The Household of God
Volume 2
Rise and spiritual prime of the first world empire Hanoch
- Chapter 260 -
THE SPEECH OF THE SPIRITUALLY BLIND RATIONALIST (24th February 1843)
After this speech the company returned to their former seats, full of respect.
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In turn, the former main speaker went to the Lord and said to Him: "Behold, here I am as you have summoned me through my brothers; but I hardly know why you summoned me.
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"However, I will speak before you and show you what it is that prevents me from believing what now all my friends, brothers and sisters as I can see believe who are also visibly blissful since they believe in your immediate divinity.
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"You are surely as finite and limited as I am and are of course unable to reach further with your hand than I or jump a greater distance with your feet than I am with mine.
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This neither you nor anyone else can deny. Furthermore, you are fully present here and no part of your body and thus certainly none of your spirit is missing.
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Thereby I do not mean to maintain that you are not what the king, or now leader, Lamech called you and what most wisely you have now proclaimed yourself to be. But I should really like to learn who exactly sustains, carries and leads the entire creation! Who now enlivens the endlessly great earth, who creates the winds, who puts restraint on the endlessly great ocean, who moves forward the floods of the rivers, who nourishes the natural fire of the mountains, who ripens the green crops, and who watches over the life of all beings while you, as I said, are now amongst us undivided?
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"Look, this is for a thinking human a question of the utmost importance; unless this is completely cleared up in me, I cannot fully accept you in downright earnest and in all the fullness of might and power as the sale eternal God, Creator and Sustainer of all things.
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"It is true, the love of the heart can do this, just like children when they believe without doubt that the people caring for them are their parents; but can this be applied generally?
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"I say: No! Just let someone give away an infant to a far-away place and then show himself after twenty years as the true father and he as the father will soon be convinced that love alone will not be sufficient to prove to the son his fatherhood; in that case one has to resort to other evidence by which to convince the son that the father presenting himself as father is in earnest his true father.
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"Once this has happened, the son's love will anyway stir up the first feelings for the father; until this happens, the son is advised not to love the father as a father until he has recognized him rationally as such.
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"Verily true, the father who would in all earnest demand this of his son must be devoid of all discernment!
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"Behold, you now demand the same thing of us and thus also of me! How can this be reconciled with your former wisdom?
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"So far all except for me believe that you are completely and truly God from eternity; behold, this is a weak faith engendered only by Lamech's and your own wise persuasion, which can therefore evaporate as easily as it came into being, and soon the people will again be walking in great darkness and inviting God's judgment.
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"For once this urged-on love will easily and soon grow cold, also the weak faith will perish along with it
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"However, if we can recognize you by way of our reason - and this without doubt just as we see that one plus one makes two -, love will result spontaneously and will henceforth have to last imperishably like the inescapably true basic calculation, and God will never find it necessary to judge His peoples but only to make them happy always.
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"So answer my question and I will believe you undoubting; if you do not answer it, I remain what I am and adhere to the God of Farak."