And as he gazed upon the grinding mass of worlds, the wild torch dance of starry will-o'-the-wisps, and all the coral banks of throbbing hearts--and saw how world by world shook forth its glimmering souls on to the Ocean of Death--then He, sublime, loftiest of finite beings, raised his eyes towards the nothingness and boundless void, saying, "Oh dead, dumb, nothingness! necessity endless and chill! Oh! mad unreasoning Chance--when will ye dash this fabric into atoms, and me too? Chance, knowest thou--thou knowest not--when thou dost march, hurricane-winged, amid the whirling snow of stars, extinguishing sun after sun upon thy onward way, and when the sparkling dew of constellations ceases to gleam, as thou dost pass them by? How every soul in this great corpse-trench of an universe is utterly alone? _I_ am alone--none by me--O Father, Father! where is that boundless breast of thine, that I may rest upon it? Alas! if every soul be its own father and creator, why shall it not be its own destroying angel too? Is this a man still near me? Wretched being! That petty life of thine is but the sigh of nature, or the echo of that sigh. Your wavering cloudy forms are but reflections of rays cast by a concave mirror upon the clouds of dust which shroud your world--dust which is dead men's ashes. Look ye down into the chasm athwart the face of which the ash-clouds float and fly. A mist of worlds rises up from the Ocean of Death; the future is a gathering cloud, the present a falling vapour. Dost thou see and know thy earth?" Here Christ looked downward, and his eyes grew full of tears, and he spake on, and said, "Alas! I, too, was once of that poor earth; then I was happy, then I still possessed my infinite Father, and I could look up from the hills with joy to the boundless heaven, and I could cry even in the bitterness of death, 'My Father, take thy Son from out this bleeding earthly shell, and lift Him to thy heart.' Alas! too happy dwellers upon earth, ye still believe in Him. Your sun, it may be, is setting at this hour, and amid flowers and brilliance, and with tears ye sink upon your knees, and, lifting up your hands in rapturous joy, ye cry each one aloud up to the open heavens, 'Oh Father, infinite, eternal, hear! Thou knowest _me_ in all my littleness, even as Thou knowest all things, and Thou seest my wounds and sorrows, and Thou wilt receive me after death and soothe and heal them all.' Alas! unhappy souls! For after death these wounds will _not_ be healed. But when the sad and weary lays down his worn and wounded frame upon the earth to sleep towards a fairer brighter morn all truth, goodness and joy,--behold! he awakes amid a howling chaos, in a night endless and everlasting; and no morning dawns, there is no healing hand, no everlasting Father. Oh, mortal, who standest near, if still thou breathest the breath of life, worship and pray to Him, or else thou losest Him for evermore."