Post 24428
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I began with the contemplation of the beauty and terror of the thunderbolt–“God’s autograph,” as one of our poets (Joel Benton) said, “written upon the sky.” Let me end with an allusion to another aspect of the storm that has no terror in it–the bow in the clouds: a sudden apparition, a cosmic phenomenon no less wonderful and startling than the lightning’s flash. The storm with terror and threatened destruction on one side of it, and peace and promise on the other! The bow appears like a miracle, but it is a commonplace of nature; unstable as life, and beautiful as youth. The raindrops are not changed, the light is not changed, the laws of the storms are not changed; and yet, behold this wonder!
But all these strange and beautiful phenomena springing up in a world of inert matter are but faint symbols of the mystery and the miracle of the change of matter from the non-living to the living, from the elements in the clod to the same elements in the brain and heart of man.
Still the problem of living things haunts my mind and, let me warn my reader, will continue to haunt it throughout the greater part of this volume. The final truth about it refuses to be spoken. Every effort to do so but gives one new evidence of how insoluble the problem is.