material something out of nothing, know neither the world nor him.  If matter only is something, then there is nowhere anything, and nowhere, in all eternity, can anything be.  Only Reason is:  the infinite reason in itself, and the finite in and through the infinite.  Only in our minds does he create the world, or, at least, that from which we unfold it, and that whereby we unfold it—­the call to duty, and the feelings, perceptions and laws of thought agreeing therewith.  It is his light whereby we see light and all that appears to us in that light.  In our minds he is continually fashioning this world, and interposing in it by interposing in our minds with the call of duty, whenever another free agent effects a change therein.  In our minds he maintains this world, and, therewith, our finite existence, of which alone we are capable, in that he causes to arise out of our states new states continually.  After he has proved us sufficiently for our next destination, according to his higher aim, and when we shall have cultivated ourselves for the same, he will annihilate this world for us by what we call death, and introduce us into a new one, the product of our dutiful action in this.  All our life is his life.  We are in his hand, and remain in it, and no one can pluck us out of it.  We are eternal because he is eternal.

Sublime, living Will, whom no name can name, and whom no conception can grasp!—­well may I raise my mind to thee, for thou and I are not divided.  Thy voice sounds in me, and mine sounds back in thee; and all my thoughts, if only they are true and good, are thought in thee.  In thee, the Incomprehensible, I become comprehensible to myself, and entirely comprehend the world.  All the riddles of my existence are solved, and the most perfect harmony arises in my mind.

Thou art best apprehended by childlike simplicity, devoted to thee.  To it thou art the heart-searcher who lookest through its innermost thoughts; the all-present, faithful witness of its sentiments, who alone knowest that it meaneth well, and who alone understandest it, when misunderstood by all the world.  Thou art to it a Father, whose purposes toward it are ever kind, and who will order everything for its best good.  It submitteth itself wholly, with body and soul, to thy beneficent decrees.  Do with me as thou wilt, it saith, I know that it shall be good, so surely as it is thou that dost it.  The speculative understanding, which has only heard of thee but has never seen thee, would teach us to know thy being in itself, and sets before us an inconsistent monster which it gives out for thine image, ridiculous to the merely knowing, hateful and detestable to the wise and good.

I veil my face before thee and lay my hand upon my mouth.  How thou art in thyself, and how thou appearest to thyself, I can never know, as surely as I can never be thou.  After thousand times thousand spirit-lives lived through, I shall no more be able to comprehend thee than now, in this hut of earth.  That which I comprehend becomes, by my comprehension of it, finite; and this can never, by an endless process of magnifying and exalting, be changed into infinite.  Thou differest from the finite, not only in degree but in kind.  By that magnifying process they make thee only a greater and still greater man, but never God, the Infinite, incapable of measure.