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The life of God is in us, we are in the life of God; but that life transcends us so that it includes all else, every person, every animal, every grass-blade, every flower, every particle of earth, every particle of everything, animate and inanimate.
But as an illustration of the creativeness of man's intellect of its wondrous capability of its alliance with that attribute of the Divine Nature which is evident in the fibres of the grass-blade and the march of the galaxy I know of nothing more striking than this piece of mechanism, which is the product of the most profound and patient thought, the harmonizing of antagonistic forces, the combination of the most abstruse details, fitted to the remotest exigencies, and working just as the inventive mind meant it should, and just as it was set a-going, as if that mind were presiding over it, were in it, though it is now far distant, or has vanished from the earth.
As a grass-blade, if badly grasped, cuts the arm, badly-practised asceticism leads to hell. If anything is to be done, let a man do it, let him attack it vigorously! A careless pilgrim only scatters the dust of his passions more widely. An evil deed is better left undone, for a man repents of it afterwards; a good deed is better done, for having done it, one does not repent.
Then, before a single grass-blade had sprouted, a hopeful multitude of large hairy, silky buds about as thick as one's thumb came to light, pushing up through the black and gray ashes and cinders, and before these buds were fairly free from the ground they opened wide and displayed purple blossoms about two inches in diameter, giving beauty for ashes in glorious abundance.
And she was free. If you could have seen how pretty she looked standing there, about the height of a grass-blade, wringing out her long wet hair. Every bit of moisture she wrung out of it, she was so glad to be quit of that tear. Then she raised her two arms above her in one delicious stretch, and if you had been the size of a mustard-seed perhaps you might have heard her laughing.
She answered at once: "It is the Little Kopje. The English traveller made it when he put the dead woman in the ground." His heart beat heavily, and the hand that pointed with the grass-blade shook a little. "Where is the man who buried the dead woman and built the Little Kopje?" She pointed to the rude oblong that was meant for a grave. "There." The slender finger climbed the heap of boulders.
Meg obediently following the long grass-blade which her new tutor used to point with, read slowly and timidly, unconsciously making poetry of the hard words by the soft intonation of her musical voice. Down the page went the green guide, and presently, forgetting her listener in the beauty of the sad scene, Meg read as if alone, giving a little touch of tragedy to the words of the unhappy queen.
CARLYLE: "Then sawest thou that this fair Universe, were it in the meanest province thereof, is in very deed the star-domed City of God; that through every star, through every grass-blade, and most through every Living Soul, the glory of a present God still beams. But Nature, which is the Time-vesture of God, and reveals Him to the wise, hides Him from the foolish."
In the level plain the desolation was yet more marked; there was not a grass-blade or plant; the surface was hard, black, and burned, resembling iron, and indeed in places it resounded to his feet, though he supposed that was the echo from hollow passages beneath.
A few very simple rules for testing the power, presence, and quality of the prevailing gray in nature are so easily learned and so convincing in their application that once applied they are never forgotten. Take, for instance, a morning in late spring or early summer, when all nature is dressed from tree-top to grass-blade in a suit of vivid green.
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