Conclusion: Man and the Eternal
Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing Introduction: Man and the Eternal Father in heaven!
What is all that he knows, vast accumulation though it be, but a chipped fragment if he does not know Thee!
What is all his striving, could it even encompass a world, but a half-finished work if he does not know Thee: Thee the One, who art one thing and who art all!
So may Thou give to the intellect, wisdom to comprehend that one thing; to the heart, sincerity to receive this understanding; to the will, purity that wills only one thing.
In prosperity may Thou grant perseverance to will one thing; amid distractions, collectedness to will one thing; in suffering, patience to will one thing.
Oh, Thou that giveth both the beginning and the completion, may Thou early, at the dawn of day, give to the young man the resolution to will one thing.
As the day wanes, may Thou give to the old man a renewed remembrance of his first resolution, that the first may be like the last, the last like the first, in possession of a life that has willed only one thing.
Alas, but this has indeed not come to pass.
Each day, and day after day something is being placed in between: delay, blockage, interruption, delusion, corruption.
So in this time of repentance may Thou give the courage once again to will one thing.
True, it is an interruption of our ordinary tasks; we do lay down our work as though it were a day of rest, when the penitent (and it is only in a time of repentance that the heavy-laden worker may be quiet in the confession of sin) is alone before Thee in self-accusation.
But it is an interruption that searches back into its very beginnings that it might bind up anew that which sin has separated, that in its grief it might atone for lost time, that in its anxiety it might bring to completion that which lies before it.
Oh, Thou that givest both the beginning and the completion, give Thou victory in the day of need so that what neither a man’s burning wish nor his determined resolution may attain to, may be granted unto him in the sorrowing of repentance: to will only one thing.
“To everything there is a season,” says Solomon.(Ecclesiastes 3:1) And in these words he voices the experience of the past and of that which lies behind us.
For when an old man relives his life, he lives it only by dwelling upon his memories; and when wisdom in an old man has outgrown the immediate impressions of life, the past viewed from the quiet of memory is something different from the present in all its bustle.
The time of work and of strain, of merrymaking and of dancing is over.
Life requires nothing more of the old man and he claims nothing more of it.
By being present, one thing is no nearer to him than another.
Expectation, decision, repentance in regard to a thing do not affect his judgment.
By being a part of the past, these distinctions all become meaningless, for that which is completely past has no present to which it may attach itself.
Oh, the desolation of old age, if to be an old man means this: means that at any given moment a living person could look at life as if he himself did not exist, as if life were merely a past event that held no more present tasks for him as a living person, as if he, as a living person, and life were cut off from each other within life, so that life was past and gone, and he had become a stranger to it.
Oh, tragic wisdom, if it were of everything human that Solomon spoke, and if the speech must ever end in the same manner, insisting that everything has its time, in the well-known words: “What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth” (Ecclesiastes 3:9)?
Perhaps the meaning would have been clearer if Solomon had said, “There was a time for all, all had its time,” in order to show that, as an old man, he is speaking of the past and that in fact he is not speaking to someone but is talking to himself.
For the person who talks about human life, which changes with the years, must be careful to state his own age to his listeners.
And that wisdom which is related to such a changeable and temporal element in a man must, as with every frailty, be treated with caution in order that it shall not work harm.
Only the Eternal is always appropriate and always present, is always true.
Only the Eternal applies to each human being, whatever his age may be.
The changeable exists, and when its time has passed it is changed.
Therefore any statement about it is subject to change.
That which may be wisdom when spoken by an old man about past events may be folly in the mouth of a youth or of a grown man when spoken of the present.
The youth would not be able to understand it and the grown man would not want to understand it.
Even one who is a little advanced in age may fully agree with Solomon in saying, “There is a time to dance from sheer joy.” And yet how can he agree with him?
For his dancing time is past, and therefore he speaks of it as of something past.
And it does not matter whether, in that day when both youth and the longing to dance were his, he grieved at its being denied him, or whether in joyous abandon he yielded to the invitation to dance: one who is a little advanced in age will still say quietly, “There is a time to dance.” But for the youth, to be allowed to hurry off to the dance and to sit shut in at home are two such different things that it does not occur to him to consider them on the same level and to say, “There is a time for the one and a time for the other.” A man is changed in the course of the years, and each time some portion of life lies behind him he tends to talk of its varied content as if it were all on the same level.
But it does not follow from this that he has become any wiser.
For by this, one has only said that he has changed.
Perhaps even now there is something that makes him restless in the same way that the dance disturbs the youth, something that absorbs his attention in the same way that a toy absorbs a child.
It is in this manner that a man changes, over the years.
The old man speaks in the same vein of it all, of all the changeable that is now past.
Has all been heard that may be said about being a man, and about man’s temporal life?
The most important and decisive thing of all is certainly left out.
For the talk about the natural changes of human life over the years, together with what externally happened there, is not in essence any different from talking of plant or of animal life.
When it is older it has other desires than it had at an earlier age.
At certain times it, too, has its happiness in life, and at other times it must endure hardship.
