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- 9462
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- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.921Z
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- 9401
- text
- chronometer; that is, having ascertained its degree of organic
inaccuracy, however small, then in all subsequent chronometrical
calculations, that ascertained loss or gain can be readily added or
deducted, as the case may be. Then again, on these long voyages, the
chronometer may be corrected by comparing it with the chronometer of
some other ship at sea, more recently from home.
"Now in an artificial world like ours, the soul of man is further
removed from its God and the Heavenly Truth, than the chronometer
carried to China, is from Greenwich. And, as that chronometer, if at all
accurate, will pronounce it to be 12 o'clock high-noon, when the China
local watches say, perhaps, it is 12 o'clock midnight; so the
chronometric soul, if in this world true to its great Greenwich in the
other, will always, in its so-called intuitions of right and wrong, be
contradicting the mere local standards and watch-maker's brains of this
earth.
"Bacon's brains were mere watch-maker's brains; but Christ was a
chronometer; and the most exquisitely adjusted and exact one, and the
least affected by all terrestrial jarrings, of any that have ever come
to us. And the reason why his teachings seemed folly to the Jews, was
because he carried that Heaven's time in Jerusalem, while the Jews
carried Jerusalem time there. Did he not expressly say--My wisdom (time)
is not of this world? But whatever is really peculiar in the wisdom of
Christ seems precisely the same folly to-day as it did 1850 years ago.
Because, in all that interval his bequeathed chronometer has still
preserved its original Heaven's time, and the general Jerusalem of this
world has likewise carefully preserved its own.
"But though the chronometer carried from Greenwich to China, should
truly exhibit in China what the time may be at Greenwich at any moment;
yet, though thereby it must necessarily contradict China time, it does
by no means thence follow, that with respect to China, the China watches
are at all out of the way. Precisely the reverse. For the fact of that
variance is a presumption that, with respect to China, the Chinese
watches must be all right; and consequently as the China watches are
right as to China, so the Greenwich chronometers must be wrong as to
China. Besides, of what use to the Chinaman would a Greenwich
chronometer, keeping Greenwich time, be? Were he thereby to regulate his
daily actions, he would be guilty of all manner of absurdities:--going
to bed at noon, say, when his neighbors would be sitting down to dinner.
And thus, though the earthly wisdom of man be heavenly folly to God; so
also, conversely, is the heavenly wisdom of God an earthly folly to man.
Literally speaking, this is so. Nor does the God at the heavenly
Greenwich expect common men to keep Greenwich wisdom in this remote
Chinese world of ours; because such a thing were unprofitable for them
here, and, indeed, a falsification of Himself, inasmuch as in that case,
China time would be identical with Greenwich time, which would make
Greenwich time wrong.
"But why then does God now and then send a heavenly chronometer (as a
meteoric stone) into the world, uselessly as it would seem, to give the
lie to all the world's time-keepers? Because he is unwilling to leave
man without some occasional testimony to this:--that though man's
Chinese notions of things may answer well enough here, they are by no
means universally applicable, and that the central Greenwich in which He
dwells goes by a somewhat different method from this world. And yet it
follows not from this, that God's truth is one thing and man's truth
another; but--as above hinted, and as will be further elucidated in
subsequent lectures--by their very contradictions they are made to
correspond.
- title
- Chunk 7