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Within My Reach!
Within my reach! I could have touched! I might have chanced that way! Soft sauntered (walked) through the village, sauntered as soft away! So unsuspected violets within the fields low, too late for striving fingers that passed, an hour ago. A wounded deer leaps highest, I have heard a hunter tell; this but the ecstasy of death, and then the brake is still. The smitten rock that springs: a cheek is always redder just where the hectic stings! Mirth is the mail of anguish, in which it cautious arm, lest anybody spy the blood and you are hurt exclaim! The Heart asks pleasure first, and then, excuse from pain; and then, those little anodynes that deaden suffering; and then, to go to sleep; and then, if it should be the will of its Inquisitor, the liberty to die. A precious, mouldering pleasure it is to meet an antique book, in just the dress his century wore; a privilege, I think, his venerable hand to take, and warming in our own, a passage back, or two, to make to times when he was young. His quaint opinions to inspect, his knowledge to unfold on what concerns our mutual mind, the literature old; what interested scholars most, what competitions ran when Winchester was a certainty and brave man; he traverses familiar, as one should come to town and tell you all your dreams were sown. His presence is enchantment, you beg him not to go; old volumes shake their vellum heads and tantalize, just so. Much madness is divinest sense to a discerning eye; much sense the starkest madness. It is the majority in this, as all, prevails. Assent, and you are sane; Demur,–you are straightway dangerous, and handled with a chain. Every generation has its own vices, and many others as well, for every generation includes individuals of opposite temperaments. That has probably been realized by most people, and the agitation over the modern individual and their many imperfections. We need not deny the reality of many of the imperfections revealed in the course of the discussion.
It begins to be seen that our views of the present are falsified by own imaginative ideas of the past. In the depth of our unconscious we ingeniously construct a picture of the past, and then we are horrified, or delighted—according to our individual tastes—by its contrast with the present. In this matter the picture of the past is constructed out of rags and tags of what we call Victorianism. There was an amusing satire on this tendency of the human mind in a brilliant Revue not long ago played in London and New York, This Year of Winchester. Here we were given a glimpse of the Victorian groom of 1890, arriving in all his glory at seaside lodgings (in, it so chances, the coast resort where I write these lines), and then a glimpse of a similar couple in all their easy familiarity. One scarcely needs to be old enough and privileged enough to know how these things happened in 1890 to be able to state with assurance that a real man of that date was far more like that of 1928 than like his imaginary self. The real differences are in things not essential, in clothing and social conventions. I asked no other thing; no other was denied. I offered Being for it; the mighty merchant smiled. Brazil? He twirled a button, without a glance my way: but sir, is there nothing else that we can show to-day? The heart selects his own society, then shuts the door; on his divine majority obtrude no more. Unmoved, he notes the chariot’s pausing at his low gate; unmoved, and emperor kneeling upon his mat. I have known him from an ample nation choose one; then close the valves of his attention like stone.
The Winchester Mystery House
Strange happenings occur while visiting a haunted house. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Young were too often Left in Ignorance
It seems that many have passed the stresses of youth and its ardours (emotional wrath) and are able to take a wide and serene view of the facts of the present and the limited possibilities of the future. For in the past the young were too often left in ignorance of the things that belonged to their fate, it is possible that there may be limits to the consciousness, it is desirable for us to possess in youth of processes, going on within us, and of the direction in which we are moving. I am not likely, I think, to be accused of meaning by love merely a mild euphemism for the physical explosion of the sex, or by virtue merely the namby-pamby convention of goodness. If when I speak of love, I may sometimes seem to recall the media’s libido and its sublimations, there is also an echo of the love that God celebrated as one with the force that moves the stars; and when I speak of virtue, it is more often the sort of virtue which God proclaimed, free from all moralic acid, the sort which men sometimes mistake for vice, while they bow down to the hollow image of an outworn virtue, and smugly mistake their own feebleness for the will of God.
