nd facts that end in the statement, cannot be all that is true of
this brave lodging wherein man is harbored, and wherein all his
faculties find appropriate and endless exercise. And all the uses of
nature admit of being summed in one, which yields the activity of
man an infinite scope. Through all its kingdoms, to the suburbs and
outskirts of things, it is faithful to the cause whence it had its origin.
It always speaks of Spirit. It suggests the absolute. It is a perpetual
effect. It is a great shadow pointing always to the sun behind us.

The aspect of nature is devout. Like the figure of Jesus, she stands
with bended head, and hands folded upon the breast. The happiest
man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.

Of that ineffable essence which we call Spirit, he that thinks most,
will say least. We can foresee God in the coarse, and, as it were,
distant phenomena of matter; but when we try to define and describe
himself, both language and thought desert us, and we are as helpless
as fools and savages. That essence refuses to be recorded in
propositions, but when man has worshipped him intellectually, the
noblest ministry of nature is to stand as the apparition of God. It is
the organ through which the universal spirit speaks to the individual,
and strives to lead back the individual to it.

When we consider Spirit, we see that the views already presented do
not include the whole circumference of man. We must add some
related thoughts.

Three problems are put by nature to the mind; What is matter?
Whence is it? and Whereto? The first of these questions only, the
ideal theory answers. Idealism saith: matter is a phenomenon, not a
substance. Idealism acquaints us with the total disparity between the
evidence of our own being, and the evidence of the world's being.
The one is perfect; the other, incapable of any assurance; the mind is
a part of the nature of things; the world is a divine dream, from
which we may presently awake to the glories and certainties of day.
Idealism is a hypothesis to account for nature by other principles
than those of carpentry and chemistry. Yet, if it only deny the
existence of matter, it does not satisfy the demands of the spirit. It
leaves God out of me. It leaves me in the splendid labyrinth of my
perceptions, to wander without end. Then the heart resists it, because
it balks the affections in denying substantive being to men and
women. Nature is so pervaded with human l