ABSTRACT
Vague Religious Feeling shows us another shapeless rolling cloud, but this time it is blue instead of crimson. It betokens that vaguely pleasurable religious feeling, a sensation of devoutness rather than of devotion, which is so common among those in whom piety is more developed than intellect. Strange is it to note under what varied circumstances this vague blue cloud may be seen; and oftentimes its absence speaks more loudly than its presence. Self-renunciation gives us yet another form of devotion, producing an exquisitely beautiful form of a type quite new to us, a type in which one might at first sight suppose that various graceful shapes belonging to animate nature were being imitated. Manifestly, however, these are not and cannot be copies of vegetable or animal forms, and it seems probable that the explanation of the similarity lies very much deeper than that.
