years have hidden it from our eyes.

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Truth to tell, these supernatural manifestations seem less
marvelous and less fantastic than they did some centuries ago;
and we are at first a little disappointed. One would think that
even the mysterious has its ups and downs and remains subject to
the caprices of some strange extra mundane fashion; or perhaps,
to be more exact, it is evident that the majority of those
legendary miracles could not withstand the rigorous scrutiny of
our day. Those which emerge triumphant from the test and defy our
less credulous and more penetrating vision are all the more
worthy of holding our attention. They are not the last survivals
of the riddle, for this continues to exist in its entirety and
grows greater in proportion as we throw light upon it; but we can
perhaps see in them the supreme or else the first efforts of a
force which does not appear to reside wholly in our sphere. They
suggest blows struck from without by an Unknown even more unknown
than that which we think we know, an Unknown which is not that of
the universe, not that which we have gradually made into an
inoffensive and amiable Unknown, even as we have made the
universe a son of province of the earth, but a stranger arriving
from another world, an unexpected visitor who comes in a rather
sinister way to trouble the comfortable quiet in which we were
slumbering, rocked by the firm and watchful hand of orthodox
science.

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