Himself? Why does He suffer us to grope after Him, and not find Him?
If He be good, and loving, and gracious in His nature, He will desire
to make known to His creatures these attributes. But how silent--how
impenetrable the mystery that environs Him in the habitation of His
throne! Will He forever remain wrapped up in the dark clouds of space?
Will He never reveal Himself in His moral nature to man? Will He never
of Himself proclaim to the creation His unity--that there is no God
but One, and besides Him there is none else? How can He demand
obedience and virtue of men when they know not His laws? Yet,
consciousness within, visible nature, reason, all demonstrate that
there is but one Supreme God, a single First Cause, how numerous
soever the inferior deities He may have created to aid in the
government of His vast universe; and that to Him an intellectual and
spiritual worship should be paid. This is the theory of Remeses, who
seems to be infinitely above his people and country in piety and
wisdom. Sometimes I fancy that he draws inspiration from this Infinite
God whom he worships in his heart, and recognizes through his
intellect; for his utterances on these themes are often like the words
of a god, so wonderful are the mysteries treated of by him, so
elevating to the heart and mind.
But I will repeat part of a conversation we had together, after he had
offered in the temple of Apis his sacrifice for the restoration of the
queen's health. He said, as we walked away together, along a beautiful
and sacred avenue of acacia and delicate, fringe-like ittel or
tamarisk trees, alternating with the pomegranate and mimosa:
"Sesostris, doubtless, after all my conversations with you, I seemed
an idolater to-day, quite as material and gross, in the offerings and
prayers I made, as the galley-rower we saw offering a coarse garland
of papyrus-leaves and poppies to the god."
"No, my noble prince," I answered; "I saw in you an intellectual
sacrificer, whose bodily eyes indeed beheld the sacred bull, but whose
spirit saw the Great Osiris, who once dwelt in the bull when on earth.
You honored the house where anciently a god abode."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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