VTHE IDEA OF GODMy study (not the place where I get my knowledge but the place where I put it together) is a great meadow—ten square splendid level miles of it—as fenceless and as open as a sky—merely two mountains to stand guard. IfH——the scientist who lives nearest to me (that is; nearest to my mind,) were to come down to me to-morrow morning, down in my meadow, with its huge triangle of trolleys and railways humming gently around the edges and tell me that he had found a God, I would not believe it. “Where?” I would say, “in which Bottle?” I have groped for one all these years. Ever since I was a child I have been groping for a God. I thought one had to. I have turned over the pages of ancient books and hunted in morning papers and rummaged in the events of the great world and looked on the under sides of leaves and guessed on the othersides of the stars and all in vain. I never could make out to find a God in that way. I wonder if anyone can.I know it is not the right spirit to have, but I must confess that when the scientist (the smaller sort of scientist around the corner in my mind and everybody’s mind) with all his retorts and things, pottering with his argument of design, comes down to me in my meadow and reminds me that he has been looking for a God and tells me cautiously and with all his kind, conscientious hems and haws that he has found Him, I wonder if he has.The very necessity a man is under of seeking a God at all, in a world alive all over like this, of feeling obliged to go on a long journey to search one out makes one doubt if the kind of God he would find would be worth while. I have never caught a man yet who has found his God in this way, enjoying Him or getting anyone else to.It does seem to me that the idea of a God is an absolutely plain, rudimentary, fundamental, universal human instinct, that the very essence of finding a God consists in His not having to be looked for, in giving one’s self up to one’s plain every-day infinite experiences. I suppose if it could be analyzed, the poet’s real quarrel with the scientist is not that he is material, but that he is not material enough,—he does notconceive matter enough to find a God. I cannot believe for instance that any man on earth to whom the great spectacle of matter going on every day before his eyes is a scarcely noticed thing—any man who is willing to turn aside from this spectacle—this spectacle as a whole—and who looks for a God like a chemist in a bottle for instance—a bottle which he places absolutely by itself, would be able to find one if he tried. It seems to me that it is by letting one’s self have one’s infinite—one’s infinitely related experiences, and not by cutting them off that one comes to know a God. To find a God who is everywhere one must at least spend a part of one’s time in being everywhere one’s self—in relating one’s knowledge to all knowledge.There are various undergirding arguments and reasons, but the only way that I really know there is an infinite God is because I am infinite—in a small way—myself. Even the matter that has come into the world connected with me, and that belongs to me, is infinite. If my soul, like some dim pale light left burning within me, were merely to creep to the boundaries of its own body, it would know there was a God. The very flesh I live with every day is infinite flesh. From the furthest rumors of men and women, the furthest edge of time and space my soul has gathered dust to itself. I carry a temple about with me. If I coulddo no better, and if there were need, I am my own cathedral. I worship when I breathe. I bow down before the tick of my pulse. I chant to the palm of my hand. The lines in the tips of my fingers could not be duplicated in a million years. Shall any man ask me to prove there are miracles or to put my finger on God? or to go out into some great breath of emptiness or argument to be sure there is a God? I am infinite. Therefore there is a God. I feel daily the God within me. Has He not kindled the fire in my bones and out of the burning dust warmed me before the stars—made a hearth for my soul before them? I am at home with them. I sit daily before worlds as at my own fireside.I suppose there is something intolerant and impatient and a little heartless about an optimist—especially the kind of optimism that is based upon a simple everyday rudimentary joy in the structure of the world. There is such a thing, I suppose, with some of us, as having a kind of devilish pride in faith, as one would say to ordinary mortals and creepers and considerers and arguers “Oh now just see me believe!” We are like boys taking turns jumping in the Great Vacant Lot, seeing which can believe the furthest. We need to be reminded that a man cannot simply bring a little brag to God, about His world, and make a religion out of it. I do not doubt in the least, as a matter of theory,that I have the wrong spirit—sometimes—toward the scientific man who lives around the corner of my mind. It seems to me he is always suggesting important-looking unimportant things. I have days of sympathizing with him, of rolling his great useless heavy-empty pack up