Justin Welby, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, may have to confront this year the possible break-up of the world-wide Anglican communion. Perhaps the splendid letter from Seneca the Younger (AD 1-65), sketching a pagan take on religious feeling, will suggest a way ahead.
After discussing the divine spirit ‘which guards us and watches us in the evil and the good we do’, he turns to nature: ‘Imagine you come across a dense wood of exceptionally tall, ancient trees that shut out all sight of the sky with thick screens of overlaying branches. Its loftiness, its seclusion and your wonderment at finding so deep and unbroken a gloom out in the open, will prove the presence of a deity. Likewise, an impressive cave hollowed out deep into a mountain, produced not by the labours of men but the processes of nature, will strike into your soul some kind of inkling of the divine.
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