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Unamuno, Miguel de, 1864-1936

"Tragic Sense Of Life"


The God whom we hunger after is the God to whom we pray, the God of the
_Pater Noster_, of the Lord's Prayer; the God whom we beseech, before
all and above all, and whether we are aware of it or not, to instil
faith into us, to make us believe in Him, to make Himself in us, the God
to whom we pray that His name may be hallowed and that His will may be
done--His will, not His reason--on earth as it is in heaven; but feeling
that His will cannot be other than the essence of our will, the desire
to persist eternally.
And such a God is the God of love--_how_ He is it profits us not to ask,
but rather let each consult his own heart and give his imagination leave
to picture Him in the remoteness of the Universe, gazing down upon him
with those myriad eyes of His that shine in the night-darkened heavens.
He in whom you believe, reader, He is your God, He who has lived with
you and within you, who was born with you, who was a child when you were
a child, who became a man according as you became a man, who will vanish
when you yourself vanish, and who is your principle of continuity in
the spiritual life, for He is the principle of solidarity among all men
and in each man and between men and the Universe, and He is, as you are,
a person. And if you believe in God, God believes in you, and believing
in you He creates you continually. For in your essence you are nothing
but the idea that God possesses of you--but a living idea, because the
idea of a God who is living and conscious of Himself, of a
God-Consciousness, and apart from what you are in the society of God you
are nothing.


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