Yes, when late autumn comes, even the flower can speak the wisdom of the years and say with truthfulness, “All has its time, there is ‘a time to be born and a time to die’; there is a time to jest lightheartedly in the spring breeze, and a time to break under the autumn storm; there is a time to burst forth into blossom, beside the running water, beloved by the stream, and a time to wither and be forgotten; a time to be sought out for one’s beauty, and a time to be unnoticed in one’s wretchedness; there is a time to be nursed with care, and a time to be cast out with contempt; there is a time to delight in the warmth of the morning sun and a time to perish in the night’s cold.
All has its time; ‘what profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth?’ Yes, the animal, too, when it has lived its time may speak the wisdom of the years and say with truth, “All has its time.
There is a time to leap with joy, and a time to drag oneself along the earth; there is a time to waken early, and a time to sleep long; there is a time to run with the herd, and a time to go apart to die; there is a time to build nests with one’s beloved, and there is a time to sit alone on the roof; there is a time to soar freely among the clouds, and a time to sink heavily to the earth.
All has its time; ‘what profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth?’ “ And, in case you should say to the flower.
“Is there, then, nothing more to tell?” then it will answer you, “No, when the flower is dead, the story is over.” Otherwise the story must have been different from the beginning and been different as it went along, not merely becoming different at the end.
For let us assume that the flower concluded its story in another fashion and added, “The story is not over, for when I am dead, I am immortal.” Would this not be a strange story?
If the flower were really immortal then immortality must be just that which prevented it from dying, and therefore immortality must have been present in each instant of its life.
And the story of its life must once again have been wholly different in order to express continually immortality’s difference from all the changeableness and the different kinds of variations of the perishable.
Immortality cannot be a final alteration that crept in, so to speak, at the moment of death as the final stage.
On the contrary, it is a changelessness that is not altered by the passage of the years.
Therefore, to the old man’s words that “all has its time,” the wise Solomon adds, “God made all things beautiful in his time; also he hath set eternity within man’s heart” (Ecclesiastes 3: 11).
(Kierkegaard often takes some liberty with his quotations paraphrasing what he takes them essentially to mean.
“He hath made everything beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart from the beginning to the end.”) Thus says the sage.
For the talk about change, and the varied way of talking about change is indeed confusing, even when it comes from the mouth of an old man.
If there is, then, something eternal in a man, it must be able to exist and to be grasped within every change.
Nor can it be wisdom to say, indiscriminately, that this something eternal has its time like the perishable, that it makes its circle like the wind that never gets further; that it has its course like the river that never fills up the sea.
Nor can it be wisdom to talk of this eternal element in the same vein as if one were speaking of the past, as if it is past and past in the sense that it can never, not even in repentance, relate itself to a present person but only to an absent one.
For repentance is precisely the relation between something past and someone that has his life in the present time.
It was unwise of the youth to wish to talk in the same terms of the pleasure of dancing and of its opposite.
For this clear act of folly betrayed that the youth, in his youth, would like to have outgrown youth.
But as for the Eternal, the time never comes when a man has grown away from it, or has become older — than the Eternal.
If there is, then, something eternal in a man the discussion of it must have a different ring.
It must be said that there is something that shall always have its time.
something that a man shall always do, just as one Apostle says that we should always give thanks to God.
(For example: 2 Thessalonians 1:3.) For that which has its time must properly be looked upon as an associate and an equal with other temporal things that in their turn shall pass away.
But the Eternal is that which is set over all, The Eternal will not have its time, but will fashion time to its own desire, and then give its consent that the temporal should also be given its time.
So the Scripture says, “The one shall be done, the other shall not be neglected.”(Matthew 23:23.
The precise text is: “These ought ye to have done and not to leave the other undone.”)But that which shall not be neglected is just that which cannot come into consideration until that is done which ought to be done.
If the wisdom of life should ever alter that which.
concerns the eternal in a man to the point of changing it into something temporal, then this would be folly whether it be spoken by an old man or by a youth.
For m relation to the Eternal, age gives no justification for speaking absurdly, and youth does not exclude one from being able to grasp what is true.
Should someone explain that the fear of God, in the sense of that felt in this world of time, should belong to childhood and therefore disappear with the years as does childhood itself, or should be like a happy state of mind that cannot be maintained, but only remembered; should someone explain that penitence comes like the weakness of old age, with the wasting away of strength, when the senses are blunted, when sleep no longer strengthens but weakens; then this would be Impiety and folly.
Yes, to be sure, it is a fact that there was a man who with the years forgot his childish fear of God, was swindled out of the best, and was taken in by that which was most insolent.
Yes, to be sure, it is a fact that there was a man whom repentance first overtook in the painfulness of old age, when he no longer had the strength to sin, so that the repentance not only came late, but the despair of late repentance became the final stage.
But this is no story of an event that calls for an ingenious explanation or that would even of itself explain life.
And even if a man should become a thousand years old, he would not have become so old that he dares speak otherwise of it than the youth — with fear and trembling.
For in relation to the Eternal, a man ages neither in the sense of time nor in the sense of an accumulation of past events.
