Whitaker beautifully says of Luther;--_Felix ille, quem Dominus eo honore
dignatus est, ut homines nequissimos suos haberet inimicos_.
* * * * *
There is now no reverence for any thing; and the reason is, that men
possess conceptions only, and all their knowledge is conceptional only.
Now as, to conceive, is a work of the mere understanding, and as all that
can be conceived may be comprehended, it is impossible that a man should
reverence that, to which he must always feel something in himself
superior. If it were possible to conceive God in a strict sense, that is,
as we conceive a horse or a tree, even God himself could not excite any
reverence, though he might excite fear or terror, or perhaps love, as a
tiger or a beautiful woman. But reverence, which is the synthesis of love
and fear, is only due from man, and, indeed, only excitable in man,
towards ideal truths, which are always mysteries to the understanding, for
the same reason that the motion of my finger behind my back is a mystery
to you now--your eyes not being made for seeing through my body. It is
the reason only which has a sense by which ideas can be recognized, and
from the fontal light of ideas only can a man draw intellectual power.
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