spiritual life and the word of god by emanuel swedenborg ( - ) extracted from the apocalypse explained contents part first--the spiritual life i. how spiritual life is acquired ii. goods of charity iii. shunning evils iv. cleansing the inside v. what religion consists in part second--the commandments i. the first commandment ii. the second commandment iii. the third commandment iv. the fourth commandment v. the fifth commandment vi. the sixth commandment vii. the seventh commandment viii. the eighth commandment ix. the ninth and tenth commandments x. the commandments in general part third--profanations of good and truth i. goods and truths and their opposites ii. the first kind of profanation iii. the second kind of profanation iv. the third kind of profanation v. the fourth and fifth kinds of profanation part fourth--the divine word i. the holiness of the word ii. the lord is the word iii. the lord's words spirit and life iv. influx and correspondence v. the three senses of the word vi. conjunction by the word vii. the sense of the letter part first--the spiritual life i. how spiritual life is acquired spiritual life is acquired solely by a life according to the commandments in the word. these commandments are given in summary in the decalogue, namely, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not covet the goods of others. these commandments are the commandments that are to be done, for when a man does these his works are good and his life is spiritual, and for the reason that so far as a man shuns evils and hates them so far he wills and loves goods. for there are two opposite spheres that surround man, one from hell, the other from heaven; from hell a sphere of evil and falsity therefrom, from heaven a sphere of good and of truth therefrom; and these spheres do [not immediately] affect the body, but they affect the minds of men, for they are spiritual spheres, and thus are affections that belong to the love. in the midst of these man is set; therefore so far as he approaches the one, so far he withdraws from the other. this is why so far as a man shuns evils and hates them, so far he wills and loves goods and the truths therefrom; for no one can at the same time serve two masters, for he will hate the one and will love the other. (matt. vi. ). but let it be noted, that man must do these commandments from religion, because they are commanded by the lord; and if he does this from any other consideration whatever, for instance, from regard merely to the civil law or the moral law, he remains natural, and does not become spiritual. for when a man acts from religion, he acknowledges in heart that there is a god, a heaven and a hell, and a life after death. but when he acts from regard merely to the civil and moral law, he may act in the same way, and yet in heart may deny that there is a god, a heaven and a hell, and a life after death. and if he shuns evils and does goods, it is merely in the external form, and not in the internal; thus while he is outwardly in respect to the life of the body like a christian, inwardly in respect to the life of his spirit he is like a devil. all this makes clear that a man can become spiritual, or receive spiritual life, in no other way than by a life according to religion from the lord. i have had proof that this is true from angels of the third or inmost heaven, who are in the greatest wisdom and happiness. when asked how they had become such angels, they said it was because during their life in the world they had regarded filthy thoughts as abominable, and these had been to them adulteries; and had regarded in like manner frauds and unlawful gains, which had been to them thefts; also hatreds and revenges, which had been to them murder; also lies and blasphemies, which had been to them false testimonies; and so with other things. when asked again whether they had done good works, they said they loved chastity, in which they were because they had regarded adulteries as abominable; that they loved sincerity and justice, in which they were because they had regarded frauds and unlawful gains as abominable; that they loved the neighbor because they had regarded hatreds and revenges as abominable; that they loved truth because they had regarded lies and blasphemies as abominable, and so on; and that they perceived that when these evils have been put away, and they acted from chastity, sincerity, justice, charity and truth, it was not done from themselves, but from the lord, and thus that all things whatsoever that they had done from these were good works, although they had done them as if from themselves; and that it was on this account that they had been raised up by the lord after death into the third heaven. thus it was made clear how spiritual life, which is the life of the angels of heaven, is acquired. it shall now be told how that life is destroyed by the faith of the present day. the faith of this day is that it must be believed that god the father sent his son, who suffered the cross for our sins, and took away the curse of the law by fulfilling it; and that this faith apart from good works will save everyone, even in the last hour of death. by this faith instilled from childhood and afterward confirmed by preachings, it has come to pass that no one shuns evils from religion, but only from civil and moral law; thus not because they are sins but because they are damaging. consider, when a man thinks that the lord suffered for our sins, that he took away the curse of the law, and that merely to believe these things, or to have faith in them without good works saves, whether this is not to regard as of little worth the commandments of the decalogue, all the life of religion as prescribed in the word, and furthermore all the truths that inculcate charity. separate these, therefore, and take them away from man, and is there any religion left in him? for religion does not consist in merely thinking this or that, but in willing and doing that which is thought; and there is no religion when willing and doing are separated from thinking. from this it follows that the faith of this day destroys spiritual life, which is the life of the angels of heaven, and is the christian life itself. consider further, why the ten commandments of the decalogue were promulgated from mount sinai in so miraculous a way; why they were engraved on two tables of stone, and why these were placed in the ark, over which was placed the mercy-seat with cherubs, and the place where those commandments were was called the holy of holies, within which aaron was permitted to enter only once a year, and this with sacrifices and incense; and if he had entered without these, he would have fallen dead; also why so many miracles were afterward performed by means of that ark. have not all throughout the whole globe a knowledge of like commandments? do not their civil laws prescribe the same? who does not know from merely natural lumen, that for the sake of order in every kingdom, adultery, theft, murder, false witness, and other things in the decalogue are forbidden? why then must those same precepts have been promulgated by so many miracles, and regarded as so holy? can there be any other reason than that everyone might do them from religion, and thus from god, and not merely from civil and moral law, and thus from self and for the sake of the world? such was the reason for their promulgation from mount sinai and their holiness; for to do these commandments from religion purifies the internal man, opens heaven, admits the lord, and makes man as to his spirit an angel of heaven. and this is why the nations outside the church who do these commandments from religion are all saved, but not anyone who does them merely from civil and moral law. inquire now whether the faith of this day, which is, that the lord suffered for our sins, that he took away the curse of the law by fulfilling it, and that man is justified and saved by this faith apart from good works, does not cancel all these commandments. look about and discover how many there are at this day in the christian world who do not live according to this faith. i know that they will answer that they are weak and imperfect men, born in sins, and the like. but who is not able to think from religion? this the lord gives to everyone; and in him who thinks these things from religion the lord works all things so far as he thinks. and be it known that he who thinks of these things from religion believes that there is a god, a heaven, a hell, and a life after death; but he who does not think of these things from religion does not, i affirm, believe them. (a.e., n. .) ii. goods of charity what is meant by goods of charity or good works is at this day unknown to most in the christian world, because of the prevalence of the religion of faith alone, which is a faith separated from goods of charity. for if only faith contributes to salvation, and goods of charity contribute nothing, the idea that these goods may be left undone has place in the mind. but some who believe that good works should be done do not know what is meant by good works, thinking that good works are merely giving to the poor and doing good to the needy and to widows and orphans, since such things are mentioned and seemingly commanded in the word. some think that if good works must be done for the sake of eternal life they must give to the poor all they possess, as was done in the primitive church, and as the lord commanded the rich man to sell all that he had and give to the poor, and take up the cross and follow him (matt. xix. ). (a.e., n. .) it has just been said that at this day it is scarcely known what is meant by charity, and thus by good works, unless it be giving to the poor, enriching the needy, doing good to widows and orphans, and contributing to the building of churches and hospitals and lodging houses; and yet whether such works are done by man and for the sake of reward is not known; for if they are done by man they are not good, and if for the sake of reward they are not meritorious; and such works do not open heaven, and thus are not acknowledged as goods in heaven. in heaven no works are regarded as good except such as are done by the lord in man, and yet the works that are done by the lord in man appear in outward form like those done by the man himself and cannot be distinguished even by the man who does them. for the works done by the lord in man are done by man as if by himself; and unless they are done as if by himself they do not conjoin man to the lord, thus they do not reform him. (a.e., n. .) but for works to be done by the lord, and not by man, two things are necessary: first, there must be an acknowledgment of the lord's divine, also that he is the god of heaven and earth even in respect to the human, also that every good that is good is from him; and secondly, it is necessary that man live according to the commandments of the decalogue, by abstaining from those evils that are there forbidden, that is, from worshipping other gods, from profaning the name of god, from thefts, from adulteries, from murders, from false witness, from coveting the possessions and property of others. these two things are requisite that the works done by man may be good. the reason is that every good comes from the lord alone, and the lord cannot enter into man and lead him so long as these evils are not set aside as sins; for they are infernal, and in fact are hell with man, and unless hell is set aside the lord cannot enter and open heaven. this is what is meant by the lord's words to the rich man: who asked him about eternal life, and said that he had kept the commandments of the decalogue from his youth; whom the lord is said to have loved, and to have taught that one thing was lacking to him, that he should sell all that he had and take up the cross (matt. xix. - ; mark x. - ; luke xviii. - ). "to sell all that he had" signifies that he should relinquish the things of his religion, which were traditions, for he was a jew, and also should relinquish the things that were his own, which were loving self and the world more than god, and thus leading himself; and "to follow the lord" signifies to acknowledge him only and to be led by him; therefore the lord also said, "why callest thou me good? there is none good but god only." "to take up his cross" signifies to fight against evils and falsities, which are from what is one's own (proprium). (a.e., n. .) iii. shunning evils in the previous chapter two things are said to be necessary that works may be good, namely, that the divine of the lord be acknowledged, and that the evils forbidden in the decalogue be shunned as sins. the evils enumerated in the decalogue include all the evils that can ever exist; therefore the decalogue is called the ten commandments, because "ten" signifies all. the first commandment, "thou shalt not worship other gods," includes not loving self and the world; for he that loves self and the world above all things worships other gods; for everyone's god is that which he loves above all things. the second commandment, "thou shalt not profane the name of god," includes not to despise the word and doctrine from the word, and thus the church, and not to reject these from the heart, for these are god's "name." the fifth commandment, "thou shalt not steal," included the shunning of frauds and unlawful gains, for these also are thefts. the sixth commandment, "thou shalt not commit adultery," includes having delight in adulteries and having no delight in marriages, and in particular cherishing filthy thoughts respecting such things as pertain to marriage, for these are adulteries. the seventh commandment, "thou shalt not kill," includes not hating the neighbor nor loving revenge; for hatred and revenge breathe murder. the eighth commandment, "thou shalt not bear false witness," includes not to lie and blaspheme; for lies and blasphemies are false testimonies. the ninth commandment, "thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house," includes not wishing to possess or to divert to oneself the goods of others against their will. the tenth commandment, "thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, his man-servants," and so on, includes not wishing to rule over others and to subject them to oneself, for the things here enumerated mean the things that are man's own. anyone can see that these eight commandments relate to evils that must be shunned, and not to goods that must be done. (a.e., n. .) but many, i know, think in their heart that no one can of himself shun these evils enumerated in the decalogue, because man is born in sins and has therefore no power of himself to shun them. but let such know that anyone who thinks in his heart that there is a god, that the lord is the god of heaven and earth, that the word is from him, and is therefore holy, that there is a heaven and a hell, and that there is a life after death, has the ability to shun these evils. but he who despises these truths and casts them out of his mind, and still more he who denies them, is not able. for how can one who never thinks about god think that anything is a sin against god? and how can one who never thinks about heaven, hell, and the life after death, shun evils as sins? such a man does not know what sin is. man is placed in the middle between heaven and hell. out of heaven goods unceasingly flow in, and out of hell evils unceasingly flow in; and as man is between he has freedom to think what is good or to think what is evil. this freedom the lord never takes away from anyone, for it belongs to his life, and is the means of his reformation. so far, therefore, as man from this freedom has the thought and desire to shun evils because they are sins, and prays to the lord for help, so far does the lord take them away and give man the ability to refrain from them as if of himself, and then to shun them. everyone is able from natural freedom to shun these same evils because of their being contrary to human laws. this every citizen of a kingdom does who fears the penalties of the civil law, or the loss of life, reputation, honor, wealth, and thus of office, gain, and pleasures; even an evil man does this. and the life of such a man appears exactly the same in external form as the life of one who shuns these evils because they are contrary to the divine laws; but in internal form it is wholly unlike it. the one acts from natural freedom only, which is from man; the other acts from spiritual freedom, which is from the lord; both acting from freedom. when a man is able to shun these same evils from natural freedom, why is he not able to shun them from spiritual freedom, in which he is constantly held by the lord, provided he thinks to will this because there is a heaven, a hell, a life after death, punishment and reward, and prays to the lord for help? let it be noted, that every man when he is beginning the spiritual life because he wishes to be saved, fears sins on account of the punishments of hell, but afterward on account of the sin itself, because it is in itself abominable, and finally on account of the truth and good that he loves, thus for the lord's sake. for so far as anyone loves truth and good, thus the lord, he so far turns away from what is contrary to these, which is evil. all this makes clear that he that believes in the lord shuns evils as sins; and conversely, he that shuns evils as sins believes; consequently to shun evils as sins is the sign of faith. (a.e., n. .) but as all the evils into which man is born derive their roots from a love of ruling over others and from a love of possessing the goods of others, and all the delights of man's own life flow forth from these two loves, and all evils are from them, so the loves and delights of these evils belong to man's own life. and since evils belong to the life of man, it follows that man from himself can be no means refrain from them, for this would be from his own life to refrain from his own life. an ability to refrain from them of the lord is therefore provided, and that he may have this ability the freedom to think that which he wills and to pray to the lord for help is granted him. he has this freedom because he is in the middle between heaven and hell, consequently between good and evil. and being in the middle he is in equilibrium; and he who is in equilibrium is able easily and as of his own accord to turn himself the one way or the other; and the more so because the lord continually resists evils and repels them, and raises man up and draws him to himself. and yet there is combat, because the evils which belong to man's life are stirred up by the evils that unceasingly rise up from hell; and then man must fight against them, and, indeed, as if of himself. if he does not fight as if of himself the evils are not set aside. (a.e., n. .) iv. cleansing the inside it is acknowledged that man's interior must be purified before the good that he does is good; for the lord says, "thou blind pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup and of the platter, that the outside may be clean also" (matt. xxiii. ). man's interior is purified only as he refrains from evils, in accordance with the commandments of the decalogue. so long as man does not refrain from these evils and does not shun and turn away from them as sins, they constitute his interior, and are like an interposed veil or covering, and in heaven this appears like an eclipse by which the sun is obscured and light is intercepted; also like a fountain of pitch or of black water, from which nothing emanates but what is impure. that which emanates therefrom and that appears before the world as good is not good, because it is defiled by evils from within, for it is pharisaic and hypocritical good. this good is good from man and is meritorious good. it is otherwise when evils have been removed by a life according to the commandments of the decalogue. now since evils must be removed before goods can become good the ten commandments were the first of the word, being promulgated from mount sinai before the word was written by moses and the prophets. and these do not set forth goods that must be done, but evils that must be shunned. for the same reason these commandments are the first things to be taught in the churches; for they are taught to boys and girls in order that man may begin his christian life with them, and by no means forget them as he grows up; although he does so. the same is meant by these words in isaiah: "what is the multitude of sacrifices" to me? your meat offering, your incense, "your new moons, and your appointed feasts, my soul hateth. . . and when you multiply prayer i will not hear. . . wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil . . . . then though your sins were as scarlet they shall be white as snow; though they were red as purple they shall be as wool" (i. - ). "sacrifices," "meat offerings," "incense," "new moons," and "feasts," also "prayer," mean all things of worship. that these are wholly evil and even abominable unless the interior is purified from evils is meant by "wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings, and cease to do evil." that afterward they are all goods is meant by words that follow. (a.e., n. .) when man's interior is purified from evils by his refraining from them and shunning them because they are sins, the internal which is above it, and which is called the spiritual internal, is opened. this communicates with heaven; consequently man is then admitted into heaven and is conjoined to the lord. there are two internals in man, one beneath and the other above. while man lives in the world he is in the internal which is beneath and from which he thinks, for it is natural. this may be called for the sake of distinction the interior. but the internal that is above is that into which man comes after death when he enters heaven. all angels of heaven are in this internal, for it is spiritual. this internal is opened to the man who shuns evils as sins; but it is kept closed to the man who does not shun evils as sins. this internal is kept closed to the man who does not shun evils as sins, because the interior, that is, the natural internal, until man has been purified from sins, is hell; and so long as there is hell there heaven cannot be opened; but as soon as hell has been set aside it is opened. but let it be noted that in the measure in which the spiritual internal and heaven are opened to man, the natural internal is purified from the hell that is there. this is not done at once, but successively by degrees. all this makes clear that man from himself is hell, and that man is made a heaven by the lord, consequently that he is snatched out of hell by the lord, and raised up into heaven to the lord, not without means but through means; and these means are the commandments just mentioned, by which the lord leads him who wishes to be led. (a.e., n. .) when the spiritual internal is opened, and through it communication with heaven and conjunction with the lord are granted, enlightenment takes place with man. he is enlightened especially when he reads the word, because the lord is in the word, and the word is divine truth, and divine truth is light to angels. man is enlightened in the rational, for this directly underlies the spiritual internal, and receives light from heaven and transfers it into the natural when it is purified from evils, filling it with the knowledges of truth and good, and adapting to them the knowledges (scientiae) that are from world, for the sake of proof and agreement. thus man has a rational, and thus he has an understanding. he who believes that man has a rational and an understanding before his natural has been purified from evils is deceived, for the understanding is seeing truths of the church from the light of heaven; and the light of heaven does not flow into those not purified. and as the understanding is perfected, the falsities of religion and of ignorance and all fallacies are dispersed. (a.e., n. .) when a man has been admitted by the opening of his internal into heaven, and receives light therefrom, the same affections that angels of heaven have, with their pleasures and delights, are communicated to him. the first affection then granted is an affection for truth; the second is an affection for good; and the third is an affection for bringing forth fruits. for when a man has been admitted into heaven and into its light and heat he is like a tree growing from its seed. his first budding forth is from enlightenment; his blossoming before the fruit is from an affection for truth; the putting forth of fruit that follows is from an affection for good; the multiplication of itself again into trees is from an affection for producing fruit. the heat of heaven, which is love, and the light of heaven, which is the understanding of truth from that love, bring forth in subjects of life things like those that the heat of the world and its light bring forth in subjects not of life. that like things are brought forth is from correspondence. but in both cases the production is effected in springtime; and springtime in man is when he enters heaven, which is effected when his spiritual internal is opened; before that it is the time of winter to him. (a.e., n. .) man has affection for truth when he loves truth and turns away from falsity. he has an affection for good when he loves good uses and turns away from evil uses. he has an affection for bringing forth fruit when he loves to do goods and to be serviceable. all heavenly joy is in these affections and from them, and this joy cannot be described by comparisons, for it is supereminent and eternal. (a.e., n. .) into this state the man comes who shuns evils because they are sins, and looks to the lord; and so far as he comes into this state he turns away from and hates evils as sins, and acknowledges in heart and worships the lord only, and his divine in the human. this is a summary. (a.e., n. .) when a man is in that state he is raised up from what is his own (proprium); for a man is in what is his own (proprium) when he is only in the natural external, but he is raised up from what is his own (proprium) when he is in the spiritual internal. this raising up from what is his own man perceives only by this, that he does not think evils, and that he turns away from thinking them, and takes delight in truths and in good uses. and yet if such a man advances further into that state he perceives influx by a kind of thought; but he is not withheld from thinking and willing as if from himself, for this the lord wills for the sake of reformation. nevertheless, man should acknowledge that nothing of good or of truth therefrom is from himself, but all is from the lord. (a.e., n. .) it follows from this that when man shuns and turns away from evils as sins and is raised up into heaven by the lord, he is not longer in what is his own (proprium), but in the lord, and thus he thinks and wills goods. again, since man acts as he thinks and wills, for every act of man goes forth from the thought of his will, it follows that when he shuns and turns away from evils he does goods from the lord and not from self; and this is why shunning evils is doing goods. the goods that a man does in this way are what are meant by good works; and good works in their whole complex are what are meant by charity. man cannot be reformed unless he thinks, wills, and does as if from himself, since that which is done as if by the man himself is conjoined to him and remains with him, while that which is not done as if by the man himself, not being received in any life of sense, flows through like ether; and this is why the lord wills that man should not only shun and turn away from evils as if of himself, but should also think, will, and do as if of himself, and yet acknowledge in heart that all these things are from the lord. this he must acknowledge because it is the truth. (a.e., n. .) v. what religion consists in religion with man consists in a life according to the divine commandments, which are contained in a summary in the decalogue. he that does not live according to these can have no religion, since he does not fear god, still less does he love god; nor does he fear man, still less does he love him. can one who steals, commits adultery, kills, bears false witness fear god or man? nevertheless everyone is able to live according to these commandments; and he who is wise does so live as a civil man, as a moral man, and as a natural man. and yet he who does not live according to them as a spiritual man cannot be saved; since to live according to them as a spiritual man means to live so for the sake of the divine that is in them, while to live according to them as a civil man means for the sake of justice and to escape punishments in the world; and to live according to them as a moral man means for the sake of honesty, and to escape the loss of reputation and honor; while to live according to them as a natural man means for the sake of what is human, and to escape the repute of having an unsound mind. all laws, civil, moral, and natural, prescribe that one must not steal, must not commit adultery, must not kill, must not bear false witness; and yet a man is saved not by shunning these evils from these laws alone, but by shunning them also from spiritual law, thus shunning them as sins. for with such a man there is religion, and a belief that there is a god, a heaven and a hell, and a life after death; with such a man there is a civil life, a moral life, and a natural life; a civil life because there is justice, a moral life because there is honesty, and a natural life because there is manhood. but he who does not live according to these commandments as a spiritual man is neither a civil man, nor a moral man, nor a natural man; for he is destitute of justice, of honesty, and even of manhood, since the divine is not in these. for there can be nothing good in and from itself, but only from god; so there can be nothing just, nothing truly honest or truly human in itself and from itself, but only from god, and only when the divine is in it. consider whether anyone who has hell in him, or who is a devil, can do what is just from justice or for the sake of justice; in like manner what is honest, or what is truly human. the truly human is what is from order and according to order, and what is from sound reason; and god is order, and sound reason is from god. in a word, he who does not shun evils as sins is not a man. everyone who makes these commandments to belong to his religion becomes a citizen and an inhabitant of heaven; but he who does not make them to belong to his religion, although in externals he may live according to them from natural, moral, and civil law, becomes a citizen and an inhabitant of the world, but not of heaven. most nations possess a knowledge of these commandments, and make them the commandments of their religion, and live according to them because god so wills and has commanded; and through this they have communication with heaven and conjunction with god, consequently they are saved. but most in the christian world at this day do not make them the commandments of their religion, but only of their civil and moral life; and they do this that they may not appear in external form to act fraudulently and make unlawful gains, commit adulteries, manifestly pursue others from deadly hatred and revenge, and bear false witness, and do not refrain from these things because they are sins and against god, but because they have fears for their life, their reputation, their office, their business, their possessions, their honor and gain, and their pleasure; consequently if they were not restrained by these bonds they would do these things. because, therefore, such form for themselves no communication with heaven or conjunction with the lord, but only with the world and with self, they cannot be saved. consider is respect to yourself, when these external bonds have been taken away, as is done with every man after death, if there are no internal bonds, which are from fear and love of god, thus from religion, to restrain and hold you back, whether you would not rush like a devil into thefts, adulteries, murders, false witnesses, and lusts of every kind, from a love of these and a delight in them. that this is the case i have both seen and heard. (a.e., n. .) so far as evils are set aside as sins so far goods flow in, and so far does man afterward do goods, not from self, but from the lord. as, first, so far as one does not worship other gods, and thus does not love self and the world above all things, so far acknowledgment of god flows in from the lord, and then he worships god, not from self but from the lord. secondly, so far as one does not profane the name of god, that is, so far as he shuns the lusts arising from the loves of self and of the world, so far he loves the holy things of the word and of the church; for these are the name of god, and are profaned by the lusts arising from the loves of self and of the world. thirdly, so far as one shuns thefts, and thus shuns frauds and unlawful gains, so far sincerity and justice enter, and he loves what is sincere and just from sincerity and justice, and thus does what is sincere and just not from self but from the lord. fourthly, so far as one shuns adulteries and thus shuns unchaste and filthy thoughts, so far marriage love enters, which is the inmost love of heaven, and in which chastity itself has its seat. fifthly, so far as one shuns murders, and thus shuns deadly hatreds and revenges that breathe murder, so far the lord enters with mercy and love. sixthly, so far as one shuns false testimonies, and thus shuns lies and blasphemies, so far truth from the lord enters. seventhly, so far as one shuns a covetousness for the house of others, and thus shuns the love and consequent lusts for possessing the goods of others, so far charity toward the neighbor enters from the lord. eighthly, so far as one shuns a covetousness for the wives of others, their servants, etc., and thus shuns the love and consequent lusts of ruling over others (for the things enumerated in this commandment are what belong to man), so far love to the lord enters. these eight commandments include the evils that must be shunned, but the two others, namely, the third and fourth, include certain things that must be done, namely, that the sabbath must be kept holy, and that parents must be honored. but how these two commandments should be understood, not by men of the jewish church but by men of the christian church, will be told elsewhere. (a.e., n. ). part second--the commandments i. the first commandment "thou shalt not make to thee other gods" includes not loving self and the world above all things; for that which one loves above all things is his god. there are two directly opposite loves, love of self and love to god, also love of the world and love of heaven. he who loves himself loves his own (proprium); and as a man's own (proprium) is nothing but evil he also loves evil in its whole complex; and he who loves evil hates good, and thus hates god. he who loves himself above all things sinks his affections and thoughts in the body, and thus in his own (proprium), and from this he cannot be raised up by the lord; and when one is sunk in the body and in his own (proprium) he is in corporeal ideas and in pleasures that pertain solely to the body, and thus in thick darkness in respect to higher things; while he who is raised up by the lord is in light. he who is not in the light of heaven but in thick darkness, since he sees nothing of god, denies god and acknowledges as god either nature or some man, or some idol, and even aspires to be himself worshipped as a god. from this it follows that he who loves self above all things worships other gods. the same is true, but in a less degree, of one who loves the world; for there cannot be so great a love of the world as of one's own (proprium); therefore the world is loved because of one's own and for the sake of one's own, because it is serviceable to it. love of self means especially the love of ruling over others from a mere delight in ruling and for the sake of eminence, and not from a delight in uses and for the sake of public good; while love of the world means especially a love of possessing goods in the world from a mere delight in possession and for the sake of riches, and not from a delight in uses from these and for the sake of the consequent good. these loves are both of them without limit, and rush on, so far as scope is given, to infinity. (a.e., n. .) it is not believed in the world that the love of ruling from a mere delight in ruling, and the love of possessing goods from a mere delight in possession, and not from delight in uses, conceal in themselves all evils, and also a contempt for and rejection of all things pertaining to heaven and the church; and for the reason that man is stirred up by the love of self and love of the world to right doing in respect to the church, to the country, to society, and to the neighbor, by making good deeds honorable and looking for reward. therefore this love is called by many the fire of life, and the incitement to great things. but it is to be noted that so far as these two loves give uses the first place and self the second they are good, while so far as they give self the first place and uses the second they are evil, since man then does all things for the sake of self and consequently from self, and thus in every least thing he does there is self and what is his own (proprium), which regarded in itself is nothing but evil. but to give uses the first place and self the second is to do good for the sake of the church, the country, society, and the neighbor; and the goods that man does to these for the sake of these are not from man but from the lord. the difference between these two is like the difference between heaven and hell. man does not know that there is such a difference, because from birth and thus from nature he is in these loves, and because the delight of these loves continually flatters and pleases him. but let him consider that a love of ruling from delight in ruling, and not from a delight in uses, is wholly devilish; and such a man may be called an atheist; for so far as he is in that love he does not in his heart believe in the existence of god, and to the same extent he derides in his heart all things of the church, and he even hates and pursues with hatred all who acknowledge god, and especially those who acknowledge the lord. the very delight of the life of such is to do evil and to commit wicked and infamous deeds of every kind. in a word, they are very devils. this a man does not know so long as he lives in the world: but he will know that it is so when he comes into the spiritual world, as he does immediately after death. hell is full of such, where instead of having dominion they are in servitude. moreover, when they are looked at in the light of heaven they appear inverted, with the head downward and the feet upward, since they gave rule the first place and uses the second; and that which is in the first place is the head, and that which is in the second is the feet; and that which is the head is loved, but that which is the feet is despised. (a.e., n. .) he who supposes that he acknowledges and believes that there is a god before he abstains from the evils forbidden in the decalogue, especially from the love of ruling from a delight in ruling, and from the love of possessing the goods of the world from a delight in possession, and not from delight in uses, is mistaken. let a man confirm himself as fully as he can, from the word, from preachings, from books, and from the light of reason, that there is a god, and thus be persuaded that he believes, yet he does not believe unless the evils that spring from love of self and of the world have been removed. the reason is that evils and their delights block up the way, and shut out and repel goods and their delights from heaven, and prevent their establishment. and until heaven is established there is only a faith of the lips, which in itself is no faith, and there is no faith of the heart, which is real faith. a faith of the lips is faith in externals, a faith of the heart is faith in internals; and if the internals are crowded with evils of every kind, when the externals are taken away (as they are with every man after death), man rejects from them even the faith that there is a god. (a.e., n. .) so far as a man resists his own two loves, which are the love of ruling from the mere delight in rule and the love of possessing the goods of the world from the mere delight in possession, thus so far as he shuns as sins the evils forbidden in the decalogue, so far there flows in through heaven from the lord, that there is a god, who is the creator and preserver of the universe, and even that god is one. this then flows in for the reason that when evils have been removed heaven is opened, and when heaven is opened man no longer thinks from self but from the lord through heaven; and that there is a god and that god is one is the universal principle in heaven which comprises all things. that from influx alone man knows and as it were sees that god is one, is evident from the common confession of all nations, and from a repugnance to think that there are many gods. man's interior thought, which is the thought of his spirit, is either from hell or from heaven; it is from hell before evils have been removed, but from heaven when they have been removed. when this thought is from hell man sees no otherwise than that nature is god, and that the inmost of nature is what is called the divine. when such a man after death becomes a spirit he calls anyone a god who is especially powerful; and also himself strives for power that he may be called a god. all the evil have such madness lurking inwardly in their spirit. but when a man thinks from heaven, as he does when evils have been removed, he sees from the light in heaven that there is a god and that he is one. seeing from light out of heaven is what is meant by influx. (a.e., n. .) when a man shuns and turns away from evils because they are sins he not only sees from the light of heaven that there is a god and the god is one, but also that god is a man. for he wishes to see his god, and he is incapable of seeing him otherwise than as a man. thus did the ancients before abraham and after him see god; thus do the nations in lands outside the church see god from an interior perception, especially those who are interiorly wise although not from knowledges; thus do all little children and youths and simple well-disposed adults see god; and thus do the inhabitants of all earths see god; for they declare that what is invisible, since it does not come into the thought, does not come into faith. the reason of this is that the man who shuns and turns away from evils as sins thinks from heaven; and the whole heaven, and everyone there, has no other idea of god than that he is a man; nor can he have any other idea, since the whole heaven is a man in the largest form, and the divine that goes forth from the lord is what makes heaven; consequently to think otherwise of god than according to that divine form, which is the human form, is impossible to angles, since angelic thoughts pervade heaven. (that the whole heaven in the complex answers to a single man may be seen in the work on heaven and hell, n. - ; and that the angels think according to the form of heaven, n. - .) this idea of god flows in from heaven into all in the world, and has its seat in their spirit; but it seems to be rooted out in those in the church who are in intelligence from what is their own (proprium), indeed so rooted out as to be no longer a possible idea; and this for the reason that they think of god from space. but when these become spirits they think otherwise, as has been made evident to me by much experience. for in the spiritual world an indeterminate idea of god is no idea of him; consequently the idea there is determined to someone who has his seat either on high or elsewhere, and who gives answers. from a general influx which is from the spiritual world men have received ideas of god as a man variously according to the state of perception; and for this reason the triune god is with us called persons; and in paintings in churches god the father is represented as a man, the ancient of days. it is also from a general influx that men, both living and dead, who are called saints, are adored as gods by the common people in christian gentilism, and their sculptured images are esteemed. the same is true of many nations elsewhere, of the ancient peoples in greece, in rome, and in asia, who had many gods, all of whom were regarded by them as men. this has been said to make known that there is an intuition, namely, in man's spirit, to see god as a man. that is called an intuition which is from general influx. (a.e., n. .) as man from a general influx out of heaven sees in his spirit that god is a man, it follows that those who are of the church where the word is, if they shun and turn away from evils as sins, see, from the light of heaven in which they then are, the divine in the lord's human, and the trine in him, and himself to be the god of heaven and earth. but those who by intelligence from what is their own (proprium) have destroyed in themselves the idea of god as a man are unable to see this; neither do they see from the trinity that is in their thought that god is one; they call him one with the lips only. but those who have not been purified from evils, and therefore are not in the light of heaven, do not in their spirit see the lord to be the god of heaven and earth; but in place of the lord some other being is acknowledged; by some of these someone whom they believe to be god the father; by others someone whom they call god because he is especially powerful; by others some devil whom they fear because he can bring evil upon them; by others nature, as in the world; and by others no god at all. it is said in their spirit, because they are such after death when they become spirits; therefore what lay concealed in their spirit in the world then becomes manifest. but all who are in heaven acknowledge the lord only, since the whole heaven is from the divine that goes forth from him, and answers to him as a man; and for this reason no one can enter heaven unless he is in the lord, for he enters into the lord when he enters into heaven. if others enter they lose their mind and fall backward. (a.e., n. .) the idea of god is the chief of all ideas; for such as this idea is such is man's communication with heaven and his conjunction with the lord, and such is his enlightenment, his affection for truth and good, his perception, intelligence, and wisdom; for these are not from man but from the lord according to conjunction with him. the idea of god is the idea of the lord and his divine, for no other is god of heaven and god of earth, as he himself teaches in matthew: "authority has been given unto me in heaven and on earth" (xxviii. ). but the idea of the lord is more or less full and more or less clear; it is full in the inmost heaven, less full in the middle, and still less full in the outmost heaven; therefore those who are in the inmost heaven are in wisdom, those who are in the middle in intelligence, and those who are in the outmost in knowledge. the idea is clear in the angels who are at the center of the societies of heaven; and less clear in those who are round about, according to the degrees of distance from the center. all in the heavens have places allotted them according to the fullness and clearness of their idea of the lord, and they are in correspondent wisdom and in correspondent felicity. all those who have no idea of the lord as divine, like the socinians and arians, are under the heavens, and are unhappy. those who have a twofold idea, namely, of an invisible god and of a visible god in a human form, also have their place under the heavens, and are not received until they acknowledge one god, and him visible. some in the place of a visible god see as it were something aerial, and this because god is called a spirit. if this idea is not changed in them into the idea of a man, thus of the lord, they are not accepted. but those who have an idea of god as the inmost of nature are rejected, because they cannot help falling into the idea of nature as being god. all nations that have believed in one god, and have had an idea of him as a man, are received by the lord. from all this it can be seen who those are that worship god himself and who those are that worship other gods, thus who live according to the first commandment of the decalogue and who do not. (a.e., n. .) ii. the second commandment the second commandment is, "thou shalt not profane the name of god." in the first place, what is meant by "the name of god" shall be told, and afterward what is meant by "profaning" it. "the name of god" means every quality by which god is worshipped. for god is in his own quality, and is his own quality. his essence is divine love, and his quality is divine truth therefrom united with divine good; thus with us on earth it is the word; consequently it is said in john: "the word was with god, and the word was god" (i. ). so, too, it is the doctrine of genuine truth and good from the word; for worship is according to that. now as his quality is manifold, for it comprises all things that are from him, so he has many names; and each name involves and expresses his quality in general and in particular. he is called "jehovah," "jehovah of hosts," "lord," "lord jehovah," "god," "messiah (or christ)," "jesus," "saviour," "redeemer," "creator," "former," "maker," "king," and "the holy one of israel," "the rock" and "the stone of israel," "shiloh," "almighty," "david," "prophet," "son of god," and "son of man," and so on. all these names are names of the one god, who is the lord; and yet where they occur in the word they signify some universal divine attribute or quality distinct from other divine attributes or qualities. so, too, where he is called "father, son, and holy spirit," three are not meant, but one god; that is, there are not three divines, but one; and this trine which is one is the lord. since each name signifies some distinct attribute or quality, "to profane the name of god" does not mean to profane his name itself but his quality. "name" signifies quality for the reason that in heaven everyone is named according to his quality; and the quality of god or the lord is everything that is from him by which he is worshipped. for this reason, since no divine quality of the lord is acknowledged in hell the lord cannot be named there; and in the spiritual world his names cannot be uttered by anyone except so far as his divine is acknowledged; for there all speak from the heart, thus from love and consequent acknowledgment. (a.e., n. .) since "the name of god" means that which is from god and which is god, and this is called divine truth, and with us the word, this must not be profaned, because it is in itself divine and most holy; and it is profaned when its holiness is denied, which is done when it is despised, rejected, and treated contemptuously. when this is done heaven is closed and man is left to hell. for as the word is the only medium of conjunction of heaven with the church, so when the word is cast out of the heart that conjunction is dissolved; and because man is then left to hell he no longer acknowledges any truth of the church. there are two things by which heaven is closed to the men of the church. one is a denial of the lord's divine, and the other is a denial of the holiness of the word; and for this reason, that the lord's divine is the all of heaven; and divine truth, which is the word in the spiritual sense, is what makes heaven; which makes clear that he who denies the one or the other denies that which is the all of heaven and from which heaven is and exists, and thus deprives himself of communication and consequent conjunction with heaven. to profane the word is the same as "blaspheming the holy spirit," which is not forgiven to anyone, consequently it is said in this commandment that he who profanes the name of god shall not be left unpunished. (a.e., n. .) as divine truth or the word is meant by "the name of god," and the profanation of it means a denial of its holiness, and thus contempt, rejection, and blasphemy, it follows that the name of god is interiorly profaned by a life contrary to the commandments of the decalogue. for there can be a profanation that is inner and not outer, and there can be a profanation that is inner and at the same time outer, and there can be also a kind of profanation that is outer and not at the same time inner. inner profanation is wrought by the life, outer by the speech. inner profanation, which is wrought by the life, becomes outer also, or of the speech, after death. for then everyone thinks and wills, and so far as it can be permitted, speaks and acts, according to his life; thus not as he did in the world. in the world man is wont [accustomed], for the world's sake and to gain reputation, to speak and act otherwise than as he thinks and wills from his life. this is why it has been said that there can be a profanation that is inner and not at the same time outer. that there can be also a kind of profanation that is outer and not at the same time inner is possible from the style of the word, which is not at all the style of the world, and for this reason it may be to some extent despised from an ignorance of its interior sanctity. (a.e., n. .) he who abstains from profaning the name of god, that is, the holiness of the word, by contempt, rejection, or any blasphemy, has religion; and such as his abstinence is such is his religion. for no one has religion except from revelation, and with us revelation is the word. abstinence from profaning the holiness of the word must be from the heart, and not merely from the mouth. those who abstain from the heart live from religion; but those who abstain merely from the mouth do not live from religion, for they abstain either for the sake of self or for the sake of the world, in that the word can be made to serve them as a means of acquiring honor and gain; or they abstain from some fear. but of these many are hypocrites who have no religion. (a.e., n. .) iii. the third commandment the third commandment is, to keep the sabbath holy. the third and fourth commandments of the decalogue contain things that must be done, namely, that the sabbath must be kept holy, and that parents must be honored. the other commandments contain things that are not to be done, namely, that other gods must not be worshipped; that the name of god must not be profaned; that one must not steal, must not commit adultery, must not bear false witness, must not covet the goods of others. these two commandments are commandments to be done because the sanctification of the rest of the commandments depends upon these, for the "sabbath" signifies the union in the lord of the divine itself and the divine human, also his conjunction with heaven and the church, and thus the marriage of good and truth in the man who is being regenerated. this being the signification of the sabbath, it was the chief representative of all things of worship in the israelitish church, as is evident in jeremiah (xvii. - ), and elsewhere. it was the chief representative of all things of worship, because the first thing in all things of worship is the acknowledgment of the divine in the lord's human, for without that acknowledgment man can believe and do only from self, and to believe from self is to believe falsities, and to do from self is to do evils, as is also evident from the lord's words in john: to those asking, "what shall we do that we might work the works of god?" jesus said, "this is the work of god, that ye believe on him whom god hath sent" (vi. , ). and in the same, "he that abideth in me and i in him, the same beareth much fruit; for apart from me ye can do nothing" (xv. ). that the sabbath represented that union and the holy acknowledgment of it, has been fully shown in the arcana coelestia, namely, that the "sabbath" signified in the highest sense the union of the divine itself and the divine human in the lord, in the internal sense the conjunction of the lord's human with heaven and with the church, in general the conjunction of good and truth, thus the heavenly marriage (n. , , ). therefore the rest on the sabbath day signified the state of that union, because the lord then has rest; also through that union there is peace and salvation in the heavens and on the earth. in a relative sense it signified the conjunction of man with the lord, because man then has peace and salvation (n. , , , , , , , ). the six days preceding the sabbath signified the labors and combats that precede union and conjunction (n. , , , , ). the man who is being regenerated is in two states, the first when he is in truths and by means of truths is being led to good and into good, the other when he is in good. when man is in the first state he is in combats or temptations; but when he is in the second state he is in the tranquillity of peace. the former state is signified by the six days of labor that precede the sabbath; and the latter state is signified by the rest on the sabbath day (n. , , ). the lord also was in two states: the first when he was divine truth and from it fought against the hells and subjugated them, the other when he was made divine good by union with the very divine in himself. the former state was signified in the highest sense by the six days of labor, and the latter by the sabbath (n. ). because such things were represented by the sabbath, it was the chief representative of worship, and the holiest of all (n. , ). "to do work on the sabbath day" signified to be led not by the lord but by self, thus to be disjoined (n. , , , , ). the sabbath day is not now representative, but is a day of instruction (n. at the end). (a.e., n. .) iv. the fourth commandment the fourth commandment of the decalogue is that parents must be honored. this commandment was given because honor to parents represented and thus signified love to the lord and love toward the church, for "father" in the heavenly sense, that is, the heavenly father, is the lord; and "mother" in the heavenly sense, that is, the heavenly mother, is the church; "honor" signifies good of love; and "length of days," which such will have, signifies the happiness of eternal life. so is this commandment understood in heaven, where no father but the lord is known, and no mother but the kingdom of the lord, which is also the church. for the lord gives life from himself, and through the church he gives nourishment. that in the heavenly sense no father in the world can be meant, and indeed, when man is in a heavenly idea, can be mentioned, the lord teaches in matthew: "call no man your father on earth; for one is your father who is in the heavens" (xxiii. ). that "father" signifies the lord in relation to divine good may be seen in the apocalypse explained (n. , , , ). that "mother" signifies the lord's kingdom, the church, and divine truth, may be seen in the arcana coelestia (n. , , , , , ); that "length of days" signifies the happiness of eternal life (n. ); and the "honor" signifies good of love (n. ), and apocalypse explained (n. , ). all this makes clear that the third and fourth commandments involve arcana relating to the lord, namely, acknowledgment and confession of his divine, and worship of him from good of love. (a.e., n. .) v. the fifth commandment the fifth commandment is, "thou shalt not steal." by "thefts" both open thefts and those not open are meant, such as unlawful usury and gains, which are effected by fraud and craft under various pretenses to make them appear lawful, or so done clandestinely as not to appear at all. such gains are commonly made by higher and lower managers of the goods of others, by merchants, also by judges who sell judgments and thus make justice purchasable. these and many other things are thefts that must be abstained from and shunned, and finally renounced as sins against god, because they are against the divine laws that are in the word and against this law, which is one among the fundamental laws of all religions in the whole globe. for these ten commandments are universals, given to the end that in living from these a man may live from religion, since by a life from religion man is conjoined with heaven, while a life according to these from obedience to civil and moral law conjoins man with the world and not with heaven, and to be conjoined with the world and not with heaven is to conjoined with hell. (a.e., n. .) man is so created as to be an image of heaven and an image of the world, for he is a microcosm. he is born of his parents an image of the world, and he is born again to be an image of heaven. to be born again is to be regenerated; and man is regenerated by the lord by means of truths from the word and a life according to them. man is an image of the world in respect to his natural mind, and he is an image of heaven in respect to his spiritual mind. the natural mind, which is the world, is beneath; and the spiritual mind, which is heaven, is above. the natural mind is full of all kinds of evil, such as thefts, adulteries, murders, false witnesses, covetousnesses, and even blasphemies and profanations respecting god. these evils and many others have their seat in that mind, for the loves of them are there, and thus the delights of thinking, willing, and doing them. these things are inborn in that mind from parents, for man is born and grows up into the things that are in that mind, and is restrained only by the bonds of civil law and by the bonds of moral life from doing them, and from thus manifesting the tendencies of his depraved will. who cannot see that the lord cannot flow in out of heaven into man and teach him and lead him until these evils have been removed? for they obstruct, repel, pervert, and suffocate the truths and goods of heaven, which present themselves from above, press down, and strive to flow in. for evils are infernal and goods are heavenly, and everything infernal burns with hatred against everything heavenly. this makes clear that before the lord can flow in with heaven out of heaven and form man to the image of heaven, those evils that lie heaped up in the natural mind must needs be removed. moreover, as the removal of evils must come first before man can be taught and led by the lord, the reason is evident why in eight commandments of the decalogue the evil works that must not be done are recounted, but not the good works that must be done. good does not exist together with evil, nor does it exist until evils have been removed; for until then there is no way possible from heaven into man. man is like a dark sea, the waters of which must be removed on either side before the lord in a cloud and in fire can give a passage to the sons of israel. the "dark sea" signifies hell, "pharaoh with the egyptians" the natural man, and "the sons of israel" the spiritual man. (a.e., n. .) communication with heaven is not possible until the evils and the falsities therefrom with which the natural mind is stopped up have been removed; for these are like black clouds between the sun and the eye, or like a wall between the light of heaven and the lumen of a candle in a chamber. for so long as a man is in the lumen of the natural man only he is like one shut up in a chamber where he sees by a candle. but as soon as the natural man has been purified from evils and falsities therefrom he is as if he saw through windows in the wall the things of heaven from the light of heaven. for as soon as evils have been removed, the higher mind, which is called the spiritual mind, is opened, and this, viewed in itself, is a type or image of heaven. through this mind the lord flows in and enables man to see from the light of heaven, and through this he also reforms and at length regenerates the natural man, and implants in it truths in the place of falsities and goods in the place of evils. this the lord does through spiritual love, which is a love for truth and good. man is then placed in the midst between two loves, between the love of evil and the love of good; and when the love of evil recedes the love of good takes its place. the love of evil recedes solely through a life according to the commandments of the decalogue, that is, through refraining from evils there enumerated because they are sins, and finally shunning them as infernal. in a word, so long as man does not refrain from evils because they are sins the spiritual mind is shut; but as soon as he refrains from evils because they are sins the spiritual mind is opened, and with that mind heaven also. and when heaven is opened man comes into another light in respect to all things of the church, heaven, and eternal life; although so long as man lives in this world the difference between this and the former light is scarcely noticeable, and for the reason that in the world man thinks naturally even about spiritual things, and until he passes from the natural into the spiritual world spiritual things are enclosed in natural ideas; but in the spiritual world spiritual things are disclosed, perceived, and made evident. (a.e., n. .) so far as man refrains from evils and shuns and turns away from them as sins, good flows in from the lord. the good that flows in is an affection for knowing and understanding truths, and an affection for willing and doing goods. but man cannot refrain from evils by shunning and turning away from them of himself, for he himself is in evils from his birth, and thus from nature; and evils cannot of themselves shun evils, for this would be like a man's shunning his own nature, which is impossible; consequently it must be the lord, who is divine good and divine truth, who causes man to shun them. nevertheless, man ought to shun evils as if of himself, for what a man does as if of himself becomes his and is appropriated to him as his own; while what he does not as if of himself in no wise becomes his or is appropriated to him. what comes from the lord to man must be received by man; and it cannot be received unless he is conscious of it that is, as if of himself. this reciprocation is a necessity to reformation. this is why the ten commandments were given, and why it is commanded in them that man shall not worship other gods, shall not profane the name of god, shall not steal, shall not commit adultery, shall not kill, shall not covet the house, wife, or servants of another, thus that man shall refrain from doing these things by thinking, when the love of evil allures and incites, that they must not be done because they are sins against god, and in themselves are infernal. so far, therefore, as a man shuns these evils so far the love of truth and good enters from the lord; and this love causes man to shun these evils, and at length to turn away from them as sins. and as the love of truth and good puts these evils to flight it follows that man shuns them not from himself but from the lord, since the love of truth and good is from the lord. if a man shuns evils merely from a fear of hell they are withdrawn; but goods do not take their place; for as soon as the fear departs the evils return. to man alone is it granted to think as if of himself about good and evil, that is, that good must be loved and done because it is divine and remains to eternity, and that evil must be hated and not done because it is devilish and remains to eternity. to think thus is not granted to any beast. a beast can do good and shun evil, yet not of itself, but either from instinct or habit or fear, and never from the thought that such a thing is a good or an evil, thus not of itself. consequently, one who would have it believed that man shuns evils or does goods not as if of himself but from an imperceptible influx, or from the imputation of the lord's merit, would also have it believed that man lives like a beast, without thought of, or perception of, or affection for, truth and good. that this is so has been made clear to me from manifold experience in the spiritual world. every man after death is there prepared either for heaven or for hell. from the man who is prepared for heaven evils are removed, and from the man who is prepared for hell goods are removed; and all such removals are effected as if by them. likewise those who do evils are driven by punishments to reject them as if of themselves; but if they do not reject them as if of themselves the punishments are of no avail. by this it was made clear that those who hang down their hands, waiting for influx or for the imputation of the lord's merit, continue in the state of their evil and hang down their hands forever. to shun evils as sins is to shun the infernal societies that are in them, and man cannot shun these unless he repels them and turns away from them; and a man cannot turn away from them with repulsion unless he loves good and from that love does not will evil. for a man must either will evil or will good; and so far as he wills good he does not will evil; and it is granted him to will good when he makes the commandments of the decalogue to be of his religion, and lives according to them. since man must refrain from evils as sins as if of himself, these ten commandments were inscribed by the lord on two tables, and these were called a covenant; and this covenant was entered into in the same way as it is usual to enter into covenants between two, that is, one proposes and the other accepts, and the one who accepts consents. if he does not consent the covenant is not established. to consent to this covenant is to think, will, and do as if of oneself. man's thinking to shun evil and to do good as if of himself is done not by man, but by the lord. this is done by the lord for the sake of reciprocation and consequent conjunction; for the lord's divine love is such that it wills that what is its own shall be man's, and as these things cannot be man's, because they are divine, it makes them to be as if they were man's. in this way reciprocal conjunction is effected, that is, that man is in the lord and the lord in man, according to the words of the lord himself in john (xiv. ); for this would not be possible if there were not in the conjunction something belonging as it were to man. what man does as if of himself he does as if of his will, of his affection, of his freedom, consequently of his life. unless these were present on man's part as if they were his there could be no receptivity, because nothing reactive, thus no covenant and no conjunction; in fact, no ground whatever for the imputation that man had done evil or good or had believed truth or falsity, thus that there is from merit a hell for anyone because of evil works, or from grace a heaven for anyone because of good works. (a.e., n. .) he who refrains from thefts, understood in a broad sense, and even shuns them from any other cause than religion and for the sake of eternal life, is not cleansed of them; for only by such refraining is heaven opened. for it is through heaven that the lord removes evils in man, as through heaven he removes the hells. for example, there are higher and lower managers of property, merchants, judges, officers of every kind, and workmen, who refrain from thefts, that is, from unlawful modes of gain and usury, and who shun these, but only to secure reputation and thus honor and gain, and because of civil and moral laws, in a word, from some natural love or natural fear, thus from merely external constraints, and not from religion; but the interiors of such are full of thefts and robberies, and these burst forth when external constraints are removed from them, as takes place with everyone after death. their sincerity and rectitude is nothing but a mask, a disguise, and a deceit. (a.e., n. .) so far then as the various kinds and species of theft are removed, and the more they are removed, the kinds and species of goods to which they by opposition correspond enter and occupy their place; and these have reference in general to what is sincere, right and just. for when a man shuns and turns away from unlawful gains through fraud and craft he so far wills what is sincere, right, and just, and at length begins to love what is sincere because it is sincere, what is right because it is right, and what is just because it is just. he begins to love these things because they are from the lord, and the love of the lord is in them. for to love the lord is not to love the person, but to love the things that go forth from the lord, for these are the lord in man; thus it is to love sincerity itself, right itself, and justice itself. and as these are the lord, so far as a man loves these, and thus acts from them, so far he acts from the lord and so far the lord removes insincerity and injustice in respect to the very intentions and volitions in which they have their roots, and always with less resistance and struggle, and therefore with less effort than in the first attempts. thus it is that man thinks from conscience and acts from integrity,--not the man of himself but as if of himself; for he then acknowledges from faith and also from perception that it seems as if he thought and did these things from himself, and yet he does them not from himself but from the lord. (a.e., n. .) when a man begins to shun and turn away from evils because they are sins all things that he does are good, and may be called good works; with a difference according to the excellence of the use. for what a man does before he shuns and turns away from evils as sins are works done by the man himself; and as the man's own (proprium), which is nothing but evil, is in these, and they are done for the sake of the world, so they are evil works. but the works that a man does after he shuns and turns away from evils as sins are works from the lord, and because the lord is in these and heaven with him they are good works. the difference between works done by man and works done by the lord in man is not apparent to man's vision, but is clearly evident to the vision of angels. works done by man are like sepulchers outwardly whitened, which within are full of dead men's bones. they are like platters and cups outwardly clean, but containing unclean things of every kind. they are like fruits inwardly rotten, but with the outer skin still shining; or like nuts and almonds eaten by worms within, while the shell remains untouched; or like a foul harlot with a fair face. such are the good works done by man himself, since however good they appear on the outside, within they are full of impurities of every kind; for their interiors are infernal, while their exteriors appear heavenly. but as soon as man shuns and turns away from evils as sins his works are good not only outwardly but inwardly also; and the more interior they are the more they are good, for the more interior they are the nearer they are to the lord. then they are like fruits that have a fine-flavored pulp, in the center of which are depositories with many seeds, from which new trees, even to whole gardens, may be produced; but everything and all things in his natural man are like eggs from which swarms of flying creatures may be produced, and gradually fill a great part of heaven. in a word, when man shuns and turns away from evils as sins the works that he does are living works, while those that he did before were dead works; for what is from the lord is living but what is from man is dead. (a.e., n. .) it has been said that so far as a man shuns and turns away from evils as sins he does goods, and that the goods that he does are such good works as are described in the word, for the reason that they are done in the lord; also that these works are good so far as man turns away from the evils opposed to them, because so far they are done by the lord and not by man. nevertheless, works are more or less good according to the excellence of the use; for works must be uses. the best are those that are done for the sake of uses to the church. next in point of goodness come those that are done as uses to one's country; and so on, the uses determining the goodness of the works. the goodness of works increases in man according to the fullness of truths from affection for which they are done; since the man who turns away from evils as sins wishes to know truths because truths teach uses and the quality of their good. this is why good loves truth and truth loves good, and they wish to be conjoined. so far, therefore, as such a man learns truths from an affection for them so far he does goods more wisely and more fully, more wisely because he knows how to distinguish uses and to do them with judgment and justice, and more fully because all truths are present in the performance of uses, and form the spiritual sphere that the affection for them produces. (a.e., n. .) take judges for an example: all who make justice venal [purchasable] by loving the office of judging for the sake of gain from judgments, and not for the sake of uses to their country, are thieves, and their judgments are thefts. it is the same if judgments are given according to friendship or favor, for friendships and favors are also profits and gains. when these are the end and judgments are the means, all things that are done are evil, and are what are meant in the word by "evil works" and "not doing judgment and justice, perverting the right of the poor, of the needy, of the fatherless, of the widow, and of the innocent." and when such do justice, and yet regard profit as the end while they do a good work, to them it is not good; for justice, which is divine, is to them a means, and such gain is the end; and that which is made the end is everything, while that which is made the means is nothing except so far as it is serviceable to the end. consequently, after death such judges continued to love what is unjust as well as what is just, and are condemned to hell as thieves. i say this from what i have seen. these are such as do not abstain from evils because they are sins, but only because they fear punishments of the civil law and the loss of reputation, honor, and office, and thus of gain. it is otherwise with judges who abstain from evils as sins and shun them because they are contrary to the divine laws, and thus contrary to god. such make justice their end, and they venerate, cherish, and love it as divine. in justice they see god, as it were, because everything just, like everything good and true, is from god. they always join justice with equity and equity with justice, knowing that justice must be of equity in order to be justice, and that equity must be of justice in order to be equity, the same as truth is of good and good is of truth. as such make justice their end, their giving judgments is doing good works; yet these works, which are judgments, are to them more or less good as there is in their judgments more or less of regard for friendship, favor, or gain; also as there is more or less in them of a love of what is just for the sake of the public good, which is that justice may prevail among their fellow citizens, and that those who live according to the laws may have security. such judges have eternal life in a degree that accords with their works; for they are judged as they themselves have judged. (a.e., n. .) take as an example managers of the goods of others, higher or lower. if these secretly by arts or under some pretext by fraud deprive their kings, their country, or their masters of their goods, they have no religion and thus no conscience, for they hold the divine law respecting theft in contempt and make it of no account. and although they frequent churches, devoutly listen to preachings, observe the sacrament of the supper, pray morning and evening, and talk piously from the word, yet nothing from heaven flows in and is present in their worship, piety, or discourse, since their interiors are full of theft, plundering, robbery, and injustice; and so long as these are within, the way into them from heaven is closed; consequently all the works they do are evil works. but the managers of property who shun unlawful gains and fraudulent profits because they are contrary to the divine law respecting theft, have religion, and thus also conscience; and all the works they do are good, for they act from sincerity for the sake of sincerity, and from justice for the sake of justice, and furthermore are content with their own, and are cheerful in mind and glad in heart whenever it happens that they have refrained from fraud; and after death they are welcomed by the angels and received by them as brothers, and are presented with good things even to abundance. but the opposite is true of evil managers; these after death are cast out of societies, and afterward seek wages and finally are sent into the caverns of robbers to labor there. (a.e., n. .) take merchants as an example: all their works are evil works so long as they do not regard as sins, and thus shun as sins, unlawful gains and wrongful usury, also fraud and craft; for such works cannot be done from the lord, but must be done from man himself. and the more expert they are in skillfully and artfully contriving devices from within for overreaching their companions the more evil are their works. and the more expert they are in bringing such devices into effect under the pretense of sincerity, justice, and piety, the more evil still are their works. the more delight a merchant feels in such things the more do his works have their origin in hell. but if he acts sincerely and justly in order to acquire reputation, and wealth through reputation, even so as to seem to act from a love of sincerity and justice, and yet does not act sincerely and justly from affection for the divine law or from obedience to it, he is still inwardly insincere and unjust, and his works are thefts, for through a pretense of sincerity and justice he seeks to steal. that this is so becomes evident after death, when man acts from his inner will and love, and not from the outer; for then he thinks about and devises nothing but sharp practices and robberies, and withdraws himself from those who are sincere, and betakes himself either to forests or deserts, where he devotes himself to stratagems. in a word, all such become robbers. but it is otherwise with merchants who shun as sins thefts of every kind, especially the more interior and hidden, which are effected by craft and deceit. all the works of such are good, because they are from the lord; for the influx from heaven, that is, through heaven from the lord, for accomplishing such works is not intercepted by the evils just mentioned. to such riches do no harm, because to them riches are means for uses. their tradings are the uses by which they serve their country and their fellow citizens; and through their riches they are in a condition to perform those uses to which affection for good leads them. (a.e., n. .) from what has been said above, what is meant in the word by good works can now be seen, namely, that they are all works done by man when evils have been set aside as sins. for the works done after this are done by man only as if by him; for they are done by the lord; and all works done by the lord are good, and are called goods of life, goods of charity, and good works; as for instance, all judgments of a judge who has justice as his end, all who venerates and loves it as divine, and who detests as infamous decisions made for the sake of rewards or friendship, or from favor. thus he consults the good of his country by causing justice and judgment to reign therein as in heaven; and thus he consults the peace of every innocent citizen and protects him from the violence of evildoers. all these are good works. so all services of managers and dealings of merchants are good works when they shun unlawful gains as sins against the divine laws. when a man shuns evils as sins he daily learns what a good work is, and an affection for doing good grows in him, and an affection for knowing truths for the sake of good; for so far as he knows truths he can perform works more fully and more wisely, and thus his works become more truly good. refrain, therefore, from asking in thyself, "what are the good works that i must do, or what good must i do to receive eternal life?" only refrain from evils as sins and look to the lord, and the lord will teach and lead you. (a.e., n. .) vi. the sixth commandment thus far five commandments of the decalogue have been explained. now follows the explanation of the sixth commandment, "thou shalt not commit adultery." who at this day can believe that the delight of adultery is hell in man, and that the delight of marriage is heaven in him, consequently so far as he is in the one delight he is not in the other, since so far as man is in hell he is not in heaven? who at this day can believe that the love of adultery is the fundamental love of all hellish and devilish loves, and that the chaste love of marriage is the fundamental love of all heavenly and divine loves; consequently so far as a man is in the love of adultery he is in every evil love, if not in act yet in endeavor; and on the other hand, so far as he is in the chaste love of marriage he is in every good love, if not in act yet in endeavor? who at this day can believe that he who is in the love of adultery believes nothing of the word, thus nothing of the church, and even in his heart denies god; and on the other hand, that he who is in the chaste love of marriage is in charity and in faith, and in love to god; also that the chastity of marriage makes one with religion, and the lasciviousness of adultery makes one with naturalism? all this is at this day unknown because the church is at its end, and is devastated in respect to truth and in respect to good; and when the church is such, the man of the church, by influx from hell, comes into the persuasion that adulteries are not detestable things and abominations, and thus comes into the belief that marriages and adulteries do not differ in their essence, but only as a matter of order, and yet the difference between them is like the difference between heaven and hell. that such is the difference between them will be seen in what follows. this, then, is why in the word in its spiritual sense heaven and the church are meant by nuptials and marriages, and hell and rejection of all things of the church are meant in the word in its spiritual sense by adulteries and whoredoms. (a.e., n. .) since adultery is hell in man and marriage is heaven in him, it follows that so far as a man loves adultery he removes himself from heaven; consequently adulteries close heaven and open hell, and this they do so far as they are believed to be allowable and are perceived to be more delightful than marriages. the man, therefore, who confirms himself in adulteries and commits them from the favor and consent of his will, and turns away from marriage, closes heaven to himself, until finally he ceases to believe anything of the church or of the word, and becomes a wholly sensual man, and after death an infernal spirit; for, as has been said above, adultery is hell, and thus an adulterer is a form of hell. and since adultery is hell it follows that unless a man abstains from adulteries and shuns them and turns away from them as infernal he shuts up heaven to himself, and does not receive the least influx therefrom. afterward he reasons that marriages and adulteries are alike, but that marriages must be maintained in kingdoms for the sake of order and the training of offspring; also that adulteries are not criminal, since children are equally born from them; and they are not harmful to women, since they can endure them, and by them the procreation of the human race is promoted. he does not know that these and other like reasonings in favor of adulteries ascend from the stygian [extremely dark] waters of hell, and that the lustful and bestial nature of man which inheres in him from birth attracts them and sucks them in with delight, as a swine does excrement. that such reasonings, which at this day possess the minds of most men in the christian world, are diabolical, will be seen. (a.e., n. .) that marriage is heaven and that adultery is hell cannot be better seen than from considering their origin. the origin of true marriage love is the lord's love for the church; and this is why the lord is called in the word a "bridegroom" and a "husband," and the church a "bride" and a "wife." it is from this marriage that the church is a church in general and in particular. the church in particular is a man in whom the church is. from this it is clear that the lord's conjunction with a man of the church is the very origin of true marriage love; and how that conjunction can be the origin shall be told. the lord's conjunction with a man of the church is a conjunction of good and truth; good is from the lord, and truth is a man, and from this is the conjunction that is called the heavenly marriage, and from that marriage true marriage love exists between the married pair that are in such conjunction with the lord. from this it is now evident that true marriage love is from the lord alone, and exists in those who are in the conjunction of good and truth from the lord. as this conjunction is reciprocal it is said by the lord that they are in him, and he in them (john xiv. ). this conjunction or this marriage was thus established from creation. the man was created to be an understanding of truth, and the woman to be an affection for good; and thus the man to be a truth, and the woman to be a good. when understanding of truth which is in the man makes one with the affection for good which is in the woman, there is a conjunction of the two minds into one. this conjunction is the spiritual marriage from which marriage love descends. for when two minds are so conjoined as to be one mind there is love between them; and when this love, which is the love of spiritual marriage, descends into the body it becomes the love of natural marriage. that this is so anyone can clearly perceive if he will. a married pair who interiorly or in respect to their minds love each other mutually and reciprocally also love each other mutually and reciprocally in respect to their bodies. it is well known that all love descends into the body from an affection of the mind, and that apart from such an origin no love exists. since then the origin of marriage love is the marriage of good and truth, which marriage in its essence is heaven, it is clear that the origin of the love of adultery is a marriage of evil and falsity, which in its essence is hell. heaven is a marriage because all who are in the heavens are in a marriage of good and truth; and hell is adultery because all who are in the hells are in a marriage of evil and falsity. from this it follows that marriage and adultery are as opposite as heaven and hell are. (a.e., n. .) man was so created as to be spiritual and celestial love, and thus an image and likeness of god. spiritual love, which is a love for truth, is an image of god; and celestial love, which is a love for good, is a likeness of god. all angels in the third heaven are likenesses of god; and all angels in the second heaven are images of god. man can become the love which is an image or likeness of god only by a marriage of good and truth; for good and truth inmostly love one another, and ardently long to be united that they may be one; and for the reason that divine good and divine truth go forth from the lord united, therefore they must be united in an angel of heaven and in a man of the church. this union is by no means possible except by a marriage of two minds into one, since, as has been said before, man was created to be an understanding of truth, and thus a truth, and woman was created to be an affection for good, and thus a good; therefore in them a conjunction of good and truth is possible. for marriage love which descends from that conjunction is the veriest medium by which man (homo) becomes the love that is an image or likeness of god. for the married pair who are in conjugal love from the lord love one another mutually and reciprocally from the heart, thus from inmosts; and therefore although apparently two they are actually one, two in respect to their bodies, but one in respect to life. this may be compared to the eyes, which are two as organs but one in respect to the sight; also to the ears, which are two as organs but one in respect to hearing; so, too, the arms and the feet are two as members but one in respect to use, the arms one in respect to action, and the feet one in respect to walking. so with the other pairs with man. all these have reference to good and truth, the organ or member on the right to good, and that on the left to truth. it is the same with a husband and wife between whom there is a true marriage love; they are two in respect to their bodies but one in respect to life; consequently in heaven the married pair are not called two angels but one. all this makes clear that through marriage man becomes a form of love, and thus a form of heaven, which is an image and likeness of god. man is born into a love of evil and falsity, which love is the love of adultery; and this love cannot be turned about and changed into spiritual love, which is an image of god, and still less into celestial love, which is a likeness of god, except by a marriage of good and truth from the lord, and not fully except by a marriage of two minds and two bodies. from this it is clear why marriages are heavenly and adulteries infernal; for marriage is an image of heaven, and true marriage love is an image of the lord, while adultery is an image of hell, and love of adultery is an image of the devil. moreover, marriage love appears in the spiritual world in form like an angel, and love of adultery in form like a devil. reader, treasure this up within you, and after death, when you are living as a spirit-man, inquire whether this is true, and you will see. (a.e., n. .) how profane and thus how much to be detested adulteries are can be seen from the holiness of marriages. all things in the human body, from the head to the sole of the feet, both interior and exterior, correspond to the heavens, and in consequence man is a heaven in its least form, and also angels and spirits are in form perfectly human, for they are forms of heaven. all the members devoted to generation in both sexes, especially the womb, correspond to societies of the third or inmost heaven, and for the reason that true marriage love is derived from the lord's love for the church, and from the love of good and truth which is the love of the angels of the third heaven; therefore marriage love, which descends therefrom as the love of that heaven, is innocence, which is the very being (esse) of every good in the heavens. and for this reason embryos in the womb are in a state of peace, and when they have been born as infants are in a state of innocence; so, too, is the mother in relation to them. as this is the correspondence of the genital organs in the two sexes, it is evident that by creation they are holy, and therefore they are devoted solely to chaste and pure marriage love, and are not to be profaned by the unchaste and impure love of adultery, by which man converts the heaven in himself into hell; for as the love of marriage corresponds to the love of the highest heaven, which is love to the lord from the lord, so the love of adultery corresponds to the love of the lowest hell. the love of marriage is so holy and heavenly because it has its beginning in the inmosts of man from the lord himself, and it descends according to order to the outmosts of the body, and thus fills the whole man with heavenly love and brings him into a form of the divine love, which is the form of heaven, and is an image of the lord. but the love of adultery has its beginning in the outmosts of man from an impure lascivious fire there, and thus, contrary to order, penetrates toward the interiors, always into the things that are man's own, which are nothing but evil, and brings these into a form of hell, which is an image of the devil. therefore a man who loves adultery and turns away from marriage is in form a devil. as the organs of generation in the two sexes correspond to the societies of the third heaven, and the love of a married pair corresponds to the love of good and truth, so those organs and that love correspond to the word. the reason is that the word is divine truth united to divine good going forth from the lord; and this is why the lord is called "the word," also why in every particular of the word there is a marriage of good and truth, or a heavenly marriage. that there is such a correspondence is a mystery not yet known in the world, but it has been made evident and proved to me by much experience. from this also it is clear how holy and heavenly marriages are in themselves, and how profane and diabolical adulteries are. and for this reason adulterers make no account of divine truths and thus of the word, and if they were to speak from the heart they would even blaspheme the holy things that are in the word. this they do when they have become spirits after death, for every spirit is compelled to speak from the heart, that his interior thoughts may be revealed. (a.e., n. .) as all the delights that man has in the natural world are turned into correspondent delights in the spiritual world, so are the delights of the love of marriage and the delights of the love of adultery. the love of marriage is represented in the spiritual world as a virgin, whose beauty is such as to inspire the beholder with the charms of life; while the love of adultery is represented in the spiritual world by an old woman, whose deformity is such as to inspire in the beholder a coldness and death to every charm of life. therefore in the heavens the angels are beautiful according to the quality of marriage love in them, and in the hells the spirits are deformed according to the quality of the love of adultery in them. in a word, the angels of heaven have life in their faces, in the movements of the body, and in their speech, in the measure of their marriage love, while the spirits of hell have death in their faces in the measure of their love of adultery. in the spiritual world the delights of marriage love are represented to the sense by odors from fruits and flowers of various kinds, while the delights of the love of adultery are there represented to the sense by the stenches from excrements and putridities of various kinds. moreover, the delights of the love of adultery are actually turned into such things, since all things pertaining to adultery are spiritual filth. therefore from the brothels in the hells stenches pour forth that excite vomiting. (a.e., n. .) how holy in themselves, that is, from creation, marriages are can be seen from the fact that they are the nurseries of the human race; and as the angelic heaven is from the human race they are also the nurseries of heaven; consequently by marriages not only the earths but also the heavens are filled with inhabitants; and as the end of the entire creation is the human race, and thus heaven, where the divine itself may dwell as in its own and as it were in itself, and as the procreation of mankind according to divine order is accomplished through marriages, it is clear how holy marriages are in themselves, that is, from creation, and thus how holy they should be esteemed. it is true that the earth might be filled with inhabitants by fornications and adulteries as well as by marriages, but not heaven; and for the reason that hell is from adulteries but heaven from marriages. hell is from adulteries because adultery is from the marriage of evil and falsity, from which hell in the whole complex is called adultery; while heaven is from marriages because marriage is from the marriage of good and truth, from which heaven in its whole complex is called a marriage. that is called adultery where its love, which is called a love of adultery, reigns, whether it be within wedlock or apart from it, and that is called marriage where its love, which is called marriage love, reigns. when procreations of the human race are effected by marriages in which the holy love of good and truth from the lord reigns, then it is on earth as it is in the heavens, and the lord's kingdom on earth corresponds to the lord's kingdom in the heavens. for the heavens consist of societies arranged according to all the varieties of celestial and spiritual affections, from which arrangement the form of heaven springs, and this pre-eminently surpasses all other forms in the universe. there would be a like form on the earth if the procreations there were effected by marriages in which a true marriage love reigned; for then, however many families might descend in succession from one head of a family, there would spring forth as many images of the societies of heaven in a like variety. families would then be like fruit-bearing trees of various kinds, forming as many different gardens, each containing its own kind of fruit, and these gardens taken together would present the form of a heavenly paradise. this is said in the way of comparison, because "trees" signify men of the church, "gardens" intelligence, "fruits" goods of life, and "paradise" heaven. i have been told from heaven that with the most ancient people, from whom the first church on this globe was established, which was called by ancient writers the golden age, there was such a correspondence between families on the earth and societies in the heavens, because love to the lord, mutual love, innocence, peace, wisdom, and chastity in marriages then prevailed; and it was also told me from heaven that they were then inwardly horrified at adulteries, as at the abominable things in hell. (a.e., n. .) that heaven is from marriages and hell from adulteries has been shown above. what this means shall now be told. the hereditary evils into which man is born are not from adam's having eaten of the tree of knowledge, but from the adulteration of good and the falsification of truth by parents, thus from the marriage of evil and falsity, from which a love of adultery springs. the ruling love of parents by means of a germ from it passes over into the offspring and is transcribed upon it and becomes its nature. if the love of the parents is a love of adultery it is also a love of evil for falsity and of falsity for evil. from this source man has all evil, and from evil he has hell. all this makes clear that it is from adulteries that man has hell, until he is reformed by the lord by means of truths and a life according to them. and no one can be reformed unless he shuns adulteries as infernal and loves marriages as heavenly. in this and in no other way is hereditary evil broken and rendered milder in the offspring. it is to be noted, however, that while from adulterous parents man is born a hell, he is not born for hell but for heaven. for the lord provides that no one shall be condemned to hell on account of hereditary evils, but only on account of the evils that the man has actually made his own by his life, as can be seen from the lot of infants after death, all of whom are adopted by the lord, educated under his auspices in heaven, and saved. this makes clear that every man, although from the evils with which he is born he is a hell, is born not for hell but for heaven. it is the same with every man born from adultery if he does not himself become an adulterer. becoming an adulterer means living in the marriage of evil and falsity by thinking evils and falsities from a delight in them and by doing them from a love for them. every man who does this becomes an adulterer. moreover, it is from divine justice that no one suffers punishments on account of the evils of his parents, but only on account of his own; therefore the lord provides that hereditary evils shall not return after death, but only one's own evils, and it is only for those that return that a man is then punished. (a.e., n. .) it has been said that the difference between a love of marriage and a love of adultery is like that between heaven and hell. there is a like difference between the delights of these loves; for delights derive their all from the loves from which they spring. the delights of the love of adultery derive what they are from the delights of doing evil uses, thus of evil-doing; and the delights of the love of marriage from the delights of doing good uses, thus of well-doing. therefore such as the delight of the evil is in doing evil such is the delight of their love of adultery; because a love of adultery descends therefrom. that it descends from that scarcely anyone can believe; and yet such is its origin. from this it is evident that the delight of adultery ascends from the lowest hell. but the delight of the love of marriage, since it is from the love of the conjunction of good and truth and from the love of doing good, is a heavenly delight; and it comes down from the inmost or third heaven, where love to the lord from the lord reigns. from this it can be seen that the difference between these two delights is like that between heaven and hell. and yet, for a wonder, it is believed that the delight of marriage and the delight of adultery are similar; nevertheless the difference between them is such as has now been described. but the difference can be discerned and felt only by one who is in the delight of marriage love. one who is in that delight plainly feels that in the delight of marriage there is nothing impure or unchaste, thus nothing lascivious; and that in the delight of adultery there is nothing but what is impure, unchaste, and lascivious. he feels that unchastity comes up from beneath, and that chastity comes down from above. but one who is in the delight of adultery is incapable of feeling this, because he feels what is infernal as his heavenly. from all this it follows that the love of marriage, even in its outmost act, is purity itself and chastity itself; and that the love of adultery in its acts is impurity itself and unchastity itself. since the delights of these two loves are alike in outward appearance, although inwardly they are wholly unlike, because opposites, the lord provides that the delights of adultery shall not ascend into heaven and that the delight of marriage shall not descend into hell; and yet that there shall be some correspondence of heaven with prolification in adulteries, though none with the delight itself in them. (a.e., n. .) it has been said that marriage love, which is natural, descends from the love of good and truth, which is spiritual; this spiritual therefore is in the natural love of marriage as a cause is in its effect. so from the marriage of good and truth there comes forth a love of bearing fruit, that is, good through truth and truth from the good; and from that love a love of producing offspring descends, and in that love there is every delight and pleasure. on the contrary, love of adultery, which is natural, springs from a love of evil and falsity, which is spiritual; consequently this spiritual is in the natural love of adultery as a cause is in its effect. so from the marriage of evil and falsity by love there comes forth a love of bearing fruit, namely, evil through falsity and falsity from evil; and from that love a love of producing offspring in adulteries descends, and in that love there is every delight and pleasure. there is every delight and pleasure in the love of producing offspring, because all that is delightful, pleasurable, blessed, and happy, in the whole heaven and in the whole world, has been from creation brought together into the effort and thus into the act of bringing forth uses; and these joys increase in an ascending degree to eternity, according to the goodness and excellence of the uses. this make evident why the pleasure of producing offspring, which surpasses every other pleasure, is so great. it surpasses every other because its use, which is the procreation of the human race, and thus of heaven, surpasses all other uses. from this, too, comes the pleasure and delight of adultery; but as prolification by adulteries corresponds to the bringing forth of evil through falsity and of falsity from evil, that pleasure or delight decreases and becomes vile by degrees until it is changed at last into aversion and disgust. because, as has been said above, the delight of the love of marriage is a heavenly delight, so the delight of adultery is an infernal delight, so the delight of adultery is from a certain impure fire, which as long as it lasts, counterfeits the delight of the love of good, but in itself it is the delight of the love of evil, which is in its essence the delight of hatred against good and truth. and because this is its origin there is not love between an adulterer and an adulteress except such as the love of hatred is, which is such that they can be in conjunction in externals but not in internals. for in the externals there is something fiery, but in the internals there is coldness; therefore after a short time the fire is extinguished and coldness succeeds, either with impotence or a turning away as from something filthy. it has been granted me to see that love in its essence, and it was such that within it was deadly hatred, while without it appeared like a fire from burning dung and putrid and stinking matters. and as that fire with its delight burnt out, so by degrees the life of mutual discourse and intercourse expired, and hatred came forth, manifested first as contempt, afterward as aversion, then as rejection, and finally as abuse and contention. and what was wonderful, although they hated each other they could from time to time come together and for the time feel the delight of hatred as the delight of love; but this came from a hankering of the flesh. what the delight of hatred and thus of doing evil is with those who are in hell can neither be described nor believed. to do evil is the joy of their heart, and this they call their heaven. their delight in doing evil derives its all from hatred and vengeance against good and truth; when, therefore, they are moved by a deadly and devilish hatred they rage against heaven, especially against those who are from heaven and who worship the lord; for they violently burn to slaughter them, and because they cannot destroy their bodies they desire to destroy their souls. it is, therefore, the delight of hatred which, becoming a fire in the extremes and being injected into the lusting flesh, becomes for the moment the delight of adultery,--the soul in which the hatred lies concealed then withdrawing itself. it is for this reason that hell is called adultery, and also that adulterers are desperately unmerciful, savage, and cruel. this, then, is the infernal marriage. (a.e., n. .) it has been said that the love of adultery is a fire enkindled from impurities that soon burns out and is turned into cold, and into an aversion corresponding to hatred. but the reverse is true of the love of marriage. this is a fire enkindled from a love of good and truth and from a delight in well-doing, thus from love to the lord and from love toward the neighbor. this fire, which from its origin is heavenly, is full of innumerable delights, as many, in fact, as are the delights and blessednesses of heaven. it has been told me that the charms and pleasantnesses of that love, which are manifested from time to time, are so many and such that they cannot be numbered or described. moreover, they are multiplied with continued increase to eternity. these delights have their origin in the fact that the married pair wish to be united into one in respect to their minds, and into such a union heaven breathes from the marriage of good and truth from the lord in heaven. (a.e., n. .) that true marriage love contains in itself ineffable delights that can neither be numbered nor described can be seen from the fact that this is the fundamental love of all celestial and spiritual loves, since through that love man becomes love; for from it each of the married pair loves the other as good loves truth and truth loves good, thus representatively as the lord loves heaven and the church. such a love can come forth only through a marriage in which the man is truth and the wife is good. when a man through marriage has become such a love he is also in love to the lord and in love toward the neighbor, and thus in a love for all good and in a love for all truth. for from man as a love loves of every kind must proceed; therefore marriage love is the fundamental love of all the loves of heaven. and as it is the fundamental love of all the loves of heaven it is also the foundation of all the delights and joys of heaven, since every delight and joy is of love. from this it follows that heavenly joys, in their order and in their degrees, have their origins and their causes in marriage love. from the felicities of marriages a conclusion may be drawn respecting the infelicities of adulteries, namely, that the love of adultery is the fundamental love of all infernal loves, which are in themselves not loves, but hatreds, consequently from the love of adultery hatreds of every kind gush forth, both against god and against the neighbor, and in general against every good and truth of heaven and the church; therefore to it all infelicities belong, for, as has been said before, from adulteries man becomes a form of hell, and from the love of adulteries he becomes an image of the devil. that from the marriages in which there is true marriage love all delights and felicities increase even till they become the delights and felicities of the inmost heaven, and that all that is undelightful and unhappy in the marriages in which love of adultery reigns increases in direfulness even to the lowest hell, can be seen in the work on heaven and hell (n. ). (a.e., n. .) true marriage love is from the lord alone. it is from the lord alone because it descends from the lord's love for heaven and the church, and thus from the love of good and truth; for good is from the lord, and truth is in heaven and the church; and from this it follows that true marriage love in its first essence is love to the lord. and from this it is that no one can be in true marriage love and in its pleasantnesses, delights, blessings, and joys, unless he acknowledges the lord alone, that is, that the trinity is in him. one who approaches the father as a person by himself, or the holy spirit as a person by himself, and not these as in the lord, can have no marriage love. the genuine conjugal principle is given especially in the third heaven, because the angels there are in love to the lord and acknowledge him alone as god, and do his commandments. to them doing the commandments is loving the lord. to them the lord's commandments are the truths in which they receive him. there is conjunction of the lord with them, and of them with the lord; for they are in the lord because they are in good, and the lord is in them because they are in truths. this is the heavenly marriage, from which true marriage love descends. (a.e., n. .) as true marriage love in its first essence is love to the lord from the lord it is also innocence. innocence is loving the lord as one's father by doing his commandments and wishing to be led by him and not by oneself, thus like a little child. as that love is innocence, it is the very being (esse) of all good; and therefore man has so much of heaven in himself, or he is so much in heaven, as he is in marriage love, because he is so far in innocence. it is because true marriage love is innocence that the playfulness between a married pair is like the play of little children; and this is so in the measure in which they love each other, as is evident in the case of all in the first days after the nuptials, when their love emulates true marriage love. the innocence of marriage love is meant in the word by the "nakedness" at which adam and his wife blushed not; and for the reason that there is nothing of lasciviousness, and thus nothing of shame, between a married pair, any more than between little children when they are naked together. (a.e., n. .) since marriage love in its first essence is love to the lord from the lord, and thus is innocence, marriage love is also peace, such as angels in the heavens have. for as innocence is the very being (esse) of all good, so peace is the very being (esse) of all delight from good, consequently is the very being (esse) of all joy between the married pair. as, then, all joy is of love, and marriage love is the fundamental love of all the loves of heaven, so peace itself has its seat chiefly in marriage love. peace is bliss of heart and soul arising from the conjunction of the lord with heaven and the church, as well as from conjunction of good and truth, when all conflict and combat of evil and falsity with good and truth has ceased. and as marriage love descends from such conjunction so all the delight of that love descends and derives its essence from heavenly peace. moreover, this peace shines forth in the heavens as heavenly bliss from the faces of a married pair who are in that love, and who mutually regard each other from that love. but such heavenly bliss, which inmostly affects the delights of loves, and is called peace, can be granted only to those who can be joined together inmostly, that is, as to their very hearts. (a.e., n. .) man has such and so much of intelligence and wisdom as he has of marriage love. the reason is that marriage love descends from the love of good and truth as an effect does from its cause, or as the natural from its spiritual; and from the marriage of good and truth the angels of the three heavens have all their intelligence and wisdom; for intelligence and wisdom are nothing else than the reception of light and heat from the lord as a sun, that is, the reception of divine truth joined to divine good, and of divine good joined to divine truth; thus it is a marriage of good and truth from the lord. that it is such has been made clearly evident by angels in the heavens. when these are separated from their consorts they are indeed in intelligence, but not in wisdom; but when they are with their consorts they are also in wisdom; and what seemed wonderful, as they turn the face to their consort they are to the same extent in a state of wisdom; for the conjunction of truth and good is effected in the spiritual world by looking; and the wife there is good and the husband truth; therefore as truth turns itself to good so truth becomes living. by intelligence and wisdom ingenuity in reasoning about truths and goods is not meant, but a capacity to see and understand truths and goods, and this capacity man has from the lord. (a.e., n. .) true marriage love is a source of power and protection against the hells, as it is against the evils and falsities that ascend from the hells, and for the reason that through marriage love man has conjunction with the lord, and the lord alone has power over all the hells; also because through marriage love man has heaven and the church; consequently as the lord unceasingly protects heaven and the church from the evils and falsities that rise up from the hells, so he protects all who are in true marriage love, because such and no others have heaven and the church. for heaven and the church are a marriage of good and truth, from which is marriage love, as has been said above. and this is why through marriage love man has peace, which is inmost joy of heart from a complete safety from the hells and a protection from infestations of the evil and falsity therefrom. (a.e., n. .) those who are in true marriage love, when after death they become angels, return to their early manhood and to youth, the males, however spent with age, becoming young men, and the wives, however spent with age, becoming maidens. each of the married pair returns to the flower and joy of the age when marriage love begins to exalt the life with new delights, and to inspire playfulness for the sake of prolification. the man who while he lived in the world had shunned adulteries as sins, and who has been inaugurated by the lord into marriage love, comes into this state first outwardly and afterward more and more interiorly to eternity. as such continue to grow young more interiorly it follows that true marriage love continually increases and enters into its charms and satisfactions, which have been provided for it from the creation of the world, and which are the charms and satisfactions of the inmost heaven, arising from the love of the lord for heaven and the church, and thus from the love of good for truth and truth for good, which loves are the source of every joy in the heavens. man thus grows young in heaven because he then enters into the marriage of good and truth; and in good there is the conatus [instinct] to love truth continually, and in truth there is the conatus [instinct] to love good continually; and then the wife is good in form and the husband is truth in form. from that conatus [instinct] man puts off all the austerity, sadness, and dryness of old age, and puts on the liveliness, gladness, and freshness of youth, from which the conatus [instinct] becomes living and a joy. i have been told from heaven that such then have the life of love, which cannot otherwise be described than as the life of joy itself. that the man who lives in true marriage love in the world comes after death into the heavenly marriage, which is the marriage of good and truth springing from the marriage of the lord with the church, is clearly evident from this, that from the marriages in the heavens, although the married pair have consociations there like those on the earth, children are not born, but instead of children goods and truths, and thus wisdom, as has been said above. and this is why births, nativities, and generations mean in the word, in its spiritual sense, spiritual births, nativities, and generations, and sons and daughters mean the truths and goods of the church, and other like things are meant by daughters-in-law, mothers-in-law, and fathers-in-law. this also makes clear that marriages on the earth correspond to marriages in the heavens; and that after death man comes into the correspondence, that is, comes from natural bodily marriage into spiritual heavenly marriage, which is heaven itself and the joy of heaven. (a.e., n. .) from marriage love angels have all their beauty; thus each angel has beauty in the measure of that love. for all angels are forms of their affections, for the reason that it is not permitted in heaven to counterfeit with the face things that do not belong to one's affection; consequently their faces are types of their minds. when, therefore, they have marriage love, and love of wisdom, these loves in them give form to their faces, and show themselves like vital fires in their eyes; to which innocence and peace add themselves, which complete their beauty. such are the forms of the inmost angelic heaven; and they are truly human forms. (a.e., n. .) from what has been thus far presented what the good is that results from chastity in marriage can be inferred, consequently what the good works of chastity are that a man does who shuns adulteries as sins against god. the good works of chastity concern either the married pair themselves, or their offspring and posterity, or the heavenly societies. the good works of chastity that concern the married pair themselves are spiritual and celestial loves, intelligence and wisdom, innocence and peace, power and protection against the hells and against the evils and the falsities therefrom, and manifold joys and felicities to eternity. those who live in chaste marriages, as before described, have all these. the good works of chastity that concern the offspring and posterity are that so many and so great evils do not become innate in families. for the ruling love of parents is transmitted to the offspring and sometimes to remote posterity, and becomes their hereditary nature. this is broken and softened in parents who shun adulteries as infernal and love marriages as heavenly. the good works of chastity that concern the heavenly societies are that chaste marriages are the charms of heaven, that they are its nurseries, and that they are its supports. they supply charms to heaven by communications; they are nurseries to heaven by producing offspring; and they are supports to heaven by their power against the hells; for at the presence of conjugal love devilish spirits become furious, insane, and mentally impotent, and cast themselves into the deep. (a.e., n. .) from the goods enumerated and described that result from chaste marriages it may be concluded what the evils are that result from adulteries; for such evils are the opposites of such goods; that is, in place of the spiritual and celestial loves that those have who live in chaste marriages, there are the infernal and devilish loves that those have who are in adulteries. so in place of the intelligence and wisdom that those have who live chastely in marriages there are the insanities and follies that those have who are in adulteries; in place of the innocence and peace that those have who live in chaste marriages there are the deceit and no peace that those have who are in adulteries; in place of the power and protection against the hells that those have who live chastely in marriages there are the very asmodean demons and the hells that those have who live in adulteries; in place of the beauty that those have who live chastely in marriages there is the deformity that those have who live in adulteries, which is monstrous according to what they are. their final lot is that from the extreme impotence to which they are at length reduced they become emptied of all the fire and light of life, and dwell alone in deserts as images of the slothfulness and weariness of their own life. (a.e., n. .) true marriage love is impossible except between two, like the lord's love toward heaven, which is one from him and in him, or toward the church, which like heaven is one from him and in him. all who are in the heavens and who are in the church must be one through mutual love from love to the lord. an angel in heaven or a man in the church who does not thus make one with the rest is not of heaven or of the church. moreover, in the whole heaven and in the whole world there are two things to which all things have reference; these two are called good and truth, from which, when joined into one, all things in heaven and in the world have had existence and subsistence. when these are one, good is in truth and truth is in good, and truth is of good and good is of truth; thus one recognizes the other as its mutual and reciprocal, or as an agent recognizes its reagent, each in its turn. this universal marriage is the source of marriage love between husband and wife. the husband has been so created as to be the understanding of truth, and the wife so created as to be the will of good, and thus the husband to be a truth and the wife a good, as well as that both may be truth and good in form, which form is man, and an image of god. since, then, for truth to come to be of good and good to be of truth mutually and reciprocally has its origin in creation, so it is impossible for one truth to be united to two diverse goods, or the reverse; neither is it possible for one understanding to be united to two diverse wills or the reverse; neither for one person who is spiritual to be united to two diverse churches; neither in like manner for one man (vir) to be inmostly united to two women. inmost union is like that of soul and heart; the soul of the wife is the husband, and the heart of the husband is the wife. the husband communicates and conjoins his soul to the wife by actual love; it is in his seed; and the wife receives it in her heart, and from this the two become one, and then each and all things in the body of the one look to their mutual in the body of the other. this is genuine marriage, which is possible only between two. for it is by creation that all things of the husband, both of his mind and of his body, have their mutual in the mind and in the body of the wife; and thus the most particular things look mutually to each other and will to be united. from this looking and conatus [instinct] marriage love springs. all things in the body, which are called members, viscera, and organs, are nothing but natural corporeal forms corresponding to the spiritual form of the mind; from this each and all things of the body so correspond to each and all things of the mind that whatever the mind wills and thinks the body at its command instantly brings forth into act. when, therefore, two minds act as one their two bodies are potentially so united that they are no more two but one flesh. to will to become one flesh is marriage love; and such as the willing is, such is that love. it is allowed to confirm this by a wonderful thing in the heavens. there are married pairs there in such marriage love that the two can be one flesh, and are one whenever they wish, and they then appear as one man. i have seen and talked with such; and they said that they have one life, and are like the life of good in truth and the life of truth in good, and are like the pairs in man, that is, like the two hemispheres of the brain enclosed in one membrane, the two ventricles of the heart within a common covering, likewise the two lobes of the lungs; these, although they are two, yet are one in regard to life and the activities of life, which are uses. they said that their life so conjoined is full of heaven, and is the very life of heaven with its infinite beatitudes, for the reason that heaven that heaven also is such from the marriage of the lord with it, for all the angels of heaven are in the lord and the lord in them. furthermore, they said that it is impossible for them to think from any intention about an additional wife or woman, because this would be turning heaven into hell, consequently if an angel merely thinks of such a thing he falls from heaven. they added that natural spirits do not believe such conjunctions as theirs to be possible, for the reason that with those who are merely natural there is no marriage from a spiritual origin, which is of good and truth, but only a marriage from a natural origin; therefore there is no union of minds, but only a union of bodies from a lascivious disposition in the flesh; and this lust is from a universal law impressed upon and thus implanted in everything animate and inanimate from creation. the law is that everything in which there is force wills to produce its like and to multiply its kind to infinity and to eternity. as the posterity of jacob, who were called the sons of israel, were merely natural men, and thus their marriages were not spiritual but carnal, so they were permitted on account of the hardness of their hearts to take more wives than one. (a.e., n. .) but it is to be noted that adulteries are more and less infernal and abominable. the adulteries that spring from more grievous evils and their falsities are more grievous, and those from the milder evils and their falsities are milder; for adulteries correspond to adulterations of good and consequent falsifications of truth; adulterations of good are in themselves evils, and falsifications of truth are in themselves falsities. according to correspondences with these the hells are arranged into genera and species. (a.e., n. .) in brief, from every conjunction of evil and falsity in the spiritual world a sphere of adultery flows forth, but only from those who are in falsities in regard to doctrine and in evils in regard to life; not from those who are in falsities in regard to doctrine but are in goods in regard to life, for in such there is no conjunction of evil and falsity, but only in the former. that sphere flows forth particularly from priests who have taught falsely and lived wickedly; for these have adulterated and falsified the word. although such were not adulterers in the world, adultery is excited by them; but it is an adultery called sacerdotal [priestly] adultery, which is distinguishable from other adulteries. all this makes clear that the origin of adulteries is the love and consequent conjunction of evil and falsity. (a.e., n. .) adulteries are less abhorrent to christians than to the heathen, and even to some barbarous nations, for the reason that at present in the christian world there is no marriage of good and truth, but a marriage or evil and falsity. for the religion and doctrine of faith separated from good works is a religion and doctrine of truth separated from good; and truth separated from good is not truth, but inwardly regarded is falsity; and good separated from truth is not good, but inwardly regarded is evil. consequently in the christian religion there is doctrine of falsity and evil, from which origin a desire and inclination for adultery from hell flow in; and this is why adulteries are believed in the christian world to be allowable, and are practiced without shame. for, as has been said above, the conjunction of evil and falsity is spiritual adultery, from which according to correspondence natural adultery springs. for this reason "adulteries" and "whoredoms" signify in the word adulterations of good and falsifications of truth; and for this reason babylon is called in the apocalypse a "harlot," and jerusalem is so called in the word of the old testament; and the jewish nation was called by the lord "an adulterous nation," and "from their father the devil." (a.e., n. .) he that abstains from adulteries from any other motive than because they are sins and are against god is still an adulterer; as for instance when anyone abstains from them from fear of the civil law and its penalties, from fear of the loss of reputation and thus of honor, from fear of resulting diseases, from fear of upbraidings at home from his wife and consequent intranquility of life, from fear of chastisement by the servants of the injured husband, from poverty, or from avarice; from infirmity arising from abuse or from age or impotence or disease; in fact, when one abstains because of any natural or moral law, and does not at the same time abstain because of the divine law, he is interiorly unchaste and an adulterer, since he none the less believes that adulteries are not sins, and therefore declares them lawful in his spirit, and thus commits them in spirit, although not in the body; consequently after death when he becomes a spirit he speaks openly in favor of them, and commits them without shame. it has been granted me in the spiritual world to see maidens who regarded whoredoms as wicked because they are contrary to the divine law, and also maidens who did not regard them as wicked and yet abstained from them because the resulting bad name would turn away suitors. these latter i saw encompassed with a dusky cloud in their descent to those below, while the former i saw encompassed with a shining light in their ascent to those above. (a.e., n. .) vii. the seventh commandment in what now follows something shall be said about the seventh commandment, which is, "thou shalt not kill." in all the commandments of the decalogue, as in all things of the word, two internal senses are involved (besides the highest which is a third), one that is next to the letter and is called the spiritual moral sense, another that is more remote and is called the spiritual celestial sense. the nearest sense of this commandment, "thou shalt not kill," which is the spiritual moral sense, is that one must not hate his brother or neighbor, and thus not defame or slander him; for thus he would injure or kill his reputation and honor, which is the source of his life among his brethren, which is called his civil life, and afterward he would live in society as one dead, for he would be numbered among the vile and wicked, with whom no one would associate. when this is done from enmity, from hatred, or from revenge, it is murder. morever, by many in the world this life is counted and esteemed in equal measure with the life of the body. and before the angels in the heavens he that destroys this life is held to be as guilty as if he had destroyed the bodily life of his brother. for enmity, hatred, and revenge breathe murder and will it; but they are restrained and curbed by fear of the law, of resistance and of loss of reputation. and yet these three are endeavors toward murder; and every endeavor is an act, for it goes forth into act when fear is removed. this is what the lord teaches in matthew: "ye have heard that it was said to them of old, thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be liable to the judgment. but i say unto you, that whosoever is angry with his brother without cause shall be liable to the judgment; whosoever shall say to his brother, raca, shall be liable to the council; but whosoever shall say, thou fool, shall be liable to the hell of fire." (v. - ) but the more remote sense of this commandment, thou shalt not kill, which is called the celestial spiritual sense, is that one shall not take away from man the faith and love of god, and thus his spiritual life. this is murder itself, because from this life man is a man, the life of the body serving this life as the instrumental cause serves its principal cause. moreover, from this spiritual murder moral murder is derived; consequently he who is in the one is also in the other; for he who wills to take away a man's spiritual life is in hatred against him if he cannot take it away, for he hates the faith and love in him, and thus the man himself. these three, namely, spiritual murder, which pertains to faith and love, moral murder, which pertains to reputation and honor, and natural murder, which pertains to the body, follow in a series one from the other, like cause and effect. (a.e., n. .) as all who are in hell are in hatred against the lord, and thus in hatred against heaven, for they are against goods and truths, so hell is the essential murderer or the source of essential murder. it is the source of essential murder because man is man from the lord through the reception of good and truth; consequently destruction of good and truth is destruction of the human itself, thus the killing of man. that those who are in hell are such has not yet been known in the world, because in those who belong to hell and therefore after death come into hell no hatred against good and truth, or against heaven, or still less against the lord, is evident. for everyone while he lives in the world is in externals; and these externals are taught and trained from infancy to counterfeit such things as are honest and decorous, right and equitable, and good and true. nevertheless, hatred lies concealed in their spirit, and this in equal degree with the evil of their life. and as hatred is in the spirit it breaks forth when the externals are laid aside, as is the case after death. this infernal hatred against all who are in good is deadly hatred because it is hatred against the lord. this can be seen particularly in their delight in doing evil, which is such as to exceed in degree every other delight, for it is a fire that burns with a lust for destroying souls. moreover, it has been ascertained that this delight is not from hatred against those whom they attempt to destroy, but from hatred against the lord himself. and since man is a man from the lord, and the human which is from the lord is good and truth, and since those who are in hell are, from hatred against the lord, eager to kill the human, which is good and truth, it follows that hell is the source of murder itself. (a.e., n. .) from what has been said above it can be seen that all who are in evils in respect to life, and in the falsities therefrom, are murderers; for they are enemies and haters of good and truth, since evil hates good and falsity hates truth. the evil man does not know he is in such hatred until he becomes a spirit; then hatred is the very delight of his life. consequently from hell, where all the evil are, there constantly breathes forth a delight in doing evil from hatred; while from heaven, where all the good are, there constantly breathes forth a delight in doing good from love. therefore two opposite spheres meet each other in the middle region between heaven and hell, and engage in reciprocal combat. while man lives in the world he is in this middle region. if he is then in evil and in falsities therefrom he passes over to the side of hell, and thus comes into a delight in doing evil from hatred. but if he is in good and in truths therefrom, he passes over to the side of heaven, and thus comes into a delight in doing good from love. the delight in doing evil from hatred, which breathes forth from hell, is a delight in killing. but as they cannot kill the body they wish to kill the spirit; and to kill the spirit is to take away spiritual life, which is the life of heaven. this makes clear that the commandment, "thou shalt not kill," involves also thou shalt not hate thy neighbor, also thou shalt not hate the good of the church and its truth; for if one hates good and truth he hates the neighbor; and to hate is to wish to kill. this is why the devil, by whom hell in the whole complex is meant, is called by the lord, "a murderer from the beginning" (john viii, ). since hatred, which is a desire to kill, is the opposite of love to the lord and also of love toward the neighbor, and since these loves are what make heaven in man, it is evident that hatred, being thus opposite, is what makes hell in him. nor is infernal fire anything else than hatred; and in consequence the hells appear to be in a fire with a dusky glow according to the quality and quantity of the hatred, and in a fire with a dusky flame according to the quantity and quality of the revenge from hatred. since hatred and love are direct opposites, and since hatred in consequence constitutes hell in man, just as love constitutes heaven in him, so the lord teaches, "if thou shalt offer thy gift upon the altar, and shalt there remember that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go; first be reconciled to they brother, and then coming offer thy gift. be well disposed toward thine adversary whiles thou art in the way with him; lest haply the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. verily, i say unto thee, thou shalt not come out thence till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing" (matt. v. - ). to be delivered to the judge, and by the judge to the officer, and by him to be cast into prison, depicts the state of the man who is in hatred after death from his having been in hatred against his brother in the world, "prison" meaning hell, and "paying the uttermost farthing" signifying the punishment that is called the fire everlasting. (a.e., n. .) since hatred is infernal fire it is clear that it must be put away before love, which is heavenly fire, can flow in, and by light from itself give life to man; and this infernal fire can in no wise be put away unless man knows whence hatred is and what it is, and afterward turns away from it and shuns it. there is in every man by inheritance a hatred against the neighbor; for every man is born into a love of self and of the world, and in consequence conceives hatred, and from it is inflamed against all who do not make one with him and favor his love, especially against those who oppose his lusts. for no one can love himself above all things and love the lord at the same time; neither can anyone love the world above all things and love the neighbor at the same time; since no one can serve two masters at the same time without despising and hating the one while he honors and loves the other. hatred is especially in those who are in a love of ruling over all; with others it is unfriendliness. it shall be told what hatred is. hatred has in itself a fire which is an endeavor to kill man. that fire is manifested in anger. there is a seeming hatred and consequent anger in the good against evil; but this is not hatred, but an aversion to evil; neither is it anger, but a zeal for good in which heavenly fire inwardly lies concealed. for the good turn away from what is evil, and are seemingly angry at the neighbor, in order that they may remove the evil; and thus they have regard to the neighbor's good. (a.e., n. .) when a man abstains from hatred and turns away from it and shuns it as devilish, love, charity, mercy, clemency flow in through heaven from the lord, and then for the first time the works that he does are works of love and charity; while the works he had done before, however good might be their appearance in the external form, were all works of love of self and of the world, in which hatred lurked whenever they were not rewarded. so long as hatred is not put away so long man is merely natural; and the merely natural man remains in all his inherited evil, nor can he become spiritual until hatred, with its root, which is love of ruling over all, is put away; for the fire of heaven, which is spiritual love, cannot flow in so long as the fire of hell, which is hatred, stands in the way and shuts it out. (a.e., n. .) viii. the eighth commandment the eighth commandment of the decalogue, "thou shalt not bear false witness," shall now be explained. "to bear false witness" signifies in the sense nearest to the letter to lie about the neighbor by accusing him falsely. but in the internal sense it signifies to call what is just unjust, and what is unjust just, and to confirm this by means of falsities; while in the inmost sense it signifies to falsity the truth and good of the word, and on the other hand to prove a falsity of doctrine to be true by confirming it by means of fallacies, appearances, fabrications, knowledges falsely applied, sophistries, and the like. the confirmations themselves and the consequent persuasions are false witnesses, for they are false attestations. from this it can be seen that what is here meant is not only false witness before a judge, but even a judge himself who in perverting right makes what is just unjust, and what is unjust just, for he as well as the witness himself acts the part of a false witness. the same is true of every man who makes what is straight to appear crooked, and what is crooked to appear straight; likewise any ecclesiastical leader who falsifies the truth of the word and perverts its good. in a word, every falsification of truth, spiritual, moral, and civil, which is done from an evil heart, is false witness. (a.e., n. .) when a man abstains from false testimonies understood in a moral and spiritual sense, and shuns and turns away from them as sins, a love of truth and a love of justice flow in from the lord through heaven. and when, in consequence, the man loves truth and loves justice he loves the lord, for the lord is truth itself and justice itself. and when a man loves truth and justice it may be said that truth and justice love him, because the lord loves him; and as a consequence his utterances become utterances of truth, and his works become works of justice. (a.e., n. .) ix: the ninth and tenth commandments the ninth commandment, "thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house," is now to be treated of. there are two loves from which all lusts spring and flow forth perpetually like streams from their fountains. these loves are called love of the world and love of self. lust is a love continually desiring, for what a man loves, that he continually longs for. but lusts belong to the love of evil, while desires and affections belong to the love of good. now because love of the world and love of self are the fountains of all lusts, and all evil lusts are forbidden in these last two commandments, it follows that the ninth commandment forbids the lusts that flow from love of the world, and the tenth commandment the lusts that flow from love of self. "not to covet a neighbor's house" means not to covet his goods, which in general are possessions of wealth, and not to appropriate them to oneself by evil arts. this lust belongs to love of the world. (a.e., n. .) the tenth commandment is "thou shalt not covet (or try to get possession of) thy neighbor's wife, his man-servant, or his maid-servant, his ox, or his ass." these are lusts after what is man's own, because the wife, man-servant, maid-servant, ox, and ass, are within his home, and the things within a man's home mean in the spiritual internal sense the things that are his own, that is, the wife means affection for spiritual truth and good, "man-servant and maid-servant," affection for rational truth and good serving the spiritual, and "ox and ass" affection for natural good and truth. these signify in the word such affections; but because coveting and trying to get possession of these affections means to wish and eagerly desire to subject a man to one's own authority or bidding, it follows that lusting after these affections means the lusts of the love of self, that is, of the love of ruling, for thus does one make the things belonging to a companion to be his own. from this it can now be seen that the lust of the ninth commandment is a lust of the love of the world, and that the lusts of the tenth commandment are lusts of the love of self. for, as has been said before, all lusts are of love, for it is love that covets; and as there are two evil loves to which all lusts have reference, namely, love of the world and love of self, it follows that the lust of the ninth commandments has reference to love of the world, and the lust of this commandment to love of self, especially to the love of ruling. (a.e., n. .) x. the commandments in general the commandments of the decalogue are called the ten words or ten commandments, because "ten" signifies all; consequently the ten words mean all things of the word, and thus all things of the church in brief. all things of the word and all things of the church in brief are meant, because there are in each commandment three interior senses, each sense for its own heaven, for there are three heavens. the first sense is the spiritual moral sense; this is for the first or outmost heaven; the second sense is the celestial spiritual sense, which is for the second or middle heaven; and the third sense is the divine celestial, which is for the third or inmost heaven. there are thus three internal senses in every least particular of the word. for from the lord, who is in things highest, the word has been sent down in succession through the three heavens even to the earth, and thus has been accommodated to each heaven; and therefore the word is in each heaven and i may say in each angel in its own sense, and is read by them daily; and there are preachings from it, as on the earth. for the word is divine truth itself, thus divine wisdom, going forth from the lord as a sun, and appearing in the heavens as light. divine truth is the divine that is called the holy spirit, for it not only goes forth from the lord but it also enlightens man and teaches him, as is said of the holy spirit. as the word in its descent from the lord has been adapted to the three heavens, and the three heavens are joined together as inmosts are with outmosts through intermediates, so, too, are the three senses of the word; which shows that the word is given that by it there may be a conjunction of the heavens with each other, and a conjunction of the heavens with the human race, for whom the sense of the letter is given, which is merely natural and thus the basis of the other three senses. that the ten commandments of the decalogue are all things of the word in brief can be seen only from the three senses of those commandments, which are as above stated. (a.e., n. ). what these three senses in the commandments of the decalogue are can be seen from the following summary explanation. the first commandment, "thou shalt not worship other gods beside me," involves in the spiritual moral sense that nothing else nor anyone else is to be worshipped as divine; nothing else, that is, nature, by attributing to it something divine of itself; nor anyone else, that is, any vicar of the lord or any saint. in the celestial spiritual sense it involves that one god only is to be acknowledged, and not several according to their qualities, as the ancients did, and as some heathens do at this day, or according to their works, as christians do at this day, who make out one god because of creation, another because of redemption, and another because of enlightenment. this commandment in the divine celestial sense involves that the lord alone is to be acknowledged and whorshipped, and a trinity in him, namely, the divine itself from eternity, which is meant by the father, the divine human born in time, which is meant by the son of god, and the divine that goes forth from both, which is meant by the holy spirit. these are the three senses of the first commandment in their order. from this commandment viewed in its threefold sense it is clear that it contains and includes in brief all things that concern the essence of the divine. the second commandment, "thou shalt not profane the name of god," contains and includes in its three senses all things that concern the quality of the divine, since "the name of god" signifies his quality, which in its first sense is the word, doctrine from the word, and worship of the lips and of the life from doctrine; in its second sense it means the lord's kingdom on the earth and the lord's kingdom in the heavens; and in its third sense it means the lord's divine human, for this is the quality of the divine itself. in the other commandments there are likewise three internal senses for the three heavens; but these, the lord willing, will be considered elsewhere. (a.e., n. .) as the divine truth united to divine good goes forth from the lord as a sun, and by this heaven and the world were made (john i. , , ), it follows that it is from this that all things in heaven and in the world have reference to good and to truth and to their conjunction in bringing forth something. these ten commandments contain all things of divine good and all things of divine truth, and there is also in them a conjunction of these. but this conjunction is hidden; for it is like the conjunction of love to the lord and love toward the neighbor, divine good belonging to love to the lord, and divine truth to love toward the neighbor; for when a man lives according to divine truth, that is, loves his neighbor, the lord flows in with divine good and conjoins himself. for this reason there were two tables on which these ten commandments were written, and they were called a covenant, which signifies conjunction; and afterward they were placed in the ark, not one beside the other, but one above the other, for a testimony of the conjunction between the lord and man. upon one table the commandments of love to the lord were written, and upon the other table the commandments of love toward the neighbor. the commandments of love to the lord are the first three, and the commandments of love toward the neighbor are the last six; and the fourth commandment, which is "honor thy father and thy mother," is the mediating commandment, for in it "father" means the father in the heavens, and "mother" means the church, which is the neighbor. (a.e., n. .) something shall now be said about how conjunction is effected by means of the commandments of the decalogue. man does not conjoin himself to the lord, but the lord alone conjoins man to himself, and this he does by man's knowing, understanding, willing, and doing these commandments; and when man does them there is conjunction, but if he does not do them he ceases to will them, and when he ceases to will them he ceases also to understand and know them. for what does willing amount to if man when he is able does not do? is it not a figment of reason? from this it follows that conjunction is effected when a man does the commandments of the decalogue. but it has been said that man does not conjoin himself to the lord, but that the lord alone conjoins man to himself, and that conjunction is effected by doing; and from this it follows that it is the lord in man that does these commandments. but anyone can see that a covenant cannot be entered into and conjunction be effected by it unless there is some return on man's part, not only in consent but also in acceptance. to this end the lord has imparted to man a freedom to will and act as if of himself, and such a freedom that man does not know otherwise, when he is thinking about truth and doing good, than that the freedom is in himself and thus from himself. there is this return on man's part in order that conjunction may be effected. but as this freedom is from the lord, and continually from him, man must by all means acknowledge that thinking about and understanding truth and willing and doing good are not from himself, but are from the lord. consequently when man through the last six commandments conjoins himself to the lord as if of himself, the lord then conjoins himself to man through the first three commandments, which are that man must acknowledge god, must believe in the lord, and must keep his name holy. these man does not believe, however much he may think that he does, unless the evils forbidden in the other table, that is, in the last six commandments, he abstains from as sins. these are the things pertaining to the covenant on the part of the lord and on the part of man, through which there is reciprocal conjunction, which is that man may be in the lord and the lord in man (john xiv. ). (a.e., n. .) it is said by some that he who sins against one commandment of the decalogue sins also against the rest, thus that he who is guilty of one is guilty of all. it shall be told how far this is in harmony with the truth. when a man transgresses one commandment, assuring himself that it is not a sin, thus offending without fear of god, because he has thus rejected the fear of god he does not fear to transgress the rest of the commandments, although he may not do this in act. for example, when one does not regard as sins frauds and illicit gains, which in themselves are thefts, neither does he regard as a sin adultery with the wife of another, hating a man even to murder, lying about him, coveting his house and other things belonging to him; for when he rejects from his heart in any one commandment the fear of god he denies that anything is a sin; consequently he is in communion with those who in like manner transgress the other commandments. he is like an infernal spirit who is in a hell of thieves; and although he is not an adulterer, nor a murderer, nor a false witness, yet he is in communion with such, and can be persuaded by them to believe that such things are not evils, and can be led to do them. for he who becomes an infernal spirit through the transgression of one commandment, no longer believes it to be a sin to do anything against god or anything against the neighbor. but the opposite is true of those who abstain from the evil forbidden in one commandment, and who shun and afterward turn away from it as a sin against god. because such fear of god, they come into communion with angels of heaven, and are led by the lord to abstain from the evils forbidden in the other commandments and to shun them, and finally to turn away from them as sins; and if perchance they have sinned against them, yet they repent and thus by degrees are withdrawn from them. (a.e., n. .) part third--profanations of good and truth i. goods and truths and their opposites the divine good that goes forth from the lord is united with his divine truth, as heat from the sun is with light in the time of spring. but angels, who are recipients of the divine good and divine truth going forth from the lord, are distinguished as celestial and spiritual. those who receive more of the lord's divine good than of his divine truth are called celestial angels; because these constitute the kingdom of the lord that is called the celestial kingdom. but the angels who receive more of the lord's divine truth than of his divine good are called spiritual angels, because of these the lord's spiritual kingdom consists. this makes clear that goods and truths have a twofold origin, namely, a celestial origin and a spiritual origin. those goods and truths that are from a celestial origin are the goods and truths of love to the lord; while those goods and truths that are from a spiritual origin are the goods and truths of love toward the neighbor. the difference is like that between higher and lower, or between inner and outer; thus like that between things that are in a higher or inner degree, and those that are in a lower or outer degree; and what this difference is can be seen from what has been said in the work on heaven and hell about the three degrees of the heavens, and thus of the angels and their intelligence and wisdom (h.h., n. , , , , , , , ). (a.e., n. .) as the heavens are divided into two kingdoms, namely, into a celestial kingdom and a spiritual kingdom, so are the hells divided into two domains opposite to those kingdoms. the domain opposite to the celestial kingdom is called devilish, and the domain opposite to the spiritual kingdom is called infernal. these domains are distinguished in the word by the names devil and satan. there are two domains in the hells, because the heavens and the hells are opposite to each other; and opposite must fully correspond to opposite that there may be equilibrium. for the springing forth and permanence of all things, both in the natural world and in the spiritual world, depend upon an exact equilibrium between two activities that are opposite; and when these act against each other manifestly, they act by forces, but when not manifestly they act by endeavors (canatus). by means of equilibriums all things in both worlds are preserved; without this all things would perish. in the spiritual world the equilibrium is between good from heaven and evil from hell; and thus between truth from heaven and falsity from hell. for the lord arranges unceasingly that all kinds and species of good and truth in the heavens shall have opposite to them in the hells evils and falsities of kinds that correspond by opposition; thus goods and truths from a celestial origin have for their opposites evils and falsities that are called devilish; and in like manner goods and truths from a spiritual origin have for their opposites evils and falsities that are called infernal. the cause of these equilibriums is to be found in the fact that the same divine goods and divine truths that the angels in the heavens receive from the lord, the spirits in the hells turn into evils and falsities. all angels, spirits, and men are kept by the lord in equilibrium between good and evil, and thus between truth and falsity, in order that they may be in freedom; and thus may be led from evil to good and from falsity to truth easily and as if by themselves, although in fact they are led by the lord. for the same reason they are led in freedom from good to evil, and from truth to falsity, and this, too, as if by themselves, although the leading is from hell. (a.e., n. .) ii. the first kind of profanation profanations are of many kinds. the most grievous kind is when one acknowledges and lives according to the truths and goods of the word, of the church, and of worship, and afterward denies them and lives contrary to them, or even lives contrary to them and does not deny them. such profanation effects a conjunction and coherence of good with falsity, and of truth with evil, and from this it comes to pass that man is at the same time in heaven and in hell; consequently, when heaven wills to have its own, and hell wills to have its own, and yet they cohere, they are both swept away, and thus the proper human life perishes, and the man becomes like a brute animal, continually delirious, and carried hither and thither by fantasy like a dragon in the air, and in his fantasy shreds and specks appear like giants and crowds, and a little platter like the universe; and so on. as such have no longer any human life they are not called spirits, but something profane, nor are they called he or she, but it; and when they are seen in the light of heaven they appear like dried skeletons. but this kind of profanation is rare, since the lord provides against a man's entering into a belief in truth and a life of good unless he can be kept in them continually even to the end of his life. (a.e., n. .) it has been said that the most grievous kind of profanation is when the truths of the word are acknowledged in faith and confirmed in the life, and man afterward recedes from faith and lives wickedly, or if he does not recede from faith he nevertheless lives wickedly. but one who is in faith and in a life according to it from childhood to youth, and afterward in adult age recedes from faith and from a life of faith, does not profane, for the reason that the faith of childhood is a faith of the memory, and is the master's faith in the child; while the faith of adult age is a faith of the understanding, and thus a man's own faith. this faith a man can profane if he recedes from it and lives contrary to it, but not the former. for nothing enters the life of a man and affects it except what comes into the understanding and from that into the will; and a man does not think from his own understanding and act from his own will until he arrives at adult age. before that he has thought merely from knowledge and acted merely from obedience; and this does not make a part of his life, and therefore cannot be profaned. in a word, whatever a man thinks, speaks, and does, from the understanding with the will favoring it, this belongs to his life or comes to be of his life; and if this is holy it is profaned by his receding. but the profanations of this kind are more or less grievous according to the quality of the truth and the consequent faith, and according to the quality of the good and the consequent life, and according to the quality of the withdrawal from these; and therefore there are many specific differences in this profanation. (a.e., n. .) why the state of profaners after death is so horrible shall be disclosed. man has two minds, a natural and a spiritual. the natural mind is opened to him by knowledges (scientiae et cognitiones) of truth and good, and the spiritual mind is opened by a life according to these; and this is effected in those who know, acknowledge, and believe the truths of the word and live according to them. in others that mind is not opened. when the spiritual mind has been opened, the light of heaven, which is divine truth, flows through it into the natural mind, and there arranges truths in a corresponding order. therefore when a man passes over into a contrary state, and either in faith or life denies the truths of the word that he has previously acknowledged, the things that are in the natural mind no longer correspond with those that are in the spiritual mind; consequently heaven with its light flows in through the spiritual mind into non-corresponding things, or into things opposite to those that correspond in the natural man; and from this a fantasy arises that is so direful that they seem to themselves to fly in the air like dragons, while shreds and specks appear to them like giants and crowds, and a little ball like the whole globe, and other like things. the reason of this is that they have heaven in the spiritual mind and hell in the natural mind, and when heaven, which is in the spiritual mind, acts into hell, which is in the natural mind, such things appear. and as this destroys all things pertaining to the understanding, and the will with the understanding, the man comes to be no longer a man. and this is why a profaner is no longer called a man, nor he or she, but it, for he is a brute. (a.e., n. .) this kind of profanation exists especially in those who acknowledge the lord and his divine, and the word and its holiness; and for the reason that the lord alone by means of truths from the word opens heaven to the man who lives according to those truths; and unless heaven is opened such profanation is not possible. and this shows why the gentiles, who are ignorant of the lord and know nothing about the word, cannot bring upon themselves such profanation; neither can the jews, for they deny the lord from their infancy, and heaven is not opened to them by means of the word; neither can the impious who have been such from childhood; for, as has been said, those only profane who believe rightly and live rightly, and afterward believe wrongly and live wrongly. besides this kind of profanation there are other kinds that shall be treated of. (a.e., n. .) iii. the second kind of profanation there is another kind of profanation of holy things that those come into who have supremacy as their end, and regard the holy things of the word, of the church, and of worship, as means. the divine order is that heaven and the church, and consequently the holy things of these, be the end, and supremacy the means for promoting that end. for when holy things are the end and supremacy the means, the lord is worshipped and adored; but when supremacy is the end and holy things the means, man instead of the lord is worshipped and adored. for the means look to the end as servants look to their master, and the end looks to the means as a master looks to his servants; consequently as a master esteems and loves his servants according to the compliance they render to his will, so a man who has supremacy as his end esteems and loves the holy things of the word, of the church, and of worship, according to the compliance they render to his end, which is supremacy. and on the other hand, as a lord despises and dismisses servants and takes others in their place when they are not subservient to his will, so a man who has supremacy as his end despises and rejects the holy things of the church, and takes other things in their place when they are not subservient to his end, which is supremacy. from this it is clear that in those who have supremacy as their end, holy things are of no account except so far as they are subservient to the end, and also that they are not holy, but are profane when they are subservient to this end; and for the reason that the end, when it is supremacy, is the man himself, and as this end is love of self it is the man's own (proprium); and man's own when viewed in itself is nothing but evil, and indeed is profane, and the end joins to itself the means that they may be as one. in this kind of profanation are all those who are in sacred ministries, and who are seeking by means of the holy things of the church to gain honor and glory, and these and not use, which is the salvation of souls, are what give them joy of heart. (a.e., n. .) those who are in this kind of profanation cannot do otherwise than adulterate the goods of the word and falsify its truths, and thus pervert the holy things of the church; for these are not in accord with the end, which is the supremacy of man over them, for they are divine things that cannot be mere servants; therefore from necessity, that the means may be in accord with the end, goods are turned into evils, truths into falsities, and thus holy things into things profane, and this in an increasing degree as the supremacy, which is the end, is increased. that this is so can be clearly seen from the babylon of the present day, to which the holy things of the word, of the church and of worship, are means, and supremacy is the end. so far as they have magnified supremacy they have minimized the holiness of the word, and have actually exalted above it the holiness of the pope's decrees; they have claimed to themselves power over heaven, and even over the lord himself, and they have instituted the idolatrous worship of men, both living and dead, and this until there is nothing left of divine good and divine truth. that the holy things of the word, of the church, and of worship, have been so changed is of the lord's divine providence; not of his providence that this should be done, but of his providence that when men wish to rule and do rule by means of the holy divine things, they should choose falsity in place of truth and evil in place of good, for otherwise they would defile holy things, and render them abominable before angels; but when holy things no longer exist this cannot be done. take as an example what has been done with the holy supper instituted by the lord: they have separated the bread and the wine, giving the bread to the people and drinking the wine themselves. for "bread" signifies good of love to the lord, and "wine" the truth of faith in him; and good separated from truth is not good, nor is truth separated from good truth, for truth is truth from good, and good is good in truth. and so in other things. (a.e., n. .) those who are in the love of self, and from that in the love of ruling, and who covet, acquire, and afterward exercise supremacy by means of the holy things of the word, of the church, and of worship, are those who profane. for the delight of the love of ruling for self's sake, that is, for the sake of eminence, and consequent homage and a kind of worship of self, is an infernal delight. moreover, this prevails in hell, for in hell everyone wills to be the greatest, while in heaven everyone wills to be the least; and to rule over holy things from an infernal delight is to profane them. but this second kind of profanation of the holy things of the church is not like the former kind of the profanation of them. those fall into the former kind in whom a communication with heaven has been effected by the opening of their spiritual mind; while this second kind of profanation those fall into in whom the spiritual mind has not been opened, or communication with heaven effected through it. for so long as the delight of the love of ruling resides in man, that mind cannot be opened, and communication with heaven is not possible to him. moreover, the lot of these profaners after death differs from the lot of the former. the former, as has been said, are in an unceasing delirium of fantasy; but these hate the lord, hate heaven, hate the word, hate the church, and hate all its holy things; and they come into such hatred because their dominion is taken away from them, and thus their state is changed into its opposite. they appear like something fiery, and their hell appears like a conflagration; for infernal fire is nothing else than a lust for ruling from love of self. these are among the worst, and are called devils, while the others are called satans. (a.e., n. .) the love of ruling by the holy things of the church as means wholly shuts up the interiors of the human mind from the inmosts toward the outmosts, according to the kind and strength of that love. but to make clear that they are shut up, something shall first be said about the interiors belonging to the human mind. man has a spiritual mind, a rational mind, a natural mind, and a sensual mind. by means of the spiritual mind man is in heaven and is a heaven in its least form. by means of the natural mind he is in the world and is a world in its least form. heaven in man communicates with the world in him by means of the rational mind, and with the body by means of the sensual mind. the sensual mind is the first to be opened in man after his birth; after that the natural mind, and as he seeks to become intelligent the rational mind, and as he seeks to become wise the spiritual mind. and at length, as man becomes wise the spiritual mind becomes to him as the head, and the natural mind as the body, and the rational mind serves as a neck to join this to the head, and then the sensual mind becomes like the sole of the foot. in little children the lord so arranges all these minds by means of the inflow of innocence from heaven that they can be opened. but with those who begin from childhood to be inflamed with the lust of ruling through the holy things of the church as means, the spiritual mind is wholly shut; so, too, is the rational mind, and finally the natural mind, even to the sensual mind, or as it is said in heaven, even to the nose. and thus men become merely sensual, and are the most stupid of all in things spiritual and thus in things rational, and the most crafty of all in worldly and thus in civil matters. that they are so stupid in spiritual things they do not themselves know, because in heart they do not believe these things, and because they believe craft to be prudence and cunning to be wisdom. and yet all of this kind differ according to the kind and strength of their lust for ruling and for exercising rule, also according to the kind and strength of the persuasion that they are holy, and according to the kind of good and truth from the word that they profane. (a.e., n. .) profaners of this kind are stupid and foolish in spiritual things, but are crafty and keen in worldly things, because they make one with the devils in hell, and because, as has been said above, they are merely sensual, and are therefore in what is their own (proprium), which draws its delight of life from the unclean effluvia that exhale from waste matters in the body, and that are emitted from dunghills; and these cause a swelling of their breasts when their pride is active and the titillation of these cause delight. that such is the source of their delight is made evident by their delights after death when they are living as spirits; for then more than the sweetest odors do they love the rank stenches arising from the gases of the belly and from outhouses, which to their smell are more fragrant than thyme. the approach and touch of these close up the interiors of their mind, and open the exteriors pertaining to the body, from which come their quickness in worldly things and their dullness in spiritual things. in a word, the love of ruling by means of the holy things of the church corresponds to filth, and its delight to a stench indescribable by words, and at which angels shudder. such is the exhalation from their hells when they are opened; but they are kept closed because of the oppression and occasional swooning which they produce. (a.e., n. .) iv. the third kind of profanation in the third kind of profanation are those who with devout gestures and pious utterance worship divine things, and yet in heart and spirit deny them; thus who venerate the holy things of the word and of the church and of worship outwardly or before the world, and yet at home or in secret deride them. when those of this class are in a holy external, and are teaching in a church or conversing with the common people, they do not know otherwise than that what they are saying is so; but as soon as they return into themselves their thought is reversed. because these are such they can counterfeit angels of light, although they are angels of darkness. from this it is clear that this kind of profanation is a hypocritical kind. they are not unlike images made of filth and gilded, or like fruits rotten within but with a beautiful skin, or like nuts eaten by worms within but with a whole shell. from all this it is evident that their internal is diabolical, and therefore that their holy external is profane. such are some of the rulers in the babylon of the present day, and many of a certain society in babylon, as those of them know who claim to themselves dominion over the souls of men and over heaven. for to believe as they do, that power has been given them to save and to admit into heaven, is the very opposite of acknowledging in heart that there is a god, and for the reason that man, in order to be saved and admitted into heaven, must look to the lord and pray to him. but a man who believes that such power has been given him looks to himself, and believes the things that are the lord's to be in himself; and to believe this, and at the same time to believe that there is a god or that god is in him, is impossible. for a man to believe that god is in him when he thinks himself to be above the holy things of the church, and heaven to be in his power, is like ascribing that belief to lucifer, who burns with the fire of ruling over all things. if such a man thinks that god is in him he cannot think this otherwise than from himself; and thinking from himself that god is in him is thinking not that god is in him, but that he himself is god, as is said of lucifer in isaiah (xiv. , ), by whom is there meant babylon, as is evident from the fourth and twenty-second verses of the same chapter. moreover, such a man of himself, when power is given him, shows forth what he is of himself, and this by degrees according to his elevation. from this it is clear that such are atheists, some avowedly, some clandestinely, and some ignorantly. and as they regard dominion as an end, and the holy things of heaven and the church as means, they counterfeit angels of light in face, gesture, and speech, and thus profane holy things. (a.e., n. .) those who are in this kind of profanation, which is hypocritical, differ in this respect, that there are those who have less ability and those who have more ability to conceal the interiors of their mind, that they may not be disclosed, and to shape the exteriors, which pertain to face and mouth, into an expression of sanctity. when such after death become spirits they appear encompassed with a cloud, in the midst of which is something black, like an egyptian mummy. but as they are raised up as it were into the light of heaven, that bright cloud changes to a diabolical duskiness, not from any shining through it, but from a breathing through it, and the consequent disclosing. in hell, therefore, these are black devils. the differences in this kind of profanation are known from the blackness, as being more or less horrifying. (a.e., n. .) v. the fourth and fifth kinds of profanation a fourth kind of profanation is to live a life of piety, by frequenting churches, listening devoutly to preachings, observing the sacrament of the supper, and the other appointed forms of worship, reading the word at home, and sometimes books of devotion, and habitually praying morning and evening, and yet making the precepts of life that are in the word, particularly in the decalogue, of no account, by acting dishonestly and unjustly in business and in judgments for the sake of gain or influenced by friendship; committing whoredom and adultery when lust inflames and urges; burning with hate and revenge against those who do not favor their gain or honor; lying, and speaking evil of the good, and good of the evil, and so on. when a man is in these evils, and has not been purified from them by turning away from them and hating them, and still worships god devoutly, as has been said above, then he profanes; for he mingles his internals which are impure with externals that are pious, and these he defiles. for there can be nothing external that does not proceed and have existence from internals. the actions and speech of man are his externals, and thoughts and volitions are his internals. man can speak only from thought, and can act only from volition. when the life of the thoughts and of the will is infected with craft, cunning, and violence, it must needs be that these, as interior evils of the life, will flow into the speech and actions pertaining to worship and piety, and defile them as filth defiles waters. this worship is what is meant by "gog and magog" (apoc. xx. ), and is thus described in isaiah: "what is the multitude of sacrifices unto me, meat offerings, incense, sabbaths, new moons, appointed feasts, and prayers, when your hands are full of bloods? wash you, make you clean, put away the wickedness of your doings . . . ; cease to do evil" (i. - ). this kind of profanation is not hypocritical like the former, because the man who is in it believes that he will be saved by external worship separate from internal, and does not know that the worship by which he can be saved is external worship from internal. (a.e., n. .) those who give themselves up wholly to a life of piety, who walk continually in pious meditations, who pray frequently upon their knees, and talk about salvation, faith, and love at all times and in all places, and yet do not shun frauds, adulteries, hatreds, blasphemies, and the like, as sins against god, nor fight against them, such are the kind that are more fully profaners; for by the impurities of their minds they defile the piety of their lips, especially when they renounce the world and lead solitary lives. of this kind there are some who are still more profaners; these are like those just described, but by reasonings and by the word falsely interpreted they defend their vices as adulteries and lusts that belong to their nature, and thus to their enjoyment. such first regard themselves as free from danger, afterward as blameless, and at length as holy; and thus under the veil of sanctity they cast themselves into uncleannesses with which both themselves and their garments are polluted. (a.e., n. .) to this class of profaners those especially belong who read the word and know about the lord; because from the lord through the word are all things holy that can be profaned; things not from that source cannot be profaned. that is said to be profane that is the opposite of what is holy, and that offers violence to what is holy and destroys it. from this it follows that those who do not read the word and do not approach the lord, as is the case with the papists, still less those who know nothing about the lord and the word, like the gentiles, do not belong to this class of profaners. those who belong to this class of profaners appear after death at first with a face of human color, around which float many wandering stars; and those of them that had been leaders sometimes appear shining about the lips. but as they are brought into the light of heaven, the stars and the shining of the lips vanish, and the color of the face is changed to black, and likewise their garments. but the blackness of these profaners tends to blue, as the blackness of the other kind of profaners tends to red, for the reason that the latter profane the goods of the word and of the church, while the others profane the truths of the word and of the church. for red derives from the sun its signification of good, while blue derives from the sky its signification of truth. (a.e., n. .) the fifth kind of profanation is not like the others that have been treated of, for it consists in jesting from the word and about the word. for those who make jokes from the word do not regard it as holy, and those who joke about it hold it in no esteem. and yet the word is the very divine truth of the lord with men, and the lord is present in the word, and heaven also; for every particular of the word communicates with heaven, and through heaven with the lord; therefore to jest from the word or about the word is to bespatter the holy things of heaven with the dust of the earth. (a.e., n. .) part fourth--the divine word i. the holiness of the word it was said of old that the word is from god, divinely inspired, and thus holy; and yet it has not been known heretofore where in the word the divine is. for the word appears in the letter like a common writing in a foreign style, and a style not so sublime or so lucid as appears in the writings of the present ages. for this reason a man who worships nature more than god, or in place of god, and thus thinks from himself and what is his own (proprium), and not from the lord out of heaven, can easily fall into error respecting the word, and into contempt for it, saying in his heart when he reads it, what is this, or what is that? is this divine? can god who has infinite wisdom speak in this manner? where is its holiness, and from what source, unless from the religion whose ministers it serves? and other like things. but that it may be known that the word is divine, not only in every meaning but also in every expression, its internal sense, which is spiritual, and which is in its external sense, which is natural, as a soul in its body, has now been revealed. this sense can bear witness to the divinity and consequent holiness of the word; and can convince even the natural man that the word is divine if he is willing to be convinced. (a.e., n. .) in brief, the word is divine truth itself, which gives wisdom to angels and enlightens men. as divine truth goes forth from the lord, and as what goes forth is himself out of himself, the same as light and heat go forth from the sun and are the sun, that is, are of the sun out of it, and as the word is divine truth, it is therefore the lord, as it is called in john (i. - , ). in as much as divine truth, which is the word, in its descent into the world from the lord, has passed through the three heavens, it has become accommodated to each heaven, and lastly to men also in the world. this is why there are in the word four senses, one outside of the other from the highest heaven down to the world, or one within the other from the world up to the highest heaven. these four senses are called the celestial, the spiritual, the natural from the celestial and spiritual, and the merely natural. this last is for the world, the next for the lowest heaven, the spiritual for the second heaven, and the celestial for the third. these four senses differ so greatly from one another that when one is exhibited beside the other no connection can be recognized; and yet they make one when one follows the other; for one follows from the other as an effect from a cause, or as what is posterior from what is prior; consequently as an effect represents its cause and corresponds to its cause, so the posterior sense corresponds to the prior; and thus it is that all four senses make one through correspondences. from all this these truths follow. the outmost sense of the word, which is the sense of the letter, and the fourth in order, contains in itself the three interior senses, which are for the three heavens. these three senses are unfolded and exhibited in the heavens when a man on the earth is reverently reading the word. therefore the sense of the letter of the word is that from which and through which there is communication with the heavens, also from which and through which man has conjunction with the heavens. the sense of the letter of the word is the basis of divine truth in the heavens, and without such a basis divine truth would be like a house without a foundation; and without such a basis the wisdom of the angels would be like a house in the air. it is the sense of the letter of the word in which the power of divine truth consists. it is the sense of the letter of the word through which man is enlightened by the lord, and through which he receives answers when he wishes to be enlightened. it is the sense of the letter of the word by which everything of doctrine on the earth must be established. in the sense of the letter of the word is divine truth in its fullness. in the sense of the letter of the word divine truth is in its holiness. (a.e., n. .) that the word is divine truth itself, which gives wisdom to angels and enlightens men, can be perceived or seen only by a man enlightened. for to a worldly man, whose mind has not been raised above the sensual sphere, the word in the sense of the letter appears so simple that scarcely anything could be more simple; and yet divine truth, such as it is in the heavens and from which angels have their wisdom, lies concealed in it as in its sanctuary. for the word in the letter is like the adytum [sanctum] in the midst of a temple covered with a veil, within which lie deposited mysteries of heavenly wisdom such as no ear hath heard. for in the word and in every particular of it there is a spiritual sense, and in that sense a divine celestial sense, which regarded in itself is divine truth itself, which is in the heavens and which gives wisdom to angels and enlightenment to men. the divine truth that is in the heavens is light going forth from the lord as a sun, which is divine love. and as the divine truth that goes forth from the lord is the light of heaven, so it is the divine wisdom. it is this that illuminates both the minds and the eyes of angels, and it is this also that enlightens the minds of men, but not their eyes, and that enables them to understand truth and also to perceive good when man reads the word from the lord and not from self; for he is then a participator with angels, and has an inward perception like the spiritual perception of angels; and that spiritual perception which the angel-man has flows into his natural perception which is his own while in the world and enlightens it. consequently the man who reads the word from an affection for truth has enlightenment through heaven from the lord. (a.e., n. .) ii. the lord is the word since the word is divine truth, and this goes forth from the lord's divine esse (being), as light from the sun, it follows that the lord is the word because he is divine truth. the lord is the word, because he is divine truth, and this goes forth his divine esse (being), which is divine love, because the divine love was in him when in the world as a soul is in its body; and as divine truth goes forth from divine love as light goes forth from the sun, as has been said, so the lord's human in the world was divine truth going forth from the divine love that was in him. that the divine itself, which is called "jehovah" and the "father," and which is the divine love, was in the lord from conception, is evident in the gospels of matthew and luke. in matthew from these words: when mary the mother of jesus had been betrothed to joseph, "before they came together she was found with child of the holy spirit." and the angle said to joseph in a dream, "fear not to take unto thee mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the holy spirit" . . . this came to pass that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the lord by the prophet: . . . "behold a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son." and joseph "knew her not until she had brought forth her firstborn son; and he called his name jesus" (i. - ). and in luke from these words: the angel said to mary, "behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name jesus; he shall be great, and shall be called the son of the most high." . . . then mary said unto the angel, "how shall this be, seeing i know not a man?" the angel answered her, "the holy spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the most high shall overshadow thee; wherefore also the holy thing that shall be born of thee shall be called the son of god" (i. - ). it was because he was conceived of jehovah that he is so frequently called in the word "the son of god," and jehovah is called his "father." jehovah in respect to his esse (being) is divine love, and in respect to his existere (outgo) he is divine good united to divine truth. from this it can be seen what is meant by: the word that was with god and that was god, and also was the light that enlighteneth every man (john i. - ), namely, that it was divine truth going forth from the lord, thus the lord in respect to his existere (outgo). that the lord in respect to his existere was divine truth, and that this was his divine human, because this came forth from his divine esse as a body from its soul, these words in john clearly certify: the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten of the father (i. ). "the word" is the divine truth, which also is "glory"; "flesh" means the divine human; "the only begotten of the father" means the springing forth or going forth from the divine esse in him. (a.e., n. .) but as the world does not know how the words in john (i. , , ) that the lord is the word, are to be understood, this shall be further explained. it is known in the church that god is good itself and truth itself, and thus that all the good that an angel has and that a man has is from god, and likewise all truth. now since the lord is god he is also divine good and divine truth; and this is what is meant by "the word, that was with god, and was god," and also was "the light that enlighteneth every man," and that also "became flesh," that is, man in the world. that when the lord was in the world he was the divine truth, which is the word, he himself teaches in many passages where he calls himself "the light," also where he calls himself "the way, the truth, and the life"; and where he says that "the spirit of truth" goes forth from him. "the spirit of truth" is the divine truth. when the lord was transfigured he represented the word, "his face that shone as the sun" represented its divine good; and his garments, which were "bright as the light" and "white as snow," represented its divine truth. "moses and elijah," who then talked with the lord, also signified the word, "moses" the historical word and "elijah" the prophetic word. moreover, all things of the lord's passion represented the kind of violence that the jewish nation offered to the word. again, the lord from divine truth, which he is, is called "god," "king," and "angel," and is meant by "the rock in horeb," and "the rock" where peter is spoken of. all this makes clear that the lord is the word, because he is divine truth. the word in the letter, which is with us, is the divine truths in outmosts. (a.e., n. .) as it cannot but transcend the comprehension that the lord in relation to his human in the world was the word, that is, divine truth; according to these words in john, "and the word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the father" (i. ), it shall be explained, as far as possible, to the comprehension. it can be said of every regenerate man that he is his own truth and his own good, since the thought which belongs to his understanding is from truths, and the affection which belongs to his will is from goods. whether you say, therefore, that a man is his own understanding and his own will, or that a man is his own truth and his own good, it amounts to the same thing. the body is mere obedience; for it speaks that which man thinks from the understanding, and does that which he wills from affection. thus these things and the body mutually correspond and make one, like an effect and its effecting cause; and these taken together constitute the human. as it can be said of the regenerate man that he is his own truth and his own good, so it can be said of the lord as man, that he is truth itself or divine truth, and good itself or divine good. all this makes evident the truth that the lord in relation to his human in the world was divine truth, that is the word; and that everything that he then said was divine truth, which is the word; and that since the time when he went to the father, that is, became one with the father, the divine truth going forth from him is the spirit of truth, which goes out and goes forth from him, and at the same time from the father in him. (a.e., n. .) iii. the lord's words spirit and life that the word is holy and divine from inmosts to outermosts is not evident to the man who leads himself, but is evident to the man whom the lord leads. for the man who leads himself sees only the external of the word, and forms his opinion of it from its style; but the man whom the lord leads forms his opinion of the external of the word from the holiness that is in it. the word is like a garden, that may be called a heavenly paradise, in which are delicacies and charms of every kind, delicacies from the fruits, and charms from the flowers; and in the middle of it trees of life, and near them fountains of living water, and round about trees of the forest, and near them rivers. the man who leads himself forms his opinion of that paradise, which is the word, from its circumference, where the trees of the forest are; but the man whom the lord leads forms his opinion of it from the middle of it, where the trees of life are. the man whom the lord leads is actually in the middle of it, and looks to the lord; but the man who leads himself actually sits down at the circumference, and looks away from it to the world. again, the word is like fruit within which there is a nutritious pulp, and in the middle of it seed vessels, in which inmostly is a living germ that germinates in good soil. again, the word is also like a most beautiful infant, about which, except the face, there are wrappings upon wrappings; the infant itself is in the inmost heaven, the wrappings are in the lower heavens, and the general covering of the wrappings is on the earth. as the word is such it is holy and divine from inmosts to outermosts. (a.e., n. .) the word is such because in its origin it is the divine itself that goes forth from the lord, and is called divine truth; and when this descended to men in the world it passed through the heavens in their order according to their degrees, which are three; and in each heaven it was recorded in accommodation to the wisdom and intelligence of the angels there. finally it was brought down from the lord through the heavens to men, and there it was recorded and made known in adaptation to man's understanding and apprehension. this, therefore, is the sense of its letter, and in this lies divine truth such as it is in the three heavens, stored up in distinct order. from this it is clear that the entire wisdom of the angels in the three heavens has been imparted by the lord to our word, and in its inmost there is the wisdom of the angels of the third heaven, which is incomprehensible and ineffable to man, because full of mysteries and treasures of divine verities. these lie stored up in each particular and in all the particulars of our word. and as divine truth is the lord in the heavens, so the lord himself is present, and may be said to dwell in all the particulars and each particular of his word, as he does in his heavens; and in the same way as he has said of the ark of the covenant, in which were deposited only the ten commandments written on the two tables, the first-fruits of the word, for he said that he would speak there with moses and aaron, that he would be present there, that he would dwell there, and that it was his holy of holies, and his dwelling place as in heaven. (a.e., n., .) as the divine truth, in passing from the lord himself through the three heavens down to men in the world, is recorded and becomes the word in each heaven, so the word is a bond of union of the heavens with each other, and a bond of union of the heavens with the church in the world. for the word is the same everywhere, differing only in perfection of glory and wisdom according to the degrees in which the heavens are; consequently the holy divine from the lord flows in through the heavens into the man in the world who acknowledges the lord's divine and the holiness of the word whenever he reads the word; and so far as such a man loves wisdom he can be instructed and can imbibe wisdom from the word as from the lord himself, or from heaven itself, and can thus be nourished with the food with which the angels themselves are nourished, and in which there is life; according to these words of the lord: "the words that i speak unto you are spirit and are life" (john vi. ). "the water that i will give you shall become . . . a fountain of water springing up unto eternal life" (john iv. ). "man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of god" (matt. iv. ). "work . . . for the meat that abideth unto eternal life, which the son of man shall give unto you" (john vi. ). such is the word. (a.e., n. .) it has been said that the divine truth goes forth from the lord, and that the word is from that, and that through the word angels and men have wisdom. but so long as it is unknown how divine truth goes forth from the lord, this may be said but it cannot be understood. divine truth, which is the same as divine wisdom, goes forth from the lord as light and heat do from the sun. the lord is divine love itself, and love appears in the heavens from correspondence as fire, and the lord's divine love as a sun, glowing and resplendent like the sun of the world. from that sun, which is high above the heavens where the angels are, and which is divine love, heat and light go forth; the heat therefrom is divine good, and the light therefrom is divine truth. the heat is divine good, because all heat of life going forth from love is felt as good, for it is spiritual heat; and the light is divine truth because all light going forth from love is felt as truth, for it is spiritual light; consequently it is from that light that the understanding sees truths, and it is from that heat that the will is sensible of goods; and this is why in the word love is meant by heavenly fire and wisdom by heavenly light. it is the same with a man and with an angel. every angel and man is his own love, and a sphere flowing out from his love encompasses every man and angel. that sphere consists of the good of his love and of the truth of his love, for love gives forth both, as fire gives forth both heat and light; from the will of a man or angel it gives forth good, and from his understanding it gives forth truth. this sphere, when the man or angel is good, has an extension into the heavens in every direction according to the character and amount of the love, and into the hells in every direction when the man or angel is evil. but the sphere of the love of a man or an angel has a finite extension into a few societies only of heaven or hell, while the sphere of the lord's love, being divine, has an infinite extension, and creates the heavens themselves. (a.e., n. .) the word of the lord is wonderful in this respect, that in every particular of it there is a reciprocal union of good and truth, which testifies that the word is the divine that goes forth from the lord, which is divine good and divine truth reciprocally united; and also testifies that in the word there is a marriage of the lord with heaven and the church, which also is reciprocal. there is a marriage of good and truth, also of truth and good, in every particular of the word, in order that it may be a source of wisdom to angels and of intelligence to men, for from good alone no wisdom or intelligence is born, neither from truth alone, but from their marriage when the love is reciprocal. this reciprocal love the lord sets forth in john: "he that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me and i in him" (vi. ). in the same, "in that day ye shall know, that . . . ye are in me and i in you. he that hath my commandments and doeth them, he it is that loveth me; . . . and i will love him" (xiv. , ). the reciprocality is that such are in the lord and the lord is in them, also that whoever loves the lord, the lord also will love him. "to have his commandments" is to be in truths, and "to do them" is to be in good. reciprocality is also described by the lord in his union with the father, in these words, "philip, . . . how sayest thou, show us the father? believest thou not that i am in the father and the father in me? . . . believe me, that i am in the father and the father in me" (john xiv. - ). from this reciprocal union of the divine and the human in the lord the reciprocal union of divine good and divine truth goes forth; and this goes forth from the lord's divine love; and the same is true of the lord's reciprocal union with heaven and the church, and in general the reciprocal union of good and truth in an angel of heaven and in a man of the church. and as good is of charity and truth is of faith, and as charity and faith make the church, it follows that the church is in a man when there is a reciprocal union of charity and faith in him. again, as good is of the will and truth is of the understanding, and as the will and understanding make man, it follows that a man is a man according to the union of the will and all things belonging to it with the understanding and all things belonging to it, and this reciprocally. this union is what is called marriage, which from creation is in every particular of heaven and in every particular of the world; and from this is the production and the generation of all things. that in every particular of the word there is such a marriage that good loves truth and truth loves good, thus mutually and in turn, is disclosed in the spiritual sense of the word; and it is from this marriage that good and truth are one and not two, and are one when good is of truth and truth is of good. (a.e., n. ). the word in the sense of the letter appears very simple, and yet there is stored up in it the wisdom of the three heavens, for each least particular of it contains interior and more interior senses; an interior sense such as exists in the first heaven, a still more interior sense such as exists in the second heaven, and an inmost sense such as exists in the third heaven. these senses are in the sense of the letter, one within the other, and are evolved therefrom one after the other, each from its own heaven, when the word is read by a man who is led by the lord. these interior senses differ in a degree of light and wisdom according to the heavens, and yet they make one by influx, and thus by correspondences. how they thus make one shall be told in what follows. all this makes clear how the word was inspired by the divine, and that it was written from an inspiration to which nothing else in the world can in anywise be compared. the mysteries of wisdom of the three heavens contained in it are the mystical things of which many have spoken. (a.e., n. .) iv. influx and correspondence it has been said that there is a word in each heaven and that these words are in our word in their order, and that they thus make one by influx and consequent correspondences. here, therefore, it shall be told what correspondence is and what influx is; otherwise what the word is inwardly in its bosom, thus in respect to its life from the lord, which is its soul, cannot be understood. but what correspondence is and what influx is shall be illustrated by examples. the changes of the face that are called expressions correspond to the affections of the mind; consequently the face changes in respect to its expressions just as the affections of the mind change in respect to their states. these changes in the face are correspondences, as consequently the face itself is; and the action of the mind into it, that the correspondences may be exhibited, is called influx. the sight of man's thought, which is called the understanding, corresponds to the sight of his eyes; and consequently the quality of the thought from the understanding is made evident by the light and flame of the eyes. the sight of the eye is a correspondence, as consequently the eye itself is; the action of the understanding into the eye, by which the correspondence is exhibited, is influx. active thought, which belongs to the understanding, corresponding to speech, which belongs to the mouth. the speech is a correspondence, likewise the mouth and everything belonging to it, and the action of thought into speech and into the organs of speech is influx. the perception of the mind corresponds to the smell of the nostrils. the smell and the nostrils are correspondences, and the action is influx. for this reason a man who has interior perception is said to have a keen nose, and perceiving a thing is called scenting it out. hearkening, which means obedience, corresponds to the hearing of the ears; consequently both the hearing and the ears are correspondences, and the action of obedience into the hearing, that a man may raise his ears and attend, is influx; therefore hearkening and hearing are both significative, hearkening and giving ear to anyone meaning to obey, and hearkening and hearing anyone meaning to hear with the ears. the action of the body corresponds to the will, the action of the heart corresponds to the life of the love, the action of the lungs, which is called respiration, corresponds to the life of the faith, and the whole body in respect to all its members, viscera, and organs, corresponds to the soul in respect to all the functions and powers of its life. from these few examples it can be seen what correspondence is and what influx is; and that when the spiritual, which belongs to the life of man's understanding and will, flows into the acts which belong to his body, it exhibits itself in a natural effigy, and there is correspondence; also that thus the spiritual and the natural act as one by correspondences, like interior and exterior, or like prior and posterior, or like the effecting cause and the effect, or like the principal cause which belongs to man's thought and will, and the instrumental cause which belongs to his speech and action. there is such a correspondence of natural things and spiritual not only in each and every thing of man, but also in each every thing of the world; and the correspondences are produced by an influx of the spiritual world and all things of it into the natural world and all things of it. from all this it can be seen in some measure how our word, as to the sense of the letter, which is natural, makes one by influx and correspondences with the words in the heavens, the senses of which are spiritual. (a.e., n. .) what the word is in respect to influx and correspondences can now be shown. it is said in john: "he hath blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they should see with their eyes and understand with their heart, and should turn themselves and i should heal them" (xii. ). the "eyes" that are blinded signify the understanding of truth and belief in it; the "heart" that is hardened signifies the will and love of good; and "to be healed" signifies to be reformed. they were not permitted "to turn themselves and be healed" lest they should commit profanation; for a wicked man who is healed and who returns to his evil and falsity commits profanation; and so it would have been with the jewish nation. in matthew: "blessed are your eyes, for they see; and your ears, for they hear" (xiii. ). here, too, the "eyes" signify the understanding of truth and belief in it; so "to see" signifies to understand and believe, and the "ears" signify obedience, thus a life according to the truths of faith, and "to hear" signifies to obey and live. for one is blessed not because he sees and hears, but because he understands, believes, obeys, and lives. in the same, "the lamp of the body is the eye; if the eye be sound the whole body is light, if the eye be evil the whole body is darkened. if, therefore, the light . . . be darkness, how great is the darkness" (vi. , ). here, again, the "eye" signifies the understanding of truth and belief in it, which is called a lamp from the light of truth that man has from understanding and belief. and because a man becomes wise from understanding and believing in truth, it is said "if the eye be sound the whole body is light." the "body" means the man, and "to be light" means to be wise. but it is the reverse with the "evil eye," that is, understanding and believing in falsity. "darkness" means falsities, "if the light be darkness" signifies if the truth be false or falsified, and because truth falsified is worse than any other falsity, it is said, "if the light be darkness, how great is the darkness." these few examples make clear what correspondence is and what influx is, namely, that the eye is a correspondence of the understanding and faith, the heart a correspondence of the will and love, the ears a correspondence of obedience, the lamp and light correspondences of truth, and darkness a correspondence of falsity, and so on; and as the one is spiritual and the other is natural, and the spiritual acts into the natural and forms it to a likeness of itself that it may appear before the eyes or before the world, so that action is influx. such is the word in each and every particular. (a.e., n. .) the spiritual by influx presents what is correspondent to itself in the natural, in order that the end may become a cause, and the cause become an effect, and thus the end through the cause may present itself in the effect as visible and sensible. this trine, namely, end, cause, and effect, exists from creation in every heaven. the end is good of love, the cause is truth from that good, and the effect is use. the producing force is love, and the product therefrom is of love from good by means of truth. the final products, which are in our world, are various, as numerous as the objects are in its three kingdoms of nature, animal, vegetable, and mineral. all products are correspondences. as this trine, namely, end, cause, and effect, exists in each heaven, there must be in each heaven products that are correspondences, and that are like in form and aspect the objects in the three kingdoms of our earth; from which it is clear that each heaven is like our earth in outward appearance, differing only in excellence and beauty according to degrees. now in order that the word may be full, that is, may consist of effects in which are a cause and an end, or may consist of uses in which truth is the cause and good is the end and love is the producing force, it must needs consist of correspondences; and from this it follows that the word in each heaven is like the word in our world, differing only in excellence and beauty according to degrees. what this difference is shall be told elsewhere. (a.e., n. .) v. the three senses in the word as there is a trine, one within another, in every last particular of the word, and this trine is like that of effect, cause, and end, it follows that there are three senses in the word, one within another, namely, a natural, a spiritual, and a celestial; a natural for the world, a spiritual for the heavens of the lord's spiritual kingdom, and a celestial for the heavens of his celestial kingdom. (that the entire heavens are divided into two kingdoms, the spiritual and the celestial, may be seen in heaven and hell, n. - .) now as there is one sense within another, a first which is the sense of the letter for the natural world, a second which is the internal sense for the spiritual kingdom, and a third which is the inmost for the celestial kingdom, it follows that a natural man draws from it his sense, a spiritual angel his sense, and a celestial angel his sense, thus everyone what is analogous to and in agreement with his own essence and nature. this takes place whenever a man who is led by the lord is reading the word. but let this be illustrated by examples. when this commandment of the decalogue is read, "thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother," a man in the world understands by "father and mother" a father and mother on the earth, and also all who are or may be in the place of father or mother; and by "honoring" he understands to hold such in honor. but an angel of the spiritual kingdom understands by "father" the divine good, and by "mother" the divine truth, and by "honoring" loving; while an angel of the celestial kingdom understands by "father" the lord, and by "mother" heaven and the church, and by "honoring" doing. when the fifth commandment of the decalogue, "thou shalt not steal," is read, by "stealing" a man understands stealing, defrauding, and taking away under any pretense his neighbor's goods. but an angel of the spiritual kingdom by "stealing" understands depriving another of his truths and goods by means of falsities and evils, while an angel of the celestial kingdom by "not to steal" understands not to attribute to himself the things that are the lord's, as the good of love and the truth of faith; for thereby good becomes not good, and truth not truth, because they are from men. when the sixth commandment, "thou shalt not commit adultery," is read, a man by "committing adultery" understands committing adultery and whoredom, also thinking filthy thoughts, speaking lasciviously, and doing obscene things. but an angel of the spiritual kingdom by "committing adultery" understands falsifying the truths of the word and adulterating its goods; while an angel of the celestial kingdom by "committing adultery" understands blaspheming against the lord, heaven, and the church. when the seventh commandment, "thou shalt not kill," is read, by "killing" a man understands hating and desiring revenge, even to murder. but an angel of the spiritual kingdom by "killing" understands the killing of a man's soul by stumbling blocks to the life and by reasonings, whereby a man is led into spiritual death, while an angel of the celestial kingdom by "killing" understands seducing a man into believing that there is no god and no heaven and no hell, for thus man's eternal life is destroyed. when the eighth commandment, "thou shalt not bear false witness," is read, a man by "false witness" understands lying and defamation. but an angel of the spiritual kingdom by "false witness" understands asserting, proving, and persuading that falsity is truth and evil is good, or on the other hand that truth is falsity and good is evil, while an angel of the celestial kingdom by "false witness" understands every falsity against the lord, and against heaven in favor of hell. all this makes clear how a man draws and calls forth from the word in the letter a natural sense, a spiritual angel a spiritual sense, and a celestial angel a celestial sense, much as the wood of a tree draws its sap, the leaf its sap, and the fruit its sap, from the same soil. and what is wonderful, this is done instantly, without the angel's knowing what the man thinks, or the man what the angel thinks, and yet their thoughts are one by correspondences, as end, cause, and effect are one. moreover, ends are actually in the celestial kingdom, causes in the spiritual kingdom, causes in the spiritual kingdom, and effects in the natural world. (a.e., n. .) vi. conjunction by the word since it is from creation that end, cause, and effect shall together make one, so it is from creation that the heavens shall make one with the church on the earth, but by means of the word, when it is read by man from a love of truth and good. for the word was given by the lord to this end, that there might be a perpetual conjunction of the angels of heaven with men on the earth, and a perpetual communication according to conjunction. without this medium there would be no conjunction or communication with heaven on this earth. the conjunction and communication are instantaneous, and for the reason that all things of the word in the sense of the letter are as effects, in which the cause and the end exist together, and the effects, which are in the word, are called uses, their cause truths, and their ends goods; and the divine love, which is the lord, unites these three together in the man who is in an affection for uses from the word. how a man draws and calls forth from the word in the letter the natural sense, a spiritual angel the spiritual sense, and a celestial angel the celestial sense, and this instantly, from which there is a communication and a conjunction, shall be illustrated by comparisons; first by something in the animal kingdom, afterward by something in the vegetable kingdom, and finally by something in the mineral kingdom. from the animal kingdom:--from the food, when it has been changed into chyle, the vessels draw and call forth their blood, the fibers of the nerves their fluid, and the substances that are the origins of fibers their spirit, which is called the animal spirit; and this is done through the vital heat, which in its essence is love. the vessels, the fibers, and the substances which are their origins, are distinct from each other, and yet they act as one throughout the body, and they act together and on the instant. from the vegetable kingdom:--the tree, with its trunk and branches, leaves and fruits, stands upon its root, and from the soil where its root is draws and calls forth its sap, a coarser sap for the trunk and branches, a purer for the leaves, and a still purer and also nobler for the fruits and for the seeds in them; and this is done by means of heat from the sun. here the branches, leaves, and fruit are distinct, and yet they extract together and instantly and from the same soil foods of such different purity and nobleness. from the mineral kingdom:--in the bosom of the earth in certain places there are minerals impregnated with gold, silver, copper, and iron. from vapors stored up in the earth the gold attracts its element, silver its element, copper and iron theirs, distinctly, together, and on the instant, and this by means of some power of unknown heat. as it is allowable to illustrate spiritual things by means of comparisons drawn from natural things, these will serve to illustrate how interior things, which are spiritual and celestial, and by which a man of the church has communication and conjunction with the heavens, can be drawn and called forth and extracted and eliminated from the word in its outmosts, that is, the sense of the letter. comparisons can be made with these, because all things in the three kingdoms of nature, animal, vegetable, and mineral, correspond to the spiritual things that are in the three heavens, as the food of the body with which a comparison has been made, corresponds to the food of the soul, which is knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom; a tree, with which also a comparison has been made, corresponds to man, the tree to man himself, the wood to his good, the leaves to his truths, and the fruits to his uses; so, too, gold, silver, copper, and iron, correspond to goods and truths, gold to celestial good, silver to spiritual truth, copper to natural good, and iron to natural truth. moreover, these things have these significations in the word. and what is wonderful, the purer are contained in the grosser and are drawn from them, as the animal spirit and the nerve fluid are contained in blood from which the original substances and nerve fibers draw and extract their distinct portions. so, again, fruits and leaves draw theirs from the gross fluid that is brought up from the soil by the wood and its bark, and so on. thus comparatively, as has been said, the purer senses of the word are drawn and called forth from the sense of the letter. (a.e., n. .) vii. the sense of the letter as there are three senses in the word, a natural, a spiritual, and a celestial, and as its natural sense, which is the sense of the letter, is a containment of the two senses, the spiritual and celestial, it follows that the sense of the letter of the word is the basis of those senses. and as the angels of the three heavens receive their wisdom from the lord through the word that they have, and as their words make one with our word by correspondences, it also follows that the sense of the letter of our word is the basis, support, and foundation of the wisdom of the angels of heaven. for the heavens rest upon the human race as a house rests upon its foundation; so the wisdom of the angels of heaven rests in like manner upon the knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom of men from the sense of the letter of the word; for, as has been said above, communication and conjunction with the heavens are effected through the sense of the letter of the word. for this reason, as a result of the lord's divine providence, there has been no mutilation of the sense of the letter of the word from its first revelation, not even in a word or letter in the original text; for each word, and in some measure each letter, is a support. from all this it is clear what a profanation it is to falsify the truths and adulterate the goods of the word, and how infernal it is to deny or to weaken its holiness. as soon as that is done, for that man of the church heaven is closed. the blasphemy against the holy spirit, which cannot be forgiven, is the blasphemy of the word by those who deny its holiness. since the word is the basis of the heavens, and since the word was wholly falsified and adulterated by the jewish nation by traditions and adaptation of the sense of the letter to favor their evil loves, lest the heavens should be endangered and the wisdom of the angels there should become foolishness it pleased the lord to come down from heaven and to put on the human and to become the word (as is evident from john i. ), and thus to restore the state of heaven. (a.e., n. .) there is a successive order and there is a simultaneous order. in successive order things pure and perfect appear above, and those less pure and perfect appear below. the three heavens are in successive order, one above another; and in the higher heavens all things are pure and perfect, while in the lower they are less pure and perfect. simultaneous order exists in lower things, and fully in the lowest; for higher things let themselves down and place themselves in the order that is called simultaneous, in which the pure and perfect things, which were the higher, are in the middle or center, and the less pure and perfect, which were the lower, are in the circumferences. therefore all things that have come forth in successive order are together in outmosts in their order. as all higher things place themselves in what is lowest in simultaneous order, it follows that in the outmosts of the word, which constitute the sense of its letter, are all things of divine truth and of divine good, even from their firsts. and as all things of divine truth and divine good are together in their outmost, which is the sense of the letter of the word, there evidently is the power of divine truth, yea, the omnipotence of the lord in saving man. for when the lord operates he operates not from first things through mediates into outmosts, but from first things through outmosts and thus into mediates. this is why the lord is called in the word the first and the last; and this is why the lord assumed the human, which in the world was divine truth or the word, and glorified it even to outmosts, which are the bones and flesh, in order that he might operate from first things through outmosts, and not as before from man, but from himself. this power in outmosts was represented by the hair with the nazirites, as with samson, for the hair with the nazirites, as with samson, for the hair corresponds to the outmosts of divine truth. and for this reason, to produce baldness was regarded in ancient times as disgraceful. the boys who called elisha "bald head" were torn in pieces by bears, because elisha and elijah represented the word; and the word without the sense of the letter, which is like a head without hair, is destitute of all power, and thus is no longer the word. "bears" signify those that have strength from the outmost of truth. the power of the word in the sense of the letter is the power to open heaven, whereby communication and conjunction are effected, and also the power to fight against falsities and evils, thus against the hells. a man who is in genuine truths from the sense of the letter of the word can disperse and scatter the whole diabolical crew and their devices in which they place their power, which are innumerable, and this in a moment, merely by careful thought and an effort of the will. in brief, in the spiritual world nothing can resist genuine truths confirmed by the sense of the letter of the word (a.e., n. .) now since all interior things, that is, the spiritual and celestial things that are in the words of the three heavens, are together in the outmost sense of the word, which is called the sense of the letter (for in its inmosts there are the things that are in the word that the angels of the third heaven have, and in its middle parts the things that are in the words belonging to the angels of the lower heavens, and these are encompassed by such things as exist in the nature of our world and are included in these), so the sense of the letter of our word is from all these. from this it can be seen that divine truth is in its fullness in the sense of the letter of our word. that is said to be full which contains in itself all things prior, even from the first, or all things higher even from the highest; the last is what includes these. the fullness of the word is like a general vessel of marble, in which are countless lesser vessels of crystal, and in these still more numerous vessels of precious stones, in and about which are the most delightful things of heaven which are for those who perform noble uses according to the word. that the word is such is not evident to man while he is in the world; but it is evident to him when he becomes an angel. because the word is such in outmosts it follows that it is not the word until it is in that outmost, that is, until it is in the sense of the letter. the word not in that outmost would be like a temple in the air and not on the earth, or like a man having flesh but without bones. as divine truth is in its fullness and also in its power in its outmost, for when it is in that it is in all things at once, so the lord never works except from first things through outmosts, and thus in fullness. for he reforms and regenerates man only through truths in outmosts, which are natural. and this is why a man remains after his departure out of the world to eternity such as he has been in the world. for the same reason heaven and hell are from the human race, and angels are not created immediately such; for in the world a man is in his fullness, consequently he can there be conceived and born, and afterward be imbued with knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom, and become an angel. to create angels in any other way is impossible. because the lord works all things from things first through outmosts, and is in his power and in his fullness in outmosts, so it pleased the lord to take upon him the human and to become divine truth, that is, the word, and thus from himself to reduce to order all things of heaven and all things of hell, that is, to execute a last judgment. this the lord could accomplish from the divine in himself, which was in things first, through his human which was in outmosts, and not, as before, from his presence or abode in the men of the church; for these had wholly forsaken the truths and goods of the word, in which the lord had previously had his dwelling-place with men. this was the chief reason for the lord's coming into the world, also for making his human divine; for he thus put himself into possession of a power to hold all things of heaven and all things of hell in order for ever. this is meant by "sitting at the right hand of god" (mark xvi. ). "the right hand of god" means divine omnipotence, and "to sit at the right hand of god" means to be in that omnipotence through the human. that the lord ascended into heaven with his human glorified even to outmosts he testifies in luke: jesus said to the disciples, "see my hands and my feet, that it is i myself; handle me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye behold me having" (xxiv. ). this the lord said just after his resurrection. "flesh and bones" are the outmosts of the human body, on which its strength depends. (a.e., n. .) divine truth is what is called holy, but only when it is in its outmost, and its outmost is the word in the sense of the letter; therefore the divine truth there is holy, and may be called a holy place, and for the reason that that sense contains and encloses all the holy things of heaven and the church. the appearance is that divine truths in the heavens, which are called spiritual and celestial, are more holy than the divine truths in the sense of the letter of the word, which are natural; but the divine truths in the heavens, which are called spiritual and celestial, are comparatively like the lungs and heart in man, which form the chest only when they are encompassed by ribs, and enclosed in the pleura and diaphragm; for without these integuments, and even unless connected with them by bonds, they could not perform their vital functions. the spiritual things of the word are like the breathing of the lungs, its celestial things are like the systole and diastole of the heart, and its natural things are like the pleura, the diaphragm, and the ribs, with the moving fibers attached, by which the motions are made reciprocal. again, the spiritual and celestial things of the word are comparatively like the holy things of the tabernacle, which consisted of the table upon which was the shew bread, the golden altar upon which was the incense, the perfumes and the censor, also the lampstand with the lamps, and still further within, the cherubim, the mercy seat, and the ark. all these were the holy things of the jewish and israelitish church; nevertheless they could not be called holy and a sanctuary until they had been covered by curtains and veils, for without those coverings they would have stood under the naked sky, exposed to showers and storms, to the birds of heaven and the wild beasts of the earth, and also to robbers that would violate, plunder, and scatter them. so would it be with the divine truths in the heavens, which are called spiritual and celestial, unless they were enclosed in natural truths, like the truths of the sense of the letter of the word. natural truths, which are the truths of the sense of the letter of the word, are not the very truths of heaven, but are appearances of them; and appearances of truth encompass, enclose and contain the truths of heaven, which are genuine truths, and cause them to be in connection and order and to act together, like the cardiac and pulmonary organs with their coverings and ribs, as has been said above; and when these truths are held in connection and in order they are holy, and not till then. this the sense of the letter of our word does by means of the appearances of truth of which its outmost consists; and this is why that sense is the holy divine itself and a sanctuary. but he is greatly mistaken who separates appearances of truth from genuine truths and calls these appearances holy by themselves and of themselves, and not the sense of the letter holy by these and from these, and together with these. he separates these who sees only the sense of the letter and does not explore its meaning, as those do who do not read the word from doctrine. the "cherubim" mean in the word guard and protection that the holy things of heaven be not violated, and that the lord be approached only through love; consequently these signify the sense of the letter of the word, because that is what guards and protects. it guards and protects in this manner that man can think and speak according to appearances of truth so long as he is well-disposed, simple, and as it were a child; but he must take heed not to so confirm appearances as to destroy the genuine truths in the heavens. (a.e., n. .) it is an invariable truth that no one can understand the word without doctrine; for he may be led away into any errors to which he may be inclined from some love, or to which he may be drawn from some principle, whereby his mind becomes unsettled and uncertain, and at length as it were destitute of truth. but he who reads the word from doctrine sees all things that confirm it, and many things that are hidden from the eyes of others, and does not permit himself to be drawn away into strange things; and thus his mind becomes so settled as to see with certainty. again, unless the word is read from doctrine it may be drawn away to confirm heresies, for the reason that the sense of its letter consists of mere correspondences, and these are in great part appearances of truth, and in part genuine truths, and unless there be doctrine for a lamp these cannot be seen and cannot be distinguished from each other. and yet only from the word can doctrine be acquired, and it can be acquired only by those who are in enlightenment from the lord. those are in enlightenment who love truths because they are truths and make them to be of their life. moreover, all things of doctrine must be confirmed by the sense of the letter of the word, because divine truth is in its fullness and in its power in that sense, and through it man is in conjunction with the lord and in consociation with the angels. in brief, he who loves truth because it is truth can inquire of the lord, as it were, in doubtful matters of faith, and can receive answers from him, but nowhere except in the word for the reason that the lord is the word. (a.e., n. .) the essentials of spirituality by felix adler the essentials of spirituality the first essential is an awakening, a sense of the absence of spirituality, the realized need of giving to our lives a new and higher quality; first there must be the hunger before there can be the satisfaction. similar effects are often produced by widely differing processes. in the psychical world that quality which we call spirituality may be associated with and evoked by theism, or the belief in a divine father; by pantheism, as in the case of spinoza, whose face at the very first glance impresses you with its spiritual cast; or even by the buddhist belief in nirvana. it may also be attained by following the precepts and striving after the ideals of ethical culture. for spirituality is not indissolubly associated with any one type of religion or philosophy; it is a quality of soul manifesting itself in a variety of activities and beliefs. before we proceed further, however, we must hazard a definition of the word. in the region of mental activity which is called the spiritual life vagueness is apt to prevail, the outlines of thought are apt to be blurred, the feelings aroused are apt to be indistinct and transitory. the word 'spiritual' becomes a synonym of muddy thought and misty emotionalism. if there were another word in the language to take its place, it would be well to use it. but there is not. we must use the word 'spiritual,' despite its associations and its abuse. we shall endeavor, however, to attach a distinct and definite meaning to the word. mere definition, however, is too abstract and nakedly intellectual. perhaps a description of some types of character, combined with definition, will be the better way. savonarola is surely one of the commanding figures in history. his fiery earnestness, his passion for righteousness, the boldness with which he censured the corruptions of the roman court, the personal qualities by which he--a foreigner and a mere monk--made himself for a short period the lawgiver, the prophet, and virtually the dictator of florence--that florence which was at the time the very gemmary of the renaissance--his sudden fall and tragic death; all combine to attract toward him our admiration, pity, and love, and to leave upon our minds the impression of his extraordinary moral genius. and yet, though a spiritual side was not wanting in savonarola, we should not quote him as an outstanding exemplar of spirituality. the spiritual life is unperturbed and serene. his nature was too passionate, he was too vehement in his philippics, too deeply engrossed in the attainment of immediate results, too stormy a soul to deserve the name of spiritual. again, our own washington is one of the commanding figures in history. he achieved the great task which he set himself; he secured the political independence of america. he became the master builder of a nation; he laid securely the foundations on which succeeding generations have built. he was calm, too, with rare exceptions; an expert in self-control. but there was mingled with his calmness a certain coldness. he was lofty and pure, but we should hardly go to him for instruction in the interior secrets of the spiritual life. his achievements were in another field. his claim to our gratitude rests on other grounds. the spiritual life is calm, but serenely calm; irradiated by a fervor and a depth of feeling that were to some extent lacking in our first president. lincoln, perhaps, came nearer to possessing them. again, we have such types of men as john howard, the prison reformer, and george peabody, who devoted his great fortune to bettering the housing of the poor and to multiplying and improving schools. these men--especially the latter--were practical and sane, and were prompted in their endeavors by an active and tender benevolence. yet we should scarcely think of them as conspicuous examples of the spiritual quality in human life and conduct. benevolence, be it never so tender and practical, does not reach the high mark of spirituality. spirituality is more than benevolence in the ordinary sense of the term. the spiritual man is benevolent to a signal degree, but his benevolence is of a peculiar kind. it is characterized by a certain serene fervor which we may almost call saintliness. but perhaps some one may object that a standard by which personalities like savonarola, washington, howard and peabody fall short is probably set too high, and that in any case the erection of such a standard cannot be very helpful to the common run of human beings. where these heroic natures fall short, can you and i hope to attain? to such an objection the reply is that we cannot be too fastidious or exacting in respect to our standard, however poor our performance may be. nothing less than a kind of divine completeness should ever content us. furthermore, there have been some men who approached nearer to the spiritual ideal than the patriots and the philanthropists just mentioned--some few men among the greeks, the hindus, and the hebrews. and for the guidance of conduct, these more excellent spirits avail us more than the examples of a savonarola, a washington or a howard. to be a prophet or the lawgiver of a nation is not within your province and mine. for such a task hardly one among millions has the opportunity or the gifts. to be liberators of their country has been accorded in all the ages thus far covered by human history to so small a number of men that one might count them on the fingers of a single hand. even to be philanthropists on a large scale is the restricted privilege of a very few. but to lead the spiritual life is possible to you and me if we choose to do so. the best is within the reach of all, or it would not be the best. every one is permitted to share life's highest good. the spiritual life, then, may be described by its characteristic marks of serenity, a certain inwardness, a measure of saintliness. by the latter we are not to understand merely the aspiration after virtue or after a lofty ideal, still pursued and still eluding, but to a certain extent the embodiment of this ideal in the life--virtue become a normal experience like the inhalation and exhalation of breath! moreover, the spiritually-minded seem always to be possessed of a great secret. this air of interior knowledge, of the perception of that which is hidden from the uninitiated, is a common mark of all refinement, aesthetic as well as moral. in studying the face of leonardo da vinci's 'mona lisa,' for instance, one will find that it is this interior insight that explains the so-called "cryptic smile." in the case of aesthetic refinement, the secret discloses itself as at bottom delicacy, the delicacy which prevents intrusion on the personality of others; which abhors a prying curiosity; which finds subtle ways of conveying esteem and delicate modes of rendering service. but the secret of moral refinement is of a far higher order, transcending aesthetic refinement by as much as goodness is superior to mere charm. the secret in this case consists in the insight vouchsafed to the spiritually-minded of the true end of human existence. constituted as we are, there exist for us lower and higher ends. this distinction is fundamental for ethics. food is necessary; without it we cannot live. but the getting of food--however necessary--is a lower end. knowledge is a necessary end, and a higher one. the practical moral ends, such as the reformation of prisons, the improvement of the dwellings of the poor, are yet higher ends. but above all these is the highest end, that of moral completeness, of perfection, not in one particular but in every particular. spirituality consists in always keeping in view this supreme end. the spiritually-minded person is one who regards whatever he undertakes from the point of view of its hindering or furthering his attainment of the supreme end. if a river had a consciousness like the human consciousness, we might imagine that it hears the murmur of the distant sea from the very moment when it leaves its source, and that the murmur grows clearer and clearer as the river flows on its way, welcoming every tributary it receives as adding to the volume which it will contribute to the sea, rejoicing at every turn and bend in its long course that brings it nearer to its goal. such is the consciousness of a spiritually-minded human being. or to take a simile from human experience. there are times when we go abroad to travel just for change of scenery and the refreshment which change brings with it. when we go in this mood we are likely to be intent on wayside pleasures, and at every stage of the journey, at every town where we halt, we shall suffer ourselves to be engrossed in the points of interest which that temporary abiding-place has to offer us, careless of what may await us farther on. but there are other times when we go abroad on serious business. some congress of scientists or fellow-workers is to meet in which we are to take our part; or there is a conflict being waged in which we are to bear our share of wounds or death, as in the case of the japanese, who are now setting out from their homes toward the battlefields of manchuria; or there is some loved one at a distance who needs us, calls us, expects us. then the stations on the way are unable to captivate our attention; we are impatient to pass them by; we welcome each one as we approach it as bringing us one step nearer to the desired goal. some such analogy will help us understand the inner state of a spiritually-minded person. he thinks always of the ultimate end. in whatever he does or omits to do he asks himself, will it advance me or divert me from the ultimate goal? since spirituality consists in keeping in mind the ultimate goal, it follows, in accordance with what was said in the beginning, that there must be various types of spirituality, corresponding to the various ways in which the ultimate goal is conceived. for those to whom the final end of human life is union with god, the divine father, the thought of this divine father gives color and complexion to their spiritual life. they think of him when they lie down at night and when they rise up in the morning; his praise is ever on their lips; the desire to win his approbation is with them in all their undertakings. to those who regard the attainment of nirvana as the supreme end, like the buddhists, the thought of nirvana is a perpetual admonition. to those who view the supreme end of life as moral perfection, the thought of that perfection is the constant inner companion. the moral man, commonly so-called; the man who is honest, pays his debts, performs his duties to his family; the man who works for specific objects, such as political reform; this man, worthy of all respect though he be, is still intent on the stages of his journey. the spiritual man, as we must now define him from the point of view of ethical culture, is the man who always thinks of the ultimate goal of his journey, i. e., a moral character complete in every particular, and who is influenced by that thought at all times and in all things. spirituality, in this conception of it, is nothing but morality raised to its highest power. and now, let us ask what are some of the conditions on which the attainment of such a life depends. the prime condition is to acquire the habit of ever and anon detaching one's self from one's accustomed interests and pursuits, becoming, as it were, a spectator of one's self and one's doings, escaping from the sweeping current and standing on the shore. for this purpose it is advisable to consecrate certain times, preferably a certain time each day, to self-recollection; to dedicate an hour--or a half-hour, if no more can be spared--to seeing one's life in all its relations; that is, as the poet has put it, to seeing life "steadily and seeing it whole." the sane view is to see things in their relation to other things; the non-sane view is to see them isolated, in such a way that they exercise a kind of hypnotic spell over us. and it makes no difference what a man's habitual interests may be, whether they be sordid or lofty, he needs ever and anon to get away from them. in reality, nothing wherewith a man occupies himself need be sordid. the spiritual attitude does not consist in turning one's back on things mundane and fixing one's gaze on some supernal blaze of glory, but rather in seeing things mundane in their relation to things ultimate, perfect. the eating of bread is surely a sufficiently commonplace operation. yet jesus brake bread with his disciples in such way that that simple act has become the symbol of sublimely spiritual relations, the centre of the most august rite of the christian church. in like manner the act of sitting down to an ordinary meal with the members of our family may, if seen in its relations, be for us a spiritual consecration. the common meal may become for us the type of the common life we share, the common love we bear. on the other hand, seemingly much more lofty pursuits may have a narrowing and deadening effect on us if we do not see them in their ultimate relations, and so divest them of reference to life's highest end. for instance, the pursuit of science may have this effect, if the sole object of the scientist be to perform some astonishing piece of work for the purpose of attracting attention or to secure a well-salaried position, or even if he be so wedded to his specialty as to fail to be sensitive to the relations of it to the body of truth in general. and the same holds good of the narrow-minded reformer, of whom emerson has said that his virtue so painfully resembles vice; the man who puts a moral idol in the place of the moral ideal, who erects into the object toward which all his enthusiasm goes some particular reform, such as the single tax, or socialism, or public parks, or a model school; the man, in short, who strives for a good instead of striving for goodness. whatever our pursuits may be, we should often mentally detach ourselves from them, and, standing aloof as impartial spectators, consider the direction in which they are taking us. this counsel is frequently urged on grounds of health, since the wear and tear of too intense absorption in any pursuit is apt to wreck the nervous system. i urge it on the ground of mental sanity, since a man cannot maintain his mental poise if he follows the object of his devotion singly, without seeing it in relation to other objects. and i urge it also on the ground of spirituality, for a salient characteristic of spirituality is calmness, and without the mental repose which comes of detachment we cannot import calmness into our lives. there are some persons, notably among those engaged in philanthropic activities, who glory in being completely engrossed in their tasks, and who hug a secret sense of martyrdom, when late at night, perhaps worn out in mind and body, they throw themselves upon their couch to snatch a few hours of insufficient sleep. great occasions, of course, do occur when every thought of self should be effaced in service; but as a rule, complete absorption in philanthropic activity is as little sane and as little moral as complete absorption in the race for gain. the tired and worn-out worker cannot do justice to others, nor can he do justice to that inner self whose demands are not satisfied even by philanthropic activity. if, then, self-recollection is essential, let us make daily provision for it. some interest we should have--even worldly prudence counsels this much--as far remote as possible from our leading interest; and beyond that, some book belonging to the world's great spiritual literature on which we may daily feed. the bible used to be in the old days all-sufficient for this purpose, and it is still, in part at least, an admirable aid to those who know how to use it. but there are other books, such as the legacy of the great stoics, the writings of our latter-day prophets, the essays of arnold and carlyle and emerson, the wisdom of goethe. these noble works, even if they do not wholly satisfy us, serve to set our thoughts in motion about high concerns, and give to the mind a spiritual direction. a second condition of the spiritual life has been expressed in the precept, reiterated in many religions, by many experts in things relating to the life of the soul: "live as if this hour were thy last." you will recall, as i pronounce these words, the _memento mori_ of the ancients, their custom of exhibiting a skeleton at the feast, in order to remind the banqueters of the fate that awaited them. you will remember the other-worldliness of christian monks and ascetics who decried this pleasant earth as a vale of tears, and endeavored to fix the attention of their followers upon the pale joys of the christian heaven, and you will wonder, perhaps, that i should be harking back to these conceptions of the past. i have, however, no such intention. the prevailing attitude toward the thought of death is that of studied neglect. men wish to face it as little as possible. we know, of course, what the fate is that awaits us. we know what are the terms of the compact. now and again we are momentarily struck by the pathos of it all; for instance, when we walk through some crowded thoroughfare on a bright day and reflect that before many years this entire multitude will have disappeared. the rosy-cheeked girl who has just passed; the gay young fellow at her side, full of his hopes, confident of his achievements, acting and speaking as if the lease of eternity were his; that "grave and reverend seigneur," clad with dignity and authority--all will have gone, and others will have taken their places. yet, as a rule, we are not much affected by such reflections. when one of our friends has met with a painless death we are apt to solace ourselves with the hope that perhaps we shall be as lucky as he; at all events, we know that when our time comes we must take our turn. even those who look forward with apprehension to the last moment, and who when it approaches, cling desperately to life, are prudent enough to hold their peace. there is a general understanding that those who go shall not mar the composure of those who stay, and that public decorum shall not be disturbed by outcries. this is the baldly secular view of the matter, and this view, though based on low considerations, in some respects is sound enough. and yet i reiterate the opinion that to live as if this hour were our last--in other words, to frankly face the idea of death--is most conducive to the spiritual life. it is for the sake of the reflex action upon life that the practice of coming to a right understanding with death is so valuable. take the case of a man who calls on his physician, and there unexpectedly discovers that he is afflicted with a fatal malady, and is told that he may have only a few months longer to live. this visit to the physician has changed the whole complexion of life for him. what will be the effect upon him? if he be a sane, strong, morally high-bred man, the effect will be ennobling; it will certainly not darken the face of nature for him. matthew arnold wished that when he died he might be placed at the open window, that he might see the sun shining on the landscape, and catch at evening the gleam of the rising star. everything that is beautiful in the world will still be beautiful; he will thankfully accept the last draught of the joy which nature has poured into his goblet. everything that is really uplifting in human life will have a more exquisite and tender message for him. the gayety of children will thrill him as never before, interpreted as a sign of the invincible buoyancy of the human race, of that race which will go on battling its way after he has ceased to live. if he be a man of large business connections, he will still, and more than ever, be interested in planning how what he has begun may be safely continued. if he be the father of a family, he will provide with a wise solicitude, as far as possible, for every contingency. he will dispose of matters now, as if he could see what will happen after his departure. on the other hand, all that is vain or frivolous, every vile pleasure, gambling, cruelty, harsh language to wife or child, trickery in business, social snobbishness, all the base traits that disfigure human conduct, he will now recoil from with horror, as being incongruous with the solemn realization of his condition. the frank facing of death, therefore, has the effect of sifting out the true values of life from the false, the things that are worth while from the things that are not worth while, the things that are related to the highest end from those related to the lower partial ends. the precept, "live as if this hour were thy last," is enjoined as a touchstone; not for the purpose of dampening the healthy relish of life, but as a means of enhancing the relish for real living, the kind of living that is devoted to things really worth while. as such a test it is invaluable. the question, "should i care to be surprised by death in what i am doing now?"--put it to the dissipated young man in his cups, put it to the respectable rogue--nay, put it to each one of us, and it will often bring the blush of shame to our cheeks. when, therefore, i commend the thought of death, i think of death not as a grim, grisly skeleton, a king of terrors, but rather as a mighty angel, holding with averted face a wondrous lamp. by that lamp--hold it still nearer, o death--i would read the scripture of my life, and what i read in that searching light, that would i take to heart. finally, there is a third condition of the spiritual life which i would mention, and which comes nearer to the heart of the matter than anything that has yet been said. learn to look upon any pains and injuries which you may have to endure as you would upon the same pains and injuries endured by someone else. if sick and suffering, remember what you would say to someone else who is sick and suffering, remember how you would admonish him that he is not the first or the only one that has been in like case, how you would expect of him fortitude in bearing pain as an evidence of human dignity. exhort yourself in like manner; expect the same fortitude of yourself. if any one has done you a wrong, remember what you would adduce in palliation of the offence if another were in the same situation; remember how you would suggest that perhaps the one injured had given some provocation to the wrongdoer, how you would perhaps have quoted the saying: _"tout comprendre est tout pardonner"_--"to understand is to pardon," how you would in any case have condemned vindictive resentment. in the moral world each one counts for one and not more than one. the judgment that you pass on others, pass on yourself, and the fact that you are able to do so, that you have the power to rise above your subjective self and take the public universal point of view with respect to yourself, will give you a wonderful sense of enfranchisement and poise and spiritual dignity. and, on the other hand (and this is but the obverse of the same rule), look upon everyone else as being from the moral point of view just as important as you are; nay, realize that every human being is but another self, a part of the same spiritual being that is in you, a complement of yourself, a part of your essential being. realize the unity that subsists between you and your fellow-men, and then your life will be spiritual indeed. for the highest end with which we must be ever in touch, toward which we must be ever looking, is to make actual that unity between ourselves and others of which our moral nature is the prophecy. the realization of that unity is the goal toward which humanity tends. spirituality depends upon our tutoring ourselves to regard the welfare of others--moral as well as external--as much our concern as our own. what this practically means the following illustration will indicate. a certain bank official, a man of excellent education and of high social standing, committed a crime. he allowed himself in a moment of lamentable weakness to use certain trust funds which had been committed to him to cover losses which he had sustained. he intended to replace what he had taken, of course, but he could not do so, for he became more and more deeply involved. one night as he was alone in his office it became plain to him that the day of reckoning could no longer be put off. he was at the end of his resources. the morrow would bring exposure and ruin. then the temptation seized him to make away with himself. he had a charming wife and two lovely daughters. he was the revered head of the household; in the eyes of his family the paragon of honor. he was universally esteemed by his friends, who knew not his temptation and his fall. on that night in the lonely office he could not bear to think of meeting the future, of being exposed as a criminal in the eyes of his friends, of bringing upon his family the infamy and the agony of his disgrace. should a man in his situation be permitted to commit suicide? if we were at his elbow should we allow him to do so? this question was submitted to one of my ethics classes. the students at first impulsively decided in the affirmative, for they argued, as many do, that right conduct consists in bestowing happiness on others, and wrong conduct in inflicting suffering on others; and now that the man had committed the crime, they maintained he could at least relieve those whom he loved of his presence by taking himself out of their way. true, someone said, the exposure was inevitable in any case, and the shock of discovery could not be averted; but we were forced to concede that from the point of view of suffering, the pain involved in the sudden shock could not be compared to the long-drawn-out anguish which would result if he continued to live. for presently he would forfeit his liberty; he would sit as a prisoner in the dock. his wife and daughters, loyal to their duties even toward an unworthy husband and father, would be found at his side. they would hear the whispers, they would see the significant nods, they would endure all the shame. later on, when the trial was at an end, the prisoner would stand up to hear the verdict. they would still be near him. still later there would be the pilgrimage to the prison on the hudson. they would see their beloved husband and father in striped garb among the scum and refuse of society, and these weary journeys would be repeated during long years until his term was over and he returned a broken and outcast man to what was once a home. could not this lamentable issue at least be forestalled? but then there came a new light into our discussion. one of the students suggested that he must face the consequences of his wrongdoing, and that one of the consequences is the very suffering which he inflicts upon the innocent. he must see that day by day. that would be a part of his expiation, the purifying fire that may consume the dross of his nature. and, on the other hand, it would be right for the innocent to bear, not the guilt, but the consequences of the guilt of the wrongdoer whom they have loved, whom they still love. for this is the holy law: that the other whom we love shall be taken into our self as a part of our very self, that in his joy we shall rejoice as if his joy were ours, that in his achievements we shall triumph, that in his humiliations we shall be humbled, and that we shall work out his redemption by traveling with him the hard road that leads out of the dark depths upward again to the levels of peace and reconciliation. the spiritual life depends on self-recollection and detachment from the rush of life; it depends on facing frankly the thought of death; it is signalized, especially, by the identification of self with others, even of the guiltless with the guilty. spirituality is sometimes spoken of as if it were a kind of moral luxury, a work of supererogation, a token of fastidiousness and over-refinement. it is nothing of the sort. spirituality is simply morality carried to its farthest bounds; it is not an airy bauble of the fancy, it is of "the tough fibre of the human heart." ii. the spiritual attitude toward one's neighbor. sunday, nov. , . those whom we call our neighbors, our fellow-men, may stand to us in a threefold relation. some possess gifts far greater than our own, and in point of development are our superiors; some are on the same level; and some are much inferior to us. the spiritual attitude toward our neighbor--though always governed by the same principle, expresses itself in different ways, according as our neighbor is related to us in one or another of these three ways. i recently read a biography of matthew arnold, the author of which constantly speaks of himself as arnold's disciple. it is not often nowadays that we hear men proclaim themselves disciples and glory in their discipleship. at the present day the tendency is for every one to assert an equality with others; and most persons would resent the imputation of subordination implied in such a word as disciple. and yet the writer in question is a self-respecting man, he is thoroughly alive to his dignity, and he has keen and unsparing words for certain of the faults of the master whom he reveres. he is not blind, he is not wax in the hands of the master, he does not look upon him with undiscerning admiration, and yet he takes toward him the reverent attitude--what i should call the spiritual attitude--for he recognizes that this master of his is a casket in which nature has deposited a treasure of extraordinary value, that he possesses a genius much superior to that of others. the loyal disciple is concerned that this genius should appear in its full potency and in undiminished radiance. to this end is the upward look, the appreciation and reverence, and to this end also the misgiving and the remonstrance when the great man deviates from the course which he ought to follow. the same attitude of loyalty we sometimes find among the disciples of great artists, and the followers of great religious teachers. loyalty is a virtue which is somewhat underrated at the present day. loyalty is not debasing, not unworthy of a self-respecting man; it is but another name for the spiritual attitude toward those who have a superior genius, to whose height we are lifted by our appreciation of them. furthermore, in our spiritual relation toward those who occupy about the same plane of development with ourselves, the same principle of sympathy with the best possible attainment should be the rule. to rejoice in the failure of others, to accentuate in our thinking and in our conversation the faults of others, to triumph at their expense, is the utterly unspiritual attitude. to desire that others may manifest the excellence that is latent in them--be it like to or different from our own, to desire that they shall have credit for every excellence they possess, and to sedulously aid them in developing such excellence as they can attain to, that is the spiritual attitude. i have spoken of superiors and equals, of our attitude toward those who are more developed than we are, and toward those who are about equally developed; but my address to-day will be mainly occupied with our duty toward those who are or seem to be wholly undeveloped. the fundamental principle of ethics is that every human being possesses indefeasible worth. it is comparatively easy to apply the principle of anticipating our neighbor's latent talents to the highly gifted, to the great authors, scientists, statesmen, artists, and even to the moderately gifted, for their worth is, in part, already manifested in their lives. but it is not so easy to apply or justify the principle in the case of the obscure masses, whose lives are uneventful, unilluminated by talent, charm, or conspicuous service, and who, as individuals at least, it might appear, could well be spared without impairing the progress of the human race. and yet this doctrine of the worth of all is the cornerstone of our democracy. upon it rests the principle of the equal rights of even the humblest before the law, the equal right of all to participate in the government. it is also the cornerstone of all private morality; for unless we accept it, we cannot take the spiritual attitude toward those who are undeveloped. the doctrine, then, that every man possesses indefeasible worth is the basis of public morality, and at the same time the moral principle by which our private relations to our fellow-men are regulated. what does it mean to ascribe indefeasible worth to every man? it means, for instance, that human beings may not be hunted and killed in sport as hunters kill birds or other game; that human beings may not be devoured for food as they have been by cannibals or sometimes by men in starvation camps when hard pressed by hunger; that human beings may not be forced to work without pay, or in any way treated as mere tools or instruments for the satisfaction of the desires of others. this, and more to the same purpose, is implied in the ascription of indefeasible worth to every man. moreover, on the same principle, it follows that it is morally wrong to deprive another of the property which he needs for his livelihood or for the expression of his personality, and to blast the reputation of another--thereby destroying what may be called his social existence. and it also follows that a society is morally most imperfect, the conditions of which are such that many lives are indirectly sacrificed because of the lack of sufficient food, and that many persons are deprived of their property through cunning and fraud. the life of animals we do take, and whatever secret compunction we may have in the matter, the most confirmed vegetarian will not regard himself in the light of a cannibal when he partakes of animal food. the liberty of animals we do abridge without scruple; we harness horses to our carriages, regardless of what may be their inclinations, and we do not regard ourselves as slaveholders when we thus use them. why is there this enormous distinction between animals and men? are the hottentots so greatly elevated above the animal level; are the lowest classes of negroes so much superior in intelligence to animals? have the black race and the brown race any claim to be treated as the equals of the white? among white men themselves is there not a similar difference between inferiors and superiors? such questions naturally suggest themselves; and they have been asked at all times. it seems obvious that value should be ascribed to those who possess genius or even talent, or at least average intelligence; but why should value be ascribed to every human being just because he wears the human form? the positive belief in human worth on which is based the belief in human equality, so far as it has rooted itself in the world at all, we owe to religion, and more particularly to the hebrew and christian religions. the hebrew bible says: "in the image of god did he create man"--it is this god-likeness that to the hebrew mind attests the worth of man. as some of the great masters on completing a painting have placed a miniature portrait of themselves by way of signature below their work, so the great world-artist when he had created the human soul stamped it with the likeness of himself to attest its divine origin. and the greatest of the hebrew thinkers conceived of this dignity as belonging to all human beings alike, irrespective of race or creed. in practice, however, the idea of equal human worth was more or less limited to the chosen people. at least, to keep within the bounds of the artistic simile, the members of the hebrew people were regarded as first-proof copies, and other men as somewhat dim and less perfect duplicates. in the christian religion a new idea was introduced. the belief in the worth of man was founded on the doctrine of redemption. the sacrifice of atonement had been offered up for the benefit of all persons who chose to avail themselves of it. christ had come to save the gentile as well as the jew, the bond as well as the free, men, women and children of every race, living under every sky, of every color of skin and degree of intelligence. the sacred respect which we owe to every human being is due from this point of view to the circumstance that every human being is a possible beneficiary of the atonement. for him too--as the theological phrase is--christ died upon the cross. but in christianity too we find that the idea of brotherhood, of equal worth, universal as it is in theory, in practice came to be considerably restricted. it did not really extend to all human beings as such; it did not extend to those who refused to be the beneficiaries of the act of atonement. in reality, it applied only to christians or to those who were not averse to receiving the christian faith. the theological formulation of the fundamental idea which we are discussing, therefore, is beset by two difficulties: it is limited in application, and it is based on theological conceptions. as soon as these theological conceptions are relinquished, the doctrine of equality is in danger of being abandoned. in , the founders of the american republic undertook to supply a new and a secular foundation for this doctrine. in the declaration of independence, jefferson wrote: "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created free and equal." in other words, he put forth the astonishing proposition that human equality is self-evident. many of us would incline to the opinion that the opposite is self-evident, that the inequalities which subsist between men are so palpable that we cannot overlook them. if, however, we inquire what led jefferson to this statement, we shall find that, at the time when the declaration of independence was written, there existed a basis of fact that gave color to his assumption. the population of the united colonies was small--only about three millions--and on the whole homogeneous. the great majority of the people were agriculturists, pursuing the same occupations and on the whole exhibiting the same traits. they were all, or almost all, of vigorous stock, capable of self-government, jealous of their rights, independent in spirit. at that particular time, the points of similarity and equality among the members of the american colonies far outweighed the points of dissimilarity. it was, then, to a certain extent on facts of experience, and not entirely on the hypothesis of the eighteenth century philosophy, that jefferson's famous proclamation rested. since jefferson's day the facts have markedly changed. we have passed beyond the agricultural stage, and have entered the stage of industrial development. the occupations of our citizens have become greatly diversified. large bodies of foreign immigrants have come to us. if we survey the conditions of american life at present, we are strongly impressed with the differences that exist between the various strata of our population: differences in mental ability, differences in vital energy, differences in the point of culture attained, differences in capacity to rise. as a consequence, the declaration of independence is treated by many as an obsolete document, and its assertions as mere bombast and rhetoric; unjustly so, because the truth which it attempts to convey is valid, though the form in which the truth is expressed and the grounds on which it is put are no longer adequate. we have arrived, then, at this pass: the theological foundation for the doctrine of human equality has failed or is failing us; the facts to which the declaration of independence appealed have altered. are we, then, to give up the belief in human equality--that priceless postulate of the moral law, the basis alike of democracy and of private morality? at times it seems to us that the world is almost ready to do so. nietzsche in germany puts it forth as a philosophic principle that humanity exists not for the democratic purpose of securing the highest development of all, but for the aristocratic purpose of producing a race of supermen, an elite of strong, forceful, "leonine" beings. and in his doctrine that the many exist as a kind of pedestal for the grandeur of the few, he finds support the world over. men are but too ready in this age, when the energies of the strong have been unfettered and moral restraints have become weakened, to put nietzche's doctrine into practice too. from the congo we hear appalling accounts of the cruelty of civilized men in their dealings with the uncivilized. rubber and ivory, it appears, must be obtained in large quantities to secure a handsome profit on investments that have been made in those regions. railroads must be built to make the supply of rubber and of ivory accessible. in consequence, a system of forced labor, of virtual slavery, has been imposed on the miserable natives in order to make the building of these railroads possible. human life has not been spared, for human life in the congo is as dust in the balance when weighed against the profits from rubber. punitive expeditions have been organized (in other words, wholesale slaughter has been resorted to), in order to coerce the reluctant natives to bring in their supplies more punctually. the wives and daughters of the natives have been seized, brutally chained, and detained as hostages in order to influence their husbands and fathers to a more ready obedience. the story of the congo reads like an incredible nightmare; the civilized world is aghast at the partial revelations of it which have been published. from armenia we hear similar stories of ruthless contempt for human life and merciless outrage. with kishineff and siberia in mind, we need not comment on the conditions that exist in russia. in the united states, the heartrending circumstances that accompany negro lynchings, the conditions in the sweated industries, and the widespread evil of child labor show us clearly enough how little the doctrine of the intrinsic and indefeasible worth of man has as yet become the property of even the most advanced nations. in the face of all these odds on the other side, in the face of these confederate forces working the world over for the abasement of man, how urgent is the appeal to rescue and fortify the doctrine, to make it effectual, first in our own conduct and then in that of others! and on what tenable foundations can we rest it, that it may become operative? first, as to its meaning. it does not mean equality of gifts, or equality of mental energy, or equality in any of the traits that lead to successful careers. it means equality in the sense that each is the vehicle of some talent, however small, the bearer of some gift, however seemingly inconsiderable, which in the sum total of humanity's development is needed; that each one in his place and with his gift, however insignificant in appearance, is in fact indispensable. and what is the reason for ascribing such worth to human beings? the sole reason is, that the moral law enjoins us to do so. before ever we have discovered whether a man has worth in him or not, the moral law enjoins us to ascribe it to him, to treat him as if he had it, to see in him the light of the possibilities which he has never made good and which he never wholly will make good: and thus, and thus only, shall we bring to light, in part at least, the precious things in his nature, the existence of which we can only divine. the moral law is wholly misunderstood if it be founded on the actual worth or value of men, for none of us has great worth or value. the moral law is a law for the eliciting of possibilities. briefly put, it enjoins that we shall invest others with a garment of light, that we shall ascribe worth to others and to ourselves, in order that they and we may become worthy. this is the spiritual basis of the doctrine of equality; this is the spiritual conception which should regulate our attitude toward our neighbors. and yet if there were no evidence at all to support our faith in human goodness, our faith, however vigorous at first, would soon decline, and hope and courage might utterly desert us. if men on nearer acquaintance turned out to be, as some pessimists have represented them to be, hard egotists, ingrates, slanderers, backbiters, envious, incapable of generous admirations, sodden in sensuality, knaves devoid of scruple; if experience indeed bore out this sweeping impeachment, if especially the so-called masses of mankind were hopelessly delivered over to the sway of brutal instincts, of superstition and folly; the faith of which i speak might justly be termed mere fatuousness, and the rule of acting on the assumption that men are better than they appear would turn out a blind delusion. but the striking fact is, that as soon as we act on the principle of looking for the latent good in others, we are rewarded by finding far more than we had any reason to expect. take as an instance the masses of the poor and ignorant, upon whom we are so apt to pass sweeping judgments, as carlyle did when he said that the population of england was forty millions-- mostly fools. the experience of those who have had to do with popular education does not corroborate this rash condemnation. there is hardly a child in our public schools that is not found to possess mental power of some sort, if only we possess the right method of calling it out. the new education is new and significant just because it has succeeded in devising methods for gaining access to the latent mental power, and thus reaching what had been supposed to be non-existent. every so-called educational campaign in the field of politics brings out the same truth. the capacity for hard thinking and sound judgment which resides in the working class is surprising to us, only because in our preposterous pride we had supposed them to be baked of different clay than we are. in the matter of artistic endowment, too, what wonderful discoveries do we constantly make among poor children, even among children that come from the lowest dregs of society! what fine fancy, what prompt response to the appeal of the beautiful, in spite of all the debasing inheritance! but it is, in the last analysis, the moral qualities upon which our respect for human nature rests, and in this respect how often are we astonished, yes and abashed, when we observe the extent to which the moral virtues express themselves in the life of those who, in point of so-called culture, are infinitely our inferiors! what power of self-sacrifice is displayed by these poor people, whom sometimes in our wicked moods we are disposed to despise; what readiness to share the last crust with those who are, i will not say hungry, but hungrier! who of us would take into his own house, his own bedchamber, a dying consumptive, a mere acquaintance, in order that the last days of the sufferer might be soothed by friendly nursing? who of us would make provision in our will to share our grave with a worthy stranger, in order to avert from him the dreaded fate of being buried in the potter's field? which of our young men would be willing to refuse the proffered opportunity of an education in one of the foremost colleges in the land, in order to stay with the old folks at home and work at a menial occupation for their support? who of us would give up the joys of youth to devote his whole life to the care of a bed-ridden, half-demented parent? yet all of these things and many others like them i have known to be done by people who live in the tenement houses of this great city. it sometimes seems as if the angelic aspect of human nature displayed itself by preference in the house of poverty, as if those who possessed no other treasure, no other jewels with which to adorn themselves, were compensated for their penury in other ways by these priceless gems of the most unselfish virtue. such conduct, of course, is not universal. there are abundant instances of the opposite. but the truth remains that it is the worth which those who seem to lead the least desirable lives display toward others that assures us of their own worth. this, too, is the lesson of the oft-quoted and oft-misunderstood parable of the good samaritan, upon which here, for the moment, i should like to dwell. the jewish state in the time of jesus was substantially an ecclesiastical aristocracy. the highest rank was occupied by the priests and their assessors, the levites; after them, sometimes disputing the first place, came the doctors learned in the sacred law; below them the commonalty; and still lower in the social scale were the people of samaria, who accepted the current jewish religion only in part, and who were regarded by the blue-blood ecclesiastical aristocrats with contempt, indeed almost as outcasts. this fact it is necessary to remember in order to understand the parable. the designation good samaritan has become so associated with the idea of mercifulness, that i doubt not there are many persons who have the impression that samaritans in the ancient hebrew days were people specially noted for their benevolent disposition. nothing of the kind, of course, is true. the samaritans were a despised lower stratum of the population of palestine. read the parable in this light, and you will perceive that the moral of it is not as commonly stated--every one who has need of me is my neighbor; but that there is a far deeper meaning in it. there came to jesus one day a man versed in the sacred law, and asked him what he must do to inherit eternal life. and jesus replied: the substance of right conduct is plain enough. why do you ask as if it were a thing very recondite and difficult? love thy god and thy neighbor. but the doctor of the sacred law, wishing to justify himself (wishing to show that the way of the upright life is not so plain, that it may be difficult to decide whom one should regard as one's equal, to whom one should ascribe worth), asked: who is my neighbor? and jesus replied in the words of the well-known parable concerning a certain man who had fallen among thieves, and these stripped him of his raiment and left him for dead on the public road that runs between jerusalem and jericho. presently a member of the high aristocracy, a priest, passed by, but paid no attention to the sufferer; then another, a levite, came that way, looked at the man who was lying there helpless, and turned and went on his journey. then there came one of those low-caste despised samaritans; and he acted like a tender human brother, bound up the man's wounds, poured oil and wine into them, etc. and jesus said: which one of these three showed himself to be a neighbor to the man that had fallen among thieves? in which of the social classes did there appear to be the truest understanding of the conduct which moral duty requires of us toward our fellow-men--in the upper classes or in the lowest? and the answer evidently is--in the lowest. the point of the parable is that the samaritan himself, whom priest and levite and doctor of the law refused to regard as a neighbor, was worthy to be treated as a neighbor, because he understood, as they did not, how to treat others as neighbors. the lesson of the parable is a twofold one: not only that the wounded man lying untended on the road was a neighbor because of his need, but more especially that the samaritan was a neighbor because he responded to the need, and set an example of truly human behavior to those who had doubted whether, because of his extreme social degradation, he was himself to be regarded as human. the moral qualities in men, then, constitute their most universal title to respect, and these qualities we find in all social grades and among all races and nationalities. we find them among the chinese, as their devoted family life, the honesty of their merchants, and the ethics of confucius indicate. we find them among the negroes, not only in the case of exceptional persons like booker washington or dubois or atkinson, but also in the undistinguished life of many an obscure man and woman, whom to know more intimately is to learn to respect as a neighbor and a moral equal. what we need to build up our faith in human goodness is the clairvoyance that discerns the hidden treasures of character in others. and one other quality is indispensable for the moral appreciation of our neighbors, namely, the quality of humility. strange as it may seem, the less we plume ourselves on our own goodness, the more we shall be ready to believe in the goodness of other people; the more we realize the infinite nature of the moral ideal and our own distance from it, the more we shall esteem as of relatively small importance the distance that separates us from others, the slight extent to which we may morally surpass them. the more we are aware of our own frequent and serious shortcomings, the more, when we perceive the moral delinquencies of others, shall we recognize in their nature the same recuperative agency which we believe to be in ourselves, namely, the power of divine regeneration that can make all things new. if we regard ourselves as morally little and yet as never lost, we shall regard no one else as lost, however morally little he may seem to be. respect, then, for the indefeasible worth of every human being must be based not on theological systems which are fast decaying, nor on the fancied self-evidence of jefferson's declaration, but solely on the moral law which commands us to ascribe such worth to others whether we perceive it or not, nay, to create it in others by ascribing it to them. such is the spiritual attitude toward our fellow-men. and though our confidence may not always be demonstrably justified by the result, though we not always succeed in uplifting others, yet by pursuing this line of conduct we ourselves at all events shall be uplifted, our own life will be touched to finer issues. iii. the spiritual attitude toward oppressors. sunday, dec. , . the problem of our spiritual attitude toward positive badness, social and individual wrongdoing, cruelty and oppression, is far more difficult of solution than the problem of our attitude toward worth really existent but concealed. the thorny question, how we are to deal with wicked persons, whether we are to observe the spiritual attitude toward them, and in what that attitude consists, requires the most sincere and straightforward treatment. should we cultivate an attitude of indifference in such cases? a ruffian cruelly beats his horse, the poor beast that has rendered him faithful service for many a day, but is feeble now and sinks beneath its load. with curses and the sharp persuasion of the lash, the merciless driver seeks to force the animal to efforts of which it is plainly incapable. can we stand by and witness such a scene in philosophic calm? shall we say that the wretch is the product of circumstances, and cannot be expected to act otherwise than he does? shall we liken evildoers generally, as at present is customary in certain quarters, to the sick? shall we say that such men are the outcome of their heredity, their education, their environment? i have known of a husband who in a state of intoxication brutally struck and injured his wife, while she was holding in her arms a babe not eight days old. shall we say that that man was morally sick, that he could not help becoming intoxicated, and therefore was not responsible for the havoc he wrought when the demon of drink had gained possession of him? shall we say of the syndicate of traders who hunt the natives on the congo like rabbits, massacre and mutilate them, that they are sick? a bad deed done with intention argues badness in the doer. we impute to the man the act and its consequences. we cannot separate the sin from the sinner, and merely condemn sin in the abstract. there is no such thing as sin in the abstract. sin is sin only when it is incorporated in the will of a human individual. we condemn the sinner because he has wedded himself to the sin. if this were not the case, we might as well close our courts of justice. we hold men accountable, then, for their misdeeds, whatever speculative philosophy may urge to the contrary. how could we revere virtue if we did not stigmatize its opposite; how could we believe in human worth if we did not condemn unworth where it appears? but the ordinary judgment stops short right here. it recognizes the particular badness of a particular act, and desires that the agent be made to suffer for it. it says, this act is the expression of an evil disposition, and it identifies the whole man with the particular act of which he was guilty. the spiritual attitude is characterized by discriminating between the particular act and the whole of the man's nature. it recognizes that there is an evil strand; but it also sees or divines the good that exists along with the evil, even in the most seemingly hopeless cases. it trusts to the good, and builds upon it with a view to making it paramount over evil. upon the basis of this spiritual attitude, what should be our mode of dealing with the bad? there are a number of steps to be taken in order, and much depends on our following the right order. the first step is to arrest the course of evil, to prevent its channel from being deepened, its area from being enlarged. pluck the whip from the hand of the ruffian who is lashing his beast; stay the arm that is uplifted to strike the cowardly murderous blow. much has been said of the need of considering the good of society, of protecting the community at large from the depredations of the violent and fraudulent; and of subjecting the latter to exemplary punishment, in order to deter others from following their example. but the welfare of society and the welfare of the criminal are always identical. nothing should be done to the worst criminal, not a hair of his head should be touched merely for the sake of securing the public good, if the thing done be not also for his private good. and on the other hand, nothing can be done to the criminal which is for his own lasting good that will not also profoundly react for the good of society, assuring its security, and deterring others from a like career of crime. the very first claim which the criminal has upon the services of his fellow-men is that they stop him in his headlong course of wickedness. arrest, whether by the agents of the law or in some other way, is the first step. the most spiritual concern for a degraded and demoralized fellow-being does not exclude the sharp intervention implied in arrest, for the spiritual attitude is not mawkish or incompatible with the infliction of pain. this, i think, will be readily granted. but the second step, a step far more important than the arrest of the evildoer in order to arrest the evildoing, is more likely to be contested and misunderstood. the second step consists in fixing the mark of shame upon the offender and publicly humiliating him by means of the solemn sentence of the judge. it may be asked, what human being is fit to exercise this awful office of acting as judge of another? remember the words of shakespeare in king lear: ". . . .see how yond justice rails upon yond simple thief. hark in thine ear: change places; and . . . . which is the justice, which the thief?" or recall what the puritan preacher said when he saw from his window a culprit being led to the gallows: "there, but for the grace of god, go i." in other words, had i been born as this man was, had i been played upon by the influences to which he was subject, had i been tempted as he was, how dare i say that i should not have fallen as he did? had it not been for some grace extended to me through no desert of mine, i might be traveling the road on which he travels now. furthermore, can we say that the sentence of the judge is proportioned to the heinousness of the deed? is the murderer who in a fit of uncontrolled passion has taken a human life--it may have been his first and only crime--necessarily more depraved than the thief; or is the thief in jail who has indeed broken the law, necessarily more depraved than numbers of others who have dexterously circumvented the law, violating the spirit though keeping within the letter of it? is even the abject creature who strikes his wife more abandoned than a man of the type of grandcourt in _daniel deronda_, whose insults are dealt with a marble politeness, and who crushes his wife's sensibilities, not with a vulgar blow but with the cold and calculating cruelty of a cynic? when it comes to passing moral judgments and fixing blame, and especially to measuring the degree of another's guilt, who of us is good enough, who of us is pure enough, who of us is himself free enough from wrong to exercise so terrible an office? is not lear right, after all: ". . . .change places; and. . . .which is the justice, which is the thief?" it may be said in reply to these objections: first, that the judge does not speak in his private capacity, but that he delivers the judgment of mankind on the doer and the deed, serving as the mouthpiece of the moral law, so far as it is incorporated in the human law. we should select the highest characters available for so exalted a duty, but freedom from even great human infirmity we cannot expect to find. again, it is not the judge's business to fix the degree of moral guilt; that not even the best and wisest of men can do. the inscrutable fact of the degree of moral guilt eludes all human insight. only omniscience could decide who is more guilty relatively to opportunities, advantages, circumstances; who has made the braver effort to escape wrongdoing; whether the admired preacher, or the culprit on his way to the gallows; whether the president in the white house or the wretch behind the bars. the office of the judge is to pronounce that crime has been committed, irrespective of the subtle question of the degree of guilt. murder has been done, property has been stolen, the sin and the sinner wedded together. the office of the judge is to declare the fact of that infelicitous union, and to pronounce the penalty according to the law. and this, in particular. the object of the punishment which the law pronounces is not vindictive chastisement of the culprit. the object of punishment is purely reformatory. only it must not be forgotten that there can be no reformation without penitence, and no penitence without self-abasement. and this consists in confessing one's self guilty, admitting that the guilt has become a part of one's being, and humbling one's pride to the ground. the public sentence pronounced by the judge, the shame which he fixes upon the culprit, has, then, for its object to pave the way toward reformation, to break down the defenses which the sophistry of wickedness sets up, to compel the man to see himself as others see him, to force him to realize to the full the evil of his present state. not to blast him utterly, not to exclude him forever from the kindly society of men, but to lead him into the way along which--if he travel it--he may eventually return, though perhaps only after many years, to human fellowship. if the verdict is pronounced in any other spirit, it is false and inhuman. the methods to be employed to bring about reformation must often be severe and painful, and one of these methods is shock, shock sharp and sudden enough to loosen the incrustations of evil habit, and to shake a wicked nature down to its foundations. the purpose of the trial of a criminal in a court of justice, and of the verdict in which the trial culminates, is to supply such a shock, a searching and terrible experience, yet salutary and indispensable in order that better things may ensue. from what has been said, it follows that the death penalty as a punishment even for the worst crimes is morally untenable; for either the culprit is really irredeemable, that is to say, he is an irresponsible moral idiot, in which case an asylum for the insane is the proper place for him; or he is not irredeemable, in which case the chance of reformation should not be taken from him by cutting off his life. the death penalty is the last lingering vestige of the _lex talionis_, of the law which attempts to equalize the penalty with the crime, a conception of justice which in all other respects we have happily outgrown. it does not necessarily follow that the immediate abolition of capital punishment is expedient. it is not expedient in fact, because of the condition of our prisons, and because of the abuses to which the pardoning power of the state is subjected; because security is lacking that the worst offenders, before ever they can be reclaimed, may not be returned unrepentant into the bosom of society, to prey upon it anew with impunity. but, then, we must not defend the death penalty as such, but rather deplore and do our utmost to change our political conditions, which make it still unwise to abolish a form of punishment so barbarous and so repugnant to the moral sense. the step which follows the arrest and condemnation of the evildoer is isolation, with a view to the formation of new habits. a change of heart is the necessary pre-requisite of any permanent change in conduct; but the change of heart, and the resolution to turn over a new leaf to which it gives birth, must be gradually and slowly worked out into a corresponding practice. the old body of sin cannot be stripped off in a moment; the old encumbrance of bad habits cannot be sloughed off like a serpent's coil. the new spirit must incorporate itself slowly in new habits; and to this end the delinquent must be aided in his efforts by a more or less prolonged absence from the scene of his former temptations. he must be placed in an entirely new and suitable environment, and encouraging pressure must be exerted upon him to acquire new habits of order, diligent application to work, obedience, self-control. it is upon this idea that the moral propriety of imprisonment and of prison discipline is based, whether the actual treatment of prisoners be in accord with it or not. and so we may pass on at once to the last and chief element in the process of the reclamation of the evildoer, namely, forgiveness. an angel's tongue, the wisdom and insight of the loftiest of the sages, would be required to describe all the wealth of meaning contained in the sublime spiritual process which we designate by the word pardon. it is a process which affects equally both parties to the act, the one who forgives and the one who is forgiven. it exalts both, transfigures both, indeed establishes a new tie of wonderful tenderness and sublimity between them. the person who forgives is a benefactor. is it a little thing, when a man is sunk in the slough of poverty, denuded of all the decencies of life, harassed day and night by grinding cares, knows not whither to turn to find shelter and food, for some fellow human being, moved by pure human kindness, or let us rather say moved by respect for the worth which he sees in his perishing fellow-man, to come to the aid of the latter, to lift him out of his distress, to place him on sun-lit levels, to put him on his feet and give him a new chance, to open for him a new career in which effort may meet with its reward? such an act of human helpfulness is not a little thing; the man who does it is rightly esteemed a great benefactor. or is it a little thing to save the imperiled sick, to bring back from the brink of the grave a precious life, already despaired of? this, too, surely is not a little thing, and the good physician who accomplishes such a miracle is rightly esteemed a benefactor to whom lifelong gratitude is due. but there is a yet greater thing, a benefit, by the side of which even these--great as they are--appear almost insignificant. to take a man who is sinking in the moral slough and has no courage left to rise out of it; to give him back his lost self-esteem, that jewel without which health and wealth are of little avail; to put him in a position once more to look his fellow-men straight in the eye; to place him morally on the sun-lit levels; to put him morally on his feet--this assuredly is the supreme benefit, and the man who accomplishes this for another is the supreme benefactor. and a note of exquisite moral beauty is added if the benefactor be the same person whom the guilty man had injured. this is what is meant by forgiveness. this is why forgiveness is so divine a thing. this is the reason why, when an act of genuine forgiveness occurs, "the music of the spheres" seems to become audible in our nether world. and this is also the reason why we often see such a strange kind of tie springing up between a person who has been chastised and the one who has chastised him in the right spirit and then forgiven him--a tie into which there enters shame for the wrong done, gratitude for the unmerited good received, and a reverence akin to idolatry toward the one upon whose faith in him the sinner rebuilt his faith in himself. there should be some organ of the state to exercise this office of forgiveness toward criminals, this pardoning power in the finer sense of the term. the prison warden, if he be a man of the right stamp, sometimes exercises it. the society for the befriending of released prisoners has here an appropriate function open to it; also the employer who after due inquiry has the courage to dismiss suspicion and to give work to the released prisoner. the methods and principles which i have described in the case of the criminal are used for illustration, not that i am interested today in discussing the special problem of the criminal, but because principles can best be exemplified in extreme cases. the same methods, the same maxims should control punishment in general; our dealings, for instance, with the misdeeds of which our own children are guilty. here, too, there should be by no means unvarying gentleness and pleading, but when need arises the sharp check, that evil may be instantaneously stopped. here, too, there should be the temporary disgrace, the clear presentation of the magnitude of the fault, if it have magnitude, the humiliation that calls forth penitence and good resolutions. here, too, there should be sedulous care, to work out the better habits. and all these steps should be taken with a view to ultimate reconciliation, forgiveness, and the holier bond between parent and child. but now can we take one step further? can we dispose our minds and our hearts in the same fashion toward oppressors? i have in mind, for instance, the hard proprietors of houses who pitilessly wring the last penny from their tenants; the cruel taskmasters who drive the workers, sometimes only children not yet full-grown, twelve and fifteen hours a day; the unscrupulous exploiters on a large scale, who raise the price of the people's food, and in their eagerness for fabulous gain conspire by every corrupt means to crush their less crafty or less shameless competitors. as we hate wrong, must we not hate them? shall we assail greed and exploitation merely in the abstract? what effect will that have? which one of the oppressors will not hypocritically assent to such abstract denunciation? if we seek to produce a change, must we not proceed to more specific allegations and point the finger of scorn at the offenders, saying as the prophet nathan said to king david: "thou art the man"? is it not necessary to arouse the popular anger against the oppressors and to encourage hatred against the hateful? clearly the case is not the same as that of the criminal in the dock. he stands there dishonored; the evil he has done has been brought home to him; he is covered with the garment of shame. but those others are invested--despite the evil they have done and are still doing--with every outward symbol of success; they triumph defiantly over the better moral sense of the community; they inhabit, as it were, impregnable citadels; they have harvested unholy gains which no one seems strong enough to take from them; and the influence they wield in consequence of their power to benefit or harm is immense. is it a wonder, then, that such oppressors are branded as monsters, and that the hoarse note of some of the hebrew psalms is sometimes to be heard re-echoing in the cry of the social radicals of our time--let vengeance be visited upon the wicked; let the oppressors be destroyed from the face of the earth! but the logical and inevitable conclusion of the thought i have developed to-day is, that we are bound to recognize the indefeasible worth latent even in the cruel exploiter and the merciless expropriator. i have already sufficiently indicated that the spiritual view is consistent with severe and stringent treatment. checks there should be by the heavy hand of legislation laid upon the arrogant evildoers. they should be stopped if possible in mid-career. the oppressed, also, should oppose those who oppress them. no one is worth his salt who is not willing to defend his rights against those who would trample on them. so far from ruling out conflict, i regard conflict as a weapon of progress--an ethical weapon, if it be waged with the right intentions. furthermore, when speaking of oppression, i have in mind not merely the cupidity of the few as it operates mercilessly upon the many, but also the banded arrogance of the many as it sometimes displays itself in contempt for the rights of the few. from whichever side oppression proceeds, there should be resistance to it; the check imposed by resistance is one of the means of educating to new habits those who find themselves checked. individuals, and social classes, too, as history proves, learn to respect the rights which they find in practice they cannot traverse. first come the limits set to the aggression, and then the opening of the eyes to perceive the justice of the limitation. but conflict is an ethical weapon only if it is wielded like the knife in the surgeon's hands. the knife wounds and hurts; the method is apparently cruel; but the purpose is benevolent. so should the battle of social reform be animated by concern not only for the oppressed, but also for the oppressor. and such a motive does not exceed the capacity of human nature, but, on the contrary, is the only motive which will permanently satisfy human nature. certain of the socialists have made it their deliberate policy for years to stir up hatred between the poor and the rich, on the ground that hatred alone can overcome the lethargy of the masses and arouse in them the intensity of feeling necessary for conflict. on the contrary, hatred engenders hatred on the opposite side, action provokes reaction. as the individual can be uplifted in his life only by accepting the spiritual motive, by trying to act always so as to recognize in others and to make manifest the indefeasible worth of the human soul, so the social classes can be uplifted only by acting on the same spiritual motive. despite the efforts of a hundred years, the real progress that has been achieved in ameliorating the relations between the social classes at the present day is slight, and sometimes one is impelled to doubt whether there has been any progress at all. the egotism of one side is met by the egotism of the other side. but appeals to mass egotism will no more elevate mankind, than appeals to individual egotism. appeals to sympathy also will not permanently help. only the highest motive of all can furnish the power needed to accomplish the miracle of social transformation; only that conflict which is waged for the purpose not of striking down the oppressor and rescuing his victim, but for the rescue of both the victim and the oppressor, will attain its end. the oppressor may be regarded as a man who has consented so to degrade himself as to become for the time being a heartless automaton, ruthlessly working for gain, a being like one of those terrible ogres of the popular mythology who feed on human flesh. but he is not a mere automaton or ogre. there is a better side to his nature, as we often discover, to our amazement, when we learn about the facts of his private life. these private virtues do not indeed condone his social sins--far from it--but they indicate that there exists a better side. if that side could be made victorious, if conditions could be shaped so as to starve out the worse nature and bring to the fore the better nature in the oppressor as well as in the oppressed, the problem would be advanced toward a solution. there is a story told of two brothers, sons of the same father, who grew up in the same home and were deeply attached to each other. it happened that the older wandered away and fell into the power of an evil magician, who changed him into a ravening wolf. the younger mourned his loss, and treasured in his heart the image of the brother as he had been in the days before the wicked spell fell upon him. impelled by his longing, he at last went out into the world to find his brother, and if possible to redeem him. one day as he passed through a lonely forest, a hungry wolf set upon him. the horrid, brutal face was near to his, the hot breath breathed upon him, and the fierce eyes flamed into his own. but by the might of his love, the younger brother was able to detect beneath the wolfish disguise the faint outlines of the brother whom he had long ago lost, and by the strength of his gaze, which saw only the brother and refused to see the wolf, he was able to give shape and substance to that faint outline. the outer frame of brutishness gradually melted away, and the human brother was restored to his senses and to his home. this is a parable of the spiritual attitude toward oppressors, toward those who oppress the people in public, as well as toward those who oppress us in our private lives. we must liberate them from the brutal frame in which they are inclosed; we must give them back their human shape! iv. the two souls in the human breast. sunday, dec. , . painful and revolting associations are called up by the phrase--"leading the double life." to the aversion provoked by the evil itself, is added in such cases the disgust excited by the hypocrisy with which it is cloaked. he who leads a double life offends not only by the wrong he does, but by borrowing the plumes of virtue. he lives a perpetual lie; he is "a whited sepulchre, clean on the outside, full of filth and corruption within." the beecher trial at the time so profoundly agitated the whole country, because the accusations brought forward associated the name of one of the most prominent characters of the nation, a man of brilliant talent and meritorious service, with secret impurity. the more meritorious such a man's services, the more damning the charges if they be established. nor do we admit in such cases the sophistical argument, that the interests of public morality require the facts to be hushed up in order to avoid a scandal. nothing is so imperative where guilt really exists as that it be confessed and expiated. the public conscience requires the truth. let the sinner make a clean breast of it; let the atmosphere be cleared by an act of public humiliation. no injury to the cause of public morality is so great as the lurking suspicion that men who stand forth as exponents of morality are themselves corrupt. lurking suspicion, distrust of all the moral values, is worse than recognition of human weakness, however deplorable. there are other examples of the double life, with which all who have knowledge of the world's ways are familiar. that of the merchant, for instance, who, though he has long been virtually a bankrupt, conceals his position behind a screen of opulence, emulating the sumptuous expenditure of the rich, living a life of glittering show; tortured inwardly by the fear of exposure, yet not courageous enough to be honest; sinking deeper himself and, what is worse, dragging others down with him. a young man at college sometimes leads a double life, his letters home being filled with accounts of his legitimate employments, while at the same time he is leading the life of the prodigal, the spendthrift, the dissipated sot. the dual life has been depicted in powerful colors by poets and writers of fiction; as, for instance, by hawthorne in his "scarlet letter," by robert louis stevenson in his "doctor jekyll and mr. hyde." i suppose if there be such a thing as hell on earth, the double life is another name for it. yet i know of no writer of fiction whose plummet has sounded the depths of this hell. in stevenson's story one gets the impression of a too mechanical separation between the two sides. the man is at one moment the benevolent doctor, and at another the malignant fiend. the device of the drug is introduced to explain the transition; but the transformation is too sudden, too abrupt. jekyll and hyde dwell side by side in the same body, and the relations between them have not been wrought out with sufficient subtlety. it is rather a broad moral parable than a subtle study of man's dual nature. the initial point i desire to make is, that in certain cases the inner torture and anguish of the dual life can only be ended by publishing the secret, so long and jealously hidden. just as the criminal must stand judgment in a court of law, so must the double-minded man stand judgment in the court of public opinion. it is not possible to determine by a hard and fast line, when such exposure is obligatory; but in general it may be said that it is required in those cases where publicity is necessary to set things right and to repair the wrong that has been done to others. there are, however, cases in which others are not affected, or only indirectly so; in which the evil relates to the personal life and its consequences are private to the man himself. the situation is such as is described by goethe, when he speaks of the two souls dwelling within the human breast; the soul itself in its own sphere being divided against itself. the man is conscious of rectitude in one part of his conduct, of magnanimous impulses, of high and noble aspirations. he feels himself allied on one side to what is best and purest, and at the same time is aware of another side which in his saner moments fills him with loathing, and poisons for him life's cup of satisfaction. it is of this class of cases that i propose to speak. and here the terrible fact stares us in the face, that if the dual life be interpreted in this sense, there is hardly a man who is not leading it. even the best of men have been aware of an abhorrent side of their nature. what else can st. paul mean when he speaks of the continual warfare between the two laws--"the law of the flesh that is in his members, and the law of god that is in his spirit"? what else do the confessions of st. augustine reveal but the continual oscillations of a finely poised nature between the two extremes? what else can we gather from certain passages in tennyson's writings, but hints of a miserable and grievous struggle of the same sort? and what an intolerable burden to any person of integrity, to any one who would at least be honest, to think that he passes for better than he is, to think that if men only could see his heart as he sees it, they would pass him by with scorn instead of admiration! yet as a rule, in such cases self-revelation is not only not demanded, but not even allowable. the opening of the secret chambers of one's life to the public, confessions like those of rousseau, are, if anything, indecent and nauseating. the case of a man in such situations is bad enough, but the remedy for it is perforce committed to his own hands. let him put his hand to the plough and not turn back, let him grapple with the evil in his nature and subdue and transform it, let him accomplish his inner redemption, let him make himself what he ought to be--what others perhaps think he is. what aid can the spiritual view of life extend to him in this stupendous business? the cardinal thought i have in mind, which i believe will provide an escape from such intolerable moral dilemmas, can best be set forth by contrasting it with its diametrical opposite. this opposite is contained in the buddhistic doctrine of the karma. the doctrine of karma implies that we are what we are to-day, good or bad, or good and bad, in consequence of good or bad deeds which we performed in previous states of existence. our present life, according to this view, is but a link added to the chain of the innumerable lives which we have left behind us. it is true, we do not remember those past existences; but all the same, they have left their indelible mark upon us. our fortunes, too, in this present existence, are determined by our meritorious or unmeritorious behavior in the past. if, for example, a man acts as your enemy to-day, it is because in a previous state you wantonly injured him or some one like him. bear your disappointments, then, and the harm you receive from others without complaint; you are but suffering the penalty you deserve. not only our fortune but our character, as has been said, is thus predetermined; we are what we are, in virtue of what we have been. if a man is a mean miser, it is because in a previous existence he was already unduly covetous of wealth. 