No, when an old person has outgrown the childish and the youthful, ordinary language calls this, maturity and a gain.
But willfully ever to have outgrown the Eternal is spoken of as falling away from God and as perdition; and only the life of the ungodly “shall be as the snail that melts, as it goes” (Psalm 58:8).
Remorse, Repentance, Confession: Eternity’s Emissaries to Man There is, then, something which should at all times be done.
There is something which in no temporal sense shall have its time.
Alas, and when this is not done, when it is omitted, or when just the opposite is done, then once again, there is something (Or more correctly it is the same thing, that reappears, changed, but not changed in its essence) which should at all times be done.
There is something which in no temporal sense shall have its time.
One dare not say of repentance and remorse that it has its time; that there is a time to be carefree and a time to be prostrated in repentance.
Such talk would be: to the anxious urgency of repentance — unpardonably slow; to the grieving after God — sacrilege; to what should be done this very day, in this instant, in this moment of danger — senseless delay.
There is a danger that is called delusion.
It goes on and on: then it is called perdition.
But there is a concerned guide, a knowing one, who attracts the attention of the wanderer, who calls out to him that he should take care.
He is not so quick of foot as the indulgent imagination, which is the servant of desire.
He is not so strongly built as the victorious intention.
If that guide’s voice is never heard, then it is just because one is wandering along the way of perdition.
For when the sick man who is wasting away from consumption believes himself to be in the best of health, his disease is at the most terrible point.
If there were some one who early in life steeled his mind against all remorse and who actually carried it out, nevertheless remorse would come again if he were willing to repent even of this decision.
So wonderful a power is remorse, so sincere is its friendship that to escape it entirely is the most terrible thing of all.
A man can wish to slink away from many things in life, and he may even succeed, so that life’s favored one can say in the last moment, “I slipped away from all the cares under which other men suffered.” But if such a person wishes to bluster out of, to defy, or to slink away from remorse, alas, which is indeed the most terrible to say of him, that he failed, or — that he succeeded?
A Providence watches over each man’s wandering through life.
They are, however, not in opposition to each other, these two guides, nor do they leave the wanderer standing there in doubt, confused by the double call.
Rather the two are in eternal understanding with each other.
For the one beckons forward to the Good, the other calls man back from evil.
Just for that reason there are two of them.
For in order to make the journey secure, they must look both forward and backward.
Alas, there was perhaps many a one who went astray through not understanding how to continue a good beginning.
For his course was along a false way, and he pressed on so continuously that remorse could not call him back onto the old way.
There was perhaps someone who went astray because, in the exhaustion of repentance, he could go no further, so that the guide could not help him to find the way forward.
When a long procession is about to move, a call is heard first from the one who is furthest forward.
But he waits until the last has answered.
The two guides call out to a man early and late, and when he listens to their call, then he finds his way, then he can know where he is, on the way.
Because these two calls designate the place and show the way.
Of these two, the call of remorse is perhaps the best.
For the eager traveler who travels lightly along the way does not, in this fashion, learn to know it as well as a wayfarer with a heavy burden.
The one who merely strives to get on does not learn to know the way as well as the remorseful man.
The eager traveler hurries forward to the new, to the novel, and, indeed, away from experience.
But the remorseful one, who comes behind, laboriously gathers up experience.
The two guides call out to a man early and late.
And yet, no, for when remorse calls to a man it is always late.
The call to find the way again by seeking out God in the confession of sins is always at the eleventh hour.
Whether you are young or old, whether you have sinned much or little, whether you have offended much or neglected much, the guilt makes this call come at the eleventh hour.
The inner agitation of the heart understands what remorse insists upon, that the eleventh hour has come.
For in the sense of time, the old man’s age is the eleventh hour; and the instant of death, the final moment in the eleventh hour.
The indolent youth speaks of a long life that lies before him.
The indolent old man hopes that his death is still a long way off.
But repentance and remorse belong to the eternal in a man.
And in this way each time that repentance comprehends guilt it understands that the eleventh hour has come: that hour which human indolence knows well enough exists and will come, when it is talked about in generalities, but not when it actually applies to the indolent one himself.
For even the old man thinks that there is some time left and the indolent youth deceives himself when he thinks that difference in age is the determining factor in regard to the nearness of the eleventh hour.
See, then, how good and how necessary it is that there are two guides.
For whether it be the lightly armed desire of youth which it is presumed will press forward to victory, or whether it be the mature man s determination that will fight its way through life, they both count on having a long time at their disposal.
They presuppose, in the plans for their efforts, a generation or at least a number of years, and therefore they waste a great deal of time and on that account the whole thing so readily ends in delusion.
But repentance and remorse know how to make use of time in fear and trembling.
When remorse awakens concern, whether it be in the youth, or in the old man, it awakens it always at the eleventh hour.
It does not have much time at its disposal, for it is at the eleventh hour.
It is not deceived by a false notion of a long life, for it is at the eleventh hour.
And in the eleventh hour one understands life in a wholly different way than in the days of youth or in the busy time of manhood or in the final moment of old age.
He who repents at any other hour of the day repents in the temporal sense.
