Drummond’s “Hymn” is the work of a mind in which poetical sensuousness and philosophic abstraction are well-nigh equally balanced. In More the philosopher had outweighed the poet. In Milton the poet asserts his full power. To him the Plotinian scheme of the hypostases is valuable only as they enable his love of beauty to be satisfied in conformity with his intellectual apprehension of the relation between God and the Son in the Trinal Godhead. Plotinus had outlined the relation between The Good and Intellect as that of a principle of beauty by which the intellect is invested and possesses beauty and light. (“Enneads,” VI. vii. 31.) The Good itself is the principle of beauty, hidden in its own rays of light. In Milton the conception of God as hidden in inaccessible light, and of the Son as the express image of the invisible beauty of God, is explained in conformity with the Platonic scheme, and also with those Scriptural texts, one of which mentions God as a King of kings, who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto (1 Tim. vi. 16); and the other proclaims that in Christ “dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Col. ii. 9). Thus in heaven the angels hymn their praises: “Thee, Father, first they sung, Omnipotent, Immutable, Immortal, Infinite, Eternal King; thee, Author of all being, Fountain of light, thyself invisible Amidst the glorious brightness where thou sitt’st Throned inaccessible, but when thou shad’st The full blaze of thy beams, and through a cloud Drawn round about thee like a radiant shrine Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear, Yet dazzle Heaven, that brightest Seraphim Approach not, but with both wings veil their eyes. Thee next they sang, of all creation first, Begotten Son, Divine Similitude, In whose conspicuous countenance, without cloud Made visible, the Almighty Father shines, Whom else no creature can behold: on thee Impressed the effulgence of his glory abides. Transfused on thee his ample Spirit rests.” (P. L., III. 372–389.) And the Almighty addresses the Son: “‘Effulgence of my glory, Son beloved, Son in whose face invisible is beheld Visibly, what by Deity I am.’” (VI. 680–682.) This relation of Christ to God which in the Scripture was indicated only as in an outline sketch has been filled in with the substance of the Plotinian æsthetics, in which The One and The Good is beauty itself (καλλονή) and intellect is the beautiful (τὸ καλόν). (“Enneads,” I. vi. 6.)