ly as
stupendous, blind, indifferent elements; and that though they pass over
us, in us, penetrate into our being, and inspire and mould our life,
they are as careless of our individual existence as air, water, or
light. And the whole of our conscious life, the life that forms our
one certitude, that is our one fixed point in time and space, rests
upon "incomparable probabilities" of this nature; but rarely are they
as "incomparable" as these.

4

The hour when a lofty conviction forsakes us should never be one of
regret. If a belief we have clung to goes, or a spring snaps within
us; if we at last dethrone the idea that so long has held sway, this is
proof of vitality, progress, of our marching steadily onwards, and
making good use of all that lies to our hand. We should rejoice at the
knowledge that the thought which so long has sustained us is proved
incapable now of even sustaining itself. And though we have nothing to
put in the place of the spring that lies broken, there need still be no
cause for sadness. Far better the place remain empty than that it be
filled by a spring which the rust corrodes, or by a new truth in which
we do not wholly believe. And besides, the place is not really empty.
Determinate truth may not yet have arrived, but still, in its own deep
recess, there hides a truth without name, which waits and calls. And
if it wait and call too long in the void, and nothing arise in the
place of the vanished spring, it still shall be found that, in moral no
less than in physical life, necessity will be able to create the organ
it needs, and that the negative truth will at last find sufficient
force in itself to set the idle machinery going. And the lives that
possess no more than one force of this kind are not the least
strenuous, the least ardent, or the least useful.

And even though our belief forsake us entirely, it still will take with
it nothing of what we have given, nor will there be lost one single
sincere, religious, disinterested effort that we have put forth to
ennoble this faith, to exalt or embellish it. Every thought we have
added, each worthy sacrifice we have had the courage to make in its
name, will have left its indelible mark on our moral existence. The
body is gone, but the palace it built still stands, and the space it
has conquered will remain for ever unenclosed. It is our duty, and one
we dare not renounce, to prepare homes for truths that shall come, to
maintain