But after all this I shall be told that to show that faith creates its own object is to show that this object is an object for faith alone, that it has no objective reality external to faith itself--just as, on the other hand, to maintain that faith is necessary in order to restrain or to console people is to declare that the object of faith is illusory. What is certain is that for thinking believers to-day, faith is, before all and above all, wishing that God may exist. Wishing that God may exist, and acting and feeling as if He did exist. And it is in this way, wishing for God’s existence and acting conformably with this desire, that we create God in ourselves, that is, that God creates Himself in us, manifests Himself to us, opens and reveals Himself to us. For God goes out to meet him who seeks Him with love and by love and withdraws Himself from him who seeks Him with the cold and loveless reason. God wills that the heart should have rest but not the head, while in the physical life the head sometimes rests and sleeps and the heart wakes and works unrestingly. And thus knowledge without love removes us from God; and love, even without knowledge, and perhaps better without it, leads us to God, and through God to wisdom. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. * * * * * Faith is our longing for the eternal, for God; and hope is God’s longing, the longing of the eternal, of the divine in us, which advances to meet our faith and raises us up. Man aspires to God by faith and cries to Him: “I believe--give me, Lord, wherein to believe.” And God, the divinity in man, sends him hope in another life in order that he may believe in it. Hope is the reward of faith. Only he who believes truly hopes, and only he who truly hopes believes. We believe only what we hope, and we hope only what we believe. THE SONG OF THE ETERNAL WATERS The narrow road, hewn out of the naked rock, goes winding along above the abyss. On one side rise high tors and crags, on the other side is heard the ceaseless murmur of waters in the dark depths of the ravine, deeper than eye can reach. At intervals the track widens so as to form a kind of refuge, just large enough to hold about a dozen people, a resting-place, screened by leafy branches, for those who travel along the road above the ravine. In the distance, crowning the summit of a jutting crag, a castle stands out against the sky. The clouds passing over it are torn by the pinnacles of its tall towers. With the pilgrims goes Maquetas. He walks hurriedly, sweating, seeing nothing but the road in front of his eyes, except when from time to time he raises them towards the castle. As he walks he sings an old wailing song that his grandmother taught him when he was a child, and he sings it so that he shall not hear the ominous murmur of the torrent flowing unseen in the depths of the abyss.