He fortifies himself by a false and hasty conception of the insignificance of his guilt.
He braces himself with a false and hasty notion of life’s length.
His remorse is not in true inwardness of spirit.
Oh, eleventh hour, wherever thou art present, how all is changed!
How still everything is, as if it were the midnight hour; how sober, as if it were the hour of death; how lonely, as if it were among the tombs; how solemn, as if it were within eternity.
Oh, heavy hour of labor (although labor is at rest), when the account is rendered, yet there is no accuser there; when all is called by its own name, yet there is nothing said; when each improper word must be repeated, in the light of eternity!
Oh, costly bargain, where remorse must pay so dearly for what seemed in the eyes of lightheartedness and busyness and proud struggling and impatient passion and the judgment of the world to be reckoned as nothing!
Oh, eleventh hour, how terrible if Thou shouldst remain, how much more terrible than if death should continue through a whole life!
So repentance must have its time if all is not to be confused.
But repentance shall not have its time in a temporal sense.
It will not belong to a certain section of life as fun and play belong to childhood, or as the excitement of love belongs to youth.
It will not come and disappear as a whim or as a surprise.
No, remorse should be an action with a collected mind, so that it may be spoken of to the edification of the hearer and so that new life may be born of it, so that it does not become an event whose sorrowful heritage is a feeling of sadness.
In a setting of freedom, bearing the impress of eternity, repentance should have its time, yes, even its time of preparation.
For in proportion to what should be done there, the time of collection and preparation is not a drawn-out affair.
On the contrary there is a sense of reverence, a holy fear, a humility, that that which is to be done in the pure sincerity of this act of repentance may not become vain and overhasty.
That a man wishes to prepare himself is no torpid delay.
On the contrary, it is an intense agitation of heart that is already in alliance with what is to be done there.
From the point of view of the Eternal, repentance must come instantaneously, indeed there is not even time to utter the words.
But man is in the temporal dimension and moves along in time.
Thus the Eternal and the temporal seek to make themselves intelligible to each other.
Just as the temporal does not wish for delay simply in order to withdraw itself, but, conscious of its weakness, asks time to prepare itself; so the Eternal yields not because it gives up its claim, but in order by tender treatment to give frail man a little time.
The Eternal with its “obey at once” must not become a sudden shock which merely confuses the temporal.
It should, on the contrary, be of assistance to the temporal throughout life.
As the superior in relation to its mental inferior, or as an older person in relation to a child, can press its claim to such an extreme that it ends by actually weakening the mind of the mentally inferior or the child, so also the Eternal can in the imagination of an excitable person make an attempt to push the temporal into madness.
Hut the grieving of repentance after God and the heartfelt anxiety must not, above all, be confused with impatience.
Experience teaches that the right moment to repent is not always the one that is immediately present.
For repentance in this precipitate moment when labored thoughts and various passions are acutely active or at least are strained by this unburdening may so easily be mistaken about that which is really to be repented.
It can so easily be confused with its opposite, with the momentary feeling of contrition, that is, with impatience.
It can so easily be confused with a painful agonizing sorrow after the world, that is, with impatience; with a desperate feeling of grief in itself, that is, with impatience.
But impatience, no matter how long it continues to rage, never becomes repentance.
However clouded, then, the mind becomes, the sobs of impatience no matter how violent they are, never become sobs of repentance.
The tears of impatience lack the blessed fruitfulness.
They are like empty clouds that bear no water, or like convulsive puffs of wind.
On the other hand, if a man assumed an even heavier guilt, but at the same time improved and year after year went steadily forward in the good, it is certain that from year to year, as he advanced in the good, he would with greater intensity repent of his guilt, the guilt which year by year in a temporal sense he would be leaving further and further behind.
For it is indeed the case that guilt must be alive for a man if he is honestly to repent.
But just for that reason, precipitate repentance is false and is never to be sought after.
For it may not be the inner anxiety of heart but only the momentary feeling that presents the guilt so actively.
This kind of repentance is selfish, a matter of the senses, sensually powerful for the moment, excited in expression, impatient in the most diverse exaggerations — and, just on this account, is not real repentance.
Sudden repentance would drink down all the bitterness of sorrow in a single draught and then hurry on.
It wants to banish all recollection of it, fortifying itself by imagining that it does this in order not to be held back in the pursuit of the Good.
It is its wish that guilt, after a time, might be wholly forgotten.
Perhaps a later sudden repentance may make it apparent that the former sudden repentance lacked true inwardness.
It is told that there was once a man who through his misdeeds deserved the punishment which the law meted out to him.
After he had suffered for his wrong acts he went back into ordinary society, improved.
Then he went to a strange land, where he was not known, and where he became known for his worthy conduct.
Then one day there appeared a fugitive that recognized the distinguished person as his equal back in those miserable days.
A deathlike fear shook him each time this man passed.
Although silent, this memory shouted in a high voice until through the voice of this vile fugitive it took on words.
Then suddenly despair seized this man, who seemed to have been saved.
And it seized him just because repentance was forgotten, because the improvement toward society was not the resigning of himself to God, so that in the humility of repentance he might remember what he had been.
