The Household of God
Volume 1
The early history of mankind
- Chapter 174 -
A GOSPEL FOR THE OFFENDED
When Sethlahem was once more at the sacrificial altar in the midst of Abedam, Enoch, Jared and the known Abedam he took a deep breath and wanted through a detailed complaint to give vent to his hurt feelings at the insults.
2
But the high Abedam forestalled him and said, as if asking him: "Sethlahem, where are actually the seven?
3
"I see only you alone. How come that you failed in the service you intended to render?
4
"And instead of leading the seven here, you have turned up quite alone and with an offended heart full of bitter complaint.
5
"What am I now to do with you? - But I tell you that if you want to revenge yourself on your seven brothers, write their guilt into the sand. If someone wishes you evil in his heart, bless him as if he were your first born son; then you will be a true, immortal child of eternal Love, full of grace and full of love and all the wisdom out of it.
6
"Behold, what good is a thinking spirit to you if you do not have love? I tell you, you will always grope in the dark. Though you may for a thousand years stare at that distant mountain range and ponder on it so much that your thoughts might grind a hole into a stone, say, will the nature of the blue distance become thereby any clearer to you?
7
"I think not! But if instead of the lengthy, cold pondering you let your heart become aglow, will you not as soon as possible take some action, choose some companions who have a similar longing and set out on a journey to the unknown distance? And when you have arrived there, will you find it exactly as a hundred thousand of your blind thoughts have falsely presented it to you?
8
"Will not there every thoughtless glance reveal more to you than here countless so-called keenest thoughts in a thousand years?
9
"So you can see what a considerable advantage love has before all mental wisdom.
10
"He who has love, that is, the pure love for God the Father of all men and Creator of all things and out of this love for all his brothers, and in a proper, pure measure also for the sisters, has everything. He has eternal life and a clear, holy wisdom, not the dark mental wisdom of the world, which is absolutely useless, except that it gradually matures living man towards death and finally kills him.
11
"However, if you want to attain to true, living wisdom through love, all resentment against your brothers must leave your heart and with it all mental wisdom. If that does not happen you will always be groping in the dark and be even incapable of distinguishing whether you are facing a man or an eternal, almighty God, which to a great extent is the case with you now.
12
"Therefore, first deliberate upon this in your heart. Forgive your brothers however badly they might have treated you, then I, too, will forgive you your foolishness and heal you for everlasting life.
13
"If it annoys you that your brothers think and speak differently from you, why do you not also take into account that your different thoughts are exasperating seven hearts whereas the seven are dealing only with you?
14
"Look, when you are struck and strike again when will there ever be a gain? But if you are in harmony And have love in your heart, You have some gain for a start. This may not too much truth contain, But I am closer to you then: And if so, is that not a gain?
15
"Therefore, go once more to your brothers. Ask their forgiveness and win their hearts, and it will be easy to lead them here and win them for the true, eternal life.
16
"You will never win the defiant with counter-defiance, not even your own child. For in your wisdom you say yourself, and have found, that two forces of the same kind can never become one. Each one will struggle against the other and endeavor to destroy it. Therefore two stones cannot occupy the place of one of them.
17
"Behold, is that not your own theory? And I tell you that this theory is correct and perfectly true.
18
"Have you never observed how the weaker stone gives in to the stronger one? Which one now follows the other and becomes the other's leader and finally the very foundation?
19
"Surely not the stronger one which pushed the weaker from its place, but the weaker that gave way to the stronger. Behold, this too is wisdom!
20
"So go now to your brothers and act accordingly, and you will become their leader and master because of the better inclination of your heart. Amen."