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There has been throughout present to him the conscience of "a soul defiled with every stain." And at the same moment, under circumstances unexplained, his spiritual ear is purged to hear a "Heavenly Teacher." The voice takes the form of the touching and effective hymn, which has doubtless found a place since in many an evangelical hymn-book, beginning
"Saint John makes you shudder when he cries out that this night of the soul is bitter and terrible, and that the being who suffers it is plunged alive into hell. But when the old man is purged out, when he is scraped at every seam, raked over every face, light springs out, and God appears. Then the soul casts itself like a child into His arms, and the incomprehensible fusion takes place.
Even so must the body be purged of its humours to make it a fit receptacle for illumination and knowledge. So he began a series of terrible fasts and sat "with set teeth and tongue pressed against the palate" until in this spiritual wrestling the sweat poured down from his arm pits.
That is, much progress was accounted for through the selection by the females of the superior males. The belief in sexual selection involved a long string of corollaries, of which biology has about purged itself, but they hang on tenaciously in sociological and popular literature.
Gradually, the Ranger's emotional stability returned, and he knew that was due in no little part to Hovan's support. When the worst of his internal storm had passed, he felt purged still certain he would die, but now accepting the fear instead of ignoring it so that it ate blindly at his confidence. He rested for a moment more, then looked up at his sponsor. "It's okay now."
But I detest humbug, and I believe that so long as you and your Mallorings go on blindly dosing yourselves with humbug about duty and superiority, so long will you see things as they are not. And until you see things as they are, purged of all that sickening cant, you will none of you really move to make the conditions of life more and ever more just.
Even Scott was touched by the grossness of prosperity, though he purged his fault in despair and tears. But such poets as did not guess their own greatness, and remained humble and peaceable, how much sweeter and gentler is their example, walking humbly in the company of the mighty, and hardly seeming to guess that they are of the happy number.
Yes; have faith in God. Nothing in thee which he has made shall see corruption; for it is a thought of God's, and no thought of his can perish. Nothing shall be purged out of thee but thy disease; nothing shall be burnt out of thee but thy dross; and that in thee shall be saved, and live to all eternity, of which God said at the beginning, Let us make man in our own image. Yes.
Now and then you also find offerings of corn and fruits before her altar, in acknowledgment of good crops which the Madonna has made to grow; and again you find rows of silver hearts, typical of the sinful hearts which her intercession has caused to be purged.
A valley, when a battle has done with it, is nothing but earth exactly what it was when God said, "Let there be Light;" a man just something with a mind purged of the past and ready to observe afresh. I question whether a return to old environments will ever restore to us the whole of our old tastes and affections. War is, I think, utterly destructive.
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