Hence, growing hope, blossoming
ever and anon into the white flower of confidence, is their answer as
yet; their hope--the Beatific Vision--the _happy-making sight_, as Milton
renders the word of the mystics.
It is strange how gentle a certain large class of the priesthood will be
with those who, believing there is a God, find it hard to trust him, and
how fierce with those who, unable, from the lack of harmony around and in
them, to say they are sure there is a God, would yet, could they find
him, trust him indeed. "Ah, but," answer such of the clergy and their
followers, "you want a God of your own making." "Certainly," the doubters
reply, "we do not want a God of your making: that would be to turn the
universe into a hell, and you into its torturing demons. We want a God
like that man whose name is so often on your lips, but whose spirit you
understand so little--so like him that he shall be the bread of life to
_all_ our hunger--not that hunger only already satisfied in you, who take
the limit of your present consciousness for that of the race, and say,
'This is all the world needs:' we know the bitterness of our own hearts,
and your incapacity for intermeddling with its joy. We
have another mountain-range, from whence
Bursteth a sun unutterably bright;
nor for us only, but for you also, who will not have the truth except it
come to you in a system authorized of man.
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