That things
which cannot appear save to the eye capable of seeing them, that things
which cannot be recognized save by the mind of a certain development,
should be examined by eye incapable, and pronounced upon by mind
undeveloped, is absurd. The deliverance the message offers is a change
such that the man shall _be_ the rightness of which he talked: while his
soul is not a hungered, athirst, aglow, a groaning after
righteousness--that is, longing to be himself honest and upright, it is
an absurdity that he should judge concerning the way to this rightness,
seeing that, while he walks not in it, he is and shall be a dishonest
man: he knows not whither it leads and how can he know the way! What he
_can_ judge of is, his duty at a given moment--and that not in the
abstract, but as something to be by him _done_, neither more, nor less,
nor other than _done_. Thus judging and doing, he makes the only
possible step nearer to righteousness and righteous judgement; doing
otherwise, he becomes the more unrighteous, the more blind. For the man
who knows not God, whether he believes there is a God or not, there can
be, I repeat, no judgement of things pertaining to God.
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