The outside world, may all be but a myth; Then let him so believe, but let him act Consistently; but does the skeptic so? He crams all Nature in his little mind, Yet how he cringes to her slightest law! He flees the rain, and wards the cold, or fears The lightning’s glittering blow. He doubts his frame Can work by mechanism so absurd, Yet will not for a day refrain from food! When Man compares his body and his mind, And tries the power of each, he magnifies The mind to Deity, and yet how small Compared with what it has to learn! The more Man knows, the more he finds he does not know; And as a traveller toiling up the hill, Each upward step reveals a wider view Of fields of thought sublime he dares not hope To ever reach in life; and wearily he sits Him down upon the mountain-side, so far Beneath its untrod top, and recklessly Doubts everything, because beyond his grasp. All skeptic reasoning ends, as did your own, No fruit but blind bewilderment of thought! And none but fools will e’er believe sincere The faith that doubts alone by theory, And yet approves by practice. Such is yours; The stern necessities of life demand A practical belief, and such is given; And still, forsooth, because your narrow mind Cannot contain the Truth in perfect form, You dare deny it does exist. But few Of skeptic minds are let to live on Earth, And even these made instruments of good, In calling forth defenders of the Truth, Who add their strength to its Eternal Walls. Then here behold God’s wisdom manifest! Amid the care of countless greater orbs, He watches Earth, and knows its smallest thing. While Man, as individual, is free, Collective Man is being surely led Towards an end, but when it will be reached, God knows alone. Then Man will be removed Into a higher or a lower sphere, As he has worthy proved. With Man ’twill be A great event; his awful Judgment-day! When from those far-off realms, the Son shall come With Angel retinue, and through the worlds, Shall lead their solemn flight, to where we stand; And as the trump shall peal its clarion tones, And beat away Earth’s gauze of atmosphere, The millions living, and the billions dead, Will leave the sod, and “caught up in the air,” Shall stand before the Throne, to hear their doom. Then, faces pale with fear, and trembling limbs, Will be on every side, as on the air They rest, with nothing solid ’neath their feet; And see dismantled Earth burst into flames, And reel along its track, a globe of fire, The volumed smoke, a dusky envelope; Its revolutions wrapping pliant flames, In scarlet girdles, round its bulging waist, And hurling streams of centrifugal sparks, In broad red tangents, from the burning orb. Upon the conflagration Man will gaze,