TO God the
sufferance of infinite pain is the same as suffering none at all. For pain is a
concept and a thing beneath God and therefore is absorbed into destruction by
His complete Preponderance. This explanation is primarily the cause of the
anodyne effect of theistic worship (when it is truly theistic worship
that is, not disguisedly so), for through those means the images and intentions
of the mind are brought into a kind of parallelism or inspired image of the
Divine Whole. That this can never be achieved to perfection in human life is
necessary, as the complete concept takes after the complete thing which is God
for being intolerably great and grand to my imperfect intellect and condition.
However, it is as intolerable as the intense rays of midsummer to a poor
neglected flower; but with shade and water originating in this Sun yet
generated through the intermediating organs of His Providence (that is, through
other beings and circumstances—modes) I can, I trust, find health and happiness
for a time, though it be by means of thirty-nine articles, an old book of the
saints, or an unwieldy local catechism.
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