peat my old steps, and do not believe in remedial force, in the
power of change and reform. But some Petrarch[708] or Ariosto,[709]
filled with the new wine of his imagination, writes me an ode or a
brisk romance, full of daring thought and action. He smites and
arouses me with his shrill tones, breaks up my whole chain of habits,
and I open my eye on my own possibilities. He claps wings to the sides
of all the solid old lumber of the world, and I am capable once more
of choosing a straight path in theory and practice.

We have the same need to command a view of the religion of the world.
We can never see Christianity from the catechism:--from the pastures,
from a boat in the pond, from amidst the songs of wood-birds we
possibly may. Cleansed by the elemental light and wind, steeped in the
sea of beautiful forms which the field offers us, we may chance to
cast a right glance back upon biography. Christianity is rightly dear
to the best of mankind; yet was there never a young philosopher whose
breeding had fallen into the Christian church by whom that brave text
of Paul's was not specially prized, "Then shall also the Son be
subject unto Him who put all things under him, that God may be all in
all."[710] Let the claims and virtues of persons be never so great and
welcome, the instinct of man presses eagerly onward to the impersonal
and illimitable, and gladly arms itself against the dogmatism of
bigots with this generous word out of the book itself.

The natural world may be conceived of as a system of concentric
circles, and we now and then detect in nature slight dislocations
which apprize us that this surface on which we now stand is not fixed,
but sliding. These manifold tenacious qualities,[711] this chemistry
and vegetation, these metals and animals, which seem to stand there
for their own sake, are means and methods only, are words of God, and
as fugitive as other words. Has the naturalist or chemist learned his
craft, who has explored the gravity of atoms and the elective
affinities, who has not yet discerned the deeper law whereof this is
only a partial or approximate statement, namely that like draws to
like, and that the goods which belong to you gravitate to you and need
not be pursued with pains and cost? Yet is that statement approximate
also, and not final. Omnipresence is a higher fact. Not through subtle
subterranean channels need friend and fact be drawn to their
counterpart, but, rightly considered, t