world always is phenomenal; and virtue subordi-
nates it to the mind. Idealism sees the world in
God. It beholds the whole circle of persons and
things, of actions and events, of country and re-
ligion, not as painfully accumulated, atom after
atom, act after act, in an aged creeping Past, but
as one vast picture which God paints on the in-
stant eternity for the contemplation of the soul.
Therefore the soul holds itself off from a too trivial
and microscopic study of the universal tablet. It
respects the end too much to immerse itself in the
means. It sees something more important in Chris-
tianity than the scandals of ecclesiastical history
or the niceties of criticism; and, very incurious
concerning persons or miracles, and not at all dis-
turbed by chasms of historical evidence, it accepts
from God the phenomenon, as it finds it, as the
pure and awful form of religion in the world. It
is not hot and passionate at the appearance of what
it calls its own good or bad fortune, at the union
or opposition of other persons. No man is its en-
emy. It accepts whatsoever befalls, as part of its
lesson. It is a watcher more than a doer, and it is
a doer, only that it may the better watch.

-338-