Were there no God, we would be in this glorious world with grateful hearts and no one to thank.

The line frames gratitude as a clue to the divine: the world’s beauty naturally elicits thankful feeling, yet gratitude seems to imply a recipient. By imagining a godless universe in which people still feel thankful but have “no one to thank,” the speaker highlights a perceived mismatch between human moral-emotional instincts and a purely impersonal cosmos. The thought functions as a compact argument from religious experience—less a proof than an intuition that thanksgiving is relational and therefore points beyond the self. It also underscores a devotional stance: creation is “glorious,” but its proper completion is directed praise rather than free-floating appreciation.