acter. No doubt beauty is a half-way element, mediating between the physical laws and the moral sentiments, partaking more of the latter than of the former, as being itself a spiritual perception. No doubt it does in some measure act as a reconciler between those two elements which so often seem to stand out in contrast irreconcilable. If however it is to do this, if it is really to lead the soul upward, man must come to the contemplation of it with his moral convictions clear and firm, and with faith in these as connecting him directly with God. Neither morality nor religion will he get out of beauty taken by itself. If out of the splendid vision spread before him-the sight of earth, sea, and sky, of the clouds, the gleams, the shadows-man could arrive directly at the knowledge of Him who is behind them, how is it that in early ages whole nations, with these sights continually before them, never reached any moral conception of God? how is it that even in recent times many of the most gifted spirits, who have been most penetrated by that vision, and have given it most magnificent expression, have been in revolt against religious faith? It is because they sought in Nature alone, that which alone she was never intended to give. It is because the spectacle of the outward world, however splendid, if we begin with it, and insist on extracting our main light from it, is powerless to satisfy our human need, to speak any word which fits in to man's

moral yearning. Nay, Nature taken alone will often appear no benign mother at all, no dwellingplace of a kindly spirit, but an inexorable and cruel Sphinx, who rears children and makes them glad a little while, only that she may the more relentlessly destroy them.

But he who takes the opposite road, who, instead of looking to visible Nature for his first teaching, begins with the knowledge of himself, of his need, his guilt, his helplessness, and listens to the voice that tells of a strength not his own, and a redemption not in him but for him, he will learn to look on Nature with other and calmer eyes, and to discern a meaning in it which taken by itself it cannot give. Man may then find in the beauty which he sees a hint and intimation of a higher beauty which he does not see a something revealed to the eye which corresponds to the religious truth revealed to the heart, harmonising with it and confirming it. He can regard the glory of Nature, not only in itself and for its own sake, but as the foreshadow and prophecy of a higher glory yet to be. And so the sight of Nature, instead of intoxicating, maddening, and rousing to rebellion, soothes, elevates, spiritualises, chiming in unison with our best thoughts, our purest aspirations.

Canon Mozley, in his sermon on Nature' already alluded to, has dwelt very powerfully on this, as the use which the highest poetry makes of Nature, and has shown that it is at once in

accordance with the teaching and practice of Scripture, and true to our human instincts. He shows how sight, the noblest of our senses here, is made the pattern and type of the highest attitude of the soul hereafter. For heaven is represented as 'a perfected sight,' and he who attains to it is to be a beholder. It is not mere self-rapt thought or inward contemplation, but a future vision of God which is promised. Meanwhile Nature and her works are employed in Scripture, not only as proofs of goodness in God, but also as symbols representative of what He has in keeping for them who shall attain. Out of the storehouse of Nature are taken the materials the light, the rainbow, the sapphire, and the sea of glass-to set forth, as far as can be set forth, the things that shall be,-sight, the noblest sense here, made the type of the highest mental act hereafter; and Nature the spectacle given to employ sight now, and to adumbrate the things that shall be in heaven :-this is the high function assigned by Scripture to sight and to Nature.

When, therefore, in the light of these thoughts we study Nature in this, her highest poetic aspect, we may well feel that we are engaged in no trivial employment, but in one befitting an immortal being. Even the most common acts of minutely observing Nature's handiwork may in this way partake of a religious character. How much more when the great spectacle of Nature lends itself to devout imagination, and becomes as it were the steps of a stair ascending towards the Eternal!

CHAPTER VII.

PRIMEVAL IMAGINATION WORKING ON NATURE -LANGUAGE AND MYTHOLOGY.

THE thought with which the last chapter closed opens up views which are boundless. Through the imaginative apprehension of outward Nature, and through the beauty inherent in it, we get a glimpse into the connection of the visible world with the realities of morality and of religion. The vivid feeling of Beauty suggests, what other avenues of thought more fully disclose, that the complicated mechanism of Nature which Science investigates and formulates into physical law is not the whole, that it is but the case or outer shell of something greater and better than itself,—that through this mechanism and above it, interpenetrating it, within it, and beyond it, there lie existences which Science has not yet formulated-probably never can formulate-a supersensible world which, to the soul, is more real and of higher import than any which the senses reveal. It is apprehended by other faculties than those through which Science works, yet it is in no ways opposed to Science, but in

perfect harmony with it, while transcending it. The mechanical explanation of things—of the Universe-we accept as far as it goes, but we refuse to take it as the whole account of the matter, for we know, on the testimony of moral and spiritual powers, that there is more beyond, and that that which is behind and beyond the mechanism is higher and nobler than the mechanism. We refuse to regard the Universe as only a machine, and hold by the intuitions of faith and of Poetry, though the objects which these let in on us cannot be counted, measured, or weighed, or verified by any of the tests which some physicists demand as the only gauges of reality. This ideal but most real region, which the visible world in part hides from us, in part reveals, is the abode of that supersensible truth to which conscience witnesses, the special dwelling-place of the One Supreme Mind. The mechanical world and the ideal or spiritual are both actual. Neither is to be denied, and Imagination and Poetry do their best work when they body forth those glimpses of beauty and goodness which flash upon us through the outer shell of Nature's mechanism.

But

'descending

From these imaginative heights,'

we must turn to the humbler task of showing by a few concrete examples how Imagination has actually worked on the plastic stuff supplied by Nature. To do this the readiest way would be to turn to the