AE in the Irish TheosophistRussell, George William
Religion
AE in the Irish Theosophist
Russell, George William
Theosophy
Then another voice from below laughed at the madness. Full of scorn
it spake, "You, born of clay, a ruler of stars? Pitiful toiler with
the pen, feeble and weary body, what shall make of you a spirit?"
Harvey thrust away this hateful voice. From his soul came the
impulse to go to other lands, to wander for ever and ever under
the star-rich skies, to be a watcher of the dawn and eve, to live
in forest places or on sun-nurtured plains, to merge himself once
more in the fiery soul hidden within. But the mocking voice would
not be stifled, showing him how absurd and ridiculous it was "to
become a vagabond," so the voice said, and finally to die in the
workhouse. So the eternal spirit in him, God's essence, conscious
of its past brotherhood, with the morning stars, the White Aeons,
in its prisonhouse writhed with the meanness, till at last he cried,
"I will struggle no longer; it is only agony of spirit to aspire
here at all; I will sit and wait till the deep darkness has vanished."
But the instruction was not yet complete; he had learned the primal
place of spirit; he had yet to learn its nature. He began to think
with strange sadness over the hopes of the world, the young children.
He saw them in his vision grow up, bear the burden in silence or
ignorance; he saw how they joined in dragging onward that huge
sphinx which men call civilization; there was no time for loitering
amid the beautiful, for if one paused it was but to be trampled by
the feet of the many who could not stay or rest, and the wheels
of the image ground that soul into nothingness. He felt every pain
almost in an anguish of sympathy. Helpless to aid, to his lips
came the cry to another which immemorial usage has made intuitive
in men. But It is high and calm above all appeal; to It the cries
from all the sorrowing stars sound but as one great music; lying
in the infinite fields of heaven, from the united feelings of many
universes It draws only a vast and passionless knowledge, without
distinction of pleasure or pain. From the universal which moves
not and aids not, Harvey in his agony turned away. He himself
could fly from the struggle; thinking of what far place or state
to find peace, he found it true in his own being that nowhere could
the soul find rest while there was still pain or misery in the world.
He could imagine no place or state where these cries of pain would
not reach him: he could imagine no heaven where the sad memory
would not haunt him and burn him. He knew then that the nature
of the soul was love eternal; he knew that if he fled away a
divine compassion would compel him to renew his brotherhood with
the stricken and suffering; and what was best forever to do was
to fight out the fight in the darkness. There was a long silence
in Harvey's soul; then with almost a solemn joy he grew to realize
at last the truth of he himself--the soul. The fight was over;
the Gloom and the Glory were linked together, and one inseparably.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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