Ossian Collection > Aspects of poetry

XV.] CARDINAL NEWMAN. 445
present to him than the material worid which sur-
rounded him.
It is a thought of his, always deeply felt, and many
times repeated, that this visible world is but the outward
shell of an invisible kingdom, a screen which hides from
our view things far greater and more wonderful than any
which we see, and that the unseen world is close to us,
and ever ready as it were to break through the shell,
and manifest itself.
' To those who hve by faith,' he says, ' everything they see
speaks of that future world ; the very glories of nature, the sun,
moon, and stars, and the richness and the beauty of the earth,
are as types and figures, witnessing and teaching the invisible
things of God. All that we see is destined one day to burst forth
into a heavenly bloom, and to be transfigured into immortal glory.
Heaven at present is out of sight, but in due time, as snow melts
and discovers what it lay upon, so will this visible creation fade
away before those greater splendours which are behind it, and on
which at present it depends. In that day shadows will retire, and
the substance show itself. The sun will grow pale and be lost
in the sky, but it will be before the radiance of Him, whom it
does but image, the Sun of Righteousness Our own
mortal bodies will then be found in like manner to contain within
them an inner man, which will then receive its due proportions,
as the soul's harmonious organ, instead of the gross mass of flesh
and blood which sight and touch are sensible of.'
In this, and in many another place, he expresses the
feeling that here he is walking about ' in a world of
shadows,' and that there is behind it ' that kingdom
where all is real.' To his eye the very movements of
nature, and the appearances of the sky, suggest the