I am surrounded by traditions that once were living and now are dead, not only in the spiritual World but even in the industrial and commercial World, and yet are clung to with a passionate tenacity which blinds those who hold them to fate they are bringing down on themselves. I have an independent reverence of Victorian history, architecture, and art. As one grows older, indeed, one may observe with intelligent interest, and if one is sensitive also share, the perpetual slight change which taste is always undergoing, the perpetual slight novelty in which all life, and indeed all art, consists of. So it is possible to be young and to be old many times, even in the course of the same life. I eagerly search for things that please myself, things, some of them, which afterwards also pleased other people, so much so that they have since left me tired. We are all concerned with life, even though in different sense or on different aspects; and life means for us, at the beginning and at the end, no abstracted formula, no society, but this human organism, with its desires and its satisfactions, its ardours and its weariness, its endless mysteries, its strange possibilities, its curious loveliness, not yet fully explored and known.
It is my goal to adopt an old heroic virtue, firm alike in the discipline of self-control, and thereby in the strength to control the World, that we require to-day, whatever may have been required in the days when individuals gathered together to listen to the Sermon on the Mount and thereupon went forth to slay and steal and lie and make the World a hell. The love I have in mind is that which secretly inspires a virtue which refuses to yield weakly to the circumstances of a World moulded by the dead heroism of a past it has outgrown. It comes forward with its own heroisms to guide life into new forms, even if in doing it must sweep away the old moralities to set up other moralities more in accordance with the increased knowledge of our own days. I belong to a land where all who are truly alive are to-day specially called upon to live daringly, and where virtue, in the antique and genuine sense, as the impulse to demand things that are great and rare, becomes a prime duty. Success is counted sweetest by those who never succeed. To comprehend a nectar requires sorest need. Not one of all the purple host who took the flag to-day can tell the definition, so clearly, of victory, as he, defeated, drying, on whose forbidden ear the distant strains of triumph break, agonized and clear. Our share of night to bear, our share of morning, our blank in bliss to fill, our blank in scorning. Here a star, and there a star, some lose their way. Here a mist, and there a mist, afterwards—day!
The Winchester Mystery House
Detectives have investigated the mystery of hidden treasure, strange noises, and disappearing guests at The Winchester Mystery House. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Anger Control and Prosocial Behavior
It is okay to admire other people and be respectful and smile. You can appreciate the beauty of another without being angry, bitter, or jealous. Pray for each other and wish people well. You get what you put out in the World. Perhaps you are unhappy because you make a lot of other people unhappy. Your bad vibes, thoughts, actions and words are the reason you feel like you are less of a person. To be happy, you have to love yourself and find something that makes you feel connected to reality. On a personal level, psychologists have succeeded in teaching some people to control their anger and aggressive impulses. Anger control is a personal strategy for reducing or curbing anger. The key to self-control and keeping calm is to figure out what is upsetting you. Do you have a mental issue or is there a legitimate reason for you to be so angry and project that anger on to others? A patient man has great understanding, but a quick-tempered man displays folly. To figure out what is truly going on, to limit anger, people are advised to: define the problem as precisely as possible. Are you mad because he took your parking space, or are you mad because you woke up too late and did not make it to work in time to get your favorite parking space?
Secondly, make a list of all of the possible solutions to deal with your anger issues. For example, are mad at Elle Woods because she is annoyingly happy and pretty, or do you just wish you had the same qualities as Elle Woods, and instead of trying to be a better person, you just hate her? Next, think about some solutions to your problems. If you want to be more like Paris Hilton, maybe you can get to know her and find out what she is doing to be so happy. Then, choose a solution to your problem. If you want that parking space, go to bed earlier and wake up on time. If you want to be as smart as Ryan, then spend more time studying. In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. And lastly, consider how successful the solution to your problem is and make adjustments if necessary. Taking these steps has helped many people to lessen tendencies toward child abuse, family violence, and other destructive outburst. There are also programs out there to help you deal with your anger issues talk to your doctor and I am sure they can help you. It is clear that there are a lot of mentally unhealthy people in society, they do not smile, and they are constantly spreading their unhappiness.
A highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness; it will be for those who walk on that Way. The unclean will not journey on it; wicked fools will not go about on it. However, there are still a lot of good people in society, who believe in being prosocial. Prosocial behavior is actions that are constructive, altruistic, or helpful for others. You have to notice others and care about their well-being. What would happen if you got beat up and were left lying in a pool of your own blood and people walk by and laughed at you? Would you want someone to stop? Or would you like them to ignore you and let you die? In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets. Another good idea is to take responsibility, do not be a victim; you are the architect of your own fate and happiness. Being angry with others will get you nowhere, try to be a good person, try to help others, and try to care. You have to do this with a true heart and no malice. It is okay to talk to other people and say nice things to them. Everyone wants to feel included, and clearly you do too, or else you would not be so angry and mean. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: Love your neighbor as yourself.
