"When the idea formed of Divinity is the fruit of true spiritual culture, its intimate re-action on the inner perfection is at once beneficial and beautiful. All things assume a new form and meaning in our eyes when regarded as the creatures of forecasting design, and not the capricious handiwork of unreasoning chance. The ideas of wisdom order, and adaptative forethought,—ideas so necessary to the conduct of our own actions, and even to the culture of the intellect,—strike deeper root into our susceptible nature, when we discover them everywhere around us. The finite becomes, as it were, infinite; the perishable, enduring; the fleeting, stable; the complex, simple,—when we contemplate one great regulating Cause on the summit of things, and regard what is spiritual as endlessly enduring. Our search after truth, our striving after perfection, gain greater certainty and consistency when we can believe in the existence of a Being who is at once the source of all truth, and the sum of all perfection. The soul becomes less painfully sensible of the chances and changes of fortune, when it learns how to connect hope and confidence with such calamities. The feeling of receiving everything we possess from the hand of love, tends no less to exalt our moral excellence and enhance our happiness. Through a constant sense of gratitude for enjoyment—through clinging with fond trustfulness to the object towards which it yearns, the soul is drawn out of itself, nor always broods in jealous isolation over its own sensations, its own plans, hopes, and fears. Should it lose the exalting feeling of owing everything to itself, it still enjoys the rapture of living in the love of another,—a feeling in which its own perfection is united with the perfection of that other being. It becomes disposed to be to others what others are to it; it would not that they too should receive nothing but from themselves, in the same way that it receives nothing from others."
Wilhelm von Humboldt, The Limits of State action; 1792(CHAPTER VII. Religion)
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