asure from whatever is a type or
semblance of the divine attributes, and from nothing enduringly but that
which is, is the most ennobling of all that can be said of human nature,
not only setting a great gulf of specific separation between us and the
brutes that perish, but it seems a promise of a communion ultimately
deep, close, and conscious with the Being in whose darkened
manifestations we here unconsciously and instinctively delight. It is at
least probable that the higher the order of intelligences, the more of
the divine image becomes palpable in all around them, and the redeemed
spirits and angels may have perceptions as much more full and rapturous
than ours, as ours than those of the beasts and creeping things. It may
be received almost as an axiom that no natural instinct or desire can be
entirely frustrated, and as these desires for the beautiful are so
unfailing that they have not escaped the thinkers of any age, but were
held divine of old, and even in heathen countries, it must be admitted
that in these visionary pleasures, lightly as we may now be disposed to
regard them, there are causes of gratitude, grounds of hope, anchors of
faith, more than in all the manifold material gifts with which God
mercifully crowns the years and hedges the path of men.

We turn to Plato to show how clearly such ideas were held by the
thinkers of antiquity:

'Eternal beauty, not created, not made; exempt from increase or
decay; not beautiful in one part and deformed in another, beautiful
in such a time, such a place, such a relation; not beauty which
hath any sensible parts or anything corporeal, or which may be
found comprised in any one thought or science, or residing in any
creation different from itself, as in an animal, the earth, or the
heavens;--but absolute beauty, identical and invariable in itself;
beauty in which, would they please the spirit of men, other things
must participate, but their creation or destruction brings IT
neither diminution, increase, nor the slightest change.'

Plotinus writes in the same spirit:

'Let him who has closed his eyes upon mere sensuous beauty, advance
boldly into the depths of the sanctuary. Let him reverently gaze
upon the true beauty, the original type of those pale and fleeting
images to which he may have hitherto applied the holy name of
beautiful.'

We propose to consider reverently and with a hu