It is false, if
literally applied to marriage. For God is the bride or bridegroom of
the soul. Heaven is not the pairing of two, but the communion of all
souls. We meet, and dwell an instant under the temple of one thought,
and part as though we parted not, to join another thought in other
fellowships of joy. So far from there being anything divine in the low
and proprietary sense of, Do you love me? it is only when you leave
and lose me, by casting yourself on a sentiment which is higher than
both of us, that I draw near, and find myself at your side; and I am
repelled, if you fix your eye on me, and demand love. In fact, in the
spiritual world, we change sexes every moment. You love the worth in
me; then I am your husband: but it is not me, but the worth, that fixes
the love; and that worth is a drop of the ocean of worth that is beyond
me. Meantime, I adore the greater worth in another, and so become his
wife. He aspires to a higher worth in another spirit, and is wife of
receiver of that influence.
Whether a self-inquisitorial habit, that he grew into, from jealousy
of the sins to which men of thought are liable, he has acquired, in
disentangling and demonstrating that particular form of moral disease,
an acumen which no conscience can resist.
Pages:
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134