less present locally. He is at a distance unapproachable by finite
creatures; and yet, without any contradiction, (as the profound St.
Paul observes,) 'not very far' from every one of us. And I will
venture to say, that many a poor old woman has, by virtue of her
Christian inoculation, Sir Isaac's great idea lurking in her mind;
as for instance, in relation to any of God's attributes; suppose
holiness or happiness, she feels, (though analytically she could
not explain,) that God is not holy or is not happy by way of
participation, after the manner of other beings: that is, he does
not draw happiness from a fountain separate and external to himself,
and common to other creatures, he drawing more and they drawing
less; but that he, himself _is_ the fountain; that no other
being can have the least proportion of either one or the other but
by drawing from that fountain; that as to all other good gifts, that
as to life itself, they are, in man, not on any separate tenure,
not primarily, but derivatively, and only in so far as God enters
into the nature of man; that 'we live and move' only so far and so
long as the incomprehensible union takes place between the human
spirit and the fontal abyss of the divine. In short, here, and here
only, is found the outermost expansion, the centrifugal, of the
TO catholic, united with the innermost centripetal of the personal
consciousness. Had, therefore, the pagan gods been less detestable,
neither impure nor malignant, they could not have won a salutary
veneration--being so merely concrete individuals.

Next, it must have degraded the gods, (and have made them instruments
of degradation for man,) that they were, one and all, incarnations;
not, as even the Christian God is, for a transitory moment and for
an eternal purpose; but essentially and by overruling necessity. The
Greeks could not conceive of spirituality. Neither can _we_,