The effect
was solemn and spiritual above every thing I have ever seen. These
words, which had been often in my mind through the day, and which
occurred to me more often than any others while I was travelling
through the Alps, came into my mind with a pomp and magnificence of
meaning unknown before--"For by Him were all things created in heaven
and on earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or
dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things are by him and for
him; and he is before all things, and by him all things subsist."
In this dazzling revelation I saw not that cold, distant, unfeeling
fate, or that crushing regularity of power and wisdom, which was all
the ancient Greek or modern Deist can behold in God; but I beheld, as
it were, crowned and glorified, one who had loved with our loves, and
suffered with our sufferings. Those shining snows were as his garments
on the Mount of Transfiguration, and that serene and ineffable
atmosphere of tenderness and beauty, which seemed to change these
dreary deserts into worlds of heavenly light, was to me an image of
the light shed by his eternal love on the sins and sorrows of time,
and the dread abyss of eternity.
Pages:
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301