I veil my face before thee and lay my hand upon my mouth. How thou art
in thyself, and how thou appearest to thyself, I can never know,
as surely as I can never be thou. After thousand times thousand
spirit-lives lived through, I shall no more be able to comprehend thee
than now, in this hut of earth. That which I comprehend becomes, by my
comprehension of it, finite; and this can never, by an endless process
of magnifying and exalting, be changed into infinite. Thou differest
from the finite, not only in degree but in kind. By that magnifying
process they make thee only a greater and still greater man, but never
God, the Infinite, incapable of measure.
* * * * *
I will not attempt that which is denied to me by my finite nature,
and which could avail me nothing. I desire not to know how thou art
in thyself. But thy relations and connections with me, the finite,
and with all finite beings, lie open to mine eye, when I become what
I should be. They encompass me with a more luminous clearness than the
consciousness of my own being. Thou workest in me the knowledge of my
duty, of my destination in the series of rational beings. How? I know
not, and need not to know. Thou knowest and perceivest what I think
and will. How thou canst know it--by what act thou bringest this
consciousness to pass--on that point I comprehend nothing. Yea, I know
very well that the idea of an act, of a special act of consciousness,
applies only to me but not to thee, the Infinite.
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