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Even in the vintage it is not allowed to glory in the results of the year, "the branches are torn down and trodden in the wine-press, while the vine stands stripped and desolate." So it has always been. The well-being of the world has been greatly promoted through the Church, but always at an infinite cost to herself.
I said to God, "They are very mighty." God said, "Ay, exceeding great." And I listened. God asked me what I was listening to. And I said, "A sound of weeping, and I hear the sound of strokes, but I cannot tell whence it comes." God said, "It is the echo of the wine-press lingering still among the coping-stones upon the mounds. A banquet-house stood here." And he called me to come further.
It is here that they then all eat, and in it the women of the establishment perform their work, spinning and weaving and mending. Off from the court will be situated the wine-press, or the olive-press, the-granaries, the fruit mellowing on mats, and the various rooms or bins where wine is fermented and stored, or where the olive-oil is treated and stocked.
They are to be trodden underfoot by the Messiah, like grapes in a wine-press, until the gushing blood shall rise to the height of the horse's bridle. In the writings of Paul the dogma of the resurrection assumes a very different aspect.
He said, "A vine truss, bruised in the wine-press!" And at the head of the grave stood a cross, and on its foot lay a crown of thorns. And as I turned to go, I looked backward. The wine-press and the banquet-house were gone; but the grave yet stood. And when I came to the edge of a long ridge there opened out before me a wide plain of sand.
He, the Man who has penetrated to the heart of every form of sorrow, and left a blessing there; He who has watched in silence by every kind of earthly grief, and found its antidote: the Man who trod the wine-press alone He will be with you. And, since He is with you, see to it you acquit yourself well in His presence.
There, seated all alone upon a bundle of hay, just inside the little skylight, I had a capital view. What a throng! The old galleries were bending under their weight, the roofs were visibly swaying. I shuddered to think of what might happen. It seemed inevitable that they would all come down together like grapes in the wine-press, heaped up in a sea of heads.
And I looked; and it seemed to me that behind the ruins lay still a large circular hollow within the earth where a foot of the wine-press had stood. I said to God, "How came it that this large house fell?" God said, "Because the earth was sodden." He called me to come further. And at last we came upon a hill where blue waters played, and white marble lay upon the earth.
After that first explosion the flow was more sober, and I looked upon the product of my wine-press more coolly. Continuations almost always sag a little. I will not say that of my own second effort, but if others said it, I should not be disposed to wonder at or to dispute them. This series of papers was not so much a continuation as a resurrection.
He who enters by me will find pasture, but he who enters elsewhere, is a thief and a murderer, as it is written: I am a good shepherd; a good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep; so I also give my body and life and soul for my sheep, my body to the tower and my life to the sword, or fire, or the wine-press, where it will be pressed out of the flesh as the blood of Christ on the cross.
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