ILLUSTRATIVE: THE SKY.
21. It is a strange thing how little in general people know about the
sky. It is the part of creation in which Nature has done more for the
sake of pleasing man--more for the sole and evident purpose of talking
to him, and teaching him--than in any other of her works; and it is
just the part in which we least attend to her. There are not many of
her other works in which some more material or essential purpose than
the mere pleasing of man is not answered by every part of their
organization; but every essential purpose of the sky might, so far as
we know, be answered if once in three days, or thereabouts, a great,
ugly, black rain-cloud were brought up over the blue, and everything
well watered, and so all left blue again till next time, with perhaps
a film of morning and evening mist for dew;--and instead of this,
there is not a moment of any day of our lives, when Nature is not
producing scene after scene, picture after picture, glory after glory,
and working still upon such exquisite and constant principles of the
most perfect beauty, that it is quite certain[14] it is all done for
us, and intended for our perpetual pleasure. And every man, wherever
placed, however far from other sources of interest or of beauty, has
this doing for him constantly. The noblest scenes of the earth can be
seen and known but by few; it is not intended that man should live
always in the midst of them; he injures them by his presence, he
ceases to feel them if he is always with them; but the sky is for all:
bright as it is, it is not
"too bright nor good
For human nature's daily food;"
it is fitted in all its functions for the perpetual comfort and
exalting of the heart,--for soothing it, and purifying it from its
dross and dust. Sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes
awful--never the same for two moments together; almost human in its
passions, almost spiritual in its tenderness, almost divine in its
infinity, its appeal to what is immortal in us is as distinct as its
ministry of chastisement or of blessing to what is mortal is
essential. And yet we never attend to it, we never make it a subject
of thought, but as it has to do with our animal sensations; we look
upon all by which it speaks to us more clearly than to brutes, upon
all which bears witness to the intentions of the Supreme that we are
to receive more from the covering vault than the light and the dew
which we share with the weed and the worm, as only a succession of
meaningless and monotonous accident, too common and too vain to be
worthy of a moment of watchfulness, or a glance of admiration. If in
our moments of utter idleness and insipidity, we turn to the sky as a
last resource, which of its phenomena do we speak of? One says, it has
been wet; and another, it has been windy; and another, it has been
warm. Who among the whole chattering crowd can tell one of the forms
and the precipices of the chain of tall white mountains that girded
the horizon at noon yesterday? Who saw the narrow sunbeam that came
out of the south, and smote upon their summits until they melted and
mouldered away in a dust of blue rain? Who saw the dance of the dead
clouds when the sunlight left them last night, and the west wind blew
them before it like withered leaves? All has passed unregretted as
unseen; or, if the apathy be ever shaken off even for an instant, it
is only by what is gross, or what is extraordinary. And yet it is not
in the broad and fierce manifestations of the elemental energies, not
in the clash of the hail, nor the drift of the whirlwind, that the
highest characters of the sublime are developed. God is not in the
earthquake, nor in the fire, but in the still, small voice. They are
but the blunt and the low faculties of our nature, which can only be
addressed through lamp-black and lightning. It is in quiet and subdued
passages of unobtrusive majesty, the deep and the calm, and the
perpetual; that which must be sought ere it is seen, and loved ere it
is understood; things which the angels work out for us daily, and yet
vary eternally; which are never wanting, and never repeated; which are
to be found always, yet each found but once;--it is through these that
the lesson of devotion is chiefly taught, and the blessing of beauty
given.
[14] At least, I thought so, when I was four-and-twenty. At
five-and-fifty, I fancy that it is just possible there may be other
creatures in the universe to be pleased, or,--it may be,--displeased, by
the weather.
22. We habitually think of the rain-cloud only as dark and grey; not
knowing that we owe to it perhaps the fairest, though not the most
dazzling, of the hues of heaven. Often in our English mornings, the
rain-clouds in the dawn form soft, level fields, which melt
imperceptibly into the blue; or, when of less extent, gather into
apparent bars, crossing the sheets of broader cloud above; and all
these bathed throughout in an unspeakable light of pure rose-colour,
and purple, and amber, and blue; not shining, but misty-soft; the
barred masses, when seen nearer, composed of clusters or tresses of
cloud, like floss silk; looking as if each knot were a little swathe
or sheaf of lighted rain.
