CHAP. II - OF ILLUSION

Summary

From the ingrained fashion

Of this earthly nature

Which mars thy creature

From grief which is but passion;

Good Lord deliver us!

THAT man is being raised from a dead state into life gives a solution of the otherwise insoluble problems of our experience. The light which this thought throws upon sin, showing it to be a necessary result of the death from which man has to be delivered (the evil of which it displays and brings to our consciousness, but cannot increase), is but one example of its bearing upon the mysteries that throng around us. Our perplexity arises from our inadequate apprehension of the fact that our present state of being is not the LIFE of man; that ours is not the true humanity. For, thereby, we tacitly take ourselves always as the standard, and assuming in our thoughts that which we feel as that which is, we surround ourselves with darkness; not reflecting that a being in a wrong state must feel, as well as act, wrongly. Thus, for example, has come an utter confusion into our ideas respecting good and evil. For it is evident that the raising man from death to life is good, the only possible true good for him; and whatever things are included in, or necessary for, that end must be also perfectly good. But these things are felt as evil by us; to us they are evil, involving the loss of that which we value, the failure of that which we attempt, the bearing of that which is painful.