Whither goes it? Science has done much for us; but it is a poor science
that would hide from us the great deep sacred infinitude of Nescience,
whither we can never penetrate, on which all science swims as a mere
superficial film. This world, after all our science and sciences, is still
a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, _magical_ and more, to whosoever will
_think_ of it.

That great mystery of TIME, were there no other; the illimitable, silent,
never-resting thing called Time, rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like
an all-embracing ocean-tide, on which we and all the Universe swim like
exhalations, like apparitions which are, and then are _not_: this is
forever very literally a miracle; a thing to strike us dumb,--for we have
no word to speak about it. This Universe, ah me--what could the wild man
know of it; what can we yet know? That it is a Force, and thousand-fold
Complexity of Forces; a Force which is _not_ we. That is all; it is not
we, it is altogether different from us. Force, Force, everywhere Force; we
ourselves a mysterious Force in the centre of that. "There is not a leaf
rotting on the highway but has Force in it; how else could it rot?" Nay
surely, to the Atheistic Thinker, if such a one were possible, it must be a
miracle too, this huge illimitable whirlwind of Force, which envelops us
here; never-resting whirlwind, high as Immensity, old as Eternity. What is
it? God's Creation, the religious people answer; it is the Almighty God's!
Atheistic science babbles poorly of it, with scientific nomenclatures,
experiments and what not, as if it were a poor dead thing, to be bottled up
in Leyden jars and sold over counters: but the natural sense of man, in
all times, if he will honestly apply his sense, proclaims it to be a living
thing,--ah, an unspeakable, godlike thing; towards which the best attitude
for us, after never so much science, is awe, devout prostration and
humility of soul; worship if not in words, then in silence.