Yea, though the soul should mortal prove,
So be God's life but in me move
To my last breath--I'm satisfied
A lonesome mortal God to have died.
This last paragraph is magnificent as any single passage I know in
literature.
Is it lawful, after reading this, to wonder whether Henry More, the
retired, and so far untried, student of Cambridge, would have been able
thus to meet the alternations of suffering which he imagines? It is one
thing to see reasonableness, another to be reasonable when objects have
become circumstances. Would he, then, by spiritual might, have risen
indeed above bodily torture? It is _possible_ for a man to arrive at this
perfection; it is absolutely _necessary_ that a man should some day or
other reach it; and I think the wise doctor would have proved the truth
of his principles. But there are many who would gladly part with their
whole bodies rather than offend, and could not yet so rise above the
invasions of the senses. Here, as in less important things, our business
is not to speculate what we would do in other circumstances, but to
perform the duty of the moment, the one true preparation for the duty to
come. Possibly, however, the right development of our human relations in
the world may be a more difficult and more important task still than this
condition of divine alienation.
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