"It is only through Christ we can see the love, goodness, and wisdom
of God. He is to us what the telescope is to the astronomer, with
this difference: He so exalts and purifies us that our subject
becomes the power to see. The telescope is a medium through which the
boundaries of our vision are enlarged, but it is passive. Christ is
an active Mediator who begets us if we will, and gives us power to
see by becoming one with Him."

"May 3.--We all look upon this world as suits our moods,
assimilating only such food as suits our dispositions--and no doubt
there is sufficient variety to suit all. . . . Every personality
individualizes the world to himself not subjectively but truly
objectively. . . . Every individual ought, perhaps, to be satisfied
with his own character. For it is an important truth of Fourier's
that attractions are in proportion to destinies. Fear in proportion
to hope, pain in proportion to pleasure, strength in proportion to
destiny, etc. But it is mysterious that we know all this. 'Man has
become as one of us.' We are all dead.

"Ah, mystic! dost thou show thyself in this shape? But now, being
dead, shall we receive life and immortality (for I imagine
immortality the solidarity of life--i.e., the union of the two lives,
here and heaven) through Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, and
so lose 'the knowledge of good and evil.' For as in Adam all died, so
shall ye all be made alive through Jesus Christ.' The effect of the
fall was literally the knowledge of good and evil. God knows no evil,
and when we become one with Him, through the Mediator, we shall
regain our previous state. Knowledge is the effect of sin, and is
perhaps destined to correct itself. Consciousness and knowledge go
together. Spontaneity and life are one. Knowledge is no gain, for it