Page 41 - All India Magazine May-2024

Wherever thou seest a great end, be sure of a great beginning.
Where a monstrous and painful destruction appals thy mind, con-
sole it with the certainty of a large and great creation. God is there
not only in the still small voice, but in the fire and in the whirlwind.
*
The hand of the divine Artist works often as if it were unsure of its
genius and its material. It seems to touch test and leave, to pick
up and throw away and pick up again, to labour and fail and botch
and repiece together. Surprises and disappointments are the or-
der of his work before all things are ready. What was selected, is
cast away into the abyss of reprobation; what was rejected, be-
comes the cornerstone of a mighty edifice. But behind all this is
the sure eye of a knowledge which surpasses our reason and the
slow smile of an infinite ability.
*
Wherefore God hammers so fiercely at his world, tramples and
kneads it like dough, casts it so often into the blood-bath and the
red hell-heat of the furnace? Because humanity in the mass is still
a hard, crude and vile ore which will not otherwise be smelted and
shaped; as is his material, so is his method. Let it help to trans-
mute itself into nobler and purer metal, his ways with it will be
gentler and sweeter, much loftier and fairer its uses.
*
Wherefore he selected or made such a material, when he had
all infinite possibility to choose from? Because of his divine Idea
which saw before it not only beauty and sweetness and purity, but
also force and will and greatness. Despise not force, nor hate it for
the ugliness of some of its faces, nor think that love only is God.
All perfect perfection must have something in it of the stuff of the
hero and even of the Titan. But the greatest force is born out of
the greatest difficulty.
Thoughts and Glimpses, CWSA 13: 392-93

All India Magazine, May 2024 41