e
a mad witch's hair; till, after a space, it vanished, and, in the
clear sunbeam, your Schreckhorn stood smiling grim-white, for the
vapour had held snow. How thou fermentest and elaboratest, in thy
great fermenting-vat and laboratory of an Atmosphere, of a World, O
Nature!--Or what is Nature? Ha! why do I not name thee GOD? Art not
thou the "Living Garment of God"? O Heavens, is it, in very deed, HE,
then, that ever speaks through thee; that lives and loves in thee,
that lives and loves in me?

'Fore-shadows, call them rather fore-splendours, of that Truth, and
Beginning of Truths, fell mysteriously over my soul. Sweeter than
Dayspring to the Shipwrecked in Nova Zembla; ah, like the mother's
voice to her little child that strays bewildered, weeping, in unknown
tumults; like soft streamings of celestial music to my too-exasperated
heart, came that Evangel. The Universe is not dead and demoniacal, a
charnel-house with spectres; but godlike, and my Father's!

'With other eyes, too, could I now look upon my fellow man; with an
infinite Love, an infinite Pity. Poor, wandering, wayward man! Art
thou not tired, and beaten with stripes, even as I am? Ever, whether
thou bear the royal mantle or the beggar's gabardine, art thou not so
weary, so heavy-laden; and thy Bed of Rest is but a Grave. O my
Brother, my Brother, why cannot I shelter thee in my bosom, and wipe
away all tears from thy eyes! Truly, the din of many-voiced Life,
which, in this solitude, with the mind's organ, I could hear, was no
longer a maddening discord, but a melting one; like inarticulate
cries, and sobbings of a dumb creature, which in the ear of Heaven are
prayers. The poor Earth, with her poor joys, was now my needy Mother,
not my cruel Stepdame; Man, with his so mad Wants and so mean
Endeavours, had become the dearer to me; and even for his sufferings
and his sins, I now first named him Brother. Thus was I standing in
the porch of that "_Sanctuary of Sorrow_;" by strange, steep ways had
I too been guided thither; and ere long its sacred gates would open,
and the "_Divine Depth of Sorrow_" lie disclosed to me.'

The Professor says, he here first got eye on the Knot that had been
strangling him, and straightway could unfasten it, and was free. 'A
vain interminable controversy,' writes he, 'touching what is at
present called Origin of Evil, or some such thing, arises in every
soul, since the beginning of the world; and in every soul, that would
pass