we cannot witness them, yet the existence of degrees at all seems at
first unlikely in Divine work, and I cannot see reason for it unless
that palpable one of increasing in us the understanding of the sacred
characters by showing us the results of their comparative absence. For I
know not that if all things had been equally beautiful, we could have
received the idea of beauty at all, or if we had, certainly it had
become a matter of indifference to us, and of little thought, whereas
through the beneficent ordaining of degrees in its manifestation, the
hearts of men are stirred by its occasional occurrence in its noblest
form, and all their energies are awakened in the pursuit of it, and
endeavor to arrest it or recreate it for themselves. But whatever doubt
there may be respecting the exact amount of modification of created
things admitted reference to us, there can be none respecting the
dignity of that faculty by which we receive the mysterious evidence of
their divine origin. The fact of our deriving constant pleasure from
whatever is a type or semblance of Divine attributes, and from nothing
but that which is so, is the most glorious of all that can be
demonstrated of human nature; it not only sets a great gulf of specific
separation between us and the lower animals, but it seems a promise of a
communion ultimately deep, close, and conscious, with the Being whose
darkened manifestations we here feebly and unthinkingly delight in.
Probably to every order of intelligence more of his image becomes
palpable in all around them, and the glorified spirits and the angels
have perceptions as much more full and rapturous than ours, as ours than
those of beasts and creeping things. And receiving it, as we must, for
an universal axiom that "no natural desire can be entirely frustrate,"
and seeing that these desires are indeed so unfailing in us that they
have escaped not the reasoners of any time, but were held divine of old,
and in even heathen countries,[30] it cannot be but that there is in
these visionary pleasures, lightly as we now regard them, cause for
thankfulness, ground for hope, anchor for faith, more than in all the
other manifold gifts and guidances, wherewith God crowns the years, and
hedges the paths of men.

FOOTNOTES

[30] [Greek: He de teleia eudaimonia theoretike tis eotin henergeia.
* * tois men gar theois apas ho bios makarios, tois d anthropois,
eph hoson homoioma ti tes toiantes henergeias