our blindness we
call wicked?

*****

But to be a true disciple is to think of the same things as our prophet,
and to think of different things in the same order. To be of the same
mind with another is to see all things in the same perspective; it is
not to agree in a few indifferent matters near at hand and not much
debated; it is to follow him in his farthest flights, to see the force
of his hyperboles, to stand so exactly in the centre of his vision that
whatever he may express, your eyes will light at once on the original,
that whatever he may see to declare, your mind will at once accept....

Now, every now and then, and indeed surprisingly often, Christ finds
a word that transcends all commonplace morality; every now and then
He quits the beaten track to pioneer the unexpressed, and throws out a
pregnant and magnanimous hyperbole; for it is only by some bold poetry
of thought that men can be strung up above the level of everyday
conceptions to take a broader look upon experience or accept some higher
principle of conduct. To a man who is of the same mind that was in
Christ, who stand at some centre not too far from His, and looks at the
world and conduct from some not dissimilar or, at least, not opposing
attitude--or, shortly, to a man who is of Christ's philosophy--every
such saying should come home with a thrill of joy and corroboration; he
should feel each one below his feet as another sure foundation in
the flux of time and chance; each should be another proof that in
the torrent of the years and generations, where doctrines and great
armaments and empires are swept away and swallowed, he stands immovable,
holding by the eternal stars.

*****

Those who play by rule will never be more than tolerable players; and
you and I would like to play our game in life to the noblest and the
most divine advantage....For no definite precept can be more than an
illustration, though its truth were resplendent like the sun, and it was
announced from heaven by the voice of God. And life is so intricate and
changing, that perhaps not twenty times, or perhaps not twice in the
ages, shall we find that nice consent of circumstances to which alone it
can apply....

It is to keep a man awake, to keep him alive to his own soul and
its fixed design of righteousness, that the better part of moral and
religious education is directed; not only that of words and doctors, but
the sharp ferule of calamity under which we are all Go