Luke 1:37 For with God nothing shall be impossible. It is not a lucky word, this same impossible: no good comes of those who have it so often in their mouth. Who is he that says always, There is a lion in the way? Sluggard, thou must slay the lion, then; the way has to be travelled. In art, in practice, innumerable critics will demonstrate that most things are henceforth impossible; that we are got, once for all, into the region of perennial commonplace, and must contentedly continue there. Let such critics demonstrate; it is the nature of them: what harm is in it? Poetry once demonstrated to be impossible, arises the Burns, arises the Goethe. Unheroic commonplace being now clearly all we have to look for, comes Napoleon, comes the conquest of the world. It was proved by fluxionary calculus, that steamships could never get across from the farthest point of Ireland to the nearest of Newfoundland: impelling force, resisting force, maximum here, minimum there, by law of Nature and geometric demonstration. What could be done? The Great Eastern could weigh anchor from Bristol Port; that could be done. The Great Eastern, bounding safe through the gullets of the Hudson, threw her cable out on the capstan of New York, and left our still moist-paper demonstration to dry itself at leisure. "Impossible" he, cried Mirabeau, "ne me dites jamais ce bete de mot" (Never name to me that blockhead of a word). (Thomas Carlyle.) Parallel Verses KJV: For with God nothing shall be impossible. |
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