It  is  immense,  it  is  sublime,  it  sparkles  with
beauties,  but  it  is  senseless,  aimless,  pitiless.  It  is
an  interminable  succession  of  causes  and  effects,
with  no  reason  or  love  as  either  their  beginning  or
end  ;  it  is  an  unlimited  ocean  of  restlessness  and
change,  the  waves  of  which  heave  and  moan,  under
the  influence  of  necessity,  in  darkness  for  evermore;
it  is  an  enormous  mechanism,  driving  and  grinding
on  of  itself  from  age  to  age,  but  towards  no  goal
and  for  no  good.  Says  Strauss  himself,  "  In  the
enormous  machine  of  the  universe,  amid  the  in-
cessant whirl  and  hiss  of  its  jagged  iron  wheels —
amid  the  deafening  crash  of  its  ponderous  stamps
and  hammers — in  the  midst  of  this  terrific  com-
motion, man,  a  helpless  and  defenceless  creature,
finds  himself  placed— not  secure  for  a  moment,
that  on  some  unguarded  motion,  a  wheel  may
not  seize  and  rend  him,  or  a  hammer  crush  him
to  powder.  This  sense  of  abandonment  is  at  first
very  awful."  And  we  may  add,  the  longer  it  is
realised  it  should  grow  more  and  more  awful,  ever
deeper,  denser,  and  darker,  until  the  atheist  feels
that  for  him  to  talk  of  heartily  enjoying  nature
were  a  cruel  mockery  of  his  own  helplessness.  We
can  only  be  rationally  free  to  enjoy  nature  when
we  have  confidence  that  one  hand  of  an  almighty
Father  is  working  the  mechanism  of  the  universe
and  another  guiding  His  children  in  the  midst  of


A  theism  a? id  Morality.  3 1

it,  so  that  neither  wheel  nor  hammer  shall  injure
one  hair  of  their  heads.
