As to mysticism, to go along with it even counter to fact and to reason may sometimes be tempting, though to do so would take me right away off the terra firma of practicable duty and business into the limbo of unrevealed things, the forbidden terra incognita of vague hopes and hypothetical aspirations. But when I lose my legs, I lose my head; I am seized with spiritual vertigo and meagrims unutterable.
It seems His newer will
We should not think at all of Him, but turn,
And of the world that He has given us make
What best we may.
What we are we know (says the beloved Apostle, does he not?), or at any rate, can make some sort of guess, which is much more than we can about what we shall be: howbeit we know, or rather hope, that if we have done something here, it will count for something there; nor will those be nothing to each other there that have consorted faithfully here.
Lay not your hand upon the veil of the inner sanctuary, to try and lift it up; go, thou proselyte of the gate, and do thy service where it is permitted thee. Is it for nothing, but for the foolish souls of men to be discontented and repine and whimper at, that He made this very tolerably beautiful earth, with its logic and its arithmetic, and its exact and punctual multifarious arrangements, &c. &c.? Is it the end and object of all finite creation that sentimental human simpletons may whine about their infinite longings? Was it ordered that twice two should make four, simply for the intent that boys and girls should be cut to the heart that they do not make five? Be content, when the veil is raised, perhaps they will make five! who knows?
April 3.
As for the objects of life, heaven knows! they differ with one’s opportunities. (a) Work for others—political, mechanical, or as it may be. (b) Personal relations. (c) Making books, pictures, music, &c. (d) Living in one’s shell. ‘They also serve who only stand and wait.’ I speak as a philosopher, otherwise fool; but you may look at things under some such heads.
It is odd that I was myself in a most Romanizing frame of mind yesterday, which I very rarely am. I was attracted by the spirituality of it. But what has hitherto always come before me as the truth is rather that—