The Fredösphere

Thought the Vision of Dame Kind is not specifically Christian, there is nothing in it incompatible with the Christian belief in a God who created the material universe and all its creatures out of love and found them good:  the glory in which the creatures appear to the natural mystic must be a feeble approximation to their glory as God sees them.  There is nothing to prevent him from welcoming it as a gift, however indirect, from God.  To a Gnostic for whom matter is the creation of an evil spirit, it must, of course, be a diabolic visitation and to the monist who regards the phenomenal world as an illusion, it must be doubly an illusion, harmless, maybe, but to be seen through as soon as possible.  To a philosophical materialist for whom the notion of glory has no meaning, it must be an individual delusion, probably neurotic in origin, and to be discouraged as abnormal and likely to lead the patient into the more serious and socially harmful delusion of some sort of theism.  When such a staunch atheist as Richard Jeffries can speak of praying "that I might touch the unutterable existence even higher than deity," the danger of allowing people to take solitary country walks becomes obvious.