The Household of God
Volume 1
The early history of mankind
- Chapter 52 -
ENOCH'S MORNING HYMN
The two soon left the hut and hurried towards the small round hillock, which they ascended, for it was only ten man-lengths higher than the spot where Adam's hut was standing. There were no trees surrounding it and the tops of the cedars reached only to the foot of this free hill up to, which an only narrow but otherwise quite comfortable path was leading.
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They arrived on the summit, according to your reckoning seven minutes before sunrise. There Adam sat down on the ground, thanked Me for the new day he was experiencing and asked Me for My blessing to enable him to bless effectively in My name all his children in My love and with My grace.
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(N.B. What you now seldom observe and what the world regards as silliness, wherefore I and My blessing have to stay away as all this for a long time has no longer been needed!)
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When he had done this, he perceived the presence of My Spirit, and he blessed all his children before sunrise.
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When Adam had given the blessing out of Me to all his children, not forgetting those in the lowlands, the first rays of the morning sun broke forth over the wide horizon, and Adam wept for joy as his eyes beheld My grace shining across the wide plains of the earth and that through My merciful love the sun began once more to warm the ground of the mountains, which had become cold overnight where it was always colder than in the lowlands, as is the case still today.
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After having thus rejoiced, Adam saw Enoch full of joy was reminded of him and admonished him to speak while the sun was rising as he had asked him earlier that morning, immediately after the morning prayer.
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Upon this request Enoch promptly began to speak out of love, and this was his speech:
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"O father, you demand a speech from me of which I am not capable! You want me now to sing a hymn to the morning, as did Seth who is a very gifted speaker on such subjects, whereas I am only a blind perceiver of love.
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"Therefore, be patient if I cannot do it like the exalted Seth. However, what is stirring in my heart I will give forth to the best ability of my weak tongue.
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"O father, what is this dim, weak, transitory morning compared with the eternal morning of the spirit out of the boundless love of the eternal, holy Father! This sun with its faint shine, what is its light compared with the endless glory of the love in God? Nothing but a black dot in the rays of the divine love. Yes, it is the last starting point of a tiny sparkle of grace from the eternal Love in God, and we marvel at its majesty! What would we do if we were capable of beholding the eternal, primordial source of all light in the love of the Father in all its holiness?
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"Far be it from me to blame the sun because of it, but I say that it is meant to be a teacher and to tell us: 'O you weak people, why do you gaze at me, a faintly shining light for the earth, and marvel at me? That which on my surface dazzles your eye, how unimportant it is compared with what you carry in your heart. Had I been given as much as the lowest among you, truly, my light would just about penetrate to the distant poles of infinity with undiminished force. However, where my rays are unable to proceed, the eye of your spirit still spreads its rays powerfully and then receives fresher and even more powerful ones from the eternal morning of the love in God.'
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"O father, look, the sun is right to teach us this with its first ray! For when we go within and consider the great, endless scope of our thoughts and the still greater one of our feelings and, finally, the greatest of all- our love for God, which surely must be boundless, as only this enables us to comprehend the infinite, eternal God and to love Him, how can we almost worship and consider magnificent and great the light of the dust, which has sufficient room in the eye of our flesh, when the eternal, great and holy Father lets Himself be loved and readily grasped in this love?
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"Through our eyes our hearts enjoy the gentle shine of the morning sun and all the animals noisily greet the gracious mother of the day. The calices of the flowers open up in order to greedily absorb the first mild gifts of the morning sun's bright blessing and the distant wavelets of the sea frisk about like young children and, like them, pull their shining mother at her wide garment of light. - These are indeed picturesque thought-forms; but when I think that for experiencing all this beauty it always needs a human whose heart is capable of forming such picturesque thoughts when his mind has faithfully rested in the love of God, there is the comforting afterthought of a true order. Considering this, all such morning and other scenes would not be really worth anything if they could be neither seen, sensed nor felt and thus externally grasped by a human with an indwelling living soul within which dwells an eternal spirit of love out of God.