For in the temporal, and sensual, and social sense, repentance is in fact something that comes and goes during the years.
But in the eternal sense, it is a silent daily anxiety.
It is eternally false, that guilt is changed by the passage of a century.
To assert anything of this sort is to confuse the Eternal with what the Eternal is least like — with human forgetfulness.
If anyone in a brazen and impious mood should pronounce absolution from the Good, on the ground that all is lost, then this is sacrilege and this will only add to the guilt by piling up more and more fresh guilt.
Guilt is not increased for the reason that it seems more and more tragic to the improved individual.
It is not a gain that guilt should be wholly forgotten.
On the contrary, it is loss and perdition.
But it is a gain to win an inner intensity of heart through a deeper and deeper inner sorrowing over guilt.
It is not a gain to notice, because of a man’s forgetfulness, that he is growing older.
But it is a gain to notice that a man has grown older by the deeper and deeper penetration into his heart of the transformation wrought by remorse.
One should be able to tell the age of a tree from its bark; in truth one can also tell a man’s age in the Good by the intensity of his repentance.
There is a battle of despair that struggles — with the consequences.
The enemy attacks constantly from behind, and yet the fighter shall continue to advance.
When this is so, the repentance is still young and weak.
There is a suffering of repentance, that is not impatient in bearing the punishment, but yet each moment cringes under it.
When this is so, the repentance is still young and weak.
There is a silent, sleepless sorrow at the picturing of what has been wasted.
It does not despair, but in its daily grieving, it is always restless.
When this is so, the repentance is still young and weak.
There is a laborious moving forward in the Good that is like the gait of one whose feet are without skin.
He is willing enough, he will gladly walk swiftly, but he has suffered a loss of courage.
The pains make his going uncertain and agonizing.
When this is so, the repentance is still young and weak.
But when, in spite of this, more confident steps are made along the way, when punishment itself becomes a blessing, when consequences even become redemptive, when progress in the Good is apparent; then is there a milder but deep sorrow that remembers the guilt.
It has wearied out and overcome what could deceive and confuse the sight.
Therefore it does not see falsely, but sees only the one sorrowful thing.
This is the older, the strong and the powerful repentance.
When it is a matter of the senses, it is true that they deteriorate and decline in the course of the years.
Of a dancer one must say that her time is past when her youth is gone.
And it must be said of repentance that, if it is forgotten, then its strength was only an immaturity; but the longer and the more deeply one treasures it, the better it becomes.
For guilt looks most terrifying the nearer at hand one sees it.
But repentance is most acceptable to God, the further away repentance views the guilt, along the way of the Good.
So, then, repentance should not merely have its time, but even its time of preparation.
Although it should be a silent daily concern, it should also be able to collect itself and be well prepared for the solemn occasion.
One such an occasion is the office of Confession, the holy act for which preparation should be made in advance.
As a man changes his raiment for a feast, so is a man changed in his heart who prepares himself for the holy act of confession.
It is indeed like a changing of raiment to lay off manyness, in order rightly to center down upon one thing; to interrupt the busy course of activity, in order to put on the quiet of contemplation and be at one with oneself.
And this being at one with oneself is the simple festival garment of the feast that is the condition of admittance.
The manyness, one may see with a dispersed mind, see something of it, see it in passing, see it with half-closed eyes, with a divided mind, see it and indeed not see it.
In the rush of busyness, one may be anxious over many things, begin many things, do many things at once, and only half do them all.
Hut one cannot confess without this at-oneness with oneself.
He that is not truly at one with himself during the hour of the office of Confession is merely dispersed.
If he remains silent, he is not collected; if he speaks, it is only in a chatty vein, not in confession.
But he that in truth becomes at one with himself, he is in the silence.
And this is indeed like a changing of raiment: to strip oneself of all that is as full of noise as it is empty, in order to be hidden in the silence, to become open.
This silence is the simple festivity of the holy act of confession.
For at dancing and festive occasions worldly judgment holds that the more musicians, the better.
But when we are thinking of divine things, the deeper the stillness the better.
When the wanderer comes away from the much-traveled noisy highway into places of quiet, then it seems to him (for stillness is impressive) as if he must examine himself, as if he must speak out what lies hidden in the depths of his soul.
It seems to him, according to the poets’ explanation, as if something inexpressible thrusts itself forward from his innermost being, the unspeakable, for which indeed language has no vessel of expression.
Even the longing is not the unspeakable itself.
But what silence means, what the surroundings will say in this stillness, is just the unspeakable.
Now the surprise expressed by the trees, if it can be said that the trees looked down in surprise upon the wanderer, explains nothing.
And the wood’s echo makes very clear indeed that it explains nothing.
No, as an impregnable fortress throws back the attack of the enemy, so the echo throws back the voice, no matter how loudly the wanderer shouts.
And the clouds hang as they please, and dream only of themselves.
Whether seeming to be in restful revery, or enjoying voluptuous soft movements; whether in their transparence running swiftly off, driven by the wind, or gathering in a dark mass to battle with the wind, at least they do not trouble themselves over the wanderer.