23. Aqueous vapour or mist, suspended in the atmosphere, becomes
visible exactly as dust does in the air of a room. In the shadows, you
not only cannot see the dust itself, because unillumined, but you can
see other objects through the dust, without obscurity; the air being
thus actually rendered more transparent by a deprivation of light.
Where a sunbeam enters, every particle of dust becomes visible, and a
palpable interruption to the sight; so that a transverse sunbeam is a
real obstacle to the vision--you cannot see things clearly through it.
In the same way, wherever vapour is illuminated by transverse rays,
there it becomes visible as a whiteness more or less affecting the
purity of the blue, and destroying it exactly in proportion to the
degree of illumination. But where vapour is in shade, it has very
little effect on the sky, perhaps making it a little deeper and greyer
than it otherwise would be, but not, itself, unless very dense,
distinguishable or felt as mist.
24. Has the reader any distinct idea of what clouds are?
[15]That mist which lies in the morning so softly in the valley, level
and white, through which the tops of the trees rise as if through an
inundation--why is _it_ so heavy, and why does it lie so low, being
yet so thin and frail that it will melt away utterly into splendour of
morning when the sun has shone on it but a few moments more? Those
colossal pyramids, huge and firm, with outlines as of rocks, and
strength to bear the beating of the high sun full on their fiery
flanks,--why are _they_ so light, their bases high over our heads,
high over the heads of Alps? Why will these melt away, not as the sun
_rises_, but as he _descends_, and leave the stars of twilight clear;
while the valley vapour gains again upon the earth, like a shroud? Or
that ghost of a cloud, which steals by yonder clump of pines; nay,
which does _not_ steal by them, but haunts them, wreathing yet round
them, and yet,--and yet,--slowly; now falling in a fair waved line
like a woman's veil; now fading, now gone; we look away for an
instant, and look back, and it is again there. What has it to do with
that clump of pines, that it broods by them, and weaves itself among
their branches, to and fro? Has it hidden a cloudy treasure among the
moss at their roots, which it watches thus? Or has some strong
enchanter charmed it into fond returning, or bound it fast within
those bars of bough? And yonder filmy crescent, bent like an archer's
bow above the snowy summit, the highest of all the hills--that white
arch which never forms but over the supreme crest,--how is it stayed
there, repelled apparently from the snow,--nowhere touching it, the
clear sky seen between it and the mountain edge, yet never leaving
it--poised as a white bird hovers over its nest? Or those war clouds
that gather on the horizon, dragon-crested, tongued with fire,--how is
their barbed strength bridled? What bits are those they are champing
with their vapourous lips, flinging off flakes of black foam? Leagued
leviathans of the Sea of Heaven,--out of their nostrils goeth smoke,
and their eyes are like the eyelids of the morning; the sword of him
that layeth at them cannot hold the spear, the dart, nor the
habergeon. Where ride the captains of their armies? Where are set the
measures of their march? Fierce murmurers, answering each other from
morning until evening--what rebuke is this which has awed them into
peace;--what hand has reined them back by the way in which they came?
[15] This is a fifth volume bit, and worth more attention.
I know not if the reader will think at first that questions like these
are easily answered. So far from it, I rather believe that some of the
mysteries of the clouds never will be understood by us at all.
"Knowest thou the balancings of the clouds?" Is the answer ever to be
one of pride? The wondrous works of Him, who is perfect in knowledge?
Is _our_ knowledge ever to be so?...
For my own part, I enjoy the mystery, and perhaps the reader may. I
think he ought. He should not be less grateful for summer rain, or see
less beauty in the clouds of morning, because they come to prove him
with hard questions; to which perhaps, if we look close at the
heavenly scroll, we may find also a syllable or two of answer,
illuminated here and there.[16]
[16] Compare, in 'Sartor Resartus,' the boy's watching from the garden
wall.
And though the climates of the south and east may be _comparatively_
clear, they are no more absolutely clear than our own northern air.
