bodily to moral and intellectual beauty, till we reach a Beauty
eternal, immutable, absolute, substantial, and self-existent, on which
all other beauties depend for their being, while it is independent of
them. (Plato, _Symposium_, 210, 211.) Unless the ascent be prosecuted
thus far, the contemplation is inadequate, the happiness incomplete.
The mind needs to travel to the beginning and end of things, to the
Alpha and Omega of all. The mind needs to reach some perfect good:
some object, which though it is beyond the comprehension, is
nevertheless understood to be the very good of goods, unalloyed with
any admixture of defect or imperfection. The mind needs an infinite
object to rest upon, though it cannot grasp that object positively in
its infinity. If this is the case even with the human mind, still
wearing "this muddy vesture of decay," how much more ardent the
longing, as how much keener the gaze, of the pure spirit after Him who
is the centre and rest of all intellectual nature?

5. Creatures to contemplate and see God in, are conditions and
secondary objects of natural happiness. They do not afford happiness
finally of themselves, but as manifesting God, even as a mirror would
be of little interest except for its power of reflection.

6. In saying that God is the object of happiness, we must remember
that He is no cold, impersonal Beauty, but a living and loving God,
not indeed in the order of nature our Father and Friend, but still our
kind Master and very good Lord, who speaks to His servants from behind
the clouds that hide His face, and assures them of His abiding favour
and approving love. More than that, nature cannot look for: such
aspiration were unnatural, unreasonable, mere madness: it is enough
for the creature, as a creature, in its highest estate to stand before
God, hearing His voice, but seeing not His countenance, whom, without