Friday, January 09, 2009

abyss of love

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:

Elizabeth said...

Thank you for this quote -- I am going to look for the book.

Elizabeth said...

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.

Unknown said...

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!

Unknown said...

Oh, and someone does write things like this nowadays--Anne Lamott, for one.