the most common,
every-day truths, that seemed stale and exhausted, become illuminated
with infinite meaning, and are the blossoms of an infinite life.

The wider our circle of discovery, the wider our wonder; the more
startling our conclusions, the more perplexing our questions. We have
not exhausted the universe;--we have just begun to see its harmony of
proportion and of relations, without penetrating a fathom into its
real life. How and what is that power that works in the shooting of
a crystal, and binds the obedience of a star; that shimmers in the
northern Aurora, and connects by its attraction the aggregated universe;
that by its unseen forces, its all-prevalent jurisdiction, holds the
little compass to the north, blooms in the nebula and the flower, weaves
the garment of earth and the veil of heaven, darts out in lightning,
spins the calm motion of the planets, and presides mysteriously over
all motion and all life? And what is life, and what is death, and what
a thousand things that we touch, and experience, and think we know all
about? O! as science, as nature opens upon us, we find mystery after
mystery, and the demand upon the human soul if for faith, faith in high,
yes, in spiritual realities; and this materialism that would shut us in
to death and sense, that denies all spirit and all miracle, is shattered
like a crystal sphere, and the soul rushes out into wide orbits and
infinite revolutions, into life, and light, and power, that are of
eternity,--that are of God!

Thus the scale is prepared for us to rise from things of sense to things
of spirit, to rise from faith in nature to faith in Revelation, from
the faith of LaPlace to the faith of Paul. No one who has studied nature
will reject Christianity because it reveals truths that he cannot
see with his naked eye,--because it speaks of things that he cannot
comprehend. No one who has considered the shooting of a green blade
will dogmatically deny its miracles. No one who has found in the natural
world the intelligent wisdom that pervades all things, will wonder that
he discovers a revelation of perfect love in Jesus Christ. "We walk by
faith, not by sight," said Paul. So says every Christian; and it is of
all things the most rational. Faith in something higher and greater
than we can see, faith in something above this narrow scene, faith in
something beyond this present life, faith in realities that are not of
time or sense; from all that we have now c