'tis but the seed he sowed in the past, that blossoms out in the present. if a man commit murder, it is because he was already guilty of unchecked violence in previous lives. the beginnings which he made in the past culminate in the awful present. this is indeed a plausible theory, and it would help us to read some dark riddles if it were true, but there is not the slightest reason for supposing that it is. if ever there was a theory in the air, this is one. we not only have no recollections of any past incarnations, but we have no ground for inferring that there were any. i have mentioned the theory merely in order to exhibit its opposite. and the opposite is this: that a man is not responsible for the attractive or repulsive qualities with which he is born; that these are not to be accounted as his, in the sense that he is accountable for them. the son of the dipsomaniac, for instance, is not responsible for the morbid craving that stirs in him. he begins life, so far as responsibility is concerned, so far as merit or demerit is concerned, with a fresh start. he is not responsible for the craving; he is responsible only for assenting to it. true, the pull in his case is incomparably stronger than in others; still he can resist. he is responsible, not for the hideous thing itself, but for the degree in which he yields to it. he is meritorious to the extent of the effort he puts forth not to yield to it. the reason why this point is often obscured is that from the first awakening of consciousness, from the time when first we have been capable of deliberate choice, we have more or less often assented to these evil propulsions and have thus made them our own. it has therefore become impossible to separate clearly between that element in our acts which is imposed upon us from without, and that deliberate element in the act which is our own. nevertheless, no fair-minded person will dispute that there are qualities or predispositions, for which--hideous as they may be--we are no more responsible than we are for being born with an unprepossessing face. men are born with certain attractive qualities and certain atrocious qualities, but moral goodness and badness consists not in having these predispositions, but rather in consenting to them and adopting them into our will. now this, it seems to me, throws an entirely new light upon the duality of our inner life. the fact that we discover that there is baseness within us from which we recoil as we should from a venomous snake, need not shake our throne of reason or overthrow our balance. these base things are not we; our true self does not reside in them, until, indeed, we unite with them by assenting to them. a man's natural propensities are motley, but his soul is white. one hears much nowadays of the "white man's burden." there is such a thing as the white soul's burden. these dipsomaniac cravings with which some men are handicapped, these explosive irascibilities with which some are accursed, these tendencies to impurity with which others are defiled--these are the white soul's burden. some men are more heavily burdened than others. but it is not the nature of the burden that makes men good or bad; it is the way they bear it, or rather it is the extent to which they transform this initial nature of theirs into a better nature. there is a distinction between the natural character and the moral character; the moral character results from the changes produced in the natural character, by the power of the moral will, or by the energy of the soul striving to imprint its nobler pattern on this difficult, oft intractable material. but if we are not blameworthy for the repellant propensities, neither are we praiseworthy on account of the attractive and gracious qualities we may possess. the state of mind of one who is conscious of a divided inner life is torture. nothing but an heroic treatment, nothing but a radical cure will free him from that torture; the cure is to realize that our seeming virtues are often not virtues at all. we must sacrifice our fancied virtues, if we would escape from the horrid sense of utter depravity that arises from our vices. a man puts to himself the question: how is it possible that at one moment i should be sympathetic and kind, should strive to compass the happiness of my fellow-beings, should take a generous interest in public causes, and try to act justly; and that at another moment i am so selfish and base? how can there be this oscillation from one pole to the other of human character? it is the contradiction that makes the tragedy. am i, too, not "truly one but truly two"; am i, too, a jekyll and a hyde, both dwelling under the same skin? the answer is: you are neither the hyde nor the jekyll unless you elect to be. the true self is a principle in you superior to both these natural characters, a kind of oversoul, as emerson puts it. sympathy and kindness lend themselves to the building up of a virtuous character, they are the psychological bases of virtue, but they must not be confounded with virtue itself. taken by themselves, they represent merely a felicitous mixture of the elements of which we are compounded, no more praiseworthy than their opposites are blameworthy. sympathy and kindness must be governed and regulated by principle, if they are to be rated as moral qualities. left uncultivated, they often produce positively immoral results. likewise, what is called justice is often no more than a hard adherence to rules, a love of order in our relations to others, which must be tempered and softened by the quality of mercy, before it can be accounted a moral virtue. again, a willingness to advance the interests of a class or of a people is often no more than an enlarged egotism, with most of the defects of the narrower egotism, and must be regulated by a moral principle, if it is to attain to the dignity of a moral attribute. it is only by the conformity of our thoughts, our feelings, and our acts to principle, that morality is achieved. it is only by such means that the genial and attractive tendencies of our nature are converted into genuine virtues, and the way of escape from the double life is along the line of the moral transformation of our seeming virtues. _mend your virtues, and your vices will take care of themselves._ but if the illusion is dispelled that the goodness or badness of an action as it appears to the eye is the measure of the virtuousness or viciousness of the agent; if the principle that governs the act and the effort put forth to conform to the principle be recognized as the true standard by which we are to judge, then two consequences will follow with respect to the conduct of life. the first is that the seemingly petty occasions of life are to be treated as grand occasions in so far as a moral principle is involved. for instance, a petty falsehood spoken for the purpose of securing business advantage or of avoiding business loss may seem to the average man a trivial affair; and it is so, so far as the results are concerned. and yet a morally high-bred man could no more condescend to such a falsehood than a man of cleanly habits would willingly steep himself in the mire. it is not the consequences, one way or the other, that matter. it is the eternal issue between the moral realities, truth and untruth, that is at stake. and in the light of this issue, in the light of the principle involved, petty as the circumstances may be, the occasion is not to be considered trivial. the eternal forces that have been at war since mankind first existed are at war on this occasion also; he must cast in his lot on the side of the good. another instance of action seemingly trivial is that of simulating a personal interest in others, of pretending agreement in the foibles of others or of affecting a personal homage which one does not feel, in order to use others as instruments for the achievement of one's ends, whether those ends be selfish pecuniary advantage or political preferment, or even financial aid and support for some important philanthropic enterprise. as if philanthropy--which is based on respect for the worth of man--did not defeat its own ends, the moment it seeks to accomplish them by methods which degrade both him who gives and him who receives. the occasion is small, but the principle involved as to the choice of means is great. another instance relates to the degree to which we may trench upon the personality of others, or seek to enter into that part of their life which they keep secret from us. we may suspect, for instance, that a friend is oppressed by some secret trouble, and we may believe that we could help him if only he would consent to reveal himself; but the act of self-revelation must come from his side, and the permission to help him must first be granted. we may give him the opportunity to declare himself, but we may not invade the sanctuary of his silence. the principle involved is great; it is that of respect for the precincts within which every soul has the right to live its own life. and there are other illustrations in abundance that might be quoted. for instance, custom prescribes rules of behavior in respect to many things which are really indifferent; in regard to the cut of the clothes we wear, in regard to the accepted form of salutation, in regard to the language of polite speech, and much more of the same sort. now, the ethically-minded man is not a pedantic micrologist who wastes his time on the minutiae of conduct. but where custom relates to things not indifferent, where a principle is involved, there is no detail of conduct so minute as not to challenge the most vigorous protest, the utmost assertion of independence. the ethically-minded man is one who endeavors to shake off the yoke of custom, wherever it interferes with the affirmation of the great principles of life; who disdains to follow the multitude in doing not only what is palpably wrong, but what is morally unfine. he seeks to be a free man, an independent being, and to assert without acrimony or invidious criticism of others, yet firmly and unflinchingly, a strong and self-poised manhood. this, then, is one consequence that flows from our point of view: namely, that in the moral sphere the small occasions are to be treated as if they were grand occasions. as the poet puts it, "rightly to be great is not to stir without great argument, but greatly to find quarrel in a straw when honor is at stake," or, as we should put it, greatly to find quarrel in the straws of life when principle is at stake. and the second consequence is the obverse of this: to treat what seem to be great occasions because of their outward results, as if they were small. is it a fortune that smiles upon you, that you can win by suppressing a moral scruple, by transgressing the eternal law? put it aside as a thing not worth a second glance, if the price exacted be the loss of self-respect, if the bargain to which you must subscribe be the betrayal of principle. is it life itself that is at stake; the dear life to which we cling so fondly? yes, life is precious in its nobler uses; but life itself shall not be esteemed as great in the hour in which we must choose between it and fidelity to principle. and that it is really possible to take this high attitude the example of the world's great martyrs shows. ******************************** the leading thoughts i have endeavored to state in these addresses are the following: spirituality is morality carried out to the finish. it depends on always keeping the ultimate end of existence in view, and on not resting in the partial ends. intervals set aside for self-recollection and the facing of the thought of death are useful aids. the ultimate end itself is to elicit worth in others, and, by so doing, in one's self. the indispensable condition of this attitude is to ascribe worth to every human being before even we observe it, to cast as it were a mantle of glory over him, to take toward every fellow human being the expectant attitude, to seek the worth in him until we find it. even toward oppressors we should take the same attitude. furthermore, our true self resides neither in our poorer nor in our better natural endowments, but in the will that suppresses the one and alone gives moral significance to the other. finally, we must testify to our respect for principle by treating the small occasions of life as great if they involve a moral issue, and the great prizes of life as small if they are offered at the price of moral integrity. these are thoughts which i have found helpful in my own experience; i submit them to you, in the hope that they may be of use to you also. book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the google books project.) transcriber's note. apparent typographical errors have been corrected, as have inconsistencies in the use of hyphens. a table of contents has been inserted to assist the reader. italics are indicated by _underscores_. small capitals have been replaced by full capitals. evening incense. by the author of "morning and night watches," "words of jesus," etc., etc. philadelphia: h. hooker, chestnut & eighth streets. . king & baird, printers, sansom street. "and thou shalt make an altar to burn incense upon: "and thou shalt put it ... before the mercy-seat that is over the testimony, where i will meet with thee. "and when aaron lighteth the lamps at even, he shall burn incense upon it."--exod. xxx. , , . "the star-lit sky's a temple-arch, the calm, still, evening air is glorious with the spirit-march of messengers of prayer. "are gentle moon, or kindling sun, or stars unnumbered, given as shrines to burn earth's incense on-- the altar-fires of heaven? "nay! pale away must moon and sun, and star by star decline; o be, thou ever living one, thy 'golden altar'--mine!" evening incense. the writer has endeavored in the following pages to comply with frequent requests made to him to prepare a small volume of _evening_ prayers, suitable as a companion to the "_morning_ watches." may he with whom is "the residue of the spirit," "cause his angel to fly swiftly" and touch us in the time of our evening oblation; and may all that is amiss in thought and word be lost in the fragrant incense-cloud which ascends from the golden altar before the throne! _december, ._ table of contents evening page i. for communion with god. ii. for pardoning grace. iii. for renewing grace. iv. for sanctifying grace. v. for restraining grace. vi. for restoring grace. vii. for quickening grace. viii. for imputed righteousness. ix. for peace in believing. x. for the spirit of adoption. xi. for weanedness from the world. xii. for gratitude for the past. xiii. for trust for the future. xiv. for knowledge of christ. xv. for guidance in perplexity. xvi. for victory over sin. xvii. for the life of faith. xviii. for the daily death. xix. for renunciation of self. xx. for a child-like spirit. xxi. for heavenward progress. xxii. for humility of heart. xxiii. for firmness in temptation. xxiv. for composure in trial. xxv. for activity in duty. xxvi. for the spirit's teaching. xxvii. for the world's conversion. xxviii. for the church's revival. xxix. for support in death. xxx. for preparation for judgment. xxxi. for meeting in heaven. first evening. for communion with god. "abide with us; for it is towards evening, and the day is far spent."--luke xxiv. . o god, i desire to approach thy throne of grace on the evening of this day, beseeching thee to grant me thy benediction and blessing. the shadows of night have once more gathered around me; may no shadow of sin or unbelief darken my soul, or interrupt my communion with thee. "it is not night if thou art near." let me enter the inner chamber of thy presence, and experience conscious fellowship with thee my father in heaven. do thou graciously forgive all the sins of the past day, its sins of omission and of commission, of thought, and word, and deed. hide me anew in the clefts of the smitten rock. i confidently repose my everlasting interests on the finished work and righteousness of a tried redeemer. may i know more and more of the attractive power of his cross--the adaptation of his character and work to all the wants and weaknesses, the sorrows and infirmities, of my tried and suffering and tempted nature. may i live more under the sovereign motive of love to him, and experience more the happiness of life spent in his service. gracious lord! may a sense of thy favor penetrate with its leavening power every duty in which i engage, lessening every cross and sweetening every care. take what thou wilt away, but take not thyself; no earthly good can compensate for the loss of thy friendship. existence would be one vast blank without thee. give me to realize the blessedness of unfaltering dependence on thy covenant mercy, knowing that all which befalls me is the pledge and dictate of unerring love, and that nothing can come wrong that comes from thy hand. thus while my daily walk is hallowed and brightened by thy presence and fellowship, may i be enabled to look calm and undismayed on the unknown and chequered future, feeling that even over the gloomy portals of the grave, with thee as my portion and heritage, i can write, "to die is gain!" meanwhile do thou fit me for every duty, prepare me for every trial. if thou givest me the "full cup," give me grace to carry it with a steady hand. if thou sendest adversity, let me regard it as thine own gracious discipline, to wean me from earth and train me for glory. may it be my great ambition, through the help of thy blessed spirit, to attain a gradual resemblance to the character and conformity to the will of my adorable redeemer. may i be clothed with humility. may i be daily becoming more meek and gentle, more contented and thankful, more submissive and resigned, watching against anything in my heart or conduct that i know would be displeasing to thee, making it my meat and my drink to do thy holy will. thou unslumbering shepherd of israel, vouchsafe thy guardian care to all near and dear to me: shield them from danger: give thine angels charge over them; sanctify them body, soul, and spirit; seal them unto the day of eternal redemption. may we all lie down to sleep this night in thy fear, and awake in thy favor, fitted for the duties of a new day. and all i ask is for jesus' sake. amen. "let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense: and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." second evening. for pardoning grace. "for thy name's sake, o lord, pardon mine iniquity; for it is great."--ps. xxv. . gracious god! do thou look down upon me this night in thy great mercy. may i have now the inner sunshine of thy presence! ere i retire to rest, let me pitch my tent near thyself, and enjoy the tokens of thy favor and blessing. thy loving-kindness has been new to me every morning, and thy faithfulness every night. i desire to render thee the thank-offering of a grateful heart. my life is one wondrous attestation to thy patience and forbearance. the kindness of the best earthly friend has been nothing to thine. thou mightest long ere now have left me to reap the fruits of my own guilty estrangement, withdrawing the grace and spirit i have so long resisted, executing against me the awful doom of the cumberer. but i am still spared, a living monument of mercy. thy ways are not as man's ways, nor thy thoughts as man's thoughts. lord, i would seek anew this night to close with the alone sovereign remedy! jesus! there is no other prop but thee to support a sinking soul and a sinking world. there is nothing between me and everlasting destruction but thy glorious work and finished righteousness. i rejoice to think that it is all i need--living or dying, for time or for eternity. o blot out in thy precious blood my many, many sins. nothing in my own hands i bring; i cling simply to thy cross. mercy and truth have there met together; righteousness and peace have embraced each other. reposing in what thou has done, and in what thou art still willing to do, i can rejoicingly say, "return unto thy rest, o my soul." bring me to live more habitually under the constraining influence of redeeming love. purchased at such a price, may i be willing freely to consecrate soul and body to thy service. let me feel that the bitterest of all trials is the forfeiture of thy favor and love, and the loftiest joy is the assured possession of thy gracious friendship. may my spirit be brought into blessed unison with thine. may i become more gentle, and resigned, and submissive, and unselfish; more heavenly-minded; more saviour-like. may i be led to regard _all_, even thy darkest dealings to me here, as needful parts in thy plan of stupendous wisdom. may i rest contented in the assurance that what i know not now i shall know hereafter. unite me to all my dear friends, and them to me, in the bonds of christian love. amid all the fluctuations of this mortal life, may we ever have grace given us to cleave unto the lord with full purpose of heart. treading the same pilgrim-journey, may we arrive at last at the same pilgrim-home. i would retire to rest this night with my eye on the opened fountain. o give me that peace of thine which the world knoweth not of, which the world cannot give, and, blessed be god, which the world cannot take away! abide with me, for it is towards evening, and the day is far spent. give thine angels charge over me during the unconscious hours of sleep, and, when all my evenings and mornings shall be finished, may it be mine to wake up with thyself in glory everlasting, through jesus christ my only lord and saviour. amen. "let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense: and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." third evening. for renewing grace. "renew a right spirit within me."--psalm li. . blessed god, i desire anew to end this night with thee! do thou enkindle my soul as with a live coal from off thy holy altar! let all unhallowed and obtrusive thoughts and cares be set aside, that i may enjoy a season of fellowship with the father and with his son jesus christ. i rejoice to think that i have such a friend to repair to--such a never-failing refuge in every season of perplexity and trouble; vicissitude is written on all around me, but "thou art the same." though often, alas! i have changed towards thee, thou hast never changed towards me. thou didst love me from the beginning, and that love remains to this hour, infinite, unalterable! lord, i am mourning over my many and grievous backslidings, my base and unworthy requital of all thine unmerited kindness. bring me in poverty of spirit, with deep conscious unworthiness, to say, "god be merciful to me a sinner." give me a realizing sense of the evil of sin, and my own sin in particular. i feel that i have no abiding and depressing consciousness of my guilt. how little of genuine, heartfelt contrition do i experience! how often i _appear_ to be humble and penitent when i am _not_! how do my very prayers condemn me; and my confessions of sin need themselves to be confessed! oh renew me in the spirit of my mind.--may all old things pass away; may all things be made new. transform me by the indwelling power of thy quickening spirit. may affections now alienated from thee be reclaimed to thy service. may i seek to be more animated by the sovereign motive of love to him, whose i am, and whom it is alike my duty and my privilege to obey. knowing that this is thy will concerning me, even my sanctification, may it be my constant ambition to be growing in grace and in the knowledge of the lord and saviour jesus christ. i have in myself no might, no power, no sufficiency, to do any of these things. my sufficiency is of thee. do thou make thy grace sufficient for me, and perfect strength in weakness. keep me from all evil that would be likely to grieve me. wean me from all that is fleeting and perishable here, and may all thy dealings towards me issue in the confirmed habit of a holy life. if thou sendest affliction, let me regard it as thine own way of dispensing spiritual blessing, and bow with lowly submission to thy sovereign appointments. bless all my beloved friends. keep them as the apple of thine eye. hide them under the shadow of thy everlasting wings. sanctify trial to all in sorrow. let the widow and the fatherless put their trust in thee. succor the poor and him that hath no helper. support the aged. sustain the dying. may we all bear one another's burdens and so fulfil the law of christ. as the pillar of cloud has been with me by day, so may the pillar of fire be with me this night. watch over me during the unconscious hours of sleep, and when i awake may i be still with thee. and all i ask is for the sake of jesus christ, my only saviour. amen. "let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense: and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." fourth evening. for sanctifying grace. "sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth."--john xvii. . blessed lord, do thou bend thy pitying eye of love and mercy upon me this evening. draw thou near to me as i venture once more on praying and on pleading ground. i desire to feel that i am one night nearer glory. oh, enable me to feel, as night after night is silently stealing over my head, that my seasons and opportunities of grace are fleeting fast away, and that soon the night cometh, wherein i can work no more. alas! o god, how little have i improved the time that is past! i am a wonder to myself, that with all my deep ingratitude and utter vileness i am yet permitted to approach thy footstool: i have sinned against light and love--warning and mercy--grace and privilege. the retrospect of life is a retrospect of guilt. i mourn over my manifold shortcomings--the alienation of my heart from thee--the fitfulness of my spiritual frames--the ebbings and flowings in the tide of my love. when tried by the lofty and unerring standard of thy law, how are my best actions and duties marred with defilement! how much self-seeking and self-glorying--how little animated by the predominating motive of love to thee, and singleness of eye to thy service! blessed jesus! i flee anew to the pavilion of thy love. i have no other hope, no other refuge, but in thy finished work--thy matchless atonement--thy spotless righteousness. there is in thee an all-sufficiency for every want. finite necessities cannot exhaust infinite fullness. let me hear thy voice saying, "thy sins, which are many, are all forgiven thee!" o sprinkle me with thy blood; sanctify me, body, soul, and spirit. transform me more and more into thine own image. may i know more and more the happiness of true holiness--that i am really blessed in seeking to walk so as to please god. may the power of grace wax stronger and stronger, and the power of sin wax weaker and weaker. may trials and crosses become light and easy to me when borne in a spirit of meek, unrepining submission to the divine will. may this quiet every doubt and misgiving, "your heavenly father knoweth that ye have need of all these things." lord, may every providential dealing prove a heart-searcher, testing the reality of my love to thee, and my meetness and preparedness for thy heavenly kingdom. extend, lord, thy cause and gospel everywhere. strengthen thy missionary and ministering servants. may they ever hear the sound of their master's footsteps behind them. may thy churches walk in the fear of god and in the comfort of the holy ghost. bless all my beloved friends wherever they are; do thou be their almighty protector and guide. let the angel come at this the time of evening incense, touching all our hearts, and granting us an answer to our several petitions. let us rise to-morrow refreshed for thy service; and fitted for whatsoever in thy good providence we may be called either to do or to suffer. hear me, gracious god, for the sake of him whom thou hearest always. amen. "let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense: and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." fifth evening. for restraining grace. "keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins."--psalm xix. . blessed god, thou hast in thy mercy permitted me to see the close of another day. with what unwearying watchfulness has thou been compassing my path!--defending me from danger, guarding me from temptation, hedging up my way with thorns, "preventing me with the blessings of thy goodness!" there is no friend in the world i have like thee; none so able, none so willing to be my friend. if i have been successful in resisting sin, it is all thy blessed grace which has enabled me. from how many slippery places has thou rescued me! when often on the brink of the precipice, ready to fall, thy interposing hand has saved me from inevitable destruction. when through my own weakness and unwatchfulness i must now have been wandering in hopeless alienation from thee, thou hast mercifully not suffered the bruised reed to be broken, nor the smoking flax to be quenched. lord, my earnest prayer is that thy grace may still be made sufficient for me. may no spiritual foe be allowed to invade my peace or endanger my safety. let thy love be restored to its rightful ascendancy in my affections. may no rival be allowed to usurp its place. may i ever exercise a holy jealousy over this truant, wandering, deceitful heart; seeking day by day to subdue unmortified sin. may all thy dispensations issue in my sanctification. let me seek no unruffled path; may the cross be willingly carried. thou lovest me too well to give me my own way. whatever thy will and thy dealings may be, be it mine cheerfully and rejoicingly to acquiesce in them, knowing them to be the dictate of infinite wisdom and unchanging love. may all my worldly business and engagements be interfused and hallowed with the blessed sense and assurance of thy favor! walking all the day in the light of thy countenance, i must be safe! god of bethel--god of all the families of the earth, vouchsafe thy richest benediction on all near and dear to me. give thine angels charge over them; let their names be written among the living in jerusalem; and oh, may we all seek in our several spheres to glorify thee on earth, either by active duty or by patient endurance; exemplifying in our daily walk the meek and lowly, the unselfish and self-denying, spirit of him, who hath left us an example that we should follow his steps. hasten the coming of thy son's kingdom. arise, o god, and plead thine own cause. "save thy people, bless thine inheritance, feed them also and lift them up for ever." the curtain of night is again drawn around me. if it be thy will, spare me to see the light and enjoy the comforts of a new day; may i seek anew to enjoy them in thee; may every blessing be doubly sweet to me, bearing the impress of thy love in jesus. guide me _in_ life, _through_ death, _into_ glory, for the sake of him in whom is all my hope, and to whom, with thee the father, and thee, ever-blessed spirit, one god, be ascribed all blessing and honor and glory and praise, world without end. amen. "let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense: and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." sixth evening. for restoring grace. "restore unto me the joy of thy salvation."--ps. li. . blessed god, i rejoice to know that the gates of prayer are ever open;--that for the sake of jesus christ, my adorable redeemer, thou art waiting to be gracious, not willing that any should perish. come in the plenitude of thy love this evening, that i may feel it to be good for me to draw near to god! scatter my darkness, thou better sun, with the brightness of thy rising. give me filial confidence in approaching the mercy-seat, rejoicing in the mightiest of all beings as my father and friend. blessed jesus! i would exercise a simple confidence and trust in thy finished work, i would seek to wash anew in the opened fountain of thy blood, to repose anew in the faithful saying which never can cease, to the sin-stricken, sin-burdened soul, to be worthy of all acceptation, that thou didst come into the world to save the chief of sinners. i have to mourn, o lord, my constant proneness to depart from thee--the instability of my best purposes of obedience. unsupported by thy grace i must fall. there is nothing, o thou great intercessor within the veil, but thine omnipotent pleadings between me and irretrievable ruin. but thou hast prayed, and art even now praying, for me that my faith fail not. oh if i am still prone to start aside, like a deceitful bow, do thou bring me back again! reclaim my truant heart from its wanderings. i would cast myself with simple dependence on thy grace for the future. this is sufficient for all wants and equal to all exigencies. thine everlasting arms are lower than my deepest necessities. adorable saviour, i may well cast my every care on thee, for these cares thou makest thine own. thou hast a heart to feel for those who have often no heart to feel for themselves. oh let me ever seek to hear thy directing voice and to hear no other. do thou carry on within me thine own work in thine own way. thou, great shepherd of israel, canst not lead me wrong. i delight to trace thy guiding love in the past, and i may well trust thee still; going up through the wilderness may i lean on thine arm; when i come to die may the gloom of the dark valley be lighted with the rays of thy love, and may i hear thy voice whispering in gentle accents, "fear not, for i am with thee." be gracious to all my beloved friends. train them also, by thy good spirit, for eternity. fit them for every duty. arm them against every temptation. dispose them to fear thy glorious name, and to live from day to day under the powers and influences of a world to come. compassionate the afflicted; comfort the bereaved; support the dying. lord, take the charge of me during the silent watches of another night. may i rise on the morrow to renew my work and warfare on earth, looking forward to the time when the twilight of this world shall melt into everlasting day, and when nothing shall evermore mar or interrupt the blessedness of endless communion with thee: through jesus christ, my only lord and saviour. amen. "let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense: and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." seventh evening. for quickening grace. "quicken me after thy loving kindness, so shall i keep the testimony of thy mouth."--psalm cxix. . o god, on this the close of another day, i desire to approach the footstool of thy throne. glory be to thy holy name that i can enjoy freedom of access into thy presence, and with the confidence of a child unburden and unbosom to thee all my wants and sins, my sorrows and infirmities, my perplexities and cares. lord, how unworthy i am of the least of all thy mercies! what righteous cause hast thou to cut me down as a cumberer of the ground. how cold my love, how unfrequent my prayers! how full my heart of pride and vain-glory, self and sin! how little have i habitually realized thy nearness and sought thy favor as my chief good! there is enough of coldness and formality in my best approaches to thy footstool to lead thee in thy wrath to spurn me forever away, and to mingle my blood with my sacrifices! i cast myself as a worthless unworthy sinner at the feet of jesus. i need daily, hourly washing at that fountain which he has opened for sin and for uncleanness. wash me, gracious lord, fully, freely, and forever. let me know the blessedness of "no condemnation." deepen my contrition on account of my sin. i am apt to palliate its enormity, to invent vain excuses for its commission, to hide its heinousness from myself, and to hide it from thee. let me see all sin, and my own sin in particular, in the light of calvary's cross. may i hate it with a perfect hatred, and resolve in thy grace that it henceforth have no dominion over me. oh quicken me by the indwelling of thy blessed spirit. may i seek to be progressing in the divine life. may my pathway heavenward be brightened by a lively sense of reconciliation through the blood of the everlasting covenant. let me lean on thy heavenly arm, seeking thy glory with singleness of eye. may it be my greatest grief to give thee pain, my greatest joy and happiness to do thy will. keep me from all hard thoughts and unrighteous surmises regarding thy dealings. may i see them all as designed to quicken my steps in the heavenly way, to bring me nearer thyself, and to impart an increasing meetness for glory. let thy kingdom come, let thy blessed gospel triumph over the pride and superstition and will-worship of man. put an end to war and discord, and may all the ends of the earth see thy salvation. bless thy ministering servants; may they be valiant for the truth, and have no fear but the fear of god. be the guide and guardian of all whom i love. preserve their bodies from danger and their souls from sin. watch over them and me this night; be about our bed as thou hast been about our path. night after night as i retire to rest may i think of the deeper darkness of the night of death, which must, sooner or later encompass me. reposing in the merits of my gracious redeemer, may i be enabled to look _beyond_ death and the grave, to that morning without clouds, when i shall awake in his likeness, and be ushered into the full vision and fruition of thee my god; and all that i ask or hope for is for his sake. amen. "let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense: and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." eighth evening. for imputed righteousness. "even the righteousness of god which is by faith of jesus christ unto all and upon all them that believe."--rom. iii. . almighty god, father of all mercies, i desire to draw near into thy sacred presence on this the evening of another day, under a deep sense of my own great unworthiness. what am i, guilty, sinful, polluted, that i should be permitted to take thy name into my lips, or so much as lift up my eyes to the place where thou in glory dwellest! i desire to renounce all dependence on myself. i come with all the great burden of my great guilt to a great saviour. i seek to bring the unrighteousness of an unworthy creature to the infinite righteousness and everlasting faithfulness of a tried redeemer. where would i have been, blessed jesus! this night, _but for thee_! all i am, and all i have, i owe to thy free, sovereign, unmerited grace. all my temporal mercies are sweetened to me as flowing from thy cross, and bearing on them the image and superscription of thy love. and for every spiritual blessing i enjoy, and every spiritual hope i entertain, i desire doubly to adore thee, thou great author and finisher of my faith! whom have i in heaven but thee, and there is none in all the earth i desire besides thee. thou alone canst fill up the aching voids of my heart. in vain can i look to a transient world, or to the perishable creature, for solid peace and permanent enjoyment. all my well-springs are in thyself; with thee for my portion i am independent of every other. i desire this night to obtain a lively and humbling view of my own spiritual poverty and deep creature destitution, that i may rejoice in the fullness and all-sufficiency of that righteousness which is unto all and upon all them that believe. in that righteousness i would seek to live, and in that righteousness i would seek to die. there is nothing else between me and everlasting ruin. but for thee, thou great covenant-angel standing in the breach, the fire of god would break forth and mingle my blood with this my evening sacrifice! but i "will greatly rejoice in the lord, my soul shall be joyful in my god, for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with a robe of righteousness." i take thee, o adorable saviour, as mine only, mine wholly; mine for all wants and all exigencies. i rejoice in the inexhaustible riches treasured up in thee--that thy fullness is adequate to supply all my present necessities; and out of that fullness i may still continue receiving, and that for ever and ever! lord, look in great kindness on all whom i love. pity a perishing world. arrest the careless; reclaim the wandering; strengthen the feeble. hasten thy son's coming and kingdom. how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked triumph? save thy people; bless thine inheritance; feed them also, and lift them up for ever. let the curtain of thy protecting providence be drawn around me this night. let me fall asleep at peace with thee, ready, if need be, to awake up in glory. and all i ask is for jesus' sake. amen. "let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense: and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." ninth evening. for peace in believing. "therefore being justified by faith we have peace with god through our lord jesus christ."--rom. v. . gracious god, i would seek to end another day with thee; i would desire to look up to thee through jesus christ, thy well-beloved son, and to be made partaker of that peace which passeth all understanding. there is no other refuge for the sin-stricken, woe-worn spirit. in vain amid other portions and meaner joys can i say to my soul "peace, peace." there is no peace! but reposing, blessed saviour, on thy finished work and everlasting righteousness, i have a peace which the world knows not of, and which enables me to rise superior to all the vicissitudes and changes of this changing life. i desire to remember with a grateful heart that this peace has been purchased for me by the blood of the cross--that it is made as sure as everlasting power and wisdom and faithfulness can make it. o thou great prince, who hast power with god and dost prevail, i would lift the undivided eye of faith to thy bleeding sacrifice! do thou dispel every disquieting fear with the thought that thou hast done all, and suffered all, and procured all for me. being justified by faith, i have peace with god through the lord jesus christ. i rejoice in the plenitude of thy promises, that they are all yea and amen to them that believe. man's word may fail, man's faithfulness may falter, but "the word of the lord is tried," thy faithfulness is unto all generations! o god, enable me to rejoice more and more in thee as my everlasting portion. may i know nothing to compare with the enjoyment of thy favor. other props may be removed, other refuges may prove refuges of lies, but thou art the strength of my heart and my portion for ever. give me grace to be active in thy service while it is called to-day. opportunities are fleeting. the night cometh wherein none of us can work. may simple believing be followed by the earnest cultivation of every christian virtue, and by progressive advancement in the heavenly life. may i faithfully employ the talents thou hast intrusted to me, and seek never to be weary in well doing. preserve me from every unholy temper and unchristian deed. may i be gentle and meek, patient and forgiving, kind and benevolent, living in charity towards all men. on all my beloved friends i supplicate thy richest blessing. protect them with thy favor as with a shield. sanctify them, body, soul, and spirit. seal them unto the day of eternal redemption. bless all poor afflicted ones. let them receive largely out of the wells of thine own everlasting consolation. let them see thy sovereign hand alone in their trials, and say with unrepining submission, "the lord's will be done!" lord, take the charge of me through the silent watches of the night. may i fall asleep listening to the gracious benediction, "peace be unto you." and when the gates of the morning are opened, may it be to hear anew thy voice saying, "my presence will go with you." hear, accept, and answer me, for the redeemer's sake. amen. "let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense: and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." tenth evening. for the spirit of adoption. "ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, abba, father."--rom. viii. . blessed lord! i desire to draw near this night with holy boldness to the footstool of thy throne, rejoicing that i can look up to thee as my father in heaven. "behold what manner of love is this the father hath bestowed on me, that i should be called a child of god." thou mightest have righteously left me orphaned, friendless, portionless for ever. but in the midst of wrath thou hast remembered mercy: the kindness of no earthly parent, o god, could equal thine. thou hast borne with all my obstinacy, all my perverseness, and waywardness, and ingratitude. i am at this hour the monument of a love as wondrous as it is undeserved. oh teach me to cultivate more and more a spirit of child-like obedience to thee; to cherish a holy fear of offending so kind and forgiving and beneficent a father. whilst thou art strewing my wilderness path with unmerited blessings, may i be enabled to rise above every earthly gift and mercy to the better inheritance i have in thee, the bountiful bestower of all! let me feel every created blessing to be doubly sweet, as emanating from a father's hand, and being a proof and pledge of a father's love. let the hour of prayer be doubly hallowed by the thought that i am permitted to haunt a father's presence, and pour my wants into a father's ear. let the season of sorrow be sweetened by the thought that the rod is in a father's hand, and that the voice, though apparently rough, is the tender whispering of parental love. blessed jesus! i desire to remember that it is thou and thou only who hast not left me "comfortless." it is thou who hast devised and completed a way by which "thy banished" may not be "expelled" from a father's presence. thou hast opened a door of welcome to the chief of sinners. it is thy blessed voice and thy glorious work which utter the gracious declaration, "in my father's house there are many mansions." oh let me lean with a more simple and entire dependence on thee; let me live from day to day with an unfaltering trust in thy mercy. may every new evening, as it finds me laying the incense-offering of gratitude and love on thine altar, find me also a stage nearer my father's house, nearer _home_, and nearer _thee_. take all my beloved friends under thy shadowing wings this night. the darkness can not screen them from thee; the curtains of night can not exclude thy kind and watchful eye. guide, guard, protect them, and bring them all at last to thy heavenly kingdom. bless thy church everywhere; lengthen her cords and strengthen her stakes. be a wall of fire around thy zion and the glory in the midst thereof. clothe her priests with salvation, let her saints and people shout aloud for joy. bless those on whom thou hast laid thine afflicting hand. may they take refuge in the arms that are chastising them, and be enabled to say in unmurmuring submission, "the lord's will be done." hear me, gracious father, for the sake of jesus christ, my blessed lord and saviour. amen. "let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense: and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." eleventh evening. for weanedness from the world. "they are not of the world, even as i am not of the world."--john xvii. . o god, i desire to come into thy gracious presence this night, beseeching thee to bless me. let my prayer come before thee as incense. may the incense-offering of gratitude and thanksgiving ascend from a grateful heart. how manifold are the proofs i have to recount of kindness on thy part! how deep the ingratitude i have to mourn on my own! my sins have reached unto the clouds; they are more in number than the sand of the sea. thou art of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. i cannot evade thy righteous scrutiny; all things are naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom i have to do! lord, i have to lament the proneness of this evil heart of unbelief ever to depart away from thee, the living god. i mourn the debasing influence of earthly things; the fascinating power of a present evil world. how inclined to conform to its evil maxims and unholy practices! how often am i found ranged among those who "mind earthly things;" my soul cleaving to the dust, instead of soaring upwards to thyself, my alone satisfying portion! lord, it is my earnest prayer that thou wouldst wean me from the world. keep me from over-anxiety about the things that are seen--from being over-careful and troubled about earth's "many things," to the exclusion of the one thing needful! break every alluring worldly spell; disenchant things temporal of their false and delusive charm; disengage me by all the salutary discipline of thy providence from what is fleeting, uncertain, transient, perishable; and unite me to the things which cannot be shaken, but which remain forever! may my citizenship be more in heaven; imbibing more of the pilgrim spirit, may i declare plainly that i seek a better country. may the sins of the past day be forgiven; may the blood of sprinkling wash their guilt away. may i be driven nearer and closer to him who is the true refuge and portion, and saviour of his people. i rejoice to think that he has a balm for every wound, a comfort for every bosom, a solace for every tear. may it be mine to go up through the wilderness leaning on his arm. may thy holy spirit carry on his own work of sanctification within me. may he enlighten, quicken, comfort, strengthen me; and mould me in gradual conformity to thy divine will. bless all connected with me, by whatever tie. when earth's separations are at an end, do thou take me and all dear to me to the enjoyment of thy presence and love in thine own everlasting kingdom. let the pillar of thy presence be over us this night. guard me during sleep's unconscious hours. let no unquiet dreams disturb my repose; may i compose myself to rest under the sweet assurance that thou the lord sustainest me; and when i awake, may i be still with thee, through jesus christ, my only lord and saviour. amen. "let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense: and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." twelfth evening. for gratitude for the past. "bless the lord, o my soul, and forget not all his benefits."--psalm ciii. . o god almighty, do thou draw near to me at this time in thy great mercy, and accept of this my evening sacrifice! i bless thee for all that gladdens my earthly lot, for food and raiment, for friends and home, for health of body and soundness of mind. lord, i delight to trace the wondrous way by which thou hast hitherto led me! thou hast compassed my path and my lying down. thou hast supplied my ever-recurring necessities. my wants have been infinite, but infinite too has been the gracious supply. with a grateful heart i would set up my ebenezer, saying, "hitherto hath the lord helped me." and remembering thy faithfulness in the past, i would confidently trust thee for the future. may i thankfully employ the manifold gifts of thy bounty. impress upon me the feeling that i am but a steward, responsible to thee for all i possess. let me not selfishly appropriate the varied means of usefulness thou hast put within my power, but willingly employ these in thy service for the good of others. when thou comest to demand a reckoning, may i be able to give a faithful account of my stewardship, paying thee thine own with usury. lord, while i bless thee for the other proofs and tokens of thy love, far above all would i bless thee for _jesus_. where would i have been this night but for _him_? how dreary would have been the past! how dismal and hopeless the future! thanks, eternal thanks be unto god for his unspeakable gift! let me feel, more than i _have_ done, the exceeding riches of thy grace in thy kindness toward me through christ jesus. let all thy dealings only serve to confirm my love to him, and to lead me to cleave to him with fuller purpose of heart. may he have my undivided homage. let no earthly gift or blessing supplant the giver, but may every rill of creative bliss be doubly sweet to me as flowing from his atoning sacrifice. i rejoice in the midst of trial and perplexity to think of thee, thou tried and suffering _one_. i rejoice that amid my sorrows i can remember _thine_, that amid my very tears, i can remember _jesus wept_. thou canst enter into all the peculiarities of thy people's case, for thou wert in "_all_ points tempted." let me feel, even amid the changes of life, that what i am apt to call vicissitudes, are the sovereign decrees and allotments of thine infinite wisdom; and what i cannot comprehend now, be it mine to wait the disclosures of that blessed morning when, standing at the luminous portals of heaven, i shall joyfully acknowledge that the lord hath done all things well. bless my beloved friends; may they be growing in thy fear and favor; may they all at last, as sheaves in thy heavenly garner, be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of jesus christ. i commend myself, gracious god, to thy care; let me retire to rest this night in the blessed consciousness of thy favor; and if spared to see the light of a new day, fit me for whatsoever thou hast in store for me. and all i ask is for jesus' sake. amen. "let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense: and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." thirteenth evening. for trust for the future. "i will trust, and be not afraid."--isaiah xii. . o god, thou makest the outgoings of the evening and the morning to rejoice over me. i thank thee for thy sparing mercy during the past day. while multitudes of my fellow-men have been called away into an eternal world, i am still preserved in the land of the living, and in the place of hope. it is of thy compassions alone that i am not consumed. my way zionward may well be studded with ebenezers, testifying "the lord hath helped me." i may well set to my seal that god is true. the pillar of thy presence has guided me through many a perplexing path. thy love has smiled through many a threatening cloud. thy restraining grace has arrested me in many a slippery way; when "my soul was among lions," how often has the lord "sent his angel" to rescue me and shut the lions' mouths. i am this night a marvel and miracle of thy patience, and forbearance, and mercy. lord, i joyfully take all these past kindnesses as tokens for the future. to thee i would confidingly commit the unknown morrow, and cleave to thy guiding arm with full purpose of heart. the lot is thrown into the lap, but the whole disposing of it is of the lord; o, be it my joy and privilege, thus reposing in thy covenant faithfulness, to say, "undertake thou for me." looking forward to that time when all thy inscrutable dealings will be unfolded, when inner meanings and purposes now undiscerned by the eye of sense will be brought to light, and all discovered to be full of infinite love. keep me from dishonoring thee by the workings of unbelief; i am prone to trust my own wisdom, o give me teachableness of spirit and simplicity of faith, waiting patiently on thee; leaving all that concerns me and mine to thy better direction. blessed jesus! i would seek to cleave closer and closer to thy cross. i have no trust but in thy finished work. other refuges may fail, but i am as secure in thee as everlasting love and wisdom and power can make me. o cleanse every guilty stain away in thy most precious blood. let me live day by day at the opened fountain, and feel that i _only_ "live" while _there_. thus simply relying on thy justifying grace, may i seek to walk in thy footsteps and to imbibe thy spirit. may i follow thee, o lamb of god, whithersoever thou seest meet to lead me. may i never feel as if i would wish one jot or tittle regarding me altered, when the reins of empire are in thy hands. take my beloved friends under thy special care. watch over them, provide for them, decide for them. in all their ways may they acknowledge thee, and in all things seek thy honor and glory. pity the afflicted. stay thy rough wind in the day of thy east wind. let them rejoice that every bitter drop in the cup of life is appointed by thee. may they submissively drink it, saying, "thy will be done!" hear, lord, the voice of my supplications, when thou hearest, forgive, and grant me an answer in peace, seeing all that i ask is in the name and for the sake of jesus christ, my only saviour. amen. "let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense: and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." fourteenth evening. for knowledge of christ. "that i may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings."--phil. iii. . almighty god, do thou draw near to me this night in thy great mercy. what am i, that infinite unworthiness and nothingness should be permitted to stand in the presence of infinite purity, majesty, and glory? lord, i dare not have ventured to bow at thy footstool in my own merits. i am poor and wretched, and miserable, and blind, and naked. enter not in judgment with thy servant, for in thy sight no flesh living can be justified. but, adored be thy name, i have an all-sufficient ground of confidence wherewith to approach thee. i bless thee, that by the doing and dying of jesus, thou hast opened up a way of reconciliation to the chief of sinners. oh, enable me to know more fully the adaptation of his person and work to all the necessities and exigencies of my character and circumstances. let me know him in his infinite godhead, as "mighty to save;" in his spotless humanity, as mighty to compassionate. let me know him in all his offices, as my prophet, my priest, my king; my kinsman-redeemer within the veil, my refuge in trouble, my guide in perplexity, my support in death, my portion through eternity. i rejoice, blessed jesus, at the hidden springs of life resident in thee! thou art suited to all the varied wants and circumstances, and trials of thy people--for every moment of need, for every diversity of situation. i can mourn no real blank, if i have thy presence and blessing. o thou, better than the best of earthly friends, who, though enthroned amid the hosannas of angels, hast still thy human sympathy unaltered and unchanged, draw near to me this night, and breathe upon me, and say, "peace be unto thee." let me know the melting energy of thy love, and the attractive power of thy cross. may i keep the unwavering eye of faith steadily directed to thy all-glorious sacrifice. be thou the habitual object of my contemplation, the source of holiest joy, the animating principle of obedience. may all creature love be subordinated to thine. may my temper, my walk, my conversation, be regulated in accordance with thy blessed will and holy example. may this be the lofty aim and ambition of life, to act so as to please jesus. bless my dear friends, may they too be led to count all but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of christ jesus their lord, whom to know is life eternal. pity the careless; reclaim the backsliding; comfort the sorrowful; sustain the dying. may the lord arise and have mercy on zion; may he show that the time to favor her, yea, the set time, is come! ere i lay my head on my nightly pillow, i would lay anew my guilt on the head of the divine surety; may i fall asleep under the blessed sense of sin forgiven, and look forward to that blessed day when earth's night-shadows shall have vanished forever, and when i shall be enabled more fully "to know the love of christ which passeth knowledge." and all i ask or hope for is for his sake. amen. "let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense: and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." fifteenth evening. for guidance in perplexity. "cause me to know the way wherein i should walk; for i lift up my soul unto thee."--psalm cxliii. . o god, thy favor is life, thy loving-kindness is better than life. thy mercies have been new to me every morning, and thy faithfulness every night. thou hast watched over me from the earliest years of infancy with more than a father's care. the kindness of the kindest on earth has been coldness itself when compared with thine. i rejoice that i can thus trace in a wondrous past the visible footsteps of thy love, and fearlessly trust and repose in thee for the future. thou art a rich provider. none so able, none so willing to guide me in every perplexity, to extricate me from every difficulty, and to befriend me amid the fitful changes of life. what a safe anchorage is this amid the world's restless surges of vicissitude, "the lord reigneth!" do thou enable me wholly to follow the lord my god; to follow thee not only in smooth places, but even when the path is rough and the way thorny. may i confide in the wisdom of all thine allotments. i rejoice that all the changes thou orderest for thy covenant people are changes for the _better_, and not for the _worse_. o blessed jesus! thou who art the true pillar of cloud by day, and of fire by night, do thou precede me ever in all my wilderness wanderings. may i encamp only where thou leadest me. may i strike my tent only when thou speakest that i "go forward." let me experience the conscious happiness of knowing no will but thine, and of being solicitous in all things to follow the guiding voice and footsteps of the great shepherd of the flock. if there be aught in thy providence perplexing me now, i would say in child-like simplicity, "i am oppressed, undertake thou for me!" "my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to the rock that is higher than i." hide me in the crevices of that smitten rock; let me know the safety and joy of being shielded _there_, until earth's calamities be overpast. graciously forgive all the sins of this past day--the sins of thought, word and deed; all my selfishness and uncharitableness; all my pride and vain-glory; all my censoriousness and inconsideration of the wishes and feelings of others. blessed jesus! let me follow more closely thy holy footsteps, and drink more deeply of thy heavenly spirit. bless all in sorrow, sanctify to them their trials, may they see and own a "need be" in them all. prepare the dying for death, and spare useful lives. take all belonging to me this night under the shield of thy protecting providence, let them ever commit their way onto thee, and do thou bring it to pass. hold up their goings in thy word, that their footsteps may not stumble. watch over me during the unconscious hours of sleep; and when all my days and nights on earth are finished, may it be mine to enjoy thy presence in a cloudless, nightless heaven; through jesus christ, my blessed lord and saviour. amen. "let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense: and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." sixteenth evening. for victory over sin. "sin shall not have dominion over you."--rom. vi. . o god, thou art of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. evil cannot dwell with thee, fools cannot stand in thy presence. thou hast solemnly declared, "thou canst by no means clear the guilty," and that "though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not escape unpunished." lord, i rejoice that i can draw near to thee in the name of him by whom the guilty _have_ been cleared; and through whom it is that a holy and righteous and sin-hating god can yet be holy and just, in the very act of justifying the ungodly. i desire to adore thee for all thy creative and providential goodness. thou hast loaded me with thy benefits. the past is paved with love. i see in the retrospect of life nothing but amazing, unmerited kindness, mercy upon mercy! amid manifold changes there has been no change in _thee_, no altered looks, no fainting or weariness or estrangement. amid the wanderings of my own fitful spirit i can write over every remembrance of the past, _but_ "_thou_ art the same!" i desire with penitence of soul to mourn my own ingratitude and sin, the desperate wickedness and deceitfulness of my own evil heart, the power of corruption, the mastery of self, the alienation of my affections from thee their rightful sovereign and lord. what an easy prey have i often fallen in the hour of temptation--by thought and word and deed dishonoring thy name and basely requiting thy love! father, i have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy child! give me genuine contrition for the past, inspire me with new purposes of obedience for the future. without thy favor and reconciliation, in peace i cannot live, in peace i dare not die! my cry would be, "more grace, more grace!" let me be gaining every day fresh victories over sin; may my soul be daily nurtured by the influence of heaven-born principles. may i know the expulsive power of the new implanted affection of love to thee. dethrone the world. subjugate the power of sin. give me greater tenderness of conscience; may i jealously guard every avenue to temptation, and be ready ever with the reply to the seductions of the tempter, "how can i do this great wickedness and sin against god?" let me be willing to forego anything rather than forsake thy ways. be it my habitual purpose and desire to cleave unto thee the lord with full purpose of heart. let me hallow all life's duties and engagements with thy favor, looking forward to that time when _my_ will and _thine_, blessed god! shall be one, and when there shall be no more sin to interrupt the interchange of love and devotedness. bless all my dear friends; may the blessing of jacob's god, the god of all the families of the earth, rest upon them. give them all needful temporal blessings. fill their souls with peace and joy in believing. may they and i look forward with joyful anticipation to that "morning without clouds," which knows no change nor vicissitude, when there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, because there will be no more sin; and all i ask is for jesus' sake. amen. "let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense: and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." seventeenth evening. for the life of faith. "the life which i live in the flesh i live by the faith of the son of god, who loved me, and gave himself for me."--gal. ii. . o god, i desire to draw near unto thy blessed presence on this the evening of another day, adoring thee for all the loving-kindness thou art continually making to pass before me. may i ever be enabled to look up to thee as the author and bestower of all my mercies. may no created good ever be suffered to dispossess thee of my affections. may all that i enjoy, alike temporal and spiritual, be traced to thee, the fountain of all happiness. may prosperity be hallowed by receiving it as a pledge of thy favor, and may trial lose its bitterness by the consciousness that every thorn in my path is permitted by thee, and every bitter drop in the cup appointed by thee. may i thus seek, o god, from day to day, to live a life of simple faith and dependence on thy grace; with confiding love may i commit my every care and want and perplexity to thy better direction, feeling sweetly assured that thou wilt guide me by a _right_ way to the city of habitation. above all would i seek a renewed interest in those covenant blessings which christ died to purchase and which he is exalted to bestow. all my hope is in him; weak, helpless, perishing, i flee to him, as the help and hope and portion of all who seek him. hide me, o blessed jesus, in thy wounded side. i would overcome alone through the blood of the lamb. wash me thoroughly in thy precious blood. may i hear thine own voice of pardoning love saying, "your sins which are many are all forgiven." after all thou hast done for me, let me harbor no guilty and unworthy suspicions of thy faithfulness. let me feel assured that tender love regulates all thy allotments. thou art pledged to use the dealing and discipline best suited for thy people's case, and what will best effect thine own will concerning them, even their sanctification. carry on within me thine own work in thine own way. fortify me against temptation; let me not surrender myself to the base compliances of a world lying in wickedness. but, strong in the lord and in the power of his might, may i know that he who is with me is greater far than all that can be against me. oh enkindle afresh my expiring, languishing love; let me live more under the influence of "things not seen," having the eye of faith more upwards and homewards, looking for that blessed hope, even the glorious appearing of the great god my saviour. let thy kingdom come! arise, o god, and plead thine own cause. may all the ends of the earth soon be gladdened with the gospel's joyful sound! bless all in sorrow, all bereaved of near and dear friends; may they see no hand in their trials but thine. thou givest us our blessings; and when thou seest meet thou revokest the grant. let us see love in every threatening wave, all rolling at _thy_ bidding. lord, take the charge of me this night. abide with me, blessed saviour, for it is toward evening and the day is far spent. oh, may it be mine to feel that each successive evening as it brings me nearer eternity, is ripening me for its never-ending joys. and all i ask is for jesus' sake. amen. "let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense: and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." eighteenth evening. for the daily death. "i die daily."-- cor. xv. . o god almighty, father of all mercies, god of all grace, i beseech thee to look down upon me at this time in thy great kindness; let me feel it to be good for me to draw near unto god. i desire to come acknowledging my great unworthiness. forgive, gracious lord, my many, many sins of thought, word, and deed; wash out all the defilements of the day. if i were to be tried by the doings of any single hour, how would i stand condemned! i am a miracle of mercy; kept, sustained, upheld, moment by moment, by the power of god. blessed saviour! where could i have been this night _but_ for _thee_? thou art praying for me, as for thy faltering disciple of old, that my faith fail not. i _do_ rejoice to think that the same hand that was once outstretched for me on _the_ cross is now lifted up in pleading love before the throne, and that he who is _for_ me is greater far than all that can be _against_ me! oh strengthen me with all might by thy spirit in the inner man. subdue my corruptions, crucify all remaining sin. let me die to the world; let me not imbibe its false maxims, conform to its sinful tastes, or accord with its evil practices. let self in all its manifold forms be crucified, and god exalted. come, lord! search me, try me, prove me, and see if there be any wicked way in me. let me maintain a constant and habitual hatred of those sins that do more easily beset me; may i exercise a holy jealousy over my own heart. let no prosperity be strengthening my ties earthward, and weakening my ties heavenward. if thou givest me much of worldly good, may i write upon it all, "the things which are seen are temporal." may it be my exalted ambition to use it for thy glory. if thou sendest trial, let it issue in the peaceable fruits of righteousness, producing a child-like acquiescence in thy present dealings. let me never forget my pilgrim attitude. let me be ever looking forward to that joyous time when, "clean escaped" from the corruptions that are in the world, i shall stand "faultless before the throne." meanwhile, make me more heavenly-minded, copying the example of him who was meek and lowly in heart. let me be gentle and forgiving, let me not harbor unkind suspicions of others, but consider myself, lest i also be tempted. o give me the _character_ of heaven on this side of death, that when i come to pass through the swellings of jordan i may be prepared for the joyous welcome awaiting me on the shores of glory, "enter thou into the joy of thy lord!" have mercy on a world lying in wickedness! pity the careless; arouse the slumbering; support the weak; succour the poor and those that have no helper. bless thy church everywhere. may thy ministering servants hide _themselves_, that their lord may be exalted. take the charge of me and of all near and dear to me this night. keep me, o keep me, king of kings, beneath thine own almighty wings. lying down in thy fear may i awake in thy favor, fitted for all the duties of a new day; and all i ask is for jesus' sake. amen. "let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense: and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." nineteenth evening. for renunciation of self. "not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of god."-- cor. iii. . o god! do thou bend thy pitying eye upon me this night, as i venture once more into thy sacred presence. what mercy it is that, with all my great unworthiness, a throne of grace is still open, and a god of grace is still waiting to be gracious! i come to thee in deep creature-destitution, bringing nothing in my hands, but simply cleaving, blessed jesus, to thy cross; looking away from my guilty self and my guilty doings to thee, who hast done all and suffered all for me, i rejoice to think that thou hast broken every chain of condemnation--that thou hast satisfied the requirements of a broken law; and having overcome the sharpness of death, thou hast opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers. oh let me not continue in sin because all this wondrous grace abounds. let me not think lightly of the accursed thing which was the cause of all thine untold and unutterable anguish. i know, lord, that i am apt at times to plead vain excuses for my sins. i am unwilling to think them, and to think myself, so vile as i really am, in thy pure and holy eye. my heart is deceitful; but "thou art greater than my heart." oh bring me in self-renouncing lowliness to cry out, "god be merciful to me a sinner." let me cling to no remnants of my own self-righteousness. let me see that my best actions are marred with defilement and mingled with impure and unworthy motives. enable me to aim more and more at the conquest of self. show me the plague of my own heart. keep me from all that is unamiable and selfish, from all that is unkind and uncharitable, and that would exalt myself at the expense of others. keep me holy. keep me lowly.--lead me through the valley of humiliation. may life become more one grand effort to crucify sin and to please god. take, gracious saviour, my whole heart, and make it thine; occupy it without a rival. may there be no competing affection. keep me from alienating existence from its great end, by living to myself. may this be the superscription on all my thoughts, and duties, and engagements--"i am not my own, i am bought with a price." may whatever be thy time be mine. may i not murmur at deferred blessings or disappointed hopes. may my own will be resolved into the will of him who knows best what to give and what to withhold. may the lord have mercy upon zion. may showers of blessing descend on thy holy hill. hasten the glories of the latter day, when jesus shall take to himself his great power and reign! bless all my dear friends; may those ties which may be so soon severed here be rendered indissoluble by grace. guard their couch and mine this night; give us refreshing sleep, lying down in thy fear, and awaking in thy favor, fitted for all the duties of a new day. and all we ask or hope for is for the redeemer's sake. amen. "let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense: and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." twentieth evening. for a child-like spirit. "my soul is even as a weaned child."--psalm cxxxi. . o lord, i rejoice that i am permitted with filial confidence to approach thy blessed presence. what a privilege it is to have such liberty of access to the mercy-seat--to look upwards to thee, the infinite one, whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain, and call thee my father and my god! earthly love may grow cold or changeable, or perish; but "thou art the same." the mercy of god is from everlasting to everlasting. like as a father pitieth his children, so doth the lord pity them that fear him. alas! i have to mourn too often an unthankful spirit amid all thy manifold mercies. i have been rebellious and wayward, ungrateful and selfish. thou mightest righteously have surrendered me to my own perverse will; left me to the fruit of my own ways, and to be filled with my own devices. it is of the lord's mercies that i am not consumed! infinite is my want, but infinite too is my help. i would seek to stand before thee, o god, in the nothingness of the creature, and to know the boundless resources treasured up for me in the great redeemer. unite me to him by a living faith, as thine own child by adoption; may it be my great desire to glorify thee, my father in heaven; cherishing towards thee a spirit of filial love and devotedness, seeking to do only what will please thee, and having a salutary fear of offending so kind and forbearing a parent. oh keep me from any sullen fretfulness, or unbelieving misgivings, under the strokes of thy chastening hand. let there be no hard construction of thy dealings. may i see all thy chastisements tempered with gracious love--_all_ to be needful discipline. give me an unwavering trust and confidence in thy faithfulness. nothing befalls me but by thy direction; nothing is appointed but what is for my good. let thy varied dealings conform me to the image of my adorable lord. let me be willing to suffer patiently for _him_ who so willingly and so patiently suffered for _me_. let me not so much seek to have my afflictions removed as to have grace given me to glorify thee in them, and in the spirit of a weaned child to say, "even so, father!" o may my heart become a living temple, my life a living sacrifice, breathing the incense of gratitude and love. let me give myself no rest until in this soul of mine i find a place for the lord, an habitation for the mighty god of jacob. do thou sanctify trial to all the sons and daughters of sorrow. draw near to those bereaved of beloved relatives. do thou thyself compensate for every earthly loss. may they know that thou art faithful who hast promised, "lo, i am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." have mercy on thy whole church. heal divisions. bless thy preached word. strengthen thy ministering servants, that they may be enabled to proclaim the whole counsel of god. take the charge of me, and of all near and dear to me, this night. give thine angels charge over us. may no unquiet dreams disturb our rest, and when we awake may we be still with thee. and all i ask is for jesus' sake. amen. "let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense: and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." twenty-first evening. for heavenward progress. "the path of the just is as the shining light, which shines more and more onto the perfect day."--proverbs iv. . o god, i bless thee that thou hast spared me during another day, and permitted the shadows of another evening to gather around me in peace. it is thou, lord, only who makest me to dwell in safety. enable me to live from day to day as the pensioner on thy bounty; to feel my dependence; to receive every created blessing and gift direct from thy hand, and to seek to have all of them sweetened and hallowed as the pledges of thy covenant love in jesus. i bless thee, gracious god, for the richer tokens of thy redeeming grace in him. i bless thee that his infinite merit has come in the place of my infinite demerit, that in him there is "no condemnation;" that in his precious blood i have a secure shelter from the terrors of thy righteous law and the accusations of a guilty conscience. may i know more and more the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings. may my every hope of pardon centre in his cross. may i be living from day to day under the constraining influence of his love, and experience now a sweet foretaste of that everlasting communion which awaits me in his presence hereafter. lord, quicken me in my heavenly way; let me not loiter or linger on the road. let this be my habitual feeling and watchword, "i am journeying." may i seek to mark my progressive advancement in the divine life, my increasing conformity to the image and will of thee, my god. keep me humble, cherishing a constant sense of my dependence on thee. oh in every step zionward, may i be led to cry, "_hold thou_ me up, and i shall be safe." let there be no longer any halting between two opinions, any wavering or indecision. may i regard life as a great mission to please thee. let my animating wish be to be nearer thee now, ere i come to be with thee for ever in glory everlasting. walking heavenwards, may i feel i am walking homewards. may i spend each day as if possibly it were my last, so that should the midnight cry break upon my ears, "prepare to meet thy god," it might be to me no unexpected summons, but as an angel whispering, "the master is come and calleth for thee." look down in mercy on the dark places of the earth full of the habitations of horrid cruelty. how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked triumph? go forth with thy missionary servants in heathen lands; may they witness much of thy power; may thy word still be mighty as ever to the pulling down of satan's strongholds. give thy churches at home grace to be more faithful in the fulfilment of the great commission of their great head--"go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature!" take all my beloved friends this night under thy guardian care. shield them from all danger; and if thou art pleased to spare us till to-morrow, may we rise refreshed and invigorated for the duties of a new day. and all i ask is for jesus' sake. amen. "let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense: and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." twenty-second evening. for humility of heart. "he giveth grace unto the humble."--james iv. . o god, thou art great and greatly to be feared. thy greatness is unsearchable. thou art seated on a throne that is high and lifted up; myriads of blessed spirits cease not day nor night to celebrate thy praise in their ever-triumphant hymn, "holy, holy, holy, is the lord god of hosts." but i rejoice to think that though heaven is thy dwelling-place thou deignest to dwell in the humble and contrite heart; no sacrifice dost thou so love as that of the broken spirit; no incense so prized by thee as the incense of a grateful, believing soul, which, oppressed with its own unworthiness and sin, reposes with unwavering trust in the work and righteousness of the great surety. lord, on this ever-living, ever-loving saviour i desire wholly to lean. as helpless, hopeless, friendless, portionless, i cast myself on him who is helper of the helpless and friend of the friendless. there is nothing but thy sacrifice and intercession, o thou lamb of god, between me and everlasting destruction. o wash every crimson and scarlet stain away in thy precious blood. let me lie low at the foot of thy cross. give me a lowly estimate of myself, and a lofty view of thy all-glorious work and finished righteousness. i have no other hope of mercy, and, blessed be thy name, i _need_ no other. while i take thee as my saviour, may i be enabled to follow thee also as my pattern; conscious of the supreme enthronement of thy love in my heart, may i feel superior to all the fluctuations and changes of a changing world. may i live as the chartered heir of a better inheritance; while in the world, may i seek not to be of it. may i diffuse around me the noiseless influence of a heavenly life, subordinating all i do to thy glory. lord, enable me to be useful in the sphere in which thou hast placed me, to work while it is called to-day, remembering that there is no work nor device nor labor in the grave whither i am going. bless all in sorrow. sanctify their trials. keep us ever from the guilty atheism of looking to second causes. may we ever rejoice in the elevating assurance that "the lord god omnipotent reigneth," and that thou orderest all things wisely and well. may the holy spirit the comforter pour his own balm into every bleeding heart. have mercy on a world lying in wickedness. hasten that glorious period when creation, now groaning and travailing in sin, shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption and be translated into the glorious liberty of the children of god. let thy word everywhere have free course and be glorified. may jesus, faithfully "lifted up" by the attractive power of his cross, draw all men unto him. let thy best benediction rest on my friends. the lord watch between them and me when we are absent one from another. may we experience thy guardian care this night; and if spared to awake in the morning, may it be to spend a new day in thy service, through jesus christ, our blessed lord and saviour. amen. "let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense: and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." twenty-third evening. for firmness in temptation. "resist the devil, and he will flee from you."--james iv. . o god, thou art from everlasting to everlasting. loving me at the beginning, thou hast promised to love me even unto the end. notwithstanding all the fitful changes of my own changing heart towards _thee_, there _has_ been, and _can_ be, no shadow of turning in thy covenant faithfulness towards _me_. i am at this hour the monument of thy mercy--a living comment on the words, "thy ways are not as man's ways, nor thy thoughts as man's thoughts." if i have been enabled in any degree to resist the assaults of temptation, it is all thy doing. i am "kept by the power of god." unless the lord had been my help, my soul must long ere now have dwelt in silence. by the grace of god i am what i am. lord, indulged and cherished sin unfits me for the enjoyment of thy service and favor. i have to lament my proneness to evil, the natural bias of my heart to that which is opposed to thy pure and holy will. when i would do good, sin is too often present with me. i feel the power of my spiritual adversaries. if left to myself and my own unaided resources, i must often hopelessly resign the conflict. but i rejoice to think that there is help and hope and strength at hand. i would look to him who is now bending upon me an eye of unchanging love from the throne. all thy ascension glories, blessed redeemer, have not obliterated the tenderness of thy humanity. thou art "that same jesus;" thou, the abiding friend, art still left changeless among the changeable; and when satan often desires to have me, that he might sift me as wheat, it is thy intercessory prayer that saves me from utter ruin. thou art pleading for me, that my faith fail not! oh may i be found invincible in the hour of temptation, being made more than conqueror through him that loved me. sheltered in thee the true refuge, the wicked one will touch me not. let me not trifle with my own soul or with the momentous interests of eternity. let me every day be living under the realizing consciousness that thy pure eye is upon me. keep me from all that is at variance with thy gracious mind. keep me from unchristian tempers, from an unholy or inconsistent or uneven walk. by a christ-like demeanor may i exhibit the sanctifying and transforming influence of the gospel on my own soul, that others may take knowledge of me that i have been with jesus. god of bethel! do thou take under thy protecting providence all related to me by endearing ties. however far we may be separated from one another, let us never be separated from thee. let us often rejoice in this our common meeting-place; that around thy mercy-seat in spirit we can assemble, and lay our evening incense in the one golden censer of our gracious high priest! take charge of me this night, defend me from all danger; whether i wake or sleep, may i live together with thee; and all that i ask or hope for is in the name and for the sake of jesus christ, my only saviour. amen. "let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense: and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." twenty-fourth evening. for composure in trial. "even so, father; for so it seemed good in thy sight."--matt. xi. . o god, i come into thy presence this night, rejoicing that amid all earth's vicissitudes, i have in thee a rock that cannot be shaken. thou doest according to thy will in the armies of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth! thou doest all things well, and nothing but what _is_ well. there is no finite wisdom in thy dealings. all is the result of combined faithfulness, power, and love. let me repose in the righteous ordinations of thy will. if thou withhold from me earthly blessings, let me feel that the very denial is precious because it is thy sovereign pleasure. covenant love and wisdom cannot lead or teach me wrong; every burden is imposed by thee. the lot may be thrown into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the lord. o thou who turnest the shadow of death into the morning, may every wilderness-storm only drive me nearer thyself, my true shelter. thou takest the sting from every cross, the bitterness from every cup. let me recognise in all that befalls me the tokens of a father's love; and if sense and sight should at times fail to descry "the bright light in the cloud," may i see written over every dark trial thine own unanswerable challenge, "he that spared not his own son, but gave him up to the death for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?" lord! the end of all thy sovereign dealings is to subjugate my wayward will, and to unfold more of the preciousness of jesus. blessed spirit of all grace! do thou take of the things that are christ's and show them unto my soul. let me not stagger at the promises through unbelief. let me see nothing but love in the past, love in the present, and love looming through the mists of a cloudy future. thou, o god, art seated by every furnace; all is meted out, all is provided for; all has a "need be" in it! magnify the power of thy grace in me, by a sweet spirit of patient submission to thy righteous ordinations. may i seek to have no other prayer than this, "father, glorify thy name." impart thou that inner sunshine which no outward darkness or trial can obscure. may the peace of god, which passeth understanding, keep my heart. may thy holy spirit shed abroad his blessed influences over the whole church. revive thy work, o god, in the midst of the years. in wrath remember mercy. may thy ministers be more faithful. may thy people be more close and consistent in their walk with thee. may the young be growing up in thy fear and favor; may the aged find in thee the staff of their declining years. may the sick and afflicted pillow their head on thy promises. may the dying fall asleep in jesus. i commend myself, my friends, and all belonging to me, to thy paternal care and keeping; and when earth's long night-watches of trial and sorrow are ended, may i wake up in the sorrowless morning of glory, to enjoy uninterrupted fellowship with thyself. through jesus christ, my only lord and saviour. amen. "let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense: and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." twenty-fifth evening. for activity in duty. "not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the lord."--romans xii. . lord, i come to thee this night rejoicing in the thought that thou faintest not, neither are weary: thou art ever good, and doing me good. thine arm is never shortened, thine ear is never heavy. the gates of prayer are ever open. the throne of the heavenly grace is ever accessible, none of thy children need perish with hunger! may the darkness now gathering around me be as the shadow of thine infinite presence. i take comfort in the thought that the shepherd of israel neither slumbers nor sleeps; that he is ever bending over me his watchful, untiring eye, compassing my path and my lying down, and holding up my doings that my footsteps do not stumble. lord, how sad is the contrast of thine unwearied and unwearying watchfulness, with my negligence and inactivity in thy service. how little have i sought to promote thy glory. how little have i felt the solemnity and responsibility of being a steward in thy household! let me be more zealous for thy honor in the future. let me seek more than i have ever yet done, to ask in the midst of life's duties and engagements, its perplexities and trials, in simple faith, "lord! what wouldst thou have me to do?" let me feel that duty is a delight when done for thee. keep me from further relaxing my diligence. let me not mock thee any longer with the wrecks of a worn affection. let there be no half-surrender of the heart and life to thee, but may soul and body be consecrated as living sacrifices, and may i have the growing experience that active obedience in thy service is self-rewarding. lord! i have indeed a vast work to do and a brief time to do it in. may opportunities and talents, while i have them, be cheerfully given to thee. may the warning words oft sound in my ear, "work while it is called today, for the night cometh wherein no man can work." oh prepare me for my saviour's coming. forbid that i should be found among the slothful servants or the faithless stewards who are squandering their lord's money, and are living, forgetful that a time of reckoning is at hand! may i be so waiting and so watching, and so working, that the cry may never break too soon or too suddenly on my ears--"behold, the judge standeth before the door!" send forth thy gracious spirit into a world lying in wickedness. scatter the darkness that is now brooding over the nations. bless all thy ministering servants; may they be valiant for the truth; may the lord send his own angel to stand by them, and to shut the mouths of every adversary. bless all my friends; may they too be working out their own salvation with fear and trembling, and so be found at last prepared for the appearing and kingdom of jesus. take me under thy protecting care this night; vouchsafe me a season of refreshing repose; spare me to awake in thy favor; and may every returning morning find me better prepared for the glorious noon-day of immortality; through jesus christ, my ever-living saviour. amen. "let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense: and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." twenty-sixth evening. for the spirit's teaching. "as many as are led by the spirit of god, they are the sons of god."--rom. viii. . o lord, thou art the god of my life and the length of my days. there is no real happiness independent of thee. thy favor is life. in vain can i seek for any satisfying portion in an unsatisfying world. if bereft of thee i am bereaved indeed. but with thy countenance shining upon me, i must be safe, i must be happy. do thou pour down upon me the gifts and graces of thy holy spirit. may he "garrison" my heart. may he write on its blood-besprinkled lintels the superscription, "holiness to the lord." oh may this soul of mine become a living temple, an "habitation of god through the spirit." let me not trifle with convictions. let me not grieve by my hardness and impenitency that gracious agent, whereby i am sealed unto the day of redemption; but may all my affections be willingly surrendered to his service. by his omnipotent energy may every high thought and lofty imagination be brought into captivity to the obedience of jesus. may i be enabled to lean upon him in the extremity of my weakness. fill me with all joy and peace in believing that i may abound in hope through the power of the holy ghost; fitted for thy service here, and for the enjoyment of thee forever hereafter. i pray for the outpouring of the same blessed spirit on the whole church. may he descend like rain upon the mown grass, and as showers that water the earth. come from the four winds, o breath, and breathe upon the slain in the valley! hasten that glorious period when the year of thy redeemed shall come, when the earth shall be full of the tabernacles of the righteous, in which the voice of joy and melody will continually be heard! oh that there were more in me of the mind of my gracious saviour, on whom the spirit was poured without measure. may i, like him, be more meek and gentle, more amiable and forgiving, overcoming evil with good.--transform me into the same image from glory to glory, by the lord the spirit. hide all my friends under the shadow of thy wings. put thy good spirit also into their hearts. may he guide them into all the truth, and reveal to them more and more of the preciousness of jesus. let all poor afflicted ones rejoice in the presence and consolations of the promised comforter; may he pour oil and wine into their wounds; may he strengthen them in the midst of all their tribulations, and enable them in lowly resignation to say, "the lord's will be done." teach us all to repose in that will as the best; and to make it day by day our aim and ambition to attain a greater conformity to it. lord, take the charge of me through the watches of the night. under the blessed sense of thy presence and favor i would compose myself to rest, and when i awake, may i be still with thee. and all i ask is for jesus' sake. amen. "let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense: and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." twenty-seventh evening. for the world's conversion. "the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the lord, as the waters cover the sea."--isaiah xi. . o god, i desire to draw near into thy blessed presence, beseeching thee to lift upon me the light of thy countenance and grant me a father's blessing. i am utterly unworthy of thy mercies. and it is only in jesus, the son of thy love, that i dare venture to cast myself at thy footstool. i rejoice to think that in him there is an open door of welcome; that he has by his doing and dying satisfied the demands of thy righteous law, and magnified all thy glorious attributes. i would bury all my sins in the ocean-depths of his redeeming love. oh let me now know the blessedness of _living_, and at last the blessedness of _dying_, at peace with thee, in the sure and certain hope of a resurrection to eternal life. darkness is still covering the lands, and gross darkness the people. lord, do thou have mercy on a world lying in wickedness. i rejoice to think of all thy glorious promises concerning the latter day. that this creation of ours, now groaning and travailing in bondage under sin, is yet to be delivered from the yoke of corruption, and to be translated into the glorious liberty of the sons of god. glorify thy great name in the salvation of sinners! hasten the period of predicted glory, when all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of god; when from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same, the lord's name is to be praised. may thine own omnipotent spirit brood over the darkness, as he did over chaos of old, and say, "let there be light, and there will be light." may gladsome voices soon be heard proclaiming, "arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the lord is risen upon thee." oh may i know personally something of that compassionate yearning over ruined souls and a ruined world that my saviour had. let me be prodigal in devising means for the extension of his kingdom and the good of my fellow-men. i would pray the lord of the harvest that he would send forth laborers to the harvest. stand by thy missionary servants. may they have many souls for their hire. may mountains of difficulty be levelled before them; may crooked things be made straight and rough places plain, and may the glory of the lord be revealed. let them exercise simple faith in the power of thy word and the efficacy of thy grace. may they feel that these are mighty as they ever were to the pulling down of strongholds. arouse thy churches to greater zeal. may jesus, faithfully lifted up by his servants, by the attractive power of his cross draw all men unto him. may they be the honored instruments of preparing many gems for immanuel's crown, who will be found unto praise and honor and glory at his second appearing. lord, guard me through the silent watches of the night; be the defence and protection of my friends and relatives; may they too dwell under the shadow of thy wings and experience the sleep of thy beloved; and when the night of earth's ignorance shall vanish away, may we all wake up in glory everlasting, through jesus christ, our only lord and saviour. amen. "let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense: and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." twenty-eighth evening. for the church's revival. "revive thy work in the midst of the years."--hab. iii. . o god, thou hast permitted me in thy great mercy to see another evening. how many of my fellow-men have this day slept the sleep of death, and are now beyond the reach of grace and privilege! i am still spared, all unworthy though i be, a monument of thy forbearance and love. i desire to make acknowledgment of my many and grievous offences. they are more in number than the sand of the sea;--sins against light, and mercy, and warning; sins committed against the kindest of benefactors, the most indulgent of parents. i would seek anew to take refuge in the offered shelter of the gospel, and to rejoice anew in the faithful saying that jesus christ came into the world to save the chief of sinners. oh may i be enabled confidingly to repose in his matchless sacrifice, and with lively appropriating faith to say, "he loved _me_ and gave himself for _me_!" lord, carry on thine own work within me. quicken my languid and languishing affections by the omnipotent agency of thy holy spirit. let me not live at a guilty distance from thy favor; but may i covet a close and habitual walk with thee, and feel the sustaining power of thy grace in my heart. revive thy work in thine own church universal, thou great high priest, who walketh in the midst of the golden candlesticks. do thou feed every lamp with the oil of thy grace. let them burn with a clearer, holier, more steady and consistent flame. as lights set in the world, may they diffuse thy glory; and feel the honor of being instrumental in shedding abroad a saviour's love. oh may the lord arise and have mercy upon zion. may the time to favor her, yea, the set time, soon come. as there is but one shepherd, so may there soon be but one sheep-fold. let thy churches no longer continue apart from one another in unholy estrangement, but live in the unity of the spirit and in the bond of peace; holding fast that which they have, that no man take their crown. spirit of all grace, come in all the plenitude of thy love and mercy. breathe upon every portion of thy visible church, and say, "receive ye the holy ghost!" "awake, o north wind! come, thou south! blow upon our garden, that the spices thereof may flow out." may thy gracious influences descend like rain upon the mown grass, and as showers that water the earth. bless all thy faithful ministers. may peace be upon them and upon the whole israel of god. direct their hearts and the hearts of all thy faithful people into thy love, and into the patient waiting for christ. comfort all in sorrow. may they see a "need be" written on all their trials. may they look beyond the long night-watch of earth to the glories of that eternal morning when clouds and darkness shall for ever flee away. take charge of me while i sleep, and as evening after evening comes round may i feel that a day has been spent for thee. hear me, gracious lord, for the redeemer's sake. amen. "let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense: and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." twenty-ninth evening. for support in death. "yea, though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death, i will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me."--ps. xxiii. . o god, i come to thee this night through jesus christ, the son of thy love, beseeching thee to have mercy upon me, and to impart unto me that peace of thine which passeth all understanding. blessed be thy great and glorious name for those hopes full of immortality which have been opened up to me in the gospel. i rejoice in christ as the great abolisher of death. i rejoice that the rainbow of covenant faithfulness spans the entrance to the dark valley; that all that is terrible in the last enemy is in him taken away, and that i can regard these closing hours of existence as the introduction and doorway into everlasting bliss. give me grace, o god, to be living in constant preparation for death. let me not unprofitably squander my present golden moments. let me _live_ while i _live_--let me live a dying life. let me feel that life is a trust given me by thee. o thou great proprietor of my being, may this all important talent of time be more consecrated to thy glory. let it not be mine, when the hour of death arrives, to bewail, when it is too late, lost and forfeited opportunities. let me not leave till then, what best can be done and what only _may_ be done now. may it be my earnest endeavor while it is called today to secure a saving interest in the everlasting covenant, and then i need not fear how soon the silver cord may be loosed and the golden bowl broken. through jesus the darkness has been taken from death, and to his own true people its shadows will melt and merge into the brightness of eternal day. thou art ever giving me impressive remembrances that "at such an hour as i think not," the summons may come, "prepare to meet thy god." the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong. verily every moment there may be but a step between me and death. let me be so living a life of habitual faith in the son of god that this step may be changed into a step between me and glory. lord, prepare all who may now be laid on dying couches for their great change. may their eyes be directed to jesus. pillowing their heads on his exceeding great and precious promises, may they fall asleep in the glorious hope of a joyful resurrection. bless all in sorrow; those who have recently been bereaved of near and dear friends, who may have been called recently to the brink of the tomb, consigning their loved ones to the narrow house appointed for all living. may they be enabled to fix their sorrowing gaze on the brighter prospects beyond death and the grave, and anticipate that glorious hour when, reunited to death-divided friends, they will be able to exult together in the song, "o death, where is thy sting? o grave, where is thy victory?" take the charge of me this night. watch over me during the unconscious hours of sleep, and when i too come to the long night and slumber of death, may it be the gentle rest of thy beloved, a falling asleep in the arms of everlasting love, looking forward to the joyful waking time of immortality, through jesus christ my only saviour. amen. "let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense: and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." thirtieth evening. for preparation for judgment. "prepare to meet thy god."--amos iv. . o god, thou art daily loading me with thy benefits. thou art making the outgoings of the evening and morning to rejoice over me, giving me unnumbered causes for gratitude and thankfulness. no earthly friend could have loved and cared for me like thee. oh may the life thou art thus preserving by thine unceasing bounty be unreservedly dedicated to thy praise. lord, keep me mindful that i am soon to be done with this world, that i am fast borne along the stream of time to an endless futurity. "it is appointed unto all once to die, and after death the judgment." may i be living in a constant state of preparedness for that solemn hour when small and great shall stand before god, and the books shall be opened. educate me for eternity. let me not be frittering away these fleeting but precious moments. impress on me the solemn conviction that "as men live so do men die," that as death leaves me so will judgment find me. oh let death leave me falling asleep in jesus, united to him by a living faith, that so judgment may find me seated at his right hand, listening to the joyous welcome, "come, ye blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." blessed jesus, all my hope of a glorious resurrection centres in thee. i look to thee as the strong tower which cannot be shaken. i flee anew to the holy sanctuary of thy covenant love. sheltered there, amid a dissolving earth, and burning worlds, i shall be able joyfully to utter the challenge, "who shall separate me from the love of christ?" meanwhile may i seek to "occupy" till my lord comes. keep me from all negligence and unwatchfulness. trim my flickering lamp. let me live with thy judgment-throne in view. whether waking or sleeping, may i bear about with me the thought that i must soon give an account of myself to god. may i feel that all the talents and means thou hast given me are trusts to be laid out for thee. when thou comest to demand a reckoning, may i not be among the number of those who have hid their talent in the earth, and have the cheerless retrospect of a misspent time. lord! bless my friends, reward my benefactors, forgive my enemies. sanctify sorrow to all the sons and daughters of trial. may the torch of thy love light up their gloomy prospects. may every providential voice sound loud in their ears, "arise and depart ye, for this is not your rest!" gracious god, watch over me during the night, and grant that at last, when all earth's evenings and mornings shall have passed away, i may, on the great day-break of glory, wake up in thy likeness, through him in whom is all my hope, and to whom, with thee, o father, and thee, ever blessed spirit, one god, be everlasting praise, honor, and glory, world without end. amen. "let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense: and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." thirty-first evening. for meeting in heaven. "meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light."--col. i. . o god, i come into thy gracious presence on this the close of another day, beseeching thee to accept of my evening sacrifice. may this my unworthy prayer come up before thee perfumed with the fragrant incense of the saviour's adorable merits. it is my comfort to know, o thou blessed intercessor within the veil, that thou art even now appearing in the presence of god for me! the names of thy covenant people are engraven on thy breastplate, and, all unworthy in themselves, they are accepted in the beloved. my special prayer to thee this night is, that by thy grace i may be made meet for thy blood-bought inheritance in glory. transform me by the indwelling power of the holy ghost; may i be dying daily unto sin, and living daily unto righteousness. make me more heavenly-minded. give me more of a pilgrim attitude and a pilgrim spirit. may i ever feel that my true home is above, that i am here but a wayfarer and sojourner, as all my fathers were. may i attain, as i advance nearer heaven, the blessed habit of a holy life, bearing about with me the lofty impress of one who is born _from_ above and _for_ above, declaring plainly that i seek "a better country." let me not arraign the appointments of infinite wisdom, but patiently await the disclosures of the great day. keep me from a hasty spirit under dark dispensations. i am no judge as to what fancied mercies are best withholden. let me look to every trial as an appointed messenger from the throne whispering in my ears, "be ye also ready!" may i delight often to anticipate that happy time when i shall suffer no more, and sin no more; when thou shalt no longer teach me by mysterious dispensations and a crossed will; when all shall be "a sea of glass" without one disturbing ripple, and i shall trace with joyous heart the long line of unbroken love and unchanging faithfulness! anew i would wash in the atoning fountain. anew i would take refuge "in the faithful saying." o blot out all the sins of the bygone day. let them not rise up in the judgment to condemn me. let me close my eyes this night listening to the saviour's own voice--"your sins which are many are all forgiven you." may the lord arise and have mercy upon zion. may the streams of thy grace make glad the city of god. build up her broken walls; restore her ruined towers; may her watchmen be men of faith and men of prayer; making mention of the lord, and keeping not silence, till he establish, and till he make jerusalem again a praise in the earth. lord, bless my friends. let us exult in those ties which survive the uncertain ones of earth, and look forward to the hour when we shall come to stand at last faultless before thy throne. oh, prepare us all for the breaking of that eternal day--that "morning without clouds," when in thy light we shall see light--when the love of christ shall be enthroned supremely in every heart, when the glory of christ will form the animating motive and principle of life that shall never end: and all i ask is for his sake. amen. "let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense: and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." the end. books recently published by h. hooker. a plain commentary on the four holy gospels, intended chiefly for devotional reading. complete from the london edition. in two volumes, vo. price $ , in muslin, gilt; in half calf, $   , two volumes in one; in two volumes, half calf, $ . this is esteemed the best commentary on the holy gospels ever published for general use. it is a mine of devotional thought and inspiration; beautiful and simple in style, and bringing to bear on the elucidation of the sacred text the choicest learning, both ancient and modern. it should find a welcome in every christian family. sermons by the rev. alexander h. vinton, d. d. in one volume. mo., $ . sermons by the rev. a. cleveland coxe. in one volume, mo., $ . sermons by the right rev. george burgess, d. d. in one volume, mo., $ . search of truth; a manual of instruction concerning the way of salvation. by rev. james craik. mo., cents. the boy trained to be a clergyman. by rev. john n. norton. mo., cents. dr. wordsworth on the inspiration and canon of holy scripture. mo., $   . dr. wordsworth on the apocalypse. vo., $ . the episcopate; its history, duties, &c., &c. by hugh davey evans, ll.d. mo., cents. two very desirable editions of the book of common prayer. just completed. the book of the homilies of the church. in one volume, vo., $   . twenty-eight lectures on the morning prayer: by rev. robert a. hallam, d. d., rector of st. james' church, new london, conn. "the rev. dr. hallam's lectures on the morning prayer are a valuable addition to the working material for ordinary parish instruction. he goes carefully, judiciously, moderately, through all the parts of the morning prayer, including the litany, and draws out with great richness and fulness the admirable order, the wonderful connection of spirit and beauty, the deep inner life, of that inestimable office. there is also a sufficient infusion of liturgical learning to make the volume very instructive to the great bulk of all our congregations. with all its wise moderation of statement, there is a warm glow in the language of dr. hallam's book, a fervor in the feeling, and even an eloquence of expression in many places, which cannot but produce in all its readers a more full and harmonious appreciation of our incomparable liturgy. it will make the worship of our congregations a wonderfully more _reasonable, holy and living_ sacrifice unto god, inspiring it with a deeper and truer life wherever its healthful influence extends."--_church journal._ "a work of great merit, remarkable in its adaptations to defend and commend the church. let it be read for information about the church and the improvement of devotional spirit in her members."--_banner of the cross._ "the book of dr. hallam is the best book we have seen to put into the hands of persons desiring to understand the church." "the mode of treating the subject gives it full right to a place among works on _practical religion_. the leading object of the lectures is to show that this was the design and intent of the service, and that none who enter into its spirit can fail of being improved by its use. there is also something in the manner in which our author treats his subject--so much of his own agreeable peculiarities of thought and style characterizing it, as to throw an air of freshness over the subject itself, rendering the perusal as pleasant as it is profitable. in doctrine and usage, dr. h. follows the golden mean, the _via media_ which has ever marked the course of the church."--_the calendar._ the tables of the law; & the adoration of the magi _five hundred and ten copies printed; type distributed._ _no._ the tables of the law; & the adoration of the magi by william butler yeats the shakespeare head press stratford-upon-avon mcmxiv the tables of the law the tables of the law i 'will you permit me, aherne,' i said, 'to ask you a question, which i have wanted to ask you for years, and have not asked because we have grown nearly strangers? why did you refuse the berretta, and almost at the last moment? when you and i lived together, you cared neither for wine, women, nor money, and had thoughts for nothing but theology and mysticism.' i had watched through dinner for a moment to put my question, and ventured now, because he had thrown off a little of the reserve and indifference which, ever since his last return from italy, had taken the place of our once close friendship. he had just questioned me, too, about certain private and almost sacred things, and my frankness had earned, i thought, a like frankness from him. when i began to speak he was lifting to his lips a glass of that old wine which he could choose so well and valued so little; and while i spoke, he set it slowly and meditatively upon the table and held it there, its deep red light dyeing his long delicate fingers. the impression of his face and form, as they were then, is still vivid with me, and is inseparable from another and fanciful impression: the impression of a man holding a flame in his naked hand. he was to me, at that moment, the supreme type of our race, which, when it has risen above, or is sunken below, the formalisms of half-education and the rationalisms of conventional affirmation and denial, turns away, unless my hopes for the world and for the church have made me blind, from practicable desires and intuitions towards desires so unbounded that no human vessel can contain them, intuitions so immaterial that their sudden and far-off fire leaves heavy darkness about hand and foot. he had the nature, which is half monk, half soldier of fortune, and must needs turn action into dreaming, and dreaming into action; and for such there is no order, no finality, no contentment in this world. when he and i had been students in paris, we had belonged to a little group which devoted itself to speculations about alchemy and mysticism. more orthodox in most of his beliefs than michael robartes, he had surpassed him in a fanciful hatred of all life, and this hatred had found expression in the curious paradox--half borrowed from some fanatical monk, half invented by himself--that the beautiful arts were sent into the world to overthrow nations, and finally life herself, by sowing everywhere unlimited desires, like torches thrown into a burning city. this idea was not at the time, i believe, more than a paradox, a plume of the pride of youth; and it was only after his return to ireland that he endured the fermentation of belief which is coming upon our people with the reawakening of their imaginative life. presently he stood up, saying: 'come, and i will show you, for you at any rate will understand,' and taking candles from the table, he lit the way into the long paved passage that led to his private chapel. we passed between the portraits of the jesuits and priests--some of no little fame--his family had given to the church; and engravings and photographs of pictures that had especially moved him; and the few paintings his small fortune, eked out by an almost penurious abstinence from the things most men desire, had enabled him to buy in his travels. the pictures that i knew best, for they had hung there longest, whether reproductions or originals, were of the sienese school, which he had studied for a long time, claiming that it alone of the schools of the world pictured not the world but what is revealed to saints in their dreams and visions. the sienese alone among italians, he would say, could not or would not represent the pride of life, the pleasure in swift movement or sustaining strength, or voluptuous flesh. they were so little interested in these things that there often seemed to be no human body at all under the robe of the saint, but they could represent by a bowed head, or uplifted face, man's reverence before eternity as no others could, and they were at their happiest when mankind had dwindled to a little group silhouetted upon a golden abyss, as if they saw the world habitually from far off. when i had praised some school that had dipped deeper into life, he would profess to discover a more intense emotion than life knew in those dark outlines. 'put even francesca, who felt the supernatural as deeply,' he would say, 'beside the work of siena, and one finds a faint impurity in his awe, a touch of ghostly terror, where love and humbleness had best been all.' he had often told me of his hope that by filling his mind with those holy pictures he would help himself to attain at last to vision and ecstasy, and of his disappointment at never getting more than dreams of a curious and broken beauty. but of late he had added pictures of a different kind, french symbolistic pictures which he had bought for a few pounds from little-known painters, english and french pictures of the school of the english pre-raphaelites; and now he stood for a moment and said, 'i have changed my taste. i am fascinated a little against my will by these faces, where i find the pallor of souls trembling between the excitement of the flesh and the excitement of the spirit, and by landscapes that are created by heightening the obscurity and disorder of nature. these landscapes do not stir the imagination to the energies of sanctity but as to orgiac dancing and prophetic frenzy.' i saw with some resentment new images where the old ones had often made that long gray, dim, empty, echoing passage become to my eyes a vestibule of eternity. almost every detail of the chapel, which we entered by a narrow gothic door, whose threshold had been worn smooth by the secret worshippers of the penal times, was vivid in my memory; for it was in this chapel that i had first, and when but a boy, been moved by the mediævalism which is now, i think, the governing influence in my life. the only thing that seemed new was a square bronze box which stood upon the altar before the six unlighted candles and the ebony crucifix, and was like those made in ancient times of more precious substances to hold the sacred books. aherne made me sit down on an oak bench, and having bowed very low before the crucifix, took the bronze box from the altar, and sat down beside me with the box upon his knees. 'you will perhaps have forgotten,' he said, 'most of what you have read about joachim of flora, for he is little more than a name to even the well read. he was an abbot in cortale in the twelfth century, and is best known for his prophecy, in a book called _expositio in apocalypsin_, that the kingdom of the father was passed, the kingdom of the son passing, the kingdom of the spirit yet to come. the kingdom of the spirit was to be a complete triumph of the spirit, the _spiritualis intelligentia_ he called it, over the dead letter. he had many followers among the more extreme franciscans, and these were accused of possessing a secret book of his called the _liber inducens in evangelium Æternum_. again and again groups of visionaries were accused of possessing this terrible book, in which the freedom of the renaissance lay hidden, until at last pope alexander iv. had it found and cast into the flames. i have here the greatest treasure the world contains. i have a copy of that book; and see what great artists have made the robes in which it is wrapped. the greater portion of the book itself is illuminated in the byzantine style, which so few care for to-day, but which moves me because these tall, emaciated angels and saints seem to have less relation to the world about us than to an abstract pattern of flowing lines that suggest an imagination absorbed in the contemplation of eternity. even if you do not care for so formal an art, you cannot help seeing that work where there is so much gold, and of that purple colour which has gold dissolved in it, was valued at a great price in its day. but it was only at the renaissance the labour was spent upon it which has made it the priceless thing it is. the wooden boards of the cover show by the astrological allegories painted upon them, as by the style of painting itself, some craftsman of the school of francesco cossi of ferrara, but the gold clasps and hinges are known to be the work of benvenuto cellini, who made likewise the bronze box and covered it with gods and demons, whose eyes are closed, to signify an absorption in the inner light.' i took the book in my hands and began turning over the gilded, many-coloured pages, holding it close to the candle to discover the texture of the paper. 'where did you get this amazing book?' i said. 'if genuine, and i cannot judge by this light, you have discovered one of the most precious things in the world.' 'it is certainly genuine,' he replied. 'when the original was destroyed, one copy alone remained, and was in the hands of a lute-player of florence, and from him it passed to his son, and so from generation to generation until it came to the lute-player who was father to benvenuto cellini, and from benvenuto cellini to that cardinal of ferrara who released him from prison, and from him to a natural son, so from generation to generation, the story of its wandering passing on with it, until it came into the possession of the family of aretino, and to giulio aretino, an artist and worker in metals, and student of the kabalistic heresies of pico della mirandola. he spent many nights with me at rome, discussing philosophy; and at last i won his confidence so perfectly that he showed me this, his greatest treasure; and, finding how much i valued it, and feeling that he himself was growing old and beyond the help of its teaching, he sold it to me for no great sum, considering its great preciousness.' 'what is the doctrine?' i said. 'some mediæval straw-splitting about the nature of the trinity, which is only useful to-day to show how many things are unimportant to us, which once shook the world?' 'i could never make you understand,' he said, with a sigh, 'that nothing is unimportant in belief, but even you will admit that this book goes to the heart. do you see the tables on which the commandments were written in latin?' i looked to the end of the room, opposite to the altar, and saw that the two marble tablets were gone, and that two large empty tablets of ivory, like large copies of the little tablets we set over our desks, had taken their place. 'it has swept the commandments of the father away,' he went on, 'and displaced the commandments of the son by the commandments of the holy spirit. the first book is called _fractura tabularum_. in the first chapter it mentions the names of the great artists who made them graven things and the likeness of many things, and adored them and served them; and the second the names of the great wits who took the name of the lord their god in vain; and that long third chapter, set with the emblems of sanctified faces, and having wings upon its borders, is the praise of breakers of the seventh day and wasters of the six days, who yet lived comely and pleasant days. those two chapters tell of men and women who railed upon their parents, remembering that their god was older than the god of their parents; and that which has the sword of michael for an emblem commends the kings that wrought secret murder and so won for their people a peace that was _amore somnoque gravata et vestibus versicoloribus_, heavy with love and sleep and many-coloured raiment; and that with the pale star at the closing has the lives of the noble youths who loved the wives of others and were transformed into memories, which have transformed many poorer hearts into sweet flames; and that with the winged head is the history of the robbers who lived upon the sea or in the desert, lives which it compares to the twittering of the string of a bow, _nervi stridentis instar_; and those two last, that are fire and gold, are devoted to the satirists who bore false witness against their neighbours and yet illustrated eternal wrath, and to those that have coveted more than other men the house of god, and all things that are his, which no man has seen and handled, except in madness and in dreams. 'the second book is called _lex secreta_, and describes the true inspiration of action, the only eternal evangel; and ends with a vision, which he saw among the mountains of la sila, of his disciples sitting throned in the blue deep of the air, and laughing aloud, with a laughter that was like the rustling of the wings of time: _c[oe]lis in cæruleis ridentes sedebant discipuli mei super thronos: talis erat risus, qualis temporis pennati susurrus_.' 'i know little of joachim of flora,' i said, 'except that dante set him in paradise among the great doctors. if he held a heresy so singular, i cannot understand how no rumours of it came to the ears of dante; and dante made no peace with the enemies of the church.' 'joachim of flora acknowledged openly the authority of the church, and even asked that all his published writings, and those to be published by his desire after his death, should be submitted to the censorship of the pope. he considered that those whose work was to live and not to reveal were children and that the pope was their father; but he taught in secret that certain others, and in always increasing numbers, were elected, not to live, but to reveal that hidden substance of god which is colour and music and softness and a sweet odour; and that these have no father but the holy spirit. just as poets and painters and musicians labour at their works, building them with lawless and lawful things alike, so long as they embody the beauty that is beyond the grave, these children of the holy spirit labour at their moments with eyes upon the shining substance on which time has heaped the refuse of creation; for the world only exists to be a tale in the ears of coming generations; and terror and content, birth and death, love and hatred, and the fruit of the tree, are but instruments for that supreme art which is to win us from life and gather us into eternity like doves into their dove-cots. 'i shall go away in a little while and travel into many lands, that i may know all accidents and destinies, and when i return will write my secret law upon those ivory tablets, just as poets and romance writers have written the principles of their art in prefaces; and when i know what principle of life, discoverable at first by imagination and instinct, i am to express, i will gather my pupils that they may discover their law in the study of my law, as poets and painters discover their own art of expression by the study of some master. i know nothing certain as yet but this--i am to become completely alive, that is, completely passionate, for beauty is only another name for perfect passion. i shall create a world where the whole lives of men shall be articulated and simplified as if seventy years were but one moment, or as they were the leaping of a fish or the opening of a flower.' he was pacing up and down, and i listened to the fervour of his words and watched the excitement of his gestures with not a little concern. i had been accustomed to welcome the most singular speculations, and had always found them as harmless as the persian cat who half closes her meditative eyes and stretches out her long claws before my fire. but now i would battle in the interests of orthodoxy, even of the commonplace: and yet could find nothing better to say than: 'it is not necessary to judge everyone by the law, for we have also christ's commandment of love.' he turned and said, looking at me with shining eyes: 'jonathan swift made a soul for the gentlemen of this city by hating his neighbour as himself.' 'at any rate, you cannot deny that to teach so dangerous a doctrine is to accept a terrible responsibility.' 'leonardo da vinci,' he replied, 'has this noble sentence: "the hope and desire of returning home to one's former state is like the moth's desire for the light; and the man who with constant longing awaits each new month and new year, deeming that the things he longs for are ever too late in coming, does not perceive that he is longing for his own destruction." how, then, can the pathway which will lead us into the heart of god be other than dangerous? why should you, who are no materialist, cherish the continuity and order of the world as those do who have only the world? you do not value the writers who will express nothing unless their reason understands how it will make what is called the right more easy; why, then, will you deny a like freedom to the supreme art, the art which is the foundation of all arts? yes, i shall send out of this chapel saints, lovers, rebels and prophets: souls who will surround themselves with peace, as with a nest made with grass; and others over whom i shall weep. the dust shall fall for many years over this little box; and then i shall open it; and the tumults, which are, perhaps, the flames of the last day, shall come from under the lid.' i did not reason with him that night, because his excitement was great and i feared to make him angry; and when i called at his house a few days later, he was gone and his house was locked up and empty. i have deeply regretted my failure both to combat his heresy and to test the genuineness of his strange book. since my conversion i have indeed done penance for an error which i was only able to measure after some years. ii i was walking along one of the dublin quays, on the side nearest the river, about ten years after our conversation, stopping from time to time to turn over the books upon an old bookstall, and thinking, curiously enough, of the terrible destiny of michael robartes, and his brotherhood; when i saw a tall and bent man walking slowly along the other side of the quay. i recognized, with a start, in a lifeless mask with dim eyes, the once resolute and delicate face of owen aherne. i crossed the quay quickly, but had not gone many yards before he turned away, as though he had seen me, and hurried down a side street; i followed, but only to lose him among the intricate streets on the north side of the river. during the next few weeks i inquired of everybody who had once known him, but he had made himself known to nobody; and i knocked, without result, at the door of his old house; and had nearly persuaded myself that i was mistaken, when i saw him again in a narrow street behind the four courts, and followed him to the door of his house. i laid my hand on his arm; he turned quite without surprise; and indeed it is possible that to him, whose inner life had soaked up the outer life, a parting of years was a parting from forenoon to afternoon. he stood holding the door half open, as though he would keep me from entering; and would perhaps have parted from me without further words had i not said: 'owen aherne, you trusted me once, will you not trust me again, and tell me what has come of the ideas we discussed in this house ten years ago?--but perhaps you have already forgotten them.' 'you have a right to hear,' he said, 'for since i have told you the ideas, i should tell you the extreme danger they contain, or rather the boundless wickedness they contain; but when you have heard this we must part, and part for ever, because i am lost, and must be hidden!' i followed him through the paved passage, and saw that its corners were choked, and the pictures gray, with dust and cobwebs; and that the dust and cobwebs which covered the ruby and sapphire of the saints on the window had made it very dim. he pointed to where the ivory tablets glimmered faintly in the dimness, and i saw that they were covered with small writing, and went up to them and began to read the writing. it was in latin, and was an elaborate casuistry, illustrated with many examples, but whether from his own life or from the lives of others i do not know. i had read but a few sentences when i imagined that a faint perfume had begun to fill the room, and turning round asked owen aherne if he were lighting the incense. 'no,' he replied, and pointed where the thurible lay rusty and empty on one of the benches; as he spoke the faint perfume seemed to vanish, and i was persuaded i had imagined it. 'has the philosophy of the _liber inducens in evangelium Æternum_ made you very unhappy?' i said. 'at first i was full of happiness,' he replied, 'for i felt a divine ecstasy, an immortal fire in every passion, in every hope, in every desire, in every dream; and i saw, in the shadows under leaves, in the hollow waters, in the eyes of men and women, its image, as in a mirror; and it was as though i was about to touch the heart of god. then all changed and i was full of misery, and i said to myself that i was caught in the glittering folds of an enormous serpent, and was falling with him through a fathomless abyss, and that henceforth the glittering folds were my world; and in my misery it was revealed to me that man can only come to that heart through the sense of separation from it which we call sin, and i understood that i could not sin, because i had discovered the law of my being, and could only express or fail to express my being, and i understood that god has made a simple and an arbitrary law that we may sin and repent!' he had sat down on one of the wooden benches and now became silent, his bowed head and hanging arms and listless body having more of dejection than any image i have met with in life or in any art. i went and stood leaning against the altar, and watched him, not knowing what i should say; and i noticed his black closely-buttoned coat, his short hair, and shaven head, which preserved a memory of his priestly ambition, and understood how catholicism had seized him in the midst of the vertigo he called philosophy; and i noticed his lightless eyes and his earth-coloured complexion, and understood how she had failed to do more than hold him on the margin: and i was full of an anguish of pity. 'it may be,' he went on, 'that the angels whose hearts are shadows of the divine heart, and whose bodies are made of the divine intellect, may come to where their longing is always by a thirst for the divine ecstasy, the immortal fire, that is in passion, in hope, in desire, in dreams; but we whose hearts perish every moment, and whose bodies melt away like a sigh, must bow and obey!' i went nearer to him and said: 'prayer and repentance will make you like other men.' 'no, no,' he said, 'i am not among those for whom christ died, and this is why i must be hidden. i have a leprosy that even eternity cannot cure. i have seen the whole, and how can i come again to believe that a part is the whole? i have lost my soul because i have looked out of the eyes of the angels.' suddenly i saw, or imagined that i saw, the room darken, and faint figures robed in purple, and lifting faint torches with arms that gleamed like silver, bending, above owen aherne; and i saw, or imagined that i saw, drops, as of burning gum, fall from the torches, and a heavy purple smoke, as of incense, come pouring from the flames and sweeping about us. owen aherne, more happy than i who have been half initiated into the order of the alchemical rose, and protected perhaps by his great piety, had sunk again into dejection and listlessness, and saw none of these things; but my knees shook under me, for the purple-robed figures were less faint every moment, and now i could hear the hissing of the gum in the torches. they did not appear to see me, for their eyes were upon owen aherne; and now and again i could hear them sigh as though with sorrow for his sorrow, and presently i heard words which i could not understand except that they were words of sorrow, and sweet as though immortal was talking to immortal. then one of them waved her torch, and all the torches waved, and for a moment it was as though some great bird made of flames had fluttered its plumage, and a voice cried as from far up in the air: 'he has charged even his angels with folly, and they also bow and obey; but let your heart mingle with our hearts, which are wrought of divine ecstasy, and your body with our bodies, which are wrought of divine intellect.' and at that cry i understood that the order of the alchemical rose was not of this earth, and that it was still seeking over this earth for whatever souls it could gather within its glittering net; and when all the faces turned towards me, and i saw the mild eyes and the unshaken eyelids, i was full of terror, and thought they were about to fling their torches upon me, so that all i held dear, all that bound me to spiritual and social order, would be burnt up, and my soul left naked and shivering among the winds that blow from beyond this world and from beyond the stars; and then a faint voice cried, 'why do you fly from our torches that were made out of the trees under which christ wept in the garden of gethsemane? why do you fly from our torches that were made out of sweet wood, after it had perished from the world and come to us who made it of old times with our breath?' it was not until the door of the house had closed behind my flight, and the noise of the street was breaking on my ears, that i came back to myself and to a little of my courage; and i have never dared to pass the house of owen aherne from that day, even though i believe him to have been driven into some distant country by the spirits whose name is legion, and whose throne is in the indefinite abyss, and whom he obeys and cannot see. the adoration of the magi the adoration of the magi i was sitting reading late into the night a little after my last meeting with aherne, when i heard a light knocking on my front door. i found upon the doorstep three very old men with stout sticks in their hands, who said they had been told i should be up and about, and that they were to tell me important things. i brought them into my study, and when the peacock curtains had closed behind us, i set their chairs for them close to the fire, for i saw that the frost was on their great-coats of frieze and upon the long beards that flowed almost to their waists. they took off their great-coats, and leaned over the fire warming their hands, and i saw that their clothes had much of the country of our time, but a little also, as it seemed to me, of the town life of a more courtly time. when they had warmed themselves--and they warmed themselves, i thought, less because of the cold of the night than because of a pleasure in warmth for the sake of warmth--they turned towards me, so that the light of the lamp fell full upon their weather-beaten faces, and told the story i am about to tell. now one talked and now another, and they often interrupted one another, with a desire like that of countrymen, when they tell a story, to leave no detail untold. when they had finished they made me take notes of whatever conversation they had quoted, so that i might have the exact words, and got up to go. when i asked them where they were going, and what they were doing, and by what names i should call them, they would tell me nothing, except that they had been commanded to travel over ireland continually, and upon foot and at night, that they might live close to the stones and the trees and at the hours when the immortals are awake. i have let some years go by before writing out this story, for i am always in dread of the illusions which come of that inquietude of the veil of the temple, which m. mallarmé considers a characteristic of our times; and only write it now because i have grown to believe that there is no dangerous idea which does not become less dangerous when written out in sincere and careful english. the three old men were three brothers, who had lived in one of the western islands from their early manhood, and had cared all their lives for nothing except for those classical writers and old gaelic writers who expounded an heroic and simple life; night after night in winter, gaelic story-tellers would chant old poems to them over the poteen; and night after night in summer, when the gaelic story-tellers were at work in the fields or away at the fishing, they would read to one another virgil and homer, for they would not enjoy in solitude, but as the ancients enjoyed. at last a man, who told them he was michael robartes, came to them in a fishing boat, like st. brandan drawn by some vision and called by some voice; and spoke of the coming again of the gods and the ancient things; and their hearts, which had never endured the body and pressure of our time, but only of distant times, found nothing unlikely in anything he told them, but accepted all simply and were happy. years passed, and one day, when the oldest of the old men, who travelled in his youth and thought sometimes of other lands, looked out on the grey waters, on which the people see the dim outline of the islands of the young--the happy islands where the gaelic heroes live the lives of homer's phæacians--a voice came out of the air over the waters and told him of the death of michael robartes. they were still mourning when the next oldest of the old men fell asleep while reading out the fifth eclogue of virgil, and a strange voice spoke through him, and bid them set out for paris, where a woman lay dying, who would reveal to them the secret names of the gods, which can be perfectly spoken only when the mind is steeped in certain colours and certain sounds and certain odours; but at whose perfect speaking the immortals cease to be cries and shadows, and walk and talk with one like men and women. they left their island, at first much troubled at all they saw in the world, and came to paris, and there the youngest met a person in a dream, who told him they were to wander about at hazard until those who had been guiding their footsteps had brought them to a street and a house, whose likeness was shown him in the dream. they wandered hither and thither for many days, but one morning they came into some narrow and shabby streets, on the south of the seine, where women with pale faces and untidy hair looked at them out of the windows; and just as they were about to turn back because wisdom could not have alighted in so foolish a neighbourhood, they came to the street and the house of the dream. the oldest of the old men, who still remembered some of the modern languages he had known in his youth, went up to the door and knocked, but when he had knocked, the next in age to him said it was not a good house, and could not be the house they were looking for, and urged him to ask for some one they knew was not there and go away. the door was opened by an old over-dressed woman, who said, 'o, you are her three kinsmen from ireland. she has been expecting you all day.' the old men looked at one another and followed her upstairs, passing doors from which pale and untidy women thrust out their heads, and into a room where a beautiful woman lay asleep in a bed, with another woman sitting by her. the old woman said: 'yes they have come at last; now she will be able to die in peace,' and went out. 'we have been deceived by devils,' said one of the old men, 'for the immortals would not speak through a woman like this.' 'yes,' said another, 'we have been deceived by devils, and we must go away quickly.' 'yes,' said the third, 'we have been deceived by devils, but let us kneel down for a little, for we are by the deathbed of one that has been beautiful.' they knelt down, and the woman who sat by the bed, and seemed to be overcome with fear and awe, lowered her head. they watched for a little the face upon the pillow and wondered at its look, as of unquenchable desire, and at the porcelain-like refinement of the vessel in which so malevolent a flame had burned. suddenly the second oldest of them crowed like a cock, and until the room seemed to shake with the crowing. the woman in the bed still slept on in her death-like sleep, but the woman who sat by her head crossed herself and grew pale, and the youngest of the old men cried out: 'a devil has gone into him, and we must begone or it will go into us also.' before they could rise from their knees a resonant chanting voice came from the lips that had crowed and said: 'i am not a devil, but i am hermes the shepherd of the dead, and i run upon the errands of the gods, and you have heard my sign, that has been my sign from the old days. bow down before her from whose lips the secret names of the immortals, and of the things near their hearts, are about to come, that the immortals may come again into the world. bow down, and understand that when they are about to overthrow the things that are to-day and bring the things that were yesterday, they have no one to help them, but one whom the things that are to-day have cast out. bow down and very low, for they have chosen for their priestess this woman in whose heart all follies have gathered, and in whose body all desires have awaked; this woman who has been driven out of time, and has lain upon the bosom of eternity. after you have bowed down the old things shall be again, and another argo shall carry heroes over sea, and another achilles beleaguer another troy.' the voice ended with a sigh, and immediately the old man awoke out of sleep, and said: 'has a voice spoken through me, as it did when i fell asleep over my virgil, or have i only been asleep?' the oldest of them said: 'a voice has spoken through you. where has your soul been while the voice was speaking through you?' 'i do not know where my soul has been, but i dreamed i was under the roof of a manger, and i looked down and i saw an ox and an ass; and i saw a red cock perching on the hay-rack; and a woman hugging a child; and three old men, in armour, studded with rubies, kneeling with their heads bowed very low in front of the woman and the child. while i was looking the cock crowed and a man with wings on his heels swept up through the air, and as he passed me, cried out: "foolish old men, you had once all the wisdom of the stars." i do not understand my dream or what it would have us do, but you who have heard the voice out of the wisdom of my sleep know what we have to do.' then the oldest of the old men told him they were to take the parchments they had brought with them out of their pockets and spread them on the ground. when they had spread them on the ground, they took out of their pockets their pens, made of three feathers, which had fallen from the wing of the old eagle that is believed to have talked of wisdom with st. patrick. 'he meant, i think,' said the youngest, as he put their ink-bottles by the side of the rolls of parchment, 'that when people are good the world likes them and takes possession of them, and so eternity comes through people who are not good or who have been forgotten. perhaps christianity was good and the world liked it, so now it is going away and the immortals are beginning to awake.' 'what you say has no wisdom,' said the oldest, 'because if there are many immortals, there cannot be only one immortal.' then the woman in the bed sat up and looked about her with wild eyes; and the oldest of the old men said: 'lady, we have come to write down the secret names,' and at his words a look of great joy came into her face. presently she began to speak slowly, and yet eagerly, as though she knew she had but a little while to live, and in the gaelic of their own country; and she spoke to them many secret powerful names, and of the colours, and odours, and weapons, and instruments of music and instruments of handicraft belonging to the owners of those names; but most about the sidhe of ireland and of their love for the cauldron, and the whetstone, and the sword, and the spear. then she tossed feebly for a while and moaned, and when she spoke again it was in so faint a murmur that the woman who sat by the bed leaned down to listen, and while she was listening the spirit went out of the body. then the oldest of the old men said in french to the woman who was still bending over the bed: 'there must have been yet one name which she had not given us, for she murmured a name while the spirit was going out of the body,' and the woman said, 'she was but murmuring over the name of a symbolist painter she was fond of. he used to go to something he called the black mass, and it was he who taught her to see visions and to hear voices. she met him for the first time a few months ago, and we have had no peace from that day because of her talk about visions and about voices. why! it was only last night that i dreamed i saw a man with a red beard and red hair, and dressed in red, standing by my bedside. he held a rose in one hand, and tore it in pieces with the other hand, and the petals drifted about the room, and became beautiful people who began to dance slowly. when i woke up i was all in a heat with terror.' this is all the old men told me, and when i think of their speech and of their silence, of their coming and of their going, i am almost persuaded that had i gone out of the house after they had gone out of it, i should have found no footsteps on the snow. they may, for all i or any man can say, have been themselves immortals: immortal demons, come to put an untrue story into my mind for some purpose i do not understand. whatever they were i have turned into a pathway which will lead me from them and from the order of the alchemical rose. i no longer live an elaborate and haughty life, but seek to lose myself among the prayers and the sorrows of the multitude. i pray best in poor chapels, where the frieze coats brush by me as i kneel, and when i pray against the demons i repeat a prayer which was made i know not how many centuries ago to help some poor gaelic man or woman who had suffered with a suffering like mine. _seacht b-páidreacha fó seacht chuir muire faoi n-a mac, chuir brigbid faoi n-a brat, chuir dia faoi n-a neart, eidir sinn 'san sluagh sidhe, eidir sinn 'san sluagh gaoith._ seven paters seven times, send mary by her son, send bridget by her mantle, send god by his strength, between us and the faery host, between us and the demons of the air. _printed by_ a. h. bullen, _at the shakespeare head press, stratford-upon-avon_. transcriber's note: one printer's error or misspelling was found and fixed: page . in the original book: orgaic dancing changed in this ebook to: orgiac dancing proofreading team joy and power three messages with one meaning by henry van dyke dedicated to my friend john huston finley president of the college of the city of new york the preface the three messages which are brought together in this book were given not far apart in time, though at some distance from one another in space. the one called joy and power was delivered in los angeles, california, at the opening of the presbyterian general assembly, may , . the one called the battle of life was delivered on baccalaureate sunday at princeton university, june . the one called the good old way was delivered on baccalaureate sunday at harvard university, june . at the time, i was thinking chiefly of the different qualities and needs of the people to whom i had to speak. this will account for some things in the form of each message. but now that they are put together i can see that all three of them say about the same thing. they point in the same direction, urge the same course of action, and appeal to the same motive. it is nothing new,--the meaning of this threefold message,--but it is the best that i have learned in life. and i believe it is true,--so true that we need often to have it brought to remembrance. henry van dyke avalon, july , contents i. joy and power ii. the battle of life iii. the good old way joy and power <i>st. john viii. : if ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.</i> i ask you to think for a little while about the religion of christ in its relation to happiness. this is only one point in the circle of truth at the centre of which jesus stands. but it is an important point because it marks one of the lines of power which radiate from him. to look at it clearly and steadily is not to disregard other truths. the mariner takes the whole heavens of astronomy for granted while he shapes his course by a single star. in the wish for happiness all men are strangely alike. in their explanations of it and in their ways of seeking it they are singularly different. shall we think of this wish as right, or wrong; as a true star, or a will-o'-the-wisp? if it is right to wish to be happy, what are the conditions on which the fulfilment of this wish depends? these are the two questions with which i would come to christ, seeking instruction and guidance. i. the desire of happiness, beyond all doubt, is a natural desire. it is the law of life itself that every being seeks and strives toward the perfection of its kind, the realization of its own specific ideal in form and function, and a true harmony with its environment. every drop of sap in the tree flows toward foliage and fruit. every drop of blood in the bird beats toward flight and song. in a conscious being this movement toward perfection must take a conscious form. this conscious form is happiness,--the satisfaction of the vital impulse,--the rhythm of the inward life,--the melody of a heart that has found its keynote. to say that all men long for this is simply to confess that all men are human, and that their thoughts and feelings are an essential part of their life. virtue means a completed manhood. the joyful welfare of the soul belongs to the fulness of that ideal. holiness is wholeness. in striving to realize the true aim of our being, we find the wish for happiness implanted in the very heart of our effort. now what does christ say in regard to this natural human wish? does he say that it is an illusion? does he condemn and deny it? would he have accepted goethe's definition: "religion is renunciation"? surely such a notion is far from the spirit of jesus. there is nothing of the hardness of stoicism, the coldness of buddhism, in christ's gospel. it is humane, sympathetic, consoling. unrest and weariness, the fever of passion and the chill of despair, soul-solitude and heart-trouble, are the very things that he comes to cure. he begins his great discourse with a series of beatitudes. "blessed" is the word. "happy" is the meaning. nine times he rings the changes on that word, like a silver bell sounding from his fair temple on the mountain-side, calling all who long for happiness to come to him and find rest for their souls. christ never asks us to give up merely for the sake of giving up, but always in order to win something better. he comes not to destroy, but to fulfil,--to fill full,--to replenish life with true, inward, lasting riches. his gospel is a message of satisfaction, of attainment, of felicity. its voice is not a sigh, but a song. its final word is a benediction, a good-saying. "these things have i spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full." if we accept his teaching we must believe that men are not wrong in wishing for happiness, but wrong in their way of seeking it. earthly happiness,--pleasure that belongs to the senses and perishes with them,--earthly happiness is a dream and a delusion. but happiness on earth,--spiritual joy and peace, blossoming here, fruiting hereafter,--immortal happiness, is the keynote of life in christ. and if we come to him, he tells us four great secrets in regard to it. i. it is inward, and, not outward; and so it does not depend on what we have, but on what we are. ii. it cannot be found by direct seeking, but by setting our faces toward the things from which it flows; and so we must climb the mount if we would see the vision, we must tune the instrument if we would hear the music. iii. it is not solitary, but social; and so we can never have it without sharing it with others. iv. it is the result of god's will for us, and not of our will for ourselves; and so we can only find it by giving our lives up, in submission and obedience, to the control of god. for this is peace,--to lose the lonely note of self in love's celestial ordered strain: and this is joy,--to find one's self again in him whose harmonies forever float through all the spheres of song, below, above,-- for god is music, even as god is love. this is the divine doctrine of happiness as christ taught it by his life and with his lips. if we want to put it into a single phrase, i know not where we shall find a more perfect utterance than in the words which have been taught us in childhood,--words so strong, so noble, so cheerful, that they summon the heart of manhood like marching-music: "man's chief end is to glorify god and enjoy him forever." let us accept without reserve this teaching of our divine lord and master in regard to the possibility and the duty of happiness. it is an essential element of his gospel. the atmosphere of the new testament is not gloom, but gladness; not despondency, but hope. the man who is not glad to be a christian is not the right kind of a christian. the first thing that commended the church of jesus to the weary and disheartened world in the early years of her triumph, was her power to make her children happy,--happy in the midst of afflictions, happy in the release from the burden of guilt, happy in the sense of divine fatherhood and human brotherhood, happy in christ's victory over sin and death, happy in the assurance of an endless life. at midnight in the prison, paul and silas sang praises, and the prisoners heard them. the lateral force of joy,--that was the power of the church. "'poor world,' she cried, 'so deep accurst, thou runn'st from pole to pole to seek a draught to slake thy thirst,-- go seek it in thy soul.' * * * * * tears washed the trouble from her face! she changed into a child! 'mid weeds and wrecks she stood,--a place of ruin,--but she smiled!" much has the church lost of that pristine and powerful joy. the furnace of civilization has withered and hardened her. she has become anxious and troubled about many things. she has sought earthly honours, earthly powers. richer she is than ever before, and probably better organized, and perhaps more intelligent, more learned,--but not more happy. the one note that is most often missing in christian life, in christian service, is the note of spontaneous joy. christians are not as much calmer, steadier, stronger, and more cheerful than other people as they ought to be. some christians are among the most depressing and worryful people in the world,--the most difficult to live with. and some, indeed, have adopted a theory of spiritual ethics which puts a special value upon unhappiness. the dark, morbid spirit which mistrusts every joyful feeling, and depreciates every cheerful virtue, and looks askance upon every happy life as if there must be something wrong about it, is a departure from the beauty of christ's teaching to follow the dark-browed philosophy of the orient. the religion of jesus tells us that cheerful piety is the best piety. there is something finer than to do right against inclination; and that is to have an inclination to do right. there is something nobler than reluctant obedience; and that is joyful obedience. the rank of virtue is not measured by its disagreeableness, but by its sweetness to the heart that loves it. the real test of character is joy. for what you rejoice in, that you love. and what you love, that you are like. i confess frankly that i have no admiration for the phrase "disinterested benevolence," to describe the main-spring of christian morals. i do not find it in the new testament: neither the words, nor the thing. interested benevolence is what i find there. to do good to others is to make life interesting and find peace for our own souls. to glorify god is to enjoy him. that was the spirit of the first christians. was not st. paul a happier man than herod? did not st. peter have more joy of his life than nero? it is said of the first disciples that they "did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart." not till that pristine gladness of life returns will the church regain her early charm for the souls of men. every great revival of christian power--like those which came in the times of st. francis of assisi and of john wesley--has been marked and heralded by a revival of christian joy. if we want the church to be mighty in power to win men, to be a source of light in the darkness, a fountain of life in the wilderness, we must remember and renew, in the spirit of christ, the relation of religion to human happiness. ii. what, then, are the conditions upon which true happiness depends? christ tells us in the text: if ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them. this is the blessing with a double if. "if ye know,"--this is the knowledge which christ gives to faith. "if ye do,"--this is the obedience which faith gives to christ. knowing and doing,--these are the twin pillars, jachin and boaz, on which the house of happiness is built. the harmony of faith and life,--this is the secret of inward joy and power. you remember when these words were spoken. christ had knelt to wash the disciples' feet. peter, in penitence and self-reproach, had hesitated to permit this lowly service of divine love. but christ answered by revealing the meaning of his act as a symbol of the cleansing of the soul from sin. he reminded the disciples of what they knew by faith,--that he was their saviour and their lord. by deed and by word he called up before them the great spiritual truths which had given new meaning to their life. he summoned them to live according to their knowledge, to act upon the truth which they believed. i am sure that his words sweep out beyond that quiet upper room, beyond that beautiful incident, to embrace the whole spiritual life. i am sure that he is revealing to us the secret of happy living which lies at the very heart of his gospel, when he says: if ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them. i. "if ye know,"--there is, then, a certain kind of knowledge without which we can not be happy. there are questions arising in human nature which demand an answer. if it is denied we can not help being disappointed, restless, and sad. this is the price we have to pay for being conscious, rational creatures. if we were mere plants or animals we might go on living through our appointed years in complete indifference to the origin and meaning of our existence. but within us, as human beings, there is something that cries out and rebels against such a blind life. man is born to ask what things mean. he is possessed with the idea that there is a significance in the world beyond that which meets his senses. john fiske has brought out this fact very clearly in his last book, through nature to god. he shows that "in the morning twilight of existence the human soul vaguely reached forth toward something akin to itself, not in the realm of fleeting phenomena, but in the eternal presence beyond." he argues by the analogy of evolution, which always presupposes a real relation between the life and the environment to which it adjusts itself, that this forth-reaching and unfolding of the soul implies the everlasting reality of religion. the argument is good. but the point which concerns us now is simply this. the forth-reaching, questioning soul can never be satisfied if it touches only a dead wall in the darkness, if its seeking meets with the reply, "you do not know, and you never can know, and you must not try to know." this is agnosticism. it is only another way of spelling unhappiness. "since christianity is not true," wrote ernest renan, "nothing interests me, or appears worthy my attention." that is the logical result of losing the knowledge of spiritual things,--a life without real interest, without deep worth,--a life with a broken spring. but suppose renan is mistaken. suppose christianity is true. then the first thing that makes it precious, is that it answers our questions, and tells us the things that we must know in order to be happy. christianity is a revealing religion, a teaching religion, a religion which conveys to the inquiring spirit certain great and positive solutions of the problems of life. it is not silent, nor ambiguous, nor incomprehensible in its utterance. it replies to our questions with a knowledge which, though limited, is definite and sufficient. it tells us that this "order of nature, which constitutes the world's experience, is only one portion of the total universe." that the ruler of both worlds, seen and unseen, is god, a spirit, and the father of our spirits. that he is not distant from us nor indifferent to us, but that he has given his eternal son jesus christ to be our saviour. that his spirit is ever present with us to help us in our conflicts with evil, in our efforts toward goodness. that he is making all things work together for good to those that love him. that through the sacrifice of christ every one who will may obtain the forgiveness of sins and everlasting peace. that through the resurrection of christ all who love him and their fellow-men shall obtain the victory over death and live forever. now these are doctrines. and it is just because christianity contains such doctrines that it satisfies the need of man. "the first and the most essential condition of true happiness," writes professor carl hilty, the eminent swiss jurist, "is a firm faith in the moral order of the world. what is the happy life? it is a life of conscious harmony with this divine order of the world, a sense, that is to say, of god's companionship. and wherein is the profoundest unhappiness? it is in the sense of remoteness from god, issuing into incurable restlessness of heart, and finally into incapacity to make one's life fruitful or effective." what shall we say, then, of the proposal to adapt christianity to the needs of the world to-day by eliminating or ignoring its characteristic doctrines? you might as well propose to fit a ship for service by taking out its compass and its charts and cutting off its rudder. make christianity silent in regard to these great questions of spiritual existence, and you destroy its power to satisfy the heart. what would the life of christ mean if these deep truths on which he rested and from which he drew his strength, were uncertain or illusory? it would be the most pathetic, mournful, heartbreaking of all phantoms. what consoling, cheering power would be left in the words of jesus if his doctrine were blotted out and his precept left to stand alone? try the experiment, if it may be done without irreverence: read his familiar discourses in the shadow of agnosticism. 'blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is a hopeless poverty. blessed are the pure in heart, for they know not whether they shall see god. blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you, for ye have no promise of a heavenly reward. 'enter into thy closet and when thou hast shut the door, keep silence, for thou canst not tell whether there is one to hear thy voice in secret. take no thought for the morrow, for thou knowest not whether there is a father who careth for thee. 'god is unknown, and they that worship him must worship him in ignorance and doubt. no man hath ascended up into heaven, neither hath any man come down from heaven, for the son of man hath never been in heaven. that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is a dream. man shall not live by bread alone, neither shall he listen for any word from the mouth of god. i proceeded forth and came from darkness, i came of myself, i know not who sent me. my sheep hear my voice, and i know them, and they follow me, but i can not give unto them eternal life, for they shall perish and death shall pluck them out of my hand. let not your heart be troubled; ye believe not in god, ye need not believe in me. keep my commandments, and i will not pray for you, and ye shall abide without a comforter. in the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, for ye know not whether there is a world to come. i came forth from darkness into the world, and again i leave the world and return to darkness. peace i leave with you. if ye loved me ye would rejoice because i said, i go into darkness, and where i am there shall ye be also.' is it conceivable that any suffering, sorrowing human soul should be comforted and strengthened by such a message as this? could it possibly be called a gospel, glad tidings of great joy to all people? and yet what has been omitted here from the words of christ? nothing but what men call doctrines: the personality of god, the divinity of christ, the atonement, the presence and power of the holy spirit, the sovereignty of the heavenly father, the truth of the divine revelation, the reality of the heavenly world, the assurance of immortal life. but it is just from these doctrines that the teaching of jesus draws its peculiar power to comfort and inspire. they are the rays of light which disperse the gloom of uncertainty. they are the tones of celestial music which fill the heart of man with good cheer. let us never imagine that we can strengthen christianity by leaving out the great doctrines which have given it life and power. faith is not a mere matter of feeling. it is the acceptance of truth, positive, unchanging, revealed truth, in regard to god and the world, christ and the soul, duty and immortality. the first appeal to faith lies in the clearness and vividness, the simplicity and joy, with which this truth is presented. there has not been too much preaching of doctrine in this age. there has been too little. and what there has been, has been too dull and cold and formal, too vague and misty, too wavering and uncertain. what the world wants and waits for to-day is a strong, true, vital preaching of doctrine. the church must realize anew the precious value of the truths which christ has given her. she must not conceal them or cast them away; she must bring them out into the light, press them home upon the minds and hearts of men. she must simplify her statement of them, so that men can understand what they mean. she must not be content with repeating them in the language of past centuries. she must translate them into the language of to-day. first century texts will never wear out because they are inspired. but seventeenth century sermons grow obsolete because they are not inspired. texts from the word of god, preaching in the words of living men,--that is what we need. we must think about the doctrines of christianity more earnestly and profoundly. we must renew our christian evidences, as an army fits itself with new weapons. the old-fashioned form of the "argument from design in nature" has gone out with the old-fashioned books of science which it used. but there is a new and more wonderful proof of god's presence in the world,--the argument from moral ends in evolution. every real advance of science makes the intelligent order of the universe more sublimely clear. every century of human experience confirms the divine claims and adds to the divine triumphs of jesus christ. social progress has followed to a hair's breadth the lines of his gospel; and he lays his hand to-day with heavenly wisdom on the social wants that still trouble us, "the social lies that warp us from the living truth." christ's view of life and the world is as full of sweet reasonableness now as it was in the first century. every moral step that man has taken upward has brought a wider, clearer vision of his need of such a religion as that which christ teaches. let not the church falter and blush for her doctrines. let her not turn and go down the hill of knowledge to defend her position in the valley of ignorance. let her go up the hill, welcoming every wider outlook, rejoicing in every new discovery, gathering fresh evidences of the truths which man must believe concerning god and new motives to the duties which god requires of man. but in doing this we must put the emphasis of our preaching to-day where it belongs, where christ puts it, on the doctrines that are most important to human life and happiness. we can afford to let the fine metaphysical distinctions of theology rest for a while, and throw all our force on the central, fundamental truths which give steadiness and courage and cheer to the heart of man. i will not admit that it makes no difference to a man of this age whether or not he believes in the personal god and the divine christ. if he really believes, it makes all the difference between spiritual strength and spiritual weakness, between optimism and pessimism. i will not admit that it makes no difference to a learned scholar or a simple labourer to-day whether he accepts or ignores the doctrine of the atonement, the doctrine of personal immortality. if he knows that christ died for him, that there is a future beyond the grave, it makes all the difference between despair and hope, between misery and consolation, between the helpless frailty of a being that is puffed out like a candle, and the joyful power of an endless life. my brethren, we must work and pray for a true revival of christian doctrine in our age. we must deepen our own hold upon the truths which christ has taught us. we must preach them more simply, more confidently, more reasonably, more earnestly. we must draw from them the happiness and the help, the comfort and the inspiration, that they have to give to the souls of men. but most of all, we must keep them in close and living touch with the problems of daily duty and experience. for no doctrine, however high, however true, can make men happy until it is translated into life. ii. here is the second if, on which the power of religion to confer happiness depends: if ye know, happy are ye if ye do these things. between the knowing and the doing there is a deep gulf. into that abyss the happiness of many a man slips, and is lost. there is no peace, no real and lasting felicity for a human life until the gulf is closed, and the continent of conduct meets the continent of creed, edge to edge, lip to lip, firmly joined forever. it is not a blessing to know the things that christ teaches, and then go on living as if they were false or doubtful. it is a trouble, a torment, a secret misery. to know that god is our father, and yet to withhold our love and service from him; to know that christ died for us, and yet to deny him and refuse to follow him; to know that there is an immortal life, and yet to waste and lose our souls in the pursuit of sensual pleasure and such small portion of the world as we may hope to gain,--surely that is the deepest of all unhappiness. but the right kind of knowing carries in its heart the doing of the truth. and the right kind of doing leads to a fuller and happier knowing. "if any man will do god's will," declares christ, "he shall know of the doctrine." let a man take the truth of the divine fatherhood and begin to conform his life to its meaning. let him give up his anxious worryings, his murmurings, his complainings, and trust himself completely to his father's care. let him do his work from day to day as well as he can and leave the results to god. let him come to his father every day and confess his faults and ask for help and guidance. let him try to obey and please god for love's sake. let him take refuge from the trials and confusions and misunderstandings of the world, from the wrath of men and the strife of tongues, in the secret of his father's presence. surely if he learns the truth thus, by doing it, he will find happiness. or take the truth of immortality. let a man live now in the light of the knowledge that he is to live forever. how it will deepen and strengthen the meaning of his existence, lift him above petty cares and ambitions, and make the things that are worth while precious to his heart! let him really set his affections on the spiritual side of life, let him endure afflictions patiently because he knows that they are but for a moment, let him think more of the soul than of the body, let him do good to his fellow-men in order to make them sharers of his immortal hope, let him purify his love and friendship that they may be fit for the heavenly life. surely the man who does these things will be happy. it will be with him as with lazarus, in robert browning's poem, "the epistle of karshish." others will look at him with wonder and say: "whence has the man the balm that brightens all? this grown man eyes the world now like a child." yes, my brethren, this is the sure result of following out the doctrines of christ in action, of living the truths that he teaches,--a simple life, a childlike life, a happy life. and this also the church needs to-day, as well as a true revival of doctrine. a revival of simplicity, a revival of sincerity, a revival of work: this will restore unto us the joy of salvation. and with the joy of salvation will come a renewal and expansion of power. the inconsistency of christians is the stronghold of unbelief. the lack of vital joy in the church is the chief cause of indifference in the world. the feeble energy, the faltering and reluctant spirit, the weariness in well-doing with which too many believers impoverish and sadden their own hearts, make other men question the reality and value of religion and turn away from it in cool neglect. what, then, is the duty of the church? what must she do to win the confidence of the world? what is the best way for her to "prove her doctrine all divine"? first, she must increase her labours in the love of men: second, she must practice the simple life, deepening her trust in god. suppose that a fresh flood of energy, brave, cheerful, joyous energy, should be poured into all the forms of christian work. suppose that foreign missions and home missions should no longer have to plead and beg for support, but that plenty of money should come flowing in to send out every missionary that wants to go, and that plenty of the strongest and best young men should dedicate their lives to the ministry of christ, and that every household where his gospel is believed should find its highest honour and its greatest joy in helping to extend his kingdom. and then suppose that the christian life, in its daily manifestation, should come to be marked and known by simplicity and happiness. suppose that the followers of jesus should really escape from bondage to the evil spirits of avarice and luxury which infect and torment so much of our complicated, tangled, artificial, modern life. suppose that instead of increasing their wants and their desires, instead of loading themselves down on life's journey with so many bags and parcels and boxes of superfluous luggage and bric-a-brac that they are forced to sit down by the roadside and gasp for breath, instead of wearing themselves out in the dusty ways of ostentation and vain show or embittering their hearts because they can not succeed in getting into the weary race of wealth and fashion,--suppose instead of all this, they should turn to quiet ways, lowly pleasures, pure and simple joys, "plain living and high thinking." suppose they should truly find and show their happiness in the knowledge that god loves them and christ died for them and heaven is sure, and so set their hearts free to rejoice in life's common mercies, the light of the sun, the blue of the sky, the splendour of the sea, the peace of the everlasting hills, the song of birds, the sweetness of flowers, the wholesome savour of good food, the delights of action and motion, the refreshment of sleep, the charm of music, the blessings of human love and friendship,--rejoice in all these without fear or misgiving, because they come from god and because christ has sanctified them all by his presence and touch. suppose, i say, that such a revival of the joy of living in christ and working for christ should silently sweep over the church in the twentieth century. what would happen? great would be the peace of her children. greater still would be their power. this is the message which i have to bring to you, my brethren, in this general assembly of the presbyterian church. you may wonder that it is not more distinctive, more ecclesiastical, more specially adapted to the peculiarities of our own denomination. you may think that it is a message which could just as well be brought to any other church on any other occasion. with all my heart i hope that is true. the things that i care for most in our church are not those which divide us from other christians but those which unite us to them. the things that i love most in christianity are those which give it power to save and satisfy, to console and cheer, to inspire and bless human hearts and lives. the thing that i desire most for presbyterianism is that it should prove its mission and extend its influence in the world by making men happy in the knowing and the doing of the things which christ teaches. the church that the twentieth century will hear most gladly and honour most sincerely will have two marks. it will be the church that teaches most clearly and strongly the truths that jesus taught. it will be the church that finds most happiness in living the simple life and doing good in the world. the battle of life <i>romans vii. : overcome evil with good.</i> the battle of life is an ancient phrase consecrated by use in commencement orations without number. two modern expressions have taken their place beside it in our own day: the strenuous life, and the simple life. each of these phrases has its own significance and value. it is when they are overemphasized and driven to extremes that they lose their truth and become catch-words of folly. the simple life which blandly ignores all care and conflict, soon becomes flabby and invertebrate, sentimental and gelatinous. the strenuous life which does everything with set jaws and clenched fists and fierce effort, soon becomes strained and violent, a prolonged nervous spasm. somewhere between these two extremes must lie the golden mean: a life that has strength and simplicity, courage and calm, power and peace. but how can we find this golden line and live along it? some truth there must be in the old phrase which speaks of life as a battle. no conflict, no character. without strife, a weak life. but what is the real meaning of the battle? what is the vital issue at stake? what are the things worth fighting for? in what spirit, with what weapons, are we to take our part in the warfare? there is an answer to these questions in the text: <i>overcome evil with good.</i> the man who knows this text by heart, knows the secret of a life that is both strenuous and simple. for here we find the three things that we need most: a call to the real battle of life; a plan for the right campaign; and a promise of final victory. i. every man, like the knight in the old legend, is born on a field of battle. but the warfare is not carnal, it is spiritual. not the east against the west, the north against the south, the "haves" against the "have-nots"; but the evil against the good,--that is the real conflict of life. the attempt to deny or ignore this conflict has been the stock in trade of every false doctrine that has befogged and bewildered the world since the days of eden. the fairy tale that the old serpent told to eve is a poetic symbol of the lie fundamental,--the theory that sin does not mean death, because it has no real existence and makes no real difference. this ancient falsehood has an infinite wardrobe of disguises. you will find it pranked out in philosophic garb in the doctrines of those who teach that all things are linked together by necessity of nature or divine will, and that nothing could ever have happened otherwise than just as it has come to pass. such a theory of the universe blots out all difference between good and evil except in name. it leaves the fence-posts standing, but it takes away the rails, and throws everything into one field of the inevitable. you will find the same falsehood in a more crude form in the popular teachings of what men call "the spirit of the age," the secular spirit. according to these doctrines the problem of civilization is merely a problem of ways and means. if society were better organized, if wealth were more equally distributed, if laws were changed, or perhaps abolished, all would be well. if everybody had a full dinner-pail, nobody need care about an empty heart. human misery the secular spirit recognizes, but it absolutely ignores the fact that nine-tenths of human misery comes from human sin. you will find the same falsehood disguised in sentimental costume in the very modern comedy of christian science, which dresses the denial of evil in pastoral garb of white frock and pink ribbons, like an innocent shepherdess among her lambs. "evil is nothing," says this wonderful science. "it does not really exist. it is an illusion of mortal mind. shut your eyes and it will vanish." yes, but open your eyes again and you will see it in the same place, in the same form, doing the same work. a most persistent nothing, a most powerful nothing! not the shadow cast by the good, but the cloud that hides the sun and casts the shadow. not the "silence implying sound," but the discord breaking the harmony. evil is as real as the fire that burns you, as the flood that drowns you. evil is as real as the typhoid germ that you can put under a microscope and see it squirm and grow. evil is negative,--yes, but it is a real negative,--as real as darkness, as real as death. there are two things in every human heart which bear witness to the existence and reality of evil: first, our judgments of regret, and second, our judgments of condemnation. how often we say to ourselves, "would that this had not come to pass!" how often we feel in regard to our own actions, "would that i had done differently!" this is the judgment of regret; and it is a silent witness of the heart to the conviction that some things are not inevitable. it is the confession that a battle has been lost which might have been won. it is the acknowledgment that things which are, but are not right, need not have been, if we and our fellow-men had seen more clearly and followed more faithfully the guiding star of the good. and then, out of the judgment of regret, springs the deeper judgment of condemnation. if the failure in duty was not inevitable, then it was base. the false word, the unjust deed, the foul action, seen as a surrender to evil, appears hateful and guilty. it deserves the indignation and the shame which attach to all treason. and the spirit which lies behind all these forms of disloyalty to the good,--the spirit which issues in selfishness and sensuality, cruelty and lust, intemperance and covetousness,--this animating spirit of evil which works against the divine will and mars the peace and order of the universe is the great adversary against whom we must fight for our own lives and the life of the world. all around us lies his dark, secret kingdom, tempting, threatening, assaulting the soul. to ignore it, is to walk blindfold among snares and pitfalls. try if you will to shut it out, by wrapping your heart in dreams of beauty and joy, living in the fair regions of art or philosophy, reading only the books which speak of evil as if it did not exist or were only another form of goodness. soon you will be shaken out of the dream into the reality. you will come into contact with evil so close, so loathsome that you can not deny it. you will see that it has its soldiers, its servants, its emissaries, as ardent and enthusiastic in its cause as if they were serving the noblest of masters. it inspires literature and supports newspapers; now intelligent and cultured, drawing the arts into its service; now coarse and vulgar, with pictures that shock the taste as much as they debase the conscience. it wins adherents and turns them into advocates. it organizes the dealers in drunkenness and debauchery into powerful societies for mutual protection. it creates lobbies and controls legislatures. it corrupts the government of great cities and rots out the social life of small towns. even when its outward manifestations are repressed and its grosser forms resisted, it steals its way into men's hearts, eating out the roots of human trust and brotherhood and kindness, and filling the air with gossip and spite, envy, malice and all uncharitableness. i am glad that since we have to live in a world where evil exists, we have a religion which does not bandage our eyes. the first thing that we need to have religion do for us is to teach us to face the facts. no man can come into touch with the divine personality of jesus christ, no man can listen to his teaching, without feeling that the distinction between good and evil to him is vital and everlasting. the choice between them is to him the great choice. the conflict between them is to him the great conflict. evil is the one thing that god has never willed. good is the one thing that he wills forever. evil is first and last a rebellion against his will. he is altogether on the side of good. much that is, is contrary to his will. there is a mighty strife going on, a battle with eternal issues, but not an eternal battle. the evil that is against him shall be cast out and shall perish. the good that overcomes the evil shall live forever. and those who yield their lives to god and receive his righteousness in christ are made partakers of everlasting life. this is the teaching of jesus: and i thank god for the honesty and virility of his religion which makes us face the facts and calls us to take a man's part in the real battle of life. ii. but what is the plan of campaign which christianity sets before us? in what spirit and with what weapons are we to enter the great conflict against the evil that is in the world? the natural feeling of the heart in the presence of evil is wrath, and the natural weapon of wrath is force. to punish crime, to avenge wrong, to put down wickedness with a strong hand,--that is the first impulse of every one who has the instincts of manhood. and as this is natural, so it is, also, within a certain sphere needful, and to a certain extent useful. armies and navies exist, at least in theory, to prevent injustice among nations. laws are made to punish wrong-doers. courts, police-forces, and prisons are maintained to suppress evil with power. but while we recognize this method of dealing with evil as useful to a certain extent and necessary within a certain sphere, we must remember that it has its strict limitations. first, it belongs to the state and not to the individual. when the private man assumes to punish evil with force he sanctions lynch-law, which is a terror to the innocent as well as to the guilty. then we have the blood-feud and the vendetta, mob-rule and anarchy. second, the suppression of evil by force is only a temporary relief, a protection for the moment. it does not touch the root of the matter. you send the murderer out of the world by a regulated flash of lightning. but you do not send murder out of the world. to do that you must reach and change the heart of cain. you put the thief in prison, but when he comes out he will be ready to steal again, unless you can purify his conscience and control his will. you assault and overthrow some system of misgovernment, and "turn the rascals out." but unless you have something better to substitute, all you have done is to make room for a new set of rascals,--a new swarm of mosquitoes with fresh appetites and larger capacities. third, the method of fighting evil with force on its own ground often has a bad effect on those who follow it. wrestle with a chimney-sweep and you will need a bath. throw back the mud that is thrown at you, and you will have dirty hands. answer shimei when he curses you and you will echo his profanity. many a man has entered a crusade against intemperance and proved himself as intemperate in his language as other men are in their potations. many a man has attacked a bad cause with righteous indignation and ended in a personal squabble with most unrighteous anger. no, my brother-men, the best way to fight against evil is not to meet it on its own ground with its own weapons. there is a nobler method of warfare, a divine plan of campaign given to us in the religion of christ. overcome evil with good. this is the secret of the battle of life. evil is potent not so much because it has command of money and the "big battalions," but because it has control of the hearts of men. it spreads because human hearts are lying fallow and ready to welcome the seeds of all kinds of weeds. it persists because too much of what we call virtue is negative, and selfish, and frost-bound,--cold storage virtue,--the poor piety which terminates in a trembling anxiety to save our own souls. the way to counteract and conquer evil in the world is to give our own hearts to the dominion of good, and work the works of god while it is day. the strongest of all obstacles to the advance of evil is a clean and generous man, doing his duty from day to day, and winning others, by his cheerful fidelity, to serve the same master. diseases are not the only things that are contagious. courage is contagious. kindness is contagious. manly integrity is contagious. all the positive virtues, with red blood in their veins, are contagious. the heaviest blow that you can strike at the kingdom of evil is just to follow the advice which the dying sir walter scott gave to his son-in-law, lockhart: "be a good man." and if you want to know how, there is but one perfect and supreme example,--the life of him who not only did no evil but went about doing good. now take that thought of fighting evil with good and apply it to our world and to ourselves. here are monstrous evils and vices in society. let intemperance be the type of them all, because so many of the others are its children. drunkenness ruins more homes and wrecks more lives than war. how shall we oppose it? i do not say that we shall not pass resolutions and make laws against it. but i do say that we can never really conquer the evil in this way. i hold with phillips brooks that "all prohibitory measures are negative. that they have their uses no one can doubt. that they have their limits is just as clear." the stronghold of intemperance lies in the vacancy and despair of men's minds. the way to attack it is to make the sober life beautiful and happy and full of interest. teach your boys how to work, how to read, how to play, you fathers, before you send them to college, if you want to guard them against the temptations of strong drink and the many shames and sorrows that go with it. make the life of your community cheerful and pleasant and interesting, you reformers, provide men with recreation which will not harm them, if you want to take away the power of the gilded saloon and the grimy boozing-ken. parks and play-grounds, libraries and music-rooms, clean homes and cheerful churches,--these are the efficient foes of intemperance. and the same thing is true of gambling and lubricity and all the other vices which drag men down by the lower side of their nature because the higher side has nothing to cling to, nothing to sustain it and hold it up. what are you going to do, my brother-men, for this higher side of human life? what contribution are you going to make of your strength, your time, your influence, your money, your self, to make a cleaner, fuller, happier, larger, nobler life possible for some of your fellow-men? i do not ask how you are going to do it. you may do it in business, in the law, in medicine, in the ministry, in teaching, in literature. but this is the question: what are you going to give personally to make the human life of the place where you do your work, purer, stronger, brighter, better, and more worth living? that will be your best part in the warfare against vice and crime. the positive method is the only efficient way to combat intellectual error and spiritual evil. false doctrines are never argued out of the world. they are pushed back by the incoming of the truth as the darkness is pushed back by the dawn. phillips brooks was right. it is not worth while to cross the street to break a man's idol. it is worth while to cross the ocean to tell him about god. the skilful fencer who attacks your doubts and drives you from corner to corner of unbelief and leaves you at last in doubt whether you doubt or not, does you a certain service. he gives you exercise, takes the conceit out of you. but the man who lays hold of the real faith that is hidden underneath your doubt,--the silent longing for god and goodness, the secret attraction that draws your heart toward jesus christ as the only one who has the words of everlasting life,--the man who takes hold of this buried faith and quickens it and makes you dare to try to live by it,--ah, that is the man who helps you indeed. my brothers, if any of you are going to be preachers remember this. what we men need is not so much an answer to our doubts, as more nourishment for our faith. the positive method is the only way of victory in our struggle with the evil that dwells in our own nature and besets our own hearts. the reason why many men fail, is because they thrust the vice out and then forget to lay hold on the virtue. they evict the unclean spirit and leave a vacant house. to cease to do evil is important, but to learn to do good is far more important. reformation never saved a man. transformation is the only way. and to be transformed, a man must welcome the spirit of good, the holy spirit, into his heart, and work with him every day, doing the will of god. there are two ways of fighting fever. one is to dose the sick people with quinine and keep the fever down. the other is to drain the marshes, and purify the water, and cleanse the houses, and drive the fever out. try negative, repressive religion, and you may live, but you will be an invalid. try positive, vital religion, and you will be well. there is an absorption of good that guards the soul against the infection of evil. there is a life of fellowship with christ that can pass through the furnace of the world without the smell of fire on its garments,--a life that is full of interest as his was, being ever about his father's business; a life that is free and generous and blessed, as his was, being spent in doing good, and refreshed by the sense of god's presence and approval. last summer, i saw two streams emptying into the sea. one was a sluggish, niggardly rivulet, in a wide, fat, muddy bed; and every day the tide came in and drowned out that poor little stream, and filled it with bitter brine. the other was a vigorous, joyful, brimming mountain-river, fed from unfailing springs among the hills; and all the time it swept the salt water back before it and kept itself pure and sweet; and when the tide came in, it only made the fresh water rise higher and gather new strength by the delay; and ever the living stream poured forth into the ocean its tribute of living water,--the symbol of that influence which keeps the ocean of life from turning into a dead sea of wickedness. my brother-men, will you take that living stream as a type of your life in the world? the question for you is not what you are going to get out of the world, but what you are going to give to the world. the only way to meet and overcome the inflowing tide of evil is to roll against it the outflowing river of good. my prayer for you is that you may receive from christ not only the watchword of this nobler life, but also the power to fulfil it. the good old way <i>jeremiah vi. . stand ye in the ways and see; and ask for the old paths, where is the good way; and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.</i> this advice was given to people who were in peril and perplexity. the kingdom of judah was threatened with destruction, which could be averted only by wise and prompt action. but the trouble was to decide in which direction that action should be taken. the nation was divided into loud parties, and these parties into noisy wings. every man had a theory of his own, or a variation of some other man's theory. some favoured an alliance with the east; some preferred the friendship of the west; others, a course of diplomatic dalliance; a few stood out for honest independence. some said that what the country needed was an increase of wealth; some held that a splendid and luxurious court like that of pharaoh or nebuchadnezzar would bring prosperity; others maintained that the troubles of the land could be healed only by a return to "simpler manners, purer laws." among the nobility and their followers all kinds of novelties in the worship of idols were in fashion and new gods were imported every season. the philosophers cultivated a discreet indifference to all religious questions. the prophets taught that the only salvation for the nation lay in the putting away of idolatry and the revival of faith in the living and true god. judah was like a man standing at the cross-roads, on a stormy night, with all the guide-posts blown down. meantime the babylonian foe was closing in around jerusalem, and it was necessary to do something, or die. the liberty of choice was an embarrassment. the minds of men alternated between that rash haste which is ready to follow any leader who makes noise enough, and that skeptical spirit which doubts whether any line of action can be right because so many lines are open. into this atmosphere of fever and fog came the word of the prophet. let us consider what it means. stand ye in the ways and see: that means deliberation. when you are at a junction it is no time to shut your eyes and run at full speed. where there are so many ways some of them are likely to be wrong. a turning-point is the place for prudence and forethought. ask for the old paths, what is the good way: that means guidance. no man is forced to face the problems of life alone. other men have tried the different ways. peace, prosperity, victory have been won by the nation in former times. inquire of the past how these blessings were secured. look for the path which has already led to safety and happiness. let history teach you which among all these crossing ways is the best to follow. and walk therein: that means action. when you have deliberated, when you have seen the guiding light upon the way of security and peace, then go ahead. prudence is worthless unless you put it into practice. when in doubt do nothing; but as long as you do nothing you will be in doubt. never man or nation was saved by inaction. the only way out of danger is the way into work. gird up your loins, trembling judah, and push along your chosen path, steadily, bravely, strenuously, until you come to your promised rest. now i am sure this was good counsel that the prophet gave to his people in the days of perplexity. it would have been well for them if they had followed it i am sure it is also good counsel for us, a word of god to steady us and stimulate us amid life's confusions. let me make it a personal message to you. stand in the ways: ask for the good way: walk therein:--deliberation, guidance, action,--will you take these words with you, and try to make them a vital influence in your life? i. first, i ask you to stand in the ways and see. i do not mean to say that you have not already been doing this to a certain extent. the great world is crossed by human footsteps which make paths leading in all directions. men travel through on different ways; and i suppose some of you have noticed the fact, and thought a little about it. there is the way of sensuality. those who walk in it take appetite as their guide. their main object in life is to gratify their physical desires. some of them are delicate, and some of them are coarse. that is a matter of temperament. but all of them are hungry. that is a matter of principle. whether they grub in the mire for their food like swine, or browse daintily upon the tree-tops like the giraffe, the question of life for those who follow this way is the same. "how much can we hold? how can we obtain the most pleasure for these five senses of ours before they wear out?" and the watchword of their journey is, "let us eat and drink and be merry, for we do not expect to die to-morrow." there is the way of avarice. those who follow it make haste to be rich. the almighty dollar rolls before them along the road, and they chase it. some of them plod patiently along the highway of toil. others are always leaping fences and trying to find short cuts to wealth. but they are alike in this: whatever they do by way of avocation, the real vocation of their life is to make money. if they fail, they are hard and bitter; if they succeed they are hard and proud. but they all bow down to the golden calf, and their motto is, "lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth." there is the way of social ambition. those who walk in it have their eyes fixed on various prizes, such as titles of honour, public office, large acquaintance with prosperous people, the reputation of leading the fashion. but the real satisfaction that they get out of it all is simply the feeling of notoriety, the sense of belonging to a circle to which ordinary people are not admitted and to whose doings the world, just for this reason, pays envious attention. this way is less like a road than like a ladder. most of the people who are on it are "climbers." there are other ways, less clearly marked, more difficult to trace,--the way of moral indifference, the way of intellectual pride, the way of hypocrisy, the way of indecision. this last is not a single road; it is a net-work of sheep-tracks, crossing and recrossing the great highways, leading in every direction, and ending nowhere. the men who wander in these aimless paths go up and down through the world, changing their purposes, following one another blindly, forever travelling but never arriving at the goal of their journey. through all this tangle there runs another way,--the path of faith and duty. those who walk in it believe that life has a meaning, the fulfilment of god's will, and a goal, the attainment of perfect harmony with him. they try to make the best of themselves in soul and body by training and discipline. they endeavour to put their talents to the noblest use in the service of their fellow-men, and to unfold their faculties to the highest joy and power in the life of the spirit. they seek an education to fit them for work, and they do their work well because it is a part of their education. they respect their consciences, and cherish their ideals. they put forth an honest effort to be good and to do good and to make the world better. they often stumble. they sometimes fall. but, take their life from end to end, it is a faithful attempt to walk in "the way of righteousness, which is the way of peace." such are some of the ways that lead through the world. and they are all open to us. we can travel by the road that pleases us. heredity gives us our outfit. environment supplies our company. but when we come to the cross-roads, the question is, "boy, which way will you ride?" deliberation is necessary, unless we wish to play a fool's part. no amount of energy will take the place of thought. a strenuous life, with its eyes shut, is a kind of wild insanity. a drifting life, with its eyes open, is a kind of mild idiocy. the real question is, "how will you live? after what rule and pattern? along what way? toward what end?" will you let chance answer that question for you? will you let yourself be led blindfold by the first guide that offers, or run stupidly after the crowd without asking whither they are going? you would not act so in regard to the shortest earthly journey. you would not rush into the railway station and jump aboard of the first train you saw, without looking at the sign-boards. surely if there is anything in regard to which we need to exercise deliberation, it is the choice of the way that we are to take through the world. you have thought a good deal about what business, what profession you are to follow. think more deeply, i beg you, about how you are to follow it and what you are to follow it for. stand in the ways, and see. ii. second, i earnestly advise you to ask for the old paths, where is the good way. i do not regard this as a mere counsel of conservatism, an unqualified commendation of antiquity. true, it implies that the good way will not be a new discovery, a track that you and i strike out for ourselves. among the paths of conduct, that which is entirely original is likely to be false, and that which is true is likely to have some footprints on it. when a man comes to us with a scheme of life which he has made all by himself, we may safely say to him, as the old composer said to the young musician who brought him a symphony of the future, "it is both new and beautiful; but that which is new is not beautiful, and that which is beautiful is not new." but this is by no means the same as saying that everything ancient is therefore beautiful and true, or that all the old ways are good. the very point of the text is that we must discriminate among antiquities,--a thing as necessary in old chairs and old books as in old ways. evil is almost, if not quite, as ancient as good. folly and wisdom, among men at least, are twins, and we can not distinguish between them by the grey hairs. adam's way was old enough; and so was the way of cain, and of noah's vile son, and of lot's lewd daughters, and of balaam, and of jezebel, and of manasseh. judas iscariot was as old as st. john. ananias and sapphira were of the same age with st. peter and st. paul. what we are to ask for is not simply the old way, but that one among the old ways which has been tested and tried and proved to be the good way. the spirit of wisdom tells us that we are not to work this way out by logarithms, or evolve it from our own inner consciousness, but to learn what it is by looking at the lives of other men and marking the lessons which they teach us. experience has been compared to the stern-light of a ship which shines only on the road that has been traversed. but the stern-light of a ship that sails before you is a head-light to you. you do not need to try everything for yourself in order to understand what it means. the writer of ecclesiastes tells us that he gave his heart to know madness and folly; and that it was all vanity and vexation of spirit. it will be a wise economy for us to accept his lesson without paying his tuition-fee over again. it is perfectly safe for a man to take it as a fact that fire burns, without putting his hand into the flame. he does not need to try perilous experiments with his own soul in order to make sure that lust defiles, that avarice hardens, that frivolity empties, that selfishness cankers the heart. he may understand the end of the way of sensuality by looking at any old pleasure-seeker, "gray, and gap-toothed, and lean as death," mumbling the dainties that he can no longer enjoy, and glowering with bleared eyes at the indulgences which now mock him even while they tempt him. the goal of the path of covetousness may be discerned in the face of any old money-worshipper; keeping guard over his piles of wealth, like a surly watch-dog; or, if perchance he has failed, haunting the places where fortune has deceived him, like an unquiet ghost. inquire and learn; consider and discern. there need be no doubt about the direction of life's various ways. which are the nations that have been most peaceful and noble and truly prosperous? those that have followed pride and luxury and idolatry? or those that have cherished sobriety and justice, and acknowledged the divine law of righteousness? which are the families that have been most serene and pure and truly fortunate? those in which there has been no discipline, no restraint, no common faith, no mutual love? or those in which sincere religion has swayed life to its stern and gracious laws, those in which parents and children have walked together to the house of god, and knelt together at his altar, and rejoiced together in his service? i tell you, my brother-men, it has become too much the fashion in these latter days to sneer and jeer at the old-fashioned ways of the old-fashioned american household. something too much of iron there may have been in the puritan's temper; something too little of sunlight may have come in through the narrow windows of his house. but that house had foundations, and the virile virtues lived in it. there were plenty of red corpuscles in his blood, and his heart beat in time with the eternal laws of right, even though its pulsations sometimes seemed a little slow and heavy. it would be well for us if we could get back into the old way, which proved itself to be the good way, and maintain, as our fathers did, the sanctity of the family, the sacredness of the marriage-vow, the solemnity of the mutual duties binding parents and children together. from the households that followed this way have come men that could rule themselves as well as their fellows, women that could be trusted as well as loved. read the history of such families, and you will understand the truth of the poet's words:-- "self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,-- these three alone lead life to sovereign power." look around you in the world and see what way it is that has brought your fellow-men to peace and quietness of heart, to security and honour of life. is it the way of unbridled self-indulgence, of unscrupulous greed, of aimless indolence? or is it the way of self-denial, of cheerful industry, of fair dealing, of faithful service? if true honour lies in the respect and grateful love of one's fellow-men, if true success lies in a contented heart and a peaceful conscience, then the men who have reached the highest goal of life are those who have followed most closely the way to which jesus christ points us and in which he goes before us. iii. walk therein and ye shall find rest for your souls. right action brings rest. rest! rest! how that word rings like a sweet bell through the turmoil of our age. we are rushing to and fro, destroying rest in our search for it. we drive our automobiles from one place to another, at furious speed, not knowing what we shall do when we get there. we make haste to acquire new possessions, not knowing how we shall use them when they are ours. we are in a fever of new discoveries and theories, not knowing how to apply them when they are made. we feed ourselves upon novel speculations until our heads swim with the vertigo of universal knowledge which changes into the paresis of universal doubt. but in the hours of silence, the spirit of wisdom whispers a secret to our hearts. rest depends upon conduct. the result of your life depends upon your choosing the good way and walking in it. and to you i say, my brother-men, choose christ, for he is the way. all the strength and sweetness of the best possible human life are embodied in him. all the truth that is needed to inspire and guide man to noble action and fine character is revealed in him. he is the one master altogether worthy to be served and followed. take his yoke upon you and learn of him, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. [transcriber's note: this production is based on https://archive.org/details/followingofchris thom. this work has almost every sentence and sentence fragment in a separate paragraph. the original work is about forty characters wide, which has been maintained in the text format to imitate "pocket book" layout. "usccb" refers to bible citations from the united states conference of catholic bishops, http://usccb.org/bible/books-of-the-bible/ these notes are inserted where the text has been relocated, e.g.: from ecclesiastes to sirach; and psalms, where chapter numbers are modified. the abbreviated names of biblical books have been replaced with their full names. some archaic, uncommon words. burthen: burden compunction: deep regret, scruples, guilt. concupiscence: sexual desire contemn: look down on with disdain. fain: having made preparations. increated: not created. longanimity: good-natured tolerance of delay or incompetence. procurator: person authorized to act for another. refection: light meal. vouchsafe: grant in a condescending manner. wo: woe. the table of contents is on page .] --------------------------------------- { } the _following of christ,_ in four books, translated from the original latin of _thomas a kempis_, by the rt. rev. and ven. richard challoner, d.d. v.a, fifteenth edition, london: printed by keating, brown and co. , duke-street, grosvenor-square. . { } { } the _following of christ_. ------------------- book i. chap. i.--_of following christ, and despising all the vanities of the world._ . _he that followeth me, walketh not in darkness,_ saith our lord, _john viii._ . these are the words of christ, by which we are admonished that we must imitate his life and manners, if we would be truly enlightened, and delivered from all blindness of heart. let it then be our chief study to meditate on the life of jesus christ. . the doctrine of christ surpasseth all the doctrines of the saints: and whosoever hath the spirit, will find therein a hidden manna. { } but it happeneth that many, by frequent hearing the gospel, are very little affected: because they have not the spirit of christ. but he who would fully and feelingly understand the words of christ: must study to make his whole life conformable to that of christ. . what doth it avail thee, to discourse profoundly of the trinity: if thou be void of humility, and consequently displeasing to the trinity? in truth, sublime words make not a man holy and just: but a virtuous life maketh him dear to god. i had rather feel compunction, than know its definition. if thou didst know the whole bible by heart, and the sayings of all the philosophers: what would it all profit thee, without the love of god and his grace? _vanity of vanities, and all is vanity_, besides loving god, and serving him alone. this is the highest wisdom: by despising the world, to tend to heavenly kingdoms. { } . it is vanity therefore to seek after riches which must perish, and to trust in them. it is vanity also to be ambitious of honours, and to raise one's self to a high station. it is vanity to follow the lusts of the flesh: and to desire that for which thou must afterwards be grievously punished. it is vanity to wish for a long life: and to take little care of leading a good life. it is vanity to mind only this present life, and not to look forward into those things which are to come. it is vanity to love that which passeth with all speed: and not to hasten thither where everlasting joy remains. . often remember that proverb: _the eye in not satisfied with seeing, nor is the ear filled with hearing._ ecclesiastes i. . study therefore to withdraw thy heart from the love of visible things, and to turn thyself to things invisible; for they that follow their sensuality, defile their conscience, and lose the grace of god. { } chap. ii.--_of having an humble sentiment of one's self._ . all men naturally desire to know; but what doth knowledge avail without the fear of god? indeed an humble husbandman, that serveth god; is better than a proud philosopher, who, neglecting himself, considers the course of the heavens. he, who knows himself well, is mean in his own eyes, and is not delighted with being praised by men. if i should know all things that are in the world, and should not be in charity: what help would it be to me in the sight of god, who will judge me by my deeds? . leave off that excessive desire of knowing: because there is found therein much distraction and deceit. they who are learned, are desirous to appear and to be called wise. there are many things, the knowledge of which is of little or no profit to the soul. { } and he is very unwise who attends to other things than what may serve to his salvation. many words do not satisfy the soul; but a good life gives ease to the mind; and a pure conscience affords a great confidence in god. . the more and better thou knowest, the more heavy will be thy judgment, unless thy life be also more holy. be not therefore puffed up with any art or science; but rather fear upon account of the knowledge which is given thee. if it seems to thee that thou knowest many things, and understandest them well enough: know at the same time that there are many more things of which thou art ignorant. _be not high minded_, but rather acknowledge thy ignorance. why wouldst thou prefer thyself to any one, since there are many more learned and skilful in the law than thyself? if thou wouldst know and learn any thing to the purpose: love to be unknown, and esteemed as nothing. { } . this is the highest and most profitable lesson, truly to know, and to despise ourselves. to have no opinion of ourselves, and to think always well and commendably of others, is great wisdom and high perfection. if thou shouldst see another openly sin, or commit some heinous crime, yet thou oughtest not to esteem thyself better: because thou knowest not how long thou mayest remain in a good state. we are all frail: but see thou think no one more frail than thyself. chap. iii.--_of the doctrine of truth_. . happy is he whom _truth_ teacheth by itself, not by figures and words that pass, but as it is in itself. our opinion, and our sense, often deceive us, and discover but little. what signifies making a great dispute about abstruse and obscure matters, for not knowing of which we shall not be questioned at the day of judgment. { } it is a great folly for us to neglect things profitable and necessary, and willingly to busy ourselves about those which are curious and hurtful.--we have eyes and see not. . and what need we concern ourselves about questions of philosophy? he to whom the _eternal word_ speaketh, is set at liberty from a multitude of opinions. from _one word_ are all things, and this one all things speak: and this is _the beginning which also speaks to us_, john viii. . without this _word_ no one understands or judges rightly. he to whom all things are _one_ [footnote], and who draws all things to _one_,--and who sees all things in _one_,--may be steady in heart, and peaceably repose in god. [footnote: the author seems here to allude to that passage of st. paul, corinthians ii. . where he says, "that he desired to know nothing but jesus christ, and him crucified."] o _truth_, my god, make me one with thee in everlasting love. { } i am weary with often reading and hearing many things: in thee is _all_ that i will or desire. let all teachers hold their peace; let all creatures be silent in thy sight: speak thou alone to me. . the more a man is united within himself, and interiorly simple, the more and higher things doth he understand without labour: because he receives the light of understanding from above. a pure, simple, and steady spirit, is not dissipated by a multitude of affairs; because he performs them all to the honour of god, and endeavours to be at rest within himself, and free from all seeking of himself. who is a greater hinderance and trouble to thee, than thine own unmortified affection of heart? a good and devout man first disposes his works inwardly, which he is to do outwardly. neither do they draw him to the desires of an inordinate inclination: but he bends them to the rule of right reason. { } who has a stronger conflict than he who strives to overcome himself? and this must be our business, to strive to overcome ourselves, and daily to gain strength against ourselves, and to grow better and better. . all perfections in this life are attended with some imperfections: and all our speculations with a certain obscurity. the humble knowledge of thyself is a surer way to god, than the deepest search after science. learning is not to be blamed, nor the mere knowledge of any thing, which is good in itself, and ordained by god: but a good conscience and a virtuous life is always to be preferred before it. but because many make it more their study to know, than to live well: therefore are they often deceived, and bring forth none, or very little fruit. . oh! if men would use as much diligence in rooting out vices and planting virtues, as they do in proposing questions: there would not be so great evils committed, nor scandals among the people, nor so much relaxation in monasteries. { } verily, when the day of judgment comes, we shall not be examined what we have read, but what we have done; nor how learnedly we have spoken, but how religiously we have lived. tell me now where are all those great doctors, with whom thou wast well acquainted, whilst they were living, and flourished in learning? now others possess their livings, and i know not whether they ever think of them. in their life-time they seemed to be something: and now they are not spoken of. . oh! how quickly doth the glory of the world pass away! would to god their lives had been answerable to their learning! then would they have studied and read well. how many perish in the world thro' vain learning, who take little care of the service of god. { } and because they chuse rather to be great than to be humble, therefore they are lost in their own imaginations. he is truly great, who is great in charity. he is truly great, who is little in his own eyes: and makes no account of the height of honour. he is truly prudent, who looks upon all earthly things as dung, that he may gain christ. and he is very learned indeed, who does the will of god, and renounces his own will. chap. iv.--_of prudence in our doings_. . we must not be easy in giving credit to every word or suggestion; but carefully and leisurely weigh the matter according to god. alas! such is our weakness, that we often more readily believe and speak of another that which is evil: than that which is good. but perfect men do not easily give credit to every report; because they know man's weakness, which is very prone to evil, and very subject to fail in words. { } . it is great wisdom not to be rash in our doings: nor to maintain too obstinately our own opinion. as also not to believe every man's word; nor presently to tell others the things which we have heard or believed. consult with the wise and conscientious man: and seek rather to be instructed by one that is better, than to follow thine own inventions. a good life make's a man wise according to god, and expert in many things. the more humble a man is in himself, and more subject to god: the more wise will he be in all things, and the more at peace. chap. v.--_of reading the holy scriptures._ . truth is to be sought for in holy scripture, not eloquence. all holy scripture ought to be read with that spirit with which it was made. { } we must rather seek for profit in the scriptures, than for subtlety of speech. we ought as willingly to read devout and simple books: as those that are high and profound. let not the authority of the writer offend thee, whether he was of little or great learning: but let the love of pure truth lead thee to read. enquire not who said this: but attend to what is said. . men pass away: but _the truth of the lord remains for ever_. god speaks many ways to us: without respect of persons. our curiosity often hinders us in reading the scriptures, when we attempt to understand and discuss that which should be simply passed over. if thou wilt receive profit, read with humility, simplicity, and faith: and seek not at any time the fame of being learned. willingly enquire after and hear with silence the words of the saints: and be pleased with the parables of the ancients: for they are not spoken without cause. { } chap. vi.--_of inordinate affection_. . whensoever a man desires any thing inordinately, he is presently disquieted within himself. the proud and covetous are never easy. the poor and humble of spirit, live in much peace. the man that is not yet perfectly dead to himself, is soon tempted and overcome with small and trifling things. he that is weak in spirit, and in a manner yet carnal and inclined to sensible things, can hardly withdraw himself wholly from earthly desires. and therefore he is often sad, when he withdraws himself from them: and is easily moved to anger if any one thwarts him. . and if he has pursued his inclinations, he is presently tormented with the guilt of his conscience: because he has followed his passion, which helps him not at all towards the peace he sought for. { } it is then by resisting our passions, that we are to find true peace of heart, and not by being slaves to them. there is no peace therefore in the heart of a _carnal_ man, nor in a man that is addicted to outward things: but only in a fervent spiritual man. chap. vii.--_of flying vain hope and pride_. . he is vain who puts his trust in men, or in creatures. be not ashamed to serve others, and to appear poor in the world, for the love of jesus christ. confide not in thyself: but place thy hope in god. do what is in thy power, and god will be with thy good will. trust not in thy own knowledge, nor in the cunning of any man living: but rather in the grace of god, who helps the humble, and humbles those who presume of themselves. . glory not in riches, if thou hast them; nor in friends, because they are powerful; but in god, who gives all things, and desires to give himself above all things. { } boast not of thy stature, nor beauty of the body, which is spoiled and disfigured by a little sickness. do not take a pride in thy talents or thy wit, lest thou displease god, to whom appertaineth every natural good quality and talent which thou hast. . esteem not thyself better than others, lest perhaps thou be accounted worse in the sight of god, who knows what is in man. be not proud of thy own works: for the judgments of god are different from the judgments of men; and oftentimes, that displeaseth him, which pleaseth men. if thou hast any thing of good, believe better things of others, that thou mayest preserve humility. it will do thee no harm to esteem thyself the worst of all: but it will hurt thee very much to prefer thyself before any one. continual peace is with the humble: but in the heart of the proud, is frequent envy and indignation. { } chap. viii.--_of shunning too much familiarity._ . _discover not thy heart to every one_ (ecclesiastes viii.): but treat of thy affairs with a man that is wise and feareth god. keep not much company with young people and strangers. he not a flatterer with the rich: nor willingly appear before the great. associate thyself with the humble and simple, with the devout and virtuous: and treat of those things which may be to edification. be not familiar with any woman: but recommend all good women in general to god. desire to be familiar only with god and his angels: and fly the acquaintance of men. we must have charity for all, but familiarity is not expedient. it sometimes happens that a person, when not known, shines by a good reputation; who, when he is present, is disagreeable to them that see him. { } we think sometimes to please others by being with them: and we begin rather to disgust them by the evil behaviour which they discover in us. chap. ix.--_of obedience and subjection._ . it is a very great thing to stand in obedience, to live under a superior, and not to be at our own disposal. it is much more secure to be in the state of subjection; than in authority. many are under obedience more out of necessity, than for the love of god: and such as these are in pain, and easily repine. nor will they gain freedom of mind, unless they submit themselves with their whole heart for god's sake. run here or there, thou will find no rest, but in an humble subjection under the government of a superior. the imagination and changing of places has deceived many. . it is true, every one is desirous of acting according to his own liking; and is more inclined to such as are of his own mind. { } but if god be amongst us, we must sometimes give up our own opinion for the sake of peace. who is so wise as to be able fully to know all things? therefore trust not too much to thine own thoughts: but be willing also to hear the sentiments of others. although thy opinion be good, yet if for god's sake thou leavest it, to follow that of another, it will be more profitable to thee. . for i have often heard, that it is more safe to hear and take counsel, than to give it. it may also happen, that each one's thought may be good; but to refuse to yield to others, when reason or a just cause requires it, is a sign of pride and wilfulness. chap. x.--_of avoiding superfluity of words._ . fly the tumult of men as much as thou canst: for treating of worldly affairs hinders very much, although they be discoursed of with a simple intention. { } for we are quickly denied and ensnared with vanity. i could wish i had often been silent, and that i had not been in company. but why are we so willing to talk and discourse with one another: since we seldom return to silence without prejudice to our conscience? the reason why we are so willing to talk, is, because by discoursing together we seek comfort from one another; and would gladly ease the heart, wearied by various thoughts. and we very willingly talk and think of such things as we most love and desire, or which we imagine contrary to us. . but, alas! it is often in vain and to no purpose: for this outward consolation is no small hinderance of interior and divine comfort. therefore we must watch and pray, that our time may not pass away without fruit. { } if it be lawful and expedient to speak, speak those things which may edify. a bad custom and the neglect of our spiritual advancement, is a great cause of our keeping so little guard upon our mouth. but devout conferences concerning spiritual things, help very much to spiritual progress: especially where persons of the same mind and spirit are associated together in god. chap. xi.--_of acquiring peace and zeal of spiritual progress_. . we might have much peace, if we would not busy ourselves with the sayings and doings of others, and with things which belong not to us. how can he remain long in peace, who entangles himself with other people's cares; who seeks occasions abroad, and who is little or seldom inwardly recollected? blessed are the single hearted, for they shall enjoy much peace. { } . what was the reason why some of the saints were so perfect and contemplative? because they made it their study wholly to mortify in themselves all earthly desires; and thus they were enabled, with the whole interior of their hearts, to cleave to god, and freely to attend to themselves. we are too much taken up with our own passions; and too solicitous about transitory things. and seldom do we perfectly overcome so much as one vice, nor are we earnestly bent upon our daily progress; and therefore we remain cold and tepid. . if we were perfectly dead to ourselves and no ways entangled in our interior: then might we be able to relish things divine, and experience something of heavenly contemplation. the whole and greatest hinderance is, because we are not free from passions and lusts; nor do we strive to walk in the perfect way of the saints. and when we meet with any small adversity, we are too quickly dejected, and turn away to seek after human consolation. { } . if we strove like valiant men to stand in the battle; doubtless we should see that our lord would help us from heaven. for he is ready to help them that fight and trust in his grace: who furnishes us with occasions of fighting that we may overcome. if we place our progress in religion in these outward observances only, our devotion will quickly be at an end. but let us lay the axe to the root, that being purged from passions, we may possess a quiet mind. . if every year we rooted out one vice, we should soon become perfect men. but now we often find it quite otherwise: that we were better and more pure in the beginning of our conversion, than after many years of our profession. our fervour and progress ought to be every day greater: but now it is esteemed a great matter if a man can retain some part of his first fervour. { } if we could use but a little violence upon ourselves in the beginning, we might afterwards do all things with ease and joy. it is hard to leave off our old customs: and harder to go against our own will. but if thou dost not overcome things that are small and light: when wilt thou overcome greater difficulties? resist thy inclination in the beginning, and break off the evil habit; lest perhaps by little and little the difficulty increase upon thee. o! if thou wert sensible how much peace thou shouldst procure to thyself, and joy to others, by behaving thyself well; thou wouldst be more solicitous for thy spiritual progress. chap. xii.--_of the advantage of adversity_. . it is good for us to have sometimes troubles and adversities; for they make a man enter into himself, that he may know that he is in a state of banishment, and may not place his hopes in any thing of this world. { } it is good that we sometimes suffer contradictions, and that men have an evil or imperfect opinion of us; even when we do and intend well. these things are often helps to humility, and defend us from vain glory. for then we better run to god our inward witness, when outwardly we are despised by men, and little credit is given to us. . therefore should a man establish himself in such a manner in god, as to have no need of seeking many comforts from men. when a _man of good will_ is troubled or tempted, or afflicted with evil thoughts; then he better understands what need he hath of god, without whom he finds he can do no good. then also he laments; he sighs, and prays by reason of the miseries which he suffers. then he is weary of living longer: and wishes death to come that he may be _dissolved and be with christ_. { } then also he well perceives that perfect security and full peace cannot be found in this world. chap. xiii.--_of resisting temptation._ . as long as we live in this world, we cannot be without tribulation and temptation. hence it is written in job: _man's life upon earth is a temptation_. therefore ought every one to be solicitous about his temptations, and to watch in prayer; lest the devil, (who never sleeps, but _goes about seeking whom he may devour_,) find room to deceive him. no man is so perfect and holy as not to have sometimes temptations: and we cannot be wholly without them. . temptations are often very profitable to a man, although they be troublesome and grievous: for in them a man is humbled, purified, and instructed. { } all the saints have passed through many tribulations and temptations, and have profited by them: and they who could not support temptations, have become reprobates, and fell off. there is not any order so holy, nor place so retired, where there are not temptations and adversities. . a man is never entirely secure from temptations as long as he lives: because we have within us the source of temptations, having been born in concupiscence. when one temptation or tribulation is over, another comes on: and we shall have always something to suffer, because we have lost the good of our original happiness. many seek to fly temptations, and fall more grievously into them. by flight alone we cannot overcome: but by patience and true humility we are made stronger than all our enemies. . he that only declines them outwardly, and does not pluck out the root, will profit little; nay, temptations will sooner return to him, and he will find himself in a worse condition. { } by degrees, and by patience, with longanimity, thou shalt, by god's grace, better overcome them, than by harshness and thine own importunity. in temptation, often take counsel, and deal not roughly with one that is tempted: but comfort him, as thou wouldst wish to be done to thyself. . inconstancy of mind, and small confidence in god, is the beginning of all temptations. for as a ship without a rudder is tossed to and fro by the waves: so the man who is remiss, and who quits his resolution, is many ways tempted. fire tries iron, and temptation tries a just man. we often know not what we can do: but temptation discovers what we are. . however, we must be watchful, especially in the beginning of temptation: because then the enemy is easier overcome, when he is not suffered to come in at the door of the soul, but is kept out and resisted at his first knock. { } whence a certain man said: _withstand the beginning, after-remedies come too late_. for first a bare thought comes to the mind, then a strong imagination; afterwards delight, and evil motion and consent. and thus, by little and little, the wicked enemy gets full entrance, when he is not resisted in the beginning. and how much the longer a man is negligent in resisting: so much the weaker does he daily become in himself, and the enemy becomes stronger against him. . some suffer great temptations in the beginning of their conversion, and some in the end. and some there are who are much troubled in a manner all their life time. some are but lightly tempted, according to the wisdom and equity of the ordinance of god, who weighs the state and merits of men, and pre-ordains all for the salvation of his elect. . we must not therefore despair when we are tempted, but pray to god with so much the more fervour, that he may vouchsafe to help us in all tribulations: who, no doubt, according to the saying of st. paul, will _make such issue with the temptation, that we may be able to sustain it._ corinthians x. { } let us therefore humble our souls, under the hand of god in all temptations and tribulations: for the humble in spirit he will save and exalt. . in temptations and tribulations, a man is proved what progress he has made: and in them there is greater merit, and his virtue appears more conspicuous. nor is it much if a man be devout and fervent when he feels no trouble: but if in the time of adversity he bears up with patience, there will be hope of a great advancement. some are preserved from great temptations, and are often overcome in daily little ones: that being humbled, they may never presume of themselves in great things, who are weak in such small occurrences. { } chap. xiv.--_of avoiding rash judgment_. . turn thy eyes back upon thyself, and see thou judge not the doings of others. in judging others a man labours in vain, often errs, and easily sins; but in judging and looking into himself, he always labours with fruit. we frequently judge of a thing according as we have it at heart: for we easily love true judgment through private affection. if god were always the only object of our desire, we should not so easily be disturbed at the resistance of our opinions. . but there is often something lies hid within, or occurs from without, which draws us along with it. many secretly seek themselves in what they do, and are not sensible of it. they seem also to continue in good peace, when things are done according to their will and judgment: but if it fall out contrary to their desires, they are soon moved and become sad. { } difference of thoughts and opinions is too frequently the source of dissensions amongst friends and neighbours, amongst religious and devout persons. . an old custom is with difficulty relinquished: and no man is led willingly farther than himself sees or likes. if thou reliest more upon thine own reason or industry than upon the virtue that subjects to jesus christ, thou wilt seldom and hardly be an _enlightened_ man: for god will have us perfectly subject to himself, and to transcend all reason by inflamed love. chap. xv.--_of works done out of charity_. . evil ought not to be done, either for any thing in the world, or for the love of any man: but for the profit of one that stands in need, a good work is sometimes freely to be omitted, or rather to be changed for a better. { } for, by doing thus, a good work is not lost, but is changed into a better. without charity, the outward work profiteth nothing: but whatever is done out of charity, be it ever so little and contemptible, all becomes fruitful. for god regards more with how much affection and love a person performs a work, than how much he does. . he does much who loves much. he does much that does well what he does. he does well who regards rather the common good than his own will. that seems often to be charity which is rather natural affection: because our own natural inclination, self-will, hope of retribution, desire of our own interest, will seldom be wanting. . he that has true and perfect charity, seeks himself in no one thing: but desires only the glory of god in all things. { } he envies no man, because he loves no private joy; nor does he desire to rejoice in himself: but above all good things, he wishes to be made happy in god. he attributes nothing of good in any man, but refers it totally to god, from whom all things proceed as from their fountain, in the enjoyment of whom all the saints repose as in their last end. ah! if a man had but one spark of perfect charity, he would doubtless perceive that all earthly things are full of vanity. chap. xvi.--_of bearing the defects of others_. . what a man cannot amend in himself or others, he must bear with patience, till god ordains otherwise. think, that it perhaps is better so for thy trial and patience: without which, our merits are little worth. thou must, nevertheless, under such impressions, earnestly pray that god may vouchsafe to help thee, and that thou mayest bear them well. { } . if any one being once or twice admonished, does not comply, contend not with him: but commit all to god, that his will may be done, and he may be honoured in all his servants, who knows how to convert evil into good. endeavour to be patient in supporting others defects and infirmities of what kind so ever: because thou also hast many things which others must bear withal. if thou canst not make thyself such a one as thou wouldst: how canst thou expect to have another according to thy liking? we would willingly have others perfect: and yet we mend not, our own defects. . we would have others strictly corrected: but are not willing to be corrected ourselves. the large liberty of others displeases us: and yet we would not be denied any thing we ask for. { } we are willing that others should be bound up by laws: and we suffer not ourselves by any means to be restrained. thus it is evident how seldom we weigh our neighbour in the same balance with ourselves. if all were perfect: what then should we have to suffer from others for god's sake? . but now god has so disposed things, that we may learn to bear one another's burdens: for there is no man without defect; no man without his burden: no man sufficient for himself; no man wise enough for himself: but we must support one another, comfort one another, assist, instruct, and admonish one another. but how great each one's virtue is, best appears by occasion of adversity: for occasions do not make a man frail, but shew what he is. chap. xvii.--_of a monastic life._ . thou must learn to renounce thy own will in many things, if thou wilt keep peace and concord with others. { } it is no small matter to live in a monastery, or in a congregation, and to converse therein without reproof, and to persevere faithful till death. blessed is he who has there lived well, and made a happy end. if thou wilt stand as thou oughtest, and make a due progress, look upon thyself as a banished man, and a stranger upon earth. thou must be content to be made a fool for christ, if thou wilt lead a religious life. . the habit and the tonsure contribute little; but a change of manners, and an entire mortification of the passions, make a true religious man. he that seeks here any other thing than purely god and the salvation of his soul, will find nothing but trouble and sorrow. neither can he long remain in peace, who does not strive to be the least, and subject to all. { } . thou camest hither to serve, not to govern: know that thou art called to suffer and to labour, not to be idle and talkative. here then men are tried as gold in the furnace. here no man can stand, unless he be willing with all his heart to humble himself for the love of god. chap. xviii.--_of the example of the holy fathers_. . look upon the lively examples of the holy fathers, in whom true perfection and religion was most shining, and thou wilt see how little, and almost nothing, that is which we do. alas! what is our life if compared to theirs? the saints and friends of christ served the lord in hunger and thirst; in cold and nakedness; in labour and weariness; in watchings and fastings; in prayers and holy meditations; in persecutions and many reproaches. { } . ah! how many and how grievous tribulations have the apostles, martyrs, confessors, virgins, and all the rest, gone through, who have been willing to follow christ's footsteps: for they hated their lives in this world, that they might possess them for eternity. o! how strict and mortified a life did the holy fathers lead in the desert! how long and grievous temptations did they endure! how often were they molested by the enemy! what frequent and fervent prayers did they offer to god! what rigorous abstinence did they go through! what great zeal and fervour had they for their spiritual progress! how strong a war did they wage for overcoming vice! how pure and upright was their intention to god! they laboured all the day, and in the nights, they gave themselves to long prayers: though even whilst they were at work, they ceased not from mental prayer. . they spent all their time profitably: every hour seemed short which they spent with god: and through the great sweetness of divine contemplation, they forgot even the necessity of their bodily refreshment. { } they renounced all riches, dignities, honours, friends, and kindred; they desired to have nothing of this world; they scarce allowed themselves the necessaries of life: the serving the body even in necessity, was irksome to them. they were poor, therefore, as to earthly things: but very rich in grace and virtues. outwardly they wanted, but inwardly they were refreshed with divine graces and consolations. . they were strangers to the world: but near and familiar friends to god. they seemed to themselves as nothing, and were despised by this world: but in the eyes of god they were very valuable and beloved. they stood in true humility, they lived in simple obedience, they walked in charity and patience: and therefore they daily advanced in spirit, and obtained great favour with god. they were given as an example for all religious: and ought more to excite us to make good progress, than the number of the lukewarm to grow slack. { } . o! how great was the fervour of all religious in the beginning of their holy institution! o! how great was their devotion in prayer! how great their zeal for virtue! how great discipline was in force amongst them! how great reverence and obedience in all, flourished under the rule of a superior! the footsteps remaining still bear witness that they were truly perfect and holy men: who waging war so stoutly, trod the world under their feet. now he is thought great who is not a transgressor: and who can with patience endure what he hath undertaken. . ah! the lukewarmness and negligence of our state, that we so quickly fall away from our former fervour, and are now even weary of living through sloth and tepidity! would to god that advancement in virtues were not wholly asleep in thee, who hast often seen many examples of the devout! { } chap. xix.--_of the exercises of a good religious man_. . the life of a good religious man ought to be eminent in all virtue: that he may be such interiorly, as he appears to men in his exterior. and with good reason ought he to be much more in his interior, than he exteriorly appears; because he who beholds us is god, of whom we ought exceedingly to stand in awe, wherever we are, and like angels walk pure in his sight. we ought every day to renew our resolution, and excite ourselves to fervour, as if it were the first day of our conversion, and to say: help me, o lord god, in my good resolution, and in thy holy service, and give me grace now this day perfectly to begin; for what i have hitherto done, is nothing. { } . according as our resolution is, will the progress of our advancement be; and he had need of much diligence who would advance much. now if he that makes a strong resolution often fails: what will he do who seldom or but weakly resolves? the falling off from our resolution happens divers ways: and a small omission in our exercises seldom passeth without some loss. the resolutions of the just depend on the grace of god, rather than on their own wisdom: and in whom they always put their trust, whatever they take in hand. for man proposes, but god disposes: nor is the way of man in his own hands. . if for piety's sake, or with a design to the profit of our brother, we sometimes omit our accustomed exercises, it may afterwards be easily recovered. but if through a loathing of mind, or negligence, it be lightly let alone, it is no small fault, and will prove hurtful. let us endeavour what we can, we shall still be apt to fail in many things. { } but yet we must always resolve on something certain, and in particular against those things which hinder us most. we must examine and order well both our exterior and interior! because both conduce to our advancement. . if thou canst not continually recollect thyself, do it sometimes, and at least once a day, that is, at morning or evening. in the morning resolve, in the evening examine thy performances: how thou hast behaved this day in word, work, or thought: because in these perhaps thou hast often offended god and thy neighbour. prepare thyself like a man to resist the wicked attacks of the devil; bridle gluttony, and thou shalt the easier restrain all carnal inclinations. be never altogether idle: but either reading, or writing, or praying, or meditating, or labouring in something that may be for the common good. { } yet in bodily exercises, a discretion is to be used: nor are they equally to be undertaken by all. . those things which are not _common_ are not to be done in public: for _particular_ things are more safely done in private. but take care then be not slack in common exercises, and more forward in things of thy own particular devotion: but having fully, and faithfully performed what thou art bound to, and what is enjoined thee, if thou hast any time remaining, give thyself to thyself according as thy devotion shall incline thee. all cannot have the self same exercise: but this is more proper for one, and that for another. moreover, according to the diversity of times, divers exercises are more pleasing: for some relish better on festival days, others on common days. we stand in need of one kind in time of temptation, and of another in time of peace and rest. some we willingly think on when we are sad, others when we are joyful in the lord. { } . about the time of the principal festivals, we must renew our good exercises: and more fervently implore the prayers of the saints. we ought to make our resolution from festival to festival: as if we were then to depart out of this world, and to come to the everlasting festival. therefore we ought carefully to prepare ourselves at times of devotion; and to converse more devoutly, and keep all observances more strictly, as being shortly to receive the reward of our labour from god. . and if it be deferred, let us believe that we are not well prepared, and that we are as yet unworthy of the great glory which shall be revealed in us at the appointed time: and let us endeavour to prepare ourselves better for our departure. _blessed is that servant_, says the evangelist st. luke, _whom when his lord shall come he shall find watching. amen, i say to you, he shall set him over all his possessions_. luke xiii. { } chap. xx.--_of the love of solitude and silence_. . seek a proper time to retire into thyself, and often think of the benefits of god. let curiosities alone. read such matters as may rather move thee to compunction, than give thee occupation. if thou wilt withdraw thyself from superfluous talk and idle visits, as also from giving ear to news and reports, thou wilt find time sufficient and proper to employ thyself in good meditations. the greatest saints avoided the company of men as much as they could, and chose to live to god in secret. . _as often as i have been amongst men_, said one, _i have returned less a man_: this we often experience when we talk long. it is easier to be altogether silent, than not to exceed in words. { } it is easier to keep retired at home, than to be able to be sufficiently upon one's guard abroad. whosoever, therefore, aims at arriving at _internal_ and _spiritual_ things, must, with jesus, go aside from the crowd. no man is secure in appearing abroad, but he who would willingly lie hid at home. no man securely speaks, but he who loves to hold his peace. no man securely governs, but he who would willingly live in subjection. no man securely commands, but he who has learned well to obey. . no man securely rejoiceth, unless he has within him the testimony of a good conscience. yet the security of the saints was always full of the fear of god. neither were they less careful or humble in themselves because they were shining with great virtues and grace. but the security of the wicked arises from pride and presumption; and will end in deceiving themselves. { } never promise thyself security in this life, though thou seemest to be a good religious man, or a devout hermit. . oftentimes they that were better in the judgments of men, have been in greater danger by reason of their too great confidence. so that it is better for many not to be altogether free from temptations, but to be often assaulted; that they may not be too secure: lest, perhaps, they be lifted up with pride, or take more liberty to go aside after exterior comforts. o! how good a conscience would that man preserve, who would never seek after transitory joy, nor ever busy himself with the world. o! how great peace and tranquillity would he possess, who would cut off all vain solicitude, and only think of the things of god and his salvation, and place his whole hope in god. . no man is worthy of heavenly comfort who has not diligently exercised himself in holy compunction. { } if thou wouldst find compunction in thy heart, retire into thy chamber, and shut out the tumults of the world, as it is written: _have compunction in your chambers_. psalms iv. thou shalt find in thy cell what thou shalt often lose abroad. thy cell, if thou continue in it, grows sweet: but if thou keep not to it, it becomes tedious and distasteful. if in the beginning of thy conversion thou accustom thyself to remain in thy cell, and keep it well; it will be to thee afterwards a dear friend, and a most agreeable delight. . in silence and quiet the devout soul goes forward, and learns the secrets of the scriptures. there she finds floods of tears, with which she may wash and cleanse herself every night: that she may become so much the more familiar with her maker, by how much the farther she lives from all worldly tumult. for god with his holy angels will draw nigh to him, who withdraws himself from his acquaintance and friends. { } it is better to lie hid, and take care of one's self, than neglecting one's self to work even miracles. it is commendable for a religious man, to go seldom abroad, to fly being seen, and not to desire to see men. . why wilt thou see what thou must not have? _the world passeth and its concupiscences_. john ii. the desires of sensuality draw thee abroad: but when the hour is past, what dost thou bring home, but a weight upon thy conscience, and a dissipation of heart. a joyful going abroad often brings forth a sorrowful coming home, and a merry evening makes a sad morning. so all carnal joy enters pleasantly; but in the end brings remorse and death. what canst thou see elsewhere which thou seest not here? behold the heaven and the earth, and all the elements; for of these are all things made. . what canst thou see any where which can continue long under the sun? { } thou thinkest perhaps to be satisfied, but thou canst not attain to it. if thou couldst see any thing at once before thee, what would it be but a vain sight? lift up thine eyes to god on high, and pray for thy sins and negligences. leave vain things to vain people: but mind thou the things which god has commanded thee. shut thy doors upon thee, and call to thee jesus thy beloved. stay with him in thy cell, for thou shalt not find so great peace any where else. if thou hadst not gone abroad, and hearkened to rumours, thou hadst kept thyself better in good peace: but since thou art delighted sometimes to hear news, thou must from thence suffer a disturbance of heart. chap. xxi.--_of compunction of heart_. . if thou wilt make any progress keep thyself in the fear of god, and be not too free, but restrain all thy senses under discipline, and give not thyself up to foolish mirth. { } give thyself to compunction of heart, and thou shalt find devotion. compunction opens the way to much good, which dissolution is wont quickly to lose. it is wonderful that any man can heartily rejoice in this life, who weighs and considers his banishment, and the many dangers of his soul. . through levity of heart, and the little thought we have of our defects, we feel not the sorrows of our soul: but often vainly laugh, when in all reason we ought to weep. there is no true liberty, nor good joy, but in the fear of god with a good conscience. happy is he who can cast away all impediments of distractions, and recollect himself to the union of holy communion. happy is he who separates himself from all that may burthen or defile his conscience. strive manfully: custom is overcome by custom. { } if thou canst let men alone, they will let thee do what thou hast to do. . busy not thyself with other men's affairs, nor entangle thyself with the causes of great ones. have always an eye upon thyself in the first place: and take special care to admonish thyself preferably to all thy dearest friends. if thou hast not the favour of men, be not grieved thereat: but let thy concern be, that thou dost not carry thyself so well and so circumspectly as it becomes a servant of god, and a devout religious man to demean himself. it is oftentimes more profitable and more secure for a man not to have many comforts in this life; especially according to the flesh. yet, that we have not divine comforts, or seldom experience them, is our own faults: because we do not seek compunction of heart, nor cast off altogether vain and outward satisfactions. { } . acknowledge thyself unworthy of divine consolation, and rather worthy of much tribulation. when a man has perfect compunction, then the whole world is to him burdensome and distasteful. a good man always finds subject enough for mourning and weeping. for whether he considers himself, or thinks of his neighbour, he knows that no man lives here without tribulations; and the more thoroughly he considers himself, the more he grieves. the subjects for just grief and interior compunction are our vices and sins, in which we lie entangled in such manner, as seldom to be able to contemplate heavenly things. . if thou wouldst oftener think of thy death, than of a long life, no doubt but thou wouldst more fervently amend thyself. and if thou didst seriously consider in thy heart the future punishments of hell and purgatory, i believe thou wouldst willingly endure labour and pain, and fear no kind of austerity. but because these things reach not the heart, and we still love the things which flatter us, therefore we remain cold and very sluggish. { } . it is oftentimes a want of _spirit_, which makes the wretched body so easily complain. pray therefore humbly to our lord, that he may give thee the spirit of compunction: and say with the prophet: _feed me, lord, with the food of tears, and give me drink of tears in measure_. chap. xxii.--_of the consideration of the misery of man_. . thou art miserable wherever thou art, and which way soever thou turnest thyself, unless thou turn thyself to god. why art thou troubled because things do not succeed with thee according to thy will and desire? who is there that has all things according to his will? neither i, nor thou, nor any man upon earth. { } there is no man in the world without some trouble or affliction, though he be a king or a pope. who is there that is most at ease? doubtless he who is willing to suffer something for god's sake. . many unstable and weak men are apt to say: behold how well such a one lives, how rich, how great, how mighty and powerful! but attend to heavenly goods, and thou wilt see that all these temporal things are nothing, but very uncertain, and rather burdensome: because they are never possessed without care and fear. the happiness of a man consisteth not in having temporal things in abundance, but a moderate competency sufficeth. it is truly a misery to live upon earth. the more a man desireth to be spiritual, the more this present life becomes distasteful to him: because he the better understands, and more clearly sees the defects of human corruption. { } for to eat, drink, watch, sleep, rest, labour, and to be subject to other necessities of nature, is truly a great misery and affliction to a devout man, who desires to be released, and free from all sin. . for the _inward_ man is very much burdened with the necessities of the body in this world. and therefore the prophet devoutly prays to be freed from them, saying: _from my necessities deliver me, o lord_. psalms xxiv. but wo to them that know not their own misery, and more wo to them that love this miserable and corruptible life. for some there are who love it to that degree, although they can scarce get necessaries by labouring or begging, that if they could live always here, they would not care at all for the kingdom of god. . o senseless people, and infidels in heart, who lie buried so deep in earthly things, as to relish nothing but the things of the flesh! miserable wretches! they will in the end find to their cost, how vile a nothing that was which they so much loved. { } but the saints of god, and all the devout friends of christ, made no account of what pleased the flesh, or flourished in this life; but their whole hope and intentions aspired to eternal goods. their whole desire tended upwards to things everlasting and invisible; for fear lest the love of visible things should draw them down to things below. lose not, brother, thy confidence of going forward to spiritual things; there is yet time, the hour is not yet past. . why wilt thou put off thy resolution from day to day? arise, and begin this very moment, and say: now is the time for doing, and now is the time to fight; now is the proper time to amend my life. when thou art troubled and afflicted, then is the time to merit. thou must pass through fire and water, before thou comest to refreshment. unless thou do violence to thyself, thou wilt not overcome vice. { } as long as we carry about us this frail body, we cannot be without sin, nor live without uneasiness and sorrow. we would fain be at rest from all misery: but because we have lost innocence by sin, we have also lost true happiness. we must therefore have patience, and wait for the mercy of god, till iniquity pass away, and this mortality be swallowed up by immortal life. . o! how great is human frailty, which is always prone to vice! to-day thou confessest thy sins, and to-morrow thou again committest what thou hast confessed! now thou resolvest to take care, and an hour after thou dost as if thou hadst never resolved. we have reason therefore to humble ourselves, and never to think much of ourselves, since we are so frail and inconstant. that may also quickly be lost through negligence, which with much labour and time was hardly gotten by grace. { } . what will become of us yet in the end: who grow lukewarm so very soon? wo be to us if we are for giving ourselves to rest, as if we had already met with peace and security, when there does not appear any mark of true sanctity in our conversation. it would be very needful that we should yet again, like good novices, be instructed in all good behaviour: if so, perhaps there would be hopes of some future amendment, and greater spiritual progress. chap. xxiii.--_of the thoughts of death_. . very quickly must thou be gone from hence: see then how matters stand with thee: a man is here to-day, and to-morrow he is vanished. and when he is taken away from the sight, he is quickly also out of mind. o! the dulness and hardness of man's heart, which only thinks on what is present, and looks not forward to things to come! { } thou oughtest in every action and thought so to order thyself, as if thou wert immediately to die. if thou hast a good conscience, thou wouldst not much fear death. it were better for thee to fly sin, than to be afraid of death. if thou art not prepared to-day, how wilt thou be to-morrow? to-morrow is an uncertain day; and how dost thou know that thou shalt be alive to-morrow? . what benefit is it to live long, when we advance so little? ah! long life does not always make us better, but often adds to our guilt! would to god we had behaved ourselves well in this world, even for one day! many count the years of their conversion; but oftentimes the fruit of amendment is but small. if it be frightful to die, perhaps it will be more dangerous to live longer. { } blessed is he that has always the hour of his death before his eyes, and every day disposes himself to die. if thou hast at any time seen a man die, think that thou must also pass the same way. . in the morning, imagine thou shalt not live till night: and when evening comes, presume not to promise thyself the next morning. be therefore always prepared, and live in such a manner, that death may never find thee unprovided. many die suddenly, and when they little think of it: _for the son of man will come at the hour when he is not looked for_. matthew xxiv. when that last hour shall come, thou wilt begin to have quite other thoughts of thy whole past life: and thou wilt be exceedingly grieved that thou hast been so negligent and remiss. . how happy and prudent is he who strives to be such now in this life, as he desires to be found at his death. for it will give a man a great confidence of dying happily, if he has a perfect contempt of the world, a fervent desire of advancing in virtue, a love for discipline, the spirit of penance, a ready obedience, self-denial, and patience in bearing all adversities for the love of christ. { } thou mayest do many good things whilst thou art well: but when thou art sick, i know not what thou wilt be able to do. few are improved by sickness; they also that travel much abroad seldom become holy. . trust not in thy friends and kinsfolks, nor put off the welfare of thy soul to hereafter: for men will sooner forget thee than thou imaginest. it is better now to provide in time and send some good before thee, than to trust to others helping thee after thy death. if thou art not now careful for thyself, who will be careful for thee hereafter? the present time is very precious: _now are the days of salvation_: now is an acceptable time. { } but it is greatly to be lamented, that thou dost not spend this time more profitably: wherein thou mayest acquire a stock on which thou mayest live for ever! the time will come, when thou wilt wish for one day or hour to amend: and i know not whether thou wilt obtain it. . o my dearly beloved, from how great a danger mayest thou deliver thyself: from how great a fear mayest thou be freed, if thou wilt but now be always fearful, and looking for death! strive now so to live, that in the hour of thy death thou mayest rather rejoice than fear. learn now to die to the world, that then thou mayest begin to live with christ. learn now to despise all things, that then thou mayest freely go to christ. chastise thy body now by penance, that thou mayest then have an assured confidence. . ah! fool! why dost thou think to live long, when thou art not sure of one day? how many thinking to live long, have been deceived, and unexpectedly have been snatched away. { } how often hast thou heard related, that such a one was slain by the sword; another drowned; another falling from on high, broke his neck: this man died at the table; that other came to his end when he was at play. some have perished by fire; some by the sword; some by pestilence; and some by robbers. thus death is the end of all, and man's life passeth suddenly like a shadow. . who will remember thee when thou art dead; and who will pray for thee? do now, beloved, do now all thou canst, because thou knowest not when thou shalt die: nor dust thou know what shall befal thee after death. whilst thou hast time, heap up to thyself riches that will never die; think of nothing but thy salvation; care for nothing but the things of god. make now to thyself friends, by honouring the saints of god, and imitating their actions; that when thou shalt fail in this life, they may receive thee into everlasting dwellings. { } . keep thyself as a pilgrim, and a stranger upon earth, to whom the affairs of this world do not in the least belong. keep thy heart free, and raised upwards to god; because thou hast not here a lasting city. send thither thy daily prayer, with sighs and tears; that after death thy spirit may be worthy to pass happily to our lord. _amen_. chap. xxiv.--_of judgment and the punishment of sins_. . in all things look to thy end, and how thou shalt be able to stand before a severe judge, to whom nothing is hidden: who takes no bribes, nor receives excuses, but will judge that which is just. o most wretched and foolish sinner, what answer wilt thou make to god, who knows all thy evils? thou who sometimes art afraid of the looks of an angry man. why dost thou not provide for thy self against the day of judgment, when no man can be excused or defended by another; but every one shall have enough to do to answer for himself? { } at present thy labour is profitable; thy tears are acceptable; thy sighs will be heard, and thy sorrow is satisfactory, and may purge away thy sins. . a patient man hath a great and wholesome purgatory, who receiving injuries is more concerned at another person's sin than his own wrong; who willingly prays for his adversaries, and from his heart forgives offences; who delays not to ask forgiveness of others; who is easier moved to compassion than to anger; who frequently useth violence to himself, and labours to bring the flesh wholly under subjection to the spirit. it is better now to purge away our sins, and cut up our vices, than to reserve them to be purged hereafter. truly, we deceive ourselves through the inordinate love we bear to our flesh. . what other things shall that fire feed on but thy sins? the more thou sparest thyself now, and followest the flesh, the more grievously shalt thou suffer hereafter, and the more fuel dost thou lay up for that fire. { } in what things a man has more sinned, in those shall he be more heavily punished. there the slothful shall be pricked forward with burning goads, and the glutton will be tormented with extreme hunger and thirst. there the luxurious and the lovers of pleasure will be covered all over with burning pitch and stinking brimstone, and the envious, like mad dogs, will howl for grief. . there is no vice which will not have its proper torments. there the proud will be filled with all confusion; and the covetous be straitened with most miserable want. there one hour of suffering will be more sharp, than a hundred years here spent in the most rigid penance. there is no rest, no comfort for the damned: but here there is sometimes intermission of labour, and we receive comfort from our friends. { } be careful at present, and sorrowful for thy sins: that in the day of judgment thou mayest be secure with the blessed. _for then the just shall stand with great constancy against those that afflicted and oppressed them_. wisdom v. then will he stand to judge: who now humbly submits himself to the judgment of men. then the poor and humble will have great confidence: and the proud will fear on every side. . then it will appear that he was wise in this world, who learned for christ's sake to be a fool, and despised. then all tribulation suffered with patience will be pleasing, _and all iniquity shall stop her mouth_. psalms cvi. then every devout person will rejoice, and the irreligious will be sad. then the flesh that has been mortified shall triumph more than if it had always been pampered in delights. then shall the mean habit shine, and fine clothing appear contemptible. then shall the poor cottage be more commended than the gilded palace. { } then constant patience shall more avail, than all the power of the world. then simple obedience shall be more prized, than all worldly craftiness. . then a pure and good conscience shall be a greater subject of joy, than learned philosophy. then the contempt of riches shall weigh more than all the treasures of worldlings. then wilt thou be more comforted that thou hast prayed devoutly, than that thou hast fared daintily. then wilt thou rejoice more that thou hast kept silence, than that thou hast made long discourses, or talked much. then will holy works be of greater value than many fair words. then will a strict life and hard penance be more pleasing than all the delights of the earth. learn at present to suffer in little things, that then thou mayest be delivered from more grievous sufferings. try first here what thou canst suffer hereafter. { } if thou canst now endure so little how wilt thou be able to bear everlasting torments? if a little suffering now makes thee so impatient, what will hell fire do hereafter? surely thou canst not have thy pleasure in this world, and afterwards reign with christ. . if to this day thou hadst always lived in honours and pleasures: what would it avail thee, if thou wert now in a moment to die? all then is vanity, but to love god, and to serve him alone! for he that loves god with his whole heart, neither fears death, nor punishment, nor judgment, nor hell: because perfect love gives secure access to god. but he that is yet delighted with sin, no wonder if he be afraid of death and judgment. it is good, however, that if love, as yet, reclaim thee not from evil, at least the fear of hell restrain thee. but he that lays aside the fear of god, will not be able to continue long in good, but will quickly fall into the snares of the devil. { } chap. xxv.--_of the fervent amendment of our whole life_. . be vigilant, and delight in god's service, and often think with thyself, to what end thou camest hither, and why thou didst leave the world: was it not that thou mightest live to god, and become a spiritual man? be fervent therefore in thy spiritual progress, for thou shalt shortly receive the reward of thy labours: and then grief and fear shall no more come near thee. thou shalt labour now a little, and thou shalt find great rest: yea, everlasting joy. if thou continue faithful and fervent in working, god will doubtless be faithful and liberal in rewarding. thou must preserve a good and firm hope of coming to the crown: but must not think thyself secure, lest thou grow negligent or proud. { } . when a certain person in anxiety of mind was often wavering between hope and fear; and on a time being overwhelmed with grief, had prostrated himself in prayer in the church before a certain altar, he revolved these things within himself, saying: _if i did but know that i should still persevere_: and presently he heard within himself an answer from god: _and if thou didst know this, what wouldst thou do? do now what thou wouldst then do, and thou shalt be very secure_. and immediately being comforted and strengthened, he committed himself to the divine will, and his anxious wavering ceased. neither had he a mind any more to search curiously, to know what should befal him hereafter; but rather studied to enquire what was the will of god, _well pleasing and perfect_, for the beginning and accomplishing every good work. _hope in the lord, and do good_, saith the prophet, _and inhabit the land, and thou shalt be fed with the riches thereof_. psalms xxxi. { } there is one thing which keeps many back from spiritual progress and fervent amendment of life, and that is, the apprehension of difficulty, or the labour which must be gone through in the conflict. and they indeed advance most of all others in virtue, who strive manfully to overcome those things which they find more troublesome or contrary to them. for there a man makes greater progress, and merits greater grace, where he overcomes himself more, and mortifies himself in spirit. . but all men have not alike to overcome and mortify. yet he that is diligent and zealous, although he have more passions to fight against, will be able to make a greater progress than another who has fewer passions, but is withal less fervent in the pursuit of virtues. two things particularly conduce to a great amendment: these are forcibly to withdraw one's self from that to which nature is viciously inclined, and earnestly to labour for that good which one wants the most. { } study likewise to fly more carefully, and to overcome those faults which most frequently displease thee in others. . turn all occasions to thy spiritual profit: so that if thou seest or hearest any good examples, thou mayest be spurred on to imitate them. but if thou observe any thing that is blame-worthy, take heed thou commit not the same: or if thou at any time hast done it, labour to amend it out of hand. as thine eye observeth others: so art thou also observed by others. o how sweet and comfortable it is to see brethren fervent and devout, regular and well disciplined! how sad a thing, and how afflicting, to see such walk disorderly, and who practise nothing of what they are called to. how hurtful it is to neglect the intent of our vocation, and to turn our minds to things that are not our business. { } . be mindful of the resolution thou hast taken, and set before thee the image of the _crucifix_. well mayest thou be ashamed, if thou looked upon the life of jesus christ, that thou hast not yet studied to conform thyself more to his pattern, although thou hast been long in the way of god. a religious man, who exercises himself seriously and devoutly in the most holy life and passion of our lord, shall find there abundantly all things profitable and necessary for him: nor need he seek for any thing better out of jesus. o if our crucified jesus did but come into our heart, how quickly and sufficiently learned should we be! . a fervent religious man bears and takes all things well that are commanded him. a negligent and lukewarm religious man has trouble upon trouble, and on every side suffers anguish: because he has no comfort within, and is hindered from seeking any without. { } a religious man that lives not in discipline, lies open to dreadful ruin. he that seeks to be more loose and remiss will always be uneasy: for one thing or other will always displease him. . how do so many other religious do, who live under strict monastic discipline? they seldom go abroad; they live very retired; their diet is very poor; their habit coarse; they labour much; they speak little; they watch long; they rise early; they spend much time in prayer; they read often; and keep themselves in all kind of discipline. consider the _carthusians_, the _cistercians_, and the monks and nuns of divers orders: how every night they rise to sing psalms to the lord. it would therefore be a shame for thee to be sluggish at so holy a time, when such multitudes of religious begin with joy to give praises to god. . o that we had nothing else to do but to praise the lord our god with our whole heart and mouth! { } o that thou didst never want to eat, nor drink, nor sleep, but couldst always praise god, and be employed solely in spiritual exercises! thou wouldst then be much more happy than now, whilst thou art under the necessity of serving the flesh. would to god there were no such necessities, but only the spiritual refreshments of the soul, which, alas, we taste too seldom! . when a man is come to this, that he seeks his comfort from nothing created, then he begins perfectly to relish god; then likewise will he be well content, however matters happen to him. then will he neither rejoice for much, nor be sorrowful for little: but will commit himself wholly and confidently to god, who is to him all in all; to whom nothing perishes or dies, but all things live to him, and serve him at a beck without delay. . always remember thy end, and that time once lost never returns. without care and diligence thou shalt never acquire virtues. { } if thou beginnest to grow lukewarm, thou wilt begin to be uneasy. but if thou givest thyself to fervour, thou shalt find great peace: and the grace of god, and love of virtue will make thee feel less labour. a fervent and diligent man is ready for all things. it is a greater labour to resist vices and passions, than to toil at bodily labours. he that does not shun small defects, by little and little falls into greater. thou wilt always rejoice in the evening, if thou spend the day profitably. watch over thyself, stir up thyself, admonish thyself; and whatever becometh of others, neglect not thyself. the greater violence thou offerest to thyself, the greater progress thou wilt make. _amen_. end of book i. { } the _following of christ._ book ii. chap i.