ON THE DEVELOPED CONCEPTION OF GOD. 365 



itself in some real but indefinable and inexpressible 

 relation. It was an attempt, at intermittent and supreme 

 moments, to transcend human conditions, to pass the 

 furthest frontier of thought and emotion ; an endeavour, 

 however vain, to fathom the mystery, to catch the 

 furthest light, to reach a final support, which the mind 

 of man has ever, from its double sense of impotence and 

 infinity, been vainly assaying. 



We are, indeed, in relations of the deepest sympathy 

 with visible Nature, as well as in profoundest final de- 

 pendence upon her relations deeper than those of the 

 child to its mother ; why, then, should not this mighty 

 and mysterious yet ever visible and beautiful presence 

 stir us deeply and at times most strangely ? She is alike 

 BO lovely in her golden sunsets and silver clouds, in her 

 splendid summer dress and soberer autumn colours ; so 

 beautiful in her glassy seas and flashing waves, by 

 meadow, grove, or stream, in flower, and bird, and man, 

 and brute ; and then she is sublime and awful on the 

 lonely summits of her mighty mountains, august and 

 terrible in her lightnings and ocean tempests. But again, 

 she is goodness itself, and shows her kind intention in 

 her cooling fountains and fruits, in her corn, her olives,, 

 and her grapes, ripening in her valleys and mountain 

 slopes. The flowers scattered on the wayside, while, 

 showing the consummate artist she has become, are in- 

 nocent whispers of her friendliness to man. And all the 

 while, whether she shows herself as bountiful, or beau- 

 tiful, or angry, or terrible, she moves calmly for ever 

 under her own appointed and unchanging laws ; all the 

 while, too, we feel that she is profoundly and utterly 

 mysterious, and that none can penetrate beneath the 

 exterior of her impassive breast to read the final secret 

 that she nourishes in her awful and inscrutable heart. 



