ace a certain delightfulness in every visible feature of
natural things which was typical of any great spiritual truth; surely,
therefore, we need not wonder now, that mist and all its phenomena have
been made delightful to us, since our happiness as thinking beings must
depend on our being content to accept only partial knowledge, even in
those matters which chiefly concern us. If we insist upon perfect
intelligibility and complete declaration in every moral subject, we
shall instantly fall into misery of unbelief. Our whole happiness and
power of energetic action depend upon our being able to breathe and live
in the cloud; content to see it opening here and closing there;
rejoicing to catch, through the thinnest films of it, glimpses of stable
and substantial things; but yet perceiving a nobleness even in the
concealment, and rejoicing that the kindly veil is spread where the
untempered light might have scorched us, or the infinite clearness
wearied.

Sec. 4. And I believe that the resentment of this interference of the mist
is one of the forms of proud error which are too easily mistaken for
virtues. To be content in utter darkness and ignorance is indeed
unmanly, and therefore we think that to love light and seek knowledge
must always be right. Yet (as in all matters before observed,) wherever
_pride_ has any share in the work, even knowledge and light may be ill
pursued. Knowledge is good, and light is good, yet man perished in
seeking knowledge, and moths perished in seeking light; and if we, who
are crushed before the moth, will not accept such mystery as is needful
for us, we shall perish in like manner. But, accepted in humbleness, it
instantly becomes an element of pleasure; and I think that every rightly
constituted mind ought to rejoice, not so much in knowing anything
clearly, as in feeling that there is infinitely more which it cannot
know. None but proud or weak men would mourn over this, for we may
always know more if we choose, by working on; but the pleasure is, I
think, to humble people, in knowing that the journey is endless, the
treasure inexhaustible,--watching the cloud still march before them with
its summitless pillar, and being sure that, to the end of time and to
the length of eternity, the mysteries of its infinity will still open
farther and farther, their dimness being the sign and necessary adjunct
of their inexhaustibleness. I know there are an evil mystery and a
deathful dimness,--the my