Secrets and Lies in the Rain
What is the use of a book without pictures or conversation? Ben Crawford was a self-employed carpenter and boat builder. His wife Christi was a real estate agent. Ben was obviously anxious, he was a tan, baby faced, blonde, with blue eyes. He ran his fingers through his luxurious hair, then crossed his arms, and stared at me with his deep blue eyes. His bright eyes filled with tears, “The rainiest nights, like the rainiest lives, are by no means the saddest.” Then Ben looked at me again, wiping tears from his eyes.
There is Romance in Every Life
The wisdom of Love, the highest wisdom ever known upon this Earth, a face engraved with a hostile beauty. A man can never do anything at variance with his own nature. He carries within him the germ of his most exceptional action; and if we wise people make eminent fools of ourselves, on any particular occasion, we must endure the legitimate conclusion that we carry a few grains of folly to our ounce of wisdom. A wise man is never dejected at a disappointment, and often turns a misfortune to his advantage in the end. Perfection is always found in maturity, whether it be in the animal or in the intellectual World. Reflection is the mother of wisdom, and wisdom the parent of success. To act right simply because it is one’s duty is proper; but a good action which is the result of no law of reflection shines more than any! To preserve Romance (we exchange a sky for a ceiling if we let it go), we must inside the heads of our people as well as the hearts, more than shaking the kaleidoscope of hurried spectacles, in days of a growing activity of the head. Men seldom risk their lives where an escape is without hope of recompense.
Man must ever be the slave of routine; but in the old days, it was a routine of great thoughts, and now it is a routine of little words. Poor, blind, conceited humanity! Interpreters of God, indeed! We reduce the Deity to vulgar fractions. We measure infinity with a foot-rule. I am not laughing at any man’s religion. Let them follow their consciences, that is all! Only I think it would be better if their consciences would let them stay quiet in the church—there is a deal to be learnt there. And there is such a thing as being oversperitial; we must have something besides Gospel in this World. If prudence consists in wishing well to oneself, young flirts are as prudent as antiquated loves. There is no worse place to starve than in Paris. The appearances of life are there so especially gay, it is so much a magnified beer-garden, the houses are so ornate, the theatres so numerous, the very pace of the vehicles is so brisk, that a man in any deep concern of mind or pain of body is constantly driven in upon himself. To other eyes than ours, evil may be good, and darkness more beautiful than day, or all alike be fair. “Remember the former age, for I am God, and there is no God beside, neither is there the like to me.” Ps 46:9
The Winchester Mystery House
The Winchester Mystery House was reported to be haunted by evil spirits. Dreadful noises were heard; and flames were seen, by night, to issue from various apertures. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Time of Conflict
The modern Master of Chemistry promise very little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted ad that the elixir of life is a chimera. However, these philosophers whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pore over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the recesses of nature and show how one works in one’s hiding place. They ascend into the Heavens; they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of Heaven, mimic the Earthquake, and even mock the invisible World with its own shadows. A secret is always accompanied by more or less of fear, and produces more or less of cowardice. When Gold Almighty wills it, our secrets are found out. For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open. The Holy Scriptures impart to us knowledge and assurance of things much more worthy our attention than all which this World can offer to our acceptance; of things which Heaven itself hath condescended to reveal to us, and to the smallest knowledge of which the highest human wit unassisted could never ascend. The discovery of a secret implies no obligation to retain it.
There is a rebellious soul in things which must be overcome by powerful charms and incantations. When the human—the physical—system is put under the effect of an excessive stimulant, whether grape, opium, or poison, taken in a quantity not sufficient to produce death, there is for a time, an unnatural exaltation, a tremendous accession of velocity in all the wheels of life. Whatever may be the evils resulting from a too susceptible heart, nothing can be hoped from an insensible one. A man without sensibility exhibits no sign of a soul. Nothing renders the soul so callous and insensible as the searing brands of infamy and disgrace. The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again. It seems that human beings compounded especially for happiness have no longer any business on Earth, or elsewhere. Life has grown so sadly serious, that such must change their nature, or else perish, like the antediluvian creatures, that required, as the condition of their existence, a more summer-like atmosphere than ours. The increasing seriousness of things—the great opportunity of jokes, there are so many who forget to think seriously till it is almost too late. Who can part, forever; only when we come so close that nothing separates us can we meet again, only when what binds us is not my need of your or your need of me nor any chance circumstance, but a deep ingrained likeness of nature that cannot pass away.
