(_c_) We must rather look for the real Sublime in the fact that under this view the entire created world is limited in time and space, with no independent stability or consistency, and as such an adventitious product which exists solely to celebrate the praise of Almighty God.
3. This recognition of the nullity of objective fact and the exaltation and extolment of God are at this stage the source of man's _own_ self-respect, and in these he looks for his own consolation and satisfaction.
(_a_) In this connection the Psalms supply us with classical examples of the genuine Sublime, and are set forth as a precedent for all times of what our humanity at the highest point of its spiritual exultation has superbly expressed as the reflection of its religious consciousness. Nothing in the world can here make good its claim to independent subsistence, inasmuch as everything exists and subsists simply through the Power of God, and only exists as in duty bound to extol His mightiness no less than to acknowledge its own essential nothingness. In the imagination of pantheism, which mainly unfolded in the direction of material substance an infinite _extension_ of range was most remarkable: what we most are amazed at here is the power of spiritual exaltation which suffers everything else to fall away that it may declare the unique Almightiness of God. An extraordinarily forceful illustration of this temper is the 104th Psalm, "The Light is Thy mantle which Thou wearest; Thou spreadest out the heavens like a carpet, etc." Light, heavens, clouds, the pinions of the winds, each and all are here nothing by themselves, merely an external vesture, the chariot or messenger in the service of God. A further expansion of the same idea is the extolment of the Wisdom of God, which has ordained all things. The springs, which leap from their sources, the waters, which flow between the hills, by the banks of which the birds of the air sit and carol among the branches; the grassy vine, which gladdens the heart of men and the cedars of Lebanon which the Lord hath planted; the sea, and its swarms without number; the whales which sport therein, all these hath the Lord made. And all that God has created He also preserves. "Thou hidest Thy Face, and they are affrighted; Thou takest their breath away and they are gone and become again as dust." The 90th Psalm, that prayer of Moses, the man of God, insists expressly on the nothingness of man, where we read: "Thou sufferest them to pass away like a brook; they are like as a sleep, even as the grass, which is soon withered, and in the evening is cut down and dried up. Thy scorn maketh us to pass away; Thou showest Thine anger and we are gone."