ensus numinis" common to humanity. It is the mysterious 122 sentiment of the Divine; it is the prolepsis of the human spirit reaching out towards the Infinite; the living susceptibility of our spiritual nature stretching after the powers and influences of the higher world. It is upon this inner instinct of the supernatural that all religion rests. I do not say every religious idea, but whatever is positive, practical, powerful, durable, and popular. Everywhere, in all climates, in all epochs of history, and in all degrees of civilization, man is animated by the sentiment--I would rather say, the presentiment--that the world in which he lives, the order of things in the midst of which he moves, the facts which regularly and constantly succeed each other, are not all. In vain he daily makes discoveries and conquests in this vast universe; in vain he observes and learnedly verifies the general laws which govern it; his thought is not inclosed in the world surrendered to his science; the spectacle of it does not suffice his soul, it is raised beyond it; it searches after and catches glimpses of something beyond it; it aspires higher both for the universe and itself; it aims at another destiny, another master.

Footnote 130: (return) Vaughan, "Hours with the Mystics," vol. i. p. 44.

Footnote 131: (return) Id. ib., vol. i. p. 65.

"'Par delà tous ces cieux le Dieu des cieux réside.'"¹³²

So Voltaire has said, and the God who is beyond the skies is not nature personified, but a supernatural Personalit