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Benson, Arthur Christopher - The Alter Fire
Identifier
028292
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
The Alter Fire – A C Benson
One day I was out with a guide on a peak at sunrise. Behind the bleak and shadowy ridges, there stole a flush of awakening dawn, then came a line of the purest yellow light, touching the crags and snowfields with sharp blue shadows; the lemon coloured radiance passed into fiery gold, the gold flushed to crimson and then the sun leapt into sight and shed the light of day upon the troubled sea of mountains.
It was more than that –the hills made, as it were, the rim of a great cold shadowy goblet; and the light poured into it from the up-rushing sun, as bubbling and sparkling wine is poured into a beaker.
I found myself thrilled from head to foot with an intense and mysterious rapture What did it all mean,this awful and resplendent solemnity, full to the brim of a solitary and unapproachable holiness?