He believed this all the more, and with trepidation,
because of the divine gloom and silence wherein dwelt the unseen
Paraclete, Whose symbols were a dove and a mighty wind, to sin against
Whom was a sin beyond forgiveness, the eternal mysterious secret Being
to Whom, as God, the priests offered up mass once a year, robed in the
scarlet of the tongues of fire.
The imagery through which the nature and kinship of the Three Persons
of the Trinity were darkly shadowed forth in the books of devotion
which he read--the Father contemplating from all eternity as in a
mirror His Divine Perfections and thereby begetting eternally the
Eternal Son and the Holy Spirit proceeding out of Father and Son from
all eternity--were easier of acceptance by his mind by reason of their
august incomprehensibility than was the simple fact that God had loved
his soul from all eternity, for ages before he had been born into the
world, for ages before the world itself had existed.
He had heard the names of the passions of love and hate pronounced
solemnly on the stage and in the pulpit, had found them set forth
solemnly in books and had wondered why his soul was unable to harbour
them for any time or to force his lips to utter their names with
conviction.
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