Intense clearness, whether, in the north, after or before rain, or in
some moments of twilight in the south, is always, as far as I am
acquainted with natural phenomena, a _notable_ thing. Mist of some
sort, or mirage, or confusion of light or of cloud, are the general
facts; the distance may vary in different climates at which the
effects of mist begin, but they are always present; and therefore, in
all probability, it is meant that we should enjoy them.... We surely
need not wonder that mist and all its phenomena have been made
delightful to us, since our happiness as thinking beings must depend
on our being content to accept only partial knowledge even in those
matters which chiefly concern us. If we insist upon perfect
intelligibility and complete declaration in every moral subject, we
shall instantly fall into misery of unbelief. Our whole happiness and
power of energetic action depend upon our being able to breathe and
live in the cloud; content to see it opening here, and closing there;
rejoicing to catch through the thinnest films of it, glimpses of
stable and substantial things; but yet perceiving a nobleness even in
the concealment, and rejoicing that the kindly veil is spread where
the untempered light might have scorched us, or the infinite clearness
wearied. And I believe that the resentment of this interference of the
mist is one of the forms of proud error which are too easily mistaken
for virtues. To be content in utter darkness and ignorance is indeed
unmanly, and therefore we think that to love light and find knowledge
must always be right. Yet (as in all matters before observed,)
wherever _pride_ has any share in the work, even knowledge and light
may be ill pursued. Knowledge is good, and light is good: yet man
perished in seeking knowledge, and moths perish in seeking light; and
if we, who are crushed before the moth, will not accept such mystery
as is needful to us, we shall perish in like manner. But, accepted in
humbleness, it instantly becomes an element of pleasure; and I think
that every rightly constituted mind ought to rejoice, not so much in
knowing anything clearly, as in feeling that there is infinitely more
which it cannot know. None but proud or weak men would mourn over
this, for we may always know more, if we choose, by working on; but
the pleasure is, I think, to humble people, in knowing that the
journey is endless, the treasure inexhaustible,--watching the cloud
still march before them with its summitless pillar, and being sure
that, to the end of time, and to the length of eternity, the mysteries
of its infinity will still open farther and farther, their dimness
being the sign and necessary adjunct of their inexhaustibleness. I
know there are an evil mystery, and a deathful dimness,--the mystery
of the great Babylon--the dimness of the sealed eye and soul; but do
not let us confuse these with the glorious mystery of the things which
the "angels desire to look into," or with the dimness which, even
before the clear eye and open soul, still rests on sealed pages of the
eternal volume.
25. On some isolated mountain at day-break,[17] when the night mists
first rise from off the plain, watch their white and lakelike fields,
as they float in level bays, and winding gulfs, about the islanded
summits of the lower hills, untouched yet by more than dawn, colder
and more quiet than a windless sea under the moon of midnight; watch
when the first sunbeam is sent upon the silver channels, how the foam
of their undulating surface parts, and passes away, and down under
their depths the glittering city and green pastures lie like Atlantis,
between the white paths of winding rivers; the flakes of light falling
every moment faster and broader among the starry spires, as the
wreathed surges break and vanish above them, and the confused crests
and ridges of the dark hills shorten their grey shadows upon the
plain. Wait a little longer, and you shall see those scattered mists
rallying in the ravines, and floating up towards you, along the
winding valleys, till they crouch in quiet masses, iridescent with the
morning light, upon the broad breasts of the higher hills, whose
leagues of massy undulation will melt back, back into that robe of
material light, until they fade away, lost in its lustre, to appear
again above in the serene heaven like a wild, bright, impossible
dream, foundationless, and inaccessible, their very bases vanishing in
the unsubstantial and mocking blue of the deep lake below. Wait yet a
little longer, and you shall see those mists gather themselves into
white towers, and stand like fortresses along the promontories, massy
and motionless, only piled, with every instant, higher and higher into
the sky, and casting longer shadows athwart the rocks; and out of the
pale blue of the horizon you will see forming and advancing a troop of
narrow, dark, pointed vapours, which will cover the sky, inch by inch,
with their grey network, and take the light off the landscape with an
eclipse which will stop the singing of the birds, and the motion of
the leaves, together;--and then you will see horizontal bars of black
shadow forming under them, and lurid wreaths create themselves, you
know not how, among the shoulders of the hills; you never see them
form, but when you look back to a place which was clear an instant
ago, there is a cloud on it, hanging by the precipice, as a hawk
pauses over his prey;--and then you will hear the sudden rush of the
awakened wind, and you will see those watch-towers of vapour swept
away from their foundations, and waving curtains of opaque rain, let
down to the valley, swinging from the burdened clouds in black bending
fringes, or, pacing in pale columns along the lake level, grazing its