upon my shoulders and strapping it there. But before I know it I’m off. I throw it away or melt it down into a tablet or something—put it in my pocket. I walk jauntily before God.And the worst of it is, I think He intended me to. I think He intended me to know and to keep knowing daily what He has done for me and is doing now, out in the universe, and what He has made me to do. I also am a God. From the first time I saw the sun I have been one daily. I have performed daily all the homelier miracles and all the common functions of a God. I have breathed the Invisible into my being. Out of the air of heaven I have made flesh. I have taken earth from the earth and burned it within me and made it into prayers and into songs. I have said to my soul “To eat is to sing.” I worship all over. I am my own sacrament. I lay before God nights of sleep, and the delight and wonder of the flesh I render back to Him again, daily, as an offering in His sight.And what is true of my literal body—of thejoy of my hands and my feet, is still more true of the hands of my hands.When I wake in the night and send forth my thought upon the darkness, track out my own infinity in it, feel my vast body of earth and sky reaching around me, all telegraphed through with thought, and floored with steel, I may have to grope for a God a little (I do sometimes), but I do it with loud cheers. I sing before the door of heaven if there is a heaven or needs to be a heaven. When I look upon the glory of the other worlds, has not science itself told me that they are a part of me and I a part of them? Nothing is that would not be different without something else. My thoughts are ticking through the clouds, and the great sun itself is creeping through me daily down in my bones. The steam cloud hurries for me on a hundred seas. I turn over in my sleep at midnight and lay my hand on the noon. And when I have slept and walk forth in the morning, the stars flow in my veins. Why should a man dare to whine? “Whine not at me!” I have said to man my brother. If you cannot sing to me do not interrupt me.Let him sing to meWho sees the watching of the stars above the day,Who hears the singing of the sunriseOn its wayThrough all the night.Who outfaces skies, outsings the storms,Whose soul has roamedInfinite-homedThrough tents of Space,His hand in the dim Great Hand that formsAll wonder.Let him sing to meWho is The Sky Voice, The Thunder LoverWho hears above the wind’s fast-flying shroudsThe drifted darkness, the heavenly strife,The singing on the sunny sides of all the clouds,Of His Own Life.
VTHE IDEA OF GODMy study (not the place where I get my knowledge but the place where I put it together) is a great meadow—ten square splendid level miles of it—as fenceless and as open as a sky—merely two mountains to stand guard. IfH——the scientist who lives nearest to me (that is; nearest to my mind,) were to come down to me to-morrow morning, down in my meadow, with its huge triangle of trolleys and railways humming gently around the edges and tell me that he had found a God, I would not believe it. “Where?” I would say, “in which Bottle?” I have groped for one all these years. Ever since I was a child I have been groping for a God. I thought one had to. I have turned over the pages of ancient books and hunted in morning papers and rummaged in the events of the great world and looked on the under sides of leaves and guessed on the othersides of the stars and all in vain. I never could make out to find a God in that way. I wonder if anyone can.I know it is not the right spirit to have, but I must confess that when the scientist (the smaller sort of scientist around the corner in my mind and everybody’s mind) with all his retorts and things, pottering with his argument of design, comes down to me in my meadow and reminds me that he has been looking for a God and tells me cautiously and with all his kind, conscientious hems and haws that he has found Him, I wonder if he has.The very necessity a man is under of seeking a God at all, in a world alive all over like this, of feeling obliged to go on a long journey to search one out makes one doubt if the kind of God he would find would be worth while. I have never caught a man yet who has found his God in this way, enjoying Him or getting anyone else to.It does seem to me that the idea of a God is an absolutely plain, rudimentary, fundamental, universal human instinct, that the very essence of finding a God consists in His not having to be looked for, in giving one’s self up to one’s plain every-day infinite experiences. I suppose if it could be analyzed, the poet’s real quarrel with the scientist is not that he is material, but that he is not material enough,—he does notconceive matter enough to find a God. I cannot believe for instance that any man on earth to whom the great spectacle of matter going on every day before his eyes is a scarcely noticed thing—any man who is willing to turn aside from this spectacle—this spectacle as a whole—and who looks for a God like a chemist in a bottle for instance—a bottle which he places absolutely by itself, would be able to find one if he tried. It