me: How good it is to be at peace
with God, and to be able and willing to say, My Father! That the whole
of the surging and flaming sun was actually down in my straitened and
hampered heart at that idle moment over my paper is scientifically
demonstrable; for only that which is in the heart of a man can kindle the
passions that are in the heart of that man; and nothing is more sure to
me than that the great passions of fear and love, wonder and rapture were
at that moment at a burning point within me. There is a passage well on
in the _Holy War_, which for terror and for horror, and at the same time
for truth and for power, equals anything either in Dante or in Milton.
Lucifer has stood up at the council board to second the scheme of
Beelzebub. 'Yes,' he said, amid the plaudits of his fellow-princes--'Yes,
I swear it. Let us fill Mansoul full with our abundance. Let us make of
this castle, as they vainly call it, a warehouse, as the name is in some
of their cities above. For if we can only get Mansoul to fill herself
full with much goods she is henceforth ours. My peers,' he said, 'you
all know His parable of how unblessed riches choke the word; and, again,
we know what happens when the hearts of men are overcharged with
surfeiting and with drunkenness. Let us give them all that, then, to
their heart's desire.' This advice of Lucifer, our history tells us, was
highly applauded in hell, and ever since it has proved their masterpiece
to choke Mansoul with the fulness of this world, and to surfeit the heart
with the good things thereof. But, my brethren, you will outwit hell
herself and all her counsellors and all her machinations, if, out of all
the riches, pleasures, cares, and possessions, that both heaven and earth
and hell can heap into your heart, those riches, pleasures, cares, and
possessions but produce corresponding passions and affections towards God
and man. Only let fear, and love, and thankfulness, and helpfulness be
kindled and fed to all their fulness in your heart, and all the world and
all that it contains will only leave the more room in your boundless
heart for God and for your brother. All that God has made, or could make
with all His counsel and all His power laid out, will not fill your
boundless and bottomless heart. He must come down and come into your
boundless and bottomless heart Himself. Himself: your Father, your
Redeemer, and your Sanctifier and Comforter also. Let the whole unive