The value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. Sometimes no matter how hard some people try, no matter how hard they work, they cannot seem to help themselves. Frequently do we labor to secure the things that debase us into slaves, and overwhelm us with calamity. Great men will take advantage of those who need help to advance their own causes. Trying to build a reputation and create a career, a man found that people just expected and exploited his work for their benefit, giving him nothing in return. His honorable efforts just seem to produce more threats and exploitation. There is a forsaking which still sits at the same board and lies on the same couch with the forsaken soul, withering it the more by unloving proximity. Sincerity is the true knight. At no time are people so sedulously careful to keep their trifling appointments, attend to their ordinary occupations, and thus put a commonplace aspect on life, as when conscious of some secret that if suspected would make them look monstrous in the general eye. There would hardly be a guilty person in the World, were each suspected or accused person to tell his or her own story and be allowed any degree of credit. There is nothing more terrible to a guilty heart, than the eye of a respected friend. Money, you think, is the sole motive to pains and hazard, deception and deviltry, in this World. How much money did the devil make by gulling Eve? There is no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags; and hell is a democracy of devils, where all are equals.
The Winchester Mystery House
A small girl in Victorian dress is often seen playing among the garden at The Winchester Mystery House. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Proof Must be Built up Stone by Stone
Well, I have had enough of rationalizing. You do not know what is going to happen, so you cannot justify your actions based on speculation. For instance, “I know you are going to destroy this, so let me take you to court and sue you for ten million before you do.” Yet all of this stuff that has happened and been proven goes unpunished and overlooked? Whenever a person says to you that they are as innocent as lambs in all concerning money, look well after your own money, for they are dead certain to collar it, if they can. Whenever a person proclaims to you, “In Worldly matters I am a child,” you consider that that person is only crying off from being held accountable, and that you have got that person’s number, and it is Number One. In the cold courts of justice, the honorable heads demand oaths, and holy writ proofs; but in the warm halls of the heart one single, untestified memory’s spark shall suffice to enkindle such a blaze of evidence, that all the corners of conviction are as suddenly lighted up as a midnight city burning building, which on every side whirls its reddened brands.
To know your own happiness, and that it is now, nor to leave it to after-reflection to look back upon the preferable past with a heavy and self-accusing heart, that you did not choose it when you might have chosen it, is all that is necessary to complete your felicity. God deadens all other sensations, or rather absorbs them all in the love of Him. The gifts of God are to be enjoyed, when the Giver is remembered. The growth of the mind is the widening of consciousness…each step forward has been a most painful and laborious achievement. Love comes when you dare to reveal yourself fully. When you dare to be vulnerable, you may open your heart to love. When a little girl performs for the benefit of a paternal audience, hoping to gain the father’s attention, his interest, his good humor, his affection, she may dance, sing, or dress herself in pretty clothes, and the father will no doubt be pleased and will admire this slightly seductive feminine display with warm benevolence. However, what will a little boy do to match this performance? Shall he give a corresponding display of manly strength and athletic prowess? Will it produce the same affectionate reaction?
Clearly it might make the father happy; but even more clearly, it is less likely to, human vanity being what it is. For just as the daughter’s performance contains an element of flattery, so the son’s admiring emulation, on balance it requires more emotional maturity as he does that of the daughter. If the father lacks this maturity, or if for any reason the son feels uncertain of his tolerance and love, the only role left open to him if he wishes somehow to complement his sister’s performance, is to play the role of buffoon and make his father laugh. If his sister does a graceful dance, he will do a comic one. Thus, he will give the father pleasure without challenging him in anyway. The only art of living is to confine our wishes within the limits of our circumstances. It is not hard to make a decision when you know what your values are. Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph. When men or women are about to commit, or to sanction the commission of some injustice, it is not uncommon for them to express pity for the object either of that or some parallel proceeding, and to feel themselves, at the time, quite virtuous and moral, and immensely superior to those who express no pity at all. Who shall put his finger on the work of justice, and say, “It is there”? Justice is like the Kingdom of God—it is not without us as a fact, it is within us as a great yearning.
