The Equinox (Volume I, Number II)

THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON THE KING winds and to weep through the storms of air. So the wheel of Time runs on through birth, death, and rebirth; and as we realise this we sink down in despair; and through our tears more clouds arise still further to obscure our path. What is the use then of doing anything if we are but as drops of water which are splashed between the wanton hands of the Sun, the Wind, and the Ocean ?—indeed the ways of God are inscrutable and past finding out. Thus the Unobtainable tempts us, and the little segments of God that we see become to us the fiercest and most terrible of the Dog- faced Demons which seduce us from the path. He is always at our elbow, whispering, tempting, jeering, advising and helping us; He it is that casts despair upon us when we have done nothing wrong, and elation when we have done nothing right; He it is who is ever rising before us like a mist to obscure our path or to magnify our goal ; yet nevertheless He is not only the cloud but that ultimate fire—if we could only understand Him as He IS; Ah! my brothers, this is THE GREAT WORK. Why does he do this and that, if he can do that and this? asks the Doubter. Because He chooses to, answers the Be- liever. But the man after God’s own Heart thinks and reasons nothing, he feels there is neither doing nor choosing, and, dimly though it be, he sees that both of these foolish men, who think themselves so wise, possess but various little segments of one great circle, and that each imagines his seg- ment a perfect circumference in itself. Presently the Mystic himself discovers that his circle which contained all their seg- ments is but a segment of some greater circle, and that even- tually he is living in a great cloud-land formed of myriads 227