cs, Francis de Sales and
Fenelon, write gracefully about the footprints of the Divine wisdom
and beauty which may be traced everywhere in the world around us.

But natural religion is not to be identified with Mysticism, and it
would not further our present inquiry to collect passages, in prose or
poetry, which illustrate the aids to faith which the book of Nature
may supply. Nor need we dwell on such pure Platonism as we find in
Spenser's "Hymn of Heavenly Beauty," or some of Shelley's poems, in
which we are bidden to gaze upon the world as a mirror of the Divine
Beauty, since our mortal sight cannot endure the "white radiance" of
the eternal archetypes.[370] We have seen how this view of the world
as a pale reflection of the Ideas leads in practice to a contempt for
visible things; as, indeed, it does in Spenser's beautiful poem. He
invites us, after learning Nature's lessons, to

"Look at last up to that sovereign light,
From whose pure beams all perfect beauty springs;
That kindleth love in every godly spright,
Even the love of God; which loathing brings
Of this vile world and these gay-seeming things;
With whose sweet pleasures being so possessed,
Thy straying thoughts henceforth for ever rest."

This is not the keynote of the later Nature-Mysticism. We now expect
that every new insight into the truth of things, every enlightenment
of the eyes of our understanding, which may be granted us as the
reward of faith, love, and purity of heart, will make the world around
us appear, not viler and baser, but more glorious and more Divine. It
is not a proof of spirituality, but of its opposite, if God's world
seems to us a poor place. If we could see it as God sees it, it would
be still, as on the morning of creation, "very good." The hymn
which is ever ascending from the earth to the throne of God is to be
listened for, that we may join in it. The laws by which all creation
lives are to be studied, that we too may obey them. As for the beauty
which is everywhere diffused so lavishly, it seems to be a gift of
God's pure bounty, to bring happiness to the unworldly souls who alone
are able to see and enjoy it.

The greatest prophet of this branch of contemplative Mysticism is
unquestionably the poet Wordsworth. It was the object of his life to
be a religious teacher, and I think there is no incongruity in placing
him at the end of the roll of mystical divines who have been dealt
with in these Lectures. His int