--_of interior conversation_. . _the kingdom of god is within you_, saith the lord. _luke_ vii. convert thyself with thy whole heart to the lord: and quit this miserable world, and thy soul shall find rest. learn to despise exterior things, and give thyself to the interior, and thou shalt see the kingdom of god will come into thee. for the kingdom of god is peace and joy in the holy ghost, which is not given to the wicked. { } christ will come to thee, discovering to thee his consolation, if thou wilt prepare him a fit dwelling within thee. all his glory and beauty is in the interior, and there he pleaseth himself. many a visit doth he make to the _internal man_, sweet is his communication with him, delightful his consolation, much peace, and a familiarity exceedingly to be admired. . o faithful soul, prepare thy heart for this thy spouse, that he may vouchsafe to come to thee, and dwell in thee. for so he saith: _if any man love me, he will keep my word, and we will come to him, and we will make our abode with him_. john xiv. make room then for christ within thee, and deny entrance to all others. when thou hast christ, thou art rich, and he is sufficient for thee: he will provide for thee, and will be thy faithful _procurator_ in all things, so that thou needest not trust to men. for men quickly change, and presently fail: but christ remainis forever, and stands by us firmly to the end. { } . there is no great confidence to be put in a frail mortal man, though he be profitable and beloved: nor much grief to be taken, if sometimes he be against thee and cross thee. they that are with thee to-day, maybe against thee to-morrow: and on the other hand often change like the wind. place thy whole confidence in god, and let him be thy fear and thy love; he will answer for thee, and do for thee what is for the best. thou hast not here a lasting city: and wherever thou art, thou art a stranger and a pilgrim: nor wilt thou ever have rest, unless thou be interiorly united to christ. . why dost thou stand looking about thee here, since this is not thy resting place? thy dwelling must be in heaven: and all things of the earth are only to be looked upon as passing by. all things pass away, and thou along with them. { } see that thou cleave not to them, lest thou be ensnared and lost. let thy thought be with the most high, and thy prayer directed to christ without intermission. if thou knowest not how to meditate on high and heavenly things, rest on the passion of christ, and willingly dwell in his secret wounds. for if thou fly devoutly to the wounds and precious stigmas of jesus, thou shalt feel great comfort in tribulation; neither wilt thou much regard the being despised by men, but wilt easily bear up against detracting tongues. . christ was also in this world despised by men: and in his greatest necessity forsaken by his acquaintance and friends in the midst of reproaches. christ would suffer and be despised, and dost thou dare to complain of any one? christ had adversaries and backbiters, and wouldst thou have all to be thy friends and benefactors? { } whence shall thy patience be crowned, if thou meet with no adversity? if thou wilt suffer no opposition, how wilt thou be a friend of christ? suffer with christ and for christ, if thou desirest to reign with christ. . if thou hadst once perfectly entered into the interior of jesus, and experienced a little of his burning love, then wouldst thou not care at all for thy own convenience or inconvenience, but wouldst rather rejoice at reproach, because the love of jesus makes a man despise himself. a love of jesus and of _truth_, and a true internal man, that is free from inordinate affections, can freely turn himself to god, and in spirit elevate himself above himself, and rest in enjoyment. . he to whom all things relish as they are, _viz_. in god, who is the very truth, not as they are said or esteemed to be, he is wise indeed, and taught rather by god than men. he who knows how to walk internally, and to make little account of external things, is not at a loss for proper places or times for performing devout exercises. { } an internal man quickly recollects himself, because he never pours forth his whole self upon outward things. exterior labour is no prejudice to him, nor any employment which for a time is necessary; but as things fall out, he so accommodates himself to them. he that is well disposed and orderly in his interior, heeds not the strange and perverse carriages of men. as much as a man draws things to himself, so much is he hindered and distracted by them. . if thou hadst a right spirit within thee, and wert purified from earthly affections, all things would turn to thy good and to thy profit. for this reason do many things displease thee, and often trouble thee; because thou art not as yet perfectly dead to thyself, nor separated from all earthly things. nothing so defiles and entangles the heart of man, as impure love to created things. { } if thou reject exterior comfort, thou wilt be able to contemplate heavenly things, and frequently to feel excessive joy interiorly. chap. ii.--_of humble submission_. . make no great account who is for thee, or against thee; but let it be thy business and thy care, that god may be with thee in every thing thou dost. have a good conscience, and god will sufficiently defend thee. for he whom god will help, no man's malice can hurt. if thou canst but hold thy peace and suffer, thou shalt see without doubt that the lord will help thee. he knows the time and manner of delivering thee, and therefore thou must resign thyself to him. it belongs to god to help and to deliver us from all confusion. oftentimes it is very profitable for the keeping us in greater humility, that others know and reprehend our faults. { } . when a man humbles himself for his defects, he then easily appeases others, and quickly satisfies those that are angry with him. the humble man, god protects and delivers: the humble he loves and comforts: to the humble he inclines himself: to the humble he gives grace: and after he has been depressed, raises him to glory. to the humble he reveals his secrets, and sweetly draws and invites him to himself. the humble man having received reproach, maintains himself well enough in peace: because he is fixed in god, and not in the world. never think thou hast made any progress, till thou look upon thyself inferior to all. chap. iii.--_of a good peaceable man_. . keep thyself first in peace, and then thou wilt be able to bring others to peace. a peaceable man does more good, than one that is very learned. { } a passionate man turns every good into evil, and easily believes evil. a good peaceable man turns all things to good. he that is in perfect peace, suspects no man: but he that is discontented and disturbed, is tossed about with various suspicions: he is neither easy himself, nor does he suffer others to be easy. he often says that which he should not say: and omit that which would be better for him to do. he considers what others are obliged to do: and neglects that to which he himself is obliged. have therefore a zeal in the first place over thyself, and then thou mayest justly exercise thy zeal towards thy neighbour. . thou knowest well enough how to excuse and colour thy own doings, and thou wilt not take the excuses of others. it were more just that thou shouldst accuse thyself, and excuse thy brother. if thou wilt be borne withal, bear also with another. { } see how far thou art yet from true charity and humility, which knows not how to be angry with any one, or to have indignation against any one but one's self. it is no great thing to be able to converse with them that are good and meek: for this is naturally pleasing to all. and every one would willingly have peace, and love those best that agree with them. but to live peaceably with those that are harsh and perverse, or disorderly, or such as oppose us, is a great grace, and a highly commendable and manly exploit. . some there are that keep themselves in peace, and have peace also with others. and there are some that are neither at peace within themselves, nor suffer others to be in peace: they are troublesome to others, but always more troublesome to themselves. and some there are who keep themselves in peace, and study to restore peace to others. { } yet all our peace in this miserable life is rather to be placed in humble suffering, than in not feeling adversities. he who knows how to suffer, will enjoy much peace. such a one is conqueror of himself, and lord of the world, a friend of christ and heir of heaven. chap. iv.--_of a pure mind and simple intention_. . with two wings a man is lifted up above earthly things; that is, with _simplicity_ and _purity_. _simplicity_ must be in the intention, _purity_ in the affection. _simplicity_ aims at god, _purity_ takes hold of him, and tastes him. no good action will hinder thee, if thou be free from inordinate affection. if thou intendest and seekest nothing else but the will of god, and the profit of thy neighbour, thou shalt enjoy internal liberty. { } if thy heart were right, then every creature would be to thee a looking-glass of life, and a book of holy doctrine. there is no creature so little and contemptible as not to manifest the goodness of god. . if thou wert good and pure within, then wouldst thou discern all things without impediment, and understand them right. a pure heart penetrates heaven and hell. according as every one is interiorly, so he judgeth exteriorly. if there be joy in the world, certainly the man whose heart is pure enjoys it. and if there be any where tribulation and anguish, an evil conscience feels the most of it. as iron put into the fire loses the rust, and becomes all fire; so a man that turns himself wholly to god puts off his sluggishness, and is changed into a new man. . when a man begins to grow lukewarm, he is afraid of a little labour, and willingly takes external comfort. { } but when he begins perfectly to overcome himself, and to walk manfully in the way of god, then he makes less account of those things, which before he considered burthensome to him. chap. v.--_of the consideration of one's self_. . we cannot trust much to ourselves, because we often want grace and understanding. there is but little light in us, and this we quickly lose through negligence. many times also we perceive not that we are so blind interiorly. we often do ill, and do worse in excusing it. we are sometimes moved with passion, and we mistake it for zeal. we blame little things in others, and pass over great things in ourselves. we are quick enough at perceiving and weighing what we suffer from others: but we mind not what others suffer from us. { } he that would well and duly weigh his own deeds, would have no room to judge hard of others. . an internal man prefers the care of himself before all other cares: and he that diligently attends to himself is easily silent with regard to others. thou wilt never be internal and devout, unless thou pass over in silence other men's concerns, and particularly look to thyself. if thou attend wholly to thyself, and to god, thou wilt be little moved with what thou perceivest without thee. where art thou, when thou art not present to thyself? and when thou hast run over all things, what profit will it be to thee, if thou hast neglected thyself? if thou desirest to have peace and true union, thou must set all the rest aside, and turn thy eyes upon thyself alone. . thou wilt then make great progress, if thou keep thyself free from all temporal care. { } but if thou set a value upon any thing temporal, thou wilt fail exceedingly. let nothing be great in thy eyes, nothing high, nothing pleasant, nothing agreeable to thee, except it be purely god, or of god. look upon as vain, all the comfort which thou meetest with from any creature. a soul that loveth god despiseth all things that are less than god. none but god eternal and incomprehensible, who fills all things, is the comfort of the soul, and the true joy of the heart. chap. vi.--of the joy of a good conscience. . the glory of a good man, is the testimony of a good conscience. keep a good conscience, and thou shall always have joy. a good conscience can bear very much, and is very joyful in the midst of adversity. { } a bad conscience is always fearful and uneasy. sweetly wilt thou take thy rest, if thy heart reprehend thee not. never rejoice but when thou hast done well. the wicked never have true joy, neither do they feel internal peace; because, _there is no peace to the wicked_, saith the lord. _isaiah_ xlviii. and if they shall say, we are in peace, evils will not come upon us, and who shall dare to hurt us, believe them not; for the wrath of god shall rise on a sudden, and their deeds will be brought to nothing, and their projects shall perish. . to glory in tribulation is not hard to him that loves: for so to glory is to glory in the cross of our lord. that glory is short lived, which is given and taken by men. the glory of this world is always accompanied with sorrow. the glory of good men is in their own consciences, not in the mouths of others. the joy of the just is from god, and in god: and they rejoice in the _truth_. { } he that desires true and everlasting glory, values not that which is temporal. and he that seeks after temporal glory, or does not heartily despise it, shews himself to have little love for that which is heavenly. that man has great tranquillity of heart, who neither cares for praises nor dispraises. . he will easily be content, and in peace, whose conscience is clean. thou art not more holy, if thou art praised: nor any thing the worse, if thou art dispraised. what thou art, that thou art: nor canst thou be said to be greater than god sees thee to be. if thou considerest well what thou art within thyself, thou wilt not care what men say of thee. man beholds the face; but god looks upon the heart. man considers the actions; but god weighs the intentions. to do always well, and to hold one's self in small account, is a mark of an humble soul. { } to refuse a comfort from any created thing, is a sign of great purity and interior confidence. . he that seeks no outward testimony for himself, shews plainly, that he has committed himself wholly to god. _for not he that commendeth himself_, saith st. paul, _is approved, but he whom god commendeth_. corinthians x. to walk with god _within_, and not to be held by any affection _without_, is the state of an _internal_ man. chap. vii.--_of the love of jesus above all things_. . blessed is he who knows what it is to love jesus, and to despise himself for the sake of jesus. we must quit what we love for _this_ beloved, because jesus will be loved alone above all things. the love of things created is deceitful and inconstant: the love of jesus is faithful and perseverant. he that cleaveth to creatures shall fall with them. he that embraceth jesus shall stand firm for ever. { } love him, and keep him for thy friend; who, when all go away, will not leave thee, nor suffer thee to perish in the end. thou must at last be separated from all things else, whether thou wilt or not. . keep thyself with jesus both in life and death, and commit thyself to his trust who alone can help thee, when all others fail. thy beloved is of such a nature, that he will admit of no other: but will have thy heart to himself, and sit there like a king on his own throne. if thou couldst but purge thyself well from affection to creatures, jesus would willingly dwell with thee. thou wilt find all that in a manner loss, which thou hast placed in men out of jesus. do not trust nor rely upon a windy reed: _for all flesh is grass, and all the glory thereof shall fade like the flower of the grass_. isaiah xl. . thou wilt soon be deceived, if thou only regard the outward shew of men. for if thou seek thy comfort and thy gain in others, thou wilt often meet with loss. { } if in all thou seek jesus, doubtless thou wilt find jesus. but if thou seek thyself, thou wilt indeed find thyself, but to thy own ruin. for a man does himself more harm if he seek not jesus, than the whole world and all his enemies could do him. chap. viii.--_of familiar friendship with jesus._ . when jesus is present, all goes well, and nothing seems difficult: but when jesus is absent every thing is hard. when jesus speaks not within, our comfort is worth nothing: but if jesus speak but one word, we feel a great consolation. did not mary magdalen arise presently from the place where she wept, when martha said to her: _the master is here and calls for thee_. john xiii. happy hour, when jesus calls from tears, to joy of spirit! { } how dry and hard art thou without jesus! how foolish and vain if thou desire any thing out of jesus! is not this a greater damage than if thou wert to lose the whole world? . what can the world profit thee without jesus? to be without jesus is a grievous hell, and to be with jesus a sweet paradise. if jesus be with thee, no enemy can hurt thee. whoever finds jesus, finds a good treasure, yea good above all goods. and he that loseth jesus, loseth exceeding much, and more than if he lost the whole world. he is wretchedly poor, who lives without jesus: and he is exceedingly rich, who is well with jesus. . it is a great art to know how to converse with jesus: and to know how to keep jesus is great wisdom. be humble and peaceable, and jesus will be with thee. be devout and quiet, and jesus will stay with thee. { } thou mayest quickly drive away jesus and lose his grace, if thou decline after outward things. and if thou drive him from thee, and lose him, to whom wilt thou fly, and whom then wilt thou seek for thy friend? without a friend thou canst not well live; and if jesus be not thy friend above all, thou wilt be exceeding sad and desolate. thou actest then foolishly, if thou puttest thy trust or rejoiceth in any other. we ought rather to chuse to have the whole world against us, than to offend jesus. of all therefore that are dear to thee, let jesus always be thy special beloved. . let all be loved for jesus's sake, but jesus for himself. jesus christ alone is singularly to be loved, who alone is found good and faithful above all friends. for him, and in him, let both friends and enemies be dear to thee: and for all these must thou pray to him, that all may know and love him. { } neither desire to be singularly praised or beloved: for this belongs to god alone, who hath none like to himself. neither desire that any one's heart should be set on thee: nor do thou let thyself be taken up with the love of any one: but let jesus be in thee, and in every good man. . be pure and free interiorly, without being entangled by any creature. thou must be naked and carry a pure heart to god, if thou wilt attend at leisure, and see how sweet is the lord. and indeed thou wilt never attain to this, unless thou be prevented and drawn in by his grace: that so thou mayest all _alone_ be united to him _alone_, having cast out and dismissed all others. for when the grace of god comes to a man, then he is strong and powerful for all things: and when it departs, then he is poor and weak, left as it were only to stripes. { } in these he must not be dejected nor despair; but stand with an even mind, resigned to the will of god, and bear, for the glory of jesus christ, whatever shall befal him: because after winter, comes summer; after night the day returns; after a storm there follows a great calm. chap. ix.--_of the want of all comfort_. . it is not hard to despise all human comfort, when we have divine. but it is much, and very much, to be able to want all comfort, both human and divine: and to be willing to bear this interior banishment for god's honour, and to seek one's self in nothing, nor to think of one's own merit. what great thing is it, if thou be cheerful and devout when grace comes? this hour is desirable to all. he rides at ease, that is carried by the grace of god. and what wonder, if he feels no weight, who is carried by the almighty, and led on by the sovereign guide? . we willingly would have something to comfort us: and it is with difficulty that a man can put off himself. { } the holy martyr, lawrence, overcame the world, with his prelate; because he despised whatever seemed delightful in this world; and for the love of christ he also suffered the high priest of god, _sixtus_, whom he exceedingly loved, to be taken away from him. he overcame therefore the love of man by the love of the creator: and instead of the comfort he had in man, he made choice rather of god's pleasure. so do thou also learn to part with a necessary and beloved friend for the love of god. and take it not to heart when thou art forsaken by a friend: knowing that one time or other we must all part. . a man must go through a long and great conflict in himself, before he can learn fully to overcome himself, and to draw his whole affection towards god. when a man stands upon himself, he easily declines after human comforts. { } but a true lover of christ, and a diligent pursuer of virtues, does not hunt after comforts, nor seek such sensible sweetnesses: but is rather willing to bear strong trials and hard labours for christ. . therefore when god gives spiritual comfort, receive it with thanksgiving; but know that it is the bounty of god, not thy merit. be not puffed up, be not overjoyed, nor vainly presume: but rather be the more humble for this gift, and the more cautious and fearful in all thy actions: for this hour will pass away, and temptation will follow. when comfort shall be taken away from thee, do not presently despair; but wait with humility and patience for the heavenly visit: for god is able to restore thee a greater consolation. this is no new thing, nor strange to those who have experienced the ways of god: for in the great saints and ancient prophets there has often been this kind of variety. . hence one said: at the time when grace was with him: _i said in my abundance, i shall not be moved for ever_. psalms xxix. { } but when grace was retired, he immediately tells us what he experienced in himself: _thou hast turned away thy face from me, and i became troubled_. yet, in the mean time he despairs not, but more earnestly prays to our lord, and says: _to thee, o lord, will i cry, and i will pray to my god_. lastly, he receives the fruit of his prayer: and witnesses that he was heard, saying: _the lord hath heard me, and hath had mercy on me: the lord is become my helper_. but in what manner? _thou hast turned, says he, my mourning into joy to me, and thou hast encompassed me with gladness_. if it has been thus with great saints, we that are weak and poor must not be discouraged, if we are sometimes in fervour, sometimes cold: because the spirit comes and goes according to his own good pleasure. wherefore holy job says: _thou dost visit him early in the morning, and on a sudden thou triest him_. job vii. . wherein then can i hope, or in what must i put my trust, but in god's great mercy alone, and in the hope of heavenly grace! { } for whether i have with me good men, or devout brethren, or faithful friends, or holy books, or fine treatises, or sweet singing and hymns: all these help little, and give me but little relish, when i am forsaken by grace, and left in my own poverty. at such a time there is no better remedy than patience, and leaving myself to god's will. . i never found any one so religious and devout, as not to have sometimes a subtraction of grace, or feel a diminution of fervour. no saint was ever so highly wrapt and illuminated, as not to be tempted at first or at last. for he is not worthy of the high contemplation of god, who has not, for god's sake, been exercised with some tribulation. for temptation going before, is usually a sign of ensuing consolation. for heavenly comfort is promised to such has have been proved by temptations. { } _to him that shall overcome_, saith our lord, _i will give to eat of the tree of life_. apoc. ii. [usccb: revelation ii. ] . now divine consolation is given that a man may be better able to support adversities. and temptation follows, that he may not be proud of good. the devil never sleeps, neither is the flesh yet dead: therefore thou must not cease to prepare thyself for battle, for on the right hand, and on the left, are enemies that never rest. chap. x.--_of gratitude for the grace of god_. . why seekest thou rest, since thou art born to labour? dispose thyself to patience, rather than consolation: and to bear the cross, rather than to rejoice. for who is there amongst worldly people, that would not willingly receive comfort and spiritual joy, if he could always have it? { } for spiritual consolations exceed all the delight of the world, and pleasures of the flesh. for all worldly delights are either vain or filthy: but spiritual delights alone are pleasant and honest, springing from virtue, and infused by god into pure minds. but these divine consolations no man can always enjoy when he will: because the time of temptation is not long away. . but what very much opposes these heavenly visits, is a false liberty of mind, and a great confidence in one's self. god does well in giving the grace of consolation: but man does ill in not returning it all to god with thanksgiving. and this is the reason why the gifts of grace cannot flow in us: because we are ungrateful to the giver: nor do we return all to the fountain's head. for grace is ever due to him that duly returns thanks: and what is wont to be given to the humble, will be taken away from the proud. { } . i would not have any such consolation as should rob me of compunction: nor do i wish to have such contemplation as leads to pride. for all that is high, is not holy; nor all that is pleasant, good: nor every desire, pure; nor is every thing that is dear to us, pleasing to god. i willingly accept of that grace, which makes me always more humble and fearful, and more ready to forsake myself. he that has been taught by the gift of grace, and instructed by the scourge of the withdrawing of it, will not dare to attribute any thing of good to himself; but will rather confess himself to be poor and naked. give to god what is his, and take to thyself what is thine: that is, give thanks to god for his grace; but as to thyself be sensible that nothing is to be attributed to thee, but sin, and the punishment due to sin. . put thyself always in the lowest place, and the highest shall be given thee: for the highest stands not without the lowest. { } the saints that are highest in the sight of god, are the least in their own eyes: and the more glorious they are, the more humble they are in themselves. being full of the truth and heavenly glory, they are not desirous of vain glory. they that are grounded and established in god, can by no means be proud. and they that attribute to god all whatsoever good they have received, seek not glory from one another, but that glory which is from god alone: and desire above all things that god may be praised in themselves, and in all the saints, and to this same they always tend. . be grateful then for the least, and thou shalt be worthy to receive greater things. let the least be to thee as something very great, and the most contemptible as a special favour. { } if thou considerest the dignity of the giver, no gift will seem to thee little which is given by so great a god. yea, though he gives punishment and stripes, it ought to be acceptable: for whatever he suffers to befal us, he always does it for our salvation. he that desires to retain the grace of god, let him be thankful for grace when it is given, and patient when it is withdrawn. let him pray, that it may return: let him be cautious and humble, lest he lose it. chap. xi.--_of the small number of the lovers of the cross of jesus_. . jesus has now many lovers of his heavenly kingdom: but few that are willing to bear the cross. he has many that are desirous of comfort, but few of tribulation. he finds many companions of his table, but few of his abstinence. all desire to rejoice with him: few are willing to suffer for him. many follow jesus to the breaking of bread; but few to the drinking the chalice of his passion. { } many reverence his miracles; but few follow the ignominy of his cross. many love jesus as long as they meet with no adversity; many praise him and bless him as long as they receive consolations from him. but if jesus hide himself and leave them for a little while; they either fall into complaints, or excessive dejection. . but they that love jesus for jesus's sake, and not for any comfort of their own, bless him no less in tribulation and anguish of heart, than in the greatest consolation. and if he should never give them his comfort, yet would they always praise him, and always give him thanks. . o! how much is the pure love of jesus able to do, when it is not mixed with any self-interest or self-love! are not all those to be called hirelings, who are always seeking consolations! { } are they not convinced to be rather lovers of themselves than of christ, who are always thinking of their own profit and gain? where shall we find a man that is willing to serve god _gratis?_ . seldom do we find any one so spiritual, as to be stripped of all things. for who shall be able to find the man that is truly poor in spirit, and naked of all things created? his value is (as of things that is brought) _from afar and from the remotest coasts_, proverbs xxxi. if a man gives his whole substance, it is yet nothing. and if he do great penance, it is yet little. and if he attain to all knowledge, he is far off still. and if he have great virtue, and exceeding fervent devotion, there is still much wanting to him; to wit, one thing, which is chiefly necessary for him. { } and what is that? that having left all things else, he leave also himself and wholly get out of himself, and retain nothing of self-love. and when he shall have done all things which he knows should be done, let him think that he has done nothing. . let him not make great account of that which may appear much to be esteemed: but let him in _truth_ acknowledge himself to be an unprofitable servant: as truth itself has said, _when ye shall have done all that is commanded you, say, we are unprofitable servants_. luke xvii. then may he be truly poor and naked in spirit, and may say with the prophet, _i am all alone, and poor_. psalms xxiv. [usccb: psalms xxv, .] yet no one is indeed richer than such a man, none more powerful, none more free; who knows how to leave himself and all things, and place himself in the very lowest place. { } chap. xii.--_of the king's highway of the holy cross_. . to many this seems a hard saying: _deny thyself, take up thy cross and follow jesus_. matthew xvi. but it will be much harder to hear that last word: _depart from me you cursed into everlasting fire_. matthew xxv. for they that at present willingly hear and follow the word of the cross, shall not then be afraid of eternal condemnation. the sign of the cross will be in heaven, when the lord shall come to judge. then all the servants of the cross, who in their life time have conformed themselves to him that was crucified, shall come to christ their judge with great confidence. . why then art thou afraid to take up thy cross, which leads to a kingdom? in the cross is salvation: in the cross is life: in the cross is protection from thy enemies. { } in the cross is infusion of heavenly sweetness: in the cross is strength of mind: in the cross is joy of spirit. in the cross is the height of virtue: in the cross is the perfection of sanctity. there is no health of the soul, nor hope of eternal life, but in the cross. take up therefore thy cross and follow jesus, and thou shalt go into life everlasting. he is gone before thee, carrying his cross: and he died for thee upon the cross: that thou mayest also bear thy cross, and love to die on the cross. because, if thou die with him, thou shalt also live with him; and if thou art his companion in buffering, thou shalt also partake in his glory. . behold the cross is all, and in dying [to thyself] all consists: and there is no other way to life, and to true internal peace, but the way of the holy cross, and of daily mortification. go where thou wilt, seek what thou wilt, and thou shalt not find a higher way above, nor a safer way below, than the way of the holy cross. { } dispose and order all things according as thou wilt; and as seems best to thee; and thou shalt still find something to suffer, either willingly or unwillingly, and so thou shalt still find the cross. for either thou shalt feel pain in the body, or sustain in thy soul tribulation of spirit. . sometimes thou shalt be left by god, other times thou shalt be afflicted by thy neighbour: and what is more, thou shalt often be a trouble to thyself. neither canst thou be delivered or eased by any remedy or comfort, but as long as it shall please god, thou must bear it. for god would have thee learn to suffer tribulation without comfort, and wholly to submit thyself to him, and to become more humble by tribulation. no man hath so lively a feeling of the passion of christ, as he who hath happened to suffer such like things. the cross therefore is always ready, and every where waits for thee. { } thou canst not escape it, whithersoever thou runnest: for whithersoever thou goest, thou carriest thyself with thee, and shall always find thyself. turn thyself upwards, or turn thyself downwards: turn thyself without, or turn thyself within thee: and every where thou shalt find the cross. and every where thou must of necessity have patience if thou desirest inward peace, and wouldst merit an eternal crown. . if thou carry the cross willingly, it will carry thee, and bring thee to thy desired end; to wit, to that place where there will be an end of suffering, tho' here there will be none. if thou carry it unwillingly, thou makest it a burden to thee, and loadest thyself the more: and nevertheless thou must bear it. if thou fling away one cross, without doubt thou wilt find another, and perhaps a heavier. . dost thou think to escape that which no mortal could ever avoid? what saint was there ever in the world without his cross and affliction? { } our lord jesus christ himself was not one hour of his life without suffering: _it behoved_, saith he, _that christ should suffer, and rise from the dead, and so enter into his glory_. luke xxiv. and how dost thou pretend to seek another way than the royal way, which is the way of the holy cross. . the whole life of christ was a cross, and a martyrdom: and dost thou seek rest and joy? thou errest, thou errest, if thou seekest any other thing than to suffer tribulations: for this whole mortal life is full of miseries, and beset on all sides with crosses. and the higher a person is advanced in spirit, the heavier crosses shall he often meet with: because the pain of his banishment increases in proportion to his love. . yet this man, thus many ways afflicted, is not without some allay of comfort for his ease: because he is sensible of the great profit which he reaps by bearing the cross. for whilst he willingly resigns himself to it, all the burden of tribulation is converted into an assured hope of comfort from god. { } and the more the flesh is brought down by affliction, the more the spirit is strengthened by inward grace. and sometimes gains such force through affection to tribulation and adversity, by reason of loving to be conformable to the cross of christ, as not to be willing to be without suffering and affliction: because such a one believes himself by so much the more acceptable to god, as he shall be able to bear more and greater things for him. this is not man's power, but the grace of christ, which can and does effect such great things in frail flesh, that what it naturally abhors and flies, even this through fervour of spirit it now embraces and loves. . it is not according to man's natural inclination to bear the cross, to love the cross, to chastise the body, and bring it under subjection; to fly honours, to be willing to suffer reproaches, to despise one's self, and wish to be despised; to bear all adversities and losses, and to desire no prosperity in this world. { } if thou lookest upon thyself, thou canst do nothing of this of thyself. but if thou confidest in the lord, strength will be given thee from heaven, and the world and flesh shall be made subject to thee. neither shalt thou fear thine enemy the devil, if thou art armed with faith and signed with the cross of christ. . set thyself then like a good and faithful servant of christ to bear manfully the cross of thy lord, crucified for the love of thee. prepare thyself to suffer many adversities, and divers evils in this miserable life; for so it will be with thee, wherever thou art: and so indeed wilt thou find it, wheresoever thou hide thyself. it must be so, and there is no remedy against tribulation and sorrow, but to bear them patiently. drink of the chalice of the lord lovingly, if thou desirest to be his friend, and to have part with him. leave consolations to god, to do with them as best pleaseth him. { } but set thou thyself to bear tribulations, and account them the greatest consolations: for the sufferings of this life bear no proportion with the glory to come, although thou alone couldst suffer them all. . when thou shalt arrive thus far, that tribulation becomes sweet and savory to thee for the love of christ: then think that it is well with thee, for thou hast found a paradise upon earth. as long as suffering seems grievous to thee, and thou seekest to fly from if, so long will it be ill with thee, and the tribulation from which thou fliest will every where follow thee. . if thou set thyself to what thou oughtest; that is, to suffer and to die [to thyself], it will quickly be better with thee, and thou shalt find peace. although thou shouldst have been wrapped up to the third heaven with st. paul, thou art not thereby secured that thou shalt suffer no adversity. _i_ (said jesus) _will shew him how great things he must suffer for my name_. acts ix. to suffer, therefore, is what waits for thee, if thou wilt love jesus, and constantly serve him. { } . would to god thou wert worthy to suffer something for the name of jesus! how great a glory would be laid up for thee, how great joy would it be to all the saints of god, and how great edification to thy neighbour! all recommend patience; but, alas! how few are there that desire to suffer! with good reason oughtest thou willingly to suffer a little for christ, since many suffer greater things for the world. . know for certain that thou must lead a dying life; and the more a man dies to himself, the more he begins to live to god. no man is fit to comprehend heavenly things, who has not resigned himself to suffer adversities for christ. nothing is more acceptable to god, nothing more wholesome for thee in this world, than to suffer willingly for christ. and if thou wert to chuse, thou oughtest to wish rather to suffer adversities for christ, than to be delighted with many comforts: because thus wouldst thou be more like to christ, and more conformable to all the saints. { } for our merit and the advancement of our state, consists not in having many gusts and consolations: but rather in bearing great afflictions and tribulations. . if, indeed, there had been any thing better, and more beneficial to man's salvation, than suffering, christ certainly would have shewed it by word and example. for he manifestly exhorts both his disciples that followed him, and all that desire to follow him, to bear the cross, saying: _if any one will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me_. luke ix. so that when we have read and searched all, let this be the final conclusion, that _through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of god_. acts xix. [usccb: acts xiv. .] { } _the following of christ_ book iii. chap. i.--_of the internal speech of christ to a faithful soul_. . _i will hear what the lord god speaketh in me_. psalms lxxxiv. [usccb: psalms lxxxv. .] happy is that soul, which heareth the lord speaking within her: and from his mouth receiveth the word of comfort. happy ears, which receive the veins of the divine whisper, and take no notice of the whisperings of the world. happy ears indeed, which hearken to truth itself teaching within, and not to the voice which soundeth without. { } happy eyes, which are shut to outward things, and attentive to the interior. happy they who penetrate into internal things, and endeavour to prepare themselves more and more by daily exercises to the attaining to heavenly secrets. happy they who seek to be wholly intent on god, and who rid themselves of every worldly impediment. mind these things, o my soul, and shut the doors of thy sensuality, that thou mayest hear what the lord thy god speaks within thee. . thus saith thy beloved: _i am thy salvation_, thy peace, and thy life: keep thyself with me, and thou shalt find peace. let alone all transitory things, and seek things eternal. what are all temporal things, but deceit? and what will all things created avail thee, if thou be forsaken by the creator? cast off then all earthly things, and make thyself agreeable to thy creator, and faithful to him, that so thou mayest attain to true happiness. { } chap. ii--_that truth speaks within us without noise of words_. . _speak, lord, for thy servant heareth_. samuel iii.--_i am thy servant, give me understanding that i may know thy testimonies_. psalms cxviii. [usccb: psalms cxix. .] incline my heart to the words of thy mouth: let thy speech distil as the dew. heretofore the children of _israel_ said to _moses, speak thou to us, and we will hear: let not the lord speak to us, lest we die_. exodus xx. it is not thus, o lord, it is not thus i pray; but rather with the prophet _samuel_, i humbly and earnestly entreat thee, _speak, lord, for thy servant heareth_. let not _moses_, nor any of the prophets speak to me; but speak thou rather, o lord god, the inspirer and enlightener of all the prophets; for thou alone without them canst perfectly instruct me; but they without thee will avail me nothing. { } . they may indeed sound forth words, but they give not the spirit. they speak well; but if thou be silent, they do not set the heart on fire. they deliver the letter, but thou disclosest the sense. they publish mysteries, but thou unlockest the meaning of the things signified. they declare the commandments, but thou enablest to keep them. they shew the way, but thou givest strength to walk in it. they work only outwardly, but thou instructest and enlightenest the heart. they water exteriorly, but thou givest the increase. they cry out with words, but thou givest understanding to the hearing. . let not then _moses_ speak to me, but thou o lord my god, the eternal truth, lest i die and prove fruitless, if i be only outwardly admonished, and not enkindled within. { } lest the word which i have heard and not fulfilled, which i have known and not loved, which i have believed and not observed, rise up in judgment against me. _speak_, then, _o lord, for thy servant heareth; for thou hast the words of eternal life_. john vi. speak to me, that it may be for some comfort to my soul, and for the amendment of my whole life; and to thy praise and glory, and everlasting honour. chap. iii.--_that the words of god are to be heard with humility, and that many weigh them not_. . my son, hear my words, words most sweet, exceeding all the learning of philosophers, and of the wise men of this world. my words are _spirit_ and _life_, and not to be estimated by the sense of man. they are not to be drawn to a vain complacence, but are to be heard in silence, and to be received with all humility and great affection. { } . and i said, _blessed is the man, whom thou, o lord, shalt instruct, and shalt teach him thy law; that thou mayest give him ease from the evil days_, (psalms xciii.); and that he may not be desolate upon earth. [usccb: psalms xciv. - .] i (saith the lord) have taught the prophets from the beginning, and even till now i cease not to speak to all; but many are deaf to my voice, and hard. the greater number listen more willingly to the world, than to god; and follow sooner the desires of the flesh, than the good-will of god. the world promises things temporal and of small value, and is served with great eagerness: i promise things most excellent and everlasting, and men's hearts are not moved! who is there that serves and obeys me in all things, with that great care, with which the world and its lords are served? _be ashamed, o sidon_, saith the sea. and if thou ask why? hear the reason. for a small living, men run a great way; for eternal life many will scarce once move a foot from the ground. { } an inconsiderable gain is sought after; for one penny sometimes men shamefully quarrel; they are not afraid to toil day and night for a trifle, or some slight promise. . but, alas! for an unchangeable good, for an inestimable reward, for the highest honour and never-ending glory, they are unwilling to take the least pains. be ashamed then, thou slothful servant, that art so apt to complain, seeing that they are more ready to labour for death than thou for life. they rejoice more in running after _vanity_, than thou in the pursuit of _truth_. and indeed they are sometimes frustrated of their hopes; but my promise deceives no man, nor sends away empty him that trusts in me. what i have promised, i will give; what i have said, i will make good; provided a man continue to the end faithful in my love. { } i am the rewarder of all the good, and the strong trier of all the devout. . write my words in thy heart, and think diligently on them; for they will be very necessary in the time of temptation. what thou understandest not when thou readest, thou shalt know in the day of visitation. i am accustomed to visit my elect [in] two manner of ways, _viz._ by trial and by comfort. and i read them daily two lessons; one to rebuke their vices, the other to exhort them to the increase of virtues. he that has my words, and slights them, has that which shall condemn him at the last day. _a prayer_, to implore the grace of devotion. . _o lord my god, thou art all my good; and who am i that i should dare to speak to thee_. { } _i am thy most poor servant, and a wretched little worm, much more poor and contemptible than i conceive or dare express_. _yet remember, o lord, that i am nothing, i have nothing and can do nothing:_ _thou alone art good, just and holy; thou canst do all things; thou givest all things; thou fillest all things, leaving only the sinner empty_. _remember thy tender mercies, and fill my heart with thy grace, thou who wilt not have thy works to be empty_. _how can i support myself in this wretched life, unless thy mercy and grace strengthen me?_ _turn not away thy face from me; delay not thy visitation; withdraw not thy comfort; lest my soul become as earth without water to thee_. _o lord, teach me to do thy will, teach we to converse worthily and humbly in thy sight; for thou art my wisdom, who knowest me in truth, and didst know me before the world was made, and before i was born in the world_. { } chap. iv.--_that we ought to walk in truth and humility in god's presence_. . son, walk before me in _truth_, and always seek me in the simplicity of thy heart. he that walks before me in _truth_ shall be secured from evil occurrences, and _truth_ shall deliver him from deceivers, and from the detractions of the wicked. if _truth_ shall deliver thee, thou shalt be _truly_ free, and shalt make no account of the _vain_ words of men. lord, this is true: as thou sayest, so i beseech thee, let it be done with me. let thy _truth_ teach me, let thy _truth_ guard me, and keep me till i come to a happy end. let the same deliver me from all evil affections, and all inordinate love, and i shall walk with thee in great liberty of heart. . i will teach thee (saith _truth_) those things that are right and pleasing in my sight. { } think on thy sins with great compunction and sorrow; and never esteem thyself to be any thing for thy good works. thou art indeed a sinner, subject to and intangled with many passions. of thyself thou always tendest to nothing, thou quickly fallest, thou art quickly overcome, easily disturbed and dissolved. thou hast not any thing in which thou canst glory, but many things for which thou oughtest to vilify thyself; for thou art much weaker than thou art able to comprehend. . let nothing then seem much to thee of all thou doest: let nothing appear great, nothing valuable or admirable, nothing worthy of esteem: nothing high, nothing truly praise-worthy or desirable, but what is eternal. let the _eternal truth_ please thee above all things, and thy own exceeding great vileness ever displease thee. fear nothing so much, blame and abhor nothing so much as thy vices and sins, which ought to displease thee more than any losses whatsoever. { } some persons walk not sincerely before me; but being led with a certain curiosity and pride, desire to know my secrets, and to understand the high things of god, neglecting themselves and their own salvation. these often fall into great temptations and sins through their pride and curiosity, because i stand against them. . fear the judgments of god, dread the anger of the almighty; but pretend not to examine the works of the most high, but search into thy own iniquities, how many ways thou hast offended, and how much good thou hast neglected. some only carry their devotion in their books, some in pictures, and some in outward signs and figures. some have me in their mouth, but little in their heart. { } there are others, who being enlightened in their understanding, and purified in their affections, always breathe after things eternal, are unwilling to hear of earthly things, and grieve to be subject to the necessities of nature; and such as these perceive what the spirit of _truth_ speaks in them. for it teaches them to despise the things of the earth, and to love heavenly things; to neglect the world, and all the day and night to aspire after heaven. chap. v.--_of the wonderful effect of divine love_. . i bless thee, o heavenly father, father of my lord jesus christ; because thou hast vouchsafed to be mindful of so poor a wretch as i am. o father of mercies, and god of all comfort, i give thanks to thee, who sometimes art pleased to cherish with thy consolations, me that am unworthy of any comfort. i bless thee and glorify thee evermore, together with thy only begotten son, and the holy ghost the comforter, to all eternity. { } o lord god, my holy lover, when thou shalt come into my heart, all that is within me will be filled with joy. thou art my glory, and the joy of my heart: thou art my hope and my refuge in the day of my tribulation. . but because i am as yet weak in love, and imperfect in virtue; therefore do i stand in need to be strengthened and comforted by thee. for this reason visit me often, and instruct me in thy holy discipline. free me from evil passions, and heal my heart of all disorderly affections; that being healed and well purged in my interior, i may become fit to love, courageous to suffer, and constant to persevere. . love is an excellent thing, a great good indeed: which alone maketh light all that is burthensome, and equally bears all that is unequal: for it carries a burthen without being burthened, and makes all that which is bitter sweet and savoury. the love of jesus is noble and generous, it spurs us on to do great things, and excites to desire all that which is more perfect. { } love will tend upwards, and not be detained by things beneath. love will be at liberty, and free from all worldly affection, lest its interior sight be hindered, lest it suffer itself to be entangled with any temporal interest, or cast down by losses. nothing is sweeter than love, nothing stronger, nothing higher, nothing wider, nothing more pleasant, nothing fuller or better in heaven or earth: for love proceeds from god, and cannot rest but in god, above all things created. . the lover flies, runs, and rejoices; he is free, and is not held. he gives all for all, and has all in all; because he rests in one sovereign _good_ above all, from whom all good flows and proceeds. he looks not at the gifts, but turns himself to the giver, above all goods. love often knows no measure, but is fervent above all measure. { } love feels no burthen, values no labours, would willingly do more than it can; complains not of impossibility, because it conceives that it may and can do all things. it is able therefore to do any thing, and it performs and effects many things, where he that loves not faints and lies down. . love watches, and sleeping slumbers not. when weary, is not tired; when straitened, is not constrained; when frighted, is not disturbed; but like a lively flame, and a torch all on fire, mounts upwards, and securely passes through all opposition. whosoever loves knows the cry of this voice. a loud cry in the ears of god is the ardent affection of the soul, which saith; o my god, my love: thou art all mine, and i am all thine. . give increase to my love, that i may learn to taste with the interior mouth of the heart how sweet it is to love, and to swim, and to be melted in love. { } let me be possessed by love, going above myself through excess of fervour and amazement. let me sing the canticle of love, let me follow thee my beloved on high, let my soul lose herself in thy praises, rejoicing exceedingly in thy love. let me love thee more than myself, and myself only for thee: and all others in thee, who truly love thee, as the law of love commands, which shines forth from thee. . love is swift, sincere, pious, pleasant, and delightful; strong, patient, faithful, prudent, long-suffering, courageous, and never seeking itself; for where a man seeks himself, there he falls from love. love is circumspect, humble, upright, not soft, not light, nor intent upon vain things; is sober, chaste, stable, quiet, and keeps a guard over all the senses. love is submissive and obedient to superiors, in its own eyes mean and contemptible, devout and thankful to god, always trusting and hoping in him, even then when it tastes not the relish of god's sweetness; for there is no living in love without some pain or sorrow. { } . whosoever is not ready to suffer all things, and to stand resigned to the will of his beloved, is not worthy to be called a lover. he that loves must willingly embrace all that is hard and bitter for the sake of his beloved, and never suffer himself to be turned away from him by any contrary occurrences whatsoever. chap. vi.--_of the proof of a true lover_. . my son, thou art not as yet a valiant and prudent lover. why, o lord? because thou fallest off from what thou hast begun upon meeting a little adversity, and too greedily seekest after consolation. a valiant lover stands his ground in temptations, and gives no credit to the crafty persuasions of the enemy. as he is pleased with me in prosperity, so i displease him not when i send adversity. { } . a prudent lover considers not so much the gift of the lover, as the love of the giver. he looks more at the good-will than the value, and sets his beloved above all his gifts. a generous lover rests not in the gift, but in me above every gift. all is not lost, if sometimes thou hast not that feeling [of devotion] towards me or my saints, which thou wouldst have. that good and delightful affection, which thou sometimes perceivest, is the effect of present grace, and a certain foretaste of thy heavenly country. but thou must not rely too much upon it, because it goes and comes. but to fight against the evil motions of the mind which arise, and to despise the suggestions of the devil, is a sign of virtue and of great merit. . let not therefore strange fancies trouble thee of what subject soever they be that are suggested to thee. keep thy resolution firm, and thy intentions upright towards god. { } neither is it an illusion, that sometimes thou art rapt into an extasy, and presently returnest to the accustomed fooleries of thy heart. for these thou rather sufferest against thy will, than procurest: and as long as thou art displeased with them, and resistest them, it is merit and not loss. . know, that the old enemy strives by all means to hinder thy desire after good, and to divert thee from every devout exercise; namely, from the veneration of the saints, from the pious meditation of my passion: from the profitable remembrance of thy sins, from keeping a guard upon thy own heart, and from a firm purpose of advancing in virtue. he suggests to thee many evil thoughts, that he may tire thee out, and fright thee; that he may withdraw thee from prayer, and the reading of devout books. he is displeased with humble _confession:_ and, if he could, he would cause thee to let _communion_ alone. { } give no credit to him, value him not, although he often lay his deceitful snares in thy way. charge him with it, when he suggests wicked and unclean things: and say to him: be gone, unclean spirit; be ashamed miserable wretch; thou art very filthy indeed to suggest such things as these to me. depart from me, thou most wicked impostor; thou shalt have no share in me; but my jesus will be with me as a valiant warrior, and thou shalt stand confounded. i had rather die, and undergo any torment whatsoever, than consent to thee. be silent, i will hear no more of thee, although thou often strive to be troublesome to me. _the lord is my light, and my salvation: whom shall i fear?_ _if whole armies should stand together against me, my heart shall not fear. the lord is my helper, and my redeemer_. psalms cvi. { } . fight like a good soldier; and if sometimes thou fall through frailty, rise up again with greater strength than before, confiding in my more abundant grace. but take great care thou yield not to any vain complacence and pride. through this many are led into error, and sometimes fall into almost incurable blindness. let this fall of the proud, who foolishly presume of themselves, serve thee for a warning, and keep thee always humble. chap. vii.--_that grace is to be hid under the guardianship of humility_. my son, it is more and more safe for thee to hide the grace of devotion and not to be elevated with it, not to speak much of it, not to consider it much; but rather to despise thyself the more, and to be afraid of it as given to one unworthy. thou must not depend too much on this affection, which may be quickly changed into the contrary. { } when thou hast grace, think with thyself how miserable and poor thou art wont to be, when thou art without it. nor does the progress of a spiritual life consist so much in having the grace of consolation, as in bearing the want of it with humility, resignation, and patience; so as not to grow remiss in thy exercise of prayer at that time, nor to suffer thyself to omit any of thy accustomed good works. but that thou willingly do what lies in thee, according to the best of thy ability and understanding; and take care not wholly to neglect thyself through the dryness or anxiety of mind which thou feelest. . for there are many, who, when it succeeds not well with them, presently grow impatient or slothful. now _the way of man is not always in his own power;_ but it belongs to god to give, and to comfort when he will, and as much as he will, and whom he will, as it shall please him, and no more. { } some wanting discretion, have ruined themselves upon occasion of the grace of devotion; because they were for doing more than they could, not weighing well the measure of their own weakness, but following rather the inclination of the heart than the judgment of reason. and because they presumptuously undertook greater things than were pleasing to god, therefore they quickly lost his grace. they became needy, and were left in a wretched condition, who had built themselves a nest in heaven; to the end, that being thus humbled and impoverished, they may learn not to trust to their own wings, but to hide themselves under mine. those who are as yet but novices and unexperienced in the way of the lord, if they will not govern themselves by the counsel of the discreet, will easily be deceived and overthrown. . and if they will rather follow their own judgment than believe others that have more experience, they will be in danger of coming off ill if they continue to refuse to lay down their own conceits. { } they that are wise in their own eyes seldom humbly suffer themselves to be ruled by others. it is better to have little knowledge with humility, and a weak understanding, than greater treasures of learning with a vain self-complacence. it is better for thee to have less than much, which may puff thee up with pride. he is not so discreet as he ought, who gives himself up wholly to joy, forgetting his former poverty, and the chaste fear of god, which apprehends the losing of that grace which is offered. neither is he so virtuously wise, who in the time of adversity, or any tribulation whatsoever, carries himself in a desponding way, and conceives and feels less confidence in me than he ought. . he, who is too secure in the time of peace, will often be found too much dejected and fearful in the time of war. if thou couldst always continue humble and little in thy own eyes, and keep thy spirit in due order and subjection, thou wouldst not fall so easily into danger and offence. { } it is a good counsel, that when thou hast conceived the spirit of fervour, thou shouldst meditate how it will be with thee when that light shall leave thee. which when it shall happen remember that the light may return again, which for a caution to thee, and for my glory, i have withdrawn from thee for a time. . such a trial is oftentimes more profitable than if thou wert always to have prosperity according to thy will. for a man's merits are not to be estimated by his having many visions of consolations; or by his knowledge of scriptures, or by his being placed in a more elevated station: but by his being grounded in true humility, and replenished with divine charity: by his seeking always purely and entirety the honour of god; by his esteeming himself to be nothing, and sincerely despising himself; and being better pleased to be despised and humbled by others, than to be honoured by them. { } chap. viii.--_of the mean esteem of one's self in the sight of god_. . _i will speak to my lord, i that am but dust and ashes_. genesis xviii. if i think any thing better of myself, behold thou standest against me; and my sins bear witness to the truth, and i cannot contradict it. but if i vilify myself, and acknowledge my own nothing, and cast away all manner of esteem of myself; and, as i really am, account myself to be mere dust, thy grace will be favourable to me, and thy light will draw nigh to my heart, and all self esteem, how small soever, will be sunk in the depth of my own nothingness, and there lose itself for ever. it is there thou shewest me to myself, what i am, what i have been, and what i am come to: for i am nothing, and i knew it not. { } if i am left to myself, behold i am nothing, and all weakness; but if thou suddenly look upon me, i presently become strong, and am filled with a new joy. and it is very wonderful that i am so quickly raised up, and so graciously embraced by thee; i, who by my own weight am always sinking to the bottom. . it is thy love that effects this, freely preventing me, and assisting me in so many necessities; preserving me also from grievous dangers; and, as i may truly say, delivering me from innumerable evils. for by an evil loving of myself, i lost myself; and by seeking thee alone and purely loving thee, i found both myself and thee, and by this love have more profoundly annihilated myself. because thou, o most sweet lord, dost deal with me above all desert, and above all that i dare hope or ask for. . blessed be thou, o my god; for though i am unworthy of all good, yet thy generosity and infinite goodness never ceaseth to do good even to those that are ungrateful, and that are turned away from thee. { } o convert us to thee, that we may be thankful, humble, and devout; for thou art our salvation, our power and our strength. chap. ix.--_that all things are to be referred to god, as to our last end_. . my son, i must be thy chief and last end, if thou desirest to be truly happy. by this intention shall thy affections be purified, which too often are irregularly bent upon thyself, and things created. for if in any thing thou seek thyself, thou presently faintest away within thyself, and growest dry. refer therefore all things principally to me, for it is i that have given thee all. consider every thing as flowing from the sovereign good: and therefore they must all be returned to me as to their origin. . out of me both little and great, poor and rich, as out of a living fountain, draw living water; and they that freely and willingly serve me shall receive _grace for grace_. { } but he that would glory in any thing else besides me, or delight in any good as his own [not referred to me] shall not be established in true joy, nor enlarged in his heart, but in many kinds shall meet with hindrances and anguish: therefore thou must not ascribe any thing of good to thyself, nor attribute virtue to any man; but give all to god, without whom man has nothing. i have given all, i will have all returned to me again, and i very strictly require thanks for all that i give. . this is that _truth_, by which all _vain glory_ is put to flight: and if heavenly grace and true charity come in, there shall be no envy nor narrowness of heart, nor shall self-love keep its hold. for divine charity overcomes all, and dilates all the forces of the soul. if thou art truly wise, thou wilt rejoice in me alone, thou wilt hope in me alone: for _none is good but god alone_, (luke xviii.) who is to be praised above all, and to be blessed in all. { } chap. x.--_that it is meet to serve god, despising this world_. . now will i speak, o lord, and will not be silent; i will say in the hearing of my god, my lord, and my king that is on high. _o how great is the multitude of thy sweetness, o lord, which thou hast hidden for those that fear thee!_ psalms xxx. [usccb: psalms xxxi. .] but what art thou to those that love thee? what to those that serve thee with their whole heart? unspeakable indeed is the sweetness of thy contemplation, which thou bestowest on those that love thee. in this, most of all hast thou shewed me the sweetness of thy love, that when i had no being, thou hast made me; and when i strayed far from thee, thou hast brought me back again, that i might serve thee; and thou hast commanded me to _love_ thee. . o fountain of everlasting _love_, what shall i say of thee? { } how can i ever forget thee, who hast vouchsafed to remember me, even after that i was laid waste, and perished? thou hast beyond all hope shewed mercy to thy servant; and beyond all my desert bestowed thy grace and friendship on me. what return shall i make to thee for this grace? for it is a favour not granted to all, to forsake all things and renounce the world, and chuse a monastic life. can it be much to serve thee, whom the whole creation is bound to serve? it ought not to seem much to me to serve thee; but this seems great and wonderful to me, that thou vouchsafest to receive one so wretched and unworthy into thy service, and to associate him to thy beloved servants. . behold all things are thine, which i have, and with which i serve thee; though rather thou servest me, than i thee. lo! heaven and earth, which thou hast created for the service of man, are ready at thy beck, and daily do whatever thou hast commanded them. { } and this is yet but little, for thou hast also appointed the angels for the service of man. but, what is above all this is, that thou thyself hast vouchsafed to serve man, and hast promised that thou wilt give him thyself. . what shall i give thee for all these thousands of favours? oh that i could serve thee all the days of my life! oh that i were able, if it were but for one day, to serve thee worthily! indeed thou art worthy of all service, of all honour, and of eternal praise. thou art truly my lord, and i am thy poor servant, who am bound with all my strength to serve thee, and ought never to grow weary of praising thee. this is my will, this is my desire; and whatever is wanting to me, do thou vouchsafe to supply. . it is a great honour, a great glory to serve thee, and to despise all things for thee; { } for they who willingly subject themselves to thy most holy service shall have a great grace; they shall find the most sweet consolation of the holy ghost, who for the love of thee have cast away all carnal delight: they shall gain great freedom of mind, who for thy name enter upon the narrow way, and neglect all worldly care. . oh pleasant and delightful _service_ of god, which makes a man truly free and holy! o sacred state of religious bondage, which makes man equal to angels, pleasing to god, terrible to the devils, and commendable to all the faithful! oh service worthy to be embraced and always wished for, which leads to the supreme good, and procures a joy that will never end. { } chap. xi.--__that the desires of our heart are to be examined and moderated_._. . son, thou hast many things still to learn, which thou hast not yet well learned. what are these things, o lord? that thou conform in all things thy desire to my good pleasure, and that thou be not a lover of thyself, but earnestly zealous that my will may be done. desires often inflame thee, and violently hurry thee on; but consider whether it be for my honour, or thy own interest that thou art more moved. if thou hast no other view but me, thou wilt be well contented with whatever i shall ordain; but if there lurk in thee any thing of self-seeking, behold this is it that hinders thee, and troubles thee. { } . take care then not to rely too much upon any desire which thou hast conceived before thou hast consulted me, lest afterwards thou repent, or be displeased with that which before pleased thee, and which thou zealously desiredst as the best. for every affection [or inclination] which appears good, is not presently to be followed, nor every contrary affection at the first to be rejected. even in good desires and inclinations, it is expedient sometimes to use some restraint, lest by too much eagerness, thou incur distraction of mind; lest thou create scandal to others, by not keeping within discipline; or by the opposition which thou mayest meet with from others, thou be suddenly disturbed and fall. . yet in some cases we must use violence, and manfully resist the sensual appetite, and not regard what the flesh has a mind for, or what it would fly from; but rather labour that, whether it will or no, it may become subject to the spirit. and so long must it be chastised, and kept under servitude, till it readily obey in all things, and learn to be content with a little, and to be pleased with what is plain and ordinary, and not to murmur at any inconvenience. { } chap. xii.--_of learning patience, and of fighting against concupiscence_. . o lord god, patience, as i perceive, is very necessary for me; this life is exposed to many adversities: for howsoever i propose for my peace, my life cannot be without war and sorrow. . so it is, son; but i would not have thee seek for such a peace as to be without temptations, or to meet with no adversities. but even then to think thou hast found peace, when thou shalt be exercised with divers tribulations, and tried in many adversities. if thou shalt say, thou art not able to suffer so much, how then wilt thou endure the fire of purgatory? of two evils one ought always to choose the least. that thou mayest therefore escape the everlasting punishments to come, labour to endure present evils with patience for god's sake. { } dost thou think the men of the world suffer little or nothing? thou shalt not find it so, though thou seek out for the most delicate. . but, thou wilt say they have many delights, and follow their own wills; and therefore make small account of their tribulations. . suppose it to be so, that they have all they desire: how long dost thou think this will last? behold, they shall vanish away like smoke that abound in this world, and there shall be no remembrance of their past joys. nay, even whilst they are living, they rest not in them, without bitterness, irksomeness, and fear. for the very same thing, in which they conceive a delight, doth often bring upon them the punishment of sorrow. it is just it should be so with them, that since they inordinately seek and follow their pleasures, they should not satisfy them without confusion and uneasiness. { } oh! how short, how deceitful, how inordinate and filthy, are all these pleasures! yet through sottishness and blindness men understand this not; but like brute beasts, for a small pleasure in this mortal life, they incur the eternal death of their souls. but thou, my son, _go not after thy concupiscences, but turn away from thy own will_. ecclesiastes xviii. [usccb: sirach xviii. .] _delight in the lord, and he will give thee the requests of thy heart_. psalms xxxvi. [usccb: psalms xxxvii. .] . for if thou wilt be delighted in truth, and receive more abundant consolation from me, behold it is in the contempt of all worldly things: and the renouncing all those mean pleasures shall be thy blessing, and an exceeding great comfort to thy soul. and the more thou withdrawest thyself from all comfort from things created, the more sweet and the more powerful consolation shalt thou find in me. { } but thou shalt not at first attain to these without some sorrow and labor in the conflict. the old custom will stand in thy way, but by a better custom it shall be overcome. the flesh will complain, but by the fervour of the spirit it shall be kept under. the old serpent will tempt thee and give thee trouble; but by prayer he shall be put to flight: moreover, by keeping thyself always employed in some useful labour, his access to thee shall be in a great measure stopt up. chap. xiii.--_of the obedience of an humble subject after the example of jesus christ_. . son, he who strives to withdraw himself from obedience, withdraws himself from grace; and he that seeks to have things for his own particular, loses such as are common. if a man doth not freely and willingly submit himself to his superiors, it is a sign that his flesh is not as yet perfectly obedient to him; but oftentimes rebels and murmurs. { } learn then to submit thyself readily to thy superior, if thou desire to subdue thy own flesh; for the enemy without is sooner overcome, if the inward man be not laid waste. there is no more troublesome or worse enemy to the soul than thou art to thyself, not agreeing well with the spirit. thou must in good earnest conceive a true contempt of thyself, if thou wilt prevail over flesh and blood. because thou yet hast too inordinate a love for thyself, therefore art thou afraid to resign thyself wholly to the will of others. . but what great matter is it, if thou, who art but dust and a mere nothing, submittest thyself for god's sake to man; when i the _almighty_, and the _most high_, who created all things out of nothing, have for thy sake humbly subjected myself to man. i became the most humble and most abject of all men, that thou mightest overcome thy pride by my humility. { } learn, o dust, to obey, learn to humble thyself thou that art but dirt and mire, and to cast thyself down under the feet of all men. learn to break thy own will, and to yield thyself up to all subjection. . conceive an indignation against thyself, suffer not the swelling of pride to live in thee: but make thyself so submissive and little, that all may trample on thee, and tread thee under their feet, as the dirt of the streets. what hast thou, vain man, to complain of? what answer canst thou make, o filthy sinner, to those that reproach thee, thou that hast so often offended god, and many times deserved hell? but mine eye hath spared thee, because thy soul was precious in my sight, that thou mightest know my love, and mightest be always thankful for my favours, and that thou mightest give thyself continually to true subjection and humility; and bear with patience to be despised by all. { } chap. xiv.--_of considering the secret judgments of god, lest we be puffed up by our good works_. . thou thunderest forth over my head thy judgments, o lord, and thou shakest all my bones with fear and trembling, and my soul is terrified exceedingly. i stand astonished, and consider that the _heavens are not pure in thy sight_. if in the angels thou hast found sin, and hast not spared them, what will become of me? stars have fallen from heaven, and i that am but dust, how can i presume? they, whose works seemed praiseworthy, have fallen to the very lowest; and such as before fed upon the bread of angels, i have seen delighted with the husks of swine. . there is then no sanctity, if thou o lord, withdraw thy hand: no wisdom avails, if thou cease to govern us: { } no strength is of any help, if thou support us not: no chastity is secure without thy protection: no guard that we can keep upon ourselves profits us, if thy holy watchfulness be not with us: for it we are left to ourselves, we sink and we perish; but if thou visit us, we are raised up and we live. for we are unsettled, but by thee we are strengthened: we are tepid, but by thee we are inflamed. . o how humbly and lowly ought i to think of myself! how little ought i to esteem whatever good i may seem to have? oh! how low ought i to cast myself down under the bottomless depth of thy judgments, o lord, where i find myself to be _nothing_ else but _nothing_ and _nothing?_ oh! immense weight! oh! sea, that cannot be passed over, where i find nothing of myself but just nothing at all. where then can there be any lurking hole for glorying in myself? where any confidence in any conceit of my own virtue? { } all vain-glory is swallowed up in the depth of thy judgments over me. . what is all flesh in thy sight? shall the clay glory against him that formed it? how can he be puffed up with the vain talk of man, whose heart in _truth_ is subjected to god. all the world will not lift him up, whom _truth_ hath subjected to itself: neither will he be moved with the tongues of all that praise him, who hath settled his whole hope in god. for behold, they also that speak are all _nothing_, for they shall pass away with the sound of their words; but _the truth of the lord remaineth for ever_. psalms cxiv. chap. xv.--_how we are to be disposed, and what we are to say when we desire any thing_. . my son, say thus in every occasion; lord, if it be pleasing to thee, let this be done in this manner. { } lord, if it be to thy honour, let this be done in thy name. lord, if thou seest that this is expedient, and approvest it as profitable for me, then grant that i may use it to thy honour; but if thou knowest that it will be hurtful to me, and not expedient for the salvation of my soul, take away from me such a desire. for every desire is not from the holy ghost, though it seem to a man right and good. and it is hard to judge truly, whether it be a good or bad spirit that pushes thee on to desire this, or that, or whether thou art not moved to it by thy own spirit. many in the end have been deceived, who at first seemed to be led by a good spirit. . whatsoever therefore presents itself to thy mind as worthy to be desired; see that it is always with the fear of god, and the humility of heart that thou desire or ask for it; { } and above all, thou oughtest with a resignation of thyself to commit all to me, and to say, o lord, thou knowest what is best; let this or that be done as thou wilt. give what thou wilt, how much thou wilt, and at what time thou wilt. do with me as thou knowest, and as best pleaseth thee, and is most for thy honour. put me where thou wilt, and do with me in all things according to thy will. i am in thy hand, turn me round which way thou wilt. lo, i am thy servant, ready to obey thee in all things; for i dont desire to live for myself, but for thee: i wish it may be perfectly and worthily. _a prayer for the fulfilling of the will of god_. . grant me thy grace, most merciful jesus, that it may be with me, and may labour with me, and continue with me to the end. { } grant me always to will and desire that which is most acceptable to thee, and which pleaseth thee best. let thy will be mine, and let my will always follow thine, and agree perfectly with it. let me always will or not will the same with thee; and let me not be able to will or not will any otherwise than as thou willest or willest not. . grant that i may die to all things that are in the world; and for thy sake love to be despised, and not to be known in this world. grant that i may rest, in thee above all things desired, and that my heart may be at peace in thee. thou art the true peace of the heart, thou art its only rest; out of thee all things are hard and uneasy. _in_ this _peace, in the self same_ (that is, in thee, the one sovereign eternal good) _i will sleep and take my rest_. (psalms iv.) _amen_. { } chap. xvi.--_that true comfort is to be sought in god alone_. . whatsoever i can desire or imagine for my comfort, i look not for it in this life, but hereafter. for if i alone should have all the comforts of this world, and might enjoy all its delights, it is certain they could not last long. wherefore thou canst not, o my soul, be fully comforted, nor perfectly delighted, but in god, the comforter of the poor, and the support of the humble. expect a little while, my soul, wait for the divine promise, and thou shalt have plenty of all that is good in heaven. if thou desirest too inordinately these present things, thou wilt lose those that are heavenly and everlasting. let temporal things serve thy use, but the eternal be the object of thy desire. { } thou canst not be fully satisfied with any temporal good, because thou wast not created for the enjoyment of such things. . although thou shouldst have all created goods, yet this could not make thee happy and blessed: but in god, who created all things, all thy beatitude and happiness consists. not such a happiness as is seen or cried up by the foolish admirers of this world, but such as good christians look for, and of which they that are spiritual and clean of heart, whose conversation is in heaven, have sometimes a foretaste. all human comfort is vain and short. blessed and true is that comfort which is inwardly received from _truth_. a devout man always carrieth about with him jesus his comforter, and saith to him, be with me, o lord jesus, in all places, and at all times. let this be my consolation, to be willing to want all human comfort. and if thy comfort also be withdrawn, let thy will, and just appointment for my trial be to me as the greatest of comforts. { } for _thou wilt not always be angry, nor wilt thou threaten for ever_. psalms cii. chap. xvii.--_that we ought to cast all our care upon god_. . son, suffer me to do with thee what i will: i know what is best for thee: thou thinkest as man: thou judgest in many things as human affection suggests. lord, what thou sayest is true, thy care over me is greater than all the care i can take of myself. for he stands at too great a hazard that does not cast his whole care on thee. lord, provided that my will remain but firm towards thee, do with me whatsoever it shall please thee: for it cannot but be good whatever thou shalt do by me. . if thou wilt have me to be in darkness, be thou blessed; and if thou wilt have me to be in light, be thou again blessed. if thou vouchsafe to comfort me, be thou blessed: and if it be thy will that i should be afflicted, be thou always equally blessed. { } . son, it is in this manner thou must stand affected, if thou desire to walk with me. thou must be as ready to suffer as to rejoice; thou must be as willing to be poor and needy, as to be full and rich. . lord, i will suffer willingly for thee whatsoever thou art pleased should befal me. i will receive with indifference from thy hand good and evil, sweet and bitter, joyful and sorrowful; and will give thee thanks for all that happens to me. keep me only from all sin, and i will fear neither death nor hell. cast me not off for ever, nor blot me out of the book of life; and what tribulation soever befalleth me shall not hurt me. { } chap. xviii.--_that temporal miseries are to be borne with patience after the example of jesus christ_. . son, i came down from heaven for thy salvation, i took upon me thy miseries, not of necessity, but moved thereto by charity, that thou mightest learn patience, and mightest bear without repining the miseries of this life: for from the hour of my birth, till my expiring on the cross, i was never without suffering. i underwent a great want of temporal things; i frequently heard many complaints against me; i meekly bore with confusions and reproaches. for my benefits i received ingratitude; for my miracles, blasphemies; and for my heavenly doctrine, reproaches. . lord, because thou wast patient in thy life-time, in this chiefly fulfilling the commandment of thy father, it is fitting that i a wretched sinner should, according to thy will, take all with patience; and as long as thou pleasest, support the burden of this corruptible life, in order to my salvation. { } for though this present life he burthensome, yet it is become through thy grace, meritorious; and by the help of thy example, and the footsteps of thy saints, more supportable to the weak, and more lightsome. it is also much more comfortable, than it was formerly under the old law, when the gate of heaven remained shut; and the way to heaven seemed more obscure, when so few concerned themselves to seek the kingdom of heaven. neither could they who were then just, and to be saved, enter into thy heavenly kingdom, before thy passion, and the payment of our debt by thy sacred death. . oh! how great thanks am i obliged to return thee, for having vouchsafed to shew me and all the faithful, a right and good way to an everlasting kingdom! { } for thy life is our way; and by holy patience we walk on to thee, who art our crown. if thou hadst not gone before and instructed us, who would have cared to have followed? alas! how many would have staid afar off, and a great way behind, if they had not before their eyes thy excellent example? behold we are still tepid, notwithstanding all thy miracles and instructions which we have heard: what then would it have been, if we had not this great light to follow thee? chap. xix.--_of supporting injuries; and who is proved to be truly patient_. . what is it thou sayest, my son? cease to complain, considering my passion, and that of other saints: thou hast not yet resisted unto blood: what thou sufferedst is but little, in comparison of them who have suffered so much; who have been so strongly tempted, so grievously afflicted, so many ways tried and exercised. { } thou must then call to mind the heavy sufferings of others, that thou mayest the easier bear the little things thou sufferest. and if to thee they seemed not little, take heed lest this also proceed from thy impatience. but whether they be little or great, strive to bear them all with patience. . the better thou disposest thyself to sufferings, the more wisely dost thou act, and the more dost thou merit; and thou wilt bear it more easily, thy mind being well prepared for it, and accustomed to it. do not say, i cannot take these things from such a man, and things of this kind are not to be suffered by me, for he has done me a great injury, and he upbraids me with things i never thought on; but i will suffer willingly from another, and as far as i shall judge fitting for me to suffer. { } such a thought is foolish, which considers not the virtue of patience, nor by whom it shall be crowned; but rather weighs the persons, and the offences committed. . he is not a true patient man, who will suffer no more than he thinks good, and from whom he pleaseth. the true patient man minds not by whom it is he is exercised, whether by his superior, or by one of his equals, or by an inferior; whether by a good and holy man, or one that is perverse and unworthy. but how much soever, and how often soever any adversity happens to him from any thing created, he takes it all with equality of mind as from the hand of god, with thanksgiving, and esteems it a great gain. for nothing, how little soever, that is suffered for god's sake, can pass without merit in the sight of god. . be thou therefore ready prepared to fight, if thou desirest to gain the victory. without fighting thou cannot obtain the crown of patience. if thou wilt not suffer, thou refusest to be crowned; but if thou desirest to be crowned, fight manfully and endure patiently. { } without labour there is no coming to rest, nor without fighting can the victory be obtained. may thy grace, o lord, make that possible to me, which seems impossible to me by nature. thou knowest that i can bear but little, and that i am quickly cast down by a small adversity. let all exercises of tribulation become amiable and agreeable to me for thy name's sake; for to suffer and to be afflicted for thee is very healthful for my soul. chap. xx.--_of the confession of our infirmity, and of the miseries of this life._ . _i will confess against myself my injustice_. psalms xxxi. i will confess to thee, o lord, my infirmity. it is oftentimes a small thing which casts me down and troubles me. { } i make a resolution to behave myself valiantly; but when a small temptation comes, i am brought into great straits. it is sometimes a very trifling thing, from whence a grievous temptation proceeds. and when i think myself somewhat safe, i find myself sometimes, when i least apprehend it, almost overcome with a small blast. . behold, then, o lord, my abjection and frailty every way known to thee. have pity on me, and draw me out of the mire, that i stick not fast therein, that i may not be utterly cast down for ever. this it is which often drives me back, and confounds me in thy sight, to find that i am so subject to fall, and have so little strength to resist my passions. and although i do not altogether consent, yet their assaults are troublesome and grievous to me; and it is exceedingly irksome to live thus always in a conflict. { } from hence my infirmity is made known to me; because wicked thoughts do always much more easily rush in upon me, than they can be cast out again. . oh! that thou the most mighty god of _israel_, the zealous lover of faithful souls, wouldst behold the labour and sorrow of thy servant, and stand by me in all my undertakings. strengthen me with heavenly fortitude, lest the old man, the miserable flesh not yet fully subject to the spirit, prevail and get the upper hand; against which we must fight as long as we breathe in this most wretched life. alas! what kind of life is this, where afflictions and miseries are never wanting, where all things are full of snares and enemies. for when one tribulation or temptation is gone, another cometh; yea, and whilst the first conflict still lasts, many others come on, and those unexpected. . and how can a life be loved that hath so great bitterness, that is subject to so many calamities and miseries. { } and how can it be called life, since it begets so many deaths and plagues? and yet it is loved, and many seek their delight in it. many blame the world that it is deceitful and vain, and yet they are not willing to quit it, because the concupiscences of the flesh too much prevail. but there are some things that draw them to love the world, others to despise it. the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and pride of life draw to the love of the world; but the pains and miseries which justly follow these things breed a hatred and loathing of the world. . but alas! the pleasure of sin prevails over the worldly soul, and under these thorns she imagines there are delights; because she has neither seen nor tasted the sweetness of god, nor the internal pleasure of virtue. but they that perfectly despise the world, and study to live to god under holy discipline, experience the divine sweetness, that is promised to those who forsake all; and such clearly see how grievously the world is mistaken, and how many ways it is imposed upon. { } chap. xxi.--_that we are to rest in god above all goods and gifts_. . above all things, and in all things, do thou my soul rest always in the lord, for he is the eternal rest of the saints. give me, o most sweet and loving jesus, to repose in thee above all things created, above all health and beauty, above all glory and honour, above all power and dignity, above all knowledge and subtlety, above all riches and arts, above all joy and gladness, above all fame and praise, above all sweetness and consolation, above all hope and promise, above all merit and desire. above all gifts and presents that thou canst give and infuse, above all joy and jubilation that the mind can contain or feel; in line, above angels and archangels, and all the host of heaven; above all things visible and invisible, and above all that which thou, my god, art not. { } . for thou, o lord my god, art the best above all things: thou alone most high, thou alone most powerful; thou alone most sufficient, and most full; thou alone most sweet, and most comfortable: thou alone most beautiful, and most loving; thou alone most noble, and most glorious above all things; in whom all good things are found together in all their perfection, and always have been, and always will be. and therefore whatever thou bestowest upon me, that is not thyself, or whatever thou revealest to me concerning thyself, or promised, as long as i see thee not, nor fully enjoy thee, is too little and insufficient. because indeed my heart cannot truly rest, nor be entirely contented, till it rest in thee, and rise above all things created. { } . o my most beloved spouse, christ jesus, most pure lover, lord of the whole creation; who will give me the wings of true liberty, to fly and repose in thee? oh! when shall it be fully granted me to attend at leisure and see how sweet thou art, o lord my god. when shall i fully recollect myself in thee, that through the love of thee i may not feel myself, but thee alone, above all feeling and measure, in a manner not known to all? but now i often sigh, and bear my misfortune with grief; because i meet with many evils in this vale of miseries, which frequently disturb me, afflict me, and cast a cloud over me: often hinder me and distract me, allure and entangle me, that i cannot have free access to thee, nor enjoy thy sweet embraces, which are ever enjoyed by blessed spirits. let my sighs move thee, and this manifold desolation under which i labour upon earth. . o jesus, the brightness of eternal glory, the comfort of a soul in its pilgrimage; with thee is my mouth without voice, and my silence speaks to thee. { } how long doth my lord delay to come. let him come to me, his poor servant, and make me joyful: let him stretch forth his hand, and deliver me a wretch from all anguish. o come, o come; for without thee i can never have one joyful day nor hour, for thou art my joy; and without thee my table is empty. i am miserable, and in a manner imprisoned, and loaded with fetters, till thou comfort me with the light of thy presence, and restore me to liberty, and shew me a favourable countenance. . let others seek instead of thee whatever else they please; nothing else doth please me, or shall please me, but thou my god, my hope, my eternal salvation. i will not hold my peace, nor cease to pray till thy grace returns, and thou speak to me interiorly. { } . behold here i am; behold i come to thee, because thou hast called upon me. thy tears, and the desire of thy soul, thy humiliation and contrition of heart have inclined and brought me to thee. . and i said, o lord, i have called upon thee, and have desired to enjoy thee, and am ready to renounce all other things for thee. for thou didst first stir me up that i might seek thee. be thou therefore blessed, o lord, who hath shewed this goodness to thy servant, according to the multitude of thy mercies. what hath thy servant more to say in thy presence, but to humble himself exceedingly before thee; always remembering his own iniquity and vileness. for there is none like to thee, amongst all things that are wonderful in heaven or earth. thy works are exceedingly good, thy judgments are true, and by thy providence all things are ruled. { } praise therefore and glory be to thee, o wisdom of the father: let my tongue, my soul, and all things created join in praising thee, and blessing thee. chap. xxii.--_of the rememberance of the manifold benefits of god._ . open, o lord, my heart in thy law, and teach me to walk in thy commandments. give me grace to understand thy will, and to commemorate with great reverence and diligent consideration all thy benefits, as well in general as in particular, that so i may be able worthily to give thee thanks for them. but i know and confess that i am not able to return thee thanks, not even for the least point. i am less than any of thy benefits bestowed upon me; and when i consider thy excellency, my spirit loses itself in the greatness of thy majesty. . all that we have in soul and body, all that we possess outwardly or inwardly, by nature or grace, are thy benefits, and commend thy bounty, mercy and goodness, from whom we have received all good. { } and though one has received more, another less, yet all is thine, and without thee even the least cannot be had. he that has received greater things cannot glory of his own merit, nor extol himself above others, nor insult over the lesser; because he is indeed greater and better, who attributes less to himself, and is more humble and devout in returning thanks. and he who esteems himself the vilest of all men, and judges himself the most unworthy, is fittest to receive the greatest blessings. . but he that has received fewer must not be troubled, nor take it ill, nor envy him that is more enriched; but attend rather to thee, and very much praise thy goodness, for that thou bestowest thy gifts so plentifully, so freely and willingly without respect of persons. all things are from thee, and therefore thou art to be praised in all. { } thou knowest what is fit to be given to every one; and why this person hath less, and the other more, is not our business to decide, but thine, who keepest an exact account of the merits of each one. . wherefore, o lord god, i take it for a great benefit, not to have much which outwardly and according to men might appear praise-worthy and glorious. so that a person, considering his own poverty and meanness, ought not upon that account to be weighed down, or to be grieved and dejected, but rather to receive comfort and great pleasure. because thou, o god, hast chosen the poor and the humble, and those that are despised by this world, for thy familiar friends and domestics. witness thy apostles themselves, whom thou hast appointed rulers over all the earth. and yet they conversed in this world without complaint, so humble and simple, without any malice or guile, that they were even glad when they suffered affronts and reproaches for thy name; and what the world flies from, they embraced with great affection. { } . nothing therefore ought to give so great joy to him that loves thee, and knows thy benefits, and the accomplishment of thy will in himself, and the pleasure of thy eternal appointment. with which he ought to be so far contented and comforted, as to be willing to be the least, as any one would wish to be the greatest, and to enjoy as much peace and content in the lowest place, as in the highest; and to be as willing to be despicable and mean, and of no name and repute in the world, as to be preferred in honour, and greater than others: for thy will, and the love of thy honour, ought to be regarded above all, and to comfort and please him more than any benefits whatsoever which he hath received, or can receive. chap. xxiii.--_of four things which bring much peace_. . son, i will teach thee now the way of peace and true liberty. . do, lord; i beseech thee, as thou sayest, for i shall be very glad to hear it. { } . endeavour, my son, rather to do the will of another, than thy own. ever choose rather to have less, than more. always seek the lowest place, and to be inferior to every one. always wish and pray that the will of god may be entirely fulfilled in thee. behold, such a man as this enters upon the coast of peace and rest. . lord, this thy short speech contains much perfection. it is short in words, but full in sense, and plentiful in its fruit; for if it could be faithfully observed by me, i should not be so easily troubled. for as often as i find myself disquieted and disturbed, i am sensible it is because i have strayed from this doctrine. but thou, o lord, who canst do all things, and always lovest the progress of the soul, increase in me thy grace, that i may accomplish this thy word, and perfect my salvation. { } _a prayer against evil thoughts_. . o lord, my god, depart not far from me: o my god, have regard to help me, for divers evil thoughts have risen up against me, and great fears afflicting my soul. how shall i pass without hurt? how shall i break through them? . _i_ (saith he) _will go before thee, end will humble the great ones of the earth_. isaiah xxv. i will open the gates of the prison, and reveal to thee the hidden secrets. . do, lord, as thou sayest, and let all these wicked thoughts flee from before thy face. this is my hope and my only comfort, to fly to thee in all tribulations, to confide in thee, to call on thee from my heart, and patiently to look for thy consolation. { } _prayer for the enlightening the mind_. . enlighten me, o good jesus, with the brightness of the internal light; and cast out all darkness from the dwelling of my heart. restrain my many wandering thoughts, and suppress the temptations that violently assault me. fight strongly for me, and overcome those wicked beasts, i mean, these alluring concupiscences; that peace may be made in thy power, and the abundance of thy praise may resound in thy holy court, which is a clean conscience. command the winds and storms: say to the sea be thou still, and to the north wind, blow thou not; and a great calm shall ensue. . send forth thy light and thy truth, that they may shine upon the earth; for i am an earth that is empty and void, till thou enlightenest me. _genesis_ i. pour forth thy grace from above; water my heart with the dew of heaven; send down the waters of devotion, to wash the face of the earth, to bring forth good and perfect fruit. { } lift up my mind, oppressed with the load of sins, and raise my whole desire towards heavenly things; that having tasted the sweetness of the happiness above, i may have no pleasure in thinking of the things of the earth. . draw me away, and deliver me from all unstable comfort of creatures, for no created thing can fully quiet and satisfy my desire. join me to thyself with an inseparable bond of love; for thou alone canst satisfy the lover; and without thee all other things are frivolous. chap. xxiv.--_that we are not to be curious in enquiring into the life of others_. . son, be not curious, and give not way to useless cares. what is this or that to thee? do thou follow me. { } for what is it to thee whether this man be such, or such; or that man do or say this, or the other? thou art not to answer for others, but must give an account for thyself; why therefore dost thou meddle with them? behold, i know every one, and see all things that are done under the sun; and i know how it is with every one, what he thinks, what he would have, and at what his intention aims. all things therefore are to be committed to me; but as for thy part, keep thyself in good peace, and let the busybody be as busy as he will. whatsoever he shall do or say, will come upon himself, because he cannot deceive me. . be not solicitous for the shadow of a great name, neither seek to be familiarly acquainted with many, nor to be particularly loved by men. for these things beget distractions and great darkness in the heart. i would willingly speak my word to thee, and reveal my secrets to thee; if thou wouldst diligently observe my coming, and open to me the door of thy heart. { } be careful and watch in prayers, and humble thyself in all things. chap. xxv.--_in what things the firm peace of the heart and true progress doth consist._ . son, i have said, _peace i leave to you, my peace i give to you: not as the world giveth, do i give to you_. john xiv. _peace_ is what all desire; but all care not for those things which appertain to true _peace_. my _peace_ is with the humble and meek of heart: thy peace shall be in much patience. if thou wilt hear me, and follow my voice, thou mayest enjoy much _peace_. . what then shall i do. lord? . in every thing attend to thyself, what thou art doing, and what thou art saying; and direct thy whole intention to this, that thou mayest please me alone, and neither desire nor seek any thing out of me. { } and as for the sayings or doings of others, judge of nothing rashly; neither busy thyself with things not committed to thy care; and thus may it be brought about that thou shalt be little or seldom disturbed. but never to feel any trouble at all, nor to suffer a grief of heart or body, is not the state of this present life, but of everlasting rest. think not therefore that thou hast found true peace, if thou feelest no burden; nor that then all is well, if thou have no adversary; nor that thou hast attained to perfection, if all things be done according to thy inclination. neither do thou then conceive a great notion of thyself, or imagine thyself especially beloved, if thou be in great devotion and sweetness: for it is not in such things as these that a true lover of virtue is known; nor doth the progress and perfection of a man consist in these things. . in what then, o lord? . in offering thyself with thy whole heart to the will of god; not seeking the things that are thine either in little or great, either in time or eternity. { } so that with the same equal countenance thou continue giving thanks both in prosperity and adversity, weighing all things in an equal balance. if thou come to be so valiant, and long suffering in hope, that when interior comfort is withdrawn, thou canst prepare thy heart to suffer still more; and dost not justify thyself, as if thou oughtest not to suffer such great things; but acknowledgest my justice in all my appointments, and praisest my holy name; then it is that thou walkest in the true and right way of peace, and mayest hope without any question to see my face again with great joy. and if thou arrive at an entire contempt of thyself, know that then thou shalt enjoy an abundance of peace, as much as is possible in this state of banishment. { } chap. xxvi.--_of the eminence of a free mind, which humble prayer better procures than reading_. . lord, this is the work of a perfect man, never to let one's mind slacken from attending to heavenly things, and to pass through many cares, as it were without care; not after the manner of an indolent person, but by a certain prerogative of a free mind, which doth not cleave by an inordinate affection to any thing created. . preserve me, i beseech thee, o my most merciful god, from the cares of this life, that i be not too much entangled by them; from the many necessities of the body, that i may not be ensnared by pleasure; and from all hinderances of the soul, lest being overcome by troubles i be cast down. i do not say from those things which worldly vanity covets with so much eagerness; but from these miseries, which by the general curse of our mortality, as punishments, weigh down and keep back the soul of thy servant from being able, when it will, to enter into liberty of spirit. { } . o my god, who art unspeakable sweetness, turn into bitterness to me all carnal comfort, which withdraws me from the love of things eternal, and wickedly allures me to itself, by setting before me a certain present delightful good. o my god, let not flesh and blood prevail over me, let it not overcome me: let not the world and its transitory glory deceive me: let not the devil supplant me by his craft. give me fortitude, that i may stand my ground, patience that i may endure, and constancy that i may persevere. give me, in lieu of all the comforts of this world, the most delightful unction of thy spirit; and instead of carnal love, infuse into me the love of thy name. . behold! eating, drinking, cloathing, and other necessaries appertaining to the support of the body are burthensome to a fervent spirit. { } grant that i may use such things with moderation, and not be entangled with an inordinate affection to them. it is not lawful to cast them all away, for nature must be supported; but to require superfluities, and such things as are more delightful, thy holy law forbids; for otherwise the flesh would grow insolent against the spirit. in all this, i beseech thee, let thy hand govern and direct me, that i may no way exceed. chap. xxvii.--_that self-love chiefly keeps a person back from the sovereign good._ . my son, thou must give all for all, and be nothing of thy own. know that the love of thyself is more hurtful to thee than any thing in the world. every thing, according to the love and inclination which thou hast to it, cleaveth to thee more or less. if thy love be pure, simple, and well ordered, thou shalt not be a captive to any thing. { } covet not that which thou mayest not have. seek not to have that which may hinder thee and rob thee of inward liberty. it is wonderful that thou wilt not from the very bottom of thy heart commit thyself wholly to me, with all things that thou canst desire to have. . why dost thou pine away with vain grief? why tirest thou thyself with useless cares? stand resigned to my good pleasure, and thou shalt suffer no loss. if thou seekest this, or that, or wouldst be here or there, for the sake of thy own interest, or the pleasing thy own will, thou shall never be at rest, nor free from solicitude; for in every thing thou shalt find some defect, and in every place there will be some one that will cross thee. . it is not therefore the obtaining or multiplying things exteriorly that avails thee, but rather the despising of them, and cutting them up by the root out of thy heart; which i would not have thee to understand only with regard to money and riches, and also with regard to ambition and honour, and the desire of empty praise: all which things pass away with the world. { } the place avails little, if the spirit of fervour be wanting; neither shall that peace stand long which is sought from abroad, if the state of thy heart want the true foundation, that is, if thou stand not in me: thou mayest change, but not better thyself. for when occasion happens, thou shalt find that which thou didst fly from, and more. _a prayer_ _for the cleansing of the heart, and the obtaining heavenly wisdom._ . confirm me, o god, by the grace of thy holy spirit. give me power to be strengthened in the inward man, and to cast out of my heart all unprofitable care and trouble; let me not be drawn away with various desires of any thing whatsoever, whether it be of little or great value; but may i look upon all things as passing away, and upon my self as passing along with them. { } for nothing is lasting under the sun, where all is vanity and affliction of spirit. o how wise is he who considers things in this manner! . give me, o lord, heavenly wisdom, that i may learn above all things to seek thee, and to find thee; above all things to relish thee, and to love thee, and to understand all other things, as they are, according to the order of thy wisdom. grant that i may prudently decline him that flatters me, and patiently bear with him that contradicts me. for this is great wisdom, not to be moved with every wind of words, nor to give ear to the wicked flattering siren; for thus shall we go on securely in the way we have begun. chap. xxviii.--_against the tongues of detractors_. . son, take it not to heart if some people think ill of thee, and say of thee what thou art not willing to hear. { } thou oughtest to think worse of thyself, and to believe that no one is weaker than thyself. if thou walkest _interiorly_, thou wilt make small account of flying words. it is no small prudence to be silent in the evil time, and to turn within to me, and not to be disturbed with the judgment of man. . let not thy peace be in the tongues of men; for whether they put a good or bad construction on what thou doest, thou art still what thou art. where is true peace, and true glory? is it not in me? and he who covets not to please men, nor fears their displeasure, shall enjoy much peace. all disquiet of heart, and distraction of our senses, arises from inordinate love, and vain fear. chap. xxix.--_how in the time of tribulation god is to be invoked and blessed_. . blessed, o lord, be thy name for ever, who has been pleased that this trial and tribulation should come upon me. { } i cannot fly from it, but must of necessity fly to thee; that thou mayest help me, and turn it to my good. lord i am now in tribulation, and my heart is not at ease; but i am much afflicted with my present suffering. and now, dear father, what shall i say? i am taken, lord, in these straits: o save me from this hour. but for this reason i came into this hour, that thou mightest be glorified, when i shall be exceedingly humbled, and delivered by thee. may it please thee, o lord, to deliver me; for, poor wretch that i am! what can i do, and whither shall i go without thee? give me patience, o lord, this time also. help me, o my god, and i will not fear how much soever i may be oppressed. . and now in the midst of these things, what shall i say? lord, thy will be done: i have well deserved to be afflicted and troubled. { } i must needs bear it; and would to god, it may be with patience, till the storm pass over, and it be better. but thy almighty hand is able to take away from me this temptation also, and to moderate its violence, lest i quite sink under it; as thou hast often done heretofore for me; _o my god, my mercy!_ and how much more difficult this is to me, so much easier to thee is _this change of the right hand of the most high._ psalms lxxvi. chap. xxx.--_of asking the divine assistance, and of confidence of recovering grace._ . son, i am the lord, who give strength in the day of tribulation. come to me when it is not well with thee. this is that which most of all hinders heavenly comfort, that thou art slow in turning thyself to prayer. for before thou earnestly prayest to me, thou seekest in the mean time many comforts, and delightest thyself in outward things. { } and hence it comes to pass, that all things avail thee little, till thou take notice that i am he who deliver those that trust in me: nor is there out of me any powerful help, nor profitable counsel, nor lasting remedy. but now having recovered spirit after the storm, grow thou strong again in the light of my tender mercies; for i am at hand, saith the lord, to repair all, not only to the full, but even with abundance, and above measure. . is any thing difficult to me? or shall i be like one that promises and does not perform? where is thy faith? stand firmly, and with perseverance. have patience, and be of good courage; comfort will come to thee in its proper season. wait for me, wait, i will come and cure thee. it is a temptation that troubles thee, and a vain fear that frights thee. what does the solicitude about future accidents bring thee but only sorrow upon sorrow? _sufficient for the day is the evil thereof._ matthew vi. { } it is a vain and unprofitable thing, to conceive either grief or joy for future things, which perhaps will never happen. . but it is incident to man to be deluded with such vain imaginations; and a sign of a soul that is yet weak to be so easily drawn away by the suggestion of the enemy. for he cares not whether it be with things true or false, that he abuses and deceives thee; whether he overthrows thee with the love of things present, or the fear of things to come. let not therefore thy heart be troubled, and let it not fear. believe in me, and trust in my mercy. when thou thinkest i am far from thee, i am often nearest to thee. when thou judgest that almost all is lost, then oftentimes it is that thou art in the way of the greatest gain of merit. all is not lost, when any thing falls out otherwise than thou wouldst have it. { } thou must not judge according to the present feeling, nor give thyself up in such manner to any trouble from whencesoever it comes, nor take it so, as if all hope was gone of being delivered out of it. . think not thyself wholly forsaken, although for a time i have sent thee some tribulation, or withdrawn from thee the comfort which thou desirest; for this is the way to the kingdom of heaven. and without all doubt it is more expedient for thee, and for the rest of my servants, that you be exercised by adversities, than that you should have all things according to your inclination. i know thy secret thoughts, i know that it is very expedient for thy soul that thou shouldest sometimes be left without gust, lest thou shouldst be puffed up with good success, and shouldst take a complaisance in thyself, imagining thyself to be what thou art not. { } what i have given i can justly take away, and restore it again when i please. . when i give it, it is still mine; when i take it away again, i take not any thing that is thine; for _every good gift and every perfect gift is mine,_ james i. if i send thee affliction, or any adversity, repine not, neither let thy heart be cast down. i can quickly raise thee up again, and turn all thy burden into joy. nevertheless, i am just, and greatly to be praised, when i deal thus with thee. . if thou thinkest rightly, and considerest things in truth, thou oughtest never to be so much dejected and troubled for any adversity; but rather to rejoice and give thanks: yea, to account this a special subject of joy, that i do not spare thee, afflicting thee with sorrows. _as my father hath loved me, i also have loved you_, said i to my beloved disciples, (john xv.) whom certainly i did not send to temporal joys, but to great conflicts; not to honours, but to contempt; not to idleness, but to labours; not to rest, but to bring forth much fruit in patience. remember these words, o my son. { } chap. xxxi.--_of disregarding all things created, that so we may find the creator_. . lord, i stand much in need of a grace yet greater, if i must arrive so far, that it may not be in the power of any man, nor any thing created, to hinder me; for as long as any thing holds me, i cannot freely fly to thee. he was desirous to fly freely to thee, who said, _who will give me wings like a dove, and i will fly and be at rest_. psalms liv. [usccb: psalms lv. .] what can be more at rest than a simple eye [that aims at nothing but god]? and what can be more free, than he that desires nothing upon earth? a man ought therefore to pass and ascend above every thing created, and perfectly to forsake himself, and in ecstasy of mind to stand and see that thou, the maker of all things, hast no similitude with thy creatures. { } and unless a man be at liberty from all things created, he cannot attend to things divine. and this is the reason why there are found so few _contemplative_ persons, because there are few that wholly sequester themselves from transitory and created things. . for this a great grace is required, which may elevate the soul, and carry her up above herself. and unless a man be elevated in spirit, and set at liberty from all creatures, and wholly united to god; whatever he knows, and whatever he has, is of no great weight. long shall he be little, and lie grovelling beneath, who esteems any thing great but only the _one, immense, eternal good._ and whatsoever is not god is _nothing_, and ought to be accounted as _nothing_. { } there is a great difference between the wisdom of an illuminated devout man, and the knowledge of a learned studious scholar. far more noble is that learning which flows from above, from the divine influence, than that which with labour is acquired by the wit of man. . many are found to desire contemplation; but care not to practise those things which are required thereunto. it is a great impediment that we stand in signs and sensible things, and have but little of perfect mortification. i know not what it is, by what spirit we are led, or what we pretend to, who seem to be called _spiritual_ persons; that we take so much pains, and have a greater solicitude for transitory and mean things; and scarce ever have our senses fully recollected to think of our own interior. . alas! after a slight recollection, we presently get out of ourselves again; neither do we weigh well our works by a strict examination. { } we take no notice where our affections lie; nor do we lament the great want of purity in all we do. _for all flesh had corrupted its way_, and therefore the great flood ensued. _genesis_ vi. _and_ vii. as therefore our interior affection is much corrupted, it must needs be that the action which follows should be corrupted also; a testimony of the want of inward vigour. from a pure heart proceeds the fruit of a good life. . we are apt to enquire how much a man has done; but with how much virtue he has done it, is not so diligently considered. we ask whether he be strong, rich, beautiful, ingenious, a good writer, a good singer, or a good workman; but how poor he is in spirit, how patient and meek, how devout and internal, is what few speak of. nature looks upon the outward thing of a man, but grace turns herself to the interior. { } nature is often deceived, but grace hath her trust in god, that she may not be deceived. chap. xxxii.--_of the denying ourselves, and renouncing all cupidity_. . son, thou canst not possess perfect liberty, unless thou wholly deny thyself. all self-seekers and self-lovers are bound in fetters, full of desires, full of cares, unsettled, and seeking always their own ease, and not the things of jesus christ, but oftentimes devising and framing that which shall not stand; for all shall come to nothing that proceeds not from god. take this short and perfect word, _forsake all and thou shall find all, leave thy desires and thou shall find rest._ consider this well, and when thou shalt put it in practice thou shalt understand all things. . lord, this is not the work of one day, nor children's sport; yea, in this short sentence is included the whole perfection of the religious. { } son, thou must not be turned back, nor presently cast down, when thou hearest what the way of the perfect is, but rather be incited thereby to undertake great things, or at least to sigh after them with an earnest desire. i would it were so with thee, and that thou wert come so far that thou wert no longer a lover of thyself, but didst stand wholly at my beck, and at his whom i have appointed father over thee; then wouldst thou exceedingly please me, and all thy life would pass in joy and peace. thou hast yet many things to forsake, which unless thou give up to me without reserve, thou shalt not attain to that which thou demandest. _i counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest become rich_. apoc. iii. that is heavenly wisdom, which treads under foot all things below. set aside the wisdom of the earth, _i.e._ seeking to please the world and thyself. { } . i have said that thou shouldst give the things that are high and of great esteem with men, to purchase those which are esteemed contemptible; for true heavenly wisdom seems very mean and contemptible, and is scarce thought of by men; that wisdom which teaches to think meanly of one's self, and not to seek to become great upon earth, which many praise; in words, but in their life they are far from it; yet this same is that _precious, pearl_, which is hidden from many. _matthew_ xiii. chap. xxxiii.--_of the inconstancy of our heart, and of directing our final intention to god_. . son, trust not to thy present affection, it will quickly be changed into another. { } as long as thou livest thou art subject to change, even against thy will; so as to be sometimes joyful, other times sad; now easy, anon troubled; at one time devout, at another dry; sometimes fervent, other times sluggish; one day heavy, another lighter. but he that is wise and well instructed in _spirit_ stands above all these changes; not minding what he feels in himself, nor on what side the wind of mutability blows; but that the whole bent of his soul may advance towards its due and wished-for end; for so he may continue one and the self-same without being shaken, by directing without ceasing, through all this variety of events, the single eye of his intention towards me. . and by how much the purer the eye of the intention is, by so much the more constantly may one pass these diverse storms. but in many the eye of pure intention is dark, for we quickly look towards something delightful which comes in our way; and it is rare to find one wholly free from all blemish of self-seeking. so the jews heretofore came into bethania to martha and mary, not for jesus only, but that they might see lazarus also. _john_ xi. { } the eye of the intention therefore must be purified, that it may be single and right; and must be directed unto me, beyond all the various objects that interpose themselves. chap. xxxiv.--_that he that loves god relishes him above all things, and in all things_. . behold _my_ god, _and my all_, what would i have more, and what can i desire more happy? o savoury and sweet word! but to him that loves _the word_, not the world, nor the things that are in the world. my god, _and all!_ enough is said to him that understands; and it is delightful to him that loves to repeat it often. for when thou art present all things yield delight; but when thou art absent, all things are loathsome. thou givest tranquillity to the heart, and great peace, and pleasant joy. { } thou makest to think well of all, and praise thee in all things; nor can any thing without thee afford any lasting pleasure: but to make it agreeable and relishing, thy grace must be present; and it must be seasoned with the seasoning of thy wisdom. . he that has a relish of thee will find all things savoury. and to him that relishes thee not, what can ever yield any true delight? but the wise of this world, and the admirers of the flesh, are far from the relish of thy wisdom; because in the world is much vanity, and the following of the flesh leads to death. but they that follow thee, by despising the things of this world, and mortifying the flesh, are found to be wise indeed: for they are translated from vanity to truth, from the flesh to the spirit. such as these have a relish of god; and what good soever is found in creatures, they refer it all to the praise of their maker. { } but great, yea very great, is the difference between the relish of the creator and the creature; of eternity and of time; of light increated, and of light enlightened. . o light eternal, transcending all created lights, dart forth thy lightning from above, which may penetrate all the most inward parts of my heart. cleanse, cherish, enlighten, and enliven my spirit with its powers, that it may be absorpt in thee with ecstasies of joy. oh! when will this blessed and desirable hour come, that thou shalt fill me with thy presence, and become to me _all in all?_ as long as this is not granted me, my joy will not be full. alas! the old man is still living in me; he is not wholly crucified; he is not perfectly dead: he still lusts strongly against the spirit; he wages war within me, and suffers not the kingdom of my soul to be quiet. { } . but, o lord, who _rulest over the power of the sea, and assuagest the motion of its waves_, (psalms lxxxviii.) arise and help me. [usccb: psalms lxxxix. .] _dissipate the people that desire war_. psalms lxvii. crush them by thy power. shew forth, i beseech thee, thy wonderful works; and let thy right-hand be glorified: for there is no other help nor refuge for me, but in thee, o lord, my god. chap. xxxv.--_that there is no being secure from temptation in this life_. . son, thou art never secure in this life; but as long as thou livest thou hast always need of spiritual arms. thou art in the midst of enemies, and art assaulted on all sides. if then thou dost not make use of the buckler of patience, thou wilt not be long without wounds. { } moreover, if thou dost not fix thy heart on me, with a sincere will of suffering all things for my sake, thou canst not support the heat of this warfare, nor attain to the victory of the saints. it behoveth thee therefore to go through all manfully, and to use a strong hand against all things that oppose thee. for _to him that overcomes is given manna_, (apoc. ii.) and to the sluggard is left much misery. . if thou seekest rest in this life, how then wilt thou come to rest everlasting? set not thy self to seek for much rest, but for much patience. seek true peace, not upon earth, but in heaven; not in men, nor in other things created, but in god alone. thou must be willing, for the love of god, to suffer all things, _viz._ labours and sorrows, temptations and vexations, anxieties, necessities, sicknesses, injuries, detractions, reprehensions, humiliations, confusions, corrections, and contempts. these things help to obtain virtue: these try a novice of christ: these procure a heavenly crown. { } i will give an everlasting reward for this short labour, and glory without end for transitory confusion. . dost thou think to have always spiritual consolations when thou pleasest? my saints had not so; but met with many troubles, and various temptations and great desolations. but they bore all with patience, and confided more in god than in themselves; knowing that the sufferings of this life are not of equal proportion to the merit of the glory to come. wouldst thou have that immediately, which others after many tears and great labours have hardly obtained? expect the lord, do manfully, and be of good heart. do not despond, do not fall off; but constantly offer both soul and body for the glory of god. i will reward thee most abundantly, and will be with thee in all thy tribulations. { } chap. xxxvi.--_against the vain judgments of men_. . son, cast thy heart firmly on the lord, and fear not the judgement of man, when thy conscience gives testimony of thy piety and innocence. it is good and happy to suffer in this manner, neither will this be grievous to an humble heart, nor to him that trusts in god more than in himself. many say many things, and therefore little credit is to be given to them. neither is it possible to satisfy all; though paul endeavoured to please all in the lord, and made himself all unto all: yet at the same time he made little account of his being judged by man's day. _corinthians_ iv. _and_ ix. . he labours for the edification and salvation of others, as much as he could, and as lay in him; but he could not prevent his being sometimes judged or despised by others. { } therefore he committed all to god, who knows all; and defended himself by patience and humility against the tongues of those that spoke evil, or thought and gave out at pleasure vain and faulty things of him. however, he answered them sometimes, lest his silence might give occasion of scandal to the weak. . who art thou, that thou shouldst be afraid of a mortal man? to-day he is, and to-morrow he appears no more. fear god, and thou shalt have no need of being afraid of man. what can any one do against thee, by his words or injuries? he rather hurts himself than thee; nor can he escape the judgment of god whoever he be. see thou have god before thine eyes; and do not contend with complaining words. and if at present thou seem to be overcome, and to suffer a confusion which thou hast not deserved; do not repine at this, and do not lessen thy crown by impatience. { } but rather look up to me in heaven, who am able to deliver thee from all confusion and wrong, and to repay every one according to his works. chap. xxxvii.--_of a pure and full resignation of ourselves, for the obtaining freedom of heart_. . son, leave thyself, and thou shalt find me. stand without choice, or any self-seeking; and thou shalt always gain. for the greater grace shall always be added to thee, when thou hast perfectly given up thyself, without resuming thyself again. . lord, how often shall i resign myself; and in what things shall i leave myself? . always, and at all times; as in little, so also in great: i make no exception, but will have thee to be found in all things stript of thyself. { } otherwise how canst thou be mine, and i thine; unless thou be both within and without freed from all self-will? the sooner thou effectest this, the better will it be for thee; and the more fully and sincerely thou dost it, the more shalt thou please me, and the more shalt thou gain. . some there are that resign themselves, but it is with some exception; for they do not trust wholly to god, and therefore are busy to provide for themselves. some also at the first offer all; but afterwards, being assaulted by temptation, return again to what they left; and therefore they make no progress in virtue. these shall not attain to the true liberty of a pure heart, nor to the grace of a delightful familiarity with me; unless they first entirely resign themselves up, and offer themselves a daily sacrifice to me; for without this, divine union neither is nor will be obtained. . i have often said to thee, and i repeat it now again, forsake thyself, resign thyself, and thou shalt enjoy a great inward peace. { } give all for all, seek nothing, call for nothing back, stand purely, and with a full confidence in me, and thou shalt have me. thou shalt be at liberty within thy own heart, and darkness shall not overwhelm thee. aim only at this, pray for this, desire this, that thou mayest be stript of self-seeking, and thus naked follow thy naked jesus; that thou mayest die to thyself, and live eternally to me. then all vain imaginations shall vanish, all evil disturbances, and superfluous cares. then also immoderate fear shall leave thee, and inordinate love shall die. chap. xxxviii.--_of the good government of ourselves in outward things, and of having recourse to god in dangers_. . son, thou must diligently make it thy aim, that in every place, and in every action or outward employment, thou be inwardly free, and master of thyself; and that all things be under thee, and not thou under them. { } that thou mayest be lord and ruler of thy actions, and not a slave or bondsman: but rather a freeman, and a true hebrew transferred to the lot and to the liberty of the children of god; who stand above the things present, and contemplate those that are eternal; who look upon transitory things with the left eye, and with the right the things of heaven. who suffer not themselves to be drawn away by temporal things to cleave to them; but they rather draw these things to themselves, to make them serviceable to that end, for which they were ordained by god, and appointed by that sovereign artist, who has left nothing in all his works but regular and orderly. . if likewise, in all events, thou rulest not thyself by the outward appearance; nor lookest on the things which thou seest or hearest, with a carnal eye; but presently, on every occasion, doth enter like moses into the tabernacle to consult the lord; thou shalt sometimes hear the divine answer, and come out instructed in many things present and to come. { } for moses always had recourse to the tabernacle, for the deciding all doubts and questions; and fled to the help of prayer, against the dangers and wickedness of men: so must thou in like manner fly to the closet of thy heart, and there most earnestly implore the divine assistance: for joshua and the children of israel, as we read, (_joshua_ ix.) were therefore deceived by the gabaonites; because they did not first consult the lord, but too easily giving credit to fair words, were deluded with counterfeit piety. chap. xxxix.--_that a man must not be over eager in his affairs._ . son, always commit thy cause to me; i will dispose well of it in due season. wait for my disposal, and thou shalt find it will be for thy advantage. { } . lord, i willingly commit all things to thee; for my care can profit little. i wish i was not too much set upon future events; but offered myself with all readiness to thy divine pleasure. . my son, oftentimes a man eagerly sets about a thing which he desires; but when he has obtained it, he begins to be of another mind: for our inclinations are not wont to continue long upon the same thing, but rather pass from one thing to another. it is therefore a thing not of the least importance, to forsake one's self even in the least things. . a man's true progress consists in denying himself; and the man that has renounced himself is very much at liberty, and very safe. but the old enemy, who opposes all that is good, fails not to tempt; but day and night lays his dangerous plots to withdraw the unwary into his deceitful snare. _watch and pray_, saith the lord, _that ye enter not into temptation_. matthew xxvi. { } chap. xl.--_that man hath no good of himself, and that he cannot glory in any thing_. . _lord, what is man that thou art mindful of him; or the son of man that thou vouchsafest to visit him?_ psalms vi. what hath man deserved, that thou shouldst give him thy grace? lord what cause have i to complain if thou forsake me? or what can i justly alledge, if thou refuse to grant my petition? this, indeed, i may truly think and say: lord, _i am nothing, i can do nothing, i have nothing of myself that is good;_ but i fail and am defective in all things, and ever tend to _nothing;_ and unless i am supported and interiorly instructed by thee, i become quite tepid and dissolute. . but thou, o lord, art always the same, and endureth for ever; always good, just and holy; doing all things well, justly, and holily; and disposing them in wisdom. { } but i, who am more inclined to go back than to go forward, continue not always in one state; for seven different seasons are changed over me. yet it quickly becomes better when it pleaseth thee, and thou stretchest out thy helping hand: for thou alone, without man's aid, canst assist me, and so strengthen me, that my countenance shall be no more changed, but my heart shall be converted, and take its rest in thee alone. . wherefore if i did but well know how to cast away from me all human comfort, either for the sake of devotion, or through the necessity of seeking thee, because there is no man that can comfort me. then might i justly depend on thy grace, and rejoice in the gift of new consolation. . thanks be to thee, from whom all proceeds as often as it goes well with me. but, for my part, i am but mere vanity, and nothing in thy sight; an unconstant and weak man. what have i then to glory in? or why do i desire to be esteemed? { } is it not for nothing? and this is most vain. truly, vain-glory is an evil plague, a very great vanity; because it draws us away from true glory, and robs us of heavenly grace. for whilst a man takes a complacence in himself, he displeaseth thee; whilst he gapes after the praises of men, he is deprived of true virtues. . but true glory and holy joy is to glory in thee, and not in one's self; to rejoice in thy name, and not to be delighted in one's own virtue, nor in any creature, save only for thy sake. let thy name be praised, not mine: let thy work be extolled, not mine: let thy holy name be blessed, but to me let nothing be attributed of the praises of men. thou art my glory, thou art the joy of my heart: in thee will i glory and rejoice all the day; but _for myself i will glory in nothing but in my infirmities_. . let the jews seek the glory which one man receives from another: i will seek that which is from god alone. { } all human glory, all temporal honour, all worldly grandeur, compared to thy eternal glory, is but vanity and foolishness. o my truth, and my mercy, my god, o blessed trinity, to thee alone be all praise, honour, power, and glory, for endless ages of ages. chap. xli.--_of the contempt of all temporal honour._ . my son, take it not to heart, if thou seest others honoured and advanced, and thyself despised and debased. lift up thy heart to me in heaven, and thou wilt not be concerned at thy being contemned by men upon earth. . lord, we are in blindness, and are quickly seduced by vanity. if i look well into myself, never was any injury done me by any creature; and therefore i cannot justly complain of thee. for, because i have often and grievously sinned against thee, all creatures have reason to take up arms against me. { } to me therefore confusion and contempt is justly due, but to thee praise, honour, and glory. and unless i put myself in this disposition, to be willing to be despised and forsaken of all creatures, and to be esteemed nothing at all, i cannot arrive at inward peace and strength, nor be spiritually enlightened, nor fully united to thee. chap. xlii.--_that our peace is not to be placed in men._ . son, if thou placest thy peace with any person, for the sake of thy contentment in his company, thou shall be unsettled and entangled: but if thou hast recourse to the everliving and subsisting truth, thou shalt not be grieved when a friend departs or dies. in _me_ the love of thy friend must stand; and for _me_ is he to be loved, whoever he be, who appears to thee good, and is very dear to thee in this life. { } without _me_ no friendship is of any strength, nor will be durable; nor is that love true and pure of which i am not the author. thou oughtest to be so far mortified to such affections of persons beloved, as to wish (for as much as appertains to thee) to be without any company of man. by so much the more does a man draw nigh to god, by how much the farther he withdraws himself from all earthly comfort. so much the higher he ascends into god, by how much the lower he descends into himself, and by how much the meaner he esteems himself. . but he that attributes any thing of good to himself, stops the grace of god from coming into him; for the grace of the holy ghost ever seeks an humble heart. if thou couldst perfectly annihilate thyself, and cast out from thyself all created love, then should i flow into thee with abundance of grace. when thou lookest towards creatures, the sight of the creator is withdrawn from thee. { } learn for the creator's sake, to overcome thyself in all things; and then thou shalt be able to attain to the knowledge of god. how little soever it be, if a thing be inordinately loved and regarded, it keeps us back from the sovereign good, and corrupts the soul. chap. xliii.--_against vain and worldly learning_. . son, be not moved with the fine and quaint sayings of men: _for the kingdom of god consists not in talk, but in virtue_. attend to my words, which inflame the heart, and enlighten the mind: which excite to compunction, and afford manifold consolations. never read any thing that thou may appear more learned or more wise. study therefore to mortify thy vices, for this will avail thee more than the knowledge of many hard questions. . when thou shalt have read, and shalt know many things, thou must always return to one beginning. { } i am he that teacheth man knowledge, and i give a more clear understanding to little ones than can be taught by man. he to whom i speak will quickly be wise, and will make great progress in spirit. wo to them that enquire of men after many curious things, and are little curious of the way to serve me. the time will come, when christ, the master of masters, the lord of angels, shall appeal, to hear the lessons of all men; that is, to examine the consciences of every one. and then he will search jerusalem with candles, and the hidden things of darkness shall be brought to light, and the arguments of tongues shall be silent. . i am he that in an instant elevates an humble mind, to comprehend more reasons of the _eternal truth_ than could be got by ten years study in the schools. { } i teach without noise of words, without confusion of opinions, without ambition of honour, without contention of arguments. i teach to despise all earthly things, to loathe things present, to seek things eternal, to relish things eternal, to fly honours, to endure scandals, to repose all hope in me, to desire nothing out of me, and above all things ardently to love me. . for a certain person, by loving me, entirely learned divine things, and spoke wonders. he profited more by forsaking all things, than by studying subtleties. but to some i speak things common, to others things more particular; to some i sweetly appear in signs and figures; to others in great light i reveal mysteries. the voice of the books is the same, but it teacheth not all men alike; because i within am the teacher of truth, the searcher of hearts, the understander of thoughts, the promoter of actions; distributing to every one as i judge fitting. { } chap. xliv.--_of not drawing to ourselves exterior things_. . son, in many things it behoveth thee to be ignorant and to esteem thyself as one dead upon earth, and as one to whom the whole world is crucified. many things also must you pass by with a deaf ear, and think rather of those things that appertain to thy peace. it is more profitable to turn away thy eyes from such things as displease thee, and to leave to every one his own way of thinking, than to give way to contentious discourses. if thou standeth well with god, and lookest at his judgment, thou wilt more easily bear to see thyself overcome. . o lord, to what are we come? behold a temporal loss is greatly bewailed, for a small gain men labour and toil; but the loss of the soul is little thought on, and hardly ever returns to mind. { } that which is of little or no profit takes up our thoughts; and that which is above all things necessary is negligently passed over: for the whole man sinks down into outward things; and unless he quickly recovers himself, he willingly continues immersed in them. chap. xlv.--_that credit is not to be given to all men; and that men are prone to offend in words_. . _grant me help, o lord, in my tribulation, for vain is the aid of man_. psalms lix. [usccb: psalms lx. .] how often have i not found faith there, where i thought i might depend upon it? and how often have i found it where i did not expect it? vain therefore is all hope in men; but the safety of the just is in thee, o lord. blessed be thou, o lord my god, in all things that befal us. we are weak and unsettled, we are quickly deceived and changed. { } . who is the man that is able to keep himself so warily, and with so much circumspection in all things, as not to fall sometimes into some deceit or perplexity? but he that trusts in thee, o lord, and seeks thee with a simple heart, does not so easily fall; and if he lights into some tribulation, in what manner soever he may be entangled therewith, he will quickly be rescued or comforted by thee; for thou wilt not forsake forever him that trusts in thee. a trusty friend is rarely to be found, that continues faithful in all the distresses of his friend. thou, o lord, thou alone art most faithful in all things, and besides thee there is no other such. . oh! how wise was that holy soul that said, _my mind is strongly settled and grounded upon christ_. st. agatha. if it were so with me, the fear of man would not so easily give me trouble, nor flying words move me. who can foresee all things, or who is able to provide against all future evils? { } if things foreseen do yet often hurt us, how can things unlooked for fail of wounding us grievously? but why did i not provide better for myself, miserable wretch as i am? why also have i so easily given credit to others? but we are men, and are but frail men, though by many we are reputed and called angels. to whom shall i give credit, o lord? to whom but thee? thou art the truth, which neither canst deceive nor be deceived. and on the other side, _every man is a liar_, (psalms cxi.) infirm, unstable, and subject to fail, especially in words; so that we ought not readily to believe even that which in appearance seems to sound well. . how wisely didst thou forewarn us to take heed of men, (_matthew_. x. .) and that man's enemies are those of his own household. (_matthew_. x. .) and that we are not to believe, if any one should say, _behold here, or behold there_. matthew xxiv. { } i have been taught to my cost, and i wish it may serve to make me more cautious, and not to increase my folly. be wary, saith one, be wary, keep in thyself what i tell thee: and whilst i hold my peace, and believe the matter to be secret, he himself cannot keep the secret which he desired me to keep, but presently discovers both me and himself, and goes his way. from such tales and such unwary people defend me, o lord, that i may not fall into their hands, nor ever commit the like. give to my mouth truth and constancy in my words, and remove far from me a crafty tongue. what i am not willing to suffer, i ought by all means to shun. . o how good a thing and how peaceable it is to be silent of others, nor to believe all that is said, nor easily to report what one has heard; to lay one's self open to few; always to seek thee the beholder of the heart; and not to be carried about with every wind of words; but to wish that all things both within and without us may go according to the pleasure of thy will! { } how secure it is for the keeping of heavenly grace, to fly the sight of men, and not to seek those things that seem to cause admiration abroad; but with all diligence to follow that which brings amendment of life and fervour! to how many hath it been hurtful to have their virtue known, and over-hastily praised? how profitable indeed hath grace been kept with silence in this frail life, which is all but a temptation and a warfare? chap. xlvi.--_of having confidence in god, when words arise against us_. . son, stand firm, and trust in me; for what are words but words? they fly through the air, but hurt not a stone. if thou art guilty, think that thou wilt willingly amend thyself. if thy conscience accuse thee not, think that thou wilt willingly suffer this for god's sake. { } it is a small matter that thou shouldst sometimes bear with words, if thou hast not as yet the courage to endure hard stripes. and why do such small things go to thy heart; but because thou art yet carnal, and regardest man more than thou oughtest? for because thou art afraid of being despised, thou art not willing to be reprehended for thy faults, and seekest to shelter thyself in excuses. . but look better into thyself, and thou shalt find that the world is still living in thee, and a vain desire of pleasing men: for when thou art unwilling to be humbled and confounded for thy defects, it is plain indeed that thou art not truly humble, nor truly dead to the world, nor the world crucified to thee. but give ear to my word, and thou shalt not value ten thousand words of men. behold, if all should be said against thee, which the malice of men can invent, what hurt could it do thee, if thou wouldst let it pass, and make no reckoning of it? could it even so much as pluck one hair away from thee? { } . but he who has not his heart _within_, nor god before his eyes, is easily moved with a word of dispraise: whereas he that trusts in me, and desires not to stand by his own judgment, will be free from the fear of men. for i am the judge and discerner of all secrets; i know how the matter passed; i know both him that offers the injury, and him that suffers it. from me this word went forth; by my permission it happened, _that out of many hearts thoughts may be revealed_. luke ii. i shall judge the guilty and the innocent; but by a secret judgment i would beforehand try them both. . the testimony of men oftentimes deceives: my judgment is true, it shall stand and not be overthrown. it is hidden for the most part, and to few laid open in every thing; yet it never errs, nor can it err, though to the eyes of fools it seems not right. { } to me therefore must thou run in every judgment, and not depend upon thy own will. _for the just man will not be troubled whatever happens to him from god_. proverbs xii. and if any thing be wrongfully pronounced against him, he will not much care; neither will he vainly rejoice, if by others he be reasonably excused; for he considers that _i am he that searcheth the heart and the reins_, (apoc. ii.) who judge not according to the face, nor according to human appearance; [usccb: revelation : , "...i am the searcher of hearts and _minds_...".] for oftentimes that is found blameworthy in my eyes, which in the judgment of men is esteemed commendable. . o lord god, the best judge, strong and patient, who knowest the frailty and perverseness of men, be thou my strength, and all my confidence, for my own conscience sufficeth me not. thou knowest that which i know not; and therefore in every reprehension i ought to humble myself, and bear it with meekness. { } pardon me, i beseech thee in thy mercy, as often as i have not done thus, and give me again the grace to suffer still more. for better to me is thy great mercy, for the obtaining of pardon, than the justice which i imagine in myself for the defence of my hidden conscience. although my conscience accuse me not, yet i cannot hereby justify myself; for setting thy mercy aside, _no man living shall be justified in thy sight_. psalms cxlii. [usccb: psalms cxliii.] chap. xlvii.--_that all grievious things are to be endured for life everlasting._ . son, be not dismayed with the labours which thou hast undertaken for me; neither let the tribulations which befal thee quite cast thee down; but let my promise strengthen thee, and comfort thee in all events. i am sufficient to reward thee beyond all measure. { } thou shalt not labour here long, nor shalt thou be always oppressed with sorrows. wait a little while, and thou shalt see a speedy end of all thy evils. the hour will come when labour and trouble shall be no more. all is little and short which passeth away with time. . mind what thou art about; labour faithfully in my vineyard; i will be thy reward. write, read, sing, sigh, keep silence, pray, bear thy crosses manfully: eternal life is worthy of all these, and greater combats. _peace_ shall come in one day, which is known to the lord: and it shall not be day, nor night, _viz_. such as is at present, but everlasting light, infinite brightness, steadfast peace, and secure rest. thou shalt not then say, _who shall deliver me from the body of this death_, (romans vii.) nor shalt thou cry out, _wo to me for that my sojourning is prolonged_. (psalms cxix.) for death shall be no more; but never failing health, no anxiety, but blessed delight, and a society sweet and lovely. [usccb: psalms cxx. . "too long did i live among those who hated peace."] { } . oh! if thou hadst seen the everlasting crowns of the saints in heaven, and in how great glory they now triumph, who appeared contemptible heretofore to this world, and in a manner unworthy even of life, doubtless thou wouldst immediately cast thyself down to the very earth, and wouldst rather seek to be under the feet of all, than to have command so much as over one. neither wouldst thou covet the pleasant days of this life, but wouldst rather be glad to suffer tribulation for god's sake, and esteem it thy greatest gain to be reputed as nothing amongst men. . ah! if thou didst but relish these things, and didst suffer them to penetrate deeply thy heart, how wouldst thou dare so much as once to complain! are not all painful labours to be endured for everlasting life? it is no small matter to lose or to gain the kingdom of god. { } lift up therefore thy face to heaven. behold i, and all my saints with me, who in this world have had a great conflict, do now rejoice, are comforted now, are now secure, are now at rest, and for all eternity shall abide with me in the kingdom of my father. chap. xlviii.--_of the day of eternity, and of the miseries of this life_. . o most happy mansion of the city above! o most bright day of eternity, which knows no night, but is always enlightened by the sovereign truth; a day always joyful, always secure, and never changing its state for the contrary! oh! that this day would shine upon us, and all these temporal things would come to an end! it shines indeed upon the saints, resplendant with everlasting brightness; but to us pilgrims upon earth it is seen only as afar off, and through a glass. { } . the citizens of heaven know how joyful that day is; but the banished children of eve lament that this our day is bitter and tedious. the days of this life are short and evil, full of sorrows and miseries: where man is defiled with many sins, is ensnared with many passions, attacked with many fears, disquieted with many cares, distracted with many curiosities, entangled with many vanities, encompassed with many errors, broken with many labours, troubled with temptations, weakened with delights, tormented with want. . oh! when will there be an end of these evils? when shall i be set at liberty from the wretched slavery of sin? when, o lord, shall i be so happy as to think of thee alone? when shall i to the full rejoice in thee? when shall i be without any impediment in true liberty, without any trouble of mind or body? when shall i enjoy a solid peace, a peace never to be disturbed and always secure, a peace both within and without, a peace every where firm? { } o good jesu, when shall i stand to behold thee? when shall i contemplate the glory of thy kingdom? when wilt thou be _all in all_ to me? o when shall i be with thee in thy kingdom, which thou hast prepared for thy beloved from all eternity? i am left a poor and banished man, in an enemy's country, where there are wars every day, and very great misfortunes. . comfort me in my banishment, assuage my sorrows; for all my desire is after thee: and all that this world offers for my comfort is burthensome to me. i long to enjoy thee intimately, but cannot attain to it. i desire to cleave to heavenly things, but the things of this life and my unmortified passions bear me down. i am willing in _mind_ to be above all things, but by the flesh am obliged against my will to be subject to them. thus, unhappy man that i am, i fight with myself, and am become burthensome to myself, whilst the spirit seeks to tend upwards, and the flesh downwards. { } . oh! what do i suffer interiorly, whilst in my mind i consider heavenly things, and presently a crowd of carnal thoughts offers to interrupt my prayer? _o my god, remove not thyself far from me, and depart not in thy wrath from thy servant_. _dart forth thy lightning, and disperse them: shoot thy arrows_, and let all the phantoms of the enemy be put to flight. gather my senses together to thee; make me forget all worldly things; give me the grace speedily to cast away and to despise all wicked imaginations. come to my aid, o eternal _truth_, that no vanity may move me. come, heavenly sweetness, and let all impurity fly before thy face. pardon me also, and mercifully forgive me the times that i have thought of any thing else in prayer besides thee. for i confess truly, that i am accustomed to be very much distracted: { } for oftentimes i am not there, where i am bodily standing or sitting, but am rather there where my thoughts carry me. there i am, where my thought is: and there oftentimes is my thought, where that is which i love. that thing most readily comes to my mind, which naturally delights me, or which through custom is pleasing to me. . for this reason thou, who art the _truth_, hast plainly said, _where thy treasure is, there also is thy heart_. matthew vi. if i love heaven, i willingly think of heavenly things. if i love the world, i rejoice in the prosperity of the world, and am troubled at its adversity. if i love the flesh, my imagination is often taken up with the things of the flesh. if i love the spirit, i delight to think of spiritual things. for whatsoever things i love, of the same i willingly speak and hear, and carry home with me the images of them. { } but blessed is the man, who for thee, o lord, lets go all things created: who offers violence to his nature; and through fervour of spirit crucifies the lusts of the flesh: that so his conscience being cleared up, he may offer to thee _pure_ prayer, and may be worthy to be admitted, among the choirs of angels, having shut out all things of the earth both from without and within. chap. xlix.--_of the desire of eternal life: and how great things are promised to them that fight_. . son, when thou perceivest a longing after eternal bliss to be infused into thee from above, and that thou desirest to go out of the dwelling of this body, that thou mayest contemplate my brightness, without any shadow of change; dilate thy heart, and with all thy affection embrace this holy inspiration. { } return very great thanks to the divine bounty, which deals so favourably with thee, which mercifully delivers thee, ardently excites thee, and powerfully raises thee up, lest by thy own weight thou fall down to the things of the earth. for it is not by thy own thought or endeavours that thou attainest to this; but only by the favour of heavenly grace and the divine visit: that so thou mayest advance in virtues, and greater humility, and prepare thyself for future conflicts, and labour with the whole affection of thy heart to stick close to me, and serve me with a fervent will. . son, the fire often burns, but the flame ascends not without smoke: so also some people's desires are on fire after heavenly things, and yet they are not free from temptation of fleshly affection: and therefore it is not altogether purely for god's honour that they do what they so earnestly request of him. { } such also is oftentimes thy desire, which thou hast signified to be so strong. for that is not pure and perfect, which is infected with self-interest. . ask not what is delightful and commodious for thee, but what is pleasing and honourable to me: for if thou judgest rightly, thou oughtest to follow my appointment rather than thy own desire, and to prefer it before all that thou desirest. i know thy desire, and i have often heard thy sighs. thou wouldst be glad to be at present in the liberty of the glory of the children of god: thou wouldst be pleased to be now at thy eternal home, and in thy heavenly country abounding with joy: but that hour is not yet come; for there is yet another time, _viz_. a time of war, a time of labour and trial. thou wishest to be replenished with the sovereign good, but thou canst not at present attain to it. i am [that sovereign good] wait for me, saith the lord, till the kingdom of god comes. { } . thou must yet be tried upon earth, and exercised in many things. consolation shall sometimes be given thee; but to be fully satisfied shall not be granted thee. take courage therefore, and be valiant as well in doing as in suffering things repugnant to nature. thou must put on the new man, and be changed into another man. thou must oftentimes do that which is against thy inclination, and let alone that which thou art inclined to: that which is pleasing to others shall go forward, that which thou wouldst have shall not succeed: that which others say, shall be hearkened to; what thou sayest shall not be regarded: others shall ask, and shall receive; thou shalt ask, and not obtain. . others shall be great in the esteem of men; but of thee no notice shall be taken. to others this or that shall be committed; but thou shalt be accounted fit for nothing. at this nature will sometimes repine, and it will be no small matter if thou bear it with silence. { } in these and many such like things, the faithful servant of the lord is used to be tried, how far he can renounce himself, and break himself in all things. there is scarce any one thing in which thou standest so much in need of mortifying thyself, as in seeing and suffering the things that are repugnant to thy will; and especially when that is commanded which seems to thee incongruous and to little purpose. and because being under authority thou darest not resist the higher power, therefore thou art apt to think it hard to walk at the beck of another, and wholly to give up thy own sentiment. . but consider, son, the fruit of these labours, how quickly they will end, and their exceeding great reward; and thou wilt not be troubled at them, but strongly comforted in thy sufferings. { } for in regard of the little of thy will, which thou now willingly forsakest, thou shalt for ever have thy will in heaven. for there thou shalt find all that thou willest, all that thou canst desire. there thou shalt enjoy all good without fear of ever losing it. there thy will being always one with mine, shall desire nothing foreign or private. there no one shall resist thee, no man shall complain of thee, no man shall hinder thee, nothing shall stand in thy way: but all that thou desirest shall be there together present, and shall replenish thy whole affection, and shall satiate it to the full. there i will give thee glory for the affronts which thou hast suffered; a garment of praise for thy sorrow; and for thy having been seated here in the lowest place, a royal throne for all eternity. there will the fruit of obedience appear, there will the labour of penance rejoice, and humble subjection shall be gloriously crowned. { } . bow down thyself then humbly at present under the hands of all; and heed not who it was that has said or commanded this; but let it be thy great care, that whether thy superior or inferior, or equal, desire any thing of thee, or hint at any thing, thou take all in good part, and labour with a sincere will to perform it. let one man seek this, another that; let this man glory in this thing, another in that, and be praised a thousand thousand times: but thou, for thy part, rejoice neither in this nor in that, but in the contempt of thyself, and in my good pleasure and honour alone. this is what thou oughtest to wish, that whether in life, or in death, god may be always glorified in thee. chap. l.--_how a desolate person ought to offer himself into the hands of god_. . o lord god, o holy father, be thou now and for ever blessed, for as thou wilt, so it has happened; and what thou dost is always good. { } let thy servant rejoice in thee, not in himself, nor in any other; for thou alone art true joy, thou my hope, and my crown; thou my gladness, and my honour, o lord. what hath thy servant but what he hath received from thee, and this without any merit on his side? all things are thine which thou hast given, and which thou hast made. _i am poor, and in my labours from my youth;_ and my soul is grieved even unto tears sometimes; and sometimes is disturbed within herself by reason of the passions which encompass her. . i long for the joy of peace, i beg for the peace of thy children, who are fed by thee in the light of thy consolation. if thou givest peace, if thou infusest holy joy, the soul of thy servant shall be full of melody, and devout in thy praise. { } but if thou withdraw thyself, as thou art very often accustomed to do, he will not be able to run in the way of thy commandments; but rather must bow down his knees, and knock his breast, because it is not with him, as it was yesterday and the day before, when thy lamp shined over his head, and he was covered under the shadow of thy wings from temptation rushing in upon him. . o just father, holy, and always to be praised, the hour is come for thy servant to be tried. o father, worthy of all love, it is fitting that thy servant should at this hour suffer something for thee. o father, always to be honoured, the hour is come, when thou didst foresee from all eternity, that thy servant for the short time should be oppressed _without_, but always live _within_ to thee; that he should be a little slighted, and humbled, and should fall in the sight of men; that he should be severely afflicted with sufferings and diseases; that so he may rise again with thee in the dawning of a new light, and be glorified in heaven. { } o holy father, thou hast so appointed, and such is thy will; and that has come to pass which thou hast ordered. . for this is a favour to thy friend, that he should suffer and be afflicted in this world for the love of thee; how often soever, and by whomsoever thou permittest it to fall upon him. without thy counsel and providence, and without cause nothing is done upon earth. _it is good for me, o lord, that thou hast humbled me, that i may learn thy justifications_, (psalms cxviii.) and cast away from me all pride of heart and presumption. [usccb: psalms cxix. . "it was good for me to be afflicted, in order to learn your laws."] it is advantageous for me that shame has covered my face, that i may rather seek my comfort from thee, than from men. i have also learned hereby to fear thy impenetrable judgment, who afflicting the just together with the wicked, but not without equity and justice. { } . thanks be to thee, that thou hast not spared me in my evils, but hast bruised me with bitter stripes, inflicting pains, and sending distress both within and without. and of all things under heaven, there is none can comfort me but thou, o lord my god, the heavenly physician of souls, _who woundest and healest, bringest down to hell, and leadest back again_. thy discipline is on me, and thy rod shall instruct me. . behold, dear father, i am in thy hands, i bow myself down under the rod of thy correction. strike thou my back and my neck, that i may bend my crookedness to thy will: make me a pious and humble disciple of thine, as thou art wont well to do, that i may walk at thy beck at all times. to thee i commit myself and all that is mine, to be corrected by thee: it is better to be chastised here than hereafter. thou knowest all and every thing, and there is nothing in man's conscience hidden from thee. { } thou knowest things to come, before they are done; and thou hast no need to be taught or admonished by any one of these things that pass upon earth. thou knowest what is expedient for my progress, and how serviceable tribulation is to rub away the rust of sin. do with me according to thy good pleasure, it is what i desire, and despise not my sinful life, to no one better or more clearly known than to thyself alone. . grant, o lord, that i may know what i ought to know; that i may love what i ought to love; that i may praise that which is most pleasing to thee; that i may esteem that which is valuable in thy sight; that i may despise that which is despicable in thy eyes. suffer me not to judge according to the sight of the outward eye, nor to give sentence according to the hearing of the ears of men that know not what they are about: but to determine both of visible and spiritual matters with _true_ judgment, and above all things ever to seek thy good-will and pleasure. { } . the sentiments of men are often wrong in their judgments; and the lovers of this world are deceived in loving visible things alone; what is a man the better for being reputed greater by man? one deceitful man deceives another; the vain deceives the vain, the blind deceives the blind, the weak the weak, whilst he extols him; and in truth doth rather confound him whilst he vainly praiseth him: for how much each one is in thy eyes, so much is he, and no more, saith the humble st. francis. chap. li.--_that we must practise ourselves in humble works, when we cannot attain to high things_. . son, thou must not always continue in the most fervent desire of virtues, nor stand in the highest degree of contemplation; but it must needs be that thou sometimes descend to lower things, by reason of original corruption; and that thou bear the burden of this corruptible life, even against thy will, and with irksomeness. { } as long as thou carriest about with thee thy mortal body, thou shalt feel trouble and heaviness of heart. thou oughtest therefore, as long as thou art in the flesh, oftentimes to bewail the burden of the flesh; for that thou canst not without intermission be employed in spiritual exercises and divine contemplation. . at these times it is expedient for thee to fly to humble and exterior works, and to recreate thyself in good actions; to look for my coming and heavenly visitation with an assured hope; to bear with patience thy banishment, and the aridity of thy mind, till thou be visited again by me, and delivered from all anguish. for i will make thee forget thy pains, and enjoy eternal rest. i will lay open before thee the pleasant fields of the scriptures, that thy heart being dilated, thou mayest begin to run the way of my commandments. { } and that thou shalt say, _the sufferings of this time have no proportion with the future glory, which shall be revealed in us_. romans viii. chap. lii.--_that a man ought not to esteem himself worthy of consolation; but rather guilty of stripes._ . lord, i am not worthy of thy consolation, or any spiritual visitation; and therefore thou dealest justly with me, when thou leavest me poor and desolate. for if i could shed tears like a sea, yet should i not be worthy of thy comfort; since i have deserved nothing but stripes and punishments, because i have grievously and often offended thee, and in very many things sinned against thee. therefore according to all just reason i have not deserved the least of thy comforts. { } but thou, who art a good and merciful god, who wilt not have thy works perish, to shew the riches of thy goodness towards the vessels of mercy, vouchsafest beyond all his deserts to comfort thy servant above human measure; for thy consolations are not like the consolations of men. . what have i done, o lord, that thou shouldst impart any heavenly comfort to me? i can remember nothing of good that ever i have done; but that i was always prone to vice, and sluggish to amendment. it is the truth, and i cannot deny it. if i should say otherwise, thou wouldst stand against me, and there would be none to defend me. what have i deserved for my sins but hell and everlasting fire? in truth, i confess i am worthy of all scorn and contempt; neither is it fitting that i should be named among thy devout servants. and though it goes against me to hear this, yet for truth's sake i will condemn my sins against myself, that so i may the easier obtain thy mercy. { } . what shall i say, who am guilty, and full of all confusion? i have not the face to say any thing but this one word, i have sinned, o lord, i have sinned; have mercy on me, and pardon me. _suffer me a little, that i may mourn out my grief, before i go to the darksome land that is covered with the dismal shade of death_. job x. what dost thou chiefly require of a guilty and wretched sinner, but that he should heartily repent, and humble himself for his sins. in true contrition and humility of heart is brought forth hope of forgiveness; a troubled conscience is reconciled; grace that was lost is recovered; a man is secured from the wrath to come, and god meets the penitent soul in the holy kiss of peace. . humble contrition for sins is an acceptable sacrifice to thee, o lord; of far sweeter odour in thy sight than the burning of frankincense. { } this is also that pleasing ointment which thou wouldst have to be poured upon thy sacred feet: _for thou never yet hast despised a contrite and humble heart_. psalms l. [usccb: psalms li. . "...god, do not spurn a broken, humbled heart." ] here is a sure place of refuge from the face of the wrath of the enemy: here whatever has been elsewhere contracted of uncleanness is amended and washed away. chap. liii.--_that the grace of god is not communicated to the earthly minded_. . son, my grace is precious; it suffers not itself to be mingled with external things, or earthly consolations. thou must therefore cast away all impediments of grace, if thou desire to have it infused into thee. choose a secret place to thyself; love to dwell with thyself alone; seek not to be talking with any one; but rather pour forth devout prayers to god, that thou mayest keep thy mind in compunction, and thy conscience clean. { } esteem the whole world as nothing: prefer the attendance on god before all external things: for thou canst not both attend to me, and at the same time delight thyself in transitory things. thou must be sequestered from thy acquaintance, and from those that are dear to thee, and keep thy mind disengaged from all temporal comfort. so the blessed apostle peter beseeches the faithful of christ to keep themselves _as strangers and pilgrims in this world_. peter ii. . oh! how great confidence shall he have at the hour of his death, who is not detained by an affection to any thing in the world? but an infirm soul is not yet capable of having a heart thus perfectly disengaged from all things; neither doth the sensual man understand the liberty of an internal man. but if he will be _spiritual_ indeed, he must renounce as well those that are near him, as those that are afar off; and beware of none more than of himself. { } if thou perfectly overcome thyself, thou shalt with more ease subdue all things else. the perfect victory is to triumph over one's self. for he that keeps himself in subjection, so that his sensuality is ever subject to reason, and reason in all things obedient to me, he is indeed a conqueror of himself, and lord of all the world. . if thou desire to mount thus high, thou must begin manfully, and set the axe to the root, that thou mayest root out and destroy thy secret inordinate inclination to thyself, and to all selfish and earthly goods. this vice, by which a man inordinately loves himself, is at the bottom of all that which is to be rooted out and overcome in us; which evil being once conquered and brought under, a great peace and tranquillity will presently ensue. but because there are few that labour to die perfectly to themselves, and that fully tend beyond themselves; therefore do they remain entangled in themselves, nor can they be elevated in spirit above themselves. { } but he that desires to walk freely with me, must mortify all his wicked and irregular affections, and must not cleave to any thing created with any concupiscence or private love. chap. liv.--_of the different motions of nature and grace_. . son, observe diligently the motions of _nature_ and _grace_; for they move very opposite ways, and very subtilly; and can hardly be distinguished but by a spiritual man, and one that is internally illuminated. all men indeed aim at _good_, and pretend to something of good in what they do and say; therefore, under the appearance of good many are deceived. . _nature_ is crafty, and draws away many, ensnares them and deceives them, and always intends herself for her end: { } but _grace_ walks with simplicity, declines from all shew of evil, offers no deceits, and does all things purely for god, in whom also she rests, as in her last end. . _nature_ is not willing to be mortified, or to be restrained, or to be overcome, or to be subject; neither will she of her own accord be brought under: but _grace_ studies the mortification of her own self, resists sensuality, seeks to be subject, covets to be overcome, aims not at following her own liberty, loves to be kept under discipline, and desires not to have the command over any one; but under god ever to live, stand, and be; and for god's sake is ever ready humbly to bow down herself under all human creatures. . _nature_ labours for her own interest, and considers what gain she may reap from another: but _grace_ considers not what may be advantageous and profitable to herself; but rather what may be profitable to many. . _nature_ willingly receives honour and respect: { } but _grace_ faithfully attributes all honour and glory to god. . _nature_ is afraid of being put to shame and despised: but _grace_ is glad to suffer reproach for the name of jesus. . _nature_ loves idleness and bodily rest: but _grace_ cannot be idle, and willingly embraces labour. . _nature_ seeks to have things that are curious and fine, and does not care for things that are cheap and coarse: but _grace_ is pleased with that which is plain and humble, rejects not coarse things, nor refuses to be clad in old clothes. . _nature_ has regard to temporal things, rejoices at earthly gain, is troubled at losses, and is provoked at every slight injurious word: but _grace_ attends to things eternal, and cleaves not to those which pass with time; neither is she disturbed at the loss of things, nor exasperated with hard words; for she places her treasure and her joy in heaven, where nothing is lost. { } . _nature_ is covetous, and is more willing to take than to give; and loves to have things to herself: but _grace_ is bountiful and open-hearted, avoids selfishness, is contented with little, and judges it _more happy to give than to receive_. acts xx. . _nature_ inclines to creatures, to her own flesh, to vanities, and to gadding abroad: but _grace_ draws to god, and virtues; renounces creatures, flies the world, hates the desires of the flesh, restrains wandering about, and is ashamed to appear in public. . _nature_ willingly receives exterior comfort: in which she may be sensibly delighted: but _grace_ seeks to be comforted in god alone, and beyond all things visible to be delighted in the sovereign good. . _nature_ doth all for her own lucre and interest; she can do nothing _gratis_, but hopes to gain sometime equal, or better, or praise or favour for her good deeds; and covets to have her actions and gifts much valued: { } but _grace_ seeks nothing temporal; nor requires any other recompence but god alone for her reward; nor desires any more of the necessaries of this life than may be serviceable for the obtaining of a happy eternity. . _nature_ rejoices in a multitude of friends and kindred; she glories in the nobility of her stock and descent; she fawns on them that are in power, flatters the rich, and applauds such as are like herself: but _grace_ loves even her enemies, and is not puffed up with having a great many friends, nor has any value for family or birth, unless when joined with greater virtue; she rather favours the poor than the rich; she has more compassion for the innocent than the powerful; she rejoices with him that loves the truth, and not with the deceitful; she ever exhorts the good to be zealous for better gifts, and to become like to the son of god by the exercise of virtues. { } . _nature_ easily complains of want, and of trouble: but _grace_ bears poverty with constancy. . _nature_ turns all things to herself, and for herself she labours and disputes: but _grace_ refers all things to god, from whom all originally proceed; she attributes no good to herself, nor does she arrogantly presume of herself; she does not contend, nor prefer her own opinion to others; but in every sense and understanding she submits herself to the eternal wisdom, and to the divine examination. . _nature_ covets to know secrets, and to hear news; is willing to appear abroad, and to have the experience of many things by the senses; desires to be taken notice of, and to do such things as may procure praise and admiration: but _grace_ cares not for the hearing of news or curious things, because all this springs from the old corruption, since nothing is new or lasting upon earth: { } she teaches therefore to restrain the senses, to avoid vain complacence and ostentation, humbly to hide those things which are worthy of praise and admiration; and from every thing, and in every knowledge, to seek the fruit of spiritual profit, and the praise and honour of god: she desires not to have herself, or what belongs to her, extolled; but wishes that god may be blessed in his gifts, who bestows all out of mere love. . this _grace_ is a supernatural light, and a certain special gift of god, and the proper mark of the elect, and pledge of eternal salvation, which elevates a man from the things of the earth to the love of heavenly things, and of carnal makes him spiritual: by how much therefore the more _nature_ is kept down and subdued, with so much the greater abundance _grace_ is infused; and the inward man, by new visitations, is daily more reformed according to the image of god. { } chap. lv.--_of the corruption of nature, and of the efficacy of divine grace._ . o lord, my god, who hast created me to thy own image and likeness, grant me this _grace_, which thou hast declared to be so great, and so necessary to salvation; that i may overcome my wicked _nature_, which draws to sin and perdition: for i perceive in my flesh the law of sin contradicting the law of my mind, and leading me captive to obey sensuality in many things; neither can i resist the passions thereof, unless thy most holy _grace_ assist me, infused ardently into my heart. . i stand in need of thy _grace_, and of a great _grace_ to overcome _nature_, which is always prone to evil from her youth; { } for she having fallen in adam, the first man, and having been corrupted by sin, the penalty of this stain has descended upon all mankind: so that _nature_ itself, which by thee was created good and right, is now put for the vice and infirmity of corrupt nature; because the motion thereof, left to itself, draws to evil, and to things below; for the little strength which remains, is but like a spark hidden in the ashes. this is our _natural reason_, which is surrounded with a great mist, having yet the judgment of good and evil, and of the distance of truth and falsehood; though it be unable to fulfil all that it approves; neither does it now enjoy the full light of truth, nor the former integrity of its affections. . hence it is, o my god, that according to the inward man i am delighted with thy law, knowing thy command to be good, just, and holy, and reproving all evil and sin, as what ought to be shunned: { } and yet in the flesh i serve the law of sin, whilst i rather obey sensuality than reason. hence it is, that _to will good is present with me, but how to accomplish it i do not find_. romans vii. hence i often make many good purposes; but because i want grace to help my weakness, through a slight resistance, i recoil and fall off. hence it comes to pass, that i know the way to perfection, and see clearly enough what it is i ought to do; but being pressed down with the weight of my own corruption, i rise not to those things which are more perfect. . o how exceedingly necessary is thy _grace_ for me, o lord, to begin that which is good, to go forward with it, and to accomplish it? for without it i can do nothing: but i can do all things in thee, when thy grace strengthens me. o truly heavenly grace, without which we have no merits of our own, neither are any of the gifts of nature to be valued! { } no arts, no riches, no beauty or strength, no wit or eloquence, are of any worth with thee, o lord, without grace; for the gifts of nature are common to the good and bad: but grace or divine love is the proper gift of the elect, which they that are adorned with are esteemed worthy of eternal life. this grace is so excellent, that neither the gift of prophecy, nor the working of miracles, nor any speculation, how sublime soever, is of any value without it. nor even faith, nor hope, nor any other virtues, are acceptable to thee, without charity and grace. . o most blessed grace, which makest the poor in spirit rich in virtues, and renderest him that is rich in many good things humble of heart; come, descend upon me, replenish me betimes with consolation, lest my soul faint through weariness and dryness of mind. i beg of thee, o lord, that i may find _grace_ in thy sight; for thy _grace_ is enough for me, though i obtain none of those things which nature desires. { } if i be tempted and afflicted with many tribulations, i will fear no evil, whilst thy _grace_ is with me; she is my strength; she gives counsel and help; she is more mighty than all my enemies, and wiser than all the wise. . she is the mistress of truth, the teacher of discipline, the light of the heart, the comfort in affliction, the banisher of sorrow, the expeller of fear, the nurse of devotion, the producer of tears. what am i without her but a piece of dry wood, and an unprofitable stock, fit for nothing but to be cast away! let thy grace therefore, o lord, always both go before me and follow me, and make me ever intent upon good works, through jesus christ, thy son. _amen_. { } chap. lvi.--_that we ought to deny ourselves, and to imitate christ by the cross_. . son, as much as thou canst go out of thyself, so much wilt thou be able to enter into me. as the desiring of nothing abroad brings peace at home, so the relinquishing ourselves interiorly joins us to god. i will have thee learn the perfect renouncing of thyself in my will, without contradiction or complaint. follow me, _i am the way, the truth and the life_. john xiv. without the _way_ there is no going; without the _truth_ there is no knowing; without the _life_ there is no living. i am _the way_ which thou must follow; _the truth_, which thou must believe; _the life_, which thou must hope for. i am _the way_ inviolable, _the truth_ infallible, and _the life_ that has no end. { } i am the straitest _way_, the sovereign _truth_, the true _life_, a blessed _life_, an uncreated _life_. if thou abide in my _way_, thou shalt know the _truth_, and the _truth_ shall deliver thee, and thou shalt attain to _life_ everlasting. . _if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments_. luke ix. [usccb: matthew xix. . "if you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments."] if thou wilt know the _truth_, believe me: _if thou wilt be perfect, sell all:_ it thou wilt be my disciple, deny thyself: if thou wilt possess a blessed life, despise this present life: if thou wilt be exalted in heaven, humble thyself in this world: if thou wilt reign with me, bear the cross with me: for none but the servants of the cross find the way of bliss and of true light. . lord jesus, forasmuch as thy way is narrow, and despised by the world; grant that i may follow thee, and be despised by the world: { } for the servant is not greater than his lord, neither is the disciple above his master. _matthew_ vi. [usccb: matthew x. . "no disciple is above his teacher, no slave above his master." ] let thy servant meditate on thy life, for there is my salvation and true holiness: whatever i read, or hear besides, does not recreate nor fully delight me. . son, thou knowest these things, and hast read them all, happy shalt thou be if thou fulfil them. _he that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me; and i will love him, and i will manifest myself unto him,_ (john xiv.); _and i will make him to sit with me in the kingdom of my father_. apoc. iii. . lord jesus, as thou hast said and hast promised, so may it be indeed; and may it be my lot to merit it: i have received the cross, i have received it from thy hand; and i will bear it, and bear it till death, as thou hast laid it upon me. indeed the life of a good religious man is a cross, but it is a cross that conducts him to paradise: { } we have now begun, it is not lawful to go back, nor may we leave off. . take courage, my brethren, let us go forward together, jesus will be with us: for jesus's sake we took up this cross; for jesus's sake let us persevere in it. he will be our helper, who is our captain and our leader. behold our king marches before us, who will fight for us. let us follow him like men of courage; let no one shrink through fear; let us be ready valiantly to die in battle, and not to suffer our glory to be blemished by flying from the standard of the cross. chap. lvii.--_that a man should not be too much dejected when he falls into some defects_. . son, patience and humility in adversity are more pleasing to me, than much consolation and devotion in prosperity. { } why art thou disturbed at a little thing said against thee? if it had been more, thou oughtest not to be moved. but now let it pass, it is not the first, or any thing new, nor will it be the last, if thou live long. thou art valiant enough, as long as no adversary or opposition comes in thy way: thou canst also give good advice, and encourage others with thy words: but when any unexpected trouble comes to knock at thy door, then thy counsel and thy courage fails thee. consider thy great frailty, which thou often experiencest in small difficulties. yet it is done for thy good, as often as these or such like things befal thee. . put it out of thy heart the best thou canst; and if it had touched thee, yet let it not cast thee down, nor keep thee a long time entangled. at least bear it patiently, if thou canst not receive it with joy. { } and though thou be not willing to hear it, and perceivest an indignation arising within thyself, yet repress thyself, and suffer no inordinate word to come out of thy mouth which may scandalize the weak. the commotion which is stirred up in thee will quickly be allayed, and thy inward pain will be sweetened by the return of grace. i am still living, saith the lord, ready to help thee, and comfort thee more than before, if thou put thy trust in me, and devoutly call upon me. . keep thy mind calm and even, and prepare thyself for bearing still more. all is not lost, if thou feel thyself often afflicted or grievously tempted: thou art man and not god, thou art flesh and not an angel. how canst thou look to continue ever in the same state of virtue, when this was not found in the angels in heaven, nor in the first man in paradise? i am he that raises up, and saves them that mourn; and them that know their own infirmity i advance to my divinity. { } . o lord, blessed be this thy word, it is more sweet to my mouth than honey, and the honey-comb. what shall i do in my so great tribulations and anguishes, didst thou not encourage me with thy holy words? what matter is it how much or what i suffer, so i come but at length to the haven of salvation. grant me a good end, grant me a happy passage out of this world: be ever mindful of me, o my god, and direct me by this strait road to thy kingdom. _amen_. chap. lviii.--_of not searching into high matters, nor into the secret judgments of god_. . son, see thou dispute not of high matters, nor of the hidden judgments of god; why this man is left thus, and this other is raised to so great grace; or why this person is so much afflicted, and that other so highly exalted. { } these things are above the reach of man, neither can any reason or discourse be able to penetrate into the judgments of god. when therefore the enemy suggests to thee such things as these, or thou hearest curious men inquiring into them, answer that of the prophet, _thou art just, o lord, and thy judgment is right_. psalms cxviii. [usccb: psalms cxix. . "you are righteous, lord, and just are your edicts."] and again: _the judgments of the lord are true, justified in themselves._ psalms xviii. [usccb: psalms xix. , . "the law of the lord is perfect, refreshing the soul. the decree of the lord is trustworthy, giving wisdom to the simple. the precepts of the lord are right, rejoicing the heart. the command of the lord is clear, enlightening the eye."] my judgments are to be feared, not to be searched into, for they are incomprehensible to human understanding. . in like manner do not inquire nor dispute of the merits of the saints, which of them is more holy than the other, or which greater in the kingdom of heaven. these things oftentimes breed strife and unprofitable contentions, and nourish pride and vain-glory; from whence arise envy and dissensions, whilst this man proudly seeks to prefer this saint, and another man is for preferring another. { } now to desire to know and to search into such things as these, is of no profit, but rather displeaseth the saints; for _i am not the god of dissensions, but of peace_ ( corinthians xiv.), which peace consists more in true humility than in exalting one's self. . some are carried by a zeal of love towards these, or those, with greater affection; but this affection is rather human than divine. i am he who made all the saints; i gave them grace, i have brought them to glory. i know the merits of every one of them, i prevented them by the blessings of my sweetness. i foreknew my beloved ones before the creation: i chose them out of the world, they were not before-hand with me to chuse me; i called them by my grace, and drew them to me by my mercy. i led them safe through many temptations, i imparted to them extraordinary comforts, i gave them perseverance, i have crowned their patience. { } . i know the first and the last, i embrace them all with an inestimable love. i am to be praised in all my saints, i am to be blessed above all things, and to be honoured in every one of them whom i have thus gloriously magnified, and eternally chosen without any foregoing merits of their own. he therefore that despises one of the least of my saints, honours not the greatest, for both little and great i have made: and he that derogates from any one of the saints, derogates also from me, and from all the rest of them in the kingdom of heaven. they are all one through the band of love; they have the same sentiment, the same will, and all mutually love one another. . and yet (which is much higher) they all love me more than themselves and their own merit. for being elevated above themselves, and drawn out of the love of themselves, they are wholly absorpt in the love of me, in whom also they rest by an eternal enjoyment. { } nor is there any thing which can divert them from me, or depress them; for being full of the eternal truth, they burn with the fire of a charity that cannot be extinguished. therefore let carnal and sensual men (who know not how to affect any thing but their private satisfactions) forbear to dispute of the state of the saints: they add and take away according to their own inclination, and not according to what is pleasing to the everlasting truth. . in many there is ignorance, especially in such as being but little enlightened seldom know how to love any one with a perfect spiritual love. they are as yet much inclined to such or such by a natural affection and human friendship; and as they are affected with regard to things below, they conceive the like imaginations of the things of heaven. { } but there is an incomparable distance between what the imperfect imagine, and what enlightened men contemplate by revelation from above. . take heed, therefore, my son, that thou treat not curiously of those things which exceed thy knowledge, but rather make it thy business and thy aim, that thou mayest be found, though it were the least, in the kingdom of god. and if any one should know who were more holy or greater in the kingdom of heaven, what would the knowledge profit him, unless he would take occasion from knowing this to humble himself in my sight, and to praise my name with greater fervour? it is much more acceptable to god for a man to think of the greatness of his own sins, and how little he is in virtues, and at how great a distance he is from the perfection of the saints, than to dispute which of them is greater or less. it is better to invocate the saints with devout prayers and tears, and to implore their glorious suffrages with an humble mind, than by a vain inquiry to search into their secrets. { } . they are well and perfectly contented, if men would be but contented, and refrain from their vain discourses. they glory not of their own merits, for they ascribe nothing of goodness to themselves, but all to me; because i bestowed all upon them out of my infinite charity. they are filled with so great a love of the deity, and such overflowing joy, that there is nothing wanting to their glory, nor can any happiness be wanting to them. all the saints by how much they are the higher in glory, by so much are they the more humble in themselves, and nearer to me, and better beloved by me. and therefore thou hast it written, that _they cast down their crowns before god, and fell upon their faces before the lamb, and adored him that lives for ever and ever._ apoc. iv. . many examine who is greatest in the kingdom of god, who know not whether they shall be worthy to be numbered amongst the least. { } it is a great matter to be even the least in heaven, where all are great; because all shall be called the children of god: the least shall be as a thousand, and a sinner of an hundred years shall die. for when the disciples asked, _who was the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?_ (matthew xviii.) they received this answer: _unless you be converted and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little one, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven._ . woe to them who disdain to humble themselves willingly with little children; for the low gate of the heavenly kingdom will not suffer them to enter thither. woe also to the rich who have their comforts here, for when the poor shall go into the kingdom of god, they stand lamenting without. { } rejoice you humble, and be glad you that are poor, for yours is the kingdom of god; yet so, if you walk in the truth. chap. lix.--_that all hope and confidence is to be fixed in god alone_. . lord, what is my confidence which i have in this life? or what is my greatest comfort amongst all things that appear under heaven? is it not thou, my lord god, whose mercies are without number? where was it ever well with me without thee? or when could it be ill with me when thou wast present? i had rather be poor for thee, than rich without thee. i chuse rather to sojourn on earth with thee, than to possess heaven without thee. where thou art, there is heaven: and there is death and hell, where thou art not. after thee i have a longing desire, and therefore i must needs sigh after thee, and cry and pray. { } in fine, i cannot fully trust in any one to bring me seasonable help in my necessities, save only in thee, my god. thou art my hope, thou art my confidence, thou art my comforter, and most faithful above all. . all seek their own interest; thou aimest only at my salvation and profit, and turnest all things to my good. and although thou expose me to various temptations and adversities, yet all this thou ordainest for my good, who art wont to prove thy beloved servants a thousand ways: under which proofs, thou oughtest no less to be loved and praised, than if thou wert to fill me with heavenly comforts. . in thee, therefore, o lord god, i put all my hope and refuge; in thee i place all my tribulation and anguish; for i find all to be infirm and unstable whatever i behold out of thee. for neither will a multitude of friends be of any service to me, nor can strong auxiliaries bring me any succours, nor wise counsellors give me a profitable answer, nor the books of the learned comfort me, nor any wealth deliver me, nor any secret and pleasant place secure me, if thou thyself do not assist; help, strengthen, comfort, instruct and defend me. { } . for all things which seem to be for our peace and for our happiness, when thou art absent, are nothing, and in truth contribute nothing to our felicity. thou therefore art the fountain of all good, and the height of life, and the depth of wisdom; and to trust in thee above all things is the strongest comfort of thy servants. to thee i lift up mine eyes; in thee, o my god; the father of mercies, i put my trust: bless and sanctify my soul with thy heavenly blessing, that it may be made thy holy habitation, and the seat of thy eternal glory; and let nothing be found in the temple of thy dignity that may offend the eyes of thy majesty. according to the greatness of thy goodness, and the multitude of thy tender mercies, look down upon me, and give ear to the prayer of thy poor servant, who is in banishment afar off from thee in the region of the shade of death. { } protect and defend the soul of thy servant amidst so many of this corruptible life; and direct him in the company of thy grace, through the way of peace to the country of everlasting light. _amen_. end of book iii. { } the _following of christ._ book iv. of the sacrament. the voice of christ. _come to me all you that labour, and are heavy burthened, and i will refresh you,_ saith the lord. matthew xi. _the bread which i will give, is my flesh, for the life of the world._ john vi. _take and eat, this is my body, which shall be delivered for you: do this in remembrance of me._ corinthians xi. _he that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, abideth in me, and i in him._ john vi. _the words which i have spoken to you are spirit and life._ john vi. { } chap. i.--_with how great reverence christ is to be received_. the voice of the disciple. . these are thy words, o christ, the eternal truth, though not all delivered at one time, nor written in one place. since therefore they are thy words, and they are true, they are all to be received by me with thanks, and with faith. they are thine, and thou hast spoken them; and they are also mine, because thou hast delivered them for my salvation. i willingly receive them from thy mouth, that they may be more inseparably ingrafted in my heart. these words of so great tenderness, full of sweetness and love, encourage me; but my own sins terrify me, and my unclean conscience keeps me back from approaching to so great mysteries. { } the sweetness of thy words invites me, but the multitude of my offence weighs me down. . thou commandest me to approach to thee with confidence, if i would have part with thee, and to receive the food of immortality, if i desire to obtain life, and glory everlasting. _come_, sayest thou, _to me all you that labour, and are heavy burthened, and i will refresh you_. matthew xi. o sweet and amiable word in the ear of a sinner, that thou, o lord my god, shouldst invite the poor and needy to the communion of thy most sacred body! but who am i, o lord, that i should presume to come to thee? behold, the heavens of heavens cannot contain thee; and thou sayest, _come you all unto me_. . what means this most loving condescension, and so friendly an invitation? how shall i dare to approach, who am conscious to myself of no good, on which i can presume? { } how shall i introduce thee into my house, who have oftentimes offended thy most gracious countenance? the angels and archangels stand with a reverential awe, the saints and the just are afraid; and thou sayest, _come you all unto me_. unless thou, o lord, didst say it, who could believe it to be true? and unless thou didst command it, who would dare attempt to approach? . behold noah, a just man, laboured a hundred years in building of the ark, that he with a few might be preserved; and how shall i be able in the space of one hour to prepare myself to receive with reverence the maker of the world? moses, thy servant, thy great and special friend, made an ark of incorruptible wood, which he also covered with most pure gold, that he might reposite therein the tables of the law; and shall i, a rotten creature, presume so easily to receive thee the maker of the law, and giver of life? { } solomon, the wisest of the kings of israel, employed seven years in building a magnificent temple for the praise of thy name; and for eight days together he celebrated the feast of the dedication thereof: he offered a thousand pacific victims, and brought in the ark of the covenant in a solemn manner, into the place prepared for it, with the sound of trumpet and jubilee: and i, a wretch, and the vilest of men, how shall i bring thee into my house, who can hardly spend one half hour devoutly? and would to god i had ever once spent one half hour as i ought! . o, my god, how much did they endeavour to do to please thee? alas! how little it is that i do! how short a time do i spend when i prepare myself to communicate? seldom am i wholly recollected, very seldom free from all distraction; and yet surely, in the life-giving presence of thy deity, no unbecoming thought should occur, nor any thing created take up my mind; for it is not an angel, but the lord of angels, that i am to entertain. { } . and yet there is a very great difference between the ark of the covenant with its relics, and thy most pure body with its unspeakable virtues; between those sacrifices of the law, which were figures of things to come, and the true sacrifice of thy body, which is the accomplishing of all those ancient sacrifices. . why then am i not more inflamed, considering thy venerable presence? why do i not prepare myself with greater care to receive thy sacred gifts, seeing that these ancient holy patriarchs and prophets, yea kings also and princes, with the whole people, have shewn so great affection of devotion towards the divine worship? { } . the most devout king david danced before the ark of god with all his force, commemorating the benefits bestowed in times past on the fathers. he made musical instruments of sundry kinds; he published psalms, and appointed them to be sung with joy; he himself likewise often sung them playing upon his harp, inspired with the grace of the holy ghost: he taught the people of israel to praise god with their whole heart, and to join their voices in blessing and magnifying him every day. if so great devotion was then used, and such remembrance of the praise of god before the ark of the covenant; how great ought to be the reverence and devotion which i, and all christian people, should have in the presence of this sacrament, in the receiving the most excellent body of christ? . many run to sundry places to visit the relics of the saints, and are astonished to hear their wonderful works; they behold the noble buildings of their churches, and kiss their sacred bones wrapt up in silk and gold; and, behold, i have thee here present on the altar, my god, the saint of saints, the creator of men, and the lord of angels. { } oftentimes in seeing those things men are moved with curiosity, and the novelty of the sight, and but little fruit of amendment is reaped thereby; especially when persons lightly run hither and thither, without true contrition for their sins: but here, in the sacrament of the altar, thou art wholly present, my god and man, christ jesus; where also the fruit of eternal salvation is plentifully reaped, as often as thou art worthily and devoutly received. and to this we are not drawn by any levity, curiosity, or sensuality; but by a firm faith, a devout hope, and sincere charity. . o god, the invisible maker of the world, how wonderfully dost thou deal with us? how sweetly and graciously dost thou order all things in favour of thy elect, to whom thou offerest thyself to be received in the sacrament? for this exceeds all understanding of man; this, in a particular manner, engages the hearts of the devout, and enkindles their love. { } for thy true faithful, who dispose their whole life to amendment, by this most worthy sacrament, frequently receive a great grace of devotion and love of virtue. . oh! the wonderful and hidden grace of this sacrament, which the faithful of christ only know; but unbelievers, and such as are slaves to sin, cannot experience. in this sacrament is conferred spiritual grace, and virtue lost is repaired in the soul; and beauty disfigured by sin returns again. and so great sometimes is this grace, that from the abundance of the devotion that is bestowed, not only the mind but the frail body also feels a great increase of strength. . yet it is much to be lamented and pitied, that we should be so lukewarm and negligent, as not to be drawn with greater affection to the receiving of christ, in whom consists all the hope and merit of those that shall be saved: { } for he is our sanctification, and our redemption; he is our comfort in our pilgrimage, and the saints' eternal enjoyment. it is therefore much to be lamented that many take so little notice of this saving mystery, which rejoices heaven, and conserves the whole world. oh! the blindness and hardness of the heart of man, that doth not more consider so unspeakable a gift, and from the daily use of it falls into a disregard for it. . for if this most holy sacrament were only celebrated in one place, and consecrated by one only priest in the world, with how great desire dost thou think would men be affected to that place, and to such a priest of god, that they might see the divine mysteries celebrated? but now there are made many priests, and christ is offered up in many places, that the grace and love of god to man may appear by so much the greater, by how much this sacred communion is more spread throughout the world. { } thanks be to thee, o good jesus, our eternal shepherd, who hast vouchsafed to feed us poor exiles with thy precious body and blood, and to invite us to the receiving of these mysteries with the words of thy own mouth, saying; _come to me all you that labour, and are burthened, and i will refresh you._ matthew xi. chap. ii.--_that the great goodness and charity of god is shewed to man in this sacrament._ the voice of the disciple. . o lord, trusting in thy goodness and in thy great mercy, i come sick to my saviour, hungry and thirsty to the fountain of life, needy to the king of heaven, a servant to his lord, a creature to his creator, and one in desolation to his loving comforter. but whence is this to me, that thou shouldst come to me? who am i, that thou shouldst give me thyself? how dare such a sinner appear before thee? and how dost thou vouchsafe to come to a sinner? thou knowest thy servant, and thou knowest that he has nothing of good in him which can entitle him to this favour. { } i confess therefore my unworthiness, i acknowledge thy bounty, i praise thy goodness, and i give thee thanks for thy excessive charity: for it is for thy own sake thou doest this, not for my merits, that thy goodness may be better known to me; that greater charity may be imparted, and humility more perfectly recommended. since therefore this is what pleaseth thee, and thou hast commanded it should be so, thy merciful condescension pleaseth me also; and i wish that my iniquity may be no obstacle. . oh! most sweet and most bountiful jesus, how great reverence and thanks, with perpetual praise, are due to thee for the receiving of thy sacred body, whose dignity no man can sufficiently express? but what shall i think of in this communion, when i am approaching to my lord, whom i can never reverence so much as i ought, and yet would gladly receive with devotion? { } what can i think of better or more wholesome to my soul, than to humble myself entirely in thy presence, and extol thy infinite goodness above me? i praise thee, o my god, and i extol thee for ever: i despise myself, and subject myself to thee, casting myself down to the depth of my unworthiness. . behold, thou art the saint of saints, and i am the scum of sinners: behold, thou bowest thyself down to me, who am not worthy to look up to thee. behold, thou comest to me; thou art willing to be with me. thou invitest me to thy banquet, where thou wilt give me thy heavenly food, and the bread of angels to eat; no other, verily, than thyself, the living bread, who didst come down from heaven, and who givest life to the world. . behold, whence love proceeds, what a bounty shines forth! how great thanks and praises are due to thee for these things! { } oh! how wholesome and profitable was thy device in this institution! how sweet and delightful this banquet in which thou givest thyself to be our food! oh! how admirable is thy work, o lord! how powerful thy virtue! how infallible thy truth! for thou hast spoken the word, and all things were made; and that has been done which thou hast commanded. . a wonderful thing it is, and worthy of faith, and exceeding all human understanding; that thou, o lord, my god, true god, and true man, art contained whole and entire, under a small form of bread and wine, and without being consumed art eaten by the receiver. thou, the lord of all things, who standest in need of no one, hast been pleased by this sacrament to dwell in us; preserve my heart and body without stain, that with a joyful and clean conscience i may be able often to celebrate thy sacred mysteries, and to receive for my eternal salvation what thou hast principally ordained and instituted for thy honour and perpetual remembrance. { } . rejoice, o my soul, and give thanks to thy god for so noble a gift, and so singular a comfort, left to thee in this vale of tears. for as often as thou repeatest this mystery, and receivest the body of christ, so often dost thou celebrate the work of thy redemption, and art made partaker of all the merits of christ; for the charity of christ is never diminished, and the greatness of his propitiation is never exhausted. therefore oughtest thou to dispose thyself for this, by perpetually renewing the vigour of thy mind, and to weigh with attentive consideration this great mystery of thy salvation. and as often as thou sayest or hearest mass, it ought to seem to thee as great, new, and delightful, as if christ that same day, first descending into the virgin's womb, had been made man; or hanging on the cross was suffering and dying for the salvation of mankind. { } chap. iii.--_that it is profitable to communicate often._ the voice of the disciple. . behold, i come to thee, o lord, that it may be well with me by thy gift, and that i may be delighted in thy holy banquet, which thou, o god, in thy sweetness, hast prepared for the poor. behold, in thee is all whatsoever i can or ought to desire: thou art my salvation and redemption, my hope and my strength, my honour and my glory. make therefore the soul of thy servant joyful this day, because, o lord jesus, i have lifted up my soul to thee. i desire at this time to receive thee devoutly and reverently; i would gladly bring thee into my house, that, like zaccheus, i may receive thy blessing, and be numbered among the children of abraham. _luke_ xix. my soul longs after thy body; my heart aspires to be united with thee. { } . give thyself to me, and it is enough; for besides thee no comfort is available. without thee i cannot subsist; and without thy visitation i cannot live; and therefore i must come often to thee, and receive for the remedy of my soul's health; lest perhaps i faint in the way, if i be deprived of this heavenly food. for so, o most merciful jesus, thou wert pleased once to say, when thou hadst been preaching to the people, and curing sundry diseases, _i will not send them home fasting, lest they faint by the way_. matthew xv. deal now in like manner with me, who hast left thyself in the sacrament for the comfort of thy faithful. for thou art the most sweet refection of the soul, and he that shall eat thee worthily, shall be partaker and heir of everlasting glory. it is indeed necessary for me (who am so often falling and committing sin, and so quickly grow slack and faint) by frequent prayers and confessions, and by the holy communion of thy body, to repair my strength, to cleanse and inflame myself, lest perhaps by abstaining for a longer time i fall away from my holy purpose. { } . for the senses of man are prone to evil from his youth; and unless thy divine medicine succour him, man quickly falls to worse. the holy communion therefore withdraws him from evil, and strengthens him in good. for if i am so often negligent and lukewarm now, when i communicate or celebrate, what would it be if i did not take this remedy, and should not seek so great a help? and although i am not every day fit, nor well disposed to celebrate, yet i will endeavour at proper times to receive the divine mysteries, and to make myself partaker of so great a grace. for this is the one principal comfort of a faithful soul, as long as she sojourns afar off from thee in this mortal body; being mindful often of her god, to receive her beloved with a devout mind. { } . o wonderful condescension of thy tender love towards us, that thou, o lord god, the creator and enlivener of all spirits, shouldst vouchsafe to come to a poor soul, and with thy whole divinity and humanity satisfy her hunger; o happy mind, and blessed soul, which deserves to receive thee her lord god devoutly; and in receiving thee to be filled with spiritual joy! oh! how great a lord does she entertain! how beloved a guest does she bring into her house! how sweet a companion does she receive! how faithful a friend does she accept of! how beautiful and how noble a spouse does she embrace, who deserves to be beloved above all her beloved, and beyond all that she can desire! let heaven and earth, with all their attire, be silent in thy presence, o my dearest beloved; for whatever praise or beauty they have, is all the gift of thy bounty; nor can they come up to the beauty of thy name, of whose wisdom there is no number. { } chap. iv.--_that many benefits are bestowed on them who communicate devoutly_. the voice of the disciple. . o lord, my god, prevent thy servant in the blessings of thy sweetness, that i may approach worthily and devoutly to thy magnificent sacrament. raise up my heart towards thee, and deliver me from this heavy sluggishness; visit me with thy grace, that i may taste in spirit thy sweetness, which plentifully lies hid in this sacrament as in its fountain; illuminate also my eyes to behold so great a mystery, and strengthen me to believe it with an undoubting faith: for it is thy work, not the power of man; thy sacred institution, not man's invention: { } for no man can be found able of himself to comprehend and understand these things, which surpass eventh subtlety of angels. what shall i therefore, an unworthy sinner, who am but dust and ashes, be able to search into, or conceive of so high and sacred a mystery? . o lord, in the simplicity of my heart, with a good and firm faith, and in obedience to thy command, i come to thee with hope and reverence; and i do verily believe, that thou art here present in the sacrament, god and man. it is then thy will that i should receive thee, and through love unite myself to thee. wherefore i implore thy mercy; and i beg of thee to give me for this a special grace, that i may be wholly melted away in thee, and overflow with thy love, and seek no more any comfort from any thing else: for this most high and most excellent sacrament is the health of soul and body, the remedy of all spiritual diseases, by which my vices are cured, my passions are restrained, temptations are overcome or lessened, a greater grace is infused, virtue receives an increase, _faith_ is confirmed, _hope_ strengthened, _charity_ enflamed and enlarged. { } . for thou hast bestowed, and still oftentimes dost bestow, many good things in this sacrament to thy beloved who communicate devoutly, o my god, the support of my soul, who art the repairer of human infirmity, and the giver of all interior comfort: for thou impartest unto them much consolation, to support them in their many troubles; and thou liftest them up from the depth of their own dejection to the hope of thy protection; and thou dost recreate and enlighten them interiorly with a certain new grace; in such sort, that they who before communion were anxious and felt no affection in them, afterwards being fed with this heavenly meat and drink, find themselves changed for the better. { } and thou art better pleased to deal thus with thy elect, to the end that they may truly acknowledge, and plainly experience, how great is their infirmity, when left to themselves, and how much they receive from thy bounty and grace: for of themselves they are cold, dry, and indevout; but by thee they are made fervent, cheerful, and devout. for who is he that approaching humbly to the fountain of sweetness, does not carry away with him some little sweetness? or who, standing by a great fire, does not receive from it some little heat? now, thou art a fountain always full, and overflowing; thou art a fire always burning, and never decaying. . wherefore, if i cannot draw out of the fulness of the fountain, nor drink my fill, i will at least set my mouth to the orifice of this heavenly pipe; that so i may draw from thence some small drops to refresh my thirst, to the end that i may not be wholly dried up: { } and if i cannot as yet be all heavenly, and all on fire like the cherubim and seraphim, i will, however, endeavour to apply myself to devotion, and to prepare my heart for the acquiring some small flame of divine fire, by the humble receiving of this life-giving sacrament. and whatever is wanting to me, o good jesus, most blessed saviour, do thou in thy bounty and goodness supply for me, who hast vouchsafed to call all unto thee, saying, _come to me all you that labour, and are burthened, and i will refresh you_. matthew xi. . i _labour_ indeed in the sweat of my brow, i am tormented with grief of heart, i am _burthened_ with sins, i am troubled with temptations, and am entangled and oppressed with many evil passions; and there is no one to help me, no one to deliver and save me, but thou, o lord god, my saviour, to whom i commit myself, and all that is mine, that thou mayest keep me and bring me to everlasting life. receive me for the praise and glory of thy name, who hast prepared thy body and blood for my meat and drink. grant, o lord god, my saviour, that with the frequenting this thy mystery the affection of my devotion may increase. { } chap. v.--_of the dignity of the sacrament, and of the priestly state_. the voice of the beloved. . if thou hast the purity of an angel, and the sanctity of st. john the baptist, thou wouldst not be worthy to receive or handle this sacrament: for this is not due to any merits of men, that a man should consecrate and handle the sacrament of christ, and receive for his food the bread of angels. great is this mystery, and great the dignity of priests, to whom that is given which is not granted to angels: for priests alone, rightly ordained in the church, have power to celebrate and consecrate the body of christ. the priest indeed is the minister of god, using the word of god, and by the command and institution of god: but god himself is there the principal author and invisible worker, to whom is subject all that he wills, and to whom obeys all that he commands. { } . thou must therefore give more credit to an omnipotent god, in this most excellent sacrament, than to thy own sense, or any visible sign: and therefore thou art to approach to this work with fear and reverence. take heed to thyself, and see what kind of ministry has been delivered to thee by the imposition of the bishop's hands. lo! thou art made a priest, and art consecrated to say mass: see now that in due time thou faithfully and devoutly offer up sacrifice to god, and that thou behave thyself in such manner as to be without reproof: thou hast not lightened thy burthen, but art now bound with a stricter band of discipline, and art obliged to a greater perfection of sanctity. a priest ought to be adorned with all virtues, and to give example of a good life to others; { } his conversation should not be with the vulgar and common ways of men, but with the angels in heaven, or with perfect men upon earth. . a priest, clad in his sacred vestments, is christ's vicegerent, to pray to god for himself, and for all the people, in a suppliant and humble manner: he has before and behind him the sign of the cross of the lord, that he may always remember the passion of christ: he bears the cross before him in his vestment, that he may diligently behold the footsteps of christ, and fervently endeavour to follow them: he is marked with the cross behind, that he may mildly suffer, for god's sake, whatsoever adversities shall befal him from others: he wears the cross before him, that he may bewail his own sins; and behind him, that, through compassion, he may lament the sins of others, and know that he is placed, as it were, a mediator betwixt god and the sinner: { } neither ought he to cease from prayer and oblation, till he be favoured with the grace and mercy which he implores. when a priest celebrates, he honours god, he rejoices the angels, he edifies the church, he helps the living, he obtains rest for the dead, and makes himself partaker of all that is good. chap. vi.--_a petition concerning the exercise proper before communion_. the voice of the disciple. . when i consider thy greatness, o lord, and my own vileness, i tremble very much, and am confounded in myself: for if i come not to thee, i fly from life; and if i intrude myself unworthily, i incur thy displeasure. what then shall i do, o my god, my helper, my counsellor in necessities? . do thou teach me the right way: appoint me some short exercise proper for the holy communion: { } for it is necessary to know in what manner i should reverently and devoutly prepare my heart to thee, for the profitable receiving of thy sacrament, or for celebrating also so great and divine a sacrifice. chap. vii.--_of the discussion of one's own conscience, and of a resolution of amendment_. the voice of the beloved. . above all things it behoves the priest of god to come to the celebrating, handling, and receiving this sacrament, with great humility of heart, and lowly reverence; with an entire faith, and with a pious intention of the honour of god. diligently examine thy conscience, and to the best of thy power cleanse and purify it by true contrition and humble confession; so that there be nothing weighty to give thee remorse, and hinder thy free access. repent thee of all thy sins in general, and in particular lament and grieve all thy daily offences; { } and if thou hast time, confess to god, in the secret of thy heart, all the miseries of thy passions. . sigh and grieve that thou art yet so carnal and worldly; so unmortified in thy passions. so full of the motions of concupiscence; so unguarded in thy outward senses; so often entangled with many vain imaginations; so much inclined to exterior things, so negligent as to the interior; so easy to laughter and dissolution; so hard to tears and compunction. so prone to relaxation, and to the pleasures of the flesh; so sluggish to austerity and fervour; so curious to hear news, and to see fine sights; so remiss to embrace things humble and abject; so covetous to possess much; so sparing in giving; so close in retaining; so inconsiderate in speech; so little able to hold thy peace; so disorderly in thy carriage; so over eager in thy actions; so greedy at meat; so deaf to the word of god; { } so hasty for rest; so slow to labour; so wakeful to hear idle tales; so drowsy to watch in the service of god; so hasty to make an end of thy prayer; so wandering as to attention. so negligent in saying thy office; so tepid in celebrating; so dry at the time of receiving; so quickly distracted; so seldom quite recollected within thyself; so easily moved to anger; so apt to take offence at others; so prone to judge; so severe in reprehending; so joyful in prosperity; so weak in adversity. so often proposing many good things, and effecting little. . having confessed and bewailed these, and other thy defects, with sorrow and great dislike of thy own weakness, make a strong resolution always to amend thy life, and to advance in virtue. then with a full resignation, and with thy whole will, offer thyself up to the honour of my name, on the altar of thy heart, as a perpetual holocaust, by committing faithfully to me both thy soul and body; { } that so thou mayest be able to approach to offer up sacrifice to god, and to receive for thy salvation the sacrament of my body. . for there is no oblation more worthy, nor satisfaction greater, for the washing away of sins, than to offer up one's self purely and entirely to god, together with the oblation of the body of christ, in the mass and in the communion. if a man does what lies in him, and is truly penitent; as often as he shall come to me for pardon and grace; _as i live, saith the lord, who will not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should be converted and live; i will no longer remember his sins_, but all shall be forgiven him. ezekiel xviii. { } chap. viii.--_of the oblation of christ on the cross, and of the resignation of ourselves_. the voice of the beloved. . as i willingly offered myself to god, my father, for thy sins, with my hands stretched out upon the cross, and my body naked, so that nothing remained in me which was not turned into a sacrifice, for to appease the divine wrath; even so must thou willingly offer thyself to me daily in the mass, for a pure and holy oblation, together with all thy powers and affections, as heartily as thou art able. what do i require more of thee, than that thou endeavour to resign thyself entirely to me? whatsoever thou givest besides thyself, i regard not; for i seek not thy gift, but thyself. . as it would not suffice thee, if thou hadst all things but me; so neither can it please me, whatever thou givest, as long as thou offerest not thyself. { } offer thyself to me, and give thy whole self for god, and thy offering will be accepted. behold, i offered my whole self to the father for thee, and have given my whole body and blood for thy food, that i might be all thine, and thou mightest be always mine: but if thou wilt stand upon thy own bottom, and wilt not offer thyself freely to my will, thy offering is not perfect, nor will there be an entire union betwixt us. therefore, before all thy works, thou must make a free oblation of thyself into the hands of god, if thou desire to obtain liberty and grace: for the reason why so few become illuminated and internally free, is because they do not wholly renounce themselves. my sentence stands firm. _unless a man renounce all, he cannot be my disciple_. luke xiv. if therefore thou desirest to be my disciple, offer up thyself to me with all thy affections. { } chap. ix.--_that we must offer ourselves, and all that is ours, to god, and pray for all._ the voice of the disciple. . lord, all things are thine that are in heaven and earth. i desire to offer up myself to thee as a voluntary oblation, and to remain for ever thine. lord, in the sincerity of my heart, i offer myself to thee this day, to be thy servant evermore, to serve thee, and to become a sacrifice of perpetual praise to thee. receive me with this sacred oblation of thy precious body, which i offer to thee this day in the presence of thy angels invisibly standing by, that it may be for mine and all the people's salvation. . lord, i offer to thee all my sins and offences, which i have committed in thy sight and that of thy holy angels, from the day that i was first capable of sin until this hour, upon thy propitiatory altar, that thou mayest burn and consume them all with the fire of thy charity, and mayest remove all the stains of my sins, and cleanse my conscience from all offences, and restore to me thy grace, which i have lost by sin, by fully pardoning me all, and mercifully receiving me to the kiss of peace. { } . what can i do for my sins, but humbly confess them, and lament them, and incessantly implore thy mercy for them? hear me, i beseech thee, in thy mercy, where i stand before thee, o my god: all my sins displease me exceedingly; i will never commit them any more: i am sorry for them, and will be sorry for them as long as i live; i am willing to do penance for them, and to make satisfaction to the utmost of my power. forgive, o my god, forgive me my sins, for thy holy name's sake: save my soul, which thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood. behold i commit myself to thy mercy, i resign myself into thy hands. { } deal with me according to thy goodness, not according to my wickedness and iniquity. . i offer also to thee all the good i have, though very little and imperfect: that thou mayest make it better and sanctify it; that thou mayest be pleased with it, and make it acceptable to thee, and perfect it more and more; and mayest, moreover, bring me, who am a slothful and unprofitable wretch, to a good and happy end. i offer also to thee all the godly desires of thy devout servants; the necessities of my parents, friends, brethren, sisters, and of all those that are dear to me; and of all such, as for the love of thee have been benefactors to me or others; or who have desired and begged of me to offer up prayers and masses for themselves and all that belonged to them; whether they live as yet in the flesh, or whether they are now departed out of this world; that they all may be sensible of the assistance of thy grace, of the benefit of thy comfort, of thy protection from all dangers, and of a deliverance from their pains; and that being freed from all evils, they may with joy give worthy thanks to thee. { } . i offer up also to thee my prayers, and this sacrifice of propitiation for them in particular, who have in any thing wronged me, grieved me or abused me, or have done me any damage or displeasure; and for all those likewise whom i have at any time grieved, troubled, injured, or scandalized, by word or deed, knowingly or unknowingly; that it may please thee to forgive us all our sins and offences one against another. take, o lord, from our hearts all jealousy, indignation, wrath and contention, and whatsoever may hurt charity, and lessen brotherly love. have mercy, o lord, have mercy on those that crave thy mercy; give grace to them that stand in need thereof; and grant that we may be worthy to enjoy thy grace, and that we may attain to life everlasting. _amen_. { } chap. x.--_that the holy communion is not lightly to be forborne_. the voice of the beloved. . thou oughtest often to have recourse to the fountain of grace, and of divine mercy; to the fountain of all goodness and purity; that thou mayest be healed of thy passions and vices, and be made more strong and vigilant against all the temptations and deceits of the devil. the enemy, knowing the very great advantage and remedy which is in the holy communion, strives by all means and occasions, as much as he is able, to withdraw and hinder faithful and devout persons from it. . for when some are preparing themselves for the sacred communion, they suffer the greater assault of satan. this wicked spirit, as it is written in job, cometh among the sons of god to trouble them with his accustomed malice, or to make them ever fearful and perplexed, that so he may diminish their devotion, or by his assaults take away their faith: it haply they may altogether forbear the communion, or at least approach to it with tepidity. { } but there is no heed to be taken of his wiles, and suggestions, be they never so filthy and abominable; but all his attempts art to be turned back upon his own head. the wretch is to be contemned and scorned, nor is the holy communion to be omitted for his assaults, and the commotions which he causeth. . oftentimes also a person is hindered by too great solicitude for obtaining devotion, and a certain anxiety about making his confession. follow herein the counsel of the wise, and put away all anxiety and scruple; for it hindereth the grace of god, and destroyeth devotion. leave not the holy communion for every small trouble or vexation, but go quickly to confession, and willingly forgive others their offences against thee. { } and if thou hast offended any one, humbly crave pardon, and god will readily forgive thee. . what doth it avail to delay thy confession for a long time, or to put off the holy communion? purge thyself with speed, spit out the venom presently, make haste to take this _remedy_, and thou shalt find it to be better with thee, than if thou hadst deferred it for a long time. if thou lettest it alone to-day for this cause, perhaps to-morrow a greater will fall out, and so thou mayest be hindered a long time from communion, and become more unfit: with all possible speed shake off this heaviness and sloth, for it is to no purpose to continue long in disquiet, to pass a long time in trouble, and for these daily impediments to withdraw thyself from the _divine mysteries_. yea, it is very hurtful to defer the communion long; for this usually causeth a great lukewarmness and numbness. { } alas! some tepid and dissolute people are willing to put off their confession, and desire that their communion should be deferred, lest they should be obliged thereby to keep a stricter watch over themselves. ah! how little is their love of god, how weak is their devotion who so easily put by the sacred communion? how happy is he, and acceptable to god, who so liveth, and keepeth his conscience in such purity, as to be ready and well disposed to communicate every day, if it were permitted, and he might do it without note. if sometimes a person abstains out of humility, or by reason of some lawful impediment, he is to be commended for his reverence. but if sloth steal upon him, he must stir up himself, and do what lieth in him; and god will assist his desire, for his good will, which he chiefly regards. . and when he is lawfully hindered, he must yet always have a good will and a pious intention to communicate, and so he shall not lose the fruit of the sacrament. { } for every devout man may every day and hour receive christ spiritually without any prohibition, and with profit to his soul. and yet on certain days, and at the time appointed, he ought to receive sacramentally with an affectionate reverence the body of his redeemer, and rather aim at the honour of god, than seek his own comfort. for he communicates mystically, and is invisibly fed, as often as he devoutly calleth to mind the mystery of the incarnation of christ, and his passion; and is inflamed with the love of him. . he that prepareth not himself, but when a festival draweth near, or when custom compelleth him thereunto, shall often be unprepared. blessed is he that offereth himself up as an holocaust to the lord, as often as he celebrates or communicates. be neither too long, nor too hasty in celebrating, but observe the good common manner of those with whom thou livest. { } thou oughtest not to be tedious and troublesome to others, but to keep the common way, according to the appointment of superiors; and rather suit thyself to the profit of others, than to thine own devotion or affection. chap. xi.--_that the body of christ and the holy scripture are most necessary to a faithful soul_. the voice of the disciple. . o sweetest lord jesus, how great sweetness hath a devout soul that feasteth with thee in thy banquet; where there is no other meat set before her to be eaten but thyself her only beloved, and most to be desired above all the desires of her heart! and to me indeed it would be delightful to pour out tears in thy presence, with the whole affection of my heart, and like the devout magdalen to wash thy feet with my tears. but where is this devotion? where is this so plentiful shedding of holy tears? { } surely in the sight of thee, and of thy holy angels, my whole heart ought to be inflamed, and to weep for joy. for i have thee in the sacrament truly present, though hidden under another form. . for to behold thee in thine own divine brightness, is what my eyes would not be able to endure, neither could the whole world subsist in the splendour of the glory of thy majesty. in this therefore thou condescendest to my weakness, that thou hidest thyself under the sacrament. i truly have and adore him whom the angels adore in heaven; but i as yet in _faith_, they by _sight_ and without a veil. i must be content with the light of _true faith_, and walk therein till the day of eternal brightness break forth, and the shades of figures pass away. but when that which is perfect shall come, the use of the sacraments shall cease: for the blessed in heavenly glory stand not in need of the remedy of the sacraments. { } for they rejoice without end in the presence of god, beholding his glory face to face; and being transformed from glory into the glory of the incomprehensible deity, they taste the _word of god made flesh_, as he was from the beginning, and as he remaineth for ever. . when i call to mind these wonders, even every spiritual comfort becomes grievously tedious to me; because as long as i behold not my lord openly in his glory, i make no account of whatsoever i see and hear in the world. thou art my witness, o god, that not one thing can comfort me, nor any thing created give me rest, but only thou, my god, whom i desire for ever to contemplate. but this is not possible whilst i remain in this mortal life. and therefore i must frame myself to much patience, and submit myself to thee in all my desires. for thy saints also, o lord, who now rejoice with thee in the kingdom of heaven, whilst they were living, expected in faith and great patience the coming of thy glory. what they believed, i believe; what they hoped for, i hope for; and whether they are come, i trust that i also through thy grace shall come. { } in the mean time i will walk in faith, strengthened by the example of thy saints. i shall have moreover for my comfort, and the direction of my life, thy holy books; and above all these things, thy most holy body for a singular remedy and refuge. . for in this life i find there are two things especially necessary for me, without which this miserable life would be insupportable. whilst i am kept in the prison of this body, i acknowledge myself to need two things, to wit, _food_ and _light_. thou hast therefore given to me, weak as i am, thy sacred body for the nourishment of my soul and body, and thou hast set _thy word as a light to my feet_. psalms cxviii. without these two i could not well live, for the word of god is the light of my soul, and thy sacrament is _the bread of life_. { } these also may be called the two tables set on the one side, and on the other, in the store house of the _holy church_. one is the table of the _holy altar_, having the _holy bread_, that is the precious _body of christ_. the other is that of the _divine law_, containing _holy doctrine_, teaching the _right faith_, and firmly leading even within the _veil_, where are the _holies of holies_: thanks be to thee, o lord jesus, light of eternal light, for the table of _holy doctrine_ which thou hast afforded us by the ministry of thy servants, the prophets and apostles, and other teachers. . thanks be to thee, o thou creator and redeemer of men, who, to manifest thy love to the whole world, hast prepared a great supper, wherein thou hast set before us to be eaten, not the typical lamb, but thy most sacred body and blood: rejoicing all the faithful with thy holy banquet, and replenishing them with the cup of salvation, in which are all the delights of paradise; and the holy angels do feast with us, but with a more happy sweetness. { } . o how great and honourable is the office of priests, to whom it is given to consecrate with sacred words the lord of majesty; to bless _him_ with their lips, to hold _him_ with their hands, to receive _him_ with their own mouth, and to administer _him_ to others! oh! how clean ought those hands to be, how pure that mouth, how holy that body, how unspotted the heart of a _priest_, into whom thou the author of purity so often enters! from the mouth of a _priest_ nothing but what is _holy_, no word but what is _good_ and _profitable_ ought to proceed, who so often receives the sacrament of christ. . his eyes ought to be _simple_, and _chaste_, which are used to behold the _body of christ;_ his hands _pure_ and lifted up to heaven, which use to handle the creator of heaven and earth. { } unto the priest especially it is said in the law, _be you holy, for i the lord your god am holy_. leviticus xix. . . let thy grace, o almighty god, assist us, that we, who have undertaken the office of priesthood, may serve thee worthily and devoutly in all purity and good conscience. and if we cannot live in so great innocency as we ought, grant us at least duly to bewail the sins which we have committed; and in the spirit of humility, and the resolution of a good-will, to serve thee more fervently for the time to come. chap. xii.--_that he who is to communicate ought to prepare himself for christ with great diligence_. the voice of the beloved. . i am the lover of purity, and the giver of all holiness. i seek a pure heart, and there is the place of my _rest_. { } make ready for me _a large upper room furnished, and i will make the pasch with thee, together with my disciples._ mark xiv. luke xxii. if thou wilt have me come to thee, and remain with thee; purge out the old leaven, and make clean the habitation of thy heart; shut out the whole world, and all the tumult of vices; sit like a sparrow solitary on the house top, and think of thy excesses in the bitterness of thy soul. for every lover prepareth the best and fairest room for his dearly beloved; and hereby is known the affection of him that entertaineth his beloved. . know nevertheless, that thou canst not sufficiently prepare thyself by the merit of any action of thine, although thou shouldst prepare thyself a whole year together, and think of nothing else. but it is of my mere goodness and grace that thou art suffered to come to my table; as if a beggar should be invited to dinner by a rich man, who hath nothing else to return him for his benefit, but to humble himself, and to give him thanks. { } do what lieth in thee, and do it diligently; not for custom, nor for necessity; but with fear, and reverence, and affection, receive the body of thy beloved lord, thy god, who vouchsafeth to come to thee. i am he that have invited thee, i have commanded it to be done, i will supply what is wanting in thee, come and receive me. . when i bestow the grace of devotion give thanks to thy god, not for that thou art worthy, but because i have had mercy on thee. if thou hast it not, but rather findest thyself dry, continue in prayer, sigh and knock, and give not over, till thou receivest some crum or drop of saving grace. thou hast need of me, not i of thee. neither dost thou come to sanctify me, but i come to sanctify and make thee better; thou comest that thou mayest be sanctified by me, and united to me; that thou mayest receive new grace, and be inflamed anew to amendment. { } neglect not this grace, but prepare thy heart with all diligence, and bring thy beloved into thee. . but thou oughtest not only to prepare thyself to devotion before communion, but carefully also to keep thyself therein after receiving the sacrament; neither is the carefully guarding of thyself afterwards less required than the devoutly preparing thyself before: for a good guard afterwards is the best preparation again for the obtaining of greater grace. for what renders a man very much indisposed is, if he presently pour himself out upon exterior comforts. beware of much talk, remain in secret, and enjoy thy god; for thou hast him whom all the world cannot take from thee. i am he to whom thou oughtest to give thy whole self; so that thou mayest henceforward live, without all solicitude, not in thyself, but in me. { } chap. xiii.--_that a devout soul ought to desire with her whole heart to be united to christ in the sacrament_. the voice of the disciple. . who will give me, o lord, to find thee alone, that i may open my whole heart to thee, and enjoy thee as my soul desireth; and that no one may now despise me, nor any thing created move me or regard me; but thou alone mayest speak to me, and i to thee; as the _beloved_ is wont to speak to his _beloved_, and a friend to banquet with his friend. this i pray for, this i desire, that i may be wholly united to thee, and may withdraw my heart from all created things; and by the holy communion, and often celebrating, may more and more learn to relish heavenly and eternal things. ah! lord god, when shall i be wholly united to thee, and absorpt in thee, and altogether forgetful of myself: thou in me, and i in thee; and so grant us both to continue in one. { } . verily thou art my _beloved_, the choicest amongst thousands, in whom my soul is well pleased to dwell all the days of her life: verily, thou art my _peace-maker_, in whom is sovereign _peace_ and true _rest;_ out of whom is _labour_ and _sorrow_, and endless _misery:_ thou art in truth, a hidden god, and thy counsel is not with the wicked; but thy conversation is with the humble and the simple. oh! how sweet is thy spirit, o lord, who, to shew thy sweetness towards thy children, vouchsafest to feed them with the most delicious bread which cometh down from heaven! surely, there is no other nation so great, that hath their god so nigh to them, as thou our god art present to all thy faithful; to whom, for their daily comfort, and for the raising up their hearts to heaven, thou gavest thyself to be eaten and enjoyed. . for what other nation is there so honoured as the christian people! { } or what creature under heaven so beloved as a devout soul, into whom god cometh, that he may feed her with his glorious flesh? oh! unspeakable grace! oh! wonderful condescension! oh! infinite love, singularly bestowed upon man! but what return shall i make to the lord for this grace, and for so extraordinary a charity? there is nothing that i can give him that will please him better, than if i give up my heart entirely to god, and unite it closely to him. then all that is within me shall rejoice exceedingly, when my soul shall be perfectly united to my god: then will he say to me, if thou wilt be with me, i will be with thee; and i will answer him: vouchsafe, o lord, to remain with me, and i will willingly be with thee. this is my whole desire, that my heart may be united to thee. { } chap. xiv.--_of the ardent desire of some devout persons to receive the body of christ_. the voice of the disciple. . _oh! how great is the abundance of thy sweetness, o lord, which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee._ psalms xxx. when i remember some devout persons, who come to thy sacrament with the greatest devotion and affection, i am often confounded and ashamed within myself, that i approach so tepidly and coldly to thy altar, and to the table of the holy communion; that i remain so dry, and without affection of heart; that i am not wholly set on fire in thy presence, o my god; nor so earnestly drawn and affected, as many devout persons have been, who, out of a vehement desire of communion, and a sensible love in their hearts, could not contain themselves from weeping; { } but with their whole souls eagerly thirsted to approach, both with the mouth of their heart and of their body, to thee, o god, the living fountain; being in no wise able to moderate or satisfy their hunger, but by receiving thy body with all joy and spiritual greediness. . oh! _true ardent faith_ of these persons, being a probable argument of thy sacred presence! for they truly know their lord in the breaking of bread, whose heart burneth so mightily within them, from jesus his walking with them. _luke_ xxiv. such affection and devotion as this, so vehement a love and burning, is often far from me. be thou merciful to me, o good jesus, sweet and gracious lord; and grant me, thy poor beggar, to feel, sometimes at least, in the sacred communion, some little of the cordial affection of thy love, that my _faith_ may be more strengthened, my _hope_ in thy goodness increased, and that my _charity_, being once perfectly enkindled, and having tasted the _manna_ of heaven, may never decay. { } . moreover, thy mercy is able to give me the grace i desire, and to visit me in thy great clemency with the spirit of fervour, when it shall please thee: for though i burn not at present with so great a desire as those that are so singularly devoted to thee; yet, by thy grace, i desire to have this same great inflamed desire; praying and wishing that i may be made partaker with all such thy fervent lovers, and be numbered in their holy company. chap. xv.--_that the grace of devotion is obtained by humility and self-denial._ . thou oughtest to seek the grace of devotion earnestly, to ask it fervently, to wait for it patiently and confidently, to receive it thankfully, to keep it humbly, to work with it diligently, and to commit to god the time and manner of this heavenly visitation, until it shall please him to come unto thee. { } thou oughtest chiefly to humble thyself, when thou feelest inwardly little or no devotion; and yet not to be too much dejected, nor to grieve inordinately. god often giveth, in one short moment, what he hath a long time denied: he giveth sometimes in the end, that which in the beginning of prayer he deferred to grant. . if grace were always presently given, and ever at hand with a wish, it would be more than man's infirmity could well bear: therefore the _grace of devotion_ is to be expected with a good hope and humble patience. yet impute it to thyself, and to thy sins, when it is not given to thee, or when it is secretly taken away. it is sometimes a little thing that hinders or hides grace from us; if that may be called _little_, and not rather _great_, which hindereth so great a good: { } but if thou remove this same, be it small or great, and perfectly overcome it, thou shalt have thy desire. . for as soon as ever thou hast delivered thyself up to god with thy whole heart, and neither seekest this nor that for thine own pleasure or will, but wholly placest thyself in him, thou shalt find thyself united and at peace; for nothing will relish so well, and please thee so much, as the good pleasure of the divine will. whosoever therefore with a single heart shall direct his attention upwards to god, and purge himself of all inordinate love or dislike of any created thing, he shall be the most fit to receive grace, and worthy of the gift of devotion: for the lord bestows his blessing there where he finds the vessels empty. and the more perfectly one forsakes these things below, and the more he dies to himself by the contempt of himself, the more speedily grace cometh, entereth in more plentifully, and the higher it elevateth the free heart. { } . _then shall he see and abound, he shall admire, and his heart shall be enlarged_ within him, because the hand of the lord is with him, and he has put himself wholly into his _hand_ for ever. behold, thus shall the man be blessed that seeketh god with his whole heart, and taketh not his soul in vain. such a one as this, in receiving the holy eucharist, obtains a great grace of _divine union;_ because he looks not towards his own devotion and comfort, but, above all devotion and comfort, regards the honour and glory of god. chap. xvi.--_that we ought to lay open our necessities to christ, and crave his grace._ the voice of the disciple. . o most sweet and loving lord, whom i now desire to receive with all devotion, thou knowest my weakness, and the necessity which i endure; in how great evils and vices i am immersed; now often i am oppressed, tempted, troubled, and defiled; { } to thee i come for remedy; i pray to thee for comfort and succour. i speak to him that knows all things, to whom all that is within me is manifest, and who alone can perfectly comfort and help me. thou knowest what good i stand most inn need of, and how poor i am in virtues. . behold, i stand before thee poor and naked, begging thy grace, and imploring thy mercy: feed thy hungry beggar; inflame my coldness with the fire of thy love; enlighten my blindness with the brightness of thy presence; turn all earthly things to me into bitterness; all things grievous and cross into patience; all things below and created, into contempt and oblivion: lift up my heart to thee in heaven, and suffer me not to wander upon earth: { } be thou only sweet to me from henceforth for evermore; for thou only art my meat and my drink, my love and my joy, my sweetness and all my good. . oh! that with thy presence thou wouldst inflame, burn, and transform me into thyself, that i may be made one spirit with thee, by the grace of internal union, and by the melting of ardent love! suffer me not to go from thee hungry and dry; but deal with me in thy mercy, as thou hast dealt wonderfully with thy saints. what marvel if i should be wholly set on fire by thee, and should die to myself; since thou art a _fire_ always burning, and never decaying; a _love_ purifying the heart, and enlightening the understanding. { } chap. xvii.--_of fervent love and vehement desire to receive christ_. the voice of the disciple. . with the greatest devotion and burning love, with all the affection and fervour of my heart, i desire to receive thee, o lord; as many saints and devout persons, who were most pleasing to thee in holiness of life, and most fervent in devotion, have desired thee when they have communicated. o my god, my eternal love, my whole good, and never-ending happiness, i would gladly receive thee with the most vehement desire, and most worthy reverence, that any of the saints ever had or could feel. . and though i be unworthy to have all those feelings of devotion, yet i offer to thee the whole affection of my heart, as if i alone had all those highly pleasing inflamed desires; { } yea, and whatsoever a godly mind can conceive and desire, all this, with the greatest reverence and most inward affection, i offer and present to thee: i desire to reserve nothing to myself, but freely and most willingly to sacrifice myself, and all that is mine, to thee. o lord, my god, my creator and redeemer, i desire to receive thee this day with such _affection, reverence, praise_, and _honour;_ with such _gratitude, worthiness,_ and _love;_ with such _faith, hope,_ and _purity,_ as thy most holy mother, the glorious virgin mary, received and desired thee, when she humbly and devoutly answered the angel, who declared to her the mystery of the incarnation; _behold the handmaid of the lord, let it be done unto me according to thy word_. luke i. . and as thy blessed forerunner, the most excellent among the saints, john the baptist, in thy presence leaped for joy through the holy ghost, whilst he was as yet shut up in his mother's womb; and afterwards seeing jesus walking amongst men, humbling himself exceedingly, said with devout affection, _the friend of the bridegroom that standeth and heareth him, and rejoiceth with joy for the voice of the bridegroom._ john iii. so i also wish to be inflamed with great and holy desires, and to present myself to thee with my whole heart: { } wherefore i here offer and present myself to thee the excessive joys of all devout hearts, their ardent affections, their extasies and supernatural illuminations, and heavenly visions; together with all the virtues and praises which are or shall be celebrated by all creatures in heaven and earth; for myself and all such as are recommended to my prayers, that by all thou mayest be worthily praised and glorified for ever. . receive my wishes, o lord, my god, and my desire of giving thee infinite praise and immense blessing, which, according to the multitude of thy unspeakable greatness, are most justly due to thee. { } these i render, and desire to render to thee every day and every moment: and i invite and entreat all the heavenly spirits, and all thy faithful, with my prayers and affections, to join with me in giving thee praises and thanks. . let all people, tribes, and tongues praise thee, and magnify thy holy and sweet name, with the highest jubilation and ardent devotion. and let all who reverently and devoutly celebrate thy most high sacrament, and receive it with full faith, find grace and mercy at thy hands, and humbly pray for me, a sinful creature. and when they shall have obtained their desired devotion and joyful union, and shall depart from thy sacred heavenly table, well comforted, and wonderfully nourished, let them vouchsafe to remember my poor soul. { } chap. xviii.--_that a man be not a curious searcher into this sacrament, but a follower of christ, submitting his sense to holy faith._ the voice of the beloved. . thou must, beware of curious and unprofitable searching into this most profound sacrament, if thou wilt not sink into the depth of doubt. _he that is a searcher of majesty shall be oppressed by glory._ proverbs xxv. god is able to work more than man can understand. a pious and humble inquiry after _truth_ is tolerable, which is always ready to be taught, and studies to walk in the sound doctrine of the _fathers_. . blessed is that simplicity that leaveth the difficult ways of disputes, and goeth on in the plain and sure path of god's commandments. many have lost devotion, whilst they would search into high things. { } it is _faith_ that is required of thee, and a _sincere life;_ not the height of understanding, not diving deep into the mysteries of god. if thou dost not understand nor comprehend those things that are under thee, how shouldst thou comprehend those things that are above thee? submit thyself to god, and humble thy _sense_ to _faith_, and the light of knowledge shall be given thee, as far as shall be profitable and necessary for thee. . some are grievously tempted about faith and the sacrament; but this is not to be imputed to them, but rather to the enemy. be not thou anxious, stand not to dispute with thy thoughts, nor to answer the doubts which the devil suggests, but believe the words of god, believe his saints and prophets, and the wicked enemy will fly from thee. it is often very profitable to the servant of god to suffer such things; { } for the devil tempteth not unbelievers and sinners, whom he already securely possesseth; but the faithful and devout he many ways tempteth and molesteth. . go forward therefore with a sincere and undoubted faith, and with an humble reverence approach to this sacrament; and whatsoever thou art not able to understand, commit securely to god, who is _omnipotent_. god never deceiveth, but he is deceived that trusts too much to himself: god walketh with the simple, and revealeth himself to the humble; he giveth understanding to little ones, openeth the gate of knowledge to pure minds, and hideth his grace from the curious and proud. human _reason_ is weak and may be deceived; but true _faith_ cannot be deceived. . all reason and natural search ought to follow faith, and not to go before it, nor oppose it; for _faith_ and _love_ are here predominant, and work by hidden ways in this most holy and super-excellent sacrament. { } god, who is eternal and incomprehensible, and of infinite power, doth great and inscrutable things in heaven and earth, and there is no searching out his wonderful works. if the works of god were such as might be easily comprehended by human reason, they could not be called wonderful and unspeakable. the end. erratum, page , line , for likely read lightly. [transcriber's note: this correction has been applied.] { } contents. chap. book i. page. i. of following christ and despising all the vanities of the world ii. of having an humble sentiment of one's self iii. of the doctrine of truth iv. of prudence in our doings v. of the reading the holy scriptures vi. of inordinate affections vii. of flying vain hope and pride viii. of shunning too much familiarity ix. of obedience and subjection x. of avoiding superfluity of words xi. of acquiring peace and zeal of spiritual progress xii. of the advantage of adversity xiii. of resisting temptation xiv. of avoiding rash judgment { } xv. of works done out of charity xvi. of bearing the defects of others xvii. of a monastic life xviii. of the examples of the holy fathers xix. of the exercises of a good religious man xx. of the love of solitude and silence xxi. of compunction of heart xxii. of the consideration of the misery of man xxiii. of the thoughts of death xxiv. of judgment and the punishment of sins xxv. of the fervent amendment of our whole life book ii. i. of interior conversation ii. of humble submission iii. of a good peaceable man iv. of a pure mind and simple intention v. of the consideration of one's self vi. of the joy of a good conscience { } vii. of the love of jesus above all things. viii. of familiar friendship with jesus ix. of the want of all comfort x. of gratitude for the grace of god xi. of the small number of the lovers of the cross of jesus xii. of the king's highway of the holy cross book iii. i. of the internal speech of christ to a faithful soul ii. that truth speaks within us without noise of words iii. that the words of god are to be heard with humility, and that many weigh them not a prayer to implore the grace of devotion iv. that we ought to walk in truth and humility in god's presence v. of the wonderful effect of divine love vi. of the proof of a true lover { } vii. that grace is to be hid under the guardianship of humility viii. of the mean esteem of one's self in the sight of god ix. that all things are to be referred to god, as to our last end x. that it is sweet to serve god, despising this world xi. that the desires of the heart are to be examined and moderated xii. of learning patience, and of fighting against concupiscence xiii. of the obedience of an humble subject after the example of jesus christ xiv. of considering the secret judgments of god, lest we be puffed up by our good works xv. how we are to be disposed, and what we are to say when we desire any thing a prayer for the fulfilling of the will of god { } xvi. that true comfort is to be sought in god alone xvii. that we ought to cast all our care upon god xviii. that temporal miseries are to be borne with patience after the example of jesus christ xix. of supporting injuries, and who is proved to be truly patient xx. of the confession of our own infirmity, and of the miseries of this life xxi. that we are to rest in god above all goods and gifts xxii. of the remembrance of the manifold benefits of god xxiii. of four things which bring much peace a prayer against evil thoughts a prayer for the enlightening of the mind xxiv. that we are not to be curious in enquiring into the life of others xxv. in what things the firm peace of the heart and true progress doth consist { } xxvi. of the eminence of a free mind, which humble prayer better procures than reading xxvii. that self love chiefly keeps a person back from the sovereign good a prayer for the cleansing of the heart and the obtaining of heavenly wisdom xxviii. against the tongues of detracters xxix. how in the time of tribulation god is to be invoked and blessed xxx. of asking the divine assistance, and of confidence of recovering grace xxxi. of disregarding all things created, that so we may find the creator xxxii. of the denying ourselves, and renouncing all cupidity xxxiii. of the inconstancy of our heart, and of directing our final intention to god xxxiv. that he that loves god relishes him above all things, and in all things { } xxxv. that there is no being secure from temptation in this life xxxvi. against the vain judgments of men xxxvii. of a pure and full resignation of ourselves, for the obtaining freedom of heart xxxviii. of the good government of ourselves in outward things, and of having recourse to god in dangers xxxix. that a man must not be over eager in his affairs xl. that man hath no good of himself, and that he cannot glory in any thing xli. of the contempt of all temporal honour xlii. that our peace is not to be placed in men xliii. against vain and worldly learning xliv. of not drawing to ourselves exterior things xlv. that credit is not to be given to all men; and that men are prone to offend in words { } xlvi. of having confidence in god when words arise against us xlvii. that all grievous things are to be endured for life everlasting xlviii. of the day of eternity, and of the miseries of this life xlix. of the desire of eternal life, and how great things are promised to them that fight l. how a desolate person ought to offer himself into the hands of god li. that we must practise ourselves in humble works, when we cannot attain to high things lii. that a man ought not to esteem himself worthy of consolation, but rather guilty of stripes liii. that the grace of god is not communicated to the earthly-minded liv. of the different motions of nature and grace iv. of the corruption of nature, and of the efficacy of divine grace { } lvi. that we ought to deny ourselves, and to imitate christ by the cross lvii. that a man should not be too much dejected when he falls into some defects lviii. of not searching into high matters, nor into the secret judgments of god lix. that all hope and confidence is to be fixed in god alone book iv. of the blessed sacrament. i. with how great reverence christ is to be received ii. that the great goodness and charity of god is shewed to man in this sacrament iii. that it is profitable to communicate often iv. that many benefits are bestowed on them who communicate devoutly { } v. of the dignity of the sacrament, and of the priestly state vi. a petition concerning the exercise proper before communion vii. of the discussion of one's own conscience, and of a resolution of amendment viii. of the oblation of christ on the cross, and of the resignation of ourselves ix. that we must offer ourselves, and all that is ours, to god, and pray for all x. that the holy communion is not lightly to be forborne xi. that the body of christ and the holy scriptures are most necessary to a faithful soul xii. that he who is to communicate ought to prepare himself for christ with great diligence xiii. that a devout soul ought to desire with her whole heart to be united to christ in this sacrament { } xiv. of the ardent desire of some devout persons to receive the body of christ xv. that the grace of devotion is obtained by humility and self-denial xvi. that we ought to lay open our necessities to christ, and crave his grace xvii. of fervent love and vehement desire to receive christ xviii. that a man be not a curious searcher into this sacrament; but an humble follower of christ, submitting his sense to holy faith ----------------------------------- keating, brown and co. printers, , duke-street, grosvenor-sq. london. [illustration: book cover] the life radiant by lilian whiting author of "the world beautiful," "the spiritual significance" "the world beautiful in books," "kate field, a record," "boston days," etc. "follow it, follow it, follow the gleam." boston little, brown, and company to arvilla delight meeker (mrs. nathan cook meeker) in whose beautiful life patience has done her perfect work, and whose unfaltering and joyful faith in god reveals impressive truth in the life radiant of holy living these pages are inscribed with the devotion of lilian whiting contents. page the golden age lies onward. the supreme illumination creating the new world eliminating anxieties heaven's perfect hour love and good will the diviner possibilities the weight of the past discerning the future. a determining question in proportion to power the ethereal realm. a scientific fact a glorious inauguration finer cosmic forces health and happiness a new force the service of the gods the power of the exalted moment. obey the vision the open door interruptions as opportunities the charm of companionship a summer pilgrimage in arizona a tragic idyl of colorado a remarkable mystic the momentous question the nectar of the hour. a profound experience the law of prayer conduct and beauty the divine panorama also the holy ghost, the comforter the life radiant. "_i am merlin who follow the gleam._" * * * * * _know well, my soul, god's hand controls whate'er thou fearest; round him in calmest music rolls whate'er thou hearest._ _what to thee is shadow, to him is day, and the end he knoweth. and not on a blind and aimless way the spirit goeth._ whittier. the golden age lies onward. "the golden age lies onward, not behind. the pathway through the past has led us up: the pathway through the future will lead on, and higher." the life radiant is that transfiguration of the ordinary daily events and circumstances which lifts them to the spiritual plane and sees them as the signs and the indications of the divine leading. every circumstance thus becomes a part of the revelation; and to constantly live in this illuminated atmosphere is to invest all experiences with a kind of magical enchantment. life prefigures itself before us as a spiritual drama in which we are, at once, the actors and the spectators. the story of living goes on perpetually. the days and the years inevitably turn the pages and open new chapters. nothing is ever hopeless, because new combinations and groupings create new results. the forces that determine his daily life are partly with man and partly with god. they lie in both the seen and the unseen. we are always an inhabitant of both realms, and to recognize either alone and be blind to the other is to deprive ourselves of the great sources of energy. the divine aid, infinite and all-potent as it is, capable at any moment of utterly transforming all the conditions and transferring them to a higher plane, is yet limited by the degree of spiritual receptivity in the individual. as one may have all the air that he is able to breathe, so may one have all the aid of the holy spirit which he is capable of receiving. man can never accept so gladly and so freely as god offers; but in just the proportion to which he can, increasingly, lift up his heart in response, to that degree god fills his life with a glory not of earth. "man may ask, and god may answer, but we may not understand, knowing but our own poor language, all the writing of his hand." science has discovered the existence of that incalculable energy, the ether, interpenetrated in the atmosphere. electro-magnetic currents of power beyond all conception are revealed, and when intelligently recognized by some happy genius, like that of marconi, they begin to be utilized in the service of human progress. now as this ethereal energy which is only just beginning to be recognized can be drawn upon for light, for heat, for motor power, for communication, just as this hitherto undreamed-of power can be drawn upon for the fundamental needs of the physical world, so, correspondingly, does there exist the infinite reservoir of spiritual energy which god freely opens to man in precisely the proportion in which he recognizes and avails himself of its transforming power. and in this realm lies the life radiant. if this transfiguration of life could only be experienced by the aid of wealth and health and all for which these two factors stand, it would not be worth talking about. we hear a great deal of the "privileged classes" and of "fortunate conditions," as if there were certain arbitrary divisions in life defined by impassable boundaries, and that he who finds himself in one, is unable to pass to another. never was there a more fatally erroneous conception. in the spiritual world there are no limits, no boundaries, no arbitrary divisions. just so far as the soul conquers, is it free. conquer ignorance, and one enters the realm of education, of culture; conquer vice, and he enters into the realm of virtue; conquer impatience and irritability and bitterness, and their result in gloom and despondency, and he enters into the realm of serenity and sweetness and exaltation with their result in power of accomplishment. the life radiant can be achieved, and is within the personal choice of every individual. one may place himself in relation with this infinite and all-potent current of divine energy and receive its impetus and its exhilaration and its illumination every hour in the day. the toiler in manual labor may lead this twofold life. on the visible side he is pushing onward in the excavation of a tunnel; he is laying the track of a new railroad; he is engaged in building a house; he stands at his appointed place in a great factory,--but is this all? his real work lies both in the visible and in the invisible. on the one hand he is contributing to the material resources of the world, and he is earning his wage by which to live; on the other hand he is developing patience, faithfulness, and judgment,--quantities of the spiritual man and possessions of the spiritual life which extend the spiritual territory. faithfulness to the immediate duty creates a larger theatre for duty. there are not wanting examples that could be named of statesmen,--senators, governors, and others in high places, to say nothing of the supreme example of a lincoln; there are not wanting examples of professional men in high and important places who initiated their work by any humble and honest industrial employment that chanced to present itself at the moment. conquering this rudimentary realm, they passed on to others successively. integrity is a spiritual quantity, and it insures spiritual aid. the cloud of witnesses is never dispersed. the only imprisonment is in limitations, and limitations can be constantly overcome. the horizon line of the impossible recedes as we advance. in the last analysis nothing is too sublime or too beautiful to be entirely possible. its attainment is simply a question of conditions. these conditions lie in entering into this inner realm of spiritual energy in which the personal will is increasingly identified with the will of god. like an echo of celestial music are these lines by sully-prudhomme:-- "the lilies fade with the dying hours, hushed is the song-bird's lay; but i dream of summers and dream of flowers that last alway." nor is this only the day-dream of a poet. the summers and flowers that last alway are a very immediate treasure which one has only to perceive, to grasp, to recognize, and to realize. "surely," exclaimed the psalmist, "goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and i shall dwell in the house of the lord forever." this dwelling in "the house of the lord" is by no means a figure of speech. nor is it to be regarded as some ineffable privilege to be--possibly to be--enjoyed after that change we call death. its real significance is here and now. one must dwell in "the house of the lord" to-day, and every day. the "house of the lord" is a beautiful figurative expression for that spiritual atmosphere in which one may perpetually live, and in which it is his simple duty both to live and to radiate to all around him. in these summer days of , in this golden dawn of the twentieth century, the world is echoing with wonder in the discovery of a new and most mysterious force in nature,--radium. science is, at this date, powerless to analyze or explain its marvellous power. the leading scientists of the world of learning--sir william crookes, sir oliver lodge, and professor curie (who, with mme. curie, has the honor of being its discoverer)--believe that in radium will be found the true solution of the problem of matter. radium gives off rays at the speed of one hundred and twenty thousand miles a second, and these rays offer the most extraordinary heat, light, and power. yet with this immense radiation it suffers no diminution of energy; nor can any scientist yet discern from what source this power is fed. a grain of it will furnish enough light to enable one to read, and, as professor j. j. thomson has observed, it will suffer no diminution in a million years. it will burn the flesh through a metal box and through clothing, but without burning the texture of the garments. the rays given out by radium cannot be refracted, polarized, or regularly reflected in the way of ordinary light, although some of them can be turned aside by a magnet. professor curie has reported to the french academy of science that half a pound of radium salts will in one hour produce a heat equal to the burning of one-third of a foot of hydrogen gas. this takes place, it must be remembered, without any perceptible diminution in the radium. it emits heat maintaining a temperature of . degrees fahrenheit above its surroundings. it evolves sufficient heat to melt more than its own weight of ice every hour. radium projects its rays through solid substances without any perceptible hindrance and burns blisters through a steel case. the light is pale blue. down in the deepest pitchblende mines, where particles of radium have been hidden away since the creation of the world, they are still found shining with their strange blue light. the radium electrons pass through the space which separates every molecule in a solid body from another. the scientific theory is that no two molecules in any body, however dense, actually touch. the relative power of radium to the x-ray is as six to one. the rays of radium have one hundred thousand times the energy of those of uranium and over one hundred times the energy of barium radiation. the scarcity of the metal will be understood when it is stated that there is far less radium in pitchblende than gold in ordinary sea water. radium colors glass violet; transforms oxygen into ozone, white phosphorus to red; electrifies various gases and liquids, including petroleum and liquid air. professor sir william crookes, the world's greatest living physicist and experimental scientist, said of radium in the june of this :-- "in total darkness i laid a piece of pitchblende--the ore from which radium is extracted--face down upon a sensitized plate, and let it act with its own light for twenty-four hours. the result was a photograph, where the black pitchblende appeared light owing to the emanations from the radium contained in it. the photograph also shows these going off into space from the sides of the specimen. "radium is dangerous to handle. once i carried a tiny piece of radium in my waistcoat pocket to a soirée at the royal society, and on reaching home found a blister in my side. the blisters from radium may take months to get well, as the injurious effect goes so deep. now i carry a thick lead box just large enough to hold the little brass case in which i keep the radium itself. there it lies--a little, tawny, crystalline patch. there would hardly be a larger quantity together in one box anywhere in england. "there are several kinds of emanations from radium. photographs similar to those produced by the roentgen ray tube and induction coil can be got by means of the emanations from a small quantity of radium. i took a screen made of zincblende, which will phosphoresce when the emanations of radium fall upon it. i then painted upon it, in a solution of radium, the word 'radium.' in the dark this screen (about three inches by four inches) gives off sufficient light to read by. but the most striking way of showing the emanations is by the little contrivance i call a spinthariscope. in this a zinc sulphide screen is fitted at the end of a short brass tube, with a speck of radium about a millimeter away from it. looking in the dark through the lens at the other end one sees a regular bombardment of the screen by the emanations. the phenomena of radium require us to recast many of our ideas of matter, electricity, and energy, and its discovery promises to realize what for the last hundred years have been but day-dreams of philosophy. "although the fact of emission of heat by radium is in itself sufficiently remarkable, this heat is probably only a small portion of the energy radium is constantly sending into space. it is at the same time hurling off material particles which reveal their impact on a screen by luminous scintillations. stop these by a glass or mica screen, and torrents of roentgen rays still pour out from a few milligrams of radium salt in quantity to exhibit to a company all the phenomena of roentgen rays, and with energy enough to produce a nasty blister on the flesh, if kept near it for an hour." it is hardly possible to contemplate this remarkable element in the world of nature without recognizing its correspondence in the world of spirit. if an element radiates perpetual light, heat, and power with no loss of its own inherent energy, so the spirit can radiate love, sympathy, sweetness, and inspiration with no diminution of its own quality. science may be unable to recognize the medium from which radium is fed; but religion recognizes the medium from which the spirit draws its sustenance in the power of god. the human will merged in the divine will is invincible. there is no ideal of life which it may not realize, and this realization is in the line of the inevitable and is experienced with the unerring certainty of a mathematical demonstration. yet, when one comes to examine the actual average attitude of humanity toward this subject of the divine will, one finds it is largely that of a mere gloomy and enforced resignation, even at its best, and, at its worst, of distrust and rebellion to the will of god. it seems to be held as the last resort of desperation and despair, rather than as the one abounding source of all joy and success and achievement. the average individual holds a traditional belief that he ought, perhaps, to be able sincerely to wish that god's will be done, but as a matter of fact he far prefers his own. the petition is, in his mind, invariably associated with seasons of great sorrow, disaster, and calamity, when, having apparently nothing else to hope for, a prayer is offered for the will of god! it is somewhat vaguely held to be the appropriate expression for the last emergency, and that it implies resigning one's self to the most serious and irreferable calamity. there is also a nebulous feeling that while the will of god may be entirely appropriate to the conditions and circumstances of the aged, the poor, the unfortunate, and the defective classes, it is the last thing in the world to be invoked for the young, the gifted, the strong, and the brilliant orders of society. it is tacitly relegated to a place in some last hopeless emergency, and not to a place in the creative energy of the most brilliant achievement. now, as a matter of profoundest truth, this attitude is as remote from the clear realization of what is involved in the will of god as would be the conviction that the flying express train or the swift electric motor cars might be suitable enough for the aged, and the weary, and the invalid, and the people whose time was of little consequence, but that the young, the radiant, the eager, the gifted, the people to whom time was valuable, must go by their own conveyances of horse or foot under their immediate personal control. this fallacy is no more remote from truth than is the fallacy that the will of god is something to be accepted with what decorum of resignation one may, only when he cannot help it! on the contrary, the will of god is the infinitely great motor of human life. its power is as incalculably greater over the soul than that of radium over other elements, as it is higher in the scale of being; as spirit rather than substance; and the life radiant is really entered upon when one has come absolutely to merge all his longing and desire into the divine purposes. it is like availing one's self of the great laws of attraction and gravitation in nature. with the human will identified with the divine will, every day's experience becomes invested with the keenest zest and interest. the events that may arise at any moment enlist the energy and fascinate the imagination. the consciousness of union with god produces an exquisite confidence in the wise and sweet enchantment of life; the constant receptivity of the soul to the influence and the guiding of the holy spirit make an atmosphere ecstatic, even under the most commonplace or outwardly depressing circumstances. celestial harmonies thrill the air. in this divine atmosphere--the soul's native air--every energy is quickened. the divine realm is as truly the habitat of the spiritual man--who, temporarily inhabiting a physical body that he may thus come into relations with a physical world, is essentially a spiritual rather than a physical being--as the air is the habitat of the bird, or the water of the fish. when the divine statement is made, "without me ye can do nothing," it is simply that of a literal fact. the gloom, the depression, the irritation that so often prevail and persist in mental conditions, do not arise, primarily, from any outward trial or perplexity; they are the result--the inevitable result--of the soul's lack of union with god; the lack of that _rapport_ between the spirit of man and the divine spirit in which alone is exhilaration and joy. when this union is forged, when the human will rests perfectly in the divine will, one then absolutely knows, with the most positive and literal conviction, that "all things work together for good to them that love god." the assurance is felt with the unchallenged force of a mathematical demonstration. not merely that the pleasant and agreeable things work together for good, but _all_ things--pain, loss, sorrow, injustice, misapprehension. then one realizes in his own experience the significance of the words, "we glory in tribulation, also." one has heard all one's life, perhaps, of "the ministry of sorrow," and similar phrases, and he has become a trifle impatient of them as a sort of incantation with which he has little sympathy. at the best, he relegates this order of ministry to the rank and file of humanity; to those whose lives are (to his vision) somewhat prosy and dull; and for himself he proposes to live in a world beautiful, where stars and sunsets and flames and fragrances enchant the hours, where, with his feet shod with silver bells, he is perpetually conscious of being "born and nourished in miracles." he is perfectly confident that every life can be happy, if it will; and he regards sorrow as a wholly stupid and negative state which no one need fall into if only he have sufficient energy to generate a perpetual enchantment. thus he dances down the years like the daffodils on the morning breeze, singing always his hymn to the radiant goddess: "the fairest enchants me, the mighty commands me," pledging his faith at the altar of perpetual adoration that one has only but to believe in happiness and make room for it in his life in order to live in this constant exhilaration. then, one day, he awakens to find his world in ruins. sorrow, pain, loss, have come upon him, and have come in the one form of all others that seems most impossible to bear. if it were death, even of the one dearest on earth, he would be sustained by divine consolations. if it were financial deprivation, he could meet it with fortitude and accept goethe's counsel to "go and earn more." if it were any one of various other forms of trial, he reflects, there would be for his pain various forms of consolation; but the peculiar guise it has assumed paralyzes him with its baffling power, its darkness of eclipse. the element of hopelessness in it,--his own utter inability to understand the cause of the sorrow which is literally a thunderbolt out of a clear sky,--plunges him almost into despair. he had endeavored to give the best, but the result is as if he had given the worst; he had come to rely on a perfect and beautiful comprehension and sympathy, but he is confronted with the most inexplicable misapprehension of all his motives, the most complete misunderstanding of all his aspirations and prayers. this, or other combinations and conditions of which it may serve as a type, is one of the phases of human experience. if pain were only the inevitable result of conscious and intentional wrong-doing, then might one even learn to refrain from the error and thus avoid the result. but a deeper experience in life, a more profound insight into the springs of its action, reveal that pain, as well as joy, falls into experience as an event encountered on the onward march, rather than as being, invariably, conditions created by ourselves. in the final analysis of being, we may have created the causes sometime and somewhere; but in the immediate sense we fail to discern the trace of our own action. a joy, a radiance undreamed of, suddenly drops into a day, making it a memorable date forever; a joy that transmutes itself into exaltation and a higher range of energy. naturally, we count such an experience divine, and offer our gratitude to god, the giver of all blessings. but a tragedy of sorrow, a darkness of desolation impenetrable and seemingly final, also falls suddenly into a day, and inexpressible amazement and incredulity that it can be real are added to the pain. but it is real. the sunshine has vanished; the stars have hidden their light; the air is leaden where once it was all gold and rose and pearl; one is alone in the desert, in a loneliness that no voice sounds through, in an anguish that no human sympathy can reach or sustain. all that made life worth the living has been inexplicably withdrawn; and how, then, shall he live? and _why_ shall he live? he may even question. the springs of energy are broken and his powers are paralyzed. whatever he has hitherto done, whatever he has tried or hoped to do in the joyous exaltation of the days that have vanished from all save memory, he can do no longer. it is not a question of choice, not a decision that he would not still continue his efforts; but it is the total impossibility of doing so that settles down upon him like a leaden pall. the blind cannot see, the deaf cannot hear, the dumb cannot speak, the paralyzed cannot walk,--no matter how gladly they would fulfil these functions. so he looks at his own life. his world is in ruins, and he has no power to ever rebuild it again. in such conditions the problem of suicide may arrive like a ghastly spectre to confront the mind. it is a spectre that, according to statistics, is alarmingly prevalent. the statisticians talk of periods of it as "an epidemic." both science and religion take note of it, discuss its bearing upon life, its tendency and its possible prevention. it is seen as the result of both great and of trivial causes. it is seen to follow a great sin, and to be the--terribly mistaken--refuge of a great sorrow. and the remedy lies,--where? it can hardly lie elsewhere than in a truer understanding of the very nature of life itself. the only remedy will be found in the larger general understanding that life cannot be extinguished. one may destroy his physical _body_,--he can do that at any moment and by an infinite variety of methods. but he cannot destroy _himself_. he may deprive himself of the instrument that was given to him for use in the physical world; he cannot escape from the duties that he should have fulfilled when he had the means of doing so in the use of this instrument we call the body. if science and religion could clearly teach the awful results that follow suicide, the terrible isolation and deprivation in which the spiritual being who has thrown away his instrument of service finds himself, it would be the one effective cure for a demoralizing tendency. if one has sinned, sometime and somewhere must he meet the consequences. he cannot escape them by escaping from his body, and the sooner he meets them, in repentance and atonement, the sooner will he work out to better and brighter conditions. if one encounters disaster or great personal sorrow, what then? one does not throw away all his possibilities of usefulness because he is himself unhappy. if he does do this he is ignoble. life is a divine dream. it is a divine responsibility, primarily between each soul and god. it is one's business to live bravely, with dignity, with faith, with generosity of consideration and good will, with love, indeed, which is the expression of the highest energy. yet, with his personal world in ruins, what shall he do? he must learn that supreme lesson of all time and eternity,--the lesson to accept and to joyfully embrace the will of god as thus revealed to him, in an inscrutable way. * * * * * [sidenote: the supreme illumination.] until he shall learn to accept this experience as divine, and offer his gratitude to god for pain as sincerely as he offered it for experiences of joy and of beauty, he cannot enter upon the life radiant. for the radiant life is only achieved through these mingled experiences as all equally accepted from the divine power. "ah, when the infinite burden of life descendeth upon us, crushes to earth our hopes, and under the earth in the graveyard, then it is good to pray unto god, for his sorrowing children turns he ne'er from the door, but he heals and helps and consoles them. yet is it good to pray when all things are prosperous with us; pray in fortunate days, for life's most beautiful fortune kneels before the eternal's gate, and with hands inter-folded, praises, thankful and moved, the only giver of blessings." the life radiant comes when one can as sincerely thank god for pain as for joy; when, after long groping in the darkness, clinging, indeed, to his faith in god (for without that he could not live an hour, though that faith be totally without sight), he suddenly realizes how a great sorrow has wrought in him a great result; that it has perfected and crystallized all that was nebulous in his faith, and that it has absolutely brought him into perfect rest in the divine will; that it has forged that indissoluble link which forevermore identifies his will with the will of god, and thus opens to him a realm fairer far than a "world beautiful"--even a world divine. only in this finer ether is revealed to him the life radiant; in the atmosphere made resplendent and glorious by this revelation of the soul's union with god. it is a life only experienced after one who has seen before him the promised land is led into the wilderness instead, and who, standing there in the midst of denial, and defeat, and desolation, can rejoice in the sea of glass mingled with fire through which he must pass. only in this supreme surrender of the soul to god; only in this rapture of union with the divine power, lies the life radiant. it is a glory not of earth; it is the instant crystallization of an intense and infinite energy that pours itself into every need of the varied human life. it is the igniting of a spark that flashes its illumination on every problem and perplexity. it is the coming to "know god" in the sense meant by saint paul, and thus to enter into the eternal life. for the eternal life is not a term that implies mere duration. it implies present conditions. the eternal life is now. it is a spiritual state, and implies the profound and the realized union with god, rather than a prolongation of existence through countless ages. only the eternal life can thus prolong itself. the life of the spirit is alone immortal. * * * * * [sidenote: creating the new world.] "the soul looketh steadily forward, creating a world before her, leaving worlds behind her," and "the web of events is the flowing robe in which she is clothed." that union of energy and will which we call the soul is capable of creating a new world every day, and any adequate perception of the life that now is, as well as that which is to come, suggests consolation for the ills of the day and leads one into the atmosphere of peace and joy. when one comes into any clear realization of this life of the spirit,--of its infinite outlook, its command of resources,--the entanglement with trifles falls off of itself. not unfrequently a great deal of time and energy is totally wasted in endeavoring to combat or to conquer the annoyances and troubles that beset one; that weight his wings and blind his eyes and render him impervious and unresponsive to the beauty and joy of life. nine times out of ten it is far better to ignore these, to put them out of sight and out of mind, and press on to gain the clearer atmosphere, to create the new world. "the whole course of things goes to teach us faith. we need only obey. there is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word. why need you choose so painfully your place, and occupation, and associates, and modes of action and of entertainment? certainly there is a possible right for you that precludes the need of balance and wilful election. for you there is a reality, a fit place and congenial duties. place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment. then you put all gainsayers in the wrong. then you are the world, the measure of right, of truth, of beauty. if we will not be marplots with our miserable interferences, the work, the society, letters, arts, science, religion of men would go on far better than now, and the heaven predicted from the beginning of the world, and still predicted from the bottom of the heart, would organize itself, as do now the rose, and the air, and the sun." the poet declares that "sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things," but there is a certain morbidness in even the sensitive delicacy and intensity of feeling that broods too deeply over the past. it is a great art to learn to let things go--let them pass. they are a part of the "flowing conditions." even the pain and sorrow that result from failures and changes in social relations; loss of friends, the vanishing of friendships in which one had trusted,--even this phase of trial, which is truly the hardest of all, can be best endured by closing the door of consciousness on it, and creating a new world by that miracle-working power of the soul. friendships that hold within themselves any permanent, any spiritual reality, come to stay. "only that soul can be my friend which i encounter on the line of my own march, that soul to which i do not decline and which does not decline to me, but, native of the same celestial altitude, repeats in its own all my experience." life has too many claims and privileges and resources to waste it in lamentations. let one look forward, not backward. fairy realms of enchantment beckon him on. these "flowing conditions of life" are, really, the conditions of joy, of exhilaration, of stimulus to energy rather than the reverse. they invest each day, each week, each year, with the enchantment of the unknown and the untried. they produce the possibility of perpetual hope, and continuity of hope is continuity of endeavor. without hope, faith, and courage, life would be impossible; and courage and all power of energy and endeavor depend entirely upon hope and faith. if a man believes in nothing and is in a state of despair and not hope, his energies are paralyzed. but hope lends wings,--hope and faith are creative, and can both control and change the trend of events. circumstances are but the crude material, which is subject to any degree of transformation by the alchemy of faith. "when a god wishes to ride, every chip and stone will bud and shoot out winged feet to carry him," and it is hope and faith that give the power of the gods. there is, perhaps, no adequate realization on the part of humanity of the enormous extent to which the forces in the unseen mingle with the forces of the seen, and thus complete the magnetic battery of action. life approaches perfection in just the degree to which it can intelligently and reverently avail itself of this aid which is a divine provision. it is not only after death that the soul "stands before god." the soul that does not stand before god, now and here, in the ordinary daily life, does not even live at all, in any true sense. "i am come that ye might have _life_," said jesus, "and have it more abundantly." it is only as one holds himself receptive to the divine currents that he has life, and it rests with himself to have it "more abundantly" every day and hour. this constant communion with jesus, this living in constant receptivity to the divine energy, includes, too, the living in telepathic communion with those who have gone on into the unseen world. the spirituality of life is conditioned on so developing our own spiritual powers by faith and prayer and communion with god, that one is sensitive to the presence and responsive to the thought of friends who have been released from the physical life. shall phillips brooks, the friend and helper and wise counsellor when here, be less so now that he has entered into the next higher scale of being? shall the friend whom we loved, and who was at our side in visible presence yesterday, be less our friend because his presence is not visible to us to-day? why is it not visible? simply because the subtle spirit-body is in a state of far higher vibration than the denser physical body, and the physical eye can only recognize objects up to a certain vibratory degree. it is a scientific fact. musicians and scientists know well that above a certain pitch the ear cannot recognize sound; it becomes silence. but as saint paul says, "there is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body," and the spiritual body also has its organs of sight and hearing. clairvoyance and clairaudience are as natural, when the spiritual faculties are sufficiently developed, as are the ordinary sight and hearing. even when there is no clairvoyance and clairaudience, in the way of super-normal development, the mind kept in harmonious receptivity to the divine world may be telepathically in more or less constant communion with those in the unseen. "the power of our own will to determine certain facts is, itself, one of the facts of life," says professor josiah royce. the power of our own will is but another name for spiritual power--that positive force to which all events and circumstances are negative. * * * * * "there never was a right endeavor but it succeeded," says emerson. "patience and patience, we shall win at the last. we must be very suspicious of the deceptions of the element of time. it takes a good deal of time to eat or to sleep, or to earn a hundred dollars, and a very little time to entertain a hope and an insight which becomes the light of our life. we dress our garden, eat our dinners, discuss the household, and these things make no impression, are forgotten next week; but in the solitude to which every man is always returning, he has a sanity and revelations which in his passage into new worlds he will carry with him. never mind the ridicule, never mind the defeat: up again, old heart!