The Heavenly Father | Page 4

and the Wise, whose will has given being to nature, and who directs at
once the chorus of stars in the depths of the heavens, and the drop of
vital moisture in the herb which we tread under foot.
If, after having looked around, we turn our regard in upon ourselves,
we then discover other heavens, spiritual heavens, in which shine, like
stars of the first magnitude, those objects which cause the heart of man
to beat, so long as he is not self-degraded: truth, goodness, beauty. Now
we feel that we are made for this higher world. Material enjoyments
may enchain our will; we may, in the indulgence of unworthy passions,
pursue what in its essence is only evil, error, and deformity; but, if all
the rays of our true nature are not extinguished, a voice issues from the
depth of our souls and protests against our debasement. Our aspirations
toward these spiritual excellences are unlimited. Our thought sets out
on its course: have we solved one question? immediately new questions
arise, which press, no less than the former, for an answer. Our
conscience speaks: have we come in a certain degree to realize what is
right and good? immediately conscience demands of us still more. Is
our feeling for beauty awakened? Well, sirs, when an artist is satisfied
with the work of his hands, do you not know at once what to think of
him? Do you not know that that man will never do any thing great, who

does not see shining in his horizon an ideal which stamps as imperfect
all that he has been able to realize? The voice which urges us on
through life from the cradle to the grave, and which, without allowing
us a moment's pause, is ever crying--Forward! forward! this voice is
not more imperious than the noble instinct which, in the view of beauty,
of truth, of good, is also saying to us--Forward! forward! and, with the
American poet, Excelsior! higher, ever higher! Many of you know that
instinct familiar to the _climbers of the Alps_,[2] as they are called,
who, arrived at one summit, have no rest so long as there remains a
loftier height in view. Such is our destiny; but the last peak is veiled in
shining clouds which conceal it from our sight. Perfection,--this is the
point to which our nature aspires; but it is the ladder of Jacob: we see
the foot which rests upon the earth; the summit hides itself from our
feeble view amidst the splendors of the infinite.
These objects of our highest desires--beauty in its supreme
manifestation, absolute holiness, infinite truth--are united in one and
the same thought--God! The attributes of the spiritual are never in us
but as borrowed attributes; they dwell naturally in Him who is their
source. God is the truth, not only because He knows all things, but
because He is the very object of our thoughts; because, when we study
the universe, we do but spell out some few of the laws which He has
imposed on things; because, to know truth is never any thing else than
to know the creation or the Creator, the world or its eternal Cause. God
it is who must be Himself the satisfaction of that craving of the
conscience which urges us towards holiness. If we had arrived at the
highest degree of virtue, what should we have done? We should have
realized the plan which He has proposed to spiritual creatures in their
freedom, at the same time that He is directing the stars in their courses
by that other word which they accomplish without having heard it. God
is the eternal source of beauty. He it is who has shed grace upon our
valleys, and majesty upon our mountains; and He, again, it is (I quote
St. Augustine) who acts within the souls of artists, those great artists,
who, urged unceasingly towards the regions of the ideal, feel
themselves drawn onwards towards a divine world.
God then above all is He who is,--the Absolute, the Infinite, the

Eternal,--in the ever mysterious depths of His own essence. In His
relation to the world, He is the cause; in His relation to the lofty
aspirations of the soul, He is the ideal. He is the ideal, because being
the absolute cause, He is the unique source, at the same time that He is
the object, of our aspirations: He is the absolute cause, because being
He who is, in His supreme unity, nothing could have existence except
by the act of His power. We are able already to recognize here, in
passing, the source at which are fed the most serious aberrations of
religious thought. Are truth, holiness, beauty considered separately
from the real and infinite Spirit in which is found