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An infinity of infinities of worlds are before us. Our world and our planetary system and our system of suns, and our system of solar systems, are but as grains of sand on the beach of the mighty ocean. But then you cry, 'But what am I poor mortal thing lost among all this inconceivable greatness? The answer comes that You are that most precious thing a living soul.
Behind them the still, heavy reach of water stretched, reflecting in mirrored clearness the mountains crowding on its southern rim. Before them the sage reached out to dim infinities of distance. The Humboldt ran nearby, sunk in a stony bed, its banks matted with growths of alder and willow. The afternoon was drawing to the magical sunset hour.
And it is his sense of sin and his sense of grace, his need of a God and his need of a Saviour, that remove him by whole infinities from the faithful brute on the chair. 'A sinner, as our fathers used to sing: A sinner is a sacred thing, The Holy Ghost hath made him so.
There are birds in the clouds, just as there are angels above human distresses; but what can they do for him? They sing and fly and float, and he, he rattles in the death agony. He feels himself buried in those two infinities, the ocean and the sky, at one and the same time: the one is a tomb; the other is a shroud.
Did I say power? Yes, power, with infinite love and wisdom behind it. What will this triumvirate of infinities not accomplish? The power of God in the material world gives us a strong suggestion of His power in the moral world. Can we then think of such an utter failure as eternal torment as being the ultimate doom of the creatures that God has made in His own likeness?
Yes, it is play; but it is not child's play, nor an idiot's play, nor the play of a 'jigging' Bacchanal, who comes out on this grave, human scene, to insult our sober, human sense, with his mad humour, making a Belshazzar's feast or an Antonian revel of it; a creature who shows himself to our common human sense without any human aim or purpose, ransacking all the life of man, exploring all worlds, pursuing the human thought to its last verge, and questioning, as with the cry of all the race, the infinities beyond, diving to the lowest depths of human life and human nature, and bringing up and publishing, the before unspoken depths of human wrong and sorrow, wringing from the hearts of those that died and made no sign, their death-buried secrets, articulating everywhere that which before had no word and all for an artistic effect, for an hour's entertainment, for the luxury of a harmonized impression, or for the mere ostentation of his frolic, to feed his gamesome humour, to make us stare at his unconsciousness, to show what gems he can crush in his idle cup for a draught of pleasure, or in pure caprice and wantonness, confounding all our notions of sense, and manliness, and human duty and respect, with the boundless wealth and waste of his gigantic fooleries.
All the rest of creation ceased, the lamp of being went out; there remained only a voice, pronouncing amid whirling infinities: "Their collars are too tight!" Somewhere in the vast spaces of chaos was a snore. Then ages afterwards, out of the void there arose a mysterious forgotten effort to get something out of a choking throat.
"Oh, that's because you think it's narrow. But it isn't. It contains infinities, and and so " "What is this jargon?" He disregarded the interjected scorn. "An infinity of absolution, for instance," he continued. "But as to this another world' who's going to look for it and for the tale that is in it?" "You," she said, with a strange, almost rough, sweetness of assertion.
"And here we find ourselves, with our tiny and uncertain space of time bounded by the Infinities at either end, with the huge puzzle set before us.
"She's the very one," he said to himself; "I wonder if Aunt Meda knows." That which proves momentous in our lives is rarely anticipated, seldom calculated. Its factors are for the most part unknown quantities; if not prime in themselves they are, at least, prime to each other. It cannot be measured in terms of time, for often it lies between two infinities.
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