Page 139 - Eclipse of God

112 Chapter 8

neither God nor any genuine absolute which manifests itself
to men as of non- human origin. It steps in between and shuts
off from us the light of heaven.
Such is the nature of this hour. But what of the next? It is a
modern superstition that the character of an age acts as fate for
the next. One lets it prescribe what is possible to do and hence
what is permitted. One surely cannot swim against the stream,
one says. But perhaps one can swim with a new stream whose
source is still hidden? In another image, the I- Thou relation
has gone into the catacombs— who can say with how much
greater power it will step forth! Who can say when the I- It
relation will be directed anew to its assisting place and activity!
The most important events in the history of that embodied
possibility called man are the occasionally occurring begin-
nings of new epochs, determined by forces previously invisible
or unregarded. Each age is, of course, a continuation of the
preceding one, but a continuation can be confirmation and it
can be refutation.
Something is taking place in the depths that as yet needs
no name. To- morrow even it may happen that it will be beck-
oned to from the heights, across the heads of the earthly ar-
chons. The eclipse of the light of God is no extinction; even
to- morrow that which has stepped in between may give way.