We step up to a
little box, and put a shell to our ear, and speak and listen, and
converse with a friend in Boston or Chicago, recognizing the voice
perfectly, as though this friend were by our side. We send a message
over a wire, under the deep, and talk to London and all round the
globe; and we have labelled this force electricity. And, instead of
getting down on our knees in reverence, we get impatient if our
communication is delayed two minutes or three. We fool ourselves with
the thought that, because we have called it electricity, we know it, we
have taken the mystery out of the fact. Why, friends, do you know
anything about electricity? Do you know what it is? Do you know why it
works as it does? I do not; and I do not know of anybody on the face of
the earth who does. The wonder of the "Arabian Nights" is cheap and
tame and theatrical compared to the wonder of this everyday workaday
world of ours, in the midst of which and by means of which we are
carrying on our business and our daily avocations. The wonder of the
carpet that would carry the person through the air who sat upon it and
wished is nothing compared with the power of electricity, steam, any
one of these invisible, intangible powers that are thrilling through
the world to-day. There never was so much room for mystery, for awe,
for poetry, for romance, as there is in the midst of our commercial
life in this nineteenth century.
This element of religion, then, is in no danger.
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