seems to me that it is by letting one’s self have one’s infinite—one’s infinitely related experiences, and not by cutting them off that one comes to know a God. To find a God who is everywhere one must at least spend a part of one’s time in being everywhere one’s self—in relating one’s knowledge to all knowledge.There are various undergirding arguments and reasons, but the only way that I really know there is an infinite God is because I am infinite—in a small way—myself. Even the matter that has come into the world connected with me, and that belongs to me, is infinite. If my soul, like some dim pale light left burning within me, were merely to creep to the boundaries of its own body, it would know there was a God. The very flesh I live with every day is infinite flesh. From the furthest rumors of men and women, the furthest edge of time and space my soul has gathered dust to itself. I carry a temple about with me. If I coulddo no better, and if there were need, I am my own cathedral. I worship when I breathe. I bow down before the tick of my pulse. I chant to the palm of my hand. The lines in the tips of my fingers could not be duplicated in a million years. Shall any man ask me to prove there are miracles or to put my finger on God? or to go out into some great breath of emptiness or argument to be sure there is a God? I am infinite. Therefore there is a God. I feel daily the God within me. Has He not kindled the fire in my bones and out of the burning dust warmed me before the stars—made a hearth for my soul before them? I am at home with them. I sit daily before worlds as at my own fireside.I suppose there is something intolerant and impatient and a little heartless about an optimist—especially the kind of optimism that is based upon a simple everyday rudimentary joy in the structure of the world. There is such a thing, I suppose, with some of us, as having a kind of devilish pride in faith, as one would say to ordinary mortals and creepers and considerers and arguers “Oh now just see me believe!” We are like boys taking turns jumping in the Great Vacant Lot, seeing which can believe the furthest. We need to be reminded that a man cannot simply bring a little brag to God, about His world, and make a religion out of it. I do not doubt in the least, as a matter of theory,that I have the wrong spirit—sometimes—toward the scientific man who lives around the corner of my mind. It seems to me he is always suggesting important-looking unimportant things. I have days of sympathizing with him, of rolling his great useless heavy-empty pack up upon my shoulders and strapping it there. But before I know it I’m off. I throw it away or melt it down into a tablet or something—put it in my pocket. I walk jauntily before God.And the worst of it is, I think He intended me to. I think He intended me to know and to keep knowing daily what He has done for me and is doing now, out in the universe, and what He has made me to do. I also am a God. From the first time I saw the sun I have been one daily. I have performed daily all the homelier miracles and all the common functions of a God. I have breathed the Invisible into my being. Out of the air of heaven I have made flesh. I have taken earth from the earth and burned it within me and made it into prayers and into songs. I have said to my soul “To eat is to sing.” I worship all over. I am my own sacrament. I lay before God nights of sleep, and the delight and wonder of the flesh I render back to Him again, daily, as an offering in His sight.And what is true of my literal body—of thejoy of my hands and my feet, is still more true of the hands of my hands.When I wake in the night and send forth my thought upon the darkness, track out my own infinity in it, feel my vast body of earth and sky reaching around me, all telegraphed through with thought, and floored with steel, I may have to grope for a God a little (I do sometimes), but I do it with loud cheers. I sing before the door of heaven if there is a heaven or needs to be a heaven. When I look upon the glory of the other worlds, has not science itself told me that they are a part of me and I a part of them? Nothing is that would not be different without something else. My thoughts are ticking through the clouds, and the great sun itself is creeping through me daily down in my bones. The steam cloud hurries for me on a hundred seas. I turn over in my sleep at midnight and lay my hand on the noon. And when I have slept and walk forth in the morning, the stars flow in my veins. Why should a man dare to whine? “Whine not at me!” I have said to man my brother. If you cannot sing to me do not interrupt me.Let him sing to meWho sees the watching of the stars above the day,Who hears the singing of the sunriseOn its wayThrough all the night.Who outfaces skies, outsings the storms,Whose soul has roamedInfinite-homedThrough tents of Space,His hand in the dim Great Hand that formsAll wonder.Let him sing to meWho is The Sky Voice, The Thunder LoverWho hears above the wind’s fast-flying shroudsThe drifted darkness, the heavenly strife,The singing on the sunny sides of all the clouds,Of His Own Life.
