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Page 33
"... And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things."[24]
Sometimes he dares to personalize this ultimate and then ascends to
the supreme poetry of the religious experience and feels the cosmic
consciousness, the eternal "I" of this strange world, which fills it
with observant majesty. And then he chants,
"The heavens declare the glory of God,
The firmament showeth his handiwork."
Or he whispers,
"Whither shall I go from Thy spirit,
Or whither shall I flee from Thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there,
If I make my bed in hell, behold Thou art there,
If I take the wings of the morning
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the earth,
Even there shall Thy hand lead me
And Thy right hand shall hold me."[25]
Indeed, the devout religionist almost never thinks of nature as such.
She is always the bush which flames and is not consumed. Therefore he
walks softly all his days, conscious that God is near.
"Of old," he says, "Thou hast laid the foundations of the earth;
And the heavens are the work of Thy hands.
They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure;
Yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment;
As a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed;
But Thou art the same,
And Thy years shall have no end."[26]
To him nature is the glass through which he sees darkly and often with
a darkling mind, the all-pervasive Presence; it is the veil--the veil
that covers the face of God.
[Footnote 24: _Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey_, stanza
3, ll. 36-45.]
[Footnote 25: Psalm cxxxix. 7-9.]
[Footnote 26: Psalm cii. 25-27.]
Here, then, we have the contrasting attitude of worldling and believer
toward nature, the outward universe. Now we come to the contrasting
attitude of humanist and believer toward man, the world within. For
why are we so sure, first, of the chasm between ourselves and
Nature and, second, that we can bridge that chasm by reaching out to
something behind and beyond her which is more like us than her?
What gives us the key to her dualism? Why do we think that there is
Something which perpetually beckons to us through her, makes awful
signs of an intimate and significant relationship? Because we feel
a similar chasm, an equal cleft in our own hearts, a division in the
moral nature of mankind. We know that gulf between us and the outward
world because we know the greater gulf between flesh and spirit,
between the natural man and the real man, between the "I" and the
"other I."
Here is where the humanist bids us good-by and we must go forward on
our road alone. For he will not acknowledge that there is anything
essential or permanent in that divided inner world; he would minimize
it or explain it away. But we know it is there and the reason we know
there is Something without which can bridge the outer chasm is because
we also know there is Something-Else within which might bridge this
one. For we who are religious know that within the depths and the
immensities of this inner world, where there is no space but where
there is infinite largeness, where there is no time but where there is
perpetual strife, there is Something-Else as well as the "I" and the
"other I," and it is that He who is the Something-Else who alone can
close the gap in that divided kingdom and make us one with ourselves,
hence with Himself and hence with His world.
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