“...  And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things."[24]

Sometimes he dares to personalize this ultimate and then ascends to the supreme poetry of the religious experience and feels the cosmic consciousness, the eternal “I” of this strange world, which fills it with observant majesty.  And then he chants,

  “The heavens declare the glory of God,
  The firmament showeth his handiwork.”

Or he whispers,

  “Whither shall I go from Thy spirit,
  Or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? 
  If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there,
  If I make my bed in hell, behold Thou art there,
  If I take the wings of the morning
  And dwell in the uttermost parts of the earth,
  Even there shall Thy hand lead me
  And Thy right hand shall hold me."[25]

Indeed, the devout religionist almost never thinks of nature as such.  She is always the bush which flames and is not consumed.  Therefore he walks softly all his days, conscious that God is near.

  “Of old,” he says, “Thou hast laid the foundations of the earth;
  And the heavens are the work of Thy hands. 
  They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure;
  Yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment;
  As a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed;
  But Thou art the same,
  And Thy years shall have no end."[26]

To him nature is the glass through which he sees darkly and often with a darkling mind, the all-pervasive Presence; it is the veil—­the veil that covers the face of God.

[Footnote 24:  Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, stanza 3, ll. 36-45.]

[Footnote 25:  Psalm cxxxix. 7-9.]

[Footnote 26:  Psalm cii. 25-27.]

Here, then, we have the contrasting attitude of worldling and believer toward nature, the outward universe.  Now we come to the contrasting attitude of humanist and believer toward man, the world within.  For why are we so sure, first, of the chasm between ourselves and Nature and, second, that we can bridge that chasm by reaching out to something behind and beyond her which is more like us than her?  What gives us the key to her dualism?  Why do we think that there is Something which perpetually beckons to us through her, makes awful signs of an intimate and significant relationship?  Because we feel a similar chasm, an equal cleft in our own hearts, a division in the moral nature of mankind.  We know that gulf between us and the outward world because we know the greater gulf between flesh and spirit, between the natural man and the real man, between the “I” and the “other I.”