November 23, 2008

• Blaise Pascal: This day of Grace (November 23, 1654) "Fire...Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy."

  In his book "Joy Unspeakable," [1] Martyn Lloyd-Jones described how Blaise Pascal received joy unspeakable and full of glory on this day in 1654:

  
  ...Blaise Pascal, one of the great geniuses of all times...[Pascal] belonged to that seventeenth century but, of course, lived in France, and he was a Roman Catholic. Here was a man who developed a great concern about his soul and about his salvation. He was a brilliant thinker and philosopher, who used to read and talk a lot; also he conducted mathematical experiments and gave mathematical lectures: he was the lion of scientific circles in Paris in those days. When he died they found he had written something on a bit of paper and had sewn it inside his shirt–an amulet in which he describes a remarkable experience that he had:
  

  This day of Grace 1654;
  From about half past ten at night, to about half after midnight,
  Fire.

  Now here you have not got one of those obvious "psychological types", always seeing visions and imagining things. You have got one of the greatest mathematicians of all times.
  
  

  Fire.
  God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,
  Not of the philosophers and the wise.
  Security, security. Feeling, joy, peace.
  God of Jesus Christ
  Thy God shall be my God.
  Forgetfulness of the world and of all save God.
  He can be found only in the ways taught in the Gospel.
  Greatness of the human soul.

  He just put these things down as best he could recollect them, these things that came upon him in such profusion.
  

  Greatness of the human soul.
  O righteous Father the world hath not known Thee,
  but I have known Thee
  Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
  
  I have separated myself from Him.
  My God, why hast Thou forsaken me? . . .
  That I be not separated from Thee eternally.
  This is life eternal: That they might know Thee
  the only true God, and Him whom Thou hast sent, Jesus Christ,
  Jesus Christ,
  Jesus Christ.
  I have separated myself from Him; I have fled, renounced, crucified Him.
  May I never be separated from Him.

  He is mixing his past with his present. He is made to feel by what was given to him what he had been in the past.

  May I never be separated from Him
  He maintains Himself in me only in the way taught in the Gospel.
  Renunciation total and sweet.

  And of course that is precisely what he did after this astonishing experience.
  
  From thenceforth he retired from the world and all his mathematical interests and pursuits and joined himself to a religious body at Port Royal, the Jansenists of that time. There he began writing his famous works: the Provincial Letters and the Thoughts (Pensées) which are so profound and moving. He was a brilliant philosopher and scientist, yet it was in this one experience that he really came to knowledge and understanding.
  
  But what he emphasized above everything else is "joy, joy, joy, tears of joy".
  
  Now this is the "joy unspeakable and full of glory" to which the apostle Peter refers in that first chapter of his first epistle.
  
  All I want to convey to you, my dear friends, is that we all ought to know something like that. And that is the question: do we know it? This is not something you work up. Pascal was not in a meeting; they had not been singing endless hymns and choruses and working themselves up into an excitement. No. When the Holy Spirit is operating you do not need to work it up, you do not need to organize it; he does it all. It is the vision of him, the knowledge of him, this immediacy, and this is the inevitable result–a joy which is unspeakable and full of glory, though we do not see him. The people to whom Peter was writing had never see him at all, they were "strangers scattered abroad". Peter had actually seen the Lord physically, they had not. It is not necessary. The Spirit is sent in order to bring him to us and this is the result of this knowledge of him and experience of him.

  

  Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing,
  ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory
  (I Peter 1:8)

  The paper on which Pascal wrote these things is known as Pascal's "Memorial." You can find a complete (and slightly different) English translation of the "Memorial" as well as the original French/Latin here.

  You may also be interested in reading:
  

  • Naphtali News: God speaking to me about my failures & the one thing needful
  • Bible Reading-Mark 16: (8) Kingdom-Obsessed People believe the stone is rolled away
  • Why not pray for the baptism of the Holy Spirit?
  • Second Sunday after Christmas: Is your religion true religion? (Henry Scougal)
  • Letter 18 on assurance and fighting for joy (my testimony of joy)
  • update w/ excerpt: Lloyd-Jones' sermons on the role of experience in Christianity
  • The flags unfurled ... Christ's eternal banner | Lloyd-Jones ~ a third type of assurance
  • "Dear Christian People, Now Rejoice!" Luther's assurance expressed! (letter 88 on assurance & joy)
  • Have you experienced "joy, joy, joy, tears of joy" like Pascal? | Letter 129 on assurance & joy

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  [1] Martyn Lloyd-Jones, "Joy Unspeakable: Power and Renewal in the Holy Spirit" (Wheaton, Il.: Howard Shaw Publishers, 1984), 105-108.

  • 11:30 PM
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