Bunyan Characters (3rd Series) by Alexander Whyte
page 35 of 234 (14%)
page 35 of 234 (14%)
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may make use of all the good things of paradise without causing
disfavour, or hatred, or envy, for there is no contrary affection there, but all hearts there are knit together in love. In paradise they love one another, and rejoice in the beauty, loveliness, and gladness of one another. No one esteems or accounts himself more excellent than another in paradise; but every one has great joy in another, and rejoices in another's fair beauty, whence their love to one another continually increases, so that they lead one another by the hand, and so friendly kiss one another.' Thus the blessed Behmen saw paradise and had it in his heart as he sat over his hammer and lapstone in his solitary stall. For of such as Jacob Behmen and John Bunyan is the kingdom of heaven, and all such saintly souls have paradise restored again and improved upon in their own hearts. 4. And for largeness a place so copious as to contain all the world. Over against the word 'copious' Bunyan hangs for a key, Ecclesiastes third and eleventh; and under it Miss Peacock adds this as a note--'_Copious_, spacious. Old French, _copieux_; Latin, _copiosus_, plentiful.' The human heart, as we have already read to-night, is the highest, greatest, strongest, and noblest part of human nature. And so it is. Fearfully and wonderfully made as is the whole of human nature, that fear and that wonder surpass themselves in the spaciousness and the copiousness of the human heart. For what is it that the human heart has not space for, and to spare? After the whole world is received home into a human heart, there is room, and, indeed, hunger, for another world, and after that for still another. The sun is--I forget how many times bigger than our whole world, and yet we can open our heart and take down the sun into it, and shut him out again and restore him to his immeasurable distances in the heavens, and all in the twinkling of an eye. As for instance. As I wrote these lines I read a report of a lecture by Sir |
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