igious attitude
in face of mystery is silence, and prayer, and fearful acceptance.
When this immense, irresistible force confronts us--this inscrutable,
ceaselessly vigilant power, humanly super-human, sovereignly
intelligent, and, for all we know, even personal--must it not, at first
sight, seem more reverent, worthier, to offer complete submission,
trying only to master our terror, than tranquilly to set on foot a
patient, laborious investigation? But is the choice possible to us;
have we still the right to choose? The beauty or dignity of the
attitude we shall assume no longer is matter of moment. It is truth
and sincerity that are called for to-day for the facing of all
things--how much more when mystery confronts us! In the past, the
prostration of man, his bending the knee, seemed beautiful because of
what, in the past, seemed to be true. We have acquired no fresh
certitude, perhaps; but for us, none the less, the truth of the past
has ceased to be true. We have not bridged the unknown; but still,
though we know not what it is, we do partially know what it is not; and
it is before this we should bow, were the attitude of our fathers to be
once more assumed by us. For although it has not, perhaps, been
incontrovertibly proved that the unknown is neither vigilant nor
personal, neither sovereignly intelligent nor sovereignly just, or that
it possesses none of the passions, intentions, virtues and vices of
man, it is still incomparably more probable that the unknown is
entirely indifferent to all that appears of supreme importance in this
life of ours. It is incomparably more probable that if, in the vast
and eternal scheme of the unknown, a minute and ephemeral place be
reserved for man, his actions, be he the strongest or weakest, the best
or the worst of men, will be as unimportant there as the movements of
the obscurest geological cell in the history of ocean or continent.
Though it may not have been irrefutably shown that the infinite and
invisible are not for ever hovering round us, dealing out sorrow or joy
in accordance with our good or evil intentions, guiding our destiny
step by step, and preparing, with the help of innumerable forces, the
incomprehensible but eternal law that governs the accidents of our
birth, our future, our death, and our life beyond the tomb, it is still
incomparably more probable that the invisible and infinite, intervene
as they may at every moment in our life, enter therein on