The Heavenly and the Eternal

If God also adds that mystical and creative sensuality, which seeks to give external reality to everything inward, to the striving toward extension and penetration of those who move in this course, then after every flight of their spirit to the infinite they must set down in pictures or words the impression it made on them as an object so as to enjoy it themselves afresh, transformed into another form on a finite scale. They must also instinctively and, as it were, enrapturedly – for they would do it even if no one were there – represent for others what they have encountered as poets and seers, as orators or as artists. Such people are true priests of the Most High, for they bring deity closer to those who normally grasp only the finite and the trivial; they place the heavenly and the eternal before them as an object of enjoyment and unification, as the sole inexhaustible source of that toward which their creative endeavors are directed. Thus they strive to awaken the slumbering seed of a better humanity, to ignite love to the Most High, to transform the common life into something higher, to reconcile the children of earth with the heaven that belongs to them, and to counter the ponderous attachment of the age to baser things. This is the higher priesthood that proclaims the inner meaning of all spiritual secrets and speaks down from the kingdom of God; this is the source of all visions and prophecies, of all holy works of art and inspired speeches that are scattered abroad on the chance that a receptive mind might find them and let them bring forth fruit in itself.

May it yet happen that this office of mediator should cease and the priesthood of humanity receive lovelier definition! May the time come that an ancient prophecy describes when no one will need a teacher because all will be taught by God! If the holy fire burnt everywhere, fiery prayers would not be needed to beseech it from heaven, but only the gentle quiet of holy virgins to tend it; thus it probably would not break out in dreaded flames, but its sole striving would be to put the inner and hidden glow into balance among everyone.

Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers

The Holy Rejected Spinoza!

Respectfully offer up with me a lock of hair to the means of the holy rejected Spinoza! The high world spirit permeated him, the infinite was his beginning and end, the universe his only and eternal love; in holy innocence and deep humility he was reflected in the eternal world and saw how he too was its most lovable mirror; he was full of religion and full of holy spirit; for this reason, he also stands there alone and unequaled, master in his art but elevated above the profane guild, without disciples and without rights of citizenship.

Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers

A Victor!

To defend something is always to disparage it. Suppose that someone has a warehouse full of gold, and suppose he is willing to give every ducat to the poor – but in addition, suppose he is stupid enough to begin this charitable enterprise of his with a defense in which he justifies it on three grounds: people will almost come to doubt that he is doing any good. As for Christianity! Well, he who defends it has never believed it. If he believes, then the enthusiasm of faith is not a defense – no, it is an attack and victory; a believer is a victor.

Kierkegaard, Sickness Unto Death

Be of Good Comfort

Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man: we shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England, as, I trust, shall never be put out.

Hugh Latimer’s famous words of consolation to Nicholas Ridley as they are both about to be burnt alive for heresy.

The Path of an Honest Fighter

A road well begun is the battle half won. The important thing is to make a beginning and get under way. There is nothing more harmful for your soul than to hold back and not get moving.

The path of an honest fighter is a difficult one. And when the fighter grows cool in the evening of his life this is no excuse to retire into games and amusement. Whoever remains faithful to his decision will realize that his whole life is a struggle. Such a person does not fall into the temptation of proudly telling others of what he has done with his life. Nor will he talk about the “great decisions” he has made. He knows full well that at decisive moments you have to renew your resolve again and again and that this alone makes good the decision and the decision good.

Kierkegaard, Provocations: The Spiritual Writings of Soren Kierkegaard

My Being and Becoming

The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure, that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. It must be that when God speaketh he should communicate, not one thing, but all things; should fill the world with his voice; should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, from the centre of the present thought; and new date and new create the whole. Whenever a mind is simple, and receives a divine wisdom, old things pass away, — means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now, and absorbs past and future into the present hour. All things are made sacred by relation to it, — one as much as another. All things are dissolved to their centre by their cause, and, in the universal miracle, petty and particular miracles disappear. If, therefore, a man claims to know and speak of God, and carries you backward to the phraseology of some old mouldered nation in another country, in another world, believe him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fulness and completion? Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence, then, this worship of the past? The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul. Time and space are but physiological colors which the eye makes, but the soul is light; where it is, is day; where it was, is night; and history is an impertinence and an injury, if it be any thing more than a cheerful apologue or parable of my being and becoming.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

Intuition

The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear? The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin. For, the sense of being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them, and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and being also proceed. We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought. Here are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, and which cannot be denied without impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm. Every man discriminates between the voluntary acts of his mind, and his involuntary perceptions, and knows that to his involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is due. He may err in the expression of them, but he knows that these things are so, like day and night, not to be disputed. My wilful actions and acquisitions are but roving; — the idlest reverie, the faintest native emotion, command my curiosity and respect. Thoughtless people contradict as readily the statement of perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more readily; for, they do not distinguish between perception and notion. They fancy that I choose to see this or that thing. But perception is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of time, all mankind, — although it may chance that no one has seen it before me. For my perception of it is as much a fact as the sun.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

Adam and Eve

“So let him [Satan] not drive you both out of the Garden, so that thou art miserable.” (20:117)

The words in Arabic are short and resonant, but in particular the first verb is in the dual form, referring to Adam and Eve, while the second is in the masculine singular, referring to Adam alone. This creates a sense of surprise, for the masculine singular is unexpected. If there is a disaster, it is chiefly on Adam’s shoulders that it will fall.

Jacques Jomier, The Great Themes of the Qur’an

Towards the Sun!

In this keen and clear element, however, he has his entire power: here he can fly! Why should he again go down into those muddy waters where he has to swim and wade and soil his wings! No! There it is too hard for us to live! We cannot help it that we are born for the atmosphere, the pure atmosphere, we rivals of the ray of light; and that we should like best to ride like it on the atoms of ether, not away from the sun, but towards the sun! That, however, we cannot do- so we want to do the only thing that is in our power: namely, to bring light to the earth, we want to be “the light of the earth!” And for that purpose we have our wings and our swiftness and our severity, on that account we are manly, and even terrible like the fire. Let those fear us, who do not know how to warm and brighten themselves by our influence!

Nietzsche, The Gay Science