--it seems to say,--there is victory yet for all justice; and the true romance which the world exists to realize will be the transformation of genius into practical power." [sidenote: eliminating anxieties.] a large percentage of the anxieties and perplexities of daily experience could be eliminated at once and struck off the balance, never to return again, if life were but viewed aright, and held in the scale of true valuations. nothing is more idle than to sell one's soul for a mess of pottage; for the pottage is not worth the price. seen in the most practical, every-day light, it is a bad bargain. not only is it true that a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of things that he possesseth, but, conversely, as a rule, the greater the mass of things the less the life. the spiritual energy becomes clogged and fettered and strangled amid its entanglement with things. the very power of finance, that might and that ought to insure its possessor a certain peace of mind, a liberation from petty anxieties, and a power to devote himself to higher aims, too often reverses this and chains him as to a wheel. recently there arrived at a fashionable hotel a family whose command of finance might have redeemed every day from the sordid and from any anxious efforts, and enabled them to live in the realm of high thought, of generous and beautiful expressions of sympathy and love to all. their visit might have made the time a glorified interlude to every one with whom they came in contact by its radiation of hope and happiness and sympathy and good cheer. instead, each and all, individually and collectively, were entangled in possessions,--weighted down with _things_, and quite illustrating the terse little couplet of emerson,-- "things are in the saddle and ride mankind." the things which rode these unfortunate beings--for the multi-millionaires may not unfrequently be so classed--were masses of jewels, that could not be worn and enjoyed because too elaborate to be suitable, and so must be instantly consigned to the safe. such part of these treasures as were in use, and left in rooms, suffered from losses or theft. they caused more or less vexation, anger, discord, and fret in general to the owners and every one concerned, until the onlooker was ready to exclaim, "if this is the price of diamonds and rubies and pink pearls, and rich and rare gems in general, let one escape the tyranny of purple and fine linen, and take simplicity and its accompanying peace of mind." after a certain limit of ordinary comfort, great possessions seem to enslave rather than to liberate. if the price of costly jewels is peace of mind, as well as a cheque of imposing figures, then, indeed, let one keep his peace of mind, and go without the necklace. it is often curious to see how little imagination goes into the spending of colossal fortunes. the possessors simply build more houses than they can live in; each one has more space and more impedimenta than he knows what to do with, and the multiplication of all these possessions results in perpetual anxieties, and fret, and worry, until one would prefer a crust and a garret, and his spiritual freedom, to any such life as that entailed by the golden shower of fortune. "are you rich? rich enough to help somebody?" there is the test. the diamond and ruby necklace, whose chief use seems to be to incite anxieties, would give some aspiring youth or maiden a college course. the costly ring left carelessly on the bureau, tempting theft, would give a gifted young girl just the study in a musical conservatory that she needs, or would make a young artist happy and encouraged by buying his picture, and some one else might be made happy and helped on to new endeavor by having the gift of the picture. money can be transmuted into spiritual gifts, and only when thus used is it of much importance in promoting any real comfort or enjoyment or stimulus to progress. the event, the thing, is purely negative, and only when acted upon by force of spirit does it become positive. let one go on through the days doing the beautiful thing in every human relation. life is a spiritual drama, perpetually being played. the curtain never goes down. the actors come and go, but the stage is never vacant. to inform the drama with artistic feeling, with beauty, with generous purpose, is in the power of every one. it depends, not on possessions, but on sympathy, insight, and sweetness of spirit. these determine the life radiant. * * * * * "i will wait heaven's perfect hour through the innumerable years." [sidenote: heaven's perfect hour.] the saving grace of life is the power to hold with serene and steadfast fidelity the vision, the ideal, that has revealed itself in happier hours; to realize that this, after all, is the true reality, and that it shines in the spiritual firmament as the sun does in the heavens, however long the period of storm and clouds that obscure its radiance. the tendency to doubt and depression is often as prevalent as an epidemic. in extreme cases it becomes the suicidal mania; in others it effectually paralyzes the springs of action and leaves its victim drifting helplessly and hopelessly with the current; and any such mental tendency as this is just as surely a definite evil to be recognized and combated as would be any epidemic of disease. to rise in the morning confronting a day that is full of exacting demands on his best energies; on his serenest and sunniest poise; that require all the exhilaration and sparkle and radiance which have vanished from his possession, and yet to be forced, someway and somehow, to go through his appointed tasks,--no one can deny that here is a very real problem, and one that certainly taxes every conceivable force of will far more than might many great and visible calamities. for all this form of trial is invisible and very largely incommunicable, and it is like trying to walk through deep waters that are undiscerned by those near, but which impede every step, and threaten to rise and overwhelm one. the poetic and artistic temperament is peculiarly susceptible to this form of trial. in work of an industrial or mechanical nature, a certain degree of will force alone will serve to insure its accomplishment whether one "feels in the mood" or not. the mood does not greatly count. but in work of any creative sort, the mood, the condition of mind, is the determining factor. and is it within human power, by force of will alone, to call up this working mood of radiant energy when all energy has ebbed away, leaving one as inert as an electric machine from which the current has been turned off? and yet--and yet--the saving gift and grace of life and achievement comes, in that there is a power higher than one's own will, on which one may lay hold with this serene and steadfast fidelity. physicians and scientists have long since recognized that intense mental depression is as inevitably an accompaniment of _la grippe_ as are its physical symptoms, and the more fully the patient himself understands this, and is thus enabled to look at it objectively, so to speak, the better it is for him. the feeling is that he has not a friend on earth, and, on the whole, he is rather glad of it. he feels as if it were much easier to die than to live,--not to say that the former presents itself to him as far the preferable course. so he envelops himself in the black shadows of gloom, and, on the whole, quite prefers drawing them constantly deeper. and this is very largely the semi-irresponsible state of illness combined with ignorance of the real nature of the malady. the knowledge of how to meet it with a degree of that "sweet reasonableness" which should invest one's daily living, is knowledge that can hardly come amiss. one must treat it as a transient visitation of those "black spirits or white, blue spirits or gray," which are to be exorcised by keeping close to beautiful thought,--to something high, poetic, reverent. "thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee" is one of the most practical aids in life. it can be relied upon more fully than the visit of the physician. from the bible, from the poets, one may draw as from a sustaining fountain. as this intense depression is a mental feature of the disease it must be met by mental methods,--of resolutely holding the thoughts to high and beautiful themes; by allying the imagination with serene and radiant ideals. emerson is the greatest of magicians. his words will work marvels. his thought is as luminous as a roentgen ray. "heaven's perfect hour" is sure to sometime dawn if one but keep his face turned toward the morning. "heaven's perfect hour" is within one's own possibilities of creation, if he live aright and think aright; and with joy and radiance may he make it his perpetual experience; although it is the supreme anomaly in life that the social relations which are designed to offer the profoundest joy, the most perfect consolation for disaster or sorrow, and to communicate the happy currents of electrical energy, are yet those which not unfrequently make themselves the channel of the most intense suffering. there is something wrong in this. the friendships of life, all forms and phases and degrees through which regard and friendship reveal themselves, are the one divinest, perhaps it may be said are the only, part of life on earth that is absolutely divine, and the divine element should communicate perpetual joy. this is the ideal view of the entire panorama of social interchange and social relations, and being the purest ideal, it is also the most intensely and absolutely real. for nothing is real, in the last analysis, save that which is ideal; and nothing is ideal that is not a spiritual reality. then the question recurs,--how is it possible, how can it be accounted for that the one phase of suffering which seems past even trying to endure, comes through the sources which should radiate only joy and blessedness? the old proverb, "save me from my friends," is founded on a certain basis of fact. "twenty enemies cannot do me the mischief of one friend," rather cynically, but perhaps not wholly untruly, said gail hamilton. for it certainly is not the avowed enemy, or the person to whom one is indifferent, who has the power to greatly harm or pain him. so far as injury goes, emerson is probably right when he says, "no one can work me injury but myself." misrepresentation, misinterpretation, there may be, but in the long run truth is mighty, and will, and does, prevail. one need not greatly concern himself with misinterpretations, but, rather, only with striving to live the life of truth and righteousness. perhaps one cause of much of the unhappiness and suffering that not infrequently invests relations that should only be those of joy and peace and mutual inspiration, is an over and an undue emphasis on material things. now, when viewed in the light of absolute truth, material things are of simply no consequence at all. they do not belong to the category of realities. money, possessions,--the mere goods and chattels of life,--are, even at their best appraisal, a mere temporary convenience. as a convenience they fill a place and are all very well. as anything beyond that they have no place at all in one's consciousness. whatever luxury they can offer is simply in using them to the best advantage, and human nature is so constituted that this best advantage is usually more closely connected with those who are dear to one than it is with himself. for himself alone, what does he want that money, mere money, can buy? he wants and needs the average conditions of life, in the "food, clothing, and shelter" line; he needs and requires certain conditions of beauty, of harmony, of gratification of tastes and enlargement of opportunities,--all these are legitimate needs, and are part of the working conditions of life; of the right development and progress which one is in duty bound to make, both for his own personal progress and as the vantage ground of his efforts for usefulness. beyond that, the luxury of life lies in doing what the heart prompts. the one heavenly joy of life is in the enlargement of social sympathies; it is in the offering of whatever appreciation and devotion it is possible to offer to those whose noble and beautiful lives inspire this devotion. to have this accepted--not because it is of intrinsic value, not because it is of any particular importance _per se_, but because it is the visible representation of the spiritual gift of reverence, appreciation, and devotion--is the purest happiness one may experience, and that which inspires him anew to all endeavor and achievement. to have it refused or denied is to have the golden portals close before one and shut him out in the darkness. why, the heavenly privilege, the infinite obligation, is on the part of him who is permitted to offer his tribute of love and devotion, expressed, if it so chances, in any material way,--and he is denied his sweetest joy if this privilege be denied him. there are gifts that are priceless, but they are not of the visible and tangible world. they are the gifts of sympathy, of intuitive comprehension, of helpful regard; and, curiously, these--the priceless and precious--are never regarded as too valuable for acceptance, while regarding the material and temporal, which, at best, are the merest transient convenience, there will be hesitation and pain. and this hesitation arises, too, from the most beautiful and delicately exquisite qualities, but it produces the pain that is "----the little rift within the lute, that by and by will make the music mute." there is in life a proportion of pain and jarring that is inevitable, probably, to the imperfect conditions with which the experience on earth is temporarily invested; and because of this, all the range of friendship should be held apart as divine, and any interchange of material gifts should not receive this undue emphasis, but be regarded as the mere incidental trifle of momentary convenience, while all the regard and devotion that may lie behind should give its mutual joy as free and as pure as the fragrance of a rose. of all that a friend may be emerson so truly says:-- "i fancied he was fled,-- and, after many a year, glowed unexhausted kindliness like daily sunrise there. my careful heart was free again. o friend, my bosom said, through thee alone the sky is arched, through thee the rose is red; all things through thee take nobler form." that alone is what all the loves and friendships of life are for,--that through their ministry life may take on nobler form. "i fancied he was fled." but a friendship that is true cannot flee; it is, by its very quality and nature, abiding. it may be silent forever; it may be invisible, inaudible, immaterial, impersonal; but once forged it is of the heavenly life, the heavenly language, and the word of the lord abideth forever! * * * * * [sidenote: love and good will.] the stress and storm of life, however, fade away very largely before the power of simple love and good will, which is the key to all situations and the solution of all problems. "how shall i seem to love my people?" asked a french king of his confessor. "my son, you _must_ love them," was the reply. when there is genuineness one does not need to engage in the elaborate and arduous labor of counterfeiting qualities and manufacturing appearances, and it is really easier--to say nothing of its being a somewhat more dignified process--to _be_ what one wishes the world to regard him, than it is to endeavor to merely produce the effect of it. doctor holmes had a bit of counsel for those who were out at sea,--that they should not waste any energy in asking how they looked from the shore; and the suggestion is not an infelicitous one in its general application to life. it is quite enough for one to keep his feet, as best he may, set on the upward and onward way, without concerning himself too much as to the effect of his figure in the landscape. the energy that goes towards attitudinizing is always wasted, while that which expends itself on the legitimate fulfilment of tasks contributes something of real importance to life. and so, any significance of achievement seems to be exactly conditioned by the degree of energy involved--the finer the energy, the more potent the achievement. it would seem as if all the noble order of success hinged on two conditions,--the initial one of generating sufficient energy, and the second that of applying it worthily. the present age is characterized as that in which new forms of force appear,--in both the physical and the spiritual realms of life. what a marvel is the new chemical force, thermite, of which the first demonstration in america was made in , by the columbia university chemical society in new york. here is a force that dissolves iron and stone. an extremely interesting account of this new energy appeared in the "new york herald," in which the writer vivifies the subject by saying of thermite:-- "under its awful lightning blaze granite flows like water and big steel rails are welded in the twinkling of an eye.... the interior of mount pelee, whose fiery blast destroyed st. pierre in a moment and crumbled its buildings into dust, would be cool compared with this temperature of °. it would melt the white mountains into rivers of liquid fire. nothing could withstand its consuming power.... and what makes this stupendous force? the answer seems incredible as the claims for the force itself. it is produced by simply putting a match to a mixture of aluminum filings and oxide of chromium, both metallic, and yet, as by magic, a mighty force is instantly created." the writer describes the discovery and processes at some length, and adds:-- "such are the wonders of chemistry suggesting emerson's claim, 'thought sets men free.' by a simple process--flame applied to metal filings--prison bars melt and vaulted dungeons flow like water." the article closes with this wonderful paragraph:-- "by chemistry the pale-faced modern faust, working in his laboratory, makes metals out of clay and many marvellous combinations. what they will do when skilfully proportioned and exposed to heat, the story related gives a hint,--accounting, as it were, for the forces at work in space, creating heat and electricity, making suns burn with indescribable fury, colliding with peaceful planets, mixing their metals in a second of time,--and new worlds seem to leap into vision, balls of molten fire sweeping through space; vast cyclones of flame, making pelee a cold-storage vault by comparison. all this seems simple enough as explained by modern chemistry, giving men unlimited power, making them gods, as it were, to first master themselves and then the universe." this description of the new force, whose intensity is almost beyond realization, is hardly less remarkable than is the energy described; and it lends itself, with perfect rhythm of correspondence, to analysis on the side of the spiritual forces of life. "cast thyself into the will of god and thou shalt become as god" is one of the most illuminating of the mystic truths. the "will of god" is the supreme potency, the very highest degree of energy, in the spiritual realm, which is the realm of cause, while the outer world is the realm of effects. now if one may so ally himself to the divine will as to share in its all-conquering power, he partakes of creative power and eternal life, now and here, just in proportion to the degree to which he can identify his entire trend of desire and purpose with this infinite will. this energy is fairly typified in the physical world by the stupendous new force called "thermite," and it is as resistless as that attraction which holds the stars in their courses and the universe in their solar relations. * * * * * [sidenote: the diviner possibilities.] it is a fallacy to suppose that it is a hardship and a trial to live the more divine and uplifting life, and that ease and pleasure are only to be found in non-resistance to the faults and defects of character. the truth is just the opposite of this, and the twentieth century will reveal a fairly revolutionary philosophy in this respect. heretofore poet and prophet have always questioned despondently,-- "does the road wind up hill all the way?" as if to wind up hill were the type of trial, and the "descent of avernus" were the type of joy. does the road wind up hill? most certainly, and thereby it leads on into the purer light, the fairer radiance, the wider view. does one prefer to go down hill into some dark ravine or deep mountain gorge? it is a great fallacy that it is the hardship of life to live in the best instead of in the worst. it is the way of the _transgressor_ which is hard--not of him who endeavors to follow the divine leading. the deeper truth is that the moment one commits all his purposes and his aspirations into the divine keeping he connects himself by that very act with a current of irresistible energy; one that reinforces him with power utterly undreamed of before. there is no limit to the power one may draw from the unseen universe. "it is possible, i dare to say," says a thoughtful writer, "for those who will indeed draw on their lord's power for deliverance and victory, to live a life on which his promises are taken as they stand and found to be true. it is possible to cast every care on him daily, and to be at peace amidst the pressure. it is possible to see the will of god in everything, and to find it not a sigh but a song. it is possible in the world of inner act and motion to put away all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and evil speaking, daily and hourly. it is possible, by unreserved resort to divine power, under divine conditions, to become strongest at our weakest point; to find the thing which yesterday upset all our obligations to patience, an occasion to-day, through him who loveth us and worketh in us, for a joyful consent to his will and a delightful sense of his presence. these things are divinely possible." one very practical question that cannot but confront the world at the present time is as to whether there is any relation between religion, in its highest and most inclusive and spiritually uplifting sense, and the possibility of communication between those in this life and those who have passed through the change we call death and have entered on the next round of experience. it is a fact--albeit a rather curious and unaccountable one--that organized religion, as a whole, has been largely opposed to the idea of possible communication between what is currently termed the living and the dead. yet when one focusses the question to a matter of personal individuality, it does not stand the test. take, for instance, the revered name of a man who was universally recognized as one of the greatest spiritual leaders the world has known,--phillips brooks. when he was the rector of trinity church, or the bishop of the massachusetts diocese, no one who sought his companionship or counsel would have been regarded as being wrong to do so. now,--always provided that there is full conviction of immortality,--why should it be wrong to seek his companionship or counsel from the unseen life? death has no power over the essential individuality. indeed, in being freed from the physical body, the spiritual man becomes only more powerful, and with his power acting from a higher plane of energy. regarding ourselves as spiritual beings,--and if we are not that we are nothing,--regarding ourselves as _temporarily inhabiting_ a physical body, but in no sense identified with it save as we use this body for our instrument of communication with the physical world; what more logical or natural than that the spiritual being, not yet released from his physical body, should hold sweet and intimate communion with the spiritual being that _has_ been released from this physical environment? telepathy has already become a recognized law. that mind to mind, spirit to spirit, flashes its messages here in this present life, is a fact attested by too great an array of evidence to be doubted or denied. now the spiritual being who is released from the physical body is infinitely more sensitive to impression, more responsive to mental call, than was possible in conditions here. the experimental research and investigation in psychology, as shown in such work as that of professor münsterberg of harvard in the university laboratory, reveals increasingly that the brain is an electric battery of the most potent and sensitive order; that it generates electric thought waves and receives them. does it lose this power by the change called death? is this power only inherent in the physical structure? on the contrary, professor william james has demonstrated with scientific accuracy in his book called "human freedom," that this is not the case. if, then, intellectual energy survives the process of death,--and if it does not then there is no immortality,--the communication between those in the unseen and those in the seen is as perfectly natural as is any form of companionship or of social life here. as all kinds of people live, so all kinds of people die, and the mere fact of death is not a transforming process, spiritually. he who has not developed the spiritual faculties while here; who has lived the mere life of the senses with the mere ordinary intelligence, or without it, but never rising to the nobler intellectual and moral life--is no more desirable as a companion because he has died than he was before he died. and the objection to any of the ordinary _seance_ phenomena is, that whatever manifestations are genuine proceed very largely, if not entirely, from this strata of the crude and inconsequential, if not the vicious, with whom the high-minded man or woman would not have associated in life, and after death their presence would be quite as much to be deplored. granted all these exceptions. one may sweep them off and clear the decks. then what remains? there remains the truth of the unity of the spiritual universe; of the truth that the mere change of death is not a revolutionary one, transforming the individual into some inconceivable state of being and removing him, in a geographical sense, into some unrevealed region in space; there remains the truth that life is evolutionary in its processes; that there is no more violent and arbitrary and instantaneous change by the event of death, than there is in the change from infancy into childhood, from childhood into manhood. there remains the truth that the ethereal and the physical worlds are inter-related, inter-blended; that man, now and here, lives partially in each, and that the more closely he can relate himself to the diviner forces by prayer, by aspiration, by every thought and deed that is noble and generous and true, and inspired by love, the more he dwells in this ethereal atmosphere and is in touch with its forces and in companionship with his chosen friends who have gone on into that world. there is nothing in this theory that is incompatible with the teachings of the church, with all that makes up for us the religious life. on the contrary, it vitalizes and reinforces that life. this life of the spirit must be in god. let one, indeed, on his first waking each day, place his entire life, all his heart, mind, and faculties, in god's hands; asking him "to take entire possession, to be the guide of the soul." thus one shall dwell hourly, daily, in the divine atmosphere, and spirit to spirit may enjoy their communion and companionship. the experience of personal spiritual companionship between those here and those on the next plane of life is included in the higher religious life of the spirit while living here on earth. it vivifies and lends joy to it; for the joy of sympathetic companionship is the one supreme and transcendent happiness in life. and to live in this atmosphere requires one absolute and inevitable condition, the constant exercise of the moral virtues,--of truth, rectitude, generosity, and love. the life held amenable to these, the life which commits itself utterly into the divine keeping, is not a life of hardship; the "road that winds up hill" is the road of perpetual interest and exhilaration. it is a fatal fallacy to invest it with gloom and despair. it is the only possible source of the constant, intellectual energy of life, of sweetness, of joy, of happiness. the only standard which is worthy for one to hold as that by which he measures his life is the divine one illustrated in the character of jesus. to measure one's quality of daily life by this is always to fall short of satisfactory achievement; and still there is always the realization that its achievement is only a question of persistence and of time. it is the direction in which one is moving that determines his final destination. there is the deepest inspiration to the soul in taking for one's perpetual watchword, "be ye therefore perfect, even as your father in heaven is perfect." not that this divine state is attained; but there is perpetual aid in the conviction that one's self--his spiritual self--_can_ "press on to the high calling of god." man is a divine being; the divine life is his only true life. the deepest loyalty to the divine ideal involves, however, not only the striving after perfection, but the charity for imperfection. to denounce evil is a part of rectitude; to condemn sin is a moral duty; but to condemn the sinner is not infrequently to be more deeply at fault than is he who thus offended. an illustration of this point has recently been before the public. a new york clergyman preached on easter sunday a sermon that was not his own. he gave no credit to its writer. the sermon was published, and a minister of another church, recognizing it, at once proceeded to "expose" the matter in the daily press. not only did he call public attention to the error, but he did it in a manner that seemed to rejoice in the opportunity; a manner so devoid of sorrow or sympathy as to fill the reader with despair at such an exhibition. rev. e. walpole warren fittingly rebuked the evident malice with which the fault was exposed, and quoted the words of saint paul in the injunction: "brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye who are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted." to have gone, in a spirit of love, privately and quietly, and pointed out the error, would have been christian-like; to exult in it must be described by a very different term. devotion to truth is good, but it is "speaking the truth in love" that is the ideal. it is even possible to convey questioning, counsel, encouragement, or reproach without the spoken word; to send the message by the law of suggestion from mind to mind. the mental intimation will reach the one to whom it is sent if the conditions for telepathy are observed, for thought is far more penetrative than the roentgen ray, and the atmosphere is magnetic, and carries it as the wire does the electric current. all these finer conditions are beginning to make themselves felt as practicable forces. humanity is becoming "plastic to the spirit touch;" sensitive to those vibrations too fine to be registered by the outward ear. "thought is the wages for which i sell days," said emerson. thought is the motor of the future. "as a man thinketh, so is he," is one of the most practical and literal truths. it is only by the divine law that one can measure the ethics of companionship. the frequent experiences in life of broken friendships; of those alliances of good will, of mutual sympathies and mutual enjoyment, that, at last, some way became entangled amid discords and barriers, and thus come to a disastrous end,--such experiences could be escaped were life lived by the diviner standards. friendship need never deteriorate in quality if each lives nobly. if one conceives of life more nobly and generously than the other, it may become, not a means of separation and alienation, but a means and measure of just responsibility. there are friendships whose shipwreck is on the rock of undue encroachment on one side and undue endurance--which has not the noble and spontaneous character of generosity--on the other. one imposes, the other is imposed on,--and so things run on from bad to worse, till at last a crisis comes, and those who had once been much to each other are farther apart than strangers. in such circumstances there has been a serious failure,--the failure of not speaking the truth in love. the failure on the part of the one more spiritually enlightened toward the one less enlightened. one should no more consent that his friend should do an ignoble thing than he should consent to do an ignoble thing himself. he should hold his friend in thought to the divine standard. he should conceive of him nobly and expect from him only honor and integrity. "those who trust us educate us," says george eliot; and still more do they who hold us in the highest thought draw us upward to that atmosphere through which no evil may pass. each one is his brother's keeper, and life achieves only its just and reasonable possibilities when it is held constantly amenable to the divine ideal,--when it is lived according to that inspiring injunction of phillips brooks: "be such a man, live such a life, that if all lives were like yours earth would be paradise." let one put aside sorrow and enter into the joy and radiance. "omit the negative propositions. nerve us with incessant affirmatives." if biography teaches any lesson, it is that the events which occur in life are of far less consequence than the spirit in which they are received. it is the attitude of mental receptivity which is the alchemy to transmute events and circumstances into experience, and it is experience alone which determines both the quality and the trend of life. it is in activity; in doing and giving and loving, that the joy of life must be sought. and it is joy which is the normal condition rather than depression and sadness, as health and not illness is the normal state. disease and sadness are abnormal, and if one finds himself "blue," it is his first business to escape from it, to change the conditions and the atmosphere. the radiant life is the ideal state, both for achievement as well as for that finer quality of personal influence which cannot emanate from gloom and depression. "everything good is on the highway," said emerson, and the first and only lasting success is that of character. it may not be, for the moment, exhilarating to realize that one's ill fortune is usually the result of some defect in his selection, or error in his judgment, but, on the other hand, if the cause of his unhappiness lies in himself, the cause of his happiness may also lie with himself, and thus it is in his power to so transform his attitude to life as to reverse the gloom and have the joy and sweetness rather than the bitterness and sadness of life. everything, in the last analysis, is a matter of temperament. nothing is hopeless, for life is infinite, and new factors can be evolved whose working out will create the new heaven and the new earth. * * * * * here, in the earth life, we have it in our power to seize our future destination.--fichte. [sidenote: the weight of the past.] one of the most inspiring injunctions of saint paul is that in which he bids us to "lay aside every weight." poet and prophet have always recognized the weight of the past as a serious problem. one has made all sorts of mistakes; he is entangled in the consequences of his "errors and ignorances," if not in his sins, and how can he enter on a life radiant with this burden? well does sidney lanier express this feeling in the stanzas:-- "my soul is sailing through the sea, but the past is heavy and hindereth me, the past hath crusted cumbrous shells that hold the flesh of cold sea-mells about my soul. the huge waves wash, the high waves roll, each barnacle clingeth and worketh dole, and hindereth me from sailing! "old past, let go and drop i' the sea till fathomless waters cover thee! for i am living, but thou art dead; thou drawest back, i strive ahead the day to find. thy shells unbind! night comes behind, i needs must hurry with the wind and trim me best for sailing." there is no question but that the past is heavy and hindereth every one. its "cumbrous shells" cling like dead weights around man, and keep him from the larger, freer life. "man is not by any means convinced as yet of his immortality," says sir edwin arnold; "all the great religions have in concert more or less positively affirmed it to him; but no safe logic proves it, and no entirely accepted voice from some farther world proclaims it." the one proof, of course, so far as absolute evidential demonstration goes, lies in the communication from those who have passed through death. there unfolds an increasingly impressive mass of logical probabilities that point to but one conclusion to every student of science and of spiritual laws. biology offers its important testimony. the law of the conservation of forces,--of motion and matter,--which is definitely proven by actual demonstration, suggests with a potency which no one can evade that intellect, emotion, and will--the most intense and resistless forces of the universe--can hardly be extinguished when the forces of matter persist. the study of the nature of the ether alone pours a flood of illumination on the theory of an ethereal world,--a theory with which all the known facts of science and psychology accord, and with which they range themselves. rev. doctor newman smyth says that the facts disclosed by a study of biology, as well as the theories advanced by some trained biologists, fairly open the new and interesting question whether death itself does not fall naturally under some principle of selection and law of utility for life? "it is of religious concern as well as of scientific interest," he continues, "for us to learn, as far as possible, all the facts and suggestions which microscopic researches may bring to our knowledge concerning the minute processes or most intimate and hidden laws of life and death. for if we, children of an age of questioning and change, are to keep a rational faith in spiritual reality,--strong and genuine as was our fathers' faith according to their light, ours must be a faith that shall strike its roots deep down into all knowledge, although light from above alone may bring it to its perfect christian trust and sweetness.... the least facts of nature may be germinal with high spiritual significance and beauty." the twentieth century leads faith to the brink of knowledge. the deepest spiritual feeling must perpetually recognize that faith alone--christ's words alone--are enough for every human soul; but faith grows not less, but more, when informed by knowledge. when man measures and weighs the star and discovers their composition; when he sends messages without visible means, then he may believe with fichte, that "here, in the earth life, we have it in our power to seize our future destination." mr. weiss objected to any (possible) evidential demonstration of immortality, because (as he said), "if you owe your belief in immortality to the assumed facts of a spiritual intercourse, your belief is at the mercy of your assumption.... it is merely an opinion derived from phenomena." but this reasoning would not hold good regarding any other trend of knowledge; the vital necessity of the soul to lay hold on god and immortality is not lessened, but rather deepened and reinforced by understanding, when knowledge goes hand in hand with faith. and the one supreme argument of all is that a truer knowledge of man's spiritual being--now and here--with a truer conception of his destiny in the part of life immediately succeeding the change of death, would make so marvellous a difference in all his relations on earth, in all his conceptions of achievement, and would, as sir edwin arnold says, "turn nine-tenths of the sorrows of earth into glorious joys and abolish quite as large a proportion of the faults and vices of mankind." the past is heavy with misconceptions of the simple truths of life and immortality as jesus taught them. the present seeks to throw off these "cumbrous shells." death is the liberator, the divinely appointed means for ushering man into the more real, the more significant life, whose _degree_ of reality and significance depends wholly on ourselves; which is simply the achievement--better or poorer--which man creates now and here, in the same manner in which the quality of manhood and womanhood depends wholly on the degree of achievement in childhood and youth. we do not "find," but instead, create our lives. as we are perpetually creating, we are perpetually making them anew. if we must, this year, live out the errors that we made last year, there is an encouragement rather than a penalty in the fact, as this truth argues that if we now enter on a loftier plane and realize in outward life a nobler experience, we shall, next year, or in some future time, find ourselves entirely free from the weight of the errors we have abandoned, the mistakes we have learned not to make, and the entanglements that our "negligences and ignorances" created. if we have caused our own sorrow, we can cause our own joy. for the golden age lies onward. discerning the future. _as the sun, ere it is risen, sometimes paints its image in the atmosphere, so often do the spirits of great events stride on before the events, and in to-day already walks to-morrow._ * * * * * _there exist moments in the life of man when he is nearer the great soul of the world than is man's custom, and possesses freely the power of questioning his destiny._ --coleridge. * * * * * think of the power of anticipation everywhere! think of the difference it would make to us if events rose above the horizon of our lives with no twilight that announced their coming. god has given man the powers which compel him to anticipate the future _for something_. --phillips brooks. the unexpected and the unaccountable play so large a part in human life that they may well incite study. it is not conceivable that man should always remain at the mercy of events without conscious and intelligent choice in selecting and grouping them. is there no roentgen ray that will pierce the horizon of the future and disclose to us what lies beyond? of course it is a sort of stock-in-trade, axiomatic assertion, that if it were intended for man to know the future god would have revealed it to him; and as it is not thus revealed, it is unwise, or unlawful, or immoral to seek to read it. on the same principle and with just as much logic, it might be solemnly declared that we have no right to endeavor to surprise any of the secrets of the universe; that if it had been intended for us to know the weight and composition of the stars, to understand the laws that hold them in their courses, or to know what is conquered by the scientist in geology, or chemistry, or anything else, that the knowledge would have been ready made, and as it is not so, it is not lawful for man to explore any of these territories of the unknown. or this assertion could be carried to a still further absurdity, and construed that if man had been intended to read he would have been born with the knowledge, and have had no need of learning the alphabet; or that if god had intended man to dwell in cities they would have sprung up spontaneously like forests. as a matter of fact, the extending of the horizon line of knowledge in every direction is man's business in this part of life; and why, indeed, if he can weigh and measure the stars in space, shall he not be able to compel some magic mirror to reveal to him his future? as it is, we all tread on quicksands of mystery, that may open and engulf us at any instant. it is simply appalling when one stops to think of it,--to realize the degree to which all one's achievements, and possibilities, and success, and happiness depend on causes apparently outside his own control. one awakens to begin the day without the remotest idea of what that day holds for him. all his powers of accomplishment, all his energy, all his peace of mind,--even the very matter of life or death hangs in the balance, and the scales are to him invisible and intangible. the chance of a moment may make or mar. a letter, a telegram, with some revelation or expression that paralyzes all his powers; the arrival of an unforeseen friend or guest, a sudden summons to an unexpected matter,--all these and a thousand other nebulous possibilities that may, at any instant, fairly revolutionize his life, are in the air, and may at any moment precipitate themselves. is not the next step in scientific progress to be into the invisible and the unknown? doctor loeb conceived the idea that the forces which rule in the realm of living things are not different from the forces that we know in the inanimate world. he has made some very striking and arresting experiments with protoplasm and chemical stimuli and opened a new field of problems in biology. if the physical universe can be so increasingly explored, shall not the spiritual universe be also penetrated by the spiritual powers of man? there is no reason why clairvoyance should not be developed into a science as rational as any form of optical research or experiment. not an exact science, like mathematics, for the future is a combination of the results of the past with the will and power and purposes of the individual in the present, and of those events that have been in train and are already on their way. it is a sort of spiritual chemistry. but it seems reasonably clear that all the experiences on this plane have already transpired in the life of the spirit on the other plane of that twofold life that we live, and they occur here because they have already occurred there. they are precipitated into the denser world after having taken place in the ethereal world. and so, if the vision can be cultivated that penetrates into this ethereal world, the future can thereby be read. it is the law and the prophets. now as the present largely determines the future, the things that shall be are partly of our own creation. "we shape ourselves the joy or fear of which our coming life is made, and fill our future's atmosphere with sunshine or with shade." there are no conditions of being that are not plastic to the potency of thought. as one learns to control his thought he controls the issues of life. he becomes increasingly clear in intuition, in perceptions, and in spiritual vision. as the planets and the stars and the solar systems are evolved out of nebulae through attraction and motion and perpetual combination, so the present and the future is evolved for each individual out of his past, and he is perpetually creating it. nothing is absolute, but relative,--"no truth so sublime but that it may become trivial to-morrow in the light of new thoughts." there is no relationship, no casual meeting, no accident or incident of the moment, however trivial it may seem, but that is a sign, a hint, an illustration of the human drama, perpetually moving onward, and demanding from each and all insight, as well as outlook, and a consciousness of the absolute realities involved in the manifestation of the moment. "the present moment is like an ambassador which declares the will of god," says the writer of a little catholic book of devotions; "the events of each moment are divine thoughts expressed by created objects," and the one serious hindrance, it may be, to the acceptance of events in this spirit, lies in the fact of not being prepared for their acceptance. the problem of life, then, resolves itself into the question of so ordering one's course of living as to be prepared to receive the event of the moment; but the entire rush and ceaseless demands of the life of the present form the obstacle in the way of this harmonious recognition. one cannot accept the event of the moment because he is absorbed in the event of yesterday, or last week, and his life is not, thereby, "up-to-date." to be always behindhand is to be under a perpetual and ever-increasing burden. empedocles under mt. etna was no more imprisoned than is the life of to-day which is filled with the things of yesterday. yet where does the remedy lie? it is the problem of the hour. "in nature every moment is new," says emerson, and it is that sense of freshness and exhilaration that one needs in order successfully to enter into the experiences of the present hour. the world of mechanism keeps pace in the most curiously interesting way with the world of thought. inventions came as material correspondences to the immaterial growth and demand. when in the middle of the nineteenth century the human race had achieved a degree of development that made swift communication essential to the common life, the telegraph and the ocean cable were invented; or it might rather be said, the laws that make them possible were discerned, and were taken advantage of to utilize for this purpose. the constant developments in rapid transit, in the instantaneous conveniences of telephonic communication, and, latest of all, in wireless telegraphy, are all in the line of absolute correspondence with the advancing needs of humanity. more than a decade ago doctor edward everett hale made the prediction in an article in "the forum" that writing (in the mechanical sense) would become a lost art, and that the people of future centuries would point to us as "the ancients," who communicated our ideas by means of this slow and clumsy process. according to doctor hale's vision, the writing of all this present period would come to be regarded in much the same light as that in which we look at the egyptian hieroglyphics or the papyrus. at that time the phonograph, if invented, was not in any way brought to the practical perfection of the present, and telepathy was more a theory than an accepted fact; but doctor hale has the prophetic cast of mind, and already his theory is more in the light of probability than that of mere possibility. the demands of modern life absolutely require the development of some means of communication that shall obviate the necessity of the present laborious means of handwriting. there is needed the mechanism that shall transfer the thought in the mind to some species of record without the intervention of the hand. whether the phonograph can be popularized to meet this need; whether some still finer means that photograph thought shall be evolved, remains to be seen. thought is already photographed in the ether, but whether this image can be transferred to a material medium is the question. that telepathy shall yet come to be so well understood; its laws formulated as to bring it within the range of the definite sciences, there can be no doubt; but this result can only attend a higher development of the spiritual power of humanity. in its present status telepathy is seen as a result of wholly unconscious and unanalyzed processes that open a new region of life and a new range of possibilities. it is the discovery of a new keyboard, so to speak, in the individual, enabling him to still more "live in thought," and to "act with energies that are immortal." science is continually revealing the truth that the world, the solar system, the infinite universes are all created as the theatre of man's evolutionary development. as emerson so truly says, "the world is the perennial miracle which the soul worketh." "the discovery of the future" was the title of an interesting lecture by mr. h. g. wells, given in london early in , before the royal institute, in which the subject was speculatively discussed, and in the course of his lecture mr. wells said:-- "along certain lines, with certain limitations, he argued, a working knowledge of the things of the future was practicable and possible. as during the past century the amazing searchlights of inference had been passed into the remoter past, so by seeking for operating causes instead of for fossils the searchlight of inference might be thrown into the future. the man of science would believe at last that events in a. d. were as fixed, settled, and unchangeable as those of a. d. , with the exception of the affairs of man and his children. it is as simple and sure to work out the changing orbit of the earth in future until the tidal drag hauls one unchanging face at last toward the sun, as it is to work back to its blazing, molten past. we are at the beginning of the greatest change that humanity has ever undergone. there will be no shock, as there is no shock at a cloudy daybreak. we are creatures of twilight, but out of our minds and the lineage of our minds will spring minds that will reach forward fearlessly. a day will come--one day in the unending succession of days--when the beings now latent in our thoughts, hidden in our loins, shall stand on this earth as one stands on a footstool, and they shall laugh and reach out their hands among the stars." mr. wells is a disciple of darwin, and he is applying to the life of humanity certain laws of evolution. in this lecture he argued that great men are merely "the images and symbols and instruments taken at haphazard by the incessant, consistent forces behind them. they were the pen nibs which fate used in her writing, and the more one was inclined to trust these forces behind individuals, the more one could believe in the possibility of a reasoned inductive view of the future that would serve us in politics, morals, social contrivances, and in a thousand ways." the lecturer argued that "a deliberate direction of historical, economic, and social study toward the future, and a deliberate and courageous reference to the future in moral and religious discussion, would be enormously stimulating and profitable to the intellectual life." one incalculable aid in thus throwing a spiritual searchlight forward and discussing the future is the realization embodied by dr. lyman abbott, that there is no death, and no dead; that the entire universe is life; and that we are encompassed round about by invisible companions and friends; sustained, guided, helped by forces that we see not. to see the future as clearly as we see the past, what does it require? saint paul tells us that "spiritual things are spiritually discerned." the future is visible to the spiritual sight. no one doubts but that the future is known to god, for it is he who creates and controls it. and man is the child of god, and his true life is in co-operating with god in every form of the higher activity. so far as he may co-operate with god he becomes, himself, a creative force; making, shaping, and determining this future, and thus, to an increasing degree, he becomes aware of it, or sees it, before it is realized on the outward plane. the day is not, indeed, distant, when humanity will live far less blindly than now. as man develops his psychic self and lives the life of the spirit,--the life of intellect and thought and purpose and prayer, rather than the life of the senses, he will perceive his future. to just the degree that one lives in the energies which are immortal does he perceive the future. knowledge penetrates into the unknown and the unseen. leverrier postulated neptune long before his "long-distance" theory was verified. the intelligent recognition of the unseen forces and unseen presences, the intelligent conception of the manner in which these unseen forces are working out the problems of destiny, alone enables one to consciously combine with them; to enter into the processes of evolution as an intelligent factor, and thus redeem his individual life to harmony, beauty, and happiness. * * * * * [sidenote: a determining question.] the question confronts one as a very determining problem in life,--can man control his circumstances? to go deeper still, can he create them? or is he the product of his environment? is every life just that which it is made? or does there work, under all our human will and endeavor, a force resistless as gravitation and as constant as attraction? a writer, considering this subject, thus expresses his own convictions:-- "i believe that every life is the exact and necessary outcome of its _environment_, and that there is in reality not one particle of actual freedom in this respect from the cradle to the grave. i cannot here go into any extended proof of my position. the syllogism may be stated as follows: "every phenomenon is the necessary result of pre-existing causes: "life is but a succession of phenomena. "therefore every life is necessarily determined by pre-existing causes. "i do not see how the conclusion can be escaped that from the time we open our eyes upon the world and receive our first impressions, we are thrust forward between insurmountable walls of fate that leave no room for freedom. it is true that so far as external or objective forces are concerned we may be, as a rule, under no compulsion to follow one more than another; but _subjectively_ we are in no sense free, because the peculiar way in which the _will_ will act under given conditions must depend upon the preponderating _subjective_ force. to hold otherwise is to contend that a lesser force can overcome a greater,--which is absurd." certainly the problem as to the degree to which environment determines life is an interesting one, but may it not be reversed and stand as the problem to what degree life controls and fashions the environment? does not the environment change with the life in a corresponding evolutionary process? "every spirit builds its house." then, too, the thing we call life is not composed exclusively of character and circumstances. there enters into it a third element,--that of the unknown. the environment of tennyson, for instance, in his early youth, was that of the limited, even though thoughtful and refined life of the son of a country clergyman of modest means; as his powers expanded and developed his environment kept pace with it in extension of breadth. is it not, then, true that a life really belongs to the environment it creates for himself, rather than to that in which it is first nurtured? "it doth not yet appear what we shall be" applies to the possibilities of life in the present as well as in that future which lies beyond the change we call death. the divine electric spark leaps through the atmosphere and communicates its kindling power. the inner force of the spirit works outward and begins to shape and fashion its own world. environment is simply another name for that series "of the more stately mansions" that each one may build according to the power that worketh in him. a great sorrow comes; or an overwhelming joy, on which one rises to heights of ecstasy, to the very mount of transfiguration itself, and thus transcends all former limits and creates his new environment, whose walls are transparent to the sunrise flame and through which the glory enters in. what has he to do with that far-away, opaque, limited environment into which he was born? no more than has the giant oak, tossing its branches under the stars, to do with the acorn cup out of which it sprang. let one realize, ever so faintly, even, the miracle of possibilities that may unfold, and his life is uplifted into a richness and a peace, and a serene confidence that carries with it the essential essence of all that is best and noblest in its past, and all that is potential in its infinite future. the problem evolves into a definite work to be fulfilled, and this work, in turn, leads to another problem involving its demonstration, in actual performance, as well; and by this alternation life progresses,--growing ever larger and deeper and more exalted with its increasing power. in this way man produces his circumstances--creates his outer conditions. his successive environments become the expressions of his inner life and energy in their series of development and growth. but this growth, this development, may be stimulated or retarded. it depends entirely upon the degree to which one may relate himself to the spiritual energy of the divine atmosphere, ever ready to pour itself, with unlimited power, through every receptive channel. and this energy is the divine will, and entering into it man does not lose his own free choice, but only enters into that which makes his conscious choice vital and magnetic with infinite power of achievement. maurice maeterlinck offered a fascinating contribution to this range of discussion, in the course of which he said:-- "one would say that man had always the feeling that a mere infirmity of his mind separates him from the future. he knows it to be there, living, actual, perfect, behind a kind of wall, around which he has never ceased to turn since the first days of his coming on this earth. or rather, he feels it within himself and known to a part of himself; only, that importunate and disquieting knowledge is unable to travel, through the too narrow channels of his senses, to his consciousness, which is the only place where knowledge acquires a name, a useful strength, and, so to speak, the freedom of the human city. it is only by glimmers, by casual and passing infiltrations, that future years, of which he is full, of which the imperious realities surround him on every hand, penetrate to his brain. he marvels that an extraordinary accident should have closed almost hermetically to the future that brain which plunges into it entirely, even as a sealed vessel plunges, without mixing with it, into the depths of a monstrous sea that overwhelms it, entreats it, teases it, and caresses it with a thousand billows." time and space are the two dimensions which differentiate the physical and the spiritual worlds; the higher the degree of spiritual development and advancement, the less is the individual limited and hampered and fettered by these two conditions. one may get a certain analogy on it by realizing to how much greater extent the infant or the child is bound by the conditions of space and time than is the man or the woman. to the child the idea of the next year is, practically, an eternity; while the man calmly and confidently makes his plans for the next year, or for five years or ten years later; with a matter-of-course assurance. the next year to the man is not so remote as the next day is to the child. so by this analogy it is not difficult to realize that when one is released from the physical world and advances into the realm of the subtle and potent forces of the ethereal world, with his faculties responsive to the larger environment,--it is not difficult to realize that he is increasingly free from these conditions that are so strong in their power of limitation over the mortal life. "it is," continues maurice maeterlinck, "quite incomprehensible that we should not know the future. probably a mere nothing, the displacement of a cerebral lobe, the resetting of broca's convolution in a different manner, the addition of a slender network of nerves to those which form our consciousness,--any one of these would be enough to make the future unfold itself before us with the same clearness, the same majestic amplitude as that with which the past is displayed on the horizon, not only of our individual life? but also of the life of the species to which we belong. a singular infirmity, a curious limitation of our intellect, causes us not to know what is going to happen to us, when we are fully aware of what has befallen us. from the absolute point of view to which our imagination succeeds in rising, although it cannot live there, there is no reason why we should not see that which does not yet exist, considering that that which does not yet exist in its relation to us must necessarily have its being already, and manifest itself somewhere. if not, it would have to be said that, where time is concerned, we form the centre of the world, that we are the only witnesses for whom events wait so that they may have the right to appear and to count in the eternal history of causes and effects. it would be as absurd to assert this for time as it would be for space,--that other not quite so incomprehensible form of the twofold infinite mystery in which our whole life floats." the latest progress in this new century is that of overcoming space. it is being overcome; it is being almost annihilated. when on the atlantic coast we call up a friend in chicago and speak with him any hour; when we cable across three thousand miles of water and receive a speedy reply; when wireless telegraphy wafts its message through the etheric currents of the air; when the electric motor is about to revolutionize all our preconceived ideas of distance and journeyings,--we see how space is being dominated and is no longer to be one of the conditions that limit man's activities. to a degree, overcoming space is also overcoming time. in an essay of emerson's, written somewhere in the middle of the nineteenth century, he speaks of something as being worth "going fifty miles to see." fifty miles, at that time, represented a greater space than three thousand miles represent at the present. regarding the condition of space maeterlinck further says: "space is more familiar to us, because the accidents of our organism place us more directly in relation with it and make it more concrete. we can move in it pretty freely, in a certain number of directions, before and behind us. that is why no traveller would take it into his head to maintain that the towns which he has not yet visited will become real only at the moment when he sets his foot within their walls. yet this is very nearly what we do when we persuade ourselves that an event which has not yet happened does not yet exist." the only explanation of certain phases of the phenomena of life is in the theory that life is twofold; that what we call life--in the sense of experiences and events and circumstances--is simply the result, the precipitation into the physical world, of the events and experiences that have already occurred to us on the spiritual side of life, and that they occur here _because_ they have occurred there. maeterlinck says further (in this paper entitled "the foretelling of the future"): "but i do not intend, in the wake of so many others, to lose myself in the most insoluble of enigmas. let us say no more about it, except this alone,--that time is a mystery which we have arbitrarily divided into a past and a future, in order to try to understand something of it. in itself, it is almost certain that it is but an immense, eternal, motionless present, in which all that takes place and all that will take place takes place immutably, in which to-morrow, save in the ephemeral mind of man, is indistinguishable from yesterday or to-day." the question is raised by mr. maeterlinck as to whether the clairvoyant who foretells to one future events gets his knowledge from the subliminal consciousness of the person himself. he relates a series of experiences that he had in paris with all sorts and degrees of the professed seers, and he says:-- "it is very astonishing that others can thus penetrate into the last refuge of our being, and there, better than ourselves, read thoughts and sentiments at times forgotten or rejected, but always long-lived, or as yet unformulated. it is really disconcerting that a stranger should see further than ourselves into our own hearts. that sheds a singular light on the nature of our inner lives. it is vain for us to keep watch upon ourselves, to shut ourselves up within ourselves; our consciousness is not water-tight, it escapes, it does not belong to us, and though it requires special circumstances for another to install himself there and take possession of it, nevertheless it is certain that, in normal life, our spiritual tribunal, our _for intérieur_,--as the french have called it, with that profound intuition which we often discover in the etymology of words,--is a kind of _forum_, or spiritual market place, in which the majority of those who have business there come and go at will, look about them and pick out the truths, in a very different fashion and much more freely than we would have to this day believed." mr. maeterlinck reiterates that it is incredible that we should not know the future. the truth is that it is even more than incredible; it is unpardonably stupid, and the great desideratum is to so develop and unfold the spiritual faculties that they will discern the experiences on the spiritual side,--those which will, later on, precipitate themselves into the mortal life, and that will be "knowing the future." that is to say, if we can read our spiritual past, we then know our earthly future; for that which _has_ been, in the inner experience, _shall be_, in the outer experience. mr. maeterlinck says:-- "i cannot think that we are not qualified to know beforehand the disturbances of the elements, the destiny of the planets, of the earth, of empires, peoples, and races. all this does not touch us directly, and we know it in the past, thanks only to the artifices of history. but that which regards us, that which is within our reach, that which is to unfold itself within the little sphere of years, a secretion of our spiritual organism, that envelops us in time, even as the shell or the cocoon envelops the mollusc or the insect in space; that, together with all the external events relating to it, is probably recorded in that sphere. in any case, it would be much more natural that it were so recorded than comprehensible that it be not. there we have realities struggling with an illusion; and there is nothing to prevent us from believing that, here as elsewhere, realities will end by overcoming illusion. realities are what will happen to us, having already happened in the history that overhangs our own, the motionless and superhuman history of the universe. illusion is the opaque veil woven with the ephemeral threads called yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow, which we embroider on those realities. but it is not indispensable that our existence should continue the eternal dupe of that illusion. we may even ask ourselves whether our extraordinary unfitness for knowing a thing so simple, so incontestable, so perfect and so necessary as the future, would not form one of the greatest subjects for astonishment to an inhabitant of another star who should visit us.... "moreover, we must not believe that the march of events would be completely upset if we knew it beforehand. first, only they would know the future, or a part of the future, who would take the trouble to learn it; even as only they know the past, or a part of their own present, who have the courage and the intelligence to examine it. we should quickly accommodate ourselves to the lessons of this new science, even as we have accommodated ourselves to those of history. we should soon make allowance for the evils we could not escape and for inevitable evils. the wiser among us, for themselves, would lessen the sum total of the latter; and the others would meet them half-way, even as now they go to meet many certain disasters which are easily foretold. the amount of our vexations would be somewhat decreased, but less than we hope; for already our reason is able to foresee a portion of our future, if not with the material evidence that we dream of, at least with a moral certainty that is often satisfying; yet we observe that the majority of men derive hardly any profit from this easy fore-knowledge. such men would neglect the counsels of the future, even as they hear, without following it, the advice of the past." not to know the future is extremely inconvenient, to say the least, and it may present itself as the next most needed advance in progress. the question is in the air; the demand for its solution may increase, and demands penetrate the unknown and reconstruct it for the higher use of man. meanwhile, as mr. maeterlinck continues:-- "our life must be lived while we wait for the word that shall solve the enigma, and the happier, the nobler our life, the more vigorous shall it become, and we shall have the more courage, clear-sightedness, boldness to seek and desire the truth.... we should live as though we were always on the eve of the great revelation, and we should be ready with welcome, with, warmest and keenest and fullest, most heartfelt and intimate welcome. and whatever the form it shall take on the day that it comes to us, the best way of all to prepare for its fitting reception is to crave for it now, to desire it as lofty, as perfect, as vast, as ennobling as the soul can conceive. it must needs be more beautiful, glorious, and ample than the best of our hopes. for when it differs therefrom or even frustrates them, it must of necessity bring something nobler, loftier, nearer to the nature of man, for it will bring us truth. to man, though all that he value go under, the intimate truth of the universe must be wholly, pre-eminently admirable. and though on the day it unveils, our meekest desires turn to ashes and float on the wind, still there shall linger within us all we have prepared; and the admirable will enter into our soul, the volume of its waters being as the depth of the channel that our expectation has fashioned." * * * * * [sidenote: in proportion to power.] may it not be that the degree to which one is enabled to dominate his own life in the sense of controlling and selecting and grouping its outer events is precisely in proportion to the spiritual power that he has achieved? nor has this spiritual power any conceivable relation to what is currently known as occultism, or a thing to be attained by any series of prescribed outer actions. there has sprung up a species of literature with explicit directions for "concentration" and "meditation" and one knows not what,--directions to spend certain hours of the day gazing upon a ten-penny nail or something quite as inconsequential, and a more totally demoralizing and negative series of performances can hardly be imagined. but all this is not even worth denunciation. the only real spiritual power is that of the union of the soul with the divine. "lift up your hearts." "we lift them up unto the lord." in these lines lies the secret of all that makes for that mental and moral energy whose union is spiritual power. the question of what happens to one daily and constantly, as weeks and months go on, is the one most practical question of life. in it is involved all one's personal happiness as well as all his power for usefulness. to feel that this ever-flowing current of events is something entirely outside one's own choice or volition is to stand helpless--if not hopeless--before the spectacle of life. it is out of this aimless and chaotic state that resort is had to the seeking of all kinds of divination, omens, prophecies, and foreshadowings, with the result of more and more completely separating the individual from his legitimate activities and endeavor, and leading him to substitute for spiritual realities a mere false and mirage-like outlook,--and instead of that rational activity and high endeavor that create events and increasingly control their conditions, there is merely an impatient and restless expectation of something or other that may suddenly occur to transform the entire outlook. the unforeseen events do occur, and they are the crowning gift and grace and sweetness of life. but they are the product, the result, the fine inflorescence of intense spiritual activity, not of stagnation and idleness. "it might almost be said that there happens to one only that which he desires," says maeterlinck: "it is time that on certain external events an influence is of the feeblest, but we have all-powerful action on that which these events shall become in ourselves--in other words on their spiritual part, on what is radiant, undying within them.... there are those with whom this immortal part absorbs all; these are like islands that have sprung up in the ocean; for they have found immovable anchorage whence they issue commands that their destiny must needs obey.... whatever may happen is lit up by their inward life. when you love, it is not your love that forms part of your destiny, but the knowledge of self that you will have found, deep down in your love--this it is that will help you to fashion your life. if you have been deceived, it is not the deception that matters, but the forgiveness whereto it leads, and the loftiness, wisdom, completeness of this forgiveness--by these shall your life be steered to destiny's haven of brightness and peace; by these shall your eyes see more clearly.... let us always remember that nothing befalls us that is not of the nature of ourselves. there comes no adventure but means to our soul the shape of our every-day thoughts.... and none but yourself shall you meet on the highway of fate.... events seem as the watch for the signal we hoist from within." the inner life that is lived--the life of thought, purpose, aspiration, and prayer--dominates and determines the outer life. it creates it. and when one feels helplessly drifting, at the mercy of events, his only safety lies in a more positive and abounding energy; in deeper purpose and a firmer grasp on his work, a higher and diviner trend to his thought, and a closer clinging to the divine promises. "in man," says balzac, "culminates a visible finite universe; in him begins a universe invisible and infinite,--two worlds unknown to each other." but one's life always belongs far more to his future than to his past. he is more closely and truly related to that which he shall be than to that which he has been; as the flower, the plant, the tree, is in more intimate and vital relation with the air and sunshine than with the dark ground in which the seed germinated. it retains its hold on the kingdom of the earth, but it has achieved a new and a higher relation with the kingdom of the air. man's relations with the invisible and the infinite universe are his truest and most determining relations. and these are governed and are constantly extended by his power of will. the power of will is so akin to the divine energy that it is the power through which, and by means of which, the closest relation with the divine energy can be effected. man, by the power of will, unites his life with the life of god; he so relates himself to the divine energy that he becomes receptive to it, and when this irresistible force pours itself into his life all nobler realizations become possible; all sublimest aspiration may express itself in the daily quality of life, and fulfil its visions in actual tasks and deeds. nothing is ever hopeless. there is no situation nor complication that has not its key simply in lifting up the heart to god; in willing, through prayer, to work, as well as to walk, with him; and in praying, through power of will brought to bear in all its resistless intensity of aspiration, that the power of god may work through all the conditions of the human life. the subjective or subliminal self is capable of extending the mental faculties in a way almost undreamed of by the ordinary consciousness. "there is in the mind a faculty," says a writer on this subject, "which, if it receives the correct impression, is able to correct the mental and physical life of a person and produce a manifest impression on his environment, the secret of which is conscious and concentrated attention under direction of the will of the individual. "the subjective mind is a distinct entity. it occupies the whole human body, and, when not opposed in any way, it has absolute control over all the functions, conditions, and sensations of the body. while the objective mind has control of all our voluntary functions and motions, the subjective mind controls all the silent, involuntary, and vegetative functions. this subjective mind can see without the use of physical eyes. it perceives by intuition. it has the power to communicate with others without the use of ordinary physical means. it can read the thoughts of others. it receives intelligence and transmits it to people at a distance. distance offers no resistance against the successful missions of the subjective mind. it never forgets anything, it never sleeps. it is capable of sustaining an existence independent of the body. it never dies. it is the living soul." that "distinct entity" which has been called the "subjective mind" is probably more accurately defined as the real person, the man himself, the immortal being who inhabits for a time the physical body. the development of this immortal self by an intellectual and moral and religious progress is the real business of life,--the _raison d'être_ of man's sojourn on earth. there is no more important truth to be grasped at the present time than that this culture and development of the spiritual self, or this spiritualization of life, is in no sense a matter of incantations and mysterious rites, but is only to be achieved through faith in god, through prayer and the constant uplifting of the spirit to the divine. the inspiration of life lies in the unceasing effort to unite all the conscious inner life with the divine will and guidance. the problem that presents itself to the instructors of the deaf, dumb, and blind is in this development and liberation of the spiritual self, that the psychic powers may, to some extent, take the place of the outer senses that are closed. the physical mechanism of communication with the visible world is defective, and that perception, which is spiritual sight, must overcome blindness; that swift recognition which is spiritual hearing must overcome deafness; and the wonderful delicacy and intense keenness that these perceptions develop in those with defective senses is itself an incontrovertible proof of the reality of the inner spiritual being that for a time inhabits the physical body. the observation of the deaf and blind leads one to see that sight and hearing in all people vary in degree, and that a vast number of people are partially defective in these senses, and that all mankind are defective beyond a given point. there are vibrations too fine to be detected by the human ear; and the sight of the eye is, as is well known, entirely limited to a certain degree of distance even in those whose eyesight is the keenest. clairvoyance and clairaudience are considered as abnormal and phenomenal gifts, and as in no way conceivable, nor even desirable, as general and usual powers for every one. yet what are they but the sight and hearing of the spiritual man, the development of the powers of the subtle body transcending those of the physical body? this ethereal or psychic body is in correspondence with the ethereal world. it is formed to be an inhabitant of that world in which it finds itself the moment it is released by death. but if sufficiently developed to take command, so to speak, while here, of the will and the consciousness and all the mechanism of the physical body, it then brings to bear upon practical, daily life all this infinite and irresistible energy of the higher planes with which it is in receptive relation. then, whether in the body or out of the body matters little in the responsive communion with those who have passed through death. "could the spiritual vision of the present man be unfolded but for a moment, to realize the mighty forces of nature that will one day be at his command, he would become dizzy at the contemplation of such wondrous possibilities," says a recent writer. "the electro-magnetic energy that holds worlds in their orbits, and neutralizes the power of gravitation, is but one of those powers that awaits the growing genius of man to utilize. the magnetic force is the attractive or centripetal power; the electric force is the repellent or centrifugal power. a machine will be invented, in the near future, that will combine these into a single electro-magnetic force, and with this force the power of gravitation will be neutralized. then the world's traffic will be as readily carried in the air as now it is upon the ground. the forces of the universe await only the dissipation of ignorance, selfishness, and greed to bless and harmonize the world." the outlook for the twentieth century in its grandeur; in the unfolding and expanding powers of man, and the new and deeper insights into the hidden forces of nature, can hardly be exaggerated. we stand on the threshold of a new heaven and a new earth. the drama of life is to be uplifted to a higher plane, to the realm of beauty and blessedness and radiance and joy. the ethereal realm. it is henceforth open to science to transcend all we now think we know of matter and to gain new glimpses of a profounder scheme of cosmic law. --sir william crookes. * * * * * _we exist also in a world of ether;--that is to say, we are constructed to respond to a system of laws,--ultimately continuous, no doubt, with the laws of matter, but affording a new, a generalized, a profounder conception of the cosmos. so widely different, indeed, is this new aspect of things from the old, that it is common to speak of the ether as a newly-known environment. on this environment our organic existence depends as absolutely as on the material environment, although less obviously. in ways which we cannot fathom, the ether is at the foundation of our physical being. perceiving heat, light, electricity, we do but recognise in certain conspicuous ways,--as in perceiving the "x rays" we recognise in a way less conspicuous,--the pervading influence of ethereal vibrations which in range and variety far transcend our capacity of response._ _within, beyond, the world of ether,--as a still profounder, still more generalized aspect of the cosmos,--must lie, as i believe, the world of spiritual life. that the world of spiritual life does not depend upon the existence of the material world i hold as now proved by actual evidence. that it is in some way continuous with the world of ether i can well suppose. but for our minds there must needs be a "critical point" in any such imagined continuity; so that the world where life and thought are carried on apart from matter, must certainly rank again as a new, a =metetherial= environment. in giving it this name i expressly imply only that from our human point of view it lies after or beyond the ether, as metaphysic lies after or beyond physics. i say only that what does not originate in matter or ether originates =there=; but i well believe that beyond the ether there must be not one stage only, but countless stages in the infinity of things._ --human personality. * * * * * the glorious consummation toward which organic evolution is tending is the production of the highest and most perfect psychical life.--john fiske. the recognition of the untold force of thought is productive of marvellous results and opens as unlimited possibilities as the discovery and the increasing application of the power of electricity. the force of thought--the most intense potency in the universe--has always existed, as has that of electricity. it only awaited recognition. telepathy is just as entirely the manifestation of a law as is gravitation; and gravitation existed long before it was recognized. the entire question of the conduct of life is included in the true development and right use of thought. the entire problem of achievement, of success, lies in it. the supreme end of all religious teaching is the culture of right thought. it is the power that determines all social relations, all opportunities for usefulness, and all personal achievement. the right thought opens the right door. there is absolutely no limit to its power, and each individual may increase and strengthen his grasp of it and develop it to an indefinite and unforeseen degree. one actual method of the use of thought is to use it, creatively, for the immediate future. the time that is just before one is plastic to any impress. it has not yet taken form in events or circumstances, and it can, therefore, be controlled and determined. one may sit quietly and alone for a little time at night, calling up all his thought force, and by means of it create the next day. the events of the day will follow the impression made by the thought. one can thus will himself, so to speak, with the successful currents. he can create his atmosphere and environment, and can open wide the portals of his life to beauty and happiness. the law of telepathy is as supreme in the spiritual universe as are the laws of gravitation and attraction in the physical universe. the law that holds the constellations in their courses is not more in absolute evidence than that which governs the flashes of perception between two persons in a finer and more subtle communication than words, spoken or written, could possibly convey. but while there is no law more universally and impressively in evidence, there is also no law so totally unformulated, so entirely, it would seem, outside the domain of conscious recognition and will. one endeavors to send a telepathic message to his friend--and no impress is made. again, when he has made no effort at all, nor even thought of trying, the telepathic message is received. the magnetic sensitiveness of the spirit to thought currents is astounding. it has long seemed to many persons that the very air conveyed messages--and so it does. one may "call up" another, in either this world or in the ethereal world, at any time, simply by directing to him a strong current of thought. the thousand little things generally ranked as coincidence are really illustrations of this law. one thinks intently of a friend whom, perhaps, he has not met, or heard from, for years, and, presto, a letter, or the person himself appears. one can settle misunderstandings, convey counsel, entreaty, instruction, or comprehension,--all by the quality of the thought he sends forth. all this is a part of the phenomena of spiritual life. we must not make the mistake of imagining we become spiritual beings only by death. we are spiritual beings now and here, and our real life is, even in the present, in the spiritual world, and carried on by means of spiritual forces. everything which is intellectual and moral is of the spirit. such men as edison and tesla and marconi are dealing with the higher spiritual forces. when cyrus field laid the atlantic cable, it was a work of the spiritual rather than of the physical world. so are the vast works of commerce, of transportation, of building, the discovery of new countries, and the promulgation of the higher civilization in every form. we must not regard spiritual life as limited to mere religious or devotional rites and ceremonies. these have their place, and an important one; but they are included among a thousand other things that make up the life of the spirit. man is primarily and permanently a spiritual being, and only incidentally and temporarily a physical being. still the further problem confronts us: how shall we consciously and intelligently control telepathic communication as we now control our communication by speech, letters, or telegrams? a curious instance of unconscious and unaccountable telepathy is the following: there were two individuals who had never met, but who held some mutually antagonistic conceptions of each other,--conceptions that were, too, perhaps more or less mutually erroneous, and this condition had lasted over a prolonged period of time. then one of these persons had the experience of waking in the night, simply engulfed in an overwhelming wave of tender and compassionate feeling toward the other: seeing, as if with spiritual vision, a nature unstrung, hardly responsible, and one that invited only the most infinite tenderness and care. this wave of new and perfectly clear perception was like a magnetic trance. it was an hour of absolute spiritual clairvoyance, and the evidence was furnished by a letter received, the next morning, from a mutual friend, which entirely substantiated and corroborated the telepathic impression that had been experienced in the night. now the scientific question is: from whence did this impression proceed? was it direct telepathy between the two persons concerned? was it a clairvoyant reading of the letter that was en route during the night? who can decide? the special point here is that these most vivid and intense experiences are largely, if not entirely, encountered unconsciously. they suddenly--come. one asks for them--and they do not come? now how are we to pluck out the heart of the mystery? the moment one realizes himself as a spiritual being, belonging by right to the spiritual world; one whose true interests are in and of that realm, and to whom communion with the divine is the very breath of existence, the one elixir of life, that moment he asserts himself aright. from that hour his life becomes a significant factor in true progress. prayer may be a formal and ceremonial act, and mean nothing: it may be the absolute surrender of one's soul to the divine, when it enters behind the veil into the very glory of god. this spiritual truth is closely linked with certain scientific facts. the scientists have theories of inner ether by means of which psychic power is conveyed and which translate it into action, as the wire translates the electric current to express a message. a scientist asserts a new theory that there are no varying states of ether, but that all space is filled with matter in various states of vibration; and that what we had heretofore called air and ether is simply all one substance in degrees of lower and higher range. it is conceivable that this latest idea may approximate to the truth more than any previous theory. no one has yet discovered those forces of nature by means of which sense relates itself to spirit. there is certainly some great law, still unrecognized and unformulated, which acts, and which is acted upon by human beings, irrespective of any physical means; but why these laws sometimes do and sometimes do not produce given results, no one can tell. there are other existing laws in the physical world that transcend scientific scrutiny. the marvellous results of chemical combinations, the miracle nature of electricity and all its phenomena, fade into absolute nothingness beside the higher marvels of the action of spirit. the crude and merely approximate truth must be that in each human being is a part of the divine being; that this divine element may be nurtured and strengthened by living in its native atmosphere of spiritual life,--in the atmosphere of peace, joy, and love; and that this potency of god and of man, so far as he relates himself to god, can act upon that substance that fills all space; that this substance, whether it be ether, or whether it be matter differentiated in degree of vibration, is intensely susceptible, in the most infinitely delicate way, to thought, which acts upon it as physical force can act on physical matter. to realize intelligently one's relatedness to god, and one's own power over this subtle matter, whatever it be that fills all space, is to arise in newness of life. it is to realize one's self as a spiritual being, here and now, and an inhabitant of the spiritual world. it is to realize that one's relation to the physical world is a merely incidental thing,--a fact that has its purpose, its responsibilities, as a phase of development, and which it is most important to use aright; but which is inevitably transient. day-dreams, the habitual meditations that go on of themselves in the mind, are prophecies and potencies. they are the creative factors of future states. "out of the heart are the issues of life." it is a question of degree,--so much love, so much force to act upon outer affairs. he who finds his currents of thought verging to the unkind, the ungenerous, the inimical; whose mind, in its unconscious action, is in a discordant state, fretting at circumstances, or persons,--is doing himself the gravest injury. he is creating, on the unseen side, which is the most potent and determining side, conditions which he must live out sooner or later. it would seem, if one may judge from the data of telepathic experiences, that the power belongs to the sub-conscious self, or, as we may prefer to call it, to the spiritual self, and does not relate itself to the conscious intellectual life and the conscious will. if this deduction is true--what then? can we not relate our consciously intelligent life to our unconscious spiritual life? not only, indeed, that we may, but that we must,--for it is the next step in spiritual advancement. the time has come in the era of progress when humanity begins to realize its spiritual development. all the signs of the times point it out. the discoveries of higher laws constantly being made, are an impressive attestation that register the movement. with the new century came in tesla's discovery of the vacuum tube and its wonderful light; and hardly a week later came the announcement of the discovery of a perpetual light found by a certain chemical combination placed in a glass globe, which, when the air was exhausted and the globe sealed, would burn as long as the globe lasts. the discoverer claims that there is but one force in all nature,--that of vibration; that all space is pervaded by matter, which is energy. certainly the world is on the eve of new revelations, and life is to be lifted up, even here and now, to the divine plane. perhaps the most practical counsel in the way of determining one's own future control of these telepathic conditions is conveyed in the words: "begin now the eternal life of trustful consecration and sanctified service, consciously drawing your innermost life from god." this absolute personal control of each man over his own future lies in a twofold power: the one being that integrity, moral purpose, aspirations, have a creative power of the most potent character; and the other being in that one attracts to himself the spiritual companionship and sympathetic co-operation of just such quality as his own. there is an objection, often made to the faith in the companionship and communion with those in the unseen,--that only those of a lower order in the life beyond death are attracted into the sphere of this world. nothing could be more remote from the truth. one might as well refuse all social intercourse with those in this world, on the plea that if he have companionship at all it would be of a lower order, and therefore he will have none. now the order of one's companions and associates depends on himself. if he is noble and exalted, he does not attract nor is he attracted to the base and the unworthy: and only more deeply and unfailingly does this law hold true in the realm of spirit. one attracts to himself from the unseen world companionship of the same order and quality as that of his own spirit, with the exception that in proportion to the purity of his aspiration does this quality of companionship come to him of a still higher order than his own. thus one creates his own world. he need not abjectly feel that he must accept sorrow, trial, defeat, and disaster at the moment, because compensation somewhere awaits him. the law of transmutation supersedes the law of compensation. one may bring to bear, at the moment, the potent force that transforms all: that changes dullness into radiance, trial into joy, depression into exaltation. and how? simply by bringing to bear on the events and conditions of the hour the intense and creative potency of spiritual power. by means of this we shall certainly gain those "new glimpses of a profounder scheme of cosmic law" to which sir william crookes refers and which his vision discerns as open to science. * * * * * [sidenote: a scientific fact.] it is a scientific fact that any vibration set up in the ether persists to an unlimited degree, communicating itself to that which is in correspondence with its rate of vibration. this, of course, is the explanation of the phenomena involved in wireless telegraphy, and is equally the explanation of the phenomena involved in telepathy. at a meeting of the society of arts in may of , professor ayrton, commenting on marconi's system, said that we "are gradually coming within thinkable distance of the realization of a prophecy he had ventured to make four years before, at a time when, if a person wanted to call to a friend he knew not where, he would call in a very loud electro-magnetic voice, heard by him who had the electro-magnetic ear, silent to him who had it not. 'where are you?' he would say. a faint reply would come, 'i am at the bottom of a coal mine, or crossing the andes, or in the middle of the atlantic.' or, perhaps, in spite of all the calling, no reply would come, and the person would then know that his friend was dead. think of what this would mean, of the calling which goes on every day from room to room of a house, and then think of that calling extending from pole to pole,--not a noisy babble, but a call audible to him who wants to hear, and absolutely silent to all others. it would be almost like dreamland and ghostland,--not the ghostland cultivated by a heated imagination, but a real communication from a distance, based on true physical laws." yet even this speculation fails to keep pace with the advance of truth, for there is no death, in the sense in which professor ayrton refers to it here, as a state of unconsciousness which no message can reach, and from which no reply can come. on the contrary, that transformation we call death is a condition of far more intense consciousness, of being far more alive and far more responsive to the call and the thought. we are learning to realize the literal truth of the phrase in the bible, "dead in trespasses and sins." so far as one is in sins and faults and defects he is dead. spiritual vitality is in goodness alone. so far as one endeavors to follow after righteousness, to achieve and live in truth, honor, and love, he is alive; so far as he fails in this he is dead, and this, quite irrespective of the fact as to whether he is in or out of his physical body. this present world has its dead people walking around, it is true: eating, drinking, dressing, travelling, taking part in the average activities of daily life, but dead, all the same, or, at most, only partially alive,--the "dead souls," as gogol well terms them. the vital truth of immortality is to be immortal now, to-day; to be spiritually alive, spiritually conscious, and with this achieved, whether in or out of the body is immaterial. that becomes a mere detail of no special significance. given the condition of spiritual vitality, and the electro-magnetic call would receive its reply from the friend who had "shed" his body. sir william preece, in a recent address before the royal society, remarked:-- "if any of the planets be populated (say mars) with beings like ourselves, having the gift of language and the knowledge to adapt the great forces of nature to their wants, then if they could oscillate immense stores of electrical energy to and fro in electrical order, it would be possible for us to hold communication, by telephone, with the people of mars." it is hardly a bolder or more startling speculation to contemplate the establishment of intelligent and definite communication with mars than it would have been, a half-century ago, to contemplate communication across three thousand miles of ocean without visible means. an evening's observation of the heavens, made recently through the great telescope of the naval observatory in washington, revealed, in one of its phases, a sunrise in the moon. one gazed at the dark edge of a mountain range to see it suddenly grow light; to see the illumination increase both in area and intensity, precisely like a sunrise over a mountain range here on earth. the spectacle was as suggestive as it was sublime. it brought the observer into a new relation to the universe. the sun that lights the earth was then rising on the moon. one realized a new conception of the unity of the solar system. now it is this unity in the universe that scientists are everywhere affirming. this is the new note in science, and it is only one aspect of this truth to realize that wireless telegraphy and telepathy are both manifestations of the same principle,--that of setting up a magnetic disturbance in the ether, by utilizing the electricity in etheric currents. thought is the most potent form of energy, and given the conditions of a certain _rapport_ between two minds, and the result is the same as that discerned and verified by marconi, in setting up two instruments that are attuned to each other. in the end telepathy will take entire precedence of all other forms of communication. it will supersede the telegraph, the telephone, the cable, and wireless telegraphy. it will serve every demand, public and private. distance will interpose no obstacle or difficulty, for thought overcomes space and time. we are spiritual beings here and now. we are living in a spiritual universe. we are entering in more and more to the grasp and knowledge of spiritual appliances, and we can only say, reverently, that "it doth not yet appear what we shall be." is thought, itself, photographed on the ether? does the vibration of the spoken word linger in the place where it is uttered? the question cannot but recur to one after recognizing phenomena that, apparently, point to this solution,--when, for instance, a caller comes, and, taking the chair of a preceding guest, repeats, substantially, the same words that the other had spoken regarding some subject or event. this is something that frequently occurs. just what is the explanation? do thoughts register themselves magnetically on the air, and is this magnetic writing perceived, unconsciously, by one sensitive to it? the question is certainly one of curious interest. again, are the daily occurrences of life pre-destined? how far do we make our own life? how far is it made for us? an individual was led in dreams one night through rooms that seemed to have granite walls, to be very bare, cold, and vast. the next evening he was leaving on a journey, and did start; but after he had taken his seat in the palace car, the discovery of a mistake caused him hastily to leave the train before it started, and return. in consequence of the mistake discovered he was obliged to seek a certain official in a great granite building, whose interior had, heretofore, been entirely unknown to him. entering it, his way led through the same cold, vast, bare rooms that the preceding night in dreams he had traversed. now the mistake that delayed his journey and brought about these results was not even his own mistake, but one made by another person. was all this series of events--trifles of no importance in themselves, but very curious in their combination--foreordained? and if not, how was it that they were partly perceived, in the passive state of sleep, twenty-four hours before they occurred? it often seems true that the spirit, in the unconscious condition of sleep, has a certain clairvoyance, and looks out beholding and reporting to the consciousness the immediate future; but if the events it reports were not already formed, how could they be seen? the question involves many psychic complexities. there can be little question that the atmosphere is electric, magnetic, and conducts thought from mind to mind, as the wire does the electric current. the higher spirituality to which the race has advanced enables one to perceive and experience this truth more or less, some to a great degree, some only in a minor; but some sort of perception is universal, and is seen as phenomena, or as indications of the working of spiritual laws, according to the individual who recognizes it. one of these striking phases may be seen in the experience that results from absence and separation. let two persons who are mutually sympathetic and responsive to each other meet, and they at once strike the chord of ardent social enjoyment in their companionship, and the note of prelude to an enthusiastic friendship. let a sudden separation come in the external world, and the mutual spiritual experience is strangely full of color, of vital sympathy, of vivid perceptions. evidently, the spirits of each meet and mingle, independent of the fact that a thousand miles of distance lie between the individuals. what is distance to the spiritual being? it is not an element which bears any significance to that part of the nature which has transcended time and place. in such an experience as this, and one that occurred recently between two persons, one writes to the other:-- "i talk to you incessantly. i find currents from my life continually running out like telegraph wires to yours." and a letter written by the other person, crossing this one on the way, had borne a message something to the effect:-- "i go about companioned by you. far more actually present you are to me than those by whom i am surrounded. everything i read and think keeps referring itself to you for response." between these two persons telepathy was working perfectly. absence and separation made no blank, but rather a season filled with the most intense and direct sense of psychical communion. they were meeting--spirit to spirit--more closely, more clearly, indeed, than would have been possible had they been dwelling under one roof. for personality, and all the incidents and accidents and interruptions hinder rather than help actual companionship, when it is on this higher plane of spirit to spirit in mutual, swift, unerring response. in this phase of actual experience may we not find a hint from which to study the words of jesus to his disciples,--"it is expedient for you that i go away." through that mystic silence that fell between them on his departure from the visible world, there thrilled the sense of a communion so near, so exalted, so divinely sweet, that it could never have been theirs in the external life. to give this it was expedient that he should go away. here we find the key to the separations that must occur between friends by the demands of life, or that occur by death, but that may be in either case infinitely deeper in spiritual communion. the friend with whom we are in any real relations is nearer, even when the ocean rolls between, than one in the same room can be with whom we are not in special sympathy; and one who has gone into the invisible world is nearer still, as out of the realm of pure spirit the communion is still stronger and more direct and more intense. for this is "a universe of reciprocal forces." the very ether is the medium of communication between spirit and spirit. marconi has recently completed a new wonder in the shape of a ship detector. by means of this instrument the course of any ship having one aboard can be traced, wherever she may be in mid-ocean. it acts on the principle of the wireless telegraph, but does not require a wireless plant to operate it. no operator is needed on the ship, the shore stations locating the ships by a system of tunings. it is proposed to install this system on the leading liners, and the home office can thus know at every moment the exact position of a ship and note her progress as she moves along her course. should the vessel become disabled it will become noted, and by means of the chart her position can be known and assistance can be sent to her. here is one of the most marvellous among the new illustrations of the finer forces. but this "ship detector," which acts on the principle of wireless telegraphy, is less potent than are the electric forces in every human being, if it were known how to control and utilize these to serve the purposes of perception. for perception is a faculty that may far transcend both sight and hearing. perception is a faculty of the soul--often undeveloped; rarely developed to anything like its full possibilities, but capable of locating objects or of discerning persons and events, or of apprehending states of mind in others, regardless of space, as the ship's detector and the shore stations become aware of each other through their relation of finer vibrations. a recent experimenter in electric and super-physical force, m. tessier d'helbaicy, states this theory: "taking as his premise the fundamental law of physical science, that all chemical reaction is accompanied by a generation of heat and electricity, he said to himself that the human body, with the innumerable and incessant chemical reactions presented by all its cells, should create a thermo-electric pile of great power. in any case, the austrian savant, reichenbach, in his remarkable series of experiments, has already proved, fifty years ago, that we radiate electric waves of a special kind, visible in the dark under certain conditions, and these present positive and negative poles." this being granted, m. d'helbaicy has measured the yielding power of the human machine in heat and electricity, and has compared these with what the heat industrial machines can do, such as those run by steam, dynamos, and electric piles. [sidenote: a glorious inauguration.] the new year of was inaugurated by the scientific success of the most remarkable, the most marvellous achievement of any age,--that of wireless telegraphy. "before you write i will have demonstrated the success of wireless communication," exclaimed marconi, early in ; and ten days before the dawning of the year he named, the achievement was an undisputed success. it is so marvellous a thing that thought, without visible mechanism, can be flashed through the air, across the ocean, and record itself, that the success of marconi can be held as nothing less than sublime. it is the most impressive of all the realizations of the past decade in entering on the unseen and intangible potencies. it has become a familiar thing to see the cars in city streets, and carriages move swiftly by a motor power that is invisible to the eye; a power that no one can analyze or detect save in its effects and its results. it has become so familiar a thing that one can carry on a conversation with a friend at a thousand miles' distance, that one forgets how wonderful it really is. within the memory of men still living is the time when it required forty days to make the voyage to europe, and to obtain, or to send, news between the two countries. now, within forty minutes, the news is flashed under the ocean. all these discoveries that annihilate time and space are simply the result of the evolution of life to higher stages; of the advance of man into the ethereal realm. for is not the underlying and fundamental truth this: that all is spirit? one may talk of "the spiritual life," but there is no other life! withdraw the spiritual element, and there is no life at all! the difference, then, between the physical and the material worlds is only a difference of degree,--as ice-water, steam, and vapor are only different degrees and conditions of the same element. progress is the transformation of the physical into the spiritual; of the lower and cruder and denser life into the finer, the more potent, the more ethereal. energy is proportioned in potency to its ethereal aspects. in its cruder and denser form there is only a low degree of potency, and in its more ethereal forms is there higher potency. the ox-team is a dense and crude form of potency, and the electric motor is the more ethereal and intense form of energy. now the progress of humanity is unfailingly registered by its advance into the employment of the ethereal forces and the more intense energies, as these form conditions that react upon life. how far more intelligent a nation may be when its facilities for swift intercommunication foster and stimulate and instantly disseminate the knowledge of all events, discoveries, and experiences; and when its facilities for swift transportation facilitate all economic and social intercourse! judged, then, by their unfailing measurements, how significant was the triumphal achievement of wireless telegraphy on the eve of the dawn of . if telepathy is "the science of the soul's interchange with god--of the interchange of the thought of one soul with another;" if it "reveal that realm of consciousness where all god's thought is interpreted to the soul:" if "its vibration never dies out of the atmosphere of thought;" the discovery of this great law must indeed take precedence of that of any other achievement of the past century. the nature of human personality holds the secret of spiritual evolution. it doth not yet appear what man may be; but the increasing knowledge of his powers; the development of those heretofore latent and unrecognized, are combining to throw a new illumination on not only the aspects, but the purposes of life. man is coming into enlightenment concerning the environment of the spiritual world as one more immediately controlling him, as well as one far more profound and significant, than the environment of matter and of ether. as things go, the chief emphasis has always been placed upon the material environment. man has not infrequently been willing to sell his soul for a mess of pottage--his chief concern being, not the loss of his soul, but the gain of the pottage. he has been willing to exchange the entire devotion of all his energies for a finer and more resplendent quality of food, clothing, and shelter,--for a palace in which to live, for private cars and steam yachts in which to go about, and all the paraphernalia accessible to the multi-millionaire. but it is not all that these possessions typify which constitutes his most important environment. it is that degree of the spiritual world with which his own quality of spiritual life is fitted to ally itself. "the life of the organism consists in its power of interchanging energy with that of its environment," says frederic w. h. myers,--"of appropriating by its own action some fraction of that pre-existent and limitless power. we human beings exist, in the first place, in a world of matter," he continues, "whence we draw the obvious sustenance of our bodily functions. we exist also in a world of ether; that is to say, we are constructed to respond to a system of laws, ultimately continuous, no doubt, with the laws of matter, but affording a new, a generalized, a profounder conception of the cosmos. on this environment our organic existence depends as absolutely as on the material environment, although less obviously,--but ... within, beyond the world of ether, as a still profounder, still more generalized aspect of the cosmos, must lie, as i believe, the world of spiritual life." this world of spiritual life, a deeper reality, a profounder realm of energy than the ethereal world, is the true environment of the spirit even while embodied in physical form; and the secret of all success, of all achievement, of all progress, of all happiness, is to discover increasing means by which we may thus relate ourselves to our native realm. science and psychical research are supplementing religion; are, indeed, incorporating themselves into religion as vital factors of the spiritual progress of humanity. far from being hostile elements to the revelation of the divine power given in the bible, they explain, they extend, they interpret that revelation. as archdeacon wilberforce so finely points out, god is ever the same, "but what men see of him changes,--changes without contradiction of the past conceptions." * * * * * "it was a definite promise of god that he should unfold, develop, spiritualize the conceptions of the early christian faith, revealing gradually, as men should be able to assimilate them, higher, nobler views of the nature, character, and purpose of the eternal father," continued archdeacon wilberforce in a memorable sermon preached in westminster abbey, and he added:-- "it is, i suppose, inevitable that timid hearts, rooted in the traditions of the past, iron-bound in antiquated definitions, should imagine that the foundations of faith are shaken. they forget that the christ told us that when his visible presence was removed he would speak by his spirit, as he had only delivered the preliminaries of his full message; that there were truths yet to be unfolded which men would receive and assimilate as the generations succeeded one another,--'as the thoughts of men widened with the progress of the suns.' i have been told by experts that the astronomers who built those marvels of antiquity, the pyramids of the nile, pierced a slanting shaft through the larger pyramid which pointed direct to the pole-star, and that in those days had you gazed heavenward through the shaft into the eastern night, the pole-star alone would have met your eye. it was in the ages of the past, it was when the southern cross was visible from the british isles. slowly, imperceptibly, the orientation of the planet has changed. did you now look up into the midnight sky through the shaft in the great pyramid you would not see the pole-star; new brilliant space-worlds would shine down on you. but the heavens have not altered, and the shaft of the pyramid is not guilty, so to speak, of unorthodoxy. a new view of the heavens has quietly come, for the earth's axis has changed its place. similarly, it is the work of the spirit of the ascended jesus to advance the axis of the church of god from glory to glory. conceptions of the universal soul once prominent before the telescope of human faith and aspiration grow, enlarge, expand. he changeth not; he is ever the same. and these conceptions will change until knowledge, in the sense of the acquisition of facts, shall be no more, and intuitive perception of the transcendent majesty of the universal life shall fill our souls forever." in these latter days one may hold all his old faith and add to it knowledge, as saint paul himself enjoins. one of these powers of the spiritual man now being rapidly developed is that of telepathy. we shall learn to _talk in thought_, as well as in oral speech. we shall learn to "call up" the friend at a distance, or the friend in the unseen, as unmistakably as we now call up a friend by telephone. time and space are the limits which define the terrestrial life as distinct from the celestial. but man is, primarily, a celestial being. he is, first of all, a spirit, belonging to the spiritual world, and only secondarily and temporarily a denizen of earth. he can regain, to some extent, at least, his celestial faculties. for centuries he has accepted imprisonment in the senses. his release is at hand. he has but to assert his own pre-eminence as a spiritual being with spiritual powers. he has but to exert these in order to prove to himself their existence, and to develop them to their increasing use. extension of power over the material universe, more wonderful and more potent, and more all-comprehending than even marconi's wonderful wireless telegraphy, is at hand. "it doth not yet appear what we shall be;" but that man can create and control his destiny to an increasing extent, is true. it is the evolution of religion,--of that faith which has added to itself knowledge. thought is the highest manifestation of energy; and when man learns to live in thought he acts upon all his environment with energies that are immortal. professor leavenworth of the state university observatory in minnesota photographed the new asteroid eros at a distance estimated to be some thirty-six millions of miles,--a distance that renders it impossible to discern this planet even through the strongest telescope. exact mathematical calculation had worked out the problem of the location of eros, and the sensitive photographic plate caught it, even though it is beyond the power of the telescope. this scientific fact illustrates perfectly the way in which an unseen universe exists about us, registering its existence on the sensitive plate of spiritual impression. science has long since established the truth of the different rates of vibration that characterize different things. the reason that the psychic (or spiritual) body of those who have passed from the physical to the ethereal world is unseen is simply that the ethereal body is in a state of vibration too high for the eye to follow. stephen phillips expresses a deep scientific truth when he says:-- "i tell you we are fooled by the eye, the ear; these organs muffle as from that real world that lies about us." yet in every human being there lies latent the inner sight and the inner hearing, which can be increasingly developed by psycho-physical culture; by such habits of life as make the physical body more flexible, more subtle, and which thus raise to a far higher rate its degree of vibration, and enable the organs of sight and hearing to be far less "muffled" than they are in those who live more in the mere life of the senses. this unseen world that lies about us may be explored; the unseen friends who encompass us may be recognized by those who will so live as to develop the psychic senses, and so as to allow the psychic body to take greater control of its physical instrument; this unseen world is simply the natural continuation of the physical universe in the scale of evolution. science is every day penetrating its space, and the horizon line of mystery constantly recedes. what is wireless telegraphy but one of those marvels which a decade ago we should have considered as quite beyond the horizon line of our experimental knowledge, and as belonging to the unrevealed mysteries of the spiritual universe? the ordinary trolley car of to-day--moving without visible means--would have been regarded as a miracle a century ago. there is no hard and fast line between the physical and the ethereal worlds. they melt into one another and are determined only by degrees. any element may exist as a solid, a liquid, a gas, or in the etheric condition, and one state is no less real than another. the trend of progress is leading humanity constantly into the realm of finer forces; of more subtle forms of expression. the trend of progress is constantly discarding the more ponderous and clumsy for the subtle, the swift, and the more ethereal form of mechanism. instead of the stage coach, with two, four, or six horses, we have the automobile; instead of the sailing ship, the twin-screw propeller; instead of stoves or fireplaces, with fuel to be carried in and refuse to be carried out, we have the hot-water radiator, and are on the eve of having heat, as we already have light, from electricity. now when science provides the explanation of this ethereal universe surrounding and interpenetrating that in which we live and psychic science begins to explore it and formulate its means and methods, there are persons who object on the ground of its "materializing heaven." if one were to inquire as to what this idea of heaven is he would probably receive no more definite reply than that it was supposed to be a condition of playing on golden harps and waving palm branches. the figurative pictures of the new testament have largely been accepted as literal ones, and it may be an open question as to which condition would be the more "material," that of walking golden streets, waving branches of palms and devoting one's time to the harp, or the life that prefigures itself as a development and expansion of our present intellectual, artistic, and spiritual life. "unless some insight is gained into the psychical side of things, some communications realized with intelligences outside our own, some light thrown upon a more than corporeal descent and destiny of man," wrote frederick w. h. myers in that monumental work entitled "human personality," which offers a rich mine of suggestion, "it would seem that the shells to be picked up on the shore of the ocean of truth will ever become scantier, and the agnostics of the future will gaze forth ever more hopelessly on that gloomy and unvoyageable sea. for vast as is the visible universe, infinite as may have been the intelligence that went to its evolution, yet while viewed in the external way in which we alone can view it--while seen as a product and not as a plan--it cannot possibly suggest to us an indefinite number of universal laws. such cosmic generalizations as gravitation, evolution, correlation of forces, conservation of energy, though assuredly as yet unexhausted, cannot, in the nature of things, be even approximately inexhaustible." [sidenote: finer cosmic forces.] the entire trend of progress is toward the continued discovery of finer cosmic forces and their utilization in practical affairs. within the past five years this tendency has strikingly demonstrated itself. the evolution of the ways and means of travel offers, in itself, an impressive illustration of this tendency. the visitor to the musée cluny in paris will find, among the masses of relics of an historic pass, the state carriages used in the time of louis xv. and marie antoinette. they are incredibly clumsy and gigantic,--the carriage itself mounted on four great wheels, two of which are very large, with the two front ones smaller,--the entire vehicle occupying about twice the space of a modern conveyance, and its weight must be something to reckon with. several of these are standing in the cluny and offer a strange contrast with the carriages of to-day. but when these, with their lumbering motion, are contrasted,--not merely with the modern carriage, but with the flying automobile,--one realizes, indeed, the evolution in the methods of local transportation. again, let one compare the traditions of the sailing vessels on which passengers crossed to europe within the memory of men still living,--the forty days' passage between boston and liverpool which is well within the memory of doctor hale,--with the passage on this latest floating palace of the ocean, the kaiser wilhelm ii.,--and he realizes how far science has penetrated into the more subtle forces, where lightness and speed take the place of clumsy device and slow motion. to go up to the hurricane deck of the wonderful kaiser wilhelm and look down through the openings on the six mighty engines, with their intense throb of vibration day and night, is to behold an object lesson in the possibilities of motion. with the precision and the persistence of fate, the great beams fly up--and down. the vibration pervades the entire vast spaces of the great steamer. it becomes like an electric current, a thing of life, to be missed when one leaves the steamer as if one had left there a part of his own life. there is an exhilaration in it that communicates itself to mind and body. it is like a dynamo generating vitality. and still more swift and subtle methods of loco-motion are in the air. doctor albertson, an electrical engineer of the royal university of denmark, has an invention for a railroad train without wheels to make a speed of three hundred miles an hour. "two things defeated the attainment of speed above the present maximum (sixty miles an hour)," says a writer in the "new york herald," and these are specified as "the dead weight of the train, and aerial resistance. "now comes the announcement that there has been discovered a method of abolishing the dead weight of the train, leaving only aerial resistance to be contended with. if this can be done, as mr. albertson asserts, half of the battle is won, and the world may yet be able to travel on the earth's surface with the much-dreamed-of speed of hundreds of miles an hour. for many years the great principle of magnetism has been known to electricians and used in practical work by laymen. steel companies have found the magnet useful in lifting huge metal girders. at one end of their lifting apparatuses they have placed a magnet which, when charged, grips the steel bars and lifts them, no matter how great their weight. it has been noticed that a magnet would move to come in contact with the steel bar as soon as it arrived within the drawing radius, carrying any amount of weight with it which happened to be attached at the time. "it is this principle which doctor albertson sought to make use of--the lifting power of a magnet when attracted to a fixed rail of steel. he arranged a series of magnets under a miniature car running on a steel railway track. the magnets were insulated and attached to the bottom of the car so that they came under the rail and about an inch below it. then he turned on enough electricity to make the magnets active. they rose upward toward the rail, lifting the car bodily in the air. the weight of the train was thus simply overcome!" the electro-magnetic train has demonstrated its principle to the satisfaction of scientific engineers. professor roberts, in charge of the chemical works at niagara falls, says of it:-- "it is the electrical discovery of the age, and so simple in application that the marvel is that it has escaped us so long. the lightening power of magnetism has been known for years, the greatest saving power to overcome gravity, but it seems it had to wait for doctor albertson to discover it." the air-ship promises, however, to eclipse the greatest and swiftest of latter-day steamers. the air, rather than the ocean, is to be navigated. all these marvellous developments in scientific activity correspond to the developments of man's mental and spiritual powers. telepathy establishes its communication from spirit to spirit, as wireless telegraphy establishes its sending of messages without visible means. on both planes,--the physical and the psychical,--the subtle and finer forces are being utilized, and the horizon line of the unknown continually recedes before the progress of man. sir oliver lodge, ll.d., presented a new phase of the problem of personality in an address in london, in the following statement of a speculative belief:-- "to tell the truth, i do not myself hold that the whole of any one of us is incarnated in these terrestrial bodies; certainly not in childhood; more, but perhaps not so very much more, in adult life. what is manifested in this body is, i venture to think likely, only a portion--an individualized, a definite portion--of a much larger whole. what the rest of me may be doing, for these few years while i am here, i do not know, perhaps it is asleep; but probably it is not so entirely asleep with men of genius; nor, perhaps, is it all completely inactive with the people called 'mediums.' "imagination in science is permissible, provided one's imaginations are not treated as fact, or even theory, but only as working hypotheses,--a kind of hypotheses which, properly treated, is essential to the progress of every scientific man. let us imagine, then, as a working hypothesis, that our subliminal self--the other, the greater part of us--is in touch with another order of existence, and that it is occasionally able to communicate, or somehow, perhaps unconsciously, transmit to the fragment in the body something of the information accessible to it. this guess, if permissible, would contain a clue to a possible explanation of clairvoyance. we should then be like icebergs floating in an ocean, with only a fraction exposed to sun and air and observation: the rest--by far the greater bulk--submerged and occasionally in subliminal contact, while still their peaks, their visible peaks, were far separate." that which doctor lodge expresses in the form of a speculative theory is by many realized as an actual experience; an absolute consciousness that over and above and outside of the ordinary intelligent consciousness is another being more one's self than is his conscious self; with whom he is in a very varied degree of communion; clearer and more immediate at times; clouded, confused, even shut off by some dense state at others; intermittent always, yet often sufficiently clear and impressive to compel his attention to the phenomena and compel recognition of the truth. in fact, as one comes into still clearer recognition of this "other" self,--which is far more the true self than is the lower and lesser manifestation,--one comes to absolutely realize that his larger, higher, more comprehensive life is being lived in this higher realm, or condition, and that his entire being on the plane of the lower consciousness is a series of effects of which the causes lie in this other larger and more real life. that is, the individual has two lives not precisely corresponding in chronological sequence. the experiences of the day are his because, _before the day has dawned_, they have been the experiences of the higher life lived in the larger realm. the spiritual self has realized that train of experiences in the spiritual realm; therefore, and as a result inevitable, these experiences precipitate themselves into the physical life, and are manifested on the physical plane of being. one does a given thing to-day, or meets a given event, _because_ his spiritual or subliminal or even real self has already done that thing or met that event on the higher plane. the real being is all the time dwelling in the more real world. as all planes of life are spiritual planes,--even that which we call the physical, being but the cruder and denser quality of the spiritual,--it makes the theory clearer to designate the realm just above our present one as the ethereal. in this ethereal realm dwells the ethereal body. a certain portion of its consciousness animates the physical structure and works through the physical brain. it lies with ourselves as to how closely we may establish the relation between the higher and the lower self. this relation may constantly be increased in the degree of receptivity of the lower to the higher self by living the life of the spirit. and what is the life of the spirit? the life of joy and peace; and the life of study, thought, and endeavor; the life of both intellectual and spiritual culture; the life in which the physical body is subordinated to its true place as a mechanism, an instrument for carrying out the will of the spiritual self. thus, by study, thought, and prayer, may one more and more consciously and entirely control and determine his active life, and constantly refine and exalt it in quality. as this is done its potency increases, for spirit alone is power. of telepathy doctor lodge says:-- "telepathy itself, however, is in need of explanation. an idea or thought in the mind of one person reverberates, and dimly appears in the mind of another. how does this occur? is it a physical process going on in some physical medium or ether connecting the two brains? is it a primary physiological function of the brain, or is it primarily psychological? if psychological only, what does that mean? perhaps it may not be a direct immediate action between the two minds at all; perhaps a third intelligence is in communication with both." will this theory furnish the basis for a true interpretation of telepathy? the relations between the individual and the forces of the ethereal realm are also determining as regards health. [sidenote: health and happiness.] for health and illness are by no means the mere and exclusive consideration of the physical life. health, in its complete significance, is mental and even moral, and involves, in its higher aspects, the entire question of the spiritual life. health, successful achievement, and happiness are an indissoluble trinity, when interpreted in their full integrity and in their inter-relations. ideally considered, they are in closest interpenetration. as a matter of actual fact each is often partially manifest,--good physical health without any special achievement; or a high degree of achievement with defective health; or both, without much resultant happiness; or happiness even, without outward success or physical health, resulting only from a deeper spiritual insight and recognition of eternal laws. still, ideally considered, as this world goes, health should be the basis of successful achievement, and this achievement should rest on health; and the union of both should produce the inflorescence of happiness; for the true sense of all successful achievement is in that it makes for the forces of righteousness, and a successful swindler or criminal could hardly be included under these general definitions. and so, to have good health, and to achieve good and noble work, must produce a good degree of personal happiness as inevitably as that certain numerical combinations produce certain numerical results. so much we may concede. the question is then before us: how can we secure and hold unvarying, from day to day, from year to year, this basis of physical health on which the superstructure of all endeavor and realization must rest? just how shall one be well and keep well? it is certainly a question not restricted to the physician nor yet to the metaphysician. for health is not merely a physical condition. it is the question of the poise, the harmony of the entire psychical being. professor john d. quackenbos has recently said of hypnotism:-- "investigations extending over many years have led me to a belief in the dual personality of man--that is, each human unit exists in two distinct states of superior consciousness. one of these states is called the primary or superliminal consciousness,--the personality by which a man is known to his objective associates, which takes cognizance through the senses of the outside world, and carries on the ordinary business of every-day life. the second or subliminal personality is the superior spiritual self, the man's own oversoul, which automatically superintends all physical functions and procedures, and influences mental and moral attitudes. "it happens to be a fact of mind that in sleep--natural or induced--this subliminal or submerged self may be brought into active control of the objective life. my experiments have forced me to the conclusion that there is no difference as regards suggestibility between natural sleep and the so-called hypnotic trance. in the induced sleep the subject is in _rapport_ exclusively with the operator; in natural sleep only with his own objective self, perhaps with a multitude of discarnate personalities, who think and feel in common with him, and, in case he be of superior parts, possibly with all well-wishing extra-human intelligences." here we have the basis of truth. that condition of vigor, poise, vitality, and harmony which we call good health depends on the degree of control exercised over the physical body by that "second or subliminal personality, the superior spiritual self, the man's own oversoul, which," as doctor quackenbos so truly observes, "superintends all physical functions and procedures, and influences mental and moral attitudes." the problem, then, becomes that of bringing the psychical body into this receptive relation to the physical self? how shall the perfect spiritual supremacy be established? this question reveals, of itself, to how great a degree health is a mental and moral as well as a physical affair. perhaps the initial step is that of clearly realizing--of holding the luminous conception--of one's self as a spiritual being in the psychical body, _temporarily inhabiting_ a physical body,--a spiritual being using as its instrument a physical body so long as it is at work in the physical world, or on the physical plane. one may thus conceive of his physical body as being really as objective as is the pen of the writer; the palette and brushes of the painter; the machine, or mechanism, or instrument used by any one. and the moment one learns to thus hold the physical instrument objectively, he thus brings it under the control of thought. he is no longer so a part of it; so entangled and involved in it that he cannot control it. the moment he holds this clear, vivid mental realization of it as his instrument, he is in command. this may be illustrated by an electric car and a motor-man. if the man were bound up and entangled among the cogs and wheels he could not guide and control the car; but in his place, free from all its mechanism, his hand on the motor, the course and the degree of speed obeys his mental direction applied through his control. this realization of the true relation of the spiritual man to his body is the initial condition of health, and this involves as a matter of course the spiritual relations with the divine power, and receptivity to the infinite energy. it also involves an intelligent care of the physical mechanism. a clogged pen would repress the recording of the noblest sonnet or epic; a defective brush, or pigment, would ruin the picture of the greatest artist; a broken wire would prevent the transmission of the most important telegraphic or cable message. and so, however intelligently and completely one holds the faith of supremacy of the spiritual over the physical, he must realize the absolute necessity of fidelity to hygienic laws. food, in its quantity and quality; bathing, exercise, fresh air, sleep,--these are the conditions on which the state of the physical mechanism depends, and which involve that perfection of health which determines exhilaration, power, achievement, and happiness. canon scott holland of st. paul's cathedral has ably discussed these new problems of the finer forces in the ethereal realm; and in a discourse entitled "other world activities" he drew the following analogy:-- "the text is from the book of daniel, a book which takes us into a world of visions and trances and mystical imagery. there is a world within the world; a life beyond life. that world is not only the sphere of god, but of recognizable beings, meditating presences subject to rule, with organization and degrees, activities and authorities. it is a host, a kingdom, swayed by law and purpose. in the bible there is much of this, learnt probably by the hebrews from their captors. they had gone far afield: their horizon had been widened: they had been taught how to enter largely into this mysterious region. but, fortunately, they dealt soberly with this weltering flood of occult knowledge. these hosts of unseen presences are marshalled into order: they are not mere genii, fantastic and magical; they pass under the control of the sole directive will of the most high. they are solemn instruments of spiritual destiny: they are semi-human, and the record is, 'one like unto a man touched me.'" canon holland proceeds to arraign modern teachings. "we have drifted from this tremendous reality," he says. "we have tried to isolate the field of known experience, and to cut it off from disturbing supernatural imaginings. we have set ourselves to purge out from our scheme of things anything that seemed to interfere with it. the unseen was the unknown and the unknowable. but our agnostic programme has broken down. facts have been too much for it. the isolation desired by it is impossible. in and out of the life that we can cover with our rationalized experiences, there are influences, forces, powers which are forever at work, and belong to a world beyond our scientific methods. we float in a mysterious ether to which no physical limitations apply. sounds, motions, transmit themselves through this medium, under conditions which transform our whole idea of what space or time they mean. through and beyond the semi-physical mystery, a world of spiritual activity opens upon us. it has capacities of which we have never dreamed. it allows of apparent contact of spirit with spirit, in spite of material distance and physical obstruction. there are modes of communication which are utterly unintelligible to our ordinary scientific assumptions, yet which actual experience tends more and more to verify." yes, as canon holland well says, "facts have been too much" for those who would cling to the old and the less intelligent ideas of the future life. the ethereal world will even cease to be mysterious before advancing scientific investigation and knowledge. through the ether, as canon holland notes, sounds and motions transmit themselves "under conditions which transform our whole idea of what space or time may mean." in the realm of present life the same assertion may be made. who can contemplate wireless telegraphy without having opened to him a range of activities and conditions undreamed of heretofore? "we become sure," continues canon holland, "that both above and below our normal consciousness we are in touch with mysteries that travel far, and that we lie open to spiritual acts done unto us from a far distance, that we assimilate intimations and intuitions that reach us by inexplicable channels. "this world of spirit powers and activities has been opened afresh; and now even physical science is compelled to recognize the evidence for it, and a new psychological language is coming into being to describe its phenomena. we are only slowly recovering our hold upon this life of mystic intuition, of exalted spiritual communications; we are only beginning to recognize the abnormal and exceptional spiritual condition with which saint paul was familiar, when, whether in the body or out of it, he could not say,--god only knows,--he was transported to the third heaven and heard unutterable things." this remarkable sermon is an initiation of a new era of religious teaching. the light is breaking and the full illumination is only a question of time. life is exalted in its purpose and refined in its quality by holding the perpetual consciousness of the two worlds in which we dwell; by the constant realization that "the spirit world around this world of sense floats like an atmosphere...." this atmosphere is all peopled, and it is magnetic with intelligence. every spirit-call for aid, for guidance, for support, is answered. if a man fall on a crowded street in the city, how instantaneous is the aid that cares for him. he is lifted and conveyed tenderly to his home, or to a hospital, or to some temporary resting-place if the ill be but a slight one. strangers or friends, it matters not, rush to his rescue. this, which occurs in the tangible and visible world, is but a feeble illustration of the more profound tenderness, the clearer understanding, the more potent aid that is given instantly to man from the unseen helpers and friends in this spirit world which floats like an atmosphere around this world of sense. it is all and equally the help of god; it is the divine answer to the call; but the heavenly father works through ways and means. if a man fall on the street god does not cause a miracle to be wrought and a bed to descend from the clouds, but he works through the sympathies of the bystanders. is it not equally conceivable that the appeal for leading and for light sent into spirit spheres meets the response of spirit-aid; that it awakens the interest and the infinite tenderness and care of those who have passed from this life into that of the next stage beyond, and that they are, according to their development and powers, co-workers with god, even as we who are yet on earth aim and pray to be? now it is just this faith that is so largely pervading the religious world to-day. spirituality includes all the convictions that constitute ethics. spirituality is the unchanging quality in all forms of organized religion. and it is found, in greater or in less degree, in every sect and every creed. outward forms come and go; they multiply, or they decrease, and the change in the expression of religious faith is a matter largely determined by the trend of general progress; but the essentials of religion, under all organized forms, remain the same, for the essential element is spirituality. in and around copley square in boston, within the radius of one block, are several denominations whose order of worship varies, the one from another. the baptist believes in immersion as the outer sign of the inner newness of life; the episcopalian holds dear his ritual; the unitarian and the presbyterian, and perhaps a half-dozen other sects in close proximity (which express the various forms of what they call "new thought"), each and all exist and have their being by virtue of the one essential faith held in common by all,--the one aim to which all are tending,--that of the spiritualization of life. the larger recognition of the spiritual universe includes the recognition of this interpenetration of the life in the seen and the unseen. every thought and decision is like an action on the spiritual side. a thought has the force of a deed, and there is a literal truth in the line,-- "the good, though only thought, has life and breath;" and in lowell's words:-- "ah! let us hope that to our praise good god not only reckons the moments when we tread his ways, but when the spirit beckons." the thought-life is, indeed, the most real of the two lives, and dominates the other. the events and achievements, held in thought and will, precipitate themselves into outer circumstance and action. to live in this perfect sympathy of companionship with the forces and the powers of the unseen world is to dwell amid perpetual reinforcement of energy, solace, and sustaining aid, and with faith vitalized by spiritual perception. all scientific problems are ethical, and even spiritual, problems. they are discoveries in the divine laws. "can man by searching find out god?" apparently he approaches constantly to this possibility, and finds that "--through the ages one increasing purpose runs, and the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns." every succeeding century brings humanity to a somewhat clearer perception of the nature of the divine creation. however slowly, yet none the less surely, does the comprehension of man and his place in the universe and his oneness with the divine life increase with every century. jonathan edwards taught that while nature might reflect the divine image, man could not, as he was in a "fallen" state, until he was regenerated. putting aside the mere dogma involved in the "fall" of man, the other matter--that of regeneration, of redemption--is undeniable, even though we may interpret this process in a different manner from that of the great eighteenth-century theologian. the redemption, the regeneration of man, lies in faith. in that is the _substance_ through which and by means of which man comes into conscious communion with god. it is by the intense activity possible to this mental attitude that he conquers the problems of the universe, that he advances in knowledge, and advances in the increasing capacity to receive the divine messages and to follow the divine leadings. * * * * * [sidenote: a new force.] of late years a new force has been discovered in the line of ethico-spiritual aid in the higher order of hypnotism, as discovered and practiced by doctor quackenbos, who may, indeed, without exaggeration, be called the discoverer of this higher phase of applied suggestion. "i have been brought," he says, "into closest touch with the human soul. first objectively; subsequently in the realm of subliminal life, where, practically liberated in the hypnotic slumber from its entanglement with a perishable body, it has been open to approach by the objective mind in which it elected to confide, dynamically absorptive of creative stimulation by that mind, and lavish in dispensing to the personality in _rapport_ the suddenly apprehended riches of its own higher spiritual nature." of the nature of this power, we again find doctor quackenbos saying: "hypnotic suggestion is a summoning into ascendancy of the true man; an accentuation of insight into life and its procedures; a revealing, in all its beauty and strength and significance, of absolute, universal, and necessary truth; and a portraiture of happiness as the assured outcome of living in consonance with this truth." the learned doctor regards hypnotism, indeed, as "a transfusion of personality." the truth is that there lies in every nature forces which, if recognized and developed, would lift one to higher planes and induce in him such an accession of activities and energies as to fairly transform his entire being and achievement. this would be effected, too, on an absolutely normal plane. the development of the spiritual faculties is just as normal as is that of the intellectual. and it is to this development that we must look for the true communion with those who have passed into the unseen. the objective life must be spiritualized. the soul can come into a deeper realization of its own dignity and the worth of its higher nature; can discern the spiritual efficiency, the energy commensurate to every draft upon it. all, however, that is done by the highest phase of hypnotism, as exerted by doctor quackenbos, can be done by auto-suggestion. the soul has only to call upon its own higher forces. it has only to act from love and compassion,--from sympathy and generous aims, and all the infinite power of the divine world is at its service. * * * * * [sidenote: the service of the gods.] "we had letters to send; couriers could not go fast enough, not far enough; broke their wagons, foundered their horses; bad roads in spring, snowdrifts in winter, heats in summer; could not get the horses out of a walk. "but we found out that the air and earth were full of electricity, and always going our way--just the way we wanted to send. _would he take a message?_ just as lief as not; had nothing else to do; would carry it in no time. only one doubt occurred one staggering objection--he had no carpet bag, no visible pockets, no hands, not so much as a mouth, to carry a letter. but, after much thought and many experiments, we managed to meet the conditions, and to fold up the letter in such invisible, compact form as he could carry in those invisible pockets of his, never wrought by needle and thread--and it went like a charm. "now that is the wisdom of a man, in every instance of his labor, to hitch his wagon to a star, and see his chores done by the gods themselves. that is the way we are strong, by borrowing the might of the elements. the forces of steam, gravity, galvanism, light, magnets, wind, fire, serve us day by day, and cost us nothing." with his wonderful insight into conditions, emerson thus expresses a provision of conditions that are now being realized to an even greater degree than he consciously knew, although he unconsciously foretold them. now it is wireless telegraphy that is the ultimate fulfilment of what he saw,--the method that will reduce to practical realization his counsel to hitch one's wagon to a star, and "see his chores done by the gods themselves." it is not only humanity--civilization--the onward sweep and march by the progress of the world, but the individual life also that can take advantage of "the might of the elements." the one irresistible element is the power of will, the power that results from the perfect uniting of the human will with the divine will. people talk of fate, and conditions, and burdens, and limitations. they are all merely negative, and are easily and instantly subject to the infinite and irresistible potency of the will brought to bear upon them. on the threshold of any endeavor when one takes account of his possessions and conditions,--material and immaterial; when he again, from a new vantage ground, surveys his future, it is his salvation and success to realize the depth and height of his own personal power over his own life. "there are points from which we may command our life, when the soul sweeps the future like a glass, and coming things, full freighted with our fate, jut out on the dark offing of the mind." but when these points appear they must be taken advantage of at the moment. they are the result of an occultation of events that may never occur again within the limits of a lifetime. the swift intuition that leaps over all conceivable processes is the heaven-appointed monitor. it is the divine voice speaking. it is the word which must be obeyed. when one "... by the vision splendid is on his way attended," he must give heed to the vision or it vanishes and returns no more. we need a new, a deeper, a far more practical realization that the ideals and visions which flash before us are the real mechanism of life; that they are the working model by which one is to pattern his experience, in outward selection and in grouping by means of his own force of will. somewhere has emerson said,-- "all is waste and worthless till arrives the wise selecting will," which is, to the potential circumstances, like a magnet introduced among filings that suddenly attracts to itself and draws all into related and orderly groups. circumstances are thus amenable to the power of will brought to bear that selects, arranges, combines, after the pattern of the revealed ideal held in view. each individual life may "borrow the might of the elements." man is created, not only in the image of god, but with god-like faculties and potency, which, if he but truly relate them to the divine potency, if he unite his will with god's will, there is then no limit, no bound to that which he may achieve. in one of the most wonderful creations of vedder, the artist shows us the figure of a woman whose eyes are closed, and whose hands, lying in her lap, are inextricably entangled amid crewels and threads that bind and hold them. but one sees, also, that she has but to open her eyes, and lift her hands, and all the entanglement would fall off of itself. the picture offers the most typical lesson of life. all imprisonment of conditions is dissolved into thin air the instant one impresses his own will-power on the affairs and circumstances of his life. he _can_ do that which he _desires_ to do. the desire has only to be intensified into conscious, intelligent choice, into absolute will,--and all the minor barriers melt away and are no more. every life may hitch its wagon to a star. it may borrow the might of the elements. it has but to resolve to hold its ideal firmly and clearly in mind, and it will then be realized as the sculptor's dream in clay is realized in the marble. "all things are yours," said saint paul. one has but to take his own; to wisely and clearly select the elements and combine them by that irresistible potency of mental magnetism and energy. the power of the exalted moment. "the salvation of christ is the complete occupation of the human life by the divine life." _it is in our best moments, not in our worst moments, that we are most truly ourselves. oh believe in your noblest impulses, in your purest instincts, in your most unworldly and spiritual thoughts! you see man most truly when he seems to you to be made for the best things. you see your true self when you believe that the best and purest and devoutest moment which ever came to you is only the suggestion of what you were meant to be and might be all the time. believe that, o children of god! this is the way in which a soul lives forever in the light which first began to burn around it when it was with jesus in the holy mount._--phillips brooks. the power of the exalted moment is the very motor of human life. the exalted moment is the dynamo that generates the working energy. the moment itself fades; it passes into the region of memory where its true service is to shine, with the unfailing continuance of radium, as a perpetual illumination of life. it is the greatest, the saddest, the most hopelessly fatal error that can be made,--to cast away from one the exalted moment because it has not fulfilled itself in outer condition and circumstance. vision and prophecy are given by god for a working model, which the long patient days--days of monotony, of trial, of commonplace work under commonplace conditions, amid commonplace people and events--are yet to fashion and fulfil. these are the material,--the ordinary events, the commonplace daily duty. the perplexity of problems rather than the clear grasping of their significance; the misunderstanding and the misconstruction of motive that make the tragedy of life; the interpretation of evil where one only meant all that was true, and sympathetic, and appreciative, and holy; the torture and trial, where should be only sweetness of spirit and true recognition,--of all these are the days made; all these are a part of "the flowing conditions of life," which it is the business, the responsibility, the personal duty, to transmute into noble living, into poetry and ecstasy and exaltation, and into that perfect faith in god that can truly say, "though he slay me, yet will i trust in him." though he slay all that made life seem worth the living; the enchantment, the response of sympathy; recognition rather than misconstruction,--though all these be obscured in what may seem a total eclipse,--still let one not forget "the gleam;" still let one keep faith with the power of the exalted moment. it came from god and held its deep significance. it laid upon its beholder consecration of divinest aspiration and unfaltering effort. "if i could uncover the hearts of you who are listening to me this morning," said phillips brooks, in a memorable sermon, "i should find in almost all--perhaps in all--of them a sacred chamber where burns the bright memory of some loftiest moment, some supreme experience, which is your transfiguration time. once on a certain morning you felt the glory of living, and the misery of life has never since that been able quite to take possession of your soul. once for a few days you knew the delight of a perfect friendship. once you saw for an inspired instant the idea of your profession blaze out of the midst of its dull drudgery. once, just for a glorious moment, you saw the very truth, and believed it, without the shadow of a cloud. and so the question comes,--what do they mean? what value shall i give to those transformation experiences?" on the personal answer to that question depends all the success or the failure; all the nobleness or the unworthiness of the individual life. no one can estimate too ardently, or too earnestly, the spiritual salvation of keeping faith with the exalted moment,-- "delayed, it may be, for more lives yet, through worlds i shall traverse--not a few, with much to learn and much to forget"-- ere the golden hour of fulfilment shall come; but faith in the exalted moment is but another name for faith in god. the great truth of life--that which we may well hold as its central and controlling and dominating truth--is that "our best moments are not departures from ourselves, but are really the only moments in which we have truly been ourselves." these moments flash upon the horizon of the soul and vanish; they image themselves before us as in vision, and fade; but the fact of their appearance is its own proof of their deep reality. they are the substance compared with which all the lower and lesser experiences are mere phantasmagoria. and this fulfilment is not found, but made. it is a spiritual achievement. so let one not reject, or ignore, or be despairing before undreamed-of, unexplained, and incomprehensible forms of trial, but know that it is trial that worketh patience; know that "no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruits of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby." "it was given unto me," wrote dante in the _vita nuova_, "to behold a very wonderful vision; wherein i saw things that determined me." it may be given to any one at any time to behold the vision. circumstances are fluidic and impressionable, and take on any form that the mental power has achieved sufficient strength to stamp, and because of this--which is the explanation of the outward phenomena whose significance, on the spiritual side, is all condensed in prayer--one need never despond or despair. at any instant he can so unite his own will with the divine will that new combinations of event and circumstance will appear in his life. a writer on this line of thought has recently said:-- "there is an elemental essence--a strange living essence--which surrounds us on every side, and which is singularly susceptible to the influence of human thought. "this essence responds with the most wonderful delicacy to the faintest action of our minds or desires, and this being so, it is interesting to note how it is affected when the human mind formulates a definite, purposeful thought or wish." there is a phase of occult thought represented at its best by mr. c. w. leadbeater of london, and at its worst by a host of miscellaneous writers, whose speculations are more or less grotesque and devoid of every claim to attention, who materialize thought and purpose, and invest it with an organism which they name "an elemental," and one finds mr. leadbeater saying things like this, of the results of an intensely held thought:-- "the effect produced is of the most striking nature. the thought seizes upon the plastic essence, and moulds it instantly into a living being of appropriate form,--a being which when once thus created is in no way under the control of its creator, but lives out a life of its own, the length of which is proportionate to the intensity of the thought or wish which called it into existence. it lasts, in fact, just as long as the thought force holds it together." mr. leadbeater continues:-- "still more pregnant of results for good or evil are a man's thought about other people, for in that case they hover not about the thinker, but about the object of the thought. a kindly thought about any person or any earnest wish for his good will form and project toward him a friendly artificial elemental; if the wish be a definite one, as, for example, that he may recover from some sickness, then the elemental will be a force ever hovering over him to promote his recovery, or to ward off any influence that might tend to hinder it, and in doing this it will display what appears like a very considerable amount of intelligence and adaptability, though really it is simply a force acting along the line of the least resistance--pressing steadily in one direction all the time, and taking advantage of any channel that it can find, just as the water in a cistern would in a moment find the one open pipe among a dozen closed ones, and proceed to empty itself through that." this train of speculation, which if one is to reject he must first confront, is demoralizing. it leads nowhere save into mental quagmires and quicksands. it leads into materiality and not into spirituality. of course with all this the one question is as to whether such conceptions are true; but judged by intuition, which is the roentgen ray of spirit--judged by the data reached by scholars and thinkers, by psychologists and scientists--it has no claim to recognition. that thought is the most intense form of energy, its potency far exceeding that of even electricity, is certainly true, and that one can think himself--or another person--into new and different outward phases and circumstances is most true. tesla, in a paper discussing the problem of how to increase the sum of human energy, considers the possibility of the existence of organized beings under conditions impossible for us. "we cannot even positively assert that some are not present in this, our world, in the very midst of us," he says, "for their constitution and life manifestation may be such that we are unable to perceive them." this speculative possibility opens the gate to the scientific recognition of the truth that "all the company of heaven" may companion us, here and now, in the terrestrial life, invisible, intangible, inaudible to the perceptions of sense. it may largely be through their ministry and mediation that the unforeseen and unexpected opportunities, privileges, gifts fall upon man,--gifts that the gods provide. dreams, visions, and ideals are given that they may be realized. the vision is projected from the higher spiritual realm as the working model, the pattern of the life here. a dream is something to be carried out; not put aside and neglected and lost in over-lying and ever-accumulating stratas of experience. the dream, once clearly recognized, becomes a personal responsibility. it has been revealed for a purpose. it is the divine revelation to the individual life, and these visions are given to the individual as well as to humanity, and they are the most significant occurrences in the entire experience of life. to once clearly recognize this divine ideal, this glorious vision of possibilities that shines once and for all upon the individual, and then to turn away from it and leave it unrealized in the outward life: to put it by, because the effort to transform the vision into external and visible conditions is surrounded with difficulties and invested with perplexities, is to wander into the maze of confusion. difficulties are merely incidental. they are neither here nor there. if god give the dream he will lead the way. if he gives it, he means something by it, and its significance should be appreciated and taken into life as a working energy. it is the will of the lord, and to pray sincerely that the divine will be done, is also to accept the obligation of entering into the doing of it. indeed, difficulties and perplexities in the way do not count and should not. briars and brambles there will always be, but one's path lies onward all the same. who would relinquish a right purpose because its achievement were hard? all the more should he press on and gain the strength of the obstacles that he overcomes. doctor william t. harris says, "realize your ideals quickly." that is, an ideal is a responsibility; it is the working model that god has set before the individual; the pattern after which and by which he shall shape his life. if he accept and follow it with fidelity and energy; with that energy born of absolute faith in the divine leading,--he will find himself miraculously led; he will find that the obstacle which appears so insurmountable in perspective vanishes as he comes near; that a way is made, a path appears. it chanced to the writer of these papers to take a long day's stage drive one summer through the colorado mountain region. for a distance of forty-five miles the solitary road wound on and on, ever ascending through the dreamy, purple mountains. the entire route was a series of vistas that apparently came to an abrupt end at the base of an insurmountable height. the mountain wall seemed to utterly arrest progress, as it rose across the ascending valley through which the driver urged his "four-in-hand," and no way to pass beyond the next mountain ahead could possibly be discerned. but as the stage drew near, a way, unseen before, revealed itself, and the winding road found its outlet and onward course in another valley opening by a natural pass between the hills, and one that apparently in its turn was as inevitably blocked at its end by another mountain range. it was a constant interest to watch the changing landscape and discover the new ways that constantly came in sight as fast as the need for them came. that day amid the dreamy purple of the colorado mountains was one to translate itself into renewed trust in the divine guidance on the journey of life. some wonderful words of phillips brooks seemed to write themselves on the air:-- "look up, poor soul, out of the valley and know that on the top of yonder shining mountain lies folded safe the secret of your life, the oracle which would, if you could read it, solve all your mysteries and tell you just exactly how you ought to live. look up out of the valley and know that it is there; and then turn back again into the valley, for in the valley is the home where you must live, and you can never read the oracle which you know is there upon the mountain top." that day, alone with the mountains and with god, was one to leave its impress forever upon life. it was a day of solutions as well as of impressions--of solutions of the problem of living. one has but to follow the path that god has revealed to him, and however insurmountable the difficulties that seem to hedge him in and to limit his progress, they vanish as they are drawn near, and a way is revealed. [sidenote: obey the vision.] to forsake a dream as being impracticable and impossible of realization is to take the wrong turning in life, like one who leaves the mountain road,--which winds in and out of the passes, on and on, and leads to a definite place at last,--and, because he sees an apparently impassable mountain wall across the path, forsakes this and wanders off into some other valley and defile that looks more open, but in whose mazes he loses himself and makes no progress toward his true destination. no,--when the vision shines suddenly upon one's life, it is god's call to him to realize in it outward expression. the difficulties that hedge it round about will vanish as he approaches them. a dream is given to be realized. it is the working model that god sends into one's life for that full expression which alone is at once his best service and truest success. it is the common daily work of fulfilling duties add meeting claims. "not by the exceptional," says maeterlinck, "shall the last word ever be spoken; and, indeed, what we call the sublime should be only a clearer, profounder insight into all that is perfectly normal." it is of service, often, to watch those on the peaks who do battle; but it is well, too, not to forget those in the valley below who fight not at all. as we see all that happens to these whose life knows no struggle; as we realize how much must be conquered in us before we can rightly distinguish their narrower joys from the joy known to them who are striving on high, then, perhaps does the struggle itself appear to become less important; but, for all that, we love it the more. this normal fulfilment of the due claims of ordinary life leads to that order of success which is a beautiful and desirable one, and which is almost a universal aim and purpose. aspirations and energy are its factors, and these are of all various and varying degrees of excellence according to the specific aim in view. success itself, therefore, is merely a representative term, and may be used regarding almost every variety of achievement, from the triumphant winning of a game of football, the making of a great fortune, the attainment of professional or political rank, the production of great art, the acquirement of world-wide fame, or the achievement of character that is potent for fine and ennobling influence. all these are typical of myriad forms of the thing the world calls success, and while it involves a vast amount of competition, of selfishness, of greed, of injustice, it is yet a matter of the progress of humanity that each individual should strive after the highest form of attainment that he is capable of conceiving. in the long run, and as a general principle, this is advantageous and desirable. it involves and indeed develops many of the lower and baser qualities; but these are the tares among the wheat, and the wheat is essential. the great enterprise that builds a railway across the continent, tunneling under mountains, or climbing the precipitous inclines; that inaugurates a new steamer line, or that exerts itself for the founding of institutions for culture or technical instruction; that concerns itself with municipal reforms and improvements,--all these expressions of energy are manifestations of successful effort, and are necessary to the onward march of civilization. yet the visible achievement is not, after all, the realization of the highest ideal of success. the conditions of success may best be approached by a clearly defined idea of what success itself means, what it stands for to us, what proportion of our real life it represents. success is the watchword of american life--one might almost, indeed, say that it is made the test of our national life to a far greater degree than in any other country. the elements are well defined in emerson's phrase of "the _flowing_ conditions of life." they are, indeed, more than merely plastic and malleable; they are fluid, flowing, and the constant advance into higher states of life is precisely in proportion to the mental and moral force of the individual brought to bear upon them. even this assertion, however, is to hold in the light of the true conception of success itself. we see a man whose life is conspicuously that of mental and moral force, working faithfully and ably day by day, year by year, and yet never being free from certain financial anxieties, if not financial needs; while his neighbor, who is neither very learned nor able, nor yet in any wise remarkable in his moral development, is living much after the fashion of midas, whose touch turned everything to gold. but is gold the test of success? the panorama of life is a complicated one. it used to be the fashion of the novelists to represent the world of riches and fashion as the world devoid of sympathy and love, and often, indeed, as devoid even of moral principle; while the world of poverty and toil was held up as composed of men and women whose lives were all unselfishness and sacrifice, and as those who truly followed the example of him who was meek and lowly of heart. but the panorama of actual life reveals no such sharply defined divisions as that. virtue and vice are not checked off into special and separate regions; wealth has its greatness of mind and beneficence of sympathy and love, and poverty has its selfishness and cruelty and injustice. other things being equal, the command of unlimited means may be so used as to make it one of the great blessings of life, and this fact is attended and illustrated by such an increasing array of evidence as to make the statement merely the trite one of every-day fact. again, that prominence in affairs that we call position is good if rightly used, and to an increasing degree it is so used. _noblesse oblige_ is the watchword of modern life. "success in thyself, which is best of all." that line from a poem of emerson's most clearly defines true success. the "power of conduct, the power of intellect and knowledge, the power of beauty, and the power of social life and manners,"--to achieve such power as is thus enumerated by matthew arnold, and adding to it that which is greater than all, and that without which all else is useless and unvitalized, the power of the divine energy received through prayer,--these are the powers and achievements that tend to the true and only success,--the success of character. new conceptions of the old watchwords of life are in the air. in "culture" president eliot of harvard sees new points of view; he finds a new definition of the cultivated man, who is not, in this twentieth-century reading of the term, to be "a weak, critical, fastidious creature, vain of a little exclusive information or of an uncommon knack in latin verse or mathematical logic; he is to be a man of quick perceptions, broad sympathies, and wide affinities, responsive but independent, self-reliant but deferential, loving truth and candor, but also moderation and proportion, courageous but gentle, not finished but perfecting." "the situation that has not its ideal was never yet occupied by man," well said goethe; and perhaps one of the greatest aids to both achievement and happiness would be to recognize this ideal as the standard placed before one, the model after which he is to fashion his life, because he is, now and here, in the divine presence, because now and here he "stands before god." nor is this too sublime a test for the trivialities of every day. as a matter of truth, nothing is trivial that has to do with the life of the spirit. the petty irritations, impatience, vexations, and disappointments of life are things that affect one's spiritual quality, that make or mar his higher self, that accelerate or retard his progress in the upward way, according as these feelings are allowed to take control or are resolutely conquered. the occurrences that excite them are, to the life of the spirit, like the "gifts" in a kindergarten,--they are the object lessons by means of which growth and progress are attained. now, if one can conceive of his life, every day, every hour, as lived in the very presence of the divine; if he can realize himself at all times as "standing before god," how this recognition transforms all the conditions and circumstances! the drama of living is instantly lifted up to a higher plane. that which was hard becomes easy; that which was sad, or dull, or unattractive, becomes invested with interest. one is living, not unto himself, but unto god. he is living within that marvellous, all-enfolding charm and radiance. he is an actor in the great spiritual drama, and he feels the stimulus of playing his part nobly and well. and they who have gone behind the curtain come forth and minister to him. he is aware of the courage of companionship. "'mortal,' they softly say, 'peace to thy heart. we, too, yes, mortal, have been as thou art.'" voices unheard by the outer ear speak to the soul; presences unseen by the eye are yet felt, giving their sympathy and stimulus. it is good to remember that it is not only after death that the soul stands before god; that here and now is the heavenly test to which life must be held amenable; here and now must one make his thought and his acts those that know only the ideals of love and generosity and sweetness and courage. one may thus call up all his higher forces to meet misunderstandings with patience and with love: to meet adverse fortune with courage and with stronger and more intense endeavor; to live above the tide of jar or fret so as to dwell in perpetual radiance and sunshine of spirit. this is to "stand before god" here and now, through the days and the experiences of the life that is, as well as to anticipate standing before his presence in that which is to come. * * * * * [sidenote: the open door.] visions and enthusiasms are the only true guides in life. to keep true to the ideal dream that in some rare and exalted moment falls upon the soul, is to set one's steps toward that success which lies in fulfilment. such dreams may be obscured by passing clouds; they may become entangled with the transient and the trivial; but nothing that is temporary holds over them any power to disintegrate or to destroy, for they are made of heavenly revealings and illuminations. the ideal that reveals itself in a sudden vision of the higher harmonies and achievements possible to human life is but another name for the opportunity which shakespeare defines,--the opportunity that, if one fail to accept it, vanishes, to leave all the remainder of life "bound in shallows and in miseries." there is something about hesitation and reconsiderations that is curiously fatal to successful achievement. good fortune is in going on,--not in going back. the parable of lot's wife, who turned into a pillar of salt because she looked back, is by no means inapplicable to the life of to-day. let one on whom the vision has shone look backward instead of forward and he becomes paralyzed and immovable. he has invoked inimical influences. he is impeded by the shallows and the miseries. he has withdrawn himself from all the heavenly forces that lead him on. the fidelity to the vision is the vital motor. it gives that exhilaration of energy which makes possible the impossible. "the americans have many virtues," said emerson, "but they have not faith and hope. i know no two words whose meaning is more lost sight of. we use these words as if they were as obsolete as selah. and yet they have the broadest meaning and the most cogent application. the opening of the spiritual senses," continues emerson, "disposes men even to greater sacrifices, to leave their signal talents, their means and skill of procuring a present success, their power and their fame,--to cast all things behind in the insatiable thirst for divine communications. a purer fame, a greater power, rewards the sacrifice." each recurring new year is an open door. however arbitrary are the divisions of time, there is inspiration and exaltation in standing on the threshold of an untried year, with its fresh pages awaiting record. it is, again, the era of possibilities. the imaginative faculty of the soul must, indeed, be "fed with objects immense and eternal." life stretches before one in its diviner unity,--even in the wholeness of the life that is and that which is to come. there is not one set of motives and purposes to be applied to this life, and another set to that which awaits us. this is the spiritual world, here and now, and it is the business of man to live divinely in it; to be responsive to the enthusiasms that enchant his thought; to be faithful to the vision that beckons him on. it is well to drop the old that one may seize the new. progress lies in a successive series of new conditions. let one give all and ask for nothing,--let him yield himself wholly to the overpowering enthusiasm; let him not look backward from his vision of the morning star and the promised land, and thus shall the new year fulfil itself in ever widening glory and that enchanting loveliness which invests the higher fulfilments of life. * * * * * [sidenote: interruptions as opportunities.] "to work, to help and to be helped, to learn sympathy through suffering, to learn faith by perplexity, to reach truth through wonder,--behold! this is what it is to prosper, this is what it is to live," said phillips brooks. when herbert spencer produced his great "data of ethics" he did not consider in it the ethics of interruptions which sometimes assume a formidable place in the strenuous life. one is perhaps exceptionally patient and tolerant when it is a question of great trial or calamity, and not infrequently very impatient with the trifling annoyances and demands and interruptions that occur. yet, is there not just here a richness of opportunity in the aim to "do good to all men" that may often be unrecognized? a writer who may be pressed for time finds in his mail-matter a number of personal requests from strangers. one package contains manuscripts, perhaps, which a woman in montana entreats shall be read and returned with advice or suggestion. some one in texas wants a paragraph copied that he may use it in compiling a calendar. an individual in indiana has a collection of autographs for sale and begs to know of the ways and means for disposing of them. and an author in arizona desires that a possible publisher be secured for her novel; and so the requests run on. strictly speaking, perhaps, no one of these has any real right to thus tax the time and energy of a stranger; but is there not another side to it? here are an array of interruptions, but why not give them another name--that of opportunities? one has, perhaps, his theories and his convictions regarding the service of humanity. he holds it to be a duty,--a privilege. he believes that it is through entering into this service that he may even co-operate with god in the onward progress. to "help humanity" is a very attractive and high-sounding term. but what is humanity? is it not, after all, composed of individuals? and here are individuals to be helped; here they are, with their several individual requests, and the injunction of the apostle suggests itself, "_as ye have therefore opportunity_, ... do good unto all men." do not the interruptions assume a new form, and are they not, thereby, transfigured into glad and golden opportunity? and it is the will of god,--that great, resistless, and unceasing force, working underneath all our human wills--it is the will of god manifesting itself in small things as well as in those that seem outwardly more important, that has grouped all these special things together and sent them on an especially busy morning. shall not one rejoice and recognize that the need of another is brought as a privilege to himself? the blessedness of giving is not limited to cheques and bank-bills. there are gifts that far transcend these,--gifts of patience, sympathy, thought, and counsel, and (such is the blessedness of the divine law) these are gifts that the poorest can give. the need on the one side may be the luxury on the other, for it invites sympathetic comprehension and the enlargement of friendly relations. and as for one's time,--even in a full and busy life,--it is not so much time that one requires as it is right conditions. an hour will do the work of a day, when the conditions are harmonious; and nothing so increases the degree of spiritual energy as the glow and ardor and joy of doing some little service for another. in this lies the real blessedness, the real luxury of life, and one reads the profound significance in the words of maeterlinck: "it is well to believe that there needs but a little more courage, more love, more devotion to life, a little more eagerness, one day to fling open wide the portals of joy and truth." these qualities redeem the temporal to the immortal, for immortality is a condition of the soul, not a definite period in time. the soul, now and here, may put on immortality. life is, after all, an affair of the immortal self, and it is the invisible powers which are its stay, its guide, and its inspiration. we live and move and have our being on the divine side of things. we only live--in any true sense--as we are filled with the heavenly magnetism. "thou hast made known to me the ways of life; thou shalt make me full of joy with thy countenance," says the apostle. here is the true gospel to live by. there _are_ "ways of life;" even through toil and trial they shall be reached. the one is eternal, the other temporal. it is unwise to lay too much stress on the infelicities of the moment. exaltation alone is real; depression is unreal. the obstacle before one is not intended to stop progress, but to stimulate new energies to the overcoming. "by living so purely in thought and in deed as to prevent the interposition of any barrier between his phenomenal and substantial self; and by steadfastly cultivating harmonious relations between these two,--by substantiating the whole of his system to the divine central will, whose seat is in the soul,--the man gains full access to the stores of knowledge laid up in his soul, and attains to the cognition of god and the universe." among the "devastators of a day" there is encountered, however, a vast army of persons who advertise themselves vociferously as being wonder-workers of human life. according to their insistent proclamations, poverty is a "disease," and is to be cured by a course of correspondence lessons; beauty, address, gifts and graces and power, are secrets of which they hold the key; even death, too, is but another mental malady and is easily to be overcome by their recipes. all these fraudulent representations--as absurd as they are false--are but the gross distortion of the underlying truth that thought creates conditions and controls results. thought cannot transform poverty into wealth by means of six lessons; but the right quality of thought can set in motion the causes which, carried on to fulfilment, result in an increasing prosperity and welfare. one may thus achieve the top of his condition through serenity and poise of spirit, and thus be enabled to see events and combinations in their true perspective. he is not overwhelmed and swept into abysses of despair because some momentary disaster has occurred, but he regards it in its relative significance to the general trend of matters, and thus remains master of the situation. still, if there are spurious claims to the power of the magician, and if these claims, paraded by the idle, invade disastrously the realms of the industrious in a continual procession of interruptions, there is something, too, to be said on the side of another--and a very genuine sort of wonder-working,--to transmute these interruptions into opportunities. individuality is the incalculable factor in life, and it is one, too, that must be fully allowed for, if one would proceed as harmoniously as possible among the unseen brambles and pitfalls that may beset his onward pathway. a very large proportion of the discords of life arise from the failure to take into consideration the special qualities in their special grouping that determine the person with whom one has to do,--qualities which are, practically, unalterable, and must simply be accepted and borne with as best one may. there is the person, for instance, who is always and invariably behind time in every movement of his life. he leaves undone the things that ought to be done, until there is little use in doing them at all. he exhausts the patience and excites the irritability of his friend, who is, by nature, prompt and always up with the hour. there is the person who, from some latent cause in his character, always manages badly; who reduces all his own affairs to confusion; who contrives to waste more money, time, and energy than industry and energy can produce; whose normal condition is a crisis of disaster, and who, if extricated from this seventy times seven, will contrive to fall into it again. all these, and a thousand variations on characters of this type, we see around us, or within ourselves, constantly, and a liberal proportion of the trial or discord incident to family life, or to friendship and companionship, is simply in constantly demanding of another that which he cannot give, which he does not possess. to ask of the habitual procrastinator that he shall be prompt; or of the defective manager that he shall keep his affairs in order and make the most and the best out of his possessions, is totally useless. in the evolutionary progress of life, he will probably, sometime and somewhere, learn wisdom and do better; but habit and temperament are not liable to meet a sea change into something new and strange all in the flash of a moment, and it is worse than useless to demand this, or to be irritated, or impatient, or even too sorrowful, because of this fact. there are things that cannot be cured,--at least, not immediately. therefore they must be endured. when one once makes up his mind to the acceptance of this theory it is astonishing to see how it simplifies the problem. the philosophy is merely to do one's own part, but not to make any superhuman effort to do the other person's part also. let it go. there is no use in making a _casus belli_ of the matter. nothing is ever helped by irritation over it,--even the irritation of generosity and love, which seeks only the good of the other. there is, for instance, the procrastinating correspondent. you write, and you want a reply, and you want it straightway. on your own part you would make it with the promptness and despatch of the united states mail itself, but your correspondent is not constructed after the fashion of a galvanic battery, and although he means to respond at once, he doesn't. he has not the temperamental apparatus that works in that way. he has, perhaps, a thousand qualities that are better, finer, more important, but he does not happen to have that particular one. what then? shall you make his life and your own a burden with complaint and reproach? by no means. let it pass. it is a part of his individuality, and cannot--at the moment, at least--be altered. this one must frankly accept as the defect of his friend. but recognizing the defect need not blind one to the thousand virtues that his friend possesses. in fact, as we have each and all our individual sins, negligences, and weaknesses, we may well limit our zeal for reform to our own needs, at least until we have achieved such perfection that we are entitled to require perfection on the part of our associates. to the orderly, thrifty type of new england temperament nothing is more incompatible with sympathy than the bad management of the person not endowed with "faculty," as mrs. stowe well expresses it. and it must be conceded that a lack of the power essential to dominate the general affairs of life and keep them in due subordination and order, is an unmistakable draft on the affections. it is a problem as to just how far aid and sympathy do any good, and not infrequently the greater the real care and affection, the greater, too, is the irritation and the annoyance. but even the annoyance born of tender interest and love, it is better not to feel too keenly. let one do what he can,--do all that is reasonable and right to assist in counterbalancing the ills that arise from defective management, and then let it pass, and not take it into his mind as a source of constant anxiety. we have all our lessons to learn, and every failure brings its own discipline as the inevitable result. "regret calamities if you can thereby help the sufferer," as emerson so well says; "if not, attend to your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired." * * * * * [sidenote: the charm of companionship.] of society, in the true sense, social life offers comparatively little. in the midst of ceremonial assembling one is starved for companionship. one may live in the very heart of what is held to be a brilliant social season and be as unutterably lonely as if in a desert solitude. indeed, the latter offers compensations which the former denies. there is a great deal of companionship, however unrecognized, in the cloud of witnesses that encompass us round about, and whose presence is less vividly felt in the gleam and glitter of ceremonial society. the more general assemblages of clubs, teas, and receptions are so incorporated into the social system that no one could cancel these if he would, nor would he if he could. they have their uses. all exchange of human sympathies is good, even if it be somewhat superficial and spectacular. the more exclusive dinners are not without their special charm as occasions when conversation becomes possible on a less unsatisfactory scale than the exchange of inanities in crowded receptions. yet, with due recognition of the stimulus and the brilliancy that may flash from a select group of people, the deeper truth remains that it is only in a more personal companionship that is found the supreme luxury of life, and that companionship is a relation existing solely between two, refusing its spell when that number is increased. nothing is less considered by society than companionship. it is considered an unheard-of waste of time to devote an entire evening to one guest, when, indeed, five, ten, or fifty might be warmed, lighted, and fed in the same time. the fashionable hostess invites her friends to pay off her social debts. if she can pay off fifty or five hundred--in the time that she would give to one, she felicitates herself on her clever management. the idea of inviting her friends because she really wishes to talk with them would bewilder her. she does not converse; she "receives." she arrays herself in her smartest gown, and her social interchange with each guest consists in a graceful greeting and a no less graceful adieu, followed by an epoch of private gratitude that the required entertainment is over. she consults her visiting list and conscientiously arranges for her next reception, or dinner, or dance, in the fulfilment of what she is pleased to call her social duties. and all this, however superficial or spectacular it may be, has its place, and serves, with more or less success, to promote social meeting, preliminary acquaintance, out of which the choicest friendships sometimes spring. but it is quite possible to concede that certain formalities and ceremonial observances have their legitimate place without conceding that they monopolize the resources of social enjoyment. when one comes to that--it is quite another matter. the supreme gift and grace and enchantment of life is in sympathetic companionship. and this, in its truer sense, is a relation of spirit, an elective affinity, rather than a mere concurrence of intellectual or artistic tastes. it is quite possible for two persons to like sargent's pictures, or to draw the line at the inane "society" play without, after all, finding themselves in any relations of especial sympathy. "only that soul can be my friend," said emerson, "which i encounter on the line of my own march; that soul to which i do not decline, and which does not decline to me, but, native of the same celestial latitude, repeats in its own all my experience." margaret fuller defined this sympathy as that of beings born under the same star. but phrases are of little worth,--the experience eludes all definitions and defies all phrasings. it exists by divine right, or it does not exist at all. it is a law unto itself. it is a recognition that has to do with the inward springs of thought and action. companionship is the inflorescence of social life,--its finest result, its most exquisite and perfect ideal. but it requires a certain degree of fitness. it requires the choice organization, the nobler and the finer degree of spiritual development. the crude person can pass well enough in a social assemblage, but only the choicer individuality is fit for that finer and more subtle relation of companionship. yet this highest realization of social enjoyment is, for the most part, relegated to shreds and patches of time. the mornings must be given to lectures, readings, receptions, clubs, and teas; the evenings must be devoted to dinners, dances, opera, concerts, plays, or musicales. for communion of friend with friend, spirit with spirit, there is no time. the crowning joy of life, in its possibilities for sympathetic companionship, is ignored. for companionship is a spiritual joy, and society recognizes only the spectacular pleasures. the finer order of social life for which the world were well lost, awaits its evolution. * * * * * "the life a man lives and the life he ought to live belong together. the real and the ideal lie side by side in the thought of god." the distractions of life are every day's tragedy. the mutilation of purpose, the disintegration of time, the neutralization of all endeavor, which result from the perpetual occurrence of the unforeseen, cannot but prefigure itself as a theme for meditation to the worker who looks back on a day, a week, a month, an entire season, in which "the flighty purpose" has never been overtaken. the calendar has the inexorableness of fate. the day, the month, goes by, unrelenting. it may be shattered with feeble and inexpressive demands, but all the same it is gone, and it is unreturning. whether freighted richly with the essential, or merely burdened with the ineffectual, it is equally irretrievable. this involves a problem of life full of spiritual perplexity. certainly, no man liveth to himself, or, if he does, his living is a selfish and worthless thing. certainly a man _is_ his brother's keeper--to a degree. the poet whose dream is about to crystallize in verse is assured that life is more than art, and that to sustain the spirits of the depressed caller who appears at that precise instant, with the unfailing instinct with which the depressed do invariably appear at a literary crisis,--he is assured that this act is a "nobler poem" than any he could write. and such is the tremendous impression that the gospel in the air of the service of humanity makes on us all, that he dare not disregard this possibility. he is not absolutely sure, it is true, that he is "serving humanity" in this individual instance, but he is not at all sure that it is _not_ true; and he reflects that other days are coming, when, perhaps, by some divine dispensation, the depressed caller will _not_ appear! but there are no days on which he, or his prototype, is not on hand, and so the problem ever remains a present, an immediate, and, alas! an insoluble one. for this is an age when the depressed, who have nothing to do, require, to sustain their drooping spirits, the sympathetic ministrations of those who are too busy to indulge in the languid luxury of gentle and romantic sadness. in fact, they feel a certain inalienable right to demand that current of sympathetic interest which otherwise would express itself in the specific work in which one is engaged. "you desire to 'serve humanity,' do you?" the depressed caller says, virtually, as he fixes the mere worker with his glittering eye. "well, i am humanity. what is a book compared to a human soul? here, before you, in living personality, is a need. can you forsake it for abstract literature?" if the unfortunate worker has any species of the new england conscience he is at a disadvantage. he has nothing to say for himself. there are behind him more than two centuries of his ancestors who have preached and practiced self-sacrifice, generosity, love. in one sense he is even enfeebled by his ethical nature. it possesses him, rather than enables him to clearly and consciously possess it. he feels a certain magnetic attraction to the fulfilment of a definite purpose; but after all, the world is full of purposes and of far greater and abler persons than himself to carry them on; and perhaps this particular appeal is from one of those "little ones" whom the christ he holds in reverence bids him care for first of all. perhaps the immediate human need should take precedence over specific work. perhaps it _is_ a real human need. "treat the people as if they were real," said emerson; "perhaps they are so." and so he becomes the victim rather than the master of his own diviner life. he sees through a glass darkly. he is not in the least sure that he can do any good, but he is fearful he may do evil. and so he espouses what is really a negative side; a side of blind chance; a mere spiritual gambling, so to speak, and throws his stakes on the side of what _may_ be useful, as he cannot prove to himself that it is not, and his life becomes a poor, mean, weak, ineffectual thing. he recalls sir hugo's counsel to daniel deronda: "be courteous, be obliging, dan; but don't give yourself over to be melted down for the tallow trade." he becomes sadly conscious that his entire time, purpose, energies are being simply, with his own dull consent, "melted down for the tallow trade," and that he himself is by way of being on a far more perilous margin than that of any one of the gently depressed spirits who devastate his days, and command him to create for them,--not energy, purpose, will,--but, instead, external conditions in which they may more luxuriously enjoy their romantic languor and their comforting consciousness of superior qualities. now is it not more than an open question that when temptation assumes the masque of "service," it is no less temptation, and that it is evil disguised as good? the woman who reads the infinitely uplifting sermons of rev. doctor charles g. ames; who solaces what she is pleased to call her soul in that marvelously great work, "the expansion of religion," by rev. doctor e. winchester donald; who is excited--and mistakes it for being aroused--by rev. doctor philip moxom's noble book called "the religion of hope;" or who entertains similar emotions over recent new and great and uplifting books by rev. doctor george a. gordon or rev. doctor lyman abbott, or many another, often evolves the pleasing fantasy that all she requires for producing the same quality of work is the illumination of personal interviews or personal correspondence with them. "surely," she reasons, "these men are servants of the lord, and i am one of the least of these whose needs they are divinely commanded to serve. is not the life more than meat? should not the minister break off his morning meditation--an abstract thing, at best--to see me, who needs an immediate infusion of encouragement?" and the tragedy of this is that the worker, who is true to his own purpose,--through good report or through ill report,--to the duties he is divinely commissioned to perform, is not infrequently entirely misunderstood. the woman who sends him a voluminous manuscript, accompanying pretty phrasings regarding his work, and modestly requesting that he shall read it, give his "views" on it, and decide just what editor or publisher will be rejoiced to issue it,--and who receives her pages of outpouring back by return mail with a note, however courteous, expressing his inability to fulfil this commission,--this woman becomes, as a rule, the enemy of the person who declines to be "melted down for the tallow trade." she may do no particular harm, but the antagonism is there. this, however, could be borne; but the nature sensitive to shades of human need is always liable to torture itself because of any failure to meet a specific demand. and this torture is disintegrating to that force of positive energy which a special work requires. is there not, then, a need for the gospel of one's own endeavor? that a given line of work, plainly revealed in hours of mystic communion with the divine, indicated by the subtle trend of circumstance and condition,--is there not a need of realizing so clearly that it is the duty apportioned to the one fitted for it, that it shall inspire fidelity and reverence,--even at the risk of what the unthinking may describe as selfish absorption? for there are vast varieties of ministering for ministering spirits. the work of the social settlement is divine; but the poet and the painter, if they produce poems and paintings, cannot devote their time to its work. and the poems and the pictures have their value, as well as service in giving food and clothing to those in need. the special gift does require special conditions, and it is not selfish to insist on those conditions, when the special work is held as unto the lord. it often requires more heroism, more faith, more love to deny than to accede to a given request. to yield is often easy; to be steadfast to one's own purpose, shining like a star upon the horizon, is not infrequently very difficult. * * * * * [sidenote: a summer pilgrimage in arizona.] no pilgrimage of the crusaders of old could be more impressive in its spiritual results than that which can be made to-day to the grand cañon of the colorado in arizona. the majesty and sublimity of the scene suggest another world, not, indeed, an "inferno," but a "paradiso." it is a sea of color, a very new jerusalem, on which one looks down from the rim of this titanic chasm. it is a vision not less wonderful than that beheld by saint john in the isle of patmos. the term "cañon" is a misnomer for this supreme marvel of earth. one journeys to it anticipating a colossal variation on cheyenne canon or the royal gorge. instead, what does the tourist see? the ridge of a vast mountain-chain over two hundred miles in length split asunder in a yawning chasm eighteen miles in width and over seven thousand feet deep; one in which a thousand niagaras would be lost; in which a cliff that, relatively to the scene, does not impress one as especially lofty, yet which exceeds in height the eiffel tower in paris; and another which does not arrest special attention, yet is taller than the washington monument. but the splendor of apparent architectural creations arrests the eye. "solomon's temple," the "temple of vishnu," and altars, minarets, towers, pagodas, colonnades, as if designed by architectural art, lie grouped in wonderful combinations of form and color. "an inferno, swathed in soft, celestial fires; a whole chaotic underworld, just emptied of primeval floods, and waiting for a new creative word; a boding, terrible thing, unflinchingly real, yet spectral as a dream, eluding all sense of perspective or dimension, outstretching the faculty of measurement, overlapping the confines of definite apprehension. the beholder is at first unimpressed by any detail; he is overwhelmed by the _ensemble_ of a stupendous panorama, a thousand square miles in extent, that lies wholly beneath the eye, as if he stood upon a mountain peak instead of the level brink of a fearful chasm in the plateau whose opposite shore is thirteen miles away. a labyrinth of huge architectural forms, endlessly varied in design, fretted with ornamental devices, festooned with lace-like webs formed of talus from the upper cliffs, and painted with every color known to the palette in pure transparent tones of marvellous delicacy. never was picture more harmonious, never flower more exquisitely beautiful. it flashes instant communication of all that architecture and painting and music for a thousand years have gropingly striven to express. it is the soul of michael angelo and of beethoven. "the spectacle is so symmetrical, and so completely excludes the outside world and its accustomed standards, it is with difficulty one can acquire any notion of its immensity. were it half as deep, half as broad, it would be no less bewildering, so utterly does it baffle human grasp. something may be gleaned from the account given by geologists. what is known to them as the grand cañon district lies principally in northwestern arizona, its length from northwest to southeast in a straight line being about one hundred and eighty miles, its width one hundred and twenty-five miles, and its total area some fifteen thousand square miles. its northerly beginning, at the high plateaus in southern utah, is a series of terraces, many miles broad, dropping like a stairway step by step to successively lower geological formations, until in arizona the platform is reached which borders the real chasm and extends southward beyond, far into the central part of that territory. it is the theory of geologists that ten thousand feet of strata have been swept by erosion from the surface of this entire platform, whose present uppermost formation is the carboniferous; the deduction being based upon the fact that the missing permian, mesozoic, and tertiary formations, which belong above this carboniferous in the series, are found in their place at the beginning of the northern terraces referred to. the theory is fortified by many evidences supplied by examination of the district, where, more than anywhere else, mother earth has laid bare the secrets of her girlhood. the climax in this extraordinary example of erosion is, of course, the chasm of the grand cañon proper, which, were the missing strata restored to the adjacent plateau, would be sixteen thousand feet deep. the layman is apt to stigmatize such an assertion as a vagary of theorists, and until the argument has been heard it does seem incredible that water should have carved such a trough in solid rock. it is easier for the imagination to conceive it as a work of violence, a sudden rending of earth's crust in some huge volcanic fury; but it appears to be true that the whole region was repeatedly lifted and submerged, both under the ocean and under a fresh-water sea, and that during the period of the last upheaval the river cut its gorge. existing as the drainage system of a vast territory, it had the right of way, and as the plateau deliberately rose before the pressure of the internal forces, slowly, as grinds the mills of the gods, through a period to be measured by thousands of centuries, the river kept its bed worn down to the level of erosion; sawed its channel free, as the saw cuts the log that is thrust against it. tributaries, traceable now only by dry lateral gorges, and the gradual but no less effective process of weathering, did the rest." in the innermost depths of this colossal chasm runs the colorado river. descending the stupendous crags and terraces by one of the two or three "trails," the traveller at last stands upon a sandy rift confronted by nearly vertical walls many hundred feet high, at whose base a black torrent pitches in a giddying onward slide that gives him momentarily the sensation of slipping into an abyss. "with so little labor may one come to the colorado river in the heart of its most tremendous channel, and gaze upon a sight that heretofore has had fewer witnesses than have the wilds of africa. dwarfed by such prodigious mountain shores, which rise immediately from the water at an angle that would deny footing to a mountain sheep, it is not easy to estimate confidently the width and volume of the river. choked by the stubborn granite at this point, its width is probably between two hundred and fifty and three hundred feet, its velocity fifteen miles an hour, and its volume and turmoil equal to the whirlpool rapids of niagara. its rise in time of heavy rain is rapid and appalling, for the walls shed almost instantly all the water that falls upon them. drift is lodged in the crevices thirty feet overhead." descending to this ledge the tourist "can hardly credit powell's achievement, in spite of its absolute authenticity. never was a more magnificent self-reliance displayed than by the man who not only undertook the passage of the colorado river, but won his way. and after viewing a fraction of the scene at close range, one cannot hold it to the discredit of three of major powell's companions that they abandoned the undertaking not far below this point. the fact that those who persisted got through alive is hardly more astonishing than that any should have had the hardihood to persist. for it could not have been alone the privation, the infinite toil, the unending suspense in constant menace of death that assaulted their courage; these they had looked for; it was rather the unlifted gloom of those tartarean depths, the unspeakable horrors of an endless valley of the shadow of death, in which every step was irrevocable.... "not the most fervid pictures of a poet's fancy could transcend the glories revealed in the depths of the cañon; inky shadows, pale gildings of lofty spires, golden splendors of sun beating full on façades of red and yellow, obscurations of distant peaks by veils of transient shower, glimpses of white towers half drowned in purple haze, suffusions of rosy light blended in reflection from a hundred tinted walls. caught up to exalted emotional heights, the beholder becomes unmindful of fatigue. he mounts on wings. he drives the chariot of the sun." the language is not yet invented that can suggest any adequate idea of the grand cañon. nor can it be painted or photographed, or in any way pictorially reproduced in a manner to afford any suggestion, even, of its sublimity in design and its perpetual enchantment of color. one beholds the temples and towers and mosques and pagodas glowing in rose-red, sapphire blue, with emerald and amber and amethyst, all blending, and swimming, apparently, in a sea of purple, or of pearl gray mist, the colors flashing through like flame under alabaster. the sunlight changes as the day wears on, and so this play of color changes,--glowing, fading, paling, flaming. watching these magical effects from dawn to sunset, watching the panorama of color as it deepens into mysterious shadows and spectral illusions under the moonlight, one can only say, "what hath god wrought!" to contemplate this marvellous and sublime spectacle is to come into a new perception of the divine creation. * * * * * formerly almost as inaccessible as the himalayas, the grand cañon in arizona can now be reached by the most luxurious methods of modern travelling. from williams, on the santa fé road, a branch line of sixty miles runs over the rolling mesas to the "bright angel" hotel at the "bright angel trail." the journey is enchanted by beautiful views of the san francisco mountains seen through a purple haze. the entire journey through arizona offers one of the most unique experiences of a lifetime. is this "the country god forgot"? the vast stretch of the plains offer effects as infinite as the sea. the vista includes only land and sky. the cloud forms and the atmospheric effects are singularly beautiful. as one flies on into arizona this wonderful color effect in the air becomes more vivid. mountains appear here and there: the journey is up a high grade, and one realizes that he is entering the altitudes. a special feature of interest in arizona is the town of flagstaff, famous for the great lowell observatory, established there by percival lowell, a nephew of the noble john lowell, who founded the lowell institute in boston. professor percival lowell is a man of broad and varied culture, a great traveller, who has familiarized himself with most things worth seeing in this sublunary sphere, and has only failed to explore mars from reasons quite beyond his own control. at his own expense he has founded here an observatory, with a telescope of great power, by means of which he is making astronomical researches of the greatest value to science. the special advantage of arizona in astronomical study is not the altitude, but in the fact that there is the least possible vibration in the air here. mr. lowell's work makes flagstaff a scientific centre of cosmopolitan importance, and scholars and great scientists from all over the world are constantly arriving in the little arizona mountain town to visit the observatory. flagstaff has no little archæological interest, also; the famous cliff dwellings of the zuni tribe, which frank cushing explored and studied so deeply, are within a few miles of the town, located on the summit and sides of an extinct volcano. they now present the appearance of black holes, a few yards deep, often surrounded with loose and broken stone walls, and broken pottery abounds all over the vicinity. the most remarkable group of the cliff dwellers is to be seen in walnut cañon, eight miles from flagstaff. this is one of the deep gorges, the cliffs rising several hundred feet above the valley; and they are sheer terraced walls of limestone, running for over three miles. in these terraces, in the most singularly inaccessible places, are dozens of the cliff dwellings. some of them are divided into compartments by means of cemented walls, and they retain traces of quite a degree of civilization. the petrified forests of arizona are a most extraordinary spectacle, with its acres of utter desolation in its giant masses of dead trees lying prostrate on the ground. arizona is a land of the most mysterious charm. the grand cañon alone is worth a pilgrimage around the world to see,--a spectacle so bewildering that words are powerless to suggest the living, changing picture. "long may the visitor loiter upon the rim, powerless to shake loose from the charm, tirelessly intent upon the silent transformations until the sun is low in the west. then the cañon sinks into mysterious purple shadow, the far shinumo altar is tipped with a golden ray, and against a leaden horizon the long line of the echo cliffs reflects a soft brilliance of indescribable beauty, a light that, elsewhere, surely never was on sea or land. then darkness falls, and should there be a moon, the scene in part revives in silver light, a thousand spectral forms projected from inscrutable gloom; dreams of mountains, as in their sleep they brood on things eternal." [sidenote: a tragic idyl of colorado.] i hung my verses in the wind, time and tide their faults may find. all were winnowed through and through, five lines lasted sound and true; five were smelted in a pot than the south more fierce and hot; these the siroc could not melt, fire their fiercer flaming felt, and the meaning was more white than july's meridian light. sunshine cannot bleach the snow, nor time unmake what poets know. have you eyes to find the five which five hundred did survive? --emerson. not only verses, but lives, are "winnowed through and through," and time and tide reveal their faults and their virtues. in the history of the state of colorado there is one man whose life and work stand out in noble pre-eminence; whose character is one to inspire and to reward study as an example of intellectual and moral greatness. this man is nathan cook meeker, the founder of the town of greeley, colorado; the founder and for many years the editor of the greeley "tribune;" later appointed by president hayes, in a somewhat confidential capacity, the indian commissioner at white river, where he died the death of a hero, and where, marking the spot of the tragic massacre, the town of meeker now stands, among the mountains of the snowy range. mr. meeker, who is one of the heroes of pioneer civilization, founded this town in the very desert of sand and sage-brush. its first inception is a wonderful idyl of the extension of progress into the unknown west. the vision of the bands of singing angels in the air that fell upon the shepherds in the judean plains was hardly more wonderful than the vision out of which the town of greeley arose from the desert. on a december night in the late sixties mr. meeker found himself one evening standing under the brilliant starry skies of colorado near the foot of pike's peak. the marvellous splendor of the scene filled his mind with sublime picturings. in the very air before him he seemed to see a city arise in the desert--a city of beautiful ideals, of high purposes, of temperance, education, culture, and religion. the vision made upon him that permanent impression which the heavenly vision, revealed for one instant to a life, forever makes, however swiftly it may be withdrawn; however deep and dark the eclipse into which it fades and seems forever lost. to mr. meeker had been granted the angelic vision. the ideal had been revealed, and it was revealed in order that it might be realized in the outer and actual world. he felt the power, the nameless thrill of enchantment that pervades this wonderful country. one who is a poet in heart and soul has said of this pike's peak region:-- "over the range is another world--a happy valley hundreds of miles in extent, fenced in with beauty and joy; palisaded with god's own temples; roofed with crystal and gold, and afloat in dream life; perpetual youth in thought and growth--all of it life to the soul; music and rapture to the weary traveller of earth. oh, the leaping ecstasy of it by day and by night, and at the dawn!" this indescribable ecstasy of the colorado air communicated itself to mr. meeker. he went home to new york; he called a meeting in cooper institute; horace greeley presided, and mr. meeker outlined his plans to the large audience. he presented them, also, in full detail in the columns of the "tribune," and the result was that in he led a colony of some seven hundred to this most favorable site--now mid-way between two state capitols--fifty miles north of denver and fifty miles south of cheyenne; he laid out the town with broad boulevards and double rows of shade-trees while yet they lived in tents, and the shade-trees seen in his imagination are now an established fact. greeley is to-day a town embowered in trees. the first work was to dig a canal at a cost of sixty thousand dollars, this being the initial experiment of upland irrigation. such is, in outline, the history of greeley, which the colony desired to name meeker--for its founder--but which horace greeley's friend and associate editor insisted should bear its present name. greeley is known as the "garden city" of colorado, and that it was founded in faith and in ideals has been a determining fact in its quality of life and its phenomenal progress. nathan cook meeker was born in the "western reserve," in ohio, in , coming of the order of people whom emerson characterized as those "who go without the new carpet and send the boy to college." behind him were a long list of distinguished ancestry, men who through successive generations had stood for achievements. mr. meeker in his youth taught school, went into journalism, was connected with the new york "mirror," and later was associated with george d. prentice on the louisville "journal," now the "courier-journal," edited by the brilliant henry watterson. a versatile writer in both prose and verse, he wrote two or three books, one of which he dedicated to president pierce. he married a woman of great force and exaltation of character, a native of connecticut, and a descendant of elder brewster. she shared his aims and ideals. in the decade of - horace greeley, who was always waving his divining rod to see if it indicated the proximity of genius, discovered mr. meeker, and invited him to become the agricultural editor of the "tribune," succeeding solon robinson. mr. meeker's work made a strong impression on the reading public of the day, and even emerson inquired as to the authorship of some of mr. meeker's editorial work, which won the appreciation of the concord seer. in mr. meeker made a trip to the west for the "tribune," writing a series of valuable letters embodying his observations of the country. it was during this journey that the night came which lends itself to imaginative picturing with dramatic vividness when, just after christmas, he stood in the garden of the gods near the foot of pike's peak, while the stars of the colorado skies blazed above him, and, as if by a flash of vision saw a town arise in the desert. the vision fell upon him like an inspiration. founding towns seemed, indeed, to run in the family, as one of his ancestors had founded the town of elizabeth, new jersey, naming it after his wife. mr. meeker returned to the tribune office with his dream of a beautiful city to arise out of the sand and sage-brush of the desert. an idealist himself, mr. meeker had also the good fortune of having married a woman capable of sharing ideal dreams and of rising to the heights of sacrifice, and she, too, embraced his new enthusiasm. "go ahead," replied mr. greeley, when mr. meeker mentioned his new project, "the 'tribune' will back you." a meeting was then called in cooper institute, as before stated, horace greeley presiding, and john russell young entering into the idea with sympathy. mr. meeker presented his project of a union colony to establish itself in colorado. of the conditions he said:-- "the persons with whom i would be willing to associate must be temperance men and ambitious to establish good society, and among as many as fifty, ten should have as much as ten thousand dollars each, or twenty should have five thousand dollars each, while others may have from two thousand to one thousand dollars and upward. for many to go so far without means could only result in disaster." the members were to each contribute one hundred and fifty-five dollars to a fund to purchase and prepare the land. it was in april of that the committee made the purchase of forty thousand acres, located between the cache la poudre and the south platte rivers, twenty-five miles from the rocky mountains and in full sight of long's peak. greeley has a beautiful situation, and a perfection of climate that perhaps exists hardly anywhere else in all colorado. whatever the heat of the day, the nights are cool. the days are so bright, so beautiful, that they seem a very foretaste of paradise. in the spring of the seven hundred members of union colony, with their families, arrived. mr. meeker further stipulated:-- "in particular should moral and religious sentiments prevail, for without these qualities man is nothing. at the same time tolerance and liberality should also prevail. one thing more is equally important. happiness, wealth, and the glory of a state spring from the family, and it should be our aim and a high ambition to preserve the family pure in all its relations, and to labor with the best efforts life and strength can give to make the home comfortable, to beautify and to adorn it, and to supply it with whatever will make it attractive and loved." he added: "i make the point that two important objects will be gained by such a colony. first, schools, refined society, and all the advantages of life in an old country; while, on the contrary, where settlements are made by the old method, people are obliged to wait twenty, forty, or more years. second, with free homesteads as a basis, with the sale of reserved lots for the general good, the greatly increased value of real estate will be for the benefit of all the people, and not for schemers and speculators. in the success of this colony a model will be presented for settling the remainder of the vast territory of our country." every deed granted forbade the sale of intoxicating liquors. the town was founded in the purest moral ideals of education, culture, faith, and prayer, and greeley is everywhere pointed out to the tourist in colorado as one of the most interesting features of the centennial state. of the town mr. meeker himself said in one of his letters to the "tribune": "individuals may rise or fall, may live or die; property may be lost or gained; but the colony as a whole will prosper, and the spot on which we labor so long as the world stands will be a centre of intelligence and activity." in mr. meeker was appointed commissioner from colorado to the centennial exposition. he was strongly talked of for congress, but his destiny led elsewhere. early in the seventies he founded "the greeley tribune," which he edited with conspicuous ability, making it the leading country paper of that part of the state. the indian troubles became a prominent problem of the government in the decade of the seventies, and this question deeply engaged mr. meeker's attention. he had his own theories regarding their treatment--ideas much in advance of his time, and which in some respects have been adopted in the best indian legislation in washington within the past two years. one point in mr. meeker's policy was that "work should go hand in hand and to some extent precede school education"--an insight comprising much of the truth taught to-day by the more eminent leaders of industrial education, and one which the recent indian legislation, during the fifty-seventh congress, has recognized. mr. meeker believed that the indian could be advanced into the peaceful arts of civilized life, and this aim he held with conspicuous courage and fidelity. with a desire to carry out these theories, mr. meeker applied for and received, under president hayes, the post of commissioner to the utes on white river in colorado, his appointment being, as before stated, of a somewhat confidential nature, and charged with more important responsibilities than are usually included in this office. mr. meeker entered on the duties of this position with much that same high and noble purpose that inspired general armstrong in his work at hampton. general hall of colorado, who is said to be the most authoritative historian of that state, thus wrote of mr. meeker's entrance on the agency at white river. "in the spring of mr. meeker, founder of union colony and the now beautiful city of greeley, at his own solicitation was appointed resident agent, succeeding several who had attempted to carry this benevolent enterprise into effect, but without material success. he was a venerable philanthropist, eminently representing the humanitarian school of the atlantic seaboard, under the example of horace greeley, whom he revered above all the public men of his time. "thoroughly imbued with the purpose of educating, refining, and christianizing the wild rovers of the mountains, and longing for an opportunity to put his cherished theories into practice, confident of his ability to bring about a complete transformation of their lives and character, he entered upon the work with deep enthusiasm. his ideals were splendid, eminently worthy of the man and the cause; but, unhappily, he had to deal with savages, of whose natures he was profoundly ignorant. he took with him his wife and youngest daughter, josephine, and also a number of mechanics from union colony to aid in the great work of regeneration and redemption." the honorable alva adams of pueblo, colorado, ex-governor of the state, writing of nathan cook meeker, said:-- "meeker was a patriot, and no soldier upon the field of battle was more loyal, and no one in the annals of our country has ever made a more awful sacrifice than the meekers. but i need not tell the story. back of it is the incompetent treatment of the indians that was responsible for the meeker massacre. upon the government rests the blood and outrage of the meekers. nor can i recall that the indians were ever adequately punished for the crime. it is a black spot." mrs. meeker entered into the views and the work of her husband in this new field with sympathetic comprehension and sustaining aid. their youngest daughter, josephine, who shared the idealism of the family, opened a free school for the indians. mr. meeker encountered peculiar difficulties over a period of several months, during which he appealed, unsuccessfully, for government aid and protection. general william t. sherman, in his report ( ) to the secretary of war, alludes to these troubles; general pope was familiar with the situation, and major thornburg, at fort steele, held himself ready to send protection to mr. meeker at a day's notice; but the government failed to give that notice. the tragedy came swiftly and suddenly, like the fates in a greek drama, and on september , , mr. meeker was brutally massacred, his wife and daughter were taken into captivity, where, for twenty-three days, until rescued by general adams, they endured unspeakable sufferings, and the agency buildings and their contents were burned. to the awful spectacle of her husband's mutilated body, his wife--a woman of gentle birth and breeding--was led by the indians, in their savage cruelty, to thus first learn of the tragedy. through her agony of tears she pleaded to be allowed to stop and kiss the cold lips of him whose faithful, tender companion and wife she had been for thirty-five years. this last sacred consolation was denied her. with diabolical glee they reviled her tears and her prayers. her daughter josephine, a girl of twenty, with the evangeline type of face, was torn from her arms and hurried away into a deep, lonely cañon, which is now called "josephine valley." mrs. meeker herself was shot in her hip and left lame for life. she was thrust on a horse without even a saddle and carried off into the lonely mountains in this terrible captivity. yet so sublime is the character of mrs. meeker in her deep religious feeling that in this moment of supreme desolation,--her husband's murdered body left alone on the ground; her daughter snatched from her arms; her home in smoking ruins behind her,--so remarkable is her character in its religious exaltation, that even in this hour of supreme agony she could say, "_though he slay me_, yet will i trust in him!" a little mountain town of some five hundred inhabitants, named meeker, for the heroic man who there met his tragic death, now marks the site of the massacre. even at this day it is forty-five miles from the nearest railroad station, rifle, on the denver and rio grand scenic route. the little town reminds one of florence, italy, in the way it is surrounded by amethyst mountains, and the white river on which it is located is far more beautiful than the turbid arno. the name of nathan cook meeker is held in the greatest reverence by the people of the entire region. on an august afternoon more than twenty years after this tragedy a visitor to colorado stood on the site of the massacre under a sky whose intense blue rivalled that of italy. with the peaceful flow of the river murmuring in the air and the hum of insects in the purple-flowered alfalfa, the tragic scene seemed to rise again and impressed its lesson,--the ethical lesson of apparent defeat, disaster, and death in the outer and temporal world, while, on the spiritual side, it was triumph and glory and the entrance to the life more abundant. the man might be massacred,--the idea for which he stood cannot die. it rises from the apparent death and is resurrected in the form of new and nobler and more widely pervading ideals which communicate their inspiration to all humanity. in the cemetery of greeley lie buried the body of mr. meeker and of his daughter josephine, whose early death followed close upon the tragedy. the aged widow, now in her eighty-ninth year, still survives, occupying her home in this colorado town. mrs. meeker retains all her clearness of intellect; all her keen interest in the affairs of the day. she reads her daily newspapers, writes letters that are models of beautiful thought and exquisite feeling, and still continues to write the verse which through life has been the natural expression of her poetic nature. mrs. meeker writes verses as a bird sings--with a natural gift full of spontaneous music. the work of nathan cook meeker in all that makes for industrial and social progress and moral ideals contributed incalculable aid to colorado. all over the state the tourist is asked, "have you seen greeley? that is our ideal town." during all the years of mr. meeker's residence in colorado he remained a staff correspondent of the "tribune." horace greeley went to the west and visited the colony; and in the fine high school building of greeley to-day, there hang, side by side, the portraits of horace greeley and nathan cook meeker. in this world in which we live events are not finished when they have receded into the past. they persist in the texture of life. they stand for certain fulfilments, and, like banquo's ghost, they will "not down" until their complete significance is worked out to its final conclusion. "say not the struggle naught availeth." it always avails. it matters little as to amassing of possessions; but it matters greatly as to the purity of a man's motives and the degree to which he keeps faith with his ideals. unfalteringly, even unto death, did nathan cook meeker keep faith with those ideals that revealed themselves to him. a noble work like that of mr. meeker is like the seed sown which is not quickened except it die. sown in weakness, it is raised in power; sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. the three years of the ministry of jesus on earth ended in defeat, disaster, and death. was his life thereby a failure? who has won the triumph's evidence--pilate or christ? lincoln had to die that the nation might live. heroism is forever being crowned with martyrdom. all life is better to-day for every noble individual life that has been lived in the world. nathan cook meeker was one who literally gave his life to lofty ideals, and this hero whom the silver state holds in honor and reverence merits the recognition of the nation. * * * * * [sidenote: a remarkable mystic.] "the only affections which live eternally are those of the soul--those which have struck deep into the man and made part of his inmost being. the loves of the earthly mind die with it and form no part of the permanent man.... to enter the heavenly sphere and to come into communion with souls a generated state is necessary. there are four atmospheres surrounding us, and only in the highest of these do we find the freed soul. interior knowledge, earnest aspiration, and purity of thought and life, are the keys by which alone can be opened the gates of the inmost and highest sphere. the lowest is enlightened by the natural sun. it is that of the present life of the body. the next is enlightened by the astral or magnetic light, and it is that of the sidereal body. the next is that of the soul, and it is enlightened by the spiritual sun. and the highest is the immediate presence of god." since the days of jacob behmen there have been no such remarkable series of mystic writings as are contained in the two volumes called "the perfect way" and "clothed with the sun," by doctor anna kingsford. her belief and her illuminations were crystallized in the affirmation, "life is the elaboration of soul through the varied transformations of matter." she saw the entire purpose of creation to be the evolution and elaboration of the soul. very little is generally known of doctor kingsford. she was descended from an old italian family, one of whom had been the architect of the vatican, and, on her mother's side, from mingled german and irish ancestry. she was the daughter of john bonus, born in england in , and she married, in , algernon godfrey kingsford, who subsequently took orders in the english church. three years later mrs. kingsford entered the catholic communion, and some years afterward she studied medicine in paris and received her degree. she is said to have been very beautiful, with great talent in painting and in music, a poet of lyric gifts, and from her childhood she saw visions and dreamed dreams. she died in , and is buried in atcham, near shrewsbury, where her husband had his parish. in doctor kingsford delivered in london, before drawing-room audiences, comprising representatives of literature, art, fashion, and the peerage,--audiences inclusive of the most notable people in london, the nine lectures that are published under the title of "the perfect way," and at the time these lectures inspired a profound interest. their central theme is the pre-existence and perfectibility of the soul. "the intuition," she says, "is that portion of the mind whereby we are enabled to gain access to the interior and permanent region of our nature, and there to possess ourselves of the knowledge which in the long ages of her past existence the soul has made her own. for that in us which perceives and permanently remembers is the soul. and all that she has once learned is at the service of those who duly cultivate relations with her." and those relations, she taught, are cultivated by living so purely in thought and deed as to prevent the interposition of any barrier between the phenomenal (or the outer) and the substantial (or the inner) self; and by steadfastly cultivating harmonious relations between those two, by subordinating the whole system to the divine will,--thus does one gain full access to the stores of knowledge in the soul. doctor kingsford further explains:-- "for, placed as is the soul between the outer and the inner mediator, between the material and the spiritual, she looks inwards as well as outwards, and by experience learns the nature and method of god; and according to the degree of her elevation, purity, and desire, sees, reflects, and transmits god. it is in virtue of the soul's position between the worlds of substance and of phenomenon, and her consequent ability to refer _things_ to their essential _ideas_, that in her, and her alone, resides an instrument of knowledge competent for the comprehension of truth, even the highest, which she only is able to behold face to face. it is no hyperbole that is involved in the saying, 'the pure in heart see god.' true, the _man_ cannot see god. but the divine in man sees god. and this occurs when, by means of his soul's union with god, the man becomes 'one with the father', and beholds god _with the eyes of god_.... "and he to whom the soul lends her ears and eyes, may have knowledge not only of his own past history, but of the past history of the planet, as beheld in the pictures imprinted in the magnetic light whereof the planet's memory consists. for there are actually ghosts of events, manes of past circumstances, shadows on the protoplasmic mirror, which can be evoked. "but beyond and above the power to read the memory of himself or of the planet, is the power to penetrate to that innermost sphere wherein the soul obtains and treasures up her knowledge of god. this is the faculty whereby true revelation occurs. and revelation, even in this, its highest sense, is, no less than reason, a natural appanage of man, and belongs of right to man in his highest and completest measure of development." doctor kingsford was an evolutionist, holding that development along evolutionary lines is a true doctrine, but she held that this development was not of the original substance, because that, being infinite and eternal, is always perfect; and that the development lay in the manifestation of the qualities of that substance, in the individual. "the highest product, man," she said, "is the result of the spirit working intelligently within. but man attains his highest and becomes perfect _only through his own voluntary_ co-operation with the spirit." doctor kingsford regarded jesus as a spiritual ideal and an eternal verity, and religion as an ever-present actuality. we find her saying:-- "for every man makes his own fate, and nothing is truer than that character is destiny. it is by their own hands that the lines of some are cast in pleasant places, of some in vicious, and of some in virtuous ones, so that there is nothing arbitrary or unjust. but in what manner soever a soul conducts itself in one incarnation, by that conduct, by that order of thought and habit, it builds for itself its destiny in a future incarnation. for the soul is enchained by these prenatal influences, which irresistibly force it into a new nativity at the time of such conjunction of planets and signs as oblige it into certain courses and incline it strongly thereto. but if the soul oppose itself to these influences and adopt some other course,--as it well may to its own real advantage,--it brings itself under a 'curse' for such period as the planets and ruling signs of that incarnation have power. but though this means misfortune in a worldly sense, it is true fortune for the soul in a spiritual sense. for the soul is therein striving to atone and make restitution for the evil done in its own past; and thus striving, it advances towards higher and happier conditions. wherefore man is, strictly, his own creator, in that he makes himself and his conditions, according to the tendencies he encourages. the process of such reformation, however, may be a long one. for tendencies encouraged for ages cannot be cured in a single lifetime, but may require ages for their cure. and herein is a reflection to make us as patient towards the faults of others as we ought to be impatient of our own faults." the entire interpretation of life, as given by doctor kingsford in these books, is remarkable, and is one of singular clearness in tracing the law of cause and effect. * * * * * [sidenote: the momentous question.] "the question for man most momentous of all is whether or no he has an immortal soul; or--to avoid the word immortal, which belongs to the realm of infinities--whether or no his personality involves any element which can survive bodily death. in this direction have always lain the gravest fears, the farthest reaching hopes, which could either oppress or stimulate mortal minds.... the method of modern science--that process which consists in an interrogation of nature entirely dispassionate, patient, systematic ... has never yet been applied to the all-important problem of the existence, the powers, the destiny of the human soul." the rev. doctor alexander whyte of edinborough, one of the few greatest and most celebrated preachers in europe, said, in a sermon recently delivered in london, that the spiritual, like the physical life, required constant sustenance. doctor whyte dwelt with marked emphasis on the important truth that no one who does not give at least one hour of the day to the concentration of thought on the higher purposes of life, and devote himself, essentially and especially, to aspiration and prayer, can live aright, and live up to his higher possibilities. doctor whyte especially recommended the last hour before sleep as the best season for this uplift of the soul to its native atmosphere. "it is not necessary," he said, "that one should be kneeling, in the attitude of prayer, all the time. walk about. go out and look at the stars. read, if you prefer, some ennobling book. but, in whatever form thought and meditation may take, keep the key held to the divinest melody of life. in that way shall the spiritual life gather its rich strength and infinite energy." the principle is one that every life which has given to the world noble results, has acted upon, consciously or unconsciously, as may be. no one can live, in the sense of that life which is alone worth the living, without definite and constant periods of seeking that refreshment which is found in communion with god, and in setting one's spiritual forces in touch anew with the infinite spiritual energy. poet and prophet have emphasized this truth. stephen phillips, in his poem of "the dead soul," touches it most impressively. without its own sustenance from the spiritual world, how could it survive? "she felt it die a little every day, flutter more wildly and more feebly pray." the soul is ever "imploring dimly something beautiful," and it must have this or its powers remain latent and undeveloped. "not in dead matter do we live," said lord kelvin, in his recent address before the british scientists, "but we live and move in the creative and directing power that science compels to be accepted as an article of faith. we are forced to believe, with absolute confidence, in a directive power,--in an influence other than the physical, dynamic, and electric powers. science is not antagonistic to religion, but a help to religion," he added; "science positively affirms creative power, and makes every one feel a miracle in himself." the soul has certainly a door into infinite beauty, and through the portals must it fare forth to renew its activities in its own atmosphere. the question as to whether the individual survives bodily death is one that the twentieth century will answer with no unmistakable reply. the investigation into the very nature of man is one possible on strictly scientific lines, whose results agree with and confirm all that faith has intuitively divined. this investigation--pursued in many ways--is best of all pursued in keeping some hour apart, each day, for absolute _re_union and _com_munion with the holy spirit. to lift up the heart to god in deepest aspiration and prayer is to come into an increasing knowledge of one's own spiritual self, and into increasing harmony with the divine world in whose atmosphere, alone, we live and breathe and have our being. in love and sympathy lie the daily solution of all the problems of the spiritual life. these are the divine attributes, and they are as indispensable to life to-day as they were when christ walked in galilee. compassion and love are the handmaids of hope and faith and joy. the heart to sympathize, the love to aid, lead on to the radiant atmosphere of happiness. there is a deep and impressive significance in the lesson of the music-drama of "parsifal." "only those of pure heart can be strong." and that "the knights in the play were saved by parsifal _who was willing to encounter anything_." this alone is the diviner quality of love,--to be willing to "encounter anything;"--to meet pain, disaster, defeat, if so it be the appointed way to serve. there is a consecration in pain that purifies and refines and exalts all effort. it may be the very divine sign and seal of approval when the way leads to personal sacrifice rather than to personal joy. "the magi," it is said, "have but to follow their star in peace.... the divine action marvellously adjusts all things. the order of god sends each moment the appropriate instrument for its work, and the soul, enlightened by faith, finds all things good, desiring neither more nor less than she possesses." one may tread,--not the "whole round of creation," as browning phrases it, but a minor segment of it, at least, and come back with added and more profound conviction that happiness is a condition of the spirit; that "the soul is ceaselessly joyful"; that the incidents and accidents of the outward life cannot mar nor lessen that sense of higher peace and joy and harmony which is the atmosphere of any true spiritual life. one may recognize and affirm this truth by spiritual intuition, and he may then be led through many phases of actual tests in actual life; he may, for a time, lose his hold on it and come to say that happiness is a thing that depends on so many causes outside one's own control; that illness, death, loss of friends, adverse circumstances, failures and trials of all kinds may come into his experience, and that one is at the mercy of all these vicissitudes. can the individual be happy, he will ask, when all that made happiness is taken away? can he be happy if he has lost all his worldly goods? or if death has taken those nearest and dearest to him? or if the separations of life, far harder to bear than those of death, have come into his experience with their almost hopeless sense of desolation? and yet, until he has learned to answer these questions with the most triumphant affirmative, he has not learned the measure nor sounded the depth of a true and noble order of happiness. the difference is that of being safely on board a great steamer when wind and wave are tempest-tossed, or of being helpless in the raging waters. the storm may be precisely the same; the tempest may rage as it will, but safe and secure in the cabin or stateroom, the voyager does not mind its fury. truly may this analogy be held in life. it is possible to emerge from the winds and waves; to enter so entirely into the sense of security in the divine; to hold so absolutely the faith in the divine leading, that even in the midst of trial and loss and deprivation and sorrow, one shall come to _know_, through his own experience, that "the soul is ceaselessly joyful." for it is one thing to accept a truth theoretically, to believe it intuitively, and another to prove it through experience that shall test the quality of faith and conviction. learning this supreme truth of life through outward experiences as well as though inner revelation, is a victory of the will that may even make itself an epoch, a landmark, in spiritual progress. one of the great discourses of phillips brooks had for its theme the lesson of not laying too much stress on the recognition of one's motives or on any return of sympathetic consideration. "let me not think," said bishop brooks, "that i get nothing from the man who misunderstands all my attempts to serve him and who scorns me when i know that i deserve his sympathy. ah! it would be sad enough if only the men who understood us and were grateful to us when we gave ourselves to them had help to give us in return. the good reformer whom you try to help in his reform, and who turns off from you contemptuously because he distrusts you, seeing that your ways are different from his, does not make you happy,--he makes you unhappy; but he makes you good, he leads you to a truer insight, a more profound unselfishness. and so (it is the old lesson), not until goodness becomes the one thing that you desire, not until you gauge all growth and gain by that, not until then can you really know that the law has worked, the promise has been fulfilled. with what measure you gave yourself to him, he has given himself--the heart of himself, which is not his favor, not his love, but his goodness, the real heart of himself to you. for the rest you can easily wait until you both come to the better world, where misconceptions shall have passed away and the outward forms and envelopes of things shall correspond perfectly with their inner substances forever." in the last analysis one comes to realize that happiness is a condition depending solely on the relation of his soul to god; that neither life, nor death, nor principalities, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any living creature can separate him from it, because happiness and the love of god are one and identical, and it is not in the power of this world to give, or to take away, this sense of absolute oneness with the divine life that comes when man gives himself, his soul and body, his hopes and aspirations and ideals, in complete consecration to the will of god. for this alone is happiness. it may not be ease nor pleasure, but it is that ceaseless joy of the soul that may be the daily experience of every human being. and to gain the deep inner conviction of this sublime truth is worth whatever it may cost of tears or trial or desolation of spirit. it is the threshold of joy. it is the initiation into a higher spiritual state which one may gain during his progress on earth as well as in heaven. in fact, no one is really fitted for the highest privileges and sweetness he may crave, until he has learned to live well, to live joyfully, without these. no one is fitted _for_ joy until he can live well _without_ joy. it is the law and the prophets. the nectar of the hour. i share the good with every flower, i drink the nectar of the hour. --emerson. * * * * * _if we knew how to greet each moment as the manifestation of the divine will we could find in it all the heart could desire. nor what indeed is more reasonable, more perfect, more divine, than the will of god? can its infinite value be increased by the paltry difference of time, place, or circumstance? the present moment is always filled with infinite treasures; it contains more than one is capable of receiving. faith is the measure of these blessings; in proportion to your faith will you receive. by love also are they measured; the more your heart loves the more it desires, and the more it desires the more it receives. the will of god is constantly before you as an unfathomable sea, which the heart cannot exhaust; only in proportion as the heart is expanded by faith, confidence, and love can it receive of its fulness.... the divine will is an abyss of which the present moment is the entrance; plunge fearlessly therein and you will find it more boundless than your desires._--the rev. j. p. de caussade, in "holy abandonment." * * * * * "the moment we desire god and his will, that moment we enjoy them, and our enjoyment corresponds to the order of our desires." what though the bough beneath thee break? remember, thou hast wings. --victor hugo. to enter into the will of god is an initiation of such power and beauty that language falters in any effort to interpret this supreme experience. it can be indicated only in the words of the poet:-- "i share the good with every flower, i drink the nectar of the hour." that wonderful test of seeing every event of life from the point of view of the will of god simply transforms and revolutionizes the entire scale of human experience. it simplifies all perplexities, it offers the solution for all problems. it illuminates the small and the apparently insignificant occurrences which, nevertheless, contrive to play so large and often so determining a part in our days, as well as places in high relief the great questions that beset one in his varied round. the little book from which the extract on the preceding page is taken--a catholic book of devotion--is one of the most illuminating in all spiritual literature. it offers to one instruction and guidance in that life which alone is progress, peace, and joy,--and one who comes to use it daily will place it almost next to the bible in its practical and almost miraculous helpfulness. catholic or protestant,--what matters it so that one who listens may hear the word? it is in no wise necessary to embrace catholicism in order to concede that some of the most vital literature of the spiritual life is written by the priests and thinkers of that communion; and it is good to take help wherever one can find it,--regardless of sect or creed. a french priest, preaching in an impassioned and sublime abandon of enthusiasm; caught up in a rapture of the heavenly life, poured out these wonderful words to audiences that thronged the dim shades of saint sulpice, in paris. his theme was the consecration of life to the divine will. he called upon all humanity to recognize that this divine will is revealed,--not exclusively in the cloister or the silence, but in the common trend of daily life. "the field is the world." "all things," said this priest, "may further the soul's union with god; all things perfect it, save sin, and that which is contrary to duty;" and he added: "when god thus gives himself to a soul, all that is ordinary becomes extraordinary; therefore it is that nothing appears of the great work which is going on in the soul; the way itself is so marvellous that it needs not the embellishment of marvels which belong not to it. it is a miracle, a revelation, a continuous enjoyment of god, interrupted only by little faults; but in itself it is characterized by the absence of anything remarkable, while it renders marvellous all ordinary and sensible things." the entire discourse was a fervent and illuminating illustration of how god's will reveals itself through the most common things. "o divine action," père de caussade exclaims, "i will cease to prescribe to thee hours or methods; thou shalt be ever welcome. o divine action, thou seemest to have revealed to me thy immensity. i will walk henceforth in thy infinity. no longer will i seek thee within the narrow limits of a book, or the life of a saint, or a sublime thought. no longer will i seek thy action alone in spiritual intercourse. for since the divine life labors incessantly and by means of all things for our advancement, i would draw my life from this boundless reservoir. the will of god imparts to its every instrument an original and incomparable action. we do not sufficiently regard things in the supernatural light which the divine action gives them. we must always receive and worthily meet the divine action with an open heart, full confidence and generosity: for to those who thus receive it, it can work no ill. the divine action killeth while it quickeneth; the more we feel death, the firmer our faith that it will give life." these words invest the truth of the constant revelation of god's will through ordinary events, with a burning intensity and vividness that can hardly fail to leave a permanent impress upon the reader. there is probably no thoughtful observer of the phenomena of life with whom spiritual aspiration is ever present, who is not often honestly puzzled as to what extent the ordinary tide of events that attend him must be accepted as the will of god, and to what degree he should modify these by his own power of will in selection and grouping. he is engaged, for instance, in important work. to what extent should he yield to the "devastator of the day"? to what extent should he allow his general onward course of pursuits and interests to be deflected or changed by the unforeseen events that attend his pathway? it may be accepted as a fundamental truth that good sense, good judgment, discretion, poise, are not unworthy to be ranked among the christian virtues. jesus was eminently sane. he was no fanatic. he gave both by precept and example the ideal of a rational and reasonable life. the individual has no right to rush off and kill himself because his dearest hope is denied or his most cherished purpose defeated. nor has he any more right to commit what may be called intellectual suicide, by relinquishing his aspirations and endeavors, merely because things go wrong, or because he thinks they are wrong. the conditions of life are not necessarily wrong because contrary to what one might desire. perhaps it is the desire itself which was wrong, and the conditions which are right; and which are the expression of god's will and are thus to be joyfully accepted. the test of all circumstances and influence lies in unchanging fidelity, in unswerving allegiance to the divine ideal of life. the "devastator of a day" need not be welcomed to make unlimited waste of time and energy that have their due channels, but the interruption may be met with patience and sweetness, as well as with firmness of purpose in declining to be turned aside from the duty in hand. the adverse circumstances of life,--loss of money, of friends, disaster in one way or another, that may come without visible relation to any error on one's own part,--shall not such adverse conditions teach a divine lesson of patience and incite new springs of energy to overcome trial, and to gain by it a higher spiritual vantage-ground on which to live? cannot even denial and defeat be held as developing qualities that might otherwise lie latent? may they not teach the divinest lesson of all,--the one most invaluable to human life,--absolute trust in god? gaining this, the soul really gains all that it was sent on earth to learn through all the varied phenomena of joy and sorrow, of triumph and failure. there is a common expression of one's "embracing religion and turning away from the world." it is a contradiction of terms. the world is the place in which any real religion is tested and proved, and it is there that the soul must recognize and receive the divine action. in the marvellous sermons of père lacordaire are found suggestions that might well serve as a daily manual on this sublime and vital truth of the relation between the will of god and the daily experience. these sermons are among the world's treasures of help toward a higher spirituality. the argument of père de caussade--one equally entitled to consideration--is that god reveals himself to us now, in ordinary events, as mysteriously and as adorably and with as much reality as in the great events of history or in the holy scriptures. "when the will of god reveals itself to a soul manifesting a desire to wholly possess her," says père de caussade, "if the soul freely gives herself in return, she experiences most powerful assistance in all difficulties; she then tastes by experience the happiness of that coming of the lord, and her enjoyment is in proportion to the degree in which she has learned to practice that self-abandonment which must bring her at all moments face to face with this ever adorable will." the entire philosophy of this is that the events of life are the language in which god speaks to us. the thought is as simple as it is impressive, and it is yet so great as to be fairly epoch-making in its complete realization. and it is more than an open question whether, even to a large majority of the most prayerful and ardent of christian believers, there is not still a new aspect of life revealed in this simple acceptance of the common details of the day, the events of the hour, as the divine language which is to be read and followed. because there is a more or less widespread conviction that events, circumstances, conditions are things to be battled with, in case they are not agreeable, and that there is a signal virtue in overcoming them. nor is this conviction without value, too, and a large measure of truth, for aspiration and achievement must always be among the vital forces in creating the immediate future; and we must create the future as well as accept the present. "thou speakest, lord, to all mankind by general events. thou speakest to each one in particular by the events of his every moment." père de caussade proceeds to say:-- "but instead of respecting the mystery of thy words and hearing thy voice in all the occurrences of life, they only see therein chance, the acts, the caprice of men; they find fault with everything; they would add to, diminish, reform. they revere the word of the lord, but have they no respect for words which are not conveyed by means of ink and paper, but by what they have to do and suffer from moment to moment,--do these words merit nothing?" this handwriting on the wall in the guise of the daily events is a message to be read by faith alone. just here is the parting of the ways. one fares forth in a certain direction, intent on a given accomplishment, and unforeseen circumstances arise that hinder, annoy, delay, or prevent the fulfilment of the intention. from one point of view, one would say that interruptions and disasters were things to be overcome as speedily as possible, and that the virtue lay in pressing on. but the theory of life so wonderfully set forth by this great preacher teaches, instead, that these very obstacles, delays and embarrassments are a signal and an important thing in and of themselves; that they are nothing less than the divine voice; the appointed means through which the voice of god speaks to us; that each moment, each hour, is just as valuable during delay and enforced pause as it could be for the most strenuous action, because,--the only important thing we have to do in this life is to bring our own will into harmony with the will of god; to learn to recognize his leading and to _love_ this leading. nor does this interpretation of the divine purposes of life lead the least in the world to inertia and dull passivity. on the contrary, it is, in essence, the theory to do all one can, ceaselessly and constantly; but, having done this, then await the results in a believing trust which is peace and love of harmony. the larger part of the events and circumstances that have to do with our lives are not under our personal control. no man liveth to himself. regarding this large part of our lives that are not under our personal control, there is a perpetual tendency to fret, to worry, to impatience, to irritation, or to despondency, and the consequent loss of that cheerfulness and radiant exhilaration in which one should live if he live aright. could one, then, regard all this part of his life which he cannot change, nor hasten, nor delay, nor alter in the slightest degree, one way or the other,--could he but recognize all this as the divine language and meet it,--not only with resignation but with that joyful acceptance of perfect faith which absolutely realizes the oneness of the will between himself and god,--then would not life gain, at once, immeasurably in peace and happiness? "can the divine will err?" questions père de caussade. "can anything that it sends be amiss? but i have this to do; i need such a thing; i have been deprived of the necessary means; that man thwarts me in such good works; this illness overtakes me when i most need my health." the answer is: "no; the will of god is all that is absolutely necessary to you, therefore you do not need what he withholds from you--you lack nothing. if you could read aright these things which you call accidents, disappointments, misfortunes, contradictions, which you find unreasonable, untimely, you would blush with confusion, but you do not reflect that all these things are simply the will of god." the life of faith, that perfect faith which is perfect peace, consists in this ever-present recognition, and, tested by its results,--tested by the absolute peace and the larger energy which is liberated by the cheerful and believing rather than the sad and distrusting state of mind,--tried by all those tests of actual experience, this attitude of perfect faith is the attitude most favorable to progress and achievement. * * * * * [sidenote: a profound experience.] renunciation is a word that stands for a great experience, and it is, perhaps, too often conceived of as relating to the material rather than to the spiritual life. the question as to whether one shall give up this or that article, or practice, during lent, for instance, is sometimes in the air,--always with the saving clause that the renunciation is merely temporal, and if given up for forty days in the year, is to be fully enjoyed and revelled in on the other three hundred and twenty-five,--a clause that degrades a religious theory to a purely material plane. if it is better for one's command of his higher powers not to take coffee, for instance, during lent, then it is better not to take it for the greater proportion of the year aside from lent. if it is better to be gentle, tolerant, forgiving, and generous for forty days, it is still better to be so for three hundred and sixty-five days. there is really something absolutely absurd as well as repellent in the apparent acceptation that to live the higher, sweeter, fuller, nobler life is a penitential affair,--to be endured but not enjoyed, and limited chiefly to lenten periods and the special holy days of the christian church. for religion is the life, the continual life of every hour and moment, and consists in the quality of that constant life. the offices of religion, the ceremonial forms, are quite another matter. they have their place, and a most important one. the gathering together at stated hours and periods for the devotions of religious worship is so great an aid to the christian life as well to be ranked indispensable to the community and the nation; and while it is true that the letter killeth but the spirit giveth life, yet the letter, rightly interpreted, is filled with the spirit, and conveys it to us. the cry of certain reformers (?) that society has outgrown the church, has little claim to consideration, for the church itself is a progressive institution, and moves forward and enlarges itself with still larger revelations of the divine truth. the great opportunities for renunciation come not in the guise of temporal and material things; whether one shall eat or drink this thing or the other; whether he shall forego the theatre, or deprive himself of music, or array himself in sackcloth and ashes, or in purple and fine linen. the real question comes in the guise of the spiritual problems. one comes to know, for instance, of an act of his neighbor's which is really one of treachery and betrayal of trust. circumstances arise in which he could put his finger upon the evidential chain revealing this lapse from integrity. shall he do it? perhaps in the spiritual vista three ways open to him. the one would be to reveal the affair publicly; but this is crude if not cruel, and to touch the spring that precipitates discord and controversy is hardly less disastrous than to precipitate war. discord only engenders evil, and it never produces good results. evil things must, of course, be resisted, and combat inevitably results,--but discord for the sake of revealing some one's inadvertences is invariably disastrous as well as morally wrong. then there is the method of seeking the person directly, and laying before him his error, thus giving him the opportunity of any extenuating explanation, and protecting his reputation in the genuineness of true friendship, from the world. and this course is often the wisest as well as the noblest, and really requires more heroism than the former one. yet, after these there is still another, and it is absolutely the most potent, the most successful in its results, the most truly uplifting for all concerned. has one been wronged, or misrepresented, or in any way injured? let him commit it all, unreservedly, to the very immediate, the very real, the infinitely potent power of the divine world. let him, as his own form of personal renunciation, absolutely forgive whatever annoyance or injury he has received, and let him pray, not for any vengeance against the wrong-doer, but that the divine love and light would so envelop and direct the one who has erred as to enable him to free his own spirit from whatever fault he had been led into, and to rise into such regions of spiritual life that never again would he repeat it. how beautiful is the counsel given by whittier:-- "my heart was heavy, for its trust had been abused, its kindness answered with foul wrong. so, turning gloomily from my fellow-men, one summer sabbath day i strolled among the green mounds of the village burial-place; where, pondering how all human love and hate find one sad level, and how, soon or late, wronged and wrong-doer, each with meekened face, and cold hands folded over a still heart, pass the green threshold of our common grave, whither all footsteps tend, whence none depart, awed for myself, and pitying my race, our common sorrow, like a mighty wave, swept all my pride away, and trembling i forgave!" forgiveness,--forgiveness in love, and in readiness to aid and to rejoice in all future success of the one who had erred,--is not this the highest renunciation of the christian life? is it not this which is set before us in the progress of spirituality? mutual forgiveness, mutual aid, mutual trust and sustaining, realizing that we all err and need to be forgiven even as we need to forgive,--shall we not in these touch the _blessedness_ of sacrifice rather than its barren husk, and find in it that "soul of happiness" which should be the perpetual atmosphere of the higher life? for "this is the life eternal--to know thee, the only true god," and humanity knows god just in proportion to the degree in which it is able to partake of the divine spirit and translate its religious aspiration into practical guidance for the affairs of the day. probably the one solution of the problem of life in all its intricacies and its perplexing and baffling experiences lies in that trust in god which is the soul's absolute surrender to the divine will. even in this solution, however, perplexities not unfrequently lie, from the fact that it is not always easy to separate that inevitableness which runs through human affairs from the results that we, ourselves, produce by our own series of choices and our habitual currents of thought. "a good will has nothing to fear," says père de caussade; "it can but fall under that all-powerful hand which guides and sustains it in all its wanderings. it is this divine hand which draws it toward the goal when it has wandered therefrom, which restores it to the path. the work of the divine action is not in proportion to the capacity of a simple, holy soul, but to her purity of intention; nor does it correspond to the means she adopts, the projects she forms, the counsel she follows. the soul may err in all these, and this not rarely happens; but with a good will and pure intention she can never be misled. when god sees this good disposition he overlooks all the rest, and accepts as done what the soul would assuredly do if circumstances seconded her good will." nevertheless, as things go in this world, the good will may encounter the most peculiarly trying experiences. the most entire and absolute devotion of thought and interest, of love, friendship, regard,--whatever may be,--pouring itself out lavishly, asking nothing but to give of the best the soul conceives, meets the experience of total indifference in return. had it given coldness instead of ardent regard, selfish scheming instead of infinite and vital interest and absorbing devotion, the result could not be less devoid of response or recognition. nor is this, perhaps, as life goes, an exceptional experience, though the multiplication of instances does not tend to make any single one less bitter or less tragically sad. loss is common, but that statistical truth does not make one's own losses less disastrous or less difficult to bear. yet, accepting all these experiences that are encountered as absolute facts in life, facts from which there is no appeal, and for which, alas, there is no mitigation, what remains? one may feel as if he would gladly give up the whole business of trying to live at all, but that is not a matter that is optional with the individual. one has to live out his appointed days in this phase of being, and it is only the person of defective intellect as well as defective moral power who will not take the gift of life and make the best--not the worst--of it. mr. longfellow's familiar lines, "not enjoyment and not sorrow is our destined end or way; but to act, that each to-morrow find us further than to-day," have often been pronounced trite, but they contain a vital philosophy. it is not enjoyment, or the reverse, which is the aim; but development. and the culture of the soul lies in these mingled experiences; in the baffled efforts, the devotion that gives itself without return or response,--it lies in the doing and the giving, and not in the receiving. nor does one fare onward uncompanioned by the friends and helpers unseen, as well as by those in this visible world. "'mortal,' they softly say, 'peace to thy heart! we, too, yes, mortal, have been as thou art, hope-lifted, doubt-depressed, seeing in part; tried, troubled, tempted, sustained as thou art.'" the spiritual faith and that courage and persistence of energy which is the fruition of faith,--and which are both results of the recognition and acceptance of the great truth so luminously revealed by bishop brooks when he says, "jesus never treated his life as if it were a temporary deposit of the divine life on the earth, cut off and independent of its source; he always treated it as if it lived by its association with the father's life, on which it rested,"--this faith and courage go forward to complete themselves in exhilaration, in firmness of purpose, and in actual achievement. one finds that he not only gains the strength of that which he overcomes, but that he gains a higher plane of life altogether, a more exalted view and a purer atmosphere by accepting cheerfully and lovingly the discipline of denial and limitation, and using the experience as a stepping-stone, and not as an obstacle to his endeavors. there are three ways of meeting the disappointments and denials that are--for the most part--somewhat inevitable to every human life: one of sheer despair, of the relinquishing of every effort, and, in the extreme degree of this feeling, resorting to the apparent extinction of life by suicide; the second, of resignation, that is still, however, a hopeless and passive and negative state, in which the man anchors himself to some mere platitudes of submission to the divine will, misunderstanding and misinterpreting and misapplying the great and sublime law of obedience and translating it into conditions of spiritual and mental inactivity that are only a degree less degrading than the cowardice and ignorance that rushes into suicide; and the third, of learning the great lesson involved in the disappointment. submission to the divine will is all very well; it is one of the sublimest of the divine laws; but it is not fulfilled by a hopeless and inert evasion of all the duties and demands of life,--it is, instead, in its integrity and its deep significance, fulfilled by the _joyful_ acceptance of the leading, the _willing_ surrender that opens a still wider view and a still more vital faith in the divine wisdom. another way in which denial and defeat and thwarted desires or plans can be met is one still higher and greater, and is that path by which true spiritual advancement is made. this is, not despair and hopelessness because an apparently impassable wall arises across the pathway; not even mere content, and cordial or joyful submission however noble that attitude may be; but there is a loftier state in which the denial can be met; it is not merely an acceptance of god's manifest leading that is so informed with faith that it becomes ceaselessly joyful, but it is to even discern in limitation, in denial, new and sublime opportunities. one's dearest hopes are suddenly, by circumstances and conditions entirely outside his control, totally cut off. what then? at that moment an entire world of new possibilities opens, and it rests with the man himself to develop these into something far greater than the scope of his former hope or expectation could reveal. he can bring to bear a power of spiritual energy that shall transform the very ill-fortune itself into one transcendently beautiful and even angelic. he can lift all the factors of his individual problem to the divine plane of love. for love is the spiritual alchemy,--not merely the love for friends and for those near and dear to us; not merely the love for those who are agreeable and winning and whose high qualities inspire it,--but love, love and good will for all. the command to love one's enemies is not an idle nor even an impossible one. the whole law--the whole philosophy, it may be--of life can be read in the counsel, "as ye have therefore opportunity, do good unto all men." do good,--do the right thing, the kind, the generous thing, regardless of return (for which one usually cares little or not at all), or even of recognition (for which one usually cares a great deal), regardless of the recognition,--let the good be done. let one, finding himself suddenly confronted by disaster or defeat, resolve: all that has been, every factor and every circumstance that has led up to this moment, shall be for good and never for evil. it shall be for good to each and all and every one involved in it. even loss or sadness shall be transmuted into gain and joy on a higher than the mere earthly plane. for life "shall be kept open, that the father's life may flow through it." always may one realize the profound truth that "the going down of the walls between our life and our lord's life, though it consisted of the failure of our dearest theories and the disappointment of our dearest plans,--that, too, could be music to us if through the breach we saw the hope that henceforth our life was to be one with his life, and his was to be ours." prayer, in its relation to god and the divine laws; its practical effect upon the immediate events of life, and its power to transform the spiritual self, is one of the great problems of the intellectual and the scientific as well as of the religious life. one day a prayer seems absolutely and undoubtedly answered,--the relation between the prayer and the fulfilment being too direct to admit of classing it under coincidence; and again the purpose that is made a continual supplication perhaps recedes from the realm of the possible to that of the impossible, and the more fervent the entreaty, the more absolute and hopeless seems the denial. by means of which, it may be, one learns a very high spiritual lesson,--that of not desiring any specific event or fulfilment, but of praying, instead, to be kept in harmony with the divine laws, to be enabled to make his life a means of aid and true service to others, and to think as little as possible about any special conditions for himself. "he that loseth his life shall find it," is the affirmation of a very deep philosophy as well as of sacred truth. to entirely emancipate one's mind from thoughts of himself, and to fill it with the inspiration and the sweetness and exhilaration of making his life a quest after every good, and an increasing means for service to humanity, is the only way to find it in the truest and largest sense. so, for the most part, the highest use of prayer is not to ask for the specific gift or event. in a work entitled "esoteric christianity" by annie besant there is a chapter on prayer in which we find mrs. besant saying:-- "in the invisible world there exist many kinds of intelligences, which come into relationship with man,--a veritable jacob's ladder, on which the angels of god ascend and descend, and above which stands the lord himself. some of these intelligences are mighty spiritual powers, others are exceedingly limited beings, inferior in consciousness to man. this occult side of nature is a fact recognized by all religions. all the world is filled with living things, invisible to fleshy eyes. the invisible worlds interpenetrate the visible, the crowds of intelligent beings throng round us on every side. some of these are accessible to human requests and others are amenable to the human will. christianity recognizes the existence of the higher classes of intelligences under the general name of angels, and teaches that they are 'ministering spirits;' but what is their ministry, what the nature of their work, what their relationship to human beings?