arth was a part of godhead, gave him no comfort; it was
rather the personal God of the Psalms whom he saw in the ordering of
Nature.

The cosmological element in theism has never been more beautifully
expressed than in his words:

I asked the earth, and she said: 'I am not He,' and all things
that are in her did confess the same. I asked the sea and the
depths and creeping things, and they answered: 'We are not thy
God, seek higher.' I asked the blowing breezes, and the whole
expanse of air with its inhabitants made answer: 'Anaxagoras was
at fault, I am not God.' I asked the sky, the sun, the moon, the
stars, and with a loud voice did they exclaim: 'He made us.' My
question was the enquiry of my spirit, their answer was the
beauty of their form.

In another place:

Not with uncertain but with sure consciousness, Lord, I love
Thee. But behold, sea and sky and all things in them from all
sides tell me that I must love Thee, nor do they cease to give
all men this message, so that they are without excuse. Sky and
earth speak to the deaf Thy praises: when I love Thee, I love not
beauty of form, nor radiancy of light; but when I love my God, I
love the light, the voice, the sweetness, the food, the embrace
of my innermost soul. That is what I love when I love my God.

Augustine's interest in Nature was thus religious. At the same time,
the soothing influence of quiet woods was not unknown to him.

The likeness and unlikeness between the Christian and heathen points
of view are very clear in the correspondence between Ausonius, the
poet of the Moselle, and Paulinus, Bishop of Nola; and the deep
friendship expressed in it raises their dilettante verses to the
level of true poetry.

Ausonius, thoroughly heathen as he was, carries us far forward into
Christian-Germanic times by his sentimentality and his artistic
descriptions of the scenery of the Moselle.[22]

It is characteristic of the decline of heathendom, that the lack of
original national material to serve as inspiration, as the AEneas Saga
had once served, led the best men of the time to muse on Nature, and
describe scenery and travels. Nothing in classic Roman poetry attests
such an acute grasp of Nature's little secret charms as the small
poem about the sunny banks of the Moselle, vine-clad and crowned by
villas, and reflected in the crystal water below. It seemed as if the
Roman, with the G