Supernatural; World War, 1914-1918; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
To man, and it would appear to
man alone on this plane, it is given to explore the unknown and to
establish the communion of soul with soul.
After all it is a question of evidence. If a man say "I won't believe in
anything super-natural whatever the evidence may be," it is best to
leave him to his folly. If he will accept the evidence that would pass
muster in a court of law, then you have a common ground, you can weigh
evidence. To me the evidence for spiritual appearances is overwhelming
looking at it from the strictly legal angle of vision.
In years gone by the scientific genius began with the assertion that
everything must have had a beginning, and to assert that there was a
spiritual Being with no beginning was nonsense. To the dim indistinct
crowd such appeared to be clever reasoning. But our very consciousness
insists that there is something which had no beginning, and Reason adds,
"else there could be nothing now." For example, Space could not have had
a beginning, that Duration could not, that Truth could not, that
somehow, somewhere these Three Eternals must have been co-eternal,
incomprehensible. And in this Trinity "none is afore or after the
other," which recalls the Athanasian Creed.
I cannot prove that Truth had no beginning, yet my consciousness tells
me at no period was it laid down as something new, that the shortest
distance between two points would be a straight line. No mathematician
has ever proved that there is no boundary to space, but something within
me tells me that there can be no such boundary. Even Reason tells me
that an impassable boundary would only serve to indicate the unlimited
extension beyond.
In all ages we have the mystic. Now the mystic is common to all
religions. He is the man who has felt the touch of spiritual beings, the
call of Heavenly things, and we have to explain him. In seeking to do
this we shall realize some of the truth of the things soldiers see which
we have called "The Weird in War."
V
ANGELS
The evidence for the existence and the appearance of angels does not
rest on the testimony merely of men who fought at Mons. But even that
evidence which is accepted by the talented author of _The Bowmen_
requires some explaining away and he admits that there is a difficulty
in ignoring it. But there is the accumulating evidence of the ages. When
we have explained away the soldiers' delusions, we have to confront
those of the world's wisest sons--giants in thought. We have to confront
the fact that all great religions have the theory of angels.
After all, every good thought may be the whisper of an angel, every
beautiful prospect may be but the glint of the wing, every ray of light
and heat but the waving of the robes of those higher spiritual
intelligences which rush hither and thither on God's service, whose
faces see God in Heaven. Such a belief is just as sound, and far more
philosophical than any of the guesses I have read so far, given us as
"explanation" of such phenomena.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account