Art thou a grown baby, then, to fancy that the Miracle lies in miles of
distance, or in pounds avoirdupois of weight; and not to see that the
true inexplicable God-revealing Miracle lies in this, that I can stretch
forth my hand at all; that I have free Force to clutch aught therewith?
Innumerable other of this sort are the deceptions, and wonder-hiding
stupefactions, which Space practices on us.

"Still worse is it with regard to Time. Your grand anti-magician,
and universal wonder-hider, is this same lying Time. Had we but the
Time-annihilating Hat, to put on for once only, we should see ourselves
in a World of Miracles, wherein all fabled or authentic Thaumaturgy, and
feats of Magic, were outdone. But unhappily we have not such a Hat; and
man, poor fool that he is, can seldom and scantily help himself without
one.

"Were it not wonderful, for instance, had Orpheus, or Amphion, built the
walls of Thebes by the mere sound of his Lyre? Yet tell me, Who built
these walls of Weissnichtwo; summoning out all the sandstone rocks, to
dance along from the _Steinbruch_ (now a huge Troglodyte Chasm, with
frightful green-mantled pools); and shape themselves into Doric and
Ionic pillars, squared ashlar houses and noble streets? Was it not
the still higher Orpheus, or Orpheuses, who, in past centuries, by the
divine Music of Wisdom, succeeded in civilizing Man? Our highest Orpheus
walked in Judea, eighteen hundred years ago: his sphere-melody, flowing
in wild native tones, took captive the ravished souls of men; and,
being of a truth sphere-melody, still flows and sounds, though now
with thousand-fold accompaniments, and rich symphonies, through all our
hearts; and modulates, and divinely leads them. Is that a wonder, which
happens in two hours; and does it cease to be wonderful if happening in
two million? Not only was Thebes built by the music of an Orpheus; but
without the music of some inspired Orpheus was no city ever built, no
work that man glories in ever done.

"Sweep away the Illusion of Time; glance, if thou have eyes, from
the near moving-cause to its far distant Mover: The stroke that came
transmitted through a whole galaxy of elastic balls, was it less a
stroke than if the last ball only had been struck, and sent flying? Oh,
could I (with the Time-annihilating Hat) transport thee direct from
the Beginnings, to the Endings, how were thy eyesight unsealed, and thy
heart set flaming in the Light-sea of celestial wonder