surface into foam as they go. And then, as the sun sinks, you shall
see the storm drift for an instant from off the hills, leaving their
broad sides smoking and loaded yet with snow-white, torn, steam-like
rags of capricious vapour, now gone, now gathered again,--while the
smouldering sun, seeming not far away, but burning like a red-hot ball
beside you, and as if you could reach it, plunges through the rushing
wind and rolling cloud with headlong fall, as if it meant to rise no
more, dyeing all the air about it with blood;--and then you shall hear
the fainting tempest die in the hollow of the night, and you shall see
a green halo kindling on the summit of the eastern hills, brighter,
brighter yet, till the large white circle of the slow moon is lifted
up among the barred clouds, step by step, line by line; star after
star she quenches with her kindling light, setting in their stead an
army of pale, penetrable, fleecy wreaths in the heaven, to give light
upon the earth, which move together hand in hand, company by company,
troop by troop, so measured in their unity of motion that the whole
heaven seems to roll with them, and the earth to reel under them. And
then wait yet for one hour, until the east again becomes purple, and
the heaving mountains, rolling against it in darkness, like waves of a
wild sea, are drowned one by one in the glory of its burning; watch
the white glaciers blaze in their winding paths about the mountains,
like mighty serpents with scales of fire; watch the columnar peaks of
solitary snow, kindling downwards chasm by chasm, each in itself a new
morning--their long avalanches cast down in keen streams brighter than
the lightning, sending each his tribute of driven snow, like
altar-smoke, up to heaven; the rose-light of their silent domes
flushing that heaven about them, and above them, piercing with purer
light through its purple lines of lifted cloud, casting a new glory on
every wreath, as it passes by, until the whole heaven, one scarlet
canopy, is interwoven with a roof of waving flame, and tossing vault
beyond vault, as with the drifted wings of many companies of angels;
and then, when you can look no more for gladness, and when you are
bowed down with fear and love of the Maker and Doer of this, tell me
who has best delivered this His message unto men!
[17] I forget now what all this is about. It seems to be a recollection
of the Rigi, with assumption that the enthusiastic spectator is to stand
for a day and night in observation; to suffer the effects of a severe
thunder-storm, and to get neither breakfast nor dinner. I have seen such
a storm on the Rigi, however, and more than one such sunrise; and I much
doubt if its present visitors by rail will see more.
26.[18] The account given of the stages of creation in the first
chapter of Genesis is in every respect clear and intelligible to the
simplest reader, except in the statement of the work of the second
day. I suppose that this statement is passed over by careless readers
without any endeavour to understand it, and contemplated by simple and
faithful readers as a sublime mystery which was not intended to be
understood. But there is no mystery in any other part of the chapter,
and it seems to me unjust to conclude that any was intended here. And
the passage ought to be peculiarly interesting to us, as being the
first in the Bible in which the heavens are named, and the only one in
which the word "Heaven," all-important as that word is to our
understanding of the most precious promises of Scripture, receives a
definite explanation. Let us therefore see whether, by a little
careful comparison of the verse with other passages in which the word
occurs, we may not be able to arrive at as clear an understanding of
this portion of the chapter as of the rest. In the first place the
English word, "Firmament," itself is obscure and useless; because we
never employ it but as a synonym of heaven, it conveys no other
distinct idea to us; and the verse, though from our familiarity with
it we imagine that it possesses meaning, has in reality no more point
nor value than if it were written, "God said, Let there be a something
in the midst of the waters, and God called the something, Heaven." But
the marginal reading, "Expansion," has definite value; and the
statement that "God said, Let there be an expansion in the midst of
the waters, and God called the expansion, Heaven," has an
apprehensible meaning. Accepting this expression as the one intended,
we have next to ask what expansion there is, between two waters,
describable by the term "heaven." Milton adopts the term "expanse,"
but he understands it of the whole volume of the air which surrounds
the earth. Whereas, so far as we can tell, there is no water beyond
the air, in the fields of space; and the whole expression of division
of waters from waters is thus rendered valueless. Now with respect to
this whole chapter, we must remember always that it is intended for
the instruction of all mankind, not for the learned reader only; and
that therefore the most simple and natural interpretation is the
likeliest in general to be the true one. An unscientific reader knows
little about the manner in which the volume of the atmosphere
surrounds the earth; but I imagine that he could hardly glance at the
sky when rain was falling in the distance, and see the level line of
the bases of the clouds from which the shower descended, without being
able to attach an instant and easy meaning to the words, "expansion in
the midst of the waters;" and if, having once seized this idea, he
proceeded to examine it more accurately, he would perceive at once, if
he had ever noticed _anything_ of the nature of clouds, that the level
