The Catholic World, Vol. 10, October, 1869 to March, 1870Various
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 10, October, 1869 to March, 1870
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
Radicalism has heard of the mystery of the Incarnation, and
interprets it to mean not the union of two for ever distinct
natures, the divine and human, in one divine person, but one divine
nature in all human persons. Hence, while the person is human,
circumscribed, and transitory, nature in all men is divine, is God
himself, permanent, universal, infinite, immortal. This is what
the Christian mystery, according to them, really means, though the
ignorant, narrow-minded, and blundering apostles never knew it, never
understood its profound significance. The church took the narrow and
shallow view of the apostles; and hence our radicals have outgrown
the church, and instead of looking back or without, above or beyond
themselves, they look only within, down into their own divine nature,
whence emanates the universe, and in which is all virtue, all good,
all truth, all force, all reality. The aim of all moral and religious
discipline must be to get rid of all personal distinction, all
circumscription, and to sink all individuality in the divine nature,
which is the real man, the "one man," the "over-soul" of which Mr.
Emerson in his silvery tones formerly discoursed so eloquently and
captivated so many charming Boston girls, who understood him by
sympathy with their hearts, not their heads, though what he said
seemed little better than transcendental nonsense to the elder,
graver, and less susceptible of both sexes. Impersonal nature is
divine; hence the less of persons we are the more divine we are,
and the more we act from the promptings of impersonal nature the
more god-like our acts. Hence instinct, which is impersonal, is a
safer guide than reason, which is personal; the logic of the heart is
preferable to the logic of the head, and fools and madmen superior
to the wise and the sane. Hence, are fools and madmen profoundly
reverenced by Turks and Arabs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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