And the sea, like a wise man, is sufficient unto itself.
Whether it lies like a child and amuses itself with its soft ripples as a child that plays with its mouth, or at noon lies like a drowsy thinker in carefree enjoyment and allows its gaze to wander over all, or in the night ponders deeply over its own being; whether in order to see what is going on, it cunningly conceals itself as though it no longer existed, or whether it rages in its own passion the sea has a deep ground, it knows well enough what it knows.
That which has that deep ground always knows this; but there is no sharing of this knowledge.
And what a puzzling arrangement the army of stars presents!
Yet there seems to be an agreement between them that they shall arrange themselves in this fashion.
But the stars are so far away that they cannot see the wanderer.
It is only the wanderer who can see the stars, hence there may come no agreement between him and the stars.
So this melancholy of poetical longing is grounded in a deep misunderstanding, because the lonely wanderer is everywhere surrounded in nature by that which does not understand him, even though it always seems as if an understanding must be arrived at.
Now the unspeakable is like the murmuring of a brook.
If you go buried in your own thoughts, if you are busy, then you do not notice it at all in passing.
You are not aware that this murmuring exists.
But if you stand still, then you discover it.
And if you have discovered it, then you must stand still.
And when you stand still, then it persuades you.
And when it has persuaded you, then you must stoop and listen attentively to it.
And when you have stooped to listen to it, then it captures you.
And when it has captured you, then you cannot break away from it, then you are overpowered.
At each moment it is as if in the next moment it must offer an explanation.
But the brook goes on murmuring, and the wanderer at its side grows older.
The stillness also impresses him, yet not in the melancholy mood of misunderstanding, but rather with the seriousness of eternity.
He is not, like the wanderer, uncertain about how he came upon the still places.
Nor is he like the poet who wishes to seek out loneliness and its mood.
No, to confess is a holy act, for which purpose, the mind is collected in preparation.
That which environs you knows well enough what this stillness means and that it calls for earnestness.
It knows that it is its wish to be understood.
It knows that fresh guilt is incurred if it be misunderstood.
And the One that is present at this confession is an omniscient One.
He knows and remembers all that this man has ever confided to Him, or that this man has ever withdrawn from His confidence.
He is an omniscient One that again at the final moment of this man’s life will remember this hour, will remember what this man confided to Him and what this man withdrew from His confidence.
He is an omniscient One who knows every thought from a distance, who knows plainly the very path of each thought, even when it eludes a man’s own consciousness.
He is an omniscient One “who seeth in secret,” with whom a man speaks even in silence, so that no one shall venture to deceive Him either by talk, or by silence, as in this world where one man can conceal much from the other now by being silent, and again even more by talking.
The person making the confession is not like a servant that gives account to his lord for the management which is given over to him because the lord could not manage all or be present in all places.
The all-knowing One was present at each instant for which reckoning shall be made in the account.
The account of what is done is not made for the lord’s sake but for the servant’s sake, who must even render account of how he used the very moment of rendering the account.
Nor is the person confessing like one that confides in a friend to whom sooner or later he reveals things that the friend did not previously know.
The all-knowing One does not get to know something about the maker of the confession, rather the maker of confession gets to know about himself.
Therefore, do not raise the objection against the confession that there is no point in confiding to the all-knowing One that which He already knows.
Reply first to the question whether it is not conferring a benefit when a man gets to know something about himself which he did not know before.
A hasty explanation could assert that to pray is a useless act, because a man’s prayer does not alter the unalterable.
But would this be desirable in the long run?
Could not fickle man easily come to regret that he had gotten God changed?
The true explanation is therefore at the same time the one most to be desired.
The prayer does not change God, but it changes the one who offers it.
It is the same with the substance of what is spoken.
Not God, but you, the maker of the confession, get to know something by your act of confession.
Much that you are able to keep hidden in darkness, you first get to know by your opening it to the knowledge of the all-knowing One.
Even the most atrocious misdeeds are committed, even blood is spilt, and many times it must in truth be said of the guilty one: he knew not what he did.
Perhaps he died, without ever in repentance really getting to know what it was he had done.
For does passion ever properly know what it does?
Does not passion’s insidious temptation and its apparent excuse center in that deceptive ignorance about itself because, in the instant, it has forgotten the Eternal?
For if passion continues in a man, it changes his life into nothing but instants and as passion cunningly serves its deluded master, it gradually gains the ascendancy until the master serves it like a blind serf!
For when hate, and anger, and revenge, and despondency, and melancholy, and despair, and fear of the future, and reliance on the world, and trust in oneself, and pride that infuses itself even into sympathy, and envy that even mingles itself with friendship, and that inclination that may have changed but not for the better: when these dwell m a man — when was it without the deceptive excuse of ignorance?
And when a man remained ignorant of them, was it not precisely because he at the same time remained ignorant of the fact that there is an all-knowing One.
Yes, there is an ignorance which no one needs be troubled over if he was deprived either of the opportunity or the capacity to learn.
But there is an ignorance about one’s own life that is equally tragic for the learned and for the simple, for both are bound by the same responsibility.
