We see then that the inborn German feeling for Nature, conditioned by
climate and landscape, and pronounced in his mythology, found both an
obstacle and a support in Christianity--an obstacle in its
transcendentalism, and a support in its inwardness.

CHAPTER II

THE THEOLOGICAL CHRISTIAN AND THE SYMPATHETIC
HEATHEN FEELING OF THE FIRST TEN CENTURIES A.D.

The Middle Ages employed its best intellectual power in solving the
problems of man's relation to God and the Redeemer, his moral
vocation, and his claim to the Kingdom of the blessed. Mind and heart
were almost entirely engrossed by the dogmas of the new faith, such
as the incarnation, original sin, and free-will, and by doubts which
the Old Testament had raised and not solved. Life was looked upon as
a test-place, a thoroughfare to the heavenly Kingdom; earth, with its
beauty and its appeal to the senses, as a temptress.

To flee the world and to lack artistic feeling were therefore marks
of the period. We have no trace of scientific knowledge applied to
Nature, and she was treated with increasing contempt, as the
influence of antiquity died out. In spite of this, the attitude of
the Apostolic Fathers was very far from hostile. Their fundamental
idea was the Psalmist's 'Lord, how great are Thy works; in wisdom
hast Thou made them all!' and yet they turned to Nature--at any rate,
the noblest Grecians among them--not only for proof of divine wisdom
and goodness, but with a degree of personal inclination, an
enthusiasm, to which antiquity was a stranger.

Clement of Rome wrote to the Corinthians:

'Let us note how free from anger He is towards all His creatures. The
heavens are moved by His direction and obey Him in peace. Day and
night accomplish the course assigned to them by Him, without
hindrance one to another. The sun and the moon and the dancing stars,
according to His appointment, circle in harmony within the bounds
assigned to them, without any swerving aside. The earth, bearing
fruit in fulfilment of His will at her proper seasons, putteth forth
the food that supplieth abundantly both men and beasts and all living
things which are thereupon, making no dissension, neither altering
anything which He hath decreed. Moreover, the inscrutable depths of
the abysses and unutterable statutes of the nether regions are
constrained by the same ordinances. The basin of the boundless sea,
gathered together by His workmanship into its reservoirs, passeth