line of their bases did indeed most severely and stringently divide
"waters from waters"--that is to say, divide water in its collective
and tangible state, from water in its aerial state; or the waters
which _fall_, and _flow_, from those which _rise_, and _float_. Next,
if we try this interpretation in the theological sense of the word
_heaven_, and examine whether the clouds are spoken of as God's
dwelling-place, we find God going before the Israelites in a pillar of
cloud; revealing Himself in a cloud on Sinai; appearing in a cloud on
the mercy-seat; filling the Temple of Solomon with the cloud when its
dedication is accepted; appearing in a great cloud to Ezekiel;
ascending into a cloud before the eyes of the disciples on Mount
Olivet; and in like manner returning to judgment: "Behold He cometh
with clouds, and every eye shall see Him." "Then shall they see the
Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven, with power and great
glory." While, further, the "clouds" and "heavens" are used as
interchangeable words in those psalms which most distinctly set forth
the power of God: "He bowed the heavens also, and came down; He made
darkness pavilions round about Him, dark waters, and thick clouds of
the skies." And again, "Thy mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens, and Thy
faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds." And again, "His excellency is
over Israel, and His strength is in the clouds." And again, "The
clouds poured out water, the skies sent out a sound, the voice of Thy
thunder was in the heaven." Again, "Clouds and darkness are round
about Him, righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His
throne; the heavens declare His righteousness, and all the people see
His glory." In all these passages the meaning is unmistakable if they
possess definite meaning at all. We are too apt to take them merely
for sublime and vague imagery, and therefore gradually to lose the
apprehension of their life and power. The expression, "He bowed the
heavens," for instance, is, I suppose, received by most readers as a
magnificent hyperbole, having reference to some peculiar and fearful
manifestation of God's power to the writer of the psalm in which the
words occur. But the expression either has _plain_ meaning, or it has
_no_ meaning. Understand by the term "heavens" the compass of infinite
space around the earth, and the expression "bowed the heavens,"
however sublime, is wholly without meaning: infinite space cannot be
bent or bowed. But understand by the "heavens" the veil of clouds
above the earth, and the expression is neither hyperbolical nor
obscure; it is pure, plain, accurate truth, and it describes God, not
as revealing Himself in any peculiar way to David, but doing what He
is still doing before our own eyes, day by day. By accepting the words
in their simple sense, we are thus led to apprehend the immediate
presence of the Deity, and His purpose of manifesting Himself as near
us whenever the storm-cloud stoops upon its course; while by our vague
and inaccurate acceptance of the words, we remove the idea of His
presence far from us, into a region which we can neither see nor know:
and gradually, from the close realization of a living God, who "maketh
the clouds His chariot," we define and explain ourselves into dim and
distant suspicion of an inactive God inhabiting inconceivable places,
and fading into the multitudinous formalisms of the laws of Nature.
All errors of this kind--and in the present day we are in constant and
grievous danger of falling into them--arise from the originally
mistaken idea that man can, "by searching, find out God--find out the
Almighty to perfection"--that is to say, by help of courses of
reasoning and accumulations of science, apprehend the nature of the
Deity, in a more exalted and more accurate manner than in a state of
comparative ignorance; whereas it is clearly necessary, from the
beginning to the end of time, that God's way of revealing Himself to
His creatures should be a _simple_ way, which _all_ those creatures
may understand. Whether taught or untaught, whether of mean capacity
or enlarged, it is necessary that communion with their Creator should
be possible to all; and the admission to such communion must be
rested, not on their having a knowledge of astronomy, but on their
having a human soul. In order to render this communion possible, the
Deity has stooped from His throne, and has, not only in the person of
the Son, taken upon Him the veil of our human _flesh_, but, in the
person of the Father, taken upon Him the veil of our human _thoughts_,
and permitted us, by His own spoken authority, to conceive Him simply
and clearly as a loving father and friend; a being to be walked with
and reasoned with, to be moved by our entreaties, angered by our
rebellion, alienated by our coldness, pleased by our love, and
glorified by our labour; and, finally, to be beheld in immediate and
active presence in all the powers and changes of creation. This
conception of God, which is the child's, is evidently the only one
which can be universal, and, therefore, the only one which _for us_
can be true. The moment that, in our pride of heart, we refuse to
accept the condescension of the Almighty, and desire Him, instead of
stooping to hold our hands, to rise up before us into His glory, we
hoping that, by standing on a grain of dust or two of human knowledge
higher than our fellows, we may behold the Creator as He rises,--God
takes us at our word. He rises into His own invisible and
inconceivable majesty; He goes forth upon the ways which are not our
ways, and retires into the thoughts which are not our thoughts; and we
are left alone. And presently we say in our vain hearts, "There is no
God."
