room, no reality of reason, between absolute faith and absolute
unbelief. Either not a sparrow falls to the ground without Him, or there
is no God, and we are fatherless children. Those who attempt to live in
such a limbo as lies between the two, are only driven of the wind and
tossed.
Has my reader ever known the weariness of suffering, the clouding of the
inner sky, the haunting of spectral shapes, the misery of disordered
laws, when nature is wrong within him, and her music is out of tune and
harsh, when he is shot through with varied griefs and pains, and it
seems as there were no life more in the world, save of misery--"pain,
pain ever, for ever"? Then, surely, he has also known the turn of the
tide, when the pain begins to abate, when the sweet sleep falls upon
soul and body, when a faint hope doubtfully glimmers across the gloom!
Or has he known the sudden waking from sleep and from fever at once, the
consciousness that life is life, that life is the law of things, the
coolness and the gladness, when the garments of pain which, like that
fabled garment of Dejanira, enwrapped and ate into his being, have
folded back from head and heart, and he looks out again once more
new-born? It is God. This is his will, his law of life conquering the
law of death Tell me not of natural laws, as if I were ignorant of them,
or meant to deny them. The question is whether these laws go wheeling
on of themselves in a symmetry of mathematical shapes, or whether
their perfect order, their unbroken certainty of movement, is not the
expression of a perfect intellect informed by a perfect heart. Law is
truth: has it a soul of thought, or has it not? If not, then farewell
hope and love and possible perfection. But for me, I will hope on,
strive on, fight with the invading unbelief; for the horror of being the
sport of insensate law, the more perfect the more terrible, is hell and
utter perdition. If a man tells me that science says God is not a likely
being, I answer, Probably not--such as you, who have given your keen,
admirable, enviable powers to the observation of outer things only, are
capable of supposing him; but that the God I mean may not be the very
heart of the lovely order you see so much better than I, you have given
me no reason to fear. My God may be above and beyond and in all that.
In this matter of healing, then, as in all the miracles, we find Jesus
doing the works of the Father. God is our Saviour: the Son of God comes
healing the sick--doing that, I repeat, before our eyes, which the
Father, for his own reasons, some of which I think I can see well
enough, does from behind the veil of his creation and its laws. The cure
comes by law, comes by the physician who brings the law to bear upon us;
we awake, and lo! I it is God the Saviour. Every recovery is as much his
work as the birth of a child; as much the work of the Father as if
it had been wrought by the word of the Son before the eyes of the
multitude.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account