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THE FOOL HATH SAID

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Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Nov 29, 1883

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 9, No. 45.

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THE FOOL HATH SAID.

By Edward Willett

“THERE is no God!”—an easy thing For any fool to say. The fool hath said it in his heart This many and many a day.
“Prove this and that!” the fool demands. “Explain eternity! Reveal to me that awful form Which mortals cannot see!”
Of microscope and telescope The limits we can find; The limit of the human eye, The limit of the mind.
What we perceive is all that is, The sodden fool insists; Beyond the limit of our ken Nothing at all exists.
But any fool must still admit, If any fool reflects, That there are many things unknown Except by their effects.
We do not know the life within The merest blade of grass, Nor can we see the vagrant winds That lightly come and pass.
Nor form nor size the lightning has; We only feel the stroke. An unseen force, we hold and bind And tame it to our yoke.
We mortals boast of what we know, Exalting reason's throne, While there is, far beyond our reach, An infinite unknown.
The lessons of eternal space The fool takes not to heart, And all the endless universe He gauges by a part.
If he could pass his narrow bounds And freely range abroad, He must confess that all he sees Are but effects of God. —Edward Willett, in Independent.