rnal
we must forget about ourselves. We must cease to be consumed by a
cancerous anxiety to endure in time and be permanent in space. In the
order of Nature our own particular lives are of no especial importance.
And unless we recognize this, we are necessarily doomed to a miserable
fate. We must recognize that our mere selves can never give us ultimate
fulfillment or blessedness of soul. Only by losing ourselves in Nature
or God can we escape the wretchedness of finitude and find the final
completion and salvation of our lives. This, the free man understands.
He knows how insignificant he is in the order of Nature. But he also
knows that if only he can lose himself in Nature or God then, in his own
insignificant particularity, the eternal and infinite order of Nature
can be displayed. For in the finite is the infinite expressed, and in
the temporal, the eternal.

It is this knowledge that makes man free, that breaks the finite fetters
from his soul enabling him to embrace the infinite and to possess
eternity. Once man is reconciled to the petty worth of his own person,
he assumes some of the majestic worth of the universe. And the austere
sublimity of soul that inscribes on the grave of the beloved _God is
Love_, inscribes, when it is chastened and purified by understanding, on
the grave of all that is merely human _Nature is Great_. Religion is the
joy and peace and strength that is all understanding.

JOSEPH RATNER.

FIRST PART

ON GOD

_The multitude, ever prone to superstition, and caring more for the
shreds of antiquity than for eternal truths, pays homage to the Books of
the Bible, rather than to the Word of God._

SPINOZA.

CHAPTER I

OF SUPERSTITION[1]

Men would never be superstitious, if they could govern all their
circumstances by set rules, or if they were always favored by fortune:
but being frequently driven into straits where rules are useless, and
being often kept fluctuating pitiably between hope and fear by the
uncertainty of fortune's greedily coveted favors, they are consequently,
for the most part, very prone to credulity. The human mind is readily
swayed this way or that in times of doubt, especially when hope and fear
are struggling for the mastery, though usually it is boastful,
over-confident, and vain.

This as a general fact I suppose every one knows, though few, I believe,
know their own nature; no one can have lived in the world without
observing that most peo