All our life is his life. We are in
his hand, and remain in it, and no one can pluck us out of it. We are
eternal because he is eternal.
Sublime, living Will, whom no name can name, and whom no conception
can grasp!--well may I raise my mind to thee, for thou and I are not
divided. Thy voice sounds in me, and mine sounds back in thee; and all
my thoughts, if only they are true and good, are thought in thee. In
thee, the Incomprehensible, I become comprehensible to myself, and
entirely comprehend the world. All the riddles of my existence are
solved, and the most perfect harmony arises in my mind.
Thou art best apprehended by childlike simplicity, devoted to thee.
To it thou art the heart-searcher who lookest through its innermost
thoughts; the all-present, faithful witness of its sentiments, who
alone knowest that it meaneth well, and who alone understandest it,
when misunderstood by all the world. Thou art to it a Father, whose
purposes toward it are ever kind, and who will order everything for
its best good. It submitteth itself wholly, with body and soul, to thy
beneficent decrees. Do with me as thou wilt, it saith, I know that it
shall be good, so surely as it is thou that dost it. The speculative
understanding, which has only heard of thee but has never seen thee,
would teach us to know thy being in itself, and sets before us an
inconsistent monster which it gives out for thine image, ridiculous to
the merely knowing, hateful and detestable to the wise and good.
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