[18] This passage, to the end of the section, is one of the last, and
best, which I wrote in the temper of my youth; and I can still ratify
it, thus far, that the texts referred to in it must either be received
as it explains them, or neglected altogether.
I would desire, therefore, to receive God's account of His own
creation as under the ordinary limits of human knowledge and
imagination it would be received by a simple-minded man; and finding
that "the heavens and the earth" are spoken of always as having
something like equal relation to each other, ("Thus the heavens and
the earth were finished, and all the host of them,") I reject at once
all idea of the term "heavens" being intended to signify the infinity
of space inhabited by countless worlds; for between those infinite
heavens and the particle of sand, which not the earth only, but the
sun itself, with all the solar system, is, in relation to them, no
relation of equality or comparison could be inferred. But I suppose
the heavens to mean that part of creation which holds equal
companionship with our globe; I understand the "rolling of these
heavens together as a scroll," to be an equal and relative destruction
with the melting of the elements in fervent heat; and I understand the
making of the firmament to signify that, so far as man is concerned,
most magnificent ordinance of the clouds;--the ordinance that, as the
great plain of waters was formed on the face of the earth, so also a
plain of waters should be stretched along the height of air, and the
face of the cloud answer the face of the ocean; and that this upper
and heavenly plain should be of waters, as it were, glorified in their
nature, no longer quenching the fire, but now bearing fire in their
own bosoms; no longer murmuring only when the winds raise them or
rocks divide, but answering each other with their own voices, from
pole to pole; no longer restrained by established shores, and guided
through unchanging channels, but going forth at their pleasure like
the armies of the angels, and choosing their encampments upon the
heights of the hills; no longer hurried downwards for ever, moving but
to fall, nor lost in the lightless accumulation of the abyss, but
covering the east and west with the waving of their wings, and robing
the gloom of the farther infinite with a vesture of diverse colours,
of which the threads are purple and scarlet, and the embroideries
flame.
This I believe is the ordinance of the firmament; and it seems to me
that in the midst of the material nearness of these heavens, God means
us to acknowledge His own immediate presence as visiting, judging, and
blessing us: "The earth shook, the heavens also dropped at the
presence of God." "He doth set His bow in the clouds," and thus
renews, in the sound of every drooping swathe of rain, His promises of
everlasting love. "In them hath He set a _tabernacle_ for the sun;"
whose burning ball, which, without the firmament, would be seen but as
an intolerable and scorching circle in the blackness of vacuity, is by
that firmament surrounded with gorgeous service, and tempered by
mediatorial ministries: by the firmament of clouds the temple is
built, for his presence to fill with light at noon; by the firmament
of clouds the purple veil is closed at evening, round the sanctuary of
his rest; by the mists of the firmament his implacable light is
divided, and its separated fierceness appeased into the soft blue that
fills the depth of distance with its bloom, and the flush with which
the mountains burn, as they drink the overflowing of the dayspring.
And in this tabernacling of the unendurable sun with men, through the
shadows of the firmament, God would seem to set forth the stooping of
His own Majesty to men, upon the throne of the firmament. As the
Creator of all the worlds, and the Inhabiter of eternity, we cannot
behold Him; but as the Judge of the earth and the Preserver of men,
those heavens are indeed His dwelling-place: "Swear not, neither by
heaven, for it is God's throne; nor by the earth, for it is His
footstool!" And all those passings to and fro of fruitful showers and
grateful shade, and all those visions of silver palaces built about
the horizon, and voices of moaning winds and threatening thunders, and
glories of coloured robe and cloven ray, are but to deepen in our
hearts the acceptance, and distinctness, and dearness of the simple
words, "Our Father, which art in heaven."