is_, contracts into a mathematic point; and
even that point perishes a thousand times before we can utter its birth.
All is finite in the present; and even that finite is infinite in its
velocity of flight towards death. But in God there is nothing finite;
but in God there is nothing transitory; but in God there _can_ be
nothing that tends to death. Therefore, it follows--that for God there
can be no present. The future is the present of God; and to the future
it is that he sacrifices the human present. Therefore it is that he
works by earthquake. Therefore it is that he works by grief. Oh, deep is
the ploughing of earthquake! Oh, deep," [and his voice swelled like a
_sanctus_ rising from the choir of a cathedral,]--"oh, deep is the
ploughing of grief! But oftentimes less would not suffice for the
agriculture of God. Upon a night of earthquake he builds a thousand
years of pleasant habitations for man. Upon the sorrow of an infant, he
raises oftentimes, from human intellects glorious vintages that could
not else have been. Less than these fierce ploughshares would not have
stirred the stubborn soil. The one is needed for earth, our planet--for
earth itself as the dwelling-place of man. But the other is needed yet
oftener for God's mightiest instrument; yes," [and he looked solemnly at
myself,] "is needed for the mysterious children of the earth!"

END OF PART I.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 9: Some readers may be apt to suppose, from all English
experience, that the word _exorcise_ means properly banishment to the
shades. Not so. Citation _from_ the shades, or sometimes the torturing
coercion of mystic adjurations, is more truly the primary sense.]

[Footnote 10: "_Laughter from the fields of ocean._"--Many readers will
recall, though at the moment of writing my own thoughts did _not_
recall, the well-known passage in the Prometheus--

[Greek:----oonlion te chymapon
'Anezithmon Gelasma.]

"Oh multitudinous laughter of the ocean billows!" It is not clear
whether AEschylus contemplated the laughter as addressing the ear or the
eye.]

[Footnote 11: This, it may be said, requires a corresponding duration of
experience; but, as an argument for this mysterious power lurking in our
nature, I may remind the reader of one phenomenon open to the notice of
every body, viz. the tendency of very aged persons to throw back and
concentrate the light of their memory upon scenes of early childhood, as
to which they recall man