The Household of God
Volume 2
Rise and spiritual prime of the first world empire Hanoch
- Chapter 37 -
HORED'S SOLILOQUY AND REPENTANCE
For a whole hour Hored had been groaning in a somewhat inaccessible corner of the cave, when a slight breeze began to blow from morning putting an end to the glorious sounds.
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As soon as the sounds had ceased which appeared to be so sacred to Hored he raised himself up and began to soliloquize as follows:
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"O you glorious, wondrous creation of God, how sublime and holy you are, viewed with the eyes of love and deeply felt in a loving heart, yes, even with an only somewhat love-cleansed heart before God!
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"What a difference there is now in me! A while ago, hardly a shadow's turn ago, everything around me was still cold and dead, - yes, even my heart was cold and my eye incapable of shedding a tear; now everything is alive: The hard stone speaks, and the grass sends sweet smelling hymns of praise up to the holy spheres of God.
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"Through the rustling branches of the magnificent trees a holy, pure voice, a great word is sounding far over all the forests of the earth; it says: 'God is the purest love! And everything is love around Him, out of Him and through Him!'
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"Oh, how glorious, how beautiful, how holy, how alive is everything around me! How exalted now these holy mountains and how inexpressibly sublime and holy now that morning-hill of Adam, where - where - oh for the magnitude of it! I cannot say it!
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"O my heart, my heart! Now lay yourself wide open; yes, enlarge far beyond all endless creations, and grasp what is now on that sacred hill!
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"Do grasp it, do grasp it; for it is God, the great, eternal, more-than holy Creator of infinity - O heart, grasp it! - it is the most loving, exceedingly holy Father! Yes, it is the Father of us all Who is there, visible among His children!
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"O nature, O you winds all, you gushing spring, be silent, be silent now; and you twittering dwellers in the branches of the cedars, and you too, chirping cricket, do not stifle the holy sensation in my heart!
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"The holy Father, full of sublime love, among His children there on that sacred hill! He - the almighty Creator, the eternal, sole God and Lord of all things and beings as Father among His children! O thought, O you most lightful, most holy truth, what infinity can grasp you, what eternity understands you?
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"Yes, you otherwise poor heart are holy, as soon as this thought as much as touches you! The Father - among His children! O you too endlessly great thought,.. - who can live and think you in your magnitude, in your endless endlessness?
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"The Father among His children - teaching them Himself, teaching them to recognize Him, the holy Father!
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"Also my dead ear was reached by His holy father-voice, and I did not understand it; and my eyes saw Him, and I did not recognize Him! To this place His Word led me; the Father's Word led me to this place!
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"O you sacred spot, you place where my heart, my spirit were truly transfigured, with what eternal monument shall I embellish you, with what holy word call you, you sacred spot to which the Father's Word summoned me?
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"Oh, what is man, the weak dweller on this earth, for the eternal God to have mercy on him and accept him as a child!
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"Is man maybe good? - No, not by any means! - Is he maybe so exceedingly beautiful for God to come to him? - No, no, that he is even less; for, where true goodness is missing, also true beauty is missing.
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"Is it maybe because he is worthy of love that the Lord descended to him? - Oh, by no means; for, in order to be worthy of love one must at first of necessity be good and beautiful!
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"Is man maybe richly endowed with various things alien and peculiar to God? - Oh what inexpressible folly, oh for the darkest thought to possibly take possession of the tongue!
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"What, then, does man possess without having it received beforehand?
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"Hence - what is - or what does, then, miserable man of this poor earth possess that God came to him, teaching, guiding and comforting him?
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"O you great, impenetrable mystery! The fact that we may call ourselves children, is only due to His endless mercy, without which we, like any stone, would be nothing else but mere creatures, and at that creatures full of disobedience, whereas a stone does not move without the Lord's will for thousands upon thousands of years from the spot upon which it was placed by the holy Father's almighty hand.
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"Or was the holy thought in God from which man, ungrateful man, went forth, perhaps, even more divine than that from which earlier, at the same time or later a stone went forth from one and the same God?
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"Surely man is and has nothing, absolutely nothing before God, - but everything only out of His pure mercy!
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"O you inexpressible love, you endless mercy of the Father, Who is always holy, exceedingly holy, - how shall the heart thank you, how praise and glorify you, with what words to the whole earth fittingly proclaim such endless mildness coming from you to us poor humans, who call themselves undeservedly your children!
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"O Father, do let me now sink into the dust; for my eyes are not even worthy to look in the direction where You are still among Your children!
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"You holy Father - among Your children! "This thought is too holy to be once more thought by me, a worm of this earth!
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"So be still, still, everything be still around me so that I, too, may become still before the exceedingly great holiness of the Father!
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"For what should a dusty worm of the mud say, where the whole of infinity observes the most sublime, respectful silence? So be still, still, my heart and my tongue; for everything around me has now become silent. Silent in God, silent; for - the Father is near!"