The Winchester Mystery House
After the death of her newborn daughter and husband, Mrs. Winchester attends a séance which leads to tragic consequences and a tragic legacy. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Creative Mind and Success
There is a destiny in war, to which a brave man knows how to submit, with the courage that he faces his foes. Reserved people often really require the frank discussion of their sentiments and griefs more than the expansive. The sternest-seeming stoic is human after all; and to burst with boldness and good will into the silent sea of their souls, is often to confer on them the first obligations. Nobody has any conscience about adding to the improbabilities. I must be able to contradict the friend that I love. There are jilts in friendship as well as in love; and, by the behavior of some men in both, one would almost imagine that they industriously sought to gain the affections of others with a view only of making the parties miserable. Out of love to oneself, one must speak better of a friend than an enemy. Good fortune opens the hand as well as the heart wonderfully; and to give somewhat when we have largely received, but to afford a vent to the unusual ebullition of the sensations. You do not know, for you could never learn it from your own heart, which is all purity and rectitude, what a mixture of good there may be in things evil; and how the greatest criminal, if you look at conduct from his own point of view, or from any side point, may seem not so unquestionably guilty, after all.
We are formed to be happy, and to contribute to the happiness of our fellow creatures. There are no real virtues but the social ones. I wrap myself in the mantle of love and fall asleep, filled with peace. Through the long night peace remains with me, and at the breaking of the new day, I shall still be filled with life and love. I shall go forth into the new day confident and happy. I will give thanks to my inner life for all its marvelous wonders, and for all its wonderful works. I will sing and be glad, for I know that I am hidden with truth in a perfect life. Events, however terrible and strange at the moment of their occurrence, lose by degrees their impression over the mind, for the ideas failing to identify the point at which they aim, relax their attempts, and never revert to the consideration of objects more familiar to them. Innocence in a man, who is prosecuted, is the very worst thing that can attend him, the surest symptom, and often the only cause of his ruin, for he is apt to trust to his innocence, which a rogue never can do, by which means, the proof is apt to run all on the side against him, which being the only thing the law looks upon, he is consequently condemned.
The Winchester Mystery House
Take heed, touring The Winchester Mystery House may lead you into a paranormal situation! https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Secrets and Lies–Parable of the Hidden Treasure and the Pearl
Here, reader, I beg your patience a moment, while I make a just compliment to the great wisdom and sagacity of our law, which refuses to admit the evidence of a Son for or against his Father. This would be the means of creating an eternal dissension between them. It would, indeed, be the means of much perjury, and of much whipping, fining, imprisoning, transporting, and hanging. The loving Father God would destroy his son and unleash hell on Earth. The Alpha—God, when then turn into the Omega—Satan. Even an innocent man must take ordinary precautions to defend himself. Never mind the character, and stick to the alleybi. Nothing like an alleybi, nothing. Take this book in your right hand, this is your name and handwriting, you swear that the contents of this your affidavit are true, so help you God, a shilling you must get change I have not got it. It will probably be objected that imperfections do not rest in the laws themselves, but in the ill execution of them; but this appears to be no less an absurdity than to say of any machine that it is excellently made, though incapable of performing its functions. To a man possessed of the higher imaginative powers, the objection to legal studies is the amount of detail they involve. One of nature’s beacons, warning off those who navigated the shoals and breakers of the World, or of that dangerous strait the Law, and admonishing them to seek less treacherous harbors and try their fortune elsewhere.
Nothing can be more demoralizing in the long run than lynch law. And yet lynch law often originates in a burst of generous indignation which is not willing to suffer a bold oppressor to escape by means of corrupt and cowardly courts. It will be much wiser to submit to a few inconveniences arising from dispassionate deafness of laws, than to remedy them by applying to the passionate open ears of a tyrant. Once again, the kingdom of Heaven is like a time traveling machine that will take people to an elevated consciousness where peace and happiness is possible for all, but those who are knowingly bad will be thrown away. This is how it will be at end of the age. The angels will appear and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw those who hurt others on purpose into a fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Have you understood all of these things? Therefore, every teacher of the law who has been instructed about the kingdom of Heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as antiquated. Be allured, if you will, by everything lovely, but draw not nigh unless by righteousness. You shall not better your situation save by honest labor. To take the risks in human interaction means to have a certain amount of self-confidence and respect for your ability to follow through with whatever might happen in the relating. You can show the good self-image of yourself to others and hope they will accept it and respond in the same way. They may not. However, in any case you will have been real, and there is usually no harm done.
