e sanity of Wordsworth, or of Tennyson, whose description of the
Vision in his "Ancient Sage" is now known to be a record of personal
experience. These explorers of the high places of the spiritual life
have only one thing in common--they have observed the conditions laid
down once for all for the mystic in the 24th Psalm, "Who shall ascend
into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in His holy place? He
that hath clean hands and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his
soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing
from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation." The
"land which is very far off" is always visible to those who have
climbed the holy mountain. It may be scaled by the path of prayer and
mortification, or by the path of devout study of God's handiwork in
Nature (and under this head I would wish to include not only the way
traced out by Wordsworth, but that hitherto less trodden road which
should lead the physicist to God); and, lastly, by the path of
consecrated life in the great world, which, as it is the most exposed
to temptations, is perhaps on that account the most blessed of the
three.[389]

It has been said of Wordsworth, as it has been said of other mystics,
that he averts his eyes "from half of human fate." Religious writers
have explained that the neglected half is that which lies beneath the
shadow of the Cross. The existence of positive evil in the world, as a
great fact, and the consequent need of redemption, is, in the opinion
of many, too little recognised by Wordsworth, and by Mysticism in
general. This objection has been urged both from the scientific and
from the religious side. It is held by many students of Nature that
her laws affirm a Pessimism and not an Optimism. "Red in tooth and
claw with ravine," she shrieks against the creed that her Maker is a
God of love. The only morality which she inculcates is that of a tiger
in the jungle, or at best that of a wolf-pack. "It is not strange
(says Lotze) that no nature-religions have raised their adherents to
any high pitch of morality or culture.[390]" The answer to this is
that Nature includes man as well as the brutes, and the merciful and
moral man as well as the savage. Physical science, at any rate, can
exclude nothing from the domain of Nature. And the Christian may say
with all reverence that Nature includes, or rather is included by,
Christ, the Word of God, by whom it was made. And the Word