Page:The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart.pdf/306

302 alone as a security for all things. The world examines things for her own purpose in divers fashions, distrusts, tests, suspects. The Christian relies fully on the truthfulness of God. And whereas the world will ever cavil, doubt, question, feel uncertain, the Christian hath ever Him in whom he can place his entire confidence, whom he can obey, and before whom he can humble himself; therefore the light of faith gleams on him, and he can see and know what things are unchangeable, and must be so, even though he cannot grasp them by the light of reason.

4. And looking at this light, I behold wondrous, most wondrous, things—more than I dare tell. Yet I will say somewhat. I beheld the world before me as a vast clock-work, fashioned out of divers visible and invisible materials; and it was wholly glassy, transparent and fragile. It had thousands, nay, thousands of thousands, of larger and smaller columns, wheels, hooks, teeth, dents; and all these moved and worked together, some silently, some with much rustling and rattling of divers fashions. In the middle of all stood the largest, principal, yet invisible wheel; from it the various motions of the others proceeded in some unfathomable manner. For the power of the wheel penetrated through all things, and directed everything. How this was done, I was not, indeed, able fully to fathom; but