Why then did it seem well to the prophet and revealer to represent God as binding Himself by an oath? It was to convince created man of his weakness and to accompany conviction with help and comfort. We are not able to cherish continually in our souls the thought which sums so worthily the nature of the Cause, that “God is not as man” (Numb. 23:19), and thus rise superior to all the human conceptions of Him. In us the mortal is the chief ingredient. We cannot get outside ourselves in forming our ideas; we cannot escape our inborn infirmities. We creep within our covering of mortality, like snails into their shells, or like the hedgehog we roll ourselves into a ball, and we think of the blessed and the immortal in terms of our own natures. We shun indeed in words the monstrosity of saying that God is of human form, but in actual fact we accept the impious thought that He is of human passions. And therefore we invent for Him hands and feet, incomings and outgoings, enmities, aversions, estrangements, anger, in fact such parts and passions as can never belong to the Cause. And of such is the oath—a mere crutch for our weakness. So to resume, “if God gives such and such to thee, thou shalt separate them” (Exod. 13:11). Thus does Moses condition his command. Yes, for unless He gives, thou shalt not have, since all things are His possessions, all things outside thee, and the body, the senses, the reason, the mind, and the functions of them all; and not thyself only, but this world also. And whatsoever thou severest or dividest from it for thy use, thou shalt find to be not thine but Another’s. Earth and water, air, sky, stars, all forms of living creatures and plants, things that perish and things that perish not, thou dost not hold in ownership. Therefore whatsoever thou bringest as an offering, thou wilt offer God’s possession and not thine own.
On the Sacrifices of Abel and Cain 29
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