proof of what we call a
'poetic nature,' that we recognise how every object has a divine
beauty in it; how every object still verily is 'a window through which
we may look into Infinitude itself'? He that can discern the
loveliness of things, we call him Poet, Painter, Man of Genius,
gifted, lovable. These poor Sabeans did even what he does,--in their
own fashion. That they did it, in what fashion soever, was a merit:
better than what the entirely stupid man did, what the horse and camel
did,--namely, nothing!

But now if all things whatsoever that we look upon are emblems to us
of the Highest God, I add that more so than any of them is man such an
emblem. You have heard of St. Chrysostom's celebrated saying in
reference to the Shekinah, or Ark of Testimony, visible Revelation of
God, among the Hebrews: "The true Shekinah is Man!" Yes, it is even
so: this is no vain phrase; it is veritably so. The essence of our
being, the mystery in us that calls itself "I,"--ah, what words have
we for such things?--is a breath of Heaven; the Highest Being reveals
himself in _man_. This body, these faculties, this life of ours, is it
not all as a vesture for that Unnamed? 'There is but one Temple in the
Universe,' says the devout Novalis, 'and that is the Body of Man.
Nothing is holier than that high form. Bending before men is a
reverence done to this Revelation in the Flesh. We touch Heaven when
we lay our hand on a human body!' This sounds much like a mere
flourish of rhetoric; but it is not so. If well meditated, it will
turn out to be a scientific fact; the expression, in such words as can
be had, of the actual truth of the thing. _We_ are the miracle of
miracles,--the great inscrutable mystery of God. We cannot understand
it, we know not how to speak of it; but we may feel and know, if we
like, that it is verily so.

Well; these truths were once more readily felt than now. The young
generations of the world, who had in them the freshness of young
children, and yet the depth of earnest men, who did not think that
they had finished-off all things in Heaven and Earth by merely giving
them scientific names, but had to gaze direct at them there, with awe
and wonder: they felt better what of divinity is in man and
Nature;--they, without being mad, could _worship_ Nature, and man more
than anything else in Nature. Worship, that is, as I said above,
admire without limit: this, in the full use of their faculties, with
all sincerity of