There is an ignorance that by degrees, as more and more is learned, gradually changes into knowledge.
But there is only one thing that can remove that other ignorance which is self-deception.
And to be ignorant of the fact that there is one thing and only one thing, and that only one thing is necessary, is still to be in self-deception.
The ignorant one may have been ignorant of much.
He can increase his knowledge, and still there is much that he does not know.
But if the self-deluded one speaks of quantity, and of variety, then he is still in self-deception, still deeply ensnared by and in the grip of multiplicity.
The ignorant man can gradually acquire wisdom and knowledge, but the self-deluded one if he won “the one thing needful” would have won purity of heart.
Barriers to Willing One Thing: Variety and Great Moments Are Not One Thing So let us, then, upon the occasion of a time of Confession speak about this sentence: Purity of heart is to will one thing as we base our meditation on the Apostle James’ words in his Epistle, Chapter 4, verse 8: “Draw nigh to God and he will draw nigh to you.
Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts ye double-minded.” For only the pure in heart can see God, and therefore, draw nigh to Him; and only by God’s drawing nigh to them can they maintain this purity.
And he who in truth wills only one thing can will only the Good, and he who only wills one thing when he wills the Good can only will the Good in truth.
Let us speak of this, but let us first put out of our minds the occasion of the office of Confession in order to come to an agreement on an understanding of this verse, and on what the apostolic word of admonition “purify your hearts ye double-minded” is condemning, namely, double-mindedness.
Then at the close of the talk we may return more specifically to a treatment of the occasion.
If it is to be Possible, That a Man Can Will Only One Thing, Then He Must Will the Good.
To will only one thing: but will this not inevitably become a long-drawn-out talk?
If one should consider this matter properly must he not first consider, one by one, each goal in life that a man could conceivably set up for himself, mentioning separately all of the many things that a man might will?
And not only this; since each of these considerations readily becomes too abstract in character, is he not obliged as the next step to attempt to will, one after the other, each of these goals in order to find out what is the single thing he is to will, if it is a matter of willing only one thing?
Yes, if someone should begin in this fashion, then he would never come to an end.
Or more accurately, how could he ever arrive at the end since at the outset he took the wrong way and then continued to go on further and further along this false way?
It is only by a painful route that this way leads to the Good, namely, when the wanderer turns around and goes back.
For as the Good is only a single thing, so all ways lead to the Good, even the false ones: when the repentant one follows the same way back.
Oh, Thou the unfathomable trustworthiness of the Good!
‘Wherever a man may be in the world, whichever road he travels, when he wills one thing, he is on a road that leads him to Thee!
Here such a far-flung enumeration would only work harm.
Instead of wasting many moments on naming the vast multitude of goals or squandering life’s costly years in personal experiments upon them, can the talk do as life ought to do — with a commendable brevity stick to the point?
In a certain sense nothing can be spoken of so briefly as the Good, when it is well described.
For the Good without condition and without qualification, without preface and without compromise is, absolutely the only thing that a man may and should will, and is only one thing.
Oh, blessed brevity, oh, blessed simplicity, that seizes swiftly what cleverness, tired out in the service of vanity, may grasp but slowly!
That which a simple soul, in the happy impulse of a pious heart, feels no need of understanding m an elaborate way, since he simply seizes the Good immediately, is grasped by the clever one only at the cost of much time and much grief.
The way this one thing is willed is not such that: one man wills one thing but that which he wills is not the Good; another wills one thing nor is what he wills the Good; a third wills one thing and what he wills is the Good.
The person who wills one thing that is not the Good, he does not truly will one thing.
It is a delusion, an illusion, a deception, a self-deception that he wills only one thing.
For in his innermost being he is, he is bound to be, double-minded.
Therefore the Apostle says, “Purify your hearts ye double-minded,” that is, purify your hearts of double-mindedness; in other words, let your heart in truth will only one thing, for therein is the heart’s purity.
And again it is of this same purity of heart that the Apostle is speaking when he says, “If someone lacks wisdom, then let him pray...
but in faith, not like a double-minded man” (James 1:5,6, 8).
For purity of heart is the very wisdom that is acquired through prayer.
A man of prayer does not pore over learned books for he is the wise man “whose eyes are opened” — when he kneels down (Numbers 24:16).
In a word, then, there is a man whose mind remains piously ignorant of the multitude of things, for the Good is one thing.
The more difficult part of the talk is directed to the man whose mind in its double-mindedness has made the doubtful acquaintance of the multitude of things, and of knowledge.
If it is certain that a man in truth wills one thing, then he wills the Good, for this alone can be willed in this manner.
But both of these assertions speak of identical things, or they speak of different things.
The one assertion plainly designates the name of the Good, declaring it to be that one thing.
The other assertion cunningly conceals this name.
It appears almost as if it spoke of something else.
But just on that account it forces its way, searchingly, into a man’s innermost being.
And no matter how much he may protest, or defy, or boast that he wills only one thing, it searches him through and through in order to show the double-mindedness in him if the one thing he wills is not the Good.
