Kreeshna's flaming mouth, and swallowed up in it again, "as the
crowds of insects swarm into the flame, as the homeless streams
leap down into the ocean bed," in an everlasting heart-pulse whose
blood is living souls - and all that while, and ages before that
mystery began, that humble coral, unnoticed on the dark sea-floor,
has been "continuing as it was at the beginning," and fulfilling
"the law which cannot be broken," while races and dynasties and
generations have been


"Playing such fantastic tricks before high heaven,
As make the angels weep."


Yes; it is this vision of the awful permanence and perfection of
the natural world, beside the wild flux and confusion, the mad
struggles, the despairing cries of the world of spirits which man
has defiled by sin, which would at moments crush the naturalist's
heart, and make his brain swim with terror, were it not that he can
see by faith, through all the abysses and the ages, not merely


" Hands,
From out the darkness, shaping man;"


but above them a living loving countenance, human and yet Divine;
and can hear a voice which said at first, "Let us make man in our
image;" and hath said since then, and says for ever and for ever,
"Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world."