All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests
ultimately upon one assumption; a false assumption. It is supposed that
if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead; a piece of
clockwork. People feel that if the universe was personal it would vary;
if the sun were alive it would dance. This is a fallacy even in relation
to known fact. For the variation in human affairs is generally brought
into them, not by life, but by death; by the dying down or breaking off
of their strength or desire. A man varies his movements because of some
slight element of failure or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he
is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still.
But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to
Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to
Sheerness. The very speed and ecstasy of his life would have the
stillness of death. The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every
morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my
inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true
that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His
routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The
thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some
game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs
rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have
abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free,
therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do
it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly
dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.
But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible
that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every
evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity
that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy