Even machine and mechanism do not reign supreme, however much they might now afflict and even imprison us: "If Mechanism, like some glass bell, encircles and imprisons us; if the soul looks forth on a fair heavenly country which it cannot reach, and pines, and in its scanty atmosphere is ready to perish, -- yet the bell is but of glass; one bold stroke to break the bell in pieces, and thou art delivered!"' (27.81)

After claiming that his audience can repair the old temples and recover the wisdom and spiritual health of the ancients, Carlyle insists:

Nor are these the mere daydreams of fancy; they are clear possibilities; nay, in this time they are even assuming the character of hopes. Indications we do see in other countries and in our own, signs infinitely cheering to us, that Mechanism is not always to be our hard taskmaster, but one day t o be our pliant, all-ministering servant; that a new and brighter spiritual era is slowly evolving itself for all men" (27.81).

In Past and Present Carlyle similarly promises his contemporaries "a 'Chivalry of Labour,' and an immeasurable Future which it is to fill with fruitfulness and verdant shade," though he admits they now find themselves only standing on the "threshold, nay as yet outside the threshold" (10.277) of such a blessed time. He therefore closes Past and Present with a paragraph whose first description of the new labor rises to a visionary crescendo of hope:

noble fruitful Labour, growing ever nobler, will come forth, -- the grand sole miracle of Man; whereby Man has risen from the low places of this Earth, very literally, into divine Heavens. Ploughers, Spinners, Builders; Prophets, Poets, Kings; Brindleys and Goethes, Odins and Arkwrights; all martyrs, and noble men, and gods are of one grand Host; immeasurable; marching ever forward since the beginnings of the World. The enormous, all-conquering, flame-crowned Host, noble every soldier in it; sacred, and alone noble (10.298).

This passage exemplifies many of the individual stylistic and rhetorical devices that characterize the sage's prophetic closure. First of all, Carlyle employs a complex sentence structure that builds to a rhetorical climax, and he also makes use of a grammatical series that heaps up examples. In addition, he combines these stylistic and rhetorical patterns with imagery of spiritual progress and the heavens. The dawning of a new day, ascent to heaven, or emphasis upon sun or stars also commonly appear in such closes.