V
My study (not the place where I get my knowledge but the place where I put it together) is a great meadow—ten square splendid level miles of it—as fenceless and as open as a sky—merely two mountains to stand guard. IfH——the scientist who lives nearest to me (that is; nearest to my mind,) were to come down to me to-morrow morning, down in my meadow, with its huge triangle of trolleys and railways humming gently around the edges and tell me that he had found a God, I would not believe it. “Where?” I would say, “in which Bottle?” I have groped for one all these years. Ever since I was a child I have been groping for a God. I thought one had to. I have turned over the pages of ancient books and hunted in morning papers and rummaged in the events of the great world and looked on the under sides of leaves and guessed on the othersides of the stars and all in vain. I never could make out to find a God in that way. I wonder if anyone can.
I know it is not the right spirit to have, but I must confess that when the scientist (the smaller sort of scientist around the corner in my mind and everybody’s mind) with all his retorts and things, pottering with his argument of design, comes down to me in my meadow and reminds me that he has been looking for a God and tells me cautiously and with all his kind, conscientious hems and haws that he has found Him, I wonder if he has.
The very necessity a man is under of seeking a God at all, in a world alive all over like this, of feeling obliged to go on a long journey to search one out makes one doubt if the kind of God he would find would be worth while. I have never caught a man yet who has found his God in this way, enjoying Him or getting anyone else to.
It does seem to me that the idea of a God is an absolutely plain, rudimentary, fundamental, universal human instinct, that the very essence of finding a God consists in His not having to be looked for, in giving one’s self up to one’s plain every-day infinite experiences. I suppose if it could be analyzed, the poet’s real quarrel with the scientist is not that he is material, but that he is not material enough,—he does notconceive matter enough to find a God. I cannot believe for instance that any man on earth to whom the great spectacle of matter going on every day before his eyes is a scarcely noticed thing—any man who is willing to turn aside from this spectacle—this spectacle as a whole—and who looks for a God like a chemist in a bottle for instance—a bottle which he places absolutely by itself, would be able to find one if he tried. It seems to me that it is by letting one’s self have one’s infinite—one’s infinitely related experiences, and not by cutting them off that one comes to know a God. To find a God who is everywhere one must at least spend a part of one’s time in being everywhere one’s self—in relating one’s knowledge to all knowledge.
There are various undergirding arguments and reasons, but the only way that I really know there is an infinite God is because I am infinite—in a small way—myself. Even the matter that has come into the world connected with me, and that belongs to me, is infinite. If my soul, like some dim pale light left burning within me, were merely to creep to the boundaries of its own body, it would know there was a God. The very flesh I live with every day is infinite flesh. From the furthest rumors of men and women, the furthest edge of time and space my soul has gathered dust to itself. I carry a temple about with me. If I coulddo no better, and if there were need, I am my own cathedral. I worship when I breathe. I bow down before the tick of my pulse. I chant to the palm of my hand. The lines in the tips of my fingers could not be duplicated in a million years. Shall any man ask me to prove there are miracles or to put my finger on God? or to go out into some great breath of emptiness or argument to be sure there is a God? I am infinite. Therefore there is a God. I feel daily the God within me. Has He not kindled the fire in my bones and out of the burning dust warmed me before the stars—made a hearth for my soul before them? I am at home with them. I sit daily before worlds as at my own fireside.
