The world was vanity; the flesh was dust and ashes. 'A man,'
Gordon
wrote to his sister, 'who knows not the secret, who has not the
in-dwelling
of God revealed to him, is like this--[picture of a circle with
Body and
Soul written within it]. He takes the promises and curses as
addressed
to him as one man, and will not hear of there being any birth
before his
natural birth, in any existence except with the body he is in.
The man to
whom the secret (the indwelling of God) is revealed is like this:
[picture
of a circle with soul and body enclosed in two separate circles].
He applies the promises to one and the curses to the other, if
disobedient, which he must be, except the soul is enabled by God
to rule. He then sees he is not of this world; for when he speaks
of himself he quite disregards the body his soul lives in, which
is earthly.' Such conceptions are familiar enough in the history
of religious thought: they are those of the hermit and the fakir;
and it might have been expected that, when once they had taken
hold upon his mind, Gordon would have been content to lay aside
the activities of his profession, and would have relapsed at last
into the complete retirement of holy meditation. But there were
other elements in his nature which urged him towards a very
different course.
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