The Childhood of Jesus
The Gospel of James
Biographical Gospel of the Lord
- Chapter 225 -
The Long and Short Approach To God
CYRENIUS NOW ASKED the little Child, saying, 'O my life, why may or why should one not search more deeply into Your works?
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Why did You declare such searching to be detrimental to one's love for You?
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I would say it is just the opposite: Once one gets to know Your works in ever greater depth and clarity, one must obviously increase in love toward You and not become weaker therein!
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For it is already the case even among us humans that a man also becomes all the more dear to us the more perfections we discover in him.
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'How much more then will that be the case with You, the Lord and Creator of all things great, perfect and glorious if we learn to know You ever more and more!
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Therefore I would really like to entreat You myself, o my life, that You would give me a bit more enlightenment concerning this unusual star.
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For my heart tells me that I will be able to love You quite completely only then, when I am able to recognize You more and more completely in Your almighty, truly wise and wondrous works.
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No one can really love You as the only Lord and God if he does not know You before that.
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Thus our knowing in our souls who You are is in fact the chief reason of our love for You,
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just as I also first had to become acquainted with my wife before I could take her into my heart. If I had not come to know her, she surely would not have become my wife.'
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Here the little Child smiled and replied, 'Oh My dear Cyrenius, if you were to give Me such wise instruction more often, I would surely become a thoroughly shrewd human being also!
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See, you have really told Me lots of new things here.
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But consider this: Just now you were a teacher to Me, for you tried to prove to Me that My warning in regard to overmuch searching in My works as being detrimental for the soul of man in the realm of his love toward Me did not apply - and that, on the contrary, such searching is the proper way.
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How then should I, as your pupil, instruct you in matters still unknown to you?
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If there are better grounds for love known to you than your God and Creator gives you, how then can you entreat Him for more profound enlightenment?
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Or do you really suppose that God will allow Himself to be swayed to do something by reasonings arrived at and presented by men as if He were a judge according to worldly law?
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Oh Cyrenius, therein you are still in very great error!
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'See, I alone know My eternal order which is the mother of all things!
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Out of this order you too have gone forth! The love of your spirit toward Me is your very own life!
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Now if you want to turn this love away from Me all the more, when in fact you have Me right before your eyes in the flesh,
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say, will such a foolish increase in your love really be justified?
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'Yes, he who still does not know Me nor has Me in his heart, he may indeed attain Me in the manner you advocate -
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but if someone already has Me on his lap, to what end should your gradual degrees of approach serve him?'
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At this Cyrenius was greatly taken aback, took the matter deeply to heart, and no one asked about the comet any more.