this earth's history, everything is again to be reabsorbed in the heat and light out of which it came, I can trust the suns and planets to fulfil their mission of progress—or the will of God—quite as well as, or better than, in my own small sphere I can trust Constitutional Governments or Established Churches. And since these lesser lights, in their foolish and providential dealings, do not confound my faith, neither do the stars in their courses fight against it. Rather do they confirm me in my sense that even the most acute perceptions with which human life is endowed fail of themselves to justify me in any claim to a larger lease of life than can naturally belong to them; for I see in the universe things far greater than any individual man, doing service and sustaining the life of countless millions, (which without them could not live at all), without any prospect of so great a reward.
The eye of the sun itself is blind; and for ever, while it dazzles us with its light, blind it must remain. Nay, what need has it for sight at all, if in blindness it be able to fulfil its mission? And yet implicit within its vast energies, there lies the gift of sight. For that blind Eye of Heaven taught us to see; our substance came from it, our eyes were made by it, and without it was not anything made on earth that was made. And if, by this gift of sight, it has opened to us so vast a space for our understanding to dwell in—bestowing so huge a conception of life on this frail vessel of
