Monday, September 20, 2010

beams of the resplendent orb...

This on Cyrus Bartol from Octavius Brooks Frothingham.  "His Transcendentalism had a cast of its own; it was not made after any pattern; it took its color from an original genius illuminated by various reading of books, and by deep meditation in the privacy of the closet, and the companionship of nature of which he is a child-like worshipper."

Bartol's "Word of the Spirit" continued: 

"I beg you, my reader, to consider, then, that there is something in you beside yourself. There is something in the air around you, not of the atmosphere, which the chemist cannot solve. There is a light, not of the sun, lighting every man that cometh into the world. There is a voice beyond that of man or nature, gentler than the softest whisper in counsel to us, and louder than the rending thunder in our remorse. There is a feeling of present divinity, of which we are never quite rid. There is a being we are conscious of above our own, ordaining, supporting, commanding, awing, consoling, teaching, blessing it. In our solitude there is another with us; and, in our society, One, invited or uninvited, not counted in the list or written on the cards. It is the Spirit. The flash of truth in you, the path of honor pointed before you, the impulse of justice to walk therein, your act of goodness, your abstinent purity, — these are all from it. Your thought of perfect kindness, may God give it! — your flame of holy love, may God kindle it! — your swifter than arrow's flight of ascending prayer, — did you make these with your cunning contrivance, your curious fingers, and of your own potent will ? No: the Spirit breathed them into you. Part and parcel of the Spirit they are. They alone are intrinsic evidence, that all your ideas of a great Father's yearning, of a higher state for your departed ones, as being dearer to him than to yourself, are not vanity. I did not make my love: then a higher Love made it, and will justify it for ever. You did not create your own apprehensions of Eternal Purity and Goodness: you, then, may trust and hope in them, spite of sorrow and death, to enliven and save and keep you world without end. They are beams which, followed, must bring you to the resplendent orb. They are the essential stuff of which the universe is formed, without which there would be no universe ; and in them you are immortal and everlasting."

Blessings

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