a, on the
Janiculum Mount; tilling Canaan under Prophet Samuel and Psalmist
David, man is ever man; the missionary of Unseen Powers; and great and
victorious, while he continues true to his mission; mean, miserable,
foiled, and at last annihilated and trodden out of sight and memory,
when he proves untrue. Brother, thou art a Man, I think; thou art not
a mere building Beaver, or two-legged Cotton-Spider; thou hast verily
a Soul in thee, asphyxied or otherwise! Sooty Manchester,--it too is
built on the infinite Abysses; overspanned by the skyey Firmaments;
and there is birth in it, and death in it;--and it is every whit as
wonderful, as fearful, unimaginable, as the oldest Salem or Prophetic
City. Go or stand, in what time, in what place we will, are there not
Immensities, Eternities over us, around us, in us:

'Solemn before us,
Veiled, the dark Portal,
Goal of all mortal:--
Stars silent rest o'er us,
Graves under us silent!'

Between _these_ two great Silences, the hum of all our spinning
cylinders, Trades-Unions, Anti-Corn-Law Leagues and Carlton Clubs
goes on. Stupidity itself ought to pause a little and consider that. I
tell thee, through all thy Ledgers, Supply-and-demand Philosophies,
and daily most modern melancholy Business and Cant, there does shine
the presence of a Primeval Unspeakable; and thou wert wise to
recognise, not with lips only, that same!

The Maker's Laws, whether they are promulgated in Sinai Thunder, to
the ear or imagination, or quite otherwise promulgated, are the Laws
of God; transcendent, everlasting, imperatively demanding obedience
from all men. This, without any thunder, or with never so much
thunder, thou, if there be any soul left in thee, canst know of a
truth. The Universe, I say, is made by Law; the great Soul of the
World is just and not unjust. Look thou, if thou have eyes or soul
left, into this great shoreless Incomprehensible: in the heart of its
tumultuous Appearances, Embroilments, and mad Time-vortexes, is there
not, silent, eternal, an All-just, an All-beautiful; sole Reality and
ultimate controlling Power of the whole? This is not a figure of
speech; this is a fact. The fact of Gravitation known to all animals,
is not surer than this inner Fact, which may be known to all men. He
who knows this, it will sink, silent, awful, unspeakable, into his
heart. He will say with Faust: "Who _dare_ name Him?" Most rituals or
'namings' he will fall in with at p