But natural religion is not to be identified with Mysticism, and it would not further our present inquiry to collect passages, in prose or poetry, which illustrate the aids to faith which the book of Nature may supply.  Nor need we dwell on such pure Platonism as we find in Spenser’s “Hymn of Heavenly Beauty,” or some of Shelley’s poems, in which we are bidden to gaze upon the world as a mirror of the Divine Beauty, since our mortal sight cannot endure the “white radiance” of the eternal archetypes.[370] We have seen how this view of the world as a pale reflection of the Ideas leads in practice to a contempt for visible things; as, indeed, it does in Spenser’s beautiful poem.  He invites us, after learning Nature’s lessons, to

“Look at last up to that sovereign light,
 From whose pure beams all perfect beauty springs;
 That kindleth love in every godly spright,
 Even the love of God; which loathing brings
 Of this vile world and these gay-seeming things;
 With whose sweet pleasures being so possessed,
 Thy straying thoughts henceforth for ever rest.”

This is not the keynote of the later Nature-Mysticism.  We now expect that every new insight into the truth of things, every enlightenment of the eyes of our understanding, which may be granted us as the reward of faith, love, and purity of heart, will make the world around us appear, not viler and baser, but more glorious and more Divine.  It is not a proof of spirituality, but of its opposite, if God’s world seems to us a poor place.  If we could see it as God sees it, it would be still, as on the morning of creation, “very good.”  The hymn which is ever ascending from the earth to the throne of God is to be listened for, that we may join in it.  The laws by which all creation lives are to be studied, that we too may obey them.  As for the beauty which is everywhere diffused so lavishly, it seems to be a gift of God’s pure bounty, to bring happiness to the unworldly souls who alone are able to see and enjoy it.

The greatest prophet of this branch of contemplative Mysticism is unquestionably the poet Wordsworth.  It was the object of his life to be a religious teacher, and I think there is no incongruity in placing him at the end of the roll of mystical divines who have been dealt with in these Lectures.  His intellectual kinship with the acknowledged representatives of Nature-Mysticism will, I hope, appear very plainly.

Wordsworth was an eminently sane and manly spirit.  He found his philosophy of life early, and not only preached but lived it consistently.  A Platonist by nature rather than by study, he is thoroughly Greek in his distrust of strong emotions and in his love of all which the Greeks included under [Greek:  sophrosyne].  He was a loyal Churchman, but his religion was really almost independent of any ecclesiastical system.  His ecclesiastical sonnets reflect rather the dignity of the Anglican Church than the ardent