The Creator shall one day be known of all His creatures; and in each of His creatures He will be the centre and the object of the whole soul; all the functions of the spiritual life lead on to Him.  What is truth, beauty, good?  We have already replied to the question, but we will repeat our answer.

To possess truth is to know God; it is to know Him in the work of His hands, and it is to know Him in His absolute power, as the eternal source of all that is, of all that can ever be, of all actual or possible truth in the mind of His creatures.  Truth binds us to Him, “and all science is a hymn to His glory."[170]

He is the eternal source of beauty.  He it is who gives to the bird its song, and to the brook its murmur.  He it is who has established between nature and man those mysterious relations which give rise to noble joys.  He it is who opens, above and beyond nature, the prolific sources of art; the ideal is a distant reflection of His splendor.

And goodness, again, is none other than He; it is His plan; it is His will in regard of spirits; it is the word addressed to the free creature, which says to it:  Behold thy place in the universal harmony.

Thus a triple ray descends from the uncreated light, and before that insufferable brightness I am dazzled and bewildered.  There is no longer any distinction for me between profane and sacred; I no longer understand the difference of these terms.  Wheresoever I meet with good, truth, beauty, be the man who brings them to me who he may, and come he whence he may, I feel that to despise in him that gleam, would be not only to be wanting to humanity, it would be to be wanting to my faith.  If my prejudices or habits tend to shut up my heart or to narrow my mind, I hear a voice exclaiming to me:  “Enlarge thy tent; lengthen thy cords; enlarge thy tent without measure.  Be ye lift up, eternal gates, gates of the conscience and the heart!  Let in the King of glory!” All truth, all beauty, all good is He.  Where my God is, nothing is profane for me.  To ignore any one of those rays would be to steal somewhat from His glory.

Oh! the happy liberty of the heart, when it rests on the Author of all good and of all truth.  But if the heart is at liberty, how well is it guarded too!  What is the most beautiful jewel (if we may venture to use such language) in the immortal crown of this King of glory?  Powerful, He created power; free, He created liberty.  And to the free creature, in the hour of its creation, He said:  “Behold! thou art made in mine own image! my will is written in thy conscience; become a worker together with me, and realize the plans of my love.”  And that voice—­I hear it within myself.  Ah!  I know that voice well, I know the secret attraction which, in spite of all my miseries, draws me towards that which is beautiful, pure, holy, and says to me:  This is the will of thy Father.  But I know other voices also which speak within me only too loudly: