The following is a discussion of  http://thechickensarecoming.blogspot.com/2010/03/beautiful-and-sublime.html  (Vicki Blake's blog)

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The beautiful is easy (or easier, anyway).  A very wide swath of the population likes, admires, and can copy beauty in some degree or other.  Some sing, some paint, some write, some carve wood, and the list can go on, and it is largely a list of skills, talents, or natural phenomena which are pretty, pursued and/or polished.  This is good.  This is part of what we are supposed to do with the talents God has given us.  Natural beauty is to be appreciated.  But these things can be pursued in a vacuum, practically.  Lots of people keep gardens, few reflect on the rain falling on the just and the unjust..  I think of Emily Dickinson, cloistered with her poetry.  I think of monasticism, which often honed skills (brewing beer, for instance) but shut out the outside world.  Beauty can exist without reference.  Gems which are buried are still gems.

The sublime requires one to reckon.  Having not read Kant (just about him), I can't speak to what he thought you had to reckon with, but it seems like it might have been the categorical imperative or something.  For me, and in reality, for everyone, it is God.  What struck me about the items Vick listed from Kant is that they require one to reckon with God the Creator, God the Omnipresent, and God the Judge.  It seems to me that the sublime forces man to confront the God who is obviously there.  There are a variety of reactions to this encounter (see also: The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis).

1) Shut your eyes.  Pretend it's not happening, and there's no confrontation.  By the time you open your eyelids, the terror may have passed, and you can turn again to your shoes.  Honestly, I think this is the only way the godless stay sane.
2) Condescend to appreciate.  Say that it's very-nice-to-meet-you, what a positively lovely wasteland/tundra/ocean/hell/universe you have here, and it really is fantastic, and I think I may have to come and see it again someday, Good-bye!  I think this class comprises most humanist intellectuals.  But you have to leave your meeting place with God before you actually must answer Him.  What would you say, honestly?  He's such a bigot, you know, and He wouldn't appreciate this vista the way you do.
3) Fight.  I think this may be what Nietzsche did.  He ended up insane.  This is what Satan does.  He will end in the lake of fire.
4) Bow your head, kiss the rod, put your hand on your lips, and say "My God, how great Thou art!"  Understand that God has brought you to this meeting for a reason.  Perhaps you should confront your sin.  Perhaps you need pride crushed.  Perhaps God just wanted to show you something He made that's really awesome.  I think He does that.  I was hunting last fall, sitting on a ridge in an Arizona mountain range, looking on a black valley with a purple-gray sky above.  It was 4:45am or so, and cold.  The tail end of the Taurids meteor shower shot a few stars down through the atmosphere, and I was just awed at the God who made me, made the heavens, and even thought it worth His time to redeem me at countless cost.

For the Christian, there should not be a great chasm between the beautiful and the sublime.  We can reckon right with God though His son Jesus, and we can turn our energy and talents to doing beautiful work for His glory.  What else is there?

MJM