In the Bible we find the expression:  “God in spirit and in truth,”—­and hence we most significantly find an expression for the admission of what we call a feeling of the beautiful; for what else is this revelation of God but spirit and truth?  And just as our own soul shines out of the eye and the fine movement around the mouth, so does the created image shine forth from God in spirit and truth.  There is harmonious beauty from the smallest leaf and flower to the large, swelling bouquet, from our earth itself to the numberless globes in the firmamental space—­as far as the eye sees, as far as science ventures, all, small and great, is beauty and harmony.

But if we turn to mankind, for whom we have the highest, the holiest expression; “created in God’s image,” man, who is able to comprehend and admit in himself all God’s creation, the harmony in the harmony then seems to be defective, for at our birth we are all equal! as creatures we have equally “no right to demand;” yet how differently God has granted us abilities! some few so immensely great, others so mean!  At our birth God places us in our homes and positions; and to how many of us are allotted the hardest struggles!  We are placed there, introduced there—­how many may not say justly:  “It were better for me that I had never been born!”

Human life, consequently—­the highest here on the earth—­does not come under the laws of harmonious beauty:  it is inconceivable, it is an injustice, and thus cannot take place.

The defect of harmony in life lies in this:—­that we only see a small part thereof, namely, existence here on the earth:  there must be a life to come—­an immortality.

That, the smallest flower preaches to us, as does all that is created in beauty and harmony.

If our existence ceased with death here, then the most perfect work of God was not perfect; God was not justice and love, as everything in nature and revelation affirms; and if we be referred to the whole of mankind, as that wherein harmony will reveal itself, then our whole actions and endeavours are but as the labours of the coral-insect:  mankind becomes but a monument of greatness to the Creator:  he would then only have raised His glory, not shown His greatest love.  Loving-kindness is not self-love.

We are immortal!  In this rich consciousness we are raised towards God, fundamentally sure, that whatever happens to us, is for our good.  Our earthly eye is only able to reach to a certain boundary in space; our soul’s eye also has but a limited scope; but beyond that, the same laws of loving-kindness must reign, as here.  The prescience of eternal omniscience cannot alarm us; we human beings can apprehend the notion thereof in ourselves.  We know perfectly what development must take place in the different seasons of the year; the time for flowers and for fruits; what kinds will come forth and thrive; the time of maturity, when the storms must prevail, and