Surely a great Phenomenon:  nay it is a transcendental one, overstepping all rules and experience; the crowning Phenomenon of our Modern Time.  For here again, most unexpectedly, comes antique Fanaticism in new and newest vesture; miraculous, as all Fanaticism is.  Call it the Fanaticism of ‘making away with formulas, de humer les formulas.’  The world of formulas, the formed regulated world, which all habitable world is,—­must needs hate such Fanaticism like death; and be at deadly variance with it.  The world of formulas must conquer it; or failing that, must die execrating it, anathematising it;—­can nevertheless in nowise prevent its being and its having been.  The Anathemas are there, and the miraculous Thing is there.

Whence it cometh?  Whither it goeth?  These are questions!  When the age of Miracles lay faded into the distance as an incredible tradition, and even the age of Conventionalities was now old; and Man’s Existence had for long generations rested on mere formulas which were grown hollow by course of time; and it seemed as if no Reality any longer existed but only Phantasms of realities, and God’s Universe were the work of the Tailor and Upholsterer mainly, and men were buckram masks that went about becking and grimacing there,—­on a sudden, the Earth yawns asunder, and amid Tartarean smoke, and glare of fierce brightness, rises Sansculottism, many-headed, fire-breathing, and asks:  What think ye of me?  Well may the buckram masks start together, terror-struck; ‘into expressive well-concerted groups!’ It is indeed, Friends, a most singular, most fatal thing.  Let whosoever is but buckram and a phantasm look to it:  ill verily may it fare with him; here methinks he cannot much longer be.  Wo also to many a one who is not wholly buckram, but partially real and human!  The age of Miracles has come back!  ’Behold the World-Phoenix, in fire-consummation and fire-creation; wide are her fanning wings; loud is her death-melody, of battle-thunders and falling towns; skyward lashes the funeral flame, enveloping all things:  it is the Death-Birth of a World!’

Whereby, however, as we often say, shall one unspeakable blessing seem attainable.  This, namely:  that Man and his Life rest no more on hollowness and a Lie, but on solidity and some kind of Truth.  Welcome, the beggarliest truth, so it be one, in exchange for the royallest sham!  Truth of any kind breeds ever new and better truth; thus hard granite rock will crumble down into soil, under the blessed skyey influences; and cover itself with verdure, with fruitage and umbrage.  But as for Falsehood, which in like contrary manner, grows ever falser,—­what can it, or what should it do but decease, being ripe; decompose itself, gently or even violently, and return to the Father of it,—­too probably in flames of fire?