"Tooth for Tooth"
by Louis Claude de Saint-Martin
If it be said: “Tooth for tooth, eye for eye,”
in the rigors of the material order;
Why,
in the beneficent order of the Spirit, would this truth not have an application which
was to our advantage?
Give thy life, if
thou wouldst receive life.
Give thy life
without reserve, if thou wishest that life be given to thee in the plenitude of
its unity.
As long as thou
dost languish in thy desires, or even stop to survey thy pleasures, life is not
yet in thee in the plenitude of its unity.
When that term doth
arrive for thee, thou shalt no longer have to ease thy trouble with sacrifices,
nor take precautions against thy holy satisfactions.
The Spirit of Truth
shall press thee; it shall torment thee, it shall drive thee into the desert;
And thou wilt say
to the nations: Make straight the ways of
the Lord!
Ye powers
celestial, terrestrial and universal, respect the human soul: the Lord cometh
to renew His alliance with it, He hath bound it to Him with a new treaty of
peace.
He hath opened to
it the divine archives; there it hath admired all the treasures prepared for
the man of peace.
It hath
contemplated there the torches of intelligence, ever alight, and the living
springs of love, which never cut off their courses.
There it hath
glanced through the books of life, whence are derived the laws of nations.
There it hath read
the history of past, present and future peoples.
There
it hath inhaled the sweet vapor of balsams used daily to heal the wounds of
mortals.
There
it hath seen the terrible weapons destined to mow down the enemies of the fatherland.
The
soul of man today can enter these diverse storehouses at will, according to its needs and those of its brethren.
Soul
of man, climb up towards thy God with humility and penitence. These are the
routes which lead to love and light.
to share with them the treasures of thy God.
O
people, you open your pecuniary treasures to the poor, but are you thinking
more of the needs of his spirit than of those of his ephemeral envelope?
Do
you desire that he recover, with this relief, a part of his liberty and his
activity that is taken away by his destitution?
Do
you desire that he recover through this liberty the means to praise his God
more easily and more constantly, and to enrich himself with prayer?
This is the true end of alms; this is how alms can advance the work of
God.
God
is Spirit; He wants everything you do to be spiritualized!
If
in giving your alms you content yourselves with asking the poor to pray for
you,
You
ask him for more than you give to him; you are thinking more of yourselves than
of him!
And
yet he is less free than you to devote himself to prayer.
Spiritualize
your works if you wish that they be perfectly in accordance with justice!
--Chant 6 from THE MAN OF DESIRE (L'HOMME DE DESIR) (1790)
translated by Seth Edwards, 2016
title by Robert Amadou
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