Iv — Choice
Heaven hell’s pit copes:
Nor fathoms any sin’s abyss, or clambers out,
Save by the steps his choice hath delved.
The gods descend in the likeness of men, and ascending transfigure the man into their Personal likeness. Descending below himself he debases and disfigures this image; as by choice he leaps upwards, so by choice he lapses downwards. Yet, while free to choose, he sinks himself never beneath himself absolutely, his beneath subsisting by his election only. His choices free or fetter, elevate or debase, deify or demonize his humanity. Superior to all forces is the Spirit within, doing or defying his determinations, ever holding him fast to the consequences. Obeying its dictates or disobeying, frees or binds. It has golden chains for the good, for others iron. Love is its soft, yet mighty curb; freedom its easy yoke; fate its fetter.
Nor man in evil willingly doth rest,
Nor God in good unwillingly is blest.
There is no appeal from the decisions of this High Court of Duty in the breast. The Ought is the Must and the Inevitable. One may misinterpret the voice, may deliberate, disobey the commandment, but cannot escape the consequences of his election. The deed decides. Nor is the Conscience appeased till sooner or later our deserts are pronounced—The welcome “well done,” or the dread “depart.”
“’Tis vain to flee till gentle mercy show
Her better eye. The further off we go
The swing of justice deals the mightier blow.”
Only the repenting consciousness of freedom abused restores the lost holiness, redeems from the guilty lapse—the sin that in separating us from the One, revealed the fearful Doubleness within, opening the yawning pit down which we stumbled, to become the prey of the undying worm.
“Meek love alone doth wash our ills away.”
And with love enough, knowledge were useless. It comes in defect of love. Exhaustless in its sources, love supersedes knowledge, being the proper intellect of spirit and spring of intuition—God being very God, because his love absorbs all knowledge and contains his Godhead. Knowing without loving is decease from love, and lapse from pure intellect into sense. Knowledge is not enough. The more knowledge, the deeper the depths left unsounded, the more exacting our faith in the certainty of knowing. Our faith feels after its objects, if haply by groping in the darkness of our ignorance we may fathom its depths, and find ourselves in Him who is ever seeking us. “Although no man knoweth the spirit of a man save The Spirit within him, yet is there something in him that not even man’s spirit knoweth.”
“WHO placed thee here, did something then infuse
Which now can tell thee news.”
| CATEGORIES OF SPEECH, | ||
| being: | ||
| Flowing, | Fixed, | |
| Subjective. | Objective. | |
| i. | iii. | ii. |
| Actions, | Participles, | Things, |
| Verbs. | Nouns. | |
| iv. | ||
| Qualities, | ||
| Adverbs, Adjectives. | ||
| v. | ||
| Relations, | ||
| Prepositions, Conjunctions, Pronouns. |
III
Genesis
“Had man withstood the trial, his descendants would have been born one from another in the same way that Adam—i. e., mankind—was, namely, in the image of God; for that which proceeds from the Eternal has eternal manner of birth.”
—Behmen.
Genesis
Notes
I “One would think nothing were easier for us than to know our own mind, discern what was our main scope and drift, and what we proposed to ourselves as our end in the several occurrences of our lives. But our thoughts have such an obscure, implicit language, that it is the hardest thing in the world to make them speak out distinctly; and for this reason the right method is to give them voice and accent. And this, in our default, is what the philosophers endeavor to do to our hand, when, holding out a kind of vocal looking-glass, they draw sound out of our breast, and instruct us to personate ourselves in the plainest manner.”—Lord Shaftesbury.
J “The first principle of all things is Living Goodness, armed with Wisdom and all-powerful Love. But if a man’s soul be once sunk by evil fate or desert, from the sense of this high and heavenly truth into the cold conceit that the original of all lies either in shuffling chance or in the stark root of unknowing nature and brute necessity, all the subtle cords of reason, without the timely recovery of that divine torch within the hidden spirit of his heart, will never be able to draw him out of that abhorred pit of atheism and infidelity. So much better is innocency and piety than subtle argument, and sincere devotion than curious dispute. But contemplations concerning the dry essence of the Godhead have for the most part been most confusing and unsatisfactory. Far better is it to drink of the blood of the grape than to bite the root of the grape, to smell the rose than to chew the stalk. And blessed be God, the meanest of men are capable of the former, very few successful in the latter; and the less, because the reports of those that have busied themselves that way have not only seemed strange to most men, but even repugnant to one another. But we should in charity refer this to the nature of the pigeon’s neck than to mistake and contradiction. One and the same object in nature affords many different aspects. And God is infinitely various and simple; like a circle, indifferent whether you suppose it of one uniform line, or an infinite number of angles. Wherefore it is more safe to admit all possible perfections of God than rashly to deny what appears not to us from our particular posture.”—Henry More.