It will be clear from what I have said already that I see no fundamental
conquest of fear that is not based in God. There may be knacks by which
fear can be nipped and expedients by which it may be outwitted, but its
extermination can be brought about, it seems to me, only in one way.
According to our capacity and our individual needs we must know God; and
knowing God is not as difficult as the Caucasian mind is apt to think.
It stands to reason that if knowing God, in the senses in which it is
possible to know Him, is so essential to mankind it could not be
difficult. The making it difficult is part of the dust the Caucasian
throws in his own eyes.
We know God through His Self-Expression, and His Self-Expression is
round about us in every form. Except through His Self-Expression there
is no way of our knowing Him. No speculation or theory will teach us to
know Him. It must be His own revelation of Himself, or nothing.
II
Such little knowledge of Him as has come to me came much more freely
when I began to look for that revelation not alone in solemn mysteries,
or through the mediumship of prophets, apostles, and ancient scriptures,
but in the sights and sounds and happenings of every day. Here I must
ask not to be misunderstood. The solemn mysteries have their place, but
it is one of climax. The mediumship of prophets, apostles, and ancient
scriptures is of unreckonable value, after I have done something for
myself. By this I do not mean that all cannot work together
simultaneously, but rather that it is useless for the soul to strike
only at the more advanced, having ignored the elementary.
As I write I look out on a street full of the touches of spring. The
rain-washed grass is of bright new green. The elms are in tenderest
leaf, the hawthorn bursting into flower. Here and there a yellow clump
of forsythia is like a spot of sunshine. Tulips are opening their
variegated cups, and daffodils line the walls. Dogs are capering about,
a collie, a setter, a Boston terrier. Birds are carrying straws or bits
of string to weave into their nests--or singing--or flying--or perching
on boughs. Children are playing--boys on bicycles eagerly racing
nowhere--little girls with arms round each others' waists, prattling
after their kind. Overhead is a sky of that peculiar blue for which the
Chinese have a word which means "the blue of the sky after rain," a hue
which only these masters in colour have, to my knowledge,
specially observed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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