Page:The Garden of Eden (Doughty).djvu/102

96 ideas; the natural mind with gross natural conceptions.

Now in this matter of cursings, as human utterances they are evil in themselves, and spring from evil in the heart of him who utters them. And men of evil passions instinctively ascribe to the Lord, when they read expressions of this kind, the same fire of passion which they feel within themselves. But the Lord is a Being of infinite love, charitv and mercy. A curse, therefore, when attributed in the Scripture to Him, must be an expression of that love, charity and mercy; for we cannot think of Him as capable of expressing anything else. When the poet says,

we do not, in our poetic ardor, literally attribute to the sun a peculiar anger with the desert of Sahara above all other lands, under the influence of which it withers all attempts at herbage, and dries up ruthlessly each bubbling fount or stream. We know that it is but a poetical method of expressing a fact resulting from the atmospheric and climatic conditions of that arid region. We know that it is the same sun which shines so beneficently on our own prolific land. He sends forth the same heat, and the same amount and kind, to America that he does to Sahara. But our position, and our