but at least it must be that. True, also, that beautiful as these things
appear to physical eyes they must be still more beautiful to spiritual
eyes--the eyes of those who have passed on, for instance--to say nothing
of the delight which God must have in them Himself. But even with my
imperfect mortal vision they are rapturously good, a veritable glimpse
of the Divine.

This is what I mean by the elementary--the common, primary thing, the
thing I look at every day and hardly ever accredit to its source. I am
not speaking pantheistically here, any more than when I spoke of light.
These things are not God, or part of God. They are expressions of God.
If I speak of seeing God in them I mean that in them, as well as in many
other simple things, we see Him as nearly as is possible to such
comprehension as ours. "No human eye," writes St. John, "has ever seen
God: the only Son, who is in the Father's bosom--He has made Him
known."[8] He made Him known in His own Person; but He appealed also to
the everyday sights and sounds, the lily of the field, the blowing wind,
the sparrow falling, the children at their mothers' knees, for the
evidence to declare Him. As expressions of Him they may be
misinterpreted by the error in my physical senses, or distorted by my
limitations of spiritual perception; but even then they bring Him near
to me in the kind of radiance which I can catch.

[8] Most of the quotations from the New Testament are taken from a
recent translation, "The New Testament in Modern Speech," by R.F.
Weymouth and E. Hampden-Cook.



III