Page:Val d'Arno (Ruskin, 1890).djvu/219

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IX.—THE TYRRHENE SEA.
187

Koran, or don't,—or believe the Vedas, or don't,—it will enable you to believe in God, and please Him, and be such a part of the εὐδοκία of the universe as your nature fits you to be, in His sight, faithful in awe to the powers that are above you, and gracious in regard to the creatures that are around.

225. I will take leave on this head to read one more piece of Carlyle, bearing much on present matters. "I hope also they will attack earnestly, and at length extinguish and eradicate, this idle habit of 'accounting for the moral sense,' as they phrase it. A most singular problem;—instead of bending every thought to have more, and ever more, of 'moral sense,' and therewith to irradiate your own poor soul, and all its work, into something of divineness, as the one thing needful to you in this world! A very futile problem that other, my friends; futile, idle, and far worse; leading to what moral ruin, you little dream of! The moral sense, thank God, is a thing you never will 'account for;' that, if you could think of it, is the perennial miracle of man; in all times, visibly connecting poor transitory man, here on this bewildered earth, with his Maker who is eternal in the