was a merit: better than what the entirely stupid man did, what the horse
and camel did,--namely, nothing!

But now if all things whatsoever that we look upon are emblems to us of the
Highest God, I add that more so than any of them is man such an emblem.
You have heard of St. Chrysostom's celebrated saying in reference to the
Shekinah, or Ark of Testimony, visible Revelation of God, among the
Hebrews: "The true Shekinah is Man!" Yes, it is even so: this is no vain
phrase; it is veritably so. The essence of our being, the mystery in us
that calls itself "I,"--ah, what words have we for such things?--is a
breath of Heaven; the Highest Being reveals himself in man. This body,
these faculties, this life of ours, is it not all as a vesture for that
Unnamed? "There is but one Temple in the Universe," says the devout
Novalis, "and that is the Body of Man. Nothing is holier shall that high
form. Bending before men is a reverence done to this Revelation in the
Flesh. We touch Heaven when we lay our hand on a human body!" This sounds
much like a mere flourish of rhetoric; but it is not so. If well
meditated, it will turn out to be a scientific fact; the expression, in
such words as can be had, of the actual truth of the thing. We are the
miracle of miracles,--the great inscrutable mystery of God. We cannot
understand it, we know not how to speak of it; but we may feel and know, if
we like, that it is verily so.

Well; these truths were once more readily felt than now. The young
generations of the world, who had in them the freshness of young children,
and yet the depth of earnest men, who did not think that they had finished
off all things in Heaven and Earth by merely giving them scientific names,
but had to gaze direct at them there, with awe and wonder: they felt
better what of divinity is in man and Nature; they, without being mad,
could _worship_ Nature, and man more than anything else in Nature.