You tread on dangerous ground,

A mental bog that quakes beneath your feet.

These words would seem to come from humbleness,

And low opinion of yourself and man,

Yet are engendered by the rankest pride,

Arrayed in robes of meek humility—

Stop! the next step is infidelity!

Contempt for man begets contempt for God;

He who hates man, must scorn the source of man,

And challenge, as unwise, his awful Maker.

The next step, doubt—and then comes unbelief;

Last, you raise man above all else beside,

And make him chiefest in the universe.

So, from a self-contempt grows impious pride,

Which swells your first-thought pigmy to a giant,

And gives the puffed up atom fancied sway.

God is! Philosophy here ends her flight!

This is the height and term of human reason;

A fact that, like the whirling Norway pool,

Draws to its centre all things, swallows all.

How can you know God’s nature to Himself?

How learn His purpose in creating man?

Enough for you to know that here you are—

A thought of God made manifest on earth.

Ah, yet His voice is heard within the heart,

Faint, but oracular, it whispers there;

Follow that voice, love all, and trust to Him.