Genre:

Regular Feature, Biography

Subjects:

Unbelief, Education, Reading, Piety

    Shelley enjoyed the 'education of a poet', amidst 'mountains and lakes, the magnificent ocean, the stillness of the forest'. However, he 'never read with a humble and subdued mind, amid all his various reading, one book, the most interesting and important, and splendid that was ever given to man—the bible', and in consequence 'To him the glorious and tremendous, and beautiful works of nature, brought no reminiscences' of God. Shelley's experience is contrasted with that of noted Christians, who in the 'magnificence of nature [...] heard the voice of God' and 'communed with him with their own hearts'.