Yet even of the Christ the soul
within that body could take no heed at all.
It is, I think, one of the most astounding facts in the history of
man that a man was able to contain within his mind, to conceive, the
conception of the Sphinx. That he could carry it out in the stone is
amazing. But how much more amazing it is that before there was the
Sphinx he was able to see it with his imagination! One may criticize the
Sphinx. One may say impertinent things that are true about it: that
seen from behind at a distance its head looks like an enormous mushroom
growing in the sand, that its cheeks are swelled inordinately, that
its thick-lipped mouth is legal, that from certain places it bears a
resemblance to a prize bull-dog. All this does not matter at all. What
does matter is that into the conception and execution of the Sphinx has
been poured a supreme imaginative power. He who created it looked beyond
Egypt, beyond the life of man. He grasped the conception of Eternity,
and realized the nothingness of Time, and he rendered it in stone.
I can imagine the most determined atheist looking at the Sphinx and, in
a flash, not merely believing, but feeling that he had before him proof
of the life of the soul beyond the grave, of the life of the soul of
Khufu beyond the tomb of his Pyramid. Always as you return to the Sphinx
you wonder at it more, you adore more strangely its repose, you steep
yourself more intimately in the aloof peace that seems to emanate from
it as light emanates from the sun.
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