ce it makes to coordinate body and spirit, Nature
and God,--as if one configuration of matter were more godlike than
another. The figure of the god claims to complete what Nature has
_partly_ done. But now the world is seen to be not merely the product of
Mind working upon Matter, but the Creation of God out of nothing,--thus
altogether His, in one part as much as in another. The only conceivable
separateness, antagonism, is that of the sinful Will, setting itself up
in its vanity; this it must be that arrogates to itself the ability to
_represent_ its Creator.

The Christian image is without form or comeliness,--rejects all outward
graces, seemingly glories in abasement and deformity, fearing only to
attribute to Matter some value of its own.

Henceforth the connection is no longer at arm's-length, as of the
workman and the material. Resistance to limitation is changed into
joyful acceptance; for it is not in the limitation, but in the
resistance, that the misery of earth consists. The quarrel with
imperfection is over. The finite shall neither fortify itself in its
finiteness, nor seek to abolish it, but only make it the willing
instrument of universal ends. Thus the true self first exists, and no
longer needs to be extenuated or apologised for.

The key-note of all this is contained in those verses of the "Dies
Irae,"--

"Quaerens _me_ sedisti lassus,
Redemisti crucem passus;
Tantus labor non sit cassus."

Here we have in its compactest expression the difference between this
age and the classic: that I, the vilest of sinners, am the object of
God's highest care,--not the failure and mistake I seem, not the slag
and refuse of Nature's working, but the object of this most stupendous
mystery of the Divine economy. It is no purification or idealizing that
is needed,--any such attempt must be abomination,--but a new birth of
the self, by devotion of it to the purpose for which it was made.

The astounding discovery is slowly realized, and the statement of it
difficult, from the need to distinguish between the true self and the
false, and to declare that this importance belongs to the individual in
virtue of his spiritual nature alone. The sainthood of the saint is not
to be confounded with his personality. What have his virtues to do with
his gown and shoes? what, indeed, with his natural disposition, as
courageous, irascible, avaricious? The difficulty is pervading, not to
be avoided; every aspect of him re