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But I venture to think that that is a mistake; and that what is meant by the symbol is just what is expressed by the verbal revelation which accompanied it, and that was this: 'I AM THAT I AM. The fire that did not burn out is the emblem of the divine nature which does not tend to death because it lives, nor to exhaustion because it energises, nor to emptiness because it bestows, but after all times is the same; lives by its own energy and is independent.
Nothing is more interesting in tracing Virgil's genius, than to note how each fullest development of his talent subsumes and embraces those that had gone before it; how his mind energises in a continuous mould, and seems to harp with almost jealous constancy on strings it has once touched. The deeper we study him, the more clearly is this feature seen.
As is said in an Eastern Scripture: "Having permeated this whole universe with one fragment of Myself I remain." Of that higher life of His we can know nothing. But of the fragment of His life which energises His system we may know something in the lower levels of its manifestation. We may not see Him, but we may see His power at work.
Protestantism, in this perfectly instinctive trustfulness and self-assertion, is not only prior to Christianity but more primitive than reason and even than man. The plants and animals, if they could speak, would express their attitude to their destiny in the Protestant fashion. "He that formed us," they would say, "lives and energises within us.
The delicate graces of those flowery summits of speech which the ideal nature, when it energises in speech, creates, must overhang in this design the rude actuality which the untrained nature in man, forgotten of art, is always producing.
Some people reckon that it was this astonishing visionary who invented wireless, remote control, robotics and a form of X-ray photography using high frequency radio waves. A patent which he took out in the U.S.A. in 1890 ultimately led to the design of the humble ignition coil which energises billions and billions of spark plugs in all the motor cars of the world.
We know the temperament which from the earliest hour consumes with eager desire for knowledge, and energises spontaneously with unceasing and joyful activity in that bright and pure morning of intellectual curiosity, which neither the dull tumultuous needs of life nor the mists of spiritual misgiving have yet come up to make dim.
It has its real but partial embodiment in this present time, when, in the midst of the whole community of believing and loving souls, which stretches wider than any society that calls itself a Church, the living God abides and energises by His Spirit and by His Son in the souls of them that believe upon Him.
We carry our brokenness to God; we put our helpless will at His feet, and He energises it, and sends us back from the altar-steps, or from the glory where we have met with Him, able to say, "I delight to do Thy will, O my God."
This state is no ecstasy, but smooth, silent, high living in which we learn heavenly manners. This is Passive or Quiet Contemplation. High Contemplation ends in Contact with God, in ecstasy and rapture. It is not to be sought for, and we cannot reach it for ourselves; but it is to be enjoyed when God calls, when He assists the soul, when He energises her.
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