Thus the first great lesson taught by Mr. Emerson was "self-reliance." And the second was like it, though apparently opposed to it, "God-reliance." Not really opposed to it, for it meant this: God is near to your mind and heart, as he was to the mind and heart of the prophets and inspired men of the past. God is ready to inspire you also if you will trust in him. In the little book called "Nature" he says:-- "The highest is present to the soul of man; the dread universal essence, which is not wisdom, or love, or power, or beauty, but all in one, and each entirely, is that for which all things exist, and by which they are. Believe that throughout nature spirit is present; that it is one, that it does not act upon us from without, but through ourselves.... As a plant on the earth, so man rests on the bosom of God, nourished by unfailing fountains, and drawing at his need inexhaustible power." And so in his poem called "The Problem" he teaches that all religions are from God; that all the prophets and sibyls and lofty souls that have sung psalms, written scripture, and built the temples and cathedrals of men, were inspired by a spirit above their own. He puts aside the shallow explanation that any of the great religions ever came from priestcraft:-- "Out from the heart of Nature rolled The burdens of the Bible old; The litanies of nations came, Like the volcano's tongue of flame, Up from the burning core below, The canticles of love and woe. "The word unto the prophet spoken Was writ on tables yet unbroken; The word by seers or sibyls told, In groves of oak or fanes of gold, Still floats upon the moving wind, Still whispers to the willing mind. One accent of the Holy Ghost The heedless world hath never lost." In all that Emerson says of nature he is equally devout. He sees God in it all. It is to him full of a divine charm. "In the woods," he says, "is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God a decorum and sanctity reigns, and we return to reason and faith." "The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me. I am part and particle of God." For saying such things as these he was accused of Pantheism. And he was a Pantheist; yet only as Paul was a Pantheist when he said, "In Him we live and move and have our being;" "From whom and through whom are all things;" "The fullness of him who filleth all in all." Emerson was, in his view of nature, at one with Wordsworth, who said:-- "The clouds were touched, And in their silent faces he could read Unutterable love. Sensation, soul, and form All melted into him; they swallowed up His animal being; in them did he live, And by them did he live; they were his life. In such high hour Of visitation from the living God, Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired."