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Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern

held

Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why:

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In Midnight by the Master of the Show; Drink! for you know not why you go, nor

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Oh Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst Whereat some of the loquacious Lot- 345 make, I think a Súfi pipkin-waxing hot"All this of Pot and Potter-Tell me

And ev❜n with Paradise devise the Snake: For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man

Is blacken'd-Man's forgiveness giveand take!

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It is in his stupendous Section, headed Natural Supernaturalism, that the Professor first becomes a Seer; and, after long effort, such as we have witnessed, finally subdues under his feet the refractory Clothes-Philosophy, and takes victorious possession thereof. Phantasms enough he has had to struggle with; "Cloth-webs and Cob-webs," of Imperial Mantles, Superannuated Symbols, and what [10 not; yet still did he courageously pierce through. Nay, worst of all, two quite mysterious, world embracing Phantasms, TIME and SPACE, have ever hovered round him, perplexing and bewildering; but with these also he now resolutely grapples, these also he victoriously rends asunder. In a word, he has looked fixedly on Existence, till, one after the other, its earthly hulls and garnitures have all [20 melted away; and now, to his rapt vision, the interior celestial Holy of Holies lies disclosed.

This stupendous Section we, after long painful meditation, have found not to be unintelligible; but, on the contrary, to grow clear, nay radiant, and

1 the end.

all-illuminating. Let the reader, turning on it what utmost force of speculative intellect is in him, do his part; as we, [30 by judicious selection and adjustment, shall study to do ours:

"Deep has been, and is, the significance of Miracles," thus quietly begins the Professor; "far deeper perhaps than we imagine. Meanwhile, the question of questions were: What specially is a Miracle? To that Dutch King of Siam, an icicle had been a miracle; whoso had carried with him an air-pump and [40 vial of vitriolic ether, might have worked a miracle. To my Horse, again, who unhappily is still more unscientific, do not I work a miracle, and magical 'Open sesamel' every time I please to pay twopence and open for him an impassable Schlagbaum, or shut Turnpike?

"But is not a real Miracle simply a violation of the Laws of Nature?' ask several. Whom I answer by this [50 new question: what are the Laws of Nature? To me perhaps the rising of one from the dead were no violation of these Laws, but a confirmation; were some far deeper Law, now first penetrated into, and by Spiritual Force, even as the rest have all been, brought to bear on us with its Material Force.

"But is it not the deepest Law of Nature that she be constant?' cries an [60 illuminated class: 'Is not the Machine of the Universe fixed to move by unalterable rules?' Probable enough, good friends: nay, I, too, must believe that the God, whom ancient inspired men assert to be 'without variableness or shadow of turning,' does indeed never change; that Nature, that the Universe, which no one whom it so pleases can be prevented from calling a Machine, [70 does move by the most unalterable rules. And now of you too I make the old inquiry: What those same unalterable rules, forming the complete Statute-Book of Nature, may possibly be?

"They stand written in our Works of Science, say you; in the accumulated records of man's Experience?-Was man with his Experience present at the Crea

tion, then, to see how it all went on? [80 Have any deepest scientific individuals yet dived down to the foundations of the Universe, and gauged everything there? Did the Maker take them into His counsel; that they read His ground-plan of the incomprehensible All; and can say, This stands marked therein, and no more than this? Alas! not in anywise! These scientific individuals have been nowhere but where we also are; have seen some [90 handbreadths deeper than we see into the Deep that is infinite, without bottom as without shore.

"System of Nature! To the wisest man, wide as is his vision, Nature remains of quite infinite depth, of quite infinite expansion; and all Experience thereof limits itself to some few computed centuries, and measured square-miles. The course of Nature's phases, on this our [100 little fraction of a Planet, is partially known to us: but who knows what deeper courses these depend on; what infinitely larger Cycle (of causes) our little Epicycle revolves on? To the Minnow every cranny and pebble, and quality and accident, of its little native Creek may have become familiar: but does the Minnow understand the Ocean Tides and periodic Currents, the Trade-winds, and Mon- [110 soons, and Moon's Eclipses,-by all which the condition of its little Creek is regulated, and may, from time to time (unmiraculously enough), be quite overset and reversed? Such a minnow is Man; his Creek this Planet Earth; his Ocean the immeasurable All; his Monsoons and periodic Currents the mysterious Course of Providence through Eons of Æons.

