Cloud Upon the Sanctuary

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without the other, and the more faith a man has the more will revelation be made to
him of matters which lie in obscurity. It is true, and very true, that all the veiled
truths of religions, even those heavily veiled ones, the most difficult ones to us, will
one day be revealed and justified before a tribunal of the most rigid Justice; but the
weakness of men, the lack of penetration in perceiving the relation and
correspondence between physical and spiritual nature, requires that the highest
truths should only be imparted gradually.
The holy obscurity of the mysteries is thus on account of our weakness, because
our eyes are enabled only gradually to bear their full and dazzling light. In every
grade at which the believer in Revelation arrives, he obtains clearer light, and this
progressive illumination continues the more convincing, because every truth of faith
so acquired becomes more and more vitalized, passing finally into conviction.
Hence faith is founded on our weakness, and also on the full light of revelation
which will, in its communication with us, direct us according to our capabilities to
the gradual understanding of things, so that in due order the cognizance of the most
elevated truths will be ours.
Those objects which are quite unknown to human sense are necessarily belonging
to the domain of faith.
Man can only adore and be silent, but if he wishes to demonstrate matters which
cannot be manifested objectively, he necessarily falls into error.
Man should adore and be silent, therefore, until such time arrives when these
objects in the domain of faith become clearer, and, therefore, more easily
recognized. Everything proves itself by itself as soon as we have acquired the
interior experience of the truths revealed through faith, so soon as we are led by
faith to vision, that is to say, to full cognizance.
In all time have there been men illuminated of God who had this interior
knowledge of the things of faith demonstrated objectively either in full or partly,
according as the truths of faith passed into their understanding or their hearts. The
first kind of vision was called divine illumination. The second was entitled divine
inspiration.
The inner sensorium was opened in many to divine and transcendental vision,
called ecstasy because this inner sensorium was so enlarged that it entirely
dominated the outer physical senses.
But this kind of man is always inexplicable, and he must remain such always to
the man of mere sense who has no organs receptive to the transcendental and
supernatural, "the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they
are foolishness unto him and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually
judged," I. Cor; xi., 14, i.e., because his spiritual senses are not open to the
transcendental world, so that he can have no more objective cognizance of such
world than a blind man has of color; thus the natural man has lost these interior
senses, or rather, the capacity for their development is neglected almost to atrophy.
Thus mere physical man is, in general, spiritually blind, one of the further
consequences of the Fall. Man then is doubly miserable; he not only has his eyes
blindfolded to the sight of high truths, but his heart also languishes a prisoner in the
bonds of flesh and blood, which confine him to animal and sensuous pleasures to
the hurt of more elevated and genuine ones. Therefore, are we slaves to
concupiscence, to the domination of tyrannical passions, and, therefore, do we drag
ourselves as paralyzed sufferers supported on crutches; the one crutch being the
weak one of mere human reason, and the other, sentiment- the one daily giving us
appearance instead of reality, the other making us constantly choose evil, imagining
it to be good. This is, therefore, our unhappy condition.
Men can only be happy when the bandage which intercepts the true light falls
from their eyes, and when the fetters of slavery are loosened from their hearts. The
blind must see, the lame must walk, before happiness can be understood. But the
great and all-powerful law to which the felicity or happiness of man is indissolubly
attached is the one following- "Man, let reason rule over your passions!"
For ages has man striven to teach and to preach, with, however, the result, after so
many centuries, of but the blind always leading the blind; for in all the foolishness of
misery into which we have fallen, we do not yet see that man wants more than man
to raise us from this condition.
Prejudices and errors, crimes and vices, only change from century to century; they
are never extirpated from humanity; reason without illumination flickers faintly in
every age, in the heavy air of spiritual darkness; the heart, exhausted with passions,
is also the same century after century.
There is but One who can heal these evils, but One who is able to open our inner
eyes, but One who can free us from the bonds of sensuality.
This One is Jesus Christ, the Savior of Man, the Savior because He wishes to
obliterate from us all the consequences which follow as result from the blindness of
our natural reason, or the errors arising from the passions of ungoverned hearts.
Very few men, beloved brothers, have a true and exact conception of the
greatness of the idea meant by the Redemption of Man; many suppose that Jesus
Christ the Lord has only redeemed or re-bought us by His Blood from damnation,
otherwise the eternal separation of man from God; but they do not believe that He
could also deliver all those who are bound in Him and confide in Him, from all the
miseries of this earth plane!
Jesus Christ is the Savior of the World ; He is the deliverer from all human
wretchedness, and He has redeemed us from death and sin; how could He be all
that, if the world must languish perpetually in the shades of ignorance and in the
bonds of passions? It has been already very clearly predicted in the Prophets that
the time of the Redemption of His people, the first Sabbath of time, will come. Long
ago ought we to have acknowledged this most consolatory promise; but the want of
the true knowledge of God, of man, and of nature has been the real hindrance which
has always obstructed our sight of the great Mysteries of the faith.
You must know, my brothers, that there is a dual nature, one pure, spiritual,
immortal, and indestructible, the other impure, material, mortal, and destructible.
The pure nature was before the impure. This latter originated solely through the
disharmony and disproportion of substances which form destructible nature. Hence
nothing is pertinent until all disproportions and dissonances are eradicated, so that
all remains in harmony.
The incorrect conception regarding spirit and matter is one of the principal causes
which prevent many verities of faith from shining in their true lustre.
Spirit is a substance, an essence, an absolute reality. Hence its properties are
indestructibility, uniformity, penetration, indivisibility, and continuity. Matter is
not a substance, it is an aggregate. Hence it is destructible, divisible, and subject to
change.
The metaphysical world is one really existing, perfectly pure and indestructible,
whose Center we call Jesus Christ, and whose inhabitants are known by the names
of Angels and Spirits.
The physical world is that of phenomena, and it possesses no absolute truth, all
that we call truth here is but relative, the shadow and phenomena only of truth.
Our reason here borrows all its ideas from the senses, hence they are lifeless and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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