“Last
night I spent an hour in the dark transept of St. Patrick’s Cathedral where I
go now and then in my more lonely moods. An old argument with me is that the
true religious force in the world is not the church but the world itself: the
mysterious callings of Nature and our responses. What incessant murmurs fill that
ever-laboring tireless church!But to-day
in my walk I thought that after all there is no conflict but rather a contrast.
In the cathedral I felt one presence; on the highway I felt another.Two different deities presented themselves:
and, though I have only cloudy visions of either, yet I now feel the
distinction between them.The priest in
me worshipped one God at one shrine; the poet another God at another shrine.
The priest worshipped Mercy and Love; the poet, Beauty and Might.In the shadows of the church I could hear the
prayers of men and women;in the shadows
of the trees nothing human mingled with Divinity.As I sat dreaming with the Congregation I
felt how the glittering altar worked on my senses stimulating and consoling
them; and as I went tramping through the fields and woods I beheld every leaf
and blade of grass revealing or rather betokening the Invisible.”
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