Observations placeholder
Lamb, Charles - Composed at Midnight
Identifier
005128
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
The fallacy of the existence of hell, and the fallacy of the idea of sins, judgement day or any of the other inventions of those who consider themselves somehow 'above others' - the religious self righteous
A description of the experience
From Composed at Midnight
The man of parts,
Poet, or prose declaimer,
on his couch, lolling, like one indifferent,
Fabricates a heaven of gold, where he,
and only such as he,
Their heads encompassed with crowns, their heels
With fine wings garlanded, shall tread the stars.
Beneath their feet, heaven's pavement,
far removed from damned spirits, and the torturing cries of men,
his breth'ren,
fashioned of the earth as he was,
nourish'd with the self-same bread,
Belike his kindred or companions once--
Through everlasting ages now divorced,
In chains and savage torments to repent
Short years of folly on earth.
Their groans unheard in heav'n.
The saint nor pity feels, nor care,
For those thus sentenced--pity might disturb
The delicate sense and most divine repose
Of spirits angelical.
Blessed be God,
The measure of his judgments is not fixed
By man's erroneous standard.
He discerns no such inordinate difference and vast
Betwixt the sinner and the saint, to doom
Such disproportion'd fates.
Compared with him,
No man on earth is holy called:
they best stand in his sight approved, who at his feet
Their little crowns of virtue cast,
and yield to him of his own works the praise, his due.