and shadow; heat and cold; day and night; sleeping and waking; summer and winter.
This eternal and universal alternation of states, the perpetual outflowing and indrawing of the breath of God, is the mighty force which keeps the orbs of heaven on their courses, turns the world on its axis, makes the ebb and flow of the tides, brings us June and December; causes the heart to beat and the lungs to breathe, excites and subdues the powers of the brain, impels us to labor and to rest, lifts us to heaven and permits us to recede to the earth.
Amid all the infinite variety of phenomena and the multiplicity of secondary causes, the one primary universal cause of all these things is, the tendency of the self hood, on the one hand, to recede from the Lord, and the attractive power of the divine love, on the other, which would draw all things back to the infinite bosom.
This apparent resolution or disintegration of the one great cause into the many, was in the mind of the far-sighted poet when he sang:
"All things
Are of one pattern made; bird, beast and flower,
Song, picture, form, space, thought and character
Deceive us, seeming to be many things,
And are but one."