"We speak of the Volume of Na- [120 ture: and truly a Volume it is, whose Author and Writer is God. To read it! Dost thou, does man, so much as well know the Alphabet thereof? . . .

"Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain-tricks of Custom: but of all these perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that the Miraculous, by simple repetition, ceases to be Miraculous. True, it is by this means [130 we live; for man must work as well as

wonder: and herein is Custom so far a kind nurse, guiding him to his true benefit. But she is a fond foolish nurse, or rather we are false foolish nurslings, when, in our resting and reflecting hours, we prolong the same deception.

"But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for hiding Wonder, as for many other ends, are your two grand funda- [140 mental world-enveloping Appearances, SPACE and TIME. These, as spun and woven for us from before Birth itself, to clothe our celestial ME for dwelling here, and yet to blind it,-lie all-embracing, as the universal canvas, or warp and woof, whereby all minor Illusions, in this Phantasm Existence, weave and paint themselves. In vain, while here on Earth, shall you endeavor to strip them off; [150 you can, at best, but rend them asunder for moments, and look through.

then, or only past; is the Future nonextant or only future? Those mystic faculties of thine, Memory and Hope, already answer: already through those mystic avenues, thou the Earth- [190 blinded summonest both Past and Future, and communest with them, though as yet darkly, and with mute beckonings. The curtains of Yesterday drop down, the curtains of To-morrow roll up; but Yesterday and To-morrow both are. Pierce through the Time-Element, glance into the Eternal. Believe what thou findest written in the sanctuaries of Man's Soul, even as all Thinkers, in all [200 ages, have devoutly read it there: that Time and Space are not God, but creations of God; that with God as it is a universal HERE, so is it an everlasting Now.

"And seest thou therein any glimpse of IMMORTALITY?-O Heaven! Is the white Tomb of our Loved One, who died from our arms, and had to be left behind us there, which rises in the distance, like [210 a pale, mournfully receding Milestone, to tell how many toilsome uncheered miles we have journeyed on alone, but a pale spectral Illusion! Is the lost Friend still mysteriously Here, even as we are Here mysteriously with God!-Know of a truth that only the Time-shadows have perished, or are perishable; that the real Being of whatever was, and whatever is, and whatever will be, is even now and [220 forever. This, should it unhappily seem new, thou mayst ponder at thy leisure; for the next twenty years, or the next twenty centuries: believe it thou must; understand it thou canst not.

"Fortunatus had a wishing Hat, which when he put on, and wished himself Anywhere, behold he was There. By this means had Fortunatus triumphed over Space, he had annihilated Space; for him there was no Where, but all was Here. Were a Hatter to establish himself, in the Wahngasse of Weissnichtwo, and [160 make felts of this sort for all mankind, what a world we should have of it! Still stranger, should, on the opposite side of the street, another Hatter establish himself; and, as his fellow-craftsman made Space-annihilating Hats, make Timeannihilating! Of both would I purchase, were it with my last groschen, but chiefly of this latter. To clap-on your felt, and, simply by wishing that you were [170 Anywhere, straightway to be There! Next to clap-on your other felt, and simply by wishing that you were Anywhen, straightway to be Then! This were indeed the grander: shooting at will from the Fire-Creation of the World to its Fire-Consummation; here historically pres-imaginings, seems altogether fit, just,

ent in the First Century, conversing face to face with Paul and Seneca; there prophetically in the Thirty-first, con- [180 versing also face to face with other Pauls and Senecas, who as yet stand hidden in the depth of that late Time!

"Or thinkest thou, it were impossible, unimaginable? Is the Past annihilated,

"That the Thought-forms, Space and Time, wherein, once for all, we are sent into this Earth to live, should condition and determine our whole Practical reasonings, conceptions, and imagings or [230

and unavoidable. But that they should, furthermore, usurp such sway over pure spiritual Meditation, and blind us to the wonder everywhere lying close on us, seems nowise so. Admit Space and Time to their due rank as Forms of Thought; nay, even, if thou wilt, to their quite undue rank of Realities: and con

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