But does not this awakening to consciousness of everything that has
been, necessarily involve a fusion of the identical, an amalgamation of
like things? In this conversion of the human race into a true society in
Christ, a communion of saints, a kingdom of heaven, will not individual
differences, tainted as they are with deceit and even with sin, be
obliterated, and in the perfect society will that alone remain of each
man which was the essential part of him? Would it not perhaps result,
according to Bonnefon's supposition, that this consciousness that lived
in the twentieth century in this corner of this earth would feel itself
to be the same with other such consciousnesses as have lived in other
centuries and perhaps in other worlds?
And how can we conceive of an effective and real union, a substantial
and intimate union, soul with soul, of all those who have been?
If any two creatures grew into one
They would do more than the world has done,
said Browning in _The Flight of the Duchess_; and Christ has told us
that where two or three are gathered together in His name, there is He
in the midst of them.
Heaven, then, so it is believed by many, is society, a more perfect
society than that of this world; it is human society fused into a
person. And there are not wanting some who believe that the tendency of
all human progress is the conversion of our species into one collective
being with real consciousness--is not perhaps an individual human
organism a kind of confederation of cells?--and that when it shall have
acquired full consciousness, all those who have existed will come to
life again in it.
Pages:
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364