of the soul takes it straight to God, and may start from any set of facts. The pious mind makes edifying reflections upon what it sees, and beginning with what is most insignificant and most special, recognises in it something which is essentially higher. Very often you find mixed up with these reflections the perverted notion that what goes on in the world of Nature is to be regarded as belonging to a higher order of things than what is found in the human sphere. This way of looking at things, however, is inadequate, from the very fact that it starts from what is individual or particular. We may look at things in another way which will be the opposite of this. The cause, it may be argued, must correspond to the phenomenon, and must itself contain the element of limitation which belongs to the phenomenon; we desire a particular ground or basis upon which this particular phenomenon is based. This element of inadequacy always attaches to the consideration of any particular phenomenon. Further, these particular phenomena belong to the realm of the natural; God, however, must be conceived of as Spirit, and the element in which we recognise His presence must also be spiritual. “God thunders with His thunder,” it is said, “and is yet not known.” The spiritual man, however, demands something higher than what is merely natural. If God is to be known as Spirit, He must do more than thunder.
The truth is that we reach a higher mode of viewing Nature, and perceive the deeper relation in which it must be placed in regard to God, when it is itself conceived of as spiritual, i.e., as something which is the natural side of Man’s nature. It is only when the subject ceases to be classed as belonging to the immediate Being of the Natural, and is made to appear what it implicitly is, namely, movement, and when it has gone into itself, that we get finitude as such, and finitude, in fact, as shown in the process of the relation in which the need of the