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"Since we are quite aware of this, how come that we always rejoice when the sun according to the will of God is made to rise in order to appear at a certain time? But when we consider our free spirit we hardly wonder when we behold a light in it that, never vanishing, keeps radiating to and fro in marvelous freedom with undiminished love-capacity and force in the endless regions of the eternal, holy Father's grace and love!
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"Yes, we marvel at a dangling dewdrop when its shimmering radiance and glitter tickle our lustful eye, whereas we hardly pay attention to divine Love's immeasurable wonder-drops of life within us. When we feel a fresh little morning breeze, oh then we rejoice, but that an abundance of the freshest breeze of life from God's eternal morning keeps blowing upon us continuously in the face of the sun of the spirit for an eternal and increasingly freer life, oh, about that we do not much rejoice. Thus we strain our eyesight gazing across the great expanse of the surface of the sea and mightily enjoy the light swaying of the sparkling waves, but the great waves of light from the endless sea of divine grace often pass us by unnoticed and our joy at them is very limited. We also marvel at a red-, green- and blue- shimmering wing of a butterfly, but an exalted thought in the breast of an immortal brother is easily discarded as the poor work of deceptive fancy. Thus often the nest of a bird is admired and God justly praised for it, whereas an invaluable and beautiful work of the free immortal spirit is regarded with contempt.
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"Oh what a sublime feeling the sough of the cedars gives our heart when a bold wind relentlessly blows through their tender branches, but the holy sough of the spirit of eternal Love is ignored by the wind-dizzied ear which listens to the language of the storm and pays no attention to the loud call of God's voice in one's own breast.
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"O father, since I am speaking before you, let me continue to speak from my heart which realizes before God how truly unreasonable it is and outside of all order if someone has a large and a small vessel and puts only a little into the large one, and into the small one so much that it cannot be held by the vessel, but spills out around it and is trampled underfoot, whilst the large vessel is almost empty and so much could have been placed into it. Our physical body is the small vessel, which we always mightily overload. Our spirit of love, however, as the boundless large vessel, we mostly ignore and as a result we put shockingly little into it.
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"We make our offerings regularly and believe to please the Lord when we throw ourselves into the dust in front of the sacrificial fire. But these are all things that overload the small vessel, whereas the large vessel of pure love in spirit and in truth, the only one pleasing to the Lord, is not given much consideration.
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" I am of the opinion that since we do the one for a visible sign of our spiritual blindness we should not neglect the essential thing on which alone depends the true eternal life of the spirit of love in God! Of this we are reminded every morning and by every sunrise, as owing to the blindness of our spirit we do not know whence it comes and what it is. Also the bark covering a tree reminds us of this, for no one can maintain that the tree is there for the bark; but the bark is there for the sake of the tree to protect its creative powers out of God and keep them hidden from our fleshly curiosity. To the spirit it may be a hint from God, saying:
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"'Behold, I have concealed the life from the flesh so that death may not catch sight of it, and I have veiled My property within you that you may carry it within well preserved until the time of unveiling. There is a mighty activity under the bark, working and arranging the eternal God's wise and lovingly earnest holy love; there mighty streams of the active life out of God are rushing!'
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"O father, thus everything, everything we may ever see with our fleshly eyes is nothing but a dead garment inside of which a quiet life is active which is meant to attract us, but first of all our life within us. Once we have found this in the pure love for God, the wonders around us become alive; wonders by whose external, lifeless appearance we have already so often allowed ourselves to be carried away for nothing, almost worshipping them.
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"Whoever would want to admire a drop of water because it is water? What, then, is one expected to do at the sight of the sea or of a fertile rain falling in countless drops from above upon the earth making it fruitful?
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"But once the spirit discovers his own image in the drop, O father, he will begin to gather for the vessel of life and have plenty to wonder about when in himself, as well as in his brothers, he will discover the greatest wonder which is the eternal, boundless love of God full of the greatest humility within us! O father, behold I have now finished; do receive it graciously and show me graciously Your further will! Amen."