XVI 



THE DIVINE SHIP 



TT is well to stop our star-gazing occasionally and 

 -*- consider the ground under our feet. May be it 

 is celestial, too ; may be this brown, sun-tanned, sin- 

 stained earth is a sister to the , morning and the 

 evening star. If it should turn out to be so, it 

 seems to me we have many things to learn over 

 again, — we must tear down and build larger. 



No wonder the old fathers resisted the notion 

 that the earth was round and turned round ! It was 

 not the mill-ponds that were in danger of spilling 

 out so much as certain creeds and theories. Once 

 set the earth afloat and what have you not unloosed ? 

 Admit that the notch in the mountain really does 

 not determine where the sun shall rise, — or, further, 

 that this great palpable fact, which our senses so 

 overwhelmingly affirm, of the passage of the sun 

 from east to west over the earth, is no fact at all, 

 but an illusion, — that it is the solid ground beneath 

 our feet that is slipping away, and not the sun up 

 there, — and you have admitted a principle that 

 makes your creeds and philosophies whirl like soap- 

 bubbles. Your creeds and philosophies are based on 

 a different fact, proceed from different premises, 

 and are totally inadequate to face such a deduction. 



