C. INCOMPREHENSIBILITY OF ETERNITY NOT CONCLUSIVE. § 43. There is, however, a general objection, which may here be noticed. Eternity and self-existence are themes too mysterious to be contemplated; and, as mysteries, they should, therefore, be rejected. To this the answer is twofold. a1. To assert incomprehensibility is begging the question. How can eternity be mysterious unless it exists? Nor is an inability to comprehend a thing a valid ground for skepticism as to its existence. "There is a mystery about a plenum, and a mystery about a vacuum," to paraphrase one of Dr. Johnson's remarks, "but one must be true." There is a mystery about soul and about body, and yet we must believe in one, if not both.

b1. Experience tells us that it is limit which is artificial, not infinitude. Infinitude is nothing more than limit untied. Take, for instance, the effect of the magnetic telegraph, which operates by destroying the obstructions by which the senses are impeded. Let us suppose, then, artificial obstructions to be removed, and we fall back at once upon eternity as to time, and infinitude as to space.*

There is an anecdote told by Mr. Rogers, in his "TableTalk," which strikingly illustrates the unconscious confession by the human mind of this great truth. He was visiting a picture of the Transfiguration, in an Italian convent, and observed an old Benedictine monk silently looking on the same great scene. Day after day the poet repeated the visit, and day after day the monk was found at his post, gazing with an eye which seemed to view not so much the

* See this more fully stated, post, & 129.

painting as the sublime fact behind it. At last Mr. Rogers made an excuse for asking him a question which might draw out his opinion of the picture's artistic merits. Sir," was the reply, "for fifty years have I paced to and fro in this chapel,―nearly three generations of monks have I seen pass away, and sink under those stone flags; and, as I look up to that vision of our transfigured Lord, I begin to think that it is we who are the pictures, and that the reality." And is there any one who has watched the rapid course of human life, who has, in the record of nature, seen how even mountains and oceans have been marshaled at their posts and then dismissed at a divine command, but has felt that it is the created that is artificial, and the Creator alone that is real?

d. DESOLATENESS OF A GODLESS UNIVERSE.

§ 44. Nowhere is this more vividly portrayed than by Jean Paul, in a celebrated paper, of which we give part of a translation by Mr. Carlyle. The author supposes himself to fall into a dream, which he prefaces as follows:

"The purpose of this fiction is the excuse of its boldness. Men deny the Divine existence with as little feeling as the most assert it. Even in our true systems we go on collecting mere words, playmarks and medals, as the misers do coins; and not till late do we transform the words into feelings, the coins into enjoyments. A man may, for twenty years, believe in the immortality of the soul; in the oneand-twentieth, in some great moment, he, for the first time, discovers, with amazement, the rich meaning of this belief and the warmth of this naphtha well.

'Of such sort, was my terror at the poisonous, stifling vapor which floats out around the heart of him who, for the first time, enters the school of atheism. I could, with less pain, deny immortality than Deity; there I should lose but a world covered with mists, here I should lose the present world, namely, the sun thereof; the whole spiritual universe is dashed asunder, by the hand of atheism, into numberless quicksilver points of me's, which glitter, run, waver, fly together or asunder, without unity or continuance. No one in creation is so alone as the denier of God; he mourns, with an orphaned heart that has lost its great Father, by the corpse of Nature, which no world-spirit moves and holds together, and which grows in its grave; and he mourns by that corpse till he himself crumbles off from it. The whole world lies before him like the Egyptian sphinx of stone, half-buried in the sand; and the All is the cold, iron mask of a formless eternity."

Of the remarkable dream that follows, itself the most brilliant production of a very brilliant writer, the following passage is all that can be at present extracted:

"I was lying once, on a summer evening, in the sunshine, and I fell asleep. Methought I awoke in the churchyard. The down-rolling wheels of the steeple clock, which was striking eleven, had woke me. In the emptied night-heaven. I looked for the sun; for I thought an eclipse was veiling him with the moon. All the graves were open, and the iron doors of the charnel-houses were swinging to and fro by invisible hands. On the walls flitted shadows which proceeded from no one, and other shadows stretched upward In the open coffins none now lay sleeping

in the pale air.

but the children. folds, a gray, sultry mist, which a giant shadow like vapor was drawing down nearer, closer, and hotter. Above me I heard the distant fall of avalanches; under me the first step of a boundless earthquake. The church wavered up and down with two interminable dissonances, which struggled with each other in it, endeavoring in vain to mingle in unison. At times a gray glimmer hovered along the windows, and under it the lead and iron fell down molten. The net of the mist and the tottering earth brought me into that hideous temple, at the door of which, in two poison bushes, two glittering basalisks lay brooding. I passed through unknown shadows, on whom ancient centuries were impressed. All the shadows were standing around the empty altar; and in all, not the heart, but the breast quivered and pulsed. One dead man only, who had just been buried there, still lay in his coffin without quivering breast; and on his smiling countenance stood a happy dream; but, at the entrance of one living, he awoke, and smiled no longer; he lifted his heavy eyelids, but within was no eye; and in his beating breast there lay, instead of a heart, a wound. He held up his hands and folded them to pray, but the arms lengthened out and dissolved; and the hands, still folded together, fell away. Above, on the church dome, stood the dial-plate of Eternity, whereon no number appeared, and which was its own index; but a black finger pointed thereon, and the dead sought to see by it."

Over the whole heaven hung, in large

CHAPTER V.

FROM DESIGN IN NATURE.

§ 45. IN a fragment of Aristotle, preserved by Cicero, in his treatise De Naturâ Deorum, we find the following striking passage:—

"If there were beings who lived in the depths of the earth, in dwellings adorned with statues and paintings, and everything which is possessed in rich abundance by those. whom we esteem fortunate; and if these beings could receive tidings of the power and might of the gods, and could then emerge from their hidden dwellings through the open fissures of the earth to the places we inhabit; if they could suddenly behold the earth, and the sea, and the vault of heaven; could recognize the expanse of the cloudy firmament, and the might of the winds of heaven, and admire the sun in its majestic beauty and radiant effulgence; and lastly, when night veiled the earth in darkness, they could behold the starry heavens, the changing moon, and the stars rising and setting in their unvarying course, ordained from eternity, they would surely exclaim, 'there are gods, and such great things must be the work of their hands !'"

From this stand-point, to which our very familiarity with these great spectacles requires that we should elevate ourselves in order to understand them, let us view,