Without the sun’s rays the mists of Monte Generoso could have shown, no shadowy forms.  Without some other power than the mind of man, could men have fashioned for themselves those ideals that they named their gods?  Unseen by Greek, or Norseman, or Hindoo, the potent force by which alone they could externalise their image, existed outside them, independent of their thought.  Nor does the trite epigram touch the surface of the real mystery.  The sun, the human beings on the mountain, and the mists are all parts of one material universe:  the transient phenomenon we witnessed was but the effect of a chance combination.  Is, then, the anthropomorphic God as momentary and as accidental in the system of the world as that vapoury spectre?  The God in whom we live and move and have our being must be far more all-pervasive, more incognisable by the souls of men, who doubt not for one moment of His presence and His power.  Except for purposes of rhetoric the metaphor that seemed so clever fails.  Nor, when once such thoughts have been stirred in us by such a sight, can we do better than repeat Goethe’s sublime profession of a philosophic mysticism.  This translation I made one morning on the Pasterze Gletscher beneath the spires of the Gross Glockner:—­

  To Him who from eternity, self-stirred,
  Himself hath made by His creative word! 
  To Him, supreme, who causeth Faith to be,
  Trust, Hope, Love, Power, and endless Energy! 
  To Him, who, seek to name Him as we will,
  Unknown within Himself abideth still!

  Strain ear and eye, till sight and sense be dim;
  Thou’lt find but faint similitudes of Him: 
  Yea, and thy spirit in her flight of flame
  Still strives to gauge the symbol and the name: 
  Charmed and compelled thou climb’st from height to height,
  And round thy path the world shines wondrous bright;
  Time, Space, and Size, and Distance cease to be,
  And every step is fresh infinity. 
  What were the God who sat outside to scan
  The spheres that ’neath His finger circling ran? 
  God dwells within, and moves the world and moulds,
  Himself and Nature in one form enfolds: 
  Thus all that lives in Him and breathes and is,
  Shall ne’er His puissance, ne’er His spirit miss.

  The soul of man, too, is an universe: 
  Whence follows it that race with race concurs
  In naming all it knows of good and true
  God,—­yea, its own God; and with homage due
  Surrenders to His sway both earth and heaven;
  Fears Him, and loves, where place for love is given.

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LOMBARD VIGNETTES

ON THE SUPERGA