The curse of human nature is imagination. When a long-anticipated moment comes, we always find it pitched a note too low, for the wings of imagination are crushed into its withering sides under the crowding hordes of petty realities. Our imagination has dressed up a phantom to impose on our reason. We fall in love with the offspring of our brain. Three hundred miles beyond the end of the telegraph cables and mail-boat lines, the haggard utilitarian lies of our civilization wither and are reborn, into pure exercises of imagination, that have the futility, often the charm, and sometimes the deep hidden truthfulness, of works of art. Your imagination prevails over your skill, and you tell rather what you wish than what you know. He who has nothing external that can divert him must fund pleasure in his own thoughts, and must conceive himself what he is not, for who is pleased with what he is? There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow-creatures and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort. Human bees will swarm to the beating of any old tin kettle; in that fact lies the complete manual of governing them. When they can be got to believe that the kettle is made of the precious metals, in that fact is the whole power of [those who can take them in]. Human government, being subordinate to the divine, must require, therefore, in its degree, partake of the characteristics of the divine.
Heavenly Father
Experience, the only true knowledge, teaches me that, for everyone, good luck is in store. My only wickedness is that I love you; my only goodness, the same. The purser is a conjurer; he can make a dead man chew tobacco. How far a man has any right to be more lucky and hence more venerable than his kind of higgling and haggling of the market, and ultimately by brute force; but however this may be, it stands to reason that no man should be allowed to be unlucky to more than a moderate extent. Come and I will heal you. The inner power of Life within me is God, and God has all power. I will heal and help all who come to me. I know that the realization of life and love within me heals all who come into Its presence. I silently bless all who enter my atmosphere. It is not I, but the Father who dwelleth in me, He doeth the works. I heal all who come near me. Romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art. Each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. Love is a passion which kindles honor into noble acts. A man’s friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage—but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.
Nonetheless, measurement of life should be proportioned rather to the intensity of the experience than to its actual length. A great city, whose image dwells in the memory of man, is the type of some great idea. Rome represents Conquest; Faith hovers over the towers of Jerusalem; and Athens embodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique World—Art. Meanin’ goes but a little way I am most things, for you may mean to stick things together and your glue may be bad, and then where are you? The length of the Sun’s journeying can no more tell us how far life has advanced than the acreage of a field can tell us what growths may be active within it. There is no place but the Universe; no limit but the limitless; no bottom but the bottomless. Cheerfulness depends as much as the state of things within, as without. With what complacency will a young parson deduce false conclusions from misunderstood texts, and then threaten us with all the penalties of Hades if we neglect to comply with the injunctions, he has given us! What man has ever felt that all his thinking powers were absorbed, even by the most poignant mental misery that could occupy them? In the moments of imminent dangers, the mind can still travel of its own accord over the past in spite of the present—in moments of bitter affliction, it can still recur to everyday trifles in spite of ourselves.
Pain of the mind is relieved by an abstraction of solid thought. He had bruised his eloquence, for through you may start a sermon from stones to hit the stars, he must be practiced orator who shall descend out of the abstract to take up a heavy lump of the concrete without unseating himself. It is painful to be frustrated in what we propose as our pleasure. I have known a good man wish to have bad news true, merely because he had related them: and we may conceive a saint vexed at not finding a man dead, when he had digested a funeral sermon in his mind, and was ready to bury him. Is there not a sublimity in the obscure? I want something that I cannot understand. Give me the divine that will speak through his nose, whack the pulpit, and make the whole house ring; who will shut his eyes, and open his mouth, and stamp with his foot. It is of no moment whether I understand his words or not; or rather, I would not wish to understand him, for if I did, I would it for granted that it was not so deep as it out to be.
The Winchester Mystery House
Discover the tales of the ghosts and specters that linger in The Winchester Mystery House. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Randolph Harris II International Institute 