“Then quick I ran my glance about the globe,
To find Religion link’d with Order’s aim,
Ruling by love and light,”
says the Christian poet, who has, however, to deplore the disappointments of his quest. Of all orderly things that are beautiful in God’s eyes, it has been said, there can be none so beautiful as an orderly or holy soul. “Once in this world the sight presented itself in spotless beauty and brilliancy.” Everything there seen was in its place: reason, conscience, will, feeling, instinct, appetite, “all most beautifully arranged; each was in perfect health, and all were in thorough harmony with the will of God.” But that was God manifest in the flesh. Order incarnate. Without Him, in the material world, was not anything made that was made. Apart from Him, the moral world is without form and void, and darkness covers the face of its deep. Order, in fine, is the indispensable postulate of every given cosmos. In the words of Schiller—
“It is the keystone of the world’s wide arch;
The one sustaining and sustained by all,
Which, if it fall, brings all in ruin down.”
Of the Church as a family, George Herbert, ever quaint in his devotion, sings or says—after a depreciation of his own unruly thoughts:
“But, Lord, the house and family are Thine,
Though some of them repine.