For in truth there was a man on earth who seemed to will only one thing.
It was unnecessary for him to insist upon it.
Even if he had been silent about it, there were witnesses enough against him who testified how inhumanly he steeled his mind, how nothing touched him, neither tenderness, nor innocence, nor misery; how his blinded soul had eyes for nothing, and how the senses in him had only eyes for the one thing that he willed.
And yet it was certainly a delusion, a terrible delusion, that he willed one thing.
For pleasure and honor and riches and power and all that this world has to offer only appear to be one thing.
It is not, nor does it remain one thing, while everything else is in change or while he himself is in change.
On the contrary, it is subject to continual alteration.
Hence even if this man named but one thing whether it be pleasure, or honor or riches, actually he did not will one thing.
Neither can he be said to will one thing when that one thing which he wills is not in itself one: is in itself a multitude of things, a dispersion, the toy of changeableness, and the prey of corruption!
In the time of pleasure see how he longed for one gratification after another.
Is variety, then, to will one thing that shall ever remain the same?
On the contrary, it is to will one thing that must never be the same.
And a person who wills in this fashion is not only double-minded but is at odds with himself.
For such a man wills first one thing and then immediately wills the opposite, because the oneness of pleasure is a snare and a delusion.
It is the diversity of pleasures that he wills.
So when the man of whom we are speaking had gratified himself up to the point of disgust, he became weary and sated.
Even 1f he still desired one thing — what was it that he desired?
He desired new pleasures; his enfeebled soul raged so that no ingenuity was sufficient to discover something new — something new!
It was change he cried out for as pleasure served him, change!
And it was change that he cried out for as he came to pleasure’s limit, as his servants were worn out — change!
Now it is to be understood that there are also changes in life that can prove to a man whether he wills one thing.
There is the change of the perishable nature when the sensual man must step aside, when dancing and the tumult of the whirling senses are over, when all becomes soberly quiet.
If, for once, the perishable nature should seem to forget to close in, if it should seem as if the sensual one had succeeded in slipping by: death does not forget.
The sensual one will not slip past death, who has dominion over what belongs to the earth and who will change into nothing the one thing which the sensual person desires.
And last of all, there is the change of eternity, which changes all.
Then only the Good remains and it remains the blessed possession of the man that has willed only one thing.
But that rich man whom no misery could touch, that rich man who even in eternity to his own damnation must continue to will one thing, ask him now whether he really wills one thing.
So, too, with honor and riches and power.
For in the time of strength as he aspired to honor, did he really discover some limit, or was that not simply the striver’s restless passion to climb higher and higher?
Did he find some rest amid his sleeplessness in which he sought to capture honor and to hold it fast?
Did he find some refreshment in the cold fire of his passion?
And if he really won honor’s highest prize, then is earthly honor in itself one thing?
Or in its diversity when the thousands and thousands braid the wreath, is honor to be likened to the gorgeous carpet of the field — created by a single hand?
No, like worldly contempt, worldly honor is a whirlpool, a play of confused forces, an illusory moment in the flux of opinions.
It is a sense-deception, as when a swarm of insects at a distance seem to the eye like one body; a sense-deception, as when the noise of the many at a distance seems to the ear like a single voice.
Even if honor were unanimous it would still be meaningless, and the more so, the more thousands that create the unanimity.
And the greater the multitude that created unanimity, the sooner will it show itself to be meaningless.
And indeed it was this unanimity of the thousands that he desired.
It was not the approbation of the good men.
No, it was rather the approbation of the thousands.
Is, then, this desire for counting, is this to will one thing?
To count and count until it suffices, to count and count until a mistake is made; is this to will one thing?
Whoever, therefore, wills this honor or fears this contempt, whether or not he is said to will one thing in his innermost being, is not merely double-minded but thousand-minded, and at variance with himself.
So is his life when he must grovel — in order to attain honor; when he must flatter his enemies — in order to attain honor; when he must woo the favor of those he despises — in order to attain honor; when he must betray the one whom he respects — in order to attain honor.
For to attain honor means to despise oneself after one has attained the pinnacle of honor — and yet to tremble before any change.
Change, yes, where does change rage more unchecked than here?
What desertion is more swift and sudden, like a mistake in foolery, like a hit by a blind man, when the seeker for honor has not even time to take off the garb of honor before insult seizes him in it?
Change, the final change, the absolute certainty among the range of unpredictables: no matter how loud the thunder of honor may sound over his grave, even if it could be heard over the whole earth, there is one who cannot hear it: the dead man, he who died with honor, the single thing he had desired.
But also in dying he lost the honor, for it remains outside, it marches home again, it dies away like an echo.
Change, the true change, when eternity exists: I should like to know if honor’s crown is offered to the much-honored one there!
And yet eternity is more lust than the earth and the world; for in eternity there is a crown of honor laid aside for each of those that have in truth willed only one thing.
So also with riches and power and the world that passes away and the lust thereof.
The one who has willed either of them, even if he only willed one thing, must, to his own agony, continue to will it when it has passed, and learn by the agony of contradiction that it is not one thing.