SOUNDINGS 



Furthermore, grant that the religious sense of 

 mankind is real, one of the most real things in life, — • 

 so real and valuable that the life, the literature, and 

 the art which have it not seem shallow and ephem- 

 eral, — a living sense of the Infinite Mystery in 

 which we are embosomed and our constant rela- 

 tion to it, — grant this, I say, and yet our creeds 

 and systems of salvation do not minister to it. 

 They are too legal; they know and explain too 

 much. With them the administration of the uni- 

 verse is as simple and judicial as a police court, 

 save that in human courts of justice there is no 

 deputed sin or atonement. This is a gratuitous, 

 manufactured mystery of the theologians, as are 

 the Trinity and the saving grace of rites and 

 ceremonies. 



Science has real mysteries. Catalysis is one. How 

 or why the presence of one body should cause two 

 other bodies to unite chemically without parting 

 with an atom of their own substance — as in several 

 cases in industrial chemistry — is certainly a mys- 

 tery. On the strength of such and similar facts in 

 chemistry, shall we image or invent a whole category 

 of mysteries which are beyond the reach of verifica- 

 tion? 



What mystery hovers about all chemical reac- 

 tions ! What a miracle that two invisible gases, such 

 as oxygen and hydrogen, should, when chemically 

 united, produce a body so utterly unlike either as is 



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