For should I ask you who
hear me now, you would all reply thoughtlessly, and just because
I ask you from this place, 'Faith is first.'
"No, in very truth, it is not. Watch over your child, as it
struggles for breath on the outermost verge of life, or see
your wife follow the child to that outermost verge, beside
herself for anxiety and sleeplessness,--then love will teach
you that _life comes first_. And never from this day on will
I seek God or God's will in any form of words, in any sacrament,
or in any book or any place, as if He were first and foremost to
be found there; no, life is first and foremost--life as we win
it from the depths of despair, in the victory of the light, in
the grace of self-devotion, in our intercourse with living
human kind. God's supreme word to us is life, our highest
worship of Him is love for the living. This lesson, self-evident
as it is, was needed by me more than by most others. This it
is that in various ways and upon many grounds I have hitherto
rejected,--and of late most of all. But never more shall
words be the highest for me, nor symbols, but the eternal
revelation of life. Never more will I freeze fast in doctrine,
but let the warmth of life melt my will.
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