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"Presidential Address
835
Philosophy begins in the attempt to limit the limitless, and ends in wonder The human mind imagines that God is its creature § whom it can subject to its discipline. With its little systems it tries to compre. hend him, but all its attempts fail one after another, leaving behind just a state of reverential wonder and humble conclusion that
" Thou, O Lord, art more than they." This is the ground and essence of mysticism.
It is beyond our purpose to review all the forms of this attitude, but two of these may be noted as furnishing an interesting contrast. Years ago Tennyson pictured the human soul as
“ An infant crying in the night
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry." To-day, Drinkwater prays with divine content: “ Lord, not for light in darkness do we pray,
Not that the veil be lifted from our eyes, Not that the slow ascension of our day
Be otherwise. Not for a clearer vision of the things Whereof the fashioning shall make us great, Not for remission of the peril and stings
Of time and fate. Not for a fuller knowledge of the end Whereto we travel bruised yet unafraid, Not that the little healing that we lend
Shall be repaid. f“ God, since his deity is a part of the Universe, is in it is in the strictest sense not a creator but a creature".--Alexander,
