The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains,
Are not these, O Soul, the vision of Him Who reigns?
* * * * *
Speak to Him thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet.
Closer is He than breathing and nearer than hands or feet.

Certainly, we may say, nothing atheistic in utterances like these: they
are the utterances of lofty thought, of profound piety, of soaring
aspiration, and of childlike faith. They have a pantheistic tinge:
what is there to dread in Pantheism? Not much in {80} Pantheism of
that kind: would there were more of it! But it will be observable
that, in the instances cited, though God is in Nature and manifesting
Himself through it, there is a clear distinction between Nature and
God. It may seem as if it were merely the sky, the sun, the stars, the
ocean, that are apostrophised: in reality it is a Life, a Spirit, a
Power not themselves, in which they live and move and have their being:
not to them, but to That, are the prayers addressed. And, we venture
to think, it is scarcely ever otherwise: scarcely ever is the Visible
alone invoked: identify God as men will with the material universe, or
even with the force and energy with which the material universe is
pervaded, when they enter into communion with it, in spite of
themselves they endow it with the Life and the Will and the Purpose
which they have in theory rejected. But the absolute identification of
God and the Universe, the assumption that above and {81} beneath and
through all there is no conscious Righteousness and Wisdom and Love
overruling and directing, _that_ is a belief to be resisted, a belief
which enervates character and enfeebles hope.[9] 'Whoever says in his
heart that God is _no more_ than Nature: whoever does not provide
_behind the veil of creation_ an infinite reserve of thought and beauty
and holy love, that might fling aside this universe and take another,
as a vesture changing the heavens and they are changed, ... is bereft
of the essence of the Christian Faith, and is removed by only
accidental and precarious distinctions from the atheistic worship of
mere "natural laws."'[10] 'In our worship we have to do, not so much
with His finite expression in created things as with His own free self
and inner reality ... all _religion_ consists in _passing Nature by_,
in order to enter into direct personal relation {82} with Him, soul to
soul. It is _not_ Pantheism