Every fact in nature is a revelation of God, is there such as it is because God is such as he is; and I suspect that all its facts impress us so that we learn God unconsciously. True, we cannot think of any one fact thus, except as we find the soul of it—its fact of God; but from the moment when first we come into contact with the world, it is to us a revelation of God, his things seen, by which we come to know the things unseen. What idea could we have of God without the sky? The truth of the sky is what it makes us feel of the God that sent it out to our eyes. In its discovered laws, light seems to me to be such because God is such. Its so-called laws are the waving of his garments, waving so because he is thinking and loving and walking inside them. We are here in a region far above that commonly claimed for science, open only to the heart of the child and the childlike man and woman. Facts and laws are but a means to an end; in the perfected end we find the intent, and there God. For that reason, human science cannot discover God; for science is but the backward undoing of the tapestry-web of God’s science; it will never find the face of God, while those who would reach his heart will find also the spring-head of his science. The work of science is a following back of his footsteps, too often without appreciation of the result for which the feet took those steps. If a man could find out why God worked so, then he would be discovering God; but even then he would not be discovering the best and deepest of God; for his means cannot be so great as his ends.

Commentary

by Dale Darling

For His means cannot be so great as His ends.

POW!

A friend, an artist, once said to me, a composer, "All we have is the process."

I am inspired, a mystery I learned to trust, and obeyed by putting a clef on a staff, a note in a space, designated to be played by one instrument at one particular moment. The note will have an attack: it sounds, and may sustain for as long as the musician can blow, the string vibrate or the bow draw, or end as quickly as its attack: a cymbal crash immediately muted, the POW! reverberating in the mind's ear like the brightness of a flash of light remains behind closed eyes.

The writing of that note in itself, a spot of ink on paper, is an easy thing. The playing of it at the right time in the right place at the right volume by the right instrument alone or along with its fellows may take less time than it took to put the spot of ink on the paper, in the space, or on the line.

And the one that tries to analyze the singleness of all of that in order to discover the inspiration might miss the intent: music.