When Their Heat, However
Generated, Is Expended, They Die To Frozen Cinders; Possibly
To Be Again Diffused As Nebulae, To Begin Again The Eternal
Round Of Change.
What is life amidst this change?
'When I consider the work
of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast
ordained, what is man that Thou art mindful of him?'
But is He mindful of us? That is what the sceptic asks. Is
He mindful of life here or anywhere in all this boundless
space? We have no ground for supposing (so we are told) that
life, if it exists at all elsewhere, in the solar system at
least, is any better than it is here? 'Analogy compels us to
think,' says M. France, one of the most thoughtful of living
writers, 'that our entire solar system is a gehenna where the
animal is born for suffering. . . . This alone would suffice
to disgust me with the universe.' But M. France is too deep
a thinker to abide by such a verdict. There must be
something 'behind the veil.' 'Je sens que ces immensites ne
sont rien, et qu'enfin, s'il y a quelque chose, ce quelque
chose n'est pas ce que nous voyons.' That is it. All these
immensities are not 'rien,' but they are assuredly not what
we take them to be. They are the veil of the Infinite,
behind which we are not permitted to see.
It were the seeing Him, no flesh shall dare.
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