A pure emotion deprives him of personality and
annihilates the self in him. Self must perforce disappear when it is the
Holy Spirit who speaks, when it is God who acts. This is the mood in
which the prophet hears the call, the young mother feels the movement of
the child within, the preacher watches the tears of his audience. So
long as we are conscious of self we are limited, selfish, held in
bondage; when we are in harmony with the universal order, when we
vibrate in unison with God, self disappears. Thus, in a perfectly
harmonious choir, the individual cannot hear himself unless he makes a
false note. The religious state is one of deep enthusiasm, of moved
contemplation, of tranquil ecstasy. But how rare a state it is for us
poor creatures harassed by duty, by necessity, by the wicked world, by
sin, by illness! It is the state which produces inward happiness; but
alas! the foundation of existence, the common texture of our days, is
made up of action, effort, struggle, and therefore dissonance. Perpetual
conflict, interrupted by short and threatened truces--there is a true
picture of our human condition.
Let us hail, then, as an echo from heaven, as the foretaste of a more
blessed economy, these brief moments of perfect harmony, these halts
between two storms.
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