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I will not attempt that which is denied to me by my finite nature, and which could avail me nothing.  I desire not to know how thou art in thyself.  But thy relations and connections with me, the finite, and with all finite beings, lie open to mine eye, when I become what I should be.  They encompass me with a more luminous clearness than the consciousness of my own being.  Thou workest in me the knowledge of my duty, of my destination in the series of rational beings.  How?  I know not, and need not to know.  Thou knowest and perceivest what I think and will.  How thou canst know it—­by what act thou bringest this consciousness to pass—­on that point I comprehend nothing.  Yea, I know very well that the idea of an act, of a special act of consciousness, applies only to me but not to thee, the Infinite.  Thou willest, because thou willest, that my free obedience shall have consequences in all eternity.  The act of thy will I cannot comprehend; I only know that it is not like to mine.  Thou doest, and thy will itself is deed.  But thy method of action is directly contrary to that of which, alone, I can form a conception.  Thou livest and art, for thou knowest, and willest, and workest, omnipresent to finite Reason.  But thou art not such as through all eternity I shall alone be able to conceive of Being.

In the contemplation of these thy relations to me, the finite, I will be calm and blessed.  I know immediately, only what I must do.  This will I perform undisturbed and joyful, and without philosophizing.  For it is thy voice which commands me, it is the ordination of the spiritual world-plan concerning me, and the power by which I perform it is thy power.  Whatsoever is commanded me by that voice, whatsoever is accomplished by this power, is surely and truly good in relation to that plan.  I am calm in all the events of this world, for they occur in thy world.  Nothing can deceive, or surprise, or make me afraid, so surely as thou livest and I behold thy life.  For in thee and through thee, O infinite One, I behold even my present world in another light!  Nature and natural consequences in the destinies and actions of free beings, in view of thee, are empty, unmeaning words.  There is no Nature more.  Thou, thou alone, art.

It no longer appears to me the aim of the present world that the above-mentioned state of universal peace among men, and of their unconditioned empire over the mechanism of Nature, should be brought about merely that it may exist, but that it should be brought about by man himself, and, since it is calculated for all, then it should be brought about by all, as one great, free, moral community.  Nothing new and better for the individual, except through his dutiful will, nothing new and better for the community, except through their united, dutiful will, is the fundamental law of the great moral kingdom of which the present life is a part.