resumption as to an astronomer, of whom we
know nothing, would be that what may be termed his emotive
appreciation of stars and stellar systems is probably not so full as
his intellectual. And no amount or quality of intellectual insight can
supply or compensate a want of sensibility. No matter how many
hundreds of millions of miles he may pierce into space, he has still
to do with the visible and calculable. But religion is the putting of
the human mind in relation with the invisible, the incalculable. A man
gets no nearer to God through a telescope than through a microscope,
and no nearer through either than through the naked eye. Who cannot
recognize the divine spirit in the hourly phenomena of nature and of
his own mind will not be helped by the differential calculus, or any
magnitude or arrangement of telescopic lenses.

That we ever live not only in a material, but also in a spiritual
world, can be easily apprehended without at all entangling ourselves
in the web-work of metaphysics. The least of our acts or motions, is
it not always preceded by a thought, a volition, a something
intangible, invisible? All that we voluntarily do is, must be, an
offspring of mind. The waving of the hand is never a simple, it is a
compound process: mind and body, spirit and matter, concur in it. The
visible, corporeal movement is but the outward expression of an
inward, incorporeal movement. And so in all our acts and motions, from
birth till death; they issue out of the invisible within us; they are
feelings actualized, thoughts embodied. The embodiment is perishable,
the source of it imperishable. It is not a recondite, super-subtle,
metaphysical or psychological postulate, it is a palpable, and may be
and ought to be a familiar fact, that each one of us is ruled by the
eternal and invisible within us.

Now, just as our words and deeds and movements stand to our mind, as
being the utterance and embodiment of that, so do we stand towards
Deity, being the utterance and embodiment of the divine thought and
will. As all our doings are but exhibitions of our minds, so ourselves
are manifestations of God. Through all things shines the eternal soul.
The more perfect the embodiment, the more translucent is the soul; and
when this is most transparent, making the body luminous with the
fullness of its presence, there is beauty, which may be said to be the
most intense and refined incarnation and exhibition of the divine
spirit.

Behind