"I have been much given to introspection. I have endeavored to study myself, without regard to the outward conditions of time, standpoint, or circumstance. I perceive it, but, as yet, I cannot grasp it. It is a dew-drop shut up in the heart of a rock.
"There are moments when I am fully up to the ideal I have formed for myself, but there are many more when I am merely the caricature of my better self. How am I to form a conception of my actual self? What am I?
"I perceive that I am a something belonging to the universe and to eternity.
"During the blessed moments, sometimes drawn out into hours, in which I realize this conception, there is naught but life for me--no such thing as death, either for me or the world.
"In my dying hour, I should like to be as clearly conscious as I now am that I am in God, and that God is in me.
"Religion may claim warmth of feeling and glory of imagination as her portion. We, on the other hand, have attained to that clear vision which includes both feeling and imagination.
"In troubled, restless days, when I endeavored to grasp the Infinite, I felt as if melting away, vanishing, disappearing. I longed to know: What is God?
"And now I possess our master's answer: Although we cannot picture God to ourselves, yet we have a clear idea or conception of Him.
"For us, the old commandment: 'Thou shalt not make unto thyself any image of God,' signifies thou canst not make to thyself any image of God. Every image is finite; the idea of God is that of infinity.
"Spinoza teaches that we must regard ourselves as a part of God--