At various periods in time poor humanity standing aside like helpless children, had seen great commotions on the premises, apparent catastrophes, and seeming opposition to things as they should be. Humanity had actually seen the lightning “strike” and demolish; and there was marvelous unity in co-operation of labor when the lightning did strike. Nevertheless the real status of things was not thereby changed. Man imagined that the edifice itself would fall, and the world come to an end; a mass of débris to be blown away, much like nebulous mist or a comet’s tail is scattered and disappears in space. Man had seen such things with his “field-glasses;” similarly man presumed to know. He really knew just so much of the building and its eternal purpose as the present stage of progress permitted—no more, no less. Of many things he could be but a spectator; and when he manufactured his glasses for greater depths of penetration, he reduced his scope (field), and less and less grew the light upon his lens.
Thus far there had been no real catastrophe; it was merely the taking down of scaffolding amid a cloud of dust and rubbish. The scaffolding removed, the Temple stood behind safe and erect; its beauty more apparent than ever before. A new façade had been brought to light for the admiration of all who cultivated their inborn capacity for appreciation; both worshipers and non-worshipers alike.
It was during the crises of scaffold-demolishing, when there was much talk of what would happen when the world dissolved, that absurd disputes had arisen among the crowd of lookers-on. Non-worshipers, in their conceit, offered criticisms, although in fact they knew only “the little” that is vouchsafed to all mankind. Theological fanatics asserted themselves, saying with intensity:
“You have neglected your opportunities, and now it’s too late. You’ll be condemned.”
To which came, of course, the practical responsive application:
“Be condemned!—yourself!” Hence the sobriquet, “condemned,” popular in application to this day as a verb of intensity.
Such dogmatic assertions and petty recriminations were really absurd in this presence; disputes embodying mere words; since naught is condemned in nature where each day’s work is pronounced “good,” and where “there is no condemnation” to those who seek the Truth and follow in it; and where the Divine Voice of a man to his brother man has pronounced the dictum: “For this cause came I, the Truth, into this world, to save it.”
This Himalaya Cathedral stood in a region where the rain-fall was appalling. It was more sudden and more terrific than occurs elsewhere. Torrents, apparently devastating, passed that way, carrying all loose impedimenta before them, gathering fresh strength by momentum as they rushed headlong into the depths. Humanity stood aghast, wiseacres felt confident that nothing could withstand the force of these downpours. Having observed similar phenomena on a smaller scale, therefore these reasoners concluded it must, must forebode the worst, annihilation.
It was then that the voice in nature, resonant through the Cathedral, actually laughed them to scorn for their blindness.
From the beginning nature had abhorred the idea of annihilation, and would never permit a vacuum where she had built so beautiful a Temple. Truth destroys not, but fulfils; it is not destructive, but constructive. Annihilation, a vacuum, is an abstract conception without a concrete embodiment even in physics; and less still where the Mind of Nature and the Spirit that is Holy dominate.