--all that was part of the instruction given in the lesser mysteries, as the actual communication with them was enjoyed in the greater, but in modern days these truths have sunk into the background. for the protestant the ministry of angels is little more than a phrase." * * * * * [sidenote: the law of prayer.] mrs. besant notes that it seems almost impossible for the ordinary student to discover the law according to which a prayer is or is not productive. "and the first thing necessary in seeking to understand this law," she says, "is to analyze prayer itself." mrs. besant classifies prayers as: ( ) those which are for definite worldly advantages; ( ) those which are for help in moral and intellectual difficulties, and for spiritual growth; and lastly, those which consist in meditation on, and adoration of, the divine perfection; and then we find her saying:-- "in addition to all these man is himself a constant creator of invisible beings, for the vibrations of his thoughts and desires create forms of subtle matter, the only life of which is the thought or the desire which ensouls them; he thus creates an army of invisible servants who range through the invisible worlds seeking to do his will. yet, again, there are in the world human helpers, who work there in their subtle bodies while their physical bodies are sleeping, whose attentive ear may catch a cry for help. and to crown all, there is the ever-present, ever-conscious life of god himself, potent and responsive at every point of his realm,--that all-pervading, all-embracing, all-sustaining life of love, in which we live and move. as naught that can give pleasure or pain can touch the human body without the sensory nerves carrying the message of its impact to the brain centres, so does every vibration in the universe, which is his body, touch the consciousness of god, and draw thence responsive action. nerve cells, nerve threads, and muscular fibres may be the agents of feeling and moving, but it is the man who feels and acts; so may myriads of intelligences be the agents, but it is god who knows and answers. nothing can be so small as not to affect that delicate omnipresent consciousness, nothing so vast as to transcend it." in the most literal sense we live and move and have our being in the realm of spiritual forces. "our life is hid with christ in god." that assertion is no mere mystic phase, but a plain and direct assertion of an absolute spiritual truth. our real life, all our significant action, is in the invisible realm, and the manifestation in the physical sphere is simply the results and effects of which the processes and causes are all in the ethereal world. prayer, in all its many and varied phases, is simply activity on the spiritual side, and because of this it is the motor of life. it is the key to that intense form of energy which is the divine life, and its highest development is reached when the soul asks only for one thing,--the one that includes all others,--that of union with god. "anxiety and misgiving," wrote fénelon, "proceed solely from love of self. the love of god accomplishes all things quietly and completely; it is not anxious or uncertain. the spirit of god rests continually in quietness. perfect love casteth out fear. it is in forgetfulness of self that we find peace. happy is he who yields himself completely, unconsciously, and finally to god. listen to the inward whisper of his spirit and follow it--that is enough; but to listen one must be silent, and to follow one must yield." the quiet and perfect obedience to the divine will, taught by fénelon, has nothing in common with a mere passive and blind acceptance of events as they occur. obedience to the heavenly vision is not in standing still, but in following. it finds its best expression in energy and not in inactivity. the more absolutely one abandons himself to the divine will, the more unceasingly will he fill every hour with effort toward the working out of the higher and the more ideal conditions. an ideal once revealed is meant to be realized. that is the sole reason for its being revealed at all, and the way of life is to unfalteringly work toward its realization. it is a curious fact that there can be no achievement of life so improbable or so impossible that it cannot be realized by the power--the absolutely invincible power--of mental fidelity. let one hold his purpose in thought, and the unseen forces thus generated are working for it day and night. like one of the new inventions in electricity, so thought--a force infinitely more potent than electricity--sets up a certain rate of vibration in the spiritual atmosphere and works as with irresistible sway. the individual who is held to possess great strength of will is, really, simply the one capable of holding the thought, of keeping a certain tenacity of purpose. this power alone redeems one from living on shifting sands, and being perhaps, at last, engulfed and swallowed up in the quicksands of his own shattered visions and ideals, which never grew to fulfilment because of his infirmity of will and his closing his eyes to the star that had shone in his firmament. the very pain and trial and multiplying obstacles that one may encounter who definitely sets his steps along a certain way, are only helps, not hindrances. one gains the strength of that which he overcomes. he transforms obstacles into stepping-stones. for we live and move and have our being in an ethereal atmosphere, which is universal, and which unerringly registers every thought and every energy, and transmutes these into living forces. thought is creative, and if the thought be held with sufficient intensity, it acts upon every element that has to do with the final achievement. imagination--which is simply clairvoyant vision--discerns the ideal in the dim distance, and thought is the motive force by means of which it is achieved. to be "infirm of will" is, therefore, the greatest of misfortunes, as it inevitably produces complete failure in all the affairs of life. however hopeless a certain combination of events may look, it really is not so. nothing is ever hopeless, because nothing is final. conditions are forever flowing like a river, and may be modified and transformed at any moment. failure or success is optional with the individual, for each lies in character, and is not a matter of possessions or external conditions. to become cynical, despondent, indifferent, is failure, and one has no moral right to fall to that level. associations that induce these feelings should be abandoned. the happy conditions of life are to be had on the same terms. the fretful, the ill-tempered, the selfish, the exacting, must, somewhere and some way, learn their lesson and grow toward the light; but their influence should not be allowed to poison the spiritual atmosphere. it is neither a moral duty, nor is it even true sympathy to share the gloom and depression generated by these qualities. the inward whisper of the spirit is the summons to a nobler plane on which all the higher powers find their expression. it is a fatal mistake to enter into the dark and unreasoning moods of every unfortunately constituted person. to do this habitually is to so deplete the forces of the spirit that one has nothing left. let one keep his heart and mind in the currents of the divine power; let him actively follow the vision that is revealed to him, and he shall achieve and realize his ideals. it is the law and the prophets. a force as resistless as that of the attraction that holds the stars in their courses will lead him on. "the love of god accomplishes all things quietly and completely." the mystic truth that lies enfolded in the words, "cast thyself into the will of god and thou shalt become as god," is one of marvellous potency. to achieve the state of absolute peace and reconcilement with the divine will is to achieve poise and power. for to be thus "cast into the will of god" means no mere languid acquiescence or hopeless, despairing acceptance; it means no merely negative and passive state that accepts the will of god for lack of sufficient stamina to assert its own will. but, instead, it means an intelligent recognition of the divine order; it means the will to gain the higher plane of life; it means the glad entering into a new and finer atmosphere charged with the utmost potency, and to become so receptive to it, so much a part of this energy as to command its expression in various forms of activity. the "will of god" is, indeed, the atmosphere of heavenly magnetism; it is liberation, not captivity; it is achievement, not renunciation. people talk about being "resigned" to the will of god; as well might they phrase being "resigned" to paradise! that has been an inconceivably false tradition that repeated the prayer, "thy will be done," as if it were the most sorrowful, instead of the most joyful, petition. there is another phase of experience into which those of a certain sensitiveness of temperament are apt to fall when encountering the loss or pain that, in one form or another, seems a part of the discipline of the present life; a phase that can only be described as spiritual loneliness and desolation, in which no effort seems possible. it is an experience portrayed in the following stanzas:-- "i see a spirit by thy side, purple-winged and eagle-eyed, looking like a heavenly guide. though he seems so bright and fair, ere thou trust his proffered care, pause a little, and beware! if he bid thee dwell apart, tending some ideal smart in a sick and coward heart; in self-worship wrapped alone, dreaming thy poor griefs are grown more than other men have known; though his words seem true and wise, soul, i say to thee, arise, he is a demon in disguise!" it is a phase in which one feels his own peculiar sorrow as the most unendurable of all. perhaps it is--but one _must_ abandon that point of view. "that way madness lies." his life may be desolate, but he must not allow himself to meditate on that conviction. it is moral as well as mental disaster, and as life is a divine responsibility, not to be evaded because things in general go wrong, one has no right to live in less than his best expression every day and hour. in darkness and desolation, even, one may find a spiritual exaltation. such a period in life may be like that of the seed, isolated and buried in the ground--that it may germinate and grow; that it may spring up in leaf and flower and fruit, and reach out to life and light with multiplied forces in the transfiguration of new power. a period that seems empty and devoid of stimulus may be, after all, that of highest potency. when nothing crystallizes into events, all the elements are plastic to the impress of spiritual energy. "cast thyself into the will of god." this is the crucible from which is distilled the alembic of power. one may stamp the image of noblest achievement upon this plastic period. it is the time in which to create on the spiritual side. to live in poise, and beauty, and harmony is the finest of all the fine arts. it is, in itself, the occupation of life. "i am primarily engaged to myself," said emerson, "to be a public servant of the gods; to demonstrate to all men that there is good will and intelligence at the heart of things, and ever higher and yet higher leadings. these are my engagements. if there be power in good intention, in fidelity, and in toil, the north wind shall be purer, the stars in heaven shall glow with a kindlier beam, that i have lived." it is in the will of god that perfect serenity and joy shall be found. "in his will is our peace," says dante. the acceptance of this profound truth is the absolute key to all harmony and happiness. when sorrow is felt as a dark cloud, a crushing weight, the energies are paralyzed; but when one can rise above this inertia and cease questioning that which he regards as a mysterious and--in all humility--undeserved calamity; when he can simply accept it as an expression of the divine action that is moulding the soul, and thus leave it all in peace of spirit; when, forgetting the past, he can press onward to the things that are before,--then, indeed, does he receive of the true ministry of pain. "every consecration made in the darkness is reaching out toward the light, and in the end it must come into the light, strong in the strength which it won in its life and struggle in the dark." there is a great renewal and regeneration of life in the actual realization of saint paul's admonition as to forgetting the things that are behind to press onward to those before. one should force himself, simply by an act of will and by his rational convictions of the beauty and value of life, to let go past experiences that chain him to sorrow, and, instead, link himself in that magnetism of spiritual apprehension possible to achieve, to the enchantment and power of the future. even the most tragic sorrows lose their hold over one if he will reflect that these, as well as his joys, are alike expressions of the divine will. "seek you," said a devout catholic priest, "the secret of union with god? there is none other than to avail yourselves of all that he sends you. you have but to accept all that he sends, and let it do its work in you.... no created mind or heart can teach you what this divine action will do in you; you will learn it by successive experiences. your life unceasingly flows into this incomprehensible abyss, where we have but to love and accept as best that which the present moment brings, with perfect confidence in this divine action which of itself can only work you good." when the divine action comes in the guise of joy and happiness, one is swift to give thanks. but when it comes in the guise of pain, shall he not also see in it the expression of god's will, and accept it with that absolute confidence in the wisdom and beneficence of the divine action that is, in itself, peace and sweetness? for it is a "light affliction which is but for a moment," and the promise is ours that it "worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." and this is not merely nor mostly a religious enthusiasm; it is the only practical working basis on which one whom experiences touch deeply can live at all. without this philosophy sorrow would undermine the health and paralyze all the energy that should express itself in achievements. but the secret of joy is hidden in pain. "for what god deigns to try with sorrow he means not to decay to-morrow; but through that fiery trial last when earthly ties and bonds are past." an experience that receives this test must hold deep significance. let one accept it,--not only with patience and trust, but triumphantly, radiantly, as in the exquisite realization of the divine words: "for ye have need of patience, that after ye have done the will of god, ye shall receive the promise." and the promise is sure if the conditions have been fulfilled. it is only a question of time. even heaven itself is but "the perfect sight of christ," and why shall not this radiant vision flash upon us, now and here in the earthly life, and make heaven of every day? it is not merely by the change called death that we enter into the spiritual world. the turn of thought, the thrill of love and sacrifice and generous outgoing, carries one, at any instant, into the heavenly life. it is only the qualities that find there their native atmosphere which give beauty, depth, and significance to this human life. it is only as one lives _divinely_ that he lives at all,--only as one recognizes "the perfect sight of the christ" that he recognizes the full scope of his responsibility and enters on his truest experiences. * * * * * [sidenote: conduct and beauty.] matthew arnold dwells often upon "our need for conduct, our need for beauty;" and he finds the springs of the supply to be, not in the "strenuous" life, always at high pressure and extreme tension, but in the thoughtful leisure, in the serenity of repose, in the devotion to poetry and art. "how," he questions, "are poetry and eloquence to exercise the power of relating the modern results of natural science to man's instinct for conduct, his instinct for beauty? and here again i answer that i do not know _how_ they will exercise it, but that they can and will exercise it i am sure. i do not mean that modern philosophical poets and modern philosophical moralists are to come and relate for us, in express terms, the results of modern scientific research to our instinct for conduct, our instinct for beauty. but i mean that we shall find, as a matter of experience, if we know the best that has been thought and uttered in the world, we shall find that the art and poetry and eloquence of men who lived, perhaps, long ago, who had the most limited natural knowledge, who had the most erroneous conceptions about many important matters,--we shall find that this art, and poetry, and eloquence, have, in fact, not only the power of refreshing and delighting us, they have also the power,--such is the strength and worth, in essentials, of their author's criticism of life,--they have a fortifying, and elevating, and quickening, and suggestive power, capable of wonderfully helping us to relate the results of modern science to our need for conduct, our need for beauty." life has a tendency to become far too "strenuous" with the best one can do, even; and the need is not for greater pressure of intensity, but for greater receptivity of intellectual and spiritual refreshment; for a calmer trust and a loftier faith. the joy of faith in its inspiration and emotion is wonderfully renewed from the divine word. "the lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy god thy glory." the gospels are full of these positive and radiant assurances that invest faith with the most absolute joy of confidence and positiveness of trust. these assurances meet the eye and enter the heart with the certainty of a personal message, directly given from god. and it is in this realm of the higher thought, of that culture of the soul which is the true object and aim of the temporary life on earth, that the relief from the too strenuous pressure of affairs must be found. the human soul is so constituted that it cannot live unless it breathes its native air of inspiration and joy and divineness. it is stifled in the "strenuous" lower life, its energies are paralyzed unless it seek renewal at the divine springs. it is this strenuousness of latter-day life, unrelieved by love and by prayer; unrelieved by the spiritual luxury of loving service and outgoing thought; this strenuous attitude, intent on getting and greed and gain and personal advantage, that, at last, ends in the discords and the crimes, the despair and the suicides, whose records fill the daily press. the cure for all these ills is to be found only in the higher life of conduct and of beauty. "thou shalt show me the way of life: thou shalt make me full of joy with thy countenance." here, and here alone, is the cure, the relief, the leading into peace and serenity and exaltation. it is not that the "fierce energy" of life is in excess, but that its application is in wrong and unmeaning directions. let the soul find its true refreshment and infinitely sustaining tide of energy in god, and immediately "old things have passed away," and "all have become new," and life is full of exhilaration and joy. "every day we ought to renew our purpose, saying to ourselves: this day let us make a sound beginning, for what we have hitherto done is naught." every day is a new and definite re-entrance upon life. nor is it worth while to linger too much on the mistakes, the errors of yesterday. true, the consequences of errors and mistakes linger in life until they are worked out; but the working out is, after all, only a question of time and of unfaltering persistence in the upward way, and thus a new foundation of life is laid: "old things have passed away and all things have become new." it is in the serene and joyous exaltation of life alone that one truly lives; in that sweetness of mutual trust and generous aims and over-flowing love that radiates its joy and beauty to all with whom it comes in contact, and which is perpetually fed and perpetually renewed by the constant communion of the soul with god. on the new year's eve of there was a wonderful phenomenon transpiring in the stellar universe, which continued during several weeks. that night was one of the utmost beauty. the air was as clear as crystal, and the constellation of orion gleamed and sparkled like a colossal group of diamonds against an azure background. the entire sky was a scene of unparalleled grandeur and magnificence. the superb constellations of orion and ursa major (familiarly known as the "dipper") blazed with an intense brilliancy that seemed the very incarnation and concentration of electric vitality. five of the stars in ursa major were then receding from our atmosphere at the rate of twenty thousand miles a second; the other two were approaching; and the phenomenon of these weeks was in the changing aspect of that constellation which the astronomers hold will require some two thousand years to complete. then will ursa major, as seen from the earth, be entirely changed. such facts as these, and the speculation they suggest, offer to us a new basis for the contemplation of life. if it require a period of two thousand years to produce the appreciable change of grouping in a constellation whose stars are moving at the rate of twenty thousand miles a second, this fact indicates to us the infinite spaces and the unlimited time in which the universe moves onward in its appointed path. with the individual life, as with the star,--it is the direction in which it is moving that determines the results. in this truth lies infinite encouragement. let one set his feet in the upward way, and keep steadfastly to his aim; let him keep unfaltering faith with his ideals,--and his success in whatever direction he is moving, his ultimate achievement of every aim he follows, is assured. it becomes simply a question of time when the entire aspect of his life shall be changed even as that of constellations in their appointed course. it is in this manner alone that one may control his life,--not by the working of an instantaneous miracle, but by absolute fidelity to a definite ideal of progressive change. "quicksand years that whirl me i know not whither, your schemes, politics, fail, lines give way, substances mock and elude me, only the theme i sing, the great and strong-poss'd soul, eludes not, one's self must never give way--that is the final substance--that out of all is sure, out of politics, triumphs, battles, life, what at last finally remains? when shows break up what but one's self is sure?" the "quicksand years" whirl away many things. schemes dissolve and vanish; new combinations constantly arise; every day is, indeed, a new beginning, and "every morn is the world made new." but a purpose that remains unchanged amid all the shifting scenery of perpetual new environments must eventually fulfil itself. the stars in their courses fight for it. the celestial laws insure its final goal. "out of politics, triumphs, battles, life, what at last finally remains? when shows break up, what but one's self is sure?" one has this sure self only in proportion as he relates his life to the divine life. the only permanence is to be found in the currents of divine energy, infinite and exhaustless. there are many ways of watching the new year in; but the somewhat unique personal experience of welcoming it on that eve of , gazing at the vast expanse of the brilliant skies through the windows of a sleeping-car, had its claim to beauty and sacredness. the rush of the train gave a sense of almost floating out into the ethereal spaces. there was a detachment from earth that hardly comes even in the sacred service of the church on that mystic midnight of a new year. one seemed alone with the infinite powers, and a new and deeper trust in the giver of all good was inspired. the beautiful lines of whittier came to memory:-- "i know not what the future hath of marvel and surprise, assured alone that life and death his mercy underlies." thus might one remember and dream while flying on under the new year's skies, and realize anew that any trend of thought is inevitably creating its future. auto-suggestion is the most potent of forces, and the assertion that "as a man thinketh so is he," is literally true. as he thinketh, so he _shall_ be, also; and he can thus think himself into new conditions and attract to himself new forces. he has the power to keep his feet set in this upward pathway, and so sure as is the destiny of the stars and the constellations on their course through the heavenly spaces, so sure is his own arrival at the point toward which he is moving, and his achievement of the supreme end he holds steadfastly in view. thus life will be to him no period of mere "quicksand years," but, instead, a series of advancing realization and beautiful states. ideals may be swiftly realized by the accelerated energy of concentration and prayer, and the secret of transformation from defeat and denial to the perfect hour of triumph and happiness lies, for each one, within his own keeping. "one's self must never give way--that is the final substance." * * * * * [sidenote: the divine panorama.] "do we not all wish that we could live our lives over again in the light of our present experience?" remarked rev. doctor charles gordon ames; "but this is just what god lets us do." here, in a word, was that divine panorama of the completeness of life revealed; the part of it lived in this present phase of experience being infinitely less in its relation, compared to the whole, than is one day in its relation to the longest life possible on earth. one day out of seventy, eighty, ninety years, would not seem so much; yet this entire period of even the longest life on earth, in its relative proportion to the life of all the eternities, is far less than is one day out of a lifetime in its proportional relation to immortality. this spiritual panorama suggests its infinite energy of hope; it reinforces courage; it reveals in the most impressive manner the significance of living. for it is the tendency which always determines the result. there can hardly be a question but that distrust of conditions is a fatal element in all effort and achievement. depression might, indeed, well take its place among the seven deadly sins that dante names. there are serious errors whose effect is less disastrous than is that of habitual depression of spirits. mental power is one's working capital, and the degree of power depends, absolutely, on the quality of thought, or, as the phrase goes, on "the state of mind." conditions determine events, but conditions are plastic to thought. on them one may stamp the impress. if he persist in regarding himself as a victim to fate and his life as a sacrifice and burnt offering, he can very soon work this conception into actuality. he can--indeed he will, and he inevitably must--become that which he continually sees himself, in mental vision. but if he will take his stand, with poise and serenity, on spiritual truth; if he will amend his life according to spiritual laws; if he will accept failure as merely a stepping-stone to ultimate success,--as "the triumph's evidence,"--ill fortune can establish no dominant power over his life. that things have gone wrong is only, after all, a proof that they _may_ go right. the consequences of error or mistake warn one not to make the same error or mistake again; and therefore the consequences, however unpleasant or sad at the moment, are really educative in their nature, and their very trial or pain becomes, if truly recognized, a friendly and redemptive power. then, too, time is a variable factor. it is degree, not duration, that it means. the consequences of an error may be accepted and annulled swiftly. intensity of feeling will condense a year, an eternity, even, into an hour. and the "new day," days in which, as doctor ames so charmingly wrote,-- "--god sets for you a fair clean page to write anew the lesson blotted hitherto,"-- a new day may be a new lifetime as well as that "next life" beyond the change we call death. how wonderfully emerson unfolds the magic possible to a day. "one of the illusions," he says, "is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. _write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year._ no man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is doomsday. there are days which are the carnival of the year. the angels assume flesh, and repeatedly become visible. the imagination of the gods is excited, and rushes on every side into forms. yesterday not a bird peeped; the world was barren, peaked, and pining: to-day 't is inconceivably populous; creation swarms and meliorates." the speculative idea that immortality is an achievement rather than a gift is not new, but whenever it is formulated, as in a recent sermon by rev. doctor parkhurst, it startles many people and arouses antagonism, so far as it is not truly understood. yet it has its deepest aspects of spiritual truth, and it is the idea constantly, persistently, and most impressively taught by saint paul throughout the entire gospels. we are constantly besought to _lay hold_ on the eternal life; to press forward toward immortal things; to be renewed in the spirit; to "put on the new man, which after god is created in righteousness and true holiness; to follow him, who is the life, the truth, the way." the entire teaching of the gospels is one forcible system of active and unfaltering endeavor in the growing achievement of spirituality, which determines immortality. it is the exact accountant--measure for measure. so much spirituality, so much immortality. nor does this assertion partake in the slightest degree of the nature of a metaphysical problem, to be comprehended only by the theologian and the philosopher. it is the most simple, clear, and direct of propositions. we all accept saint paul's assertion that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven. so far as one lives only in the processes of the physical life he is not living the life of those spiritual energies which alone lay hold on immortality. there is a certain degree of intelligent consciousness that is inseparable from this physical life; an intelligence that buys and sells, and bargains and calculates on the physical plane, and is sufficient to produce a certain rational status of life. there are not wanting individuals who never rise above this plane. they may, and often do, acquire possessions and even power on the limited plane of the outward life; they may even have some formal and ceremonial religious observances which they mistake for christianity, but which are the framework ready and able to inspire them if filled with the spirit, but which, to them, remain empty and dead. the man whose body, simply, occupies his church pew on sunday, and who on monday proceeds to cheat his neighbor, is not, we will all agree, the man who has really entered into the true privileges offered by the church. the sacrament of sunday must become the consecration of monday. unless this be true the man has not _laid hold_ on immortality. so we see that this lower plane of considerable intelligence and consciousness, related exclusively to the visible and the tangible, must be eliminated from our conceptions of immortality. there is nothing at all in this that can possibly survive death. doctor john fiske gives a fine and comprehensive definition of that degree of achievement which is above the level of death when he says:-- "in the highest of creatures the divine immanence has acquired sufficient concentration and steadiness to survive the dissolution of the flesh, and assert an individuality untrammelled by the limitations which in the present life everywhere persistently surround it." here we have the initial truth. the acquirement of "sufficient concentration and steadiness to survive the dissolution of the flesh,"--_and_ "to assert an individuality untrammelled by the limitations of the present life,"--when man has progressed so far as this, then, and then alone, has he _achieved_ immortality. he has laid hold on its initial phase. for immortality is infinite beyond conception. it is as infinite as space, and as the idea of god. to have achieved enough of this "concentration and steadiness"--which is merely another phrase for spirituality--to survive death, is no more achieving immortality, in its wholeness and completeness, than learning the alphabet is the achievement of scholarship in its infinite resources. it cannot be conceived of as complete, but, instead, as an endless chain of infinite possibilities, of ever new and ever widening vistas. one of the noblest men and loftiest thinkers of the day, referring, in a private letter, to this sermon of doctor parkhurst that inspired such wide discussion, thus wrote:-- "that paragraph from doctor parkhurst expresses my idea regarding immortality. there must be a master (good) thought or passion. it is the angel with wings that wafts the soul where the man most longed to be in life,--with the purest and best. 'as one thinks, so he shall be,' is sound doctrine. all this embodies what i once read of sappho, who counselled her pupils to cultivate their thoughts and grow, or they would have nothing to carry with them, nothing to make a soul of, nothing to survive the grave. "i believe that on this idea rests the scheme of life through faith in christ. as he is the highest, the ideal, the supreme, the soul finds rest in him, and there grows into a life that death cannot annihilate. in the presence of the great master passion, with the soul thrilling with nobleness, as when dying for another, burned at the stake for righteousness' sake, the spirit goes straight to god, into the infinite bosom, an angel fit for only heaven. "if the soul hungers and thirsts for god it will reach him. if, at the last moment, a man's whole nature cries longingly in faith to christ,--that will save him, waft him, draw him into the divine abode. and this explains the christian plan of so-called salvation. faith in christ is the master passion, and love the magnet that draws the soul to its own kind. it may be set down as true that vice and sin have no vitality. wickedness is death. virtue and love of god are life." but the question recurs just here, is there absolutely no possibility of immortality for him who does not advance beyond a certain conscious and partly automatic intelligence on the physical plane? does the gate of possibilities, does the door of opportunity close with this brief mortal life? to that question science as well as faith answers "no." the law of evolution is the law of eternal possibility and opportunity. the spark of immortality--the divine spark, implanted by god, when he made man in his image,--this is eternal in its nature, and unquestionably survives death. but immortality is the result of man's co-operation with the divine. god has implanted the spark. he has placed man in an environment of discipline and of opportunity. the individual _may be_ whatever he, himself, decides and chooses to be. not all in an hour, or in a year; not, perhaps, even in this entire lifetime; but sometime and somewhere he who is unfaltering in his allegiance to his ideal shall realize it at last. and the degree of immediateness and celerity with which he realizes it depends entirely on the degree of spiritual energy that he brings to bear on his purpose. the higher the potency, the swifter the result. * * * * * [sidenote: also the holy ghost, the comforter.] science as well as ethics recognizes the reality of the unseen potencies. science is, indeed, pointing the way. "the influence of the holy spirit, exquisitely called the comforter," says professor william james, "is a matter of actual experience, as solid a reality as that of electro-magnetism," and he adds:-- "the further limits of our being plunge, it seems to me, into an altogether other dimension of existence from the sensible and merely understandable world. name it the mystical region, or the supernatural region, whichever you choose. so far as an ideal impulse originates in this region (and most of them do originate in it, for we find them possessing it in a way for which we cannot otherwise account); we belong to it in a more intimate sense than that in which we belong to the visible world, for we belong in the most intimate sense wherever our ideals belong. yet the unseen region in question is not merely ideal, for it produces effects in the world. when we commune with it, work is absolutely done upon our finite personality, for we are turned into new men, and consequences in the way of conduct follow in the natural world upon our regenerative change. but that which produces effects in another reality must be termed a reality itself, so i feel as if we had no philosophic excuse for calling the unseen or mystical world unreal." not unreal. on the contrary, the unseen is the realm of that which is alone real and abiding. the positiveness of the divine life is a quality that has too little recognition from the world of philosophy and speculation. it is an infinite reservoir of infinite energy, from which may be drawn at any moment, peace, courage, and power. "man can learn to transcend the limitations of finite thought at will. the divine presence is known through experience. the turning to a higher plane is a distinct act of consciousness. it is not a vague twilight, or semi-conscious experience. it is not an ecstasy. it is not a trance. it is not super-consciousness in the vedantic sense. it is not due to self-hypnotization. it is a perfectly calm, sane, sound, rational, common-sense shifting of consciousness from the phenomena of sense perception to the phenomena of seer-ship, from the thought of self to a distinctively higher realm. for example, if the lower self be nervous, anxious, tense, one can in a few moments compel it to be calm. this is not done by a word simply. nor is it done by hypnotism. it is by the exercise of power. one feels the spirit of peace as definitely as heat is perceived on a hot summer day. the power can be as surely used as the sun's rays can be focussed and made to do work, to set fire to wood." in these words there is very clearly set forth a certain spiritual achievement of a definite nature. it is simply the act of liberating the spiritual self from entanglement with the lower self,--the summoning into ascendency of the higher powers. this intense degree of spiritual energy may be achieved with the force and suddenness of a special creation. the physical universe in which man finds himself is not only surrounded by the spiritual universe, but the two are so absolutely interpenetrated that he may live in both, and, as a matter of fact, whoever lives the life of the spirit does live now and here, as an inhabitant of both these realms. the spiritual universe is the reservoir of energy. "the things that are seen are temporal, but those that are unseen are eternal," and faith, as _the substance_ of those things not seen, is a definite potency which is practically related to daily affairs. that is to say, it is an absolute power, by means of which one can fulfil the practical duties of every day. the degree of one's ability to draw from this energy and assimilate it into his life measures his degree of success. doctor ostwald, a german scientist, claims that in energy he has discovered the actual bridge, the missing link, between mind and matter, between the spiritual and the physical worlds; that it is a bridge "which covers the chasm between force and substance," and "which is of a nature sufficiently manifest to embrace the totality of our experiences, the interior as well as the exterior." doctor ostwald claims that there is an immaterial factor, one endowed with neither weight nor mass, which in a quantitative way is just as unchangeable as the mass and weight of material substances, and which, exactly like these, can undergo qualitative transformations of all kinds. he holds that energy may be converted from every one of its forms into every other, and its power of transformation is therefore unlimited, and that every change which takes place in the outer world, and every process, may be described by a statement of the kind and amount of energy that has undergone conversion. this conception of energy is a very clear and remarkable one, placing it as the infinite power from which any form of force, spiritual or mechanical, can be derived. in the moral universe the true expression of this energy upon which one may draw infinitely lies in service. it is in so enlarging the personal sphere of life as to include the widest possible range of sympathy and comprehension. the mystic spirit is full of value in reaching out into the realm of spiritual forces, but when these forces are gained they must be applied. the old religious idea used to include a great deal of discussion about saving the soul; but the larger spiritual enlightenment of to-day sees that the phrase "saving the soul" implies a present condition,--the state of love, sympathy, service, by which the soul is saved to-day, and not a vague condition to be only realized in some remote eternity. _now_ is the day of salvation. the success of life lies not in possessions; it lies in keeping the harmonious and perfectly receptive relation with the spiritual realm of forces, and using these forces in every duty and need and opportunity that presents itself. as for always compassing desires, or achieving the possession of this thing or that, is in reality immaterial. the best things in life are often the things one does not have; but they produce effects in the visible world, and often, just in proportion as the things themselves remain in the ethereal realm, is the potency of the effects they produce in the physical realm. this other dimension of existence is one with which the final reckoning must be made. it is no longer length of days, but intensity of energy, that determines results. not length of time, but intensity of purpose, energy of action,--in these lie the secret of achievement. the power that lies in brief moments is the power required for effective life and work. emerson truly says that we talk of the shortness of life, but that life is unnecessarily long. degree and not duration is the test of power in any work, and the application of this truth to the ordinary affairs of life would render it possible to have every day hold in itself the value of a week or a month as usually estimated. the entire trend of progress is toward that intensity of creative energy that fairly speaks things into being. a business man has now on his desk a long-distance telephone, connecting him with far-away cities; he answers his letters by speaking into the phonograph; his typewriting clerk copies them from this, and an hour of his morning represents as much accomplishment as by the old and slower methods would have required days; and thus time is constantly made more valuable. the discoveries in nature are in a perfect correspondence with the advancing requirements of human life. the deeper researches of science are revealing the absolute unity of the entire universe. the earth and the most remote stars are composed of the same matter. the wonderful discovery of spectrum analysis by kirchoff and bunsen in has shown that the whole stellar universe is made up of the same chemical materials as those with which we are familiar upon the earth. a part of the dazzling brilliance of the noonday sun is due to the vapor of iron floating in his atmosphere, and the faint luminosity of the remotest cloudlike nebula is the glow of just such hydrogen as enters into every drop of water that we drink.... "... the generalization of the metamorphosis of forces, which was begun a century ago by count rumford when he recognized heat as a mode of molecular motion, was consummated about the middle of the century, when doctor joule showed mathematically just how much heat is equivalent to just how much visible motion, and when the researches of helmholtz, mayer, and faraday completed the grand demonstration that light and heat and magnetism and electricity and visible motion are all interchangeable one into the other, and are continually thus interchanging from moment to moment." it is not a far cry from these scientific data to the recognition that force, in all its various forms of manifestation, proceeds from the same energy, and that the curious manifestation of it in radium is explained by the possibility that this substance is merely a remarkable conductor of this intense energy in the ether. the human organism may make itself increasingly a conductor and transmitter of this energy, and the secret of coming into perfectly harmonious relations with this energy is the secret of all achievement. "life is a search after power," says emerson, "and this is an element with which the world is so saturated,--there is no chink or crevice in which it is not lodged,--that no honest seeking goes unrewarded.... all power," he adds, "is of one kind; a sharing of the nature of the world." with his characteristically marvellous insight, emerson has, in this paragraph, recognized the truth that, in these latter days, is a matter of absolute scientific discovery. the "life that now is and that which is to come" are no more definitely separable than are the periods of childhood and youth, or youth and manhood. the advance is by evolutionary progress, with no sudden, or visible, change from day to day. the life that now is creates and determines the life that is to come. a man is what he is to-day because of the life he lived yesterday, and last year, and a decade, or several decades, ago. that which we call life--environment, circumstances, conditions--is the sum of the expression of all its past experiences, thought, aspirations, energy, or the lack of thought, aspirations, and energy. one's life is in his own hands; it is subject to his own will power, to his own energy of aspiration. he must aspire and go forward or he will degenerate. there is no possibility of an epoch that is stationary. both in any form of work or art, as well as in mental and spiritual life, one must constantly go forward, or he will find himself going backward. even a pianist as great as paderewski must keep his fingers in practice on the keyboard every day. the painter cannot long absent himself from his canvas without losing in his art. the thinker, the student, must be forever conquering new realms. science is demonstrating the actual existence of another world, transcending, pervading, surrounding this one; a world which interpenetrates our own,--the ethereal in the atmospheric,--and there is one part of the personality of man that dwells continually on this ethereal side. the physical body only conveys a partial expression of the entire being. the spiritual self lived long before it tenanted this present body, and it will continue to live after it has discarded this body. the life that is constantly proceeds to create the life that is to come. in this ethereal world,--which interpenetrates our atmosphere and in which the higher part of man's being continually dwells,--there are stored the finer forces which humanity is now discovering and learning to use. in this realm spirit speaks to spirit, telepathically. the power to thus communicate is an attribute of the spirit, and, whether in or out of the body, does not seem to affect the power. in this ethereal realm are the currents that make possible wireless telegraphy. the grouping and combination of these finer and more intense potencies result in great inventions. this realm is, in short, the miracle world; but a miracle is not something outside the laws of nature. indeed, as phillips brooks truly said, "a miracle is an essential part of the plan of god." it is simply an occurrence under the higher laws, and on a higher plane. the great truths of spiritual life are pouring themselves out to this age with larger revelations of god. they teach the deepening necessity for constant love, for larger service, for a more complete consecration to the divine life that may contribute more and more of usefulness to the human life. to achieve that "closer walk with god" that alone gives power, one must constantly seek larger fields of effort and endeavor, and bring himself face to face with great problems. to live the higher life, the life of the spirit, is not to seek cloistered seclusion, but to enter into all the great opportunities, the difficulties, the privileges, or the penalties, that attend every real endeavor. in this, alone, does one find the life more abundant. in this, alone, lies the secret of making noble the life that now is and glorifying that which is to come. the profound significance, and the illumination brought to the problem of living by simply giving one's self entirely, with belief, and love, and joy, to the will of god, is an experience that transcends human language. too often has the acceptance of god's will been held to be a spirit of the abandonment of despair, or of the mere inertia that ceases from striving and from aspiration. on the contrary, it is the most intense form of action. it embodies the loftiest aspiration. it compels the highest degree of energy. it calls into play every intellectual faculty; it arouses and inspires. it is the regeneration of the individual. he does not know what life is; he does not even begin to live, at all, in any sense worth the name, until he lives and moves and has his being in the will of god. it is, indeed, as professor carl hilty has said, a sense of initiative and power. "what is the happy life?" questions professor hilty. "it is a life of conscious harmony with the divine order of the world, a sense, that is to say, of god's companionship.... the better world we enter is, indeed, entered by faith and not by sight; but this faith grows more confident and more supporting, until it is like an inward faculty of life itself. to substitute for this a world of the outward senses is to find no meaning in life which can convey confidence. faith in god," continues professor hilty, "is a form of experience, not a form of proof.... here then, is the first step toward the discovery of the meaning of life. it is an act of will, a moral venture, a listening to experience. no man can omit this initial step, and no man can teach another the lesson which lies in his own experience. the prophets of the old testament found an accurate expression for this act of will when they described it as a 'turning,' and they went on to assure their people of the perfect inward peace and the sense of confidence which followed this act. 'look unto me and be ye saved,' says isaiah; 'incline your ear and come unto me; hear, and your soul shall live.' from that time to this, thousands of those who have thus changed the direction of their wills have entered into the same sense of peace; while no man who has thus given his will to god has ever felt himself permanently bewildered or forsaken. "here, also, in this free act of the will is attained that sense of liberty which is described as righteousness. it is a sense of initiative and power, as though one were not wholly the subject of arbitrary grace, but had a certain positive companionship with god.... this step once taken both the world in which one lives and one's own personal life get a clear and intelligible meaning." mrs. browning has a line in "aurora leigh" that runs,-- "and having tried all other ways, to just try god's." ignorance and blindness may "try all other ways," and they prove unavailing. there is no success, there is no happiness, there is no progress, until there is the clear inner recognition and the profound and loving and joyful acceptance of the divine will; of coming into such perfect acceptance of it as to make one's own will identified with its harmony. thus, when jesus said, "i am the way, the truth, and the life," he simply expressed a fact that cannot be negatived nor ignored. it is an actual, a positive law, as impossible to evade as the law of gravitation. one may refuse "the way, the truth, and the life," and wander in bewilderment and inaction; but he will never be able to achieve worthy work, or personal peace, until he accepts and lives by this law. as professor hilty so well says, this, alone, gives life an intelligent meaning. "as one follows the way, he gains, first of all, courage, so that he dares to go on in his search. he goes still further, and the way opens into the assurance that life, with all its mystery, is not lived in vain. he pushes on, and the way issues into health, not only of the soul, but even of the body; for bodily health is more dependent on spiritual condition than spiritual condition is on bodily health; and modern medicine can never restore and assure health to the body if it limit its problem to physical relief alone. nor is even this the end of the 'way' of christ. here alone is positive social redemption.... finally, the way is sure to lead every life which follows it, and is willing to pay the price for the possession of truth, into the region of spiritual peace." thus, in the end, "out of the midst of evil, issues at last the mastery of the good." thus moral progress itself is the witness of god. living by this faith, life becomes strong, serene, and radiant. "the magi have but to follow their star in peace.... the divine action marvellously adjusts all things. the order of god sends each moment the appropriate instrument for its work; and the soul, enlightened by faith, finds all things good, desiring neither more nor less than she possesses." one of the great discourses of phillips brooks had for its theme the lesson of not laying too much stress on the recognition of one's motives or on any return of sympathetic consideration. "let me not think," said doctor brooks, "that i get nothing from the man who misunderstands all my attempts to serve him, and who scorns me when i know that i deserve his sympathy. ah! it would be sad enough if only the men who understood us and were grateful to us when we gave ourselves to them had help to give us in return. the good reformer whom you try to help in his reform, and who turns off from you contemptuously because he distrusts you, seeing that your ways are different from his, he does not make you happy,--he makes you unhappy; but he makes you good, he leads you to a truer insight, a more profound unselfishness. and so (it is the old lesson), not until goodness becomes the one thing that you desire, not until you gauge all growth and gain by that, not until then can you really know that the law has worked, the promise has been fulfilled. with what measure you gave yourself to him, he has given himself--the heart of himself,--which is not his favor, not his love, but his goodness, the real heart of himself to you. for the rest you can easily wait until you both come to the better world, where misconceptions shall have passed away, and the outward forms and envelopes of things shall correspond perfectly with their inner substances forever." in the last analysis one comes to realize that happiness is a condition depending solely on the relation of his soul to god; that neither life, nor death, nor principalities, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any living creature can separate him from it, because happiness and the love of god are one and identical, and it is not in the power of this world to give, or to take away, this sense of absolute oneness with the divine life that comes when man gives himself, his soul and body, his hopes and aspirations and ideals, in complete consecration to the will of god. for this alone is the life radiant. it may not be ease or pleasure, but it is that ceaseless joy of the soul that may be the daily experience of every human being. and to gain the deep inner conviction of this sublime truth is worth whatever it may cost of tears or trial. it is the threshold of joy. it is the initiation into a higher spiritual state which one may gain in his progress while on earth as well as in heaven. in fact, no one is really fitted for the highest privileges and sweetness he may crave until he has learned to live well, to live joyfully, without them. no one is fitted for joy until he can live well _without_ joy. it is the law and the prophets. one may tread,--not the "whole round of creation," as browning phrases it, but a minor segment of it, at least, and come back with added and more profound conviction that happiness is a condition of the spirit; that "the soul is ceaselessly joyful;" that the incidents and accidents of the outward life cannot mar nor lessen that sense of higher peace and joy and harmony which is the atmosphere of any true spiritual life. one may recognize and affirm this truth by spiritual intuition, and he may then be led through many phases of actual tests in actual life; he may for a time lose his hold on it and come to say that happiness is a thing that depends on so many causes outside one's own control; that illness, death, loss of friends, adverse circumstances, failures and trials of all kinds, may come into his experience, and that one is at the mercy of all these vicissitudes. can the individual be happy, he will ask, when all that made happiness is taken away? can he be happy if he has lost all his worldly goods? or if death has taken those nearest and dearest to him? or if the separations of life, far harder to bear than those of death, have come to him? and yet, until he has learned to answer these questions with the most triumphant affirmative, he has not learned the measure nor sounded the depth of a true and noble order of happiness. the difference is that of being safely on board a great steamer when wind and wave are tempest-tossed, or of being helpless in the raging waters. the storm may be precisely the same; the tempest may rage as it will, but safe and secure in the cabin or stateroom, the voyager does not mind its fury. and truly may this analogy be held in life. it is possible to emerge from the winds and waves; to enter so entirely into the sense of security in the divine; to hold so absolutely the faith in the divine leading, that even in the midst of trial and loss and deprivation and sorrow, one shall come to _know_, through his own experience, that "the soul is ceaselessly joyful." for it is one thing to accept a truth theoretically, or believe it intuitively, and another to prove it through experience that shall test the quality of faith and conviction. learning this supreme truth of life through outward experiences as well as through inner revelation is a victory of the will that may even make itself an epoch, a landmark, in spiritual progress. it is the complete recognition of that invincible aid given to the soul through the "ever-present" aid of the holy ghost, the comforter. "jesus, the christ, this one perfect character, has come into the world and lived in it; filling all the moulds of action, all the terms of duty, and love, with his own divine manners, works, and charities," wrote doctor horace bushnell. "all the conditions of our life are raised thus by the meaning he has shown to be in them and the grace he has put upon them. the world itself is changed and is no more the same that it was; it has never been the same since jesus left it. the air is charged with heavenly odors, and a kind of celestial consciousness, a sense of other worlds, is wafted on us in its breath. it were easier to untwist all the beams of light in the sky, separating and expunging one of the colors, than to get the character of jesus, which is the real gospel, out of the world." the one deepest need of the world to-day; the one deepest need of each individual, is the more actual realization of the personality of christ. the perspective of nineteen hundred years only brings more vividly before the mind, more close to the spiritual apprehension, the personal holiness of jesus, and enforces the truth that shall redeem humanity,--the practical possibility of the increasing achievement of this personal holiness for every man and woman. "because i live ye shall live also," he said. but what is it to live? certainly, something far above and beyond mere existence. life, in its true sense, is to know god. this is the life eternal. no one can "know god" save in just the degree to which he lives god's life,--the divine life,--and in the degree to which he is living the divine life does he live the life eternal. the life eternal may be lived to-day as well as after death, in some vague eternity. the life eternal is simply the life of spiritual qualities. it is the life in which truth, honor, integrity, sacrifice, patience, and love abound, and in which all that is selfish and false is cast out. now, however exalted a definition of the present, daily life this may seem to be, it is in no sense an impossible one. the more exalted is one's standard for the perpetual quality of his life, the more stimulating it becomes. the exalted ideal inspires; the low standard depresses. an invincible energy sweeps instantly through the atmosphere to sustain him who allies himself with his noblest ideals. a force that disintegrates and baffles sweeps down upon him who abandons his nobler ideals, and substitutes for them the mere selfish, the commonplace, or the base. the "choose ye this day whom ye will serve" is no merely abstract phrase or trick of rhetoric. every hour is an hour of destiny. every hour is an hour of choice. legions of angels are in the unseen world surrounding humanity. not one thought, one aspiration, one prayer, is unheard and unnoted. no conditions or circumstances are sordid or material unless he whom they invest make them so by sordid and material thought; by turning away from that life of the spirit whose very reality is made and is tested by these circumstances. "all the conditions of life are raised," says doctor bushnell, in the extract quoted above, "by the meaning he has shown to be in them, and the grace he has put upon them." might not one, with profit, dwell for a moment upon this statement? there is a current sweeping through latter-day life and reflecting itself largely in miscellaneous literature, to the effect that what the writers are pleased to call "success in life" is achieved by self-reliance; that a man must believe in himself; and the final triumph is illustrated as that of the man who begins as an errand boy at two dollars a week and ends as a multi-millionaire. between these two points in space the arc of success subtends, according to this order of literature, and the word is: make a million, or a hundred millions of dollars,--honestly if you can, dishonestly if you must, but, at all events, the point is to "arrive." now there is both a most demoralizing fallacy and a strong and valuable truth mixed up in these exhortations. "trust thyself," said emerson; "every heart vibrates to that iron string." "i thank whatever gods there be for my unconquerable soul," sings william ernest henley, and he closes with the ringing lines,-- "i am the captain of my fate, i am the master of my soul." and emerson and henley are right--so far as they go. and the man who has been industrious, and economical, and has accumulated a fortune, has, at all times, some elements that are right; and rigid economy is far better than selfish indulgence. but whether a rigid economy is always a virtue--depends. "there is that scattereth, yet increaseth." whether it is nobler to increase one's bank account at the expense of all the personal expansion of life, through study, social life, travel,--all that makes up a choice and fine culture, and at the expense of depriving one's self of the untold luxury of service, as needs come in view,--is certainly an open question, and one in which there is a good deal to say for other uses of money than that of establishing an impressive bank account; but leaving this aspect of the problem, one returns to that phase of it represented by self-reliance. it is a great hindrance to the infinite development of man to conceive of courage and self-reliance as capacities or powers of his own rather than as fed from the divine energy. a stream might as well cut itself off from its source, and from its tributaries, and expect to flow on, in undiminished current to the sea, as for man to regard courage and force of will as generated in himself. thus he dwarfs and hinders all his spiritual powers that are found to lay hold upon god. thus he stifles himself, rather than open his windows into the pure air. "all the conditions of life are raised by the meaning jesus has shown to be in them." certainly, it was not for nothing that christ came into the conditions of the human life. his experience on earth comprehended every privation, every limitation, known to the physical life. not only these,--but he experienced every phase of sorrow, of trial, of mental pain, of spiritual anguish. he was misunderstood, he was misrepresented, he was assailed and crucified. he understood the needs of the body as well as of the spirit. he had no contempt nor condemnation for comfort, prosperity, or wealth, in and of themselves. he simply regarded them as means to an end, and if nobly used to noble ends, life was the better for whatever phases and factors of power it possessed. but he taught the truth that here we have no continuing city; that this temporary sojourn on earth is designed as a period in which to develop qualities rather than to heap up accumulations. "what shall it profit a man," he well said, "if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" so here was a man, living the earthly and physical life; comprehending all the earthly and physical problems involved in relation with the physical world; not ignoring or denying them like a mere fanatic, but estimating them in the true scale of values,--here was a man who by his experience and example proved that personal holiness of life is not incompatible with personal attention to every detail of human affairs. jesus did not isolate himself in a monastic cell in order to live the life of the spirit. he practically taught that the very supreme test of the life of the spirit is to live it in the heart of human activities. it is in the resistless tide of daily affairs,--in the office of the lawyer, the journalist, the physician, the architect; in the studio of the artist, in the counting-room, the bank, the salesroom, and the market-place, that the life of personal holiness is possible, and it is possible to man because jesus, taking upon himself the human life, so lived it in these very circumstances and under these conditions. christ and his all-quickening life remain in the world. they did not leave it with his physical death. they remain as the incorruptible, the glorious, the priceless possession of every man and woman to-day. to this divine example of a perfect character revealed in the guise of the human life, each individual in the world to-day can turn, as the most practical ideal by which to shape his own life and to ultimately realize the command, "be perfect, even as your father in heaven is perfect." if this transcendent ideal were not a possibility for the soul, surely god would not have given it as an idle command; but man, as a spiritual being, is designed to live the spiritual life, and this life is that of perpetual spiritual progress and ideal achievement; of entering into that golden atmosphere in which he shall not only "--dream of summers and dream of flowers that last alway," but find, in an ever-increasing degree, that the dream is merged into the profoundest reality of experience. "present suffering is not enjoyable," said the late rev. doctor maltbie davenport babcock, "but life would be worth little without it. the difference between iron and steel is fire, but steel is worth all it costs. iron ore may think itself senselessly tortured in the furnace, but when the watch-spring looks back it knows better. david enjoyed pain and trouble no more than we do, but the time came when he admitted that they had been good for him. though the aspect of suffering is hard, the prospect is hopeful.... the tests of life are to make, not break us. the blow at the outward man may be the greatest blessing to the inner man. if god, then, puts, or permits, anything hard in our lives, be sure that the real peril, the real trouble, is what we shall lose if we flinch or rebel." doctor babcock's words suggest that there is perhaps nothing in all the divine teachings that is less understood and less accepted than the assertion of saint paul, "we glory in tribulation also." the general reader of the gospels and epistles--even the prayerful and reverent reader--relegates this expression to some abstract conditions, as something that might do very well for saint paul and a rudimentary civilization; as something that might be a very appropriate and decorous sentiment for saint sebastian on his gridiron, or saint catherine keeping her vigils in the vast and gloomy old church in siena, but which certainly can bear no relation and hold no message for the modern reader. for the electric life of the hour,--full of color and vitality; throbbing with achievement; the life that craves prosperity as its truest expression, and finds adversity a poor and mean failure quite unsuitable to a man of brilliant gifts and energy; the life that believes in its own right of way and mistakes possessions for power,--what has _it_ to do with "tribulation" except to refuse it? if it comes it is met with indignant protest rather than as a phase of experience in which to "glory;" it is evaded, if possible; and if it cannot be evaded it is received with rebellion, with gloom, with despondency, and perhaps, at last, an enforced and hopeless endurance, which is not, by the way, to be mistaken for resignation. endurance is a passive condition that cannot, and does not even try, to help itself. resignation, in its true reading, is wholly another matter; it is active, it is alive, it is conscious and intelligent and in joyful co-operation with the will of god. it is no poor and negative mental state; it is rich in vitality and in hope, as well, for in its absolute identification of itself, this human will with the divine will, it enters into a kingdom of untold glory, whose paths lead by the river of life to the noblest and most exalted heights of achievement and of undreamed-of joy. if this be true of resignation, what shall be said of tribulation,--of glorying in tribulation? a man awakens to find himself in poverty instead of in wealth; his possessions suddenly swept away; or from health, he, or some one whose life is still dearer to him than his own, prostrated with illness; or to find himself unjustly accused or maligned, or misunderstood, or to encounter some other of the myriad phases of what he calls misfortune and tribulation. how is he to endure it? how is he to go on, living his life, in all this pain, perplexity, trial, or annoyance, much less to "glory" in this atmosphere of tribulation? one is engaged, it may be, in a work for which it would seem that peace of mind and joy and radiance were his only working capital; his essential resources; and suddenly these vanish, and his world is in ruins. clouds of misapprehension envelop him round about, and he can neither understand, himself, what has produced them, nor can he, by any entreaty or appeal, be permitted the vantage ground of full and clear explanation. and his energies are paralyzed; the golden glory that enfolded his days investing them with a magical enchantment, has gone, and a leaden sky shuts him into a gloomy and leaden atmosphere. it is not only himself, but his work; not only what he may feel, but what, also, he may not accomplish. and his work is of a nature that is not only his own expression, his contribution to the sum of living, but one which involves responsibility to others, and some way,--well or ill, as may be,--it must be done. shall he, _can_ he, "glory" in this paralyzing pain and torture that so mysteriously has fallen upon him,--whose causes do not, so far as he can discern, lie in his own conduct, but in some impenetrable mystery of misapprehensions and misunderstandings; a tangled labyrinth to which he is denied the clue? can he, indeed, facing all this torture and tragedy, with all that made the joy and light of life withdrawn,--can he encounter this form of tribulation with serene poise, with unfaltering purpose, with an intense and exalted faith? it is "not enjoyable," indeed, as doctor babcock, in the quotation above, at once concedes; but that the experience has a meaning,--a very profound meaning, one must believe; and believing this, he must feel that the responsibility rests on himself to accept this new significance that has, in an undreamed-of way, fallen into his life; to read its hidden lesson; to transmute it, by the miracle of divine grace, into something fairer and sweeter; to let its scorching fire make steel of that which was only iron. to accept, to believe, to _feel_ this, in every fibre of his nature, is to "glory" in the tribulation. it is to extract its best meaning, and to go on in life better equipped than before. "the tests of life are to _make_ and not _break_ us." here is the truer view, and one that reveals the divine significance in all mysteries of human experience. beyond all these views, also, is that inflorescence of joy that springs from this more complete identification of one's own will with that of the divine. one comes into the full glow and beauty of that wonderful assurance of jesus: "these things have i spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full." this fulness of joy is a condition freely offered for perfect acceptance. the varied experiences are, as browning has said, "just a stuff to try the soul's strength on." the kingdom of heaven lies open to all; it is _at hand_, not waiting afar in some vague futurity. shall we not enter to-day into this kingdom of heaven which is at hand? shall we not enter to-day into the very joy of the lord? pain and sorrow may invest the conditions of the moment, but they are forces which are transmuting the inconsequential into the significant; the common and trivial into the exalted and the sublime. the discord is merged into sublime harmonies that thrill the air; the glory of the lord shines round about, and we enter into its illumination; we are ascending the mount of vision and the soul looketh steadily onward, discerning the beauty of holiness, in whose transfiguration gleams the fairest ideal revealed to humanity,--even the life radiant. index. abbott, rev. dr. lyman, , . academy of science, . adams, hon. alva, his tribute to nathan cook meeker, . ----, general, . africa, . albertson, dr., his invention, , , . altar of perpetual adoration, . ames, dr. charles gordon, his uplifting sermons, , , . andes, the, . arizona, , . armstrong, gen. samuel chapman, . arno, the, . arnold, sir edwin, , . ----, matthew, , . atlantic, the, . ---- cable, . ---- coast, . "aurora leigh," . austrian, . avernus, . ayrton, prof. w. e., , . babcock, rev. dr. maltbie davenport, his noble words, , , . balzac, honoré de, . "banquo," . baptist belief, . beethoven, . behmen, jacob, . besant, annie, her theories on prayer, , , . bible, the, . bonus, john, . boston, , . brewster, elder, . "bright angel trail, the," . british isles, . brooks, rt. rev. dr. phillips, , , , , , , , , , . browning, elizabeth barrett, . ----, robert, , . bunsen, dr. robert wilhelm, . bushnell, rev. dr. horace, . cache la poudre, . carboniferous, . centennial exhibition, the, , . chemical society, . cheyenne, . ---- cañon, , , . chicago, . christmas, . "clothed with the sun," . colorado river, . ----, state of, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . columbia university chemical society, . congress, . connecticut, . cooper institute, , . copley square, . cosmos, the, . "courier journal," , . crookes, sir william, , . crusaders, the, . "culture," . curie, professor, radium discovered by, , . ----, madame, , . cushing, frank, . daniel, book of, . "daniel deronda," . dante, , . "data of ethics," . darwin, dr. charles, . de caussade, père, , , , , . denver, . denver and rio grande railroad, . discovery of the future, . donald, rev. dr. e. winchester, . divine creation, . ---- love, , . ---- perfection, . ---- pressure, , . ---- truth, . ---- word, . ---- will, , . echo cliffs, . edison, thomas, . edwards, jonathan, . egyptian, . eiffel tower, . electricity, . eliot, president charles w., . elizabeth, . emerson, ralph waldo, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . empedocles, . england, . episcopalian, . eros, . "esoteric christianity," . europe, , . "evangeline," . evolution, . "expansion of religion," . faraday, michael, . faust, . fénelon, . fichte, johann gottlieb, . field, cyrus, . fiske, dr. john, consummation of organic evolution, ; degree of achievement above the level of death, . flagstaff, ; cosmopolitan influence of, . florence, . foretelling of the future, . fort steele, . "forum, the," article of edward everett hale in, . fuller, margaret, defines social sympathies, . galilee, . garden of the gods, . german, . "giver of all good," . goethe, . gogol, . gordon, rev. dr. george a., . grand cañon of the colorado, , , , , . greek, . greeley, horace, presided at meeting in cooper institute, ; invited nathan cook meeker to place on "tribune," ; encouraged founding of town, , ; portrait of, . ----, town of, founded by nathan cook meeker, , ; beautiful situation of, ; interest of, , . "----, tribune, the," founding of, . hale, rev. dr. edward everett, prediction of, , ; memory of, . hall, general, writes of nathan cook meeker, . hamilton, gail, . harris, dr. william torrey, . harvard, , . hayes, hon. rutherford b., appoints nathan cook meeker indian commissioner, , . heavenly vision, . helbaicy, m. tessier d', theory of, , . helmholtz, hermann ludwig, . henley, william ernest, . hilty, carl, his ideas on happiness, . himalayas, . holland, canon scott, discussions of, ; arraigns modern teachings, , ; characterizes the ether, . holmes, dr. oliver wendell, counsel of, . holy spirit, the, , . "hope of religion," . hugo, victor, lines of, . "human freedom," . "human personality," , . humanity, . indian, the, . indian commissioner, . indiana, . indians, legislation for, , , , . isles of patmos, . italy, . jacob's ladder, . james, prof. william, demonstration of, ; depicts power of the holy spirit, . jesus, . joule, dr., . kaiser wilhelm ii., the, . kelvin, lord, . kerchsoff, . kingsford, dr. anna, née bonus, remarkable mystic writings of, ; marriage of, ; theories of, , ; remarkable interpretation of life of, . lacordaire, père, . lanier, sidney, . latin, . leadbeater, c. w., . leavenworth, professor, . lent, . leverrier, urbain john joseph, . "life radiant, the," , , , , , . , , . lincoln, abraham , . liverpool, . lodge, sir oliver, ; new problems presented, by, , , ; his theories regarding telepathy, . loeb, dr., . london, , , . longfellow, henry wadsworth, . long's peak, . lot, . louis xv., . lowell institute, . lowell, james russell, . ----, john, . ---- observatory, . ----, prof. percival, his astronomical work, , . maeterlinck, maurice, the future discussed by, , , , ; theories of, , ; insights of, , . magi, the, , . marconi, guglielmo, genius of, , ; system of, ; ship detector of, ; predictions of, fulfilled, . marie antoinette, . mars, , . massachusetts, diocese of, . ----, bishop of, . mayer, julius robert von, . meeker, arvilla delight, née smith (mrs. nathan cook meeker), , , . ----, nathan cook, town of greeley, colo., founded by, ; visions of, , ; outlines plans, ; birth of, ; editorial work of, praised by emerson, ; municipal principles of, , , ; appointed commissioner to centennial exposition, ; "the greeley tribune" founded by, ; indian policy of, , ; difficulties encountered by, ; massacre of, ; estimation of, , ; work of, ; noble ideals of, . ----, josephine, , , , . mesozoic age, . michael angelo, . mont pelee, , . montana, . morning star, . mount etna, . ---- of transfiguration, . ---- of vision, . moxom, rev. dr. philip, . münsterberg, prof. hugo, . musée cluny, the, , . myers, frederic, w. h. , . nature, . naval observatory, . neptune, . new england, . new jersey, . new jerusalem, . new testament, . new year, the, , , . new york, . "new york herald," , . "---- mirror," . "---- tribune," . niagara, , , . nile, observatory, the minnesota university, . ohio, . orion, . ostwald, dr., . paderewski, ignace, . paradise, . "paradiso," . paris, , , , . parkhurst, rev. dr., , . "parsival," . permian, . phillips, stephen, , . pierce, hon. franklin, . pike's peak, , , . pope, general, . powell, major john w., . preece, sir william, . prentice, george d., . presbyterian, . promised land, . protestant, . prudhomme, sully, . psychical research, . pueblo, . pyramids, , . quackenbos, dr. john d., , , . reichenbach, anton benedict, remarkable experiments of, . roberts, professor, electrical work of, . robinson, solon, . rocky mountains, the, . roentgen ray, , , . royal gorge, . ---- institute, . ---- society, . ---- university of denmark, . royce, prof. josiah, . rumford, count, experiments of, . saint john, . ---- paul, the two bodies described by, ; counsel of, ; spiritual things discerned by, , , ; admonitions of, , , ; cathedral of, . ---- pierre, . ---- sulpice, . san francisco, . santa fé road, . secretary of war, the, . shakespeare, . sherman, gen. w. t., . shinumo altar, . silver state, the, . sir hugo, . smyth, rev. dr. newman, . snowy range, the, . society of arts, . solomon's temple, . south platte river, . southern cross, . spencer, herbert, . spirit, whisper of the, . state university observatory, minnesota, . stowe, mrs. harriet, née beecher, . tennyson, lord alfred, . tertiary, . tesla, nicola, ; discovery of, ; human energy discussed by, . texas, . "the gleam," . "the inferno," . "the country god forgot," . "the perfect way," , . "the world beautiful," . thompson, prof. j. j., . thornburg, major, . titanic, . trinity church, . twentieth century, , . union colony, , , , . unitarian, . united states, . universe, . unseen, the, . ursa major, , . utah, . utes, the, . vatican, the, . vedantic, . vedder, elihu, . "vita nuova," . walnut cañon, . warren, rev. dr. walpole, . washington, , . washington monument, . watterson, col. henry, . wells, h. g., theories of, on foretelling the future, , . west, the, . western reserve, the, . westminster abbey, . white mountains, the, . white river, , , , . whittier, john greenleaf, , . whyte, rev. dr. alexander, . wilberforce, rev. dr. basil, archdeacon of westminster, , . will of god, , . young, john russell, . zuni, . * * * * * _lilian whiting's works_ the world beautiful. first series the world beautiful. second series the world beautiful. third series after her death. the story of a summer the spiritual significance kate field: a record from dreamland sent. verses of the life to come a study of elizabeth barrett browning the world beautiful in books boston days the life radiant * * * * * the world beautiful by lilian whiting i know of no volumes of sermons published in recent years which are so well fitted to uplift the reader, and inspire all that is finest and best in his nature, as are the series of essays entitled "the world beautiful," by lilian whiting.--b. o. flower, _in the coming age_. the world beautiful (first series) mo. cloth, $ . . decorated cloth, $ . . comprising: the world beautiful; friendship; our social salvation; lotus eating; that which is to come. the world beautiful about which she writes is no far-off event to which all things move, but the every-day scene around us filled by a spirit which elevates and transforms it.--prof. louis j. block, in _the philosophical journal_. no one can read it without feeling himself the better and richer and happier for having done so.--_the independent_. the world beautiful (second series) mo. cloth, $ . . decorated cloth, $ . . comprising: the world beautiful; our best society; to clasp eternal beauty; vibrations; the unseen world. the style is at once graceful and lively. every touch is fresh.--_zion's herald_. the world beautiful (third series) mo. cloth, $ . . decorated cloth, $ . . comprising: the world beautiful; the rose of dawn; the encircling spirit-world; the ring of amethyst; paradisa gloria. the thoughtful reader who loves spiritual themes will find these pages inspiring.--_chicago inter-ocean_. * * * * * after her death the story of a summer by lilian whiting, author of "the world beautiful," etc. mo. cloth, $ . . decorated cloth, $ . . comprising: what lacks the summer? from inmost dreamland; past the morning star; in two worlds; distant gates of eden; unto my heart thou livest so; across the world i speak to thee; the deeper meaning of the hour. my conviction is that every preacher, reformer, religious editor, and christian worker should read the books by lilian whiting.--rev. w. h. rogers, in _the christian standard_. "after her death" has given me the light and help i have so long craved; it has given me comfort and strength which _no other_ book has ever done.--cordelia l. commore. * * * * * from dreamland sent verses of the life to come by lilian whiting. new edition, with additional verses, mo. cloth, extra, $ . . decorated cloth, $ . . lilian whiting's verse is like a bit of sunlit landscape on a may morning.--_boston herald_. graceful, tender, and true, appealing to what is best in the human heart.--_the independent_. i never saw anything on earth before which looked so much as if just brought from heaven by angel hands as this new edition of "from dreamland sent." in the golden sunshine of an italian morning i have heard the silver trumpets blow. this exquisite book reminds me of them.--sarah holland adams. * * * * * kate field: a record by lilian whiting. author of "the world beautiful," "a study of elizabeth barrett browning," etc. with several portraits of miss field, including one by elihu vedder. mo. cloth, extra. $ . . contents childhood and circumstance. an interesting heredity; family letters; mr. and mrs. field's stage life; death of joseph m. field; the mother and daughter. early youth. aspirations and studies; interest in art and literature; ardent devotion to music. florentine days. at villa bellosguardi; enthusiasm for italy; george eliot and the trollopes; walter savage landor; at casa guidi with the brownings. lecturing and writing. intense energy of purpose; john brown's grave; ristori, fechter, and the drama; planchette's diary; death of eliza riddle field. europe revisited. among london celebrities; in spain with castelar; music and drama; professor bell and the telephone; the shakespeare memorial. a significant decade. return to america; failures and renewed effort; the mormon problem; alaska and the golden gate; fame and friends. "kate field's washington." a unique enterprise; miss gilder's friendship; charming life in the capitol; the columbian exposition; france decorated kate field. crossing the bar. a journey of destiny; life and studies in hawaii; noble and generous work; the angel of death. in retrospect. universal appreciation and love; the strange ordering of circumstance; a sculptured cross in mount auburn; death only an event in life. * * * * * the spiritual significance or, death as an event in life by lilian whiting. author of "the world beautiful," "boston days," etc. mo. cloth, $ . . decorated cloth, gilt top, $ . . comprising: the spiritual significance; vision and achievement; between the seen and the unseen; psychic communication; the gates of new life. it suggests and hints at the ultimate significance of scientific investigation with relation to the totality of thought in a very fresh and suggestive way.... the spirit of her book, like that of its predecessors, is admirable.--_the outlook_. a book from her pen means new flashes of insight, a revelation of spiritual truth almost emersonian in kind.--_chicago chronicle_. * * * * * the world beautiful in books by lilian whiting. mo. cloth, $ . _net_. decorated cloth, $ . _net_. the careful and repeated reading of "the world beautiful in books" would be a liberal education.--_philadelphia telegraph_. it is like a greek urn filled with priceless relics. hundreds of brains, ancient and modern, are daintily picked of their best thoughts, and there is scarcely a page that is not enriched with some rifled treasure. it is, in fact, concentrated food for select minds.--_chicago post_. to read it is like being taken informally into a great assemblage of poets, romancers, and thinkers, while all are at their best, and being introduced to them by a near friend of all.--_the era_, philadelphia. * * * * * boston days the city of beautiful ideals, concord and its famous authors, the golden age of genius, dawn of the twentieth century. by lilian whiting. author of "the world beautiful," etc. with portraits and other illustrations. mo. decorated cloth, $ . _net_. all the famous names associated with boston pass in review before the reader of this apotheosis of the intellectual life of massachusetts.--_the boston herald_. the book is full of fascination of the intrinsic sort, by virtue of the material of which it is made up, and miss whiting has fulfilled her task with special literary grace and discretion.--_albany argus_. a volume to place on the same shelf with the "yesterdays with authors" of the late james t. fields and the "literary friends and acquaintances" of william d. howells.--_cleveland plain dealer_. * * * * * the life radiant by lilian whiting, mo. cloth, $ . _net_. decorated cloth, $ . _net_. in this book miss whiting aims to portray a practical ideal for daily living that shall embody the sweetness and exaltation and faith that lend enchantment to life. it is, in a measure, a logical sequence of "the world beautiful," leading into still diviner harmonies. * * * * * little, brown, & company, publishers washington street, boston, mass. fraternal charity fraternal charity by rev. father valuy, s.j. authorized translation new york, cincinnati, chicago benziger brothers printers to the holy apostolic see nihil obstat. f. thomas bergh, o.s.b., _censor deputatus._ imprimatur. gulielmus, _episcopus arindelensis,_ _vicarius generalis._ westmonasterii, _die feb., ._ translator's note the name of father valuy, s.j., is already favourably known to english readers by several translations of his works, which have a large circulation. the following little treatise is taken from one of his works on the religious life, and is translated with the kind permission of the publisher, m. emmanuel vitte, of lyons. the subject is so important a factor in community life that i feel confident it will supply a want hitherto felt by many. though specially written for religious, it cannot fail to prove beneficial to seculars in every sphere of life, as love, the sunshine of existence, is wanted everywhere. contents i. charity the peculiar virtue of christ ii. first fundamental truth iii. second fundamental truth iv. the family spirit v. egotism, or self-seeking vi. first characteristic of fraternal charity vii. second characteristic viii. third characteristic ix. fourth characteristic x. fifth characteristic xi. sixth characteristic xii. seventh characteristic xiii. eighth characteristic xiv. ninth characteristic xv. tenth characteristic xvi. eleventh characteristic xvii. twelfth characteristic xviii. extent and delicacy of god's charity for men xix. extent and delicacy of the charity of jesus christ during his mortal life xx. first preservative xxi. second preservative xxii. third preservative xxiii. fourth preservative xxiv. fifth preservative xxv. sixth preservative xxvi. seventh preservative xxvii. eighth preservative xxviii. ninth preservative xxix. tenth preservative xxx. eleventh preservative xxxi. means to support the evil thoughts and tongues of others xxxii. second means to bear with others xxxiii. conclusion appendix: the practice of fraternal charity fraternal charity i charity the peculiar virtue of christ our divine saviour shows both by precept and example that his favourite virtue, his own and, in a certain sense, characteristic virtue, was charity. whether he treated with his ignorant and rude apostles, with the sick and poor, or with his enemies and sinners, he is always benign, condescending, merciful, affable, patient; in a word, his charity appeared in all its most amiable forms. oh, how well these titles suit him!--a king full of clemency, a lamb full of mildness. how justly could he say, "learn of me, that i am meek and humble of heart"! his yoke was sweet, his burden light, his conversation without sadness or bitterness. he lightened the burdens of those heavily laden; he consoled those in sorrow; he quenched not the dying spark nor broke the bruised reed. he calls us his friends, his brothers, his little flock; and as the greatest sign of friendship is to die for those we love, he gave to each of us the right to say with st. paul: "he loved me, and delivered himself up for me." let us, then, say: "my good master, i love thee, and deliver myself up for thee." religious, called to reproduce the three great virtues of jesus christ--poverty, chastity, and obedience--have still another to practise not less noble or distinctive--viz., fraternal charity. by this virtue they are not called to rise above earthly or sensual pleasures, nor above their judgment and self-will, but above egotism and self-love, which shoot their roots deepest in the soul. they must consider attentively the fundamental truths on which charity is based and its effects, as also the principal obstacles to its attainment, and the means to overcome them. ii first fundamental truth _we are all members of the great christian family_ charity towards our neighbour is charity towards god in our neighbour, because, faith assuring us that god is our father, jesus christ our head, the holy ghost our sanctifier, it follows that to love our neighbour--inasmuch as he is the well-beloved child of god, the member of jesus christ, and the sanctuary of the holy ghost--is to love in a special manner our heavenly father, his only-begotten son, together with the holy spirit. and because it is scarcely possible for religious to behold their brethren in this light without wishing them what the most holy trinity so lovingly desires to bestow on them, acts of fraternal charity include--almost necessarily at least--implicit acts of faith and hope; and the exercise of the noblest of the theological virtues thus often becomes an exercise of the other two. thus it is that charity poured into our hearts by the holy spirit, uniting christians among themselves and with the adorable trinity whose images they are, is the vivid and perfect imitation of the love of the father for the son, and of the son for the father--a substantial love which is no other than the holy ghost, and makes us all one in god by grace, as the father and son are only one god with the holy ghost by nature, according to the words of our lord: "that they all may be one; as thou, father, in me, and i in thee: that they also may be one in us." such is the chain that unites and binds us--a chain of gold a thousand times stronger than those of flesh and blood, interest or friendship, because these permit the defects of body and the vices of the soul to be seen, whilst charity covers all, hides all, to offer exclusively to admiration and love the work of the hands of god, the price of the blood of jesus christ and the masterpiece of the holy spirit. iii second fundamental truth _we are members of the same religious family_ to love our brethren as ourselves in relation to god, it suffices without doubt to have with them the same faith, the same sacraments, the same head, the same life, the same immortal hopes, etc. but, besides these, there exist other considerations which lead friendship and fraternity to a higher degree among the members of the same religious order. all in the novitiate have been cast in the same mould, or, rather, have imbibed the milk of knowledge and piety from the breasts of the same mother. all follow the same rules; all tend to the same end by the same means; all from morning to night, and during their whole lives, perform the same exercises, live under the same roof, work, sanctify themselves, suffer and rejoice together. like fellow-citizens, they have the same interests; like soldiers, the same combats; like children of a family, the same ancestors and heirlooms; and, like friends, a communication of ideas and interchange of sentiments. if our lord said to christians in general, "this is my commandment, that you love one another as i have loved you. by this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (john xiii.), can he not say to the members of the same religious order: "this is my own and special recommendation: before all and above all preserve amongst you a mutual charity. have but one soul in several different bodies. you will be recognized as religious and brethren, not by the same habit, vows, and virtues, nor by the particular work entrusted to you by the church, but by the love you have one for the other. ah! who will love you if you do not love one another? love one another fraternally, because as human beings you have only one heavenly father. love one another holily, because as christians you have only one head. love one another tenderly, because as religious you have only one mother--your order"? it is impossible for religious to love their brethren with a true, sincere, pure, and constant love if they do not look at them in this light. iv the family spirit based on the foregoing principles, fraternal charity begets the family spirit--that spirit which forgets itself in thinking only of the common good; which makes particular give way to general interests; which forces oneself to live with all without exception, to live as all without singularity, and to live for all without self-seeking; that spirit which, binding like a divine cement all parts of the mysterious edifice of religion, uniting all hearts in one and all wills in one, permits the community to proceed firmly and securely, and its members to work out efficaciously and peacefully their personal sanctification and perfection; in fine, that spirit which gives to all religious not only an inexpressible family happiness, but a delicious foretaste of heaven, which renders them invincible to their enemies, and causes to be said of them with admiration: "see how they love one another!" writing on these words of the psalmist, "behold how good and pleasant it is for brethren to live together in union," st. augustine cries out: "behold the words which make monasteries spring up! sweet, delightful, and delicious words which fill the soul and ear with jubilation." yes, certainly the happiness of community life is great and its advantages inappreciable; but without the family spirit there is no community, as there would be no beauty in the human body without harmony in its members. oh, never forget this comparison, you who wish to live happy in religion, and who wish to make others happy. a community is a body. now, as the members of a body, each in its proper place and functions, live in perfect harmony, mutually comfort, defend, and love each other, without being jealous or vengeful, and have only in view the well-being of that body of which they are parts, so in the community of which you are members and in the employment assigned to you. remember you are parts of a whole, and that it is necessary to refer to this whole your time, labour, and strength; to have the same thoughts, sentiments, designs, and language, without which there would no longer exist either body, members, parts, or whole. if you wish, then, to obtain and practise the family spirit, study what passes within you. your actions bespeak your sentiments. v egotism, or self-seeking egotism, taking for its motto "every one for himself," is very much opposed to fraternal charity and the family spirit. it never hesitates, when occasion offers, to sacrifice the common good to its own. it isolates the individuals, makes them concentrated in self, places them in the community, but not of it, makes them strangers amongst their brethren, and tends to justify the words of an impious writer, who calls monasteries "reunions of persons who know not each other, who live without love, and die without being regretted." egotism breeds distrust, jealousy, parties, aversions. it destroys abnegation, humility, patience, and all other virtues. it introduces a universal disgust and discontent, makes religious lose their first fervour, presents an image of hell where one expected to find a heaven on earth, saps the very foundation of community life, and leads sooner or later to inevitable ruin. as the family spirit causes the growth and prosperity of an order, however feeble its beginning, so, on the other hand, egotism dries the sap and renders it powerless, no matter what other advantages it may enjoy. if the one, by uniting hearts, is a principle of strength and duration, the other, by dividing, is a principle of dissolution and decay. sallust says that "the weakest things become powerful by concord, and the greatest perish through discord." whilst the descendants of noah spoke the same language the building of the tower of babel proceeded with rapidity. from the moment they ceased to understand one another its destruction commenced, and the monument which was to have immortalized their name was left in ruin to tell their shame and pride. on each of the four corners of the monastery religion or charity personified ought to be placed, bearing on shields in large characters the following words: ( ) "love one another"; ( ) "he who is not with me is against me, and he who gathers not with me scatters"; ( ) "every kingdom divided will become desolate"; ( ) "they had all but one heart and one soul." vi first characteristic of fraternal charity _to esteem our brethren interiorly_ "charity, the sister of humility," says st. paul, "is not puffed up." she cannot live with pride, the disease of a soul full of itself. it willingly prefers others by considering their good qualities and one's own defects, and shows this exteriorly when occasion offers by many sincere proofs. it always looks on others from the most favourable point. instead of closing the eyes on fifty virtues to find out one fault, without any other profit than to satisfy a natural perverseness and to excuse one's own failings, it closes the eyes on fifty faults to open them on one virtue, with the double advantage of being edified and of blessing god, the author of all good. since an unfavourable thought, or the sight of an action apparently reprehensible, tends to cloud the reputation of a religious, charity hastens before the cloud thickens to drive it away, saying, "what am i doing? should i blacken in my mind the image of god, and seek deformities in the member of jesus christ? besides, cannot my brethren be eminently holy and be subject to many faults, which god permits them to fall into in order to keep them humble, to teach them to help others, and to exercise their patience?" vii second characteristic _to treat brethren with respect, openness, and cordiality_ exterior honour being the effect and sign of interior esteem, charity honours all those whom it esteems superiors, equals, the young and the old. it carefully observes all propriety, and takes into consideration the different circumstances of age, employment, merit, character, birth, and education to make itself all to all. convinced that god is not unworthy to have well-bred persons in his service, and that religious ought not to respect themselves less than people in the world, it conforms to all the requirements of politeness as far as religious simplicity will permit; not that politeness which is feigned and hypocritical, and which is merely a sham expression of deceitful respect, but that politeness, the flower of charity, which, manifesting exteriorly the sentiments of a sincere affection and a true devotion, is accompanied with a graceful countenance, benign and affable regards, sweetness in words, foresight, urbanity, and delicacy in business. in fine, that politeness which is the fruit of self-denial and humility no less than of charity and friendship; which is the art of self-restraint and self-conquest, without restraining others; which is the care of avoiding everything that might displease, and doing all that can please, in order to make others content with us and with themselves. in a word, a mixture of discretion and complaisance, cordiality and respect, together with words and manners full of mildness and benignity. viii third characteristic _to work harmoniously with those in the same employment, and not to cause any inconvenience to them_ why should we cling so obstinately to our own way of seeing and doing? do not many ways and means serve the same ends provided they be employed wisely and perseveringly? some have succeeded by their methods, and i by mine--a proof that success is reached through many ways, and that it is not by disputing it is obtained, nor by giving scandal to those we should edify, nor, perhaps, by compromising the good work in which we are employed. the four animals mentioned by ezekiel joined their wings, were moved by the same spirit and animated by the same ardour, and so drew the heavenly chariot with majesty and rapidity, giving us religious an example of perfect union of efforts and thoughts. charity avoids haughty and contemptuous looks, forewarns itself against fads and manias, and in the midst of most pressing occupations carefully guards against rudeness and impatience. careful of wounding the susceptibility of others, it neither blames nor despises those who act in an opposite way. religious animated by fraternal charity are not ticklish spirits who are disturbed for nothing at all, and who do not know how to pass unnoticed a little want of respect, etc.; nor punctilious spirits, who find pleasure in contradicting and making irritating remarks; nor self-opinionated spirits, who pose themselves as supreme judges of talent and virtue as well as infallible dispensers of praise and blame. neither are they suspicious characters who are constantly ruminating in their hearts, and who consider every little insult as levelled at themselves; nor discontented beings, who find fault with the places whither obedience sends them and the persons with whom they live, and who could travel the entire world without finding a single place or a single person to suit them. charitable religious are not those imperious minds who endeavour to impose their opinions on all and refuse to accept those of others, however just they may be, simply because they did not emanate from themselves, nor are they those ridiculing, hard-to-be-pleased sort of people who do not spare even grey hairs. finally, they are not those great spouters who, instead of accommodating themselves to circumstances as charity and politeness require, monopolize the conversation, and thereby shut up the mouths of others and make them feel weary when they should be joyful and free. ix fourth characteristic _to accommodate oneself to persons of different humour_ they who are animated by charity support patiently and in silence, in sentiments of humility and sweetness, as if they had neither eyes nor ears, the difficult, odd, and most inconstant humours of others, although they may find it very difficult at times to do so. no matter how regular and perfect we may be, we have always need of compassion and indulgence for others. to be borne with, we must bear with others; to be loved, we must love; to be helped, we must help; to be joyful ourselves, we must make others so. surrounded as we are by so many different minds, characters, and interests, how can we live in peace for a single day if we are not condescending, accommodating, yielding, self-denying, ready to renounce even a good project, and to take no notice of those faults and shortcomings which are beyond our power or duty to correct? charity patiently listens to a bore, answers a useless question, renders service even when the need is only imaginary, without ever betraying the least signs of annoyance. it never asks for exceptions or privileges for fear of exciting jealousy. it does not multiply nor prolong conversations which in any way annoy others. it fights antipathy and natural aversions so that they may never appear, and seeks even the company of those who might be the object of them. it does not assume the office of reprehending or warning through a motive of bitter zeal. it seeks to find in oneself the faults it notices in others, and perhaps greater ones, and tries to correct them. "if thou canst not make thyself such a one as thou wouldst, how canst thou expect to have another according to thy liking? we would willingly have others perfect, and yet we mend not our own defects. we would have others strictly corrected, but are not fond of being corrected ourselves. the large liberty of others displeases us, and yet we do not wish to be denied anything we ask for. we are willing that others be bound up by laws, and we suffer not ourselves to be restrained by any means. thus it is evident how seldom we weigh our neighbour in the same balance with ourselves" ("imitation," i. ). x fifth characteristic _to refuse no reasonable service, and to accept or refuse in an affable manner_ charity is generous; it does everything it can. when even it can do little, it wishes to be able to do more. it never lets slip an opportunity of comforting, helping, and taking the most painful part, after the example of its divine model, who came to serve, not to be served. one religious, seemingly in pain, seeks comfort; another desires some book, instrument, etc.; a third bends under a burden; while a fourth is afflicted. in all these cases charity comes to the aid by consoling the one, procuring little gratifications for the other, and helping another. without complaining of the increased labour or the carelessness of others, it finishes the work left undone by them, too happy to diminish their trouble, while augmenting its own reward. "does the hunter," says st. john chrysostom, "who finds splendid game blame those who beat the brushwood before him? or does the traveller who finds a purse of gold on the road neglect to pick it up because others who preceded him took no notice of it?" it would be a strange thing to find religious uselessly giving themselves to ardent desires of works of charity abroad, such as nursing in a hospital or carrying the gospel into uncivilized lands, and at the same time in their own house and among their own brethren showing coldness, indifference, and want of condescension. there is an art of giving as well as of refusing. several offend in giving because they do so with a bad grace; others in refusing do not offend because they know how to temper their refusal by sweetness of manner. charity possesses this art in a high degree, and, besides, raises a mere worldly art into a virtue and fruit of the holy ghost. xi sixth characteristic _to share the joys and griefs of our brethren_ as the soul in the human body establishes all its members as sharers equally in joys and griefs, so charity in the religious community places everything in common content, affliction, material goods driving out of existence the words mine and thine. it lavishes kind words and consolations on all who suffer in any way through ill-humour, sickness, want of success, etc.; it rejoices when they are successful, honoured, and trusted, or endowed with gifts of nature or grace, felicitates them on their good fortune, and thanks god for them. if, on the one hand, compassion sweetens pains to the sufferer by sharing them, on the other hand participation in a friend's joys doubles them by making them personal to ourselves. would to god that this touching and edifying charity replaced the low and rampant vice of jealousy! when david returned after he slew the philistines, the women came out of all the cities of israel singing and dancing to meet king saul. and the women sang as they played, "saul slew his thousands and david his ten thousands." saul was exceedingly angry, and this word was displeasing in his eyes, and he said: "they have given david ten thousand, and to me they have given but a thousand. . . . and saul did not look on david with a good eye from that day forward. . . . and saul held a spear in his hand and threw it, thinking to nail david to the wall" ( kings). thus it is that the jealous complain of their brethren who are more successful, learned, or praised; thus it is that they lance darts of calumny, denunciation, and revenge. xii seventh characteristic _not to be irritated when others wrong us_ we must pardon and do good for evil, as god has pardoned us and rendered good for evil in jesus christ. it is vain to trample the violet, as it never resists, and he who crushes it only becomes aware of the fact by the sweetness of its perfume. this is the image of charity. it always strives to throw its mantle over the evil doings of others, persuading itself that they were the effects of surprise, inadvertence, or at most very slight malice. if an explanation is necessary, it is the first to accuse itself. never does it permit the keeping of a painful thought against any of the brethren, and does all in its power to hinder them from the same; and, moreover, excuses all signs of contempt, ingratitude, rudeness, peculiarities, etc. cassian makes mention of a religious who, having received a box on the ear from his abbot in presence of more than two hundred brethren, made no complaint, nor even changed colour. st. gregory praises another religious, who, having been struck several times with a stool by his abbot, attributed it not to the passion of the abbot, but to his own fault. he adds that the humility and patience of the disciple was a lesson for the master. this charity will have no small weight in the balance of him who weighs merit so exactly. charity gives no occasion to others to suffer, but suffers all patiently, not once, but all through life, every day and almost every hour. it is most necessary for religious, as, not being able to seek comfort abroad, they are obliged to live in the same house, often in the same employment with characters less sympathetic than their own. these little acts of charity count for little here below, and they are rather exacted than admired. hence there is less danger of vainglory, and all their merit is preserved in the sight of god. xiii eighth characteristic _to practise moderation and consideration_ tell-tales, nasty names, cold answers, lies, mockery, harsh words, etc., are all contrary to charity. st. john chrysostom says: "when anyone loads you with injuries, close your mouth, because if you open it you will only cause a tempest. when in a room between two open doors through which a violent wind rushes and throws things in disorder, if you close one door the violence of the wind is checked and order is restored. so it is when you are attacked by anyone with a bad tongue. your mouth and his are open doors. close yours, and the storm ceases. if, unfortunately, you open yours, the storm will become furious, and no one can tell what the damage may be." if we have been guilty in this respect, let us humble ourselves before god. "the tongue," says st. gertrude, "is privileged above the other members of the body, as on it reposes the sacred body and precious blood of jesus christ. those, then, who receive the holy of holies without doing penance for the sins of the tongue are like those who would keep a heap of stones at their doors to stone a friend on arrival." in order to keep ourselves and others in a state of moderation, we must remember that all persons have some fad, mania, or fixed ideas which they permit no one to gainsay. if we touch them on these points, it will be like playing an accompaniment to an instrument with one string out of tune. xiv ninth characteristic _care of the sick and infirm_ charity lavishes care on the sick and infirm, on the old, on guests and new-comers. it requires that we visit those who are ill, to cheer and console them, to foresee their wants, and thereby to spare them the pain or humiliation of asking for anything. bossuet says: "esteem the sick, love them, respect and honour them, as being consecrated by the unction of the cross and marked with the character of a suffering jesus." charity pays honour to the aged in every respect, coincides with their sentiments, consults them, forestalls their desires, and attempts not to reform in them what cannot be reformed. charity receives fraternally all guests and new-comers, and makes us treat them as we would wish to be treated under similar circumstances. it also causes us to lavish testimonies of affection on those who are setting out, and warns us to be very careful of saying or doing anything that may in the least degree offend even the most susceptible. religious must ever feel that they can bless, love, and thank religion as a good mother. but religion is not an abstract matter; it is made up of individuals reciprocally bound together in and for each other. alas! how many times are the sick and the old made to consider themselves as an inconvenient burden, or like a useless piece of furniture! in reality what are they doing? they pray and do penance for the community, turn away the scourge of god, draw down his graces and blessings, merit, perhaps, the grace of perseverance for several whose vocation is shaking, hand down to the younger members the traditions and spirit of the institute, and finally practise, and cause to be practised, a thousand acts of virtue. did our divine lord work less efficaciously for the church when he hung on the cross than when he preached? we must, then, do for the sick and the old who are now bearing their cross what we would have wished to do for jesus in his suffering. xv tenth characteristic _prayer for living and deceased brethren_ "we do not remember often enough our dear dead, our departed brethren," says st. francis de sales, "and the proof of it is that we speak so little of them. we try to change the discourse as if it were hurtful. we let the dead bury their dead. their memory perishes with us like the sound of the funeral knell, without thinking that a friendship which perishes with death is not true. it is a sign of piety to speak of their virtues as it urges us to imitate them." in communities distinguished for fraternal charity and the family spirit the conversation frequently turns on the dead. one talks of their virtues, another of their services, a third quotes some of their sayings, while a fourth adds some other edifying fact; and who is the religious that will not on such occasions breathe a silent prayer to god and apply some indulgence or other satisfactory work for the happy repose of their souls? charity also prays for those who want help most, and who are often known to god alone--those whose constancy is wavering, those who are led by violent temptations to the edge of the precipice. it expands pent-up souls by consolations or advice; it dissipates prejudices which tend to weaken the spirit of obedience; it is, in fine, a sort of instinct which embraces all those things suggested by zeal and devotion. can there be anything more agreeable to god, more useful to the church, or more meritorious, than to foster thus amongst the well-beloved children of god peace, joy, love of vocation, together with union amongst themselves and with their superiors? it is one of the most substantial advantages we have in religion to know that we are never forsaken in life or death; to find always a heart that can compassionate our pains, a hand which sustains us in danger and lifts us when we fall. xvi eleventh characteristic _to have a lively interest in the whole order, in its works, its success, and its failures_ religious who have the family spirit wish to know everything which concerns the well-being of the different houses. they willingly take their pens to contribute to the edification and satisfy the lawful curiosity of their brethren. they bless god when they hear good news, and grieve at bad news, losses by death, and, above all, scandalous losses of vocation. those who would concentrate all their thoughts on their own work, as if all other work counted for nothing or merited no attention, who would speak feebly or perhaps jealously of it, as if they alone wished to do good, or that others wished to deprive them of some glory, would show that they only sought themselves, and that to little love of the church they joined much indifference for their order. charity, by uniting its good wishes and interest to the deeds of others, becomes associated at the same time in the merit. it shares in a certain manner in the gifts and labours of others. it is, at the same time, the eye, the hand, the tongue, and the foot, since it rejoices at what is done by the eye, the hand, the tongue, etc., or, rather, it is as the soul which presides over all, and to whom nothing is a stranger in the body over which it presides. xvii twelfth characteristic _mutual edification_ be edified at the sight of your brethren's virtues, and edify them by your own. in other words, be alternately disciple and master. profit by the labours of others, and make them profit by your own. receive from all, in order to be able to give to all. borrow humility from one, obedience from another, union with god, and the practice of mortification from others. by charity we store up in ourselves the gifts of grace enjoyed by every member of the community, in order to dispense them to all by a happy commerce and admirable exchange. as the bee draws honey from the sweetest juices contained in each flower; as the artist studies the masterpieces to reproduce their marvellous tints in pictures which, in their turn, become models; as a mirror placed in a focus receives the rays of brilliancy from a thousand others placed around it to re-invest them with a dazzling brilliancy, so happy is the community whose members multiply themselves, so to say, by mutually esteeming, loving, admiring, and imitating each other in what is good. this spontaneity of virtues exercises on all the members a constant and sublime ministry of mutual edification and reciprocal sanctification. xviii extent and delicacy of god's charity for men in order to excite ourselves to fraternal charity, let us try and picture that of god for us. after having had us present in his thoughts from all eternity, he has called us from nothingness to life. he himself formed man's body, and, animating it with a breath, enclosed in it an immortal soul, created to his own image. scarcely arrived on the threshold of life, we found an officer from his court an angel deputed to protect, accompany, and conduct us in triumph to our heavenly inheritance. what a superb palace he has prepared for us in this world, supplied with a prodigious variety of flowers, fruits, and animals which he has placed at our disposal! we were a fallen race, and he sent his son to raise us and save us from hell, which we merited. the word was made flesh. he took a body and soul like ours, thus ennobling and deifying, so to speak, our human nature. before ascending to his heavenly father, after having been immolated for us on the cross, for fear of leaving us orphans, he wished to remain amongst us in the holy eucharist, to nourish us with his flesh, and to infuse into our hearts his divine spirit as the living promise and the delicious foretaste of the felicity and glory which he went to prepare for us in his kingdom. truly, o god, you treat us not only with a paternal love, but with an infinite respect and honour; and cannot i love and honour those whom you have thus honoured and loved yourself? why do not these thoughts inflame my charity in the fire of your divine love? my brethren and myself are children of god and members of jesus christ. my brethren have their angels, who are companions of my angel. one day my brethren will be my companions in glory, chanting eternally the divine praises. it is but a short time since, with them, i partook of the heavenly banquet of the most holy sacrament, and to-morrow shall do so again. xix extent and delicacy of the charity of jesus christ during his mortal life let us now admire the charity of our divine saviour while on earth. if wine was wanting at a feast; if fishermen laboured in vain during the night; if a vast crowd knew not where to procure food in the desert; if unfortunate persons were possessed by devils or deprived of the use of their limbs; if death deprived a father of his daughter, or a widow of an only son, jesus was there to supply what was wanting, to give back what was lost, or to sweeten all their griefs. sometimes he forestalled the petition by curing before being asked, or by exciting the wavering faith. he generally went beyond the demands of the petitioners. he was always ready to interrupt his meal, to go to a distance, or to quit his solitude. nicodemus, as yet trembling and timid, came to find jesus during the night, and he did not hesitate to sacrifice his sleep by prolonging the conversation. the samaritan woman was not beneath his notice, although he was fatigued after a long journey. he lavished with prodigality his caresses on the children who pressed around him. when the crowd was so great that the poor woman with the flow of blood could not come within reach of his hand, he caused an all-powerful virtue to set out from him, and a simple touch of the hem of his garment supplied instead. with what charming grace his benefits were accompanied! "zacheus, come down quickly, for i will abide this day in thy house." who more than he excelled in the art of making agreeable surprises? in his apparitions to magdalen, to the holy women, to the disciples at emmaus, did he not pay well for the ointment, the tears, and the perfumes, and the hospitality he received from them? who is not moved with emotion when he sees his lord preparing a meal for the apostles on the lake-shore, or asking peter thrice to give him an opportunity of publicly repairing his triple denial, "lovest thou me?" who would not be moved when he hears what st. clement relates having heard it from st. peter that our lord was accustomed to watch like a mother with her children near his disciples during their sleep to render them any little service? o jesus! the sweetest, the most amiable, the most charitable of the children of men, make me a sharer in your mildness, your love, and your charity. xx first preservative _how to fortify ourselves against uncharitable conversations, the principal danger to fraternal charity_ to meditate on what the holy scripture says of it: "place, o lord, a guard before my mouth" (ps. cxl.)--a vigilant sentinel, well armed, to watch, and, if necessary, to arrest in the passing out any unbecoming word--"and a door before my lips," which, being tightly closed, will never let an un charitable dart escape. "shut in your ears with a hedge of thorns," to counteract the tongue, which would pour into them the poison of uncharitableness, "and refuse to listen to the wicked tongue." "put before your mouth several doors and on your ears several locks"--_i.e._, put doors upon doors and locks upon locks, because the tongue is capable, in its fury, to force open the first door and break the first lock. "melt your gold and silver, and make for your words a balance"--weighing them all before uttering them--"and have for your mouth solid bridles which are tightly held," for fear that the tongue, getting the better of your vigilance, will break loose and do mischief in all directions. considering these many barriers and formidable checks, must we not see the necessity of burying in a well-fortified prison that most dangerous monster, the tongue? "ah! truly death and life are in the power of the tongue" (prov. xviii.). "and although the sword has been the instrument of innumerable murders, the tongue has at all times beaten it in producing death" (ecclus. xxviii.). "it forms but a small part of the body, and has done mighty evil: as the helm badly directed causes the wreck of a fine ship, and as a spark may enkindle a forest. . . . unquiet evil, inflamed firebrand, source of deadly poison, world of iniquity" (st. james iii.). xxi second preservative _to meditate on what the saints say_ st. bonaventure relates that st. francis of assisi said to his religious one day: "uncharitable conversation is worse than the assassin, because it kills souls and becomes intoxicated with their blood. it is worse than the mad dog, because it tears out and drags on all sides the living entrails of the neighbour. it is worse than the unclean animal, because it wallows in the filth of vices and makes its favourite pasture there. it is worse than cham, because it exposes everywhere the nasty spots which soil the face of religion--its mother." st. bernard goes further: "do not hesitate to regard the tongue of the backbiter as more cruel than the iron of the lance which pierced our saviour's side, because it not only pierces his sacred side, but one of his living members also, to whom by its wound it gives death. it is more cruel than the thorns with which his venerable head was crowned and torn, and even than the nails with which the wicked jews fastened his sacred hands and feet to the cross, because if our divine saviour did not esteem more highly the member of his mystic body (which is pierced by the foul tongue of the slanderer) than his own natural body formed by the operation of the holy ghost in the chaste womb of the virgin mary, he would never have consented to deliver the latter to ignominies and outrages to spare the former." now st. francis and st. bernard are here speaking to religious. is it possible, then, for backbiting to glide into religious communities? yes, certainly. and it is by this snare that satan catches souls which have escaped all others. st. jerome says: "there are few who avoid this fault. amongst those even who pride themselves on leading an irreproachable life, you will scarcely find any who do not criticize their brethren." rarely, without doubt, but too often, nevertheless, we calumniate at first secretly or with one or two friends, afterwards openly and in public. we speak of the mistakes, shortcomings, and defects, great and small, and sometimes transmit them as a legacy. sometimes we use a moderate hypocrisy by purposely letting ourselves be questioned, and sometimes brutally attack our victim without shame. "have i, then," may the religious thus attacked say, "in making my vows renounced my honour and delivered my character to pillage? has my position as religious, has the majesty of the king of kings, of whom i have become the intimate friend, in place of ennobling me, degraded me? you call yourselves my brethren, and yet there are none who esteem me less! you would not steal my money, and yet you make no scruple of stealing my character, a thousand times more precious. you pay court to your saviour and persecute his child! the same tongue on which reposes the holy of holies spreads poison and death! is this to be the result of your study and practice of virtue? has not jesus christ, by so many communions, placed a little sweetness on your tongue and a little charity in your heart? by eating the lamb have you become wolves? as st. john chrysostom reproached the clergy of antioch. and you, who fly so carefully the gross vices of the world, have you no care or anxiety about damning yourself by slander?" xxii third preservative _to guard the tongue_ this must be done especially in five circumstances: ( ) at the change of superiors. do not criticize the outgoing superior nor flatter the new one. ( ) when you replace another religious. never by word or act cast any blame on him. inexperience, or a desire to introduce new customs, sometimes causes this to be done. ( ) when you are getting old. because then we are apt to think-- erroneously, of course--that the young members growing up are incapable of fulfilling duties once accomplished by ourselves. ( ) when religious come from another house do not ask questions which they ought not to answer, and do not tell them anything which might prejudice or disgust them with the house or anyone in it. lastly, in our interviews with our particular friends we must be very cautious. there are some who, when anything goes amiss with them, always seek the company of their confidants. these should seriously examine before god whether it is a necessary comfort in affliction or a support in weakness, or the too human satisfaction of justifying themselves, giving vent to their feelings, or getting blame and criticism for the superior or some one else. they should also examine whether on such occasions they speak the exact truth, and whether they seek a friend, who knows how to take the arrow sweetly from the wound rather than to bury it deeper. the way to find out the gravity of the sin of detraction is--( ) to consider the position of him who speaks and the weight which is attached to his words; ( ) the position of him who is spoken about, and the need he has of his reputation; ( ) the evil thing said; ( ) the number of the hearers; ( ) the result of the detraction; and, lastly, the intention of the speaker, and the passion which was the cause of it. xxiii fourth preservative _to be on our guard with certain persons_ there are six sorts of religious who wound fraternal charity more or less fatally, ( ) those who say to you, "such a one said so-and-so about you." these are the sowers of discord, whom god almighty declares he has in abomination. their tongues have three fangs more terrible than a viper. "with one blow," says st. bernard, "they kill three persons--themselves, the listeners, and the absent." ( ) those who, obscuring and perverting this amiable virtue, possess the infernal secret of transforming it into vice. is not this to sin against the holy ghost? ( ) those who skilfully turn the conversation on those brethren of whom they are jealous, in order to have all put in a bad word. they thus double the fault they apparently wish to avoid. ( ) those who constantly have their ears cocked to hear domestic news, who are skilful in finding out secrets and picking up stories, whose trade seems to be to take note of all little bits of scandalous news going, and to take them from ear to ear, or, worse, from house to house. oh, what an occupation! what a recreation for a spouse of christ! ( ) those who, under pretext of enlivening the conversation, sacrifice their brethren to the vain and cruel wantonness of witticism by relating something funny in order to give a lash of their tongue or to expose some weakness. alas! they forget that they ruin themselves in the esteem and opinion of the hearers. ( ) critics of intellectual work. on this point jealousy betrays itself very easily on one side, and susceptibility is stirred on the other. the heart is never insensible nor the mouth silent when we are wounded in so delicate a part. it is evident, besides, that in this case the blame supposes a desire of praise, and that in proportion as we endeavour to lower our brethren we try to raise ourselves. all these religious ought to be regarded as pests in the community. if we call those who maintain fraternal charity the children of god, should not those who disturb it be called the children of satan? do they not endeavour to turn the abode of peace into a den of discord, and the sanctuary of prayer into a porch of hell? xxiv fifth preservative _to be cautious in letter-writing and visiting_ great care must be taken never to repeat anything at visits or in letters which might compromise the honour of the community or any of its members. never utter a word or write a syllable which might in the least degree diminish the esteem or lower the merit of anyone. every well-reared person knows that little family secrets must be kept under lock and key. st. jane frances de chantal writes: "to mention rashly outside the community without great necessity the faults of religious would be great impudence. never relate outside, even to ecclesiastics, frivolous complaints and lamentations without foundation, which serve only to bring religion, and those who govern therein, into disrepute. certainly, we ought to be jealous of the honour and good odour of religious houses, which are the family of god. guard this as an essential point which requires restitution." xxv sixth preservative _caution in communication with superiors_ in communications made to superiors say the exact truth, and for a good purpose. do not speak into other ears that which, strictly speaking, should only be told to the local superior or superior-general. with the exception of extraordinary cases, or when it refers to a bad habit or something otherwise irremediable, there is generally little charity and less prudence in telling the superior-general of something blameable which has occurred. do not reveal, even before a superior, confidences which conscience, probity, or friendship requires to be guarded with an inviolable seal of friendship. if we write a complaint about a personal offence, lessen it rather than exaggerate, and endeavour to praise the person for good qualities, because nothing is easier than to blacken entirely another's reputation. pray and wait till your emotion be calmed. when passion holds the pen, it is no longer the ink that flows, but spleen, and the pen is transformed into a sword. before speaking or writing to the superior it would be well to put this question to ourselves: "am i one of those proud spirits who expose the faults of others in order to show off their own pretended virtues? or jealous spirits who are offended at the elevation of others? or vindictive spirits who like to give tit for tat? or polite spirits who wish to appear important? or ill-humoured, narrow-minded spirits, scandalized at trifles? or credulous, inconsiderate spirits who believe and repeat everything--the bad rather than the good? in fine, am i a hypocrite who, clothing malice with the mantle of charity, and hiding a cruel pleasure under the veil of compassion, weep with the victim they intend to immolate, as though profoundly touched by his misfortune, and seem to yield only to the imperative demands of duty and zeal?" xxvi seventh preservative _caution in doubtful cases_ act with the greatest reserve in doubtful cases where grave suspicions, difficult to be cleared up, rest on a religious superior or inferior, as the case may be. the ears of the superior are sacred, and it is unworthy profanation to pour into them false or exaggerated reports. to infect the superior's ears is a greater crime than to poison the drinking fountain or to steal a treasure, because the only treasure of religious is the esteem of their superior, and the pure water which refreshes their souls is the encouraging and benevolent words of the same superior. some, by imprudence or under the influence of a highly coloured or impressionable imagination which carries everything to extremes (we would not say through malice), render themselves often guilty of crying acts of injustice and ruin a religious. what is uncertain they relate as certain, and what is mere conjecture they take as the base of grave suspicions. several facts which, taken individually, constitute scarcely a fault, they group together, and so make a mountain out of a few grains of sand. an act which, seen in its entirety, would be worthy of praise, they mutilate in such a fashion as to show it in an unfavourable light. enemies of the positive degree, they lavish with prodigality the words _often, very much, exceedingly,_ etc. when they have only one or two witnesses, they make use of the word _everybody_, thereby leaving you under the impression that the rumour is scattered broadcast. on such statements, how can a superior pronounce judgment? xxvii eighth preservative _to check uncharitable conversation in others_ when you see charity wounded by an equal call him to order. if to say or do anything scandalous is the first sin forbidden by charity, not to stop, when you can, him who speaks or acts badly ought to be considered the second. when the discourse degenerates, represent jesus christ entering suddenly into the midst of the company, and saying, as he did formerly to the disciples of emmaus: "what discourse hold you among yourselves, and why are you sad?" recall also these words of the psalmist: "you have preferred to say evil rather than good, and to relate vices rather than virtues. o deceitful, inconsiderate, and rash tongue! dost thou think thou wilt remain unpunished? no; god will punish thee in everlasting flames." after having thus fortified ourselves against uncharitable conversation, we ought to try and put a stop to it. st. john climacus tells us to address the following words to those who calumniate in our presence: "for mercy's sake cease such conversation! how would you wish me to stone my brethren--me, whose faults are greater and more numerous?" a holy religious replied to an uncharitable person: "we have to render infinite thanks to god if we are not such as those of whom you speak. alas! what would become of us without him?" the philosopher zeno, hearing a man relate a number of misdeeds about antisthenes, said to him: "ah! has he never done anything good? has he never done anything for which he merits praise?" "i don't know," he replied. then said zeno, "how is that? you have sufficient perception to remark, and sufficient memory to remember, this long list of faults, and you have had no eyes to see his many good qualities and virtuous actions." st. john chrysostom says: "to the calumniator i wish you to say the following: if you can praise your neighbours, my ears are open to receive your perfume. if you can only blacken them, my ears are closed, as i do not wish them to be the receptacle of your filthy words. what matters it to me to hear that such a one is wicked, and has done some detestable act? friend, think of the account that must be rendered to the sovereign judge. what excuse can we give, and what mercy will we deserve--we who have been so keen-sighted to the faults of others, and so blind to our own? you would consider it very rude for a person to look into your private room; but i say it is far worse to pry into another's private life and to expose it. the calumniator should remember that, besides the fault he commits and the wrong he does to his neighbours, he exposes himself, by a just punishment of god, to be the victim of calumny himself. xxviii ninth preservative _how to check uncharitable conversation in superiors, etc._ when we see charity wounded by persons worthy of respect, keep silent, in order to show your regret, or relate something to the advantage of the absent. if necessary, withdraw. it is related in the life of sister margaret, of the blessed sacrament of the carmelite order, that when a discourse against charity took place in the house she saw a smoke arise of such suffocating odour that she nearly fainted, and fled immediately to her divine master for pardon. st. jerome, writing to nepotian on this subject, says: "some object that they cannot warn the speaker of his fault without failing in the respect due to him. this excuse is vain, because their eagerness to listen increases his itch for speaking. no one wishes to relate calumnies and murmurs to ears closed with disgust. is there anyone so foolish as to shoot arrows against a stone wall?" let your strict silence be a significant and salutary lesson for the detractor. "have no commerce with those who bite," said solomon, because perdition is on the eve of overtaking them; and who can tell the disaster and ruin with which the rash detractor and equally blamable listener are threatened? if it be true, according to the testimony of a religious who was visitor of the houses of his order, that the virtue against which one can most easily commit a grievous sin in religion is charity; and, according to st. francis de sales, sins of the tongue number three-fourths of all sins committed; cannot it be said with equal truth that to refuse to listen to detractors is with one blow to prevent the sin and safeguard charity? in many cases one can adroitly make known the good qualities and virtues which more than counterbalance the defects related by the defamer. to act thus is to spread about the good odour of christ. xxix tenth preservative _be cautious after hearing uncharitable conversation_ after having heard uncharitable words, observe the following precautions given by the saints: . repeat nothing. . believe all the good you hear, but believe only the bad you see. malice does the contrary. it demands proofs for good reports, but believes bad reports on the slightest grounds. out of every thousand reports one can scarcely be found accurate in all its details. when, as a rule of prudence, superiors are told to believe only half of what they hear, to consider the other half, and still suspect the remaining part, what rule should be prescribed for inferiors? when the act is evidently blameworthy, suppose a good intention, or at least one not so bad as apparent, leaving to god what he reserves to himself the judgment of the heart; or consider it as the result of surprise, inadvertence, human frailty, or the violence of the temptation. never come to hasty conclusions-- _e.g._, "he is incorrigible; as he is, so will he always be." expect everything from grace, efforts, and time. . efface as much as possible the bad impression produced on the mind, because calumny always produces such. the recital of something bad about a fellow-religious based on probabilities has sufficed to tarnish a reputation which ample apologies cannot fully repair. the detractor's evil reports are believed on account of the audacity with which he relates them, but when he wants to relate something good he will not be believed on oath. we know by experience that evil reports spread with compound interest, while good ones are retailed at discount. xxx eleventh preservative _not to judge or suspect rashly_ expel every doubt, every thought, likely to diminish esteem. they amuse themselves with a most dangerous game who always gather up vague thoughts of the past, rumours without foundation, conjectures in which passion has the greatest share, and thus form in their minds characters of their brethren--adding always, never subtracting--and by dint of the high idea they have of their own ability conclude that all their judgments are true, and thus become fixed in their bad habit. st. bernard, comparing them to painters, warns them that it is the devil who furnishes the materials, and even the evil conceptions, necessary to depict such bad impressions of their brethren. we read in the "life of st. francis" that our lord himself called in a distinct voice a certain young man to his order. "o lord," replied the young man, "when i am once entered, what must i do to please you?" pay particular attention to our lord's answer: "lead thou a life in common with the rest. avoid particular friendships. take no notice of the defects of others, and form no unfavourable judgments about them." what matter for consideration in these admirable words! thomas à kempis says: "turn thy eyes back upon thyself, and see thou judge not the doing of others. in judging others a man labours in vain, often errs, and easily sins; but in judging and looking into himself he always labours with fruit. we frequently judge of a thing according to the inclination of our hearts, because self-love easily alters in us a true judgment." rodriguez tells us to turn on ourselves the sinister questions, etc., we are tempted to refer to others _e.g._: "it is i who am deceived. it is through jealousy that i condemn my brethren. it is through malice that i find so much to blame in them. finally, the fault is mine, not theirs." even when reports more or less true might depreciate in your eyes some of the community, may they not have, besides their faults, some great but hidden virtues, and by these be entitled to a more merciful judgment? st. augustine says beautifully: "if you cast your eye over a field where the corn has been trampled, you only perceive the straw, not the grain. lift up the straw, and you will see plenty of golden sheaves full of grain." the simile is very applicable to a poor religious beaten down by foul tongues. we blame the defects of our brethren, and perhaps we have the same, or others more shameful still. we usurp the right of judgment, which god reserves to himself, and forget that he will punish us by leaving us to our own irregular passions. ah! is it not already a very great misfortune to have these contemptuous, slanderous, distrustful thoughts, and many other sins, the result of malicious suspicions and rash judgments, rooted in the soul? xxxi means to support the evil thoughts and tongues of others what must be done in those painful moments when, being the victim of a painful calumny, the object of suspicion, the butt of domestic persecution, we are tempted to believe that charity is banished from the community, and so to banish it from our own heart? recall the words of st. john of the cross. "imagine," says he, "that your brethren are so many sculptors armed with mallets and chisels, and that you have been placed before them as a block of marble destined in the mind of god to become a statue representing the man of sorrows, jesus crucified." consider a hasty word said to you as a thorn in the head; a mockery as a spit in the face; an unkind act as a nail in the hand; a hatred which takes the place of friendship as a lance in the side; all that which hurts, contradicts, or humiliates us as the blows, stripes, the gall and vinegar, the crown of thorns and the cross. the work proceeds always, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. let us not complain. we will one day thank these workmen, who, without intending it, give to our soul the most beautiful, the most glorious, and the noblest traits. we ourselves are sculptors as well as statues, and we will find that, on our part, we have materially helped to form in them the same traits. "if all were perfect," says the "imitation," "what, then, should we have to suffer from others for god's sake?" it is not forbidden us to seek consolation. but from whom? is it from those discontented spirits whose ears are like public sewers, the receptacle of every filth and dirt? they increase our pain by pouring the poison of their own discontent instead of the oil of the good samaritan. they will take our disease and give us theirs, and, like samson's foxes, spread destruction around by repeating what we said to them. may god preserve us from this misfortune! if we cannot carry our burden alone, and if we find it no relief to lay our griefs in the sacred heart of jesus, let us go to him whom the rule appoints to be our friend and consoler, our confidant and director, and who, as st. augustine relates of st. monica, after having listened to us with patience, charity, and compassion, after having at first appeared to share our sentiments, will sweeten and explain all with prudence, will lift up and encourage our oppressed heart, and by his counsel and prayers will restore us to peace and charity. xxxii second means to bear with others recall the words of our lord to blessed margaret mary: "with the intention of perfecting thee by patience i will increase thy sensibility and repugnance, so that thou wilt find occasions of humiliation and suffering even in the smallest and most indifferent things." what would be considered, when we were in the world, as the prick of a needle, we look upon in religion as the blow of a sword. what we looked upon in our own house as light as a feather, becomes in community life as heavy as a rock. an insignificant word becomes an outrage, and a little matter which formerly would escape our notice now upsets us, and even deprives us of sleep and appetite. is not this increase of sensibility and repugnance found in the religious state only to form in us the image of our crucified lord? if christ alone has suffered interiorly more than all the saints and martyrs together, was it not because of this extreme repugnance of his soul, which multiplied to infinity for him the bitterness of the affronts and the rigour of his torments? religious may expect for a certainty that, like their divine master, there are reserved for them moments of complete abandonment, those agonies intended for the souls of the elect, in which nature seems on the point of succumbing. no consolation from their families, which they have quitted; nor from their companions, who are busy in their various employments; nor from their superiors, who do not understand the excess of their grief, and whose words by divine permission produce no effect. the solemn moment of agony with our divine saviour was that in which, abandoned, betrayed, and denied by his apostles, and perceiving in his father only an irritated face, he exclaimed, "my god! my god! why hast thou forsaken me?" such will be for religious the last touch which will complete in them the resemblance of jesus crucified, provided they will render themselves worthy of it. when will be the time of this complete abandonment? how long will this agony be prolonged? this is a secret known only to god. xxxiii conclusion poverty, chastity, obedience, and charity--such are the virtues suitable and characteristic of the religious. in this little treatise we have endeavoured to trace the features of the last. in every community we can distinguish two sorts of religious-- those who mount and those who descend--those whose face is towards the path of perfection, and those who have turned their back to it. perhaps amongst these latter some have only one more step to abandon it altogether. now we mount or descend, proceed or retrace our steps, in proportion as we practise these four virtues or neglect them. a religious order is like a fire balloon, which requires four conditions in order to rise into the clouds amidst the applause of the spectators. first, the rarefaction of the air by fire. this represents the vow of poverty, which empties the heart through the hands, and substitutes the desire of heavenly goods for those of earth. second, release from the cords which bind it down. this represents the effects of the vow of chastity, which, by breaking human attachments, permits us to soar towards god with freedom and rapidity. third, a man who will feed the fire and moderate the flight of the balloon upwards. this represents the right which the vow of obedience places in the hands of the superior, to nourish the sacred fire, and direct the sublime movement of the soul and foresee dangers. fourth, the union of its component parts. this represents the operations of charity, in causing all the members of a community to have but one heart and one soul. possessing these four virtues, a religious order soars in the heights of perfection; but if one of these be wanting it falls helplessly, and is no longer an object of edification, but of scandal and ridicule. when it happens that some members, losing the spirit of their state, abandon their holy vocation, we may say with st. john: "they went out from us; but they were not of us. for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but that they might be made manifest that they are not all of us" ( john ii.). they appeared to have the religious virtues, but in reality one or all were wanting to them. o god, do not permit that lukewarmness or an uncontrolled passion will ever make me waver in my vocation. during life and at death i wish to remain a faithful religious, so that i may find the salvation which thou hast promised by procuring thy glory. as good grain improves by pulling up the weeds, and the body becomes healthy when purged of bad humours, pour into my soul the grace and unction which others refuse, in order that, practising more perfectly from day to day poverty, chastity, obedience, and charity, and redoubling my ardour and zeal to my last hour, i may obtain the priceless treasure promised to those who have quitted all to follow thee. amen. appendix the practice of fraternal charity (father faber) . often reflect on some good point in each of your brethren. . reflect on the opposite faults in yourself. . do this most in the case of those whom we are most inclined to criticize. . never claim rights or even let ourselves feel that we have them, as this spirit is most fatal both to obedience and charity. . charitable thoughts are the only security of charitable deeds and words. they save us from surprises, especially from surprises of temper. . never have an aversion for another, much less manifest it. . avoid particular friendships. . never judge another. always, if possible, excuse the faults we see, and if we cannot excuse the action, excuse the intention. we cannot all think alike, and we should, therefore, avoid attributing bad motives to others. charitable religious they have a disregard of self and a desire to accommodate others. they rejoice with their companions in their joys and recreations, and grieve with them in their afflictions. they try to bring all the good they can to the community and to avert all the evil. they begin with themselves, by being as little trouble as possible to others. with great charity and affability they bear with the faults and shortcomings of others, careful to fulfil the law of christ, which tells us to bear one another's burdens. they dispense to others what they have for their own advantage; more particularly do they give spiritual assistance by prayer and the other spiritual works of mercy. they never contradict anyone. they never speak against anyone. they are convinced that charity, holy friendships, and concord form the great solace of this life, and that no good ever came from dissensions and disputes. they consider that god is ever in the midst of those who live united together by the bonds of holy love. we will do likewise if we consider the image of god in the souls of our brethren. as we form one body here and one spirit in the same faith and charity, let us hope not to be separated hereafter, but to belong for ever to that one body in heaven when faith and hope shall disappear, but where charity alone shall remain, and remain for ever. --- _r. & t. washbourne, ltd., , & paternoster row_ on union with god nihil obstat. f. thos. bergh, o.s.b., censor deputatus. imprimatur. edm. can. surmont, vicarius generalis. westmonasterii, _die decembris, _. [_all rights reserved_] _the angelus series_ on union with god by blessed albert the great, o.p. with notes by rev. p. j. berthier, o.p. translated by a benedictine of princethorpe priory _r. & t. washbourne, ltd._ paternoster row, london and at manchester, birmingham, and glasgow preface surely the most deeply-rooted need of the human soul, its purest aspiration, is for the closest possible union with god. as one turns over the pages of this little work, written by blessed albert the great[ ] towards the end of his life, when that great soul had ripened and matured, one feels that here indeed is the ideal of one's hopes. simply and clearly the great principles are laid down, the way is made plain which leads to the highest spiritual life. it seems as though, while one reads, the mists of earth vanish and the snowy summits appear of the mountains of god. we breathe only the pure atmosphere of prayer, peace, and love, and the one great fact of the universe, the divine presence, is felt and realized without effort. but is such a life possible amid the whirl of the twentieth century? to faith and love all things are possible, and our author shows us the loving father, ever ready to give as much and more than we can ask. the spirit of such a work is ever true; the application may vary with circumstances, but the guidance of the holy spirit will never be wanting to those souls who crave for closer union with their divine master. this little treatise has been very aptly called the "metaphysics of the imitation," and it is in the hope that it may be of use to souls that it has been translated into english. blessed albert the great is too well known for it to be necessary for us to give more than the briefest outline of his life. the eldest son of the count of bollstädt, he was born at lauingen in swabia in or , though some historians give it as . as a youth he was sent to the university of padua, where he had special facilities for the study of the liberal arts. drawn by the persuasive teaching of blessed jordan of saxony, he joined the order of st. dominic in , and after completing his studies, received the doctor's degree at the university of paris. his brilliant genius quickly brought him into the most prominent positions. far-famed for his learning, he attracted scholars from all parts of europe to paris, cologne, ratisbon, etc., where he successively taught. it was during his years of teaching at paris and cologne that he counted among his disciples st. thomas aquinas, the greatness of whose future he foretold, and whose lifelong friendship with him then began. in albert was elected provincial of his order in germany. in he was appointed bishop of ratisbon, but resigned his see in . he then continued unweariedly until a few years before his death, when his great powers, especially his memory, failed him, but the fervour of his soul remained ever the same. in , at cologne, he sank, at last worn out by his manifold labours. "whether we consider him as a theologian or as a philosopher, albert was undoubtedly one of the most extraordinary men of his age; i might say, one of the most wonderful men of genius who appeared in past times" (jourdain). very grateful thanks are due to rev. p. j. berthier, o.p., for his kind permission to append to this edition a translation of his excellent notes (from the french edition, entitled "de l'union avec dieu"). contents chapter page i. of the highest perfection which man can attain unto in this life ii. how a man may despise all things and cleave to christ alone iii. the law of man's perfection in this life iv. that our labour must be with the understanding and not with the senses v. of purity of heart, which is to be sought above all else vi. that a man truly devout must seek god in purity of mind and heart vii. of the practice of interior recollection viii. that a truly devout man should commit himself to god in all that befalls him ix. the contemplation of god is to be preferred above all other exercises x. that we should not be too solicitous for actual and sensible devotion, but desire rather the union of our will with god xi. in what manner we should resist temptation and endure trials xii. the power of the love of god xiii. of the nature and advantages of prayer,--of interior recollection xiv. that everything should be judged according to the testimony of our conscience xv. on the contempt of self: how it is acquired: its profit to the soul xvi. of the providence of god, which watches over all things "it is good for me to adhere to my god." "be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly father is perfect." on union with god chapter i of the highest perfection which man can attain unto in this life i have felt moved to write a few last thoughts describing, as far as one may in this waiting-time of our exile and pilgrimage, the entire separation of the soul from all earthly things and its close, unfettered union with god. i have been the more urged to this, because christian perfection has no other end but charity, which unites us to god.[ ] this union of charity is essential for salvation, since it consists in the practice of the precepts and in conformity to the divine will. hence it separates us from whatever would war against the essence and habit of charity, such as mortal sin.[ ] but religious, the more easily to attain to god, their last end, have gone beyond this, and have bound themselves by vow to evangelical perfection, to that which is voluntary and of counsel.[ ] with the help of these vows they cut off all that might impede the fervour of their love or hinder them in their flight to god. they have, therefore, by the vow of their religious profession, renounced all things, whether pertaining to soul or body.[ ] god is in truth a spirit, and "they that adore him must adore him in spirit and in truth,"[ ] that is, with a knowledge and love, an intelligence and will purified from every phantom of earth. hence it is written: "when thou shalt pray, enter into thy chamber"--_i.e._, into the inmost abode of thy heart--and, "having shut the door" of thy senses, with a pure heart, a free conscience and an unfeigned faith, "pray to thy father" in spirit and in truth, in the "secret" of thy soul.[ ] then only will a man attain to this ideal, when he has despoiled and stripped himself of all else; when, wholly recollected within himself, he has hidden from and forgotten the whole world, that he may abide in silence in the presence of jesus christ. there, in solitude of soul, with loving confidence he makes known his desires to god. with all the intensity of his love he pours forth his heart before him, in sincerity and truth, until he loses himself in god. then is his heart enlarged, inflamed, and melted in him, yea, even in its inmost depths. chapter ii how a man may despise all things and cleave to christ alone whosoever thou art who longest to enter upon this happy state or seekest to direct thither thy steps, thus it behoveth thee to act. first, close, as it were, thine eyes, and bar the doors of thy senses. suffer not anything to entangle thy soul, nor permit any care or trouble to penetrate within it. shake off all earthly things, counting them useless, noxious, and hurtful to thee.[ ] when thou hast done this, enter wholly within thyself, and fix thy gaze upon thy wounded jesus, and upon him alone. strive with all thy powers, unwearyingly, to reach god through himself, that is, through god made man, that thou mayest attain to the knowledge of his divinity through the wounds of his sacred humanity. in all simplicity and confidence abandon thyself and whatever concerns thee without reserve to god's unfailing providence, according to the teaching of st. peter: "casting all your care upon him,"[ ] who can do all things. and again it is written: "be nothing solicitous";[ ] "cast thy care upon the lord and he shall sustain thee";[ ] "it is good for me to adhere to my god";[ ] "i set the lord always in my sight";[ ] "i found him whom my soul loveth";[ ] and "now all good things came to me"[ ] together with him. this is the hidden and heavenly treasure, the precious pearl, which is to be preferred before all. this it is that we must seek with humble confidence and untiring effort, yet in silence and peace. it must be sought with a brave heart, even though its price be the loss of bodily comfort, of esteem, and of honour. lacking this, what doth it profit a religious if he "gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul?"[ ]. of what value are the religious state, the holiness of our profession, the shaven head, the outward signs of a life of abnegation, if we lack the spirit of humility and truth, in which christ dwells by faith and love? st. luke says: "the kingdom of god," that is, christ, "is within you."[ ] chapter iii the law of man's perfection in this life in proportion as the mind is absorbed in the thought and care of the things of this world do we lose the fervour of our devotion, and drift away from the things of heaven. the greater, on the other hand, our diligence in withdrawing our powers from the memory, love and thought of that which is inferior in order to fix them upon that which is above, the more perfect will be our prayer, the purer our contemplation. the soul cannot give itself perfectly at the same time to two objects as contrary one to another as light to darkness;[ ] for he who lives united to god dwells in the light, he who clings to this world lives in darkness. the highest perfection, therefore, of man in this life lies in this: that he is so united to god that his soul with all its powers and faculties becomes recollected in him and is one spirit with him.[ ] then it remembers naught save god, nor does it relish or understand anything but him. then all its affections, united in the delights of love, repose sweetly in the enjoyment of their creator. the image of god which is imprinted upon the soul is found in the three powers of the reason, memory, and will. but since these do not perfectly bear the divine likeness, they have not the same resemblance to god as in the first days of man's creation.[ ] god is the "form" of the soul upon which he must impress his own image, as the seal on the wax or the stamp on the object it marks.[ ] this can only be fully accomplished when the reason is wholly illuminated according to its capacity, by the knowledge of god, the sovereign truth; the will entirely devoted to the love of the supreme good; the memory absorbed in the contemplation and enjoyment of eternal felicity, and in the sweet repose of so great a happiness. as the perfect possession of this state constitutes the glory of the blessed in heaven, it is clear that in its commencement consists the perfection of this life. chapter iv that our labour must be with the understanding and not with the senses blessed is he who by continually cleansing his soul from the images and phantoms of earth draws its powers inward, and thence lifts them up to god. at length he in a manner forgets all images, and by a simple and direct act of pure intellect and will contemplates god, who is absolutely simple. cast from thee, therefore, all phantoms, images, and forms, and whatsoever is not god,[ ] that all thy intercourse with him may proceed from an understanding, affection, and will, alike purified. this is, in truth, the end of all thy labours, that thou mayest draw nigh unto god and repose in him within thy soul, solely by thy understanding and by a fervent love, free from entanglement or earthly image. not by his bodily organs or outward senses does a man attain to this, but by the intelligence and will, which constitute him man.[ ] so long as he lingers, trifling with the objects of the imagination and senses, he has not yet passed beyond the limits and instincts of his animal nature, which he possesses in common with the brute beasts. they know and feel through images and by their senses, nor can it be otherwise, for they have no higher powers. not so is it with man, who, by his intelligence, affections, and will, is created in the image and likeness of god. hence it is by these powers that he ought, without intermediary, purely and directly to commune with god, be united to him, and cleave to him.[ ] the devil does his very utmost to hinder us from this exercise, for he beholds in it a beginning and a foretaste of eternal life, and he is envious of man. therefore he strives, now by one temptation or passion, now by another, to turn away our thoughts from god. at one time he assails us by arousing in us unnecessary anxiety, foolish cares or troubles, or by drawing us to irregular conversations and vain curiosity. at another he ensnares us by subtle books, by the words of others, by rumours and novelties. then, again, he has recourse to trials, contradictions, etc. although these things may sometimes seem but very trifling faults, if faults at all, yet do they greatly hinder our progress in this holy exercise. therefore, whether great or small, they must be resisted and driven from us as evil and harmful, though they may seem useful and even necessary. it is of great importance that what we have heard, or seen, or done, or said, should not leave their traces or fill our imagination. neither before nor after, nor at the time, should we foster these memories or allow their images to be formed. for when the mind is free from these thoughts, we are not hindered in our prayer, in meditation, or the psalmody, or in any other of our spiritual exercises, nor do these distractions return to trouble us. then shouldst thou readily and trustfully commit thyself and all that concerns thee to the unfailing and most sure providence of god, in silence and peace. he himself will fight for thee, and will grant thee a liberty and consolation better, nobler, and sweeter than would be possible if thou gavest thyself up day and night to thy fancies, to vain and wandering thoughts, which hold captive the mind, as they toss it hither and thither, wearying soul and body, and wasting uselessly alike thy time and strength.[ ] accept all things, whatsoever their cause, silently and with a tranquil mind, as coming to thee from the fatherly hand of divine providence. free thyself, therefore, from all the impressions of earthly things, in so far as thy state and profession require, so that with a purified mind and sincere affection thou mayest cleave to him to whom thou hast so often and so entirely vowed thyself. let nothing remain which could come between thy soul and god, that so thou mayest be able to pass surely and directly from the wounds of the sacred humanity to the brightness of the divinity. chapter v of purity of heart, which is to be sought above all else wouldst thou journey by the shortest road, the straight and safe way unto eternal bliss, unto thy true country, to grace and glory? strive with all thy might to obtain habitual cleanness of heart, purity of mind, quiet of the senses. gather up thy affections, and with thy whole heart cleave unto god. withdraw as much as thou canst from thy acquaintance and from all men, and abstain from such affairs as would hinder thy purpose. seek out with jealous care the place, time, and means most suited to quiet and contemplation, and lovingly embrace silence and solitude. beware the dangers of which the times are full; fly the agitation of a world never at rest, never still.[ ] let thy chief study be to gain purity, freedom, and peace of heart. close the doors of thy senses and dwell within, shutting thy heart as diligently as thou canst against the shapes and images of earthly things. of all the practices of the spiritual life purity of heart stands highest, and rightly, for it is the end and reward of all our labours, and is found only with those who live truly according to the spirit and as good religious. wherefore thou shouldst employ all thy diligence and skill in order to free thy heart, senses, and affections from whatever could trammel their liberty, or could fetter or ensnare thy soul. strive earnestly to gather in the wandering affections of thy heart and fix them on the love of the sole and pure truth, the sovereign good; then keep them, as it were, enchained within thee. fix thy gaze unwaveringly upon god and divine things; spurn the follies of earth and seek to be wholly transformed in jesus christ, yea, even to the heart's core. when thou hast begun to cleanse and purify thy soul of earthly images, and to unify and tranquillize thy heart and mind in god with loving confidence, to the end that thou mayest taste and enjoy in all thy powers the torrents of his good pleasure, and mayest fix thy will and intelligence in him, then thou wilt no longer need to study and read the holy scriptures to learn the love of god and of thy neighbour, for the holy spirit himself will teach thee.[ ] spare no pains, no labour, to purify thy heart and to establish it in unbroken peace. abide in god in the secret place of thy soul as tranquilly as though there had already risen upon thee the dawn of eternity, the unending day of god. strong in the love of jesus, go forth from thyself, with a heart pure, a conscience at peace, a faith unfeigned; and in every trial, every event, commit thyself unreservedly to god, having nothing so much at heart as perfect obedience to his will and good pleasure. if thou wouldst arrive thus far, it is needful for thee often to enter within thy soul and to abide therein, disengaging thyself as much as thou canst from all things. keep the eye of thy soul ever in purity and peace; suffer not the form and images of this world to defile thy mind; preserve thy will from every earthly care, and let every fibre of thy heart be rooted in the love of the sovereign good. thus will thy whole soul, with all its powers, be recollected in god and form but one spirit with him. it is in this that the highest perfection possible to man here below consists. this union of the spirit and of love, by which a man conforms himself in everything to the supreme and eternal will, enables us to become by grace what god is by his nature.[ ] let us not forget this truth: the moment a man, by the help of god, succeeds in overcoming his own will, that is, in freeing himself from every inordinate affection and care, to cast himself and all his miseries unreservedly into the bosom of god, that moment he becomes so pleasing to god that he receives the gift of grace. grace brings charity, and charity drives out all fear and hesitation, and fills the soul with confidence and hope. what is more blessed than to cast all our care on him who cannot fail? as long as thou leanest upon thyself thou wilt totter. cast thyself fearlessly into the arms of god. he will embrace thee, he will heal and save thee.[ ] if thou wouldst ponder often upon these truths they would bring to thee more happiness than all the riches, delights, honours, of this false world, and would make thee more blessed than all the wisdom and knowledge of this corruptible life, even though thou shouldst surpass all the wise men who have gone before thee. chapter vi that a man truly devout must seek god in purity of mind and heart as thou goest forward in this work of ridding thee of every earthly thought and entanglement thou wilt behold thy soul regain her strength and the mastery of her inward senses, and thou wilt begin to taste the sweetness of heavenly things. learn, therefore, to keep thyself free from the images of outward and material objects, for god loves with a special love the soul that is thus purified. his "delights" are "to be with the children of men,"[ ] that is, with those who, set free from earthly affairs and distractions, and at peace from their passions, offer him simple and pure hearts intent on him alone. if the memory, imagination, and thoughts still dwell below, it follows of necessity that fresh events, memories of the past, and other things will ensnare and drag thee down. but the holy spirit abides not amid such empty thoughts. the true friend of jesus christ must be so united by his intelligence and will to the divine will and goodness that his imagination and passions have no hold over him, and that he troubles not whether men give him love or ridicule, nor heeds what may be done to him. know well that a truly good will does all and is of more value than all. if the will is good, wholly conformed and united to god, and guided by reason, it matters little that the flesh, the senses, the exterior man are inclined to evil and sluggish in good, or even that a man find himself interiorly lacking in devotion.[ ] it suffices that he remains with his whole soul inwardly united to god by faith and a good will. this he will accomplish if, knowing his own imperfection and utter nothingness, he understands that all his happiness is in his creator. then does he forsake himself, his own strength and powers, and every creature, and hides himself in complete abandonment in the bosom of god. to god are all his actions simply and purely directed. he seeks nothing outside of god, but knows that of a truth he has found in him all the good and all the happiness of perfection. then will he be in some measure transformed in god. he will no longer be able to think, love, understand, remember aught save god and the things of god. he will no longer behold himself or creatures save in god; no love will possess him but the love of god, nor will he remember creatures or even his own being, save in god. such a knowledge of the truth renders the soul humble, makes her a hard judge towards herself, but merciful to others, while earthly wisdom puffs up the soul with pride and vanity. behold, this is wise and spiritual doctrine, grounded upon the truth, and leading unto the knowledge and service of god, and to familiarity with him. if thou desirest to possess him indeed, thou must of necessity despoil thy heart of earthly affections, not alone for persons, but for every creature, that thou mayest tend to the lord thy god with thy whole heart and with all thy strength, freely, simply, without fear or solicitude, trusting everything in entire confidence to his all-watchful providence.[ ] chapter vii on the practice of interior recollection the author of the book entitled "de spiritu et anima" tells us (chap. xxi.)[ ] that to ascend to god means nothing else than to enter into oneself. and, indeed, he who enters into the secret place of his own soul passes beyond himself, and does in very truth ascend to god. banish, therefore, from thy heart the distractions of earth and turn thine eyes to spiritual joys, that thou mayest learn at last to repose in the light of the contemplation of god. verily the soul's true life and her repose are to abide in god, held fast by love, and sweetly refreshed by the divine consolations. but many are the obstacles which hinder us from tasting this rest, and of our own strength we could never attain to it. the reason is evident--the mind is distracted and preoccupied; it cannot enter into itself by the aid of the memory, for it is blinded by phantoms; nor can it enter by the intellect, for it is vitiated by the passions. even the desire of interior joys and spiritual delights fails to draw it inward. it lies so deeply buried in things sensible and transitory that it cannot return to itself as to the image of god. how needful is it, then, that the soul, lifted upon the wings of reverence and humble confidence, should rise above itself and every creature by entire detachment, and should be able to say within itself: he whom i seek, love, desire, among all, more than all, and above all, cannot be perceived by the senses or the imagination, for he is above both the senses and the understanding. he cannot be perceived by the senses, yet he is the object of all our desires; he is without shape, but he is supremely worthy of our heart's deepest love. he is beyond compare, and to the pure in heart greatly to be desired. above all else is he sweet and love-worthy; his goodness and perfection are infinite. when thou shalt understand this, thy soul will enter into the darkness of the spirit, and will advance further and penetrate more deeply into itself.[ ] thou wilt by this means attain more speedily unto the beholding in a dark manner of the trinity in unity, and unity in trinity, in christ jesus, in proportion as thy effort is more inward; and the greater is thy charity, the more precious the fruit thou wilt reap. for the highest, in spiritual things, is ever that which is most interior. grow not weary, therefore, and rest not from thy efforts until thou hast received some earnest or foretaste of the fulness of joy that awaits thee, and has obtained some first-fruits of the divine sweetness and delights. cease not in thy pursuit till thou shalt behold "the god of gods in sion."[ ] in thy spiritual ascent and in thy search after a closer union with god thou must allow thyself no repose, no slipping back, but must go forward till thou hast obtained the object of thy desires. follow the example of mountain-climbers. if thy desires turn aside after the objects which pass below thou wilt lose thyself in byways and countless distractions. thy mind will become dissipated and drawn in all directions by its desires. thy progress will be uncertain, thou wilt not reach thy goal, nor find rest after thy labours. if, on the other hand, the heart and mind, led on by love and desire, withdraw from the distractions of this world, and little by little abandon baser things to become recollected in the one true and unchangeable good, to dwell there, held fast by the bonds of love, then wilt thou grow strong, and thy recollection will deepen the higher thou risest on the wings of knowledge and desire. they who have attained to this dwell as by habit in the sovereign good, and become at last inseparable from it. true life, which is god himself, becomes their inalienable possession;[ ] for ever, free from all fear of the vicissitudes of time and change,[ ] they repose in the peaceful enjoyment of this inward happiness, and in sweet communication with god. their abode is for ever fixed within their own souls, in christ jesus, who is to all who come to him "the way, the truth, and the life."[ ] chapter viii that a truly devout man should commit himself to god in all that befalls him from all that has hitherto been said, thou hast understood, if i mistake not, that the more thou separatest thyself from earthly images and created objects, and the closer thy union with god, the nearer wilt thou approach to the state of innocence and perfection. what could be happier, better, sweeter than this? it is, therefore, of supreme importance that thou shouldst preserve thy soul so free from every trace or entanglement of earth that neither the world nor thy friends, neither prosperity nor adversity, things present, past, or future, which concern thyself or others, not even thine own sins above measure, should have power to trouble thee. think only how thou mayest live, as it were, alone with god, removed from the world, the simple and pure life of the spirit, as though thy soul were already in eternity and separated from thy body. there thou wouldst not busy thyself with earthly things, nor be disquieted by the state of the world, by peace or war, fair skies or foul, or anything here below. but thou wouldst be absorbed and filled by his love. strive even now in this present life to come forth in a manner from thy body and from every creature. as far as thou canst, fix the eye of thy soul steadfastly, with unobscured gaze, upon the uncreated light. then will thy soul, purified from the clouds of earth, be like an angel in a human body, no longer troubled by the flesh, or disturbed by vain thoughts. arm thyself against temptations, persecutions, injuries, so that in adversity as in prosperity, thou mayest still cleave to god in unbroken peace. when trouble, discouragement, confusion of mind assail thee, do not lose patience or be cast down. do not betake thee to vocal prayers or other consolations, but endeavour by an act of the will and reason to lift up thy soul and unite it to god, whether thy sensual nature will or no. the devout soul should be so united to god, should so form and preserve her will in conformity to the divine will, that she is no more occupied or allured by any creature than before it was created, but lives as though there existed but god and herself.[ ] she will receive in unvarying peace all that comes to her from the hand of divine providence. in all things she will hope in the lord, without losing patience, peace, or silence. behold, therefore, of how great value it is in the spiritual life to be detached from all things, that thou mayest be interiorly united to god and conformed to him. moreover, there will then be no longer anything to intervene between thy soul and god. whence could it come? not from without, for the vow of voluntary poverty has despoiled thee of all earthly goods, that of chastity has taken thy body. nor could it come from within, for obedience has taken from thee thy very will and soul. there is now nothing left which could come between god and thyself. that thou art a religious, thy profession, thy state, thy habit and tonsure, and the other marks of the religious life declare. see to it whether thou art a religious in truth or only one in name. consider how thou art fallen and how thou sinnest against the lord thy god and against his justice if thy deeds do not correspond with thy holy state, if by will or desire thou clingest to the creature rather than to the creator, or preferrest the creature to the creator. chapter ix the contemplation of god is to be preferred above all other exercises whatever exists outside of god is the work of his hands. every creature is, therefore, a blending together of the actual and the possible, and as such is in its nature limited. born of nothing, it is surrounded by nothingness, and tends to nothingness.[ ] of necessity the creature depends each moment upon god, the supreme artist, for its existence, preservation, power of action, and all that it possesses. it is utterly unable to accomplish its own work, either for itself or for another, and is impotent as a thing which is not before that which is, the finite before the infinite. it follows, therefore, that our life, thoughts, and works should be in him, of him, for him, and directed to him, who by the least sign of his will could produce creatures unspeakably more perfect than any which now exist. it is impossible that there should be in the mind or heart a thought or a love more profitable, more perfect or more blessed than those which rest upon god, the almighty creator, of whom, in whom, by whom, towards whom all tend. he suffices infinitely for himself and for others, since from all eternity he contains within himself the perfections of all things. there is nothing within him which is not himself. in him and by him exist the causes of all transitory things; in him are the immutable origins of all things that change, whether rational or irrational. all that happens in time has in him its eternal principle. he fills all; he is in all things by his essence, by which he is more present and more near to them than they are to themselves.[ ] in him all things are united and live eternally.[ ] it is true that the weakness of our understanding or our want of experience[ ] may oblige us to make use of creatures in our contemplation, yet there is a kind of contemplation which is very fruitful, good, and real, which seems possible to all. whether he meditates on the creature or the creator, every man may reach the point at which he finds all his joy in his creator, god, one in trinity, and kindles the fire of divine love in himself or in others, so as to merit eternal life. we should notice here the difference which exists between the contemplation of christians and that of pagan philosophers. the latter sought only their own perfection, and hence their contemplation affected their intellect only; they desired only to enrich their minds with knowledge. but the contemplation of saints, which is that of christians, seeks as its end the love of the god whom they contemplate. hence it is not content to find fruit for the intelligence, but penetrates beyond to the will that it may there enkindle love. the saints desired above all in their contemplation the increase of charity. it is better to know jesus christ and possess him spiritually by grace, than, without grace, to have him in the body, or even in his essence. the more pure a soul becomes and the deeper her recollection, the clearer will be her inward vision. she now prepares, as it were, a ladder upon which she may ascend to the contemplation of god. this contemplation will set her on fire with love for all that is heavenly, divine, eternal, and will cause her to despise as utter nothing all that is of time. when we seek to arrive at the knowledge of god by the method of negation, we first remove from our conception of him all that pertains to the body, the senses, the imagination. then we reject even that which belongs to the reason, and the idea of being as it is found in creatures.[ ] this, according to st. denis, is the best means of attaining to the knowledge of god,[ ] as far as it is possible in this world. this is the darkness in which god dwells and into which moses entered that he might reach the light inaccessible.[ ] but we must begin, not with the mind, but with the body. we must observe the accustomed order, and pass from the labour of action to the repose of contemplation, from the moral virtues to those of sublime contemplation.[ ] why, o my soul, dost thou vainly wear thyself out in such multiplicity of things? thou findest in them but poverty. seek and love only that perfect good which includes in itself all good, and it will suffice thee. unhappy art thou if thou knowest and possessest all, and art ignorant of this. if thou knewest at the same time both this good and all other things, this alone would render thee the happier. therefore st. john has written: "this is eternal life: that they may know thee,"[ ] and the prophet: "i shall be satisfied when thy glory shall appear."[ ] chapter x that we should not be too solicitous for actual and sensible devotion, but desire rather the union of our will with god seek not too eagerly after the grace of devotion, sensible sweetness and tears, but let thy chief care be to remain inwardly united to god by good will in the intellectual part of the soul.[ ] of a truth nothing is so pleasing to god as a soul freed from all trace and image of created things. a true religious should be at liberty from every creature that he may be wholly free to devote himself to god alone and cleave to him. deny thyself, therefore, that thou mayest follow christ, thy lord and god, who was truly poor, obedient, chaste, humble, and suffering, and whose life and death were a scandal to many, as the gospel clearly shows.[ ] the soul, when separated from the body, troubles not as to what becomes of the shell it has abandoned--it may be burnt, hanged, spoken evil of; and the soul is not afflicted by these outrages,[ ] but thinks only of eternity and of the one thing necessary, of which the lord speaks in the gospel.[ ] so shouldst thou regard thy body, as though the soul were already freed from it. set ever before thine eyes the eternal life in god, which awaits thee, and think on that only good of which the lord said: "one thing is necessary."[ ] a great grace will then descend upon thy soul, which will aid thee in acquiring purity of mind and simplicity of heart. and, indeed, this treasure is close at thy doors. turn from the images and distractions of earth, and quickly shalt thou find it with thee and learn what it is to be united to god without hindrance or impediment. then wilt thou gain an unshaken constancy, which will strengthen thee to endure all that may befall thee. thus was it with the martyrs, the fathers, the elect, and all the blessed. they despised all and thought only of possessing in god eternal security for their souls. thus armed within and united to god by a good will, they despised all that is of this world, as though their soul had already departed from the body. learn from them how great is the power of a good will united to god. by that union of the soul with god it becomes, as it were, cut off from the flesh by a spiritual separation, and regards the outward man from afar as something alien to it. then, whatever may happen inwardly or in the body will be as little regarded as though it had befallen another person or a creature without reason. he who is united to god is but one mind with him. out of regard, therefore, for his sovereign honour, never be so bold as to think or imagine in his presence what thou wouldst blush to hear or see before men. thou oughtest, moreover, to raise all thy thoughts to god alone, and set him before thine inward gaze, as though he alone existed. so wilt thou experience the sweetness of divine union and even now make a true beginning of the life to come. chapter xi in what manner we should resist temptation and endure trials he who with his whole heart draws nigh unto god must of necessity be proved by temptation and trial. when the sting of temptation is felt, by no means give thy consent, but bear all with patience, sweetness, humility, and courage. if thou art tempted to blasphemy or any shameful sin, be well assured thou canst do nothing better than to utterly despise and contemn such thoughts. blasphemy is indeed sinful, scandalous, and abominable, yet be not anxious about such temptations, but rather despise them, and do not let thy conscience be troubled by them. the enemy will most certainly be put to flight if thou wilt thus contemn both him and his suggestions. he is too proud to endure scorn or contempt. the best remedy is, therefore, to trouble no more about these thoughts than we do about the flies which, against our will, dance before our eyes. let not the servant of christ thus easily and needlessly lose sight of his master's presence, nor let him grow impatient, murmur, or complain of these flies; i mean these light temptations, suspicions, sadness, depression, pusillanimity--mere nothings which a good will can put to flight by an elevation of the soul to god. by a good will man makes god his master, and the holy angels his guardians and protectors. good will drives away temptation as the hand brushes away a fly. "peace," therefore, "to men of good will."[ ] in truth no better gift than this can be offered to god. good will in the soul is the source of all good, the mother of all virtues. he who possesses it, possesses without fear of loss all he needs to live a good life.[ ] if thou desirest what is good and art not able to accomplish it, god will reward thee for it as though thou hadst performed it.[ ] he has established as an eternal and unchangeable law that merit should lie in the will, and that upon the will should depend our future of heaven or hell, reward or punishment.[ ] charity itself consists in nothing else but a strong will to serve god, a loving desire to please him, and a fervent longing to enjoy him. forget not, therefore, temptation is not sin, but rather the means of proving virtue. by it man may gain great profit,[ ] and this the more inasmuch as "the life of man upon earth is a warfare."[ ] chapter xii the power of the love of god all that we have hitherto described, all that is necessary for salvation, can find in love alone its highest, completest, most beneficent perfection. love supplies all that is wanting for our salvation; it contains abundantly every good thing, and lacks not even the presence of the supreme object of our desires. it is by love alone that we turn to god, are transformed into his likeness, and are united to him, so that we become one spirit with him, and receive by and from him all our happiness: here in grace, hereafter in glory. love can find no rest till she reposes in the full and perfect possession of the beloved. it is by the path of love, which is charity, that god draws nigh to man, and man to god, but where charity is not found god cannot dwell. if, then, we possess charity we possess god, for "god is charity."[ ] there is nothing keener than love, nothing more subtle, nothing more penetrating. love cannot rest till it has sounded all the depths and learnt the perfections of its beloved. it desires to be one with him, and, if it could, would form but one being with the beloved. it is for this reason that it cannot suffer anything to intervene between it and the object loved, which is god, but springs forward towards him, and finds no peace till it has overcome every obstacle, and reached even unto the beloved. love has the power of uniting and transforming; it transforms the one who loves into him who is loved, and him who is loved into him who loves. each passes into the other, as far as it is possible. and first consider the intelligence. how completely love transports the loved one into him who loves! with what sweetness and delight the one lives in the memory of the other, and how earnestly the lover tries to know, not superficially but intimately, all that concerns the object of his love, and strives to enter as far as possible into his inner life! think next of the will, by which also the loved one lives in him who loves. does he not dwell in him by that tender affection, that sweet and deeply-rooted joy which he feels? on the other hand, the lover lives in the beloved by the sympathy of his desires, by sharing his likes and dislikes, his joys and sorrows, until the two seem to form but one. since "love is strong as death,"[ ] it carries the lover out of himself into the heart of the beloved, and holds him prisoner there. the soul is more truly where it loves than where it gives life, since it exists in the object loved by its own nature, by reason and will; whilst it is in the body it animates only by bestowing on it an existence which it shares with the animal creation.[ ] there is, therefore, but one thing which has power to draw us from outward objects into the depths of our own souls, there to form an intimate friendship with jesus. nothing but the love of christ and the desire of his sweetness can lead us thus to feel, to comprehend and experience the presence of his divinity. the power of love alone is able to lift up the soul from earth to the heights of heaven, nor is it possible to ascend to eternal beatitude except on the wings of love and desire. love is the life of the soul, its nuptial garment, its perfection.[ ] upon charity are based the law, the prophets, and the precepts of the lord.[ ] hence the apostle wrote to the romans: "love is therefore the fulfilling of the law,"[ ] and in the first epistle to timothy: "the end of the commandment is charity."[ ] chapter xiii of the nature and advantages of prayer--of interior recollection of ourselves we are utterly unable to attain to charity or any other good thing. we have naught to offer to the lord, the author of all, which was not his already. one thing alone remains to us: that in every occurrence we should turn to him in prayer, as he himself taught us by word and example. let us go to him as guilty, poor, and miserable, as beggars, weak and needy, as subjects and slaves, yet as his children. of ourselves we are utterly destitute. what can we do but cast ourselves at his feet in deepest humility, holy fear mingling in our souls with love, peace, and recollection? and while we are fain to draw nigh with all lowliness and modesty, with minds sincere and simple, let our hearts burn with great desires, with ardour and heartfelt longings. and so let us supplicate our god, and lay before him with entire confidence the perils which menace us on every side. let us freely, unhesitatingly, and in all simplicity, confide ourselves to him, and offer him our whole being, even to the last fibre, for are we not in truth absolutely his? let us keep nothing for ourselves, and then will be fulfilled in us the saying of blessed isaac, one of the fathers of the desert, who, speaking of this kind of prayer, said: "we shall be one being with god, and he will be all in all to us, when that perfect charity by which he loved us first has entered into our inmost hearts."[ ] this will be accomplished when god alone becomes the object of all our love, our desires, our striving, of all our efforts and thoughts, of all that we behold, speak of, hope for; when that union which exists between the father and the son, and between the son and the father shall be found also in our mind and soul. since his love for us is so pure, sincere, and unchanging, ought not we in return to give him a love constant and uninterrupted? so intimate should be our union with him that our hopes, thoughts, prayers breathe only god.[ ] the truly spiritual man should set before him, as the goal of all his efforts and desires, the possession even in a mortal body, of an image of the happiness to come, and the enjoyment even here below of some foretaste of the delights, the life, and glory of heaven. this, i say, is the end of all perfection--that the soul may become so purified from every earthly longing, and so raised to spiritual things, that at last the whole life and the desires of the heart form one unbroken prayer. when the soul has thus shaken off the dust of earth and aspires unto her god, to whom the true religious ever directs his intention, dreading the least separation from him as a most cruel death; when peace reigns within and she is delivered from the bondage of her passions and cleaves with firmest purpose to the one sovereign good, then will be fulfilled in her the words of the apostle: "pray without ceasing,"[ ] and "in every place, lifting up pure hands, without anger and contention."[ ] when once this purity of soul has gained the victory over man's natural inclination for the things of sense, when all earthly longings are quenched and the soul is, as it were, transformed into the likeness of pure spirits or angels, then all she receives, all she undertakes, all she does, will be a pure and true prayer. only persevere faithfully in thy efforts and, as i have shown from the beginning, it will become as simple and easy for thee to contemplate god and rejoice in him in thy recollection as to live a purely natural life. chapter xiv that everything should be judged according to the testimony of our conscience there is also another practice which will tend greatly to thy progress in spiritual perfection, and will aid thee to gain purity of soul and tranquil rest in god. whatever men say or think of thee, bring it before the tribunal of thine own conscience. enter within thyself, and there, turning a deaf ear to all else, set thyself to learn the truth. then wilt thou see clearly that the praise and honour of men bring thee no profit, but rather loss, if thou knowest that thou art guilty and worthy of condemnation in the sight of truth. and, just as it is useless to be honoured outwardly by men if thy conscience accuse thee within, so in like manner is it no loss to thee if men despise, blame, or persecute thee without, if within thou art innocent and free from reproach or blame. nay, rather, thou hast then great reason to rejoice in the lord in patience, silence, and peace. adversity is powerless to harm where sin has no dominion; and just as there is no evil which goes unpunished, so is there no good without recompense. seek not with the hypocrites thy reward and crown from men, but rather from the hand of god, not now, but hereafter; not for a passing moment, but for eternity. thou canst, therefore, do nothing higher nor better in every tribulation or occurrence than enter into the sanctuary of thy soul, and there call upon the lord jesus christ, thy helper in temptation and affliction. there shouldst thou humble thyself, confessing thy sins, and praising thy god and father, who both chastises and consoles. there dispose thyself to accept with unruffled peace, readiness, and confidence from the hands of god's unfailing providence and marvellous wisdom all that is sent thee of prosperity or adversity, whether touching thyself or others. then wilt thou obtain remission of thy sins;[ ] bitterness will be driven from thy soul, sweetness and confidence will penetrate it, grace and mercy will descend upon it. then a sweet familiarity will draw thee on and strengthen thee, abundant consolation will flow to thee from the bosom of god. then thou wilt adhere to him and form an indissoluble union with him. but beware of imitating hypocrites who, like the pharisees, try to appear outwardly before men more holy than they know themselves in truth to be. is it not utter folly to seek or desire human praise and glory for oneself or others, while within we are filled with shameful and grievous sins? assuredly he who pursues such vanities can hope for no share in the good things of which we spoke just now, but shame will infallibly be his lot. keep thy worthlessness and thy sins ever before thine eyes, and learn to know thyself that thou mayest grow in humility. shrink not from being regarded by all the world as filthy mud, vile and abject, on account of thy grievous sins and defects. esteem thyself among others as dross in the midst of gold, as tares in the wheat, straw among the grain, as a wolf among the sheep, as satan among the children of god. neither shouldst thou desire to be respected by others, or preferred to anyone whatsoever. fly rather with all thy strength of heart and soul from that pestilential poison, the venom of praise, from a reputation founded on boasting and ostentation, lest, as the prophet says, "the sinner is praised in the desires of his soul."[ ] again, in isaias, we read: "they that call thee blessed, the same deceive thee, and destroy the way of thy steps."[ ] also the lord says: "woe to you when men shall bless you!"[ ] chapter xv on the contempt of self: how it is acquired: its profit to the soul the more truly a man knows his own misery, the more fully and clearly does he behold the majesty of god. the more vile he is in his own eyes for the sake of god, of truth, and of justice, the more worthy of esteem is he in the eyes of god. strive earnestly, therefore, to look on thyself as utterly contemptible, to think thyself unworthy of any benefit, to be displeasing in thine own eyes, but pleasing to god. desire that others should regard thee as vile and mean. learn not to be troubled in tribulations, afflictions, injuries; not to be incensed against those that inflict them, nor to entertain thoughts of resentment against them. try, on the contrary, sincerely to believe thyself worthy of all injuries, contempt, ill-treatment and scorn. in truth, he who for god's sake is filled with sorrow and compunction dreads to be honoured and loved by another. he does not refuse to be an object of hatred, or shrink from being trodden under foot and despised as long as he lives, in order that he may practise real humility and cleave in purity of heart to god alone. it does not require exterior labour or bodily health to love god only, to hate oneself more than all, to desire to seem little in the eyes of others: what is needed is rather repose of the senses, the effort of the heart, silence of the mind. it is by labouring with the heart, by the inward aspiration of the soul, that thou wilt learn to forsake the base things of earth and to rise to what is heavenly and divine. thus wilt thou become transformed in god, and this the more speedily if, in all sincerity, without condemning or despising thy neighbour, thou desirest to be regarded by all as a reproach and scandal--nay, even to be abhorred as filthy mire, rather than possess the delights of earth, or be honoured and exalted by men, or enjoy any advantage or happiness in this fleeting world. have no other desire in this perishable life of the body, no other consolation than unceasingly to weep over, regret and detest thy offences and faults. learn utterly to despise thyself, to annihilate thyself and to appear daily more contemptible in the eyes of others. strive to become even more unworthy in thine own eyes, in order to please god alone, to love him only and cling to him. concern not thyself with anything except thy lord jesus christ, who ought to reign alone in thy affections. have no solicitude or care save for him whose power and providence give movement and being to all things.[ ] it is not now the time to rejoice but rather to lament with all the sincerity of thy heart. if thou canst not weep, sorrow at least that thou hast no tears to shed; if thou canst, grieve the more because by the gravity of thy offences and number of thy sins thou art thyself the cause of thy grief. a man under sentence of death does not trouble himself as to the dispositions of his executioners; so he who truly mourns and sheds the tears of repentance, refrains from delight, anger, vainglory, indignation, and every like passion. citizens and criminals are not lodged in like abodes; so also the life and conduct of those whose faults call for sighs and tears should not resemble those of men who have remained innocent and have nothing to expiate. were it otherwise, how would the guilty, great though their crimes may have been, differ in their punishment and expiation from the innocent? iniquity would then be more free than innocence. renounce all, therefore, contemn all, separate thyself from all, that thou mayest lay deep the foundations of sincere penance. he who truly loves jesus christ, and sorrows for him, who bears him in his heart and in his body, will have no thought, or care, or solicitude for aught else. such a one will sincerely mourn over his sins and offences, will long after eternal happiness, will remember the judgment and will think diligently on his last end in lowly fear. he, then, who wishes to arrive speedily at a blessed impassibility and to reach god, counts that day lost on which he has not been ill-spoken of and despised. what is this impassibility but freedom from the vices and passions, purity of heart, the adornment of virtue? count thyself as already dead, since thou must needs die some day. and now, but one word more. let this be the test of thy thoughts, words, and deeds. if they render thee more humble, more recollected in god, more strong, then they are according to god. but if thou findest it otherwise, then fear lest all is not according to god, acceptable to him, or profitable to thyself. chapter xvi of the providence of god, which watches over all things wouldst thou draw nigh unto god without let or hindrance, freely and in peace, as we have described? desirest thou to be united and drawn to him in a union so close that it will endure in prosperity and adversity, in life and in death? delay not to commit all things with trustful confidence into the hands of his sure and infallible providence. is it not most fitting that thou shouldst trust him who gives to all creatures, in the first place, their existence, power, and movement, and, secondly, their species and nature, ordering in all their number, weight, and measure? just as art presupposes the operations of nature, so nature presupposes the work of god, the creator, preserver, organizer, and administrator. to him alone belong infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, essential mercy, justice, truth, and charity, immutable eternity, and immensity. nothing can exist and act of its own power, but every creature acts of necessity by the power of god, the first moving cause, the first principle and origin of every action, who acts in every active being. if we consider the ordered harmony of the universe, it is the providence of god which must arrange all things, even to the smallest details. from the infinitely great to the infinitely small nothing can escape his eternal providence; nothing has been drawn from his control, either in the acts of free-will, in events we ascribe to chance or fate, or in what has been designed by him. we may go further: it is as impossible for god to make anything which does not fall within the dominion of his providence as it is for him to create anything which is not subject to his action. divine providence, therefore, extends over all things, even the thoughts of man. this is the teaching of holy scripture, for in the epistle of st. peter it is written: "casting all your care upon him, for he hath care of you."[ ] and, again, the prophet says: "cast thy care upon the lord and he shall sustain thee."[ ] also in ecclesiasticus we read: "my children, behold the generations of men; and know ye that no one hath hoped in the lord, and hath been confounded. for who hath continued in his commandment, and hath been forsaken?"[ ] and the lord says: "be not solicitous, therefore, saying, what shall we eat?"[ ] all that thou canst hope for from god, however great it may be, thou shalt without doubt receive, according to the promise in deuteronomy: "every place that your foot shall tread upon shall be yours."[ ] as much as thou canst desire thou shalt receive, and as far as the foot of thy confidence reaches, so far thou shalt possess. hence st. bernard says: "god, the creator of all things, is so full of mercy and compassion that whatever may be the grace for which we stretch out our hands, we shall not fail to receive it."[ ] it is written in st. mark: "whatsoever ye shall ask when ye pray, believe that you shall receive, and they shall come unto you."[ ] the greater and more persistent thy confidence in god, and the more earnestly thou turnest to him in lowly reverence, the more abundantly and certainly shalt thou receive all thou dost hope and ask. but if, on account of the number and magnitude of his sins, the confidence of any should languish, let him who feels this torpor remember that all is possible to god, that what he wills must infallibly happen, and what he wills not cannot come to pass, and, finally, that it is as easy for him to forgive and blot out innumerable and heinous sins as to forgive one. on the other hand, it is just as impossible for a sinner to deliver himself from a single sin as it would be for him to raise and cleanse himself from many sins; for, not only are we unable to accomplish this, but of ourselves we cannot even think what is right.[ ] all comes to us from god. it is, however, far more dangerous, other things being equal, to be entangled in many sins than to be held only by one. in truth, no evil remains unpunished, and for every mortal sin is due, in strict justice, an infinite punishment, because a mortal sin is committed against god, to whom belong infinite greatness, dignity, and glory. moreover, according to the apostle, "the lord knoweth who are his,"[ ] and it is impossible that one of them should perish, no matter how violently the tempests and waves of error rage, how great the scandal, schisms and persecutions, how grievous the adversities, discords, heresies, tribulations, or temptations of every kind. the number of the elect and the measure of their merit is eternally and unalterably predestined. so true is this that all the good and evil which can happen to them or to others, all prosperity and adversity, serve only to their advantage. nay more, adversity does but render them more glorious, and proves their fidelity more surely. delay not, therefore, to commit all things without fear to the providence of god, by whose permission all evil of whatever kind happens, and ever for some good end. it could not be except he permitted it; its form and measure are allowed by him who can and will by his wisdom turn all to good. just as it is by his action that all good is wrought, so is it by his permission that all evil happens.[ ] but from the evil he draws good, and thus marvellously shows forth his power, wisdom, and clemency by our lord jesus christ. so also he manifests his mercy and his justice, the power of grace, the weakness of nature, and the beauty of the universe. so he shows by the force of contrast the glory of the good, and the malice and punishment of the wicked. in like manner, in the conversion of a sinner we behold contrition, confession, and penance; and, on the other hand, the tenderness of god, his mercy and charity, his glory and his goodness. yet sin does not always turn to the good of those who commit it; but it is usually the greatest of perils and worst of ills, for it causes the loss of grace and glory. it stains the soul and provokes chastisement and even eternal punishment. from so great an evil may our lord jesus vouchsafe to preserve us! amen. r. and t. washbourne, ltd., printers, london. footnotes: [ ] following the general tradition, we attribute this work to albert the great, but not all critics are agreed as to its authenticity. [ ] albert the great is speaking here in a special manner of religious perfection, although what he says is also true of christian perfection in general. [ ] he speaks here of the obligation laid upon all christians. [ ] religious bind themselves to observe as a duty that which was only of counsel. to them, therefore, the practice of the counsels becomes an obligation. [ ] the vows of religion have as their immediate object the removal of obstacles to perfection, but they do not in themselves constitute perfection. perfection consists in charity. albert the great speaks of only one vow, because in his day the formulas of religious profession mentioned only the vow of obedience, which includes the other two vows. [ ] john iv. . [ ] matt. vi. . [ ] when albert the great and the other mystics warn us against solicitude with regard to creatures, they refer to that solicitude which is felt for creatures in themselves; they do not mean that we ought not to occupy ourselves with them in any way for god's sake. the great doctor explains his meaning in clear terms later on in this work. [ ] pet. v. . [ ] phil. iv. . [ ] ps. liv. . [ ] ps. lxxii. . [ ] ps. xv. . [ ] cant. iii. . [ ] wis. vii. . [ ] matt. xvi. . [ ] luke xvii. . [ ] albert the great supposes here that we give ourselves equally to god and to creatures, which would be wrong, and not that creatures are subordinated to god, which would be a virtue. [ ] this must be understood to mean that god is the principal and supreme end of all created activities. [ ] the perfect image of god in man does not consist merely in the possession of those faculties by which we resemble him, but rather in performing by faith and love, as far as is in our power, acts like those which he performs, in knowing him as he knows himself, in loving him as he loves himself. [ ] in scholastic theology the term "form" is used of that which gives to anything its accidental or substantial being. god is the "accidental form" of the soul, because in giving it its activity he bestows upon it something of his own activity, by means of sanctifying grace. yet more truly may it be said that god is also the "form" of the soul in the sense that it is destined by the ordinary workings of providence to participate by sanctifying grace in the being of god, enjoying thus a participation real, though created, in the divine nature. [ ] we must avoid these things in so far as they separate us from god, but they may also serve to draw us nearer to him if we regard them in god and for god. [ ] it is by the intelligence and will that man actually attains to this, but the use of the sensitive faculties is presupposed. [ ] the sensitive faculties, if used as a means, often help us to draw near to god, but when used as an end, their activity becomes an obstacle. [ ] this teaching is the christian rendering of the axiom formulated by the philosopher: "homo sedendo fit sapiens"--"it is in quiet that man gains wisdom." [ ] this is especially true for religious. [ ] by this is meant that the holy scriptures, though always presupposed as the foundation of our belief, of themselves give only an objective knowledge of god, while that which the holy ghost gives is experimental. [ ] god knows and loves himself in himself by his own nature, while we know and love him in himself by grace. [ ] a very striking feature in the doctrine of this book is that it requires first the perfection of the soul and the faculties, whence proceeds that of our actions. some modern authors, confining themselves to casuistry, speak almost exclusively of the perfection of actions, a method less logical and less thorough. [ ] prov. viii. . [ ] the exterior powers of a man are the imagination and passions; the interior his intelligence and will, which sometimes find themselves deprived of all the aids of sensible devotion. [ ] in truth, all the designs of god in our regard are full of mercy, and tend especially to our sanctification; the obstacles to these designs come only from our evil passions. [ ] the book "de spiritu et anima" is of uncertain authorship. it is printed after the works of st. augustine in migne's "patrologia latina," vol. xl., . [ ] this darkness is the silence of the imagination, which no longer gains a hearing, and that of the intellect, which is sufficiently enlightened to understand that we can in reality understand nothing of the divinity in itself, and that the best thing we can do is to remove from our conception of god all those limitations which we observe in creatures. the reason of this is that we can only know god naturally by means of what we see in creatures, and these are always utterly insufficient to give us an adequate idea of the creator. [ ] ps. lxxxiii. . [ ] we only lose god, the uncreated good, by an unlawful attachment to created good; if we are free from this attachment, we tend to him without effort. [ ] the subsequent condemnation, in , of this doctrine, as taught by molino, could not, of course, be foreseen by blessed albertus writing in the thirteenth century. [ ] john xiv. . [ ] and this she does because creatures no longer occupy her, except for god's sake. [ ] this is so because, according to true philosophy, the essence of a thing is distinct from its existence. [ ] every actual cause is more intimately present to its accomplished work than the work itself, which it necessarily precedes. [ ] john i. , . [ ] we cannot always experience divine things, and at first we can only compare them to the things which we experience here below. [ ] we deny that there is in god anything which is a mere potentiality, or an imperfection. we deny in him also the process of reasoning which is the special work of the faculty of reason, because this implies the absence of the vision of truth. we deny "being as it is found in creatures," because in creatures it is necessarily limited, and subject to accident. [ ] "nom. div.," i. [ ] exod. xxxiii. ; num. xii. ; heb. iii. . [ ] it would be well to quote st. thomas, the disciple of albert the great, upon this important doctrine: "a thing may be said to belong to the contemplative life in two senses, either as an essential part of it, or as a preliminary disposition. the moral virtues do not belong to the essence of contemplation, whose sole end is the contemplation of truth.... but they belong to it as a necessary predisposition ... because they calm the passions and the tumult of exterior preoccupations, and so facilitate contemplation" ("sum.," , {ae}, q. , a. ). this distinction should never be lost sight of in reading the mystic books of the scholastics. [ ] john xvii. . [ ] ps. xvi. . [ ] this admirable doctrine condemns a whole mass of insipid, shallow, affected and sensual books and ideas, which have in modern times flooded the world of piety, have banished from souls more wholesome thoughts, and filled them with a questionable and injurious sentimentality. [ ] matt. xi. ; xiii. , etc. [ ] this shows an excellent grasp of the meaning of the celebrated maxim "perinde ac cadaver." [ ] luke x. . [ ] _ibid._ [ ] luke ii. . [ ] nothing could be more conformable to the teaching of the gospel than this doctrine. at his birth jesus bids the angels sing that peace belongs to men of good will (luke ii. ); later he will declare that his meat is to do the will of his father (john iv. ); that he seeks not his own will, but the will of him who sent him (john v. ); that he came down from heaven to accomplish it (john vi. ); and when face to face with death he will still pray that the father's will be done, not his (matt. xxvi. ; luke xxii. ). over and over again, in the gospel, do we find him using the same language. he would have his disciples act in the same manner. it is not the man, he tells us, who repeats the words: "my father, my father," who shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of god (matt. vii. ; rom. ii. ; jas. i. ); and in the prayer which he dictates to us he bids us ask for the accomplishment of this will as the means of glorifying god, and of sanctifying our souls (matt. vi. ). finally, he tells us that if we conform ourselves to this sovereign will, we shall be his brethren (matt. xii. ; mark iii. ). when certain persons, pious or otherwise, confusing sentiment with true love, ask themselves if they love god, or if they will be able to love him always, we have only to ask them the same question in other words: are they doing the will of god? can they do it?--_i.e._, can they perform their duty for god's sake? put thus, the question resolves itself. the reason for such a doctrine is very simple: to love anyone is to wish him well; that, in the case of god, is to desire his beneficent will towards us. our lord and master recalled this principle when he said to his disciples, "you are my friends, if you do the things that i command you" (john xv. ). [ ] we must, in virtue of the same principle, keep a firm hold of the truth, as indisputable as it is frequently forgotten, that we have the merit of the good which we will to carry out and are unable to accomplish, as we have also the demerit of the evil we should have done and could not. [ ] "upon the will depends our future of heaven or hell," because, given the knowledge of god, the will attaches itself to him by love, or hates him with obstinacy. [ ] we may notice, in particular, a three-fold benefit: first, temptation calls for conflict, and so strengthens virtue; then it obliges a man to adhere deliberately to that virtue which is assailed by the temptation, and so gain a further perfection; finally, there are necessarily included in both the conflict and the adherence to good numerous virtuous, and therefore meritorious, acts. thus we may reap advantage from temptation both in our dispositions and our acts. [ ] job vii. . [ ] john iv. . [ ] cant. viii. . [ ] the author is speaking here of the soul in so far as it is human, and it is as such that it is more where it loves than where it gives life. [ ] without charity there is no perfect virtue, since without it no virtue can lead man to his final end, which is god, although it may lead him to some lower end. it is in this sense that, according to the older theologians, charity is the "form" of the other virtues, since by it the acts of all the other virtues are supernaturalized and directed to their true end--_i.e._, to god. _cf._ st. th. "sum.," , {ae}, q. , aa. , . [ ] matt. xxii. . [ ] rom. xiii. . [ ] tim. i. . [ ] god can only love himself or creatures for his own sake; if we have this love within our souls we shall be in a certain sense one being with him. [ ] this teaching is based on the definition that prayer is essentially "an elevation of the soul to god." [ ] thess. v. . [ ] tim. ii. . [ ] remission may be obtained in this way of the fault in the case of venial sins, of the punishment due in all sins. [ ] ps. ix. . [ ] isa. iii. . [ ] luke vi. . [ ] st. thomas explains as follows both the possibility and the correctness of this opinion of ourselves: "a man can, without falsehood, believe and declare himself viler than all others, both on account of the secret faults which he knows to exist within him, and on account of the gifts of god hidden in the souls of others." st. augustine, in his work "de virginit.," ch. lii., says: "believe that others are better than you in the depths of their souls, although outwardly you may appear better than they." in the same way one may truthfully both say and believe that one is altogether useless and unworthy in his own strength. the apostle says ( cor. iii. ): "not that we are sufficient to think anything of ourselves, as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from god" ("sum.," , {ae}, q. , a. , {m}). [ ] pet. v. . [ ] ps. liv. . [ ] ecclus. ii. , . [ ] matt. vi. . [ ] deut. xi. . [ ] _cf._ serm. i. in pent. [ ] mark xi. . [ ] cor. iii. . [ ] tim. ii. . [ ] the teaching of albert the great on divine providence is truly admirable. it is based upon the axiom that the actions of the creature do not depend partly upon itself and partly upon god, but wholly upon itself and wholly upon god (_cf._ st. thomas "cont. gent.," iii. ). human causality is not parallel with the divine, but subordinate to it, as the scholastics teach. this doctrine alone safeguards the action of god and of that of the creature. the doctrine of parallelism derogates from both, and leads to fatalism by attributing to god things which he has not done, and suppressing for man the necessary principle of all good, especially that of liberty. it is the doctrine of subordinated causes also which explains how things decreed by god are determined by the supreme authority, and infallibly come to pass, without prejudice to the freedom of action of secondary causes. all this belongs to the highest theology. unhappily, certain modern authors have forgotten it. _the angelus series_ of authorized translations of standard foreign works, original works, and selections the first seven volumes are =on kindness.= by very rev. j. guibert, s.s. _ , copies sold in france._ =on character.= by very rev. j. guibert, s.s. _ , copies sold in france._ =on thanksgiving.= selected from father faber's works. by the hon. alison stourton. =from a garden jungle.= by an unpaid secretary. =on piety.= by very rev. j. guibert, s.s. _ , copies sold in france._ =on the exercises of piety.= by very rev. j. guibert, s.s. _ , copies sold in france._ =on union with god.= by blessed albert the great, o.p. with notes by rev. p. j. berthier, o.p. other volumes in preparation. _art linen, gilt, with ingrained paper sides, s. d. net._ _paste-grain leather, gilt top and back, s. d. net._ london: r. & t. washbourne, ltd., paternoster row. transcriber's notes: passages in italics or underlined are indicated by _italics_. passages in bold are indicated by =bold=. superscripted letters are indicated by {superscript}. living for the best by james g. k. mcclure author of "a mighty means of usefulness," "the great appeal," "possibilities," etc. chicago new york toronto fleming h. revell company london and edinburgh copyright, by fleming h. revell company march chicago: washington street new york: fifth avenue toronto: richmond street, w. london: paternoster square edinburgh: st. mary street preface. the publisher of a large metropolitan journal, a most effective man in reaching and influencing his fellows, once expressed to me the thought, "from what i know of myself and others, were i a writer or speaker desiring to enforce truth, i would always try to vivify that truth through illustration and story. the every-day intelligence of man rejoices to have truth put before it in living form." it is with these words in mind that this book is written. its purpose is to set forth great ideas, and so to set them forth, each one illustrated by a historic life already familiar, that these ideas shall be made luminous, and even vivid, to the reader. the characters chosen for such illustration are from the old testament--those men of ancient times whose humanity is the humanity of every race and clime, and whose experiences touch our own with sympathy and suggestion. may these old-day heroes live again before the mind of him who turns these pages, and may the ideas which they are used to illustrate be an abiding power in the memory of every reader. james g. k. mcclure. lake forest, illinois. table of contents chapter page i. open to the best ii. winning the best victories iii. making the best use of our lives iv. putting the best into others v. developing our best under difficulties vi. the need of retaining the best wisdom vii. the best possession viii. using aright our best hours ix. giving our best to god open to the best. chapter i. open to the best. "if every morning we would fling open our windows and look out on the wide reaches of god's love and goodness, we could not help singing." so it has been written. so luther thought. when he was at wartburg castle, in the perilous times of the reformation, he went every morning to his window, threw it open, looked up to the skies, and veritable prisoner though he was, cheerily sang, "god is our refuge and strength, a very present help." then he carried a buoyant heart to the labor of the day. the joy of a glad outlook was well understood by ruskin. his guests at brantwood were often awakened early in the morning by a knocking at their doors and the call, "are you looking out?" when in response to this summons they pushed back the window-blinds a scene of beauty greeted their eyes. the glory of sunlight and the grandeur of forest dispelled care, quieted fret, and animated hope. scarce anything in life more determines a soul's welfare than the nature of its outlook. if spiritual frontage is toward the shadow, the soul sees all things in the gloom of the shadow; if spiritual frontage is toward the sunlight, the soul sees all things in the brightness of the sunlight. the preliminary question of character is, what is the outlook? let that outlook be wrong, and opinion and conduct in due time will be wrong; let it be right, and whatever the temporary mistakes of opinion and conduct, the permanent tendency of character will be toward the right. "from a small window one may see the infinite," carlyle wrote. this was daniel's belief. he acted upon his belief. the windows of his soul were always open to the infinite. in that fact lies the explanation of his character--a character of which every child hears with interest, every youth with admiration, and every mature man with reverence. to-day in eastern lands the mohammedan, wherever he may be, turns his face toward mecca when, seeking help, he worships god. to him mecca is the central spot of mohammedan revelation, and is the focus of all mohammedan brotherhood. so in olden times the israelite, wherever he might be, thought of jerusalem as the place where god's worship was worthiest and where israelitish fellowship was heartiest. the name "jerusalem" strengthened his religious faith and stirred his national patriotism. to open the windows of his soul toward jerusalem was to open the soul to the best thoughts and impressions that the world provided. as the premier of the great medo-persian empire daniel had his own palatial residence. the windows of the different rooms fronted in their special directions. there was one room that was his particular and private room. it was an "upper room" or "loft," somewhere apart by itself. the distinctive feature of this room was that its windows opened toward jerusalem. into this room daniel was accustomed to go three times a day, throw open the lattice windows, look toward jerusalem, and then in the thought of all that jerusalem represented, kneel and talk with god. such was his custom. if the matters of his life were comparatively comfortable, he did this; and if those matters were seriously unpleasant, he did the same. should, then, an occasion much out of the ordinary arise, an occasion involving a crisis in his life, it would be perfectly natural that he should, as he had invariably done, go into his retired chamber and open the windows. such an extraordinary occasion arose when darius issued the decree that the man who prayed to other than himself should be cast into a den of lions. in itself the decree seemed justifiable. it was customary for the persians to worship their kings as gods. ormuzd was said to dwell in every persian king. accordingly, divine authority was attributed to persian kings, and whenever one of them issued a law, it had the force of infallibility. so it was "that the law of the medes and the persians published by a king altereth not." at this particular time a decree commanding all people to bow to the king was perhaps a matter of state policy. the kingdom of the medes and persians had just been established. here was an opportunity of testing the loyalty of the entire realm to the new king, darius. if the people far and wide would bow to him, then they were loyal; but if they refused so to bow, then they evidently were disloyal. there was, however, an ulterior motive lying back of this seemingly rational decree. many of the state officials envied daniel. he was a foreigner, and still he held higher place than they. they desired to bring him into disrepute. they could not accomplish their purposes through charges of malfeasance of office, for his actions were absolutely faultless. they therefore resorted to the securing of this decree, believing, from what they knew of daniel's habits and character, that he would, as he always had done, pray to jehovah and not to darius. in such case he would violate the decree and expose himself to the penalty of death. daniel knew that the decree had been issued. what would he do about it? the envious officials watched to see. when daniel went to his palace their eyes followed him. perhaps they had spies in the palace. in any case, some eyes tracked him as he passed from room to room until he came into his "loft," his "upper room," and then they saw him open the windows toward jerusalem and kneel before jehovah! so much was it a part of daniel's life to keep the windows of his soul open to the best, that the direst threat had no power to divert him for an instant from his wonted course. daniel kept the windows of his soul open to the best _religion_. to him jerusalem stood for the best religion on earth. from the time, as a boy of fourteen, he first went away from home, he had lived among peoples having different faiths. he had known the religion of the chaldeans, and had seen its phases under nebuchadnezzar and belshazzar. it had much in its favor: its temples were beautiful, its ceremonies ornate, its feasts imposing. it had much however that was not in its favor: its heartlessness, its impurity, and its deceit. he had known, too, the fire-worshiping religion of the persians. many of its features appealed to him. the sun then as always was an object of admiration. as it rises above the horizon, moving with a stately progress that no cloud can check, no force of nature can retard, and no hand of man can withstand, it is the personification of majesty. as it causes the birds to sing, the beasts of the field to bestir themselves, and mankind to issue forth to labor, it is the emblem of power. as it makes the grass to grow and the flower to bloom, and as it draws skyward the moisture of lake and ocean that, like a great benefactor, it may send accumulated showers to refresh the parched earth, the sun is a very life-giver. it was no wonder that the persians of daniel's day, with their imperfect knowledge, bowed before that sun and worshiped it; nor was it a wonder that they worshiped all fire that has within itself such transforming and beautifying and energizing power. but though daniel knew this religion, and the many other religions that in his time had their votaries in babylon, he kept his windows open toward jerusalem. other religions might attempt the answer to the soul's inquiries concerning the meaning of life, other religions might have their beauties and their deformities, other religions might help him very materially in his political career, but to him one religion was the highest and the best, and to the influence of that religion he opened his soul. jerusalem stood for one god--an invisible creator who formed all things and was lord over the sun itself as well as over man. this god, an unseen spirit, was spotless in his character, and would dwell in the heart of man as man's friend and helper. to daniel there was no such religion anywhere as the religion that taught this incomparable god--a god without a vice, a god who forgives sin, a god who never disdains the weakest soul that comes to him in penitence--and still is "lord of lords and king of kings," the only wise and only eternal one. once a distinguished thinker, addressing students, said: "i have found great benefit in my own experience by emphasizing a very simple principle, one which never fails me when it is applied to questions of the spiritual life: '_it is always best to believe the best._'" then he illustrated his meaning. the religion that teaches that all events are guided by intelligence toward a goal of love, rather than by blind and remorseless force, enables us to live in hope. it makes existence, not a prison-house, but a place of broad and splendid horizons; it makes the service of humanity a prophecy of blessing for all; it makes the discipline of the race a means toward a beneficent end. the religion that also teaches that we all are children of a good god, and that to the weakest and humblest of us there may be deliverance from all evil, transformation into all holiness, and finally reception to immortality in the presence and service of regnant perfection, such a religion is the best--the best in its hopes, the best in its inspiration, the best in its purposes, and the best in its results. because it is the best, it is best to believe it; best to believe it, because through believing it we are helped toward the noblest manhood and are enabled to face life and death alike, with bravery. all this daniel realized. accordingly, amid all the distractions and appeals, and even temptations, of other religions, he kept his heart's windows open to the influences of god's religion. that was the wise attitude for him. it is the wise attitude for all. it is a man's duty, if he be true to his own soul, to keep an open mind to the best religion. christianity claims to be the best, and asks acceptance on that ground alone. it welcomes study of every other religion. it rejoices in a "parliament of religions," wherein the advocates of different religions may present the claims of their religions in the strongest language possible. it listens as one religion is praised because it can secure calmness of mind, and as another is praised because it can secure heroism of life. as it listens, it delights in every word of encomium, _so long as each speaker and hearer keeps an open heart toward the best religion_. then, when its own opportunity comes, christianity presents itself, and asserting that the evil that is in any other religion is not in christianity at all, that the good that is in any other religion is in christianity far more abundantly, and that there are blessings in christianity that appear in no other religion whatever, it claims to be the transcendent religion. in the activity of intellectual life common to all awakening and thoughtful minds it is inevitable that doubts will arise concerning the worthiness of christianity. every age finds the special doubts of its own age peculiar to itself. in this present age questions are in the air concerning the authorship of the bible, concerning the person of christ, and concerning the authenticity of the records of christ's earthly ministry. men are asking whether this world is impelled by a blind, resistless, heartless force, whether we are merely a mass of atoms, whether we may be delivered from the thraldom of sin, and whether when we die we become dust and dust alone. what shall we do in the face of all these questions? _keep the windows of our souls open to the beliefs that are best for our life's grandeur and for humanity's uplift._ that is what we may do, what we should do, and what if we so do, will invariably lead the mind to a higher and higher valuation of the pre-eminence of christianity. daniel kept his windows open to the best _commands_ of the best religion. his daily surroundings from the hour as a youth he entered the king's palace at babylon were demoralizing. the ideals of his associates were low. the religious life of his fellow-students was a mere form. domestic life all about him was unsound. public life was dishonest. looseness of character everywhere prevailed. impurity was alluring. bribery was considered a necessary feature of authority. the weak were crushed by the mighty. selfishness characterized both king and people. the difficulty of his position was great: to breathe malaria and not be affected by it. he was in the whirl of worldliness and still he must not be made dizzy thereby. his one resource for safety was his daily consideration of the commands of god. those commands charged men to be upright, to be clean, to do duty faithfully, even though it was duty to a heathen master, and to make life serviceable to the welfare of others. again and again all through the years of his exile it was necessary for his soul's welfare that he should ponder these commands of god and not let the atmosphere that surrounded him lower and destroy his ideals. on that day when the unalterable decree was issued daniel was in imminent and unescapable peril. jealous officers already rejoiced in his anticipated death. the danger of weakening threatened his heart. he remembered that abraham once in egypt surrendered his principles and thereby saved his life; that the gibeonites once falsified and so preserved themselves alive. he might have reasoned, "why should not i, in this special matter, yield, and give up recognition of jehovah until the storm of persecution is past?" he could easily say, "perhaps i am making too much of this whole subject; what difference will there be if i, away off here in babylon, hundreds of miles from home, call this a case of expediency, and temporarily relinquish my ideals?" the temptation was a fearful one. many a man has gone down before it. cranmer did, pilate did; but not daniel. he kept his eyes on god's commands--those commands that told him to do the right and scorn the consequences, those commands that told him that faithfulness to principle, though it ended in martyrdom, was essential to place in god's hero list. he remembered joseph, who would not sin against god in doing evil. he remembered god, that bade him bear his testimony, sealing it if necessary with his life's blood. so remembering he kept the faith and proved invincible. many a man, like daniel, exposed to a peculiar temptation, has been made brave as he has remembered the standards set for him by another. he has thought of the wife perhaps, who charged him to meet his duties as a man of god, though godliness should involve them both in disgrace, and thus thinking he has stood firm before evil. or as a youth, away from home, in a school or factory, with deteriorating influences all about him, and his feet well-nigh gone from the ways of uprightness, he has turned his heart toward that mother who would rather have him die than be false, and the remembrance of her has roused his self-assertion and made him master of the environment. the commands of god summon men to _principle_, to _fidelity_, to _serviceableness_, to _self-renunciation_, and to _holiness_. the man has never lived, nor ever will live, who can fulfil these commands of god unless his windows are continually open toward jerusalem. we need, we always need, to have our ideals kept large and our standards kept high if we are to be noble souls. daniel kept the windows of his soul open, too, to the best _promises_ of the best religion. even though the prince of the eunuchs was kind to the home-sick captive, and a king was gracious to the interpreter of dreams, daniel was always exposed to discouragement. like the missionary of to-day, alone in a foreign land, he was surrounded by the depressing influences of heathenism. as he advanced in power there was no one to whom he could go for religious fellowship. the aids of comradeship and the aids of public worship were wanting. there were no audible voices summoning him to trust, and there was no tangible evidence of the existence of a people of god. he therefore needed every day to go to god himself, and find in him a refuge for his heart; needed to hear god's reassuring voice telling him that god was with him, was watching over him in love, and would provide for him as occasion might require. how often daniel must have been comforted and heartened as he opened his soul to the promises of god! but what an hour of need that was when he was tracked to his upper room! every power in the great medo-persian empire was arrayed against him. no friend, no helper, was at hand. he stood alone before his fearful crisis. brave and determined as his spirit might be, he was still a man--a man of flesh and blood. he needed strength: needed, as christ afterward in gethsemane needed, supporting and encouraging sympathy. he turned his soul toward the promises of god's protection and help. he let those promises flood his heart. those promises made his will like adamant. we do well when we front our hearts to god's promises. every earnest soul, trying to make this world better, meets severe discouragements. then let the soul open itself to god's assurance that the ends of the earth are given to christ and that good shall indeed come off victorious. every weak soul struggling to subdue its sin comes to hours of weariness. then let the soul open itself to god's assurance that he giveth power to the faint and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. every sorrowing soul, sighing for the loved and the lost, has days of loneliness. then let the soul open itself to god's assurance that life and immortality are brought to light in jesus christ. only as the needy world of humanity opens its heart to god's promises can it walk in light and possess the peace that passeth understanding. there is always danger lest men let the windows of their souls be shut toward god. our particular _sins_ cause us to shut these windows. we do not like to look into god's face when we are conscious of cherished evil. adam and eve hid themselves from god when they knew they had done wrong. those who condemned the reformers to death, often put wax in their ears so that they might not hear the testimony given by those reformers at the stake. _cares_, too, cause us to shut these windows. we have so much responsibility to absorb us that we have "no time to look out to any distant tower of a sanctifying thought." all sorts of sights are before our windows--society, business, pleasure, study--but not god. our life seems to open in every other direction than toward the holy city. we do not go alone into a private place and expose ourselves to the influences god stands ready to send to our hearts. it would be far better if we did. we should find that almost as gently as comes the sunlight, ideas, inspirations, and aspirations would be suggested to our hearts. they would enter our hearts, we would not know how; and if we cherished them, they would correct our false estimates of life, would re-mint our courage, would clarify the vision of our faith, and would prepare us, as they prepared daniel, to discharge all life's duties with integrity, humanity, and composure. it is a blessed, very blessed, way to live, this way of keeping our hearts open to the best. we all can so live. we can have a secret chamber--a very closet of the soul--into which we can go, whether we are with the multitude or are alone; and if through the broadly opened windows of that closet we look out toward the best--distant as that best may seem--back from the best will come the light that never fails and the strength that never breaks. winning the best victories. chapter ii. winning the best victories. success in life is determined by the victories we win. only he who triumphs over obstacles is a successful man. there are as many kinds of victory as there are kinds of obstacles. some kinds of obstacles call upon us for the use of our secondary powers, and some for the use of our primary powers. when the obstacles bring into play the very best powers of our natures, and those powers conquer the obstacles, then we win our best victories. david is a most interesting illustration of the winning of victories. the bible evidently considers him one of its greatest heroes. while it gives eleven chapters to jacob and fourteen chapters to abraham, it gives sixty-one chapters to david. it thus asks us to pay great heed to the story and lessons of david's life. almost our first introduction to david represents him in a fight. he is a mere shepherd lad, out in the wilderness, perhaps miles from another human being, when a lion springs forth and seizes a lamb from the flock he is guarding. it was a fearsome hour for a boy. he might have deserted the flock and fled, preserving himself. but not so. he faced the lion. he even attacked the lion. he wrested the lamb from its mouth, and he slew the lion. again, when, under similar circumstances, a beast of another kind, a bear, laid hold of a lamb, david stood up to the danger, and with such weapons of club and knife as he had, fought the bear to its death. some years ago in alaska, in a house hundreds of miles from any other white man's home, i saw a bearskin lying upon the sitting-room floor. the son of the house, out hunting, had suddenly come upon a bear, that rose up within a few feet of his face. the boy lifted his gun, shot, aiming at the bear's heart, and then, trembling with terror, ran for home. the next day the boy's father took associates to the spot, found the body of the bear, and brought the skin home as a trophy of the boy's skill and pluck. and a trophy it was! but when david, scarce armed at all, a boy, brought down his lion and his bear, in an actual face-to-face encounter, the skins of the lion and of the bear were trophies indeed! the next scene in david's life is when he meets goliath. david is still a youth. the ruddy color has not yet been burned out of his cheeks by the oriental sun. this meeting is different from any he has faced. it is not with a beast, but with a man--a man armed, a man experienced in combat, a man of much larger size and weight than himself, a man who had an assured sense of his own strength, a man whose voice, manner, and prowess put fear into the heart of every fighter in the army of israel. in david's previous contests there had been an element of suddenness, so there was no time for hesitation, and so no time for the cowardice often born of hesitation; in this contest there was delay, and during that delay david was twitted with the foolishness of even thinking of facing goliath, and an effort was made to break down his courage. right manfully, however, did he stand up to the danger. instead of a lamb, an army was in peril. the cause was worthy of a great venture. he made the venture. he took smooth stones from the brook, he used his shepherd's sling, he conquered goliath, and goliath's sword and goliath's head became trophies of a splendid victory. the youth had rescued an army from paralyzing fear, and had saved the glory of jehovah's name! he deserved credit then. he received it then. and he became forever an inspiring example to all youth who would fight their country's battles, and win laurels for the god of battles. these two scenes are suggestive. the one with the lion and the bear speaks to us of pure physical bravery. david has such muscular strength that he, by the power in his hands and arms, can hold beasts and fight a winning fight with them. david's strength makes the killing of a lion or bear with a rifle, whether at long distance or even near at hand, seem small. it makes the ordinary successes of those who contest in the athletic trials of our day seem insignificant. still it glorifies those successes. physical bravery is most desirable. people believe so. they love to see contests of physical endurance. they will go miles to watch such contests, and they will cheer the victors to the echo. in so doing to-day they follow the example of all preceding generations. barbarian, greek, roman, indian, every man everywhere is interested in muscular power. it fells trees and wins victories over the forest; it plows soil and wins victories over the fields; it breaks stone and wins victories over roadbeds. physical victories are not to be gainsaid. may every life win them if it can against nature, against other lives in fair athletics, against any one who would rob a home or burn a house. the ambition to win muscular victories, in a right way, for the defense or honor of a worthy cause, is to be commended. victories so won make their winners heroes. waterloo is said to have been fought and won on the foot-ball ground of rugby. the other scene is likewise suggestive--of david with goliath. it is that of a youth fighting for his country and his god. it is still a physical contest, but it is now skill and muscle combined; or rather, muscle directed by skill. the contest, physically considered, is unequal. david is no match for goliath. they are in different classes. but a calm mind, a dexterous hand, and a high purpose are david's, and they more than compensate for lack of physical force. the strongest battalions do not always conquer. the strongest physical force is not to conquer in this instance. patriotism may so nerve the heart that one man is equal to a hundred, and resolute purpose may develop such skill and sturdiness that a few can put a thousand to flight. it has always been so--in days of marathon and in days of bunker hill--and it always will be so. the men who win such victories may well be lauded. it was right that david's name should go into the ballads of his country and be repeated again and again to stir the heart of patriotism. any man who can fight the battles of trade or of manufacturing or of invention--any man who can head a great industry, who can write a strong book, or who can make an eloquent speech--any man who conquers the difficulty of his position by skill and energy, and succeeds, has indeed won a great victory. for a mere shepherd youth to conquer a trained fighter was superb; and it is superb to-day when a poor boy honestly wins his way to wealth, and a stammering boy learns to speak like a demosthenes, and a seeming dunce becomes a brilliant scott. all soldiers conquering like grant, all discoverers succeeding like columbus, all investigators searching like darwin and writing like spencer, deserve crowns of recognition for victories they have won. as a result of these two scenes in david's life many other scenes of a somewhat similar nature occurred. as occasions arose, david led many another attack upon the nation's foes. he possessed the rare power of creating a well-disciplined force out of outlaws. he so combined skill and leadership that none of the enemies of israel could resist him. the story of his battles is a long and a glorious one. he was a fighter of whom the nation might be proud. if physical prowess and military skill and administrative force and legislative provision are essential to kingly success, he had them. victory after victory, in all these lines, were written upon his banner. but david's fame does not rest upon the victories he won over beast or fellow-man, interesting and great as these victories are. the reason that the bible gives him the space it does, and the reason christ is said to be david's son (though never the son of any other old testament hero), is because of the victories david won over himself. in the sphere of his own heart he found his greatest difficulties, for in that sphere he found his strongest foes; but in that sphere he wrought out his greatest victories. the best element in david's life is not his physical strength, not his intellectual skill, not his ability as a singer, a general, a judge, a builder, or a king, but the best element is his conquest of himself. what a victory of _magnanimity_ that was, when saul, who was bitterly persecuting david, entered the cave in whose dark recesses david was concealed, and lay down for sleep! david had him in his power. he could have killed him instantly, and forever ended the persecution. he was even urged to do so by his followers. but he conquered his enmity, he looked upon the sleeping saul with pity, and he left him unharmed. it is a mighty soul that can pity and forgive. here was a king pursuing an innocent subject who had no other thought than of loyalty to his king--pursuing him relentlessly. the whole transaction on saul's part was unjust and cruel. but david, deeply feeling the wrong he was suffering, crowded down the bitterness of his heart, and treated saul magnanimously. how many men, otherwise splendid men, have failed just here. they could fight bravely as sailors or soldiers, but later they could not treat a rival graciously. they could win successes socially or commercially or scholastically, but they became jealous of their places and their recognitions, and they wished no good to the one who in any way stood in their path. but david, knowing that he himself was anointed to be king, and that saul's persecution of him was unjustifiable, still rose so far above all thought of preserving his own dignity and insisting on his own rights, that when his enemy lay helpless at his feet, he treated him with deference! now we begin to see why david is called "a man after god's own heart." was it because he could fight beast and man well? no; but because he could fight his own jealous, bitter heart and make it generous and kind and magnanimous. what a victory of _penitence_ that was when david sinned in the matter of uriah and bathsheba! he did sin. no one exculpates david. the bible does not exculpate him, nor will any sane man exculpate him. he did a wrong that brought incessant sorrow on his heart and home. during all the remaining years of his life he had cause to regret his wrong. it might have been alleged that he did only what king after king, situated like himself in that oriental land, with its despotic power and its manner of life, had done before him and would do after him. he might have justified himself by the custom of the day and by the prerogative of royalty. the probability is that he acted impulsively, allowing in an unguarded moment a wicked suggestion to conquer him. but when a prophet of god, nathan, brought home to his soul the fact that he had sinned, what a victory that was, as the man fought down all the voices within him, calling to him to "brave it out," to "show no weakening before the prophet," to "justify himself to himself on the score of a king's right to do as he pleased," and in conquering these voices, humbled himself before god, making the one voice that triumphantly rose above every other voice the voice of penitence--"against thee, thee only, have i sinned, and done this evil in thy sight. create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me!" there is nothing in our world that shows high victory better than penitence. mankind does wrong. sometimes it knows the wrong. then perhaps it confesses its wrong in the hurried words, "i have sinned." so said pharaoh, and immediately did again what he had done before. so said saul, and never gave up the wrong that forced the confession from him. so said judas, and went out to hang himself. but when david said it, he said it with a broken and a contrite heart. the man who having sinned conquers all the passion and pride of his soul and becomes a sweet, true, pure penitent is a victor over whom angels rejoice. thousands of men who have made a success in their own field of labor fail to win life's best victories because they never bow before god and say, "lord, be merciful to me a sinner." they are as stout-hearted as the pharisee, and as self-deceived. they forget the bitternesses they have cherished toward their fellow-men, they overlook all the omissions of goodness that have marked their lives, they do not consider how terrible is their present and their past ingratitude to god for all his goodness to them, and so they lack that gentlest, most beautiful, and most exalting virtue of penitence. what a victory of _humility_ that was, when david, forbidden to carry out the supreme desire of his heart in the building of a temple, exerted all his power to help another to build it! the erection of a temple that should be the richest structure of its time was david's dream. it was to be the consummation of his effort. enemies should be subdued, laws should be passed, government should be sustained, and foreign alliances made--all to this end. he looked forward to the day when the temple would crown moriah, as the happiest day of his life. but god told him that another, not he, should build the temple, and that it would be known, not as david's temple, but as solomon's temple. should he then withdraw all interest from the undertaking? should he say, "this is not my matter, it is another's; let another then carry its burden, as he will carry its glory." he was sorely disappointed. the one thing he had aimed to do was denied him. but he rose above his disappointment; he conquered it. he who was to take secondary place, threw himself into the help of him who was to have first place. he devised plans, he organized forces, he started instrumentalities, he gave his money by the millions, he animated others to follow his example, and he did all that chastened devotion could do to help another to complete the building which should forever sound the praises of solomon. humility is not a virtue easily won. the virtue of sweetly accepting minor place when we wished major place, and of working as earnestly for another as for ourselves, is very rare. in the army of washington there was a general, charles lee, who again and again was conquered by his own jealousy, and would not do as the interests of washington, his commanding officer, demanded. he would have fought to the death for his own reputation, but not for the reputation of washington. self-made men find it exceedingly difficult to be humble. david won a far higher victory when he cheerily went about all the self-imposed tasks of gathering material for solomon's temple than when he fought the lion or goliath, or led an army into battle. the man that does justice does well; the man that does justice and loves mercy does better; the man that does justice and loves mercy and walks humbly before god does best. and no man, whoever he may be, strong, reputable, industrious, scholarly, wealthy, ever wins his best victories until he walks humbly with his god. and what a victory of _unselfishness_ that was when david, in the time of the numbering, called upon god to lay all penalty for the sin upon himself! again the lower propensities of david's heart had misled him. he thought that he would number his military forces and let the nation know how strong and ample its army was. the thought was a mistaken one. safety lay, not in numbers, but in the virtues that spring from obedient trust in god. the deed of numbering, however, had been done. then the plague came. god would show that in three days the army could be so reduced by sickness as to make it, however large its numbers, utterly impotent. david saw the angel of destruction as the angel drew near to the threshing-floor of araunah. with a heart overflowing with unselfishness, he cried to god, "i have sinned, i have done perversely, but these sheep, what have they done? let thy hand be against me, and against my father's house." he would die himself--to have others live. this was perhaps his very best victory. winkelried opened his breast to receive all the concentrated spear thrusts of the enemy, that thus the army behind him might have chance to advance. the self-immolating life is the noblest. true love comes to its expression in self-sacrifice. christ reached his highest glory, not when he battled with wind and wave and conquered them, not when he battled with disease and demons and conquered them, not when he battled with lawyers and dialecticians and conquered them, but when he poured out his life for others. there are victories to be won at every step of our life's progress. no one of them is to be underestimated. victories of mere brawn, wrought worthily in proper time and proper place, are good; victories of intellectual skill, wrought worthily in proper purpose and proper spirit, are good; but the best victories any life can win are the victories won within a man's own heart. these are the most difficult victories, and they are the most glorious victories. each person, equally with every other, has opportunity for such victories. whenever david failed to carry god and god's help into a battle he lost; but whenever he fought under god and for god he won. david's life knew many and many a failure, but he rose from every failure and made a new effort. as a result, victory crowned his life, and he died a man of god. victory, too, may crown our lives, however weak they are, if like david, after every fall, we penitently turn to god, and in his grace strive once again to win the victories of faith. making the best use of our lives. chapter iii. making the best use of our lives. the great humboldt once said, "the aim of every man should be to secure the highest and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete and consistent whole." another thoughtful man, sir john lubbock, also said, "our first object should be to make the most and best of ourselves." prominent among the historic personages who have made the best use of their lives is joseph. touch his career at any point that is open to investigation, and always joseph will be found doing the very best that under the circumstances can be done. when his father tells him to carry food to his envious brothers, he obediently faces the danger of their hatred and goes. when he is a slave in potiphar's house he discharges all his duties so discreetly that the prison-keeper trusts him implicitly. when his fellow-prisoners have heavy hearts, he feels their sorrows and tries to give them relief. when pharaoh commits the ordering of a kingdom to his keeping, he governs the nation ably. when foresight has placed abundant food in his control, he feeds the famishing nations so that all are preserved. when his father and his brethren are in need, he graciously supplies their wants. when that father is dying, the son is as tender with him as a mother with her child. and when that father has died, the son reverences his father's last request and carries jacob's body far up into the old home country at machpelah for burial. there were many occasions in joseph's life in which he might have failed. at least, in any one of them he might have come short of the best. seneca used to say of himself, "all i require of myself is, not to be equal to the best, but only to be better than the bad." but joseph aimed in every individual experience to be equal to the best. in that aim he succeeded wondrously. going out, as a young boy, from the simple home of a shepherd, becoming a captive in a strange land, subjected to great temptations in a luxurious civilization, tested with a great variety of important duties, exposed to the peril of pride and self-sufficiency, given opportunity for revenge upon those who had injured him, he always, without exception, carried himself well, doing his part bravely, earnestly, and wisely, and making of his life, in each opportunity, the best. it is not every one that is called to such a vast range of experience as was joseph. even christ never traveled out of his own little environment of judea, that was a few miles north and south, and still fewer miles east and west. the great majority of lives never come into public prominence. they have no part in administering the affairs of a kingdom or in managing large mercantile transactions. even among the apostles there were some whose history is almost lost in obscurity. we scarce know anything of what bartholomew said or lebbeus did. it is not a question whether we can make a great name for ourselves. that may be absolutely impossible. many a beautiful flower is so placed in some extensive field that human eyes never see it and human lips consequently never praise it. but the question is, whether we are doing the best that can be done with our lives such as they are. every human life is like the life of some tree. each tree is at its best when it well fulfils the purpose for which it was made. there are trees which must stand as towering as the date-palm if they answer their end, and there are other trees which can never expect to be towering, for they were made, like the box, to keep near the ground. some trees are for outward fruit, as the apple, and some for inward fruit, as the ash. fruit is "correspondence in development with the purpose for which the tree exists," is "production in the line of the nature of the tree." when, then, the orange tree produces sound, sweet oranges that refresh the dry lips of an invalid or ornament the table of a prince, the orange tree does well; and if it produces such fruit to as large a degree as possible, and for as long a time as possible, it has done its best. so, too, does the pine do well when it produces wood wherewith a good house for family joy may be built, and the spruce does well when it brings forth a fiber that may be fashioned into paper on which words of truth can be printed, and the oak does well when it develops a grain suitable for the construction of a vessel that plowing the waves shall carry cargoes of merchandise. if the pine, the spruce, the oak, grow to the extent of their opportunity, and become all that they can become in the line of their own possibility, each and all have made the best use of their lives. but how varied are the opportunities as well as the missions of trees, of the garden cherry and the forest poplar, of the swamp tamarack and the plantation catalpa! trees of the same genus may be so differently placed that one can attain an abundant growth while another must strive hard simply to exist. an elm along a river bottom, fed by constant moisture, lifts wide arms to the sunlight, while an elm on a rocky hill, scarce finding crevices for its roots, necessarily is small and stunted. and still that stunted elm may, in its place, make or not make the best use of its life. human lives are as diversified in their natures as the growths of the field and forest. our tastes, our aptitudes, our memories, our imaginations, widely vary. the world is made up of thousands upon thousands of different needs, that must be met if mankind is to prosper. every function necessary for the world's welfare is an honorable function and becomes, when attempted by a consecrated heart, a sacred function. the world cannot live without cooking, nor can it live without building, nor without bartering, nor without teaching. how to make the best of the function or functions that are his, is the question every human being should ponder. a man may make a _bad_ use of his life. he may throw away his opportunities, he may wreck his powers of mind and body, he may tear down that good in the world which he was put here to build up. this _is_ a possibility! every life should understand that it is a possibility. john newton held in his hand a ring. as he was leaning over the rail of an ocean vessel he had no thought that perhaps through careless handling he might drop that ring and lose it forever. his mind was entirely on the ring, not on the danger of losing the ring. suddenly the ring slipped through his fingers, and before he could get hold of it again, it was in the depths of the sea. it is for this reason that the book of proverbs is constantly calling to men to see that the priceless jewels of opportunity are "retained," and that christ's word, "not to let our light become darkness," has so much significance. men often squander fortunes. they also squander virtues and reputation and aptitudes and opportunities. jails, reformatories, houses of detention, drunkards' graves, the gathering places of tramps, all tell us that people can make a miserable use of life. so does many a beautiful banquet-hall, many a luxurious home, many a speculator's resort, many a student's room, tell us that those we see there have had powers of mind and body and opportunities of social position and of wealth which they have thrown away. they have wasted their good as truly as a prodigal who has spent his all in riotous living. they are jeroboams; dowered with gifts that might have been used for their own development and the welfare of others they have let mean and low and unworthy attractions secure their gifts, thus spoiling their own characters and causing israel to sin. every blessing that a man has may become his curse, and drag him down and drag others down with him. this truth is well known. the other truth is not so well known, that a man may make an _inferior_ use of his life. this is exactly what that seneca did who declared that his ambition was, "not to be equal to the best, but only to be better than the bad." he gained large knowledge, he wrote and spoke much that was philosophical and moral, he pointed out many of the perils of a misuse of wealth, he was better than the bad, better than the nero who would kick his mother, kill his wife, make merry over his own indecencies, and gloat in the crucifixion of martyrs. seneca was better than the man who never made effort to cultivate his mind, was better than the man who spent his days in orgies, yes, was far better than the man who was blind to the beauty of gems, of poetry, and of architecture. but all the same he made an inferior use of his life. his library, his furniture, his precious stones, his worldly wisdom, were very great. let him be tutor even to an emperor, an emperor that was a "cæsar"! and still, better than the bad, he made a lamentable misuse of life when he let luxury enervate his righteous principles, let the pleasures of the table rob him of his integrity, and let his own hand, in an hour of humiliation, end the life which was not his to end. seneca was the man who let an inferior standard decide his purposes, and thus vitiated his powers. any standard lower than the highest produces poor material. second-rate standards make second-rate goods and second-rate men. second-rate men are brought to hours of emergency calling for first-rate principles. in such hours second-rate men go down. a man satisfied to live for anything less than the best of which he is capable may stand well for a considerable time, but before his days are over he will be found to be an unsuccessful workman, a disappointing teacher, a weak financier, an inaccurate student, an untrustworthy friend. but while we may make a bad or inferior use of life, we also may make the _best_ use of it. to do this should be our ambition. it should be the underlying, all-pervading purpose that quietly but regnantly dominates our being. the best use of our life will never be secured apart from such ambition. it will not come of itself. we do not drift into a best use. the best use is a matter of toil and perseverance, of thoughtfulness and devotion. it cost joseph hours of consideration, days of application, and years of adaptation to make the best use of his life. he found himself in new positions constantly. the boy naturally had looked forward to being a shepherd. to that end he studied the lie of pasturage lands. when his father sent him to his brethren he knew the way to shechem and dothan, and he found his brethren. but with his forced departure into egypt, probably into the city of memphis, all his surroundings are new and untried. the shepherd boy is given the duties of a household servant, exchanging the freedom of the field for the confinement of the palace. but he takes up his new duties, magnifying them as an opportunity of development, and he makes the best use of them. later, he who has known only a tent and a palace is in a prison, and is charged with the work of a prison guard. right well he does that work, studying it, giving himself to it, and making a success of it by his heartiness and fidelity. later still, he who has only tended sheep and ordered a household and enforced discipline is called to be a comforter to souls. he summons his sympathy, he persuasively approaches those whose hearts are sore, he obtains their confidence, and relieves their anxiety. still again, this prisoner, this shepherd boy, this household servant, this man with pity in his eyes, is called to a new adaptation. he must appear before a pharaoh and as a courtier have interview with him! that underlying purpose of his heart, always to make the best of the hour and place, stands him in good stead, and the courtier conducts himself so wisely that he is advanced to be an egyptian viceroy. later still this viceroy must become a minister of agriculture and charge a nation when and how to sow the fields. still later he must become a secretary of the treasury, purchasing grain and building store-houses. still later he must be a great premier, both providing for present need and making arrangements for future taxation. later he must be a brother with a true brother's heart and a son with a son's gentleness toward an aged and perhaps imperious parent. later he must be a mourner, then a traveler, and then as an orphan son he must assume again the heavy burdens of statesmanship. what strange varieties of experience joseph thus met! how those experiences kept changing every little while! why did he succeed so well in them? because in every one of them he made the best use of himself that the occasion allowed. he magnified the opportunity he had. the thing that was at hand to do he did with absolute fidelity. we do not forget and we must not forget that at the very bottom of his life was a _belief in god_ and an intention to do what god sanctioned and only what god sanctioned. he would not disobey what he believed to be a wish of god! somehow, in that far-away country, surrounded by temples and idols, meeting the thousands of priests of isis, hearing the daily services of heathenism, and seeing the unceasing vices of the land, he kept god and god's principles in his soul. those principles in general taught him purity and honesty; in particular they taught him _fidelity_ in the service of others and _desire to benefit_ his fellow-men. such fidelity and helpfulness--united with dependence on the aid of god--enabled him always and everywhere to make the best use of his life. he trusted god when doors were shut as well as when they were open. privation as truly as prosperity was to him an opportunity. accordingly, _heartiness_ went into his opportunities. the spirit of grumbling never appeared in his career. no hour came too suddenly for him, no task was too small nor too great, no occasion too low nor too high, no association too mean nor too noble. as a household servant he did his work as under god and for god, and as a ruler of a nation he did it as under god and for god, and as an obedient son he did it as under god and for god. a physician whose life has been beautiful in good deeds and in a high faith once said, "my happiness and usefulness in the world are due to a chance question from a stranger. i was a poor boy and a cripple. one day, standing on a ball-field and watching other boys who were strong, well clothed, and healthy, i felt bitter and envious. the friends of the players were waiting to applaud them. i never could play nor have applause! i was sick at heart. "a young man beside me must have seen the discontent on my face. he touched my arm, and said, 'you wish you were one of those boys, do you?' 'yes, i do,' i answered quickly. 'they have everything and i have nothing.' "quietly he said, 'god has given them money, education, and health that they may be of some account in the world. did it never strike you that he gave you your lameness for the same reason, to make a splendid man of you?' "i did not answer, but i never forgot the words. 