80 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



is to be engulfed, is to transform existence into a 

 system of radical and irremediable evil, and thus 

 to make genuine religion impossible ; and not only 

 religion, but also all cordial political union and order, 

 for this gets and keeps a footing amid the shifting 

 affairs of this sense-world, only because it is the 

 outward image of the religious vision. Belief in 

 the sovereign goodness of the universe and its ground- 

 ing Light is the life alike of religious faith and of 

 political fealty. It is impossible that either faith or 

 fealty can long endure after we have come to the 

 realising conviction that the whole of which we form 

 a part, and the central Principle of the whole, are 

 hostile, or even indifferent, not simply to the perma- 

 nent existence of the soul, but to its aspirations after 

 completion in moral life. A nominal God, who 

 either cannot or will not bring to fulfilment the 

 longing after infinite moral growth that has once 

 arisen in a spirit, is not, and cannot be, for such a 

 spirit, true God at all : — 



The wish that of the living whole 



No life may fail beyond the grave, 



Derives it not from what we have 

 The likest God within the soul ? 



* If if. * ii. * ■^ 



. . . And he, shall he — 



Man, the last work, who seemed so fair, 

 Such splendid purpose in his eyes, 

 Who rolled the psalm to wintry skies, 



Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer — 



