f that Eye which is
over all the earth; which is about our path, and about our bed, and
spies out all our ways. We need no artificial and material presence
of Deity. For we believe in That One Eternal and Universal Real
Presence--of which it is written 'He is not far from anyone of us;
for in God we live and move and have our being;' and again: 'Lo, I
am with you even to the end of the world;' and again: 'Wheresoever
two or three are gathered together in My Name there am I in the midst
of them.'

"He is the God of nature, as well as the God of grace. Forever He
looks down on all things which He has made, and behold, they are very
good. And, therefore, we dare offer to Him, in our churches, the
most perfect works of naturalistic art, and shape them into copies of
whatever beauty He has shown us, in man or woman, in cove or
mountain-peak, in tree or flower, even in bird or butterfly.

"But Himself?--Who can see Him? Except the humble and the contrite
heart, to whom He reveals Himself as a Spirit to be worshipped in
spirit and in truth, and not in bread, nor wood, nor stone, nor gold,
nor quintessential diamond."

So we shall obey the sound instinct of our Christian forefathers,
when they shaped their churches into forest aisles, and decked them
with the boughs of the woodland and the flowers of the field: but we
shall obey too, that sounder instinct of theirs, which made them at
last cast out of their own temples, as misplaced and unnatural
things, the idols which they had inherited from Rome.

So we shall obey the sound instinct of our heathen forefathers when
they worshipped the unknown God beneath the oaks of the primeval
forests: but we shall obey, too, that sounder instinct of theirs,
which taught them this, at least, concerning God--That it was beneath
His dignity to coop Him within walls; and that the grandest forms of
nature, as well as the deepest consciousness of their own souls,
revealed to them a mysterious Being, who was to be beheld by faith
alone.

HOURS WITH THE MYSTICS {299}

Few readers of this magazine probably know anything about "Mystics;"
know even what the term means: but as it is plainly connected with
the adjective "mystical" they probably suppose it to denote some sort
of vague, dreamy, sentimental, and therefore useless and undesirable
personage. Nor can we blame them if they do so; for mysticism is a
form of thought and feeling now all but extinct in England. There