I ask no one to pronounce, for I dare not pronounce myself, what are the possibilities of resistance in the human will to the loving will of God. There are times when they seem to me--thinking of myself more than of others--almost infinite. But I know that there is something which must be infinite. I am obliged to believe in an abyss of love which is deeper than the abyss of death: I dare not lose faith in that love. I sink into death, eternal death, if I do. I must feel that this love is compassing the universe. More about it I cannot know. I leave myself and all to him.
--Frederick Denison Maurice, from Theological Essays, rpt. in Glorious Companions: Five Centuries of Anglican Spirituality by Richard H. Schmidt.
4 comments:
Thank you for this quote -- I am going to look for the book.
Does anyone write things like this anymore -- theological pieces that aren't all tied up in politics and fundamentalism. This makes me want to close my eyes and be in a church with John Donne preaching to me, telling me how to live.
Thanks for stopping by, Elizabeth! Your blog rocks. Glad you liked the quote. It's funny, Schmidt deems Maurice a "muddy writer" who produced "a swampy thicket of overgrown sentences and tangled paragraphs." I find this excerpt pleasingly roundabout. If you got the book, you'll see that Donne is in there, too!
Oh, and someone does write things like this nowadays--Anne Lamott, for one.
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