" No doubt Sir Frederic Pollock is quite
right in declaring that Spinoza would have been the very last man to
desire any one to become a Spinozist. But that is quite consistent with
the inspired Pantheist's infinite longing to see all men blessed by that
inward peace which he proved, by his own heroic experience, to be
identical with the self-control conferred and maintained by devout
contemplation of God's all-comprehensive Being and our place therein.
If, then, I regard purity as the best symbol of such a moral ideal, it
is because the word connotes, together with freedom from discordant
passion, a frankly unconstrained recognition of the simplicity of our
relation to God. For surely when once the self has made the great
surrender, and becomes content to be nothing, that in St. Paul's words,
"God may be all in all," the whole problem of life is infinitely
simplified, in the sense that no farther degree of simplification is
possible. Because all contradictions of pain and evil and sorrow are
dissolved in that act of surrender. We must, indeed, recognize that to
our "inadequate ideas" the time often seems "out of joint." But we need
not, with Hamlet, cry out on an impossible "spite." For when once it is
heartily and loyally realized that not our partial likings, but the
eternal harmony of the Whole, is the glory of God, we already anticipate
the peace of absorption in the Infinite.
Pages:
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67