“Mont Blanc is clearly visible from Geneva, perhaps once in the week, or about sixty times in the year. When he is visible, a walk to the junction of the Arve and the Rhone, either by the way of the plains on the Genevan side, or by the hights on the side toward the south of France, affords a wonderful combination of sublimity and beauty on the earth and in the heavens. Those snowy mountain ranges, so white, so pure, so dazzling in the clear azure depths, do really look as if they belonged to another world; as if, like the faces of supernatural intelligences, they were looking sadly and steadfastly on our world, to speak to us of theirs. Some of these mountain peaks of snow you can see only through the perspective of other mountains, nearer to you, and covered with verdure, which makes the snowy pyramids appear so distant, so sharply defined, so high up, so glorious; it is indeed like the voice of great truths stirring the soul. As your eye follows the range, they lie in such glittering masses against the horizon, in such grand repose; they shoot into the sky in bright weather in such infinite clearness, so pure, so flashing; that they seem never to lose the charm of a sudden and startling revelation to the mind. Are they not sublime images of the great truths of God’s own word, that sometimes indeed are vailed with clouds, but in fair weather do carry us, as in a chariot of fire and with horses of fire, into eternity, into the presence of God? The atmosphere of our hearts is so misty and stormy, that we do not see them more than sixty times a year in their glory: if every Sabbath-day we get a view of them without clouds, we do well; but _when_ we see them as they are, then we feel their power, then we are rapt by them from earth, away, away, away, into the depths of heaven! “In some circumstances, when we are climbing the mountains, even the mists that hang around them do add to the glory of the view; as in the rising sun, when they are so penetrated with brightness, that they softly rise over the crags as a robe of misty light, or seem like the motion of sweet Nature breathing into the atmosphere from her morning altars the incense of praise. And in the setting sun how often do they hang around the precipices, glowing with the golden and crimson hues of the west, and preventing us from clearly defining the forms of the mountains, only to make them more lovely to our view. So it is sometimes with the very clouds around God’s word, and the lights and shades upon it. There is an inscrutability of truth which sometimes increases its power, while we wait with solemn reverence for the hour when it shall be fully revealed to us; and our faith, like the setting sun, may clothe celestial mysteries with a soft and rosy-colored light, which makes them more suitable to our present existence, than if we saw them in the clear and cloudless atmosphere of a spiritual noon.