he time is eternal.
The havoc of sin, the might of Christ, the freedom of the human spirit,
the righteousness of God, the fate of souls, are materials out of which
sublimer cathedral should be built than ever Gothic Christians wrought
in poetry of stone. "Hamlet" is the sublimity of a soul fighting,
single-handed, with innumerable foes, and dying--slain, but undefeated.
"Paradise Lost" might easily be mistaken for the deep organ music of a
stormy ocean, so matchless and sublime the melody. In theme, epic; in
treatment, epic; in termination, tragic,--which melts into holy hope
and radiant promise as a night of storm and fearful darkness melts into
the light and glory of the dawn and sunrise when the sky is fair. I
can hear and see this blind old Puritan, chanting the drama of a lost
cause as a David lamenting for his Absalom dead. Milton is sublime in
history, misfortune, range of ideas, warrior strength, and prowess to
fight and die undaunted. Not even his darkness makes him sob more than
a moment. A rebellion in heaven, a war in consequence; the flaming
legions of the skies led by Christ, God's Son; a conflict, whose
clangor fills the vaulted skies in heaven with reverberating thunders,
ending in defeat for evil which makes all Waterloos insignificant; the
fall of Satanic legions from the thrones which once were theirs, when,
with dolorous cry, they stumbled into hell; the counterplot of Lucifer;
the voyage across the wastes "of chaos and old night;" the horrid birth
of Sin; the apocalypse of Sin and Death in Eden; and the Promise, whose
pierced hand, held out, saved from utter ruin those who,

"Hand in hand with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way."

Musician, instrument, and oratorio,--all sublime. "Last named, though
first written, is the drama of Job, in which all things conspire to
lift the argument into sublimity. Are seas in tempests sublime? What
are they, matched with Job's stormy soul? Are thunders reverberating
among mountains sublime? What are they when God's voice makes
interrogatory? But above all, God walks into the drama as his right is
to walk into human life; and God's appearance, whether at Sinai or
Calvary, or in the weary watches of some heart's night of pain, makes
mountain and hour and heart sublime.

Thomas Carlyle once, reading at prayers in a friend's house from the
Book of Job, became oblivious to surroundings, and read on and on, till
one by on