364 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION AND MORALS. 



absolute and complete final dependence on her, emotions 

 which are the original source, as they are the abiding 

 essence of all religious feeling ; emotions really aroused 

 by Nature, but which men have habitually referred to 

 personified powers or to a single personality behind her. 

 The emotions begotten by the contemplation of Nature 

 are well calculated to beget the sense of a perpetual, 

 mighty, and universal Presence and Power. But the pre- 

 sence and the power which exists is that of great Nature 

 herself, who is, as Schelling conceived her, divine and 

 identical with the divine in us ; and the noble emotions 

 so vivifying to our souls which flow directly from the 

 contemplation of her, eternal and exhaustless, increasing 

 and not diminishing with the advance of the ages, these 

 it was, and these it still is, that the religious soul has mis- 

 taken for special intuitions of God. It was communion 

 with Nature direct that was mistaken for communion 

 with God (and Nature is at least the only symbol of the 

 invisible power behind it) ; it was communion with her 

 such as the poet and the artist, who derive their strength 

 and inspiration from her, still delight in ; only that the 

 poet knows that the pleasure in the pathless woods, as 

 well as the rapture on the lonely shore, is to be referred 

 to the grace of Nature, as does the artist, who in love 

 with her fair features, which he tries to transfer to his 

 canvas, refers to her the quiet pervading pleasure in her 

 presence, which is the moving principle of his art and 

 the chief secret of his skill. It was in all these cases 

 communion with Nature ; but it was also, if the theo- 

 logian likes it better, a mysterious attempt, in the case 

 of some of the greatest spirits, at intercourse with the 

 Infinite, with which the soul of man, of the great poet, 

 artist, thinker, mystic," or sage, at all times, and now, as 

 in the days of Plato, of Plotinus, of St. Bernard, feels 



