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 considered we claim such faith to be most rational, most natural.God, spirit, immortality, instead of being inconsistent with what we know, are what we most legitimately deduce from it,--what we might expect from the light that trembles behind the curtain of mystery which bounds all our sensuous knowledge.We do believe, the veriest skeptic believes in something behind that curtain of mystery; nor can he withhold his faith because it attaches to that which is unseen and incomprehensible, without, as has already been shown, cutting every nerve that binds us to practical life, and smothering every suggestion that speaks from outward nature.If he do not believe in a God, then, or in Christ, or in immortality, let him not sneer at others because they walk by faith and not by sight; for he also must do so, though his faith be not in such high truths, such spiritual realities.