'my lameness given me by god to teach me patience and strength!' "at first i did not believe the words, but i was a thoughtful boy, taught to reverence god, and the more i considered the words, the clearer i saw their truth. i decided to accept the words. i let them work upon my temper, my purposes, my actions. i now looked on every difficulty as an opportunity for struggle, every situation of my life as an occasion for good. if a helpless invalid was cast on me for support, or whatever the burden that came to me, i resolved to do my best. since then life has been sweetened and growth into peace and usefulness has come." soon after the death of carlyle two friends met: "and so carlyle is dead," said one. "yes," said the other, "he is gone; but he did me a very good turn once." "how was that," asked the first speaker, "did you ever see him or hear him?" "no," came the answer, "i never saw him nor heard him. but when i was beginning life, almost through my apprenticeship, i lost all interest in everything and every one. i felt as if i had no duty of importance to discharge; that it did not matter whether i lived or not; that the world would do as well without me as with me. this condition continued more than a year. i should have been glad to die. one gloomy night, feeling that i could stand my darkness no longer, i went into a library, and lifting a book i found lying upon a table, i opened it. it was sartor resartus, by thomas carlyle. my eye fell upon one sentence, marked in italics, 'do the duty which _lies nearest to thee_, which thou knowest to be a duty! the second duty will already have become clearer.' that sentence," continued the speaker, "was a flash of lightning striking into my dark soul. it gave me a new glimpse of human existence. it made a changed man of me. carlyle, under god, saved me. he put content and purpose and power into my life." "the duty lying nearest" was the duty joseph magnified. he accepted that duty as divine, and he performed it under god faithfully, serviceably, and cheerily. any and every life that meets duty as joseph did, will make the best of its life. we may be placed in low position or in high position; we may have menial or kingly responsibilities; we may have temptations of all possible kinds about us; but if we look to god for guidance, and carry faithfulness, serviceableness, and cheer into each and every duty, we shall have made of life the best. putting the best into others. chapter iv. putting the best into others. there is nothing more worthy than the desire to perpetuate the good. that desire implies that the person cherishing it has good within himself, and that he wishes that good to live and flourish after his death. if a man thinks that his views are the best that can be held, then, if he is a noble soul, interested in the world's welfare, he longs to have his best enter into other lives, and so continue to bless the world. this longing characterized elijah. he came upon the scene of human life at a time when the worship of the low and debased threatened to dominate the people of israel. the priests of baal, an impure god, were in the ascendant. vices, as a consequence, prevailed. these vices controlled even the court. king ahab and queen jezebel were impiously wrong. elijah had stern work to do. he must reprove the people for their errors. he must face the priests of baal and show them and show the nation that their god, as compared to jehovah, was powerless. he must tell those in high places, even the king and queen themselves, that their sins, if persisted in, would surely be visited by jehovah's wrath. his was a difficult task. it required courage, persistency, and determined purpose. it would have been folly for him to undertake it unless he felt that his ideas were essential to the nation's good. he would be resisted and hated. hours would come when he would seem to stand wholly alone, and the cause he represented would appear to him hopeless. still, difficult as his task was, he undertook it. all this worship of baal and all these vicious practices of the people were wrecking the nation. as a patriot, as a lover of his fellow-man, as a good servant of god, he must do and he would do whatever was in his power to replace the wrong with the right, to implant in the lives of the people, from peasant to king, the truest and purest ideals. accordingly he faithfully taught the will of god, called upon god to reveal himself on mount carmel, reproved ahab and jezebel, and did his best to put the best into the life of his day. but he could not live forever. at any hour he might be stricken down by the hand of an enemy or by the power of some illness. like a wise man, loving the cause he had espoused, he looked about for some one who, in case of his disability or death, could take up his work and carry forward his ideas. his mind turned toward one special man, perhaps just coming out of boyhood into maturity, a man who seemed to have the inherent power of development, and he set his heart on putting into him, elisha, the best thought and the best principles that he had. he came upon elisha in the full vigor of youth, plowing with twelve yoke of oxen. the distinctive garment of elijah's mission was his mantle. that stood for elijah's special work of speaking the truth of god and calling the nation to righteousness. upon seeing elisha in the field, elijah passed over from the caravan path that he was traveling, and threw his mantle upon elisha's shoulders! the action carried its own meaning. it indicated to elisha that elijah wished him to take up his work and stand for his ideas. elisha instantly realized the meaning of the act, and, in briefest time compatible with filial duty, he answered to elijah's wish. one little sentence in the story of these two men's lives is very instructive. "they two went on." it is a very brief summary of what was occurring for days and months and years before elijah died. "they two went on." they were together. they talked together. they thought together. they prayed together. little by little elijah imparted to elisha his views of life and imparted to him also his enthusiasm for the welfare of israel. when the time came for elisha to step forward and do his part for israel's good, he was ready to act. he became and long continued to be a wise, helpful, instructive benefactor to israel. the best that had been in elijah's life was perpetuated in elisha's life. it is a beautiful way to live, this way of putting the best into other lives. it confers such a blessing on the particular _individual_ who is thus helped. we cannot say with positiveness that the world might never have known the full force of elisha's character had not elijah cast his mantle over elisha's shoulder, but the probability is that it was elijah's interest in elisha and his success in educating him toward his own ideals that gave the world elisha's elevated personality. paul acted similarly with timothy. timothy was undoubtedly a good boy of many worthy parts, and with many noble views of life. but paul laid his hand and heart upon him, and claimed him for the special purpose of continuing the ministry of the gospel, and educated him to be a faithful representative of the truth. often there is much hesitancy to be overcome, even in worthy people, before natural endowments will be put to the best use. such may have been the case with both elisha and timothy. they needed encouragement. they needed inspiration through a sense of responsibility. this was the situation with john knox. he, humanly speaking, never could have come forward as an advocate of christ's truth and religious freedom had it not been that another approached him, put his hand on his shoulder, and said, "you have powers of good in you. you must use them in standing up for god and scotland." wonderful resources are often developed in others through this purpose to put our best into them. no one knows the power latent in another life. the most unpromising looking people may have faculties that, once awakened, directed, and called into action, will do a blessed part in the world's advance. every school whose history can be followed for fifty years has had pupils that at the outset seemed absolutely unpromising, that seemed even incapable of appreciation or development, but who, under the devotion and inspiration of some teacher or fellow-pupil, became so aroused and so efficient that their names are an honor to the school. the glory of every ragged boys' home in a great city is that former inmates who were thieves, parentless and friendless, were so reached by a patient, loving man or woman that they became industrious and honorable citizens, holding positions of power in the city itself or possessing prosperous acres in the country. it is the boy picked up in the streets of new york and sent west to be a member of a farmer's household that was led by that household's interest into such character that he was appointed governor of alaska. "i have made," said sir humphry davy, "many discoveries, but the best discovery was when i discovered michael faraday." there is scarcely any joy comparable with the joy of discovering to himself and to the world the best elements possible in another's life. the one who brought about this discovery gladly sinks into the background, and rejoices to let the field be occupied by the one discovered. it would seem as though god himself must have rejoiced when, after all his patient teaching of moses on the side of horeb, he saw moses showing his superb power of leadership in egypt, and that god must have similarly rejoiced when he saw paul responding to his charge and manifesting traits of love, forbearance, and humility that paul had not thought he possessed. to put one elisha into the world's arena, there to stand and battle for the right, was the crowning glory and the crowning joy of elijah's life. the men or women that can take the best that is in them and put it into another, so that another shall live the best, honor the best, and glorify the best, can ask no higher privilege in life. but beyond the good secured to the individual by putting the best into him is the good secured to the _world_ thereby. it was not merely that elijah inspired a new life in elisha's soul and transformed a man, it was also that he set in operation a new _influence_. the influence was not exactly like his own. it was like elijah's in that it was righteous, safe, and helpful, but it was unlike elijah's in its temper and expression. elijah was a great destroyer of evil: elisha was a great uplifter of good. elijah's earliest proclamation was, "there shall not be dew nor rain these years": elisha's earliest miracle is, "there shall be from hence life and fruitful land." both were alike in their general purpose, both alike in their courage. neither one of them could be moved from the path of duty by fear of man or men. but each was himself, as distinct as two mountain peaks in the same range or as two ships on the same sea. elijah imparted his best to elisha, but that best took shape in elisha according to elisha's individuality. elisha was not elijah over again, but he was elijah's best in a new form--a new form that was demanded by the needs of a new day. elijah had laid blows of condemnation on the nation: elisha was to apply the balm of healing where those blows had fallen. elijah was an agitator: elisha was a teacher. elijah was denunciatory: elisha was tolerant. each in his place held the best views held by any man of his time, but each in his place was called upon to hold those views according to his own temperament and express them according to the need immediately at hand. no parent, teacher, or friend can possibly reproduce himself in another. it is god's law that, however alike plants may seem in reproduction, no child shall see life exactly as his parents, nor shall a pupil see it exactly as a teacher. this law is most wise. the same work is never given to any two people to do. it may be work of the same general nature, but never work the same in all particulars. different types of men, actuated by the same motives, are required for different types of work. any man who endeavors to be a pure copyist of another gone before him, always fails of individual development and fails of usefulness. elijah could not foresee the changed circumstances in which elisha would live, when many of the vexatious questions of elijah's day would be settled and new questions of morality and public welfare would arise. all that he could do, all that any man can do, is to give the best he has to another, and send him forth to use that best as well as the other can in the new place. the beauty of human history is that the work the best man of one age could not accomplish, another coming after him does accomplish, and he accomplishes it, not because he is any better than his predecessor, but because he is the man for this hour as his predecessor was for the hour before this. there is always work to be done. there are always tasks left over from a previous generation. there are always ideas hitherto unemphasized that to-day must be emphasized, else society will not know its duty. for this work and task and emphasis new men are needed, men who do not see exactly as their fathers saw, nor pronounce nor act exactly as their fathers did. to provide such men, to inspire them with a great sense of duty, and send them out into life with open minds toward god and open hearts toward their fellows, and then withdraw our hand and let them do their own work, in their own way, this is our blessed privilege. we may endeavor to put the best into others _directly_. a parent is a parent largely for this particular purpose. the father and mother have this end as their greatest and highest responsibility. they cannot shirk it without hurt to themselves and to their child. no one can and no one should influence a child as directly as does a parent. the parent may temporarily place the child beneath the influence of a nurse, a pastor, or a teacher, but the abiding influence should be and is the parent's. little by little, line upon line, precept upon precept, conduct upon conduct, the parent should endeavor to set before the child the highest ideas of life. skill is requisite in stating these ideas, in illustrating them, in making them attractive, in persuading to their acceptance. the evil or the inferior lodged in the child's heart needs to be forced out, that the best may enter. happy the parent whose forcing process is like the incoming of light into a darkened room, a process that is gentle and conciliatory, a process that never boasts of victory and never leaves a pain. this is the parent's greatest hope and greatest reward, to have a child who shall in the child's own time and place be an advancer of the world's good. a thousand spheres of opportunity open before each new generation. into any one of them the child may carry the best his father or mother ever thought or said. many parents wish their children to do in life work of the very same type that they once did. it was therefore a gratification to their ministerial fathers when they saw their own sons enter the ministry, henry ward beecher, jonathan edwards, frederick w. farrar, charles h. spurgeon, john wesley, and reginald heber. but other ministerial fathers likewise might be gratified when they saw their sons helpfully laboring in noble spheres not specifically "the ministry," as in poetry, joseph addison, samuel t. coleridge, william cowper, ben jonson, oliver goldsmith, alfred tennyson, james russell lowell, oliver w. holmes, john keble, and james montgomery; as in literature, matthew arnold, bancroft, froude, hallam, and parkman; as in art, joshua reynolds and christopher wren; as in law, lord ellenborough, stephen j. field, david j. brewer, david dudley field; as in statesmanship, henry clay, edward everett, sir william harcourt, john b. balfour, and william forster; and as in invention, samuel f. b. morse. but while the great opportunity of putting the best into others is the parent's (and men out in earnest usefulness thank god most of all for their mothers and fathers, especially as they grow older and realize how early in youth it was that their characters received determining impressions), still others, besides parents, may use direct means toward this same end. here is the teacher's opportunity. a plastic, receptive mind is before him. it says to him: "i am here to be taught. teach me the best--the best way to see, to reason, to act, the best way to do my part in society and the world." many a teacher has looked on that opportunity as sacred; has valued it as much as elijah valued his opportunity to cast his mantle on elisha. such teachers have wrought out most valuable results. they have put ideas, methods, principles, and a spirit into pupils that have made those pupils a blessing to the world. the pupils may not recall much of what the teacher said--perhaps they cannot recall one particular truth that the teacher enforced--but they recall a purpose that dominated the teacher, and the pupils now are endeavoring to fulfil what they feel would be the wishes of that teacher if the teacher to-day could stand beside them. and why should we stop with parents and teachers in speaking of this direct effort to put the best into other lives. nurses in homes have endeavored to give little children the truest knowledge of god and of beauty, and have succeeded. the world owes them much for its best men and women. had they not seconded parents, had they attempted to uproot the good implanted by parents, all would have been ruined. so, too, have friends, masters, employers, writers in the press, writers of books, lecturers, and preachers aimed at this same end. they have felt a great desire to give their fellows beautiful thoughts, strong principles, supporting comforts, and heavenly ideals. they have felt that their heart's supreme wish would be met if they could only cause a double portion of their own spirit--aye, a four-fold, a hundred-fold of their good purposes to rest upon others--and to this end they have prayed, given money and counsel, spoken to employees and friends and comrades, written, sung, preached, labored, and died. the company of those who have wished to put the best into others is a glorious company, the company of prophets, apostles, saints, martyrs, workmen in every sphere, in every clime, in every age. surely this host is the host of the elect, the choicest ones of all god's people on earth and in heaven. apart from and beyond our direct effort to put the best into other lives is our _indirect_, our unconscious influence to this good end. personality is more potent than words. men and women impart ozone to the atmosphere without knowing what good they have done. they become standards of righteousness and are all unaware that any one looks at them to gauge his own opinion or shape his own conduct. they are like regulator clocks, by which the watches of the world seen to be wrong are set aright and are kept aright. to try to live the best in the hope that somehow one can put the best into the very air, and get it into the life of the school and community, and have it become a part of public sentiment, that surely is noble. that is the way to live. no one ever lives in vain who so lives. some one is helped by him. some one tells of him. cecil's saying of sir walter raleigh, "i know he can toil terribly," is an electric touch. in one of my pastorates there was a farmer's son, living two miles from the church. almost all the young men of his age in the village and congregation were careless, selfish, and a little fast. his father was out of sympathy with religious earnestness. but the son resolved that he would put his best into others' lives. he thought, prayed, worshiped, to that end. through snow and rain and mud he came where earnestness and high ideals were in the air. he did a manly, helpful part in his home, in his village, and in his church. then, thinking that he knew farming and could teach it, he volunteered to go to an indian school in indian territory, and as a farm manager, teach farming. he went, on almost no salary, and lived and labored, that through his words, conduct, and spirit he might put the best into others' lives. thus he lived and labored till he died, two thousand miles from home, and was buried there, the only one of his family not placed in the village graveyard. but his work has not died. it lives in all who know of it. they think of it again and again, and it always makes them wish to fulfil to the best all their opportunity for the good of others. there are many, many hearts so conscious of the help they have received from others that they read with appreciation the commemorative tablet placed by the distinguished pasteur on the house of his birth: "o my father and mother, who lived so simply in that tiny house, it is to you that i owe everything! your eager enthusiasm, my mother, you passed on into my life. and you, my father, whose life and trade were so toilsome, you taught me what patience can accomplish with prolonged effort. it is to you that i owe tenacity in daily labor." "others shall sing the song; others shall right the wrong, finish what i begin, and all i fail of, win. what matter, i or they, mine or another's day, so the right word be said, and life the sweeter made." developing our best under difficulties. chapter v. developing our best under difficulties. there is nothing in this world that more appeals to my admiration than a man who makes the best of himself _under difficulties_. robert louis stevenson deservedly has many admirers by reason of his writings, but what in him most appeals to my admiration was the struggle he waged with difficulties. "for fourteen years," he wrote the year before his death, "i have not had a day's real health. i have wakened sick and gone to bed weary. i have written in bed, written in hemorrhages, written in sickness, written worn by coughing, written when my head swam for weakness. i am better now, and still few are the days when i am not in some physical distress. and the battle goes on--ill or well is a trifle, so as it goes. i was made for a contest, and the powers have so willed that my battle-field should be this dingy, inglorious one of the bed and the physic bottle. i would have preferred a place of trumpetings and the open air over my head. still i have done my work unflinchingly." the story of many a strong and useful life is very similar to this story of stevenson's. parkman wrote his histories in the brief intervals between racking headaches. prescott struggled with blindness as he prepared his volumes. kitto was deaf from boyhood, but he wrote works that caught the hearing of the english-speaking world. it sometimes seems as though god never intended to bring the best out of us excepting through pain and pressure. the most costly perfume that is known is the pure attar of roses, and one drop of it represents millions of damascene roses that were bruised before the sweet scent they contained was secured. "the best of men that e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer." the sphere of difficulty is usually the sphere of opportunity. "i was made for contest," stevenson said. we all are made for it. as we let the contest overpower us, we fail; as we overpower the contest, we succeed. one particular personage of the old testament is in mind as illustrative of these thoughts, jeremiah. he always reminds me of a violet i once saw growing on mount st. bernard in switzerland. the snow was deep on every side, excepting on one little slope a few feet in width, exposed to the eastern sun. there, so close to the snow as almost to be chilled to death by the cold atmosphere about it, was a violet sweetly lifting its head and blooming as serenely as though it knew nothing of the struggle for life. jeremiah was a mere youth when the conviction came into his heart, "god wishes me to be his mouthpiece in teaching the people to do right." he lived at anathoth, three miles from jerusalem, the distance of an hour's easy walk. his father was a priest who probably in his turn served in the duties of the temple at jerusalem. but though he came of religious ancestry, and though he heard much of the religious exercises of the temple, this call from god to be his mouthpiece in teaching the people to do right, broke in upon his life as a disturbing force. the times were worldly, and even wrong. nobles and princes, merchants, scholars, and priests had put the fear of god away from their eyes, and were acting according to the selfish impulses of the hour. the general outward life of the nation was pure, but it was the pureness of mere formality. beneath the surface ambitions and purposes were cherished that uncorrected would surely lead the people into selfishness, idolatry, and transgression. it was no easy thing for jeremiah to answer "yes" to this call of god. the call involved a lifetime of brave service. matters in the nation were sure to go from bad to worse. difficulties after difficulties therefore, as they developed, must be faced. he stood at what we name "the parting of the ways"; if he did as god wished, his whole life must be given to the work indicated; if he said "no" to god's call, he would drift along with the rest of the people, leaving them to their fate, he no better and perhaps no worse than they. in some respects there is nothing better than to be _forced_ to a decision on some important matter, particularly if that decision is a decision involving character. it was a choice with jeremiah whether he would live unselfishly for god or selfishly for himself. that choice ordinarily is the supreme choice in every one's life. it is the supreme choice that the christian pulpit is constantly presenting. present character and eternal destiny are shaped according to that choice. in jeremiah's case there was a native reluctance to do the deeds which he saw were involved in obedience to god's call. he was by temperament modest and retiring. he shrank from publicity. he did not like to reprove any one. severe words were the last words he wished to speak. it would have been a relief to him if god had simply let him alone and imposed on others this duty of trying to make the people better. some men seem to be adapted for a fray, as elijah was, and as john the baptist was. but jeremiah was more like john the beloved. he would have been glad to live and die, simply saying, "little children, love one another." it is god's way, however, again and again, to take lives that to themselves seem utterly unfitted for special duties and assign them to those duties. almost all the best workers in god's cause came into it reluctantly, and against the feeling that they were fitted for it. we are bidden ask the lord of the harvest to _thrust_ men into the fields of need. jeremiah felt in his heart this "thrusting." he did not kick against it. he yielded to it. but with what results? the first result was _estrangement_. his goodly life and conversation soon made the people of his village and even the brothers and sisters of his home feel that he was different from themselves. they chafed under the contrast of their carelessness and his earnestness. he found himself left out of their pleasures and chilled by their indifference. the estrangement developed until his fellow-townsmen were eager to rid themselves of his presence, and his own family were ready to deal treacherously with him. it is just at this point that so often a good purpose breaks down. when a man's foes are they of his own household or comradeship, he is very apt to give up his good purpose. it is more difficult for a beginner in the religious life to resist the insinuating and depreciating remarks of near acquaintances than to face a mob. it must have cut christ to the heart's core when his brethren said of him, "he hath a devil!" "i would rather go into battle," said a soldier newly enlisted as a christian, "than go back to the mess-room and hear what the men will say when they know of my decision." jeremiah started his obedience to god amid estrangement. it was not long before estrangement had given place to _threatening_. his duties as he grew older called him to jerusalem. the youth become a man must leave the village, go to the city, and in the larger sphere of need, speak the messages of god. in jerusalem he assured the people that if they did injustice, oppressed the poor, built themselves rich houses out of wages withheld from servants, made sacrifices to base idols, and strengthened the hands of evil-doers, god would bring a terrible overthrow upon them. his task was made the more difficult because in his words and attitude he stood alone. he had no following among priests or prophets to back him. with one consent they affirmed that he was wrong and that a lie was on his lips when he predicted desolation if present practices were continued. it is a great hour in any man's life when he is obliged to stand up alone and state his case or defend his cause. what an hour that was in paul's history when before the roman officials "no man stood with him," but, dependent as he was on sympathy and fellowship, he stood alone! it is when a man is absolutely left alone, in danger or disgrace, that the deepest test of his character is reached. that is the reason why the night-time, which seems to say to us "you are alone with god," has its impressiveness, and why the death hour has a similar impressiveness. jeremiah felt his loneliness. there was nothing of the stoic in him. he could not school himself to be brazen-hearted. he was so human, so like the great majority of people, that every now and then some cry of weariness would escape his lips. "woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me, a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth. i have neither lent on usury, nor men have lent me on usury; yet every one of them doth curse me." sometimes his outbursts of mental agony make us feel that the man has almost lost his bravery. "cursed be the day wherein i was born! wherefore came i forth out of the womb to see labor and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame?" but glad as he would have been to escape the responsibility of rebuking people, and glad as he would have been to hold the affection and regard of his companions, he never for a moment kept back the truth, nor for a moment did he distrust god's blessing on his life. "all my familiars watched for my halting, saying, peradventure he will be enticed, and we shall prevail against him, and we shall take our revenge on him." "but the lord is with me," he declared, and so declaring he was immovable before his adversaries. there came a third experience into his life, which carried his difficulties one degree higher. it was the experience of _disdain_. he knew full well that the wicked course of the nation was inevitably leading to destruction. unless the evil of the people should cease the powers of babylon would come and would destroy judah. he was debarred an interview with the king. he therefore wrote his message on a roll, put it in the hands of a messenger, baruch, and in due time that roll was carried into the king's presence by baruch and read to the king. the king was sitting in his winter house. the weather was cold. a fire was burning before him in a brazier. as the king heard the words of jeremiah that called him and the people to penitence, his anger was aroused. he seized the roll ere three or four of the columns had been read, cut it up with his penknife, and cast the whole roll into the fire to be utterly consumed therein. he did this in the presence of his court. he did it with a disdain and contempt that made every man present feel that jeremiah and jeremiah's words were to be despised. it never is a pleasure to be despised. contempt usually embitters a man or suppresses him. the derisive laugh against a man is more powerful in breaking him than the compactest argument. many men can remain steadfast to convictions in estrangement or in opposition who give way when they hear that their words and actions are the subject of twitting and ridicule. "who is this jeremiah, and what are his words, that we should think of them a second time? i will cut these words into fragments even with my pocket-knife, and then i will burn them in this little brazier, and that shall be the last of them!" so said and did king jehoiakim. and his princes heard and saw. but whatever the effect produced on others, the effect produced on jeremiah must have been to the king a great disappointment. jeremiah heard god's voice saying in his heart, "you must write those same words of truth again." and again he wrote them on a roll. and just here comes out one of the sweetest and most characteristic features of jeremiah's character. the ordinary man, if he has made up his mind to retort or to ridicule, says to himself, "now i will pour out my wrath on my adversary." but such was jeremiah's self-control and peacefulness of temper that perhaps he would have erred on the side of leniency unless god had charged him, not to soften or to suppress one part of the message, but to write _all_ the words that were in the former roll and add thereto other special predictions. to this charge, whatever his obedience might lead to, jeremiah immediately and completely responded. then came jeremiah's fourth experience. his persistence in duty now cost him _imprisonment_. not an ordinary imprisonment, but such an imprisonment as oriental monarchs employ when they wish to place those whom they dislike in a living death. the king first put jeremiah in a dungeon-house where there were cells. this was not very bad. then, when jeremiah still was true to his testimony, the king put him in the court of the guard, giving him a daily allowance of one little eastern bread-loaf. this also was not very bad. but later the king, when the princes claimed jeremiah for their victim, as afterward the rabble claimed christ from pilate for their victim, gave jeremiah into the hands of the princes to do with him as they pleased. then it was that they with cords dropped him down into a deep subterranean pit, whose bottom was mire, so that jeremiah sank in the mire. how many people in the time of the inquisition, when they were racked to pieces, when thumb-screws agonized them, when water drop by drop fell ceaselessly on their foreheads, and when pincers tore their flesh little by little continuously, renounced their faith and so saved themselves from slow torture! it was not an easy thing to die from starvation in a dark, damp pit, with mire creeping up all about him. it never has been easy to die slowly and alone for the faith; to die for a testimony; to die for a message that involved others much more than one's self. all that was needed to protect him from pain and to preserve his life was silence. if jeremiah would keep quiet all would be well. but for jeremiah to keep quiet would be to prove disobedient to a sense of duty implanted by god in his heart. so this gentle nature, that shrank from the horrors of the miry pit, horrors more to be dreaded than the lions' den or the fiery furnace or the executioner's sword, went down into the pit unbroken--precursor of those sweet natures in woman and child that all the beasts of the colosseum could not dismay, and that all the fires of martyrdom could not weaken. one more experience awaited jeremiah--_deportation_. so far as we know, it was the closing experience of his life. the dauntless soul had not been suffered to die in the pit. patriotic men who realized the folly of letting an unselfish, high-minded citizen perish so terribly, and who realized, too, the desirability of preserving alive so wise a counselor, secured permission from the vacillating king to take rags and worn-out garments, and let them down by cords into the pit. "put now these rags and worn-out garments under thine arm-holes under the cords," they said, "and jeremiah did so. so they drew up jeremiah with the cords." once again he was in his position of responsibility as god's messenger. in that position he held fast to his faithfulness. then came his final experience. judah had passed through trial upon trial. jeremiah had shared in her trials, never running away from them, but always bearing his full brunt of burden and loss. then he was forced to go away from the land of his love and his tears to egypt! he did not wish to go. he assured those who headed the movement that it was folly to go. but they took him with them, and carried him, like a captive, off to a foreign land. all this would have meant little to some men, but to jeremiah it meant everything. jerusalem and the land of judah were dear to his heart. he had lived for them, spoken for them, suffered for them, and well-nigh died for them. in older years the land of one's birth and of one's sacrifices becomes very dear. "if i forget thee, o jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning; if i do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!" into that deportation we cannot follow him. we only know that up to the very last minute in which we see him and hear his words, he was unceasingly true to his god, and true to the people around him, loving his master and loving his brethren, with an unfailing devotion. but this we do know, ignorant as we are whether he died naturally or was stoned to death, that in after years this jeremiah became among the jews almost an ideal character. they saw that all his words predicting the destruction of the holy city and the captivity were fulfilled. they learned to revere his fidelity. they even called him "the greatest" of all their prophets. they well-nigh glorified him. in times of war and difficulty they used his name wherewith to rouse halting hearts to bravery and to lead the fearful into the thick of perilous battles. here, then, is a life that came to its best and developed its best under difficulties. "best men are molded out of faults." so was this man molded to his best out of faults of hesitation and unwillingness and impatience. no one knows the best use we can make of ourselves but the one who created us and understands our possibilities. in the struggle against difficulties we have christ's constant sympathy. were not _estrangement_, _threatening_, _disdain_, _imprisonment_, and _deportation_ his own experiences? and did not they come in this same order? and does not he realize all the stress through which a soul must pass that would fight its contest and advance to its best? certainly he does. and when he lays a cross upon us, it is that through our right spirit in carrying that cross we may become sweeter in our hearts and braver in our lives, and thus change our cross into a very crown of manliness and of usefulness. to many a man there is no object in this earth that so appeals to his admiration as a person who makes the best of himself under difficulties. we may well believe that to christ likewise there is no human being so prized and admired as he who advances to his best through the conquest of difficulties. the need of retaining the best wisdom. chapter vi. the need of retaining the best wisdom. no one can read the story of solomon's life, as given in the bible and as given in eastern writings, without wonder. that story in the bible is amazing; that story in the historic legends of persia, abyssinia, arabia, and ethiopia is still more amazing. it is said of solomon that "those who never heard of cyrus, or alexander, or the cæsars have heard of him," and that "his name belongs to more tongues, and his shadow has fallen farther and over a larger surface of the earth than any other man's. equally among jewish, christian, and mohammedan nations his name furnishes a nucleus around which have gathered the strangest and most fantastic tales." almost at the beginning of his public activities he made a prayer to god that may well be the prayer of every one. in a dream god appears to him, asking what he most wishes god to confer upon him. humbly and earnestly he asks for a discerning mind--a mind capable of distinguishing between good and evil. he passes by long life, passes by wealth, passes by victory over enemies, and he asks only for such understanding as shall enable him to know the right from the wrong. we cannot call this prayer a surprise to god, but we can call it a delight to him. there are very many kinds of wisdom, but in god's judgment, the best wisdom is that which always discriminating between the good and the bad, the true and the false, the permanent and the fleeting, prefers the good, the true, and the permanent. it surprises us that solomon was wise enough to make the desire for discrimination the one petition of his heart. he was comparatively young, he was inexperienced in life's responsibilities, he was at the threshhold of what promised to be a great, almost a spectacular career. most men, under such circumstances, given the opportunity of asking for anything and everything they pleased, would have said, "give me many, many years of mental growth; give me much, very much material wealth; give me great and constant triumphs over all who in any way oppose me." but solomon asked only for a discerning mind that could see the difference between right and wrong, and in asking that, he asked for the best wisdom any human life can ever have. solomon had other kinds of wisdom. how they came to him we do not know. perhaps he was born with a large degree of mother wit and with a very strong mental grasp. perhaps his father, himself a thoughtful man and a brilliant writer, provided the best teachers that wealth could procure for his son. perhaps his mother, who had eager ambition for her son, constantly urged him on to large intellectual development. explain his case as we may, the facts are that he had _scientific_ wisdom. he knew nature so well that careful writers have even called him "the father of natural science." he knew trees, from the lordly cedar-tree that graced lebanon to the little hyssop that springs out from between the stones of a wall, as i once saw it in an old well near jerusalem. he knew beasts of the field, fowls of the air, animals that creep on the ground, and fishes that swim in the water. such is the brief résumé by the scriptures of his acquaintance with nature. the legends of the east add that he could interpret the speech of beasts and birds, that he understood the hidden virtues of herbs, and that he was familiar with the secret forces of nature. he had also _literary_ wisdom. he was a beautiful, trained, and forceful writer. the seventy-second psalm, beginning "give the king thy judgments, o god, and thy righteousness unto the king's son," is ascribed to him. so is the one hundred and twenty-seventh psalm, opening with the words, "except the lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it." much of the book of proverbs is written by him or compiled by him--a book whose concise, striking, intelligent, helpful utterances are a monument of literary skill. ecclesiastes, with its philosophical dissertations on the fleeting and disappointing elements of human life, is also assigned to him. so is the song of solomon, which breathes a wealth of poetical fervor, that understood and applied spiritually, is as sweet as the voice of the meadow lark soaring skyward in the light and beauty of a summer day. yet these writings are only a part of what he produced. his songs were a thousand and five, his proverbs not less than three thousand. what we have in the bible simply suggests the variety and power of his literary style, the force and sagacity of his sound sense, the brilliancy and fitness of his practical wisdom. solomon's words are such that to this day, in this land, and in every land of the earth, they are competent to teach prudence, economy, reverence for parents, self-protection, purity, honesty, and faithfulness to duty. the boy that learns them and carries them with him as a vital principle of being and of conduct will move unsoiled and unhurt wherever he may go. the home that places them at its center and reveres them will be cheerful and brave. the grown man that carries them with him into every detail of business and care will be upright and beautiful. the wisdom of solomon was _commercial_ as well as scientific and literary. he recognized the advantages of trade. he extended it. he sent ships so far away to the east that passing through the red sea out into the indian ocean they brought back the treasures of arabia and india and ceylon--gold and silver and precious stones; nard, aloes, sandalwood, and ivory; apes and peacocks. he sent other ships along the mediterranean coasts to the north, where hiram, king of tyre, lived, and then to the west, out between the gates of hercules, past the present gibraltar, up the atlantic ocean to the north until they touched at southern england, at cornwall, where they found the tin which, combined with copper, formed the bronze for armor and for all so-called "brazen" furniture. not alone through ships of the sea did he seek out the best treasures of all the accessible earth and beautify jerusalem with them, but also through ships of the desert--camels--did he do the same. he caused the great caravan routes of the day to pass through jerusalem, and he levied duties on the objects transported from damascus on the north to memphis on the south, and from tadmor in the east to asia minor in the west. he put himself into contact with all the thought and purposes of other nations than his own, he learned what their kings and queens, their merchants, their sailors, their writers, were saying and doing, and thus he brought home to his mind the leading ideas of his time. his knowledge of men, of methods, and of enterprise became vast. nor did his wisdom stop with commerce; it included government also, and was _political_. he took the throne at a time when government was weak, or almost disorganized. david's last years were years of physical disability, wherein he could not curb the rebellious spirits that were gaining influence in many quarters. solomon, upon his assumption of rule, judiciously subdued all rebellion of every kind, united the entire kingdom, and started that kingdom upon the period of its greatest glory. he made treaties that bound adjacent principalities to him and caused them to pay tribute. he held such power that nations did not care to fight with him, and so he became a king of peace. he laid taxes on his own people that brought in large revenue. it was indeed the golden period of israel. the effect of solomon's wisdom was great and extensive. his _reputation_ went far and wide. people made long journeys to see him, ask him questions, and honor him. even one like the queen of sheba came with a great retinue, up through the desert, past village and town, to bring him costly gifts and talk with the man who knew so much. his _influence_ became pervasive. it entered into the legends of people who never saw him, and became so fixed a part of those legends, that those legends, repeated until to-day, still sound his praise. he was known in tent and in palace as the wisest man that had ever lived, and the most exaggerated statements were made and received of his insight into the mysteries of the spirit world and his power to control the supposed spirit forces of the air. his _wealth_ became almost incredible. nothing like it has ever been known--not in the time of the roman emperors, nor in the time of to-day. the fabulous magnificence of mexican and peruvian kings helps us to realize solomon's glory. "the walls, the doors, the very floor of the temple, were plated with gold, furnishing gorgeous imagery for john's description of heaven." two hundred targets and three hundred shields of beaten gold were held by the guard through whose lines solomon passed to the temple or to his house of the forest. his throne of ivory, as were its steps, was overlaid with plates of gold. all his drinking-vessels were of gold, and all the vessels of the house of the forest were of pure gold, none were of silver. he was able to make the temple the costliest structure for its size the world has ever seen. hundreds of millions of dollars went into its erection and decoration. when to-day the traveler visits baalbec and sees stones over seventy feet in length and fourteen in width and in depth--stones quarried, conveyed, raised up into high walls and securely masoned there; when to-day the traveler sees the golden jewelry gathered from ancient grecian graves and placed on exhibition in athens; and when to-day the traveler examines the massive work done in egypt, whose ruins are overpowering in their grandeur, and seeing these stones, jewelry, and structures remembers that solomon knew all the skill, wealth, and buildings of the whole mediterranean world, then he can understand how solomon, with his resources, built a city like palmyra, and a house of worship like the temple, and made silver to be as stones in jerusalem. ah, if this solomon, so brilliant and so powerful, so "glorious," as christ called him, could only have preserved the best wisdom all through his years, whose name--except christ's--would be comparable to his! he asked god for the wisdom that discerns between the good and the evil. god answered that prayer and gave him such wisdom. how clearly he saw at the first! if two women came to him, each claiming to be the mother of a little child, and asking for the child's possession, how skilful he was in ordering that the child be cut in twain in their presence, thus causing the true mother to cry out in love for her child and then giving her the child unhurt. the traditions of the east--some of them perhaps once a part of those lost books mentioned in the bible, the book of the acts of solomon, the book of nathan the prophet, the prophecy of ahijah the shilonite, the visions of iddo the seer, tell again and again how quiet and accurate solomon's perception was in distinguishing real flowers from artificial, in distinguishing girls from boys though dressed alike, and in deciding case after case of legal perplexity. he did have a discerning heart when, in his early days, he knew who his enemies were and he crushed them, who his true counselors were and he listened to them, what his supreme duty was and he built god's house, what his sinful heart needed and he shed the blood of atonement for it. it was discernment when, though he made his own house rich, he made god's house richer; when he counted his gift of millions of dollars to god's honor a delight; and when he would let neither knowledge nor pleasure nor pomp nor glory withdraw his supreme affection from god. would that he had always continued as he was! would that he had remembered that the prayer offered to-day for a blessing in character must be offered again to-morrow if that blessing in character is to be retained! prayer is not so much a momentary wish as a continuous spirit. his momentary wish and the resolve that sprang from it were at the time all that god or man could desire. a mind distrustful of its own omniscience, humbly waiting on god for discernment, is the wisest of all minds. that mind was once in solomon, but not always. when grown to maturity he talked philosophy, still he was wise. but when he came to act upon his philosophy, he was unwise. he failed to discern between the value and the curse of wealth. he became a lover of money for money's sake. he laid taxes on the people that they could not endure. he treated them no longer as a father, but as a master. he ceased to distinguish between the beauty and the disease of luxury. he built gardens and palaces, and made displays, not with the thought of any praise they would be to jehovah, or to the establishment of god's people on a sound financial and political basis, but for the honor and recognition that would come to him. he became a captive to the love of magnificence and to the desire for display. he made marriages that were matters of state expediency and were not matters of heart conviction, and thus put himself under the influence of those whose religious purposes were wholly opposed to his own. he filled his palaces with women whose presence indeed was a great indication of oriental affluence, but whose presence was a menace to clear vision of integrity, and was a woeful example to the nation. he grew blinder and blinder to fine perceptions, not alone of what was good in taste, but of what was right in principle. he became so broad in his religious sympathies that he seemed to forget that there can be but one living and true god. he even went after "ashtoreth, the goddess of the sidonians, and after milcar, the abomination of the amonites." and as a last blind act of folly, he even raised within sight of god's holy temple "an high place for chemosh, the abomination of moab, and for moloch, the abomination of the children of ammon, in the hill that is before jerusalem." what men like daniel would not do, what men like shadrach would not do, what martyrs in after days, asked to say the simple word "cæsar" and throw a grain of corn on an heathen altar, would not do, though death awaited them, solomon did. he gave up the fine distinction between the true and the untrue, between god and idolatry, between divine principle and human expediency. and with this loss of the best wisdom came loss of manliness, loss of peace, and loss of the favor of god. wealth, power, luxury, praise, glory, were still about him, but he had made the most serious of all serious mistakes. later he recognized his mistake. we hope that he repented, genuinely repented, of his mistake, and before his death turned back to god and the best wisdom. but whether he died repentant or unrepentant solomon is the man who is forever the example of unparalleled wisdom and of ruinous folly--of ruinous folly because his wisdom failed to retain the element of the discerning mind. here, then, is a lesson: "with all thy getting, get understanding." life is not a best success, whatever else it may have in it, unless it draws fine lines of separation between good and evil. the wealth and learning and glory of the wide world cannot make up for a lack of sensitive conscientiousness. the study and ambition of life must be applied to the securing and retaining of fine powers of moral discrimination if we are to be truly wise. every one can have this discerning mind, at least to such a degree as shall enable him to avoid the fearful mistake of palliating evil and of becoming enslaved to evil. a little child may in this respect be wiser than the oldest man; the simple peasant may be safer than the most cultured scholar. not even libraries of knowledge can save the character of the man whose vision of good and evil is blunted. youth is the time to make this prayer for true wisdom--when life's decisions are first opening before us. youth is the time when god can best answer and when god cares most to answer prayer for the discerning mind. we need to start upon our careers with hearts exceedingly sensitive to the least variation from right. as the gunner cultivates his aim and notes his least deviation from the true line to the target, so should we cultivate clearness of moral perception. we need the "practiced" eye and the "practiced" heart, for safe judgment. "the grand endowment of washington," wrote frederic harrison, "was character, not imagination, not subtlety, not brilliancy, but wisdom. the wisdom of washington was the genius of common sense, glorified into _unerring truth of view_." almost the same tribute can be paid to victoria. when, six months after her accession, victoria drove to the house of parliament, there was not a hat raised nor a voice heard. but when sixty years later her jubilee was held, such pæans of admiration and love swelled in london's streets as never before had greeted any sovereign's ears--and all because the people saluted in victoria's person the _discrimination_ that had shunned vice, corrected abuses, exalted integrity, and glorified religion. what every one needs, washington, victoria, and all--and what every one should crave--is such wisdom, as all through life shall keep him from confusing moral principles and shall make him see, choose, love, and follow the best. the best possession. chapter vii. the best possession. what is the best possession a human life can have? judging from the efforts made to secure wealth, fame, and power, the answer would seem to be that they--wealth, fame, and power--are the best possessions any one can have. observant and thoughtful people know, however, that such possessions do not necessarily nor ordinarily make their owners happy. they therefore argue that there must be better possessions than these. so they say, eloquence is perhaps the best possession, or knowledge is, or ability to do great deeds or express great thoughts is. but the wisest book that has ever been written says that something not yet mentioned is the best possession, and says that that something makes life the happiest, and even makes it the holiest. that something, in the language of the bible, is _love_. the man that in his heart has love, true, pure, lasting love, has the best possession that can be secured. it is for this reason that jonathan is such an inspiring character. the story of his life, hastily viewed, seems almost incidental, but scholarly examination of it shows that its light and gladness are in marked contrast to the darkness and sorrow in the careers of saul and david. the story of jonathan's life has probably done more to suggest and arouse the unselfish devotion of man to man, than any story, apart from that of the christ, that has ever been told. if we wish to find one who really had the best possible possession, jonathan is that one, a man whose heart was bright, whose deeds were noble, and whose death was glorious. jonathan was a physical hero. he had both muscular strength and muscular skill. the way he could throw a spear and shoot an arrow made him famous. he had rare courage. assisted only by his armor-bearer he once made an attack upon a whole garrison at michmash, slaying twenty men within a few rods and putting an entire army to flight. he had great self-control. found fault with by his father because in an hour of weariness he had tasted honey--in ignorance of his father's wish to the contrary--he opened his breast to receive the death penalty vowed by the father, and stood unmoved until the soldiers cried to saul that the deed of blood must not be done. he was no weakling. rather he was a mighty man, able to command military forces and call out their enthusiasm. men rallied about him for hazardous undertakings, saying, "do all that is in thy heart; behold, i am with thee according to thy heart." in the field or in the court he was equally acceptable. his father, the king, had implicit confidence in him, and took him into all his counsels. in the language of poetry, he was "swifter than an eagle, he was stronger than a lion." israel might well look forward to the day when this stalwart, inspiring, wise son should succeed his father and be their king. his name, in time of battle, would be a terror to their foes. but better than jonathan's strong arm and clear intellect and winsome personality was his loving heart. he never had read paul's description of love as given in the thirteenth chapter of first corinthians, nor had he read henry drummond's exposition of love as "the greatest thing in the world," nor had he ever seen the devoted character of christ, nor known any of the beautiful examples of love created by the gospel. he was living in a selfish age--an age of strife and tumult and blood--and still his whole being seemed pervaded by that love which is "unselfish devotion to the highest interests of others." such love was his joyous and abiding possession. the first time we have an opportunity of reading his inmost heart is when david, having slain goliath, stands before saul, holding goliath's head in his hand. here we see the _generosity_ of love. it was an hour when every eye was turned from jonathan and centered upon an unknown stripling who had carried off the honors of the day by a startling and brilliant deed. hitherto jonathan had been the national hero; now he was to be set aside, and david was everywhere to come into the foreground. how should all this transfer of honor affect jonathan? should it sour him, making him look askance on this new competitor for the public recognition, and influencing him to send back david to his father's flocks, away from further opportunity for martial deeds? any such method would be what is called "natural." men usually try to get rid of competitors. they do this in business and in games. opera singers often keep back, if they can, the voice that once heard will supersede their own voice in popular favor. we do not like to have another outshine us. praise is sweet. people hate to lose it. plaudits transferred to another leave a painful vacancy in the ordinary soul. we crave favor, and when that favor passes from us to rest upon another we are severely tried. many a man has thought himself kindly dispositioned until he found that some one else was obtaining the recognition previously so secure to him, and then to his own surprise he has found himself grudging the other that recognition. how much of the unhappiness of human life comes from the fact that persons do not speak to us or of us as they do of others! how apprehensively many people protect their place--social, political, or commercial--lest another shall in any wise encroach upon it! jonathan might easily have recognized that, so far as his interests were concerned, it was far better that david should be dismissed to the sheep pastures than allowed to stay near the court. but in spite of what jonathan recognized, jonathan's heart warmed to david. by the time he had heard the story of david's home and family, the soul of jonathan was knit with the soul of david, and jonathan loved him as his own soul. the interests of david became his interests. he wished david to succeed. praises of david sounded sweet in his hearing. he showed such wish to have david stay right there, at the heart of the nation's capital, where people could see him and honor him, and where david could have new opportunity for public service, that saul would not let david go back to the distant and quiet pastures. jonathan even made a covenant with david, promising to be his friend and helper. to show the sincerity of that covenant, or rather in the expression of that covenant, jonathan took off his robe and his garments, even to his sword and to his bow and to his girdle--stripped himself of them--and gave them to david. jonathan wished david to be ready for possible opportunities of military success, and therefore he armed him with his own chosen and well-tried weapons. so their friendship began. it was a friendship that was all "give" on one side and all "take" on the other. there never was a clearer illustration of what love is than the relation between jonathan and david. it is always said that "jonathan loved david," but no emphasis is placed on david's love for jonathan. david appreciated jonathan, but jonathan loved david, and loving him, unceasingly aided him. "i call that man my friend," a noble poet declared, "for whom i can do some favor." love exists only where costly kindnesses are conferred upon another. turner, england's honored painter, exemplified love when he was on a committee on hanging pictures for exhibition in london and a picture came from an unknown artist after the walls were full. "this picture is worthy; it must be hung," he said. "impossible; the walls are full now," others asserted. quietly saying "i will arrange it," turner took down one of his own pictures and hung the new picture in its place. the second scene of jonathan's devotion to david reveals the _protection_ of love. david's life was in danger. saul, jealous of david's popularity, desired to be rid of david. he even wished to kill him. he let his servants know his wish. david was encompassed by peril. what would jonathan do now? when others were turning against him, would he also turn against him? the current was all setting one way. any kindness to david would now be in direct opposition to a ruler's will and to the sentiment of the court. interest in another often becomes luke-warm under such circumstances. "there is no use of resisting the tide of events," people say. they therefore leave the man that is down to himself and to his fate. how lovers fall away in the hour of disgrace and danger! how difficult it becomes to speak favorably of a man when every other is condemning him! in periods of excitement when the motives of men are called into question and innuendo is in the air, how reluctant we are to avow our confidence and try to still the cries of opposition. but what was the effect of this situation on jonathan? his heart warmed all the more to the imperiled man whose one crime was that he was a deliverer to israel. jonathan delighted much in david. jonathan revealed to david saul's purpose to kill him. jonathan provided for david's immediate safety and took means to anticipate his future safety. then he went to the king and _plead_ for david. that was a splendid piece of work. it was much as john knox plead with mary, queen of scots, for scotland. she did not wish to hear knox's words. she was bitter against scotland and scotland's religion. he risked much in venturing into her presence and interceding. but he loved scotland and scotland's religion. he would rather die than have scotland suffer, and so he braved mary's tears and entreaties and commands, and he spoke for scotland. love is a very expensive thing; it often summons us to surrender our personal ease, and surrender, too, our closest comradeships. it may cost us obloquy, it may cost us loss of standing with king and court, it may cost us the disdain of the world, but cost what it might, jonathan plead for david's safety, and temporarily secured his wish. later the love of jonathan was to be subjected to a more subtle and more difficult test. it was to be called upon for _self-effacement_. saul's misdemeanors and incompetences had so weighed on saul's mind that saul actually hated the david whose conduct was always irreproachable; saul's mind, too, at times had lost its balance, and he had done the insane acts of a madman toward david. saul, now half-sane and half-insane, was irrevocably determined to kill david. he learned that samuel had quietly anointed david as king, and that david in due time would succeed to the throne! saul's heart was aflame with bitterness--the bitterness that is born of chagrin and envy. david knew of that bitterness, and knew that saul's persistent enmity left but a "step between him and death." then it was that jonathan ventured to interview his father and see whether his father's hatred could not in some way be appeased and david's safety be secured. but with the first revelation of jonathan's interest in david came an outburst from saul that showed the utter implacability of saul's rage. saul even tried to inflame jonathan's temper, charging him with perversity and rebellion, and with acting undutifully; and then, when he hoped that jonathan was excited, he introduced the thought, "this david, if you let him live, will seize the throne which is yours as my son and heir! will you suffer david to live and take your throne?" it was an appeal to jonathan's envy, and that appeal touched on the most delicate ambition of jonathan's heart. what a fearful thing envy is! history is full of its unfortunate work. it hurts him who cherishes it as well as him against whom it rages. cambyses killed his brother smerdis because he could draw a stronger bow than himself or his party. dionysius the tyrant, out of envy, punished philoxenius the musician because he could sing, and plato the philosopher because he could dispute, better than himself. "envy is the very reverse of charity; it is the supreme source of pain, as charity is the supreme source of pleasure. the poets imagined that envy dwelt in a dark cave; being pale and lean, looking asquint, abounding with gall, her teeth black, never rejoicing but in the misfortune of others, ever unquiet and anxious, and continually tormenting herself." when such an appeal to envy as that subtly made by saul to jonathan comes to most human hearts they are conquered by it. few, very few, men hail the rise of the sun that pales their own star. but jonathan could not be overpowered by this appeal, however wilily the king drove it home. he stood true to david, though by so doing he imperiled his own life. for with his quick perception of jonathan's fixed adherence to david, saul hurled his javelin at his own son's breast and would have slain him on the spot. in the days that followed this stormy interview, when the king's wrath against david was still at white heat, and when one turn of jonathan's hand could have ended all possible rivalry between himself and david for the throne, jonathan sought david, said gladly to him, "thou shalt be king in israel, and i shall be next unto thee," and saying this, made a new covenant of love that should bind themselves and their descendants to all generations! i know not what others may think, but as for me, nothing in this world is sweeter, stronger, nobler, than an unselfish friendship. we have used and misused the word "love" so often that we have dragged it down from its high meaning. we have flippantly passed it over our lips when by "love" we meant mere interest, or sympathy, or fondness, or even a mental or a physical passion. we have belittled it and even smirched it in the mire. but next to the word "god" it is the greatest word of human life, and is associated with god as no other word is. the man that can and will prove a generous, unselfish, devoted friend is the highest type of man. the man that can cherish a sweet, uplifting love that is beyond the reach of envy, and that will lay down every treasure but itself for another, is the noblest specimen of manhood that can be produced. more and more it becomes clear that genuine devotion to the highest interests of others is the solution of the world's social problems. love makes its owner happy. it is a giver and a sustainer of joy. there is no bitterness in its root and no acid in its fruit. by nature it is the sweet, the healthy, the sane. the absence of love always means the presence of the selfish, or of the vain, or of the proud, or of the self-seeking, or of the cruel. envy is a thorn in the soul. love is content and cheer, a radiant flower whose perfume is refreshingly fragrant. "for life, with all it yields of joy or woe, and hope or fear, is just our chance o' the prize of learning love-- how love might be, hath been, indeed, and is." to the very end of his days jonathan stood true to david. he accomplished what might seem to many an impossible task, but what by his accomplishment of it is shown to be possible. he was true to two persons whose interests were opposite, proving a friend to each. he loved his father. he knew his father's weaknesses. they tried him seriously. when his father threw the spear at his head, and maligned his mother, and charged him with ingratitude, his whole being was stirred; he went out from his father's presence "angry." but that anger was merely a temporary emotion. he soon realized his duty to his father. he returned, placed himself at his father's hand, continued to be his adherent, counselor, and helper, went with him as one of his lieutenants to the battle on gilboa, and fought beside him until he fell dead at saul's side! there is nothing weak in this character of jonathan. let him who can reproduce it. christ said of john the baptist, "there hath not been born of women a greater than he," because john, free from envy, was so full of love that he rejoiced to see christ come into a recognition that absolutely displaced john. by these words of christ john is made to loom up as no other character of his day. jonathan was john's prototype--a massive man, a man of momentum, a man of absolute fearlessness, whose virtues were crowned by his generous, protecting, self-effacing love. no wonder that when word reached david that jonathan had been slain in fierce battle his heart poured out the greatest elegy of history--an elegy that has been sung and resung for thousands of years--"how are the mighty fallen! i am distressed for thee, my brother jonathan; very pleasant hast thou been unto me. thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women. how are the mighty fallen and the weapons of war perished!" noticeable it is that the supreme elegy of the old testament is on the man who had a heart of unselfish devotion, jonathan; and that the one elegy of the new testament pronounced by christ, is likewise on the man who had a heart of unselfish devotion, john the baptist. the greatest possession any one can have is a loving heart--a heart that generously recognizes worth in another and tries to make place for that worth; a heart that guards another's interests, even though such guarding costs intercession; a heart that gladly surrenders its own advantage that another may advance to the place which might be its own. no one can tell another how and when the heart of love should show itself. all that can be told is this: "let any one be pervaded by love as jonathan was, and in that one's home, in that one's business, and in that one's pleasures god will provide him occasion upon occasion for living that love." the love that a man gives away is the only love his heart can retain. the man that has such a heart of love has the sweetest, happiest, gladdest possession that can be obtained on earth or in heaven. all the money in the world leaves a man poor if his heart is bitter. all the poverty that can come to a man finds him rich if his heart is glad and strong. love is the only possession that a man can carry with him to heaven and always keep with him in heaven. he lives for eternity who lives for love. "the one great purpose of creation--love, the sole necessity of earth and heaven." using aright our best hours. chapter viii. using aright our best hours. every writer who has described what we call opportunity has insisted upon the necessity of seizing opportunity as it flies. we are told that there is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at its proper moment leads us on to fortune. it is also asserted that once at least there comes into every one's life a special hour which used aright has much to do with assuring his permanent welfare. universal experience bears witness to the truthfulness and force of these sayings. every human being who has studied the history of the race is aware that now and then decisive hours come to his fellows, and according as those hours are used to advantage or to disadvantage, is the success or failure of his fellows. we know this fact applies also to ourselves. all our hours are not the same hours, either in their nature or in their possibility. some hours are special hours when, for one reason or another, crises are present; if we meet these hours aright we advance, if we fail to meet them aright we fall back. such hours are the supreme opportunities of our entire existence: the hours when duty appears more clear than is its wont, or hours when the heart is strangely moved toward the good, or hours when a new and very uplifting sense of god's presence is felt. it is not asserted that such hours are equally bright and glorious to every one. they may not be bright at all. they may be dull and heavy. but they bring us a conviction of what is right, a sense of obligation to do the right, and an assurance that god's way is the way our feet should tread. given any such hour, whether it be on the mountain or in the valley, and a man has his best hour. all other hours, as we plod or play, may be good, but the hour when a soul is brought face to face with duty and with god is the best hour in that particular period of our life. it was simply and only because jacob used aright his best hours that he rescued his name from disgrace and crowned it with glory. if ever a man started in life handicapped by unfortunate characteristics and unfortunate environments jacob was such a man. one of the modern sculptors, george grey barnard, has a life-sized marble, showing what he names "our two natures," two men, one the good and one the evil, coming out of the same block of stone, and struggling, each to see which shall gain the ascendancy over the other. such two natures are in every one; but they appear with special prominence in jacob. the question of his life was, which is to conquer, the good or the evil? the struggle of the good for ascendancy was prolonged and severe. it was a struggle in which there were disgraceful defeats, but in which there was also a persistency of purpose and a reassertion of effort whereby the good finally triumphed. and this triumph, it may safely be asserted, was secured through the use jacob made of a few supreme hours in his life. when we first begin to notice jacob, we see him participating in the deception of his aged and almost blinded father, isaac. we do well, in studying that deception, to bear in mind that the mother, before jacob's birth, had been told that jacob should inherit his father's blessing. so she had probably taught jacob that this blessing belonged to him, and that she and he were justified in securing it in any way they could. and we do well also to bear in mind that the mother recognized a certain undeveloped but capable fitness in jacob for this blessing, a fitness that esau lacked. esau was a lusty, out-of-doors, happy-going man who would not control his appetites, and who, however pleasant he might be to have around when merry-making and sport were in the air, was not prudent enough and judicious enough to be the head of a great people. rebekah, and jacob, too, may have felt that it would be the height of family folly to leave the family blessing with esau, who probably in a short time would squander it; it ought, therefore, to be diverted from him. besides, the age was one in which fine distinctions between right and wrong, as we to-day see these distinctions, were not clear. we thus can understand some of the reasoning which lay back of the fraud practiced on isaac when jacob made believe that he was esau bringing the desired venison, and so secured the blessing. but we do not mean to justify the deception. it carried--as every sin carries--fearful consequences, and those consequences affected all of jacob's future life. as he had deceived his father, again and again his children deceived their father. even immediately upon its perpetration jacob's life became endangered. he was obliged to flee from enraged and threatening esau. then it was that jacob, at nightfall, coming alone to rocky bethel, and lying down to sleep--a wrong-doer, a fugitive, homeless, friendless, and in peril--had his dream. he saw heaven opened over him, with angels ascending as it were by a ladder to god and then descending by that ladder from god to his resting-place. the dream bore in upon his mind certain thoughts. one was, that god had not forsaken him, but was with him. another was, that god was ready to forgive him for his sin and bless him. and still a third was, that god would take even his life and so use it, if he should be consecrated to him, that he, jacob, should some day come back to bethel as its owner and be the head of that people through whom the whole world should be blessed. and a fourth thought was, that however long the delay in fulfilling the promises, god certainly would fulfil them, and he would watch over jacob until they were fulfilled. as jacob awaked from his dream those four thoughts were in his mind: of god's presence, of god's forgiveness, of god's call, and of god's protection. up to this time the hour of this awakening was the best hour of his life. thoughts stirred in his heart different in degree and different in quality than any he had ever had. there came a new sense of the wonderful love of god. what had he done to deserve it? nothing. why should not the heavens be closed, and be dark and forbidding to a defrauder like himself? that certainly was what one like himself might expect. did not the cherubim drive sinful adam and eve out of the garden, and stand with flaming sword forbidding their return? but here was god appearing in mercy, assuring of his readiness to pardon transgression, and calling upon the wrong-doer to repent, to be earnest, and to make his life a benediction rather than a curse. here, too, was god pledging his unfailing aid to jacob if jacob would struggle toward success! what should jacob do with these thoughts? he might have brushed them away from his heart as he brushed away the morning dew from his eyes, and thus immediately have banished them. he might have pondered the thoughts for a day or two, being softened and comforted by them, and then let them pass out of his mind forever. many men have acted in such ways. a wicked man opened a letter from his mother, and with the sight of her penmanship there came to him the memory of all her interest in his purity, integrity, and godliness. he crushed the letter in his hand and threw it into the fire burning on the hearth. but another man, many another man, though moved by good impulses, and even touched to the quick by them after a while has let such impulses glide away from his heart and carry with them their helpfulness. that is what darwin says that he did. the thought of god came to him now and then in special hours of his earlier life, but he did not hold fast to it, he let it escape, and the thought of a personal god who watches over and blesses never became the cheering possession of his soul. but it was not so with jacob; and because it was not so, hope of betterment dawned upon his character. he _valued_ the thoughts that had come to him. he was awed. awe, or reverence, is the originating spring of worthy character. his was not a simple mind easily affected. jacob was a cool, calculating, careful, worldly-wise man, almost the last type of man that finds it easy to be awed. but to him--with whom money and sheep and slaves and retinue were now and were long afterward to be very prominent objects of ambition--there was a feeling that, after all, god and god's blessings are the supreme things of life. so he did not let the awe of the hour pass unimproved. he acted on that awe. he then and there as best he could confessed god and his faith in him, raising a pillar of stone in god's name and anointing it with oil in significance that the spot upon which it stood was consecrated to god. thus he erected the first of all those tabernacles, temples, synagogues, churches, cathedrals, chapels, that have been a testimony to faith in god all over the earth. and then, as though an outward thing was not enough, but some inner thing of character was now required, he vowed a vow--the best vow probably that he, with his idea of god and of money, knew how to vow. he vowed that if god who had thus shown him his opportunity and duty would be true to his promises and would take care of him as covenanted, he, jacob, would uphold the worship of god and would give a tenth of all he might ever obtain unto god. that vow laid hold on jacob's life. it began to work a change that only many, many years advanced toward completion. but it began the change. when a soul, in a best moment of life, seeing duty clearly, or beholding a new revelation of god, crystallizes the emotions thus aroused by a vow that consecrates its dearest treasures to god, then the soul has taken its first step toward strong and beautiful character. here it was that esau failed. he seems to have had more traits that men would name attractive than had jacob. an open-hearted, open-handed, out-spoken man, rough but kind and generous and ready, he at life's beginning appeared to have more in his favor than this grasping, secretive brother. when esau's best hours came--hours when the sense of his own misdeeds rankled in his heart and when he was aware that repentance and reformation and a new application to duty should be his--he felt his situation deeply; he even, as a man of his temperament could do, shed tears of grief over his mistakes and losses. but he did not realize with awe the gravity of his situation, nor did he turn to god and to duty with a softened, chastened spirit, and vow his life in devotion to god. jacob's right use of his best hours set jacob's face towards god and character. esau's wrong use of his best hours set esau's face away from god and character. but jacob's life needed, as every life needs, more than one best hour. off in haran where he dwelt for twenty years he was among heathen people. as he served seven years for leah and seven years for rachel and six years beside, he preserved many of the ideals and purposes that came to him in the morning hour at bethel, but not all of them. these purposes seem to have kept him from idolatry and to have given him patience and fortitude and prolonged endurance. laban treated him deceivingly and unkindly. jacob showed much self-control and much generosity. laban's flocks increased beneath jacob's care until laban became a very rich man. if a lamb or a sheep was injured in any way jacob bore all the expense connected with its hurt or its death. had laban recognized the value of his services, then perhaps jacob would not again have come under the power of his own crafty, calculating, money-making propensities. but laban treated jacob like a slave, and jacob retaliated with meanness. he speciously secured from laban a large proportion of laban's cattle, and with his wealth thus gathered started away from his angry master toward the old-time bethel, that somehow was always in his memory. there was a sense in which he deserved every sheep and goat and servant that he had: he had earned them all; they ought by right of service to be his. but in another sense he had tricked laban and was going away with ill-gotten gains. now is to come the second great crisis in his life. jacob is to venture into the country where esau is, esau who for years has been cherishing hatred against jacob. hatred cherished sours and becomes malice. esau was a difficult one to meet--fierce, strong, and determined. it was then that another great hour came to jacob. to the east he had parted company with laban, who had become reconciled to jacob and who had given him his farewell blessing. to the west, where bethel lay and whither his heart called him, is esau. how shall he meet esau? he does now what seems, from the night at bethel, to have become more or less of a custom with him; he consults god. he lays the situation as it lies in his mind before god. he thus tries to see the situation as it actually is when seen in the presence of one who is omniscient. as he thus studies the situation he deems it wise to send ahead, in relays, goodly parts of his flocks, which, as they pass esau, should be announced as gifts to esau. it is the same cool, calculating jacob still at work. then he sends forward all his family and all his cattle, over the jabbok, toward the country where esau is. this done he remained behind alone. again it was the night-time. there was darkness, the darkness that often is so conducive to earnest thought and clear vision of the right. light is indeed essential that men already in the path of duty may walk safely therein, but the path of duty itself is more often discovered when we look out of darkness than when we stand in the sunlight. it was a time of uncertainty and almost of fear on jacob's part--a time of heart searching in view of the past and of hesitation in view of the present. such a time can come only to one who has ceased being a mere child and has entered into the experiences of manhood. the great questions of the nature of god and of the protection of his providence stirred in jacob's heart. his had been a sinful career. still he had repented, and repenting had grown in grace. but even yet his faith was fearful and his trust hesitant. was god really on his side? would this god, the god that had promised to bring him back to canaan and give him a place there, surely preserve him? then it was, while these questions were throbbing within him, that in the darkness one like a man grappled with him in wrestling. should he be faint-hearted and cowardly, distrusting god's promise of protection, and let this stranger throw him, kill him, and so forever end the possibility of god's fulfilling his promise? or should he lay hold of god's promise to sustain him, and do his best to throw this stranger, and thus preserve his life and accomplish his mission? it was a decisive time. luther had such a time the night before the diet of worms, when he had to wrestle with the thought "shall i be distrustful of god's providence and recant to-morrow, or shall i hold fast to my faith in god and stand by the truth to-morrow?" hamilton had such a time the night before he decided that he would be burned at the stake rather than deny the truth. such times come into many lives, when great questions about a right or a wrong marriage, a right or a wrong business, a right or a wrong amusement, must be decided. jacob _would_ not surrender to fear! he _would_ trust god to continue his life. he therefore relaxed no hold on the stranger, but wrestled with him as best he could. then came the revelation. the stranger simply touched the hollow of jacob's thigh and by that touch put it out of joint! here was an almighty one wrestling with him! jacob realized that _god_ had come to him! with that revelation, even in his weakened condition, he clings the closer to the stranger; he _will_ hold on to god. "let me go, for the day breaketh," cries the stranger. "i will not let thee go, except thou bless me," jacob replies. jacob cleaves to god. jacob longs for god's blessing. he has found god very near to him. he will avail himself of his nearness. the face of god is turned upon him in love. he will not let this hour go without getting from it all the inspiration and help he can obtain. and he did obtain the best blessing that ever came to his life--the blessing that assured him his character was to be completely changed, and made beautiful and strong for god. christ once said to a weak, impulsive, oft-falling man: "thou art simon, son of jonah"--that is, the "listening" son of a weak "dove," unreliable, changeable, frail--"thou shalt be peter"--that is, a "rock," firm, stable. christ thus indicated that he would make of weak simon a resolute, trustworthy peter, as he did. just so god in this hour said, "thy name shall be called no more jacob"--the "supplanter," the tricky, the calculating--"but israel"--a "prince of god," a man that has power with god and men, a man that even _prevails_ with god and men! what a benediction that was, one of the choicest in all history! no higher designation could be promised to such a man as jacob had been, than "israel"! i would rather--under god and for god--have that name given me by god than any other name that can be named upon a weak, frail man: "israel"--a man who can _prevail_ with his _fellows_ and with _god_ for _human good_! all this came about because jacob used aright his best hours; because when god was near him, he held on to god; because when he was discouraged and heavy-hearted and the prospect was dark, he trusted god; because when he was weakened and brought low, he would not let god go unless he bless him. "though he slay me, yet will i trust him," job said. "even if god will not deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, still we will not disobey him," said the three prisoners at babylon. henceforth in jacob's life there would still be vicissitudes. troubles, responsibilities, disappointments, sorrows, needs, would come. his children did not always treat him aright. joseph was mourned as dead. benjamin was taken from him to egypt. he had cares and burdens, as all men must have them, until life's end. but the thought of god became increasingly precious to him year by year; his spirit sweetened and softened; his memory was full of the loving kindnesses of god, and his hope laid hold on a blessed future. down in egypt as he draws nigh to death he triumphantly speaks of "god, before whom my fathers, abraham and isaac, did walk, the god which fed me all my life long unto this day, and the angel which redeemed me from all evil." he died a man of god, honored in his day, and honored since--a man who had such faith in the promises that he charged joseph to carry his body to the holy land and bury it there where the christ was to come. he started life with most unfortunate traits of character and in most unfortunate surroundings of environment, but he came off a victor, not a perfect man, but a successful man, a man whom we may well praise, a man who preserved the faith and blessed the world, and all because he made a right use of his best hours. where the highest thoughts are in the air, where the holiest persons gather, where the loftiest influences of god's holy spirit breathe, there we do well to go. there we do well to stay. any voice that calls us nearer god should be followed, any motion of our heart toward duty should be obeyed. god is sure to send us, one and all, special hours in which his wishes are clear to our understandings and his promises are reassuring to our wills. those are the golden hours of existence. even god can provide no better. if we use these best hours aright, our whole moral nature is changed, and the weakest of us becomes a mighty "prince of god." giving our best to god. chapter ix. giving our best to god. god asks every man to give to him his best. it is god's way, god's undeviating way with each individual to say to him, "whatever in yourself or in your possessions is best, that i ask you to devote to me." students of god, in all ages, have recognized this fact. they have understood that a human life cannot wholly follow god unless all the holdings of that life are consecrated to god. they have also understood that a man's "all" includes his best, and that unless that best is god's, the man's real heart and the man's strongest purposes are not god's. abraham realized these truths. accordingly, when abraham, pondering his personal relation to god, asked himself whether he was a perfectly devoted man, the thought of his son isaac crept into his mind. isaac was his only real son. he dearly loved him. he was the supreme treasure of his heart. abraham's hopes centered in isaac. his ambitions and his joys were bound up in that son and in that son's life. was abraham willing to give to god his best treasure, his isaac? that was the question abraham found himself called upon to face. in facing it he was affected by the theories of consecration that prevailed among the surrounding nations. those theories asserted that consecration meant sacrifice--that to consecrate a lamb to a god meant to slay the lamb upon the altar of that god, and that to consecrate a child to jehovah would mean to slay the child upon the altar of jehovah. as he thought on these things and knew god wished him to give to him his best, there came to him a conviction that spoke to his heart with all the authority of the voice of god. "abraham, if you are ready to give me your best, you will take isaac, your son, your only son, whom you love, and in moriah offer him there for a burnt-offering." that was the most searching command that could have entered his soul. it asked of him the sacrifice of the dearest object of his life. nobly, even sublimely, did he meet the test. believing, according to the ideas prevalent about him, that perfect devotion to god and to god's kingdom called him to lift his fatherly hand and plunge the knife of death into the heart of his child, abraham lifted his hand for the sacrifice. in that act god, who ever stood ready to correct abraham's misconception of method, had evidence that before him was an absolutely loyal soul. here was one who to all generations might deservedly be called, "the father of the faithful." accordingly, with the man who would give him his best and who thus became a worthy example for all mankind, god made a covenant; "in abraham and in his seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed." this impressive scene heads the very beginning of the salvation of the race. it is the prelude to the definite record of the world's redemption. it ushers in that line of history that starting with abraham advances through a chosen people until a christ is come and in him and through him and for him all people are asked to give their best to god and to the world's help. what is a person's best? sometimes the question can easily be answered. in malachi's time, when people were bringing their offerings to the temple, and those offerings were the blind, the lame, and the sick of the flock, it was evident that these imperfect creatures were not the best. the best were the clear-eyed, the strong-limbed, and the vigorous-bodied sheep that were left at home. of two talents or five talents or ten talents, all in the possession of the same owner, it is clear that the ten talents are the best. the thing that to a man's own heart is the dearest is to him his best. the thing that for the world's betterment is the most helpful is to that world the man's best. usually these two things are the same thing; a man's dearest treasure consecrated to the world's uplift is the best thing he can give to the world's good. whatever carries a man's undivided and enthusiastic heart into usefulness is the best that he can offer to god and to god's world. for a man is at his best when in utter self-abnegation his heart is enlisting every power of mind and body in devotion to a worthy cause. moses was good as a shepherd. the rabbins love to tell of his protection of sheep in time of danger and of his provision for them in time of need. but moses was at his best when, under god's call, he conquered his fear and reluctance, resolved to do what he could to rescue israel from cruel pharaoh, and throwing his heart into the effort, undertook the redemption of his race. joshua was good as a servant and as a spy, but he was at his best when he took the lead of armies, won glorious victories, and wisely administered government. paul was good when he sat at the feet of gamaliel and studied well, and when, grown older, he was an upright citizen of judea, but paul was at his best when, under the inspiration of a cause that inflamed his whole life, he pleaded on mar's hill, wrote to roman saints, and triumphed over suffering in prison. it is not easy for a youth to know what is his best. he is uncertain of his aptitudes. he is not sure that he _has_ special aptitudes. his marked characteristics have not become clear to his own eye, if they have become clear to the eyes of others; nor does he understand what power is latent in his distinctive characteristics, whose existence he is beginning to suspect. such a youth need not, must not, be discouraged and think he has no "best." he has a "best" that in god's sight individualizes him, a "best" that god wishes consecrated to him. whatever is most precious to that youth, whatever he least likes to have injured and most likes to have prosper, that is the element of his life that he should lay at god's feet. if the most treasured possession of his being is thus given to god, god in the due time will develop its aptitudes. he will provide a place or an hour when those aptitudes shall be given opportunity. no moses--competent for mighty tasks--is ever allowed to remain unsummoned, provided such competency is wholly given to god. there are many marvels in human history, but no marvel is greater than the coming of the hour of opportunity to every man to do his best and to reveal his best. it is not so much a question of what is our best, as it is whether we are willing to consecrate the thing we prize most to the service of god's world. that world _needs_ our best. the problems of human society and the wants of men can never be met by the cheap. what costs the giver little, accomplishes little with the receiver. skin deep beneficences never penetrate beyond the skin of those helped. the woes of the world lie far beneath the skin. when we study them, we are amazed by their depth; we see how futile many of the efforts of mankind to relieve them are. the failure of so many of these efforts causes some souls to question whether it is possible for any one ever to relieve humanity's needs. that question will always suggest a negative answer, so long as the superficial, the secondary, and the merely good are brought to the relief of mankind. it is only when the best that an individual can give or society can provide is offered men that men will be redeemed. the existence in our world to-day of so much sin and sorrow is most significant. it exists and will continue to exist so long as we bring anything less than our best to its help. there was no cure for the lepers of palestine so long as men threw them coins that they could easily spare, gave them food that cost them little self-denial, and said under their breath, "how pitiable those lepers are!" but when one came who gave _himself_ for them, who risked being put out of synagogue and temple and all society by _touching_ them, who even ceremonially defiled himself with their defilement, and thus did the best he possibly could do for them, the lepers were healed. the best men in the world are not too good for the world's needs. the streets of cities and the lanes of towns will never be purified by any instrumentalities of usefulness that are less than the best. the heathen world has not a village in which the wisest, noblest, purest man or woman will not have to battle hard before the work to be done can be done. inexpensive apparatus may avail where operations are simple, but the most expensive apparatus that can be found is required where operations are intensely complicated. it sometimes seems as though even intelligent people had not comprehended these facts. they talk of the foolishness of casting pearls before swine. but the woes of humanity are not the woes of swine. they are the woes of men and women in bondage to wrong--and pearls are none too good to set before them that thereby the beauty of life may be seen by them and thereby that earthly condition of society whose every gate is one single pearl of purity, may be desired by them. if in a home we cannot be a comfort to the sorrowful, or in a school be an inspiration to the laggard, or in business be a cheer to the discouraged, without giving the very best out of our hearts that we can give, how shall we expect that the great mass of evil congested in dense centers and compacted through ancient custom, will ever be purified, unless we take the best resources we can command, in ourselves and in others, and bring those best resources face to face, yes, heart to heart, to that mass of evil. the world will never be saved until we offer our isaacs upon the altar of its needs. that world _deserves_ our best. we never can repay to this world the good this world has done us. the richest man on the earth is the most heavily indebted to his fellows. all our knowledge, culture, and safety are gifts from others. our schools are the product of men who for a hundred generations have thought and labored for us. "every ship that comes to america got its chart from columbus. every novel is a debtor to homer." the more of treasure any man has, the more of toil others have borne for him. the best elements of our homes, our business, and our civilization reach us through the tears and blood of others. were the man who has two hundred millions of dollars to attempt to meet his indebtedness to the world by the expenditure of that sum in charities, he would not _begin_ to discharge his indebtedness. every single benefit we enjoy cost many men their best. the nobler our type of manhood the gladder we are to acknowledge this indebtedness and the gladder we are in our present place and time to give our best for others. "fame is what you have taken, character is what you give; when to this truth you waken, then you begin to live." something of fineness and of greatness is lacking in the person who thinks himself above his neighbors and their needs. the better and the larger a man becomes, the readier he is to declare himself a brother to suffering humanity and to feel that no sacrifice he can make of himself is too costly if thereby he can elevate others. it is "angelic" to be a ministering spirit sent forth to minister to those who may be made heirs of salvation. the highest examples possible to our emulation confirm this theory of the gift of the best. christ himself withheld not any treasures he possessed, but he gave them all and gave them cheerily for foolish humanity. he laid upon the altars of the world's need his best wisdom, his best power, his best glory. he even laid upon that altar his own precious life, and he laid it there, in all its spotlessness, subject to the very curses of men. so, too, did the father unhesitatingly give his best for the world's welfare. he gave his son, his only begotten son, in whom he was well pleased, to save the lost. he gave that son to any and to every pain involved in the cheering of the sorrowful and the strengthening of the weak. not even from gethsemane, no, nor from calvary, did he withhold his best. what abraham was ready to do, but what god spared him from doing, that god himself did--and god's isaac was stretched upon the cross and died there a sacrifice. it is the gift of the best that touches the heart of the recipient. superficial kindnesses are impotent, but kindnesses that involve the surrender of the giver's treasures sway the soul of the recipient. this is not always true, but it is true as a principle. "they will reverence my son." yes, though they pay no heed to mere servants and prophets, and though some unappreciative men slay even the son, other men, the great multitude of men, when they realize that the son is god's best possession, and realize that in his gift of christ god exhausts the treasury of his heart, will reverence his son. the cross is sure to win the whole world to god, because the cross stands for god's gift of his best. god's way of doing good should be our way. it is the only way that has assurance of success. our wisest learning, our best possessions, our choicest scholars, our dearest children, our brightest hours, our largest abilities--all must be given to the service of humanity, if the needs of humanity are to be met. look where we will, the souls of men are waiting for help. thousands upon thousands of lives will not suffice to provide this help. millions upon millions of dollars may be expended, and still, in this land and in other lands, there will be the destitute, the afflicted, and the enslaved. it was not abraham's gift of his sheep nor of his shekels that made him the forerunner of the christ, but it was his gift of isaac. our gift of the best alone will put us in line with abraham and christ, and make our service a power for salvation. only a large-hearted life will give its best to god. small hearts cling to their best treasures. achan puts god's name on every object found in fallen jericho excepting the most valuable; that he hides in his tent. saul devotes to jehovah all the cattle conquered from the ammonites but the best; those he reserves for himself. it was the mark of the greatness of her nature that when to the widow there came a man of god asking for food, and her meal was only enough to bake a cake for her son and herself ere they died, she took that meal, obedient to what she considered to be a call from god, and made of it, her best, her all, a cake for the man of god. god honored that gift and paid back into her own life the blessing of his unfailing provision. he always honors any such gift. a man like joseph gives his best and keeps giving his best to god all his days, and god never suffers joseph to lose his spiritual vigor. but if solomon only gives his best in his early life, and withholds his best in his later life, that later life becomes weak and meager. the proof to which god put abraham is the most soul-searching proof that ever comes into human lives. if we answer to it as did abraham, we are immediately brought into a new and sweeter relation to god. god withholds no blessing from him who offers him his best. god enters into a dearer and closer fellowship with such an one. he declares to him that his name is "jehovah-jireh," "the lord will provide," assuring the man that though he does make great sacrifices for god, god will provide for him abundantly more than he has thus sacrificed. the young ruler went away from christ sorrowful when he declined to give christ his best, but no soul ever can be sorrowful that gives its best to christ. "you shall have a hundred-fold more in this world and in the world to come life everlasting." it was because the disciples gave their best to christ that they became so efficient in his service. "what things were gain to me, those i counted loss for christ." accordingly paul became mighty to the upbuilding of the kingdom of his master and was always joyous. let every one look into his life and find his best. "what is it i prize most? what is it that gives me largest place among my fellows?" then let every one consecrate that best to god. that best may be the enthusiasm of our youth, or the wisdom of our maturity, or the wealth of our age. it may be a child in our home, or our hope of advancement, or some special attractiveness we possess. whatever our best may be, god asks us to consecrate it to him. whoever so consecrates his best will find god dearer, life sweeter, and service richer than ever before. "there are loyal hearts, there are spirits brave, there are souls that are pure and true; then give to the world the best you have, and the best shall come back to you. "give love, and love to your heart will flow, a strength in your utmost need; have faith, and a score of hearts will show their faith in your word and deed. "for life is the mirror of king and slave, 'tis just what you are and do; then give to the world the best you have, and the best will come back to you." transcriber's notes: passages in italics are indicated by _italics_. the word "repentence" on page was changed to "repentance." none none project by jon ingram the lake by george moore london: william heinemann ÉpÎtre dÉdicatoire _ août, ._ mon cher dujardin, il se trouve que je suis à paris en train de corriger mes épreuves au moment où vous donnez les dernières retouches au manuscrit de 'la source du fleuve chrétien,' un beau titre--si beau que je n'ai pu m'empêcher de le 'chipper' pour le livre de ralph elles, un personnage de mon roman qui ne parait pas, mais dont on entend beaucoup parler. pour vous dédommager de mon larcin, je me propose de vous dédier 'le lac.' il y a bien des raisons pour que je désire voir votre nom sur la première page d'un livre de moi; la meilleure est, peut-être, parceque vous êtes mon ami depuis 'les confessions d'un jeune anglais' qui ont paru dans votre jolie _revue indépendante;_ et, depuis cette bienheureuse année, nous avons causé littérature et musique, combien de fois! combien d'heures nous avons passés ensemble, causant, toujours causant, dans votre belle maison de fontainebleau, si française avec sa terrasse en pierre et son jardin avec ses gazons maigres et ses allées sablonneuses qui serpentent parmi les grands arbres forestiers. c'est dans ce jardin à l'orée de la forêt et dans la forêt même, parmi la mélancolie de lat nature primitive, et à valvins ou demeurait notre vieil ami mallarmé, triste et charmant bonhomme, comme le pays du reste (n'est-ce-pas que cette tristesse croit depuis qu'il s'en est allé?) que vous m'avez entendu raconter 'le lac.' a valvins, la seine coule silencieusement tout le long des berges plates et graciles, avec des peupliers alignés; comme ils sont tristes au printemps, ces peupliers, surtout avant qu'ils ne deviennent verts, quand ils sont rougeâtres, posés contre un ciel gris, des ombres immobiles et ternes dans les eaux, dix fois tristes quand les hirondelles volent bas! pour expliquer la tristesse de ce beau pays parsemé de châteaux vides, hanté par le souvenir des fêtes d'autrefois, il faudrait tout un orchestre. je l'entends d'abord sur les violons; plus tard on ajouterait d'autres instruments, des cors sans doute; mais pour rendre la tristesse de mon pauvre pays là bas il ne faut drait pas tout cela. je l'entends très bien sur une seule flute placée dans une île entourée des eaux d'un lac, le joueur assis sur les vagues ruines d'un réduit gallois ou bien normand. mais, cher ami, vous êtes normand et peut-être bien que ce sent vos ancêtres qui out pillé mon pays; c'est une raison de plus pour que je vous offre ce roman. acceptez-le sans le connaître davantage et n'essayez pas de le lire; ne vous donnez pas la peine d'apprendre l'anglais pour lire 'le lac'; que le lac ne soit jamais traversé par vous! et parce que vous allez rester fatalement sur le bord de 'mon lac' j'ai un double plaisir à vous le dédier. lorsqu'on dédie un livre, on prévoit l'heure où l'ami le prend, jette un coup d'oeil et dit: 'pourquoi m'a-t-il dédié une niaiserie pareille?' toutes les choses de l'esprit, sauf les plus grandes, deviennent niaiseries tôt ou tard. votre ignorance de ma langue m'épargne cette heure fatale. pour vous, mon livre sera toujours une belle et noble chose. il ne peut jamais devenir pour vous banal comme une épouse. ii sera pour vous une vierge, mieux qu'une vierge, il sera pour vous une demi-vierge. chaque fois que vous l'ouvrirez, vous penserez à des années écoulées, au jardin où les rossignols chantent, a la forêt où rien ne se passe sauf la chute des feuilles, à nos promenades à valvins pour voir le cher bonhomme; vous penserez à votre jeunesse et peut-être un peu à la mienne. mais je veux que vous lisiez cette dédicace, et c'est pour cela que je l'ai écrite en français, dans un français qui vous est très familier, le mien. si je l'écrivais en anglais et le faisais traduire dans le langage à la dernière mode de paris, vous ne retrouveriez pas les accents barbares de votre vieil ami. ils sont barbares, je le conçois, mais il y a des chiens qui sont laids et que l'on finit par aimer. une poignée de mains, georges moore. preface the concern of this preface is with the mistake that was made when 'the lake' was excluded from the volume entitled 'the untilled field,' reducing it to too slight dimensions, for bulk counts; and 'the lake,' too, in being published in a separate volume lost a great deal in range and power, and criticism was baffled by the division of stories written at the same time and coming out of the same happy inspiration, one that could hardly fail to beget stories in the mind of anybody prone to narrative--the return of a man to his native land, to its people, to memories hidden for years, forgotten, but which rose suddenly out of the darkness, like water out of the earth when a spring is tapped. some chance words passing between john eglinton and me as we returned home one evening from professor dowden's were enough. he spoke, or i spoke, of a volume of irish stories; tourguéniev's name was mentioned, and next morning--if not the next morning, certainly not later than a few mornings after--i was writing 'homesickness,' while the story of 'the exile' was taking shape in my mind. 'the exile' was followed by a series of four stories, a sort of village odyssey. 'a letter to rome' is as good as these and as typical of my country. 'so on he fares' is the one that, perhaps, out of the whole volume i like the best, always excepting 'the lake,' which, alas, was not included, but which belongs so strictly to the aforesaid stories that my memory includes it in the volume. in expressing preferences i am transgressing an established rule of literary conduct, which ordains that an author must always speak of his own work with downcast eyes, excusing its existence on the ground of his own incapacity. all the same an author's preferences interest his readers, and having transgressed by telling that these irish stories lie very near to my heart, i will proceed a little further into literary sin, confessing that my reason for liking 'the lake' is related to the very great difficulty of the telling, for the one vital event in the priest's life befell him before the story opens, and to keep the story in the key in which it was conceived, it was necessary to recount the priest's life during the course of his walk by the shores of a lake, weaving his memories continually, without losing sight, however, of the long, winding, mere-like lake, wooded to its shores, with hills appearing and disappearing into mist and distance. the difficulty overcome is a joy to the artist, for in his conquest over the material he draws nigh to his idea, and in this book mine was the essential rather than the daily life of the priest, and as i read for this edition i seemed to hear it. the drama passes within the priest's soul; it is tied and untied by the flux and reflux of sentiments, inherent in and proper to his nature, and the weaving of a story out of the soul substance without ever seeking the aid of external circumstance seems to me a little triumph. it may be that i heard what none other will hear, not through his own fault but through mine, and it may be that all ears are not tuned, or are too indifferent or indolent to listen; it is easier to hear 'esther waters' and to watch her struggles for her child's life than to hear the mysterious warble, soft as lake water, that abides in the heart. but i think there will always be a few who will agree with me that there is as much life in 'the lake,' as there is in 'esther waters'--a different kind of life, not so wide a life, perhaps, but what counts in art is not width but depth. artists, it is said, are not good judges of their own works, and for that reason, and other reasons, maybe, it is considered to be unbecoming for a writer to praise himself. so to make atonement for the sins i have committed in this preface, i will confess to very little admiration for 'evelyn innes' and 'sister teresa.' the writing of 'evelyn innes' and 'sister teresa' was useful to me inasmuch that if i had not written them i could not have written 'the lake' or 'the brook kerith.' it seems ungrateful, therefore, to refuse to allow two of my most successful books into the canon merely because they do not correspond with my æstheticism. but a writer's æstheticism is his all; he cannot surrender it, for his art is dependent upon it, and the single concession he can make is that if an overwhelming demand should arise for these books when he is among the gone--a storm before which the reed must bend--the publisher shall be permitted to print 'evelyn innes' and 'sister teresa' from the original editions, it being, however, clearly understood that they are offered to the public only as apocrypha. but this permission must not be understood to extend to certain books on which my name appears--viz., 'mike fletcher,' 'vain fortune,' parnell and his island'; to some plays, 'martin luther,' 'the strike at arlingford,' 'the bending of the boughs'; to a couple of volumes of verse entitled 'pagan poems' and 'flowers of passion'--all these books, if they are ever reprinted again, should be issued as the work of a disciple--amico moorini i put forward as a suggestion. g.m. i it was one of those enticing days at the beginning of may when white clouds are drawn about the earth like curtains. the lake lay like a mirror that somebody had breathed upon, the brown islands showing through the mist faintly, with gray shadows falling into the water, blurred at the edges. the ducks were talking in the reeds, the reeds themselves were talking, and the water lapping softly about the smooth limestone shingle. but there was an impulse in the gentle day, and, turning from the sandy spit, father oliver walked to and fro along the disused cart-track about the edge of the wood, asking himself if he were going home, knowing very well that he could not bring himself to interview his parishioners that morning. on a sudden resolve to escape from anyone that might be seeking him, he went into the wood and lay down on the warm grass, and admired the thickly-tasselled branches of the tall larches swinging above him. at a little distance among the juniper-bushes, between the lake and the wood, a bird uttered a cry like two stones clinked sharply together, and getting up he followed the bird, trying to catch sight of it, but always failing to do so; it seemed to range in a circle about certain trees, and he hadn't gone very far when he heard it behind him. a stonechat he was sure it must be, and he wandered on till he came to a great silver fir, and thought that he spied a pigeon's nest among the multitudinous branches. the nest, if it were one, was about sixty feet from the ground, perhaps more than that; and, remembering that the great fir had grown out of a single seed, it seemed to him not at all wonderful that people had once worshipped trees, so mysterious is their life, so remote from ours. and he stood a long time looking up, hardly able to resist the temptation to climb the tree--not to rob the nest like a boy, but to admire the two gray eggs which he would find lying on some bare twigs. at the edge of the wood there were some chestnuts and sycamores. he noticed that the large-patterned leaf of the sycamores, hanging out from a longer stem, was darker than the chestnut leaf. there were some elms close by, and their half-opened leaves, dainty and frail, reminded him of clouds of butterflies. he could think of nothing else. white, cotton-like clouds unfolded above the blossoming trees; patches of blue appeared and disappeared; and he wandered on again, beguiled this time by many errant scents and wilful little breezes. very soon he came upon some fields, and as he walked through the ferns the young rabbits ran from under his feet, and he thought of the delicious meals that the fox would snap up. he had to pick his way, for thorn-bushes and hazels were springing up everywhere. derrinrush, the great headland stretching nearly a mile into the lake, said to be one of the original forests, was extending inland. he remembered it as a deep, religious wood, with its own particular smell of reeds and rushes. it went further back than the island castles, further back than the druids; and was among father oliver's earliest recollections. himself and his brother james used to go there when they were boys to cut hazel stems, to make fishing-rods; and one had only to turn over the dead leaves to discover the chips scattered circlewise in the open spaces where the coopers sat in the days gone by making hoops for barrels. but iron hoops were now used instead of hazel, and the coopers worked there no more. in the old days he and his brother james used to follow the wood-ranger, asking him questions about the wild creatures of the wood--badgers, marten cats, and otters. and one day they took home a nest of young hawks. he did not neglect to feed them, but they had eaten each other, nevertheless. he forgot what became of the last one. a thick yellow smell hung on the still air. 'a fox,' he said, and he trailed the animal through the hazel-bushes till he came to a rough shore, covered with juniper-bushes and tussocked grass, the extreme point of the headland, whence he could see the mountains--the pale southern mountains mingling with the white sky, and the western mountains, much nearer, showing in bold relief. the beautiful motion and variety of the hills delighted him, and there was as much various colour as there were many dips and curves, for the hills were not far enough away to dwindle to one blue tint; they were blue, but the pink heather showed through the blue, and the clouds continued to fold and unfold, so that neither the colour nor the lines were ever the same. the retreating and advancing of the great masses and the delicate illumination of the crests could be watched without weariness. it was like listening to music. slieve cairn showing straight as a bull's back against the white sky, a cloud filling the gap between slieve cairn and slieve louan, a quaint little hill like a hunchback going down a road. slieve louan was followed by a great boulder-like hill turned sideways, the top indented like a crater, and the priest likened the long, low profile of the next hill to a reptile raising itself on its forepaws. he stood at gaze, bewitched by the play of light and shadow among the slopes; and when he turned towards the lake again, he was surprised to see a yacht by castle island. a random breeze just sprung up had borne her so far, and now she lay becalmed, carrying, without doubt, a pleasure-party, inspired by some vague interest in ruins, and a very real interest in lunch; or the yacht's destination might be kilronan abbey, and the priest wondered if there were water enough in the strait to let her through in this season of the year. the sails flapped in the puffing breeze, and he began to calculate her tonnage, certain that if he had such a boat he would not be sailing her on a lake, but on the bright sea, out of sight of land, in the middle of a great circle of water. as if stung by a sudden sense of the sea, of its perfume and its freedom, he imagined the filling of the sails and the rattle of the ropes, and how a fair wind would carry him as far as the cove of cork before morning. the run from cork to liverpool would be slower, but the wind might veer a little, and in four-and-twenty hours the welsh mountains would begin to show above the horizon. but he would not land anywhere on the welsh coast. there was nothing to see in wales but castles, and he was weary of castles, and longed to see the cathedrals of york and salisbury; for he had often seen them in pictures, and had more than once thought of a walking tour through england. better still if the yacht were to land him somewhere on the french coast. england was, after all, only an island like ireland--- a little larger, but still an island--and he thought he would like a continent to roam in. the french cathedrals were more beautiful than the english, and it would be pleasant to wander in the french country in happy-go-lucky fashion, resting when he was tired, walking when it pleased him, taking an interest in whatever might strike his fancy. it seemed to him that his desire was to be freed for a while from everything he had ever seen, and from everything he had ever heard. he merely wanted to wander, admiring everything there was to admire as he went. he didn't want to learn anything, only to admire. he was weary of argument, religious and political. it wasn't that he was indifferent to his country's welfare, but every mind requires rest, and he wished himself away in a foreign country, distracted every moment by new things, learning the language out of a volume of songs, and hearing music, any music, french or german--any music but irish music. he sighed, and wondered why he sighed. was it because he feared that if he once went away he might never come back? this lake was beautiful, but he was tired of its low gray shores; he was tired of those mountains, melancholy as irish melodies, and as beautiful. he felt suddenly that he didn't want to see a lake or a mountain for two months at least, and that his longing for a change was legitimate and most natural. it pleased him to remember that everyone likes to get out of his native country for a while, and he had only been out of sight of this lake in the years he spent in maynooth. on leaving he had pleaded that he might be sent to live among the mountains by kilronan abbey, at the north end of the lake, but when father conway died he was moved round to the western shore; and every day since he walked by the lake, for there was nowhere else to walk, unless up and down the lawn under the sycamores, imitating father peter, whose wont it was to walk there, reading his breviary, stopping from time to time to speak to a parishioner in the road below; he too used to read his breviary under the sycamores; but for one reason or another he walked there no longer, and every afternoon now found him standing at the end of this sandy spit, looking across the lake towards tinnick, where he was born, and where his sisters lived. he couldn't see the walls of the convent to-day, there was too much mist about; and he liked to see them; for whenever he saw them he began to think of his sister eliza, and he liked to think of her--she was his favourite sister. they were nearly the same age, and had played together; and his eyes dwelt in memory on the dark corner under the stairs where they used to play. he could even see their toys through the years, and the tall clock which used to tell them that it was time to put them aside. eliza was only eighteen months older than he; they were the red-haired ones, and though they were as different in mind as it was possible to be, he seemed nearer eliza than anyone else. in what this affinity consisted he couldn't say, but he had always felt himself of the same flesh and blood. neither his father nor mother had inspired this sense of affinity; and his sister mary and his brothers seemed to him merely people whom he had known always--not more than that; whereas eliza was quite different, and perhaps it was this very mutuality, which he could not define, that had decided their vocations. no doubt there is a moment in every man's life when something happens to turn him into the road which he is destined to follow; for all that it would be superficial to think that the fate of one's life is dependent upon accident. the accident that turns one into the road is only the means which providence takes to procure the working out of certain ends. accidents are many: life is as full of accidents as a fire is full of sparks, and any spark is enough to set fire to the train. the train escapes a thousand, but at last a spark lights it, and this spark always seems to us the only one that could have done it. we cannot imagine how the same result could have been obtained otherwise. but other ways would have been found; for nature is full of resource, and if eliza had not been by to fire the idea hidden in him, something else would. she was the means, but only the means, for no man escapes his vocation, and the priesthood was his. a vocation always finds a way out. but was he sure if it hadn't been for eliza that he wouldn't have married annie mcgrath? he didn't think he would have married annie, but he might have married another. all the same, annie was a good, comfortable girl, a girl that everybody was sure would make a good wife for any man, and at that time many people were thinking that he should marry annie. on looking back he couldn't honestly say that a stray thought of annie hadn't found its way into his mind; but not into his heart--there is a difference. at that time he was what is known as a growing lad; he was seventeen. his father was then dead two years, and his mother looked to him, he being the eldest, to take charge of the shop, for at that time it was almost settled that james was to go to america. they had two or three nice grass farms just beyond the town: patsy was going to have them; and his sisters' fortunes were in the bank, and very good fortunes they were. they had a hundred pounds apiece and should have married well. eliza could have married whomever she pleased. mary could have married, too, and to this day he couldn't tell why she hadn't married. the chances his sister mary had missed rose up in his mind--why, he did not know; and a little bored by these memories, he suddenly became absorbed in the little bleat of a blackcap perched on a bush, the only one amid a bed of flags and rushes; 'an alder-bush,' he said. 'his mate is sitting on her eggs, and there are some wood-gatherers about; that's what's worrying the little fellow.' the bird continued to utter its troubled bleat, and the priest walked on, thinking how different was its evensong. he meditated an excursion to hear it, and then, without his being aware of any transition, his thoughts returned to his sister mary, and to the time when he had once indulged in hopes that the mills along the river-side might be rebuilt and tinnick restored to its former commercial prosperity. he was not certain if he had ever really believed that he might set these mills going, or if he had, he encouraged an illusion, knowing it to be one. he was only certain of this, that when he was a boy and saw no life ahead of him except that of a tinnick shopman, he used to feel that if he remained at home he must have the excitement of adventure. the beautiful river, with its lime-trees, appealed to his imagination; the rebuilding of the mills and the reorganization of trade, if he succeeded in reorganizing trade, would mean spending his mornings on the wharves by the river-side, and in those days his one desire was to escape from the shop. he looked upon the shop as a prison. in those days he liked dreaming, and it was pleasant to dream of giving back to tinnick its trade of former days; but when his mother asked him what steps he intended to take to get the necessary capital, he lost his temper with her. he must have known that he could never make enough money in the shop to set the mills working! he must have known that he would never take his father's place at the desk by the dusty window! but if he shrank from an avowal it was because he had no other proposal to make. his mother understood him, though the others didn't, and seeing his inability to say what kind of work he would put his hand to, she had spoken of annie mcgrath. she didn't say he should marry annie--she was a clever woman in her way--she merely said that annie's relations in america could afford to supply sufficient capital to start one of the mills. but he never wanted to marry annie, and couldn't do else but snap when the subject was mentioned, and many's the time he told his mother that if the mills were to pay it would be necessary to start business on a large scale. he was an impracticable lad and even now he couldn't help smiling when he thought of the abruptness with which he would go down to the river-side to seek a new argument wherewith to confute his mother, to return happy when he had found one, and sit watching for an opportunity to raise the question again. no, it wasn't because annie's relations weren't rich enough that he hadn't wanted to marry her. and to account for his prejudice against marriage, he must suppose that some notion of the priesthood was stirring in him at the time, for one day, as he sat looking at annie across the tea-table, he couldn't help thinking that it would be hard to live alongside of her year in and year out. although a good and a pleasant girl, annie was a bit tiresome to listen to, and she wasn't one of those who improve with age. as he sat looking at her, he seemed to understand, as he had never understood before, that if he married her all that had happened in the years back would happen again--more children scrambling about the counter, with a shopman (himself) by the dusty window putting his pen behind his ear, just as his father did when he came forward to serve some country woman with half a pound of tea or a hank of onions. and as these thoughts were passing through his mind, he remembered hearing his mother say that annie's sister was thinking of starting dressmaking in the high street. 'it would be nice if eliza were to join her,' his mother added casually. eliza laid aside the skirt she was turning, raised her eyes and stared at mother, as if she were surprised mother could say anything so stupid. 'i'm going to be a nun,' she said, and, just as if she didn't wish to answer any questions, went on sewing. well might they be surprised, for not one of them suspected eliza of religious inclinations. she wasn't more pious than another, and when they asked her if she were joking, she looked at them as if she thought the question very stupid, and they didn't ask her any more. she wasn't more than fifteen at the time, yet she spoke out of her own mind. at the time they thought she had been thinking on the matter--considering her future. a child of fifteen doesn't consider, but a child of fifteen may _know_, and after he had seen the look which greeted his mother's remarks, and heard eliza's simple answer, 'i've decided to be a nun,' he never doubted that what she said was true. from that day she became for him a different being; and when she told him, feeling, perhaps, that he sympathized with her more than the others did, that one day she would be reverend mother of the tinnick convent, he felt convinced that she knew what she was saying--how she knew he could not say. his childhood had been a slumber, with occasional awakenings or half awakenings, and eliza's announcement that she intended to enter the religious life was the first real awakening; and this awakening first took the form of an acute interest in eliza's character, and, persuaded that she or her prototype had already existed, he searched the lives of the saints for an account of her, finding many partial portraits of her; certain typical traits in the lives of three or four saints reminded him of eliza, but there was no complete portrait. the strangest part of the business was that he traced his vocation to his search for eliza in the lives of the saints. everything that happened afterwards was the emotional sequence of taking down the books from the shelf. he didn't exaggerate; it was possible his life might have taken a different turn, for up to that time he had only read books of adventure--stories about robbers and pirates. as if by magic, his interest in such stories passed clean out of his mind, or was exchanged for an extraordinary enthusiasm for saints, who by renouncement of animal life had contrived to steal up to the last bounds, whence they could see into the eternal life that lies beyond the grave. once this power was admitted, what interest could we find in the feeble ambitions of temporal life, whose scope is limited to three score and ten years? and who could doubt that saints attained the eternal life, which is god, while still living in the temporal flesh? for did not the miracles of the saints prove that they were no longer subject to natural laws? ancient ireland, perhaps, more than any other country, understood the supremacy of spirit over matter, and strove to escape through mortifications from the prison of the flesh. without doubt great numbers in ireland had fled from the torment of actual life into the wilderness. if the shore and the islands on this lake were dotted with fortress castles, it was the welsh and the normans who built them, and the priest remembered how his mind took fire when he first heard of the hermit who lived in church island, and how disappointed he was when he heard that church island was ten miles away, at the other end of the lake. for he could not row himself so far; distance and danger compelled him to consider the islands facing tinnick--two large islands covered with brushwood, ugly brown patches--ugly as their names, horse island and hog island, whereas castle island had always seemed to him a suitable island for a hermitage, far more so than castle hag. castle hag was too small and bleak to engage the attention of a sixth-century hermit. but there were trees on castle island, and out of the ruins of the castle a comfortable sheiling could be built, and the ground thus freed from the ruins of the welshman's castle might be cultivated. he remembered commandeering the fisherman's boat, and rowing himself out, taking a tape to measure, and how, after much application of the tape, he had satisfied himself that there was enough arable land in the island for a garden; he had walked down the island certain that a quarter of an acre could grow enough vegetables to support a hermit, and that a goat would be able to pick a living among the bushes and the tussocked grass: even a hermit might have a goat, and he didn't think he could live without milk. he must have been a long time measuring out his garden, for when he returned to his boat the appearance of the lake frightened him; it was full of blustering waves, and it wasn't likely he'd ever forget his struggle to get the boat back to tinnick. he left it where he had found it, at the mouth of the river by the fisherman's hut, and returned home thinking how he would have to import a little hay occasionally for the goat. nor would this be all; he would have to go on shore every sunday to hear mass, unless he built a chapel. the hermit of church island had an oratory in which he said mass! but if he left his island every sunday his hermitage would be a mockery. for the moment he couldn't see how he was to build a chapel--a sheiling, perhaps; a chapel was out of the question, he feared. he would have to have vestments and a chalice, and, immersed in the difficulty of obtaining these, he walked home, taking the path along the river from habit, not because he wished to consider afresh the problems of the ruined mills. the dream of restoring tinnick to its commerce of former days was forgotten, and he walked on, thinking of his chalice, until he heard somebody call him. it was eliza, and as they leaned over the parapet of the bridge, he could not keep himself from telling her that he had rowed out to castle island, never thinking that she would reprove him, and sternly, for taking the fisherman's boat without asking leave. it was no use to argue with eliza that the fisherman didn't want his boat, the day being too rough for fishing. what did she know about fishing? she had asked very sharply what brought him out to castle island on such a day. there was no use saying he didn't know; he never was able to keep a secret from eliza, and feeling that he must confide in somebody, he told her he was tired of living at home, and was thinking of building a sheiling on the island. eliza didn't understand, and she understood still less when he spoke of a beehive hut, such as the ancient hermits of ireland lived in. she was entirely without imagination; but what surprised him still more than her lack of sympathy with his dream-project was her inability to understand an idea so inherent in christianity as the hermitage, for at that time eliza's mind was made up to enter the religious life. he waited a long time for her answer, but the only answer she made was that in the early centuries a man was either a bandit or a hermit. this wasn't true: life was peaceful in ireland in the sixth and seventh centuries; even if it weren't, she ought to have understood that change of circumstance cannot alter an idea so inherent in man as the hermitage, and when he asked her if she intended to found a new order, or to go out to patagonia to teach the indians, she laughed, saying she was much more interested in a laundry than in the indians. her plea that the tinnick convent was always in straits for money did not appeal to him then any more than it did to-day. 'the officers in tinnick have to send their washing to dublin. a fine reason for entering a convent,' he answered. but quite unmoved by the sarcasm, she replied that a woman can do nothing unless she be a member of a congregation. he shrank from eliza's mind as from the touch of something coarse, and his suggestion that the object of the religious life is meditation did not embarrass her in the very least, and he remembered well how she had said: 'putting aside for the moment the important question whether there may or may not be hermits in the twentieth century, tell me, oliver, are you thinking of marrying annie mcgrath? you know she has rich relations in america, and you might get them to supply the capital to set the mills going. the mills would be a great advantage. annie has a good headpiece, and would be able to take the shop off your hands, leaving you free to look after the mills.' 'the mills, eliza! there are other things in the world beside those mills!' 'a hermitage on castle island?' eliza could be very impertinent when she liked. if she had no concern in what was being said, she looked round, displaying an irritating curiosity in every passer-by, and true to herself she had drawn his attention to the ducks on the river while he was telling her of the great change that had come over him. he had felt like boxing her ears. but the moment he began to speak of taking orders she forgot all about the ducks; her eyes were fixed upon him, she listened to his every word, and when he finished speaking, she reminded him there had always been a priest in the family. all her wits were awake. he was the one of the family who had shown most aptitude for learning, and their cousin the bishop would be able to help him. what she would like would be to see him parish priest of tinnick. the parish was one of the best in the diocese. not a doubt of it, she was thinking at that moment of the advantage this arrangement would be to her when she was directing the affairs of the convent. if there was no other, there was at least one woman in ireland who was interested in things. he had never met anybody less interested in opinions or in ideas than eliza. they had walked home together in silence, at all events not saying much, and that very evening she left the room immediately after supper. and soon after they heard sounds of trunks being dragged along the passage; furniture was being moved, and when she came downstairs she just said she was going to sleep with mary. 'oliver is going to have my room. he must have a room to himself on account of his studies.' on that she gathered up her sewing, and left him to explain. he felt that it was rather sly of her to go away like that, leaving all the explanation to him. she wanted him to be a priest, and was full of little tricks. there was no time for thinking it over. there was only just time to prepare for the examination. he worked hard, for his work interested him, especially the latin language; but what interested him far more than his aptitude for learning whatever he made up his mind to learn was the discovery of a religious vocation in himself. eliza feared that his interest in hermits sprang from a boyish taste for adventure rather than from religious feeling, but no sooner had he begun his studies for the priesthood, than he found himself overtaken and overpowered by an extraordinary religious fervour and by a desire for prayer and discipline. never had a boy left home more zealous, more desirous to excel in piety and to strive for the honour and glory of the church. an expression of anger, almost of hatred, passed over father oliver's face, and he turned from the lake and walked a few yards rapidly, hoping to escape from memories of his folly; for he had made a great fool of himself, no doubt. but, after all, he preferred his enthusiasms, however exaggerated they might seem to him now, to the commonplace--he could not call it wisdom--of those whom he had taken into his confidence. it was foolish of him, no doubt, to have told how he used to go out in a boat and measure the ground about castle island, thinking to build himself a beehive hut out of the ruins. he knew too little of the world at that time; he had no idea how incapable the students were of understanding anything outside the narrow interests of an ecclesiastical career. anyhow, he had had the satisfaction of having beaten them in all the examinations; and if he had cared to go in for advancement, he could have easily got ahead of them all, for he had better brains and better interest than any of them. when he last saw that ignorant brute peter fahy, fahy asked him if he still put pebbles in his shoes. it was to fahy he had confided the cause of his lameness, and fahy had told on him; he was ridiculously innocent in those days, and he could still see them gathered about him, pretending not to believe that he kept a cat-o'-nine-tails in his room, and scourged himself at night. it was tom bryan who said that he wouldn't mind betting a couple of shillings that gogarty's whip wouldn't draw a squeal from a pig on the roadside. the answer to that was: 'a touch will make a pig squeal: you should have said an ass!' but at the moment he couldn't think of an answer. no doubt everyone looked on him as a ninny, and they persuaded him to prove to them that his whip was a real whip by letting tom bryan do the whipping for him. tom bryan was a rough fellow, who ought to have been driving a plough; a ploughman's life was too peaceful an occupation for him--a drover's life would have suited him best, prodding his cattle along the road with a goad; it was said that was how he maintained his authority in the parish. the remembrance of the day he bared his back to that fellow was still a bitter one. with a gentle smile he had handed the whip to tom bryan, the very smile which he imagined the hermits of old time used to wear. the first blow had so stunned him that he couldn't cry out, and this blow was followed by a second which sent the blood flaming through his veins, and then by another which brought all the blood into one point in his body. he seemed to lose consciousness of everything but three inches of back. nine blows he bore without wincing; the tenth overcame his fortitude, and he had reeled away from tom bryan. tom had exchanged the whip he had given him for a great leather belt; that was why he had been hurt so grievously--hurt till the pain seemed to reach his very heart. tom had belted him with all his strength; and half a dozen of tom's pals were waiting outside the door, and they came into the room, their wide mouths agrin, asking him how he liked it. but they were unready for the pain his face expressed, and in the midst of his agony he noticed that already they foresaw consequences, and he heard them reprove tom bryan, their intention being to dissociate themselves from him. cowards! cowards! cowards! they tried to help him on with his shirt, but he had been too badly beaten, and tom bryan came up in the evening to ask him not to tell on him. he promised, and he wouldn't have told if he could have helped it. but some explanation had to be forthcoming--he couldn't lie on his back. the doctor was sent for.... and next day he was told the president wished to see him. the president was eliza over again; hermits and hermitages were all very well in the early centuries, but religion had advanced, and nowadays a steadfast piety was more suited to modern requirements than pebbles in the shoes. if it had been possible to leave for america that day he thought he would have gone. but he couldn't leave maynooth because he had been fool enough to bare his back to tom bryan. he couldn't return home to tell such a story as that. all tinnick would be laughing at him, and eliza, what would she think of him? he wasn't such a fool as the maynooth students thought him, and he realized at once that he must stay in maynooth and live down remembrance of his folly. so, as the saying goes, he took the bit between his teeth. the necessity of living down his first folly, of creating a new idea of himself in the minds of the students, forced him to apply all his intelligence to his studies, and he made extraordinary progress in the first years. the recollection of the ease with which he outdistanced his fellow-students was as pleasant as the breezes about the lake, and his thoughts dwelt on the opinion which he knew was entertained, that for many years no one at maynooth had shown such aptitude for scholarship. he only had to look at a book to know more about it than his fellow-students would know if they were to spend days over it. he won honours. he could have won greater honours, but his conscience reminded him that the gifts he received from god were not bestowed upon him for the mere purpose of humiliating his fellow-students. he often felt then that if certain talents had been given to him, they were given to him to use for the greater glory of god rather than for his own glorification; and his feeling was that there was nothing more hateful in god's sight than intellectual, unless perhaps spiritual, pride, and his object during his last years at maynooth was to exhibit himself to the least advantage. it is strange how an idea enters the soul and remakes it, and when he left maynooth he used his influence with his cousin, the bishop, to get himself appointed to the poorest parish in connaught. eliza had to dissemble, but he knew that in her heart she was furious with him. we are all extraordinarily different one from another, and if we seem most different from those whom we are most like, it is because we know nothing at all about strangers. he had gone to kilronan in spite of eliza, in spite of everyone, their cousin the bishop included. he had been very happy in bridget clery's cottage, so happy that he didn't know himself why he ever consented to leave kilronan. no, it was not because he was too happy there. he had to a certain extent outgrown his very delicate conscience. ii a breeze rose, the forest murmured, a bird sang, and the sails of the yacht filled. the priest stood watching her pass behind a rocky headland, knowing now that her destination was kilronan abbey. but was there water enough in the strait at this season of the year? hardly enough to float a boat of her size. if she stuck, the picnic-party would get into the small boat, and, thus lightened, the yacht might be floated into the other arm of the lake. 'a pleasant day indeed for a sail,' and in imagination he followed the yacht down the lake, past its different castles, castle carra and castle burke and church island, the island on which marban--marban, the famous hermit poet, had lived. it seemed to him strange that he had never thought of visiting the ruined church when he lived close by at the northern end of the lake. his time used to be entirely taken up with attending to the wants of his poor people, and the first year he spent in garranard he had thought only of the possibility of inducing the government to build a bridge across the strait. that bridge was badly wanted. all the western side of the lake was cut off from railway communication. tinnick was the terminus, but to get to tinnick one had to go round the lake, either by. the northern or the southern end, and it was always a question which was the longer road--round by kilronan abbey or by the bridge of keel. many people said the southern road was shorter, but the difference wasn't more than a mile, if that, and father oliver preferred the northern road; for it took him by his curate's house, and he could always stop there and give his horse a feed and a rest; and he liked to revisit the abbey in which he had said mass for so long, and in which mass had always been said for a thousand years, even since cromwell had unroofed it, the celebrant sheltered by an arch, the congregation kneeling under the open sky, whether it rained or snowed. the roofing of the abbey and the bridging of the strait were the two things that the parish was really interested in. he tried when he was in kilronan to obtain the archbishop's consent and collaboration; moran was trying now: he did not know that he was succeeding any better; and father oliver reflected a while on the peculiar temperament of their diocesan, and jumping down from the rock on which he had been sitting, he wandered along the sunny shore, thinking of the many letters he had addressed to the board of works on the subject of the bridge. the board believed, or pretended to believe, that the parish could not afford the bridge; as well might it be urged that a cripple could not afford crutches. without doubt a public meeting should be held; and in some little indignation father oliver began to think that public opinion should be roused and organized. it was for him to do this: he was the people's natural leader; but for many months he had done nothing in the matter. why, he didn't know himself. perhaps he needed a holiday; perhaps he no longer believed the government susceptible to public opinion; perhaps he had lost faith in the people themselves! the people were the same always; the people never change, only individuals change. and at the end of the sandy spit, where some pines had grown and seeded, he stood looking across the silvery lake wondering if his parishioners had begun to notice the change that had come over him since nora glynn left the parish, and as her name came into his mind he was startled out of his reverie by the sound of voices, and turning from the lake, he saw two wood-gatherers coming down a little path through the juniper-bushes. he often hid himself in the woods when he saw somebody coming, but he couldn't do so now without betraying his intention, and he stayed where he was. the women passed on, bent under their loads. whether they saw him or not he couldn't tell; they passed near enough for him to recognize them, and he remembered that they were in church the day he alluded to nora in his sermon. a hundred yards further on the women unburdened and sat down to rest a while, and father oliver began to consider what their conversation might be. his habit of wandering away by himself had no doubt been noticed, and once it was noticed it would become a topic of conversation. 'and what they do be saying now is, "that he has never been the same man since he preached against the schoolmistress, for what should he be doing by the lake if he wasn't afraid that she made away with herself?" and perhaps they are right,' he said, and walked up the shore, hoping that as soon as he was out of sight the women would forget to tell when they returned home that they had seen him walking by the lake. all the morning he had been trying to keep nora glynn out of his mind, but now, as he rambled, he could not put back the memory of the day he met her for the first time, nearly two years ago, for to-day was the fifteenth of may; it was about that time a little later in the year; it must have been in june, for the day was very hot, and he had been riding fast, not wishing to keep catherine's dinner waiting, and as he pushed his bicycle through the gate, he saw the great cheery man, father peter, with a face like an apple, walking up and down under the sycamores reading his breviary. it must have been in june, for the mowers were in the field opposite, in the field known as the priest's field, though father peter had never rented it. there had never been such weather in ireland before, and the day he rode his bicycle over to see father peter seemed to him the hottest day of all. but he had heard of the new schoolmistress's musical talents, and despite the heat of the day had ridden over, so anxious was he to hear if father peter were satisfied with her in all other respects. 'we shall be able to talk better in the shade of the sycamores,' father peter said, and on this they crossed the lawn, but not many steps were taken back and forth before father peter began to throw out hints that he didn't think miss glynn was altogether suited to the parish. 'but if you're satisfied with her discipline,' father oliver jerked out, and it was all he could do to check himself from further snaps at the parish priest, a great burly man who could not tell a minor from a major chord, yet was venting the opinion that good singing distracted the attention of the congregation at their prayers. he would have liked to ask him if he was to understand that bad singing tended to a devotional mood, but wishing to remain on good terms with his superior, he said nothing and waited for father peter to state his case against the new schoolmistress, which he seemed to think could be done by speaking of the danger of young unmarried women in the parish. it was when they came to the break in the trees that father peter nudged him and said under his breath: 'here is the young woman herself coming across the fields.' he looked that way and saw a small, thin girl coming towards the stile. she hopped over it as if she enjoyed the little jump into the road. father peter called to her and engaged her in conversation; and he continued to talk to her of indifferent things, no doubt with the view to giving him an opportunity of observing her. but they saw her with different eyes: whereas father peter descried in her one that might become a mischief in the parish, he could discover no dangerous beauty in her, merely a crumpled little face that nobody would notice were it not for the eyes and forehead. the forehead was broad and well shapen and promised an intelligence that the eyes were quick to confirm; round, gray, intelligent eyes, smiling, welcoming eyes. her accent caressed the ear, it was a very sweet one, only faintly irish, and she talked easily and correctly, like one who enjoyed talking, laughing gaily, taking, he was afraid, undue pleasure in father peter's rough sallies, without heeding that he was trying to entrap her into some slight indiscretion of speech that he could make use of afterwards, for he must needs justify himself to himself if he decided to dismiss her. as he had been asked to notice her he remarked her shining brown hair. it frizzled like a furze-bush about her tiny face, and curled over her forehead. her white even teeth showed prettily between her lips. she was not without points, but notwithstanding these it could not be said that she deserved the adjective pretty; and he was already convinced that it was not good looks that prejudiced her in father peter's eyes. nor was the excuse that her singing attracted too much attention an honest one. what father peter did not like about the girl was her independent mind, which displayed itself in every gesture, in the way she hopped over the stile, and the manner with which she toyed with her parasol--a parasol that seemed a little out of keeping with her position, it is true. a very fine parasol it was; a blue silk parasol. her independence betrayed itself in her voice: she talked to the parish priest with due respect, but her independent mind informed every sentence, even the smallest, and that was why she was going to be dismissed from her post. it was shameful that a grave injustice should be done to a girl who was admittedly competent in the fulfilment of all her duties, and he had not tried to conceal his opinion from father peter during dinner and after dinner, leaving him somewhat earlier than usual, for nothing affronted him more than injustice, especially ecclesiastical injustice. as he rode his bicycle down the lonely road to bridget's cottage, the thought passed through his mind that if nora glynn were a stupid, intelligent woman no objection would have been raised against her. 'an independent mind is very objectionable to the ecclesiastic,' he said to himself as he leaped off his bicycle.... 'nora glynn. how well suited the name is to her. there is a smack in the name. glynn, nora glynn,' he repeated, and it seemed to him that the name belonged exclusively to her. a few days after this first meeting he met her about two miles from garranard; he was on his bicycle, she was on hers, and they both leaped instinctively from their machines. what impressed him this time far more than her looks was her happy, original mind. while walking beside her he caught himself thinking that he had never seen a really happy face before. but she was going to be sent away because she was happy and wore her soul in her face. they had seemed unable to get away from each other, so much had they to say. he mentioned his brother james, who was doing well in america and would perhaps one day send them the price of a harmonium. she told him she couldn't play on the wheezy old thing at garranard, and at the moment he clean forgot that the new harmonium would avail her little, since father peter was going to get rid of her; he only remembered it as he got on his bicycle, and he returned home ready to espouse her cause against anybody. she must write to the archbishop, and if he wouldn't do anything she must write to the papers. influence must be brought to bear, and father peter must be prevented from perpetrating a gross injustice. he felt that it would be impossible for him to remain father peter's curate if the schoolmistress were sent away for no fault of hers, merely because she wore a happy face. what father peter would have done if he had lived no one would ever know. he might have dismissed her; even so the injustice would have been slight compared with what had happened to her; and the memory of the wrong that had been done to her put such a pain into his heart that he seemed to lose sight of everything, till a fish leaping in the languid lake awoke him, and he walked on, absorbed in the memory of his mistake, his thoughts swinging back to the day he had met her on the roadside, and to the events that succeeded their meeting. father peter was taken ill, two days after he was dead, before the end of the week he was in his coffin; and it was left to him to turn nora glynn out of the parish. no doubt other men had committed faults as grave as his; but they had the strength to leave the matter in the hands of god, to say: 'i can do nothing, i must put myself in the hands of god; let him judge. he is all wise.' he hadn't their force of character. he believed as firmly as they did, but, for some reason which he couldn't explain to himself, he was unable to leave the matter in god's hands, and was always thinking how he could get news of her. if it hadn't been for that woman, for that detestable mrs. o'mara, who was the cause of so much evil-speaking in the parish!... and with his heart full of hatred so black that it surprised him, he asked himself if he could forgive that woman. god might, he couldn't. and he fell to thinking how mrs. o'mara had long been a curse upon the parish. father peter was more than once compelled to speak about her from the altar, and to make plain that the stories she set going were untrue. father peter had warned him, but warnings are no good; he had listened to her convinced at the time that it was wrong and foolish to listen to scandalmongers, but unable to resist that beguiling tongue, for mrs. o'mara had a beguiling tongue--fool that he was, that he had been. there was no use going over the wretched story again; he was weary of going over it, and he tried to put it out of his mind. but it wouldn't be put out of his mind, and in spite of himself he began to recall the events of the fatal day. he had been out all the morning, walking about with an engineer who was sent down by the board of works to consider the possibility of building the bridge, and had just come in to rest. catherine had brought him a cup of tea; he was sitting by the window, almost too tired to drink it. the door was flung open. if catherine had only asked him if he were at home to visitors, he would have said he wasn't at home to mrs. o'mara, but he wasn't asked; the door was flung open, and he found himself face to face with the parish magpie. and before he could bless himself she began to talk to him about the bridge, saying that she knew all about the engineer, how he had gotten his appointment, and what his qualifications were. it is easy to say one shouldn't listen to such gossips, but it is hard to shut one's ears or to let what one hears with one ear out the other ear, for she might be bringing him information that might be of use to him. so he listened, and when the bridge, and the advantage of it, had been discussed, she told him she had been staying at the convent. she had tales to tell about all the nuns and about all the pupils. she told him that half the catholic families in ireland had promised to send their daughters to tinnick if eliza succeeded in finding somebody who could teach music and singing. but eliza didn't think there was anyone in the country qualified for the post but nora glynn. if mrs. o'mara could be believed, eliza said that she could offer nora glynn more money than she was earning in garranard. until then he had only half listened to mrs. o'mara's chatter, for he disliked the woman--her chatter amused him only as the chatter of a bird might; but when he heard that his sister was trying to get his schoolmistress away from him he had flared up. 'oh, but i don't think that your schoolmistress would suit a convent school. i shouldn't like my daughter--' 'what do you mean?' her face changed expression, and in her nasty mincing manner she began to throw out hints that nora glynn would not suit the nuns. he could see that she was concealing something--there was something at the back of her mind. women of her sort want to be persuaded; their bits of scandal must be dragged from them by force; they are the unwilling victims who would say nothing if they could help it. she had said enough to oblige him to ask her to speak out, and she began to throw out hints about a man whom nora used to meet on the hillside (she wouldn't give the man's name, she was too clever for that). she would only say that nora had been seen on the hillside walking in lonely places with a man. truly a detestable woman! his thoughts strayed from her for a moment, for it gave him pleasure to recollect that he had defended his schoolmistress. didn't he say: 'now, then, mrs. o'mara, if you have anything definite to say, say it, but i won't listen to vague charges.' 'charges--who is making charges?' she asked, and he had unfortunately called her a liar. in the middle of the row she dropped a phrase: 'anyhow, her appearance is against her.' and it was true that nora glynn's appearance had changed in the last few months. seeing that her words had a certain effect, mrs. o'mara quieted down; and while he stood wondering if it could possibly be true that nora had deceived them, that she had been living in sin all these months, he suddenly heard mrs. o'mara saying that he was lacking in experience--which was quite true, but her way of saying it had roused the devil in him. who was she that she should come telling him that he lacked experience? to be sure, he wasn't an old midwife, and that's what mrs. o'mara looked like, sitting before him. he had lost control of himself, saying, 'now, will you get out of this house, you old scandalmonger, or i'll take you by the shoulders and put you out!' and he had thrown the front-door open. what a look she gave him as she passed out! at that moment the clock struck three and he remembered suddenly that the children were coming out of school at that moment. it would have been better if he had waited. but he couldn't wait: he'd have gone mad if he had waited; and he recalled how he had jumped into the road, squeezed through the stile, and run across the field. 'why all this hurry?' he had asked himself. she was locking up the desks; the children went by him, curtseying, and he had to wait till the last one was past the door. nora must have guessed his errand, for her face noticeably hardened. 'i've seen mrs. o'mara,' he blurted out, 'and she tells me that you've been seen walking with some man on the hillside in lonely places.... don't deny it if it is true.' 'i'm not going to deny anything that is true.' how brave she was! her courage attracted him and softened his heart. but everything was true, alas! everything. she told him that her plans were to steal out of the parish without saying a word to anyone, for she was determined not to disgrace him or the parish. she was thinking of him in all her trouble, and everything might have ended well if he had not asked her who the man was. she would not say, nor give any reasons why she wouldn't do so. only this, that if the man had deserted her she didn't want anybody to bring him back, if he could be brought back; if the man were dead it were better to say nothing about him. 'but if it were his fault?' 'i don't see that that would make any difference.' they went out of the school-house talking in quite a friendly way. there was a little drizzle in the air, and, opening her umbrella, she said, 'i'm afraid you'll get wet.' 'get wet, get wet! what matter?' he had answered impatiently, for the remark annoyed him. by the hawthorn-bush he began to tell her again that it would relieve his mind to know who the man was. she tried to get away from him, but he wouldn't let her go; and catching her by the arm he besought her, saying that it would relieve his mind. how many times had he said that? but he wasn't able to persuade her, notwithstanding his insistence that as a priest of the parish he had a right to know. no doubt she had some very deep reason for keeping her secret, or perhaps his authoritative manner was the cause of her silence. however this might be, any words would have been better than 'it would relieve my mind to know who the man was.' 'stupid, stupid, stupid!' he muttered to himself, and he wandered from the cart-track into the wood. it was impossible to say now why he had wished to press her secret from her. it would be unpleasant for him, as priest of the parish, to know that the man was living in the parish; but it would be still more unpleasant if he knew who the man was. nora's seducer could be none other than one of the young soldiers who had taken the fishing-lodge at the head of the lake. mrs. o'mara had hinted that nora had been seen with one of them on the hill, and he thought how on a day like this she might have been led away among the ferns. at that moment there came out of the thicket a floating ball of thistle-down. 'it bloweth where it listeth,' he said. 'soldier or shepherd, what matter now she is gone?' and rising to his feet and coming down the sloping lawn, overflowing with the shade of the larches, he climbed through the hawthorns growing out of a crumbled wall, and once at the edge of the lake, he stood waiting for nothing seemingly but to hear the tiresome clanking call of the stonechat, and he compared its reiterated call with the words 'atonement,' 'forgiveness,' 'death,' 'calamity,' words always clanking in his heart, for she might be lying at the bottom of the lake, and some day a white phantom would rise from the water and claim him. his thoughts broke away, and he re-lived in memory the very agony of mind he had endured when he went home after her admission that she was with child. all that night, all next day, and for how many days? would the time ever come when he could think of her without a pain in his heart? it is said that time brings forgetfulness. does it? on saturday morning he had sat at his window, asking himself if he should go down to see her or if he should send for her. there were confessions in the afternoon, and expecting that she would come to confess to him, he had not sent for her. one never knows; perhaps it was her absence from confession that had angered him. his temper took a different turn that evening. all night he had lain awake; he must have been a little mad that night, for he could only think of the loss of a soul to god, and of god's love of chastity. all night long he had repeated with variations that it were better that all which our eyes see--this earth and the stars that are in being--should perish utterly, be crushed into dust, rather than a mortal sin should be committed; in an extraordinary lucidity of mind he continued to ponder on god's anger and his own responsibility towards god, and feeling all the while that there are times when we lose control of our minds, when we are a little mad. he foresaw his danger, but he could not do else than rise from his bed and begin to prepare his sermon, for he had to preach, and he could only preach on chastity and the displeasure sins against chastity cause to god. he could think but of this one thing, the displeasure god must feel against nora and the seducer who had robbed her of the virtue god prized most in her. he must have said things that he would not have said at any other time. his brain was on fire that morning, and words rose to his lips--he knew not whence nor how they came, and he had no idea now of what he had said. he only knew that she left the church during his sermon; at what moment he did not know, nor did he know that she had left the parish till next day, when the children came up to tell him there was no schoolmistress. and from that day to this no news of her, nor any way of getting news of her. his thoughts went to the hawthorn-trees, for he could not think of her any more for the moment, and it relieved his mind to examine the green pips that were beginning to appear among the leaves. 'the hawthorns will be in flower in another week,' he said; and he began to wonder at the beautiful order of the spring. the pear and the cherry were the first; these were followed by the apple, and after the apple came the lilac, the chestnut, and the laburnum. the forest trees, too, had their order. the ash was still leafless, but it was shedding its catkins, and in another fifteen days its light foliage would be dancing in the breeze. the oak was last of all. at that moment a swallow flitted from stone to stone, too tired to fly far, and he wondered whence it had come. a cuckoo called from a distant hill; it, too, had been away and had come back. his eyes dwelt on the lake, refined and wistful, with reflections of islands and reeds, mysteriously still. rose-coloured clouds descended, revealing many new and beautiful mountain forms, every pass and every crest distinguishable. it was the hour when the cormorants come home to roost, and he saw three black specks flying low about the glittering surface; rising from the water, they alighted with a flutter of wings on the corner wall of what remained of castle hag, 'and they will sleep there till morning,' he said, as he toiled up a little path, twisting through ferns and thorn-bushes. at the top of the hill was his house, the house father peter had built. its appearance displeased him, and he stood for a long time watching the evening darkening, and the yacht being towed home, her sails lowered, the sailors in the rowing-boat. 'they will be well tired before they get her back to tinnick;' and he turned and entered his house abruptly. iii catherine's curiosity was a worry. as if he knew why he hadn't come home to his dinner! if she'd just finish putting the plates on the table and leave him. of course, there had been callers. one man, the man he especially wished to see, had driven ten miles to see him. it was most unfortunate, but it couldn't be helped; he had felt that morning that he couldn't stay indoors--the business of the parish had somehow got upon his nerves, but not because he had been working hard. he had done but little work since she left the parish. now was that story going to begin again? if it did, he should go out of his mind; and he looked round the room, thinking how a lonely evening breeds thoughts of discontent. most of the furniture in the room was father peter's. father peter had left his curate his furniture, but the pretty mahogany bookcase and the engravings upon the walls were father oliver's own taste; he had bought them at an auction, and there were times when these purchases pleased him. but now he was thinking that father peter must have known to whom the parish would go at his death, for he could not have meant all his furniture to be taken out of the house--'there would be no room for it in bridget clery's cottage;' and father oliver sat thinking of the evenings he used to spend with father peter. how often during those evenings father peter must have said to himself, 'one day, gogarty, you will be sitting in my chair and sleeping in my bed.' and father oliver pondered on his affection for the dead man. there were no differences of opinion, only one--the neglected garden at the back of the house; and, smiling sadly, father oliver remembered how he used to reprove the parish priest. 'i'm afraid i'm too big and too fat and too fond of my pipe and my glass of whisky to care much about carnations. but if you get the parish when i'm gone, i'm sure you'll grow some beauties, and you'll put a bunch on my grave sometimes, gogarty.' the very ring of the dead man's voice seemed to sound through the lonely room, and, sitting in father peter's chair, with the light of father peter's lamp shining on his face and hand, father oliver's thoughts flowed on. it seemed to him that he had not understood and appreciated father peter's kindliness, and he recalled his perfect good nature. 'death reveals many things to us,' he said; and he lifted his head to listen, for the silence in the house and about the house reminded him of the silence of the dead, and he began to consider what his own span of life might be. he might live as long as father peter (father peter was fifty-five when he died); if so, twenty-one years of existence by the lake's side awaited him, and these years seemed to him empty like a desert--yes, and as sterile. 'twenty-one years wondering what became of her, and every evening like this evening--the same loneliness.' he sat watching the hands of his clock, and a peaceful meditation about a certain carnation that unfortunately burst its calyx was interrupted by a sudden thought. whence the thought came he could not tell, nor what had put it into his head, but it had occurred to him suddenly that 'if father peter had lived a few weeks longer he would have found means of exchanging nora glynn for another schoolmistress, more suitable to the requirements of the parish. if father peter had lived he would have done her a grievous wrong. he wouldn't have allowed her to suffer, but he would have done her a wrong all the same.' and it were better that a man should meet his death than he should do a wrong to another. but he wasn't contemplating his own death nor nora's when this end to the difficulty occurred to him. our inherent hypocrisy is so great that it is difficult to know what one does think. he surely did not think it well that father peter had died, his friend, his benefactor, the man in whose house he was living? of course not. then it was strange he could not keep the thought out of his mind that father peter's death had saved the parish from a great scandal, for if nora had been dismissed he might have found himself obliged to leave the parish. again he turned on himself and asked how such thoughts could come into his mind. true, the coming of a thought into the consciousness is often unexpected, but if the thought were not latent in the mind, it would not arise out of the mind; and if father peter knew the base thoughts he indulged in--yes, indulged in, for he could not put them quite out of his mind--he feared very much that the gift of all this furniture might--no, he was judging father peter ill: father peter was incapable of a mean regret. but who was he, he'd like to be told, that he should set himself up as father peter's judge? the evil he had foreseen had happened. if father peter felt that nora glynn was not the kind of schoolmistress the parish required, should he not send her away? the need of the parish, of the many, before the one. moreover, father peter was under no obligation whatsoever to nora glynn. she had been sent down by the school board subject to his approval. 'but my case is quite different. i chose her; i decided that she was to remain.' and he asked himself if his decision had come about gradually. no, he had never hesitated, but dismissed father peter's prejudices as unworthy.... the church needed some good music. but did he think of the church? hardly at all. his first consideration was his personal pleasure, and he wished that the best choir in the diocese should be in his church, and nora glynn enabled him to gratify his vanity. he made her his friend, taking pleasure in her smiles, and in the fact that he had only to express a desire for it to be fulfilled. after school, tired though she might be, she was always willing to meet him in the church for choir practice. she would herself propose to decorate the altar for feast-days. how many times had they walked round the garden together gathering flowers for the altar! and it was strange that she could decorate so well without knowing much about flowers or having much natural taste for flowers. feeling he was doing her an injustice, he admitted that she had made much progress under his guidance in her knowledge of flowers. 'but how did he treat her in the end, despite all her kindnesses? shamefully, shamefully, shamefully!' and getting up from his chair father oliver walked across the room, and when he turned he drew his hand across his eyes. the clock struck twelve. 'i shall be awake at dawn,' he said, 'with all this story running in my head,' and he stopped on the threshold of his bedroom, frightened at the sight of his bed. but he had reached the stint of his sufferings, and that morning lay awake, hardly annoyed at all by the black-birds' whistling, contentedly going over the mistakes he had made--a little surprised, however, that the remembrance of them did not cause him more pain. at last he fell asleep, and when his housekeeper knocked at his door and he heard her saying that it was past eight, he leaped out of bed cheerily, and sang a stave of song as he shaved himself, gashing his chin, however, for he could not keep his attention fixed on his chin, but must peep over the top of the glass, whence he could see his garden, and think how next year he would contrive a better arrangement of colour. it was difficult to stop the bleeding, and he knew that catherine would grumble at the state he left the towels in (he should not have used his bath-towel); but these were minor matters. he was happier than he had been for many a day. the sight of strawberries on his breakfast-table pleased him; the man who drove ten miles to see him yesterday called, and he shared his strawberries with him in abundant spirit. the sunlight was exciting, the lake called him, and it was pleasant to stride along, talking of the bridge (at last there seemed some prospect of getting one). the intelligence of this new inspector filled him with hope, and he expatiated in the advantages of the bridge and many other things. nor did his humour seem to depend entirely on the companionship of his visitor. it endured long after his visitor had left him, and very soon he began to think that his desire to go away for a long holiday was a passing indisposition of mind rather than a need. his holiday could be postponed to the end of the year; there would be more leisure then, and he would be better able to enjoy his holiday than he would be now. his changing mind interested him, and he watched it like a vane, unable to understand how it was that, notwithstanding his restlessness, he could not bring himself to go away. something seemed to keep him back, and he was not certain that the reason he stayed was because the government had not yet sent a formal promise to build the bridge. he could think of no other reason for delaying in garranard; he certainly wanted change. and then nora's name came into his mind, and he meditated for a moment, seeing the colour of her hair and the vanishing expression of her eyes. sometimes he could see her hand, the very texture of its skin, and the line of the thumb and the forefinger. a cat had once scratched her hand, and she had told him about it. that was about two months before mrs. o'mara had come to tell him that shocking story, two months before he had gone down to his church and spoken about nora in such a way that she had gone out of the parish. but was he going to begin the story over again? he picked up a book, but did not read many sentences before he was once more asking himself if she had gone down to the lake, and if it were her spell that kept him in garranard. 'the wretchedness of it all,' he cried, and fell to thinking that nora's spirit haunted the lake, and that his punishment was to be kept a prisoner always. his imagination ran riot. perhaps he would have to seek her out, follow her all over the world, a sort of wandering jew, trying to make atonement, and would never get any rest until this atonement was made. and the wrong that he had done her seemed the only reality. it was his elbow companion in the evening as he sat smoking his pipe, and every morning he stood at the end of a sandy spit seeing nothing, hearing nothing but her. one day he was startled by a footstep, and turned expecting to see nora. but it was only christy, the boy who worked in his garden. 'your reverence, the postman overlooked this letter in the morning. it was stuck at the bottom of the bag. he hopes the delay won't make any difference.' _from father o'grady to father oliver gogarty._ '_june_ , --. 'dear father gogarty, 'i am writing to ask you if you know anything about a young woman called nora glynn. she tells me that she was schoolmistress in your parish and organist in your church, and that you thought very highly of her until one day a tale-bearer, mrs. o'mara by name, went to your house and told you that your schoolmistress was going to have a baby. it appears that at first you refused to believe her, and that you ran down to the school to ask miss glynn herself if the story you had heard about her was a true one. she admitted it, but on her refusal to tell you who was the father of the child you lost your temper; and the following sunday you alluded to her so plainly in your sermon about chastity that there was nothing for her but to leave the parish. 'there is no reason why i should disbelieve miss glynn's story; i am an irish priest like yourself, sir. i have worked in london among the poor for forty years, and miss glynn's story is, to my certain knowledge, not an uncommon one; it is, i am sorry to say, most probable; it is what would happen to any schoolmistress in ireland in similar circumstances. the ordinary course is to find out the man and to force him to marry the girl; if this fails, to drive the woman out of the parish, it being better to sacrifice one affected sheep than that the whole flock should be contaminated. i am an old man; miss glynn tells me that you are a young man. i can therefore speak quite frankly. i believe the practice to which i have alluded is inhuman and unchristian, and has brought about the ruin of many an irish girl. i have been able to rescue some from the streets, and, touched by their stories, i have written frequently to the priest of the parish pointing out to him that his responsibility is not merely local, and does not end as soon as the woman has passed the boundary of his parish. i would ask you what you think your feelings would be if i were writing to you now to tell you that, after some months of degraded life, miss glynn had thrown herself from one of the bridges into the river? that might very well have been the story i had to write to you; fortunately for you, it is another story. 'miss glynn is a woman of strong character, and does not give way easily; her strength of will has enabled her to succeed where another woman might have failed. she is now living with one of my parishioners, a mrs. dent, of , harold street, who has taken a great liking to her, and helped her through her most trying time, when she had very little money and was alone and friendless in london. mrs. dent recommended her to some people in the country who would look after her child. she allowed her to pay her rent by giving lessons to her daughter on the piano. one thing led to another; the lady who lived on the drawing-room floor took lessons, and miss glynn is earning now, on an average, thirty shillings per week, which little income will be increased if i can appoint her to the post of organist in my church, my organist having been obliged to leave me on account of her health. it was while talking to mrs. dent on this very subject that i first heard miss glynn's name mentioned. 'mrs. dent was enthusiastic about her, but i could see that she knew little about her lodger's antecedents, except that she came from ireland. she was anxious that i should engage her at once, declaring that i could find no one like her, and she asked me to see her that evening. i went, and the young woman impressed me very favourably. she came to my church and played for me. i could see that she was an excellent musician, and there seemed to be no reason why i should not engage her. i should probably have done so without asking any further questions--for i do not care to inquire too closely into a woman's past, once i am satisfied that she wishes to lead an honourable life--but miss glynn volunteered to tell me what her past had been, saying it was better i should hear it from her than from another. when she had told me her sad story, i reminded her of the anxiety that her disappearance from the parish would cause you. she shook her head, saying you did not care what might happen to her. i assured her that such a thing was not the case, and begged of her to allow me to write to you; but i did not obtain her consent until she began to see that if she withheld it any longer we might think she was concealing some important fact. moreover, i impressed upon her that it was right that i should hear your story, not because i disbelieved hers--i take it for granted the facts are correctly stated--but in the event of your being able to say something which would put a different complexion upon them. 'yours very sincerely, 'michael o'grady.' iv after reading father o'grady's letter he looked round, fearing lest someone should speak to him. christy was already some distance away; there was nobody else in sight; and feeling he was safe from interruption, he went towards the wood, thinking of the good priest who had saved her (in saving her father o'grady had saved him), and of the waste of despair into which he would have drifted certainly if the news had been that she had killed herself. he stood appalled, looking into the green wood, aware of the mysterious life in the branches; and then lay down to watch the insect life among the grass--a beetle pursuing its little or great destiny. but he was too exalted to remain lying down; the wood seemed to beckon him, and he asked if the madness of the woods had overtaken him. further on he came upon a chorus of finches singing in some hawthorn-trees, and in derrinrush he stopped to listen to the silence that had suddenly fallen. a shadow floated by; he looked up: a hawk was passing overhead, ready to attack rat or mouse moving among the young birches and firs that were springing up in the clearance. the light was violent, and the priest shaded his eyes. his feet sank in sand, he tripped over tufts of rough grass, and was glad to get out of this part of the wood into the shade of large trees. trees always interested him, and he began to think of their great roots seeking the darkness, and of their branches lifting themselves in love towards the light. he and these trees were one, for there is but one life, one mother, one elemental substance out of which all has come. that was it, and his thoughts paused. only in union is there happiness, and for many weary months he had been isolated, thrown out; but to-day he had been drawn suddenly into the general life, he had become again part of the general harmony, and that was why he was so happy. no better explanation was forthcoming, and he did not think that a better one was required--at least, not to-day. he noticed with pleasure that he no longer tried to pass behind a thicket nor into one when he met poor wood-gatherers bent under their heavy loads. he even stopped to speak to a woman out with her children; the three were breaking sticks across their knees, and he encouraged them to talk to him. but without his being aware of it, his thoughts hearkened back, and when it came to his turn to answer he could not answer. he had been thinking of nora, and, ashamed of his absentmindedness, he left them tying up their bundles and went towards the shore, stopping many times to admire the pale arch of evening sky with never a wind in it, nor any sound but the cries of swallows in full pursuit. 'a rememberable evening,' he said, and there was such a lightness in his feet that he believed, or very nearly, that there were wings on his shoulders which he only had to open to float away whither he might wish to go. his brain overflowed with thankfulness and dreams of her forgiveness, and at midnight he sat in his study still thinking, still immersed in his happiness; and hearing moths flying about the burning lamp he rescued one for sheer love of her, and later in the evening the illusion of her presence was so intense that he started up from his chair and looked round for her. had he not felt her breath upon his cheek? her very perfume had floated past! there ... it had gone by again! no, it was not she--only the syringa breathing in the window. _from father oliver gogarty to father o'grady._ 'garranard, bohola, '_june_ , --. 'dear father o'grady, 'miss glynn's disappearance caused me, as you rightly surmise, the gravest anxiety, and it is no exaggeration to say that whenever her name was mentioned, my tongue seemed to thicken and i could not speak. 'i wish i could find words to thank you for what you have done. i am still under the influence of the emotion that your letter caused me, and can only say that miss glynn has told her story truthfully. as to your reproofs, i accept them, they are merited; and i thank you for your kind advice. i am glad that it comes from an irishman, and i would give much to take you by the hand and to thank you again and again.' getting up, he walked out of the room, feeling in a way that a calmer and more judicious letter would be preferable. but he must answer father o'grady, and at once; the letter would have to go. and in this resolve he walked out of his house into his garden, and stood there wondering at the flower-life growing so peacefully, free from pain. the tall madonna lilies flourished like sculpture about the porch, and he admired their tall stems and leaves and carven blossoms, thinking how they would die without strife, without complaint. the briar filled the air with a sweet, apple-like smell; and far away the lake shone in the moonlight, just as it had a thousand years ago when the raiders returned to their fortresses pursued by enemies. he could just distinguish castle island, and he wondered what this lake reminded him of: it wound in and out of gray shores and headlands, fading into dim pearl-coloured distance, and he compared it to a shroud, and then to a ghost, but neither comparison pleased him. it was like something, but the image he sought eluded him. at last he remembered how in a dream he had seen nora carried from the lake; and now, standing among the scent of the flowers, he said: 'she has always been associated with the lake in my thoughts, yet she escaped the lake. every man,' he continued, 'has a lake in his heart.' he had not sought the phrase, it had come suddenly into his mind. yes, 'every man has a lake in his heart,' he repeated, and returned to the house like one dazed, to sit stupefied until his thoughts took fire again, and going to his writing-table he drew a sheet of paper towards him, feeling that he must write to nora. at last he picked up the pen. _from father oliver gogarty to miss nora glynn._ 'gahranard, bohola, '_june_ , --. 'dear miss glynn, 'i must write to thank you for your kindness in asking father o'grady to send me a letter. it appears that you were afraid i might be anxious about you, and i have been very anxious. i have suffered a great deal since you left, and it is a great relief to my mind to hear that you are safe and well. i can understand how loath you were to allow father o'grady to write to me; he doesn't say in his letter that you have forgiven me, but i hope that your permission to him to relieve my anxiety by a letter implies your forgiveness. father o'grady writes very kindly; it appears that everybody is kind except me. but i am thinking of myself again, of the ruin that it would have been if any of the terrible things that have happened to others had happened to you. but i cannot think of these things now; i am happy in thinking that you are safe.' the evening post was lost, but if he were to walk to bohola he would catch the morning mail, and his letter would be in her hands the day after to-morrow. it was just three miles to bohola, and the walk there, he thought, would calm the extraordinary spiritual elation that news of nora had kindled in his brain. the darkness of the night and the almost round moon high in the southern horizon suited his mood. once he was startled by a faint sigh coming from a horse looking over a hedge, and the hedgerows were full of mysterious little cracklings. something white ran across the road. 'the white belly of a stoat,' he thought; and he walked on, wondering what its quest might be. the road led him through a heavy wood, and when he came out at the other end he stopped to gaze at the stars, for already a grayness seemed to have come into the night. the road dipped and turned, twisting through gray fields full of furze-bushes, leading to a great hill, on the other side of which was bohola. when he entered the village he wondered at the stillness of its street. 'the dawn is like white ashes,' he said, as he dropped his letters into the box; and he was glad to get away from the shadowy houses into the country road. the daisies and the dandelions were still tightly shut, and in the hedgerow a half-awakened chaffinch hopped from twig to twig, too sleepy to chirrup. a streak of green appeared in the east, and the death-like stillness was broken by cock-crows. he could hear them far away in the country and close by, and when he entered his village a little bantam walked up the road shrilling and clapping his wings, advancing to the fight. the priest admired his courage, and allowed him to peck at his knees. close by tom mulhare's dorking was crowing hoarsely, 'a hoarse bass,' said the priest, and at the end of the village he heard a bird crowing an octave higher, and from the direction he guessed it must be catherine murphy's bird. another cock, and then another. he listened, judging their voices to range over nearly three octaves. the morning was so pure, the air so delicious, and its touch so exquisite on the cheek, that he could not bear even to think of a close bedroom and the heat of a feather bed. he went into his garden, and walking up and down he appreciated the beauty of every flower, none seeming to him as beautiful as the anemones, and he thought of nora glynn living in a grimy london lodging, whereas he was here amid many flowers--anemones blue, scarlet, and purple, their heads bent down on their stalks. new ones were pushing up to replace the ones that had blown and scattered the evening before. the gentians were not yet open, and he thought how they would look in a few hours--bluer than the mid-day sky. he passed through the wicket, and stood on the hill-top watching the mists sinking lower. the dawn light strengthened--the sky filled with pale tints of emerald, mauve, and rose. a cormorant opened his wings and flew down the lake, his fellows followed soon after; but father oliver stood on the hill-top waiting for daybreak. at last a red ball appeared behind a reddish cloud; its colour changed to the colour of flame, paled again, and at four flared up like a rose-coloured balloon. the day had begun, and he turned towards his house. but he couldn't sleep; the house was repellent, and he waited among the thorn-bushes and ferns. of what use to lie in one's bed when sleep is far and will not be beckoned? and his brain being clear as day he went away to the woods and watersides, saying: 'life is orientated like a temple; there are in every existence days when life streams down the nave, striking the forehead of the god.' and during his long life father oliver always looked back upon the morning when he invaded the pantry and cut large slices of bread, taking the butter out of the old red crock, with a little happy sadness in his heart. he wrapped the slices in paper and wandered without thought for whither he was going, watching the birds in the branches, interested in everything. he was fortunate enough to catch sight of an otter asleep on a rock, and towards evening he came upon a wild-duck's nest in the sedge; many of the ducklings had broken their shells; these struggled after the duck; but there were two prisoners, two that could not escape from their shells, and, seeing their lives would be lost if he did not come to their aid, he picked the shells away and took them to the water's edge, for he had heard catherine say that one could almost see little ducks growing when they had had a drop of water. the old duck swam about uttering a whistling sound, her cry that her ducklings were to join her. and thinking of the lives he had saved, he felt a sudden regret that he had not come upon the nest earlier, when christy brought him father o'grady's letter. the yacht appeared between the islands, her sails filled with wind, and he began to dream how she might cast anchor outside the reeds. a sailor might draw a pinnace alongside, and he imagined a woman being helped into it and rowed to the landing-place. but the yacht did not cast anchor; her helm was put up, her boom went over, and she went away on another tack. he was glad of his dream, though it lasted but a moment, and when he looked up a great gull was watching him. the bird had come so near that he could see the small round head and the black eyes; as soon as he stirred it wheeled and floated away. many other little adventures happened before the day ended. a rabbit crawled by him screaming, for he could run no longer, and lay waiting for the weasel that appeared out of the furze. what was to be done? save it and let the weasel go supperless? at eight the moon rose over tinnick, and it was a great sight to see the yellow mass rising above the faint shores; and while he stood watching the moon an idea occurred to him that held him breathless. his sister had written to him some days ago asking if he could recommend a music-mistress to her. it was through his sister that he might get nora back to her country, and it was through his sister that he might make atonement for the wrong he had done. the letter must be carefully worded, for nuns understood so little, so estranged were they from the world. as for his sister mary, she would not understand at all--she would oppose him; but eliza was a practical woman, and he had confidence in her good sense. he entered the house, and, waving catherine aside, who reminded him that he had had nothing to eat since his dinner the day before, he went to his writing-table and began his letter. _from father oliver gogarty to the mother abbess, tinnick convent._ 'garranard, bohola, '_june _, --. 'my dear eliza, 'i hope you will forgive me for having delayed so long to answer your letter, but i could not think at the moment of anybody whom i could recommend as music-mistress, and i laid the letter aside, hoping that an idea would come to me. well, an idea has come to me. i do not think you will find--' the priest stopped, and after thinking a while he laid down his pen and got up. the sentence he had been about to write was, 'i do not think you will find anyone better than miss glynn.' but he would have to send father o'grady's letter to his sister, and even with father o'grady's letter and all that he might add of an explanation, she would hardly be able to understand; and eliza might show the letter to mary, who was prejudiced. father oliver walked up and down the room thinking.... a personal interview would be better than the letter, for in a personal interview he would be able to answer his sister's objections, and instead of the long letter he had intended to write he wrote a short note, adding that he had not seen them for a long time, and would drive over to-morrow afternoon. v the southern road was the shorter, but he wanted to see moran and to hear when he proposed to begin to roof the abbey. father oliver thought, moreover, that he would like to see the abbey for a last time in its green mantle of centuries. the distance was much the same--a couple of miles shorter by the southern road, no doubt, but what are a couple of miles to an old roadster? moreover, the horse would rest in jimmy maguire's stable whilst he and moran rambled about the ruin. an hour's rest would compensate the horse for the two extra miles. he tapped the glass; there was no danger of rain. for thirty days there had been no change--only a few showers, just enough to keep the country going; and he fell asleep thinking of the drive round the lake from garranard to tinnick in the sunlight and from tinnick to garranard in the moonlight. he was out of bed an hour before his usual time, calling to catherine for hot water. his shaving, always disagreeable, sometimes painful, was a joyous little labour on this day. stropping his razor, he sang from sheer joy of living. catherine had never seen him spring on the car with so light a step. and away went the old gray pulling at the bridle, little thinking of the twenty-five irish miles that lay before him. the day was the same as yesterday, the meadows drying up for want of rain; and there was a thirsty chirruping of small birds in the hedgerows. everywhere he saw rooks gaping on the low walls that divided the fields. the farmers were complaining; but they were always complaining--everyone was complaining. he had complained of the dilatoriness of the board of works, and now for the first time in his life he sympathized a little with the board. if it had built the bridge he would not be enjoying this long drive; it would be built by-and-by; he couldn't feel as if he wished to be robbed of one half-hour of the long day in front of him; and he liked to think it would not end for him till nine o'clock. 'these summer days are endless,' he said. after passing the strait the lake widened out. on the side the priest was driving the shore was empty and barren. on the other side there were pleasant woods and interspaces and castles. castle carra appeared, a great ivy-grown ruin showing among thorn-bushes and ash-trees, at the end of a headland. in bygone times the castle must have extended to the water's edge, for on every side fragments of arches and old walls were discovered hidden away in the thickets. father oliver knew the headland well and every part of the old fortress. many a time he had climbed up the bare wall of the banqueting-hall to where a breach revealed a secret staircase built between the walls, and followed the staircase to a long straight passage, and down another staircase, in the hope of finding matchlock pistols. many a time he had wandered in the dungeons, and listened to old stories of oubliettes. the moat which once cut the neck of land was now dry and overgrown; the gateway remained, but it was sinking--the earth claimed it. there were the ruins of a great house a little way inland, to which no doubt the descendants of the chieftain retired on the decline of brigandage; and the rough hunting life of its semi-chieftains was figured by the gigantic stone fox on a pillar in the middle of the courtyard and the great hounds on either side of the gateway. castle carra must have been the strongest castle in the district of tyrawley, and it was built maybe by the welsh who invaded ireland in the thirteenth century, perhaps by william barrett himself, who built certainl y the castle on the island opposite to father oliver's house. william fion (i.e., the fair) barrett landed somewhere on the west coast, and no doubt came up through the great gaps between slieve cairn and slieve louan--it was not likely that he la nded on the east coast; he could hardly have marched his horde across ireland--and father oliver imagined the welshmen standing on the very hill on which his house now stood, and fion telling his followers to build a castle on each island. patsy murphy, w ho knew more about the history of the country than anybody, thought that castle carra was of later date, and spoke of the stantons, a fierce tribe. over yonder was the famous causeway, and the gross tragedy that was enacted there he yesterday heard from the wood-cutter, william's party of welshmen were followed by other welshmen--the cusacks, the petits, and the brownes; and these in time fell out with the barretts, and a great battle fought, the battle of moyne, in , in which william barrett was killed. but in spite of their defeat, the barretts held the upper hand of the country for many a long year, and the priest began to smile, thinking of the odd story the old woodman had told him about the barretts' steward, sgnorach bhuid bhearrtha, 'saving your reverence's presence,' the old man said, and, unable to translate the words into english fit for the priest's ears, he explained that they meant a glutton and a lewd fellow. the barretts sent sgnorach bhuid bhearrtha to collect rents from the lynotts, another group of welshmen, but the lynotts killed him and threw his body into a well, called ever afterwards tobar na sgornaighe (the well of the glutton), near the townland of moygawnagh, barony of tyrawley. to avenge the murder of their steward, the barretts assembled an armed force, and, having defeated the lynotts and captured many of them, they offered their prisoners two forms of mutilation: they were either to be blinded or castrated. after taking counsel with their wise men, the lynotts chose blindness; for blind men could have sons, and these would doubtless one day revenge the humiliation that was being passed upon them. a horrible story it was, for when their eyes were thrust out with needles they were led to a causeway, and those who crossed the stepping-stones without stumbling were taken back; and the priest thought of the assembled horde laughing as the poor blind men fell into the water. the story rambled on, the lynotts plotting how they could be revenged on the barretts, telling lamely but telling how the lynotts, in the course of generations, came into their revenge. 'a badly told story,' said the priest, 'with one good incident in it,' and, instead of trying to remember how victory came to the lynotts, father oli ver's eyes strayed over the landscape, taking pleasure in the play of light along sides and crests of the hills. the road followed the shore of the lake, sometimes turning inland to avoid a hill or a bit of bog, but returning back again to the shore, finding its way through the fields, if they could be called fields--a little grass and some hazel-bushes growing here and there between the rocks. under a rocky headland, lying within embaying shores, was church island, some seven or eight acres, a handsome wooded island, the largest in the lake, with the ruins of a church hidden among the tall trees, only an arch of it remaining, but the paved path leading from the church to the hermit's cell could be followed. the hermit who used this paved path fourteen hundred years ago was a poet; and father oliver knew that marban loved 'the shieling that no one knew save his god, the ash-tree on the hither side, the hazel-bush beyond it, its lintel of honeysuckle, the wood shedding its mast upon fat swine;' and on this sweet day he found it pleasanter to think of ireland's hermits than of ireland's savage chieftains always at war, striving against each other along the shores of this lake, and from island to island. his thoughts lingered in the seventh and eighth centuries, when the arts were fostered in monasteries--the arts of gold-work and illuminated missals--'ireland's halcyon days,' he said; a deep peace brooded, and under the guidance of the monks ireland was the centre of learning when england was in barbarism. the first renaissance was the irish, centuries before a gleam showed in italy or in france. but in the middle of the eighth century the danes arrived to pillage the country, and no sooner were they driven out than the english came to continue the work of destruction, and never since has it ceased.' father oliver fell to thinking if god were reserving the bright destiny for ireland which he withheld a thousand years ago, and looked out for the abbey that roderick, king of connaught, built in the twelfth century. it stood on a knoll, and in the distance, almost hidden in bulrushes, was the last arm of the lake. 'how admirable! how admirable!' he said. kilronan abbey seemed to bid him remember the things that he could never forget; and, touched by the beauty of the legended ruins, his doubts return ed to him regarding the right of the present to lay hands on these great wrecks of ireland's past. he was no longer sure that he did not side with the archbishop, who was against the restoration--for entirely insufficient reasons, it was true. 'put a roof,' father oliver said, 'on the abbey, and it will look like any other church, and another link will be broken. "which is the better--a great memory or some trifling comfort?"' a few moments after the car turned the corner and he caught sight of father moran, 'out for his morning's walk,' he said; and he compared moran's walk up and down the highroad with his own rambles along the lake shores and through the pleasant woods of carnecun. for seven years father oliver had walked up and down that road, for there was nowhere else for him to walk; he walked that road till he hated it, but he did not think that he had suffered from the loneliness of the parish as much as moran. he had been happier than moran in bridget clery's cottage--a great idea enabled him to forget every discomfort; and 'we are never lonely as long as our idea is with us,' he ejaculated. 'but moran is a plain man, without ideas, enthusiasms, or exaltations. he does riot care for reading, or for a flower garden, only for drink. drink gives him dreams, and man must dream,' he said. he knew that his curate was pledged to cure himself, and believed he was succeeding; but, all the same, it was terrible to think that the temptation might overpower him at any moment, and that he might st agger helpless through the village--a very shocking example to everybody. the people were prone enough in that direction, and for a priest to give scandal instead of setting a good example was about as bad as anything that could happen in the parish. but what was he to do? there was no hard-and-fast rule about anything, and father oliver felt that moran must have his chance. 'i was beginning to think we were never going to see you again;' and father moran held out a long, hard hand to father oliver. 'you'll put up your horse? christy, will you take his reverence's horse? you'll stay and have some dinner with me?' 'i can't stay more than half an hour. i'm on my way to tinnick; i've business with my sister, and it will take me some time.' 'you have plenty of time.' 'no, i haven't? i ought to have taken the other road; i'm late as it is.' 'but you will come into the house, if only for a few minutes.' father oliver had taught bridget clery cleanliness; at least, he had persuaded her to keep the f owls out of the kitchen, and he had put a paling in front of the house and made a little garden--an unassuming one, it is true, but a pleasant spot of colour in the summer-time--and he wondered how it was that father moran was not ashamed of its neglected state, nor of the widow's kitchen. these things were, after all, immaterial. what was important was that he should find no faintest trace of whisky in moran's room. it was a great relief to him not to notice any, and no doubt that was why moran insisted on bringing him into the house. the specifications were a pretext. he had to glance at them, however. 'no doubt if the abbey is to be roofed at all the best roof is the one you propose.' 'then you side with the archbishop?' 'perhaps i do in a way, but for different reasons. i know very well that the people won't kneel in the rain. is it really true that he opposes the roofing of the abbey on account of the legend? i have heard the legend, but there are many variants. let's go to the abbey and you'll tell the story on the way.' 'you see, he'll only allow a portion of the abbey to be roofed.' 'you don't mean that he is so senile and superstitious as that? then the reason of his opposition really is that he believes his death to be implicit in the roofing of kilronan.' 'yes; he thinks that;' and the priests turned out of the main road. 'how beautiful it looks!' and father oliver stopped to admire. the abbey stood on one of the lower slopes, on a knoll overlooking rich water-meadows, formerly abbatial lands. 'the legend says that the abbey shall be roofed when a de stanton is abbot, and the mcevillys were originally de stantons; they changed their name in the fifteenth century on account of a violation of sanctuary committed by them. a roof shall be put on those walls, the legend says, when a de stanton is again abbot of kilronan, and the abbot shall be slain on the highroad.' 'and to save himself from a violent death, he will only allow you to roof a part of the abbey. now, what reason does he give for such an extraordinary decision?' 'are bishops ever expected to have reasons?' the priests laughed, and father oliver said: 'we might appeal to rome.' 'a lot of good that would do us. haven't we all heard the archbishop say that any of his priests who appeals to rome against him will get the worst of it?' 'i wonder that he dares to defy popular opinion in this way.' 'what popular opinion is there to defy? wasn't patsy donovan saying to me only yesterday that the archbishop was a brave man to be letting any roof at all on the abbey? and patsy is the best-educated man in this part of the country.' 'people will believe anything.' 'yes, indeed.' and the priests stopped at the grave of seaghan na soggarth, or 'john of the priests,' and father oliver told father moran how a young priest, who had lost his way in the mountains, had fallen in with seaghan na soggarth. seaghan offered to put him into the right road, but instead of doing so he led him to his house, and closed the door on him, and left him there tied hand and foot. seaghan's sister, who still clung to religion, loosed the priest, and he fled, passing seaghan, who was on his way to fetch the soldiers. seaghan followed after, and on they went like hare and hound till they got to the abbey. there the priest, who could run no further, turned on his foe, and they fought until the priest got hold of seaghan's knife and killed him with it. 'but you know the story. why am i telling it to you?' 'i only know that the priest killed seaghan. is there any more of it?' 'yes, there is more.' and father oliver went on to tell it, though he did not feel that father moran would be interested in the legend; he would not believe that it had been prophesied that an ash-tree should grow out of the buried head, and that one of the branches should take root and pierce seaghan's heart. and he was right in suspecting his curate's lack of sympathy. father moran at once objected that the ash-tree had not yet sent down a branch to pierce the priest-killer's heart. 'not yet; but this branch nearly touches the ground, and there's no saying that it won't take root in a few years.' 'but his heart is there no longer.' 'well, no,' said father oliver, 'it isn't; but if one is to argue that way, no one would listen to a story at all.' father moran held his peace for a little while, and then he began talking about the penal times, telling how religion in ireland was another form of love of country, and that, if catholics were intolerant to every form of heresy, it was because they instinctively felt that the questioning of any dogma would mean some slight subsidence from the idea of nationality that held the people together. like the ancient jews, the irish believed that the faith of their forefathers could bring them into their ultimate inheritance; this was why a proselytizer was hated so intensely. 'more opinions,' father oliver said to himself. 'i wonder he can't admire that ash-tree, and be interested in the story, which is quaint and interesting, without trying to draw an historical parallel between the irish and the jews. anyhow, thinking is better than drinking,' and he jumped on his car. the last thing he heard was moran's voice saying, 'he who betrays his religion betrays his country.' 'confound the fellow, bothering me with his preaching on this fine summer's day! much better if he did what he was told, and made up his mind to put the small green slates on the abbey, and not those coarse blue things which will make the abbey look like a common barn.' then, shading his eyes with his hand, he peered through the sun haze, following the shapes of the fields. the corn was six inches high, and the potatoes were coming into blossom. true, there had been a scarcity of water, but they had had a good summer, thanks be to god, and he thought he had never seen the country looking so beautiful. and he loved this country, this poor western plain with shapely mountains enclosing the horizon. ponies were feeding between the whins, and they raised their shaggy heads to watch the car passing. in the distance cattle were grazing, whisking the flies away. how beautiful was everything--the white clouds hanging in the blue sky, and the trees! there were some trees, but not many--only a few pines. he caught glimpses of the lake through the stems; tears rose to his eyes, and he attributed his happiness to his native land and to the thought that he was living in it. only a few days ago he wished to leave it--no, not for ever, but for a time; and as his old car jogged through the ruts he wondered how it was that he had ever wished to leave ireland, even for a single minute. 'now, christy, which do you reckon to be the shorter road?' 'the shorter road, your reverence, is the joycetown road, but i doubt if we can get the car through it.' 'how is that?' and the boy answered that since the big house had been burnt the road hadn't been kept in repair. 'but,' said father oliver, 'the big house was burnt seventy years ago.' 'well, your reverence, you see, it was a good road then, but the last time i heard of a car going that way was last february.' 'and if a car got through in february, why can't we get through on the first of june?' 'well, your reverence, there was the storm, and i do be hearing that the trees that fell across the road then haven't been removed yet.' 'i think we might try the road, for all that, for though if we have to walk the greater part of it, there will be a saving in the end.' 'that's true, your reverence, if we can get the car through; but if we can't we may have to come all the way back again.' 'well, christy, we'll have to risk that. now, will you be turning the horse up the road? and i'll stop at the big house--i've never been inside it. i'd like to see what it is like.' joycetown house was the last link between the present time and the past. in the beginning of the century a duellist lived there; the terror of the countryside he, for he was never known to miss his man. for the slightest offence, real or imaginary, he sent seconds demanding redress. no more than his ancestors, who had doubtless lived on the islands, in castle island and castle hag, could he live without fighting. but when he completed his round dozen, a priest said, 'if we don't put a stop to his fighting, there won't be a gentleman left in the country,' and wrote to him to that effect. the story runs how joyce, knowing the feeling of the country was against him, tried to keep the peace. but the blood fever came on him again, and he called out his nearest neighbour, browne of the neale, the only friend he had in the world. browne lived at neale house, just over the border, in county galway, so the gentlemen arranged to fight in a certain field near the mearing. it was browne of neale who was the first to arrive. joyce, having to come a dozen miles, was a few minutes late. as soon as his gig was seen, the people, who were in hiding, came out, and they put themselves between him and browne, telling him up to his face there was to be no fighting that day! and the priest, who was at the head of them, said the same; but joyce, who knew his countrymen, paid no heed, but stood up in the gig, and, looking round him, said, 'now, boys, which is it to be? the mayo cock or the galway cock?' no sooner did he speak these words than they began to cheer him, and in spite of all the priest could say they carried him into the field in which he shot browne of the neale. 'a queer people, the queerest in the world,' father oliver thought, as he pulled a thorn-bush out of the doorway and stood looking round. there were some rough chimney-pieces high up in the grass-grown walls, but beyond these really nothing to be seen, and he wandered out seeking traces of terraces along the hillside. on meeting a countryman out with his dogs he tried to inquire about the state of the road. 'i wouldn't be saying, your reverence, that you mightn't get the car through by keeping close to the wall; but christy mustn't let the horse out of a walk.' the countryman said he would go a piece of the road with them, and tell christy the spots he'd have to look out for. 'but your work?' 'there's no work doing now to speak of, your reverence.' the three of them together just managed to remove a fallen tree, which seemed the most serious obstacle, and the countryman said once they were over the top of the hill they would be all right; the road wasn't so bad after that. half a mile further on father oliver found himself in sight of the main road, and of the cottage that his sister mary had lived in before she joined eliza in the convent. to have persuaded mary to take this step proved eliza's superiority more completely than anything else she had done, so father oliver often said, adding that he didn't know what mightn't have happened to poor mary if she had remained in the world. for her life up to the time she entered the convent was little else than a series of failures. she was a shop-assistant, but standing behind the counter gave her varicose veins; and she went to dublin as nursery-governess. father oliver had heard of musical studies: she used to play the guitar. but the instrument was not popular in dublin, so she gave it up, and returned to tinnick with the intention of starting a rabbit and poultry farm. who put this idea into her head was her secret, and when he received eliza's letter telling him of this last experiment, he remembered throwing up his hands. of course, it could only end in failure, in a loss of money; and when he read that she was going to take the pretty cottage on the road to tinnick, he had become suddenly sad. 'why should she have selected that cottage, the only pretty one in the county? wouldn't any other do just as well for her foolish experiment?' vi the flowered cottage on the road to tinnick stood in the midst of trees, on a knoll some few feet above the roadway, and father oliver, when he was a boy, often walked out by himself from tinnick to see the hollyhocks and the sunflowers; they overtopped the palings, the sunflowers looking like saucy country girls and the hollyhocks like grand ladies, delicate and refined, in pink muslin dresses. he used to stand by the gate looking into the garden, delighted by its luxuriance, for there were clumps of sweet pea and beds of red carnations and roses everywhere, and he always remembered the violets and pansies he saw before he went away to maynooth. he never remembered seeing the garden in bloom again. he was seven years at maynooth, and when he came home for his vacations it was too late or too early in the season. he was interested in other things; and during his curacy at kilronan he rarely went to tinnick, and when he did, he took the other road, so that he might see father peter. he was practically certain that the last time he saw the garden in bloom was just before he went to maynooth. however this might be, it was certain he would never see it in bloom again. mary had left the cottage a ruin, and it was sad to think of the clean thick thatch and the whitewashed walls covered with creeper and china roses, for now the thatch was black and mouldy; and of all the flowers only a few stocks survived; the rose-trees were gone--the rabbits had eaten them. weeds overtopped the currant and gooseberry bushes; here and there was a trace of box edging. 'but soon,' he said, 'all traces will be gone, the roof will fall in, and the garden will become part of the waste.' his eyes roved over the country into which he was going--almost a waste; a meagre black soil, with here and there a thorn-bush and a peasant's cabin. father oliver knew every potato field and every wood, and he waited for the elms that lined the roadway a mile ahead of him, a long, pleasant avenue that he knew well, showing above the high wall that encircled a nobleman's domain. somewhere in the middle of that park was a great white house with pillars, and the story he had heard from his mother, and that roused his childish imaginations, was that lord carra was hated by the town of tinnick, for he cared nothing for ireland and was said to be a man of loose living, in love with his friend's wife, who came to tinnick for visits, sometimes with, sometimes without, her husband. it may have been his lordship's absenteeism, as well as the scandal the lady gave, that had prompted a priest to speak against lord carra from the altar, if not directly, indirectly. 'both are among the gone,' father oliver said to himself. 'no one speaks of them now; myself hasn't given them a thought this many a year--' his memories broke off suddenly, for a tree had fallen, carrying a large portion of the wall with it, but without revealing the house, only a wooded prospect through which a river glided. 'the lord's mistress must have walked many a time by the banks of that river,' he said. but why was he thinking of her again? was it the ugly cottage that put thoughts of her into his mind? for she had done nothing to alleviate the lives of the poor, who lived without cleanliness and without light, like animals in a den. or did his thoughts run on that woman, whom he had never seen, because tinnick was against her and the priest had spoken slightingly of the friends that lord carra brought from england? the cause of his thoughts might be that he was going to offer nora glynn to his sister as music-mistress. but what connection between nora glynn and this dead woman? none. but he was going to propose nora glynn to eliza, and the best line of argument would be that nora would cost less than anyone as highly qualified as she. nuns were always anxious to get things cheap, but he must not let them get nora too cheap. but the question of price wouldn't arise between him and eliza. eliza would see that the wrong he did to nora was preying on his conscience, and that he'd never be happy until he had made atonement--that was the light in which she would view the matter, so it would be better to let things take their natural course and to avoid making plans. the more he thought of what he should say to eliza, the less likely was he to speak effectively; and feeling that he had better rely on the inspiration of the moment, he sought distraction from his errand by noting the beauty of the hillside. he had always liked the way the road dipped and then ascended steeply to the principal street in the town. there were some pretty houses in the dip--houses with narrow doorways and long windows, built, no doubt, in the beginning of the nineteenth century--and his ambition was once to live in one of these houses. the bridge was an eighteenth-century bridge, with a foaming weir on the left, and on the right there was a sentimental walk under linden-trees, and there were usually some boys seated on the parapet fishing. he would have liked to stop the car, so remote did the ruined mills seem--so like things of long ago that time had mercifully weaned from the stress and struggle of life. at the corner of the main street was the house in which he was born. the business had passed into other hands, but the old name--'gogarty's drapery stores'--remained. across the way were the butcher and the grocer, and a little higher up the inn at which the commercial travellers lodged. he recalled their numerous leather trunks, and for a moment stood a child again, seeing them drive away on post-cars. a few more shops had been added--very few--and then the town dwindled quickly, slated roofs giving way to thatched cottages, and of the same miserable kind that was wont to provoke his antipathy when he was a boy. this sinful dislike of poverty he overcame in early manhood. a high religious enthusiasm enabled him to overcome it, but his instinctive dislike of the lowly life--intellectual lowliness as well as physical--gathered within these cottages, seemed to have returned again. he asked himself if he were wanting in natural compassion, and if all that he had of goodness in him were a debt he owed to the church. it was in patience rather than in pity maybe that he was lacking; and pursuing this idea, he recalled the hopes he entertained when he railed off a strip of ground in front of bridget clery's house. but that strip of garden had inspired no spirit of emulation. eliza was perhaps more patient than he, and he began to wonder if she had any definite aim in view, and if the spectacle of the convent, with its show of nuns walking under the trees, would eventually awaken some desire of refinement in the people, if the money their farms now yielded would produce some sort of improvement in their cottages, the removal of those dreadfully heavy smells, and a longing for colour that would find expression in the planting of flowers. they gave their money willingly enough for the adornment of their chapel, for stained glass, incense, candles, and for music, and were it not for the services of the church he didn't know into what barbarism the people mightn't have fallen: the tones of the organ sustaining clear voices of nuns singing a mass by mozart must sooner or later inspire belief in the friendliness of pure air and the beauty of flowers. flowers are the only beautiful things within the reach of these poor people. roses all may have, and it was pleasant to think that there is nothing more entirely natural or charming in the life of man than his love of flowers: it preceded his love of music; no doubt an appreciation of something better in the way of art than a jig played on the pipes would follow close on the purification of the home. nora glynn was beautiful, and her personality was winning and charming, her playing delightful, and her singing might have inspired the people to cultivate beauty. but she was going to the convent. the convent had gotten her. it was a pity. mrs. o'mara's scandalous stories, insinuating lies, had angered him till he could bear with her no longer, and he had put her out the door. he didn't believe that eliza had ever said she could give nora more than she was earning in garranard. it mattered very little if she had, for it had so fallen out that she was going to get her. he begrudged them nora. but eliza was going to get her, and he'd have to make the best terms he could. but he could not constrain his thoughts to the present moment. they would go back to the fateful afternoon when he ran across the fields to ask nora if what mrs. o'mara had said of her were true. if he had only waited! if she had come to him to confession on saturday, as he expected she would! if something had prevented him from preaching on sunday! a bad cold might have prevented him from speaking, and she might have gone away for a while, and, when her baby was born, she might have come back. it could have been easily arranged. but fate had ordered her life otherwise, and here he was in the tinnick convent, hoping to make her some poor amends for the wrong he had done her. would eliza help him?--that was the question he asked himself as he crossed the beeswaxed floor and stood looking at the late afternoon sunlight glancing through the trees, falling across the green sward. 'how do you do, oliver?' his face lighted up, but it changed expression and became gray again. he had expected to see eliza, tall and thin, with yellow eyebrows and pale eyes. hers was a good, clearly-cut face, like his own, whereas mary's was quite different. yet a family likeness stared through mary's heavy white face. her eyes were smaller than his, and she already began to raise them and lower them, and to look at him askance, in just the way he hated. somehow or other she always contrived to make him feel uncomfortable, and the present occasion was no exception. she was already reproving him, hoping he was not disappointed at seeing her, and he had to explain that he expected to see eliza, and that was why he looked surprised. she must not confuse surprise with disappointment. he was very glad to see her. 'i know i am not as interesting as eliza,' she began, 'but i thought you might like to see me, and if i hadn't come at once i shouldn't have had an opportunity of seeing you alone.' 'she has something to confide,' father oliver said to himself, and he hoped that her confidences might be cut short by the timely arrival of eliza. 'eliza is engaged at present. she told sister agatha to tell you that she would be with you presently. i met sister agatha in the passage, and said i would take the message myself. i suppose i oughtn't to have done so, but if i hadn't i shouldn't have had an opportunity of speaking with you.' 'why is that?' 'i don't think she likes me to see you alone.' 'my dear mary!' 'you don't know, oliver, what it is to live in a convent, and your own sister the head of it.' 'i should have thought, mary, that it was especially pleasant, and that you were especially fortunate. and as for thinking that eliza is not wishing you to see me alone, i am sure--' 'you are sure i'm mistaken.' 'what reason could she have?' 'eliza doesn't wish the affairs of the convent discussed. you know, i suppose, that the building of the new wing has put a burden of debt on the convent.' 'i know that; so why should eliza--' 'eliza tries to prevent my seeing any of the visitors. now, do you think that quite right and fair towards one's sister?' father oliver tried to prevent himself from smiling, but he sympathized so entirely with eliza's efforts to prevent mary from discussing the affairs of the convent that he could hardly keep down the smile that rose to his lips. he could see eliza's annoyance on coming into the parlour and finding mary detailing all the gossip and confiding her own special woes, for the most part imaginary, to a visitor. nor would mary refrain from touching on the reverend mother's shortcomings. he was so much amused that he might have smiled if it had not suddenly come to his mind that mary might leave the convent and insist on living with him; and a little scared he began to think of what he could say to pacify her, remembering in the midst of his confusion and embarrassment that mary was professed last year, and therefore could not leave the convent; and this knowledge filled him with such joy that he could not keep back the words, but must remind his sister that she had had ample opportunity of considering if she were suited to the religious life. 'you see, mary, you should have thought of all this before you were professed.' 'i shan't take my final vows till next year.' 'but, my dear mary, once a woman has taken the black veil ... it is the same thing, you know.' 'not quite, otherwise there would be no meaning in the delay.' 'you don't mean to say that you're thinking of leaving the convent, mary?' 'not exactly, but it is very hard on me, oliver. i was thinking of writing to you, but i hoped that you would come to see us. you have been a long time now without coming.' 'well, mary--' 'eliza loves ruling everybody, and just because i am her sister she is harder on me than anyone else. only the other day she was furious with me because i stopped at confession a few minutes longer than usual. "i think," she said, "you might spare father higgins your silly scruples." now, how is one to stop in a convent if one's own sister interferes in one's confessions?' 'well, mary, what are you thinking of doing?' 'there are some french nuns who have just come over and want to open a school, and are looking for irish subjects. i was thinking they'd like to have me. you see, i wouldn't have to go through the novitiate again, for they want an experienced person to teach them english and to mind the school for them. it is really a mistake to be under one's own sister.' at that moment the door opened and eliza came in, apologizing for having kept her brother so long waiting. 'you see, my dear oliver, i've had two mothers here this morning, and you know what parents are. i suppose mary has told you about our difficulties. now, do you mean to say that you have found a person who will suit us?... it is really very kind of you.' 'i can't say for certain, eliza. of course, it is difficult for me to know exactly what you want, but, so far as i know, i think the person i have in my mind will suit you.' 'but has she a diploma from the academy? we must have a certificate.' 'i think she'll suit you, but we'll talk about her presently. don't you think we might go into the garden?' 'yes, it will be pleasanter in the garden. and you, mary--you've had your little chat with oliver.' 'i was just going, eliza. if i'd known that oliver wanted to speak privately to you, i'd have gone sooner.' 'no, no, i assure you, mary.' mary held out her hand to her brother, saying: 'i suppose i shall not see you again, unless, perhaps, you're stopping the night with father higgins. it would be nice if you could do that. you could say mass for us in the morning.' father oliver shook his head. 'i'm afraid i must get back to-night.' 'well, then, good-bye.' and mary went out of the room regretfully, like one who knows that the moment her back is turned all her faults will become the subject of conversation. 'i hear from mary that some french nuns are coming over, and want to open a school. i hope that won't interfere with yours, eliza; you spent a great deal of money upon the new wing.' 'it will interfere very much indeed; but i'm trying to get some of the nuns to come here, and i hope the bishop will not permit a new foundation. it's very hard upon us irish women if we are to be eaten out of house and home by pious foreigners. i'm in correspondence with the bishop about it. as for mary--' 'you surely don't think she's going to leave?' 'no, i don't suppose she'll leave; it would be easier for me if she did, but it would give rise to any amount of talk. and where would she go if she did leave, unless she lived with you?' 'my house is too small; besides, she didn't speak of leaving, only that she hadn't yet taken her final vows. i explained that no one will distinguish between the black veil and final vows. am i not right?' 'i think those vows will take a great weight off your mind, oliver. i wish i could say as much for myself.' the reverend mother opened a glass door, and brother and sister stood for some time admiring the flower vases that lined the terrace. 'i can't get her to water the geraniums.' 'if you'll tell me where i can get a can--' 'you'll excuse me, reverend mother.' it was the sister in charge of the laundry, and, seeing her crippled arm, father oliver remembered that her dress had become entangled in the machinery. he didn't know, however, that the fault lay with mary, who was told off to watch the machinery and to stop it instantly in case of necessity. 'she can't keep her attention fixed on anything, not even on her prayers, and what she calls piety i should call idleness. it's terrible to have to do with stupid women, and the convent is so full of them that i often wonder what is the good of having a convent at all.' 'but, eliza, you don't regret--' 'no, of course i don't regret. i should do just the same again. but don't let us waste our time talking about vocations. i hear enough of that here. i want you to tell me about the music-mistress; that's what interests me.' and when father oliver had told her the whole story and showed her father o'grady's letter, she said: 'you know i always thought you were a little hard on miss glynn. father o'grady's letter convinces me that you were.' 'my dear eliza, i don't want advice; i've suffered enough.' 'oliver dear, forgive me.' and the nun put out her hand to detain him. 'well, don't say again, eliza, that you always thought. it's irritating, and it does no good.' 'her story is known, but she could live in the convent; that would shelter her from any sort of criticism. i don't see why she shouldn't take the habit of one of the postulants, but--' the priest waited for his sister to speak, and after waiting a little while he asked her what she was going to say. 'i was going to ask you,' said the nun, waking from her reverie, 'if you have written to miss glynn.' 'yes, i wrote to her.' 'and she's willing to come back?' 'i haven't spoken to her about that. it didn't occur to me until afterwards, but i can write at once if you consent.' 'i may be wrong, oliver, but i don't think she'll care to leave london and come back here, where she is known.' 'but, eliza, a girl likes to live in her own country. mind you, i am responsible. i drove her out of her country among strangers. she's living among protestants.' 'i don't think that will trouble her very much.' 'i don't know why you say that, eliza. do you think that a woman cannot repent? that because she happens to have sinned once--' 'no; i suppose there are repentant sinners, but i think we most often go on as we begin. now, you see, father o'grady says that she's getting on very well in london, and we like to live among those who appreciate us.' 'well, eliza, of course, if you start with the theory that no one can repent--' 'i didn't say that, oliver. but she wouldn't tell you who the man was. she seems a person of character--i mean, she doesn't seem to be lacking in strength of character.' 'she's certainly a most excellent musician. you'll find no one like her, and you may be able to get her very cheap. and if your school doesn't pay--' a shade passed across the reverend mother's face. 'there's no doubt that the new wing has cost us a great deal of money.' 'then there are the french nuns--' 'my dear oliver, if you wish me to engage miss glynn as music-mistress i'll do so. there's no use speaking to me about the french nuns. i'll engage her because you ask me, but i cannot pay her as much as those who have diplomas. how much do you think she'd come for?' 'i don't know what she's earning in london, but i suppose you can pay her an average wage. you could pay her according to results.' 'what you say is quite true, oliver.' the priest and the nun continued their walk up and down in front of the unfinished building. 'but you don't know, oliver, if she's willing to leave london. you'll have to write and find out.' 'very well, eliza, i'll write. you'll be able to offer her as much as she was earning in my parish as schoolmistress. that's fifty pounds a year.' 'it's more than we can afford, oliver, but if you wish it.' 'i do wish it, eliza. thank you. you've taken a great weight off my mind.' they passed into the house, and, stopping in front of the writing-table, the nun looked to see if there were paper and envelopes in the blotter. 'you'll find everything you want, even sealing-wax,' she said. 'now i'll leave you.' _from father oliver gogarty to miss nora glynn._ 'tinnick convent, '_june , --_. 'dear miss glynn, 'i take it for granted that you received the letter i sent you two days ago, telling you how much i appreciated your kindness in asking father o'grady to write to tell me that you were quite safe and getting on well. since writing that letter i feel more keenly than ever that i owe you reparation, for it was through an error of judgment on my part that you are now an exile from your own country. everyone is agreed that i have committed an error of judgment. my sister, the mother superior of this convent from where i am writing, is of that opinion. the moment i mentioned your name she began, "i always thought that--" and i begged of her to spare me advice on the subject, saying that it was not for advice that i came to her, but to ask her to help me to make atonement, which she could do by engaging you to teach music in her convent. you see, i had heard that my sister was in a difficulty. the new wing is nearly completed, and she could get the best families in ireland to send their daughters to be educated in her convent if she could provide sufficient musical instruction. i thought you might like to live in your own country, now that your thoughts have again turned towards god, and i can imagine the unpleasantness it must be to a catholic to live in a protestant country. i told my sister this, and she answered that if you wish to come over here, and if father o'grady advises it, she will take you as music-mistress. you will live in the convent. you can enter it, if you wish, as a postulant, or if you should remain an extern teacher the salary they will give you will be fifty pounds a year. i know you can make more than that in london, but you can live more cheaply here, and you will be among friends. 'i shall be glad to hear from you on this subject. 'very sincerely yours, 'oliver gogarty, p.p.' when he looked up, the darkness under the trees surprised him, and the geraniums so faintly red on the terrace, and his sister passing up and down like a phantom. 'eliza.' he heard her beads drop, and out of a loose sleeve a slim hand took the letter. there was not enough light in the room to read by, and she remained outside, leaning against the glass door. 'you haven't written exactly the letter i should have written, but, then, we're quite different. i should have written a cold and more business-like letter.' his face changed expression, and she added: 'i'm sorry if i'm unsympathetic, oliver.' the touch of her hand and the look in her eyes surprised him, for eliza was not demonstrative, and he wondered what had called forth this sudden betrayal of feeling. he expected her to ask him not to send the letter, but instead of doing so she said: 'if the letter were written otherwise it wouldn't be like yourself, oliver. send it, and if she leaves london and comes back here, i will think better of her. it will be proof that she has repented. i see you'll not have an easy mind until you make atonement. you exaggerate, i think; but everyone for himself in a matter like this.' 'thank you, eliza. you always understand.' 'not always. i failed to understand when you wanted to set up a hermitage on castle island.' 'yes, you did; you have better sense than i. yet i feel we are more alike than the others. you have counted for a great deal in my life, eliza. do you remember saying that you intended to be reverend mother? and now you are reverend mother.' 'i don't think i said "i intended." but i felt that if i became a nun, one day or another i should be reverend mother; one knows most often than not what is going to happen--one's own fate, i mean.' 'i wonder if mary knows?' 'if she does, i wish she'd tell us.' 'we'll have time to walk round the garden once more. you have no idea what a pleasure it is for me to see you--to talk with you like this.' and, talking of mary, they walked slowly, forgetful of everything but each other. a bell rang. 'i must be going; it will be late before i get home.' 'which way are you going? round by kilronan or across the bridge of keel?' 'i came by kilronan. i think i'll take the other way. there will be a moon to-night.' brother and sister entered the convent. 'you'll enjoy the drive?' 'yes.' and he fell to thinking of the drive home by the southern road, the mountains unfolding their many aspects in the gray moonlight, and melting away in misty perspectives. vii _from miss nora glynn to father oliver gogarty._ ' , wilson street, london, '_june_ , --, 'father gogarty, 'i did not answer your first letter because the letters that came into my mind to write, however they might begin, soon turned to bitterness, and i felt that writing bitter letters would not help me to forget the past. but your second letter with its proposal that i should return to ireland to teach music in a convent school forces me to break silence, and it makes me regret that i gave father o'grady permission to write to you; he asked me so often, and his kindness is so winning, that i could not refuse him anything. he said you would certainly have begun to see that you had done me a wrong, and i often answered that i saw no reason why i should trouble to soothe your conscience. i do not wish to return to ireland; i am, as father o'grady told you, earning my own living, my work interests me, and very soon i shall have forgotten ireland. that is the best thing that can happen, that i should forget ireland, and that you should forget the wrong you did me. put the whole thing, and me, out of your mind; and now, good-bye, father gogarty. 'nora glynn.' 'good heavens! how she hates me, and she'll hate me till her dying day. she'll never forget. and this is the end of it, a bitter, unforgiving letter.' he sat down to think, and it seemed to him that she wouldn't have written this letter if she had known the agony of mind he had been through. but of this he wasn't sure. no, no; he could not believe her spiteful. and he walked up and down the room, trying to quell the bitterness rising up within him. no other priest would have taken the trouble; they would have just forgotten all about it, and gone about congratulating themselves on their wise administration. but he had acted rightly, father o'grady had approved of what he had done; and this was his reward. she'll never come back, and will never forgive him; and ever since writing to her he had indulged in dreams of her return to ireland, thinking how pleasant it would be to go down to the lake in the mornings, and stand at the end of the sandy spit looking across the lake towards tinnick, full of the thought that she was there with his sisters earning her living. she wouldn't be in his parish, but they'd have been friends, neighbours, and he'd have accepted the loss of his organist as his punishment. eva maguire was no good; there would never be any music worth listening to in his parish again. such sternness as her letter betrayed was not characteristic of her; she didn't understand, and never would. catherine's step awoke him; the awaking was painful, and he couldn't collect his thoughts enough to answer catherine; and feeling that he must appear to her daft, he tried to speak, but his speech was only babble. 'you haven't read your other letter, your reverence.' he recognized the handwriting; it was from father o'grady. _from father o'grady to father oliver gogarty._ '_june_ , --. 'my dear father gogarty, 'i was very glad to hear that miss glynn told her story truthfully; for if she exaggerated or indulged in equivocation, it would be a great disappointment to me and to her friends, and would put me in a very difficult position, for i should have to tell certain friends of mine, to whom i recommended her, that she was not all that we imagined her to be. but all's well that ends well; and you will be glad to hear that i have appointed her organist in my church. it remains, therefore, only for me to thank you for your manly letter, acknowledging the mistake you have made. 'i can imagine the anxiety it must have caused you, and the great relief it must have been to you to get my letter. although miss glynn spoke with bitterness, she did not try to persuade me that you were naturally hard-hearted or cruel. the impression that her story left on my mind was that your allusions to her in your sermon were unpremeditated. your letter is proof that i was not mistaken, and i am sure the lesson you have received will bear fruit. i trust that you will use your influence to restrain other priests from similar violence. it is only by gentleness and kindness that we can do good. i shall be glad to see you if you ever come to london. 'i am, sir, 'very sincerely yours, 'michael o'grady.' 'all's well that ends well. so that's how he views it! a different point of view.' and feeling that he was betraying himself to catherine, he put both letters into his pocket and went out of the house. but he had not gone many yards when he met a parishioner with a long story to tell, happily not a sick call, only a dispute about land. so he invented an excuse postponing his intervention until the morrow, and when he returned home tired with roaming, he stopped on his door-step. 'the matter is over now, her letter is final,' he said. but he awoke in a different mood next morning; everything appeared to him in a different light, and he wondered, surprised to find that he could forget so easily; and taking her letter out of his pocket, he read it again. 'it's a hard letter, but she's a wise woman. much better for us both to forget each other. "good-bye, father gogarty," she said; "good-bye, nora glynn," say i.' and he walked about his garden tending his flowers, wondering at his light-heartedness. she thought of her own interests, and would get on very well in london, and father o'grady had been lucky too. nora was an excellent organist. but if he went to london he would meet her. a meeting could hardly be avoided--and after that letter! perhaps it would be wiser if he didn't go to london. what excuse? o'grady would write again. he had been so kind. in any case he must answer his letter, and that was vexatious. but was he obliged to answer it? o'grady wouldn't misunderstand his silence. but there had been misunderstandings enough; and before he had walked the garden's length half a dozen conclusive reasons for writing occurred to him. first of all father o'grady's kindness in writing to ask him to stay with him, added to which the fact that nora would, of course, tell father o'grady she had been invited to teach in the convent; her vanity would certainly urge her to do this, and heaven only knows what account she would give of his proposal. there would be his letter, but she mightn't show it. so perhaps on the whole it would be better that he should write telling o'grady what had happened. and after his dinner as he sat thinking, a letter came into his mind; the first sentences formulated themselves so suddenly that he was compelled to go to his writing-table. _from father oliver gogarty to father o'grady._ 'garranard, bohola, '_june_ , --. 'dear father o'grady, 'i enclose a letter which i received three days ago from miss nora glynn, and i think you will agree with me that the letter is a harsh one, and that, all things considered, it would have been better if she had stinted herself to saying that i had committed an error of judgment which she forgave. she did not, however, choose to do this. as regards my sister's invitation to her to come over here to teach, she was, of course, quite right to consider her own interests. she can make more money in london than she could in ireland. i forgot that she couldn't bring her baby with her, remembering only that my eldest sister is mother abbess in the tinnick convent--a very superior woman, if i may venture to praise my own sister. the convent was very poor at one time, but she has made the school a success, and, hearing that she wanted someone who would teach music and singing, i proposed to her that she should engage miss glynn, with whose story she was already acquainted. she did not think that miss glynn would return to ireland; and in this opinion she showed her good judgment. she was always a wonderful judge of character. but she could see that i was anxious to atone for any wrong that i might have done miss glynn, and after some hesitation she consented, saying: "well, oliver, if you wish it." 'miss glynn did not accept the proposal, and i suppose that the episode now ends so far as i am concerned. she has fallen into good hands; she is making her living, thanks to your kindness. but i dare not think what might not have happened if she had not met you. perhaps when you have time you will write again; i shall be glad to hear if she succeeds in improving your choir. my conscience is now at rest; there is a term, though it may not be at the parish boundary, when our responsibility ceases. 'thanking you again, and hoping one of these days to have the pleasure of making your acquaintance, 'i am very truly yours, 'oliver gogarty.' _from father o'grady to father oliver gogarty._ '_june_ , --. 'dear father gogarty, 'thank you for sending me miss glynn's letter, and i agree with you when you describe it as harsh; but i understand it in a way. miss glynn came over to london almost penniless, and expecting the birth of her illegitimate child. she suffered all that a woman suffers in such circumstances. i do not want to harass you unnecessarily by going over it all again, but i do wish you to forgive her somewhat intemperate letter. i'll speak to her about it, and i am sure she will write to you in a more kindly spirit later on; meanwhile, rest assured that she is doing well, and not forgetful of the past. i shall try to keep a watchful eye over her, seeing that she attends to her duties every month; there is no better safeguard. but in truth i have no fear for her, and am unable to understand how she could have been guilty of so grave a sin, especially in ireland. she seems here most circumspect, even strict, in her manner. she is an excellent musician, and has improved my choir. i have been tempted to comply with her request and spend some more money upon the singing.... 'while writing these lines i was interrupted. my servant brought me a letter from miss glynn, telling me that a great chance had come her way. it appears that mr. walter poole, the father of one of her pupils, has offered her the post of secretaryship, and she would like to put into practice the shorthand and typewriting that she has been learning for the last six months. her duties, she says, will be of a twofold nature: she will help mr. poole with his literary work and she will also give music lessons to his daughter edith. mr. poole lives in berkshire, and wants her to come down at once, which means she will have to leave me in the lurch. "you will be without an organist," she writes, "and will have to put up with miss ellen mcgowan until you can get a better. she may improve--i hope and think she will; and i'm sorry to give trouble to one who has been so kind to me, but, you see, i have a child to look after, and it is difficult to make both ends meet on less than three pounds a week. more money i cannot hope to earn in my present circumstances; i am therefore going down to berkshire to-morrow, so i shall not see you again for some time. write and tell me you are not angry with me." 'on receiving this letter, i went round to miss glynn's lodgings, and found her in the midst of her packing. we talked a long while, and very often it seemed to me that i was going to persuade her, but when it came to the point she shook her head. offer her more money i could not, but i promised to raise her wages to two pounds a week next year if it were possible to do so. i don't think it is the money; i think it is change that tempts her. well, it tempts us all, and though i am much disappointed at losing her, i cannot be angry with her, for i cannot forget that i often want change myself, and the longing to get out of london is sometimes almost irresistible. i do not know your part of the country, but i do know what an irish lake is like, and i often long to see one again. and very often, i suppose, you would wish to exchange the romantic solitude of your parish for the hurly-burly of a town, and for its thick, impure air you would be willing--for a time only, of course--to change the breezes of your mountain-tops. 'very truly yours, 'michael o'grady.' _from father oliver gogarty to father o'grady._ 'garranard, bohola, '_june_ , --. 'dear father o'grady, 'no sooner had i begun to feel easier in my conscience and to dream that my responsibilities were at an end than your letter comes, and i am thrown back into all my late anxieties regarding nora glynn's future, for which i am and shall always be responsible. 'it was my words that drove her out of ireland into a great english city in which some dreadful fate of misery and death might have befallen her if you had not met her. but god is good, and he sent you to her, and everything seems to have happened for the best. she was in your hands, and i felt safe. but now she has taken her life into her own hands again, thinking she can manage it without anybody's help! 'the story you tell seems simple enough, but it doesn't sound all right. why should she go away to berkshire to help mr. walter poole with his literature without giving you longer notice? it seems strange to write to one who has taken all the trouble you have to find her work--"i have discovered a post that suits me better and am going away to-morrow." of course she has her child to think of. but have you made inquiries? i suppose you must have done. you would not let her go away to a man of whom you know nothing. she says that he is the father of one of her pupils. but she doesn't know him, yet she is going to live in his house to help him with his literature. have you inquired, dear father o'grady, what this man's writings are, if he is a catholic or a protestant? i should not like miss nora glynn to go into a protestant household, where she would hear words of disrespect for the religion she has been brought up in. 'as i write i ask myself if there is a catholic chapel within walking distance; and if there isn't, will he undertake to send her to mass every sunday? i hope you have made all these inquiries, and if you have not made them, will you make them at once and write to me and relieve my anxiety? you are aware of the responsibilities i have incurred and will appreciate the anxiety that i feel. 'yours very sincerely, 'oliver gogarty.' it seemed to father oliver so necessary that father o'grady should get his letter as soon as possible that he walked to bohola; but soon after dropping the letter in the box he began to think that he might have written more judiciously, and on his way home he remembered that he had told father o'grady, and very explicitly, that he should have made inquiries regarding mr. walter poole's literature before he allowed nora glynn to go down to berkshire to help him with his literary work. of course he hoped, and it was only natural that he should hope, that father o'grady had made all reasonable inquiries; but it seemed to him now that he had expressed himself somewhat peremptorily. father o'grady was an old man--how old he did not know--but himself was a young man, and he did not know in what humour father o'grady might read his letter. if the humour wasn't propitious he might understand it as an impertinence. it vexed him that he had shown so much agitation, and he stopped to think. but it was so natural that he should be concerned about nora glynn. all the same, his anxiety might strike father o'grady as exaggerated. a temperate letter, he reflected, is always better; and the evening was spent in writing another letter to father o'grady, a much longer one, in which he thanked father o'grady for asking him to come to see him if he should ever find himself in london. 'of course,' he wrote, 'i shall be only too pleased to call on you, and no doubt we shall have a great deal to talk about--two irishmen always have; and when i feel the need of change imminent, i will try to go to london, and do you, father o'grady, when you need a change, come to ireland. you write: "i do not know your part of the country, but i know what an irish lake is like, and i often long to see one again." well, come and see my lake; it's very beautiful. woods extend down to the very shores with mountain peaks uplifting behind the woods, and on many islands there are ruins of the castles of old time. not far from my house it narrows into a strait, and after passing this strait it widens out into what might almost be called another lake. we are trying to persuade the government to build a bridge, but it is difficult to get anything done. my predecessor and myself have been in correspondence on this subject with the board of works; it often seems as if success were about to come, but it slips away, and everything has to be begun again. i should like to show you kilronan abbey, an old abbey unroofed by cromwell. the people have gone there for centuries, kneeling in the snow and rain. we are sadly in need of subscription. perhaps one of these days you will be able to help us; but i shall write again on this subject, and as soon as i can get a photograph of the abbey i will send it. 'yours very sincerely, 'oliver gogarty.' 'now, what will father o'grady answer to all this?' he said under his breath as he folded up his letter. 'a worthy soul, an excellent soul, there's no doubt about that.' and he began to feel sorry for father o'grady. but his sorrow was suddenly suspended. if he went to london he wouldn't be likely to see her. 'another change,' he said; 'things are never the same for long. a week ago i knew where she was; i could see her in her surroundings. berkshire is not very far from london. but who is mr. poole?' and he sat thinking. a few days after he picked up a letter from his table from father o'grady, a long garrulous letter, four pages about kilronan abbey, irish london, convent schools--topics interesting enough in themselves, but lacking in immediate interest. the letter contained only three lines about her. that mr. poole explained everything to her, and that she liked her work. the letter dropped from his hand; the hand that had held the letter fell upon his knee, and father oliver sat looking through the room. awaking suddenly, he tried to remember what he had been thinking about, for he had been thinking a long while; but he could not recall his thoughts, and went to his writing-table and began a long letter telling father o'grady about kilronan abbey and enclosing photographs. and then, feeling compelled to bring himself into as complete union as possible with his correspondent, he sat, pen in hand, uncertain if he should speak of nora at all. the temptation was by him, and he found excuse in the thought that after all she was the link; without her he would not have known father o'grady. and so convinced was he of this that when he mentioned her he did so on account of a supposed obligation to sympathize once again with father o'grady's loss of his organist. his letter rambled on about the masses nora used to play best and the pieces she used to sing. a few days after he caught sight of her handwriting on his breakfast-table, and he sat reading the letter, to catherine's annoyance, who said the rashers were getting cold. _from miss nora glynn to father oliver gogarty._ 'beechwood hall, berkshire, '_july_ , --. 'dear father gogarty, 'one is not always in a mood to give credit to others for good intentions, especially when one returns home at the close of day disappointed, and i wrote a hard, perhaps a cruel, letter; but i'm feeling differently now. the truth is that your letter arrived at an unfortunate moment when things were going badly with me.' 'i'm forgiven,' father oliver cried--'i'm forgiven;' and his joy was so great that the rest of the letter seemed unnecessary, but he continued to read: 'father o'grady has no doubt told you that i have given up my post of organist in his church, mr. poole having engaged me to teach his daughter music and to act as his secretary. in a little letter which i received about a fortnight ago from him he told me he had written to you, and it appears that you have recovered from your scruples of conscience, and have forgotten the wrong you did me; but if i know you at all, you are deceiving yourself. you will never forget the wrong you did me. but i shall forget. i am not sure that it has not already passed out of my mind. this will seem contradictory, for didn't i say that i couldn't forget your cruelty in my first letter? i wonder if i meant it when i wrote, "put the whole thing and me out of your mind...." i suppose i did at the time, and yet i doubt it. does anyone want to be forgotten utterly? 'i should have written to you before, but we have been busy. mr. poole's book has been promised by the end of the year. it's all in type, but he is never satisfied. to-day he has gone to london to seek information about the altars of the early israelites. it's a wonderful book, but i cannot write about it to-day; the sun is shining, the country is looking lovely, and my pupil is begging me to finish my letter and go out with her. 'very sincerely yours, 'nora glynn.' 'so forgiveness has come at last,' he said; and as he walked along the shore he fell to thinking that very soon all her life in garranard would be forgotten. 'she seems interested in her work,' he muttered; and his mind wandered over the past, trying to arrive at a conclusion, if there was or was not a fundamental seriousness in her character, inclining on the whole to think there was, for if she was not serious fundamentally, she would not have been chosen by mr. poole for his secretary. 'my little schoolmistress, the secretary of a great scholar! how very extraordinary! but why is it extraordinary? when will she write again?' and every night he wished for the dawn, and every morning he asked if there were any letters for him. 'no, your reverence, no letters this morning;' and when catherine handed him some envelopes they only contained bills or uninteresting letters from the parishioners or letters from the board of works about the bridge in which he could no longer feel any interest whatever. at last he began to think he had said something to offend her, and to find out if this were so he would have to write to father o'grady telling him that miss glynn had written saying she had forgiven him. her forgiveness had brought great relief; but miss glynn said in her letter that she was alone in berkshire, mr. poole having gone to london to seek information regarding the altars of the early israelites. _from father o'grady to father oliver gogarty._ '_august_ , --. 'dear father gogarty, 'i am sorry i cannot give you the information you require regarding the nature of mr. poole's writings, and if i may venture to advise you, i will say that i do not think any good will come to her by your inquiry into the matter. she is one of those women who resent all control; and, if i may judge from a letter she wrote to me the other day, she is bent now on educating herself regardless of the conclusions to which her studies may lead her. i shall pray for her, and that god may watch over and guide her is my hope. i am sure it is yours too. she is in god's hands, and we can do nothing to help her. i am convinced of that, and it would be well for you to put her utterly out of your mind. 'i am, very truly yours, 'michael o'grady.' 'put her utterly out of my mind,' father oliver cried aloud; 'now what does he mean by that?' and he asked himself if this piece of advice was father o'grady's attempt to get even with him for having told him that he should have informed himself regarding mr. poole's theological opinions before permitting her to go down to berkshire. it did not seem to him that father o'grady would stoop to such meanness, but there seemed to be no other explanation, and he fell to thinking of what manner of man was father o'grady--an old man he knew him to be, and from the tone of his letters he had judged him a clever man, experienced in the human weakness and conscience. but this last letter! in what light was he to read it? did o'grady fail to understand that there is no more intimate association than that of an author and his secretary. if we are to believe at all in spiritual influences--and who denies them?--can we minimize these? on his way to the writing-table he stopped. mr. poole's age--what was it? he imagined him about sixty. 'it is at that age,' he said, 'that men begin to think about the altars of the early israelites,' and praying at intervals that he might be seventy, he wrote a short note thanking father o'grady for his advice and promising to bear it in mind. he did not expect to get an answer, nor did he wish for an answer; for he had begun to feel that he and father o'grady had drifted apart, and had no further need one for the other. 'are there no letters this morning?' he asked catherine. 'none, sir. you haven't had one from london for a long time.' he turned away. 'an intolerable woman--intolerable! i shall be obliged to make a change soon,' he said, turning away so that catherine should not see the annoyance that he felt on his face. _from father oliver gogarty to miss nora glynn._ 'garranard, bohola, '_august_ , --. 'dear miss glynn, 'you said in your very kind letter, which i received a fortnight ago, and which i answered hastily, that on some future occasion you would perhaps tell me about the book mr. poole is writing. i wonder if this occasion will ever arise, and, if so, if it be near or far--near, i hope, for interested as i naturally am in your welfare, i have begun to feel some anxiety regarding this book. on the day that--' 'father o'grady, your reverence.' father oliver laid his letter aside, and then hid it in the blotter, regretting his haste and his fumbling hands, which perhaps had put the thought into o'grady's mind that the letter was to nora. and so he came forward faintly embarrassed to meet a small pale man, whom he judged to be seventy or thereabouts, coming forward nimbly, bent a little, with a long, thin arm and bony hand extended in a formal languor of welcome. a little disappointing was the first moment, but it passed away quickly, and when his visitor was seated father oliver noticed a large nose rising out of the pallor and on either side of it dim blue eyes and some long white locks. 'you're surprised to see me,' father o'grady said in a low, winning voice. 'of course you're surprised--how could it be otherwise? but i hope you're glad.' 'very glad,' father oliver answered. 'glad, very glad,' he repeated; and begged his visitor to allow him to help him off with his overcoat. 'how pleasant,' father o'grady said, as soon as he was back in the armchair, as if he felt that the duty fell upon him to find a conversation that would help them across the first five minutes--'how pleasant it is to see a turf fire again! the turf burns gently, mildly, a much pleasanter fire than coal; the two races express themselves in their fires.' 'oh, we're fiery enough over here,' father oliver returned; and the priests laughed. 'i did not feel that i was really in ireland,' father o'grady continued, 'till i saw the turf blazing and falling into white ash. you see i haven't been in ireland for many years.' father oliver threw some more sods of turf into the grate, saying: 'i'm glad, father o'grady, that you enjoy the fire, and i'm indeed glad to see you. i was just thinking--' 'of me?' father o'grady asked, raising his catholic eyes. the interruption was a happy one, for father oliver would have found himself embarrassed to finish the sentence he had begun. for he would not have liked to have admitted that he had just begun a letter to nora glynn, to say, 'there it is on the table.' father o'grady's interruption gave him time to revise his sentence. 'yes, i was thinking of you, father o'grady. wondering if i might dare to write to you again.' 'but why should you be in doubt?' father o'grady asked; and then, remembering a certain asperity in father oliver's last letter, he thought it prudent to change the conversation. 'well, here i am and unexpected, but, apparently, welcome.' 'very welcome,' father oliver murmured. 'i'm glad of that,' the old man answered; 'and now to my story.' and he told how a variety of little incidents had come about, enabling him to spend his vacation in ireland. 'a holiday is necessary for every man. and, after all, it is as easy to go from london to ireland as it is to go to margate, and much more agreeable. but i believe you are unacquainted with london, and margate is doubtless unknown to you. well, i don't know that you've missed much;' and he began to tell of the month he had spent wandering in the old country, and how full of memories he had found it--all sorts of ideas and associations new and old. 'maybe it was you that beguiled me to ireland; if so, i ought to thank you for a very pleasant month's holiday. now i'm on my way home, and finding that i could fit in the railway journey i went to tinnick, and i couldn't go to tinnick without driving over to garranard.' 'i should think not, indeed,' father oliver answered quickly. 'it was very good of you to think of me, to undertake the journey to tinnick and the long drive from tinnick over here.' 'one should never be praised for doing what is agreeable to one to do. i liked you from your letters; you're like your letters, father oliver--at least i think you are.' 'i'm certain you're like yours,' father oliver returned, 'only i imagined you to speak slower.' 'a mumbling old man,' father o'grady interjected. 'you know i don't mean that,' father oliver replied, and there was a trace of emotion in his voice. 'it was really very good of you to drive over from tinnick. you say that you only undertook the journey because it pleased you to do so. if that philosophy were accepted, there would be no difference between a good and an evil action; all would be attributed to selfishness.' he was about to add: 'this visit is a kindness that i did not expect, and one which i certainly did not deserve;' but to speak these words would necessitate an apology for the rudeness he felt he was guilty of in his last letter, and the fact that he knew that father o'grady had come to talk to him about nora increased his nervousness. but their talk continued in commonplace and it seemed impossible to lift it out of the rut. father o'grady complimented father oliver on his house and oliver answered that it was peter conway that built it, and while praising its comfort, he enlarged on the improvements that had been made in the houses occupied by priests. 'yes, indeed,' father o'grady answered, 'the average irish priest lived in my time in a cottage not far removed from those the peasants lived in. all the same, there was many a fine scholar among them. virgil, horace, ovid, catullus, cicero in the bookcases. do you ever turn to these books? do you like reading latin?' and father oliver replied that sometimes he took down his virgil. 'i look into them all sometimes,' he added. 'and you still read latin, classical latin, easily?' father o'grady inquired. 'fairly,' father oliver replied; 'i read without turning to the dictionary, though i often come to words i have never seen or have forgotten the meaning of. i read on. the latin poets are more useful than the english to me.' 'more useful?' father o'grady repeated. 'more useful,' father oliver rejoined, 'if your object is a new point of view, and one wants that sometimes, living alone in the silent country. one sometimes feels frightened sitting by the fire all alone listening to the wind. i said just now that i was thinking of you. i often think of you, father o'grady, and envy you your busy parish. if i ever find myself in london i shall go for long tram drives, and however sordid the district i shall view the dim congregation of houses with pleasure and rejoice in the hub of the streets.' 'you would soon weary of london, i promise you that, father oliver.' 'a promise for which it would be an affectation to thank you,' father oliver answered. and father o'grady spoke of the miles and miles of docks. 'the great murky thames,' he said, 'wearies, but it is very wonderful. ah, landor's "hellenics" in the original latin: how did that book come here?' 'a question i've often asked myself,' father oliver returned. 'a most intellectual volume it is to find in the house of an irish priest. books travel, and my predecessor, father peter, is the last man in the world who would have cared to spend an hour on anything so literary as landor. he used to read the newspaper--all the newspapers he could get hold of.' father peter's personality did not detain them long, and feeling somewhat ashamed of their inability to talk naturally, without thinking of what they were to say next, father o'grady ventured to doubt if horace would approve of landor's latin and of the works written in comparatively modern times. buchanan, for instance. at last the conversation became so trite and wearisome that father o'grady began to feel unable to continue it any longer. 'you've a nice garden, father oliver.' 'you'd like to see my garden?' father oliver asked, very much relieved at having escaped from buchanan so easily. and the two priests went out, each hoping that the other would break the ice; and to encourage father oliver to break it, father o'grady mentioned that he was going back that evening to tinnick--a remark that was intended to remind father oliver that the time was passing by. father oliver knew that the time for speaking of her was passing by, but he could not bring himself to speak, and instead he tried to persuade father o'grady to stay to dinner, but he could not be persuaded; and they walked to and fro, talking about their different parishes, father o'grady asking father oliver questions about his school and his church. and when father o'grady had contributed a great deal of unnecessary information, he questioned father o'grady about his parish, and gained much information regarding the difficulties that a catholic priest met with in london, till religion became as wearisome as the latin language. at last it suddenly struck father oliver that if he allowed the talk to continue regarding the difficulties of the catholic priest in london, father o'grady might speak of girls that had been driven out of ireland by the priests, to become prostitutes in london. a talk on this subject would be too painful, and to escape from it he spoke of the beauty of the trees about the garden and the flowers in the garden, calling father o'grady's attention to the chrysanthemums, and, not willing to be outdone in horticulture, the london priest began to talk about the japanese mallow in his garden, father oliver listening indifferently, saying, when it came to him to make a remark, that the time had come to put in the bulbs. 'miss glynn was very fond of flowers,' he said suddenly, 'and she helped me with my garden; it was she who told me to plant roses in that corner, and to cover the wall with rambling robin. was it not a very pretty idea to cover that end of the garden with rambling roses?' 'it was indeed. she is a woman of great taste in music and in many other things. she must have regretted your garden.' 'why do you think she regretted my garden?' father oliver asked. 'because she always regretted that mine wasn't larger. she helped me with my garden;' and feeling that they had at last got into a conversation that was full of interest for them both, father oliver said: 'shall we go into the house? we shall be able to talk more agreeably by the fireside.' 'i should like to get back to that turf fire; for it is the last that i shall probably see. let us get back to it.' 'i'm quite agreeable to return to the fire. catherine will bring in the tea presently.' and as soon as they were back in the parlour, father oliver said: 'father o'grady, that is your chair. it was very good of you to take the trouble to drive over.' 'i wished to make my correspondent's acquaintance,' father o'grady murmured; 'and there is much that it is difficult to put down on paper without creating a wrong impression, whereas in talk one is present to rectify any mistakes one may drop into. i am thinking now of the last subject dealt with in our correspondence, that i should have informed myself regarding mr. poole's writing before i consented to allow nora glynn to accept the post of secretary.' 'you must forgive me, father o'grady,' father oliver cried. 'there is nothing to forgive, father oliver; but this criticism surprised me, for you have known miss nora glynn longer than i have, and it seems strange that you should have forgotten already her steadfastness. nothing that i could have said would have availed, and it seems to me that you were mistaken in asking me to urge miss glynn to decline the chance of improving her circumstances. i could not compel miss glynn even if i had wished to compel her. but we have discussed that question; let it pass.' 'all the same,' father oliver interjected, 'if one sees a woman going into danger, surely one may warn her. a word of warning dropped casually is sometimes effective.' 'but it is fatal to insist,' father o'grady remarked; 'and one should not try to bar the way--that is my experience at least.' 'well, your experiences are longer than mine, father o'grady, i submit. the mistake i made will certainly not be repeated. but since hearing from you i've heard from miss glynn, and the remarks she makes in her letters about mr. poole's literary work, unless indeed he be a catholic, alarm me.' 'biblical criticism is not a catholic characteristic,' father o'grady answered. 'so miss glynn has written to you?' 'yes, but nothing definite about mr. poole's work--nothing definite. do you know anything, father o'grady, about this man's writing? what is his reputation in the literary world?' 'i've heard a great deal about him,' father o'grady answered. 'i've made inquiries and have read some of mr. poole's books, and have seen them reviewed in the newspapers; i've heard his opinions discussed, and his opinions are anti-christian, inasmuch as he denies the divinity of our lord.' 'could anybody be more anti-christian than that?' father oliver asked. 'yes, very much more,' father o'grady replied. 'there have always been people, and their number is increasing, who say that christianity is not only untruthful but, what is worse, a great evil, having set men one against the other, creating wars innumerable. millions have owed their deaths to tortures they have received because they differed regarding some trifling passage in scripture. there can be no doubt of that, but it is equally true that christianity has enabled many more millions to live as much from a practical point of view as from a spiritual. if christianity had not been a necessity it would not have triumphed;' and father o'grady continued to speak of mr. poole's historical accounts of the history of the rise and influence of christianity till father oliver interrupted him, crying out: 'and it is with that man her life will henceforth be passed, reading the books he reads and writes, and, what is worse, listening to his insidious conversation, to his subtle sophistries, for, no doubt, he is an eloquent and agreeable talker.' 'you think, then,' father o'grady said, 'that a christian forfeits his faith if he inquires?' 'no, if i thought that i should cease to be a christian. she is not inquiring the matter out of her own account; she is an enforced listener, and hears only one side. every day a plausible account is being poured into her ears, and her circumstances are such as would tempt her to give a willing ear to mr. poole's beliefs that god has not revealed his existence, and that we are free to live as we please, nature being our only guide. i cannot imagine a young woman living in a more dangerous atmosphere than this. 'all you tell me, father o'grady, frightens me. i discovered my suspicions to you in my letters, but i can express myself better in talking than on paper--far better. it is only now that i realize how wrongly i acted towards this young woman. i was frightened in a measure before, but the reality of my guilt has never appeared so distinctly to me till now. you have revealed it to me, and i'm thinking now of what account i could give to god were i to die to-morrow. "thou hast caused a soul to be lost," he would say. "the sins of the flesh are transitory like the flesh, the sins of the faith are deeper," may be god's judgment. father o'grady, i'm frightened, frightened; my fear is great, and at this moment i feel like a man on his deathbed. my agony is worse, for i'm in good health and can see clearly, whereas the dying man understands little. the senses numb as death approaches.' 'have you spoken of the mistake you made in confession, father oliver?' 'no, why should i?' he answered, 'for none here would understand me. but i'll confess to you. you may have been sent to hear me. who knows? who can say?' and he dropped on his knees crying: 'can i be forgiven if that soul be lost to god? tell me if such a sin can be forgiven?' 'we must not fall into the sin of despair,' father o'grady answered. and he murmured the latin formula _absolve te_, etc., making the sign of the cross over the head of his penitent. for a while after the priests knelt together in prayer, and it was with a feeling that his burden had been lifted from him that father oliver rose from his knees, and, subdued in body and mind, stood looking through the room, conscious of the green grass showing through his window, lighted by a last ray of the setting sun. it was the wanness of this light that put the thought into his mind that it would soon be time to send round to the stables for his visitor's car. his visitor! that small, frail man sitting in his armchair would soon be gone, carrying with him this, father oliver's, confession. what had he confessed? already he had forgotten, and both men stood face to face thinking of words wherewith they might break the silence. 'i do not know,' father o'grady said, 'that i altogether share your fear that an anti-christian atmosphere necessarily implies that the catholic who comes into it will lose her faith, else faith would not be a pure gift from god. god doesn't overload his creatures unbearably, nor does he put any stress upon them from which they cannot extricate themselves. i could cite many instances of men and women whose faith has been strengthened by hostile criticism; the very arguments that have been urged against their faith have forced them to discover other arguments, and in this way they have been strengthened in their catholic convictions.' and to father oliver's question if he discerned any other influence except an intellectual influence in mr. poole, he answered that he had not considered this side of the question. 'i don't know what manner of man he is in his body,' said father oliver, 'but his mind is more dangerous. an intellectual influence is always more dangerous than a sensual influence, and the sins of faith are worse than the sins of the flesh. i never thought of him as a possible seducer. but there may be that danger too. i still think, father o'grady, that you might have warned nora of her danger. forgive me; i'm sure you did all that was necessary. you do forgive me?' the men's eyes met, and father o'grady said, as if he wished to change the subject: 'you were born at tinnick, were you not?' 'yes, i was born in tinnick,' father oliver repeated mechanically, almost as if he had not heard the question. 'and your sisters are nuns?' 'yes, yes.' 'tell me how it all came about.' 'how all what came about?' father oliver asked, for he was a little dazed and troubled in his mind, and was, therefore, easily led to relate the story of the shop in tinnick, his very early religious enthusiasms, and how he remembered himself always as a pious lad. on looking into the years gone by, he said that he saw himself more often than not by his bedside rapt in innocent little prayers. and afterwards at school he had been considered a pious lad. he rambled on, telling his story almost unconsciously, getting more thoughtful as he advanced into it, relating carefully the absurd episode of the hermitage in which, to emulate the piety of the old time, he chose castle island as a suitable spot for him to live in. father o'grady listened, seriously moved by the story; and father oliver continued it, telling how eliza, coming to see the priest in him, gave up her room to him as soon as their cousin the bishop was consulted. and it was at this point of the narrative that father o'grady put a question. 'was no attempt,' he asked, 'made to marry you to some girl with a big fortune?' and father oliver told of his liking for annie mcgrath and of his aversion for marriage, acquiescing that aversion might be too strong a word; indifference would more truthfully represent him. 'i wasn't interested in annie mcgrath nor in any woman as far as i can remember until this unfortunate conduct of mine awakened an interest in nora glynn. and it would be strange, indeed, if it hadn't awakened an interest in me,' he muttered to himself. father o'grady suppressed the words that rose up in his mind, 'now i'm beginning to understand.' and father oliver continued, like one talking to himself: 'i'm thinking that i was singularly free from all temptations of the sensual life, especially those represented by womankind. i was ordained early, when i was twenty-two, and as soon as i began to hear confessions, the things that surprised me the most were the stories relating to those passionate attachments that men experience for women and women for men--attachments which sometimes are so intense that if the sufferer cannot obtain relief by the acquiescence of the object of their affections, he, if it be he, she, if it be she, cannot refrain from suicide. there have been cases of men and women going mad because their love was not reciprocated, and i used to listen to these stories wonderingly, unable to understand, bored by the relation.' if father oliver had looked up at that moment, father o'grady's eyes would have told him that he had revealed himself, and that perhaps father o'grady now knew more about him than he knew himself. but without withdrawing his eyes from the fire he continued talking till catherine's step was heard outside. 'she's coming to lay the cloth for our tea,' father oliver said. and father o'grady answered: 'i shall be glad of a cup of tea.' 'must you really go after tea?' father oliver asked; and again he begged father o'grady to stay for dinner. but father o'grady, as if he felt that the object of his visit had been accomplished, spoke of the drive back to tinnick and of the convenience of the branch line of railway. it was a convenience certainly, but it was also an inconvenience, owing to the fact that the trains run from tinnick sometimes missed the mail train; and this led father oliver to speak of the work he was striving to accomplish, the roofing of kilronan abbey, and many other things, and the time passed without their feeling it till the car came round to take father o'grady away. 'he goes as a dream goes,' father oliver said, and a few minutes afterwards he was sitting alone by his turf fire, asking himself in what dreams differed from reality. for like a dream father o'grady had come and he had gone, never to return. 'but does anything return?' he asked himself, and he looked round his room, wondering why the chairs and tables did not speak to him, and why life was not different from what it was. he could hear catherine at work in the kitchen preparing his dinner, she would bring it to him as she had done yesterday, he would eat it, he would sit up smoking his pipe for a while, and about eleven o'clock go to his bed. he would lie down in it, and rise and say mass and see his parishioners. all these things he had done many times before, and he would go on doing them till the day of his death--until the day of my death,' he repeated, 'never seeing her again, never seeing him. why did he come here?' and he was surprised that he could find no answer to any of the questions that he put to himself. 'nothing will happen again in my life--nothing of any interest. this is the end! and if i did go to london, of what should i speak to him? it will be better to try to forget it all, and return, if i can, to the man i was before i knew her;' and he stood stock still, thinking that without this memory he would not be himself. father o'grady's coming had been a pleasure to him, for they had talked together; he had confessed to him; had been shriven. at that moment he caught sight of a newspaper upon his table. '_illustrated england_,' he muttered, his thoughts half away; and he fell to wondering how it had come into the house. 'father o'grady must have left it,' he said, and began to unroll the paper. but while unrolling it he stopped. half his mind was still away, and he sat for fully ten minutes lost in sad sensations, and it was the newspaper slipping from his hand that awoke him. the first thing that caught his eye on opening the paper was an interview with mr. walter poole, embellished with many photographs of beechwood hall. 'did o'grady leave this paper here for me to read,' he asked himself, 'or did he forget to take it away with him? we talked of so many things that he may have forgotten it, forgotten even to mention it. how very strange!' the lodge gates and the long drive, winding between different woods, ascending gradually to the hilltop on which beechwood hall was placed by an early eighteenth-century architect, seemed to the priest to be described with too much unction by the representative of _illustrated england_. to the journalist beechwood hall stood on its hill, a sign and symbol of the spacious leisure of the eighteenth century and the long tradition that it represented, one that had not even begun to drop into decadence till , a tradition that still existed, despite the fact that democracy was finding its way into the agricultural parts of england. the journalist was impressed, perhaps unduly impressed, by the noble hall and the quiet passages that seemed to preserve a memory of the many generations that had passed through them on different errands, now all hushed in the family vault. father oliver looked down the column rapidly, and it was not until the footman who admitted the journalist was dismissed by the butler, who himself conducted the journalist to the library, that father oliver said: 'we have at last arrived at the castle of learning in which the great mr. poole sits sharpening the pen which is to slay christianity. but christianity will escape mr. poole's pen. it, has outlived many such attacks in the past. we shall see, however, what kind of nib he uses, fine or blunt?' the journalist followed the butler down the long library overlooking green sward to a quiet nook, if he might venture to speak of mr. walter poole's study as a quiet nook. it seemed to surprise him that mr. walter poole should rise from his writing-table and come forward to meet him, and he expressed his gratitude to mr. walter poole, whose time was of great importance, for receiving him. and after all this unction came a flattering description of mr. walter poole himself. he was, in the interviewer's words, a young man, tall and clean-shaven, with a high nose which goes well with an eye-glass. the chin is long and drops straight; his hair is mustard-coloured and glossy, and it curls very prettily about the broad, well-shapen forehead. he is reserved at first, and this lends a charm to the promise, which is very soon granted you, of making the acquaintance with the thoughts and ideas which have interested mr. walter poole since boyhood--in fine, which have given him his character. if he seems at first sight to conceal himself from you, it is from shyness, or because he is reluctant to throw open his mind to the casual curious. why should he not keep his mind for his own enjoyment and for the enjoyment of his friends, treating it like his pleasure grounds or park? his books are not written for the many but for the few, and he does not desire a larger audience than those with whom he is in natural communion from the first, and this without any faintest appearance of affectation. 'i suppose it isn't fair,' the priest said, 'to judge a man through his interviewer; but if this interviewer doesn't misrepresent mr. walter poole, mr. walter poole is what is commonly known as a very superior person. he would appear from this paper,' the priest said, 'to be a man between thirty and forty, not many years older than myself.' the priest's thoughts floated away back into the past, and, returning suddenly with a little start to the present, he continued reading the interview, learning from it that mr. walter poole's conversation was usually gentle, like a quiet river, and very often, like a quiet river, it rushed rapidly when mr. walter poole became interested in his subject. 'how very superior all this is,' the priest said. 'the river of thought in him,' the interviewer continued, 'is deep or shallow, according to the need of the moment. if, for instance, mr. walter poole is asked if he be altogether sure that it is wise to disturb people in their belief in the traditions and symbols that have held sway for centuries, he will answer quickly that if truth lies behind the symbols and traditions, it will be in the interest of the symbols and traditions to inquire out the truth, for blind belief--in other words, faith--is hardly a merit, or if it be a merit it is a merit that cannot be denied to the savages who adore idols. but the civilized man is interested in his history, and the bible deserves scientific recognition, for it has a history certainly and is a history. "we are justified, therefore," mr. walter poole pleaded, "in seeking out the facts, and the search is conducted as much in the interests of theology as of science; for though history owes nothing to theology, it cannot be denied that theology owes a great deal to history."' 'he must have thought himself very clever when he made that remark to the interviewer,' the priest muttered; and he walked up and down his room, thinking of nora glynn living in this unchristian atmosphere. he picked up the paper again and continued reading, for he would have to write to nora about father o'grady's visit and about the interview in _illustrated england_. the interviewer inquired if mr. walter poole was returning to palestine, and mr. walter poole replied that there were many places that he would like to revisit, galilee, for instance, a country that st. paul never seemed to have visited, which, to say the least, was strange. whereupon a long talk began about paul and jesus, mr. walter poole maintaining that paul's teaching was identical with that of jesus, and that peter was a clown despised by paul and jesus. 'how very superior,' father oliver muttered--how very superior.' he read that mr. walter poole was convinced that the three synoptic gospels were written towards the close of the first century; and one of the reasons he gave for this attribution was as in matthew, chapter xxvii., verse , 'and they took counsel, and bought with them (the thirty pieces of silver) the potter's field, to bury strangers in. wherefore that field was called, the field of blood, unto this day'--a passage which showed that the gospel could not have been written till fifty or sixty years after the death of jesus. 'england must be falling into atheism if newspapers dare to print such interviews,' father oliver said; and he threw the paper aside angrily. 'and it was i,' he continued, dropping into his armchair, 'that drove her into this atheistical country. i am responsible, i alone.' _from father oliver gogarty to miss glynn._ 'garranard, bohola, '_august_ , --. 'dear miss glynn, 'i have a piece of news for you. father o'grady has been here, and left me a few hours ago. catherine threw open the door, saying, "father o'grady, your reverence," and the small, frail man whom you know so well walked into the room, surprising me, who was altogether taken aback by the unexpectedness of his visit. 'he was the last person in the world i expected at that moment to meet, yet it was natural that an irish priest, on the mission in england, would like to spend his holidays in ireland, and still more natural that, finding himself in ireland, father o'grady should come to see me. he drove over from tinnick, and we talked about you. he did not seem on the whole as anxious for your spiritual safety as i am, which is only what one might expect, for it was not he that drove you out of a catholic country into a protestant one. he tried to allay my fears, saying that i must not let remorse of conscience get hold of me, and he encouraged me to believe that my responsibility had long ago ended. it was pleasant to hear these things said, and i believed him in a way; but he left by accident or design a copy of _illustrated england_ on my table. i am sufficiently broad-minded to believe that it is better to be a good protestant than a bad catholic; but mr. walter poole is neither catholic nor protestant, but an agnostic, which is only a polite word for an atheist. week in and week out you will hear every argument that may be used against our holy religion. it is true that you have the advantage of being born a catholic, and were well instructed in your religion; and no doubt you will accept with caution his statements, particularly that very insidious statement that jesus lays no claim to divinity in the three synoptic gospels, and that these were not written by the apostles themselves, but by greeks sixty, seventy, or perhaps eighty years after his death. i do not say he will try to undermine your faith, but how can he do otherwise if he believe in what he writes? however careful he may be to avoid blasphemy in your presence, the fact remains that you are living in an essentially unchristian atmosphere, and little by little the poison which you are taking in will accumulate, and you will find that you have been influenced without knowing when or how. 'if you lose your faith, i am responsible for it; and i am not exaggerating when i say the thought that i may have lost a soul to god is always before me. i can imagine no greater responsibility than this, and there seems to be no way of escaping from it. father o'grady says that you have passed out of our care, that all we can do is to pray for you. but i would like to do something more, and if you happen upon some passages in the books you are reading that seem in contradiction to the doctrines taught by the catholic church, i hope you will not conclude that the church is without an answer. the church has an answer ready for every single thing that may be said against her doctrines. i am not qualified to undertake the defence of the church against anyone. i quite recognize my own deficiency in this matter, but even i may be able to explain away some doubts that may arise. if so, i beg of you not to hesitate to write to me. if i cannot do so myself, i may be able to put you in the way of finding out the best catholic opinion on matters of doctrine. 'very sincerely yours, 'oliver gogarty.' _from miss nora glynn to father oliver gogarty._ 'beechwood hall, berkshire, '_august_ , --. 'i am sorry indeed that i am causing you so much trouble of conscience. you must try to put it out of your mind that you are responsible for me. the idea is too absurd. when i was in your parish i was interested in you, and that was why i tried to improve the choir and took trouble to decorate the altar. have you forgotten how anxious i was that you should write the history of the lake and its castles? why don't you write it and send it to me? i shall be interested in it, though for the moment i have hardly time to think of anything but jewish history. within the next few weeks, for certain, the last chapter of mr. poole's book will be passed for press, and then we shall go abroad and shall visit all the great men in europe. some are in amsterdam, some are in paris, some live in switzerland. i wish i understood french a little better. isn't it all like a dream? do you know, i can hardly believe i ever was in forlorn garranard teaching little barefooted children their catechism and their a, b, c. 'good-bye, father gogarty. we go abroad next week. i lie awake thinking of this trip--the places i shall see and the people i shall meet. 'very sincerely yours, 'nora glynn.' it seemed to him that her letter gave very little idea of her. some can express themselves on paper, and are more real in the words they write than in the words they speak. but hardly anything of his idea of her transpired in that letter--only in her desire of new ideas and new people. she was interested in everything--in his projected book about the raiders faring forth from the island castles, and now in the source of the christian river; and he began to meditate a destructive criticism of mr. poole's ideas in a letter addressed to the editor of _illustrated england_, losing heart suddenly, he knew not why, feeling the task to be beyond him. perhaps it would be better not to write to nora again. _from father oliver gogarty to miss nora glynn._ 'garranard, bohola, '_august_ , --. 'dear miss glynn, 'i gather from your letter that religion has ceased to interest you, except as a subject for argument, and i will not begin to argue with you, but will put instead a simple question to you: in what faith do you intend to bring up your child? and what will be your answer when your child asks: "who made me?" mr. poole may be a learned man, but all the learning in the world will not tell you what answer to make to your child's questions; only the church can do that. 'i have thought a great deal about the danger that your post of secretary to mr. poole involves and am not sure that the state of indifference is not the worst state of all. one day you will find that indifference has passed into unbelief, and you will write to me (if we continue to write to each other) in such a way that i shall understand that you have come to regard our holy religion as a tale fit only for childhood's ears. i write this to you, because i have been suddenly impelled to write, and it seems to me that in writing to you in this simple way i am doing better than if i spent hours in argument. you will not always think as you do now; the world will not always interest you as much as it does now. i will say no more on this point but will break off abruptly to tell you that i think you are right when you say that we all want change. i feel i have lived too long by the side of this lake, and i am thinking of going to london....' the room darkened gradually, and, going to the window, he longed for something to break the silence, and was glad when the rain pattered among the leaves. the trees stood stark against the sky, in a green that seemed unnatural. the sheep moved as if in fear towards the sycamores, and from all sides came the lowing of cattle. a flash drove him back from the window. he thought he was blinded. the thunder rattled; it was as if a god had taken the mountains in his arms and was shaking them together. crash followed crash; the rain came down; it was as if the rivers of heaven had been opened suddenly. once he thought the storm was over; but the thunder crashed again, the rain began to thicken; there was another flash and another crash, and the pour began again. but all the while the storm was wearing itself out, and he began to wonder if a sullen day, ending in this apocalypse, would pass into a cheerful evening. it seemed as if it would, for some blue was showing between the clouds drifting westward, threatening every moment to blot out the blue, but the clouds continued to brighten at the edges. 'the beginning of the sunset,' the priest said; and he went out on his lawn and stood watching the swallows in the shining air, their dipping, swerving flight showing against a background of dappled clouds. he had never known so extraordinary a change; and he walked to and fro in the freshened air, thinking that nora's health might not have withstood the strain of trudging from street to street, teaching the piano at two shillings an hour, returning home late at night to a poky little lodging, eating any food a landlady might choose to give her. as a music teacher she would have had great difficulty in supporting herself and her baby, and it pleased him to imagine the child as very like her mother; and returning to the house, he added this paragraph: 'i was interrupted while writing this letter by a sudden darkening of the light, and when i went to the window the sky seemed to have sunk close to the earth, and there was a dreadful silence underneath it. i was driven back by a flash of lightning, and the thunder was terrifying. a most extraordinary storm lasting for no more than an hour, if that, and then dispersing into a fine evening. it was a pleasure to see the change--the lake shrouded in mist, with ducks talking softly in the reeds, and swallows high up, advancing in groups like dancers on a background of dappled clouds. 'i have come back to my letter to ask if you would like me to go to see your baby? father o'grady and i will go together if i go to london, and i will write to you about it. you will be glad, no doubt, to hear that the child is going on well. 'very sincerely yours, 'oliver gogarty.' _from father oliver gogarty to miss nora glynn._ 'garranard, bohola, '_september_ , --. 'forgive me, my dear friend, but i am compelled to write to apologize for the introduction of my troubles of conscience and my anxiety for your spiritual welfare into my last letter. you found a way out of difficulties--difficulties into which i plunged you. but we will say no more on that point: enough has been said. you have created a life for yourself. you have shown yourself to be a strong woman in more ways than one, and are entitled to judge whether your work and the ideas you live among are likely to prove prejudicial to your faith and morals. by a virtue of forgiveness which i admire and thank you for, you write telling me of the literary work you are engaged upon. if i had thought before writing the letter i am now apologizing for, i could not have failed to see that you write to me because you would relieve my loneliness as far as you are able. but i did not think: i yielded to my mood, and see now that my letters are disgracefully egotistical, and very often absurd; for have i not begged of you to remember that since god will hold me responsible for your soul, it would be well that you should live a life of virtue and renunciation, so that i shall be saved the humiliation of looking down from above upon you in hell? 'loneliness begets sleeplessness, and sleeplessness begets a sort of madness. i suffer from nightmare, and i cannot find words to tell you how terrible are the visions one sees at dawn. it is not so much that one sees unpleasant and ugly things--life is not always pretty or agreeable, that we know--but when one lies between sleeping and waking, life itself is shown in mean aspects, and it is whispered that one has been duped till now; that now, and for the first time, one knows the truth. you remember how the wind wails about the hilltop on which i live. the wailing of wind has something to do with my condition of mind; one cannot sit from eight o'clock in the evening till twelve at night staring at the lamp, hearing the wind, and remain perfectly sane. 'but why am i writing about myself? i want to escape from myself, and your letters enable me to do so. the names of the cities you are going to visit transport me in imagination, and last night i sat a long while wondering why i could not summon courage to go abroad. something holds me back. i think if i once left garranard, i should never return to the lake and its island. i hope you haven't forgotten marban, the hermit who lived at the end of the lake in church island. i visited his island yesterday. i should have liked to have rowed myself through the strait and along the shores, seeing castle cara and castle burke as i passed; but church island is nearly eight miles from here, and i don't know if i should have been man enough to pull the fisherman's boat so far, so i put the gray horse into the shafts and went round by road. 'church island lies in a bay under a rocky shore, and the farmer who cuts the grass there in the summer-time has a boat to bring away the hay. it was delightful to step into it, and as the oars chimed i said to myself, "i have marban's poem in my pocket--and will read it walking up the little path leading from his cell to his church." the lake was like a sheet of blue glass, and the island lay yellow and red in it. as we rowed, seeking a landing-place under the tall trees that grow along the shores, the smell of autumn leaves mingled with the freshness of the water. we rowed up a beautiful little inlet overhung with bushes. the quay is at the end of it, and on getting out of the boat, i asked the boatman to point out to me what remained of marban's church. he led me across the island--a large one, the largest in the lake--not less than seven acres or nine, and no doubt some parts of it were once cultivated by marban. of his church, however, very little remains--only one piece of wall, and we had great difficulty in seeing it, for it is now surrounded by a dense thicket. the little pathway leading from his cell to the church still exists; it is almost the same as he left it--a little overgrown, that is all. 'marban was no ordinary hermit; he was a sympathetic naturalist, a true poet, and his brother who came to see him, and whose visit gave rise to the colloquy, was a king. i hope i am not wronging marban, but the island is so beautiful that i cannot but think that he was attracted by its beauty and went there because he loved nature as well as god. his poem is full of charming observations of nature, of birds and beasts and trees, and it proves how very false the belief is that primitive man had no eyes to see the beauties of the forest and felt no interest in the habits of animals or of birds, but regarded them merely as food. it pleases me to think of the hermit sitting under the walls of his church or by his cell writing the poem which has given me so much pleasure, including in it all the little lives that cams to visit him--the birds and the beasts--enumerating them as carefully as wordsworth would, and loving them as tenderly. marban! could one find a more beautiful name for a hermit? guaire is the brother's name. marban and king guaire. now, imagine the two brothers meeting for a poetic disputation regarding the value of life, and each speaking from his different point of view! true that guaire's point of view is only just indicated--he listens to his brother, for a hermit's view of life is more his own than a king's. it pleases me to think that the day the twain met to discourse of life and its mission was the counterpart of the day i spent on the island. my day was full of drifting cloud and sunshine, and the lake lay like a mirror reflecting the red shadow of the island. so you will understand that the reasons marban gave for living there in preference to living the life of the world seemed valid, and i could not help peering into the bushes, trying to find a rowan-tree--for he speaks of one. the rowan is the mountain-ash. i found several. one tree was covered with red berries, and i broke off a branch and brought it home, thinking that perchance it might have come down to us from one planted by marban's hand. of blackthorns there are plenty. the adjective he uses is "dusky." could he have chosen a more appropriate one? i thought, too, of "the clutch of eggs, the honey and the mast" that god sent him, of "the sweet apples and red whortleberries," and of his dish of "strawberries of good taste and colour." 'it is hard to give in an english translation an idea of the richness of the verse, heavily rhymed and winningly alliterated, but you will see that he enumerates the natural objects with skill. the eternal summer--the same in his day as in ours--he speaks of as "a coloured mantle," and he mentions "the fragrance of the woods." and seeing the crisp leaves--for the summer was waning--i repeated his phrase, "the summer's coloured mantle," and remembered: "swarms of bees and chafers, the little musicians of the world-- a gentle chorus." "the wren," he says, "is an active songster among the hazel boughs. beautifully hooded birds, wood-peckers, fair white birds, herons, sea-gulls, come to visit me." there is no mournful music in his island; and as for loneliness, there is no such thing in "my lowly little abode, hidden in a mane of green-barked yew-tree. near is an apple-tree, big like a hostel; a pretty bush thick as a fist of hazel-nuts, a choice spring and water fit for a prince to drink. round it tame swine lie down, wild swine, grazing deer, a badger's brood, a peaceful troop, a heavy host of denizens of the soil a-trysting at my house. to meet them foxes come. how delightful!" 'the island is about a hundred yards from the shore, and i wondered how the animals crossed from the mainland as i sat under the porch of the ruined church. i suppose the water was shallower than it is now. but why and how the foxes came to meet the wild swine is a matter of little moment; suffice it that he lived in this island aware of its loneliness, "without the din of strife, grateful to the prince who giveth every good to me in my bower." to which guaire answered: '"i would give my glorious kingship with my share of our father's heritage,-- to the hour of my death let me forfeit it, so that i may be in thy company, o marban." 'there are many such beautiful poems in early irish. i know of another, and i'll send it to you one of these days. in it is a monk who tells how he and his cat sit together, himself puzzling out some literary or historical problem, the cat thinking of hunting mice, and how the catching of each is difficult and requires much patience. 'ireland attained certainly to a high degree of civilization in the seventh and eighth centuries, and if the danes had not come, ireland might have anticipated italy. the poems i have in mind are the first written in europe since classical times, and though italy and france be searched, none will be found to match them. 'i write these things to you because i wish you to remember that, when religion is represented as hard and austere, it is the fault of those who administer religion, and not of religion itself. religion in ireland in the seventh and eighth centuries was clearly a homely thing, full of tender joy and hope, and the inspiration not only of poems, but of many churches and much ornament of all kinds, illuminated missals, carven porches. if ireland had been left to herselfif it had not been for the invasion of the danes, and the still worse invasion of the english--there is no saying what high place she might not have taken in the history of the world. but i am afraid the halcyon light that paused and passed on in those centuries will never return. we have gotten the after-glow, and the past should incite us; and i am much obliged to you for reminding me that the history of the lake and its castles would make a book. i will try to write this book, and while writing will look forward to the day when i shall send you a copy of the work, if god gives me strength and patience to complete it. little is ever completed in ireland.... but i mustn't begin to doubt before i begin the work, and while you and mr. poole are studying dry texts, trying to prove that the things that men have believed and loved for centuries are false, i shall be engaged in writing a sympathetic history--the history of natural things and natural love. 'very sincerely yours, 'oliver gogarty.' _from miss nora glynn to father oliver gogarty._ 'antwerp, '_september_ , --. 'dear father gogarty, 'you are a very human person after all, and it was very kind of you to think about my baby and kind of you to write to me about her. my baby is a little girl, and she has reddish hair like mine, and if ever you see her i think you will see me in her. the address of the woman who is looking after her is mrs. cust, , henry street, guildford. do go to see her and write me a long letter, telling me what you think of her. i am sure a trip to london will do you a great deal of good. pack up your portmanteau, father gogarty, and go to london at once. promise me that you will, and write to me about your impressions of london and father o'grady, and when you are tired of london come abroad. we are going on to munich, that is all i know, but i will write again. 'very sincerely yours, 'nora glynn.' father oliver sat wondering, and then, waking up suddenly, he went about his business, asking himself if she really meant all she said, for why should she wish him to go abroad, for his health or in the hope of meeting him--where? in munich! 'a riddle, a riddle, which'--he reflected a moment--'which my experience of life is not sufficient to solve.' on his way to derrinrush he was met by a man hurrying towards him. 'sure it is i that am in luck this day, meeting your reverence on the road, for we shall be spared half a mile if you have the sacred elements about you.' so much the peasant blurted out between the gasps, and when his breath came easier the priest learnt that catherine, the man's wife, was dying. 'me brother's run for the doctor, but i, being the speedier, came for yourself, and if your reverence has the sacred elements about you, we'll go along together by a short cut over the hill.' 'i'm afraid i have not got the oil and there's nothing for it but to go back to the house.' 'then i'm afeard that catherine will be too late to get the sacrament. but she is a good woman, sorra better, and maybe don't need the oil,' which indeed proved to be a fact, for when they reached the cabin they found the doctor there before them, who rising from his chair by the bedside, said, 'the woman is out of danger, if she ever was in any.' 'all the same,' cried the peasant, 'catherine wouldn't refuse the sacrament.' 'but if she be in no danger, of what use would the sacrament be to her?' the doctor asked; the peasant answering, 'faith, you must have been a protestant before you were a catholic to be talking like that,' and father oliver hesitated, and left the cabin sorrowed by the unseemliness of the wrangle. he was not, however, many yards down the road when the dispute regarding the efficacy of the sacrament administered out of due time was wiped out by a memory of something nora had told him of herself: she had announced to the monitresses, who were discussing their ambitions, that hers was to be the secretary of a man of letters. 'so it would seem that she had an instinct of her destiny from the beginning, just as i had of mine. but had i? her path took an odd turn round by garranard. but she has reached her goal, or nearly. the end may be marriage--with whom? poole most likely. be that as it may, she will pass on to middle age; we shall grow older and seas and continents will divide our graves. why did she come to garranard?' _from father oliver gogarty to miss nora glynn._ '_september_ , --. 'dear miss glynn, 'i received your letter this morning, written from antwerp, and it has set me thinking that mr. poole's interests in scholarship must have procured for him many acquaintances among dutch scholars, men with whom he has been in correspondence. you will meet them and hear them pour their vast erudition across dinner-tables. rubens' great picture, "the descent from the cross," is in antwerp; you will go to see it, and in munich mr. poole will treat you to the works of wagner and mozart. you are very happy; everything has gone well with you, and it would ill befit me, who brought so much unhappiness upon you, to complain that you are too happy, too much intent on the things of this world. yet, if you will allow me to speak candidly, i will tell you what i really think. you are changing; the woman i once knew hardly corresponds with the woman who writes to me. in reading the letters of the english nora, i perceive many traces here and there of the irish nora, for the irish nora was not without a sense of duty, of kindness towards others, but the english nora seems bent upon a life of pleasure, intellectual and worldly adventures. she delights in foreign travel, and no doubt places feelings above ideas, and regards our instincts as our sovereign guides. now, when we find ourselves delighting to this extent in the visible, we may be sure that our lives have wandered far away from spiritual things. there is ever a divorce between the world of sense and the world of spirit, and the question of how much love we may expend upon external things will always arise, and will always be a cause of perplexity to those who do not choose to abandon themselves to the general drift of sensual life. this question is as difficult as the cognate question of what are our duties toward ourselves and our duties toward others. and your letters raise all these questions. i ponder them in my walks by the lake in the afternoon. in the evening in my house on the hilltop i sit thinking, seeing in imagination the country where i have been born and where i have always lived--the lake winding in and out of headlands, the highroad shaded by sycamores at one spot, a little further on wandering like a gray thread among barren lands, with here and there a village; and i make application of all the suggestions your letters contain to my own case. every house in garranard i know, and i see each gable end and each doorway as i sit thinking, and all the faces of my parishioners. i see lights springing up far and near. wherever there is a light there is a poor family. 'upon these people i am dependent for my daily bread, and they are dependent upon me for spiritual consolation. i baptize them, i marry them, and i bury them. how they think of me, i know not. i suppose they hardly think at all. when they return home at night they have little time for thinking; their bodies are too fatigued with the labour of the fields. but as i sit thinking of them, i regret to say that my fear often is that i shall never see any human beings but them; and i dream of long rambles in the french country, resting at towns, reading in libraries. a voice whispers, "you could do very well with a little of her life, but you will never know any other life but your present one." a great bitterness comes up, a little madness gathers behind the eyes; i walk about the room and then i sit down, stunned by the sudden conviction that life is, after all, a very squalid thing--something that i would like to kick like an old hat down a road. 'the conflict going on within me goes on within every man, but without this conflict life would be superficial; we shouldn't know the deeper life. duty has its rewards as well as its pain, and the knowledge that i am passing through a time of probationship sustains me. i know i shall come out of it all a stronger man. 'oliver gogarty.' after posting his letter he walked home, congratulating himself that he had made it plain to her that he was not a man she could dupe. her letter was written plainly, and the more he thought of her letter the clearer did it seem that it was inspired by poole. but what could poole's reason be for wishing him to leave ireland, to go abroad? it was certain that if poole were in love with nora he would do all in his power to keep a poor priest (was it thus they spoke of him?) in ireland. poole might wish to make a fool of him, but what was her reason for advising him to go abroad? revenge was too strong a word. in the course of the evening it suddenly struck him that, after all, she might have written her letter with a view of inducing him to come to rome. she was so capricious that it was not impossible that she had written quite sincerely, and wished him out there with her. she was so many-sided, and he fell to thinking of her character, without being able to arrive at any clear estimate of it, with this result, however--that he could not drive out the belief that she had written him an insincere letter. or did she wish to revenge herself? the thought brought him to his feet, for he could never forget how deeply he had wronged her--it was through his fault that she had become mr. poole's secretary--maybe his mistress. if he had not preached that sermon, she would be teaching the choir in his parish. but, good heavens! what use was there in going over all that again? he walked to the window and stood there watching the still autumn weather--a dull leaden sky, without a ray of light upon the grass, or a wind in the trees--thinking that these gray days deprived him of all courage. and then he remembered suddenly how a villager's horse coming from market had tripped and fallen by the roadside. would that he, too, might fall by the roadside, so weary was he. 'if i could only make known my suffering, she would take pity on me; but no one knows another's suffering.' he walked from his window sighing, and a moment after stopped in front of his writing-table. perhaps it was the writing-table that put the thought into his mind that she might like to read a description of an irish autumn. _from father oliver gogarty to miss nora glynn._ 'garranard, bohola, '_september_. 'you know the wind is hardly ever at rest about the hilltop on which my house stands. even in summer the wind sighs, a long, gentle little sigh, sometimes not unpleasant to hear. you used to speak of an Æolian harp, and say that i should place one on my window-sill. a doleful instrument it must be--loud wailing sound in winter-time, and in the summer a little sigh. but in these autumn days an Æolian harp would be mute. there is not wind enough to-day on the hillside to cause the faintest vibration. yesterday i went for a long walk in the woods, and i can find no words that would convey an idea of the stillness. it is easy to speak of a tomb, but it was more than that. the dead are dead, and somnambulism is more mysterious than death. the season seemed to stand on the edge of a precipice, will-less, like a sleep-walker. now and then the sound of a falling leaf caught my ear, and i shall always remember how a crow, flying high overhead towards the mountains, uttered an ominous "caw"; another crow answered, and there was silence again. the branches dropped, and the leaves hung out at the end of long stems. one could not help pitying the trees, though one knew one's pity was vain. 