Lazarus dead, rise up: for you the dove's obeying
The voice of light within the water's utmost crown
Change all the drops to glory. In their cloud delaying,
Pity at last the rich, consumed by their renown.
A winding-sheet has veiled the silence of love's glory,
Earth purified by love, no life not full of light;
Sleep in the sepulchre, believe that ancient story,
That ancient sun believe, on Moses' tablets raying,
Yet see these petals breaking near the source, and white
Roses on thorny stems, and white acacia swaying
Where glinting birds alight above the ringing cup.
Crumble this crust of birth to throw to ring-doves playing.
Rise through the waking Earth; Lazarus dead, rise up.
—Vernon Watkins, from "Cantata for the Waking of Lazarus"
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From the Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner
One finds that nothing has met with so many obstacles, so much incomprehension and misrepresentation as the development of Christianity; and nothing has been so difficult as the fact that Christianity has spread. A further feeling that arises from this is that if one is speaking of miracles, there is no greater miracle than that Christianity has survived, that it exists. But it does not merely exist; for we live today at a time when Christianity will have to prevail not only against the abolition of the spirit but also the abolition of the soul—and yet it will indeed prevail! Christianity will develop its greatest power precisely at the time of the greatest opposition! And through the resistance that must be developed against the abolition of the soul, the strength will also be found to recognize the spirit once more.
—Rudolf Steiner, lecture of March 27, 1917, in Building Stones for an Understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha: Human Life in a Cosmic Context (CW 175)
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