wherever there is a tear, there is love, wherever anguish there is
consolation, whenever the night is dark and starless and there are deep
shadows, an angel stands with bowed head and welcoming arms. What a balm
for the scarified, bleeding heart! A precious pearl of great price in a
casket of exceeding beauty; a sword of ethereal temper that divides unto
the sundering of bone and marrow; but there are diamonds upon the hilt
and golden tracery upon the scabbard. Ah, the resurrection, who gives
this promise, this faith, this hope? In all the dead aeons of dead
centuries, science, nature, man, have asked in vain 'If a man die shall
he live again?'--But just as in scaling a beautiful mountain, it needs
no chemistry to analyze the air, to tell us that it is free from miasma,
as every breath which paints a ruddier glow upon the cheek and sends a
tonic tide through the body, will tell of its invigorating touch; so it
needs no analysis, no reasoning, to persuade a spiritual mind that the
air of Heaven, the breath of God is in this book; and just as on Tabor's
brow, when from Christ His own glory pierced its callous, unfeeling
sides, it needed no refracting prism to tell us that it was the sunburst
of more than earthly radiance the pilgrims were gazing upon. So when a
Bible chapter is transfigured, when the Holy Spirit transmutes into it
his grace and glory, it will require neither a Paley or Shenstone to
prove that the power and wisdom of God are there; but radiant with
emitted splendor, in God's own light we will see it to be God's own
Book, and know it to be His blessed revelation. 'I know that my Redeemer
liveth and that in my flesh I shall see God.' The light of faith in the
afflicted man of God was burning feebly, but he begins to feel now the
strength, the virtue, which lies in innocency, as if God were beginning
to reveal Himself within him. He heeds no longer the hyper-Calvinist
when he tells him, 'Thou has taken a pledge from thy brother for naught,
and stripped the naked of their clothing; thou has not given water to
the weary, and thou hast withholden bread from the hungry.' He raises
his finger as if he would command attention and exclaims, not in irony,
but in tranquil self-possession, 'God forbid that I should justify you;
till I die, I will not remove my integrity from me. My righteousness I
will not let go. My heart shall not reproach me so long as I live.'
"Pictorial scriptures, truly, comprehending all manners, all conditions,
all countries. Egypt with the Nile and the Pyramids, the nomad Arabs,
the bewildered caravans, the heat of the tropics, the ice of the north,
are there; all save the frozen heart of Jewish traditions and
ceremonials. How divinely transfigured every page of the precious Book,
wherein is life eternal!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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