orthodoxy-第44节
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the prompt stillness in a sick…room。 We are perhaps permitted tragedy
as a sort of merciful comedy: because the frantic energy of divine
things would knock us down like a drunken farce。 We can take our
own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities
of the angels。 So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence;
while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear。
Joy; which was the small publicity of the pagan; is the gigantic
secret of the Christian。 And as I close this chaotic volume I open
again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I
am again haunted by a kind of confirmation。 The tremendous figure
which fills the Gospels towers in this respect; as in every other;
above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall。 His pathos
was natural; almost casual。 The Stoics; ancient and modern;
were proud of concealing their tears。 He never concealed His tears;
He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight; such as
the far sight of His native city。 Yet He concealed something。
Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining
their anger。 He never restrained His anger。 He flung furniture
down the front steps of the Temple; and asked men how they expected
to escape the damnation of Hell。 Yet He restrained something。
I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality
a thread that must be called shyness。 There was something that He hid
from all men when He went up a mountain to pray。 There was something
that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation。
There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when
He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was
His mirth。
End