'as i wandered in derrinrush, i came suddenly upon some blood-red beech-trees, and the hollow was full of blood-red leaves. you have been to derrinrush: you know how mystic and melancholy the wood is, full of hazels and druid stones. after wandering a long while i turned into a path. it led me to a rough western shore, and in front of me stood a great scotch fir. the trunk has divided, and the two crowns showed against the leaden sky. it has two birch-trees on either side, and their graceful stems and faint foliage, pale like gold, made me think of dancers with sequins in their hair and sleeves. there seemed to be nothing but silence in the wood, silence, and leaves ready to fall. i had not spoken to anyone for a fortnight--i mean i had no conversation with anyone--and my loneliness helped me to perceive the loneliness of the wood, and the absence of birds made me feel it. the lake is never without gulls, but i didn't see one yesterday. "the swallows are gone," i said; "the wild geese will soon be here," and i remembered their doleful cry as i scrambled under some blackthorn bushes, glad to get out of the wood into the fields. though i knew the field i was in well, i didn't remember the young sycamores growing in one corner of it. yesterday i could not but notice them, for they seemed to be like children dying of consumption in a hospital ward--girls of twelve or thirteen. you will think the comparison far-fetched and unhealthy, one that could only come out of a morbidly excited imagination. well, i cannot help that; like you, i must write as i feel. 'suddenly i heard the sound of an axe, and i can find no words to tell you how impressive its sound was in the still autumn day. "how soon will the tree fall?" i thought; and, desirous of seeing it fall, i walked on, guided by the sound, till i saw at the end of the glade--whom do you think? do you remember an old man called patsy murphy? he had once been a very good carpenter, and had made and saved money. but he is now ninety-five, and i could hardly believe my eyes when i saw him trying to cut down a larch. what his object could be in felling the tree i could not tell, and, feeling some curiosity, i walked forward. he continued to chip away pieces of the bark till his strength failed him, and he had to sit down to rest. seeing me, he took off his hat--you know the tall hat he wears--a hat given him twenty or thirty years ago by whom? patsy murphy's mind is beginning to wander. he tells stories as long as you will listen to him, and it appears now that his daughter-in-law turned him out of his house--the house he had built himself, and that he had lived in for half a century. this, however, is not the greatest wrong she had done him. he could forgive her this wrong, but he cannot forgive her stealing of his sword. "there never was a murphy," he said, "who hadn't a sword." whether this sword is an imagination of patsy's fading brain, i cannot say; perhaps he had some old sword and lost it. the tale he tells to-day differs wholly from the tale he told yesterday and the tale he will tell to-morrow. he told me once he had been obliged to give up all his savings to his son. i went to interview the son, determined to sift the matter to the bottom, and discovered that patsy had still one hundred and twenty pounds in the bank. ten pounds had been taken out for--i needn't trouble you with further details. sufficient has been said to enable you to understand how affecting it was to meet this old man in the red and yellow woods, at the end of a breathless autumn day, trying to fell a young larch. he talked so rapidly, and one story flowed so easily into another, that it was a long time before i could get in a word. at last i was able to get out of him that the colonel had given him leave to build a house on the shore, where he would be out of everybody's way. "all my old friends are gone, the colonel's father and his mother. god be merciful to her! she was a good woman, the very best. and all i want now is time to think of them that's gone.... didn't i know the colonel's grandfather and his grandmother? they're all buried in the cemetery yonder in kiltoon, and on a fine evenin' i do like to be sittin' on a stone by the lake, thinking of them all." 'it was at once touching and impressive to see this old man, weak as a child, the only trembling thing in a moveless day, telling these wanderings of an almost insane brain. you will say, "but what matter? they may not be true in fact, but they are his truth, they are himself, they are his age." his ninety-five years are represented in his confused talk, half recollection, half complaints about the present. he knew my father and mother, too, and, peering into my face, he caught sight of a gray hair, and i heard him mutter: '"ah! they grow gray quicker now than they used to." 'as i walked home in the darkening light, i bethought myself of the few years left to me to live, though i am still a young man, that in a few years, which would pass like a dream, i should be as frail as patsy murphy, who is ninety-five. "why should i not live as long?" i asked myself, losing my teeth one by one and my wits.' '_september_. 'i was interrupted in my description of the melancholy season, and i don't know how i should have finished that letter if i had not been interrupted. the truth is that the season was but a pretext. i did not dare to write asking you to forgive me for having returned your letter. i do not do so now. i will merely say that i returned the letter because it annoyed me, and, shameful as the admission may be, i admit that i returned it because i wished to annoy you. i said to myself, "if this be so--if, in return for kind thought--why shouldn't she suffer? i suffer." one isn't--one cannot be--held responsible for every base thought that enters the mind. how long the mind shall entertain a thought before responsibility is incurred i am not ready to say. one's mood changes. a storm gathers, rages for a while, and disperses; but the traces of the storm remain after the storm has passed away. i am thinking now that perhaps, after all, you were sincere when you asked me to leave garranard and take my holiday in rome, and the baseness of which for a moment i deemed you capable was the creation of my own soul. i don't mean that my mind, my soul, is always base. at times we are more or less unworthy. our tempers are part of ourselves? i have been pondering this question lately. which self is the true self--the peaceful or the choleric? my wretched temper aggravated my disappointment, and my failure to write the history of the lake and its castles no doubt contributed to produce the nervous depression from which i am suffering. but this is not all; it seems to me that i may point out that your--i hardly know what word to use: "irrelevancy" does not express my meaning; "inconsequences" is nearer, yet it isn't the word i want--well, your inconsequences perplex and distract my thoughts. if you will look through the letter you sent me last you will find that you have written many things that might annoy a man living in the conditions in which i live. you follow the current of your mood, but the transitions you omit, and the reader is left hopelessly conjecturing....' she seemed so strange, so inconclusive. there seemed to be at least two, if not three, different women in the letters she had written to him, and he sat wondering how a woman with cheeks like hers, and a voice like hers, and laughter like hers, could take an interest in such arid studies. her very name, nora glynn, seemed so unlike the woman who would accompany mr. poole into national libraries, and sit by him surrounded by learned tomes. moreover a mistress does not read hebrew in a national library with her paramour. but what did he know about such women? he had heard of them supping in fashionable restaurants covered with diamonds, and he thought of them with painted faces and dyed hair, and he was sure that nora did not dye her hair or paint her face. no, she was not poole's mistress. it was only his ignorance of life that could have led him to think of anything so absurd.... and then, weary of thinking and debating with himself, he took down a book that was lent some months ago, a monograph on a learned woman, a learned philosophical writer and translator of exegetical works from the german. like nora, she came from the middle classes, and, like nora, she transgressed, how often he did not know, but with another woman's husband certainly. a critical writer and exponent of serious literature. taste for learned studies did not preclude abstinence from those sins which in his ignorance of life he had associated with worldlings! of course, st. augustine was such a one. but is a man's truth also woman's truth? apparently it is, and if he could believe the book he had been reading, nora might very well be poole's mistress. therewith the question came up again, demanding answer: why did she write declining any correspondence with him, and three weeks afterwards write another letter inveigling him, tempting him, bringing him to this last pitch of unhappiness? was the letter he returned to her prompted by mr. poole and by a spirit of revenge? three days after he took up his pen and added this paragraph to his unfinished letter: 'i laid aside my pen, fearing i should ask what are your relations with mr. poole. i have tried to keep myself from putting this question to you, but the torture of doubt overcomes me, and even if you should never write to me again, i must ask it. remember that i am responsible to god for the life you lead. had it not been for me, you would never have known poole. you must grant to every man his point of view, and, as a christian, i cannot put my responsibility out of mind. if you lose your soul, i am responsible for it. should you write that your relations with mr. poole are not innocent, i shall not be relieved of my responsibility, but it will be a relief to me to know the truth. i shall pray for you, and you will repent your sins if you are living in sin. forgive me the question i am putting to you. i have no right to do so whatever. whatever right i had over you when you were in my parish has passed from me. i exceeded that right, but that is the old story. maybe i am repeating my very fault again. it is not unlikely, for what do we do all through our lives but to repeat ourselves? you have forgiven me, and, having forgiven me once, maybe you will forgive me again. however this may be, do not delay writing, for every day will be an agony till i hear from you. at the end of an autumn day, when the dusk is sinking into the room, one lacks courage to live. religion seems to desert one, and i am thinking of the leaves falling, falling in derrinrush. all night long they will be falling, like my hopes. forgive me this miserable letter. but if i didn't write it, i should not be able to get through the evening. write to me. a letter from italy will cheer me and help me to live. all my letters are not like this one. not very long ago i wrote to you about a hermit who never wearied of life, though he lived upon an island in this lake. did you receive that letter? i wonder. it is still following you about maybe. it was a pleasant letter, and i should be sorry if you did not get it. write to me about italy--about sunshine, about statues and pictures. 'ever sincerely yours, 'oliver gogarty.' _from father oliver gogarty to miss nora glynn._ 'garranard, bohola, '_october_ , --. 'dear miss glynn, 'i wrote last week apologizing for troubling you again with a letter, pleading that the melancholy of autumn and the falling of the leaf forced me to write to someone. i wrote asking for a letter, saying that a letter about italian sunshine would help me to live. i am afraid my letter must have seemed exaggerated. one writes out of a mood. the mood passes, but when it is with one, one is the victim of it. and this letter is written to say i have recovered somewhat from my depression of spirits.... i have found consolation in a book, and i feel that i must send it to you, for even you may one day feel depressed and lonely. did you ever read "the imitation of christ"? there is no book more soothing to the spirit than it; and on the very first page i found some lines which apply marvellously well to your case: '"if thou didst know the whole bible outwardly, and the sayings of all the philosophers, what would it all profit thee without charity and the grace of god?" 'over the page the saint says: "every man naturally desireth to know; but what doth knowledge avail without the fear of god?" '"truly, a lowly rustic that serveth god is better than a proud philosopher who pondereth the course of the stars and neglecteth himself." '"he that knoweth himself becometh vile to himself, and taketh no delight in the praises of men." '"if i knew all things that are in the world, and were not in charity, what would it profit me in the sight of god, who will judge according to deeds?" '"cease from overweening desire of knowledge, because many distractions are found there, and much delusion." 'i might go on quoting till i reached the end, for on every page i note something that i would have you read. but why quote when i can send you the book? you have lost interest in the sentimental side of religion, but your loss is only momentary. you will never find anyone who will understand you better than this book. you are engaged now in the vain pursuit of knowledge, but some day, when you are weary of knowledge, you will turn to it. i do not ask you to read it now, but promise me that you will keep it. it will be a great consolation to me to know that it is by you. 'very sincerely yours, 'oliver gogarty, p.p.' _from father oliver gogarty to miss nora glynn._ 'garranard, bohola, '_november_ , --. 'dear miss glynn, 'i sent you--i think it must be a fortnight ago--a copy of "the imitation of christ." the copy i sent is one of the original elizabethan edition, a somewhat rare book and difficult to obtain. i sent you this copy in order to make sure that you would keep it; the english is better than the english of our modern translations. you must not think that i feel hurt because you did not write to thank me at once for having sent you the book. my reason for writing is merely because i should like to know if it reached you. if you have not received it, i think it would be better to make inquiries at once in the post. it would be a pity that a copy of the original elizabethan edition should be lost. just write a little short note saying that you have received it. 'very sincerely yours, 'oliver gogarty, p.p.' ix 'the imitation' dropped on his knees, and he wondered if the spiritual impulse it had awakened in him was exhausted, or if the continual splashing of the rain on the pane had got upon his nerves. 'but it isn't raining in italy,' he said, getting up from his chair; 'and i am weary of the rain, of myself--i am weary of everything.' and going to the window, he tried to take ant interest in the weather, asking himself if it would clear up about o'clock. it cleared usually late in the afternoon for a short while, and he would be able to go out for half an hour. but where should he go? he foresaw his walk from end to end before he began it: the descent of the hill, the cart-track and the old ruts full of water, the dead reeds on the shore soaking, the dripping trees. but he knew that about o'clock the clouds would lift, and the sunset begin in the gaps in the mountains. he might go as far as the little fields between derrinrush and the plantations, and from there he could watch the sunset. but the sunset would soon be over, and he would have to return home, for a long evening without a book. terrible! and he began to feel that he must have an occupation--his book! to write the story of the island castles would pass the time, and wondering how he might write it, whether from oral tradition or from the books and manuscripts which he might find in national libraries, he went out about o'clock and wandered down the old cart-track, getting his feet very wet, till he came to the pine-wood, into which he went, and stood looking across the lake, wondering if he should go out to castle island in a boat--there was no boat, but he might borrow one somewhere--and examine what remained of the castle. but he knew every heap of old stones, every brown bush, and the thick ivy that twined round the last corner wall. castle hag had an interest castle island had not. the cormorants roosted there; and they must be hungry, for the lake had been too windy for fishing this long while. a great gust whirled past, and he stood watching the clouds drifting overhead--the same thick vapour drifting and going out. for nearly a month he was waiting for a space of blue sky, and a great sadness fell upon him, a sick longing for a change; but if he yielded to this longing he would never return to garranard. there seemed to be no way out of the difficulty--at least, he could see none. a last ray lit up a distant hillside, his shadow floated on the wet sand. the evening darkened rapidly, and he walked in a vague diffused light, inexpressibly sad to find moran waiting for him at the end of an old cart-track, where the hawthorns grew out of a tumbled wall. he would keep moran for supper. moran was a human being, and-- 'i've come to see you, gogarty; i don't know if i'm welcome.' 'it's joking you are. you'll stay and have some supper with me?' 'indeed i will, if you give me some drink, for it's drink that i'm after, and not eating. i'd better get the truth out at once and have done with it. i've felt the craving coming on me for the last few days--you know what i mean--and now it's got me by the throat. i must have drink. come along, gogarty, and give me some, and then i'll say good-bye to you for ever.' 'now what are you saying?' 'don't stand arguing with me, for you can't understand, gogarty--no one can; i can't myself. but it doesn't matter what anybody understands--i'm done for.' 'we'll have a bit of supper together. it will pass from you.' 'ah, you little know;' and the priests walked up the hill in silence. 'gogarty, there's no use talking; i'm done for. let me go.' 'come in, will you?' and he took him by the arm. 'come in. i'm a bigger man than you, moran; come in!' 'i'm done for,' father moran said again. father oliver made a sign of silence, and when they were in the parlour, and the door shut behind them, he said: 'you mustn't talk like that, and catherine within a step of you.' 'i've told you, gogarty, i'm done for, and i've just come here to bid you good-bye; but before we part i'd like to hear you say that i haven't been wanting in my duties--that in all the rest, as far as you know, i've been as good a man as another.' 'in all but one thing i know no better man, and i'll not hear that there's no hope.' 'better waste no time talking. just let me hear you say again that i've been a good man in everything but one thing.' 'yes, indeed;' and the priests grasped hands. and catherine came into the room to ask if father moran was stopping to supper. father oliver answered hurriedly: 'yes, yes, he's staying. bring in supper as soon as you can;' and she went away, to come back soon after with the cloth. and while she laid it the priests sat looking at each other, not daring to speak, hoping that catherine did not suspect from their silence and manner that anything was wrong. she seemed to be a long while laying the cloth and bringing in the food; it seemed to them as if she was delaying on purpose. at last the door was closed, and they were alone. 'now, moran, sit down and eat a bit, won't you?' 'i can't eat anything. give me some whisky; that is what i want. give me some whisky, and i will go away and you'll never see me again. just a glass to keep me going, and i will go straight out of your parish, so that none of the disgrace will fall upon you; or--what do you think? you could put me up here; no one need know i'm here. all i want are a few bottles of whisky.' 'you mean that i should put you up here and let you get drunk?' 'you know what i mean well enough. i'm like that. and it's well for you who don't want whisky. but if it hadn't been for whisky i should have been in a mad-house long ago. now, just tell me if you'll give me drink. if you will, i'll stay and talk with you, for i know you're lonely; if not, i'll just be off with myself.' 'moran, you'll be better when you've had something to eat. it will pass from you. i will give you a glass of beer.' 'a glass of beer! ah, if i could tell you the truth! we've all our troubles, gogarty--trouble that none knows but god. i haven't been watching you--i've been too tormented about myself to think much of anyone else--but now and then i've caught sight of a thought passing across your mind. we all suffer, you like another, and when the ache becomes too great to be borne we drink. whisky is the remedy; there's none better. we drink and forget, and that is the great thing. there are times, gogarty, when one doesn't want to think, when one's afraid, aren't there?--when one wants to forget that one's alive. you've had that feeling, gogarty. we all have it. and now i must be off. i must forget everything. i want to drink and to feel the miles passing under my feet.' and on that he got up from the fire. 'come, moran, i won't hear you speak like that.' 'let me go. it's no use; i'm done for;' and father oliver saw his eyes light up. 'i'll not keep you against your will, but i'll go a piece of the road with you.' 'i'd sooner you didn't come, gogarty.' without answering, father oliver caught up his hat and followed father moran out of the house. they walked without speaking, and when they got to the gate father oliver began to wonder which way his unhappy curate would choose for escape. 'now why does he take the southern road?' and a moment after he guessed that moran was making for michael garvey's public-house, 'and after drinking there,' he said to himself, 'he'll go on to tinnick.' after a couple of miles, however, moran turned into a by-road leading through the mountains, and they walked on without saying a word. and they walked mile after mile through the worn mountain road. 'you've come far enough, gogarty; go back. regan's public-house is outside of your parish.' 'if it's outside my parish, it's only the other side of the boundary; and you said, moran, that you wouldn't touch whisky till to-morrow morning.' the priests walked on again, and father oliver fell to thinking now what might be the end of this adventure. he could see there was no hope of persuading father moran from the bottle of whisky. 'what time do you be making it, gogarty?' 'it isn't ten o'clock yet.' 'then i'll walk up and down till the stroke of twelve ... i'll keep my promise to you.' 'but they'll all be in bed by twelve. what will you do then?' father moran didn't give father gogarty an answer, but started off again, and this time he was walking very fast; and when they got as far as regan's public-house father oliver took his friend by the arm, reminding him again of his promise. 'you promised not to disgrace the parish.' 'i said that.... well, if it's walking your heart is set upon, you shall have your bellyful of it.' and he was off again like a man walking for a wager. but father oliver, who wouldn't be out-walked, kept pace with him, and they went striding along, walking without speaking. full of ruts and broken stones, the road straggled through the hills, and father oliver wondered what would happen when they got to the top of the hill. for the sea lay beyond the hill. the road bent round a shoulder of the hill, and when father oliver saw the long road before him his heart began to fail him, and a cry of despair rose to his lips; but at that moment moran stopped. 'you've saved me, gogarty.' he did not notice that father gogarty was breathless, almost fainting, and he began talking hurriedly, telling father oliver how he had committed himself to the resolution of breaking into a run as soon as they got to the top of the hill. 'my throat was on fire then, but now all the fire is out of it; your prayer has been answered. but what's the matter, gogarty? you're not speaking.' 'what you say is wonderful indeed, moran, for i was praying for you. i prayed as long as i had breath; one can't pray without breath or speak. we'll talk of this presently.' the priests turned back, walking very slowly. 'i feel no more wish to drink whisky than i do to drink bog-water. but i'm a bit hot, and i think i'd like a drink, and a drink of water will do me first-rate. now look here, gogarty: a miracle has happened, and we should thank god for it. shall we kneel down?' the road was very wet, and they thought it would do as well if they leant over the little wall and said some prayers together. 'i've conquered the devil; i know it. but i've been through a terrible time, gogarty. it's all lifted from me now. i'm sorry i've brought you out for such a walk as this.' 'never mind the walk, moran, so long as the temptation has passed from you--that's the principal thing.' to speak of ordinary things was impossible, for they believed in the miracle, and, thanking god for this act of grace, they walked on until they reached father oliver's gate. 'i believe you're right, moran; i believe that a miracle has happened. you'll go home straight, won't you?' father moran grasped father oliver's hand. 'indeed i will.' and father oliver stood by his gate looking down the road, and he didn't open it and go through until father moran had passed out of sight. pushing it open, he walked up the gravel path, saying to himself, 'a miracle, without doubt. moran called it a miracle and it seems like one, but will it last? moran believes himself cured, that is certain;' and father oliver thought how his curate had gripped his hand, and felt sure that the grip meant, 'you've done me a great service, one i can never repay.' it was a pleasure to think that moran would always think well of him. 'yes, moran will always think well of me,' he repeated as he groped his way into the dark and lonely house in search of a box of matches. when his lamp was lighted he threw himself into his armchair so that he might ponder better on what had happened. 'i've been a good friend to him, and it's a great support to a man to think that he's been a good friend to another, that he kept him in the straight path, saved him from himself. saved himself from himself,' he repeated;' can anybody be saved from himself?' and he began to wonder if moran would conquer in the end and take pride in his conquest over himself. there was no sound, only an occasional spit of the lamp, and in the silence father oliver asked if it were the end of man's life to trample upon self or to encourage self. 'nora,' he said, 'would answer that self is all we have, and to destroy it and put in its place conventions and prejudices is to put man's work above god's. but nora would not answer in these words till she had spoken with mr. walter poole.' the name brought a tightening about his heart, and when father oliver stumbled to his feet--he had walked many miles, and was tired--he began to think he must tell nora of the miracle that had happened about a mile--he thought it was just a mile--beyond patsy regan's public-house. the miracle would impress her, and he looked round the room. it was then he caught sight of a letter--her letter. the envelope and foreign stamp told him that before he read the address--her writing! his hand trembled and his cheek paled, for she was telling him the very things he had longed to know. she was in love with poole! she was not only in love with him--she was his mistress! the room seemed to tumble about him, and he grasped the end of the chimney-piece. and then, feeling that he must get out into the open air, he thought of moran. he began to feel he must speak to him. he couldn't remember exactly what he had to say to him, but there was something on his mind which he must speak to moran about. it seemed to him that he must go away with moran to some public-house far away and drink. hadn't moran said that there were times when we all wanted drink? he tried to collect his thoughts.... something had gone wrong, but he couldn't remember what had gone wrong or where he was. it seemed to him that somebody had lost her soul. he must seek it. it was his duty. being a priest, he must go forth and find the soul, and bring it back to god. he remembered no more until he found himself in the midst of a great wood, standing in an open space; about him were dripping trees, and a ghostly sky overhead, and no sound but that of falling leaves. large leaves floated down, and each interested him till it reached the wet earth. and then he began to wonder why he was in the wood at night, and why he should be waiting there, looking at the glimmering sky, seeing the oak-leaves falling, remembering suddenly that he was looking for her soul, for her lost soul, and that something had told him he would find the soul he was seeking in the wood; so he was drawn from glade to glade through the underwoods, and through places so thickly overgrown that it seemed impossible to pass through. and then the thorn-bushes gave way before him, for he was no longer alone. she had descended from the trees into his arms, white and cold, and every moment the wood grew dimmer; but when he expected it to disappear, when he thought he was going to escape for ever with her, an opening in the trees discovered the lake, and in fear he turned back into the wood, seeking out paths where there was little light. once he was within the wood, the mist seemed to incorporate again; she descended again into his arms, and this time he would have lifted the veil and looked into her face, but she seemed to forbid him to recognize her under penalty of loss. his desire overcame him, and he put out his hand to lift the veil. as he did so his eyes opened, he saw the wet wood, the shining sky, and she sitting by a stone waiting for him. a little later she came to meet him from behind the hawthorns that grew along the cart-track--a tall woman with a little bend in her walk. he wondered why he was so foolish as to disobey her, and besought her to return to him, and they roamed again in the paths that led round the rocks overgrown with briars, by the great oak-tree where the leaves were falling. and wandering they went, smiling gently on each other, till she began to tell him that he must abide by the shores of the lake--why, he could not understand, for the wood was much more beautiful, and he was more alone with her in the wood than by the lake. the sympathy was so complete that words were not needed, but they had begun in his ears. he strove to apprehend the dim words sounding in his ears. not her words, surely, for there was a roughness in the voice, and presently he heard somebody asking him why he was about this time of night, and very slowly he began to understand that one of his parishioners was by him, asking him whither he was going. 'you'll be catching your death at this hour of the night, father oliver.' and the man told father oliver he was on his way to a fair, and for a short-cut he had come through the wood. and father oliver listened, thinking all the while that he must have been dreaming, for he could remember nothing. 'now, your reverence, we're at your own door, and the door is open. when you went out you forgot to close it.' the priest didn't answer. 'i hope no harm will come to your reverence; and you'll be lucky if you haven't caught your death.' x he stopped in his undressing to ponder how moran had come to tell him that he was going away on a drinking-bout, and all their long walk together to within a mile of regan's public-house returned to him bit by bit, how moran knelt down by the roadside to drink bog-water, which he said would take the thirst from him as well as whisky; and after bidding moran good-night he had fallen into his armchair. it was not till he rose to his feet to go to bed that he had caught sight of the letter. nora wrote--he could not remember exactly what she wrote, and threw himself into bed. after sleeping for many hours, his eyes at last opened, and he awoke wondering, asking himself where he was. even the familiar room surprised him. and once more he began the process of picking his way back, but he couldn't recall what had happened from the time he left his house in search of moran till he was overtaken by alec in the wood. in some semi-conscious state he must have wandered off to derrinrush. he must have wandered a long while--two hours, maybe more --through the familiar paths, but unaware that he was choosing them. to escape from the effort of remembrance he was glad to listen to catherine, who was telling him that alec was at the door, come up from the village to inquire how the priest was. she waited to hear father oliver's account of himself, but not having a story prepared, he pretended he was too tired to speak; and as he lay back in his chair he composed a little story, telling how he had been for a long walk with father moran, and, coming back in the dark, had missed his way on the outskirts of the wood. she began to raise some objections, but he said she was not to excite herself, and went out to see alec, who, not being a quick-witted fellow, was easily persuaded into an acceptance of a very modified version of the incident, and father oliver lay back in his chair wondering if he had succeeded in deceiving catherine. it would seem that he had, for when she came to visit him again from her kitchen she spoke of something quite different, which surprised him, for she was a very observant woman of inexhaustible curiosity. but this time, however, he had managed to keep his secret from her, and, dismissing her, he thought of nora's letter. _from miss nora glynn to father oliver gogarty._ 'rapallo, italy, '_december_ , --. 'dear father gogarty, 'i received "the imitation" to-day and your two letters, one asking me if i had got the book. we had left munich without giving instructions about our letters, so please accept my apologies and my best thanks. the elizabethan translation, as you point out, is beautiful english, and i am glad to have the book; it will remind me of you, and i will keep it by me even if i do not read it very often. i passed the book over to mr. poole; he read it for a few minutes, and then returned it to me. "a worthy man, no doubt," he said, "but prone to taking things for granted. 'the imitation,'" he continued, "reminds me of a flower growing in the shade of a cloister, dying for lack of sun, and this is surely not the right kind of reading for you or your friend father oliver." i feel sure you want a change. change of scene brings a change of mind. why don't you come to italy? italy is the place for you. italy is your proper mind. mr. poole says that italy is every man's proper mind, and you're evidently thinking of italy, for you ask for a description of where i am staying, saying that a ray of italian sunlight will cheer you. come to italy. you can come here without danger of meeting us. we are leaving at the end of the month. 'but i could go on chattering page after page, telling you about gardens and orange-trees (the orange-trees are the best part of the decoration; even now the great fruit hangs in the green leaves); and when i had described italy, and you had described all the castles and the islands, we could turn back and discuss our religious differences. but i doubt if any good would come of this correspondence. you see, i have got my work to do, and you have got yours, and, notwithstanding all you say, i do not believe you to be unable to write the history of the lake and its castles. your letters prove that you can, only your mind is unhinged by fears for my spiritual safety, and depressed by the irish climate. it is very depressing, i know. i remember how you used to attribute the history of ireland to the climate: a beautiful climate in a way, without extremes of heat and cold, as you said once, without an accent upon it. but you are not the ordinary irishman; there is enough vitality in you to resist the languor of the climate. your mood will pass away.... your letter about the hermit that lived on church island is most beautiful. you have struck the right note--the wistful irish note--and if you can write a book in that strain i am sure it will meet with great success. go on with your book, and don't write to me any more--at least, not for the present. i have got too much to do, and cannot attend to a lengthy correspondence. we are going to paris, and are looking forward to spending a great deal of time reading in the national library. some day we may meet, or take up this correspondence again. at present i feel that it is better for you and better for me that it should cease. but you will not think hardly of me because i write you this. i am writing in your own interests, dear father gogarty. 'very sincerely yours, 'nora glynn.' he read the letter slowly, pondering every sentence and every word, and when he had finished it his hand dropped upon his knee; and when the letter fell upon the hearthrug he did not stoop to pick it up, but sat looking into the fire, convinced that everything was over and done. there was nothing to look forward to; his life would drag on from day to day, from week to week, month to month, year to year, till at last he would be taken away to the grave. the grave is dreamless! but there might be a long time before he reached it, living for years without seeing or even hearing from her, for she would weary of writing to him. he began to dream of a hunt, the quarry hearing with dying ears the horns calling to each other in the distance, and cast in his chair, his arms hanging like dead arms, his senses mercifully benumbed, he lay, how long he knew not, but it must have been a long time. catherine came into the room with some spoons in her hands, and asked him what was the matter, and, jumping up, he answered her rudely, for her curiosity annoyed him. it was irritating to have to wait for her to leave the room, but he did not dare to begin thinking while she was there. the door closed at last; he was alone again, and his thoughts fixed themselves at once on the end of her letter, on the words, 'go on with your book, and don't write to me any more--at least, not for the present. i have too much to do, and cannot attend to a lengthy correspondence.' the evident cruelty of her words surprised him. there was nothing like this in any of her other letters. she intended these words as a _coup de grâce_. there was little mercy in them, for they left him living; he still lived--in a way. there was no use trying to misunderstand her words. to do so would be foolish, even if it were possible for him to deceive himself, and the rest of her letter mattered nothing to him. the two little sentences with which she dismissed him were his sole concern; they were the keys to the whole of this correspondence which had beguiled him. fool that he had been not to see it! alas! we see only what we want to see. he wandered about the lake, trying to bring himself to hate her. he even stopped in his walks to address insulting words to her. words of common abuse came to his tongue readily, but there was an unconquerable tenderness in his heart always; and one day the thought went by that it was nobler of her to make him suffer than to have meekly forgiven him, as many women would have done, because he was a priest. he stopped affrighted, and began to wonder if this were the first time her easy forgiveness of his mistake had seemed suspicious. no, he felt sure that some sort of shadow of disappointment had passed at the back of his mind when he read her first letter, and after having lain for months at the back of his mind, this idea had come to the surface. an extraordinary perversion, truly, which he could only account for by the fact that he had always looked upon her as being more like what the primitive woman must have been than anybody else in the world; and the first instinct of the primitive woman would be to revenge any slight on her sexual pride. he had misread her character, and in this new reading he found a temporary consolation. as he sat thinking of her he heard a mouse gnawing under the boards, and every night after the mouse came to gnaw. 'the teeth of regret are the same; my life is being gnawed away. never shall i see her.' it seemed impossible that life would close on him without his seeing her face or hearing her voice again, and he began to think how it would be if they were to meet on the other side. for he believed in heaven, and that was a good thing. without such belief there would be nothing for him to do but to go down to the lake and make an end of himself. but believing as he did in heaven and the holy catholic church to be the surest way of getting there, he had a great deal to be thankful for. poole's possession of her was but temporary, a few years at most, whereas his possession of her, if he were so fortunate as to gain heaven, and by his prayers to bring her back to the true fold, would endure for ever and ever. the wisest thing, therefore, for him to do would be to enter a trappist monastery. but our lord says that in heaven there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage, and what would heaven be to him without nora? no more than a union of souls, and he wanted her body as well as her soul. he must pray. he knew the feeling well--a sort of mental giddiness, a delirium in the brain; and it increased rapidly, urging him to fall on his knees. if he resisted, it was because he was ashamed and feared to pray to god to reserve nora for him. but the whirl in his brain soon deprived him of all power of resistance, and, looking round the room hurriedly to assure himself he was not watched, he fell on his knees and burst into extemporary prayer: '_o my god, whatever punishment there is to be borne, let me bear it. she sinned, no doubt, and her sins must be atoned for. let me bear the punishment that thou, in thine infinite wisdom, must adjudge to her, poor sinful woman that she is, poor woman persecuted by men, persecuted by me. o my god, remember that i lent a willing ear to scandalmongers, that i went down that day to the school and lost my temper with her, that i spoke against her in my church. all the sins that have been committed are my sins; let me bear the punishment. o my lord jesus christ, do thou intercede with thy father and ask him to heap all the punishment on my head. oh, dear lord jesus, if i had only thought of thee when i went down to the school, if i had remembered thy words, "let him who is without sin cast the first stone," i should have been spared this anguish. if i had remembered thy words, she might have gone to dublin and had her baby there, and come back to the parish. o my god, the fault is mine; all the faults that have been committed can be traced back to me, therefore i beseech of thee, i call upon thee, to let me bear all the punishment that she has earned by her sins, poor erring creature that she is. o my god, do this for me; remember that i served thee well for many years when i lived among the poor folk in the mountains. for all these years i ask this thing of thee, that thou wilt let me bear her punishment. is it too much i am asking of thee, o my god, is it too much?'_ when he rose from his knees, bells seemed to be ringing in his head, and he began to wonder if another miracle had befallen him, for it was as if someone had laid hands on him and forced him on his knees. but to ask the almighty to extend his protection to him rather than to mr. poole, who was a protestant, seemed not a little gross. father oliver experienced a shyness that he had never known before, and he hoped the almighty would not be offended at the familiarity of the language, or the intimate nature of the request, for to ask for nora's body as well as her soul did not seem altogether seemly. it was queer to think like that. perhaps his brain was giving way. and he pushed the plates aside; he could not eat any dinner, nor could he take any interest in his garden. the dahlias were over, the chrysanthemums were beginning. never had the country seemed so still: dead birds in the woods, and the sounds of leaves, and the fitful december sunlight on the strands--these were his distractions when he went out for a walk, and when he came in he often thought it would be well if he did not live to see another day, so heavy did the days seem, so uneventful, and in these languid autumn days the desire to write to nora crept nearer, until it always seemed about him like some familiar animal. _from father oliver gogarty to miss nora glynn._ 'garranard, bohola, '_december_ , --. 'dear miss glynn, 'i should have written to you before, but i lacked courage. do you remember saying that the loneliness of the country sometimes forced you to kneel down to pray that you might die? i think the loneliness that overcame you was the loneliness that comes at the end of an autumn day when the dusk gathers in the room. it seems to steal all one's courage away, and one looks up from one's work in despair, asking of what value is one's life. the world goes on just the same, grinding our souls away. nobody seems to care; nothing seems to make any difference. 'human life is a very lonely thing, and for that it is perhaps religious. but there are days when religion fails us, when we lack courage, lonesomeness being our national failing. we were always lonesome, hundreds of years ago as much as to-day. you know it, you have been through it and will sympathize. a caged bird simply beats its wings and dies, but a human being does not die of loneliness, even when he prays for death. you have experienced it all, and will know what i feel when i tell you that i spend my time watching the rain, thinking of sunshine, picture-galleries, and libraries. 'but you were right to bid me go on with the book i spoke to you about. if i had gone away, as you first suggested, i should have been unhappy; i should have thought continually of the poor people i left behind; my abandonment of them would have preyed on my mind, for the conviction is dead in me that i should have been able to return to them; we mayn't return to places where we have been unhappy. i might have been able to get a parish in england or a chaplaincy, but i should have always looked upon the desertion of my poor people as a moral delinquency. a quiet conscience is, after all, a great possession, and for the sake of a quiet conscience i will remain here, and you will be able to understand my scruple when you think how helpless my people are, and how essential is the kindly guidance of the priest. 'without a leader, the people are helpless; they wander like sheep on a mountain-side, falling over rocks or dying amid snowdrifts. sometimes the shepherd grows weary of watching, and the question comes, has a man no duty towards himself? and then one begins to wonder what is one's duty and what is duty--if duty is something more than the opinions of others, something more than a convention which we would not like to hear called into question, because we feel instinctively that it is well for everyone to continue in the rut, for, after all, a rut means a road, and roads are necessary. if one lets one's self go on thinking, one very soon finds that wrong and right are indistinguishable, so perhaps it is better to follow the rut if one can. but the rut is beset with difficulties; there are big holes on either side. sometimes the road ends nowhere, and one gets lost in spite of one's self. but why am i writing all these things to you?' why, indeed? if he were to send this letter she would show it to mr. poole, and they would laugh over it together. 'poor priesty!' they would say, and the paper was crumpled and thrown into the fire. 'my life is unendurable, and it will grow worse,' he said, and fell to thinking how he would grow old, getting every day more like an old stereotyped plate, the mass and the rosary at the end of his tongue, and nothing in his heart. he had seen many priests like this. could he fall into such miserable decadence? could such obedience to rule be any man's duty? but where should he go? it mattered little whither he went, for he would never see her any more, and she was, after all, the only real thing in the world for him. so did he continue to suffer like an animal, mutely, instinctively, mourning his life away, forgetful of everything but his grief; unmindful of his food, and unable to sleep when he lay down, or to distinguish between familiar things--the birds about his house, the boys and girls he had baptized. very often he had to think a moment before he knew which was mary and which was bridget, which was patsy and which was mike, and very often catherine was in the parlour many minutes before he noticed her presence. she stood watching him, wondering of what he was thinking, for he sat in his chair, getting weaker and thinner; and soon he began to look haggard as an old man or one about to die. he seemed to grow feebler in mind; his attention wandered away every few minutes from the book he was reading. catherine noticed the change, and, thinking that a little chat would be of help, she often came up from her kitchen to tell him the gossip of the parish; but he could not listen to her, her garrulousness seemed to him more than ever tiresome, and he kept a book by him, an old copy of 'ivanhoe,' which he pretended he was reading when he heard her step. father moran came to discuss the business of the parish with him and insisted on relieving father oliver of a great deal of it, saying that he wanted a rest, and he often urged father oliver to go away for a holiday. he was kind, but his talk was wearisome, and father oliver thought he would prefer to read about the fabulous rowena than to hear any more about the archbishop. but when father moran left rowena bored him, and so completely that he could not remember at what point he had left off reading, and his thoughts wandered from the tournament to some phrase he had made use of in writing to nora, or, it might be, some phrase of hers that would suddenly spring into his mind. he sought no longer to discover her character from her letters, nor did he criticize the many contradictions which had perplexed him: it seemed to him that he accepted her now, as the phrase goes, 'as she was,' thinking of her as he might of some supernatural being whom he had offended, and who had revenged herself. her wickedness became in his eyes an added grace, and from the rack on which he lay he admired his executioner. even her liking for mr. poole became submerged in a tide of suffering, and of longing, and weakness of spirit. he no longer had any strength to question her liking for the minor prophets: there were discrepancies in everyone, and no doubt there were in him as well as in her. he had once been very different from what he was to-day. once he was an ardent student in maynooth, he had been an energetic curate; and now what was he? worse still, what was he becoming? and he allowed his thoughts to dwell on the fact that every day she was receding from him. he, too, was receding. all things were receding--becoming dimmer. he piled the grate up with turf, and when the blaze came leaned over it, warming his hands, asking himself why she liked mr. poole rather than him. for he no longer tried to conceal from himself the fact that he loved her. he had played the hypocrite long enough; he had spoken about her soul, but it was herself that he wanted. this admission brought some little relief, but he felt that the relief would only be temporary. alas! it was surrender. it was worse than surrender--it was abandonment. he could sink no deeper. but he could; we can all sink deeper. now what would the end be? there is an end to everything; there must be an end even to humiliation, to self-abasement. it was moran over again. moran was ashamed of his vice, but he had to accept it, and father oliver thought how much it must have cost his curate to come to tell him that he wanted to lie drunk for some days in an outhouse in order to escape for a few days from the agony of living. 'that is what he called it, and i, too, would escape from it.' his thoughts turned suddenly to a poem written by a peasant in county cork a hundred years ago to a woman who inspired a passion that wrecked his mind altogether in the end. and he wondered if madness would be the end of his suffering, or if he would go down to the lake and find rest in it. 'oh, succour me, dear one, give me a kiss from thy mouth, and lift me up to thee from death, or bid them make for me a narrow bed, a coffin of boards, in the dark neighbourhood of the worm and his friends. my life is not life but death, my voice is no voice but a wind, there is no colour in me, nor life, nor richness, nor health; but in tears and sorrow and weakness, without music, without sport, without power, i go into captivity and woe, and in the pain of my love of thee.' xi _from father oliver gogarty to miss nora glynn._ 'garranard, bohola, '_march_ , --. 'a long time has passed without your hearing from me, and i am sure you must have said more than once: "well, that priest has more sense than i gave him credit for. he took the hint. he understood that it would be useless for us to continue to write long letters to each other about remorse of conscience and mr. poole's criticism of the bible." but the sight of my handwriting will call into question the opinion you have formed of my good sense, and you will say: "here he is, beginning it all over again." no, i am not. i am a little ashamed of my former letters, and am writing to tell you so. my letters, if i write any, will be quite different in the future, thanks to your candour. your letter from rapallo cured me; like a surgeon's knife, it took out the ulcer that was eating my life away. the expression will seem exaggerated, i know; but let it remain. you no doubt felt that i was in ignorance of my own state of feelings regarding you, and you wrote just such a letter as would force me to look into my heart and to discover who i really was. you felt that you could help me to some knowledge of myself by telling me about yourself. 'the shock on reading your confession--for i look upon your rapallo letter as one--was very great, for on reading it i felt that a good deal that i had written to you about the salvation of your soul was inspired, not by any pure fear that i had done anything that might lose a soul to god, but by pure selfishness. i did not dare to write boldly that i loved yourself, and would always love you; i wore a mask and a disguise, and in order to come to terms with myself i feel it necessary to confess to you; otherwise all the suffering i have endured would be wasted. 'but this is not all my confession; worse still remains. i have discovered that when i spoke against you in church, and said things that caused you to leave the parish, i did not do so, as i thought, because i believed that the morality of my parish must be maintained at any cost. i know now that jealousy--yes, sensual jealousy--prompted me. and when i went to my sisters to ask them to appoint you to the post of music-teacher in their school, i did not do so for their sake, but for my own, because i wished to have you back in the parish. but i do not wish you to think that when i wrote about atonement i wrote what i knew to be untrue. i did not; the truth was hidden from me. nor did i wish to get you back to the parish in order that i might gratify my passion. all these things were very vague, and i didn't understand myself until now. i never had any experience of life till i met you. and is it not curious that one should know so little of one's self, for i might have gone down to my grave without knowing how false i was at heart, if i had not been stricken down with a great illness. 'one day, catherine told me that the lake was frozen over, and, as i had been within doors a long while, she advised me to go out and see the boys sliding on the ice. her advice put an idea into my head, that i might take out my skates and skate recklessly without trying to avoid the deeper portions where the ice was likely to be thin, for i was weary of life, and knowing that i could not go back upon the past, and that no one would ever love me, i wished to bring my suffering to an end. you will wonder why i did not think of the sufferings that i might have earned for myself in the next world. i had suffered so much that i could think of nothing but the present moment. god was good, and he saved me, for as i stood irresolute before a piece of ice which i knew wouldn't bear me, i felt a great sickness creeping over me. i returned home, and for several days the doctor could not say whether i would live or die. you remember catherine, my servant? she told me that the only answer the doctor would give her was that if i were not better within a certain time there would be no hope of my recovery. at the end of the week he came into my room. catherine was waiting outside, and i hear that she fell on her knees to thank god when the doctor said: "yes, he is a little better; if there's no relapse he'll live." 'after a severe illness one is alone with one's self, the whole of one's life sings in one's head like a song, and listening to it, i learned that it was jealousy that prompted me to speak against you, and not any real care for the morality of my parish. i discovered, too, that my moral ideas were not my own. they were borrowed from others, and badly assimilated. i remembered, too, how at maynooth the tradition was always to despise women, and in order to convince myself i used to exaggerate this view, and say things that made my fellow-students look at me askance, if not with suspicion. but while dozing through long convalescent hours many things hitherto obscure to me became clear, and it seems now to me to be clearly wrong to withhold our sympathy from any side of life. it seems to me that it is only by our sympathy we can do any good at all. god gave us our human nature; we may misuse and degrade our nature, but we must never forget that it came originally from god. 'what i am saying may not be in accordance with current theology, but i am not thinking of theology, but of the things that were revealed to me during my sickness. it was through my fault that you met mr. walter poole, and i must pray to god that he will bring you back to the fold. i shall pray for you both. i wish you all happiness, and i thank you for the many kind things you have said, for the good advice you have given me. you are quite right: i want a change. you advise me to go to italy, and you are right to advise me to go there, for my heart yearns for italy. but i dare not go; for i still feel that if i left my parish i should never return to it; and if i were to go away and not return a great scandal would be caused, and i am more than ever resolved not to do anything to grieve the poor people, who have been very good to me, and whose interests i have neglected this long while. 'i send this letter to beechwood hall, where you will find it on your return. as i have already said, you need not answer it; no good will come by answering it. in years to come, perhaps, when we are both different, we may meet again. 'oliver gogarty.' _from miss nora glynn to father oliver gogarty._ 'imperial hotel, cairo, egypt, '_may_ , --. 'dear father gogarty, 'by the address on the top of this sheet of paper you will see that i have travelled a long way since you last heard from me, and ever since your letter has been following me about from hotel to hotel. it is lucky that it has caught me up in egypt, for we are going east to visit countries where the postal service has not yet been introduced. we leave here to-morrow. if your letter had been a day later it would have missed me; it would have remained here unclaimed--unless, indeed, we come back this way, which is not likely. you see what a near thing it was; and as i have much to say to you, i should be sorry not to have had an opportunity of writing. 'your last letter put many thoughts into my head, and made me anxious to explain many things which i feel sure you do not know about my conduct since i left london, and the letters i have written to you. has it not often seemed strange to you that we go through life without ever being able to reveal the soul that is in us? is it because we are ashamed, or is it that we do not know ourselves? it is certainly a hard task to learn the truth about ourselves, and i appreciate the courage your last letter shows; you have faced the truth, and having learned it, you write it to me in all simplicity. i like you better now, oliver gogarty, than i ever did before, and i always liked you. but it seems to me that to allow you to confess yourself without confessing myself, without revealing the woman's soul in me as you have revealed the man's soul in yourself, would be unworthy. 'our destinies got somehow entangled, there was a wrench, the knot was broken, and the thread was wound upon another spool. the unravelling of the piece must have perplexed you, and you must have wondered why the shape and the pattern should have passed suddenly away into thread again, and then, after a lapse of time, why the weaving should have begun again. 'you must have wondered why i wrote to you, and you must have wondered why i forgave you for the wrong you did me. i guessed that our friendship when i was in the parish was a little more than the platonic friendship that you thought it was, so when you turned against me, and were unkind, i found an excuse for you. when my hatred was bitterest, i knew somehow, at the back of my mind--for i only allowed myself to think of it occasionally--that you acted from--there is but one word--jealousy (not a pretty word from your point of view); and it must have shocked you, as a man and as a priest, to find that the woman whom you thought so much of, and whose society gave you so much pleasure (i know the times we passed together were as pleasant to you as they were to me), should suddenly without warning appear in a totally different light, and in a light which must have seemed to you mean and sordid. the discovery that i was going to have a baby threw me suddenly down from the pedestal on which you had placed me; your idol was broken, and your feelings--for you are one of those men who feel deeply--got the better of you, and you indulged in a few incautious words in your church. 'i thought of these things sometimes, not often, i admit, in the little london lodging where i lived till my baby was born, seeing my gown in front getting shorter, and telling lies to good mrs. dent about the husband whom i said was abroad, whom i was expecting to return. that was a miserable time, but we won't talk of it any more. when father o'grady showed me the letter that you wrote him, i forgave you in a way. a woman forgives a man the wrongs he does when these wrongs are prompted by jealousy, for, after all, a woman is never really satisfied if a man is not a little jealous. his jealousy may prove inconvenient, and she may learn to hate it and think it an ugly thing and a crooked thing, but, from her point of view, love would not be complete without it. 'i smiled, of course, when i got your letter telling me that you had been to your sisters to ask them if they would take me as a schoolmistress in the convent, and i walked about smiling, thinking of your long innocent drive round the lake. i can see it all, dear man that you are, thinking you could settle everything, and that i would return to ireland to teach barefooted little children their catechism and their a, b, c. how often has the phrase been used in our letters! it was a pretty idea of yours to go to your sisters; you did not know then that you cared for me--you only thought of atonement. i suppose we must always be deceived. mr. poole says self-deception is the very law of life. we live enveloped in self-deception as in a film; now and again the film breaks like a cloud and the light shines through. we veil our eyes, for we do not like the light. it is really very difficult to tell the truth, father gogarty; i find it difficult now to tell you why i wrote all these letters. because i liked you? yes, and a little bit because i wished you to suffer; i don't think i shall ever get nearer the truth than that. but when i asked you to meet us abroad, i did so in good faith, for you are a clever man, and mr. poole's studies would please you. at the back of my mind i suppose i thought to meet him would do you good; i thought, perhaps, that he might redeem you from some conventions and prejudices. i don't like priests; the priest was the only thing about you i never liked. was it in some vain, proselytizing idea that i invited you? candidly, i don't know, and i don't think i ever shall. we know so very little about this world that it seems to me waste of time to think about the next. my notion is that the wisest plan is to follow the mood of the moment, with an object more or less definite in view.... nothing is worth more than that. i am at the present moment genuinely interested in culture, and therefore i did not like at all the book you sent me, "the imitation," and i wrote to tell you to put it by, to come abroad and see pictures and statues in a beautiful country where people do not drink horrid porter, but nice wine, and where sacraments are left to the old people who have nothing else to interest them. i suppose it was a cruel, callous letter, but i did not mean it so; i merely wanted to give you a glimpse of my new life and my new point of view. as for this letter, heaven knows how you will take it--whether you will hate me for it or like me; but since you wrote quite frankly to me, confessing yourself from end to end, i feel bound to tell you everything i know about myself--and since i left ireland i have learned a great deal about myself and about life. perhaps i should have gone on writing to you if mr. poole had not one day said that no good would come of this long correspondence; he suspected i was a disturbing influence, and, as you were determined to live in ireland, he said it were better that you should live in conventions and prejudices, without them your life would be impossible. 'then came your last letter, and it showed me how right mr. poole was. nothing remains now but to beg your forgiveness for having disturbed your life. the disturbance is, perhaps, only a passing one. you may recover your ideas--the ideas that are necessary to you--or you may go on discovering the truth, and in the end may perhaps find a way whereby you may leave your parish without causing scandal. to be quite truthful, that is what i hope will happen. however this may be, i hope if we ever meet again it will not be till you have ceased to be a priest. but all this is a long way ahead. we are going east, and shall not be back for many months; we are going to visit the buried cities in turkestan. i do not know if you have ever heard about these cities. they were buried in sand somewhere about a thousand years ago, and some parts have been disinterred lately. vaults were broken into in search of treasure. gold and precious stones were discovered, but far more valuable than the gold and silver, so says mr. poole, are certain papyri now being deciphered by the learned professors of berlin. 'you know the name of mr. poole's book, "the source of the christian river"? he had not suspected that its source went further back than palestine, but now he says that some papyri may be found that will take it far back into central asia. 'i am going with him on this quest. it sounds a little absurd, doesn't it? my going in quest of the christian river? but if one thinks for a moment, one thing is as absurd as another. do you know, i find it difficult to take life seriously, and i walk about the streets thinking of you, father gogarty, and the smile that will come over your face, half angry, half pleased, when you read that your schoolmistress is going to central asia in quest of the christian river. what will you be doing all this time? you say that you cannot leave your parish because you fear to give scandal; you fear to pain the poor people, who have been good to you and who have given you money, and your scruple is a noble one; i appreciate and respect it. but we must not think entirely of our duties to others; we must think of our duties to ourselves. each one must try to realize himself--i mean that we must try to bring the gifts that nature gave us to fruition. nature has given you many gifts: i wonder what will become of you? 'very sincerely yours, 'nora glynn.' 'good god, how i love that woman!' the priest said, awaking from his reverie, for the clock told him that he had sat for nearly three-quarters of an hour, her letter in his hand, after having read it. and lying back in his armchair, his hands clasped, his eyes fixed on the window, listening to the birds singing in the vine--it was already in leaf, and the shadows of the leaves danced across the carpet--he sought to define that sense of delight--he could find no other words for it--which she exhaled unconsciously as a flower exhales its perfume, that joy of life which she scattered with as little premeditation as the birds scattered their songs. but though he was constantly seeking some new form of expression of her charm, he always came back to the words 'sense of delight.' sometimes he added that sense of delight which we experience when we go out of the house on an april morning and find everything growing about us, the sky wilful and blue, and the clouds going by, saying, 'be happy, as we are.' she was so different from every other woman. all other women were plain instincts, come into the world for the accomplishment of things that women had accomplished for thousands of years. other women think as their mothers thought, and as their daughters will think, expressing the thoughts of the countless generations behind and in front of them. but this woman was moved merely by impulses; and what is more inexplicable than an impulse? what is the spring but an impulse? and this woman was mysterious, evanescent as its breath, with the same irresponsible seduction. he was certain that she was at last clear to him, though she might become dark to him again. one day she had come to gather flowers, and while arranging her posy she said casually: 'you are a ruler in this parish; you direct it, the administration of the parish is your business, and i am the little amusement that you turn to when your business is done.' he had not known how to answer her. in this way her remarks often covered him with confusion. she just thought as she pleased, and spoke as she pleased, and he returned to his idea that she was more like the primitive woman than anybody else. pondering on her words for the hundredth time, they seemed to him stranger than ever. that any human being should admit that she was but the delight of another's life seemed at first only extraordinary, but if one considered her words, it seemed to signify knowledge--latent, no doubt--that her beauty was part of the great agency. her words implied that she was aware of her mission. it was her unconscious self that spoke, and it was that which gave significance to her words. his thoughts melted into nothingness, and when he awoke from his reverie he was thinking that nora glynn had come into his life like a fountain, shedding living water upon it, awakening it. and taking pleasure in the simile, he said, 'a fountain better than anything else expresses this natural woman,' controlled, no doubt, by a law, but one hidden from him. 'a fountain springs out of earth into air; it sings a tune that cannot be caught and written down in notes; the rising and falling water is full of iridescent colour, and to the wilting roses the fountain must seem not a natural thing, but a spirit, and i too think of her as a spirit.' and his thoughts falling away again he became vaguely but intensely conscious of all the beauty and grace and the enchantment of the senses that appeared to him in the name of nora glynn. at that moment catherine came into the room. 'no, not now,' he said; and he went into the garden and through the wicket at the other end, thinking tenderly how he had gone out last year on a day just like the present day, trying to keep thoughts of her out of his mind. the same fifteenth of may! but last year the sky was low and full of cotton-like clouds; and he remembered how the lake warbled about the smooth limestone shingle, and how the ducks talked in the reeds, how the reeds themselves seemed to be talking. this year the clouds lifted; there was more blue in the sky, less mist upon the water, and it was this day last year that sorrow began to lap about his heart like soft lakewater. he thought then that he was grieving deeply, but since last year he had learned all that a man could know of grief. for last year he was able to take an interest in the spring, to watch for the hawthorn-bloom; but this year he did not trouble to look their way. what matter whether they bloomed a week earlier or a week later? as a matter of fact they were late, the frost having thrown them back, and there would be no flowers till june. how beautifully the tasselled branches of the larches swayed, throwing shadows on the long may grass! 'and they are not less beautiful this year, though they are less interesting to me,' he said. he wandered through the woods, over the country, noting the different signs of spring, for, in spite of his sorrow, he could not but admire the slender spring. he could not tell why, perhaps because he had always associated nora with the gaiety of the spring-time. she was thin like the spring, and her laughter was blithe like the spring. she seemed to him like a spirit, and isn't the spring like a spirit? she was there in the cow-parsley just coming up, and the sight of the campions between the white spangles reminded him of the pink flowers she wore in her hat. the underwood was full of bluebells, but her eyes were not blue. the aspens were still brown, but in a month the dull green leaves, silvery underneath, would be fluttering at the end of their long stems. and the continual agitation of the aspen-leaf seemed to him rather foolish, reminding him of a weak-minded woman clamouring for sympathy always. the aspen was an untidy tree; he was not sure that he liked the tree, and if one is in doubt whether one likes or dislikes, the chances are that one dislikes. who would think of asking himself if he liked beech-trees, or larches, or willows? a little later he stood lost in admiration of a line of willows all a-row in front of a stream; they seemed to him like girls curtseying, and the delicacy of the green and yellow buds induced him to meditate on the mysteries that common things disclose. seeing a bird disappear into a hole in the wall, he climbed up. the bird pecked at him, for she was hatching. 'a starling,' he said. in the field behind his house, under the old hawthorn-tree, an amiable-looking donkey had given birth to a foal, and he watched the little thing, no bigger than a sheep, covered with long gray hair ... there were some parishioners he would be sorry to part with, and there was catherine. if he went away he would never see her again, nor those who lived in the village. all this present reality would fade, his old church, surrounded with gravestones and stunted scotch firs, would become like a dream, every year losing a little in colour and outline. he was going, he did not know when, but he was going. for a long time the feeling had been gathering in him that he was going, and her letter increased that feeling. he would go just as soon as a reputable way of leaving his parish was revealed to him. by the help of his reason he could not hope to find out the way. nothing seemed more impossible than that a way should be found for him to leave his parish without giving scandal; but however impossible things may seem to us, nothing is impossible to nature. he must put his confidence in nature; he must listen to her. she would tell him. and he lay all the afternoon listening to the reeds and the ducks talking together in the lake. very often the wood was like a harp; a breeze touched the strings, and every now and then the murmur seemed about to break into a little tune, and as if in emulation, or because he remembered his part in the music, a blackbird, perched near to his mate, whose nest was in the hawthorns growing out of the tumbled wall, began to sing a joyful lay in a rich round contralto, soft and deep as velvet. 'all nature,' he said, 'is talking or singing. this is talking and singing time. but my heart can speak to no one, and i seek places where no one will come.' and he began to ask if god would answer his prayer if he prayed that he might die. the sunlit grass, already long and almost ready for the scythe, was swept by shadows of the larches, those long, shelving boughs hung with green tassels, moving mysteriously above him. birds came and went, each on its special errand. never was nature more inveigling, more restful. he shut his eyes, shapes passed, dreams filled the interspaces. little thoughts began. why had he never brought her here? a memory of her walking under these larches would be delightful. the murmur of the boughs dissipated his dreams or changed them, or brought new ones; his consciousness grew fainter, and he could not remember what his last thoughts were when he opened his eyes. and then he wandered out of the wood, into the sunlit country, along the dusty road, trying to take an interest in everyone whom he met. it was fairday. he met drovers and chatted to them about the cattle; he heard a wonderful story about a heifer that one of them had sold, and that found her way back home again, twenty-five miles, and a little further on a man came across the fields towards him with a sheep-dog at his heels, a beautiful bitch who showed her teeth prettily when she was spoken to; she had long gold hair, and it was easy to see that she liked to be admired. 'they're all alike, the feminine sex,' the priest thought. 'she's as pretty as nora, and acts very much the same.' he walked on again, stopping to speak with everybody, glad to listen to every story. one was of a man who lived by poaching. he hadn't slept in a bed for years, but lay down in the mountains and the woods. he trapped rabbits and beat people; sometimes he enticed boys far away, and then turned upon them savagely. well, the police had caught him again, and this time he wouldn't get off with less than five years. listening to mike mulroy's talk, father oliver forgot his own grief. a little further on they came upon a cart filled with pigs. the cart broke down suddenly, and the pigs escaped in all directions, and the efforts of a great number of country people were directed to collecting them. father oliver joined in the chase, and it proved a difficult one, owing to the density of the wood that the pigs had taken refuge in. at last he saw them driven along the road, for it had been found impossible to mend the cart, and at this moment father oliver began to think that he would like to be a pig-driver, or better still, a poacher like carmody. a wandering mood was upon him. anything were better than to return to his parish, and the thought of the confessions he would have to hear on saturday night and of the mass he would have to say on sunday was bitter indeed, for he had ceased to believe in these things. to say mass, believing the mass to be but a mummery, was detestable. to remain in his parish meant a constant degradation of himself. when a parishioner sent to ask him to attend a sick call, he could barely bring himself to anoint the dying man. some way out of the dilemma must be found, and stopping suddenly so that he might think more clearly, he asked himself why he did not wander out of the parish instead of following the path which led him back to the lake? thinking that it was because it is hard to break with habits, convictions, prejudices. the beautiful evening did not engage his thoughts, and he barely listened to the cuckoo, and altogether forgot to notice the bluebells, campions, and cow-parsley; and it was not till he stood on the hilltop overlooking the lake that he began to recover his self-possession. 'the hills,' he said, 'are turned hither and thither, not all seen in profile, and that is why they are so beautiful.' the sunlit crests and the shadow-filled valleys roused him. in the sky a lake was forming, the very image and likeness of the lake under the hill. one glittered like silver, the other like gold, and so wonderful was this celestial lake that he began to think of immortals, of an assembly of goddesses waiting for their gods, or a goddess waiting on an island for some mortal, sending bird messengers to him. a sort of pagan enchantment was put upon him, and he rose up from the ferns to see an evening as fair as nora and as fragrant. he tried to think of the colour of her eyes, which were fervid and oracular, and of her hands, which were long and curved, with fragile fingers, of her breath, which was sweet, and her white, even teeth. the evening was like her, as subtle and as persuasive, and the sensation of her presence became so clear that he shut his eyes, feeling her about him--as near to him as if she lay in his arms, just as he had felt her that night in the wood, but then she was colder and more remote. he walked along the foreshore feeling like an instrument that had been tuned. his perception seemed to have been indefinitely increased, and it seemed to him as if he were in communion with the stones in the earth and the clouds in heaven; it seemed to him as if the past and the future had become one. the moment was one of extraordinary sweetness; never might such a moment happen in his life again. and he watched the earth and sky enfolded in one tender harmony of rose and blue--blue fading to gray, and the lake afloat amid vague shores, receding like a dream through sleep. xii _from father oliver gogarty to miss nora glynn._ 'garranard, bohola, '_june_ , --. 'thoughts are rising up in my mind, and i am eager to write them down quickly, and with as little consideration as possible. perhaps my thoughts will seem trivial when i have written them, but the emotion that inspired them was very wonderful and overpowering. i am, as it were, propelled to my writing-table. i must write: my emotion must find expression. even if i were sure you would not get this letter for months, i should write it. i believe if i knew you would never get it, i should write. but if i send it to beechwood hall it will be forwarded, i suppose, for you will not remain whole months without hearing from europe.... in any case, you will get this letter on your return, and it will ease my heart to write it. above all things, i would have you know that the report that i was drowned while bathing is not true, for a report to this effect will certainly find its way into the local papers, and in these days, once a piece of news gets reported, it flies along from newspaper to newspaper, and newspapers have a knack of straying into our hands when they contain a disagreeable item of news. 'you will remember how the interview with mr. poole, published in _illustrated england_, came into my hands. that was the first number of _illustrated england_ i had seen. father o'grady brought it here and left it upon the table, and only the fate that is over us knows why. in the same way, a paper containing a report of my supposed drowning may reach you when you return to england, and, as i do not want you to think that i have gone out of this life, i am writing to tell you that the report of my death is untrue, or, to speak more exactly, it will not be true, if my arms and legs can make it a false report. these lines will set you wondering if i have taken leave of my senses. read on, and my sanity will become manifest. some day next month i intend to swim across the lake, and you will, i think, appreciate this adventure. you praised my decision not to leave my parish because of the pain it would give the poor people. you said that you liked me better for it, and it is just because my resolve has not wavered that i have decided to swim across the lake. only in this way can i quit my parish without leaving a scandalous name behind me. moreover, the means whereby i was enlightened are so strange that i find it difficult to believe that providence is not on my side. 'have not men always believed in bird augury from the beginning of time? and have not prognostications a knack of coming true? i feel sure that you would think as i do if what had happened to me happened to you. yet when you read this letter you will say, "no sooner has he disentangled himself from one superstition than he drops into another!" however this may be, i cannot get it out of my head that the strangely ill-fated bird that came out of the wood last february was sent for a purpose. but i have not told you about that bird. in my last letter my mind was occupied by other things, and there was no reason why i should have mentioned it, for it seemed at the time merely a curious accident--no more curious than the hundred and one accidents that happen every day. i believe these things are called coincidences. but to the story. the day i went out skating there was a shooting-party in derrinrush, and at the close of day, in the dusk, a bird got up from the sedge, and one of the shooters, mistaking it for a woodcock, fired, wounding the bird. 'we watched it till we saw it fall on the shore of castle island, and, thinking that it would linger there for days, dying by inches, i started off with the intention of saving it from a lingering death, but a shot had done that. one pellet would have been enough, for the bird was but a heap of skin and feathers, not to be wondered at, its legs being tied together with a piece of stout string, twisted and tied so that it would last for years. and this strangely ill-fated curlew set me thinking if it were a tame bird escaped from captivity, but tame birds lose quickly their instinct of finding food. "it must have been freed yesterday or the day before," i said to myself, and in pondering how far a bird might fly in the night, this curlew came to occupy a sort of symbolic relation towards my past and my future life, and it was in thinking of it that the idea occurred to me that, if i could cross the lake on the ice, i might swim it in the summer-time when the weather was warm, having, of course, hidden a bundle of clothes amid the rocks on the joycetown side. my clerical clothes will be found on this side, and the assumption will be, of course, that i swam out too far. 'this way of escape seemed at first fantastic and unreal, but it has come to seem to me the only practical way out of my difficulty. in no other way can i leave the parish without giving pain to the poor people, who have been very good to me. and you, who appreciated my scruples on this point, will, i am sure, understand the great pain it would give my sisters if i were to leave the church. it would give them so much pain that i shrink from trying to imagine it. they would look upon themselves as disgraced, and the whole family. my disappearance from the parish would ever do them harm--eliza's school would suffer for sure. this may seem an exaggeration, but certainly eliza would never quite get over it. if this way of escape had not been revealed to me, i don't think i ever should have found courage to leave, and if i didn't leave i should die. life is so ordered that a trace remains of every act, but the trace is not always discovered, and i trust you implicitly. you will never show this letter to anyone; you will never tell anyone. 'the church would allow me, no doubt, to pick up a living as best i could, and would not interfere with me till i said something or wrote something that the church thought would lessen its power; then the cry of unfrocked priest would be raised against me, and calumny, the great ecclesiastical weapon, would be used. i do not know what my future life will be: my past has been so beset with misfortune that, once i reach the other side, i shall never look back. i cannot find words to tell you of the impatience with which i wait the summer-time, the fifteenth of july, when the moon will be full. i cannot think what would have happened to me if i had stayed at home the afternoon that the curlew was shot; something would have happened, for we cannot go on always sacrificing ourselves. we can sacrifice ourselves for a time, but we cannot sacrifice ourselves all our life long, unless we begin to take pleasure in the immolation of self, and then it is no longer sacrifice. something must have happened, or i should have gone mad. 'i had suffered so much in the parish. i think the places in which we have suffered become distasteful to us, and the instinct to wander takes us. a migratory bird goes, or dies of home-sickness; home is not always where we are born--it is among ideas that are dear to us: and it is exile to live among people who do not share our ideas. something must have happened to me. i can think of nothing except suicide or what did happen, for i could never have made up my mind to give pain to the poor people and to leave a scandalous name behind; still less could i continue to administer sacraments that i ceased to believe in. i can imagine nothing more shameful than the life of a man who continues his administrations after he has ceased to believe in them, especially a catholic priest, so precise and explicit are the roman sacraments. a very abject life it is to murmur _absolve te_ over the heads of parishioners, and to place wafers on their tongues, when we have ceased to believe that we have power to forgive sins and to turn biscuits into god. a layman may have doubts, and continue to live his life as before, without troubling to take the world into his confidence, but a priest may not. the priest is a paid agent and the money an unbelieving priest receives, if he be not inconceivably hardened in sin, must be hateful to him, and his conscience can leave him no rest. 'at first i used to suspect my conversion, and began to think it unseemly that a man should cease to believe that we must renounce this life in order to gain another, without much preliminary study of the scriptures; i began to look upon myself as a somewhat superficial person whose religious beliefs yielded before the charm of a pretty face and winsome personality, but this view of the question no longer seems superficial. i believe now that the superficial ones are those who think that it is only in the scriptures that we may discover whether we have a right to live. our belief in books rather than in nature is one of humanity's most curious characteristics, and a very irreligious one, it seems to me; and i am glad to think that it was your sunny face that raised up my crushed instincts, that brought me back to life, and ever since you have been associated in my mind with the sun and the spring-tide. 'one day in the beginning of march, coming back from a long walk on the hills, i heard the bleat of the lamb and the impatient cawing of the rook that could not put its nest together in the windy branches, and as i stopped to listen it seemed to me that something passed by in the dusk: the spring-tide itself seemed to be fleeting across the tillage towards the scant fields. as the spring-tide advanced i discovered a new likeness to you in the daffodil; it is so shapely a flower. i should be puzzled to give a reason, but it reminds me of antiquity, and you were always a thing divorced from the christian ideal. while mourning you, my poor instincts discovered you in the wind-shaken trees, and in the gaiety of the sun, and the flowers that may gives us. i shall be gone at the end of july, when the carnations are in bloom, but were i here i am certain many of them would remind me of you. there have been saints who have loved nature, but i always wondered how it was so, for nature is like a woman. i might have read the scriptures again and again, and all the arguments that mr. poole can put forward, without my faith being in the least shaken. when the brain alone thinks, the thinking is very thin and impoverished. it seems to me that the best thinking is done when the whole man thinks, the flesh and the brain together, and for the whole man to think the whole man must live; and the life i have lived hitherto has been a thin life, for my body lived only. and not even all my body. my mind and body were separated: neither were of any use to me. i owe everything to you. my case cannot be defined merely as that of a priest who gave up his religion because a pretty woman came by. he who says that does not try to understand; he merely contents himself with uttering facile commonplace. what he has to learn is the great oneness in nature. there is but one element, and we but one of its many manifestations. if this were not so, why should your whiteness and colour and gaiety remind me always of the spring-time? 'my pen is running fast, i hardly know what i am writing, but it seems to me that i am beginning to see much clearer. the mists are dissolving, and life emerges like the world at daybreak. i am thinking now of an old decrepit house with sagging roof and lichen-covered walls, and all the doors and windows nailed up. every generation nailed up a door or a window till all were nailed up. in the dusty twilight creatures wilt and pray. about the house the sound of shutters creaking on rusty hinges never ceases. your hand touched one, and the shutters fell, and i found myself looking upon the splendid sun shining on hills and fields, wooded prospects with rivers winding through the great green expanses. at first i dared not look, and withdrew into the shadow tremblingly; but the light drew me forth again, and now i look upon the world without fear. i am going to leave that decrepit dusty house and mix with my fellows, and maybe blow a horn on the hillside to call comrades together. my hands and eyes are eager to know what i have become possessed of. i owe to you my liberation from prejudices and conventions. ideas are passed on. we learn more from each other than from books. i was unconsciously affected by your example. you dared to stretch out both hands to life and grasp it; you accepted the spontaneous natural living wisdom of your instincts when i was rolled up like a dormouse in the dead wisdom of codes and formulas, dogmas and opinions. i never told you how i became a priest. i did not know until quite lately. i think i began to suspect my vocation when you left the parish. 'i remember walking by the lake just this time last year, with the story of my life singing in my head, and you in the background beating the time. you know, we had a shop in tinnick, and i had seen my father standing before a high desk by a dusty window year after year, selling half-pounds of tea, hanks of onions, and farm implements, and felt that if i married my cousin, annie mcgrath, our lives would reproduce those of my father and mother in every detail. i couldn't undertake the job, and for that began to believe i had a vocation for the priesthood; but i can see now that it was not piety that sent me to maynooth, but a certain spirit of adventure, a dislike of the commonplace, of the prosaic--that is to say, of the repetition of the same things. i was interested in myself, in my own soul, and i did not want to accept something that was outside of myself, such as the life of a shopman behind a counter, or that of a clerk of the petty sessions, or the habit of a policeman. these were the careers that were open to me, and when i was hesitating, wondering if i should be able to buy up the old mills and revive the trade in tinnick, my sister eliza reminded me that there had always been a priest in the family. the priesthood seemed to offer opportunities of realizing myself, of preserving the spirit within me. it offered no such opportunities to me. i might as well have become a policeman, and all that i have learned since is that everyone must try to cling to his own soul; that is the only binding law. if we are here for anything, it is surely for that. 'but one does not free one's self from habits and ideas, that have grown almost inveterate, without much pain and struggle; one falls back many times, and there are always good reasons for following the rut. we believe that the rutted way leads us somewhere: it leads us nowhere, the rutted way is only a seeming; for each man received his truth in the womb. you say in your letter that our destinies got entangled, and that the piece that was being woven ran out into thread, and was rewound upon another spool. it seemed to you and it seemed to me that there is no pattern; we think there is none because nature's pattern is undistinguishable to our eyes, her looms are so vast, but sometimes even our little sight can follow a design here and there. and does it not seem to you that, after all, there was some design in what has happened? you came and released me from conventions, just as the spring releases the world from winter rust. 'a strange idea has come into my mind, and i cannot help smiling at the topsyturvydom of nature, or what seems to be topsyturvydom. you, who began by living in your instincts, are now wandering beyond palestine in search of scrolls; and i, who began my life in scrolls, am now going to try to pick up the lost thread of my instincts in some great commercial town, in london or new york. my life for a long time will be that of some poor clerk or some hack journalist, picking up thirty shillings a week when he is in luck. i imagine myself in a threadbare suit of clothes edging my way along the pavement, nearing a great building, and making my way to my desk, and, when the day's work is done, returning home along the same pavement to a room high up among the rafters, close to the sky, in some cheap quarter. 'i do not doubt my ability to pick up a living--it will be a shameful thing indeed if i cannot; for the poor curlew with its legs tied together managed to live somehow, and cannot i do as much? and i have taken care that no fetters shall be placed upon my legs or chain about my neck. anything may happen--life is full of possibilities--but my first concern must be how i may earn my living. to earn one's living is an obligation that can only be dispensed with at one's own great risk. what may happen afterwards, heaven knows! i may meet you, or i may meet another woman, or i may remain unmarried. i do not intend to allow myself to think of these things; my thoughts are set on one thing only--how to get to new york, and how i shall pick up a living when i get there. again i thank you for what you have done for me, for the liberation you have brought me of body and mind. i need not have added the words "body and mind," for these are not two things, but one thing. and that is the lesson i have learned. good-bye. 'oliver gogarty.' xiii it would be a full moon on the fifteenth of july, and every night he went out on the hillside to watch the horned moon swelling to a disc. and on the fifteenth, the day he had settled for his departure, as he sat thinking how he would go down to the lake in a few hours, a letter started to his mind which, as well as he could remember, was written in a foolish, vainglorious mood--a stupid letter that must have made him appear a fool in her eyes. had he not said something about--the thought eluded him; he could only remember the general tone of his letter, and in it he seemed to consider nora as a sort of medicine--a cure for religion. he should have written her a simple little letter, telling her that he was leaving ireland because he had suffered a great deal, and would write to her from new york, whereas he had written her the letter of a booby. and feeling he must do something to rectify his mistake, he went to his writing-table, but he had hardly put the pen to the paper when he heard a step on the gravel outside his door. 'father moran, your reverence.' 'i see that i'm interrupting you. you're writing.' 'no, i assure you.' 'but you've got a pen in your hand.' 'it can wait--a matter of no importance. sit down.' 'now, you'll tell me if i'm in the way?' 'my good man, why are you talking like that? why should you be in the way?' 'well, if you're sure you've nothing to do, may i stay to supper?' 'to supper?' 'but i see that i'm in the way.' 'no; i tell you you're not in the way. and you're going to stay to supper.' father oliver flung himself between father moran and the door; father moran allowed himself to be led back to the armchair. father oliver took the chair opposite him, for he couldn't send moran away; he mustn't do anything that would give rise to suspicion. 'you're quite sure i'm not in the way--i'm not interfering with any plans?' 'quite sure. i'm glad you have come this evening.' 'are you? well, i had to come.' 'you had to come!' 'yes, i had to come; i had to come to see if anything had happened. you needn't look at me like that; i haven't been drinking, and i haven't gone out of my mind. i can only tell you that i had to come to see you this evening.' 'and you don't know why?' 'no, i don't; i can't tell you exactly why i've come. as i was reading my breviary, walking up and down the road in front of the house, i felt that i must see you. i never felt anything like it in my life before. i had to come.' 'and you didn't expect to find me?' 'well, i didn't. how did you guess that?' 'you'd have hardly come all that way to find me sitting here in this armchair.' 'that's right. it wasn't sitting in that chair i expected to see you; i didn't expect to see you at all--at least, i don't think i did. you see, it was all very queer, for it was as if somebody had got me by the shoulders. it was as if i were being pushed every yard of the road. something was running in my mind that i shouldn't see you again, or if i did see you that it would be for the last time. you seemed to me as if you were going away on a long journey.' 'was it dying or dead you saw me?' 'that i can't say. if i said any more i shouldn't be telling the truth. no, it wasn't the same feeling when i came to tell you i couldn't put up with the loneliness any more--the night i came here roaring for drink. i was thinking of myself then, and that you might save me or do something for me--give me drink or cure me. i don't know which thought it was that was running in my head, but i had to come to you all the same, just as i had to come to you to-day. i say it was different, because then i was on my own business; but this time it seemed to me that i was on yours. one good turn deserves another, as they say; and something was beating in my head that i could help you, serve as a stay; so i had to come. where should i be now if it were not for you? i can see you're thinking that it was only nonsense that was running in my head, but you won't be saying it was nonsense that brought me the night i came like a madman roaring for drink. if there was a miracle that night, why shouldn't there be a miracle to-night? and if a miracle ever happened in the world, it happened that night, i'm thinking. do you remember the dark gray clouds tearing across the sky, and we walking side by side, i trying to get away from you? i was that mad that i might have thrown you into the bog-hole if the craving had not passed from me. and it was just lifted from me as one might take the cap off one's head. you remember the prayer we said, leaning over the bit of wall looking across the bog? there was no lonesomeness that night coming home, gogarty, though a curlew might have felt a bit.' 'a curlew!' 'well, there were curlews and plovers about, and a starving ass picking grass between the road and the bog-hole. that night will be ever in my mind. where would i be now if it hadn't been that you kept on with me and brought me back, cured? it wouldn't be a cassock that would be on my back, but some old rag of a coat. there's nothing in this world, gogarty, more unlucky than a suspended priest. i think i can see myself in the streets, hanging about some public-house, holding horses attached to a cab-rank.' 'lord of heaven, moran! what are you coming here to talk to me in this way for? the night you're speaking of was bad enough, but your memory of it is worse. nothing of what you're saying would have happened; a man like you would be always able to pick up a living.' 'and where would i be picking up a living if it weren't on a cab-rank, or you either?' 'well, 'tis melancholy enough you are this evening.' 'and all for nothing, for there you are, sitting in your old chair. i see i've made a fool of myself.' 'that doesn't matter. you see, if one didn't do what one felt like doing, one would have remorse of conscience for ever after.' 'i suppose so. it was very kind of you, moran, to come all this way.' 'what is it but a step? three miles--' 'and a half.' moved by a febrile impatience, which he could not control, father oliver got up from his chair. 'now, moran, isn't it strange? i wonder how it was that you should have come to tell me that you were going off to drink somewhere. you said you were going to lie up in a public-house and drink for days, and yet you didn't think of giving up the priesthood.' 'what are you saying, gogarty? don't you know well enough i'd have been suspended? didn't i tell you that drink had taken that power over me that, if roaring hell were open, and i sitting on the brink of it and a table beside me with whisky on it, i should fill myself a glass?' 'and knowing you were going down to hell?' 'yes, that night nothing would have stopped me. but, talking of hell, i heard a good story yesterday. pat carabine was telling his flock last sunday of the tortures of the damned, and having said all he could about devils and pitchforks and caldrons, he came to a sudden pause--a blank look came into his face, and, looking round the church and seeing the sunlight streaming through the door, his thoughts went off at a tangent. "now, boys," he said, "if this fine weather continues, i hope you'll be all out in the bog next tuesday bringing home my turf."' father oliver laughed, but his laughter did not satisfy father moran, and he told how on another occasion father pat had finished his sermon on hell by telling his parishioners that the devil was the landlord of hell. 'and i leave yourself to imagine the groaning that was heard in the church that morning, for weren't they all small tenants? but i'm afraid my visit has upset you, gogarty.' 'how is that?' 'you don't seem to enjoy a laugh like you used to.' 'well, i was thinking at that moment that i've heard you say that, even though you gave way to drink, you never had any doubts about the reality of the hell that awaited you for your sins.' 'that's the way it is, gogarty, one believes, but one doesn't act up to one's belief. human nature is inconsistent. nothing is queerer than human nature, and will you be surprised if i tell you that i believe i was a better priest when i was drinking than i am now that i'm sober? i was saying that human nature is very queer; and it used to seem queer to myself. i looked upon drink as a sort of blackmail i paid to the devil so that he might let me be a good priest in everything else. that's the way it was with me, and there was more sense in the idea than you'd be thinking, for when the drunken fit was over i used to pray as i have never prayed since. if there was not a bit of wickedness in the world, there would be no goodness. and as for faith, drink never does any harm to one's faith whatsoever; there's only one thing that takes a man's faith from him, and that is woman. you remember the expulsions at maynooth, and you know what they were for. well, that sin is a bad one, but i don't think it affects a man's faith any more than drink does. it is woman that kills the faith in men.' 'i think you're right: woman is the danger. the church dreads her. woman is life.' 'i don't quite understand you.' catherine came into the room to lay the cloth, and father oliver asked father moran to come out into the garden. it was now nearing its prime. in a few days more the carnations would be all in bloom, and father oliver pondered that very soon it would begin to look neglected. 'in a year or two it will have drifted back to the original wilderness, to briar and weed,' he said to himself; and he dwelt on his love of this tiny plot of ground, with a wide path running down the centre, flower borders on each side, and a narrow path round the garden beside the hedge. the potato ridges, and the runners, and the cabbages came in the middle. gooseberry-bushes and currant-bushes grew thickly, there were little apple-trees here and there, and in one corner the two large apple-trees under which he sat and smoked his pipe in the evenings. 'you're very snug here, smoking your pipe under your apple-trees.' 'yes, in a way; but i think i was happier where you are.' 'the past is always pleasant to look upon.' 'you think so?' the priests walked to the end of the garden, and, leaning on the wicket, father moran said: 'we've had queer weather lately--dull heavy weather. see how low the swallows are flying. when i came up the drive, the gravel space in front of the house was covered with them, the old birds feeding the young ones.' 'and you were noticing these things, and believing that providence had sent you here to bid me good-bye.' 'isn't it when the nerves are on a stretch that we notice little things that don't concern us at all?' 'yes, moran; you are right. i've never known you as wise as you are this evening.' catherine appeared in the kitchen door. she had come to tell them their supper was ready. during the meal the conversation turned on the roofing of the abbey and the price of timber, and when the tablecloth had been removed the conversation swayed between the price of building materials and the archbishop's fear lest he should meet a violent death, as it had been prophesied if he allowed a roof to be put upon kilronan. 'you know i don't altogether blame him, and i don't think anyone does at the bottom of his heart, for what has been foretold generally comes to pass sooner or later.' 'the archbishop is a good catholic who believes in everything the church teaches--in the divinity of our lord, the immaculate conception, and the pope's indulgences. and why should he be disbelieving in that which has been prophesied for generations about the abbot of kilronan?' 'don't you believe in these things?' 'does anyone know exactly what he believes? does the archbishop really believe every day of the year and every hour of every day that the abbot of kilronan will be slain on the highroad when a de stanton is again abbot?' father oliver was thinking of the slip of the tongue he had been guilty of before supper, when he said that the church looks upon woman as the real danger, because she is the life of the world. he shouldn't have made that remark, for it might be remembered against him, and he fell to thinking of something to say that would explain it away. 'well, moran, we've had a pleasant evening; we've talked a good deal, and you've said many pleasant things and many wise ones. we've never had a talk that i enjoyed more, and i shall not forget it easily.' 'how is that?' 'didn't you say that it isn't drink that destroys a man's faith, but woman? and you said rightly, for woman is life.' 'i was just about to ask you what you meant, when catherine came in and interrupted us.' 'love of woman means estrangement from the church, because you have to protect her and her children.' 'yes, that is so; that's how it works out. now you won't be thinking me a fool for having come to see you this evening, gogarty? one never knows when one's impulses are true and when they're false. if i hadn't come the night when the drink craving was upon me, i shouldn't have been here now.' 'you did quite right to come, moran; we've talked of a great many things.' 'i've never talked so plainly to anyone before; i wonder what made me talk as i've been talking. we never talked like this before, did we, gogarty? and i wouldn't have talked to another as i've talked to you. i shall never forget what i owe to you.' 'you said you were going to leave the parish.' 'i don't think i thought of anything except to burn myself up with drink. i wanted to forget, and i saw myself walking ahead day after day, drinking at every public-house.' 'and just because i saved you, you thought you would come to save me?' 'there was something of that in it. gad! it's very queer; there's no saying where things will begin and end. pass me the tobacco, will you?' father moran began to fill his pipe, and when he had finished filling it, he said: 'now i must be going, and don't be trying to keep me; i've stopped long enough. if i were sent for a purpose--' 'but you don't believe seriously, moran, that you were sent for a purpose?' moran didn't answer, and his silence irritated father oliver, and, determined to probe his curate's conscience, he said: 'aren't you satisfied now that it was only an idea of your own? you thought to find me gone, and here i am sitting before you.' after waiting for some time for moran to speak, he said: 'you haven't answered me.' 'what should i be answering?' 'do you still think you were sent for a purpose?' 'well, i do.' 'you do?' the priests stood looking at each other for a while. 'can't you give a reason?' 'no; i can give no reason. it's a feeling. i know i haven't reason on my side. there you are before me.' 'it's very queer.' he would have liked to have called back moran. it seemed a pity to let him go without having probed this matter to the bottom. he hadn't asked him if he had any idea in his mind about the future, as to what was going to happen; but it was too late now. 'why did he come here disturbing me with his beliefs,' he cried out, 'poisoning my will?' for he had already begun to fear that moran's visit might come between him and his project. the wind sighed a little louder, and father oliver said: 'i wouldn't be minding his coming here to warn me, though he did say that it wasn't of his own will that he came, but something from the outside that kept pushing him along the road--i wouldn't be minding all that if this wind hadn't risen. but the omen may be a double one.' at that moment the wind shook the trees about the house, and he fell to thinking that if he had started to swim the lake that night he would be now somewhere between castle island and the joycetown shore, in the deepest and windiest part of the lake. 'and pretty well tired i'd be at the time. if i'd started to-night a corpse would be floating about by now.' the wind grew louder. father oliver imagined the waves slapping in his face, and then he imagined them slapping about the face of a corpse drifting towards the joycetown shore. xiv there was little sleep in him that night, and turning on his pillow, he sought sleep vainly, getting up at last when the dawn looked through the curtains. a wind was shaking the apple-trees, and he went back to bed, thinking that if it did not drop suddenly he would not be able to swim across the lake that evening. the hours passed between sleeping and waking, thinking of the newspaper articles he would write when he got to america, and dreaming of a fight between himself and an otter on the shore of castle island. awaking with a cry, he sat up, afraid to seek sleep again lest he might dream of drowning men. 'a dream robs a man of all courage,' and then falling back on his pillow, he said, 'whatever my dreams may be i shall go. anything were better than to remain taking money from the poor people, playing the part of a hypocrite.' and telling catherine that he could not look through her accounts that morning, he went out of the house to see what the lake was like. 'boisterous enough; it would take a good swimmer to get across to-day. maybe the wind will drop in the afternoon.' the wind continued to rise, and next day he could only see white waves, tossing trees, and clouds tumbling over the mountains. he sat alone in his study staring at the lamp, the wind often awaking him from his reverie; and one night he remembered suddenly that it was no longer possible for him to cross the lake that month, even if the wind should cease, for he required not only a calm, but a moonlight night. and going out of the house, he walked about the hilltop, about the old thorn-bush, his hands clasped behind his back. he stood watching the moon setting high above the south-western horizon. but the lake--where was it? had he not known that a lake was there, he would hardly have been able to discover one. all faint traces of one had disappeared, every shape was lost in blue shadow, and he wondered if his desire to go had gone with the lake. 'the lake will return,' he said, and next night he was on the hillside waiting for the lake to reappear. and every night it emerged from the shadow, growing clearer, till he could follow its winding shores. 'in a few days, if this weather lasts, i shall be swimming out there.' the thought crossed his mind that if the wind should rise again about the time of the full moon he would not be able to cross that year, for in september the water would be too cold for so long a swim. 'but it isn't likely,' he said; 'the weather seems settled.' and the same close, blue weather that had prevailed before the storm returned, the same diffused sunlight. 'there is nothing so depressing,' the priest said, 'as seeing swallows flying a few feet from the ground.' it was about eight o'clock--the day had begun to droop in his garden--that he walked up and down the beds admiring his carnations. every now and again the swallows collected into groups of some six or seven, and fled round the gables of his house shrieking. 'this is their dinner-hour; the moths are about.' he wondered on, thinking nora lacking; for she had never appreciated that beautiful flower miss shifner. but her ear was finer than his; she found her delight in music. a thought broke through his memories. he had forgotten to tell her he would write if he succeeded in crossing the lake, and if he didn't write she would never know whether he was living or dead. perhaps it would be better so. after hesitating a moment, the desire to write to her took strong hold upon him, and he sought an excuse for writing. if he didn't write, she might think that he remained in garranard. she knew nothing of moran's visit, nor of the rising of the wind, nor of the waning of the moon; and he must write to her about these things, for if he were drowned she would think that god had willed it. but if he believed in god's intervention, he should stay in his parish and pray that grace might be given to him. 'god doesn't bother himself about such trifles as my staying or my going,' he muttered as he hastened towards his house, overcome by an immense joy. for he was happy only when he was thinking of her, or doing something connected with her, and to tell her of the fatality that seemed to pursue him would occupy an evening. _from father oliver gogarty to miss nora glynn._ 'garranard, bohola, '_july_ , --. 'you will be surprised to hear from me so soon again, but i forgot to say in my last letter that, if i succeeded in crossing the lake, i would write to you from new york. and since then many things have happened, strange and significant coincidences.' and when he had related the circumstance of father moran's visit and the storm, he sought to excuse his half-beliefs that these were part of god's providence sent to warn him against leaving his parish. 'only time can rid us of ideas that have been implanted in us in our youth, and that have grown up in our flesh and in our mind. a sudden influence may impel us to tear them up and cast them aside, but the seed is in us always, and it grows again. "one year's seed, seven years' weed." and behind imported palestinian supernature, if i may be permitted to drop into mr. poole's style, or what i imagine to be his style, there is the home belief in fairies, spirits, and ghosts, and the reading of omens. who amongst us does not remember the old nurse who told him stories of magic and witchcraft? nor can it be denied that things happen that seem in contradiction to all we know of nature's laws. moreover, these unusual occurrences have a knack of happening to men at the moment of their setting out on some irrevocable enterprise. 'you who are so sympathetic will understand how my will has been affected by father moran's visit. had you heard him tell how he was propelled, as it were, out of his house towards me, you, too, would believe that he was a messenger. he stopped on his threshold to try to find a reason for coming to see me; he couldn't find any, and he walked on, feeling that something had happened. he must have thought himself a fool when he found me sitting here in the thick flesh. but what he said did not seem nonsense to me; it seemed like some immortal wisdom come from another world. remember that i was on the point of going. nor is this all. if nothing else had happened, i might have looked upon father moran's visit as a coincidence. but why should the wind rise? so far as i can make out, it began to rise between eleven and twelve, at the very time i should have been swimming between castle island and the joycetown shore. i know that belief in signs and omens and prognostics can be laughed at; nothing is more ridiculous than the belief that man's fate is governed by the flight of birds, yet men have believed in bird augury from the beginning of the world. 'i wrote to you about a curlew (i can still see it in the air, its beautifully shapen body and wings, its long beak, and its trailing legs; it staggered a little in its flight when the shot was fired, but it had strength enough to reach castle island: it then toppled over, falling dead on the shore); and i ask you if it is wonderful that i should have been impressed? such a thing was never heard of before--a wild bird with its legs tied together! 'at first i believed that this bird was sent to warn me from going, but it was that bird that put the idea into my head how i might escape from the parish without giving scandal. life is so strange that one doesn't know what to think. of what use are signs and omens if the interpretation is always obscure? they merely wring the will out of us; and well we may ask, who would care for his life if he knew he was going to lose it on the morrow? and what mother would love her children if she were certain they would fall into evil ways, or if she believed the soothsayers who told her that her children would oppose her ideas? she might love them independent of their opposition, but how could she love them if she knew they were only born to do wrong? volumes have been written on the subject of predestination and freewill, and the truth is that it is as impossible to believe in one as in the other. nevertheless, prognostications have a knack of coming true, and if i am drowned crossing the lake you will be convinced of the truth of omens. perhaps i should not write you these things, but the truth is, i cannot help myself; there is no power of resistance in me. i do not know if i am well or ill; my brain is on fire, and i go on thinking and thinking, trying to arrive at some rational belief, but never succeeding. sometimes i think of myself as a fly on a window-pane, crawling and buzzing, and crawling and buzzing again, and so on and so on.... 'you are one of those who seem to have been born without much interest in religion or fear of the here-after, and in a way i am like you, but with a difference: i acquiesced in early childhood, and accepted traditional beliefs, and tried to find happiness in the familiar rather than in the unknown. whether i should have found the familiar enough if i hadn't met you, i shall never know. i've thought a good deal on this subject, and it has come to seem to me that we are too much in the habit of thinking of the intellect and the flesh as separate things, whereas they are but one thing. i could write a great deal on this subject, but i stop, as it were, on the threshold of my thought, for this is no time for philosophical writing. i am all a-tremble, and though my brain is working quickly, my thoughts are not mature and deliberate. my brain reminds me at times of the skies that followed father moran's visit--skies restlessly flowing, always different and always the same. these last days are merciless days, and i have to write to you in order to get some respite from purposeless thinking. sometimes i stop in my walk to ask myself who i am and what i am, and where i am going. will you be shocked to hear that, when i awoke and heard the wind howling, i nearly got out of bed to pray to god, to thank him for having sent moran to warn me from crossing the lake? i think i did say a prayer, thanking him for his mercy. then i felt that i should pray to him for grace that i might remain at home and be a good priest always, but that prayer i couldn't formulate, and i suffered a great deal. i know that such vacillations between belief and unbelief are neither profitable nor admirable; i know that to pray to god to thank him for having saved me from death while in mortal sin, and yet to find myself unable to pray to him to do his will, is illogical, and i confess that my fear is now lest old beliefs will claim me before the time comes. a poor, weak, tried mortal man am i, but being what i am, i cannot be different. i am calm enough now, and it seems as if my sufferings were at an end; but to-morrow some new fear will rise up like mist, and i shall be enveloped. what an awful thing it would be if i should find myself without will on the fifteenth, or the sixteenth, or the seventeenth of august! if the wind should rise again, and the lake be windy while the moon is full, my chance for leaving here this summer will be at an end. the water will be too cold in september. 'and now you know all, and if you don't get a letter from new york, understand that what appears in the newspapers is true--that i was drowned whilst bathing. i needn't apologize for this long letter; you will understand that the writing of it has taken me out of myself, and that is a great gain. there is no one else to whom i can write, and it pleases me to know this. i am sorry for my sisters in the convent; they will believe me dead. i have a brother in america, the one who sent the harmonium that you used to play on so beautifully. he will believe in my death, unless we meet in america, and that is not likely. i look forward to writing to you from new york. 'oliver gogarty.' two evenings were passed pleasantly on the composition and the copying of this letter, and, not daring to entrust it to the postboy, he took it himself to bohola; and he measured the time carefully, so as to get there a few minutes before the postmistress sealed up the bag. he delayed in the office till she sealed it, and returned home, following the letter in imagination to dublin, across the channel to beechwood hall. the servant in charge would redirect it. his thoughts were at ramble, and they followed the steamer down the mediterranean. it would lie in the post-office at jerusalem or some frontier town, or maybe a dragoman attached to some turkish caravansary would take charge of it, and it might reach nora by caravan. she might read it in the waste. or maybe it would have been better if he had written 'not to be forwarded' on the envelope. but the servant at beechwood hall would know what to do, and he returned home smiling, unable to believe in himself or in anything else, so extraordinary did it seem to him that he should be writing to nora glynn, who was going in search of the christian river, while he was planning a journey westward. a few days more, and the day of departure was almost at hand; but it seemed a very long time coming. what he needed was a material occupation, and he spent hours in his garden watering and weeding, and at gaze in front of a bed of fiery-cross. was its scarlet not finer than lady hindlip? lady hindlip, like fiery-cross, is scentless, and not so hardy. no white carnation compares with shiela; but her calyx often bursts, and he considered the claims of an old pink-flaked clove carnation, striped like a french brocade. but it straggled a little in growth, and he decided that for hardiness he must give the verdict to raby castle. true that everyone grows raby castle, but no carnation is so hardy or flowers so freely. as he stood admiring her great trusses of bloom among the tea-roses, he remembered suddenly that it was his love of flowers that had brought him to garranard, and if he hadn't come to this parish, he wouldn't have known her. and if he hadn't known her, he wouldn't have been himself. and which self did he think the worthier, his present or his dead self? his brain would not cease thinking; his bodily life seemed to have dissipated, and he seemed to himself to be no more than a mind, and, glad to interest himself in the business of the parish, he listened with greater attention than he had ever listened before to the complaints that were brought to him--to the man who had failed to give up a piece of land that he had promised to include in his daughter's fortune, and to patsy murphy, who had come to tell him that his house had been broken into while he was away in tinnick. the old man had spent the winter in tinnick with some relations, for the house that the colonel had given him permission to build at the edge of the lake proved too cold for a winter residence. patsy seemed to have grown older since the autumn; he seemed like a doll out of which the sawdust was running, a poor shaking thing--a large head afloat on a weak neck. tresses of white hair hung on his shoulders, and his watery eyes were red and restless like a ferret's. he opened his mouth, and there were two teeth on either side like tusks. gray stubble covered his face, and he wore a brown suit, the trousers retained about his pot-belly--all that remained of his body--by a scarf. there was some limp linen and a red muffler about his throat. he spoke of his age--he was ninety-five--and the priest said he was a fine-looking, hearty man for his years. there wasn't a doubt but he'd pass the hundred. patsy was inclined to believe he would go to one hundred and one; for he had been told in a vision he would go as far as that. 'you see, living in the house alone, the brain empties and the vision comes.' that was how he explained his belief as he flopped along by the priest's side, his head shaking and his tongue going, telling tales of all kinds, half-remembered things: how the gormleys and the actons had driven the colonel out of the country, and dispersed all his family with their goings-on. that was why they didn't want him--he knew too much about them. one of his tales was how they had frightened the colonel's mother by tying a lame hare by a horsehair to the knocker of the hall door. whenever the hare moved a rapping was heard at the front-door. but nobody could discover the horsehair, and the rapping was attributed to a family ghost. he seemed to have forgotten his sword, and was now inclined to talk of his fists, and he stopped the priest in the middle of the road to tell a long tale how once, in liverpool, someone had spoken against the colonel, and, holding up his clenched fist, he said that no one ever escaped alive from the fist of patsy murphy. it was a trial to father oliver to hear him, for he could not help thinking that to become like him it was only necessary to live as long as he. but it was difficult to get rid of the old fellow, who followed the priest as far as the village, and would have followed him further if mrs. egan were not standing there waiting for father oliver--a delicate-featured woman with a thin aquiline nose, who was still good-looking, though her age was apparent. she was forty-five, or perhaps fifty, and she held her daughter's baby in her coarse peasant hands. since the birth of the child a dispute had been raging between the two mothers-in-law: the whole village was talking, and wondering what was going to happen next. mrs. egan's daughter had married a soldier, a protestant, some two years ago, a man called rean. father oliver always found him a straightforward fellow, who, although he would not give up his own religion, never tried to interfere with his wife's; he always said that if mary liked she could bring up her children catholics. but hitherto they were not blessed with children, and mary was jeered at more than once, the people saying that her barrenness was a punishment sent by god. at last a child was given them, and all would have gone well if rean's mother had not come to garranard for her daughter-in-law's confinement. being a black protestant, she wouldn't hear of the child being brought up a catholic or even baptized in a catholic church. the child was now a week old and rean was fairly distracted, for neither his own mother nor his mother-in-law would give way; each was trying to outdo the other. mrs. rean watched mrs. egan, and mrs. egan watched mrs. rean, and the poor mother lay all day with the baby at her breast, listening to the two of them quarrelling. 'she's gone behind the hedge for a minute, your reverence, so i whipped the child out of me daughter's bed; and if your reverence would only hurry up we could have the poor cratur baptized in the holy faith. only there's no time to be lost; she do be watchin' every stir, your reverence.' 'very well, mrs. egan: i'll be waiting for you up at the chapel.' 'a strange rusticity of mind,' he said to himself as he wended his way along the village street, and at the chapel gate a smile gathered about his lips, for he couldn't help thinking how mrs. rean the elder would rage when the child was brought back to her a catholic. so this was going to be his last priestly act, the baptism of the child, the saving of the child to the holy faith. he told mike to get the things ready, and turned into the sacristy to put on his surplice. the familiar presses gave out a pleasant odour, and the vestments which he might never wear again interested him, and he stood seemingly lost in thought. 'but i mustn't keep the child waiting,' he said, waking up suddenly; and coming out of the sacristy, he found twenty villagers collected round the font, come up from the cottages to see the child baptized in the holy religion. 'where's the child, mrs. egan?' the group began talking suddenly, trying to make plain to him what had happened. 'now, if you all talk together, i shall never understand.' 'will you leave off pushing me?' said one. 'wasn't it i that saw patsy? will your reverence listen to me?' said mrs. egan. 'it was just as i was telling your reverence, if they'd be letting me alone. your reverence had only just turned in the chapel gate when mrs. rean ran from behind the hedge, and, getting in front of me who was going to the chapel with the baby in me arms, she said: "now i'll be damned if i'll have that child christened a catholic!" and didn't she snatch the child and run away, taking a short-cut across the fields to the minister's.' 'patsy kivel has gone after her, and he'll catch up on her, surely, and she with six ditches forninst her.' 'if he doesn't itself, maybe the minister isn't there, and then she'll be bet.' 'all i'm hopin' is that the poor child won't come to any harm between them; but isn't she a fearful terrible woman, and may the curse of the son of god be on her for stealin' away a poor child the like of that!' 'i'd cut the livers out of the likes of them.' 'now will you mind what you're sayin', and the priest listenin' to you?' 'your reverence, will the child be always a protestant? hasn't the holy water of the church more power in it than the water they have? don't they only throw it at the child?' 'now, mrs. egan--' 'ah, your reverence, you're going to say that i shouldn't have given the child to her, and i wouldn't if i hadn't trod on a stone and fallen against the wall, and got afeard the child might be hurt.' 'well, well,' said father oliver, 'you see there's no child--' 'but you'll be waitin' a minute for the sake of the poor child, your reverence? patsy will be comin' back in a minute.' on that mrs. egan went to the chapel door and stood there, so that she might catch the first glimpse of him as he came across the fields. and it was about ten minutes after, when the priest and his parishioners were talking of other things, that mrs. egan began to wave her arm, crying out that somebody should hurry. 'will you make haste, and his reverence waitin' here this half-hour to baptize the innocent child! he'll be here in less than a minute now, your reverence. will you have patience, and the poor child will be safe?' the child was snatched from patsy, and so violently that the infant began to cry, and mrs. egan didn't know if it was a hurt it had received, for the panting patsy was unable to answer her. 'the child's all right,' he blurted out at last. 'she said i might take it and welcome, now it was a protestant.' 'ah, sure, you great thickhead of a boy! weren't you quick enough for her?' 'now, what are you talkin' about? hadn't she half a mile start of me, and the minister at the door just as i was gettin' over the last bit of a wall!' 'and didn't you go in after them?' 'what would i be doin', going into a protestant church?' patsy's sense of his responsibility was discussed violently until father oliver said: 'now, i can't be waiting any longer. do you want me to baptize the child or not?' 'it would be safer, wouldn't it?' said mrs. egan. 'it would,' said father oliver; 'the parson mightn't have said the words while he was pouring the water.' and, going towards the font with the child, father oliver took a cup of water, but, having regard for the child's cries, he was a little sparing with it. 'now don't be sparin' with the water, your reverence, and don't be a mindin' its noise; it's twicest the quantity of holy water it'll be wanting, and it half an hour a protestant.' it was at that moment mrs. rean appeared in the doorway, and patsy kivel, who didn't care to enter the protestant church, rushed to put her out of his. 'you can do what you like now with the child; it's a protestant, for all your tricks.' 'go along, you old heretic bitch!' 'now, patsy, will you behave yourself when you're standing in the church of god! be leaving the woman alone,' said father oliver; but before he got to the door to separate the two, mrs. rean was running down the chapel yard followed by the crowd of disputants, and he heard the quarrel growing fainter in the village street. rose-coloured clouds had just begun to appear midway in the pale sky--a beautiful sky, all gray and rose--and all this babble about baptism seemed strangely out of his mind. 'and to think that men are still seeking scrolls in turkestan to prove--' the sentence did not finish itself in his mind; a ray of western light falling across the altar steps in the stillness of the church awakened a remembrance in him of the music that nora's hands drew from the harmonium, and, leaning against the communion-rails, he allowed the music to absorb him. he could hear it so distinctly in his mind that he refrained from going up into the gallery and playing it, for in his playing he would perceive how much he had forgotten, how imperfect was his memory. it were better to lose himself in the emotion of the memory of the music; it was in his blood, and he could see her hands playing it, and the music was coloured with the memory of her hair and her eyes. his teeth clenched a little as if in pain, and then he feared the enchantment would soon pass away; but the music preserved it longer than he had expected, and it might have lasted still longer if he had not become aware that someone was standing in the doorway. the feeling suddenly came over him that he was not alone; it was borne in upon him--he knew not how, neither by sight nor sound--through some exceptional sense. and turning towards the sunlit doorway, he saw a poor man standing there, not daring to disturb the priest, thinking, no doubt, that he was engaged in prayer. the poor man was pat kearney. so the priest was a little overcome, for that pat kearney should come to him at such a time was portentous. 'it is strange, certainly, coincidence after coincidence,' he said; and he stood looking at pat as if he didn't know him, till the poor man was frightened and began to wonder, for no one had ever looked at him with such interest, not even the neighbour whom he had asked to marry him three weeks ago. and this pat kearney, who was a short, thick-set man, sinking into years, began to wonder what new misfortune had tracked him down. his teeth were worn and yellow as indian meal, and his rough, ill-shaven cheeks and pale eyes reminded the priest of the country in which pat lived, and of the four acres of land at the end of the boreen that pat was digging these many years. he had come to ask father oliver if he would marry him for a pound, but, as father oliver didn't answer him, he fell to thinking that it was his clothes that the priest was admiring, 'for hadn't his reverence given him the clothes himself? and if it weren't for the self-same clothes, he wouldn't have the pound in his pocket to give the priest to marry him,' 'it was yourself, your reverence--' 'yes, i remember very well.' pat had come to tell him that there was work to be had in tinnick, but that he didn't dare to show himself in tinnick for lack of clothes, and he stood humbly before the priest in a pair of corduroy trousers that hardly covered his nakedness. and it was as father oliver stood examining and pitying his parishioner's poverty it had occurred to him that, if he were to buy two suits of clothes in tinnick and give one to pat kearney, he might wrap the other one in a bundle, and place it on the rocks on the joycetown side. it was not likely that the shopman in tinnick would remember, after three months, that he had sold two suits to the priest; but should he remember this, the explanation would be that he had bought them for pat kearney. now, looking at this poor man who had come to ask him if he would marry him for a pound, the priest was lost in wonder. 'so you're going to be married, pat?' and pat, who hadn't spoken to anyone since the woman whose potatoes he was digging said she'd as soon marry him as another, began to chatter, and to ramble in his chatter. there was so much to tell that he did not know how to tell it. there was his rent and the woman's holding, for now they would have nine acres of land, money would be required to stock it, and he didn't know if the bank would lend him the money. perhaps the priest would help him to get it. 'but why did you come to me to marry you? aren't you two miles nearer to father moran than you are to me?' pat hesitated, not liking to say that he would be hard set to get round father moran. so he began to talk of the egans and the reans. for hadn't he heard, as he came up the street, that mrs. rean had stolen the child from mrs. egan, and had had it baptized by the minister? and he hoped to obtain the priest's sympathy by saying: 'what a terrible thing it was that the police should allow a black protestant to steal a catholic child, and its mother a catholic and all her people before her!' 'when mrs. rean snatched the child, it hadn't been baptized, and was neither a catholic nor a protestant,' the priest said maliciously. pat kearney, whose theological knowledge did not extend very far, remained silent, and the priest was glad of his silence, for he was thinking that in a few minutes he would catch sight of the square whitewashed school-house on the hillside by the pine-wood, and the thought came into his mind that he would like to see again the place where he and nora once stood talking together. but a long field lay between his house and the school-house, and what would it avail him to see the empty room? he looked, instead, for the hawthorn-bush by which he and nora had lingered, and it was a sad pleasure to think how she had gone up the road after bidding him good-bye. but pat kearney began to talk again of how he could get an advance from the bank. 'i can back no bill for you, pat, but i'll give you a letter to father moran telling him that you can't afford to pay more than a pound.' nora's letters were in the drawer of his writing-table; he unlocked it, and put the packet into his pocket, and when he had scribbled a little note to father moran, he said: 'now take this and be off with you; i've other business to attend to besides you;' and he called to catherine for his towels. 'now, is it out bathing you're going, your reverence? you won't be swimming out to castle island, and forgetting that you have confessions at seven?' 'i shall be back in time,' he answered testily, and soon after he began to regret his irritation; for he would never see catherine again, saying to himself that it was a pity he had answered her testily. but he couldn't go back. moran might call. catherine might send moran after him, saying his reverence had gone down to bathe, or any parishioner, however unwarranted his errand, might try to see him out. 'and all errands will be unwarranted to-day,' he said as he hurried along the shore, thinking of the different paths round the rocks and through the blackthorn-bushes. his mind was on the big wood; there he could baffle anybody following him, for while his pursuer would be going round one way he would be coming back the other. but it would be lonely in the big wood; and as he hurried down the old cart-track he thought how he might while away an hour among the ferns in the little spare fields at the end of the plantation, watching the sunset, for hours would have to pass before the moon rose, and the time would pass slowly under the melancholy hazel-thickets into which the sun had not looked for thousands of years. a wood had always been there. the welshmen had felled trees in it to build rafts and boats to reach their island castles. bears and wolves had been slain in it; and thinking how it was still a refuge for foxes, martens and badgers and hawks, he made his way along the shore through the rough fields. he ran a little, and after waiting a while ran on again. on reaching the edge of the wood, he hid himself behind a bush, and did not dare to move, lest there might be somebody about. it was not till he made sure there was no one that he stooped under the blackthorns, and followed a trail, thinking the animal, probably a badger, had its den under the old stones; and to pass the time he sought for a den, but could find none. a small bird, a wren, was picking among the moss; every now and then it fluttered a little way, stopped, and picked again. 'now what instinct guided its search for worms?' he asked, and getting up, he followed the bird, but it escaped into a thicket. there were only hazel-stems in the interspace he had chosen to hide himself in, but there were thickets nearly all about it, and it took some time to find a path through these. after a time one was found, and by noticing everything he tried to pass the time away and make himself secure against being surprised. the path soon came to an end, and he walked round to the other side of the wood, to see if the bushes were thick enough to prevent anyone from coming upon him suddenly from that side; and when all searches were finished he came back, thinking of what his future life would be without nora. but he must not think of her, he must learn to forget her; for the time being at least, his consideration must be of himself in his present circumstances, and he felt that if he did not fix his thoughts on external things, his courage--or should he say his will?--would desert him. it did not need much courage to swim across the lake, much more to leave the parish, and once on the other side he must go any whither, no whither, for he couldn't return to catherine in a frieze coat and a pair of corduroy trousers. her face when she saw him! but of what use thinking of these things? he was going; everything was settled. if he could only restrain his thoughts--they were as wild as bees. standing by a hazel-stem, his hand upon a bough, he fell to thinking what his life would be, and very soon becoming implicated in a dream, he lost consciousness of time and place, and was borne away as by a current; he floated down his future life, seeing his garret room more clearly than he had ever seen it--his bed, his washhand-stand, and the little table on which he did his writing. no doubt most of it would be done in the office, but some of it would be done at home; and at nightfall he would descend from his garret like a bat from the eaves. journalists flutter like bats about newspaper offices. the bats haunt the same eaves, but the journalist drifts from city to city, from county to county, busying himself with ideas that were not his yesterday, and will not be his to-morrow. an interview with a statesman is followed by a review of a book, and the day after he may be thousands of miles away, describing a great flood or a railway accident. the journalist has no time to make friends, and he lives in no place long enough to know it intimately; passing acquaintance and exterior aspects of things are his share of the world. and it was in quest of such vagrancy of ideas and affections that he was going. at that moment a sudden sound in the wood startled him from his reverie, and he peered, a scared expression on his face, certain that the noise he had heard was father moran's footstep. it was but a hare lolloping through the underwood, and wondering at the disappointment he felt, he asked if he were disappointed that moran had not come again to stop him. he didn't think he was, only the course of his life had been so long dependent on a single act of will that a hope had begun in his mind that some outward event might decide his fate for him. last month he was full of courage, his nerves were like iron; to-day he was a poor vacillating creature, walking in a hazel-wood, uncertain lest delay had taken the savour out of his adventure, his attention distracted by the sounds of the wood, by the snapping of a dry twig, by a leaf falling through the branches. 'time is passing,' he said, 'and i must decide whether i go to america to write newspaper articles, or stay at home to say mass--a simple matter, surely.' the ordinary newspaper article he thought he could do as well as another--in fact, he knew he could. but could he hope that in time his mind would widen and deepen sufficiently to enable him to write something worth writing, something that might win her admiration? perhaps, when he had shed all his opinions. many had gone already, more would follow, and one day he would be as free as she was. she had been a great intellectual stimulus, and soon he began to wonder how it was that all the paraphernalia of religion interested him no longer, how he seemed to have suddenly outgrown the things belonging to the ages of faith, and the subtle question, if passion were essential to the growth of the mind, arose. for it seemed to him that his mind had grown, though he had not read the scriptures, and he doubted if the reading of the scriptures would have taught him as much as nora's beauty. 'after all,' he said, 'woman's beauty is more important to the world than a scroll.' he had begun to love and to put his trust in what was natural, spontaneous, instinctive, and might succeed in new york better than he expected. but he would not like to think that it was hope of literary success that tempted him from garranard. he would like to think that in leaving his poor people he was serving their best interests, and this was surely the case. for hadn't he begun to feel that what they needed was a really efficient priest, one who would look after their temporal interests? in ireland the priest is a temporal as well as a spiritual need. who else would take an interest in this forlorn garranard and its people, the reeds and rushes of existence? he had striven to get the government to build a bridge, but had lost patience; he had wearied of the task. certain priests he knew would not have wearied of it; they would have gone on heckling the government and the different boards until the building of the bridge could no longer be resisted. his failure to get this bridge was typical, and it proved beyond doubt that he was right in thinking he had no aptitude for the temporal direction of his parish. but a curate had once lived in bridget clery's cottage who had served his people excellently well, had intrigued successfully, and forced the government to build houses and advance money for drainage and other useful works. and this curate had served his people in many capacities--as scrivener, land-valuer, surveyor, and engineer. it was not till he came to garranard that he seemed to get out of touch with practical affairs, and he began to wonder if it was the comfortable house he lived in, if it were the wine he drank, the cigars he smoked, that had produced this degeneracy, if it were degeneracy. or was it that he had worn out a certain side of his nature in bridget clery's cottage? it might well be that. many a man has mistaken a passing tendency for a vocation. we all write poetry in the beginning of our lives; but most of us leave off writing poetry after some years, unless the instinct is very deep or one is a fool. it might well be that his philanthropic instincts were exhausted; and it might well be that this was not the case, for one never gets at the root of one's nature. the only thing he was sure of was that he had changed a great deal, and, he thought, for the better. he seemed to himself a much more real person than he was a year ago, being now in full possession of his soul, and surely the possession of one's soul is a great reality. by the soul he meant a special way of feeling and seeing. but the soul is more than that--it is a light; and this inner light, faint at first, had not been blown out. if he had blown it out, as many priests had done, he would not have experienced any qualms of conscience. the other priests in the diocese experienced none when they drove erring women out of their parishes, and the reason of this was that they followed a light from without, deliberately shutting out the light of the soul. the question interested him, and he pondered it a long while, finding himself at last forced to conclude that there is no moral law except one's own conscience, and that the moral obligation of every man is to separate the personal conscience from the impersonal conscience. by the impersonal conscience he meant the opinions of others, traditional beliefs, and the rest; and thinking of these things he wandered round the druid stones, and when his thoughts returned to nora's special case he seemed to understand that if any other priest had acted as he had acted he would have acted rightly, for in driving a sinful woman out of the parish he would be giving expression to the moral law as he understood it and as garranard understood it. this primitive code of morals was all garranard could understand in its present civilization, and any code is better than no code. of course, if the priest were a transgressor himself he could not administer the law. happily, that was a circumstance that did not arise often. so it was said; but what did he know of the souls of the priests with whom he dined, smoked pipes, and played cards? and he stopped, surprised, for it had never occurred to him that all a man knows of his fellow is whether he be clean or dirty, short or tall, thin or stout. 'even the soul of moran is obscure to me,' he said--'obscure as this wood;' and at that moment the mystery of the wood seemed to deepen, and he stood for a long while looking through the twilight of the hazels. very likely many of the priests he knew had been tempted by women: some had resisted temptation, and some had sinned and repented. there might be a priest who had sinned and lived for years in sin; even so if he didn't leave his parish, if he didn't become an apostate priest, faith would return to him in the end. but the apostate priest is anathema in the eyes of the church; the doctrine always has been that a sin matters little if the sinner repent. father oliver suddenly saw himself years hence, still in garranard, administering the sacraments, and faith returning like an incoming tide, covering the weedy shore, lapping round the high rock of doubt. if he desired faith, all he had to do was to go on saying mass, hearing confessions, baptizing the young, burying the old, and in twenty years--maybe it would take thirty--when his hair was white and his skin shrivelled, he would be again a good priest, beloved by his parishioners, and carried in the fulness of time by them to the green churchyard where father peter lay near the green pines. only the other day, coming home from his after-noon's walk, he stopped to admire his house. the long shadow of its familiar trees awakened an extraordinary love in him, and when he crossed the threshold and sat down in his armchair, his love for his house had surprised him, and he sat like one enchanted by his own fireside, lost in admiration of the old mahogany bookcase with the inlaid panels, that he had bought at an auction. how sombre and quaint it looked, furnished with his books that he had had bound in dublin, and what pleasure it always was to him to see a ray lighting up the parchment bindings! he had hung some engravings on his walls, and these had become very dear to him; and there were some spoons, bought at an auction some time ago--old, worn georgian spoons--that his hands were accustomed to the use of; there was an old tea-service, with flowers painted inside the cups, and he was leaving these things; why? he sought for a reason for his leaving them. if he were going away to join nora in america he could understand his going. but he would never see her again--at least, it was not probable that he would. he was not following her, but an idea, an abstraction, an opinion; he was separating himself, and for ever, from his native land and his past life, and his quest was, alas! not her, but--he was following what? life? yes; but what is life? do we find life in adventure or by our own fireside? for all he knew he might be flying from the very thing he thought he was following. his thoughts zigzagged, and, almost unaware of his thoughts, he compared life to a flower--to a flower that yields up its perfume only after long cultivation--and then to a wine that gains its fragrance only after it has been lying in the same cellar for many years, and he started up convinced that he must return home at once. but he had not taken many steps before he stopped: 'no, no, i cannot stay here year after year! i cannot stay here till i die, seeing that lake always. i couldn't bear it. i am going. it matters little to me whether life is to be found at home or abroad, in adventure or in habits and customs. one thing matters--do i stay or go?' he turned into the woods and walked aimlessly, trying to escape from his thoughts, and to do so he admired the pattern of the leaves, the flight of the birds, and he stopped by the old stones that may have been druid altars; and he came back an hour after, walking slowly through the hazel-stems, thinking that the law of change is the law of life. at that moment the cormorants were coming down the glittering lake to their roost. with a flutter of wings they perched on the old castle, and his mind continued to formulate arguments, and the last always seemed the best. at half-past seven he was thinking that life is gained by escaping from the past rather than by trying to retain it; he had begun to feel more and more sure that tradition is but dead flesh which we must cut off if we would live.... but just at this spot, an hour ago, he had acquiesced in the belief that if a priest continued to administer the sacraments faith would return to him; and no doubt the sacraments would bring about some sort of religious stupor, but not that sensible, passionate faith which he had once possessed, and which did not meet with the approval of his superiors at maynooth. he had said that in flying from the monotony of tradition he would find only another monotony, and a worse one--that of adventure; and no doubt the journalist's life is made up of fugitive interests. but every man has, or should have, an intimate life as well as an external life; and in losing interest in religion he had lost the intimate life which the priesthood had once given him. the mass was a mere latin formula, and the vestments and the chalice, the host itself, a sort of fetishism--that is to say, a symbolism from which life had departed, shells retaining hardly a murmur of the ancient ecstasy. it was therefore his fate to go in quest of--what? not of adventure. he liked better to think that his quest was the personal life--that intimate exaltation that comes to him who has striven to be himself, and nothing but himself. the life he was going to might lead him even to a new faith. religious forms arise and die. the catholic church had come to the end of its thread; the spool seemed pretty well empty, and he sat down so that he might think better what the new faith might be. what would be its first principle? he asked himself, and not finding any answer to this question, he began to think of his life in america. he would begin as a mere recorder of passing events. but why should he assume that he would not rise higher? and if he remained to the end of his day a humble reporter, he would still have the supreme satisfaction of knowing that he had not resigned himself body and soul to the life of the pool, to a frog-like acquiescence in the stagnant pool. his hand held back a hazel-branch, and he stood staring at the lake. the wild ducks rose in great flocks out of the reeds and went away to feed in the fields, and their departure was followed by a long interval, during which no single thought crossed his mind--at least, none that he could remember. no doubt his tired mind had fallen into lethargy, from which a sudden fear had roughly awakened him. what if some countryman, seeking his goats among the rocks, had come upon the bundle and taken it home! and at once he imagined himself climbing up the rocks naked. pat kearney's cabin was close by, but pat had no clothes except those on his back, and would have to go round the lake to garranard; and the priest thought how he would sit naked in kearney's cottage hour after hour. 'if anyone comes to the cabin i shall have to hold the door to. there is a comic side to every adventure,' he said, 'and a more absurd one it would be difficult to imagine.' the day had begun in a ridiculous adventure--the baptism of the poor child, baptized first a protestant, then a catholic. and he laughed a little, and then he sighed. 'is the whole thing a fairy-tale, a piece of midsummer madness, i wonder? no matter, i can't stay here, so why should i trouble to discover a reason for my going? in america i shall be living a life in agreement with god's instincts. my quest is life.' and, remembering some words in her last letter, his heart cried out that his love must bring her back to him eventually, though poole were to take her to the end of the earth, and at once he was carried quickly beyond the light of common sense into a dim happy world where all things came and went or were transformed in obedience to his unexpressed will. whether the sun were curtained by leafage or by silken folds he did not know--only this: that she was coming towards him, borne lightly as a ball of thistle-down. he perceived the colour of her hair, and eyes, and hands, and of the pale dress she wore; but her presence seemed revealed to him through the exaltation of some sense latent or non-existent in him in his waking moods. his delight was of the understanding, for they neither touched hands nor spoke. a little surprise rose to the surface of his rapture--surprise at the fact that he experienced no pang of jealousy. she had said that true love could not exist without jealousy! but was she right in this? it seemed to him that we begin to love when we cease to judge. if she were different she wouldn't be herself, and it was herself he loved--the mystery of her sunny, singing nature. there is no judgment where there is perfect sympathy, and he understood that it would be as vain for him to lament that her eyebrows were fair as to lament or reprove her conduct. continuing the same train of thought, he remembered that, though she was young to-day, she would pass into middle, maybe old age; that the day would come when her hair would be less bright, her figure would lose its willowness; but these changes would not lessen his love for her. should he not welcome change? thinking that perhaps fruit-time is better than blossom-time, he foresaw a deeper love awaiting him, and a tenderness that he could not feel to-day might be his in years to come. nor could habit blunt his perceptions or intimacy unravel the mystery of her sunny nature. so the bourne could never be reached; for when everything had been said, something would remain unspoken. the two rhythms out of which the music of life is made, intimacy and adventure, would meet, would merge, and become one; and she, who was to-day an adventure, would become in the end the home of his affections. a great bird swooped out of the branches above him, startling him, and he cried out: 'an owl--only an owl!' the wood was quiet and dark, and in fear he groped his way to the old stones; for one thing still remained to be done before he left--he must burn her letters. he burnt them one by one, shielding the flame with his hand lest it should attract some passer-by, and when the last was burnt he feared no longer anything. his wonder was why he had hesitated, why his mind had been torn by doubt. at the back of his mind he had always known he was going. had he not written saying he was going, and wasn't that enough? and he thought for a moment of what her opinion of him would be if he stayed in garranard. in a cowardly moment he hoped that something would happen to save him from the ultimate decision, and now doubt was overcome. a yellow disc appeared, cutting the flat sky sharply, and he laid his priest's clothes in the middle of a patch of white sand where they could be easily seen. placing the roman collar upon the top, and, stepping from stone to stone, he stood on the last one as on a pedestal, tall and gray in the moonlight--buttocks hard as a faun's, and dimpled like a faun's when he draws himself up before plunging after a nymph. when he emerged he was among the reeds, shaking the water from his face and hair. the night was so warm that it was like swimming in a bath, and when he had swum a quarter of a mile he turned over on his back to see the moon shining. then he turned over to see how near he was to the island. 'too near,' he thought, for he had started before his time. but he might delay a little on the island, and he walked up the shore, his blood in happy circulation, his flesh and brain a-tingle, a little captivated by the vigour of his muscles, and ready and anxious to plunge into the water on the other side, to tire himself if he could, in the mile and a half of gray lake that lay between him and shore. there were lights in every cottage window; the villagers would be about the roads for an hour or more, and it would be well to delay on the island, and he chose a high rock to sit upon. his hand ran the water off his hard thighs, and then off his long, thin arms, and he watched the laggard moon rising slowly in the dusky night, like a duck from the marshes. supporting himself with one arm, he let himself down the rock and dabbled his foot in the water, and the splashing of the water reminded him of little philip rean, who had been baptized twice that morning notwithstanding his loud protest. and now one of his baptizers was baptized, and in a few minutes would plunge again into the beneficent flood. the night was so still and warm that it was happiness to be naked, and he thought he could sit for hours on that rock without feeling cold, watching the red moon rolling up through the trees round tinnick; and when the moon turned from red to gold he wondered how it was that the mere brightening of the moon could put such joy into a man's heart. derrinrush was the nearest shore, and far away in the wood he heard a fox bark. 'on the trail of some rabbit,' he thought, and again he admired the great gold moon rising heavily through the dusky sky, and the lake formless and spectral beneath it. catherine no doubt had begun to feel agitated; she would be walking about at midnight, too scared to go to sleep. he was sorry for her; perhaps she would be the only one who would prefer to hear he was in america and doing well than at the bottom of the lake. eliza would regret in a way, as much as her administration of the convent would allow her; mary would pray for him--so would eliza, for the matter of that; and their prayers would come easily, thinking him dead. poor women! if only for their peace of mind he would undertake the second half of the crossing. a long mile of water lay between him and joycetown, but there was a courage he had never felt before in his heart, and a strength he had never felt before in his limbs. once he stood up in the water, sorry that the crossing was not longer. 'perhaps i shall have had enough of it before i get there;' and he turned on his side and swam half a mile before changing his stroke. he changed it and got on his back because he was beginning to feel cold and tired, and soon after he began to think that it would be about as much as he could do to reach the shore. a little later he was swimming frog-fashion, but the change did not seem to rest him, and seeing the shore still a long way off he began to think that perhaps after all he would find his end in the lake. his mind set on it, however, that the lake should be foiled, he struggled on, and when the water shallowed he felt he had come to the end of his strength. 'another hundred yards would have done for me,' he said, and he was so cold that he could not think, and sought his clothes vaguely, sitting down to rest from time to time among the rocks. he didn't know for certain if he would find them, and if he didn't he must die of cold. so the rough shirt was very welcome when he discovered it, and so were the woollen socks. as soon as he was dressed he thought that he felt nearly strong enough to climb up the rocks, but he was not as strong as he thought, and it took him a long time to get to the top. but at the top the sward was pleasant--it was the sward of the terrace of the old house; and lying at length, fearful lest sleep might overtake him, he looked across the lake. 'a queer dusky night,' he said, 'with hardly a star, and that great moon pouring silver down the lake.' 'i shall never see that lake again, but i shall never forget it,' and as he dozed in the train, in a corner of an empty carriage, the spectral light of the lake awoke him, and when he arrived at cork it seemed to him that he was being engulfed in the deep pool by the joycetown shore. on the deck of the steamer he heard the lake's warble above the violence of the waves. 'there is a lake in every man's heart,' he said, 'and he listens to its monotonous whisper year by year, more and more attentive till at last he ungirds.' the end the child of the dawn by arthur christopher benson fellow of magdalene college cambridge [greek: êdu ti tharsaleais ton makron teiein bion elpisin] author of the upton letters, from a college window, beside still waters, the altar fire, the schoolmaster, at large, the gate of death, the silent isle, john ruskin, leaves of the tree, child of the dawn, paul the minstrel to my best and dearest friend herbert francis william tatham in love and hope introduction i think that a book like the following, which deals with a subject so great and so mysterious as our hope of immortality, by means of an allegory or fantasy, needs a few words of preface, in order to clear away at the outset any misunderstandings which may possibly arise in a reader's mind. nothing is further from my wish than to attempt any philosophical or ontological exposition of what is hidden behind the veil of death. but one may be permitted to deal with the subject imaginatively or poetically, to translate hopes into visions, as i have tried to do. the fact that underlies the book is this: that in the course of a very sad and strange experience--an illness which lasted for some two years, involving me in a dark cloud of dejection--i came to believe practically, instead of merely theoretically, in the personal immortality of the human soul. i was conscious, during the whole time, that though the physical machinery of the nerves was out of gear, the soul and the mind remained, not only intact, but practically unaffected by the disease, imprisoned, like a bird in a cage, but perfectly free in themselves, and uninjured by the bodily weakness which enveloped them. this was not all. i was led to perceive that i had been living life with an entirely distorted standard of values; i had been ambitious, covetous, eager for comfort and respect, absorbed in trivial dreams and childish fancies. i saw, in the course of my illness, that what really mattered to the soul was the relation in which it stood to other souls; that affection was the native air of the spirit; and that anything which distracted the heart from the duty of love was a kind of bodily delusion, and simply hindered the spirit in its pilgrimage. it is easy to learn this, to attain to a sense of certainty about it, and yet to be unable to put it into practice as simply and frankly as one desires to do! the body grows strong again and reasserts itself; but the blessed consciousness of a great possibility apprehended and grasped remains. there came to me, too, a sense that one of the saddest effects of what is practically a widespread disbelief in immortality, which affects many people who would nominally disclaim it, is that we think of the soul after death as a thing so altered as to be practically unrecognisable--as a meek and pious emanation, without qualities or aims or passions or traits--as a sort of amiable and weak-kneed sacristan in the temple of god; and this is the unhappy result of our so often making religion a pursuit apart from life--an occupation, not an atmosphere; so that it seems impious to think of the departed spirit as interested in anything but a vague species of liturgical exercise. i read the other day the account of the death-bed of a great statesman, which was written from what i may call a somewhat clerical point of view. it was recorded with much gusto that the dying politician took no interest in his schemes of government and cares of state, but found perpetual solace in the repetition of childish hymns. this fact had, or might have had, a certain beauty of its own, if it had been expressly stated that it was a proof that the tired and broken mind fell back upon old, simple, and dear recollections of bygone love. but there was manifest in the record a kind of sanctimonious triumph in the extinction of all the great man's insight and wisdom. it seemed to me that the right treatment of the episode was rather to insist that those great qualities, won by brave experience and unselfish effort, were only temporarily obscured, and belonged actually and essentially to the spirit of the man; and that if heaven is indeed, as we may thankfully believe, a place of work and progress, those qualities would be actively and energetically employed as soon as the soul was freed from the trammels of the failing body. another point may also be mentioned. the idea of transmigration and reincarnation is here used as a possible solution for the extreme difficulties which beset the question of the apparently fortuitous brevity of some human lives. i do not, of course, propound it as literally and precisely as it is here set down--it is not a forecast of the future, so much as a symbolising of the forces of life--but _the renewal of conscious experience_, in some form or other, seems to be the only way out of the difficulty, and it is that which is here indicated. if life is a probation for those who have to face experience and temptation, how can it be a probation for infants and children, who die before the faculty of moral choice is developed? again, i find it very hard to believe in any multiplication of human souls. it is even more difficult for me to believe in the creation of new souls than in the creation of new matter. science has shown us that there is no actual addition made to the sum of matter, and that the apparent creation of new forms of plants or animals is nothing more than a rearrangement of existing particles--that if a new form appears in one place, it merely means that so much matter is transferred thither from another place. i find it, i say, hard to believe that the sum total of life is actually increased. to put it very simply for the sake of clearness, and accepting the assumption that human life had some time a beginning on this planet, it seems impossible to think that when, let us say, the two first progenitors of the race died, there were but two souls in heaven; that when the next generation died there were, let us say, ten souls in heaven; and that this number has been added to by thousands and millions, until the unseen world is peopled, as it must be now, if no reincarnation is possible, by myriads of human identities, who, after a single brief taste of incarnate life, join some vast community of spirits in which they eternally reside. i do not say that this latter belief may not be true; i only say that in default of evidence, it seems to me a difficult faith to hold; while a reincarnation of spirits, if one could believe it, would seem to me both to equalise the inequalities of human experience, and give one a lively belief in the virtue and worth of human endeavour. but all this is set down, as i say, in a tentative and not in a philosophical form. and i have also in these pages kept advisedly clear of christian doctrines and beliefs; not because i do not believe wholeheartedly in the divine origin and unexhausted vitality of the christian revelation, but because i do not intend to lay rash and profane hands upon the highest and holiest of mysteries. i will add one word about the genesis of the book. some time ago i wrote a number of short tales of an allegorical type. it was a curious experience. i seemed to have come upon them in my mind, as one comes upon a covey of birds in a field. one by one they took wings and flew; and when i had finished, though i was anxious to write more tales, i could not discover any more, though i beat the covert patiently to dislodge them. this particular tale rose unbidden in my mind. i was never conscious of creating any of its incidents. it seemed to be all there from the beginning; and i felt throughout like a man making his way along a road, and describing what he sees as he goes. the road stretched ahead of me; i could not see beyond the next turn at any moment; it just unrolled itself inevitably and, i will add, very swiftly to my view, and was thus a strange and momentous experience. i will only add that the book is all based upon an intense belief in god, and a no less intense conviction of personal immortality and personal responsibility. it aims at bringing out the fact that our life is a very real pilgrimage to high and far-off things from mean and sordid beginnings, and that the key of the mystery lies in the frank facing of experience, as a blessed process by which the secret purpose of god is made known to us; and, even more, in a passionate belief in love, the love of friend and neighbour, and the love of god; and in the absolute faith that we are all of us, from the lowest and most degraded human soul to the loftiest and wisest, knit together with chains of infinite nearness and dearness, under god, and in him, and through him, now and hereafter and for evermore. a.c.b. the old lodge, magdalene college, cambridge, _january_, . the child of the dawn i certainly the last few moments of my former material, worn-out life, as i must still call it, were made horrible enough for me. i came to, after the operation, in a deadly sickness and ghastly confusion of thought. i was just dimly conscious of the trim, bare room, the white bed, a figure or two, but everything else was swallowed up in the pain, which filled all my senses at once. yet surely, i thought, it is all something outside me? ... my brain began to wander, and the pain became a thing. it was a tower of stone, high and blank, with a little sinister window high up, from which something was every now and then waved above the house-roofs.... the tower was gone in a moment, and there was a heap piled up on the floor of a great room with open beams--a granary, perhaps. the heap was of curved sharp steel things like sickles: something moved and muttered underneath it, and blood ran out on the floor. then i was instantly myself, and the pain was with me again; and then there fell on me a sense of faintness, so that the cold sweat-drops ran suddenly out on my brow. there came a smell of drugs, sharp and pungent, on the air. i heard a door open softly, and a voice said, "he is sinking fast--they must be sent for at once." then there were more people in the room, people whom i thought i had known once, long ago; but i was buried and crushed under the pain, like the thing beneath the heap of sickles. there swept over me a dreadful fear; and i could see that the fear was reflected in the faces above me; but now they were strangely distorted and elongated, so that i could have laughed, if only i had had the time; but i had to move the weight off me, which was crushing me. then a roaring sound began to come and go upon the air, louder and louder, faster and faster; the strange pungent scent came again; and then i was thrust down under the weight, monstrous, insupportable; further and further down; and there came a sharp bright streak, like a blade severing the strands of a rope drawn taut and tense; another and another; one was left, and the blade drew near.... i fell suddenly out of the sound and scent and pain into the most incredible and blessed peace and silence. it would have been like a sleep, but i was still perfectly conscious, with a sense of unutterable and blissful fatigue; a picture passed before me, of a calm sea, of vast depth and clearness. there were cliffs at a little distance, great headlands and rocky spires. i seemed to myself to have left them, to have come down through them, to have embarked. there was a pale light everywhere, flushed with rose-colour, like the light of a summer dawn; and i felt as i had once felt as a child, awakened early in the little old house among the orchards, on a spring morning; i had risen from my bed, and leaning out of my window, filled with a delightful wonder, i had seen the cool morning quicken into light among the dewy apple-blossoms. that was what i felt like, as i lay upon the moving tide, glad to rest, not wondering or hoping, not fearing or expecting anything--just there, and at peace. there seemed to be no time in that other blessed morning, no need to do anything. the cliffs, i did not know how, faded from me, and the boundless sea was about me on every side; but i cannot describe the timelessness of it. there are no human words for it all, yet i must speak of it in terms of time and space, because both time and space were there, though i was not bound by them. and here first i will say a few words about the manner of speech i shall use. it is very hard to make clear, but i think i can explain it in an image. i once walked alone, on a perfect summer day, on the south downs. the great smooth shoulders of the hills lay left and right, and, in front of me, the rich tufted grass ran suddenly down to the plain, which stretched out before me like a map. i saw the fields and woods, the minute tiled hamlet-roofs, the white roads, on which crawled tiny carts. a shepherd, far below, drove his flock along a little deep-cut lane among high hedges. the sounds of earth came faintly and sweetly up, obscure sounds of which i could not tell the origin; but the tinkling of sheep-bells was the clearest, and the barking of the shepherd-dog. my own dog sat beside me, watching my face, impatient to be gone. but at the barking he pricked up his ears, put his head on one side, and wondered, i saw, where that companionable sound came from. what he made of the scene i do not know; the sight of the fruitful earth, the homes of men, the fields and waters, filled me with an inexpressible emotion, a wide-flung hope, a sense of the immensity and intricacy of life. but to my dog it meant nothing at all, though he saw just what i did. to him it was nothing but a great excavation in the earth, patched and streaked with green. it was not then the scene itself that i loved; that was only a symbol of emotions and ideas within me. it touched the spring of a host of beautiful thoughts; but the beauty and the sweetness were the contribution of my own heart and mind. now in the new world in which i found myself, i approached the thoughts of beauty and loveliness direct, without any intervening symbols at all. the emotions which beautiful things had aroused in me upon earth were all there, in the new life, but not confused or blurred, as they had been in the old life, by the intruding symbols of ugly, painful, evil things. that was all gone like a mist. i could not think an evil or an ugly thought. for a period it was so with me. for a long time--i will use the words of earth henceforth without any explanation--i abode in the same calm, untroubled peace, partly in memory of the old days, partly in the new visions. my senses seemed all blended in one sense; it was not sight or hearing or touch--it was but an instant apprehension of the essence of things. all that time i was absolutely alone, though i had a sense of being watched and tended in a sort of helpless and happy infancy. it was always the quiet sea, and the dawning light. i lived over the scenes of the old life in a vague, blissful memory. for the joy of the new life was that all that had befallen me had a strange and perfect significance. i had lived like other men. i had rejoiced, toiled, schemed, suffered, sinned. but it was all one now. i saw that each influence had somehow been shaping and moulding me. the evil i had done, was it indeed evil? it had been the flowering of a root of bitterness, the impact of material forces and influences. had i ever desired it? not in my spirit, i now felt. sin had brought me shame and sorrow, and they had done their work. repentance, contrition--ugly words! i laughed softly at the thought of how different it all was from what i had dreamed. i was as the lost sheep found, as the wayward son taken home; and should i spoil my joy with recalling what was past and done with for ever? forgiveness was not a process, then, a thing to be sued for and to be withheld; it was all involved in the glad return to the breast of god. what was the mystery, then? the things that i had wrought, ignoble, cruel, base, mean, selfish--had i ever willed to do them? it seemed impossible, incredible. were those grievous things still growing, seeding, flowering in other lives left behind? had they invaded, corrupted, hurt other poor wills and lives? i could think of them no longer, any more than i could think of the wrongs done to myself. those had not hurt me either. perhaps i had still to suffer, but i could not think of that. i was too much overwhelmed with joy. the whole thing seemed so infinitely little and far away. so for a time i floated on the moving crystal of the translucent sea, over the glimmering deeps, the dawn above me, the scenes of the old life growing and shaping themselves and fading without any will of my own, nothing within or without me but ineffable peace and perfect joy. ii i knew quite well what had happened to me; that i had passed through what mortals call death: and two thoughts came to me; one was this. there had been times on earth when one had felt sure with a sort of deep instinct that one could not really ever die; yet there had been hours of weariness and despair when one had wondered whether death would not mean a silent blankness. that thought had troubled me most, when i had followed to the grave some friend or some beloved. the mouldering form, shut into the narrow box, was thrust with a sense of shame and disgrace into the clay, and no word or sign returned to show that the spirit lived on, or that one would ever find that dear proximity again. how foolish it seemed now ever to have doubted, ever to have been troubled! of course it was all eternal and everlasting. and then, too, came a second thought. one had learned in life, alas, so often to separate what was holy and sacred from daily life; there were prayers, liturgies, religious exercises, solemnities, sabbaths--an oppressive strain, too often, and a banishing of active life. brought up as one had been, there had been a mournful overshadowing of thought, that after death, and with god, it would be all grave and constrained and serious, a perpetual liturgy, an unending sabbath. but now all was deliciously merged together. all of beautiful and gracious that there had been in religion, all of joyful and animated and eager that there had been in secular life, everything that amused, interested, excited, all fine pictures, great poems, lovely scenes, intrepid thoughts, exercise, work, jests, laughter, perceptions, fancies--they were all one now; only sorrow and weariness and dulness and ugliness and greediness were gone. the thought was fresh, pure, delicate, full of a great and mirthful content. there were no divisions of time in my great peace; past, present, and future were alike all merged. how can i explain that? it seems so impossible, having once seen it, that it should be otherwise. the day did not broaden to the noon, nor fade to evening. there was no night there. more than that. in the other life, the dark low-hung days, one seemed to have lived so little, and always to have been making arrangements to live; so much time spent in plans and schemes, in alterations and regrets. there was this to be done and that to be completed; one thing to be begun, another to be cleared away; always in search of the peace which one never found; and if one did achieve it, then it was surrounded, like some cast carrion, by a cloud of poisonous thoughts, like buzzing blue-flies. now at last one lived indeed; but there grew up in the soul, very gradually and sweetly, the sense that one was resting, growing accustomed to something, learning the ways of the new place. i became more and more aware that i was not alone; it was not that i met, or encountered, or was definitely conscious of any thought that was not my own; but there were motions as of great winds in the untroubled calm in which i lay, of vast deeps drawing past me. there were hoverings and poisings of unseen creatures, which gave me neither awe nor surprise, because they were not in the range of my thought as yet; but it was enough to show me that i was not alone, that there was life about me, purposes going forward, high activities. the first time i experienced anything more definite was when suddenly i became aware of a great crystalline globe that rose like a bubble out of the sea. it was of an incredible vastness; but i was conscious that i did not perceive it as i had perceived things upon the earth, but that i apprehended it all together, within and without. it rose softly and swiftly out of the expanse. the surface of it was all alive. it had seas and continents, hills and valleys, woods and fields, like our own earth. there were cities and houses thronged with living beings; it was a world like our own, and yet there was hardly a form upon it that resembled any earthly form, though all were articulate and definite, ranging from growths which i knew to be vegetable, with a dumb and sightless life of their own, up to beings of intelligence and purpose. it was a world, in fact, on which a history like that of our own world was working itself out; but the whole was of a crystalline texture, if texture it can be called; there was no colour or solidity, nothing but form and silence, and i realised that i saw, if not materially yet in thought, and recognised then, that all the qualities of matter, the sounds, the colours, the scents--all that depends upon material vibration--were abstracted from it; while form, of which the idea exists in the mind apart from all concrete manifestations, was still present. for some time after that, a series of these crystalline globes passed through the atmosphere where i dwelt, some near, some far; and i saw in an instant, in each case, the life and history of each. some were still all aflame, mere currents of molten heat and flying vapour. some had the first signs of rudimentary life--some, again, had a full and organised life, such as ours on earth, with a clash of nations, a stream of commerce, a perfecting of knowledge. others were growing cold, and the life upon them was artificial and strange, only achieved by a highly intellectual and noble race, with an extraordinary command of natural forces, fighting in wonderfully constructed and guarded dwellings against the growing deathliness of a frozen world, and with a tortured despair in their minds at the extinction which threatened them. there were others, again, which were frozen and dead, where the drifting snow piled itself up over the gigantic and pathetic contrivances of a race living underground, with huge vents and chimneys, burrowing further into the earth in search of shelter, and nurturing life by amazing processes which i cannot here describe. they were marvellously wise, those pale and shadowy creatures, with a vitality infinitely ahead of our own, a vitality out of which all weakly or diseased elements had long been eliminated. and again there were globes upon which all seemed dead and frozen to the core, slipping onwards in some infinite progress. but though i saw life under a myriad of new conditions, and with an endless variety of forms, the nature of it was the same as ours. there was the same ignorance of the future, the same doubts and uncertainties, the same pathetic leaning of heart to heart, the same wistful desire after permanence and happiness, which could not be there or so attained. then, too, i saw wild eddies of matter taking shape, of a subtlety that is as far beyond any known earthly conditions of matter as steam is above frozen stone. great tornadoes whirled and poised; globes of spinning fire flew off on distant errands of their own, as when the heavens were made; and i saw, too, the crash of world with world, when satellites that had lost their impetus drooped inwards upon some central sun, and merged themselves at last with a titanic leap. all this enacted itself before me, while life itself flew like a pulse from system to system, never diminished, never increased, withdrawn from one to settle on another. all this i saw and knew. iii i thought i could never be satiated by this infinite procession of wonders. but at last there rose in my mind, like a rising star, the need to be alone no longer. i was passing through a kind of heavenly infancy; and just as a day comes when a child puts out a hand with a conscious intention, not merely a blind groping, but with a need to clasp and caress, or answers a smile by a smile, a word by a purposeful cry, so in a moment i was aware of some one with me and near me, with a heart and a nature that leaned to mine and had need of me, as i of him. i knew him to be one who had lived as i had lived, on the earth that was ours,--lived many lives, indeed; and it was then first that i became aware that i had myself lived many lives too. my human life, which i had last left, was the fullest and clearest of all my existences; but they had been many and various, though always progressive. i must not now tell of the strange life histories that had enfolded me--they had risen in dignity and worth from a life far back, unimaginably elementary and instinctive; but i felt in a moment that my new friend's life had been far richer and more perfect than my own, though i saw that there were still experiences ahead of both of us; but not yet. i may describe his presence in human similitudes, a presence perfectly defined, though apprehended with no human sight. he bore a name which described something clear, strong, full of force, and yet gentle of access, like water. it was just that; a thing perfectly pure and pervading, which could be stained and troubled, and yet could retain no defilement or agitation; which a child could scatter and divide, and yet was absolutely powerful and insuperable. i will call him amroth. him, i say, because though there was no thought of sex left in my consciousness, his was a courageous, inventive, masterful spirit, which gave rather than received, and was withal of a perfect kindness and directness, love undefiled and strong. the moment i became aware of his presence, i felt him to be like one of those wonderful, pure youths of an italian picture, whose whole mind is set on manful things, untroubled by the love of woman, and yet finding all the world intensely gracious and beautiful, full of eager frankness, even impatience, with long, slim, straight limbs and close-curled hair. i knew him to be the sort of being that painters and poets had been feeling after when they represented or spoke of angels. and i could not help laughing outright at the thought of the meek, mild, statuesque draped figures, with absurd wings and depressing smiles, that encumbered pictures and churches, with whom no human communication would be possible, and whose grave and discomfiting glance would be fatal to all ease or merriment. i recognised in amroth a mirthful soul, full of humour and laughter, who could not be shocked by any truth, or hold anything uncomfortably sacred--though indeed he held all things sacred with a kind of eagerness that charmed me. instead of meeting him in dolorous pietistic mood, i met him, i remember, as at school or college one suddenly met a frank, smiling, high-spirited youth or boy, who was ready at once to take comradeship for granted, and walked away with one from a gathering, with an outrush of talk and plans for further meetings. it was all so utterly unlike the subdued and cautious and sensitive atmosphere of devotion that it stirred us both, i was aware, to a delicious kind of laughter. and then came a swift interchange of thought, which i must try to represent by speech, though speech was none. "i am glad to find you, amroth," i said. "i was just beginning to wonder if i was not going to be lonely." "ah," he said, "one has what one desires here; you had too much to see and learn at first to want my company. and yet i have been with you, pointing out a thousand things, ever since you came here." "was it you," i said, "that have been showing me all this? i thought i was alone." at which amroth laughed again, a laugh full of content. "yes," he said, "the crags and the sunset--do you not remember? i came down with you, carrying you like a child in my arms, while you slept; and then i saw you awake. you had to rest a long time at first; you had had much to bear--uncertainty--that is what tires one, even more than pain. and i have been telling you things ever since, when you could listen." "oh," i said, "i have a hundred things to ask you; how strange it is to see so much and understand so little!" "ask away," said amroth, putting an arm through mine. "i was afraid," i said, "that it would all be so different--like a catechism 'dost thou believe--is this thy desire?' but instead it seems so entirely natural and simple!" "ah," he said, "that is how we bewilder ourselves on earth. why, it is hard to say! but all the real things remain. it is all just as surprising and interesting and amusing and curious as it ever was: the only things that are gone--for a time, that is--are the things that are ugly and sad. but they are useful too in their way, though you have no need to think of them now. those are just the discipline, the training." "but," i said, "what makes people so different from each other down there--so many people who are sordid, grubby, quarrelsome, cruel, selfish, spiteful? only a few who are bold and kind--like you, for instance?" "no," he said, answering the thought that rose in my mind, "of course i don't mind--i like compliments as well as ever, if they come naturally! but don't you see that all the little poky, sensual, mean, disgusting lives are simply those of spirits struggling to be free; we begin by being enchained by matter at first, and then the stream runs clearer. the divine things are imagination and sympathy. that is the secret." iv once i said: "which kind of people do you find it hardest to help along?" "the young people," said amroth, with a smile. "youth!" i said. "why, down below, we think of youth as being so generous and ardent and imitative! we speak of youth as the time to learn, and form fine habits; if a man is wilful and selfish in after-life, we say that it was because he was too much indulged in childhood--and we attach great importance to the impressions of youth." "that is quite right," said amroth, "because the impressions of youth are swift and keen; but of course, here, age is not a question of years or failing powers. the old, here, are the wise and gracious and patient and gentle; the youth of the spirit is stupidity and unimaginativeness. on the one hand are the stolid and placid, and on the other are the brutal and cruel and selfish and unrestrained." "you confuse me greatly," i said; "surely you do not mean that spiritual life and progress are a matter of intellectual energy?" "no, not at all," said he; "the so-called intellectual people are often the most stupid and youngest of all. the intellect counts for nothing: that is only a kind of dexterity, a pretty game. the imagination is what matters." "worse and worse!" i said. "does salvation belong to poets and novelists?" "no, no," said amroth, "that is a game too! the imagination i speak of is the power of entering into other people's minds and hearts, of putting yourself in their place--of loving them, in fact. the more you know of people, the better chance there is of loving them; and you can only find your way into their minds by imaginative sympathy. i will tell you a story which will show you what i mean. there was once a famous writer on earth, of whose wisdom people spoke with bated breath. men went to see him with fear and reverence, and came away, saying, 'how wonderful!' and this man, in his age, was waited upon by a little maid, an ugly, tired, tiny creature. people used to say that they wondered he had not a better servant. but she knew all that he liked and wanted, where his books and papers were, what was good for him to do. she did not understand a word of what he said, but she knew both when he had talked too much, and when he had not talked enough, so that his mind was pent up in itself, and he became cross and fractious. now, in reality, the little maid was one of the oldest and most beautiful of spirits. she had lived many lives, each apparently humbler than the last. she never grumbled about her work, or wanted to amuse herself. she loved the silly flies that darted about her kitchen, or brushed their black heads on the ceiling; she loved the ivy tendrils that tapped on her window in the breeze. she did not go to church, she had no time for that; or if she had gone, she would not have understood what was said, though she would have loved all the people there, and noticed how they looked and sang. but the wise man himself was one of the youngest and stupidest of spirits, so young and stupid that he had to have a very old and wise spirit to look after him. he was eaten up with ideas and vanity, so that he had no time to look at any one or think of anybody, unless they praised him. he has a very long pilgrimage before him, though he wrote pretty songs enough, and his mortal body, or one of them, lies in the poets' corner of the abbey, and people come and put wreaths there with tears in their eyes." "it is very bewildering," i said, "but i see a little more than i did. it is all a matter of feeling, then? but it seems hard on people that they should be so dull and stupid about it all,--that the truth should lie so close to their hand and yet be so carefully concealed." "oh, they grow out of dulness!" he said, with a movement of his hand; "that is what experience does for us--it is always going on; we get widened and deepened. why," he added, "i have seen a great man, as they called him, clever and alert, who held a high position in the state. he was laid aside by a long and painful illness, so that all his work was put away. he was brave about it, too, i remember; but he used to think to himself how sad and wasteful it was, that when he was most energetic and capable he should be put on the shelf--all the fine work he might have done interrupted; all the great speeches he would have made unuttered. but as a matter of fact, he was then for the first time growing fast, because he had to look into the minds and hearts of all sorrowful and disappointed people, and to learn that what we do matters so little, and that what we are matters so much. when he did at last get back to the world, people said, 'what a sad pity to see so fine a career spoilt!' but out of all the years of all his lives, those years had been his very best and richest, when he sat half the day feeble in the sun, and could not even look at the papers which lay beside him, or when he woke in the grey mornings, with the thought of another miserable day of idleness and pain before him." i said, "then is it a bad thing to be busy in the world, because it takes off your mind from the things which matter?" "no," said amroth, "not a bad thing at all: because two things are going on. partly the framework of society and life is being made, so that men are not ground down into that sordid struggle, when little experience is possible because of the drudgery which clouds all the mind. though even that has its opportunities! and all depends, for the individual, upon how he is doing his work. if he has other people in mind all the time, and does his work for them, and not to be praised for it, then all is well. but if he is thinking of his credit and his position, then he does not grow at all; that is pomposity--a very youthful thing indeed; but the worst case of all is if a man sees that the world must be helped and made, and that one can win credit thus, and so engages in work of that kind, and deals in all the jargon of it, about using influence and living for others, when he is really thinking of himself all the time, and trying to keep the eyes of the world upon him. but it is all growth really, though sometimes, as on the beach when the tide is coming in, the waves seem to draw backward from the land, and poise themselves in a crest of troubled water." "but is a great position in the world," i said, "whether inherited or attained, a dangerous thing?" "nothing is _dangerous_, child," he said. "you must put all that out of your mind. but men in high posts and stations are often not progressing evenly, only in great jogs and starts. they learn very often, with a sudden surprise, which is not always painful, and sometimes is very beautiful and sweet, that all the ceremony and pomp, the great house, the bows and the smiles, mean nothing at all--absolutely nothing, except the chance, the opportunity of not being taken in by them. that is the use of all pleasures and all satisfactions--the frame of mind which made the old king say, 'is not this great babylon, which i have builded?'--they are nothing but the work of another class in the great school of life. a great many people are put to school with self-satisfaction, that they may know the fine joy of humiliation, the delight of learning that it is not effectiveness and applause that matters, but love and peacefulness. and the great thing is that we should feel that we are growing, not in hardness or indifference, nor necessarily even in courage or patience, but in our power to feel and our power to suffer. as love multiplies, suffering must multiply too. the very heart of god is full of infinite, joyful, hopeful suffering; the whole thing is so vast, so slow, so quiet, that the end of suffering is yet far off. but when we suffer, we climb fast; the spirit grows old and wise in faith and love; and suffering is the one thing we cannot dispense with, because it is the condition of our fullest and purest life." v i said suddenly, "the joy of this place is not the security of it, but the fact that one has not to think about security. i am not afraid of anything that may happen, and there is no weariness of thought. one does not think till one is tired, but till one has finished thinking." "yes," said amroth, "that was the misery of the poor body!" "and yet i used to think," i said, "in the old days that i was grateful to the body for many pleasant things it gave me--breathing the air, feeling the sun, eating and drinking, games and exercise, and the strange thing one called love." "yes," said amroth, "all those things have to be made pleasant, or to appear so; otherwise no one could submit to the discipline at all; but of course the pleasure only got in the way of the thought and of the happiness; it was not what one saw, tasted, smelt, felt, that one desired, but the real thing behind it; even the purest thing of all, the sight and contact of one whom one loved, let us say, with no sensual passion at all, but with a perfectly pure love; what a torment that was--desiring something which one could not get, the real fusion of feeling and thought! but the poor body was always in the way then, saying, 'here am i--please me, amuse me.'" "but then," i said, "what is the use of all that? why should the pure, clear, joyful, sleepless life i now feel be tainted and hampered and drugged by the body? i don't feel that i am losing anything by losing the body." "no, not losing," said amroth, "but, happy though you are, you are not gaining things as fast now--it is your time of rest and refreshment--but we shall go back, both of us, to the other life again, when the time comes: and the point is this, that we have got to win the best things through trouble and struggle." "but even so," i said, "there are many things i do not understand--the child that opens its eyes upon the world and closes them again; the young child that suffers and dies, just when it is the darling of the home; and at the other end of the scale, the helpless, fractious invalid, or the old man who lives in weariness, wakeful and tortured, and who is glad just to sit in the sun, indifferent to every one and everything, past feeling and hoping and thinking--or, worst of all, the people with diseased minds, whose pain makes them suspicious and malignant. what is the meaning of all this pain, which seems to do people nothing but harm, and makes them a burden to themselves and others too?" "oh," said he, "it is difficult enough; but you must remember that we are all bound up with the hearts and lives of others; the child that dies in its helplessness has a meaning for its parents; the child that lives long enough to be the light of its home, that has a significance deep enough; and all those who have to tend and care for the sick, to lighten the burden and the sorrow for them, that has a meaning surely for all concerned? the reason why we feel as we do about broken lives, why they seem so utterly purposeless, is because we have the proportion so wrong. we do not really, in fact, believe in immortality, when we are bound in the body--some few of us do, and many of us say that we do. but we do not realise that the little life is but one in a great chain of lives, that each spirit lives many times, over and over. there is no such thing as waste or sacrifice of life. the life is meant to do just what it does, no more and no less; bound in the body, it all seems so long or so short, so complete or so incomplete; but now and here we can see that the whole thing is so endless, so immense, that we think no more of entering life, say, for a few days, or entering it for ninety years, than we should think of counting one or ninety water-drops in the river that pours in a cataract over the lip of the rocks. where we do lose, in life, is in not taking the particular experience, be it small or great, to heart. we try to forget things, to put them out of our minds, to banish them. of course it is very hard to do otherwise, in a body so finite, tossed and whirled in a stream so infinite; and thus we are happiest if we can live very simply and quietly, not straining to multiply our uneasy activities, but just getting the most and the best out of the elements of life as they come to us. as we get older in spirit, we do that naturally; the things that men call ambitions and schemes are the signs of immaturity; and when we grow older, those slip off us and concern us no more; while the real vitality of feeling and emotion runs ever more clear and strong." "but," i said, "can one revive the old lives at will? can one look back into the long range of previous lives? is that permitted?" "yes, of course it is permitted," said amroth, smiling; "there are no rules here; but one does not care to do it overmuch. one is just glad it is all done, and that one has learnt the lesson. look back if you like--there are all the lives behind you." i had a curious sensation--i saw myself suddenly a stalwart savage, strangely attired for war, near a hut in a forest clearing. i was going away somewhere; there were other huts at hand; there was a fire, in the side of a mound, where some women seemed to be cooking something and wrangling over it; the smoke went up into the still air. a child came out of the hut, and ran to me. i bent down and kissed it, and it clung to me. i was sorry, in a dim way, to be going out--for i saw other figures armed too, standing about the clearing. there was to be fighting that day, and though i wished to fight, i thought i might not return. but the mind of myself, as i discerned it, was full of hurtful, cruel, rapacious thoughts, and i was sad to think that this could ever have been i. "it is not very nice," said amroth with a smile; "one does not care to revive that! you were young then, and had much before you." another picture flashed into the mind. was it true? i was a woman, it seemed, looking out of a window on the street in a town with high, dark houses, strongly built of stone: there was a towered gate at a little distance, with some figures drawing up sacks with a pulley to a door in the gate. a man came up behind me, pulled me roughly back, and spoke angrily; i answered him fiercely and shrilly. the room i was in seemed to be a shop or store; there were barrels of wine, and bags of corn. i felt that i was busy and anxious--it was not a pleasant retrospect. "yet you were better then," said amroth "you thought little of your drudgery, and much of your children." yes, i had had children, i saw. their names and appearance floated before me. i had loved them tenderly. had they passed out of my life? i felt bewildered. amroth laid a hand on my arm and smiled again. "no, you came near to some of them again. do you not remember another life in which you loved a friend with a strange love, that surprised you by its nearness? he had been your child long before; and one never quite loses that." i saw in a flash the other life he spoke of. i was a student, it seemed, at some university, where there was a boy of my own age, a curious, wilful, perverse, tactless creature, always saying and doing the wrong thing, for whom i had felt a curious and unreasonable responsibility. i had always tried to explain him to other people, to justify him; and he had turned to me fop help and companionship in a singular way. i saw myself walking with him in the country, expostulating, gesticulating; and i saw him angry and perplexed.... the vision vanished. "but what becomes of all those whom we have loved?" i said; "it cannot be as if we had never loved them." "no, indeed," said amroth, "they are all there or here; but there lies one of the great mysteries which we cannot yet attain to. we shall be all brought together some time, closely and perfectly; but even now, in the world of matter, the spirit half remembers; and when one is strangely and lovingly drawn to another soul, when that love is not of the body, and has nothing of passion in it, then it is some close ancient tie reasserting itself. do you not know how old and remote some of our friendships seemed--so much older and larger than could be accounted for by the brief days of companionship? that strange hunger for the past of one we love is nothing but the faint memory of what has been. indeed, when you have rested happily a little longer, you will move farther afield, and you will come near to spirits you have loved. you cannot bear it yet, though they are all about you; but one regains the spiritual sense slowly after a life like yours." "can i revisit," i said, "the scene of my last life--see and know what those i loved are doing and feeling?" "not yet," said amroth; "that would not profit either you or them. the sorrow of earth would not be sorrow, it would have no cleansing power, if the parted spirit could return at once. you do not guess, either, how much of time has passed already since you came here--it seems to you like yesterday, no doubt, since you last suffered death. to meet loss and sorrow upon earth, without either comfort or hope, is one of the finest of lessons. when we are there, we must live blindly, and if we here could make our presence known at once to the friends we leave behind, it would be all too easy. it is in the silence of death that its virtue lies." "yes," i said, "i do not desire to return. this is all too wonderful. it is the freshness and sweetness of it all that comes home to me. i do not desire to think of the body, and, strange to say, if i do think of it, the times that i remember gratefully are those when the body was faint and weary. the old joys and triumphs, when one laughed and loved and exulted, seem to me to have something ugly about them, because one was content, and wished things to remain for ever as they were. it was the longing for something different that helped me; the acquiescence was the shame." vi one day i said to amroth, "what a comfort it is to find that there is no religion here!" "i know what you mean," he said. "i think it is one of the things that one wonders at most, to remember into how very small and narrow a thing religion was made, and how much that was religious was never supposed to be so." "yes," i said, "as i think of it now, it seems to have been a game played by a few players, a game with a great many rules." "yes," he said, "it was a game often enough; but of course the mischief of it was, that when it was most a game it most pretended to be something else--to contain the secret of life and all knowledge." "i used to think," i said, "that religion was like a noble and generous boy with the lyrical heart of a poet, made by some sad chance into a king, surrounded by obsequious respect and pomp and etiquette, bound by a hundred ceremonious rules, forbidden to do this and that, taught to think that his one duty was to be magnificently attired, to acquire graceful arts of posture and courtesy, subtly and gently prevented from obeying natural and simple impulses, made powerless--a crowned slave; so that, instead of being the freest and sincerest thing in the world, it became the prisoner of respectability and convention, just a part of the social machine." "that was only one side of it," said amroth. "it was often where it was least supposed to be." "yes," i said, "as far as i resent anything now, i resent the conversion of so much religion from an inspiring force into a repressive force. one learnt as a child to think of it, not as a great moving flood of energy and joy, but as an awful power apart from life, rejoicing in petty restrictions, and mainly concerned with creating an unreal atmosphere of narrow piety, hostile to natural talk and laughter and freedom. god's aid was invoked, in childhood, mostly when one was naughty and disobedient, so that one grew to think of him as grim, severe, irritable, anxious to interfere. what wonder that one lost all wish to meet god and all natural desire to know him! one thought of him as impossible to please except by behaving in a way in which it was not natural to behave; and one thought of religion as a stern and dreadful process going on somewhere, like a law-court or a prison, which one had to keep clear of if one could. yet i hardly see how, in the interests of discipline, it could have been avoided. if only one could have begun at the other end!" "yes," said amroth, "but that is because religion has fallen so much into the hands of the wrong people, and is grievously misrepresented. it has too often come to be identified, as you say, with human law, as a power which leaves one severely alone, if one behaves oneself, and which punishes harshly and mechanically if one outsteps the limit. it comes into the world as a great joyful motive; and then it becomes identified with respectability, and it is sad to think that it is simply from the fact that it has won the confidence of the world that it gains its awful power of silencing and oppressing. it becomes hostile to frankness and independence, and puts a premium on caution and submissiveness; but that is the misuse of it and the degradation of it; and religion is still the most pure and beautiful thing in the world for all that; the doctrine itself is fine and true in a way, if one can view it without impatience; it upholds the right things; it all makes for peace and order, and even for humility and just kindliness; it insists, or tries to insist, on the fact that property and position and material things do not matter, and that quality and method do matter. of course it is terribly distorted, and gets into the hands of the wrong people--the people who want to keep things as they are. now the gospel, as it first came, was a perfectly beautiful thing--the idea that one must act by tender impulse, that one must always forgive, and forget, and love; that one must take a natural joy in the simplest things, find every one and everything interesting and delightful ... the perfectly natural, just, good-humoured, uncalculating life--that was the idea of it; and that one was not to be superior to the hard facts of the world, not to try to put sorrow or pain out of sight, but to live eagerly and hopefully in them and through them; not to try to school oneself into hardness or indifference, but to love lovable things, and not to condemn or despise the unlovable. that was indeed a message out of the very heart of god. but of course all the acrid divisions and subdivisions of it come, not from itself, but from the material part of the world, that determines to traffic with the beautiful secret, and make it serve its turn. but there are plenty of true souls within it all, true teachers, faithful learners--and the world cannot do without it yet, though it is strangely fettered and bound. indeed, men can never do without it, because the spiritual force is there; it is full of poetry and mystery, that ageless brotherhood of saints and true-hearted disciples; but one has to learn that many that claim its powers have them not, while many who are outside all organisations have the secret." "yes," i said, "all that is true and good; it is the exclusive claim and not the inclusive which one regrets. it is the voice which says, 'accept my exact faith, or you have no part in the inheritance,' which is wrong. the real voice of religion is that which says, 'you are my brother and my sister, though you know it not.' and if one says, 'we are all at fault, we are all far from the truth, but we live as best we can, looking for the larger hope and for the dawn of love,' that is the secret. the sacrament of god is offered and eaten at many a social meal, and the spirit of love finds utterance in quiet words from smiling lips. one cannot teach by harsh precept, only by desirable example; and the worst of the correct profession of religion is that it is often little more than taking out a licence to disapprove." "yes," said amroth, "you are very near a great truth. the mistake we make is like the mistake so often made on earth in matters of human government--the opposing of the individual to the state, as if the state were something above and different to the individual--like the old thought of the spirit moving on the face of the waters. the individual is the state; and it is the same with the soul and god. god is not above the soul, seeing and judging, apart in isolation. the spirit of god is the spirit of humanity, the spirit of admiration, the spirit of love. it matters little what the soul admires and loves, whether it be a flower or a mountain, a face or a cause, a gem or a doctrine. it is that wonderful power that the current of the soul has of setting towards something that is beautiful: the need to admire, to worship, to love. a regiment of soldiers in the street, a procession of priests to a sanctuary, a march of disordered women clamouring for their rights--if the idea thrills you, if it uplifts you, it matters nothing whether other people dislike or despise or deride it--it is the voice of god for you. we must advance from what is merely brilliant to what is true; and though in the single life many a man seems to halt at a certain point, to have tied up his little packet of admirations once and for all, there are other lives where he will pass on to further loves, his passion growing more intense and pure. we are not limited by our circle, by our generation, by our age; and the things which youthful spirits are divining and proclaiming as great and wonderful discoveries, are often being practised and done by silent and humble souls. it is not the concise or impressive statement of a truth that matters, it is the intensity of the inner impulse towards what is high and true which differentiates. the more we live by that, the less are we inclined to argue and dispute about it. the base, the impure desire is only the imperfect desire; if it is gratified, it reveals its imperfections, and the soul knows that not there can it stay; but it must have faced and tested everything. if the soul, out of timidity and conventionality, says 'no' to its eager impulses, it halts upon its pilgrimage. some of the most grievous and shameful lives on earth have been fruitful enough in reality. the reason why we mourn and despond over them is, again, that we limit our hope to the single life. there is time for everything; we must not be impatient. we must despair of nothing and of no one; the true life consists not in what a man's reason approves or disapproves, not in what he does or says, but in what he sees. it is useless to explain things to souls; they must experience them to apprehend them. the one treachery is to speak of mistakes as irreparable, and of sins as unforgivable. the sin against the spirit is to doubt the spirit, and the sin against life is not to use it generously and freely; we are happiest if we love others well enough to give our life to them; but it is better to use life for ourselves than not to use it at all." vii one day i said to amroth, "are there no rules of life here? it seems almost too good to be true, not to be found fault with and censured and advised and blamed." "oh," said amroth, laughing, "there are plenty of _rules_, as you call them; but one feels them, one is not told them; it is like breathing and seeing." "yes," i replied, "yet it was like that, too, in the old days; the misery was when one suddenly discovered that when one was acting in what seemed the most natural way possible, it gave pain and concern to some one whom one respected and even loved. one knew that one's action was not wrong, and yet one desired to please and satisfy one's friends; and so one fell back into conventional ways, not because one liked them but because other people did, and it was not worth while making a fuss--it was a sort of cowardice, i suppose?" "not quite," said amroth; "you were more on the right lines than the people who interfered with you, no doubt; but of course the truth is that our principles ought to be used, like a stick, to support ourselves, not like a rod to beat other people with. the most difficult people to teach, as you will see hereafter, are the self-righteous people, whose lives are really pure and good, but who allow their preferences about amusements, occupations, ways of life, to become matters of principle. the worst temptation in the world is the habit of influence and authority, the desire to direct other lives and to conform them to one's own standard. the only way in which we can help other people is by loving them; by frightening another out of something which he is apt to do and of which one does not approve, one effects absolutely nothing: sin cannot be scared away; the spirit must learn to desire to cast it away, because it sees that goodness is beautiful and fine; and this can only be done by example, never by precept." "but it is the entire absence of both that puzzles me here," i said. "nothing to do and a friend to talk to; it's a lazy business, i think." amroth looked at me with amusement. "it's a sign," he said, "if you feel that, that you are getting rested, and ready to move on; but you will be very much surprised when you know a little more about the life here. you are like a baby in a cradle at present; when you come to enter one of our communities here, you will find it as complicated a business as you could wish. part of the difficulty is that there are no rules, to use your own phrase. it is real democracy, but it is not complicated by any questions of property, which is the thing that clogs all political progress in the world below. there is nothing to scheme for, no ambitions to gratify, nothing to gain at the expense of others; the only thing that matters is one's personal relation to others; and this is what makes it at once so simple and so complex. but i do not think it is of any use to tell you all this; you will see it in a flash, when the time comes. but it may be as well for you to remember that there will be no one to command you or compel you or advise you. your own heart and spirit will be your only guides. there is no such thing as compulsion or force in heaven. nothing can be done to you that you do not choose or allow to be done." "yes," i said, "it is the blessed and beautiful sense of freedom from all ties and influences and fears that is so utterly blissful." "but this is not all," said amroth, shaking his head with a smile. "this is a time of rest for you, but things are very different elsewhere. when you come to enter heaven itself, you will be constantly surprised. there are labour and fear and sorrow to be faced; and you must not think it is a place for drifting pleasantly along. the moral struggle is the same--indeed it is fiercer and stronger than ever, because there is no bodily languor or fatigue to distract. there are choices to be made, duties to perform, evil to be faced. the bodily temptations are absent, but there is still that which lay behind the bodily frailties--curiosity, love of sensation, excitement, desire; the strong duality of nature--the knowledge of duty on the one hand and the indolent shrinking from performance--that is all there; there is the same sense of isolation, and the same need for patient endeavour as upon earth. all that one gets is a certain freedom of movement; one is not bound to places and employments by the material ties of earth; but you must not think that it is all to be easy and straightforward. we can each of us by using our wills shorten our probation, by not resisting influences, by putting our hearts and minds in unison with the will of god for us; and that is easier in heaven than upon earth, because there is less to distract us. but on the other hand, there is more temptation to drift, because there are no material consequences to stimulate us. there are many people on earth who exercise a sort of practical virtue simply to avoid material inconveniences, while there is no such motive in heaven; i say all this not to disturb your present tranquillity, which it is your duty now to enjoy, but just to prepare you. you must be prepared for effort and for endeavour, and even for strife. you must use right judgment, and, above all, common sense; one does not get out of the reach of that in heaven!" viii these are only some of the many talks i had with amroth. they ranged over a great many subjects and thoughts. what i cannot indicate, however, is the lightness and freshness of them; and above all, their entire frankness and amusingness. there were times when we talked like two children, revived old simple adventures of life--he had lived far more largely and fully than i had done--and i never tired of hearing the tales of his old lives, so much more varied and wonderful than my own. sometimes we merely told each other stories out of our imaginations and hearts. we even played games, which i cannot describe, but they were like the games of earth. we seemed at times to walk and wander together; but i had a sense all this time that i was, so to speak, in hospital, being tended and cared for, and not allowed to do anything wearisome or demanding effort. but i became more and more aware of other spirits about me, like birds that chirp and twitter in the ivy of a tower, or in the thick bushes of a shrubbery. amroth told me one day that i must prepare for a great change soon, and i found myself wondering what it would be like, half excited about it, and half afraid, unwilling as i was to lose the sweet rest, and the dear companionship of a friend who seemed like the crown and sum of all hopes of friendship. amroth became utterly dear to me, and it was a joy beyond all joys to feel his happy and smiling nature bent upon me, hour by hour, in sympathy and understanding and love. he said to me laughingly once that i had much of earth about me yet, and that i must soon learn not to bend my thoughts so exclusively one way and on one friend. "yes," i said, "i am not fit for heaven yet! i believe i am jealous; i cannot bear to think that you will leave me, or that any other soul deserves your attention." "oh," he said lightly, "this is my business and delight now--but you will soon have to do for others what i am doing for you. you like this easy life at present, but you can hardly imagine how interesting it is to have some one given you for your own, as you were given to me. it is the delight of motherhood and fatherhood in one; and when i was allowed to take you away out of the room where you lay--i admit it was not a pleasant scene--i felt just like a child who is given a kitten for its very own." "well," i said, "i have been a very satisfactory pet--i have done little else but purr." i felt his eyes upon me in a wonderful nearness of love; and then i looked up and i saw that we were not alone. it was then that i first perceived that there could be grief in heaven. i say "first perceived," but i had known it all along. but by amroth's gentle power that had been for a time kept away from me, that i might rest and rejoice. the form before me was that of a very young and beautiful woman--so beautiful that for a moment all my thought seemed to be concentrated upon her. but i saw, too, that all was not well with her. she was not at peace with herself, or her surroundings. in her great wide eyes there was a look of pain, and of rebellious pain. she was attired in a robe that was a blaze of colour; and when i wondered at this, for it was unlike the clear hues, pearly grey and gold, and soft roseate light that had hitherto encompassed me, the voice of amroth answered my unuttered question, and said, "it is the image of her thought." her slim white hands moved aimlessly over the robe, and seemed to finger the jewels which adorned it. her lips were parted, and anything more beautiful than the pure curves of her chin and neck i had seldom seen, though she seemed never to be still, as amroth was still, but to move restlessly and wearily about. i knew by a sort of intuition that she was unaware of amroth and only aware of myself. she seemed startled and surprised at the sight of me, and i wondered in what form i appeared to her; in a moment she spoke, and her voice was low and thrilling. "i am so glad," she said in a half-courteous, half-distracted way, "to find some one in the place to whom i can speak. i seem to be always moving in a crowd, and yet to see no one--they are afraid of me, i think; and it is not what i expected, not what i am used to. i am in need of help, i feel, and yet i do not know what sort of help it is that i want. may i stay with you a little?" "why, yes," i said; "there is no question of 'may' here." she came up to me with a sort of proud confidence, and looked at me fixedly. "yes," she said, "i see that i can trust you; and i am tired of being deceived!" then she added with a sort of pettishness, "i have nowhere to go, nothing to do--it is all dull and cold. on earth it was just the opposite. i had only too much attention and love.... oh, yes," she added with a strange glance, "it was what you would probably call sinful. the only man i ever loved did not care for me, and i was loved by many for whom i did not care. well, i had my pleasures, and i suppose i must pay for them. i do not complain of that. but i am determined not to give way: it is unjust and cruel. i never had a chance. i was always brought up to be admired from the first. we were rich at my home, and in society--you understand? i made what was called a good match, and i never cared for my husband, but amused myself with other people; and it was splendid while it lasted: then all kinds of horrible things happened--scenes, explanations, a lawsuit--it makes me shudder to remember it all; and then i was ill, i suppose, and suddenly it was all over, and i was alone, with a feeling that i must try to take up with all kinds of tiresome things--all the things that bored me most. but now it may be going to be better; you can tell me where i can find people, perhaps? i am not quite unpresentable, even here? no, i can see that in your face. well, take me somewhere, show me something, find something for me to do in this deadly place. i seem to have got into a perpetual sunset, and i am so sick of it all." i felt very helpless before this beautiful creature who seemed so troubled and discontented. "no," said the voice of amroth beside me, "it is of no use to talk; let her talk to you; let her make friends with you if she can." "that's better," she said, looking at me. "i was afraid you were going to be grave and serious. i felt for a minute as if i was going to be confirmed." "no," i said, "you need not be disturbed; nothing will be done to you against your wish. one has but to wish here, or to be willing, and the right thing happens." she came close to me as i said this, and said, "well, i think i shall like you, if only you can promise not to be serious." then she turned, and stood for a moment disconsolate, looking away from me. all this while the atmosphere around me had been becoming lighter and clearer, as though a mist were rising. suddenly amroth said, "you will have to go with her for a time, and do what you can. i must leave you for a little, but i shall not be far off; and if you need me, i shall be at hand. but do not call for me unless you are quite sure you need me." he gave me a hand-clasp and a smile, and was gone. then, looking about me, i saw at last that i was in a place. lonely and bare though it was, it seemed to me very beautiful. it was like a grassy upland, with rocky heights to left and right. they were most delicate in outline, those crags, like the crags in an old picture, with sharp, smooth curves, like a fractured crystal. they seemed to be of a creamy stone, and the shadows fell blue and distinct. down below was a great plain full of trees and waters, all very dim. a path, worn lightly in the grass, lay at my feet, and i knew that we must descend it. the girl with me--i will call her cynthia--was gazing at it with delight. "ah," she said, "i can see clearly now. this is something like a real place, instead of mist and light. we can find people down here, no doubt; it looks inhabited out there." she pointed with her hand, and it seemed to me that i could see spires and towers and roofs, of a fine and airy architecture, at the end of a long horn of water which lay very blue among the woods of the plain. it puzzled me, because i had the sense that it was all unreal, and, indeed, i soon perceived that it was the girl's own thought that in some way affected mine. "quick, let us go," she said; "what are we waiting for?" the descent was easy and gradual. we came down, following the path, over the hill-shoulders. a stream of clear water dripped among stones; it all brought back to me with an intense delight the recollection of long days spent among such hills in holiday times on earth, but all without regret; i only wished that an old and dear friend of mine, with whom i had often gone, might be with me. he had quitted life before me, and i knew somehow or hoped that i should before long see him; but i did not wish things to be otherwise; and, indeed, i had a strange interest in the fretful, silly, lovely girl with me, and in what lay before us. she prattled on, and seemed to be recovering her spirits and her confidence at the sights around us. if i could but find anything that would draw her out of her restless mood into the peace of the morning! she had a charm for me, though her impatience and desire for amusement seemed uninteresting enough; and i found myself talking to her as an elder brother might, with terms of familiar endearment, which she seemed to be grateful for. it was strange in a way, and yet it all appeared natural. the more we drew away from the hills, the happier she became. "ah," she said once, "we have got out of that hateful place, and now perhaps we may be more comfortable,"--and when we came down beside the stream to a grove of trees, and saw something which seemed like a road beneath us, she was delighted. "that's more like it," she said, "and now we may find some real people perhaps,"--she turned to me with a smile--"though you are real enough too, and very kind to me; but i still have an idea that you are a clergyman, and are only waiting your time to draw a moral." ix now before i go on to tell the tale of what happened to us in the valley there were two very curious things that i observed or began to observe. the first was that i could not really see into the girl's thought. i became aware that though i could see into the thought of amroth as easily and directly as one can look into a clear sea-pool, with all its rounded pebbles and its swaying fringes of seaweed, there was in the girl's mind a centre of thought to which i was not admitted, a fortress of personality into which i could not force my way. more than that. when she mistrusted or suspected me, there came a kind of cloud out from the central thought, as if a turbid stream were poured into the sea-pool, which obscured her thoughts from me, though when she came to know me and to trust me, as she did later, the cloud was gradually withdrawn; and i perceived that there must be a perfect sacrifice of will, an intention that the mind should lie open and unashamed before the thought of one's friend and companion, before the vision can be complete. with amroth i desired to conceal nothing, and he had no concealment from me. but with the girl it was different. there was something in her heart that she hid from me, and by no effort could i penetrate it; and i saw then that there is something at the centre of the soul which is our very own, and into which god himself cannot even look, unless we desire that he should look; and even if we desire that he should look into our souls, if there is any timidity or shame or shrinking about us, we cannot open our souls to him. i must speak about this later, when the great and wonderful day came to me, when i beheld god and was beheld by him. but now, though when the girl trusted me i could see much of her thought, the inmost cell of it was still hidden from me. and then, too, i perceived another strange thing; that the landscape in which we walked was very plain to me, but that she did not see the same things that i saw. with me, the landscape was such as i had loved most in my last experience of life; it was a land to me like the english hill-country which i loved the best; little fields of pasture mostly, with hedgerow ashes and sycamores, and here and there a clear stream of water running by the wood-ends. there were buildings, too, low white-walled farms, roughly slated, much-weathered, with evidences of homely life, byre and barn and granary, all about them. these sloping fields ran up into high moorlands and little grey crags, with the trees and thickets growing in the rock fronts. i could not think that people lived in these houses and practised agriculture, though i saw with surprise and pleasure that there were animals about, horses and sheep grazing, and dogs that frisked in and out. i had always believed and hoped that animals had their share in the inheritance of light, and now i thought that this was a proof that it was indeed so, though i could not be sure of it, because i realised that it might be but the thoughts of my mind taking shape, for, as i say, i was gradually aware that the girl did not see what i saw. to her it was a different scene, of some southern country, because she seemed to see vineyards, and high-walled lanes, hill-crests crowded with houses and crowned with churches, such as one sees at a distance in the campagna, where the plain breaks into chestnut-clad hills. but this difference of sight did not make me feel that the scene was in any degree unreal; it was the idea of the landscape which we loved, its pretty associations and familiar features, and the mind did the rest, translating it all into a vision of scenes which had given us joy on earth, just as we do in dreams when we are in the body, when the sleeping mind creates sights which give us pleasure, and yet we have no knowledge that we are ourselves creating them. so we walked together, until i perceived that we were drawing near to the town which we had discerned. and now we became aware of people going to and fro. sometimes they stopped and looked upon us with smiles, and even greetings; and sometimes they went past absorbed in thought. houses appeared, both small wayside abodes and larger mansions with sheltered gardens. what it all meant i hardly knew; but just as we have perfectly decided tastes on earth as to what sort of a house we like and why we like it, whether we prefer high, bright rooms, or rooms low and with subdued light, so in that other country the mind creates what it desires. presently the houses grew thicker, and soon we were in a street--the town to my eyes was like the little towns one sees in the cotswold country, of a beautiful golden stone, with deep plinths and cornices, with older and simpler buildings interspersed. my companion became strangely excited, glancing this way and that. and presently, as if we were certainly expected, there came up to us a kindly and grave person, who welcomed us formally to the place, and said a few courteous words about his pleasure that we should have chosen to visit it. i do not know how it was, but i did not wholly trust our host. his mind was hidden from me; and indeed i began to have a sense, not of evil, indeed, or of oppression, but a feeling that it was not the place appointed for me, but only where my business was to lie for a season. a group of people came up to us and welcomed my companion with great cheerfulness, and she was soon absorbed in talk. x now before i come to tell this next part of my story, there are several things which seem in want of explanation. i speak of people as looking old and young, and of there being relations between them such as fatherly and motherly, son-like and lover-like. it bewildered me at first, but i came to guess at the truth. it would seem that in the further world spirits do preserve for a long time the characteristics of the age at which they last left the earth; but i saw no very young children anywhere at first, though i came afterwards to know what befell them. it seemed to me that, in the first place i visited, the only spirits i saw were of those who had been able to make a deliberate choice of how they would live in the world and which kind of desires they would serve; it is very hard to say when this choice takes place in the world below, but i came to believe that, early or late, there does come a time when there is an opening out of two paths before each human soul, and when it realises that a choice must be made. sometimes this is made early in life; but sometimes a soul drifts on, guileless in a sense, though its life may be evil and purposeless, not looking backwards or forwards, but simply acting as its nature bids it act. what it is that decides the awakening of the will i hardly know; it is all a secret growth, i think; but the older that the spirit is, in the sense of spiritual experience, the earlier in mortal life that choice is made; and this is only another proof of one of the things which amroth showed me, that it is, after all, imagination which really makes the difference between souls, and not intellect or shrewdness or energy; all the real things of life--sympathy, the power of entering into fine relations, however simple they may be, with others, loyalty, patience, devotion, goodness--seem to grow out of this power of imagination; and the reason why the souls of whom i am going to speak were so content to dwell where they were, was simply that they had no imagination beyond, but dwelt happily among the delights which upon earth are represented by sound and colour and scent and comeliness and comfort. this was a perpetual surprise to me, because i saw in these fine creatures such a faculty of delicate perception, that i could not help believing again and again that their emotions were as deep and varied too; but i found little by little, that they were all bent, not on loving, and therefore on giving themselves away to what they loved, but in gathering in perceptions and sensations, and finding their delight in them; and i realised that what lies at the root of the artistic nature is its deep and vital indifference to anything except what can directly give it delight, and that these souls, for all their amazing subtlety and discrimination, had very little hold on life at all, except on its outer details and superficial harmonies; and that they were all very young in experience, and like shallow waters, easily troubled and easily appeased; and that therefore they were being dealt with like children, and allowed full scope for all their little sensitive fancies, until the time should come for them to go further yet. of course they were one degree older than the people who in the world had been really immersed in what may be called solid interests and serious pursuits--science, politics, organisation, warfare, commerce--all these spirits were very youthful indeed, and they were, i suppose, in some very childish nursery of god. but what first bewildered me was the finding of the earthly proportions of things so strangely reversed, the serious matters of life so utterly set aside, and so much made of the things which many people take no sort of trouble about, as companionships and affections, which are so often turned into a matter of mere propinquity and circumstance. but of this i shall have to speak later in its place. now it is difficult to describe the time i spent in the land of delight, because it was all so unlike the life of the world, and yet was so strangely like it. there was work going on there, i found, but the nature of it i could not discern, because that was kept hidden from me. men and women excused themselves from our company, saying they must return to their work; but most of the time was spent in leisurely converse about things which i confess from the first did not interest me. there was much wit and laughter, and there were constant games and assemblies and amusements. there were feasts of delicious things, music, dramas. there were books read and discussed; it was just like a very cultivated and civilised society. but what struck me about the people there was that it was all very restless and highly-strung, a perpetual tasting of pleasures, which somehow never pleased. there were two people there who interested me most. one was a very handsome and courteous man, who seemed to desire my company, and spoke more freely than the rest; the other a young man, who was very much occupied with the girl, my companion, and made a great friendship with her. the elder of the two, for i must give them names, shall be called charmides, which seems to correspond with his stately charm, and the younger may be known as lucius. i sat one day with charmides, listening to a great concert of stringed and wind instruments, in a portico which gave on a large sheltered garden. he was much absorbed in the music, which was now of a brisk and measured beauty, and now of a sweet seriousness which had a very luxurious effect upon my mind. "it is wonderful to me," said charmides, as the last movement drew to a close of liquid melody, "that these sounds should pass into the heart like wine, heightening and uplifting the thought--there is nothing so beautiful as the discrimination of mood with which it affects one, weighing one delicate phrase against another, and finding all so perfect." "yes," i said, "i can understand that; but i must confess that there seems to me something wanting in the melodies of this place. the music which i loved in the old days was the music which spoke to the soul of something further yet and unattainable; but here the music seems to have attained its end, and to have fulfilled its own desire." "yes," said charmides, "i know that you feel that; your mind is very clear to me, up to a certain point; and i have sometimes wondered why you spend your time here, because you are not one of us, as your friend cynthia is." i glanced, as he spoke, to where cynthia sat on a great carved settle among cushions, side by side with lucius, whispering to him with a smile. "no," i said, "i do not think i have found my place yet, but i am here, i think, for a purpose, and i do not know what that purpose is." "well," he said, "i have sometimes wondered myself. i feel that you may have something to tell me, some message for me. i thought that when i first saw you; but i cannot quite perceive what is in your mind, and i see that you do not wholly know what is in mine. i have been here for a long time, and i have a sense that i do not get on, do not move; and yet i have lived in extreme joy and contentment, except that i dread to return to life, as i know i must return. i have lived often, and always in joy--but in life there are constantly things to endure, little things which just ruffle the serenity of soul which i desire, and which i may fairly say i here enjoy. i have loved beauty, and not intemperately; and there have been other people--men and women--whom i have loved, in a sense; but the love of them has always seemed a sort of interruption to the life i desired, something disordered and strained, which hurt me, and kept me away from the peace i desired--from the fine weighing of sounds and colours, and the pleasure of beautiful forms and lines; and i dread to return to life, because one cannot avoid love and sorrow, and mean troubles, which waste the spirit in vain." "yes," i said, "i can understand what you feel very well, because i too have known what it is to desire to live in peace and beauty, not to be disturbed or fretted; but the reason, i think, why it is dangerous, is not because life becomes too _easy_. that is not the danger at all--life is never easy, whatever it is! but the danger is that it grows too solemn! one is apt to become like a priest, always celebrating holy mysteries, always in a vision, with no time for laughter, and disputing, and quarrelling, and being silly and playing. it is the poor body again that is amiss. it is like the camel, poor thing; it groans and weeps, but it goes on. one cannot live wholly in a vision; and life does not become more simple so, but more complicated, for one's time and energy are spent in avoiding the sordid and the tiresome things which one cannot and must not avoid. i remember, in an illness which i had, when i was depressed and fanciful, a homely old doctor said to me, 'don't be too careful of yourself: don't think you can't bear this and that--go out to dinner--eat and drink rather too much!' it seemed to be coarse advice, but it was wise." "yes," said charmides, "it was wise; but it is difficult to feel it so at the time. i wonder! i think perhaps i have made the mistake of being too fastidious. but it seemed so fine a goal that one had in sight, to chasten and temper all one's thoughts to what was beautiful--to judge and distinguish, to choose the right tones and harmonies, to be always rejecting and refining. it had its sorrows, of course. how often in the old days one came in contact with some gracious and beautiful personality, and flung oneself into close relations; and then one began to see this and that flaw. there were lapses in tact, petulances, littlenesses; one's friend did not rightly use his beautiful mind; he was jealous, suspicious, trivial, petty; it ended in disillusionment. instead of taking him as a passenger on one's vessel, and determining to live at peace, to overlook, to accommodate, one began to watch for an opportunity of putting him down courteously at some stopping-place; and instead of being grateful for his friendship, one was vexed with him for disappointing one. we must speak more of these things. i seem to feel the want of something commoner and broader in my thoughts; but in this place it is hard to change." "will you forgive me then," i said, "if i ask you plainly what this place is? it seems very strange to me, and yet i think i have been here before." charmides looked at me with a smile. "it has been called," he said, "by many ugly names, and men have been unreasonably afraid of it. it is the place of satisfied desire, and, as you see, it is a comfortable place enough. the theologians in their coarse way call it hell, though that is a word which is forbidden here; it is indeed a sort of treason to use the word, because of its unfortunate association--and you can see with your own eyes that i have done wrong even to speak of it." i looked round, and saw indeed that a visible tremor had fallen on the groups about us; it was as though a cold cloud, full of hail and darkness, had floated over a sunny sky. people were hurrying out of the garden, and some were regarding us askance and with frowns of disapproval. in a moment or two we were left alone. "i have been indiscreet," said charmides, "but i feel somehow in a rebellious mood; and indeed it has long seemed absurd to me that you should be unaware of the fact, and so obviously guileless! but i will speak no more of this to-day. people come and go here very strangely, and i have sometimes wondered if it would not soon be time for me to go; but it would be idle to pretend that i have not been happy here." xi what charmides had told me filled me with great astonishment; it seemed to me strange that i had not perceived the truth before. it made me feel that i had somehow been wasting time. i was tempted to call amroth to my side, but i remembered what he had said, and i determined to resist the impulse. i half expected to find that our strange talk, and the very obvious disapproval of our words, had made some difference to me. but it was not the case. i found myself treated with the same smiling welcome as before, and indeed with an added kind of gentleness, such as older people give to a child who has been confronted with some hard fact of life, such as a sorrow or an illness. this in a way disconcerted me; for in the moment when i had perceived the truth, there had come over me the feeling that i ought in some way to bestir myself to preach, to warn, to advise. but the idea of finding any sort of fault with these contented, leisurely, interested people, seemed to me absurd, and so i continued as before, half enjoying the life about me, and half bored by it. it seemed so ludicrous in any way to pity the inhabitants of the place, and yet i dimly saw that none of them could possibly continue there. but i soon saw that there was no question of advice, because i had nothing to advise. to ask them to be discontented, to suffer, to inquire, seemed as absurd as to ask a man riding comfortably in a carriage to get out and walk; and yet i felt that it was just that which they needed. but one effect the incident had; it somehow seemed to draw me more to cynthia. there followed a time of very close companionship with her. she sought me out, she began to confide in me, chattering about her happiness and her delight in her surroundings, as a child might chatter, and half chiding me, in a tender and pretty way, for not being more at ease in the place. "you always seem to me," she said, "as if you were only staying here, while i feel as if i could live here for ever. of course you are very kind and patient about it all, but you are not at home--and i don't care a bit about your disapproval now." she talked to me much about lucius, who seemed to have a great attraction for her. "he is all right," she said. "there is no nonsense about him,--we understand each other; i don't get tired of him, and we like the same things. i seem to know exactly what he feels about everything; and that is one of the comforts of this place, that no one asks questions or makes mischief; one can do just as one likes all the time. i did not think, when i was alive, that there could be anything so delightful as all this ahead of me." "do you never think--?" i began, but she put her hand to my lips, like a child, to stop me, and said, "no, i never think, and i never mean to think, of all the old hateful things. i never wilfully did any harm; i only liked the people who liked me, and gave them all they asked--and now i know that i did right, though in old days serious people used to try to frighten me. god is very good to me," she went on, smiling, "to allow me to be happy in my own way." while we talked thus, sitting on a seat that overlooked the great city--i had never seen it look so stately and beautiful, so full of all that the heart could desire--lucius himself drew near to us, smiling, and seated himself the other side of cynthia. "now is not this heavenly?" she said; "to be with the two people i like best--for you are a faithful old thing, you know--and not to be afraid of anything disagreeable or tiresome happening--not to have to explain or make excuses, what could be better?" "yes," said lucius, "it is happy enough," and he smiled at me in a friendly way. "the pleasantest point is that one can _wait_ in this charming place. in the old days, one was afraid of a hundred things--money, weather, illness, criticism. one had to make love in a hurry, because one missed the beautiful hour; and then there was the horror of growing old. but now if cynthia chooses to amuse herself with other people, what do i care? she comes back as delightful as ever, and it is only so much more to be amused about. one is not even afraid of being lazy, and as for those ugly twinges of what one called conscience--which were only a sort of rheumatism after all--that is all gone too; and the delight of finding that one was right after all, and that there were really no such things as consequences!" i became aware, as lucius spoke thus, in all his careless beauty, of a vague trouble of soul. i seemed to foresee a kind of conflict between myself and him. he felt it too, i was aware; for he drew cynthia to him, and said something to her; and presently they went off laughing, like a pair of children, waving a farewell to me. i experienced a sense of desolation, knowing in my mind that all was not well, and yet feeling so powerless to contend with happiness so strong and wide. xii presently i wandered off alone, and went out of the city with a sudden impulse. i thought i would go in the opposite direction to that by which i had entered it. i could see the great hills down which cynthia and i had made our way in the dawn; but i had never gone in the further direction, where there stretched what seemed to be a great forest. the whole place lay bathed in a calm light, all unutterably beautiful. i wandered long by streams and wood-ends, every corner that i turned revealing new prospects of delight. i came at last to the edge of the forest, the mouths of little open glades running up into it, with fern and thorn-thickets. there were deer here browsing about the dingles, which let me come close to them and touch them, raising their heads from the grass, and regarding me with gentle and fearless eyes. birds sang softly among the boughs, and even fluttered to my shoulder, as if pleased to be noticed. so this was what was called on earth the place of torment, a place into which it seemed as if nothing of sorrow or pain could ever intrude! just on the edge of the wood stood a little cottage, surrounded by a quiet garden, bees humming about the flowers, the scents of which came with a homely sweetness on the air. but here i saw something which i did not at first understand. this was a group of three people, a man and a woman and a boy of about seventeen, beside the cottage porch. they had a rustic air about them, and the same sort of leisurely look that all the people of the land wore. they were all three beautiful, with a simple and appropriate kind of beauty, such as comes of a contented sojourn in the open air. but i became in a moment aware that there was a disturbing element among them. the two elders seemed to be trying to persuade the boy, who listened smilingly enough, but half turned away from them, as though he were going away on some errand of which they did not approve. they greeted me, as i drew near, with the same cordiality as one received everywhere, and the man said, "perhaps you can help us, sir, for we are in a trouble?" the woman joined with a murmur in the request, and i said i would gladly do what i could; while i spoke, the boy watched me earnestly, and something drew me to him, because i saw a look that seemed to tell me that he was, like myself, a stranger in the place. then the man said, "we have lived here together very happily a long time, we three--i do not know how we came together, but so it was; and we have been more at ease than words can tell, after hard lives in the other world; and now this lad here, who has been our delight, says that he must go elsewhere and cannot stay with us; and we would persuade him if we could; and perhaps you, sir, who no doubt know what lies beyond the fields and woods that we see, can satisfy him that it is better to remain." while he spoke, the other two had drawn near to me, and the eyes of the woman dwelt upon the boy with a look of intent love, while the boy looked in my face anxiously and inquiringly. i could see, i found, very deep into his heart, and i saw in him a need for further experience, and a desire to go further on; and i knew at once that this could only be satisfied in one way, and that something would grow out of it both for himself and for his companions. so i said, as smilingly as i could, "i do not indeed know much of the ways of this place, but this i know, that we must go where we are sent, that no harm can befall us, and that we are never far away from those whom we love. i myself have lately been sent to visit this strange land; it seems only yesterday since i left the mountains yonder, and yet i have seen an abundance of strange and beautiful things; we must remember that here there is no sickness or misfortune or growing old; and there is no reason, as there often seemed to be on earth, why we should fight against separation and departure. no one can, i think, be hindered here from going where he is bound. so i believe that you will let the boy go joyfully and willingly, for i am sure of this, that his journey holds not only great things for himself, but even greater things for both of you in the future. so be content and let him depart." at this the woman said, "yes, that is right, the stranger is right, and we must hinder the child no longer. no harm can come of it, but only good; perhaps he will return, or we may follow him, when the day comes for that." i saw that the old man was not wholly satisfied with this. he shook his head and looked sadly on the boy; and then for a time we sat and talked of many things. one thing that the old man said surprised me very greatly. he seemed to have lived many lives, and always lives of labour; he had grown, i gathered from his simple talk, to have a great love of the earth, the lives of flocks and herds, and of all the plants that grew out of the earth or flourished in it. i had thought before, in a foolish way, that all this might be put away from the spirit, in the land where there was no need of such things; but i saw now that there was a claim for labour, and a love of common things, which did not belong only to the body, but was a real desire of the spirit. he spoke of the pleasures of tending cattle, of cutting fagots in the forest woodland among the copses, of ploughing and sowing, with the breath of the earth about one; till i saw that the toil of the world, which i had dimly thought of as a thing which no one would do if they were not obliged, was a real instinct of the spirit, and had its counterpart beyond the body. i had supposed indeed that in a region where all troublous accidents of matter were over and done with, and where there was no need of bodily sustenance, there could be nothing which resembled the old weary toil of the body; but now i saw gladly that this was not so, and that the primal needs of the spirit outlast the visible world. though my own life had been spent mostly among books and things of the mind, i knew well the joys of the countryside, the blossoming of the orchard-close, the high-piled granary, the brightly-painted waggon loaded with hay, the creaking of the cider-press, the lowing of cattle in the stall, the stamping of horses in the stable, the mud-stained implements hanging in the high-roofed, cobwebbed barn. i had never known why i loved these things so well, and had invented many fancies to explain it; but now i saw that it was the natural delight in work and increase; and that the love which surrounded all these things was the sign that they were real indeed, and that in no part of life could they be put away. and then there came on me a sort of gentle laughter at the thought of how much of the religion of the world spent itself on bidding the heart turn away from vanities, and lose itself in dreams of wonders and doctrines, and what were called higher and holier things than barns and byres and sheep-pens. yet the truth had been staring me in the face all the time, if only i could have seen it; that the sense of constraint and unreality that fell upon one in religious matters, when some curious and intricate matter was confusedly expounded, was perfectly natural and wholesome; and that the real life of man lay in the things to which one returned, on work-a-day mornings, with such relief--the acts of life, the work of homestead, library, barrack, office, and class-room, the sight and sound of humanity, the smiles and glances and unconsidered words. when we had sat together for a time, the boy made haste to depart. we three went with him to the edge of the wood, where a road passed up among the oaks. the three embraced and kissed and said many loving words; and then to ease the anxieties of the two, i said that i would myself set the boy forward on his way, and see him well bestowed. they thanked me, and we went together into the wood, the two lovingly waving and beckoning, and the boy stepping blithely by my side. i asked him whether he was not sorry to go and leave the quiet place and the pair that loved him. he smiled and said that he knew he was not leaving them at all, and that he was sure that they would soon follow; and that for himself the time had come to know more of the place. i learned from him that his last life had been an unhappy one, in a crowded street and a slovenly home, with much evil of talk and act about him; he had hated it all, he said, but for a little sister that he had loved, who had kissed and clasped him, weeping, when he lay dying of a miserable disease. he said that he thought he should find her, which made part of his joy of going; that for a long while there had come to him a sense of her remembrance and love; and that he had once sent his thought back to earth to find her, and she was in much grief and care; and that then all these messages had at once ceased, and he knew that she had left the body. he was a merry boy, full of delight and laughter, and we went very cheerfully together through the sunlit wood, with its green glades and open spaces, which seemed all full of life and happiness, creatures living together in goodwill and comfort. i saw in this journey that all things that ever lived a conscious life in one of the innumerable worlds had a place and life of their own, and a time of refreshment like myself. what i could not discern was whether there was any interchange of lives, whether the soul of the tree could become an animal, or the animal progress to be a man. it seemed to me that it was not so, but that each had a separate life of its own. but i saw how foolish was the fancy that i had pursued in old days, that there was a central reservoir of life, into which at death all little lives were merged; i was yet to learn how strangely all life was knit together, but now i saw that individuality was a real and separate thing, which could not be broken or lost, and that all things that had ever enjoyed a consciousness of the privilege of separate life had a true dignity and worth of existence; and that it was only the body that had made hostility necessary; that though the body could prey upon the bodies of animal and plant, yet that no soul could devour or incorporate any other soul. but as yet the merging of soul in soul through love was unseen and indeed unsuspected by me. now as we went in the wood, the boy and i, it came into my mind in a flash that i had seen a great secret. i had seen, i knew, very little of the great land yet--and indeed i had been but in the lowest place of all: and i thought how base and dull our ideas had been upon earth of god and his care of men. we had thought of him dimly as sweeping into his place of torment and despair all poisoned and diseased lives, all lives that had clung to the body and to the pleasures of the body, all who had sinned idly, or wilfully, or proudly; and i saw now that he used men far more wisely and lovingly than thus. into this lowest place indeed passed all sad, and diseased, and unhappy spirits: and instead of being tormented or accursed, all was made delightful and beautiful for them there, because they needed not harsh and rough handling, but care and soft tendance. they were not to be frightened hence, or to live in fear and anguish, but to live deliciously according to their wish, and to be drawn to perceive in some quiet manner that all was not well with them; they were to have their heart's desire, and learn that it could not satisfy them; but the only thing that could draw them thence was the love of some other soul whom they must pursue and find, if they could. it was all so high and reasonable and just that i could not admire it enough. i saw that the boy was drawn thence by the love of his little sister, who was elsewhere; and that the love and loss of the boy would presently draw the older pair to follow him and to leave the place of heart's delight. and then i began to see that cynthia and charmides and lucius were being made ready, each at his own time, to leave their little pleasures and ordered lives of happiness, and to follow heavenwards in due course. because it was made plain to me that it was the love and worship of some other soul that was the constraining force; but what the end would be i could not discern. and now as we went through the wood, i began to feel a strange elation and joy of spirit, severe and bracing, very different from my languid and half-contented acquiescence in the place of beauty; and now the woods began to change their kind; there were fewer forest trees now, but bare heaths with patches of grey sand and scattered pines; and there began to drift across the light a grey vapour which hid the delicate hues and colours of the sunlight, and made everything appear pale and spare. very soon we came out on the brow of a low hill, and saw, all spread out before us, a place which, for all its dulness and darkness, had a solemn beauty of its own. there were great stone buildings very solidly made, with high chimneys which seemed to stream with smoke; we could see men, as small as ants, moving in and out of the buildings; it seemed like a place of manufacture, with a busy life of its own. but here i suddenly felt that i could go no further, but must return. i hoped that i should see the grim place again, and i desired with all my soul to go down into it, and see what eager life it was that was being lived there. and the boy, i saw, felt this too, and was impatient to proceed. so we said farewell with much tenderness, and the boy went down swiftly across the moorland, till he met some one who was coming out of the city, and conferred a little with him; and then he turned and waved his hand to me, and i waved my hand from the brow of the hill, envying him in my heart, and went back in sorrow into the sunshine of the wood. and as i did so i had a great joy, because i saw amroth come suddenly running to me out of the wood, who put his arm through mine, and walked with me. then i told him of all i had seen and thought, while he smiled and nodded and told me it was much as i imagined. "yes," he said, "it is even so. the souls you have seen in this fine country here are just as children who are given their fill of pleasant things. many of them have come into the state in which you see them from no fault of their own, because their souls are young and ignorant. they have shrunk from all pain and effort and tedium, like a child that does not like his lessons. there is no thought of punishment, of course. no one learns anything of punishment except a cowardly fear. we never advance until we have the will to advance, and there is nothing in mere suffering, unless we learn to bear it gently for the sake of love. on earth it is not god but man who is cruel. there is indeed a place of sorrow, which you will see when you can bear the sight, where the self-righteous and the harsh go for a time, and all those who have made others suffer because they believed in their own justice and insight. you will find there all tyrants and conquerors, and many rich men, who used their wealth heedlessly; and even so you will be surprised when you see it. but those spirits are the hardest of all to help, because they have loved nothing but their own virtue or their own ambition; yet you will see how they too are drawn thence; and now that you have had a sight of the better country, tell me how you liked it." "why," i said, "it is plain and austere enough; but i felt a great quickening of spirit, and a desire to join in the labours of the place." amroth smiled, and said, "you will have little share in that. you will find your task, no doubt, when you are strong enough; and now you must go back and make unwilling holiday with your pleasant friends, you have not much longer to stay there; and surely"--he laughed as he spoke--"you can endure a little more of those pretty concerts and charming talk of art and its values and pulsations!" "i can endure it," i said, laughing, "for it does me good to see you and to hear you; but tell me, amroth, what have you been about all this time? have you had a thought of me?" "yes, indeed," said amroth, laughing. "i don't forget you, and i love your company; but i am a busy man myself, and have something pleasanter to do than to attend these elegant receptions of yours--at which, indeed, i have sometimes thought you out of place." as we thus talked we came to the forest lodge. the old pair came running out to greet me, and i told them that the boy was well bestowed. i could see in the woman's face that she would soon follow him, and even the old man had a look that i had not seen in him before; and here amroth left me, and i returned to the city, where all was as peaceable as before. xiii but when i saw cynthia, as i presently did, she too was in a different mood. she had positively missed me, and told me so with many endearments. i was not to remain away so long. i was useful to her. charmides had become tiresome and lost in thought, but lucius was as sweet as ever. some new-comers had arrived, all pleasant enough. she asked me where i had been, and i told her all the story. "yes, that is beautiful enough," she said, "but i hate all this breaking up and going on. i am sure i do not wish for any change." she made a grimace of disgust at the idea of the ugly town i had seen, and then she said that she would go with me some time to look at it, because it would make her happier to return to her peace; and then she went off to tell lucius. i soon found charmides, and i told him my adventures. "that is a curious story," he said. "i like to think of people caring for each other so; that is picturesque! these simple emotions are interesting. and one likes to think that people who have none of the finer tastes should have something to fall back upon--something hot and strong, as we used to say." "but," i said, "tell me this, charmides, was there never any one in the old days whom you cared for like that?" "i thought so often enough," said he, a little peevishly, "but you do not know how much a man like myself is at the mercy of little things! an ugly hand, a broken tooth, a fallen cheek ... it seems little enough, but one has a sort of standard. i had a microscopic eye, you know, and a little blemish was a serious thing to me. i was always in search of something that i could not find; then there were awkward strains in the characters of people--they were mean or greedy or selfish, and all my pleasure was suddenly dashed. i am speaking," he went on, "with a strange candour! i don't defend it or excuse it, but there it was. i did once, as a child, i believe, care for one person--an old nurse of mine--in the right way. dear, how good she was to me! i remember once how she came all the way, after she had left us, to see me on my way through town. she just met me at a railway station, and she had bought a little book which she thought might amuse me, and a bag of oranges--she remembered that i used to like oranges. i recollect at the time thinking it was all very touching and devoted; but i was with a friend of mine, and had not time to say much. i can see her old face, smiling, with tears in her eyes, as we went off. i gave the book and the oranges away, i remember, to a child at the next station. it is curious how it all comes back to me now; i never saw her again, and i wish i had behaved better. i should like to see her again, and to tell her that i really cared! i wonder if that is possible? but there is really so much to do here and to enjoy; and there is no one to tell me where to go, so that i am puzzled. what is one to do?" "i think that if one desires a thing enough here, charmides," i said, "one is in a fair way to obtain it. never mind! a door will be opened. but one has got to care, i suppose; it is not enough to look upon it as a pretty effect, which one would just like to put in its place with other effects--'open, sesame'--do you remember? there is a charm at which all doors fly open, even here!" "i will talk to you more about this," said charmides, "when i have had time to arrange my thoughts a little. who would have supposed that an old recollection like that would have disturbed me so much? it would make a good subject for a picture or a song." xiv it was on one of these days that amroth came suddenly upon me, with a very mirthful look on his face, his eyes sparkling like a man struggling with hidden laughter. "come with me," he said; "you have been so dutiful lately that i am alarmed for your health." then we went out of the garden where i was sitting, and we were suddenly in a street. i saw in a moment that it was a real street, in the suburb of an english town; there were electric trams running, and rows of small trees, and an open space planted with shrubs, with asphalt paths and ugly seats. on the other side of the road was a row of big villas, tasteless, dreary, comfortable houses, with meaningless turrets and balconies. i could not help feeling that it was very dismal that men and women should live in such places, think them neat and well-appointed, and even grow to love them. we went into one of these houses; it was early in the morning, and a little drizzle was falling, which made the whole place seem very cheerless. in a room with a bow-window looking on the road there were three persons. an old man was reading a paper in an arm-chair by the fire, with his back to the light. he looked a nice old man, with his clear skin and white hair; opposite him was an old lady in another chair, reading a letter. with his back to the fire stood a man of about thirty-five, sturdy-looking, but pale, and with an appearance of being somewhat overworked. he had a good face, but seemed a little uninteresting, as if he did not feed his mind. the table had been spread for breakfast, and the meal was finished and partly cleared away. the room was ugly and the furniture was a little shabby; there was a glazed bookcase, full of dull-looking books, a sideboard, a table with writing materials in the window, and some engravings of royal groups and celebrated men. the younger man, after a moment, said, "well, i must be off." he nodded to his father, and bent down to kiss his mother, saying, "take care of yourself--i shall be back in good time for tea." i had a sense that he was using these phrases in a mechanical way, and that they were customary with him. then he went out, planting his feet solidly on the carpet, and presently the front door shut. i could not understand why we had come to this very unemphatic party, and examined the whole room carefully to see what was the object of our visit. a maid came in and removed the rest of the breakfast things, leaving the cloth still on the table, and some of the spoons and knives, with the salt-cellars, in their places. when she had finished and gone out, there was a silence, only broken by the crackling of the paper as the old man folded it. presently the old lady said: "i wish charles could get his holiday a little sooner; he looks so tired, and he does not eat well. he does stick so hard to his business." "yes, dear, he does," said the old man, "but it is just the busiest time, and he tells me that they have had some large orders lately. they are doing very well, i understand." there was another silence, and then the old lady put down her letter, and looked for a moment at a picture, representing a boy, a large photograph a good deal faded, which hung close to her--underneath it was a small vase of flowers on a bracket. she gave a little sigh as she did this, and the old man looked at her over the top of his paper. "just think, father," she said, "that harry would have been thirty-eight this very week!" the old man made a comforting sort of little noise, half sympathetic and half deprecatory. "yes, i know," said the old lady, "but i can't help thinking about him a great deal at this time of the year. i don't understand why he was taken away from us. he was always such a good boy--he would have been just like charles, only handsomer--he was always handsomer and brighter; he had so much of your spirit! not but what charles has been the best of sons to us--i don't mean that--no one could be better or more easy to please! but harry had a different way with him." her eyes filled with tears, which she brushed away. "no," she added, "i won't fret about him. i daresay he is happier where he is--i am sure he is--and thinking of his mother too, my bonny boy, perhaps." the old man got up, put his paper down, went across to the old lady, and gave her a kiss on the brow. "there, there," he said soothingly, "we may be sure it's all for the best;" and he stood looking down fondly at her. amroth crossed the room and stood beside the pair, with a hand on the shoulder of each. i saw in an instant that there was an unmistakable likeness between the three; but the contrast of the marvellous brilliance and beauty of amroth with the old, world-wearied, simple-minded couple was the most extraordinary thing to behold. "yes, i feel better already," said the old lady, smiling; "it always does me good to say out what i am feeling, father; and then you are sure to understand." the mist closed suddenly in upon the scene, and we were back in a moment in the garden with its porticoes, in the radiant, untroubled air. amroth looked at me with a smile that was full, half of gaiety and half of tenderness. "there," he said, "what do you think of that? if all had gone well with me, as they say on earth, that is where i should be now, going down to the city with charles. that is the prospect which to the dear old people seems so satisfactory compared with this! in that house i lay ill for some weeks, and from there my body was carried out. and they would have kept me there if they could--and i myself did not want to go. i was afraid. oh, how i envied charles going down to the city and coming back for tea, to read the magazines aloud or play backgammon. i am afraid i was not as nice as i should have been about all that--the evenings were certainly dull!" "but what do you feel about it now?" i said. "don't you feel sorry for the muddle and ignorance and pathos of it all? can't something be done to show everybody what a ghastly mistake it is, to get so tied down to the earth and the things of earth?" "a mistake?" said amroth. "there is no such thing as a mistake. one cannot sorrow for their grief, any more than one can sorrow for the child who cries out in the tunnel and clasps his mother's hand. don't you see that their grief and loss is the one beautiful thing in those lives, and all that it is doing for them, drawing them hither? why, that is where we grow and become strong, in the hopeless suffering of love. i am glad and content that my own stay was made so brief. i wish it could be shortened for the three--and yet i do not, because they will gain so wonderfully by it. they are mounting fast; it is their very ignorance that teaches them. not to know, not to perceive, but to be forced to believe in love, that is the point." "yes," i said, "i see that; but what about the lives that are broken and poisoned by grief, in a stupor of pain--or the souls that do not feel it at all, except as a passing shadow--what about them?" "oh," said amroth lightly, "the sadder the dream the more blessed the awakening; and as for those who cannot feel--well, it will all come to them, as they grow older." "yes," i said, "it has done me good to see all this--it makes many things plain; but can you bear to leave them thus?" "leave them!" said amroth. "who knows but that i shall be sent to help them away, and carry them, as i carried you, to the crystal sea of peace? the darling mother, i shall be there at her awakening. they are old spirits, those two, old and wise; and there is a high place prepared for them." "but what about charles?" i said. amroth smiled. "old charles?" he said. "i must admit that he is not a very stirring figure at present. he is much immersed in his game of finance, and talks a great deal in his lighter moments about the commercial prospects of the empire and the need of retaliatory tariffs. but he will outgrow all that! he is a very loyal soul, but not very adventurous just now. he would be sadly discomposed by an affection which came in between him and his figures. he would think he wanted a change--and he will have a thorough one, the good old fellow, one of these days. but he has a long journey before him." "well," i said, "there are some surprises here! i am afraid i am very youthful yet." "yes, dear child, you are very ingenuous," said amroth, "and that is a great part of your charm. but we will find something for you to do before long! but here comes charmides, to talk about the need of exquisite pulsations, and their symbolism--though i see a change in him too. and now i must go back to business. take care of yourself, and i will be back to tea." and amroth flashed away in a very cheerful mood. xv there were many things at that time that were full of mystery, things which i never came to understand. there was in particular a certain sort of people, whom one met occasionally, for whom i could never wholly account. they were unlike others in this fact, that they never appeared to belong to any particular place or community. they were both men and women, who seemed--i can express it in no other way--to be in the possession of a secret so great that it made everything else trivial and indifferent to them. not that they were impatient or contemptuous--it was quite the other way; but to use a similitude, they were like good-natured, active, kindly elders at a children's party. they did not shun conversation, but if one talked with them, they used a kind of tender and gentle irony, which had something admiring and complimentary about it, which took away any sense of vexation or of baffled curiosity. it was simply as though their concern lay elsewhere; they joined in anything with a frank delight, not with any touch of condescension. they were even more kindly and affectionate than others, because they did not seem to have any small problems of their own, and could give their whole attention and thought to the person they were with. these inscrutable people puzzled me very much. i asked amroth about them once. "who are these people," i said, "whom one sometimes meets, who are so far removed from all of us? what are they doing here?" amroth smiled. "so you have detected them!" he said. "you are quite right, and it does your observation credit. but you must find it out for yourself. i cannot explain, and if i could, you would not understand me yet." "then i am not mistaken," i said, "but i wish you would give me a hint--they seem to know something more worth knowing than all beside." "exactly," said amroth. "you are very near the truth; it is staring you in the face; but it would spoil all if i told you. there is plenty about them in the old books you used to read--they have the secret of joy." and that is all that he would say. it was on a solitary ramble one day, outside of the place of delight, that i came nearer to one of these people than i ever did at any other time. i had wandered off into a pleasant place of grassy glades with little thorn-thickets everywhere. i went up a small eminence, which commanded a view of the beautiful plain with its blue distance and the enamelled green foreground of close-grown coverts. there i sat for a long time lost in pleasant thought and wonder, when i saw a man drawing near, walking slowly and looking about him with a serene and delighted air. he passed not far from me, and observing me, waved a hand of welcome, came up the slope, and greeting me in a friendly and open manner, asked if he might sit with me for a little. "this is a pleasant place," he said, "and you seem very agreeably occupied." "yes," i said, looking into his smiling face, "one has no engagements here, and no need of business to fill the time--but indeed i am not sure that i am busy enough." as i spoke i was regarding him with some curiosity. he was a man of mature age, with a strong, firm-featured face, healthy and sunburnt of aspect, and he was dressed, not as i was for ease and repose, but with the garments of a traveller. his hat, which was large and of some soft grey cloth, was pushed to his back, and hung there by a cord round his neck. his hair was a little grizzled, and lay close-curled to his head; in his strong and muscular hand he carried a stick. he smiled again at my words, and said: "oh, one need not trouble about being busy until the time comes; that is a feeling one inherits from the life of earth, and i am sure you have not left it long. you have a very fresh air about you, as if you had rested, and rested well." "yes, i have rested," i said; "but though i am content enough, there is something unquiet in me, i am afraid!" "ah!" he said, "there is that in all of us, and it would not be well with us if there were not. will you tell me a little about yourself? that is one of the pleasures of this life here, that we have no need to be cautious, or to fear that we shall give ourselves away." i told him my adventures, and he listened with serious attention. "ah, that is all very good," he said at last, "but you must not be in any hurry; it is a great thing that ideas should dawn upon us gradually--one gets the full truth of them so. it was the hurry of life which was so bewildering--the shocks, the surprises, the ugly reflections of one's conduct that one saw in other lives--the corners one had to turn. things, indeed, come suddenly even here, but one is led up to them gently enough; allowed to enter the sea for oneself, not soused and ducked in it. you will need all the strength you can store up for what is before you, and i can see in your face that you are storing up strength--but the weariness is not quite gone out of your mind." he was silent for a little, musing, till i said, "will you not tell me some of your own adventures? i am sure from your look that you have them; and you are a pilgrim, it seems. where are you bound?" "oh," he said lightly, "i am not one of the people who have adventures--just the journey and the talk beside the way." "but," i said, "i have seen some others like you, and i am puzzled about it. you seem, if i may say so--i do not mean anything disrespectful or impertinent--to be like the gipsies whom one meets in quiet country places, with a secret knowledge of their own, a pride too great to be worth expressing, not anxious about life, not weary or dissatisfied, caring not for localities or possessions, but with a sort of eager pleasure in freedom and movement." he laughed. "yes," he said, "you are right! i am no doubt a sort of nomad, as you say, detached from life perhaps. i don't know that it is desirable; there is a great deal to be said for living in the same place and loving the same things. most people are happier so, and learn what they have to learn in that manner." "yes," i said, "that is true and beautiful--the same old house, the same trees and pastures, the stream and the water-plants that hide it, the blue hills beyond the nearer wood--the dear familiar things; but even so the road which passes through the fields, over the bridge, up the covert-side ... it leads somewhere, and the heart on sunny days leaps up to follow it! talking with you here, i feel a hunger for something wider and more free; your voice has the sound of the wind, with the secret knowledge of strange hill-tops and solitary seas! sometimes the heart settles down upon what it knows and loves, but sometimes it reaches out to all the love and beauty hidden in the world, and in the waters beyond the world, and would embrace it all if it could. the faces one sees as one passes through unfamiliar cities or villages, how one longs to talk, to question, to ask what gave them the look they wear.... and you, if i may say it, seem to have passed beyond the need of wanting or desiring anything ... but i must not talk thus to a stranger; you must forgive me." "forgive you?" said the stranger; "that is only an earthly phrase--the old terror of indiscretion and caution. what are we here for but to get acquainted with one another--to let our inmost thoughts talk together? in the world we are bounded by time and space, and we have the terror of each other's glances and exteriors to contend with. we make friends on earth in spite of our limitations; but in heaven we get to know each other's hearts; and that blessing goes back with us to the dim fields and narrow houses of the earth. i see plainly enough that you are not perfectly happy; but one can only win content through discontent. where you are now, you are not in accord with the souls about you. never mind that! there are beautiful spirits within reach of your hand and heart; a little clouded by mistaking the quality of joy, no doubt, but great and everlasting for all that. you must try to draw near to them, and find spirits to love. do you not remember in the days of earth how one felt sometimes in an unfamiliar place--among a gathering of strangers--at church perhaps, or at some school which one visited, where one saw the young faces, which showed so clearly, before the world had stamped itself in frowns and heaviness upon them, the quality of the soul within? don't you remember the feeling at such times of how many there were in the world whom one might love, if one had leisure and opportunity and energy? well, there is no need to resist that, or to deplore it here; one may go where one's will inclines one, and speak as one's heart tells one to speak. i think you are perhaps too conscious of waiting for something. your task lies ahead of you, but the work of love can begin at once and anywhere." "yes," i said, "i feel that now and here. will you not tell me something of yourself in return? i cannot read your mind clearly--it is occupied with something i cannot grasp--what is your work in heaven?" "oh," he said lightly, "that is easy enough, and yet you would not understand it. i have been led through the shadow of fear, and i have passed out on the other side. and my duty is to release others from fear, as far as i can. it is the darkest shadow of all, because it dwells in the unknown. pain, without it, is no suffering at all; indeed pain is almost a pleasure, when one knows what it is doing for one. but fear is the doubt whether pain or suffering are really helping us; and just as memory never has any touch of fear about it, so hope may likewise have done with fear." "but how did you learn this?" i said. "only by fearing to the uttermost," he replied. "the power--it is not courage, because that only defies fear--cannot be given one; it must be painfully won. you remember the blessing of the pure in heart, that they shall see god? there would be little hope in that promise for the soul that knew itself to be impure, if it were not for the other side of it--that the vision of god, which is the most terrible of all things, can give purity to the most sin-stained soul. in that vision, all desire and all fear have an end, because there is nothing left either to desire or to dread. that vision we may delay or hasten. we may delay it, if we allow our prudence, or our shame, or our comfort, to get in the way: we may hasten it, if we cast ourselves at every moment of our pilgrimage upon the mercy and the love of god. his one desire is that we should be satisfied; and if he seems to put obstacles in our way, to keep us waiting, to permit us to be miserable, that is only that we may learn to cast ourselves into love and service--which is the one way to his heart. but now i must be going, for i have said all that you can bear. will you remember this--not to reserve yourself, not to think others unworthy or hostile, but to cast your love and trust freely and lavishly, everywhere and anywhere? we must gather nothing, hold on to nothing, just give ourselves away at every moment, flowing like the stream into every channel that is open, withholding nothing, retaining nothing. i see," he added, "very great and beautiful things ahead of you, and very sad and painful things as well. but you are close to the light, and it is breaking all about you with a splendour which you cannot guess." he rose up, he took my hand in his own and laid the other on my brow, and i felt his heart go out to mine and gather me to him, as a child is gathered to a father's arms. and then he went silently and lightly upon his way. xvi the time moved on quietly enough in the land of delight. i made acquaintance with quite a number of the soft-voiced contented folk. sometimes it interested me to see the change coming upon one or another, a wonder or a desire that made them sit withdrawn and abstracted, and breaking with a sort of effort out of the dreamful mood. then they would leave us, sometimes quite suddenly, sometimes with courteous adieus. new-comers, too, kept arriving, to be made pleasantly at home. i found myself seeing more of cynthia. she was much with lucius, and they seemed as gay as ever, but i saw that she was sometimes puzzled. she said to me one day as we sat together, "i wish you would tell me what this is all about? i do not want to change it, and i am very happy, but isn't it all rather pointless? i believe you have some secret you are keeping from me." she was sitting close beside me, like a child, resting her head on my arm, and she took my hand in both of hers. "no," i said, "i am keeping nothing from you, pretty child! i could not explain to you what is in my mind, and it would spoil your pleasure if i could. it is all right, and you will see in good time." "i hate to be put off like that," she said. "you are not really interested in me; and you do not trust me; you do not care about the things i care about, and if you are so superior, you ought to explain to me why." "well," i said, "i will try to explain. do you ever remember having been very happy in a place, and having been obliged to leave it, always hoping to return; and then when you did return, finding that, though nothing was changed, you were yourself changed, and could not, even if you would, have taken up the old life again?" "yes," said cynthia, musing, "i remember that sort of thing happening once, about a house where i stayed as a child. it seemed so stupid and dull when i went back that i wondered how i could ever have really liked it." "well," i said, "it is the same sort of thing here. i am only here for a time, and though i do not know where i am going or when, i think i shall not be here much longer." at this cynthia did what she had never done before--she kissed me. then she said, "don't speak of such disagreeable things. i could not get on without you. you are so convenient, like a comfortable old arm-chair." "what a compliment!" i said. "but you see that you don't like my explanation. why trouble about it? you have plenty of time. is lucius like an arm-chair, too?" "no," she said, "he is exciting, like a new necklace--and charmides, he is exciting too, in a way, but rather too fine for me, like a ball-dress!" "yes," i said, "i noticed that your own taste in dress is different of late. this is a much simpler thing than what you came in." "oh, yes," she said, "it doesn't seem worth while to dress up now. i have made my friends, and i suppose i am getting lazy." we said little more, but she did not seem inclined to leave me, and was more with me for a time. i actually heard her tell lucius once that she was tired, at which he laughed, not very pleasantly, and went away. but my own summons came to me so unexpectedly that i had but little time to make my farewell. i was sitting once in a garden-close watching a curious act proceeding, which i did not quite understand. it looked like a religious ceremony; a man in embroidered robes was being conducted by some boys in white dresses through the long cloister, carrying something carefully wrapped up in his arms, and i heard what sounded like an antique hymn of a fine stiff melody, rapidly sung. there had been nothing quite like this before, and i suddenly became aware that amroth was beside me, and that he had a look of anger in his face. "you had better not look at this," he said to me; "it might not be very helpful, as they say." "am i to come with you?" i said. "that is well--but i should like to say a word to one or two of my friends here." "no, not a word!" said amroth quickly. he looked at me with a curious look, in which he seemed to be measuring my strength and courage. "yes, that will do!" he added. "come at once--don't be surprised--it will be different from what you expect." he took me by the arm, and we hurried from the place; one or two of the people who stood by looked at us in lazy wonder. we walked in silence down a long alley, to a great gate that i had often passed in my strolls. it was a barred iron gate, of a very stately air, with high stone gateposts. i had never been able to find my outward way to this, and there was a view from it of enchanting beauty, blue distant woods and rolling slopes. amroth came quickly to the gate, seemed to unlock it, and held it open for me to pass. "one word," he said with his most beautiful smile, his eyes flashing and kindling with some secret emotion, "whatever happens, do not be _afraid_! there is nothing whatever to fear, only be prepared and wait." he motioned me through, and i heard him close the gate behind me. xvii i was alone in an instant, and in terrible pain--pain not in any part of me, but all around and within me. a cold wind of a piercing bitterness seemed to blow upon me; but with it came a sense of immense energy and strength, so that the pain became suddenly delightful, like the stretching of a stiffened limb. i cannot put the pain into exact words. it was not attended by any horror; it seemed a sense of infinite grief and loss and loneliness, a deep yearning to be delivered and made free. i felt suddenly as though everything i loved had gone from me, irretrievably gone and lost. i looked round me, and i could discern through a mist the bases of some black and sinister rocks, that towered up intolerably above me; in between them were channels full of stones and drifted snow. anything more stupendous than those black-ribbed crags, those toppling precipices, i had never seen. the wind howled among them, and sometimes there was a noise of rocks cast down. i knew in some obscure way that my path lay there, and my heart absolutely failed me. instead of going straight to the rocks, i began to creep along the base to see whether i could find some easier track. suddenly the voice of amroth said, rather sharply, in my ear, "don't be silly!" this homely direction, so peremptorily made, had an instantaneous effect. if he had said, "be not faithless," or anything in the copybook manner, i should have sat down and resigned myself to solemn despair. but now i felt a fool and a coward as well. so i addressed myself, like a dog who hears the crack of a whip, to the rocks. it would be tedious to relate how i clambered and stumbled and agonised. there did not seem to me the slightest use in making the attempt, or the smallest hope of reaching the top, or the least expectation of finding anything worth finding. i hated everything i had ever seen or known; recollections of old lives and of the quiet garden i had left came upon me with a sort of mental nausea. this was very different from the amiable and easy-going treatment i had expected. yet i did struggle on, with a hideous faintness and weariness--but would it never stop? it seemed like years to me, my hands frozen and wetted by snow and dripping water, my feet bruised and wounded by sharp stones, my garments strangely torn and rent, with stains of blood showing through in places. still the hideous business continued, but progress was never quite impossible. at one place i found the rocks wholly impassable, and choosing the broader of two ledges which ran left and right, i worked out along the cliff, only to find that the ledge ran into the precipices, and i had to retrace my steps, if the shuffling motions i made could be so called. then i took the harder of the two, which zigzagged backwards and forwards across the rocks. at one place i saw a thing which moved me very strangely. this was a heap of bones, green, slimy, and ill-smelling, with some tattered rags of cloth about them, which lay in a heap beneath a precipice. the thought that a man could fall and be killed in such a place moved me with a fresh misery. what that meant i could not tell. were we not away from such things as mouldering flesh and broken bones? it seemed not; and i climbed madly away from them. quite suddenly i came to the top, a bleak platform of rock, where i fell prostrate on my face and groaned. "yes, that was an ugly business," said the voice of amroth beside me, "but you got through it fairly well. how do you feel?" "i call it a perfect outrage," i said. "what is the meaning of this hateful business?" "the meaning?" said amroth; "never mind about the meaning. the point is that you are here!" "oh," i said, "i have had a horrible time. all my sense of security is gone from me. is one indeed liable to this kind of interruption, amroth?" "of course," said amroth, "there must be some tests; but you will be better very soon. it is all over for the present, i may tell you, and you will soon be able to enjoy it. there is no terror in past suffering--it is the purest joy." "yes, i used to say so and think so," i said, closing my eyes. "but this was different--it was horrible! and the time it lasted, and the despair of it! it seems to have soaked into my whole life and poisoned it." amroth said nothing for a minute, but watched me closely. presently i went on. "and tell me one thing. there was a ghastly thing i saw, some mouldering bones on a ledge. can people indeed fall and die there?" "perhaps it was only a phantom," said amroth, "put there like the sights in the _pilgrim's progress_, the fire that was fed secretly with oil, and the robin with his mouth full of spiders, as an encouragement for wayfarers!" "but that," i said, "would be too horrible for anything--to turn the terrors of death into a sort of conjuring trick--a dramatic entertainment, to make one's flesh creep! why, that was the misery of some of the religion taught us in old days, that it seemed often only dramatic--a scene without cause or motive, just displayed to show us the anger or the mercy of god, so that one had the miserable sense that much of it was a spectacular affair, that he himself did not really suffer or feel indignation, but thought it well to feign emotions, like a schoolmaster to impress his pupils.