METAPHYSICS OF BEAR HUNTING. 845 
the century-lived glory of that antique Faith be not referable 
to this ‘“‘bodying forth”’ of rare ideals, with all the circumstance 
of an “earthly house,” a name—of the chisel and the pencil! 
So in these latter times, when a truth comes to us out from 
the Infinite, that is to abide with us, it is sent, not with the 
destroying splendors of its source, but through the gross types 
of sense, wearing the shapes of most familiar creatures, or 
acting through the common elements of things. 
Miracles 
Are so impounded now by the stern laws 
Of sentient things, that poor short-sighted reason, 
Yielding the divination up to Faith, 
Submits these revelations under rule, 
As only given to her far ken! 
Miracles are above us, around us, and beneath us; it is 
only when the higher sense bends its inner vision upon them, 
that we recognize them so. The very triteness of the incidents 
and imagery through which they appeal to our eyes, “ever 
staring, wide-propped, at marvels, or lazily glouting on the 
moon,” prevents the recognition of their import. But are 
they the less miraculous, that our own stultification will not 
permit us to see them thus? 
There are times, though, when they come to us right solemnly, 
in sternness, in strangeness, through chastenings,—when the 
veil is torn aside, and we are made to look in awe on holy, 
hidden things, to tremble and believe. In such times our 
stolidity is no refuge; ‘we know that we do see !”,—and when 
that time has passed, what are the symbols and the images 
through which that truth dwells forever after with the soul? 
The incidents through which the Godhead came, the material 
forms through which He was made visible! be they pigmy or 
huge in man’s esteem, they ever, henceforth, in one certain 
collocation, must stand linked, the eternal, movelesy, silent 
witnessess of that Revelation, and of God, against the soul. 
