is very difficult to
unriddle his _Aurora_, but love of Nature, as well as love of God, is
clear in its mystical utterances:

God is the heart or source of Nature.
Nature is the body of God.

'As man's mind rules his whole body in every vein and fills his whole
being, so the Holy Ghost fills all Nature, and is its heart and rules
in the good qualities of all things.'

'But now heaven is a delightful chamber of pleasure, in which are all
the powers, as in all Nature the sky is the heart of the waters.'

In another place he calls God the vital power in the tree of life,
the creatures His branches, and Nature the perfection and
self-begotten of God.

Nature's powers are explained as passion, will, and love, often in
lofty and beautiful comparisons:

'As earth always bears beautiful flowers, plants, and trees, as well
as metals and animate beings, and these finer, stronger, and more
beautiful at one time than another; and as one springs into being as
another dies, causing constant use and work, so it is in still
greater degree with the begetting of the holy mysteries[5] ...
creation is nothing else than a revelation of the all-pervading
superficial godhead ... and is like the music of many flutes combined
into one great harmony.'

But the most representative man, both of the fifteenth century and,
in a sense, of the German race, was Luther. That maxim of Goethe's
for teaching and ethics,' Cheerfulness is the mother of all virtues,
might well serve as a motto for Luther;

The two men had much in common.

The one, standing half in the Middle Ages, had to free himself from
mental slavery by strength of will and courage of belief.

The other, as the prophet of the nineteenth century, the incarnation
of the modern man, had to shake off the artificiality and weak
sentimentality of the eighteenth.

To both alike a healthy joy in existence was the root of being.
Luther was always open to the influence of Nature, and,
characteristically, the Psalter was his favourite book. 'Lord, how
manifold are Thy works, in wisdom hast Thou made them all!'

True to his German character, he could be profoundly sad; but his
disposition was delightfully cheerful and healthy, and we see from
his letters and table-talk, that after wife and child, it was in
'God's dear world' that he took the greatest pleasure. He could not
have enough of the wonders of creation, great or small. 'By God's
mercy we begin to see the splendour of His