I suppose there is something intolerant and impatient and a little heartless about an optimist—especially the kind of optimism that is based upon a simple everyday rudimentary joy in the structure of the world. There is such a thing, I suppose, with some of us, as having a kind of devilish pride in faith, as one would say to ordinary mortals and creepers and considerers and arguers “Oh now just see me believe!” We are like boys taking turns jumping in the Great Vacant Lot, seeing which can believe the furthest. We need to be reminded that a man cannot simply bring a little brag to God, about His world, and make a religion out of it. I do not doubt in the least, as a matter of theory,that I have the wrong spirit—sometimes—toward the scientific man who lives around the corner of my mind. It seems to me he is always suggesting important-looking unimportant things. I have days of sympathizing with him, of rolling his great useless heavy-empty pack up upon my shoulders and strapping it there. But before I know it I’m off. I throw it away or melt it down into a tablet or something—put it in my pocket. I walk jauntily before God.
And the worst of it is, I think He intended me to. I think He intended me to know and to keep knowing daily what He has done for me and is doing now, out in the universe, and what He has made me to do. I also am a God. From the first time I saw the sun I have been one daily. I have performed daily all the homelier miracles and all the common functions of a God. I have breathed the Invisible into my being. Out of the air of heaven I have made flesh. I have taken earth from the earth and burned it within me and made it into prayers and into songs. I have said to my soul “To eat is to sing.” I worship all over. I am my own sacrament. I lay before God nights of sleep, and the delight and wonder of the flesh I render back to Him again, daily, as an offering in His sight.
And what is true of my literal body—of thejoy of my hands and my feet, is still more true of the hands of my hands.
When I wake in the night and send forth my thought upon the darkness, track out my own infinity in it, feel my vast body of earth and sky reaching around me, all telegraphed through with thought, and floored with steel, I may have to grope for a God a little (I do sometimes), but I do it with loud cheers. I sing before the door of heaven if there is a heaven or needs to be a heaven. When I look upon the glory of the other worlds, has not science itself told me that they are a part of me and I a part of them? Nothing is that would not be different without something else. My thoughts are ticking through the clouds, and the great sun itself is creeping through me daily down in my bones. The steam cloud hurries for me on a hundred seas. I turn over in my sleep at midnight and lay my hand on the noon. And when I have slept and walk forth in the morning, the stars flow in my veins. Why should a man dare to whine? “Whine not at me!” I have said to man my brother. If you cannot sing to me do not interrupt me.
Let him sing to meWho sees the watching of the stars above the day,Who hears the singing of the sunriseOn its wayThrough all the night.Who outfaces skies, outsings the storms,Whose soul has roamedInfinite-homedThrough tents of Space,His hand in the dim Great Hand that formsAll wonder.Let him sing to meWho is The Sky Voice, The Thunder LoverWho hears above the wind’s fast-flying shroudsThe drifted darkness, the heavenly strife,The singing on the sunny sides of all the clouds,Of His Own Life.
Let him sing to meWho sees the watching of the stars above the day,Who hears the singing of the sunriseOn its wayThrough all the night.Who outfaces skies, outsings the storms,Whose soul has roamedInfinite-homedThrough tents of Space,His hand in the dim Great Hand that formsAll wonder.
Let him sing to me
Who sees the watching of the stars above the day,
Who hears the singing of the sunrise
On its way
Through all the night.
Who outfaces skies, outsings the storms,
Whose soul has roamed
Infinite-homed
Through tents of Space,
His hand in the dim Great Hand that forms
All wonder.
Let him sing to meWho is The Sky Voice, The Thunder LoverWho hears above the wind’s fast-flying shroudsThe drifted darkness, the heavenly strife,The singing on the sunny sides of all the clouds,Of His Own Life.
Let him sing to me
Who is The Sky Voice, The Thunder Lover
Who hears above the wind’s fast-flying shrouds
The drifted darkness, the heavenly strife,
The singing on the sunny sides of all the clouds,
Of His Own Life.