Sorry, you must be a member of the group to do that. Join this group.
More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Even someone he envisions as “poisoned by a wretched upbringing in some house full of vulgar jealousies and senseless quarrels”5 can be assured that God is well aware of “what a wretched machine you are trying to drive,” and asks only that you “keep on, [doing] the best you can.”
“How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different the saints.”
When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the whole house.
The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys.
If there was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe—no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall or staircase or fireplace in that house. The only way in which we could expect it to show itself would be inside ourselves as an influence or a command trying to get us to behave in a certain way. And that is just what we do find inside ourselves.
We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.
There is nothing progressive about being pig headed and refusing to admit a mistake.
If the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness, then all our efforts are in the long run hopeless. But if it is, then we are making ourselves enemies to that goodness every day, and are not in the least likely to do any better tomorrow, and so our case is hopeless again. We cannot do without it, and we cannot do with it. God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only possible ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies.
