“OF GOD’S UNIVERSAL PROVIDENCE, RULING ALL, AND COMPRISING ALL.

“Wherefore the great and mighty God; He that made man a reasonable creature of soul and body, and He that did neither let him pass unpunished for his sin, nor yet excluded him from mercy; He that gave, both unto good and bad, essence with the stones, power of production with the trees, senses with the beasts of the field, and understanding with the angels; He from whom is all being, beauty, form, and number, weight, and measure; He from whom all nature, mean and excellent, all seeds of form, all forms of seed, all motion, both of forms and seeds, derive and have being; He that gave flesh the original beauty, strength, propagation, form and shape, health and symmetry; He that gave the unreasonable soul, sense, memory, and appetite; the reasonable, besides these, fantasy, understanding, and will; He, I say, having left neither heaven, nor earth, nor angel, nor man, no, nor the most base and contemptible creature, neither the bird’s feather, nor the herb’s flower, nor the tree’s leaf, without the true harmony of their parts, and peaceful concord of composition:—­It is in no way credible that He would leave the kingdoms of men and their bondages and freedom loose and uncomprised in the laws of His eternal providence."[5]

[Footnote 5:  From St. Augustine’s ‘Citie of God,’ Book V., ch. xi.  (English trans., printed by George Eld, 1610.)]

This for the philosophy.[6] Next, I take for example of the Religion of our ancestors, a prayer, personally and passionately offered to the Deity conceived as you have this moment heard.

[Footnote 6:  Here one of the “Stones of Westminster” was shown and commented on.]

“O Thou who art the Father of that Son which has awakened us, and yet urgeth us out of the sleep of our sins, and exhorteth us that we become Thine;” (note you that, for apprehension of what Redemption means, against your base and cowardly modern notion of ’scaping whipping.  Not to take away the Punishment of Sin, but by His Resurrection to raise us out of the sleep of sin itself!  Compare the legend at the feet of the Lion of the Tribe of Judah in the golden Gospel of Charles le Chauve[7]:—­

  “HIC LEO SURGENDO PORTAS CONFREGIT AVERNI
  QUI NUNQUAM DORMIT, NUSQUAM DORMITAT IN AEVUM;”)

“to Thee, Lord, I pray, who art the supreme truth; for all the truth that is, is truth from Thee.  Thee I implore, O Lord, who art the highest wisdom.  Through Thee are wise all those that are so.  Thou art the true life, and through Thee are living all those that are so.  Thou art the supreme felicity, and from Thee all have become happy that are so.  Thou art the highest good, and from Thee all beauty springs.  Thou art the intellectual light, and from Thee man derives his understanding.

[Footnote 7:  At Munich:  the leaf has been exquisitely drawn and legend communicated to me by Professor Westwood.  It is written in gold on purple.]