--and that people too were not punished for their own sakes, to help them, but just to startle or convince others." "yes," said amroth, "i was only jesting, and i see that my jests were out of place. of course what you saw was real--there are no pretences here. men and women do indeed suffer a kind of death--the second death--in these places, and have to begin again; but that is only for a certain sort of self-confident and sin-soaked person, whose will needs to be roughly broken. there are certain perverse sins of the spirit which need a spiritual death, as the sins of the body need a bodily death. only thus can one be born again." "well," i said, "i am amazed--but now what am i to do? i am fit for nothing, and i shall be fit for nothing hereafter." "if you talk like this," said amroth, "you will only drive me away. there are certain things that it is better not to confess to one's dearest friend, not even to god. one must just be silent about them, try to forget them, hope they can never happen again. i tell you, you will soon be all right; and if you are not you will have to see a physician. but you had better not do that unless you are obliged." this made me feel ashamed of myself, and the shame took off my thoughts from what i had endured; but i could do nothing but lie aching and panting on the rocks for a long time, while amroth sat beside me in silence. "are you vexed?" i said after a long pause. "no, no, not vexed," said amroth, "but i am not sure whether i have not made a mistake. it was i who urged that you might go forward, and i confess i am disappointed at the result. you are softer than i thought." "indeed i am not," i said. "i will go down the rocks and come up again, if that will satisfy you." "come, that is a little better," said amroth, "and i will tell you now that you did well--better indeed at the time than i expected. you did the thing in very good time, as we used to say." by this time i felt very drowsy, and suddenly dropped off into a sleep--such a deep and dreamless sleep, to descend into which was like flinging oneself into a river-pool by a bubbling weir on a hot and dusty day of summer. i awoke suddenly with a pressure on my arm, and, waking up with a sense of renewed freshness, i saw amroth looking at me anxiously. "do not say anything," he said. "can you manage to hobble a few steps? if you cannot, i will get some help, and we shall be all right--but there may be an unpleasant encounter, and it is best avoided." i scrambled to my feet, and amroth helped me a little higher up the rocks, looking carefully into the mist as he did so. close behind us was a steep rock with ledges. amroth flung himself upon them, with an agile scramble or two. then he held his hand down, lying on the top; i took it, and, stiffened as i was, i contrived to get up beside him. "that is right," he said in a whisper. "now lie here quietly, don't speak a word, and just watch." i lay, with a sense of something evil about. presently i heard the sound of voices in the mist to the left of us; and in an instant there loomed out of the mist the form of a man, who was immediately followed by three others. they were different from all the other spirits i had yet seen--tall, lean, dark men, very spare and strong. they looked carefully about them, mostly glancing down the cliff, and sometimes conferred together. they were dressed in close-fitting dark clothes, which seemed as if made out of some kind of skin or untanned leather, and their whole air was sinister and terrifying. they passed quite close beneath us, so that i saw the bald head of one of them, who carried a sort of hook in his hands. when they got to the place where my climb had ended, they stopped and examined the stones carefully: one of them clambered a few feet down the cliff. then he came back and seemed to make a brief report, after which they appeared undecided what to do; they even looked up at the rock where we lay; but while they did this, another man, very similar, came hurriedly out of the mist, said something to the group, and they all disappeared very quickly into the darkness the same way they had come. then there was a silence. i should have spoken, but amroth put a finger on his lips. presently there came a sound of falling stones, and after that there broke out among the rocks below a horrible crying, as of a man in sore straits and instant fear. amroth jumped quickly to his feet. "this will not do," he said. "stay here for me." and then leaping down the rock, he disappeared, shouting words of help--"hold on--i am coming." he came back some little time afterwards, and i saw that he was not alone. he had with him an old stumbling man, evidently in the last extremity of terror and pain, with beads of sweat on his brow and blood running down from his hands. he seemed dazed and bewildered. and amroth too looked ruffled and almost weary, as i had never seen him look. i came down the rock to meet them. but amroth said, "wait here for me; it has been a troublesome business, and i must go and bestow this poor creature in a place of safety--i will return." he led the old man away among the rocks, and i waited a long time, wondering very heavily what it was that i had seen. when amroth came back to the rock he was fresh and smiling again: he swung himself up, and sat by me, with his hands clasped round his knees. then he looked at me, and said, "i daresay you are surprised? you did not expect to see such terrors and dangers here? and it is a great mystery." "you must be kind," i said, "and explain to me what has happened." "well," said amroth, "there is a large gang of men who infest this place, who have got up here by their agility, and can go no further, who make it their business to prevent all they can from coming up. i confess that it is the hardest thing of all to understand why it is allowed; but if you expect all to be plain sailing up here, you are mistaken. one needs to be wary and strong. they do much harm here, and will continue to do it." "what would have happened if they had found us here?" i said. "nothing very much," said amroth; "a good deal of talk no doubt, and some blows perhaps. but it was well i was with you, because i could have summoned help. they are not as strong as they look either--it is mostly fear that aids them." "well, but _who_ are they?" i said. "they are the most troublesome crew of all," said amroth, "and come nearest to the old idea of fiends--they are indeed the origin of that notion. to speak plainly, they are men who have lived virtuous lives, and have done cruel things from good motives. there are some kings and statesmen among them, but they are mostly priests and schoolmasters, i imagine--people with high ideals, of course! but they are not replenished so fast as they used to be, i think. their difficulty is that they can never see that they are wrong. their notion is that this is a bad place to come to, and that people are better left in ignorance and bliss, obedient and submissive. a good many of them have given up the old rough methods, and hang about the base of the cliff, dissuading souls from climbing: they do the most harm of all, because if one does turn back here, it is long before one may make a new attempt. but enough of this," he added; "it makes me sick to think of them--the old fellow you saw with me had an awful fright--he was nearly done as it was! but i see you are feeling stronger, and i think we had better be going. one does not stay here by choice, though the place has a beauty of its own. and now you will have an easier time for awhile." we descended from our rock, and amroth led the way, through a long cleft, with rocks, very rough and black, on either side, and fallen fragments under foot. it was steep at first; but soon the rocks grew lower; and we came out presently on to a great desolate plain, with stones lying thickly about, among a coarse kind of grass. at each step i seemed to grow stronger, and walked more lightly, and in the thin fine air my horrors left me, though i still had a dumb sense of suffering which, strange to say, i found it almost pleasant to resist. and so we walked for a time in friendly silence, amroth occasionally indicating the way. the hill began to slope downwards very slowly, and the wind to subside. the mist drew off little by little, till at last i saw ahead of us a great bare-looking fortress with high walls and little windows, and a great blank tower over all. xviii we were received at the guarded door of the fortress by a porter, who seemed to be well acquainted with amroth. within, it was a big, bare place, with, stone-arched cloisters and corridors, more like a monastery than a castle. amroth led me briskly along the passages, and took me into a large room very sparely furnished, where an elderly man sat writing at a table with his back to the light. he rose when we entered, and i had a sudden sense that i was coming to school again, as indeed i was. amroth greeted him with a mixture of freedom and respect, as a well-loved pupil might treat an old schoolmaster. the man himself was tall and upright, and serious-looking, but for a twinkle of humour that lurked in his eye; yet i felt he was one who expected to be obeyed. he took amroth into the embrasure of a window, and talked with him in low tones. then he came back to me and asked me a few questions of which i did not then understand the drift--but it seemed a kind of very informal examination. then he made us a little bow of dismissal, and sat down at once to his writing without giving us another look. amroth took me out, and led me up many stone stairs, along whitewashed passages, with narrow windows looking out on the plain, to a small cell or room near the top of the castle. it was very austerely furnished, but it had a little door which took us out on the leads, and i then saw what a very large place the fortress was, consisting of several courts with a great central tower. "where on earth have we got to now?" i said. "nowhere '_on earth_,'" said amroth. "you are at school again, and you will find it very interesting, i hope and expect, but it will be hard work. i will tell you plainly that you are lucky to be here, because if you do well, you will have the best sort of work to do." "but what am i to do, and where am i to go?" i said. "i feel like a new boy, with all sorts of dreadful rules in the background." "that will all be explained to you," said amroth. "and now good-bye for the present. let me hear a good report of you," he added, with a parental air, "when i come again. what would not we older fellows give to be back here!" he added with a half-mocking smile. "let me tell you, my boy, you have got the happiest time of your life ahead of you. well, be a credit to your friends!" he gave me a nod and was gone. i stood for a little looking out rather desolately into the plain. there came a brisk tap at my door, and a man entered. he greeted me pleasantly, gave me a few directions, and i gathered that he was one of the instructors. "you will find it hard work," he said; "we do not waste time here. but i gather that you have had rather a troublesome ascent, so you can rest a little. when you are required, you will be summoned." when he left me, i still felt very weary, and lay down on a little couch in the room, falling presently asleep. i was roused by the entry of a young man, who said he had been sent to fetch me: we went down along the passages, while he talked pleasantly in low tones about the arrangements of the place. as we went along the passages, the doors of the cells kept opening, and we were joined by young men and women, who spoke to me or to each other, but all in the same subdued voices, till at last we entered a big, bare, arched room, lit by high windows, with rows of seats, and a great desk or pulpit at the end. i looked round me in great curiosity. there must have been several hundred people present, sitting in rows. there was a murmur of talk over the hall, till a bell suddenly sounded somewhere in the castle, a door opened, a man stepped quickly into the pulpit, and began to speak in a very clear and distinct tone. the discourse--and all the other discourses to which i listened in the place--was of a psychological kind, dealing entirely with the relations of human beings with each other, and the effect and interplay of emotions. it was extremely scientific, but couched in the simplest phraseology, and made many things clear to me which had formerly been obscure. there is nothing in the world so bewildering as the selective instinct of humanity, the reasons which draw people to each other, the attractive power of similarity and dissimilarity, the effects of class and caste, the abrupt approaches of passion, the influence of the body on the soul and of the soul on the body. it came upon me with a shock of surprise that while these things are the most serious realities in the world, and undoubtedly more important than any other thing, little attempt is made by humanity to unravel or classify them. i cannot here enter into the details of these instructions, which indeed would be unintelligible, but they showed me at first what i had not at all apprehended, namely the proportionate importance and unimportance of all the passions and emotions which regulate our relations with other souls. these discourses were given at regular intervals, and much of our time was spent in discussing together or working out in solitude the details of psychological problems, which we did with the exactness of chemical analysis. what i soon came to understand was that the whole of psychology is ruled by the most exact and immutable laws, in which there is nothing fortuitous or abnormal, and that the exact course of an emotion can be predicted with perfect certainty if only all the data are known. one of the most striking parts of these discourses was the fact that they were accompanied by illustrations. i will describe the first of these which i saw. the lecturer stopped for an instant and held up his hand. in the middle of one of the side-walls of the room was a great shallow arched recess. in this recess there suddenly appeared a scene, not as though it were cast by a lantern on the wall, but as if the wall were broken down, and showed a room beyond. in the room, a comfortably furnished apartment, there sat two people, a husband and wife, middle-aged people, who were engaged in a miserable dispute about some very trivial matter. the wife was shrill and provocative, the husband curt and contemptuous. they were obviously not really concerned about the subject they were discussing--it only formed a ground for disagreeable personalities. presently the man went out, saying harshly that it was very pleasant to come back from his work, day after day, to these scenes; to which the woman fiercely retorted that it was all his own fault; and when he was gone, she sat for a time mechanically knitting, with the tears trickling down her cheeks, and every now and then glancing at the door. after which, with great secrecy, she helped herself to some spirits which she took from a cupboard. the scene was one of the most vulgar and debasing that can be described or imagined; and it was curious to watch the expressions on the faces of my companions. they wore the air of trained doctors or nurses, watching some disagreeable symptoms, with a sort of trained and serene compassion, neither shocked nor grieved. then the situation was discussed and analysed, and various suggestions were made which were dealt with by the lecturer, in a way which showed me that there was much for us to master and to understand. there were many other such illustrations given. they were, i discovered, by no means imaginary cases, projected into our minds by a kind of mental suggestion, but actual things happening upon earth. we saw many strange scenes of tragedy, we had a glimpse of lunatic asylums and hospitals, of murder even, and of evil passions of anger and lust. we saw scenes of grief and terror; and, stranger still, we saw many things that were being enacted not on the earth, but upon other planets, where the forms and appearances of the creatures concerned were fantastic and strange enough, but where the motive and the emotion were all perfectly clear. at times, too, we saw scenes that were beautiful and touching, high and heroic beyond words. these seemed to come rather by contrast and for encouragement; for the work was distinctly pathological, and dealt with the disasters and complications of emotions, as a rule, rather than with their glories and radiances. but it was all incredibly absorbing and interesting, though what it was to lead up to i did not quite discern. what struck me was the concentration of effort upon human emotion, and still more the fact that other hopes and passions, such as ambition and acquisitiveness, as well as all material and economic problems, were treated as infinitely insignificant, as just the framework of human life, only interesting in so far as the baser and meaner elements of circumstance can just influence, refining or coarsening, the highest traits of character and emotion. we were given special cases, too, to study and consider, and here i had the first inkling of how far it is possible for disembodied spirits to be in touch with those who are still in the body. as far as i can see, no direct intellectual contact is possible, except under certain circumstances. there is, of course, a great deal of thought-vibration taking place in the world, to which the best analogy is wireless telegraphy. there exists an all-pervading emotional medium, into which every thought that is tinged with emotion sends a ripple. thoughts which are concerned with personal emotion send the firmest ripple into this medium, and all other thoughts and passions affect it, not in proportion to the intensity of the thought, but to the nature of the thought. the scale is perfectly determined and quite unalterable; thus a thought, however strong and intense, which is concerned with wealth or with personal ambition sends a very little ripple into the medium, while a thought of affection is very noticeable indeed, and more noticeable in proportion as it is purer and less concerned with any kind of bodily passion. thus, strange to say, the thought of a father for a child is a stronger thought than that of a lover for his beloved. i do not know the exact scale of force, which is as exact as that of chemical values--and of course such emotions are apt to be complex and intricate; but the purer and simpler the thought is, the greater is its force. perhaps the prayers that one prays for those whom one loves send the strongest ripple of all. if it happens that two of these ripples of personal emotion are closely similar, a reflex action takes place; and thus is explained the phenomenon which often takes place, the sudden sense of a friend's personality, if that friend, in absence, writes one a letter, or bends his mind intently upon one. it also explains the way in which some national or cosmic emotion suddenly gains simultaneous force, and vibrates in thousands of minds at the same time. the body, by its joys and sufferings alike, offers a great obstruction to these emotional waves. in the land of spirits, as i have indicated, an intention of congenial wills gives an instantaneous perception; but this seems impossible between an embodied spirit and a disembodied spirit. the only communication which seems possible is that of a vague emotion; and it seems quite impossible for any sort of intellectual idea to be directly communicated by a disembodied spirit to an embodied spirit. on the other hand, the intellectual processes of an embodied spirit are to a certain extent perceptible by a disembodied spirit; but there is a condition to this, and that is that some emotional sympathy must have existed between the two on earth. if there is no such sympathy, then the body is an absolute bar. i could look into the mind of amroth and see his thought take shape, as i could look into a stream, and see a fish dart from a covert of weed. but with those still in the body it is different. and i will therefore proceed to describe a single experience which will illustrate my point. i was ordered to study the case of a former friend of my own who was still living upon earth. nothing was told me about him, but, sitting in my cell, i put myself into communication with him upon earth. he had been a contemporary of mine at the university, and we had many interests in common. he was a lawyer; we did not very often meet, but when we did meet it was always with great cordiality and sympathy. i now found him ill and suffering from overwork, in a very melancholy state. when i first visited him, he was sitting alone, in the garden of a little house in the country. i could see that he was ill and sad; he was making pretence to read, but the book was wholly disregarded. when i attempted to put my mind into communication with his, it was very difficult to see the drift of his thoughts. i was like a man walking in a dense fog, who can just discern at intervals recognisable objects as they come within his view; but there was no general prospect and no distance. his mind seemed a confused current of distressing memories; but there came a time when his thought dwelt for a moment upon myself; he wished that i could be with him, that he might speak of some of his perplexities. in that instant, the whole grew clearer, and little by little i was enabled to trace the drift of his thoughts. i became aware that though he was indeed suffering from overwork, yet that his enforced rest only removed the mental distraction of his work, and left his mind free to revive a whole troop of painful thoughts. he had been a man of strong personal ambitions, and had for twenty years been endeavouring to realise them. now a sense of the comparative worthlessness of his aims had come upon him. he had despised and slighted other emotions; and his mind had in consequence drifted away like a boat into a bitter and barren sea. he was a lonely man, and he was feeling that he had done ill in not multiplying human emotions and relations. he reflected much upon the way in which he had neglected and despised his home affections, while he had formed no ties of his own. now, too, his career seemed to him at an end, and he had nothing to look forward to but a maimed and invalided life of solitude and failure. many of his thoughts i could not discern at all--the mist, so to speak, involved them--while many were obscure to me. when he thought about scenes and people whom i had never known, the thought loomed shapeless and dark; but when he thought, as he often did, about his school and university days, and about his home circle, all of which scenes were familiar to me, i could read his mind with perfect clearness. at the bottom of all lay a sense of deep disappointment and resentment. he doubted the justice of god, and blamed himself but little for his miseries. it was a sad experience at first, because he was falling day by day into more hopeless dejection; while he refused the pathetic overtures of sympathy which the relations in whose house he was--a married sister with her husband and children--offered him. he bore himself with courtesy and consideration, but he was so much worn with fatigue and despondency that he could not take any initiative. but i became aware very gradually that he was learning the true worth and proportion of things--and the months which passed so heavily for him brought him perceptions of the value of which he was hardly aware. let me say that it was now that the incredible swiftness of time in the spiritual region made itself felt for me. a month of his sufferings passed to me, contemplating them, like an hour. i found to my surprise that his thoughts of myself were becoming more frequent; and one day when he was turning over some old letters and reading a number of mine, it seemed to me that his spirit almost recognised my presence in the words which came to his lips, "it seems like yesterday!" i then became blessedly aware that i was actually helping him, and that the very intentness of my own thought was quickening his own. i discussed the whole case very closely and carefully with one of our instructors, who set me right on several points and made the whole state of things clear to me. i said to him, "one thing bewilders me; it would almost seem that a man's work upon earth constituted an interruption and a distraction from spiritual influences. it cannot surely be that people in the body should avoid employment, and give themselves to secluded meditation? if the soul grows fast in sadness and despondency, it would seem that one should almost have courted sorrow on earth; and yet i cannot believe that to be the case." "no," he said, "it is not the case; the body has here to be considered. no amount of active exertion clouds the eye of the soul, if only the motive of it is pure and lofty, and if the soul is only set patiently and faithfully upon the true end of life. the body indeed requires due labour and exercise, and the soul can gain health and clearness thereby. but what does cloud the spirit is if it gives itself wholly up to narrow personal aims and ambitions, and uses friendship and love as mere recreations and amusements. sickness and sorrow are not, as we used to think, fortuitous things; they are given to those who need them, as high and rich opportunities; and they come as truly blessed gifts, when they break a man's thought off from material things, and make him fall back upon the loving affections and relations of life. when one re-enters the world, a woman's life is sometimes granted to a spirit, because a woman by circumstance and temperament is less tempted to decline upon meaner ambitions and interests than a man; but work and activity are no hindrances to spiritual growth, so long as the soul waits upon god, and desires to learn the lessons of life, rather than to enforce its own conclusions upon others." "yes," i said, "i see that. what, then, is the great hindrance in the life of men?" "authority," he said, "whether given or taken. that is by far the greatest difficulty that a soul has to contend with. the knowledge of the true conditions of life is so minute and yet so imperfect, when one is in the body, that the man or woman who thinks it a duty to disapprove, to correct, to censure, is in the gravest danger. in the first place it is so impossible to disentangle the true conditions of any human life; to know how far those failures which are lightly called sins are inherited instincts of the body, or the manifestation of immaturity of spirit. complacency, hard righteousness, spiritual security, severe judgments, are the real foes of spiritual growth; and if a man is in a position to enforce his influence and his will upon others, he can fall very low indeed, and suspend his own growth for a very long and sad period. it is not the criticism or the analysis of others which hurts the soul, so long as it remains modest and sincere and conscious of its own weaknesses. it is when we indulge in secure or compassionate comparisons of our own superior worth that we go backwards." this was but one of the many cases which i had to investigate. i do not say that this is the work of all spirits in the other world--it is not so; there are many kinds of work and occupation. this was the one now allotted to me; but i did become aware of the intense and loving interest which is bent upon the souls of the living by those who are departed. there is not a soul alive who is not being thus watched and tended, and helped, as far as help is possible; for no one is ever forced or compelled or frightened into truth, only drawn and wooed by love and care. i must say a word, too, of the great and noble friendships which i formed at this period of my existence. we were not free to make many of these at a time. love seems to be the one thing that demands an entire concentration, and though in the world of spirits i became aware that one could be conscious of many of the thoughts of those about me simultaneously, yet the emotion of love, in the earlier stages, is single and exclusive. i will speak of two only. there were a young man and a young woman who were much associated with me at that time, whom i will call philip and anna. philip was one of the most beautiful of all the spirits i ever came near. his last life upon earth had been a long one, and he had been a teacher. i used to tell him that i wished i had been under him as a pupil, to which he replied, laughing, that i should have found him very uninteresting. he said to me once that the way in which he had always distinguished the two kinds of teachers on earth had been by whether they were always anxious to teach new books and new subjects, or went on contentedly with the old. "the pleasure," he said, "was in the teaching, in making the thought clear, in tempting the boys to find out what they knew all the time; and the oftener i taught a subject the better i liked it; it was like a big cog-wheel, with a number of little cog-wheels turning with it. but the men who were always wanting to change their subjects were the men who thought of their own intellectual interest first, and very little of the small interests revolving upon it." the charm of philip was the charm of extreme ingenuousness combined with daring insight. he never seemed to be shocked or distressed by anything. he said one day, "it was not the sensual or the timid or the ill-tempered boys who used to make me anxious. those were definite faults and brought definite punishment; it was the hard-hearted, virtuous, ambitious, sensible boys, who were good-humoured and respectable and selfish, who bothered me; one wanted to shake them as a terrier shakes a rat--but there was nothing to get hold of. they were a credit to themselves and to their parents and to the school; and yet they went downhill with every success." anna was a woman of singularly unselfish and courageous temperament. she had been, in the course of her last life upon earth, a hospital nurse; and she used to speak gratefully of the long periods when she was nursing some anxious case, when she had interchanged day and night, sleeping when the world was awake, and sitting with a book or needlework by the sick-bed, through the long darkness. "people used to say to me that it must be so depressing; but those were my happiest hours, as the dark brightened into dawn, when many of the strange mysteries of life and pain and death gave up their secrets to me. but of course," she added with a smile, "it was all very dim to me. i felt the truth rather than saw it; and it is a great joy to me to perceive now what was happening, and how the sad, bewildered hours of pain and misery leave their blessed marks upon the soul, like the tools of the graver on the gem. if only we could learn to plan a little less and to believe a little more, how much simpler it would all be!" these two became very dear to me, and i learnt much heavenly wisdom from them in long, quiet conferences, where we spoke frankly of all we had felt and known. xix it was at this time, i think, that a great change came over my thoughts, or rather that i realised that a great change had gradually taken place. till now, i had been dominated and haunted by memories of my latest life upon earth; but at intervals there had visited me a sense of older and purer recollections. i cannot describe exactly how it came about--and, indeed, the memory of what my heavenly progress had hitherto been, as opposed to my earthly experience, was never very clear to me; but i became aware that my life in heaven--i will call it heaven for want of a better name--was my real continuous life, my home-life, so to speak, while my earthly lives had been, to pursue the metaphor, like terms which a boy spends at school, in which he is aware that he not only learns definite and tangible things, but that his character is hardened and consolidated by coming into contact with the rougher facts of life--duty, responsibility, friendships, angers, treacheries, temptations, routine. the boy returns with gladness to the serener and sweeter atmosphere of home; and just in the same way i felt i had returned to the larger and purer life of heaven. but, as i say, the recollection of my earlier life in heaven, my occupations and experience, was never clear to me, but rather as a luminous and haunting mist. i questioned amroth about this once, and he said that this was the universal experience, and that the earthly lives one lived were like deep trenches cut across a path, and seemed to interrupt the heavenly sequence; but that as the spirit grew more pure and wise, the consciousness of the heavenly life became more distinct and secure. but he added, what i did not quite understand, that there was little need of memory in the life of heaven, and that it was to a great extent the inheritance of the body. memory, he said, was to a great extent an interruption to life; the thought of past failures and mistakes, and especially of unkindnesses and misunderstandings, tended to obscure and complicate one's relations with other souls; but that in heaven, where activity and energy were untiring and unceasing, one lived far more in the emotion and work of the moment, and less in retrospect and prospect. what mattered was actual experience and the effect of experience; memory itself was but an artistic method of dealing with the past, and corresponded to fanciful and delightful anticipations of the future. "the truth is," he said, "that the indulgence of memory is to a great extent a mere sentimental weakness; to live much in recollection is a sign of exhausted and depleted vitality. the further you are removed from your last earthly life, the less tempted you will be to recall it. the highest spirits of all here," he said, "have no temptation ever to revert to retrospect, because the pure energies of the moment are all-sustaining and all-sufficing." the only trace i ever noticed of any memory of my past life in heaven was that things sometimes seemed surprisingly familiar to me, and that i had the sense of a serene permanence, which possessed and encompassed me. indeed i came to believe that the strange feeling of permanence which haunts one upon earth, when one is happy and content, even though one knows that everything is changing and shifting around one, and that all is precarious and uncertain, is in itself a memory of the serene and untroubled continuance of heaven, and a desire to taste it and realise it. be this as it may, from the time of my finding my settled task and ordered place in the heavenly community the memories of my old life upon earth began to fade from my thoughts. i could, indeed, always recall them by an effort, but there seemed less and less inclination to do so the more i became absorbed in my heavenly activities. one thing i noticed in these days; it surprised me very greatly, till i reflected that my surprise was but the consequence of the strange and mournful blindness with regard to spiritual things in which we live under the dark skies of earth. we have there a false idea that somehow or other death takes all the individuality out of a man, obliterating all the whims, prejudices, the thorny and unreasonable dislikes and fancies, oddities, tempers, roughnesses, and subtlenesses from a temperament. of course there are a good many of these things which disappear together with the body, such as the glooms, suspicions, and cloudy irritabilities, which are caused by fatigue and malaise, and by ill-health generally. but a man's whims and fancies and dislikes do not by any means disappear on earth when he is in good health; on the contrary, they are often apt to be accentuated and emphasised when he is free from pain and care and anxiety, and riding blithely over the waves of life. indeed there are men whom i have known who are never kind or sympathetic till they are in some wearing trouble of their own; when they are prosperous and cheerful, they are frankly intolerable, because their mirth turns to derision and insolence. but one of the reasons why the heavenly life is apt to appear in prospect so wearisome a thing is, because we are brought up to feel that the whole character is flattened out and charged with a serene kind of priggishness, which takes all the salt out of life. the word "saintly," so terribly misapplied on earth, grows to mean, to many of us, an irritating sort of kindness, which treats the interests and animated elements of life with a painful condescension, and a sympathy of which the basis is duty rather than love. the true sanctification, which i came to perceive something of later, is the result of a process of endless patience and infinite delay, and the attainment of it implies a humility, seven times refined in the fires of self-contempt, in which there remains no smallest touch of superiority or aloofness. how utterly depressing is the feigned interest of the imperfect human saint in matters of mundane concern! how it takes at once both the joy out of holiness and the spirit out of human effort! it is as dreary as the professional sympathy of the secluded student for the news of athletic contests, as the tolerance of the shrewd man of science for the feminine logic of religious sentiment! but i found to my great content that whatever change had passed over the spirits of my companions, they had at least lost no fibre of their individuality. the change that had passed over them was like the change that passes over a young man, who has lived at the university among dilettante literary designs and mild sociological theorising, when he finds himself plunged into the urgent practical activities of the world. our happiness was the happiness which comes of intense toil, with no fatigue to dog it, and from a consciousness of the vital issues which we were pursuing. but my companions had still intellectual faults and preferences, self-confidence, critical intolerance, boisterousness, wilfulness. stranger still, i found coldness, anger, jealousy, still at work. of course in the latter case reconciliation was easier, both in the light of common enthusiasm and, still more, because mental communication was so much swifter and easier than it had been on earth. there was no need of those protracted talks, those tiresome explanations which clever people, who really love and esteem each other, fall into on earth--the statements which affirm nothing, the explanations which elucidate nothing, because of the intricacies of human speech and the fact that people use the same words with such different implications and meanings. all those became unnecessary, because one could pierce instantaneously into the very essence of the soul, and manifest, without the need of expression, the regard and affection which lay beneath the cross-currents of emotion. but love and affection waxed and waned in heaven as on earth; it was weakened and it was transferred. few souls are so serene on earth as to see with perfect equanimity a friend, whom one loves and trusts, becoming absorbed in some new and exciting emotion, which may not perhaps obliterate the original regard, but which must withdraw from it for a time the energy which fed the flame of the intermitted relation. it was very strange to me to realise the fact that friendships and intimacies were formed as on earth, and that they lost their freshness, either from some lack of real congeniality or from some divergence of development. sometimes, i may add, our teachers were consulted by the aggrieved, sometimes they even intervened unasked. i will freely confess that this all immensely heightened the interests to me of our common life. one could see two spirits drawn together by some secret tie of emotion, and one could see some further influence strike across and suspend it. one case of this i will mention, which is typical of many. there came among us an extremely lively and rather whimsical spirit, more like a boy than a man. i wondered at first why he was chosen for this work, because he seemed both fitful and even capricious; but i gradually realised in him an extraordinary fineness of perception, and a swiftness of intuition almost unrivalled. he had a power of weighing almost by instinct the constituent elements of character, which seemed to me something like the power of tonality in a musician, the gift of recognising, by pure faculty, what any notes may be, however confusedly jangled on an instrument. it was wonderful to me how often his instantaneous judgments proved more sagacious than our carefully formed conclusions. this boy became extraordinarily attractive to an older woman who was one of our number, who was solitary and abstracted, and of an intense seriousness of devotion to her work. it was evident both that she felt his charm intensely and that her disposition was wholly alien to the disposition of the boy himself. in fact, she simply bored him. he took all that he did lightly, and achieved by an intense momentary concentration what she could only achieve by slow reflection. this devotion had in it something that was strangely pathetic, because it took the form in her of making her wish to conciliate the boy's admiration, by treating thoughts and ideas with a lightness and a humour to which she could by no means attain, and which made things worse rather than better, because she could read so easily, in the thoughts of others, the impression that she was attempting a handling of topics which she could not in the least accomplish. but advice was useless. there it was, the old, fierce, constraining attraction of love, as it had been of old, making havoc of comfortable arrangements, attempting the impossible; and yet one knew that she would gain by the process, that she was opening a door in her heart that had hitherto been closed, and learning a largeness of view and sympathy in the process. her fault had ever been, no doubt, to estimate slow and accurate methods too highly, and to believe that all was insecure and untrustworthy that was not painfully accumulated. now she saw that genius could accomplish without effort or trouble what no amount of homely energy could effect, and a new horizon was unveiled to her. but on the boy it did not seem to have the right result. he might have learned to extend his sympathy to a nature so dumb and plodding; and this coldness of his called down a rebuke of what seemed almost undue sternness from one of our teachers. it was not given in my presence, but the boy, bewildered by the severity which he did not anticipate, coupled indeed with a hint that he must be prepared, if he could not exhibit a more elastic sympathy, to have his course suspended in favour of some more simple discipline, told me the whole matter. "what am i to do?" he said. "i cannot care for barbara; her whole nature upsets me and revolts me. i know she is very good and all that, but i simply am not myself when she is by; it is like taking a run with a tortoise!" "well," i said, "no one expects you to give up all your time to taking tortoises for runs; but i suppose that tortoises have their rights, and must not be jerked along on their backs, like a sledge." "oh," said he, "you are all against me, i know; and i am not sure that this place is not rather too solemn for me. what is the good of being wiser than the aged, if one has more commandments to keep?" things, however, settled down in time. barbara, i think, must have been taken to task as well, because she gave up her attempts at wit; and the end of it was that a quiet friendship sprang up between the incongruous pair, like that between a wayward young brother and a plain, kindly, and elderly sister, of a very fine and chivalrous kind. it must not be thought that we spent our time wholly in these emotional relations. it was a place of hard and urgent work; but i came to realise that, just as on earth, institutions like schools and colleges, where a great variety of natures are gathered in close and daily contact, are shot through and through with strange currents of emotion, which some people pay no attention to, and others dismiss as mere sentimentality, so it was also bound to be beyond, with this difference, that whereas on earth we are shy and awkward with our friendships, and all sorts of physical complications intervene, in the other world they assume their frank importance. i saw that much of what is called the serious business of life is simply and solely necessitated by bodily needs, and is really entirely temporary and trivial, while the real life of the soul, which underlies it all, stifled and subdued, pent-up uneasily and cramped unkindly like a bright spring of water under the superincumbent earth, finds its way at last to the light. on earth we awkwardly divide this impulse; we speak of the relation of the soul to others and of the relation of the soul to god as two separate things. we pass over the words of christ in the gospel, which directly contradict this, and which make the one absolutely dependent on, and conditional on, the other. we speak of human affection as a thing which may come in between the soul and god, while it is in reality the swiftest access thither. we speak as though ambition were itself made more noble, if it sternly abjures all multiplication of human tenderness. we speak of a life which sacrifices material success to emotion as a failure and an irresponsible affair. the truth is the precise opposite. all the ambitions which have their end in personal prestige are wholly barren; the ambitions which aim at social amelioration have a certain nobility about them, though they substitute a tortuous by-path for a direct highway. and the plain truth is that all social amelioration would grow up as naturally and as fragrantly as a flower, if we could but refine and strengthen and awaken our slumbering emotions, and let them grow out freely to gladden the little circle of earth in which we live and move. xx it was at this time that i had a memorable interview with the master of the college. he appeared very little among us, though, he occasionally gave us a short instruction, in which he summed up the teaching on a certain point. he was a man of extraordinary impressiveness, mainly, i think, because he gave the sense of being occupied in much larger and wider interests. i often pondered over the question why the short, clear, rather dry discourses which fell from his lips appeared to be so far more weighty and momentous than anything else that was ever said to us. he used no arts of exhortation, showed no emotion, seemed hardly conscious of our presence; and if one caught his eye as he spoke, one became aware of a curious tremor of awe. he never made any appeal to our hearts or feelings; but it always seemed as if he had condescended for a moment to put aside far bigger and loftier designs in order to drop a fruit of ripened wisdom in our way. he came among us, indeed, like a statesman rather than like a teacher. the brief interviews we had with him were regarded with a sort of terror, but produced, in me at least, an almost fanatical respect and admiration. and yet i had no reason to suppose that he was not, like all of us, subject to the law of life and pilgrimage, though one could not conceive of him as having to enter the arena of life again as a helpless child! on this occasion i was summoned suddenly to his presence. i found him, as usual, bent over his work, which he did not intermit, but merely motioned me to be seated. presently he put away his papers from him, and turned round upon me. one of the disconcerting things about him was the fact that his thought had a peculiarly compelling tendency, and that while he read one's mind in a flash, his own thoughts remained very nearly impenetrable. on this occasion he commended me for my work and my relations with my fellow-students, adding that i had made rapid progress. he then said, "i have two questions to ask you. have you any special relations, either with any one whom you have left behind you on earth, or with any one with whom you have made acquaintance since you quitted it, which you desire to pursue?" i told him, which was the truth, that since my stay in the college i had become so much absorbed in the studies of the place that i seemed to have became strangely oblivious of my external friends, but that it was more a suspension than a destruction of would-be relations. "yes," he said, "i perceive that that is your temperament. it has its effectiveness, no doubt, but it also has its dangers; and, whatever happens, one ought never to be able to accuse oneself justly of any disloyalty." he seemed to wait for me to speak, whereupon i mentioned a very dear friend of my days of earth; but i added that most of those whom i had loved best had predeceased me, and that i had looked forward to a renewal of our intercourse. i also mentioned the names of charmides and cynthia, the latter of whom was in memory strangely near to my heart. he seemed satisfied with this. then he said, "it is true that we have to multiply relationships with others, both in the world and out of it; but we must also practise economy. we must not abandon ourselves to passing fancies, or be subservient to charm, while if we have made an emotional mistake, and have been disappointed with one whom we have taken the trouble to win, we must guard such conquests with a close and peculiar tenderness. but enough of that, for i have to ask you if there is any special work for which you feel yourself disposed. there is a great choice of employment here. you may choose, if you will, just to live the spiritual life and discharge whatever duties of citizenship you may be called upon to perform. that is what most spirits do. i need not perhaps tell you"--here he smiled--"that freedom from the body does not confer upon any one, as our poor brothers and sisters upon earth seem to think, a heavenly vocation. neither of course is the earthly fallacy about a mere absorption in worship a true one--only to a very few is that conceded. still less is this a life of leisure. to be leisurely here is permitted only to the wearied, and to those childish creatures with whom you have spent some time in their barren security. i do not think you are suited for the work of recording the great scheme of life, nor do i think you are made for a teacher. you are not sufficiently impartial! for mere labour you are not suited; and yet i hardly think you would be fit to adopt the most honourable task which your friend amroth so finely fulfils--a guide and messenger. what do you think?" i said at once that i did not wish to have to make a decision, but that i preferred to leave it to him. i added that though i was conscious of my deficiencies, i did not feel conscious of any particular capacities, except that i found character a very fascinating study, especially in connection with the circumstances of life upon earth. "very well," he said, "i think that you may perhaps be best suited to the work of deciding what sort of life will best befit the souls who are prepared to take up their life upon earth again. that is a task of deep and infinite concern; it may surprise you," he added, "to learn that this is left to the decision of other souls. but it is, of course, the goal at which all earthly social systems are aiming, the right apportionment of circumstances to temperament, and you must not be surprised to find that here we have gone much further in that direction, though even here the system is not perfected; and you cannot begin to apprehend that fact too soon. it is unfortunate that on earth it is commonly believed, owing to the deadening influence of material causes, that beyond the grave everything is done with a divine unanimity. but of course, if that were so, further growth and development would be impossible, and in view of infinite perfectibility there is yet very much that is faulty and incomplete. but i am not sure what lies before you; there is something in your temperament which a little baffles me, and our plans may have to be changed. your very absorption in your work, your quick power of forgetting and throwing off impressions has its dangers. but i will bear in mind what you have said, and you may for the present resume your studies, and i will once more commend you; you have done well hitherto, and i will say frankly that i regard you as capable of useful and honourable work." he bowed in token of dismissal, and i went back to my work with unbounded gratitude and enthusiasm. xxi some time after this i was surprised one morning at the sudden entrance of amroth into my cell. he came in with a very bright and holiday aspect, and, assuming a paternal air, said that he had heard a very creditable account of my work and conduct, and that he had obtained leave for me to have an exeat. i suppose that i showed signs of impatience at the interruption, for he broke into a laugh, and said, "well, i am going to insist. i believe you are working too hard, and we must not overstrain our faculties. it was bad enough, in the old days, but then it was generally the poor body which suffered first. but indeed it is quite possible to overwork here, and you have the dim air of the pale student. come," he said, "whatever happens, do not become priggish. not to want a holiday is a sign of spiritual pride. besides, i have some curious things to show you." i got up and said that i was ready, and amroth led the way like a boy out for a holiday. he was brimming over with talk, and told me some stories about my friends in the land of delight, interspersing them with imitation of their manner and gesture, which made me giggle--amroth was an admirable mimic. "i had hopes of charmides," he said; "your stay there aroused his curiosity. but he has gone back to his absurd tones and half-tones, and is nearly insupportable. cynthia is much more sensible, but lucius is a nuisance, and charmides, by the way, has become absurdly jealous of him. they really are very silly; but i have a pleasant plot, which i will unfold to you." as we went down the interminable stairs, i said to amroth, "there is a question i want to ask you. why do we have to go and come, up and down, backwards and forwards, in this absurd way, as if we were still in the body? why not just slip off the leads, and fly down over the crags like a pair of pigeons? it all seems to me so terribly material." amroth looked at me with a smile. "i don't advise you to try," he said. "why, little brother, of course we are just as limited here in these ways. the material laws of earth are only a type of the laws here. they all have a meaning which remains true." "but," i said, "we can visit the earth with incredible rapidity?" "how can i explain?" said amroth. "of course we can do that, because the material universe is so extremely small in comparison. all the stars in the world are here but as a heap of sand, like the motes which dance in a sunbeam. there is no question of size, of course! but there is such a thing as spiritual nearness and spiritual distance for all that. the souls who do not return to earth are very far off, as you will sometime see. but we messengers have our short cuts, and i shall take advantage of them to-day." we went out of the great door of the fortress, and i felt a sense of relief. it was good to put it all behind one. for a long time i talked to amroth about all my doings. "come," he said at last, "this will never do! you are becoming something of a bore! do you know that your talk is very provincial? you seem to have forgotten about every one and everything except your philips and annas--very worthy creatures, no doubt--and the master, who is a very able man, but not the little demigod you believe. you are hypnotised! it is indeed time for you to have a holiday. why, i believe you have half forgotten about me, and yet you made a great fuss when i quitted you." i smiled, frowned, blushed. it was indeed true. now that he was with me i loved him as well, indeed better than ever; but i had not been thinking very much about him. we went over the moorlands in the keen air, amroth striding cleanly and lightly over the heather. then we began to descend into the valley, through a fine forest country, somewhat like the chestnut-woods of the apennines. the view was of incomparable beauty and width. i could see a great city far out in the plain, with a river entering it and leaving it, like a ribbon of silver. there were rolling ridges beyond. on the left rose huge, shadowy, snow-clad hills, rising to one tremendous dome of snow. "where are you going to take me?" i said to amroth. "never mind," said he; "it's my day and my plan for once. you shall see what you shall see, and it will amuse me to hear your ingenuous conjectures." we were soon on the outskirts of the city we had seen, which seemed a different kind of place from any i had yet visited. it was built, i perceived, upon an exactly conceived plan, of a stately, classical kind of architecture, with great gateways and colonnades. there were people about, rather silent and serious-looking, soberly clad, who saluted us as we passed, but made no attempt to talk to us. "this is rather a tiresome place, i always think," said amroth; "but you ought to see it." we went along the great street and reached a square. i was surprised at the elderly air of all we met. we found ourselves opposite a great building with a dome, like a church. people were going in under the portico, and we went in with them. they treated us as strangers, and made courteous way for us to pass. inside, the footfalls fell dumbly upon a great carpeted floor. it was very like a great church, except that there was no altar or sign of worship. at the far end, under an alcove, was a statue of white marble gleaming white, with head and hand uplifted. the whole place had a solemn and noble air. out of the central nave there opened a series of great vaulted chapels; and i could now see that in each chapel there was a dark figure, in a sort of pulpit, addressing a standing audience. there were names on scrolls over the doors of the light iron-work screens which separated the chapels from the nave, but they were in a language i did not understand. amroth stopped at the third of the chapels, and said, "here, this will do." we came in, and as before there was a courteous notice taken of us. a man in black came forward, and led us to a high seat, like a pew, near the preacher, from which we could survey the crowd. i was struck with their look of weariness combined with intentness. the lecturer, a young man, had made a pause, but upon our taking our places, he resumed his speech. it was a discourse, as far as i could make out, on the development of poetry; he was speaking of lyrical poetry. i will not here reproduce it. i will only say that anything more acute, delicate, and discriminating, and, i must add, more entirely valueless and pedantic, i do not think i ever heard. it must have required immense and complicated knowledge. he was tracing the development of a certain kind of dramatic lyric, and what surprised me was that he supplied the subtle intellectual connection, the missing links, so to speak, of which there is no earthly record. let me give a single instance. he was accounting for a rather sudden change of thought in a well-known poet, and he showed that it had been brought about by his making the acquaintance of a certain friend who had introduced him to a new range of subjects, and by his study of certain books. these facts are unrecorded in his published biography, but the analysis of the lecturer, done in a few pointed sentences, not only carried conviction to the mind, but just, so to speak, laid the truth bare. and yet it was all to me incredibly sterile and arid. not the slightest interest was taken in the emotional or psychological side; it was all purely and exactly scientific. we waited until the end of the address, which was greeted with decorous applause, and the hall was emptied in a moment. we visited other chapels where the same sort of thing was going on in other subjects. it all produced in me a sort of stupefaction, both at the amazing knowledge involved, and in the essential futility of it all. before we left the building we went up to the statue, which represented a female figure, looking upwards, with a pure and delicate beauty of form and gesture that was inexpressibly and coldly lovely. we went out in silence, which seemed to be the rule of the place. when we came away from the building we were accosted by a very grave and courteous person, who said that he perceived that we were strangers, and asked if he could be of any service to us, and whether we proposed to make a stay of any duration. amroth thanked him, and said smilingly that we were only passing through. the gentleman said that it was a pity, because there was much of interest to hear. "in this place," he said with a deprecating gesture, "we grudge every hour that is not devoted to thought." he went on to inquire if we were following any particular line of study, and as our answers were unsatisfactory, he said that we could not do better than begin by attending the school of literature. "i observed," he said, "that you were listening to our professor, sylvanus, with attention. he is devoting himself to the development of poetical form. it is a rich subject. it has generally been believed that poets work by a sort of native inspiration, and that the poetic gift is a sort of heightening of temperament. but sylvanus has proved--i think i may go so far as to say this--that this is all pure fancy, and what is worse, unsound fancy. it is all merely a matter of heredity, and the apparent accidents on which poetical expression depends can be analysed exactly and precisely into the most commonplace and simple elements. it is only a question of proportion. now we who value clearness of mind above everything, find this a very refreshing thought. the real crown and sum of human achievement, in the intellectual domain, is to see things clearly and exactly, and upon that clearness all progress depends. we have disposed by this time of most illusions; and the same scientific method is being strenuously applied to all other processes of human endeavour. it is even hinted that sylvanus has practically proved that the imaginative element in literature is purely a taint of barbarism, though he has not yet announced the fact. but many of his class are looking forward to his final lecture on the subject as to a profoundly sensational event, which is likely to set a deep mark upon all our conceptions of literary endeavour. so that," he said with a tolerant smile, gently rubbing his hands together, "our life here is not by any means destitute of the elements of excitement, though we most of us, of course, aim at the acquisition of a serene and philosophic temper. but i must not delay you," he added; "there is much to see and to hear, and you will be welcomed everywhere: and indeed i am myself somewhat closely engaged, though in a subject which is not fraught with such polite emollience. i attend the school of metaphysics, from which we have at last, i hope, eliminated the last traces of that debasing element of psychology, which has so long vitiated the exact study of the subject." he took himself off with a bow, and i gazed blankly at amroth. "the conversation of that very polite person," i said, "is like a bad dream! what is this extraordinarily depressing place? shall i have to undergo a course here?" "no, my dear boy," said amroth. "this is rather out of your depth. but i am somewhat disappointed at your view of the situation. surely these are all very important matters? your disposition is, i am afraid, incurably frivolous! how could people be more worthily employed than in getting rid of the last traces of intellectual error, and in referring everything to its actual origin? did not your heart burn within you at his luminous exposition? i had always thought you a boy of intellectual promise." "amroth," i said, "i will not be made fun of. this is the most dreadful place i have ever seen or conceived of! it frightens me. the dryness of pure science is terrifying enough, but after all that has a kind of strange beauty, because it deals either with transcendental ideas of mathematical relation, or with the deducing of principle from accumulated facts. but here the object appears to be to eliminate the human element from humanity. i insist upon knowing where you have brought me, and what is going on here." "well, then," said amroth, "i will conceal it from you no longer. this is the paradise of thought, where meagre and spurious philosophers, and all who have submerged life in intellect, have their reward. it _is_, as you say, a very dreary place for children of nature like you and me. but i do not suppose that there is a happier or a busier place in all our dominions. the worst of it is that it is so terribly hard to get out of. it is a blind alley and leads nowhere. every step has to be retraced. these people have to get a very severe dose of homely life to do them any good; and the worst of it is that they are so entirely virtuous. they have never had the time or the inclination to be anything else. and they are among the most troublesome and undisciplined of all our people. but i see you have had enough; and unless you wish to wait for professor sylvanus's sensational pronouncement, we will go elsewhere, and have some other sort of fun. but you must not be so much upset by these things." "it would kill me," i said, "to hear any more of these lectures, and if i had to listen to much of our polite friend's conversation, i should go out of my mind. i would rather fall into the hands of the cragmen! i would rather have a stand-up fight than be slowly stifled with interesting information. but where do these unhappy people come from?" "a few come from universities," said amroth, "but they are not as a rule really learned men. they are more the sort of people who subscribe to libraries, and belong to local literary societies, and go into a good many subjects on their own account. but really learned men are almost always more aware of their ignorance than of their knowledge, and recognise the vitality of life, even if they do not always exhibit it. but come, we are losing time, and we must go further afield." xxii we went some considerable distance, after leaving our intellectual friends, through very beautiful wooded country, and as we went we talked with much animation about the intellectual life and its dangers. it had always, i confess, appeared to me a harmless life enough; not very effective, perhaps, and possibly liable to encourage a man in a trivial sort of self-conceit; but i had always looked upon that as an instinctive kind of self-respect, which kept an intellectual person from dwelling too sorely upon the sense of ineffectiveness; as an addiction not more serious in its effects upon character than the practice of playing golf, a thing in which a leisurely person might immerse himself, and cultivate a decent sense of self-importance. but amroth showed me that the danger of it lay in the tendency to consider the intellect to be the basis of all life and progress. "the intellectual man," he said, "is inclined to confuse his own acute perception of the movement of thought with the originating impulse of that movement. but of course thought is a thing which ebbs and flows, like public opinion, according to its own laws, and is not originated but only perceived by men of intellectual ability. the danger of it is a particularly arid sort of self-conceit. it is as if the lady of shalott were to suppose that she created life by observing and rendering it in her magic web, whereas her devotion to her task simply isolates her from the contact with other minds and hearts, which is the one thing worth having. that is, of course, the danger of the artist as well as of the philosopher. they both stand aside from the throng, and are so much absorbed in the aspect of thought and emotion that they do not realise that they are separated from it. they are consequently spared, when they come here, the punishment which falls upon those who have mixed greedily, selfishly, and cruelly with life, of which you will have a sight before long. but that place of punishment is not nearly so sad or depressing a place as the paradise of delight, and the paradise of intellect, because the sufferers have no desire to stay there, can repent and feel ashamed, and therefore can suffer, which is always hopeful. but the artistic and intellectual have really starved their capacity for suffering, the one by treating all emotion as spectacular, and the other by treating it as a puerile interruption to serious things. it takes people a long time to work their way out of self-satisfaction! but there is another curious place i wish you to visit. it is a dreadful place in a way, but by no means consciously unhappy," and amroth pointed to a great building which stood on a slope of the hill above the forest, with a wide and beautiful view from it. before very long we came to a high stone wall with a gate carefully guarded. here amroth said a few words to a porter, and we went up through a beautiful terraced park. in the park we saw little knots of people walking aimlessly about, and a few more solitary figures. but in each case they were accompanied by people whom i saw to be warders. we passed indeed close to an elderly man, rather fantastically dressed, who looked possessed with a kind of flighty cheerfulness. he was talking to himself with odd, emphatic gestures, as if he were ticking off the points of a speech. he came up to us and made us an effusive greeting, praising the situation and convenience of the place, and wishing us a pleasant sojourn. he then was silent for a moment, and added, "now there is a matter of some importance on which i should like your opinion." at this the warder who was with him, a strong, stolid-looking man, with an expression at once slightly contemptuous and obviously kind, held up his hand and said, "you will, no doubt, sir, remember that you have undertaken--" "not a word, not a word," said our friend; "of course you are right! i have really nothing to say to these gentlemen." we went up to the building, which now became visible, with its long and stately front of stone. here again we were admitted with some precaution, and after a few minutes there came a tall and benevolent-looking man, to whom amroth spoke at some length. the man then came up to me, said that he was very glad to welcome me, and that he would be delighted to show us the place. we went through fine and airy corridors, into which many doors, as of cells, opened. occasionally a man or a woman, attended by a male or a female warder, passed us. the inmates had all the same kind of air--a sort of amused dignity, which was very marked. presently our companion opened a door with his key and we went in. it was a small, pleasantly-furnished room. some books, apparently of devotion, lay on the table. there was a little kneeling-desk near the window, and the room had a half-monastic air about it. when we entered, an elderly man, with a very serene face, was looking earnestly into the door of a cupboard in the wall, which he was holding open; there was, so far as i could see, nothing in the cupboard; but the inmate seemed to be struggling with an access of rather overpowering mirth. he bowed to us. our conductor greeted him respectfully, and then said, "there is a stranger here who would like a little conversation with you, if you can spare the time." "by all means," said the inmate, with a very ingratiating smile. "it is very kind of him to call upon me, and my time is entirely at his disposal." our conductor said to me that he and amroth had some brief business to transact, and that they would call for me again in a moment. the inmate bowed, and seemed almost impatient for them to depart. he motioned me to a chair, and the moment they left us he began to talk with great animation. he asked me if i was a new inmate, and when i said no, only a visitor, he looked at me compassionately, saying that he hoped i might some day attain to the privilege. "this," he said, "is the abode of final and lasting peace. no one is admitted here unless his convictions are of the firmest and most ardent character; it is a reward for faithful service. but as our time is short, i must tell you," he said, "of a very curious experience i have had this very morning--a spiritual experience of the most reassuring character. you must know that i held a high official position in the religious world--i will mention no details--and i found at an early age, i am glad to say, the imperative necessity of forming absolutely impregnable convictions. i went to work in the most business-like way. i devoted some years to hard reading and solid thought, and i found that the sect to which i belonged was lacking in certain definite notes of divine truth, while the weight of evidence pointed in the clearest possible manner to the fact that one particular section of the church had preserved absolutely intact the primitive faith of the saints, and was without any shadow of doubt the perfectly logical development of the principles of the gospel. mine is not a nature that can admit of compromise; and at considerable sacrifice of worldly prospects i transferred my allegiance, and was instantly rewarded by a perfect serenity of conviction which has never faltered. "i had a friend with whom i had often discussed the matter, who was much of my way of thinking. but though i showed him the illogical nature of his position, he hung back--whether from material motives or from mere emotional associations i will not now stop to inquire. but i could not palter with the truth. i expostulated with him, and pointed out to him in the sternest terms the eternal distinctions involved. i broke off all relations with him ultimately. and after a life spent in the most solemn and candid denunciation of the fluidity of religious belief, which is the curse of our age, though it involved me in many of the heart-rending suspensions of human intercourse with my nearest and dearest so plainly indicated in the gospel, i passed at length, in complete tranquillity, to my final rest. the first duty of the sincere believer is inflexible intolerance. if a man will not recognise the truth when it is plainly presented to him, he must accept the eternal consequences of his act--separation from god, and absorption in guilty and awestruck regret, which admits of no repentance. "one of the privileges of our sojourn here is that we have a strange and beautiful device--a window, i will call it--which admits one to a sight of the spiritual world. i was to-day contemplating, not without pain, but with absolute confidence in its justice, the sufferings of some of these lost souls, and i observed, i cannot say with satisfaction, but with complete submission, the form of my friend, whom my testimony might have saved, in eternal misery. i have the tenderest heart of any man alive. it has cost me a sore struggle to subdue it--it is more unruly even than the will--but you may imagine that it is a matter of deep and comforting assurance to reflect that on earth the door, the one door, to salvation is clearly and plainly indicated--though few there be that find it--and that this signal mercy has been vouchsafed to me. i have then the peace of knowing, not only that my choice was right, but that all those to whom the truth is revealed have the power to choose it. i am a firm believer in the uncovenanted mercies vouchsafed to those who have not had the advantages of clear presentment, but for the deliberately unfaithful, for all sinners against light, the sentence is inflexible." he closed his eyes, and a smile played over his features. i found it very difficult to say anything in answer to this monologue; but i asked my companion whether he did not think that some clearer revelation might be made, after the bodily death, to those who for some human frailty were unable to receive it. "an intelligent question," said my companion, "but i am obliged to answer in the negative. of course the case is different for those who have accepted the truth loyally, even if their record is stained by the foulest and most detestable of crimes. it is the moral and intellectual adhesion that matters; that once secured, conduct is comparatively unimportant, if the soul duly recurs to the medicine of penitence and contrition so mercifully provided. i have the utmost indulgence for every form of human frailty. i may say that i never shrank from contact with the grossest and vilest forms of continuous wrong-doing, so long as i was assured that the true doctrines were unhesitatingly and submissively accepted. a soul which admits the supremacy of authority can go astray like a sheep that is lost, but as long as it recognises its fold and the authority of the divine law, it can be sought and found. "the little window of which i spoke has given me indubitable testimony of this. there was a man i knew in the flesh, who was regarded as a monster of cruelty and selfishness. he ill-treated his wife and misused his children; his life was spent in gross debauchery, and his conduct on several occasions outstepped the sanctions of legality. he was a forger and an embezzler. i do not attempt to palliate his faults, and there will be a heavy reckoning to pay. but he made his submission at the last, after a long and prostrating illness; and i have ocular demonstration of the fact that, after a mercifully brief period of suffering, he is numbered among the blest. that is a sustaining thought." he then with much courtesy invited me to partake of some refreshment, which i gratefully declined. once or twice he rose, and opening the little cupboard door, which revealed nothing but a white wall, he drank in encouragement from some hidden sight. he then invited me to kneel with him, and prayed fervently and with some emotion that light might be vouchsafed to souls on earth who were in darkness. just as he concluded, amroth appeared with our conductor. the latter made a courteous inquiry after my host's health and comfort. "i am perfectly happy here," he said, "perfectly happy. the attentions i receive are indeed more than i deserve; and i am specially grateful to my kind visitor, whose indulgence i must beg for my somewhat prolonged statement--but when one has a cause much at heart," he added with a smile, "some prolixity is easily excused." as we re-entered the corridor, our conductor asked me if i would care to pay any more visits. "the case you have seen," he said, "is an extremely typical and interesting one." "have you any hope," said amroth, "of recovery?" "of course, of course," said our conductor with a smile. "nothing is hopeless here; our cures are complete and even rapid; but this is a particularly obstinate one!" "well," said amroth, "would you like to see more?" "no," i said, "i have seen enough. i cannot now bear any more." our conductor smiled indulgently. "yes," he said, "it is bewildering at first; but one sees wonderful things here! this is our library," he added, leading us to a great airy room, full of books and reading-desks, where a large number of inmates were sitting reading and writing. they glanced up at us with friendly and contented smiles. a little further on we came to another cell, before which our conductor stopped, and looked at me. "i should like," he said, "if you are not too tired, just to take you in here; there is a patient, who is very near recovery indeed, in here, and it would do him good to have a little talk with a stranger." i bowed, and we went in. a man was sitting in a chair with his head in his hands. an attendant was sitting near the window reading a book. the patient, at our entry, removed his hands from his face and looked up, half impatiently, with an air of great suffering, and then slowly rose. "how are you feeling, dear sir?" said our conductor quietly. "oh," said the man, looking at us, "i am better, much better. the light is breaking in, but it is a sore business, when i was so strong in my pride." "ah," said our guide, "it is indeed a slow process; but happiness and health must be purchased; and every day i see clearly that you are drawing nearer to the end of your troubles--you will soon be leaving us! but now i want you kindly to bestir yourself, and talk a little to this friend of ours, who has not been long with us, and finds the place somewhat, bewildering. you will be able to tell him something of what is passing in your mind; it will do you good to put it into words, and it will be a help to him." "very well," said the man gravely, "i will do my best." and the others withdrew, leaving me with the man. when they had gone, the man asked me to be seated, and leaning his head upon his hand he said, "i do not know how much you know and how little, so i will tell you that i left the world very confident in a particular form of faith, and very much disposed to despise and even to dislike those who did not agree with me. i had lived, i may say, uprightly and purely, and i will confess that i even welcomed all signs of laxity and sinfulness in my opponents, because it proved what i believed, that wrong conduct sprang naturally from wrong belief. i came here in great content, and thought that this place was the reward of faithful living. but i had a great shock. i was very tenderly attached to one whom i left on earth, and the severest grief of my life was that she did not think as i did, but used to plead with me for a wider outlook and a larger faith in the designs of god. she used to say to me that she felt that god had different ways of saving different people, and that people were saved by love and not by doctrine. and this i combated with all my might. i used to say, 'doctrine first, and love afterwards,' to which she often said, 'no, love is first!' "well, some time ago i had a sight of her; she had died, and entered this world of ours. she was in a very different place from this, but she thought of me without ceasing, and her desire prevailed. i saw her, though i was hidden from her, and looked into her heart, and discerned that the one thing which spoiled her joy was that i was parted from her. "and after that i had no more delight in my security. i began to suffer and to yearn. and then, little by little, i began to see that it is love after all which binds us together, and which draws us to god; but my difficulty is this, that i still believe that my faith is true; and if that is true, then other faiths cannot be true also, and then i fall into sad bewilderment and despair." he stopped and looked at me fixedly. "but," i said, "if i may carry the thought further, might not all be true? two men may be very unlike each other in form and face and thought--yet both are very man. it would be foolish arguing, if a man were to say, 'i am indeed a man, and because my friend is unlike me--taller, lighter-complexioned, swifter of thought--therefore he cannot be a man.' or, again, two men may travel by the same road, and see many different things, yet it is the same road they have both travelled; and one need not say to the other, 'you cannot have travelled by the same road, because you did not see the violets on the bank under the wood, or the spire that peeped through the trees at the folding of the valleys--and therefore you are a liar and a deceiver!' if one believes firmly in one's own faith, one need not therefore say that all who do not hold it are perverse and wilful. there is no excuse, indeed, for not holding to what we believe to be true, but there is no excuse either for interfering with the sincere belief of another, unless one can persuade him he is wrong. is not the mistake to think that one holds the truth in its entirety, and that one has no more to learn and to perceive? i myself should welcome differences of faith, because it shows me that faith is a larger thing even than i know. what another sees may be but a thought that is hidden from me, because the truth may be seen from a different angle. to complain that we cannot see it all is as foolish as when the child is vexed because it cannot see the back of the moon. and it seems to me that our duty is not to quarrel with others who see things that we do not see, but to rejoice with them, if they will allow us, and meanwhile to discern what is shown to us as faithfully as we can." the man heard me with a strange smile. "yes," he said, "you are certainly right, and i bless the goodness that sent you hither; but when you are gone, i doubt that i shall fall back into my old perplexities, and say to myself that though men may see different parts of the same thing, they cannot see the same thing differently." "i think," i said, "that even that is possible, because on earth things are often mere symbols, and clothe themselves in material forms; and it is the form which deludes us. i do not myself doubt that grace flows into us by very different channels. we may not deny the claim of any one to derive grace from any source or symbol that he can. the only thing we may and must dare to dispute is the claim that only by one channel may grace flow. but i think that the words of the one whom you loved, of whom you spoke, are indeed true, and that the love of each other and of god is the force which draws us, by whatever rite or symbol or doctrine it may be interpreted. that, as i read it, is the message of christ, who gave up all things for utter love." as i said this, our guide and amroth entered the cell. the man rose up quickly, and drawing me apart, thanked me very heartily and with tears in his eyes; and so we said farewell. when we were outside, i said to the guide, "may i ask you one question? would it be of use if i remained here for a time to talk with that poor man? it seemed a relief to him to open his heart, and i would gladly be with him and try to comfort him." the guide shook his head kindly. "no," he said, "i think not. i recognise your kindness very fully--but a soul like this must find the way alone; and there is one who is helping him faster than any of us can avail to do; and besides," he added, "he is very near indeed to his release." so we went to the door, and said farewell; and amroth and i went forward. then i said to him as we went down through the terraced garden, and saw the inmates wandering about, lost in dreams, "this must be a sad place to live in, amroth!" "no, indeed," said he, "i do not think that there are any happier than those who have the charge here. when the patients are in the grip of this disease, they are themselves only too well content; and it is a blessed thing to see the approach of doubt and suffering, which means that health draws near. there is no place in all our realm where one sees so clearly and beautifully the instant and perfect mercy of god, and the joy of pain." and so we passed together out of the guarded gate. xxiii "well," said amroth, with a smile, as we went out into the forest, "i am afraid that the last two visits have been rather a strain. we must find something a little less serious; but i am going to fill up all your time. you had got too much taken up with your psychology, and we must not live too much on theory, and spin problems, like the spider, out of our own insides; but we will not spend too much time in trudging over this country, though it is well worth it. did you ever see anything more beautiful than those pine-trees on the slope there, with the blue distance between their stems? but we must not make a business of landscape-gazing like our friend charmides! we are men of affairs, you and i. come, i will show you a thing. shut your eyes for a minute and give me your hand. now!" a sudden breeze fanned my face, sweet and odorous, like the wind out of a wood. "now," said amroth, "we have arrived! where do you think we are?" the scene had changed in an instant. we were in a wide, level country, in green water-meadows, with a full stream brimming its grassy banks, in willowy loops. not far away, on a gently rising ground, lay a long, straggling village, of gabled houses, among high trees. it was like the sort of village that you may find in the pleasant wiltshire countryside, and the sight filled me with a rush of old and joyful memories. "it is such a relief," i said, "to realise that if man is made in the image of god, heaven is made in the image of england!" "that is only how you see it, child," said amroth. "some of my own happiest days were spent at tooting: would you be surprised if i said that it reminded me of tooting?" "i am surprised at nothing," i said. "i only know that it is all very considerate!" we entered the village, and found a large number of people, mostly young, going cheerfully about all sorts of simple work. many of them were gardening, and the gardens were full of old-fashioned flowers, blooming in wonderful profusion. there was an air of settled peace about the place, the peace that on earth one often dreamed of finding, and indeed thought one had found on visiting some secluded place--only to discover, alas! on a nearer acquaintance, that life was as full of anxieties and cares there as elsewhere. there were one or two elderly people going about, giving directions or advice, or lending a helping hand. the workers nodded blithely to us, but did not suspend their work. "what surprises me," i said to amroth, "is to find every one so much occupied wherever we go. one heard so much on earth about craving for rest, that one grew to fancy that the other life was all going to be a sort of solemn meditation, with an occasional hymn." "yes, indeed," said amroth, "it was the body that was tired--the soul is always fresh and strong--but rest is not idleness. there is no such thing as unemployment here, and there is hardly time, indeed, for all we have to do. every one really loves work. the child plays at working, the man of leisure works at his play. the difference here is that work is always amusing--there is no such thing as drudgery here." we walked all through the village, which stretched far away into the country. the whole place hummed like a beehive on a july morning. many sang to themselves as they went about their business, and sometimes a couple of girls, meeting in the roadway, would entwine their arms and dance a few steps together, with a kiss at parting. there was a sense of high spirits everywhere. at one place we found a group of children sitting in the shade of some trees, while a woman of middle age told them a story. we stood awhile to listen, the woman giving us a pleasant nod as we approached. it was a story of some pleasant adventure, with nothing moral or sentimental about it, like an old folk-tale. the children were listening with unconcealed delight. when we had walked a little further, amroth said to me, "come, i will give you three guesses. who do you think, by the light of your psychology, are all these simple people?" i guessed in vain. "well, i see i must tell you," he said. "would it surprise you to learn that most of these people whom you see here passed upon earth for wicked and unsatisfactory characters? yet it is true. don't you know the kind of boys there were at school, who drifted into bad company and idle ways, mostly out of mere good-nature, went out into the world with a black mark against them, having been bullied in vain by virtuous masters, the despair of their parents, always losing their employments, and often coming what we used to call social croppers--untrustworthy, sensual, feckless, no one's enemy but their own, and yet preserving through it all a kind of simple good-nature, always ready to share things with others, never knowing how to take advantage of any one, trusting the most untrustworthy people; or if they were girls, getting into trouble, losing their good name, perhaps living lives of shame in big cities--yet, for all that, guileless, affectionate, never excusing themselves, believing they had deserved anything that befell them? these were the sort of people to whom christ was so closely drawn. they have no respectability, no conventions; they act upon instinct, never by reason, often foolishly, but seldom unkindly or selfishly. they give all they have, they never take. they have the faults of children, and the trustful affection of children. they will do anything for any one who is kind to them and fond of them. of course they are what is called hopeless, and they use their poor bodies very ill. in their last stages on earth they are often very deplorable objects, slinking into public-houses, plodding raggedly and dismally along highroads, suffering cruelly and complaining little, conscious that they are universally reprobated, and not exactly knowing why. they are the victims of society; they do its dirty work, and are cast away as offscourings. they are really youthful and often beautiful spirits, very void of offence, and needing to be treated as children. they live here in great happiness, and are conscious vaguely of the good and great intention of god towards them. they suffer in the world at the hands of cruel, selfish, and stupid people, because they are both humble and disinterested. but in all our realms i do not think there is a place of simpler and sweeter happiness than this, because they do not take their forgiveness as a right, but as a gracious and unexpected boon. and indeed the sights and sounds of this place are the best medicine for crabbed, worldly, conventional souls, who are often brought here when they are drawing near the truth." "yes," i said, "this is just what i wanted. interesting as my work has lately been, it has wanted simplicity. i have grown to consider life too much as a series of cases, and to forget that it is life itself that one must seek, and not pathology. this is the best sight i have seen, for it is so far removed from all sense of judgment. the song of the saints may be sometimes of mercy too." xxiv "and now," said amroth, "that we have been refreshed by the sight of this guileless place, and as our time is running short, i am going to show you something very serious indeed. in fact, before i show it you i must remind you carefully of one thing which i shall beg you to keep in mind. there is nothing either cruel or hopeless here; all is implacably just and entirely merciful. whatever a soul needs, that it receives; and it receives nothing that is vindictive or harsh. the ideas of punishment on earth are hopelessly confused; we do not know whether we are revenging ourselves for wrongs done to us, or safeguarding society, or deterring would-be offenders, or trying to amend and uplift the criminal. we end, as a rule, by making every one concerned, whether punisher or punished, worse. we encourage each other in vindictiveness and hypocrisy, we cow and brutalise the transgressor. we rescue no one, we amend nothing. and yet we cannot read the clear signs of all this. the milder our methods of punishment become, the less crime is there to punish. but instead of being at once kind and severe, which is perfectly possible, we are both cruel and sentimental. now, there is no such thing as sentiment here, just as there is no cruelty. there is emotion in full measure, and severity in full measure; no one is either pettishly frightened or mildly forgiven; and the joy that awaits us is all the more worth having, because it cannot be rashly enjoyed or reached by any short cuts; but do not forget, in what you now see, that the end is joy." he spoke so solemnly that i was conscious of overmastering curiosity, not unmixed with awe. again the way was abbreviated. amroth took me by the hand and bade me close my eyes. the breeze beat upon my face for a moment. when i opened my eyes, we were on a bare hillside, full of stones, in a kind of grey and chilly haze which filled the air. just ahead of us were some rough enclosures of stone, overlooked by a sort of tower. they were like the big sheepfolds which i have seen on northern wolds, into which the sheep of a whole hillside can be driven for shelter. we went round the wall, which was high and strong, and came to the entrance of the tower, the door of which stood open. there seemed to be no one about, no sign of life; the only sound a curious wailing note, which came at intervals from one of the enclosures, like the crying of a prisoned beast. we went up into the tower; the staircase ended in a bare room, with four apertures, one in each wall, each leading into a kind of balcony. amroth led the way into one of the balconies, and pointed downwards. we were looking down into one of the enclosures which lay just at our feet, not very far below. the place was perfectly bare, and roughly flagged with stones. in the corner was a rough thatched shelter, in which was some straw. but what at once riveted my attention was the figure of a man, who half lay, half crouched upon the stones, his head in his hands, in an attitude of utter abandonment. he was dressed in a rough, weather-worn sort of cloak, and his whole appearance suggested the basest neglect; his hands were muscular and knotted; his ragged grey hair streamed over the collar of his cloak. while we looked at him, he drew himself up into a sitting posture, and turned his face blankly upon the sky. it was, or had been, a noble face enough, deeply lined, and with a look of command upon it; but anything like the hopeless and utter misery of the drawn cheeks and staring eyes i had never conceived. i involuntarily drew back, feeling that it was almost wrong to look at anything so fallen and so wretched. but amroth detained me. "he is not aware of us," he said, "and i desire you to look at him." presently the man rose wearily to his feet, and began to pace up and down round the walls, with the mechanical movements of a caged animal, avoiding the posts of the shelter without seeming to see them, and then cast himself down again upon the stones in a paroxysm of melancholy. he seemed to have no desire to escape, no energy, except to suffer. there was no hope about it all, no suggestion of prayer, nothing but blank and unadulterated suffering. amroth drew me back into the tower, and motioned me to the next balcony. again i went out. the sight that i saw was almost more terrible than the first, because the prisoner here, penned in a similar enclosure, was more restless, and seemed to suffer more acutely. this was a younger man, who walked swiftly and vaguely about, casting glances up at the wall which enclosed him. sometimes he stopped, and seemed to be pursuing some dreadful train of solitary thought; he gesticulated, and even broke out into mutterings and cries--the cries that i had heard from without. i could not bear to look at this sight, and coming back, besought amroth to lead me away. amroth, who was himself, i perceived, deeply moved, and stood with lips compressed, nodded in token of assent. we went quickly down the stairway, and took our way up the hill among the stones, in silence. the shapes of similar enclosures were to be seen everywhere, and the indescribable blankness and grimness of the scene struck a chill to my heart. from the top of the ridge we could see the same bare valleys stretching in all directions, as far as the eye could see. the only other building in sight was a great circular tower of stone, far down in the valley, from which beat the pulse of some heavy machinery, which gave the sense, i do not know how, of a ghastly and watchful life at the centre of all. "that is the tower of pain," said amroth, "and i will spare you the inner sight of that. only our very bravest and strongest can enter there and preserve any hope. but it is well for you to know it is there, and that souls have to enter it. it is thence that all the pain of countless worlds emanates and vibrates, and the governor of the place is the most tried and bravest of all the servants of god. thither we must go, for you shall have sight of him, though you shall not enter." we went down the hill with all the speed we might, and, i will confess it, with the darkest dismay i have ever experienced tugging at my heart. we were soon at the foot of the enormous structure. amroth knocked at the gate, a low door, adorned with some vague and ghastly sculptures, things like worms and huddled forms drearily intertwined. the door opened, and revealed a fiery and smouldering light within. high up in the tower a great wheel whizzed and shivered, and moving shadows crossed and recrossed the firelit walls. but the figure that came out to us--how shall i describe him? it was the most beautiful and gracious sight of all that i saw in my pilgrimage. he was a man of tall stature, with snow-white, silvery hair and beard, dressed in a dark cloak with a gleaming clasp of gold. but for all his age he had a look of immortal youth. his clear and piercing eye had a glance of infinite tenderness, such as i had never conceived. there were many lines upon his brow and round his eyes, but his complexion was as fresh as that of a child, and he stepped as briskly as a youth. we bowed low to him, and he reached out his hands, taking amroth's hand and mine in each of his. his touch had a curious thrill, the hand that held mine being firm and smooth and wonderfully warm. "well, my children," he said in a clear, youthful voice, "i am glad to see you, because there are few who come hither willingly; and the old and weary are cheered by the sight of those that are young and strong. amroth i know. but who are you, my child? you have not been among us long. have you found your work and place here yet?" i told him my story in a few words, and he smiled indulgently. "there is nothing like being at work," he said. "even my business here, which seems sad enough to most people, must be done; and i do it very willingly. do not be frightened, my child," he said to me suddenly, drawing me nearer to him, and folding my arm beneath his own. "it is only on earth that we are frightened of pain; it spoils our poor plans, it makes us fretful and miserable, it brings us into the shadow of death. but for all that, as amroth knows, it is the best and most fruitful of all the works that the father does for man, and the thing dearest to his heart. we cannot prosper till we suffer, and suffering leads us very swiftly into joy and peace. indeed this tower of pain, as it is called, is in fact nothing but the tower of love. not until love is touched with pain does it become beautiful, and the joy that comes through pain is the only real thing in the world. of course, when my great engine here sends a thrill into a careless life, it comes as a dark surprise; but then follow courage and patience and wonder, and all the dear tendance of love. i have borne it all myself a hundred times, and i shall bear it again if the father wills it. but when you leave me here, do not think of me as of one who works, grim and indifferent, wrecking lives and destroying homes. it is but the burning of the weeds of life; and it is as needful as the sunshine and the rain. pain does not wander aimlessly, smiting down by mischance and by accident; it comes as the close and dear intention of the father's heart, and is to a man as a trumpet-call from the land of life, not as a knell from the land of death. and now, dear children, you must leave me, for i have much to do. and i will give you," he added, turning to me, "a gift which shall be your comfort, and a token that you have been here, and seen the worst and the best that there is to see." he drew from under his cloak a ring, a circlet of gold holding a red stone with a flaming heart, and put it on my finger. there pierced through me a pang intenser than any i had ever experienced, in which all the love and sorrow i had ever known seemed to be suddenly mingled, and which left behind it a perfect and intense sense of joy. "there, that is my gift," he said, "and you shall have an old man's loving blessing too, for it is that, after all, that i live for." he drew me to him and kissed me on the brow, and in a moment he was gone. we walked away in silence, and for my part with an elation of spirit which i could hardly control, a desire to love and suffer, and do and be all that the mind of man could conceive. but my heart was too full to speak. "come," said amroth presently, "you are not as grateful as i had hoped--you are outgrowing me! come down to my poor level for an instant, and beware of spiritual pride!" then altering his tone he said, "ah, yes, dear friend, i understand. there is nothing in the world like it, and you were most graciously and tenderly received--but the end is not yet." "amroth," i said, "i am like one intoxicated with joy. i feel that i could endure anything and never make question of anything again. how infinitely good he was to me--like a dear father!" "yes," said amroth, "he is very like the father "--and he smiled at me a mysterious smile. "amroth," i said, bewildered, "you cannot mean--?" "no, i mean nothing," said amroth, "but you have to-day looked very far into the truth, farther than is given to many so soon; but you are a child of fortune, and seem to please every one. i declare that a little more would make me jealous." presently, catching sight of one of the enclosures hard by, i said to amroth, "but there are some questions i must ask. what has just happened had put it mostly out of my head. those poor suffering souls that we saw just now--it is well, with them, i am sure, so near the master of the tower--he does not forget them, i am sure--but who are they, and what have they done to suffer so?" "i will tell you," said amroth, "for it is a dark business. those two that you have seen--well, you will know one of them by name and fame, and of the other you may have heard. the first, that old shaggy-haired man, who lay upon the stones, that was ----" he mentioned a name that was notorious in europe at the time of my life on earth, though he was then long dead; a ruthless and ambitious conqueror, who poured a cataract of life away, in wars, for his own aggrandisement. then he mentioned another name, a statesman who pursued a policy of terrorism and oppression, enriched himself by barbarous cruelty exercised in colonial possessions, and was famous for the calculated libertinism of his private life. "they were great sinners," said amroth, "and the sorrows they made and flung so carelessly about them, beat back upon them now in a surge of pain. these men were strangely affected, each of them, by the smallest sight or sound of suffering--a tortured animal, a crying child; and yet they were utterly ruthless of the pain that they did not see. it was a lack, no doubt, of the imagination of which i spoke, and which makes all the difference. and now they have to contemplate the pain which they could not imagine; and they have to learn submission and humility. it is a terrible business in a way--the loneliness of it! there used to be an old saying that the strongest man was the man that was most alone. but it was just because these men practised loneliness on earth that they have to suffer so. they used others as counters in a game, they had neither friend nor beloved, except for their own pleasure. they depended upon no one, needed no one, desired no one. but there are many others here who did the same on a small scale--selfish fathers and mothers who made homes miserable; boys who were bullies at school and tyrants in the world, in offices, and places of authority. this is the place of discipline for all base selfishness and vile authority, for all who have oppressed and victimised mankind." "but," i said, "here is my difficulty. i understand the case of the oppressors well enough; but about the oppressed, what is the justice of that? is there not a fortuitous element there, an interruption of the divine plan? take the case of the thousands of lives wasted by some brutal conqueror. are souls sent into the world for that, to be driven in gangs, made to fight, let us say, for some abominable cause, and then recklessly dismissed from life?" "ah," said amroth, "you make too much of the dignity of life! you do not know how small a thing a single life is, not as regards the life of mankind, but in the life of one individual. of course if a man had but one single life on earth, it would be an intolerable injustice; and that is the factor which sets all straight, the factor which most of us, in our time of bodily self-importance, overlook. these oppressors have no power over other lives except what god allows, and bewildered humanity concedes. not only is the great plan whole in the mind of god, but every single minutest life is considered as well. in the very case you spoke of, the little conscript, torn from his home to fight a tyrant's battles, hectored and ill-treated, and then shot down upon some crowded battle-field, that is precisely the discipline which at that point of time his soul needs, and the blessedness of which he afterwards perceives; sometimes discipline is swift and urgent, sometimes it is slow and lingering: but all experience is exactly apportioned to the quality of which each soul is in need. the only reason why there seems to be an element of chance in it, is that the whole thing is so inconceivably vast and prolonged; and our happiness and our progress alike depend upon our realising at every moment that the smallest joy and the most trifling pleasure, as well as the tiniest ailment or the most subtle sorrow, are just the pieces of experience which we are meant at that moment to use and make our own. no one, not even god, can force us to understand this; we have to perceive it for ourselves, and to live in the knowledge of it." "yes," i said, "it is true, all that. my heart tells me so; but it is very wonderful and mysterious, all the same. but, amroth, i have seen and heard enough. my spirit desires with all its might to be at its own work, hastening on the mighty end. now, i can hold no more of wonders. let me return." "yes," said amroth, "you are right! these wonders are so familiar to me that i forget, perhaps, the shock with which they come to minds unused to them. yet there are other things which you must assuredly see, when the time comes; but i must not let you bite off a larger piece than you can swallow." he took me by the hand; the breeze passed through my hair; and in an instant we were back at the fortress-gate, and i entered the beloved shelter, with a grateful sense that i was returning home. xxv i returned, as i said, with a sense of serene pleasure and security to my work; but that serenity did not last long. what i had seen with amroth, on that day of wandering, filled me with a strange restlessness, and a yearning for i knew not what. i plunged into my studies with determination rather than ardour, and i set myself to study what is the most difficult problem of all--the exact limits of individual responsibility. i had many conversations on the point with one of my teachers, a young man of very wide experience, who combined in an unusual way a close scientific knowledge of the subject with a peculiar emotional sympathy. he told me once that it was the best outfit for the scientific study of these problems, when the heart anticipated the slower judgment of the mind, and set the mind a goal, so to speak, to work up to; though he warned me that the danger was that the mind was often reluctant to abandon the more indulgent claims of the heart; and he advised me to mistrust alike scientific conclusions and emotional inferences. i had a very memorable conversation with him on the particular question of responsibility, which i will here give. "the mistake," i said to him, "of human moralists seems to me to be, that they treat all men as more or less equal in the matter of moral responsibility. how often," i added, "have i heard a school preacher tell boys that they could not all be athletic or clever or popular, but that high principle and moral courage were things within the reach of all. whereas the more that i studied human nature, the more did the power of surveying and judging one's own moral progress, and the power of enforcing and executing the dictates of the conscience, seem to me faculties, like other faculties. indeed, it appears to me," i said, "that on the one hand there are people who have a power of moral discrimination, when dealing with the retrospect of their actions, but no power of obeying the claims of principle, when confronted with a situation involving moral strain; while on the other hand there seem to me to be some few men with a great and resolute power of will, capable of swift decision and firm action, but without any instinct for morality at all." "yes," he said, "you are quite right. the moral sense is in reality a high artistic sense. it is a power of discerning and being attracted by the beauty of moral action, just as the artist is attracted by form and colour, and the musician by delicate combinations of harmonies and the exquisite balance of sound. you know," he said, "what a suspension is in music--it is a chord which in itself is a discord, but which depends for its beauty on some impending resolution. it is just so with moral choice. the imagination plays a great part in it. the man whose morality is high and profound sees instinctively the approaching contingency, and his act of self-denial or self-forgetfulness depends for its force upon the way in which it will ultimately combine with other issues involved, even though at the moment that act may seem to be unnecessary and even perverse." "but," i said, "there are a good many people who attain to a sensible, well-balanced kind of temperance, after perhaps a few failures, from a purely prudential motive. what is the worth of that?" "very small indeed," said my teacher. "in fact, the prudential morality, based on motives of health and reputation and success, is a thing that has often to be deliberately unlearnt at a later stage. the strange catastrophes which one sees so often in human life, where a man by one act of rashness, or moral folly, upsets the tranquil tenor of his life--a desperate love-affair, a passion of unreasonable anger, a piece of quixotic generosity--are often a symptom of a great effort of the soul to free itself from prudential considerations. a good thing done for a low motive has often a singularly degrading and deforming influence on the soul. one has to remember how terribly the heavenly values are obscured upon earth by the body, its needs and its desires; and current morality of a cautious and sensible kind is often worse than worthless, because it produces a kind of self-satisfaction, which is the hardest thing to overcome." "but," i said, "in the lives of some of the greatest moralists, one so often sees, or at all events hears it said, that their morality is useless because it is unpractical, too much out of the reach of the ordinary man, too contemptuous of simple human faculties. what is one to make of that?" "it is a difficult matter," he replied; "one does indeed, in the lives of great moralists, see sometimes that their work is vitiated by perverse and fantastic preferences, which they exalt out of all proportion to their real value. but for all that, it is better to be on the side of the saints; for they are gifted with the sort of instinctive appreciation of the beauty of high morality of which i spoke. unselfishness, purity, peacefulness seem to them so beautiful and desirable that they are constrained to practise them. while controversy, bitterness, cruelty, meanness, vice, seem so utterly ugly and repulsive that they cannot for an instant entertain even so much as a thought of them." "but if a man sees that he is wanting in this kind of perception," i said, "what can he do? how is he to learn to love what he does not admire and to abhor what he does not hate? it all seems so fatalistic, so irresistible." "if he discerns his lack," said my teacher with a smile, "he is probably not so very far from the truth. the germ of the sense of moral beauty is there, and it only wants patience and endeavour to make it grow. but it cannot be all done in any single life, of course; that is where the human faith fails, in its limitations of a man's possibilities to a single life." "but what is the reason," i said, "why the morality, the high austerity of some persons, who are indubitably high-minded and pure-hearted, is so utterly discouraging and even repellent?" "ah," he said, "there you touch on a great truth. the reason of that is that these have but a sterile sort of connoisseur-ship in virtue. virtue cannot be attained in solitude, nor can it be made a matter of private enjoyment. the point is, of course, that it is not enough for a man to be himself; he must also give himself; and if a man is moral because of the delicate pleasure it brings him--and the artistic pleasure of asceticism is a very high one--he is apt to find himself here in very strange and distasteful company. in this, as in everything, the only safe motive is the motive of love. the man who takes pleasure in using influence, or setting a lofty example, is just as arid a dilettante as the musician who plays, or the artist who paints, for the sake of the applause and the admiration he wins; he is only regarding others as so many instruments for registering his own level of complacency. every one, even the least complicated of mankind, must know the exquisite pleasure that comes from doing the simplest and humblest service to one whom he loves; how such love converts the most menial office into a luxurious joy; and the higher that a man goes, the more does he discern in every single human being with whom he is brought into contact a soul whom he can love and serve. of course it is but an elementary pleasure to enjoy pleasing those whom we regard with some passion of affection, wife or child or friend, because, after all, one gains something oneself by that. but the purest morality of all discerns the infinitely lovable quality which is in the depth of every human soul, and lavishes its tenderness and its grace upon it, with a compassion that grows and increases, the more unthankful and clumsy and brutish is the soul which it sets out to serve." "but," i said, "beautiful as that thought is--and i see and recognise its beauty--it does limit the individual responsibility very greatly. surely a prudential morality, the morality which is just because it fears reprisal, and is kind because it anticipates kindness, is better than none at all? the morality of which you speak can only belong to the noblest human creatures." "only to the noblest," he said; "and i must repeat what i said before, that the prudential morality is useless, because it begins at the wrong end, and is set upon self throughout. i must say deliberately that the soul which loves unreasonably and unwisely, which even yields itself to the passion of others for the pleasure it gives rather than for the pleasure it receives--the thriftless, lavish, good-natured, affectionate people, who are said to make such a mess of their lives--are far higher in the scale of hope than the cautiously respectable, the prudently kind, the selfishly pure. there must be no mistake about this. one must somehow or other give one's heart away, and it is better to do it in error and disaster than to treasure it for oneself. of course there are many lives on earth--and an increasing number as the world develops--which are generous and noble and unselfish, without any sacrifice of purity or self-respect. but the essence of morality is giving, and not receiving, or even practising; the point is free choice, and not compulsion; and if one cannot give _because_ one loves, one must give _until_ one loves." xxvi but all my speculations were cut short by a strange event which happened about this time. one day, without any warning, the thought of cynthia darted urgently and irresistibly into my mind. her image came between me and all my tasks; i saw her in innumerable positions and guises, but always with her eyes bent on me in a pitiful entreaty. after endeavouring to resist the thought for a little as some kind of fantasy, i became suddenly convinced that she was in need of me, and in urgent need. i asked for an interview with our master, and told him the story; he heard me gravely, and then said that i might go in search of her; but i was not sure that he was wholly pleased, and he bent his eyes upon me with a very inquiring look. i hesitated whether or not to call amroth to my aid, but decided that i had better not do so at first. the question was how to find her; the great crags lay between me and the land of delight; and when i hurried out of the college, the thought of the descent and its dangers fairly unmanned me. i knew, however, of no other way. but what was my surprise when, on arriving at the top, not far from the point where amroth had greeted me after the ascent, i saw a little steep path, which wound itself down into the gulleys and chimneys of the black rocks. i took it without hesitation, and though again and again it seemed to come to an end in front of me, i found that it could be traced and followed without serious difficulty. the descent was accomplished with a singular rapidity, and i marvelled to find myself at the crag-base in so brief a time, considering the intolerable tedium of the ascent. i rapidly crossed the intervening valley, and was very soon at the gate of the careless land. to my intense joy, and not at all to my surprise, i found cynthia at the gate itself, waiting for me with a look of expectancy. she came forwards, and threw herself passionately into my arms, murmuring words of delight and welcome, like a child. "i knew you would come," she said. "i am frightened--all sorts of dreadful things have happened. i have found out where i am--and i seem to have lost all my friends. charmides is gone, and lucius is cruel to me--he tells me that i have lost my spirits and my good looks, and am tiresome company." i looked at her--she was paler and frailer-looking than when i left her; and she was habited very differently, in simpler and graver dress. but she was to my eyes infinitely more beautiful and dearer, and i told her so. she smiled at that, but half tearfully; and we seated ourselves on a bench hard by, looking over the garden, which was strangely and luxuriantly beautiful. "you must take me away with you at once," she said. "i cannot live here without you. i thought at first, when you went, that it was rather a relief not to have your grave face at my shoulder,"--here she took my face in her hands--"always reminding me of something i did not want, and ought to have wanted--but oh, how i began to miss you! and then i got so tired of this silly, lazy place, and all the music and jokes and compliments. but i am a worthless creature, and not good for anything. i cannot work, and i hate being idle. take me anywhere, _make_ me do something, beat me if you like, only force me to be different from what i am." "very well," i said. "i will give you a good beating presently, of course, but just let me consider what will hurt you most, silly child!" "that is it," she said. "i want to be hurt and bruised, and shaken as my nurse used to shake me, when i was a naughty child. oh dear, oh dear, how wretched i am!" and poor cynthia laid her head on my shoulder and burst into tears. "come, come," i said, "you must not do that--i want my wits about me; but if you cry, you will simply make a fool of me--and this is no time for love-making." "then you do really _care_", said cynthia in a quieter tone. "that is all i want to know! i want to be with you, and see you every hour and every minute. i can't help saying it, though it is really very undignified for me to be making love to you. i did many silly things on earth, but never anything quite so feeble as that!" i felt myself fairly bewildered by the situation. my psychology did not seem to help me; and here at least was something to love and rescue. i will say frankly that, in my stupidity and superiority, i did not really think of loving cynthia in the way in which she needed to be loved. she was to me, with all my grave concerns and problems, as a charming and intelligent child, with whom i could not even speak of half the thoughts which absorbed me. so i just held her in my arms, and comforted her as best i could; but what to do and where to bestow her i could not tell. i saw that her time to leave the place of desire had come, but what she could turn to i could not conceive. suddenly i looked up, and saw lucius approaching, evidently in a very angry mood. "so this is the end of all our amusement?" he said, as he came near. "you bring cynthia here in your tiresome, condescending way, you live among us like an almighty prig, smiling gravely at our fun, and then you go off when it is convenient to yourself; and then, when you want a little recreation, you come and sit here in a corner and hug your darling, when you have never given her a thought of late. you _know_ that is true," he added menacingly. "yes," i said, "it is true! i went of my own will, and i have come back of my own will; and you have all been out of my thoughts, because i have had much work to do. but what of that? cynthia wants me and i have come back to her, and i will do whatever she desires. it is no good threatening me, lucius--there is nothing you can do or say that will have the smallest effect on me." "we will see about that," said lucius. "none of your airs here! we are peaceful enough when we are respectfully and fairly treated, but we have our own laws, and no one shall break them with impunity. we will have no half-hearted fools here. if you come among us with your damned missionary airs, you shall have what i expect you call the crown of martyrdom." he whistled loud and shrill. half-a-dozen men sprang from the bushes and flung themselves upon me. i struggled, but was overpowered, and dragged away. the last sight i had was of lucius standing with a disdainful smile, with cynthia clinging to his arm; and to my horror and disgust she was smiling too. xxvii i had somehow never expected to be used with positive violence in the world of spirits, and least of all in that lazy and good-natured place. considering, too, the errand on which i had come, not for my own convenience but for the sake of another, my treatment seemed to me very hard. what was still more humiliating was the fact that my spirit seemed just as powerless in the hands of these ruffians as my body would have been on earth. i was pushed, hustled, insulted, hurt. i could have summoned amroth to my aid, but i felt too proud for that; yet the thought of the cragmen, and the possibility of the second death, did visit my mind with dismal iteration. i did not at all desire a further death; i felt very much alive, and full of interest and energy. worst of all was my sense that cynthia had gone over to the enemy. i had been so loftily kind with her, that i much resented having appeared in her sight as feeble and ridiculous. it is difficult to preserve any dignity of demeanour or thought, with a man's hand at one's neck and his knee in one's back: and i felt that lucius had displayed a really satanical malignity in using this particular means of degrading me in cynthia's sight, and of regaining his own lost influence. i was thrust and driven before my captors along an alley in the garden, and what added to my discomfiture was that a good many people ran together to see us pass, and watched me with decided amusement. i was taken finally to a little pavilion of stone, with heavily barred windows, and a flagged marble floor. the room was absolutely bare, and contained neither seat nor table. into this i was thrust, with some obscene jesting, and the door was locked upon me. the time passed very heavily. at intervals i heard music burst out among the alleys, and a good many people came to peep in upon me with an amused curiosity. i was entirely bewildered by my position, and did not see what i could have done to have incurred my punishment. but in the solitary hours that followed i began to have a suspicion of my fault. i had found myself hitherto the object of so much attention and praise, that i had developed a strong sense of complacency and self-satisfaction. i had an uncomfortable suspicion that there was even more behind, but i could not, by interrogating my mind and searching out my spirits, make out clearly what it was; yet i felt i was having a sharp lesson; and this made me resolve that i would ask for no kind of assistance from amroth or any other power, but that i would try to meet whatever fell upon me with patience, and extract the full savour of my experience. i do not know how long i spent in the dismal cell. i was in some discomfort from the handling i had received, and in still greater dejection of mind. suddenly i heard footsteps approaching. three of my captors appeared, and told me roughly to go with them. so, a pitiable figure, i limped along between two of them, the third following behind, and was conducted through the central piazza of the place, between two lines of people who gave way to the most undisguised merriment, and even shouted opprobrious remarks at me, calling me spy and traitor and other unpleasant names. i could not have believed that these kind-mannered and courteous persons could have exhibited, all of a sudden, such frank brutality, and i saw many of my own acquaintance among them, who regarded me with obvious derision. i was taken into a big hall, in which i had often sat to hear a concert of music. on the dais at the upper end were seated a number of dignified persons, in a semicircle, with a very handsome and stately old man in the centre on a chair of state, whose face was new to me. before this court i was formally arraigned; i had to stand alone in the middle of the floor, in an open space. two of my captors stood on each side of me; while the rest of the court was densely packed with people, who greeted me with obvious hostility. when silence was procured, the president said to me, with a show of great courtesy, that he could not disguise from himself that the charge against me was a serious one; but that justice would be done to me, fully and carefully. i should have ample opportunity to excuse myself. he then called upon one of those who sat with him to state the case briefly, and call witnesses and after that he promised i might speak for myself. a man rose from one of the seats, and, pleading somewhat rhetorically, said that the object of the great community, to which so many were proud to belong, was to secure to all the utmost amount of innocent enjoyment, and the most entire peace of mind; that no pressure was put upon any one who decided to stay there, and to observe the quiet customs of the place; but that it was always considered a heinous and ill-disposed thing to attempt to unsettle any one's convictions, or to attempt, by using undue influence, to bring about the migration of any citizen to conditions of which little was known, but which there was reason to believe were distinctly undesirable. "we are, above all," he said, "a religious community; our rites and our ceremonies are privileges open to all; we compel no one to attend them; all that we insist is that no one, by restless innovation or cynical contempt, should attempt to disturb the emotions of serene contemplation, distinguished courtesy, and artistic feeling, for which our society has been so long and justly celebrated." this was received with loud applause, indulgently checked by the president. some witnesses were then called, who testified to the indifference and restlessness which i had on many occasions manifested. it was brought up against me that i had provoked a much-respected member of the community, charmides, to utter some very treasonous and unpleasant language, and that it was believed that the rash and unhappy step, which he had lately taken, of leaving the place, had been entirely or mainly the result of my discontented and ill-advised suggestion. then lucius himself, wearing an air of extreme gravity and even despondency, was called, and a murmur of sympathy ran through the audience. lucius, apparently struggling with deep emotion, said that he bore me no actual ill-will; that on my first arrival he had done his best to welcome me and make me feel at home; that it was probably known to all that i had been accompanied by an accomplished and justly popular lady, whom i had openly treated with scanty civility and undisguised contempt. that he had himself, under the laws of the place, contracted a close alliance with my unhappy protégée, and that their union had been duly accredited; but that i had lost no opportunity of attempting to undermine his happiness, and to maintain an unwholesome influence over her. that i had at last left the place myself, with a most uncivil abruptness; during the interval of absence my occupations were believed to have been of the most dubious character: it was more than suspected, indeed, that i had penetrated to places, the very name of which could hardly be mentioned without shame and consternation. that my associates had been persons of the vilest character and the most brutal antecedents; and at last, feeling in need of distraction, i had again returned with the deliberate intention of seducing his unhappy partner into accompanying me to one or other of the abandoned places i had visited. he added that cynthia had been so much overcome by her emotion, and her natural compassion for an old acquaintance, that he had persuaded her not to subject herself to the painful strain of an appearance in public; but that for this action he threw himself upon the mercy of the court, who would know that it was only dictated by chivalrous motives. at this there was subdued applause, and lucius, after adding a few broken words to the effect that he lived only for the maintenance of order, peace, and happiness, and that he was devoted heart and soul to the best interests of the community, completely broke down, and was assisted from his place by friends. the whole thing was so malignant and ingenious a travesty of what had happened, that i was entirely at a loss to know what to say. the president, however, courteously intimated that though the case appeared to present a good many very unsatisfactory features, yet i was entirely at liberty to justify myself if i could, and, if not, to make submission; and added that i should be dealt with as leniently as possible. i summoned up my courage as well as i might. i began by saying that i claimed no more than the liberty of thought and action which i knew the court desired to concede. i said that my arrival at the place was mysterious even to myself, and that i had simply acted under orders in accompanying cynthia, and in seeing that she was securely bestowed. i said that i had never incited any rebellion, or any disobedience to laws of the scope of which i had never been informed. that i had indeed frankly discussed matters of general interest with any citizen who seemed to desire it; that i had been always treated with marked consideration and courtesy; and that, as far as i was aware, i had always followed the same policy myself. i said that i was sincerely attached to cynthia, but added that, with all due respect, i could no longer consider myself a member of the community. i had transferred myself elsewhere under direct orders, with my own entire concurrence, and that i had since acted in accordance with the customs and regulations of the community to which i had been allotted. i went on to say that i had returned under the impression that my presence was desired by cynthia, and that i must protest with all my power against the treatment i had received. i had been arrested and imprisoned with much violence and contumely, without having had any opportunity of hearing what my offence was supposed to have been, or having had any semblance of a trial, and that i could not consider that my usage had been consistent with the theory of courtesy, order, or justice so eloquently described by the president. this onslaught of mine produced an obvious revulsion in my favour. the president conferred hastily with his colleagues, and then said that my arrest had indeed been made upon the information of lucius, and with the cognisance of the court; but that he sincerely regretted that i had any complaint of unhandsome usage to make, and that the matter would be certainly inquired into. he then added that he understood from my words that i desired to make a complete submission, and that in that case i should be acquitted of any evil intentions. my fault appeared to be that i had yielded too easily to the promptings of an ill-balanced and speculative disposition, and that if i would undertake to disturb no longer the peace of the place, and to desist from all further tampering with the domestic happiness of a much-respected pair, i should be discharged with a caution, and indeed be admitted again to the privileges of orderly residence. "and i will undertake to say," he added, "that the kindness and courtesy of our community will overlook your fault, and make no further reference to a course of conduct which appears to have been misguided rather than deliberately malevolent. we have every desire not to disturb in any way the tranquillity which it is, above all things, our desire to maintain. may i conclude, then, that this is your intention?" "no, sir," i said, "certainly not! with all due respect to the court, i cannot submit to the jurisdiction. the only privilege i claim is the privilege of an alien and a stranger, who in a perfectly peaceful manner, and with no seditious intent, has re-entered this land, and has thereupon been treated with gross and unjust violence. i do not for a moment contest the right of this community to make its own laws and regulations, but i do contest its right to fetter the thought and the liberty of speech of all who enter it. i make no submission. the lady cynthia came here under my protection, and if any undue influence has been used, it has been used by lucius, whom i treated with a confidence he has abused. and i here appeal to a higher power and a higher court, which may indeed permit this unhappy community to make its own regulations, but will not permit any gross violation of elementary justice." i was carried away by great indignation in the course of my words, which had a very startling effect. a large number of the audience left the hall in haste. the judge grew white to the lips, whether with anger or fear i did not know, said a few words to his neighbour, and then with a great effort to control himself, said to me: "you put us, sir, by your words, in a very painful position. you do not know the conditions under which we live--that is evident--and intemperate language like yours has before now provoked an invasion of our peace of a most undesirable kind. i entreat you to calm yourself, to accept the apologies of the court for the incidental and indeed unjustifiable violence with which you were treated. if you will only return to your own community, the nature of which i will not now stay to inquire, you may be assured that you will be conducted to our gates with the utmost honour. will you pledge yourself as a gentleman, and, as i believe i am right in saying, as a christian, to do this?" "yes," i said, "upon one condition: that i may have an interview with the lady cynthia, and that she may be free to accompany me, if she wishes." the president was about to reply, when a sudden and unlooked-for interruption occurred. a man in a pearly-grey dress, with a cloak clasped with gold, came in at the end of the hall, and advanced with rapid steps and a curiously unconcerned air up the hall. the judges rose in their places with a hurried and disconcerted look. the stranger came up to me, tapped me on the shoulder, and bade me presently follow him. then he turned to the president, and said in a clear, peremptory voice: "dissolve the court! your powers have been grossly and insolently exceeded. see that nothing of this sort occurs again!" and then, ascending the dais, he struck the president with his open hand hard upon the cheek. the president gave a stifled cry and staggered in his place, and then, covering his face with his hands, went out at a door on the platform, followed by the rest of the council in haste. then the man came down again, and motioned me to follow him. i was not prepared for what happened. outside in the square was a great, pale, silent crowd, in the most obvious and dreadful excitement and consternation. we went rapidly, in absolute stillness, through two lines of people, who watched us with an emotion i could not quite interpret, but it was something very like hatred. "follow me quickly," said my guide; "do not look round!" and, as we went, i heard the crowd closing up in a menacing way behind us. but we walked straight forward, neither slowly nor hurriedly but at a deliberate pace, to the gateway which opened on the cliffs. at this point i saw a confusion in the crowd, as though some one were being kept back, and in the forefront of the throng, gesticulating and arguing, was lucius himself, with his back to us. just as we reached the gate i heard a cry; and from the crowd there ran cynthia, with her hair unbound, in terror and faintness. our guide opened the gate, and motioned us swiftly through, turning round to face the crowd, which now ran in upon us. i saw him wave his arm; and then he came quickly through the gate and closed it. he looked at us with a smile. "don't be afraid," he said; "that was a dangerous business. but they cannot touch us here." as he said the word, there burst from the gardens behind us a storm of the most hideous and horrible cries i had ever heard, like the howling of wild beasts. cynthia clung to me in terror, and nearly swooned in my arms. "never mind," said the guide; "they are disappointed, and no wonder. it was a near thing; but, poor creatures, they have no initiative; their life is not a fortifying one; and besides, they will have forgotten all about it to-morrow. rut we had better not stop here. there is no use in facing disagreeable things, unless one is obliged." and he led the way down the valley. when we had got a little farther off, our guide told us to sit down and rest. cynthia was still very much frightened, speechless with excitement and agitation, and, like all impulsive people, regretting her decision. i saw that it was useless to say anything to her at present. she sat wearily enough, her eyes closed, and her hands clasped. our guide looked at me with a half-smile, and said: "that was rather an unpleasant business! it is astonishing how excited those placid and polite people can get if they think their privileges are being threatened. but really that court was rather too much. they have tried it before with some success, and it is a clever trick. but they have had a lesson to-day, and it will not need to be repeated for a while." "you arrived just at the right moment," i said, "and i really cannot express how grateful i am to you for your help." "oh," he said, "you were quite safe. it was just that touch of temper that saved you; but i was hard by all the time, to see that things did not go too far." "may i ask," i said, "exactly what they could have done to me, and what their real power is?" "they have none at all," he said. "they could not really have done anything to you, except imprison you. what helps them is not their own power, which is nothing, but the terror of their victims. if you had not been frightened when you were first attacked, they could not have overpowered you. it is all a kind of playacting, which they perform with remarkable skill. the court was really an admirable piece of drama--they have a great gift for representation." "do you mean to say," i said, "that they were actually aware that they had no sort of power to inflict any injury upon me?" "they could have made it very disagreeable for you," he said, "if they had frightened you, and kept you frightened. as long as that lasted, you would have been extremely uncomfortable. but as you saw, the moment you defied them they were helpless. the part played by lucius was really unpardonable. i am afraid he is a great rascal." cynthia faintly demurred to this. "never mind," said the guide soothingly, "he has only shown you his good side, of course; and i don't deny that he is a very clever and attractive fellow. but he makes no progress, and i am really afraid that he will have to be transferred elsewhere; though there is indeed one hope for him." "tell me what that is," said cynthia faintly. "i don't think i need do that," said our friend, "you know better than i; and some day, i think, when you are stronger, you will find the way to release him." "ah, you don't know him as i do," said cynthia, and relapsed into silence; but did not withdraw her hand from mine. "well," said our guide after a moment's pause, "i think i have done all i can for the time being, and i am wanted elsewhere." "but will you not advise me what to do next?" i said. "i do not see my way clear." "no," said the guide rather drily, "i am afraid i cannot do that. that lies outside my province. these delicate questions are not in my line. i will tell you plainly what i am. i am just a messenger, perhaps more like a policeman," he added, smiling, "than anything else. i just go and appear when i am wanted, if there is a row or a chance of one. don't misunderstand me!" he said more kindly. "it is not from any lack of interest in you or our friend here. i should very much like to know what step you will take, but it is simply not my business: our duties here are very clearly defined, and i can just do my job, and nothing more." he made a courteous salute, and walked off without looking back, leaving on me the impression of a young military officer, perfectly courteous and reliable, not inclined to cultivate his emotions or to waste words, but absolutely effective, courageous, and dutiful. "well," i said to cynthia with a show of cheerfulness, "what shall we do next? are you feeling strong enough to go on?" "i am sure i don't know," said cynthia wearily. "don't ask me. i have had a great fright, and i begin to wish i had stayed behind. how uncomfortable everything is! why can one never have a moment's peace? there," she said to me, "don't be vexed, i am not blaming you; but i hated you for not showing more fight when those men set on you, and i hated lucius for having done it; you must forgive me! i am sure you only did what was kind and right--but i have had a very trying time, and i don't like these bothers. let me alone for a little, and i daresay i shall be more sensible." i sat by her in much perplexity, feeling singularly helpless and ineffective; and in a moment of weakness, not knowing what to do, i wished that amroth were near me, to advise me; and to my relief saw him approaching, but also realised in a flash that i had acted wrongly, and that he was angry, as i had never seen him before. he came up to us, and bending down to cynthia with great tenderness, took her hand, and said, "will you stay here quietly a little, cynthia, and rest? you are perfectly safe now, and no one will come near you. we two shall be close at hand; but we must have a talk together, and see what can be done." cynthia smiled and released me. amroth beckoned me to withdraw with him. when we had got out of earshot, he turned upon me very fiercely, and said, "you have made a great mess of this business." "i know it," i said feebly, "but i cannot for the life of me see where i was wrong." "you were wrong from beginning to end," he said. "cannot you see that, whatever this place is, it is not a sentimental place? it is all this wretched sentiment that has done the mischief. come," he added, "i have an unpleasant task before me, to unmask you to yourself. i don't like it, but i must do it. don't make it harder for me." "very good," i said, rather angrily too. "but allow me to say this first. this is a place of muddle. one is worked too hard, and shown too many things, till one is hopelessly confused. but i had rather have your criticism first, and then i will make mine." "very well!" said amroth facing me, looking at me fixedly with his blue eyes, and his nostrils a little distended. "the mischief lies in your temperament. you are precocious, and you are volatile. you have had special opportunities, and in a way you have used them well, but your head has been somewhat turned by your successes. you came to that place yonder, with cynthia, with a sense of superiority. you thought yourself too good for it, and instead of just trying to see into the minds and hearts of the people you met, you despised them; instead of learning, you tried to teach. you took a feeble interest in cynthia, made a pet of her; then, when i took you away, you forgot all about her. even the great things i was allowed to show you did not make you humble. you took them as a compliment to your powers. and so when you had your chance to go back to help cynthia, you thought out no plan, you asked no advice. you went down in a very self-sufficient mood, expecting that everything would be easy." "that is not true," i said. "i was very much perplexed." "it is only too true," said amroth; "you enjoyed your perplexity; i daresay you called it faith to yourself! it was that which made you weak. you lost your temper with lucius, you made a miserable fight of it--and even in prison you could not recognise that you were in fault. you did better at the trial--i fully admit that you behaved well there--but the fault is in this, that this girl gave you her heart and her confidence, and you despised them. your mind was taken up with other things; a very little more, and you would be fit for the intellectual paradise. there," he said, "i have nearly done! you may be angry if you will, but that is the truth. you have a wrong idea of this place. it is not plain sailing here. life here is a very serious, very intricate, very difficult business. the only complications which are removed are the complications of the body; but one has anxious and trying responsibilities all the same, and you have trifled with them. you must not delude yourself. you have many good qualities. you have some courage, much ingenuity, keen interests, and a good deal of conscientiousness; but you have the makings of a dilettante, the readiness to delude yourself that the particular little work you are engaged in is excessively and peculiarly important. you have got the proportion all wrong." i had a feeling of intense anger and bitterness at all this; but as he spoke, the scales seemed to fall from my eyes, and i saw that amroth was right. i wrestled with myself in silence. presently i said, "amroth, i believe you are right, though i think at this moment that you have stated all this rather harshly. but i do see that it can be no pleasure to you to state it, though i fear i shall never regain my pleasure in your company." "there," said amroth, "that is sentiment again!" this put me into a great passion. "very well," i said, "i will say no more. perhaps you will just be good enough to tell me what i am to do with cynthia, and where i am to go, and then i will trouble you no longer." "oh," said amroth with a sneer, "i have no doubt you can find some very nice semidetached villas hereabouts. why not settle down, and make the poor girl a little mote worthy of yourself?" at this i turned from him in great anger, and left him standing where he was. if ever i hated any one, i hated amroth at that moment. i went back to cynthia. "i have come back to you, dear," i said. "can you trust me and go with me? no one here seems inclined to help us, and we must just help each other." at which cynthia rose and flung herself into my arms. "that was what i wanted all along," she said, "to feel that i could be of use too. you will see how brave i can be. i can go anywhere with you and do anything, because i think i have loved you all the time." "and you must forgive me, cynthia," i said, "as well. for i did not know till this moment that i loved you, but i know it now; and i shall love you to the end." as i said these words i turned, and saw amroth smiling from afar; then with a wave of the hand to us, he turned and passed out of our sight. xxviii left to ourselves, cynthia and i sat awhile in silence, hand in hand, like children, she looking anxiously at me. our talk had broken down all possible reserve between us; but what was strange to me was that i felt, not like a lover with any need to woo, but as though we two had long since been wedded, and had just come to a knowledge of each other's hearts. at last we rose; and strange and bewildering as it all was, i think i was perhaps happier at this time than at any other time in the land of light, before or after. and let me here say a word about these strange unions of soul that take place in that other land. there is there a whole range of affections, from courteous tolerance to intense passion. but there is a peculiar bond which springs up between pairs of people, not always of different sex, in that country. my relation with amroth had nothing of that emotion about it. that was simply like a transcendental essence of perfect friendship; but there was a peculiar relation, between pairs of souls, which seems to imply some curious duality of nature, of which earthly passion is but a symbol. it is accompanied by an absolute clearness of vision into the inmost soul and being of the other. cynthia's mind was as clear to me in those days as a crystal globe might be which one could hold in one's hand, and my mind was as clear to her. there is a sense accompanying it almost of identity, as if the other nature was the exact and perfect complement of one's own; i can explain this best by an image. think of a sphere, let us say, of alabaster, broken into two pieces by a blow, and one piece put away or mislaid. the first piece, let us suppose, stands in its accustomed place, and the owner often thinks in a trivial way of having it restored. one day, turning over some lumber, he finds the other piece, and wonders if it is not the lost fragment. he takes it with him, and sees on applying it that the fractures correspond exactly, and that joined together the pieces complete the sphere. even so did cynthia's soul fit into mine. but i grew to understand later the words of the gospel--"they neither marry nor are given in marriage." these unions are not permanent, any more than they are really permanent on earth. on earth, owing to material considerations such as children and property, a marriage is looked upon as indissoluble. but this takes no account of the development of souls; and indeed many of the unions of earth, the passion once over, do grow into a very noble and beautiful friendship. but sometimes, even on earth, it is the other way; and passion once extinct, two natures often realise their dissimilarities rather than their similarities; and this is the cause of much unhappiness. but in the other land, two souls may develop in quite different ways and at a different pace. and then this relation may also come quietly and simply to an end, without the least resentment or regret, and is succeeded invariably by a very tender and true friendship, each being sweetly and serenely content with all that has been given or received; and this friendship is not shaken or fretted, even if both of the lovers form new ties of close intimacy. some natures form many of these ties, some few, some none at all. i believe that, as a matter of fact, each nature has its counterpart at all times, but does not always succeed in finding it. but the union, when it comes, seems to take precedence of all other emotions and all other work. i did not know this at the time; but i had a sense that my work was for a time over, because it seemed quite plain to me that as yet cynthia was not in the least degree suited to the sort of work which i had been doing. we walked on together for some time, in a happy silence, though quiet communications of a blessed sort passed perpetually between us without any interchange of word. our feet moved along the hillside, away from the crags, because i felt that cynthia had no strength to climb them; and i wondered what our life would be. presently a valley opened before us, folding quietly in among the hills, full of a golden haze; and it seemed to me that our further way lay down it. it fell softly and securely into a further plain, the country being quite unlike anything i had as yet seen--a land of high and craggy mountains, the lower parts of them much overgrown with woods; the valley itself widened out, and passed gently among the hills, with here and there a lake. dotted all about the mountain-bases, at the edges of the woods, were little white houses, stone-walled and stone-tiled, with small gardens; and then the place seemed to become strangely familiar and homelike; and i became aware that i was coming home: the same thought occurred to cynthia; and at last, when we turned a corner of the road, and saw lying a little back from the road a small house, with a garden in front of it, shaded by a group of sycamores, we darted forwards with a cry of delight to the home that was indeed our own. the door stood open as though we were certainly expected. it was the simplest little place, just a pair of rooms very roughly and plainly furnished. and there we embraced with tears of joy. xxix the time that i spent in the valley home with cynthia is the most difficult to describe of all my wanderings; because, indeed, there is nothing to describe. we were always together. sometimes we wandered high up among the woods, and came out on the bleak mountain-heads. sometimes we sat within and talked; and by a curious provision there were phenomena there that were more like changes of weather, and interchange of day and night, than at any other place in the heavenly country. sometimes the whole valley would be shrouded with mists, sometimes it would be grey and overcast, sometimes the light was clear and radiant, but through it all there beat a pulse of light and darkness; and i do not know which was the more desirable--the hours when we walked in the forests, with the wind moving softly in the leaves overhead like a falling sea, or those calm and silent nights when we seemed to sleep and dream, or when, if i waked, i could hear cynthia's breath coming and going evenly as the breath of a tired child. it seemed like the essence of human passion, the end that lovers desire, and discern faintly behind and beyond the accidents of sense and contact, like the sounding of a sweet chord, without satiety or fever of the sense. i learnt many strange and beautiful secrets of the human heart in those days: what the dreams of womanhood are--how wholly different from the dreams of man, in which there is always a combative element. the soul of cynthia was like a silent cleft among the hills, which waits, in its own still content, until the horn of the shepherd winds the notes of a chord in the valley below; and then the cleft makes answer and returns an airy echo, blending the notes into a harmony of dulcet utterance. and she too, i doubt not, learnt something from my soul, which was eager and inventive enough, but restless and fugitive of purpose. and then there came a further joy to us. that which is fatherly and motherly in the world below is not a thing that is lost in heaven; and just as the love of man and woman can draw down and imprison a soul in a body of flesh, so in heaven the dear intention of one soul to another brings about a yearning, which grows day by day in intensity, for some further outlet of love and care. it was one quiet misty morning that, as we sat together in tranquil talk, we heard faltering steps within our garden. we had seen, let me say, very little of the other inhabitants of our valley. we had sometimes seen a pair of figures wandering at a distance, and we had even met neighbours and exchanged a greeting. but the valley had no social life of its own, and no one ever seemed, so far as we knew, to enter any other dwelling, though they met in quiet friendliness. cynthia went to the door and opened it; then she darted out, and, just when i was about to follow, she returned, leading by the hand a tiny child, who looked at us with an air of perfect contentment and simplicity. "where on earth has this enchanting baby sprung from?" said cynthia, seating the child upon her lap, and beginning to talk to it in a strangely unintelligible language, which the child appeared to understand perfectly. i laughed. "out of our two hearts, perhaps," i said. at which cynthia blushed, and said that i did not understand or care for children. she added that men's only idea about children was to think how much they could teach them. "yes," i said, "we will begin lessons to-morrow, and go on to the latin grammar very shortly." at which cynthia folded the child in her arms, to defend it, and reassured it in a sentence which is far too silly to set down here. i think that sometimes on earth the arrival of a first child is a very trying time for a wedded pair. the husband is apt to find his wife's love almost withdrawn from him, and to see her nourishing all kinds of jealousies and vague ambitions for her child. paternity is apt to be a very bewildered and often rather dramatic emotion. but it was not so with us. the child seemed the very thing we had been needing without knowing it. it was a constant source of interest and delight; and in spite of cynthia's attempts to keep it ignorant and even fatuous, it did develop a very charming intelligence, or rather, as i soon saw, began to perceive what it already knew. it soon overwhelmed us with questions, and used to patter about the garden with me, airing all sorts of delicious and absurd fancies. but, for all that, it did seem to make an end of the first utter closeness of our love. cynthia after this seldom went far afield, and i ranged the hills and woods alone; but it was all absurdly and continuously happy, though i began to wonder how long it could last, and whether my faculties and energies, such as they were, could continue thus unused. and i had, too, in my mind that other scene which i had beheld, of how the boy was withdrawn from the two old people in the other valley. was it always thus, i wondered? was it so, that souls were drawn upwards in ceaseless pilgrimage, loving and passing on, and leaving in the hearts of those who stayed behind a longing unassuaged, which was presently to draw them onwards from the peace which they loved perhaps too well? xxx the serene life came all to an end very suddenly, and with no warning. one day i had been sitting with cynthia, and the child was playing on the floor with some little things--stones, bits of sticks, nuts--which it had collected. it was a mysterious game too, accompanied with much impressive talk and gesticulations, much emphatic lecturing of recalcitrant pebbles, with interludes of unaccountable laughter. we had been watching the child, when cynthia leaned across to me and said: "there is something in your mind, dear, which i cannot quite see into. it has been there for a long time, and i have not liked to ask you about it. won't you tell me what it is?" "yes, of course," i said; "i will tell you anything i can." "it has nothing to do with me," said cynthia, "nor with the child; it is about yourself, i think; and it is not altogether a happy thought." "it is not unhappy," i said, "because i am very happy and very well-content. it is just this, i think. you know, don't you, how i was being employed, before i came back, god be praised, to find you? i was being trained, very carefully and elaborately trained, i won't say to help people, but to be of use in a way. well, i have been wondering why all that was suspended and cut short, just when i seemed to be finishing my training. i have been much happier here than i ever was before, of course. indeed i have been so happy that i have sometimes thought it almost wrong that any one should have so much to enjoy. but i am puzzled, because the other work seems thrown away. if you wonder whether i want to leave our life here and go back to the other, of course i do not; but i have felt idle, and like a boy turned down from a high class at school to a low one." "that is not very complimentary to me!" said cynthia, laughing. "suppose we say a boy who has been working too hard for his health, and has been given a long holiday?" "yes," i said, "that is better. it is as if a clerk was told that he need not attend his office, but stay at home; and though it is pleasant enough, he feels as if he ought to be at his work, that he appreciates his home all the more when he can't sit reading the paper all the morning, and that he does not love his home less, but rather more, because he is away all the day." "yes," said cynthia, "that is sensible enough; and i am amazed sometimes that you can be so good and patient about it all--so content to be so much with me and baby here; but i don't think it is quite--what shall i say?--quite healthy either!" "well," i said, "i have no wish to change; and here, i am glad to think, there is never any doubt about what one is meant to do." and so the subject dropped. how little i thought then that this was to be the end of the old scene, and that the curtain was to draw up so suddenly upon a new one. but the following morning i had been wandering contentedly enough in the wood, watching the shafts of light strike in among the trees, upon the glittering fronds of the ferns, and thinking idly of all my strange experiences. i came home, and to my surprise, as i came to the door, i heard talk going on inside. i went hastily in, and saw that cynthia was not alone. she was sitting, looking very grave and serious, and wonderfully beautiful--her beauty had grown and increased in a marvellous way of late. and there were two men, one sitting in a chair near her and regarding her with a look of love; it was lucius; and i saw at a glance that he was strangely changed. he had the same spirited and mirthful look as of old, but there was something there which i had never seen before--the look of a man who had work of his own, and had learned something of the perplexity and suffering of responsibility. the other was amroth, who was looking at the two with an air of irrepressible amusement. when i entered, lucius rose, and amroth said to me: "here i am again, you see, and wondering whether you can regain the pleasure you once were kind enough to take in my company?" "what nonsense!" i said rather shamefacedly. "how often have i blushed in secret to think of that awful remark. but i was rather harried, you must admit." amroth came across to me and put his arm through mine. "i forgive you," he said, "and i will admit that i was very provoking; but things were in a mess, and, besides, it was very inconvenient for me to be called away at that moment from my job!" but lucius came up to me and said: "i have come to apologise to you. my behaviour was hideous and horrible. i won't make any excuses, and i don't suppose you can ever forget what i did. i was utterly and entirely in the wrong." "thank you, lucius," i said. "but please say no more about it. my own behaviour on that occasion was infamous too. and really we need not go back on all that. the whole affair has become quite an agreeable reminiscence. it is a pleasure, when it is all over, to have been thoroughly and wholesomely shown up, and to discover that one has been a pompous and priggish ass. and you and amroth between you did me that blessed turn. i am not quite sure which of you i hated most. but i may say one thing, and that is that i am heartily glad to see you have left the land of delight." "it was a tedious place really," said lucius, "but one felt bound in honour to make the best of it. but indeed after that day it was horrible. and i wearied for a sight of cynthia! but you seem to have done very well for yourselves here. may i venture to say frankly how well she is looking, and you too? but i am not going to interrupt you. i have got my billet, i am thankful to say. it is not a very exalted one, but it is better than i deserve; and i shall try to make up for wasted time." "hear, hear!" said amroth; "a very creditable sentiment, to be sure!" lucius smiled and blushed. then he said: "i never was much of a hand at expressing myself correctly; but you know what i mean. don't take the wind out of my sails!" and then amroth turned to me, and said suddenly: "and now i have something else to tell you, and not wholly good news; so i will just say it at once, without beating about the bush. you are to come with us too." cynthia looked up suddenly with a glance of pale inquiry. amroth took her hand. "no, dear child," he said, "you are not to accompany him. you must stay here awhile, until the child is grown. but don't look like that! there is no such thing as separation here, or anywhere. don't make it harder for us all. it is unpleasant of course; but, good heavens, what would become of us all if it were not for that! how dull we should be without suffering!" "yes, yes," said cynthia, "i know--and i will say nothing against it. but--" and she burst into tears. "come, come," said amroth cheerfully, "we must not go back to the old days, and behave as if there were partings and funerals. i will give you five minutes alone to say good-bye. lucius, we must start," and, turning to me, he said, "meet us in five minutes by the oak-tree in the road." they went out, lucius kissing cynthia's hand in silence. cynthia came up to me and put her arms round my neck and her cheek to mine. we sobbed, i fear, like two children. "don't forget me, dearest," she said. "my darling, what a word!" i said. "oh, how happy we have been together!" she said. "yes, and shall be happier still," i said. and then with more words and signs of love, too sacred even to be written down, we parted. it was over. i looked back once, and saw my darling gather the child to her heart, and look up once more at me. then i closed the door; something seemed to surge up in my heart and overwhelm me; and then the ring on my finger sent a sharp pang through my whole frame, which recalled me to myself. and i say it with all the strength of my spirit, i saw how joyful a thing it was to suffer and grieve. i came down to the oak. the two were waiting in silence, and lucius seemed to be in tears. amroth put his arm through mine. "come, brother," he said, "that was a bad business; i won't pretend otherwise; but these things had better come swiftly." "yes," said lucius, "but it is a cruel affair, and i can't say otherwise. why cannot god leave us alone?" "lucius," said amroth very gravely, "here you may say and think as you will--and the thoughts of the heart are best uttered. but one must not blaspheme." "no, no," said lucius, "i was wrong. i ought not to have spoken so. and indeed i know in my heart that somehow, far off, it is well. but i was thinking," he said, turning to me, and grasping my hand in both of his own, "not of you, but of cynthia. i am glad with all my heart that you took her from me, and have made her happy. but what miserable creatures we all are; and how much more miserable we should be if we were not miserable!" and then we started. it was a dreary hour that, full of deep and gnawing pain. i pictured to myself cynthia at every moment, what she was doing and thinking; how swiftly the good days had flown; how perfectly happy i had been; and so my wretched silent reverie went on. "i must say," said amroth at length, breaking a dismal silence, "that this is very tedious. can't you take some interest? i have very disagreeable things to do, but that is no reason why i should be bored as well!" and he then set himself to talk with much zest of all my old friends and companions, telling me how each was faring. charmides, it seemed, had become a very accomplished architect and designer; philip was a teacher at the college. and he went on until, in spite of my heaviness, i felt the whole of life beginning to widen and vibrate all about me, and a sense almost of shame creeping into my mind that i had become so oblivious of all the other friendships and relations i had formed. i forced myself to talk and to ask questions, and found myself walking more briskly. it was not very long before we parted with lucius. he was left at the doors of a great barrack-like like building, and amroth told me he was to be employed as an officer, very much in the same way as the young man who was sent to conduct me away from the trial; and i felt what a good officer lucius would make--smart, prompt, polite, and not in the least sentimental. so we went on together rather gloomily; and then amroth let me look for a little deep into his heart; and i saw that it was filled with a kind of noble pity for me in my suffering; but behind the pity lay that blissful certainty which made amroth so light-hearted, that it was just so, through suffering, that one became wise; and he could no more think of it as irksome or sad than a jolly undergraduate thinks of the training for a race or the rowing in the race as painful, but takes it all with a kind of high-hearted zest, and finds even the nervousness an exciting thing, life lived at high pressure in a crowded hour. xxxi and thus we came ourselves to a new place, though i took but little note of all we passed, for my mind was bent inward upon itself and upon cynthia. the place was a great solid stone building, in many courts, with fine tree-shaded fields all about; a school, it seemed to me, with boys and girls going in and out, playing games together. amroth told me that children were bestowed here who had been of naturally fine and frank dispositions, but who had lived their life on earth under foul and cramped conditions, by which they had been fretted rather than tainted. it seemed a very happy and busy place. amroth took me into a great room that seemed a sort of library or common-room. there was no one there, and i was glad to sit and rest; when suddenly the door opened, and a man came in with outstretched hands and a smile of welcome. i looked up, and it was none but the oldest and dearest friend of my last life, who had died before me. he had been a teacher, a man of the simplest and most guileless life, whose whole energy and delight was given to teaching and loving the young. the surprising thing about him had always been that he could meet one, after a long silence or a suspension of intercourse, as simply and easily as if one had but left him the day before; and it was just the same here. there was no effusiveness of greeting--we just fell at once into the old familiar talk. "you are just the same," i said to him, looking at the burly figure, the big, almost clumsy, head, and the irradiating smile. his great charm had always been an entire unworldliness and absence of ambition. he smiled at this and said: "yes, i am afraid i am too easy-going." he had never cared to talk about himself, and now he said, "well, yes, i go along in my old prosy way. it is just like the old schooldays, with half the difficulties gone. of course the children are not always good, but that makes it the more amusing; and one can see much more easily what they are thinking of and dreaming about." i found myself telling him my adventures, which he heard with the same quiet attention and i was sure that he would never forget a single point--he never forgot anything in the old days. "yes," he said at the end, "that's a wonderful story. you always had the trouble of the adventures, and i had the fun of hearing them." he asked me what i was now going to do, and i said that i had not the least idea. "oh, that will be all right," he said. it was all so comfortable and simple, so obvious indeed, that i laughed to think of the bitter and miserable reveries i had indulged in when he was taken from me, and when the stay of my life seemed gone. the whole incident seemed to give me back a touch of the serenity which i had lost, and i saw how beautifully this joy of meeting had been planned for me, when i wanted it most. presently he said that he must go off for a lesson, and asked me to come with him and see the children. we went into a big class-room, where some boys and girls were assembling. here he was exactly the same as ever; no sentiment, but just a kind of bluff paternal kindness. the lesson was most informal--a good deal of questioning and answering; it was a biographical lecture, but devoted, i saw, in a simple way, to tracing the development of the hero's character. "what made him do that?" was a constant question. the answers were most ingenious and extraordinarily lively; but the order was perfect. at the end he called up two or three children who had shown some impatience or jealousy in the lesson, and said a few half-humorous words to them, with an air of affectionate interest. "they are jolly little creatures," he said when they had all gone out. "yes," i said, with a sigh, "i do indeed envy you. i wish i could be set to something of the kind." "oh, no, you don't," he said; "this is too simple for you! you want something more artistic and more psychological. this would bore you to extinction." we walked all round the place, saw the games going on, and were presently joined by amroth, who seemed to be on terms of old acquaintanceship with my friend. i was surprised at this, and he said: "why, yes, amroth had the pleasure of bringing me here too. things are done here in groups, you know; and amroth knows all about our lot. it is very well organised, much better than one perceives at first. you remember how you and i drifted to school together, and the set of boys we found ourselves with--my word, what young ruffians some of us were! well, of course all that had been planned, though we did not know it." "what!" said i; "the evil as well as the good?" the two looked at each other and smiled. "that is not a very real distinction," said amroth. "of course the poor bodies got in the way, as always; there was some fizzing and some precipitation, as they say in chemistry. but you each of you gave and received just what you were meant to give and receive; though these are complicated matters, like the higher mathematics; and we must not talk of them to-day. if one can escape the being shocked at things and yet be untainted by them, and, on the other hand, if one can avoid pomposity and yet learn self-respect, that is enough. but you are tired to-day, and i want you just to rest and be refreshed." presently amroth asked me if i should like to stay there awhile, and i most willingly consented. "you want something to do," he said, "and you shall have some light employment." that same day, before amroth left me, i had a curious talk with him. i said to him: "let me ask you one question. i had always had a sort of hope that when i came to the land of spirits, i should have a chance of seeing and hearing something of some of the great souls of earth. i had dimly imagined a sort of reception, where one could wander about and listen to the talk of the men one had admired and longed to see--plato, let me say, and shakespeare, walter scott, and shelley--some of the immortals. but i don't seem to have seen anything of them--only just ordinary and simple people." amroth laughed. "you do say the most extraordinarily ingenuous things," he said. "in the first place, of course, we have quite a different scale of values here. people do not take rank by their accomplishments, but by their power of loving. many of the great men of earth--and this is particularly the case with writers and artists--are absolutely nothing here. they had, it is true, a fine and delicate brain, on which they played with great skill; but half the artists of the world are great as artists, simply because they do not care. they perceive and they express; but they would not have the heart to do it at all, if they really cared. some of them, no doubt, were men of great hearts, and they have their place and work. but to claim to see all the highest spirits together is as absurd as if you called on a doctor in london at eleven o'clock and expected to meet all the great physicians at his house, intent on general conversation. some of the great people, indeed, you have met, and they were very simple persons on earth. the greatest person you have hitherto seen was a butler on earth--the master of your college. and if it does not shock your aristocratic susceptibilities too much, the president of this place kept a small shop in a country village. but one of the teachers here was actually a marquis in the world! does that uplift you? he teaches the little girls how to play cricket, and he is a very good dancer. perhaps you would like to be introduced to him?" "don't treat me as a child," i said, rather pettishly. "no, no," said amroth, "it isn't that. but you are one of those impressible people; and they always find it harder to disentangle themselves from the old ideas." i spent a long and happy time in the school. i was given a little teaching to do, and found it perfectly enchanting. imagine children with everything greedy and sensual gone, with none of the crossness or spitefulness that comes of fatigue or pressure, but with all the interesting passions of humanity, admiration, keenness, curiosity, and even jealousy, emulation, and anger, all alive and active in them. they were not angelic children at all, neither meek nor mild. but they were generous and affectionate, and it was easy to evoke these feelings. the one thing absent from the whole place was any touch of sentimentality, which arises from natural affections suppressed into a giggling kind of secrecy. they expressed affection loudly and frankly, just as they expressed indignation and annoyance. all the while i kept cynthia in my heart; she was ever before me in a thousand sweet postures and with innumerable glances. but i saw much of my sturdy and wholesome-minded old friend; and the sore pain of parting faded away out of my heart, and left me with nothing but the purest and deepest love, which helped me in all i did or said, and made me patient and tender-hearted. and thus the period sped not unhappily away, though i had my times of agony and despair. xxxii i became aware at this time, very gradually and even solemnly, that some crisis of my life was approaching. how the monition came to me i hardly know; i felt like a man wandering in the dark, with eyes strained and hands outstretched, who is dimly aware of some great object, tree or haystack or house, looming up ahead of him, which he cannot directly see, but of which he is yet conscious by the vibration of some sixth sense. the wonder came by degrees to overshadow my thoughts with a sense of expectant awe, and to permeate all the urgent concerns of my life with its shadowy presence. even the thought of cynthia, who indeed was always in my mind, became obscured with the dimness of this obscure anticipation. one day amroth stood beside me as i worked; he was very grave and serious, but with a joyful kind of courage about him. i pushed my books and papers away, and rose to greet him, saying half-unconsciously, and just putting my thought into words: "so it has come!" "yes," said amroth, "it has come! i have known it for some little time, and my thought has mingled with yours. i tell you frankly that i did not quite expect it; but one never knows here. you must come with me at once. you are to see the last mystery; and though i am glad for your sake that it is come, yet i tremble for you, because it is unlike any other experience; and one can never be the same again." i felt myself oppressed by a sudden terror of darkness, but, half to reassure myself, i answered lightly: "but it does not seem to have affected you, amroth! you are always light-hearted and cheerful, and not overshadowed by any dark or gloomy thoughts." "yes, yes," said amroth hurriedly. "it is easy enough, when it is once over. nothing that is behind one matters; but this is a thing that one cannot jest about. of course there is nothing to fear; but to be brought face to face with the greatest thing in the world is not a light matter. let me say this. i am to be with you all through; and my only word to you is that you must do exactly what i tell you, and at once, without any doubting or flinching. then all will be well! but we must not delay. come at once, and keep your mind perfectly quiet." we went out together; and there seemed to have fallen a sense of gravity over all whom we met. my companions did not speak to me as we walked out, but stood aside to see me pass, and even looked at me, i thought, with an air half of reverence, half of a sort of natural compassion, as one might watch a dear friend go to be tried for his life. we came out of the door, and found, it seemed to me, an unusual stillness everywhere. the wind, which often blew high on the bare moor, had dropped. we took a path, which i had never seen, which struck off over the hills. we walked for a long time, almost in silence. but i could not bear the strange curiosity which was straining at my heart, and i said presently to amroth: "give me some idea what i am to see or to endure. is it some judgment which i am to face, or am i to suffer pain? i would rather know the best and the worst of it." "it is everything," said amroth; "you are to see god. all is comprised in that." his words fell with a shocking distinctness in the calm air, and i felt my heart and limbs fail me, and a dizziness came over my mind. hardly knowing what i did or said, i came to a stop. "but i did not know that it was possible," i said. "i thought that god was everywhere--within us, about us, beyond us? how can that be?" "yes," said amroth, "god is indeed everywhere, and no place contains him; neither can any of us see or comprehend him. i cannot explain it; but there is a centre, so to speak, near to which the unclean and the evil cannot come, where the fire of his thought burns the hottest.... oh," he said, "neither word nor thought is of any use here; you will see what you will see!" perhaps the hardest thing i had to bear in all my wanderings was the sight of amroth's own fear. it was unmistakable. his spirit seemed prepared for it, perfectly courageous and sincere as it was; but there was a shuddering awe upon him, for all that, which infected me with an extremity of terror. was it that he thought me unequal to the experience? i could not tell. but we walked as men dragging themselves into some fiery and dreadful martyrdom. again i could not bear it, and i cried out suddenly: "but, amroth, he is love; and we can enter without fear into the presence of love!" "have you not yet guessed," said amroth sternly, "how terrible love can be? it is the most terrible thing in the world, because it is the strongest. if death is dreadful, what must that be which is stronger than death? come, let us be silent, for we are near the place, and this is no time for words;" and then he added with a look of the deepest compassion and tenderness, "i wish i could speak differently, brother, at this hour; but i am myself afraid." and at that we gave up all speech, and only our thoughts sprang together and intertwined, like two children that clasp each other close in a burning house, when the smoke comes volleying from the door. we were coming now to what looked like a ridge of rocks ahead of us; and i saw here a wonderful thing, a great light of incredible pureness and whiteness, which struck upwards from the farther side. this began to light up our own pale faces, and to throw our backs into a dark shadow, even though the radiance of the heavenly day was all about us. and at last we came to the place. it was the edge of a precipice so vast, so stupendous, that no word can even dimly describe its depth; it was all illuminated with incredible clearness by the light which struck upwards from below. it was absolutely sheer, great pale cliffs of white stone running downwards into the depth. to left and right the precipice ran, with an irregular outline, so that one could see the cliff-fronts gleam how many millions of leagues below! there seemed no end to it. but at a certain point far down in the abyss the light seemed stronger and purer. i was at first so amazed by the sight that i gazed in silence. then a dreadful dizziness came over me, and i felt amroth's hand put round me to sustain me. then in a faint whisper, that was almost inaudible, amroth, pointing with his finger downwards, said: "watch that place where the light seems clearest." i did so. suddenly there came, as from the face of the cliff, a thing like a cloudy jet of golden steam. it passed out into the clear air, shaping itself in strange and intricate curves; then it grew darker in colour, hung for an instant like a cloud of smoke, and then faded into the sky. "what is that?" i said, surprised out of my terror. "i may tell you that," said amroth, "that you may know what you see. there is no time here; and you have seen a universe made, and live its life, and die. you have seen the worlds created. that cloud of whirling suns, each with its planets, has taken shape before your eyes; life has arisen there, has developed; men like ourselves have lived, have wrestled with evil, have formed states, have died and vanished. that is all but a single thought of god." another came, and then another of the golden jets, each fading into darkness and dispersing. "and now," said amroth, "the moment has come. you are to make the last sacrifice of the soul. do not shrink back, fear nothing. leap into the abyss!" the thought fell upon me with an infinity and an incredulity of horror that i cannot express in words. i covered my eyes with my hands. "oh, i cannot, i cannot," i said; "anything but this! god be merciful; let me go rather to some infinite place of torment where at least i may feel myself alive. do not ask this of me!" amroth made no answer, and i saw that he was regarding me fixedly, himself pale to the lips; but with a touch of anger and even of contempt, mixed with a world of compassion and love. there was something in this look which seemed to entreat me mutely for my own sake and his own to act. i do not know what the impulse was that came to me--self-contempt, trust, curiosity, the yearning of love. i closed my eyes, i took a faltering step, and stumbled, huddling and aghast, over the edge. the air flew up past me with a sort of shriek; i opened my eyes once, and saw the white cliffs speeding past. then an unconsciousness came over me and i knew no more. xxxiii i came to myself very gradually and dimly, with no recollection at first of what had happened. i was lying on my back on some soft grassy place, with the air blowing cool over me. i thought i saw amroth bending over me with a look of extraordinary happiness, and felt his arm about me; but again i became unconscious, yet all the time with a blissfulness of repose and joy, far beyond what i had experienced at my first waking on the sunlit sea. again life dawned upon me. i was there, i was myself. what had happened to me? i could not tell. so i lay for a long time half dreaming and half swooning; till at last life seemed to come back suddenly to me, and i sat up. amroth was holding me in his arms close to the spot from which i had sprung. "have i been dreaming?" i said. "was it here? and when? i cannot remember. it seems impossible, but was i told to jump down? what has happened to me? i am confused." "you will know presently," said amroth, in a tone from which all the fear seemed to have vanished. "it is all over, and i am thankful. do not try to recollect; it will come back to you presently. just rest now; you have been through strange things." suddenly a thought began to shape itself in my mind, a thought of perfect and irresistible joy. "yes," i said, "i remember now. we were afraid, both of us, and you told me to leap down. but what was it that i saw, and what was it that was told me? i cannot recall it. oh," i said at last, "i know now; it comes back to me. i fell, in hideous cowardice and misery. the wind blew shrill. i saw the cliffs stream past; then i was unconscious, i think. i seem to have died; but part of me was not dead. my flight was stayed, and i floated out somewhere. i was joined to something that was like both fire and water in one. i was seen and known and understood and loved, perfectly and unutterably and for ever. but there was pain, somewhere, amroth! how was that? i am sure there was pain." "of course, dear child," said amroth, "there was pain, because there was everything." "but," i said, "i cannot understand yet; why was that terrible leap demanded of me? and why did i confront it with such abject cowardice and dismay? surely one need not go stumbling and cowed into the presence of god?" "there is no other way," said amroth; "you do not understand how terrible perfect love is. it is because it is perfect that it is terrible. our own imperfect love has some weakness in it. it is mixed with pleasure, and then it is not a sacrifice; one gives as much of oneself as one chooses; one is known just so far as one wishes to be known. but here with god there must be no concealment--though even there a man can withhold his heart from god--god never uses compulsion; and the will can prevail even against him. but the reason of the leap that must be taken is this: it is the last surrender, and it cannot be made on our terms and conditions; it must be absolute. and what i feared for you was not anything that would happen if you did commit yourself to god, but what would happen if you did not; for, of course, you could have resisted, and then you would have had to begin again." i was silent for a little, and then i said: "i remember now more clearly, but did i really see him? it seems so absolutely simple. nothing happened. i just became one with the heart and life of the world; i came home at last. yet how am i here? how is it i was not merged in light and life?" "ah," said amroth, "it is the new birth. you can never be the same again. but you are not yet lost in him. the time for that is not yet. it is a mystery; but as yet god works outward, radiates energy and force and love; the time will come when all will draw inward again, and be merged in him. but the world is as yet in its dawning. the rising sun scatters light and heat, and the hot and silent noon is yet to come; then the shadows move eastward, and after that comes the waning sunset and the evening light, and last of all the huge and starlit peace of the night." "but," i said, "if this is really so, if i have been gathered close to god's heart, why is it that instead of feeling stronger, i only feel weak and unstrung? i have indeed an inner sense of peace and happiness, but i have no will or purpose of my own that i can discern." "that," said amroth, "is because you have given up all. the sense of strength is part of our weakness. our plans, our schemes, our ambitions, all the things that make us enjoy and hope and arrange, are but signs of our incompleteness. your will is still as molten metal, it has borne the fierce heat of inner love; and this has taken all that is hard and stubborn and complacent out of you--for a time. but when you return to the life of the body, as you will return, there will be this great difference in you. you will have to toil and suffer, and even sin. but there will be one thing that you will not do: you will never be complacent or self-righteous, you will not judge others hardly. you will be able to forgive and to make allowances; you will concern yourself with loving others, not with trying to improve them up to your own standard. you will wish them to be different, but you will not condemn them for being different; and hereafter the lives you live on earth will be of the humblest. you will have none of the temptations of authority, or influence, or ambition again--all that will be far behind you. you will live among the poor, you will do the most menial and commonplace drudgery, you will have none of the delights of life. you will be despised and contemned for being ugly and humble and serviceable and meek. you will be one of those who will be thought to have no spirit to rise, no power of making men serve your turn. you will miss what are called your chances, you will be a failure; but you will be trusted and loved by children and simple people; they will depend upon you, and you will make the atmosphere in which you live one of peace and joy. you will have selfish employers, tyrannical masters, thankless children perhaps, for whom you will slave lovingly. they will slight you and even despise you, but their hearts will turn to you again and again, and yours will be the face that they will remember when they come to die, as that of the one person who loved them truly and unquestioningly. that will be your destiny; one of utter obscurity and nothingness upon earth. yet each time, when you return hither, your work will be higher and holier, and nearer to the heart of god. and now i have said enough; for you have seen god, as i too saw him long ago; and our hope is henceforward the same." "yes," i said to amroth, "i am content. i had thought that i should be exalted and elated by my privileges; but i have no thought or dream of that. i only desire to go where i am sent, to do what is desired of me. i have laid my burden down." xxxiv presently amroth rose, and said that we must be going onward. "and now," he said, "i have a further thing to tell you, and that is that i have very soon to leave you. to bring you hither was the last of my appointed tasks, and my work is now done. it is strange to remember how i bore you in my arms out of life, like a little sleeping child, and how much we have been together." "do not leave me now," i said to amroth. "there seems so much that i have to ask you. and if your work with me is done, where are you now going?" "where am i going, brother?" said amroth. "back to life again, and immediately. and there is one thing more that is permitted, and that is that you should be with me to the last. strange that i should have attended you here, to the very crown and sum of life, and that you should now attend me where i am going! but so it is." "and what do you feel about it?" i said. "oh," said amroth, "i do not like it, of course. to be so free and active here, and to be bound again in the body, in the close, suffering, ill-savoured house of life! but i have much to gain by it. i have a sharpness of temper and a peremptoriness--of which indeed," he said, smiling, "you have had experience. i am fond of doing things in my own way, inconsiderate of others, and impatient if they do not go right. i am hard, and perhaps even vulgar. but now i am going like a board to the carpenter, to have some of my roughness planed out of me, and i hope to do better." "well," i said, "i am too full of wonder and hope just now to be alarmed for you. i could even wish i were myself departing. but i have a desire to see cynthia again." "yes," said amroth, "and you will see her; but you will not be long after me, brother; comfort yourself with that!" we walked a little farther across the moorland, talking softly at intervals, till suddenly i discerned a solitary figure which was approaching us swiftly. "ah," said amroth, "my time has indeed come. i am summoned." he waved his hand to the man, who came up quickly and even breathlessly, and handed amroth a sealed paper. amroth tore it open, read it smilingly, gave a nod to the officer, saying "many thanks." the officer saluted him; he was a brisk young man, with a fresh air; and he then, without a word, turned from us and went over the moorland. "come," said amroth, "let us descend. you can do this for yourself now; you do not need my help." he took my hand, and a mist enveloped us. suddenly the mist broke up and streamed away. i looked round me in curiosity. we were standing in a very mean street of brick-built houses, with slated roofs; over the roofs we could see a spire, and the chimneys of mills, spouting smoke. the houses had tiny smoke-dried gardens in front of them. at the end of the street was an ugly, ill-tended field, on which much rubbish lay. there were some dirty children playing about, and a few women, with shawls over their heads, were standing together watching a house opposite. the window of an upper room was open, and out of it came cries and moans. "it's going very badly with her," said one of the women, "poor soul; but the doctor will be here soon. she was about this morning too. i had a word with her, and she was feeling very bad. i said she ought to be in bed, but she said she had her work to do first." the women glanced at the window with a hushed sort of sympathy. a young woman, evidently soon to become a mother, looked pale and apprehensive. "will she get through?" she said timidly. "oh, don't you fear, sarah," said one of the women, kindly enough. "she will be all right. bless you, i've been through it five times myself, and i am none the worse. and when it's over she'll be as comfortable as never was. it seems worth it then." a man suddenly turned the corner of the street; he was dressed in a shabby overcoat with a bowler hat, and he carried a bag in his hand. he came past us. he looked a busy, overtried man, but he had a good-humoured air. he nodded pleasantly to the women. one said: "you are wanted badly in there, doctor." "yes," he said cheerfully, "i am making all the haste i can. where's john?" "oh, he's at work," said the woman. "he didn't expect it to-day. but he's better out of the way: he 'd be no good; he'd only be interfering and grumbling; but i'll come across with you, and when it's over, i'll just run down and tell him." "that's right," said the doctor, "come along--the nurse will be round in a minute; and i can make things easy meantime." strange to say, it had hardly dawned upon me what was happening. i turned to amroth, who stood there smiling, but a little pale, his arm in mine; fresh and upright, with his slim and graceful limbs, his bright curled hair, a strange contrast to the slatternly women and the heavily-built doctor. "so this," he said, "is where i am to spend a few years; my new father is a hardworking man, i believe, perhaps a little given to drink but kind enough; and i daresay some of these children are my brothers and sisters. a score of years or more to spend here, no doubt! well, it might be worse. you will think of me while you can, and if you have the time, you may pay me a visit, though i don't suppose i shall recognise you." "it seems rather dreadful to me," said i, "i must confess! who would have thought that i should have forgotten my visions so soon? amroth, dear, i can't bear this--that you should suffer such a change." "sentiment again, brother," said amroth. "to me it is curious and interesting, even exciting. well, good-bye; my time is just up, i think." the doctor had gone into the house, and the cries died away. a moment after a woman in the dress of a nurse came quickly along the street, knocked, opened the door, and went in. i could see into the room, a poorly furnished one. a girl sat nursing a baby by the fire, and looked very much frightened. a little boy played in the corner. a woman was bustling about, making some preparations for a meal. "let me do you the honours of my new establishment," said amroth with a smile. "no, dear man, don't go with me any farther. we will part here, and when we meet again we shall have some new stories to tell. bless you." he took his hand from my arm, caught up my hand, kissed it, said, "there, that is for you," and disappeared smiling into the house. a moment later there came the cry of a new-born child from the window above. the doctor came out and went down the street; one of the women joined him and walked with him. a few minutes later she returned with a young and sturdy workman, looking rather anxious. "it's all right," i heard her say, "it's a fine boy, and annie is doing well--she'll be about again soon enough." they disappeared into the house, and i turned away. xxxv it is difficult to describe the strange emotions with which the departure of amroth filled me. i think that, when i first entered the heavenly country, the strongest feeling i experienced was the sense of security--the thought that the earthly life was over and done with, and that there remained the rest and tranquillity of heaven. what i cannot even now understand is this. i am dimly aware that i have lived a great series of lives, in each of which i have had to exist blindly, not knowing that my life was not bounded and terminated by death, and only darkly guessing and hoping, in passionate glimpses, that there might be a permanent life of the soul behind the life of the body. and yet, at first, on entering the heavenly country, i did not remember having entered it before; it was not familiar to me, nor did i at first recall in memory that i had been there before. the earthly life seems to obliterate for a time even the heavenly memory. but the departure of amroth swept away once and for all the sense of security. one felt of the earthly life, indeed, as a busy man may think of a troublesome visit he has to pay, which breaks across the normal current of his life, while he anticipates with pleasure his return to the usual activities of home across the interval of social distraction, which he does not exactly desire, but yet is glad that it should intervene, if only for the heightened sense of delight with which he will resume his real life. i had been happy in heaven, though with periods of discontent and moments of dismay. but i no longer desired a dreamful ease; i only wished passionately to be employed. and now i saw that i must resign all expectation of that. as so often happens, both on earth and in heaven, i had found something of which i was not in search, while the work which i had estimated so highly, and prepared myself so ardently for, had never been given to me to do at all. but for the moment i had but one single thought. i was to see cynthia again, and i might then expect my own summons to return to life. what surprised me, on looking back at my present sojourn, was the extreme apparent fortuitousness of it. it had not been seemingly organised or laid out on any plan; and yet it had shown me this, that my own intentions and desires counted for nothing. i had meant to work, and i had been mostly idle; i had intended to study psychology, and i had found love. how much wiser and deeper it had all been than anything which i had designed! even now i was uncertain how to find cynthia. but recollecting that amroth had warned me that i had gained new powers which i might exercise, i set myself to use them. i concentrated myself upon the thought of cynthia; and in a moment, just as the hand of a man in a dark room, feeling for some familiar object, encounters and closes upon the thing he is seeking, i seemed to touch and embrace the thought of cynthia. i directed myself thither. the breeze fanned my hair, and as i opened my eyes i saw that i was in an unfamiliar place--not the forest where i had left cynthia, but in a terraced garden, under a great hill, wooded to the peak. stone steps ran up through the terraces, the topmost of which was crowned by a long irregular building, very quaintly designed. i went up the steps, and, looking about me, caught sight of two figures seated on a wooden seat at a little distance from me, overlooking the valley. one of these was cynthia. the other was a young and beautiful woman; the two were talking earnestly together. suddenly cynthia turned and saw me, and rising quickly, came to me and caught me in her arms. "i was sure you were somewhere near me, dearest," she said; "i dreamed of you last night, and you have been in my thoughts all day." my darling was in some way altered. she looked older, wiser, and calmer, but she was in my eyes even more beautiful. the other girl, who had looked at us in surprise for a moment, rose too and came shyly forwards. cynthia caught her hand, and presented her to me, adding, "and now you must leave us alone for a little, if you will forgive me for asking it, for we have much to ask and to say." the girl smiled and went off, looking back at us, i thought, half-enviously. we went and sat down on the seat, and cynthia said: "something has happened to you, dear one, i see, since i saw you last--something great and glorious." "yes," i said, "you are right; i have seen the beginning and the end; and i have not yet learned to understand it. but i am the same, cynthia, and yours utterly. we will speak of this later. tell me first what has happened to you, and what this place is. i will not waste time in talking; i want to hear you talk and to see you talk. how often have i longed for that!" cynthia took my hand in both of her own, and then unfolded to me her story. she had lived long in the forest, alone with the child, and then the day had come when the desire to go farther had arisen in his mind, and he had left her, and she had felt strangely desolate, till she too had been summoned. "and this place--how can i describe it?" she said. "it is a home for spirits who have desired love on earth, and who yet, from some accident of circumstance, have never found one to love them with any intimacy of passion. how strange it is to think," she went on, "that i, just by the inheritance of beauty, was surrounded with love and the wrong sort of love, so that i never learned to love rightly and truly; while so many, just from some lack of beauty, some homeliness or ungainliness of feature or carriage, missed the one kind of love that would have sustained and fed them--have never been held in a lover's arms, or held a child of their own against their heart. and so," she went on smiling, "many of them lavished their tenderness upon animals or crafty servants or selfish relations; and grew old and fanciful and petulant before their time. it seems a sad waste of life that! because so many of them are spirits that could have loved finely and devotedly all the time. but here," she said, "they unlearn their caprices, and live a life by strict rule--and they go out hence to have the care of children, or to tend broken lives into tranquillity--and some of them, nay most of them, find heavenly lovers of their own. they are odd, fractious people at first, curiously concerned about health and occupation and one can often do nothing but listen to their complaints. but they find their way out in time, and one can help them a little, as soon as they begin to desire to hear something of other lives but their own. they have to learn to turn love outwards instead of inwards; just as i," she added laughing, "had to turn my own love inwards instead of outwards." then i told cynthia what i could tell of my own experiences, and she heard them with astonishment. then i said: "what surprises me about it, is that i seem somehow to have been given more than i can hold. i have a very shallow and trivial nature, like a stream that sparkles pleasantly enough over a pebbly bottom, but in which no boat or man can swim. i have always been absorbed in the observation of details and in the outside of things. i spent so much energy in watching the faces and gestures and utterances and tricks of those about me that i never had the leisure to look into their hearts. and now these great depths have opened before me, and i feel more childish and feeble than ever, like a frail glass which holds a most precious liquor, and gains brightness and glory from the hues of the wine it holds, but is not like the gem, compact of colour and radiance." cynthia laughed at me. "at all events, you have not forgotten how to make metaphors," she said. "no," said i, "that is part of the mischief, that i see the likenesses of things and not their essences." at which she laughed again more softly, and rested her cheek on my shoulder. then i told her of the departure of amroth. "that is wonderful," she said. and then i told her of my own approaching departure, at which she grew sad for a moment. then she said, "but come, let us not waste time in forebodings. will you come with me into the house to see the likenesses of things, or shall we have an hour alone together, and try to look into essences?" i caught her by the hand. "no," i said, "i care no more about the machinery of these institutions. i am the pilgrim of love, and not the student of organisations. if you may quit your task, and leave your ladies to regretful memories of their lap-dogs, let us go out together for a little, and say what we can--for i am sure that my time is approaching." cynthia smiled and left me, and returned running; and then we rambled off together, up the steep paths of the woodland, to the mountain-top, from which we had a wide prospect of the heavenly country, a great blue well-watered plain lying out for leagues before us, with the shapes of mysterious mountains in the distance. but i can give no account of all we said or did, for heart mingled with heart, and there was little need of speech. and even so, in those last sweet hours, i could not help marvelling at how utterly different cynthia's heart and mind were from my own; even then it was a constant shock of surprise that we should understand each other so perfectly, and yet feel so differently about so much. it seemed to me that, even after all i had seen and suffered, my heart was still bent on taking and cynthia's on giving. i seemed to see my own heart through cynthia's, while she appeared to see mine but through her own. we spoke of our experiences, and of our many friends, now hidden from us--and at last we spoke of lucius. and then cynthia said: "it is strange, dearest, that now and then there should yet remain any doubt at all in my mind about your wish or desire; but i must speak; and before i speak, i will say that whatever you desire, i will do. but i think that lucius has need of me, and i am his, in a way which i cannot describe. he is halting now in his way, and he is unhappy because his life is incomplete. may i help him?" at this there struck through me a sharp and jealous pang; and a dark cloud seemed to float across my mind for a moment. but i set all aside, and thought for an instant of the vision of god. and then i said: "yes, cynthia! i had wondered too; and it seems perhaps like the last taint of earth, that i would, as it were, condemn you to a sort of widowhood of love when i am gone. but you must follow your own heart, and its pure and sweet advice, and the will of love; and you must use your treasure, not hoard it for me in solitude. dearest, i trust you and worship you utterly and entirely. it is through you and your love that i have found my way to the heart of god; and if indeed you can take another heart thither, you must do it for love's own sake." and after this we were silent for a long space, heart blending wholly with heart. then suddenly i became aware that some one was coming up through the wood, to the rocks where we sat: and cynthia clung close to me, and i knew that she was sorrowful to death. and then i saw lucius come up out of the wood, and halt for a moment at the sight of us together. then he came on almost reverently, and i saw that he carried in his hand a sealed paper like that which had been given to amroth; and i read it and found my summons written. then while lucius stood beside me, with his eyes upon the ground, i said: "i must go in haste; and i have but one thing to do. we have spoken, cynthia and i, of the love you have long borne her; and she is yours now, to comfort and lead you as she has led and comforted me. this is the last sacrifice of love, to give up love itself; and this i do very willingly for the sake of him that loves us: and here," i said, "is a strange thing, that at the very crown and summit of life, for i am sure that this is so, we should be three hearts, so full of love, and yet so sorrowing and suffering as we are. is pain indeed the end of all?" "no," said cynthia, "it is not the end, and yet only by it can we measure the depth and height of love. if we look into our hearts, we know that in spite of all we are more than rewarded, and more than conquerors." then i took cynthia's hand and laid it in the hand of lucius; and i left them there upon the peak, and turned no more. and no more woeful spirit was in the land of heaven that day than mine as i stumbled wearily down the slope, and found the valley. and then, for i did not know the way to descend, i commended myself to god; and he took me. xxxvi i saw that i was standing in a narrow muddy road, with deep ruts, which led up from the bank of a wide river--a tidal river, as i could see, from the great mudflats fringed with seaweed. the sun blazed down upon the whole scene. just below was a sort of landing-place, where lay a number of long, low boats, shaded with mats curved like the hood of a waggon; a little farther out was a big quaint ship, with a high stern and yellow sails. beyond the river rose great hills, thickly clothed with vegetation. in front of me, along the roadside, stood a number of mud-walled huts, thatched with some sort of reeds; beyond these, on the left, was the entrance of a larger house, surrounded with high walls, the tops of trees, with a strange red foliage, appearing over the enclosure, and the tiled roofs of buildings. farther still were the walls of a great town, huge earthworks crowned with plastered fortifications, and a gate, with a curious roof to it, running out at each end into horns carved of wood. at some distance, out of a grove to the right, rose a round tapering tower of mouldering brickwork. the rest of the nearer country seemed laid out in low plantations of some green-leaved shrub, with rice-fields interspersed in the more level ground. there were only a few people in sight. some men with arms and legs bare, and big hats made of reeds, were carrying up goods from the landing-place, and a number of children, pale and small-eyed, dirty and half-naked, were playing about by the roadside. i went a few paces up the road, and stopped beside a house, a little larger than the rest, with a rough verandah by the door. here a middle-aged man was seated, plaiting something out of reeds, but evidently listening for sounds within the house, with an air half-tranquil, half-anxious; by him on a slab stood something that looked like a drum, and a spray of azalea flowers. while i watched, a man of a rather superior rank, with a dark flowered jacket and a curious hat, looked out of a door which opened on the verandah and beckoned him in; a sound of low subdued wailing came out from the house, and i knew that my time was hard at hand. it was strange and terrible to me at the moment to realise that my life was to be bound up, i knew not for how long, with this remote place; but i was conscious too of a deep excitement, as of a man about to start upon a race on which much depends. there came a groan from the interior of the house, and through the half-open door i could see two or three dim figures standing round a bed in a dark and ill-furnished room. one of the figures bent down, and i could see the face of a woman, very pale, the eyes closed, and the lips open, her arms drawn up over her head as in an agony of pain. then a sudden dimness came over me, and a deadly faintness. i stumbled through the verandah to the open door. the darkness closed in upon me, and i knew no more. the end the life of the spirit and the life of to-day by evelyn underhill author of "mysticism," "the essentials of mysticism," etc. new york e.p. dutton & company fifth avenue copyright, . by e.p. dutton & company _all rights reserved_ in memoriam e.r.b. preface this book owes its origin to the fact that in the autumn of the authorities of manchester college, oxford invited me to deliver the inaugural course of a lectureship in religion newly established under the will of the late professor upton. no conditions being attached to this appointment, it seemed a suitable opportunity to discuss, so far as possible in the language of the moment, some of the implicits which i believe to underlie human effort and achievement in the domain of the spiritual life. the material gathered for this purpose has now been added to, revised, and to some extent re-written, in order to make it appropriate to the purposes of the reader rather than the hearer. as the object of the book is strictly practical, a special attempt has been made to bring the classic experiences of the spiritual life into line with the conclusions of modern psychology, and in particular, to suggest some of the directions in which recent psychological research may cast light on the standard problems of the religious consciousness. this subject is still in its infancy; but it is destined, i am sure, in the near future to exercise a transforming influence on the study of spiritual experience, and may even prove to be the starting point of a new apologetic. those who are inclined either to fear or to resent the application to this experience of those laws which--as we are now gradually discovering--govern the rest of our psychic life, or who are offended by the resulting demonstrations of continuity between our most homely and most lofty reactions to the universe, might take to themselves the plain words of thomas à kempis: "thou art a man and not god, thou art flesh and no angel." since my subject is not the splendor of historic sanctity but the normal life of the spirit, as it may be and is lived in the here-and-now, i have done my best to describe the character and meaning of this life in the ordinary terms of present day thought, and with little or no use of the technical language of mysticism. for the same reason, no attention has been given to those abnormal experiences and states of consciousness, which, too often regarded as specially "mystical," are now recognized by all competent students as representing the unfortunate accidents rather than the abiding substance of spirituality. readers of these pages will find nothing about trances, ecstasies and other rare psychic phenomena; which sometimes indicate holiness, and sometimes only disease. for information on these matters they must go to larger and more technical works. my aim here is the more general one, of indicating first the characteristic experiences--discoverable within all great religions--which justify or are fundamental to the spiritual life, and the way in which these experiences may be accommodated to the world-view of the modern man: and next, the nature of that spiritual life as it appears in human history. the succeeding sections of the book treat in some detail the light cast on spiritual problems by mental analysis--a process which need not necessarily be conducted from the standpoint of a degraded materialism--and by recent work on the psychology of autistic thought and of suggestion. these investigations have a practical interest for every man who desires to be the "captain of his soul." the relation in which institutional religion does or should stand to the spiritual life is also in part a matter for psychology; which is here called upon to deal with the religious aspect of the social instincts, and the problems surrounding symbols and cults. these chapters lead up to a discussion of the personal aspect of the spiritual life, its curve of growth, characters and activities; and a further section suggests some ways in which educationists might promote the up springing of this life in the young. finally, the last chapter attempts to place the fact of the life of the spirit in its relation to the social order, and to indicate some of the results which might follow upon its healthy corporate development. it is superfluous to point out that each of these subjects needs, at least, a volume to itself: and to some of them i shall hope to return in the future. their treatment in the present work is necessarily fragmentary and suggestive; and is intended rather to stimulate thought, than to offer solutions. part of chapter iv has already appeared in "the fortnightly review" under the title "suggestion and religious experience." chapter viii incorporates several passages from an article on "sources of power in human life" originally contributed to the "hubert journal." these are reprinted by kind permission of the editors concerned. my numerous debts to previous writers are obvious, and for the most part are acknowledged in the footnotes; the greatest, to the works of baron von hugely, will be clear to all students of his writings. thanks are also due to my old friend william scott palmer, who read part of the manuscript and gave me much generous and valuable advice. it is a pleasure to express in this place my warm gratitude first to the principal and authorities of manchester college, who gave me the opportunity of delivering these chapters in their original form, and whose unfailing sympathy and kindness so greatly helped me: and secondly, to the members of the oxford faculty of theology, to whom i owe the great honor of being the first woman lecturer in religion to appear in the university list. e.u. _epiphany_, . [** transcriber's note: this text contains just a few instances of a character with a diacritical mark. the character is a lower-case 'u' with a macron (straight line) above it. in the text, that character is depicted thusly: [=u] **] contents chapter page preface vii i. the characters of spiritual life ii. history and the life of the spirit iii. psychology and the life of the spirit: (i) the analysis of mind iv. psychology and the life of the spirit: (ii) contemplation and suggestion v. institutional religion and the life of the spirit vi. the life of the spirit in the individual vii. the life of the spirit and education viii. the life of the spirit and the social order principal works used and cited index the life of the spirit and the life of to-day initio tu, domine, terram fundasti; et opera manuum tuarum sunt caeli. ipsi peribunt, tu autem permanes; et omnes sicut vestimentum veterascent. et sicut opertorium mutabis eos, et mutabuntur; tu autem idem ipse es, et anni tui non deficient. filii servorum tuorum habitabunt; et semen eorum in seculum dirigetur. --psalm cii: - chapter i the characters of spiritual life this book has been called "the life of the spirit and the life of to-day" in order to emphasize as much as possible the practical, here-and-now nature of its subject; and specially to combat the idea that the spiritual life--or the mystic life, as its more intense manifestations are sometimes called--is to be regarded as primarily a matter of history. it is not. it is a matter of biology. though we cannot disregard history in our study of it, that history will only be valuable to us in so far as we keep tight hold on its direct connection with the present, its immediate bearing on our own lives: and this we shall do only in so far as we realize the unity of all the higher experiences of the race. in fact, were i called upon to choose a motto which should express the central notion of these chapters, that motto would be--"there are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit." this declaration i would interpret in the widest possible sense; as suggesting the underlying harmony and single inspiration of all man's various and apparently conflicting expressions of his instinct for fullness of life. for we shall not be able to make order, in any hopeful sense, of the tangle of material which is before us, until we have subdued it to this ruling thought: seen one transcendent object towards which all our twisting pathways run, and one impulsion pressing us towards it. as psychology is now teaching us to find, at all levels of our craving, dreaming, or thinking, the diverse expressions of one psychic energy; so that type of philosophy which comes nearest to the religion of the spirit, invites us to find at all levels of life the workings and strivings of one power: "a reality which both underlies and crowns all our other, lesser strivings."[ ] variously manifested in partial achievements of order and goodness, in diversities of beauty, and in our graded apprehensions of truth, this spirit is yet most fully known to us in the transcendent values of holiness and love. the more deeply it is loved by man, the nearer he draws to its heart: and the greater his love, the more fully does he experience its transforming and energizing power. the words of plotinus are still true for every one of us, and are unaffected by the presence or absence of creed: "yonder is the true object of our love, which it is possible to grasp and to live with and truly to possess, since no envelope of flesh separates us from it. he who has seen it knows what i say, that the soul then has another life, when it comes to god, and having come possesses him, and knows when in that state that it is in the presence of the dispenser of true life and that it needs nothing further."[ ] so, if we would achieve anything like a real integration of life--and until we have done so, we are bound to be restless and uncertain in our touch upon experience--we are compelled to press back towards contact with this living reality, however conceived by us. and this not by way of a retreat from our actual physical and mental life, but by way of a fulfilment of it. more perhaps than ever before, men are now driven to ask themselves the searching question of the disciple in boehme's dialogue on the supersensual life: "seeing i am in nature, how may i come through nature into the supersensual ground, without destroying nature?"[ ] and such a coming through into the ground, such a finding and feeling of eternal life, is i take it the central business of religion. for religion is committed to achieving a synthesis of the eternal and the ever-fleeting, of nature and of spirit; lifting up the whole of life to a greater reality, because a greater participation in eternity. such a participation in eternity, manifested in the time-world, is the very essence of the spiritual life: but, set as we are in mutability, our apprehensions of it can only be partial and relative. absolutes are known only to absolute mind; our measurements, however careful and intricate, can never tally with the measurements of god. as einstein conceives of space curved round the sun we, borrowing his symbolism for a moment, may perhaps think of the world of spirit as curved round the human soul; shaped to our finite understanding, and therefore presenting to us innumerable angles of approach. this means that god can and must be sought only within and through our human experience. "where," says jacob boehme, "will you seek for god? seek him in your soul, which has proceeded out of the eternal nature, the living fountain of forces wherein the divine working stands."[ ] but, on the other hand, such limitation as this is no argument for agnosticism. for this our human experience in its humbling imperfection, however we interpret it, is as real within its own system of reference as anything else. it is our inevitably limited way of laying hold on the stuff of existence: and not less real for that than the monkeys' way on one hand, or the angels' way on the other. only we must be sure that we do it as thoroughly and completely as we can; disdaining the indolence which so easily relapses to the lower level and the smaller world. and the first point i wish to make is, that the experience which we call the life of the spirit is such a genuine fact; which meets us at all times and places, and at all levels of life. it is an experience which is independent of, and often precedes, any explanation or rationalization we may choose to make of it: and no one, as a matter of fact, takes any real interest in the explanation, unless he has had some form of the experience. we notice, too, that it is most ordinarily and also most impressively given to us as such an objective experience, whole and unanalyzed; and that when it is thus given, and perceived as effecting a transfiguration of human character, we on our part most readily understand and respond to it. thus plotinus, than whom few persons have lived more capable of analysis, can only say: "the soul knows when in that state that it is in the presence of the dispenser of true life." yet in saying this, does he not tell us far more, and rouse in us a greater and more fruitful longing, than in all his disquisitions about the worlds of spirit and of soul? and kabir, from another continent and time, saying "more than all else do i cherish at heart the love which makes me to live a limitless life in this world,"[ ] assures us in these words that he too has known that more abundant life. these are the statements of the pure religious experience, in so far as "pure" experience is possible to us; which is only of course in a limited and relative sense. the subjective element, all that the psychologist means by apperception, must enter in, and control it. nevertheless, they refer to man's communion with an independent objective reality. this experience is more real and concrete, therefore more important, than any of the systems by which theology seeks to explain it. we may then take it, without prejudice to any special belief, that the spiritual life we wish to study is _one life_; based on experience of one reality, and manifested in the diversity of gifts and graces which men have been willing to call true, holy, beautiful and good. for the moment at least we may accept the definition of it given by dr. bosanquet, as "oneness with the supreme good in every facet of the heart and will."[ ] and since without derogation of its transcendent character, its vigour, wonder and worth, it is in human experience rather than in speculation that we are bound to seek it, we shall look first at the forms taken by man's intuition of eternity, the life to which it seems to call him; and next at the actual appearance of this life in history. then at the psychological machinery by which we may lay hold of it, the contributions which religious institutions make to its realization; and last, turning our backs on these partial explorations of the living whole, seek if we can to seize something of its inwardness as it appears to the individual, the way in which education may best prepare its fulfilment, and the part it must play in the social group. we begin therefore at the starting point of this life of spirit: in man's vague, fluctuating, yet persistent apprehension of an enduring and transcendent reality--his instinct for god. the characteristic forms taken by this instinct are simple and fairly well known. complication only comes in with the interpretation we put on them. by three main ways we tend to realize our limited personal relations with that transcendent other which we call divine, eternal or real; and these, appearing perpetually in the vast literature of religion, might be illustrated from all places and all times. first, there is the profound sense of security: of being safely held in a cosmos of which, despite all contrary appearance, peace is the very heart, and which is not inimical to our true interests. for those whose religious experience takes this form, god is the ground of the soul, the unmoved, our very rest; statements which meet us again and again in spiritual literature. this certitude of a principle of permanence within and beyond our world of change--the sense of eternal life--lies at the very centre of the religious consciousness; which will never on this point capitulate to the attacks of philosophy on the one hand (such as those of the new realists) or of psychology on the other hand, assuring him that what he mistakes for the eternal world is really his own unconscious mind. here man, at least in his great representatives--the persons of transcendent religious genius--seems to get beyond all labels. he finds and feels a truth that cannot fail him, and that satisfies both his heart and mind; a justification of that transcendental feeling which is the soul alike of philosophy and of art. if his life has its roots here, it will be a fruitful tree; and whatever its outward activities, it will be a spiritual life, since it is lived, as george fox was so fond of saying, in the universal spirit. all know the great passage in st. augustine's confessions in which he describes how "the mysterious eye of his soul gazed on the light that never changes; above the eye of the soul, and above intelligence."[ ] there is nothing archaic in such an experience. though its description may depend on the language of neoplatonism, it is in its essence as possible and as fruitful for us to-day as it was in the fourth century, and the doctrine and discipline of christian prayer have always admitted its validity. here and in many other examples which might be quoted, the spiritual fact is interpreted in a non-personal and cosmic way; and we must remember that what is described to us is always, inevitably, the more or less emotional interpretation, never the pure immediacy of experience. this interpretation frequently makes use of the symbolisms of space, stillness, and light: the contemplative soul is "lost in the ocean of the godhead," "enters his silence" or exclaims with dante: "la mia vista, venendo sincera, e più e più entrava per lo raggio dell' alta luce, che da sè è vera."[ ] but in the second characteristic form of the religious experience, the relationship is felt rather as the intimate and reciprocal communion of a person with a person; a form of apprehension which is common to the great majority of devout natures. it is true that divine reality, while doubtless including in its span all the values we associate with personality, must far overpass it: and this conclusion has been reached again and again by profoundly religious minds, of whom among christians we need only mention dionysius the areopagite, eckhart, and ruysbroeck. yet these very minds have always in the end discovered the necessity of finding place for the overwhelming certitude of a personal contact, a prevenient and an answering love. for it is always in a personal and emotional relationship that man finds himself impelled to surrender to god; and this surrender is felt by him to evoke a response. it is significant that even modern liberalism is forced, in the teeth of rationality, to acknowledge this fact of the religious experience. thus we have on the one hand the catholic-minded but certainly unorthodox spanish thinker, miguel de unamuno, confessing-- "i believe in god as i believe in my friends, because i feel the breath of his affection, feel his invisible and intangible hand, drawing me, leading me, grasping me.... once and again in my life i have seen myself suspended in a trance over the abyss; once and again i have found myself at the cross-roads, confronted by a choice of ways and aware that in choosing one i should be renouncing all the others--for there is no turning back upon these roads of life; and once and again in such unique moments as these i have felt the impulse of a mighty power, conscious, sovereign and loving. and then, before the feet of the wayfarer, opens out the way of the lord."[ ] compare with this upton the unitarian: "if," he says, "this absolute presence, which meets us face to face in the most momentous of our life's experiences, which pours into our fainting the elixir of new life-mud strength, and into our wounded hearts the balm of a quite infinite sympathy, cannot fitly be called a personal presence, it is only because this word personal is too poor and carries with it associations too human and too limited adequately to express this profound god-consciousness."[ ] such a personal god-consciousness is the one impelling cause of those moral struggles, sacrifices and purifications, those costing and heroic activities, to which all greatly spiritual souls find themselves drawn. we note that these souls experience it even when it conflicts with their philosophy: for a real religious intuition is always accepted by the self that has it as taking priority of thought, and carrying with it so to speak its own guarantees. thus blake, for whom the holy ghost was an "intellectual fountain," hears the divine voice crying: "i am not a god afar off, i am a brother and friend; within your bosoms i reside, and you reside in me."[ ] thus in the last resort the sufi poet can only say: "o soul, seek the beloved; o friend, seek the friend!"[ ] thus even plotinus is driven to speak of his divine wisdom as the father and ever-present companion of the soul,[ ] and kabir, for whom god is the unconditioned and the formless, can yet exclaim: "from the beginning until the end of time there is love between me and thee: and how shall such love be extinguished?"[ ] christianity, through its concepts of the divine fatherhood and of the eternal christ, has given to this sense of personal communion its fullest and most beautiful expression: "amore, chi t'ama non sta ozioso, tanto li par dolce de te gustare, ma tutta ora vive desideroso como te possa stretto piú amare; ché tanto sta per te lo cor gioioso, chi nol sentisse, nol porría parlare quanto é dolce a gustare lo tuo sapore."[ ] on the immense question of _what_ it is that lies behind this sense of direct intercourse, this passionate friendship with the invisible, i cannot enter. but it has been one of the strongest and most fruitful influences in religious history, and gives in particular its special colour to the most perfect developments of christian mysticism. last--and here is the aspect of religious experience which is specially to concern us--spirit is felt as an inflowing power, a veritable accession of vitality; energizing the self, or the religious group, impelling it to the fullest and most zealous living-out of its existence, giving it fresh joy and vigour, and lifting it to fresh levels of life. this sense of enhanced life is a mark of all religions of the spirit. "he giveth power to the faint," says the second isaiah, "and to them that hath no might he increaseth strength ... they that wait upon the lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint."[ ] "i live--yet not i," "i can do all things," says st. paul, seeking to express his dependence on this divine strength invading and controlling him: and assures his neophytes that they too have received "the spirit of power." "my life," says st. augustine, "shall be a real life, being wholly full of thee."[ ] "having found god," says a modern indian saint, "the current of my life flowed on swiftly, i gained fresh strength."[ ] all other men and women of the spirit speak in the same sense, when they try to describe the source of their activity and endurance. so, the rich experiences of the religious consciousness seem to be resumed in these three outstanding types of spiritual awareness. the cosmic, ontological, or transcendent; finding god as the infinite reality outside and beyond us. the personal, finding him as the living and responsive object of our love, in immediate touch with us. the dynamic, finding him as the power that dwells within or energizes us. these are not exclusive but complementary apprehensions, giving objectives to intellect feeling and will. they must all be taken into account in any attempt to estimate the full character of the spiritual life, and this life can hardly achieve perfection unless all three be present in some measure. thus the french contemplative lucie-christine says, that when the voice of god called her it was at one and the same time a light, a drawing, and a power,[ ] and her indian contemporary the maharishi devendranath tagore, that "seekers after god must realize brahma in these three places. they must see him within, see him without, and see him in that abode of brahma where he exists in himself."[ ] and it seems to me, that what we have in the christian doctrine of the trinity, is above all the crystallization and mind's interpretation of these three ways in which our simple contact with god is actualized by us. it is, like so many other dogmas when we get to the bottom of them, an attempt to describe experience. what is that supernal symphony of which this elusive music, with its three complementary strains, forms part? we cannot know this, since we are debarred by our situation from knowledge of wholes. but even those strains which we do hear, assure us how far we are yet from conceiving the possibilities of life, of power, of beauty which are contained in them. and if the first type of experience, with the immense feeling of assurance, of peace, and of quietude which comes from our intuitive contact with that world which ruysbroeck called the "world that is unwalled,"[ ] and from the mind's utter surrender and abolition of resistances--if all this seems to lead to a merely static or contemplative conception of the spiritual life; the third type of experience, with its impulse towards action, its often strongly felt accession of vitality and power, leads inevitably to a complementary and dynamic interpretation of that life. indeed, if the first moment in the life of the spirit be man's apprehension of eternal life, the second moment--without which the first has little worth for him--consists of his response to that transcendent reality. perception of it lays on him the obligation of living in its atmosphere, fulfilling its meaning, if he can: and this will involve for him a measure of inward transformation, a difficult growth and change. thus the ideas of new birth and regeneration have always been, and i think must ever be, closely associated with man's discovery of god: and the soul's true path seems to be from intuition, through adoration, to moral effort, and thence to charity. even so did the oxford methodists, who began by trying only to worship god and _be_ good by adhering to a strict devotional rule, soon find themselves impelled to try to _do_ good by active social work.[ ] and at his highest development, and in so far as he has appropriated the full richness of experience which is offered to him, man will and should find himself, as it were, flung to and fro between action and contemplation. between the call to transcendence, to a simple self-loss in the unfathomable and adorable life of god, and the call to a full, rich and various actualization of personal life, in the energetic strivings of a fellow worker with him: between the soul's profound sense of transcendent love, and its felt possession of and duty towards immanent love--a paradox which only some form of incarnational philosophy can solve. it is said of abu said, the great s[=u]fi, at the full term of his development, that he "did all normal things while ever thinking of god."[ ] here, i believe, we find the norm of the spiritual life, in such a complete response both to the temporal and to the eternal revelations and demands of the divine nature: on the one hand, the highest and most costing calls made on us by that world of succession in which we find ourselves; on the other, an unmoved abiding in the bosom of eternity, "where was never heard quarter-clock to strike, never seen minute glasse to turne."[ ] there have been many schools and periods in which one half of this dual life of man has been unduly emphasized to the detriment of the other. often in the east--and often too in the first, pre-benedictine phase of christian monasticism--there has been an unbalanced cultivation of the contemplative life, resulting in a narrow, abnormal, imperfectly vitalized a-social type of spirituality. on the other hand, in our own day the tendency to action usually obliterates the contemplative side of experience altogether: and the result is the feverishness, exhaustion and uncertainty of aim characteristic of the over-driven and the underfed. but no one can be said to live in its fulness the life of the spirit who does not observe a due balance between the two: both receiving and giving, both apprehending and expressing, and thus achieving that state of which ruysbroeck said "then only is our life a whole, when work and contemplation dwell in us side by side, and we are perfectly in both of them at once."[ ] all christian writers on the life of the spirit point to the perfect achievement of this two-fold ideal in christ; the pattern of that completed humanity towards which the indwelling spirit is pressing the race. his deeds of power and mercy, his richly various responses to every level of human existence, his gift to others of new faith and life, were directly dependent on the nights spent on the mountain in prayer. when st. paul entreats us to grow up into the fulness of his stature, this is the ideal that is implied. in the intermediate term of the religious experience, that felt communion with a person which is the _clou_ of the devotional life, we get as it were the link between the extreme apprehensions of transcendence and of immanence, and their expression in the lives of contemplation and of action; and also a focus for that religious-emotion which is the most powerful stimulus to spiritual growth. it is needless to emphasize the splendid use which christianity has made of this type of experience; nor unfortunately, the exaggerations to which it has led. both extremes are richly represented in the literature of mysticism. but we should remember that christianity is not alone in thus requiring place to be made for such a conception of god as shall give body to all the most precious and fruitful experiences of the heart, providing simple human sense and human feeling with something on which to lay hold. in india, there is the existence, within and alongside the austere worship of the unconditioned brahma, of the ardent personal vaishnavite devotion to the heart's lord, known as bhakti marga. in islam, there is the impassioned longing of the s[=u]fis for the beloved, who is "the rose of all reason and all truth." "without thee, o beloved, i cannot rest; thy goodness towards me i cannot reckon. tho' every hair on my body becomes a tongue a thousandth part of the thanks due to thee i cannot tell."[ ] there is the sudden note of rapture which startles us in the neoplatonists, as when plotinus speaks of "the name of love for what is there to know--the passion of the lover testing on the 'bosom of his love."[ ] surely we may accept all these, as the instinctive responses of a diversity of spirits to the one eternal spirit of life and love: and recognize that without such personal response, such a discovery of imperishable love, a fully lived spiritual life is no more possible than is a fully lived physical life from which love has been left out. when we descend from experience to interpretation, the paradoxical character of such a personal sense of intimacy is eased for us, if we remember that the religious man's awareness of the indwelling spirit, or of a divine companionship--whatever name he gives it--is just his limited realization, achieved by means of his own mental machinery, of a universal and not a particular truth. to this realization he brings all his human--more, his sub-human--feelings and experiences: not only those which are vaguely called his spiritual intuitions, but the full weight of his impulsive and emotional life. his experience and its interpretation are, then, inevitably conditioned by this apperceiving mass. and here i think the intellect should show mercy, and not probe without remorse into those tender places where the heart and the spirit are at one. let us then be content to note, that when we consult the works of those who have best and most fully interpreted their religion in a universal sense, we find how careful they are to provide a category for this experience of a personally known and loved indwelling divinity--man's father, lover, saviour, ever-present companion--which shall avoid its identification with the mere spirit of nature, whilst safeguarding its immanence no less than its transcendent quality. thus, julian of norwich heard in her meditations the voice of god saying to her, "see! i am in all things! see! i lift never mine hand from off my works, nor ever shall!"[ ] is it possible to state more plainly the indivisible identity of the spirit of life? "see! i am in _all_ things!" in the terrific energies of the stellar universe, and the smallest song of the birds. in the seething struggle of modern industrialism, as much a part of nature, of those works on which his hands are laid, as the more easily comprehended economy of the ant-heap and the hive. this sense of the personal presence of an abiding reality, fulfilling and transcending all our highest values, here in our space-time world of effort, may well be regarded as the differential mark of real spiritual experience, wherever found. it chimes well with the definition of professor pratt, who observes that the truly spiritual man, though he may not be any better morally than his non-religious neighbour, "has a confidence in the universe and an inner joy which the other does not know--is more at-home in the universe as a whole, than other men."[ ] if, in their attempt to describe their experience of this companioning reality, spiritual men of all types have exhausted all the resources and symbols of poetry, even earthly lovers are obliged to do that, in order to suggest a fraction of the values contained in earthly love. such a divine presence is dramatized for christianity in the historic incarnation, though not limited by it: and it is continued into history by the beautiful christian conception of the eternal indwelling christ. the distinction made by the bhakti form of hinduism between the manifest and the unmanifest god seeks to express this same truth; and shows that this idea, in one form or another, is a necessity for religious thought. further and detailed illustration of spiritual experience in itself, as a genuine and abiding human fact--a form of life--independent of the dogmatic interpretations put on it, will come up as we proceed. i now wish to go on to a second point: this--that it follows that any complete description of human life as we know it, must find room for the spiritual factor, and for that religious life and temper in which it finds expression. this place must be found, not merely in the phenomenal series, as we might find room for any special human activity or aberration, from the medicine-man to the jumping perfectionists; but deep-set in the enduring stuff of man's true life. we must believe that the union of this life with supporting spirit cannot _in fact_ be broken, any more than the organic unity of the earth with the universe as a whole. but the extent in which we find and feel it is the measure of the fullness of spiritual life that we enjoy. organic union must be lifted to conscious realization: and this to do, is the business of religion. in this act of realization each aspect of the psychic life--thought, will and feeling--must have its part, and from each must be evoked a response. only in so far as such all-round realization and response are achieved by us do we live the spiritual life. we do it perhaps in some degree, every time that we surrender to pure beauty or unselfish devotion; for then all but the most insensitive must be conscious of an unearthly touch, and hear the cadence of a heavenly melody. in these partial experiences something, as it were, of the richness of reality overflows and is experienced by us. but it is in the wholeness of response characteristic of religion--that uncalculated response to stimulus which is the mark of the instinctive life--that this realty of love and power is most truly found and felt by us. in this generous and heart-searching surrender of religion, rightly made, the self achieves inner harmony, and finds a satisfying objective for all its cravings and energies. it then finds its life, and the possibilities before it, to be far greater than it knew. we need not claim that those men and women who have most fully realized, and so at first hand have described to us, this life of the spirit, have neither discerned or communicated the ultimate truth of things; nor need we claim that the symbols they use have intrinsic value, beyond the poetic power of suggesting to us the quality and wonder of their transfigured lives. still less must we claim this discovery as the monopoly of any one system of religion. but we can and ought to claim, that no system shall be held satisfactory which does not find a place for it: and that only in so far as we at least apprehend and respond to the world's spiritual aspect, do we approach the full stature of humanity. psychologists at present are much concerned to entreat us to "face reality," discarding idealism along with the other phantasies that haunt the race. yet this facing of reality can hardly be complete if we do not face the facts of the spiritual life. certainly we shall find it most difficult to interpret these facts; they are confused, and more than one reading of them is possible. but still we cannot leave them out and claim to have "faced reality." höffding goes so far as to say that any real religion implies and must give us a world-view.[ ] and i think it is true that any vividly lived spiritual life must, as soon as it passes beyond the level of mere feeling and involves reflection, involve too some more or less articulated conception of the spiritual universe, in harmony with which that life is to be lived. this may be given to us by authority, in the form of creed: but if we do not thus receive it, we are committed to the building of our own city of god. and to-day, that world-view, that spiritual landscape, must harmonize--if it is needed to help our living--with the outlook, the cosmic map, of the ordinary man. if it be adequate, it will inevitably transcend this; but must not be in hopeless conflict with it. the stretched-out, graded, striving world of biological evolution, the many-faced universe of the physical relativist, the space-time manifold of realist philosophy--these great constructions of human thought, so often ignored by the religious mind, must on the contrary be grasped, and accommodated to the world-view which centres on the god known in religious experience. they are true within their own systems of reference; and the soul demands a synthesis wide enough to contain them. it is true that most religious systems, at least of the traditional type, do purport to give us a world-view, a universe, in which devotional experience is at home and finds an objective and an explanation. they give us a self-consistent symbolic world in which to live. but it is a world which is almost unrelated to the universe of modern physics, and emerges in a very dishevelled state from the explorations of history and of psychology. even contrasted with our every-day unresting strenuous life, it is rather like a conservatory in a wilderness. whilst we are inside everything seems all right. beauty and fragrance surround us. but emerging from its doors, we find ourselves meeting the cold glances of those who deal in other kinds of reality; and discover that such spiritual life as we possess has got to accommodate itself to the conditions in which they live. if the claim of religion be true at all, it is plain that the conservatory-type of spiritual world is inconsistent with it. imperfect though any conception we frame of the universe must be--and here we may keep in mind samuel butler's warning that "there is no such source of error as the pursuit of absolute truth"--still, a view which is controlled by the religious factor ought to be, so to speak, a hill-top view. lifting us up to higher levels, it ought to give us a larger synthesis. hence, the wider the span of experience which we are able to bring within our system, the more valid its claim becomes: and the setting apart of spiritual experience in a special compartment, the keeping of it under glass, is daily becoming less possible. that experience is life in its fullness, or nothing at all. therefore it must come out into the open, and must witness to its own most sacred conviction; that the universe as a whole is a religious fact, and man is not living completely until he is living in a world religiously conceived. more and more, as it seems to me, philosophy moves toward this reading of existence. the revolt from the last century's materialism is almost complete. in religious language, abstract thought is again finding and feeling god within the world; and finding too in this discovery and realization the meaning, and perhaps--if we may dare to use such a word--the purpose of life. it suggests--and here, more and more, psychology supports it--that, real and alive as we are in relation to this system with which we find ourselves in correspondence, yet we are not so real, nor so alive, as it is possible to be. the characters of our psychic life point us on and up to other levels. already we perceive that man's universe is no fixed order; and that the many ways in which he is able to apprehend it are earnests of a greater transfiguration, a more profound contact with reality yet possible to him. higher forms of realization, a wider span of experience, a sharpening of our vague, uncertain consciousness of value--these may well be before us. we have to remember how dim, tentative, half-understood a great deal of our so-called "normal" experience is: how narrow the little field of consciousness, how small the number of impressions it picks up from the rich flux of existence, how subjective the picture it constructs from them. to take only one obvious example, artists and poets have given us plenty of hints that a real beauty and significance which we seldom notice lie at our very doors; and forbid us to contradict the statement of religion that god is standing there too. that thought which inspires the last chapters of professor 'alexander's "space, time, and deity," that the universe as a whole has a tendency towards deity, does at least seem true of the fully awakened human consciousness.[ ] though st. thomas aquinas may not have covered all the facts when he called man a contemplative animal,[ ] he came nearer the mark than more modern anthropologists. man has an ineradicable impulse to transcendence, though sometimes--as we may admit--it is expressed in strange ways: and no psychology which fails to take account of it can be accepted by us as complete. he has a craving which nothing in his material surroundings seems adequate either to awaken or to satisfy; a deep conviction that some larger synthesis of experience is possible to him. the sense that we are not yet full grown has always haunted the race. "i am the food of the full-grown. _grow,_ and thou shalt feed on me!"[ ] said the voice of supreme reality to st. augustine. here we seem to lay our finger on the distinguishing mark of humanity: that in man the titanic craving for a fuller life and love which is characteristic of all living things, has a teleological objective. he alone guesses that he may or should be something other; yet cannot guess what he may be. and from this vague sense of being _in via,_ the restlessness and discord of his nature proceed. in him, the onward thrust of the world of becoming achieves self-consciousness. the best individuals and communities of each age have felt this craving and conviction; and obeyed, in a greater or less degree, its persistent onward push. "the seed of the new birth," says william law, "is not a notion, but a real strong essential hunger, an attracting, a magnetic desire."[ ] over and over again, rituals have dramatized this, desire and saints have surrendered to it. the history of religion and philosophy is really the history of the profound human belief that we have faculties capable of responding to orders of truth which, did we apprehend them, would change the whole character of our universe; showing us reality from another angle, lit by another light. and time after time too--as we shall see, when we come to consider the testimony of history--favourable variations have arisen within the race and proved in their own persons that this claim is true. often at the cost of great pain, sacrifice, and inward conflict they have broken their attachments to the narrow world of the senses: and this act of detachment has been repaid by a new, more lucid vision, and a mighty inflow of power. the principle of degrees assures us that such changed levels of consciousness and angles of approach may well involve introduction into a universe of new relations, which we are not competent to criticize.[ ] this is a truth which should make us humble in our efforts to understand the difficult and too often paradoxical utterances of religious genius. it suggests the puzzlings of philosophers and theologians--and, i may add, of psychologists too--over experiences which they have not shared, are not of great authority for those whose object is to find the secret of the spirit, and make it useful for life. here, the only witnesses we can receive are, on the one part, the first-hand witnesses of experience, and on the other part, our own profound instinct that these are telling us news of our native land. baron von hügel has finely said, that the facts of this spiritual life are themselves the earnests of its objective. these facts cannot be explained merely as man's share in the cosmic movement towards a yet unrealized perfection; such as the unachieved and self-evolving divinity of some realist philosophers. "for we have no other instance of an unrealized perfection producing such pain and joy, such volitions, such endlessly varied and real results; and all by means of just this vivid and persistent impression that this becoming is an already realized perfection."[ ] therefore though the irresistible urge and the effort forward, experienced on highest levels of love and service, are plainly one-half of the life of the spirit--which can never be consistent with a pious indolence, an acceptance of things as they are, either in the social or the individual life--yet, the other half, and the very inspiration of that striving, is this certitude of an untarnishable perfection, a great goal really there; a living god who draws all spirits to himself. "our quest," said plotinus, "is of an end, not of ends: for that only can be chosen by us which is ultimate and noblest, that which calls forth the tenderest longings of our soul."[ ] there is of course a sense in which such a life of the spirit is the same yesterday, to-day and for ever. even if we consider it in relation to historical time, the span within which it has appeared is so short, compared with the ages of human evolution, that we may as well regard it as still in the stage of undifferentiated infancy. yet even babies change, and change quickly, in their relations with the external world. and though the universe with which man's childish spirit is in contact be a world of enduring values; yet, placed as we are in the stream of succession, part of the stuff of a changing world and linked at every point with it, our apprehensions of this life of spirit, the symbols we use to describe it--and we must use symbols--must inevitably change too. therefore from time to time some restatement becomes imperative, if actuality is not to be lost. whatever god meant man to do or to be, the whole universe assures us that he did not mean him to stand still. such a restatement, then, may reasonably be called a truly religious work; and i believe that it is indeed one of the chief works to which religion must find itself committed in the near future. hence my main object in this book is to recommend the consideration of this enduring fact of the life of the spirit and what it can mean to us, from various points of view; thus helping to prepare the ground for that synthesis which we may not yet be able to achieve, but towards which we ought to look. it is from this stand-point, and with this object of examining what we have, of sorting out if we can the permanent from the transitory, of noticing lacks and bridging cleavages, that we shall consider in turn the testimony of history, the position in respect of psychology, and the institutional personal and social aspects of the spiritual life. in such a restatement, such a reference back to actual man, here at the present day as we have him--such a demand for a spiritual interpretation of the universe, which will allow us to fit in all his many-levelled experiences--i believe we have the way of approach to which religion to-day must look as its best hope. thus only can we conquer that museum-like atmosphere of much traditional piety which--agreeable as it may be to the historic or æsthetic sense--makes it so unreal to our workers, no less than to our students. such a method, too, will mean the tightening of that alliance between philosophy and psychology which is already a marked character of contemporary thought. and note that, working on this basis, we need not in order to find room for the facts commit ourselves to the harsh dualism, the opposition between nature and spirit, which is characteristic of some earlier forms of christian thought. in this dualism, too, we find simply an effort to describe felt experience. it is an expression of the fact, so strongly and deeply felt by the richest natures, that there _is_ an utter difference in kind between the natural life of use and wont, as most of us live it, and the life that is dominated by the spiritual consciousness. the change is indeed so great, the transfiguration so complete, that they seize on the strongest language in which to state it. and in the good old human way, referring their own feelings to the universe, they speak of the opposing and incompatible worlds of matter and of spirit, of nature and of grace. but those who have most deeply reflected, have perceived that the change effected is not a change of worlds. it is rather such a change of temper and attitude as will disclose within our one world, here and now, the one spirit in the diversity of his gifts; the one love, in homeliest incidents as well as noblest vision, laying its obligations on the soul; and so the true nature and full possibilities of this our present life. although it is true that we must register our profound sense of the transcendental character of this spirit-life, its otherness from mere nature, and the humility and penitence in which alone mere nature receive it; yet i think that our movement from one to the other is more naturally described by us in the language of growth than in the language of convulsion. the primal object of religion is to disclose to us this perdurable basis of life, and foster our growth into communion with it. and whatever its special, language and personal colour be--for all our news of god comes to us through the consciousness of individual men, and arrives tinctured by their feelings and beliefs--in the end it does this by disclosing us to ourselves as spirits growing up, though unevenly and hampered by our past, through the physical order into completeness of response to a universe that is itself a spiritual fact. "heaven," said jacob boehme, "is nothing else but a manifestation of the eternal one, wherein all worketh and willeth in quiet love."[ ] such a manifestation of spirit must clearly be made through humanity, at least so far as our own order is concerned: by our redirection and full use of that spirit of life which energizes us, and which, emerging from the more primitive levels of organic creation, is ours to carry on and up--either to new self-satisfactions, or to new consecrations. it is hardly worth while to insist that the need for such a redirection has never been more strongly felt than at the present day. there is indeed no period in which history exhibits mankind as at once more active, more feverishly self-conscious, and more distracted, than is our own bewildered generation; nor any which stood in greater need of blake's exhortation: "let every christian as much as in him lies, engage himself openly and publicly before all the world in some mental pursuit for the building up of jerusalem."[ ] how many people do each of us know who work and will in quiet love, and thus participate in eternal life? consider the weight of each of these words. the energy, the clear purpose, the deep calm, the warm charity they imply. willed work; not grudging toil. quiet love, not feverish emotionalism. each term is quite plain and human, and each has equal importance as an attribute of heavenly life. how many politicians--the people to whom we have confided the control of our national existence--work and will in quiet love? what about industry? do the masters, or the workers, work and will in quiet love? that is to say with diligence and faithful purpose, without selfish anxiety, without selfish demands and hostilities? what about the hurried, ugly and devitalizing existence of our big towns? can we honestly say that young people reared in them are likely to acquire this temper of heaven? yet we have been given the secret, the law of spiritual life; and psychologists would agree that it represents too the most favourable of conditions for a full psychic life, the state in which we have access to all our sources of power. but man will not achieve this state unless he dwells on the idea of it; and, dwelling on that idea, opening his mind to its suggestions, brings its modes of expression into harmony with his thought about the world of daily life. our spiritual life to-day, such as it is, tends above all to express itself in social activities. teacher after teacher comes forward to plume himself on the fact that christianity is now taking a "social form"; that love of our neighbour is not so much the corollary as the equivalent of the love of god, and so forth. here i am sure that all can supply themselves with illustrative quotations. yet is there in this state of things nothing but food for congratulation? is such a view complete? is nothing left out? have we not lost the wonder and poetry of the forest in our diligent cultivation of the economically valuable trees; and shall we ever see life truly until we see it with the poet's eyes? there is so much meritorious working and willing; and so little time left for quiet love. a spiritual fussiness--often a material fussiness too--seems to be taking the place of that inward resort to the fontal sources of our being which is the true religious act, our chance of contact with the spirit. this compensating beat of the fully lived human life, that whole side of existence resumed in the word contemplation, has been left out. "all the artillery of the world," said john everard, "were they all discharged together at one clap, could not more deaf the ears of our bodies than the clamourings of desires in the soul deaf its ears, so you see a man must go into the silence, or else he cannot hear god speak."[ ] and until we remodel our current conception of the christian life in such a sense as to give that silence and its revelation their full value, i do not think that we can hope to exhibit the triumphing power of the spirit in human character and human society. our whole notion of life at present is such as to set up resistances to its inflow. yet the inner mood, the consciousness, which makes of the self its channel, are accessible to all, if we would but believe this and act on our belief. "worship," said william penn, "is the supreme act of a man's life."[ ] and what is worship but a reach-out of the finite spirit towards infinite life? here thought must mend the breach which thought has made: for the root of our trouble consists in the fact that there is a fracture in our conception of god and of our relation with him. we do not perceive the "hidden unity in the eternal being"; the single nature and purpose of that spirit which brought life forth, and shall lead it to full realization. here is our little planet, chiefly occupied, to our view, in rushing round the sun; but perhaps found from another angle to fill quite another part in the cosmic scheme. and on this apparently unimportant speck, wandering among systems of suns, the appearance of life and its slow development and ever-increasing sensitization; the emerging of pain and of pleasure; and presently man with his growing capacity for self-affirmation and self-sacrifice, for rapture and for grief. love with its unearthly happiness, unmeasured devotion, and limitless pain; all the ecstasy, all the anguish that we extract from the rhythm of life and death. it is much, really, for one little planet to bring to birth. and presently another music, which some--not many perhaps yet, in comparison with its population--are able to hear. the music of a more inward life, a sort of fugue in which the eternal and temporal are mingled; and here and there some, already, who respond to it. those who hear it would not all agree as to the nature of the melody; but all would agree that it is something different in kind from the rhythm of life and death. and in their surrender to this--to which, as they feel sure, the physical order too is really keeping time--they taste a larger life; more universal, more divine. as plotinus said, they are looking at the conductor in the midst; and, keeping time with him, find the fulfilment both of their striving and of their peace. footnotes: [footnote : von hügel: "essays and addresses on the philosophy of religion," p. .] [footnote : ennead i, . .] [footnote : jacob boehme: "the way to christ," pt. iv.] [footnote : op. cit., loc. cit.] [footnote : "one hundred poems of kabir," p. .] [footnote : bernard bosanquet: "what religion is" p. .] [footnote : aug.: conf. vii, .] [footnote : "my vision, becoming more purified, entered deeper and deeper into the ray of that supernal light, which in itself is true"--par. xxxiii, .] [footnote : "the tragic sense of life in men and peoples," p. .] [footnote : t. upton: "the bases of religious belief," p. .] [footnote : blake: "jerusalem," cap. i.] [footnote : nicholson: "the divãni shamsi tabriz," p. .] [footnote : ennead v. i. .] [footnote : kabir, op. cit., p. .] [footnote : "love, whoso loves thee cannot idle be, so sweet to him to taste thee; but every hour he lives in longing that he may love thee more straitly. for in thee the heart so joyful dwells, that he who feels it not can never say how sweet it is to taste thy savour"--jacopone da todi: lauda .] [footnote : isaiah xl, - .] [footnote : aug.: conf. x, .] [footnote : "autobiography of the maharishi devendranath tagore," cap. .] [footnote : "le journal spirituel de lucie-christine," p. ii.] [footnote : "autobiography of maharishi devendranath tagore," cap. .] [footnote : ruysbroeck: "the book of the xii béguines;" cap. .] [footnote : overton: "life of wesley." cap. .] [footnote : r.a. nicholson: "studies in islamic mysticism," cap. i.] [footnote : "donne's sermons," edited by l. pearsall smith, p. .] [footnote : ruysbroeck, "the sparkling stone," cap. .] [footnote : bishr-i-yasin, cf. nicholson, op. cit., loc. cit.] [footnote : ennead vi. . .] [footnote : "revelations of divine love," cap. ii.] [footnote : pratt: "the religious consciousness," cap. .] [footnote : höffding: "philosophy of religion," pt. ii, a] [footnote : op. cit., bk. , cap. .] [footnote : "summa contra gentiles," l. iii. cap. .] [footnote : aug: conf. vii, .] [footnote : "the liberal and mystical writings of william law," p. .] [footnote : cf. haldane, "the reign of relativity," cap. vi.] [footnote : von hügel: "eternal life," p. .] [footnote : ennead i. . .] [footnote : boehme: "the way to christ," pt. iv.] [footnote : blake: "jerusalem": to the christians.] [footnote : "some gospel treasures opened," p. .] [footnote : william penn, "no cross, no crown."] chapter ii history and the life of the spirit we have already agreed that, if we wish to grasp the real character of spiritual life, we must avoid the temptation to look at it as merely a historical subject. if it is what it claims to be, it is a form of eternal life, as constant, as accessible to us here and now, as in any so-called age of faith: therefore of actual and present importance, or else nothing at all. this is why i think that the approach to it through philosophy and psychology is so much to be preferred to the approach through pure history. yet there is a sense in which we must not neglect such history; for here, if we try to enter by sympathy into the past, we can see the life of the spirit emerging and being lived in all degrees of perfection and under many different forms. here, through and behind the immense diversity of temperaments which it has transfigured, we can best realise its uniform and enduring character; and therefore our own possibility of attaining to it, and the way that we must tread so to do. history does not exhort us or explain to us, but exhibits living specimens to us; and these specimens witness again and again to the fact that a compelling power does exist in the world--little understood, even by those who are inspired by it--which presses men to transcend their material limitations and mental conflicts, and live a new creative life of harmony, freedom and joy. directly human character emerges as one of man's prime interests, this possibility emerges too, and is never lost sight of again. hindu, buddhist, egyptian, greek, alexandrian, moslem and christian all declare with more or less completeness a way of life, a path, a curve of development which shall end in its attainment; and history brings us face to face with the real and human men and women who have followed this way, and found its promise to be true. it is, indeed, of supreme importance to us that these men and women did truly and actually thus grow, suffer and attain: did so feel the pressure of a more intense life, and the demand of a more authentic love. their adventures, whatsoever addition legend may have made to them, belong at bottom to the realm of fact, of realistic happening, not of phantasy: and therefore speak not merely to our imagination but to our will. unless the spiritual life were thus a part of history, it could only have for us the interest of a noble dream: an interest actually less than that of great poetry, for this has at least been given to us by man's hard passionate work of expressing in concrete image--and ever the more concrete, the greater his art--the results of his transcendental contacts with beauty, power or love. thus, as the tracking-out of a concrete life, a man, from nazareth to calvary, made of christianity a veritable human revelation of god and not a gnostic answer to the riddle of the soul; so the real and solid men and women of the spirit--eating, drinking, working, suffering, loving, each in the circumstances of their own time--are the earnests of our own latent destiny and powers, the ability of the christian to "grow taller in christ."[ ] these powers--that ability--are factually present in the race, and are totally independent of the specific religious system which may best awaken, nourish, and cause them to grow. in order, then, that we may be from the first clear of all suspicion of vague romancing about indefinite types of perfection and keep tight hold on concrete life, let us try to re-enter history, and look at the quality of life exhibited by some of these great examples of dynamic spirituality, and the movements which they initiated. it is true that we can only select from among them, but we will try to keep to those who have followed on highest levels a normal course; the upstanding types, varying much in temperament but little in aim and achievement, of that form of life which is re-made and controlled by the spirit, entinctured with eternal life. if such a use of history is indeed to be educative for us, we must avoid the conventional view of it, as a mere chronicle of past events; and of historic personalities as stuffed specimens exhibited against a flat tapestried background, more or less picturesque, but always thought of in opposition to the concrete thickness of the modern world. we are not to think of spiritual epochs now closed; of ages of faith utterly separated from us; of saints as some peculiar species, god's pet animals, living in an incense-laden atmosphere and less vividly human and various than ourselves. such conceptions are empty of historical content in the philosophic sense; and when we are dealing with the accredited heroes of the spirit--that is to say, with the saints--they are particularly common and particularly poisonous. as benedetto croce has observed, the very condition of the existence of real history is that the deed celebrated must live and be present in the soul of the historian; must be emotionally realized by him _now,_ as a concrete fact weighted with significance. it must answer to a present, not to a past interest of the race, for thus alone can it convey to us some knowledge of its inward truth. consider from this point of view the case of richard rolle, who has been called the father of english mysticism. it is easy enough for those who regard spiritual history as dead chronicle and its subjects as something different from ourselves, to look upon rolle's threefold experience of the soul's reaction to god--the heat of his quick love, the sweetness of his spiritual intercourse, the joyous melody with which it filled his austere, self-giving life[ ]--as the probable result of the reaction of a neurotic temperament to mediæval traditions. but if, for instance the oxford undergraduate of to-day realizes rolle, not as a picturesque fourteenth-century hermit, but as a fellow-student--another oxford undergraduate, separated from him only by an interval of time--who gave up that university and the career it could offer him, under the compulsion of another wisdom and another love, then he re-enters the living past. if, standing by him in that small hut in the yorkshire wolds, from which the urgent message of new life spread through the north of england, he hears rolle saying "nought more profitable, nought merrier than grace of contemplation, the which lifteth us from low things and presenteth us to god. what thing is grace but beginning of joy? and what is perfection of joy but grace complete?"[ ]--if, i say, he so re-enters history that he can hear this as rolle meant it, not as a poetic phrase but as a living fact, indeed life's very secret--then, his heart may be touched and he may begin to understand. and then it may occur to him that this ardour, and the sacrifice it impelled, the hard life which it supported, witness to another level of being; reprove his own languor and comfort, his contentment with a merely physical mental life, and are not wholly to be accounted for in terms of superstition or of pathology. when the living spirit in us thus meets the living spirit of the past, our time-span is enlarged, and history is born and becomes contemporary; thus both widening and deepening our vital experience. it then becomes not only a real mode of life to us; but more than this, a mode of social life. indeed, we can hardly hope without this re-entrance into the time stream to achieve by ourselves, and in defiance of tradition, a true integration of existence. thus to defy tradition is to refuse all the gifts the past can make to us, and cut ourselves off from the cumulative experiences of the race. the spirit, as croce[ ] reminds us, is history, makes history, and is also itself the living result of all preceding history; since becoming is the essential reality, the creative formula, of that life in which we find ourselves immersed. it is from such an angle as this that i wish to approach the historical aspect of the life of spirit; re-entering the past by sympathetic imagination, refusing to be misled by superficial characteristics, but seeking the concrete factors of the regenerate life, the features which persist and have significance for it--getting, if we can, face to face with those intensely living men and women who have manifested it. this is not easy. in studying all such experience, we have to remember that the men and women of the spirit are members of two orders. they have attachments both to time and to eternity. their characteristic experiences indeed are non-temporal, but their feet are on the earth; the earth of their own day. therefore two factors will inevitably appear in those experiences, one due to tradition, the other to the free movements of creative life: and we, if we would understand, must discriminate between them. in this power of taking from the past and pushing on to the future, the balance maintained between stability and novelty, we find one of their abiding characteristics. when this balance is broken--when there is either too complete a submission to tradition and authority, or too violent a rejection of it--full greatness is not achieved. in complete lives, the two things overlap: and so perfectly that no sharp distinction is made between the gifts of authority and of fresh experience. traditional formulæ, as we all know, are often used because they are found to tally with life, to light up dark corners of our own spirits and give names to experiences which we want to define. ceremonial deeds are used to actualize free contacts with reality. and we need not be surprised that they can do this; since tradition represents the crystallization, and handling on under symbols, of all the spiritual experiences of the race. therefore the man or woman of the spirit will always accept and use some tradition; and unless he does so, he is not of much use to his fellow-men. he must not, then, be discredited on account of the symbolic system he adopts; but must be allowed to tell his news in his own way. we must not refuse to find reality within the hindu's account of his joyous life-giving communion with ram, any more than we refuse to find it within the christian's description of his personal converse with christ. we must not discredit the assurance which comes to the devout buddhist who faithfully follows the middle way, or deny that pagan sacramentalism was to its initiates a channel of grace. for all these are children of tradition, occupy a given place in the stream of history; and commonly they are better, not worse, for accepting this fact with all that it involves. and on the other hand, as we shall see when we come to discuss the laws of suggestion and the function of belief, the weight of tradition presses the loyal and humble soul which accepts it, to such an interpretation of its own spiritual intuitions as its church, its creed, its environment give to it. thus st. catherine of genoa, st. teresa, even ruysbroeck, are able to describe their intuitive communion with god in strictly catholic terms; and by so doing renew, enrich and explicate the content of those terms for those who follow them. those who could not harmonize their own vision of reality with the current formulæ--fox, wesley or blake, driven into opposition by the sterility of the contemporary church--were forced to find elsewhere some tradition through which to maintain contact with the past. fox found it in the bible; wesley in patristic christianity. even blake's prophetic system, when closely examined, is found to have many historic and christian connections. and all these regarded themselves far less as bringers-in of novelty, than as restorers of lost truth. so we must be prepared to discriminate the element of novelty from the element of stability; the reality of the intuition, the curve of growth, the moral situation, from the traditional and often symbolic language in which it is given to us. the comparative method helps us towards this; and is thus not, as some would pretend, the servant of scepticism, but rightly used the revealer of the spirit of life in its variety of gifts. in this connection we might remember that time--like space--is only of secondary importance to us. compared with the eons of preparation, the millions of years of our animal and sub-human existence, the life of the spirit as it appears in human history might well be regarded as simultaneous rather than successive. we may borrow the imagery of donne's great discourse on eternity and say, that those heroic livers of the spiritual life whom we idly class in comparison with ourselves as antique, or mediæval men, were "but as a bed of flowers some gathered at six, some at seven, some at eight--all in one morning in respect of this day."[ ] such a view brings them more near to us, helps us to neglect mere differences of language and appearance, and grasp the warmly living and contemporary character of all historic truth. it preserves us, too, from the common error of discriminating between so-called "ages of faith" and our own. the more we study the past, the more clearly we recognize that there are no "ages of faith." such labels merely represent the arbitrary cuts which we make in the time-stream, the arbitrary colours which we give to it. the spiritual man or woman is always fundamentally the same kind of man or woman; always reaching out with the same faith and love towards the heart of the same universe, though telling that faith and love in various tongues. he is far less the child of his time, than the transformer of it. his this-world business is to bring in novelty, new reality, fresh life. yet, coming to fulfil not to destroy, he uses for this purpose the traditions, creeds, even the institutions of his day. but when he has done with them, they do not look the same as they did before. christ himself has been well called a constructive revolutionary,[ ] yet each single element of his teaching can be found in jewish tradition; and the noblest of his followers have the same character. thus st. francis of assisi only sought consistently to apply the teaching of the new testament, and st. teresa that of the carmelite rule. every element of wesleyanism is to be found in primitive christianity; and wesleyanism is itself the tradition from which the new vigour of the salvation army sprang. the great regenerators of history are always in fundamental opposition to the common life of their day, for they demand by their very existence a return to first principles, a revolution in the ways of thinking and of acting common among men, a heroic consistency and single-mindedness: but they can use for their own fresh constructions and contacts with eternal life the material which this life offers to them. the experiments of st. benedict, st. francis, fox or wesley, were not therefore the natural products of ages of faith. they each represented the revolt of a heroic soul against surrounding apathy and decadence; an invasion of novelty; a sharp break with society, a new use of antique tradition depending on new contacts with the spirit. greatness is seldom in harmony with its own epoch, and spiritual greatness least of all. it is usually startlingly modern, even eccentric at the time at which it appears. we are accustomed to think of "the imitation of christ" as the classic expression of mediæval spirituality. but when thomas à kempis wrote his book, it was the manifesto of that which was called the modern devotion; and represented a new attempt to live the life of the spirit, in opposition to surrounding apathy. when we re-enter the past, what we find, there is the persistent conflict between this novelty and this apathy; that is to say between man's instinct for transcendence, in which we discern the pressure of the spirit and the earnest of his future, and his tendency to lag behind towards animal levels, in which we see the influence of his racial past. so far as the individual is concerned, all that religion means by grace is resumed under the first head, much that it means by sin under the second head. and the most striking--though not the only--examples of the forward reach of life towards freedom (that is, of conquering grace) are those persons whom we call men and women of the spirit. in them it is incarnate, and through them, as it were, it spreads and gives the race a lift: for their transfiguration is never for themselves alone, they impart it to all who follow them. but the downward falling movement ever dogs the emerging life of spirit; and tends to drag back to the average level the group these have vivified, when their influence is withdrawn. hence the history of the spirit--and, incidentally, the history of all churches--exhibits to us a series of strong movements towards completed life, inspired by vigorous and transcendent personalities; thwarted by the common indolence and tendency to mechanization, but perpetually renewed. we have no reason to suppose that this history is a closed book, or that the spiritual life struggling to emerge among ourselves will follow other laws. we desire then, if we can, to discover what it was that these transcendent personalities possessed. we may think, from the point at which we now stand, that they had some things which were false, or, at least, were misinterpreted by them. we cannot without insincerity make their view of the universe our own. but, plainly, they also possessed truths and values which most of us have not: they obtained from their religion, whether we allow that it had as creed an absolute or a symbolic value, a power of living, a courage and clear vision, which we do not as a rule obtain. when we study the character and works of these men and women, observing their nobility, their sweetness, their power of endurance, their outflowing love, we must, unless we be utterly insensitive, perceive ourselves to be confronted by a quality of being which we do not possess. and when we are so fortunate as to meet one of them in the flesh, though his conduct is commonly more normal than our own, we know then with plotinus that the soul _has_ another life. yet many of us accept the same creedal forms, use the same liturgies, acknowledge the same scale of values and same moral law. but as something, beyond what the ordinary man calls beauty rushes out to the great artist from the visible world, and he at this encounter becomes more vividly alive; so for these there was and is in religion a new, intenser life which they can reach. they seem to represent favourable variations, genuine movements of man towards new levels; a type of life and of greatness, which remains among the hoarded possibilities of the race. now the main questions which we have to ask of history fall into two groups: first, _type._ what are the characters which mark this life of the spirit? secondly, _process._ what is the line of development by which the individual comes to acquire and exhibit these characters? first, then, the _spiritual type._ what we see above all in these men and women, so frequently repeated that we may regard it as classic, is a perpetual serious heroic effort to integrate life about its highest factors. their central quality and real source of power is this single-mindedness. they aim at god: the phrase is ruysbroeck's, but it pervades the real literature of the spirit. thus it is the first principle of hinduism that "the householder must keep touch with brahma in all his actions."[ ] thus the sufi says he has but two laws--to look in one direction and to live in one way.[ ] christians call this, and with reason, the imitation of christ; and it was in order to carry forward this imitation more perfectly that all the great christian systems of spiritual training were framed. the new testament leaves us in no doubt that the central fact of our lord's life was his abiding sense of direct connection with and responsibility to the father; that his teaching and works of charity alike were inspired by this union; and that he declared it, not as a unique fact, but as a possible human ideal. this is not a theological, but a historical statement, which applies, in its degree to every man and woman who has been a follower of christ: for he was, as st. paul has said, "the eldest in a vast family of brothers." the same single-minded effort and attainment meet us in other great faiths; though these may lack a historic ideal of perfect holiness and love. and by a paradox repeated again and again in human history, it is this utter devotion to the spiritual and eternal which is seen to bring forth the most abundant fruits in the temporal sphere; giving not only the strength to do difficult things, but that creative charity which "wins and redeems the unlovely by the power of its love."[ ] the man or woman of prayer, the community devoted to it, tap some deep source of power and use it in the most practical ways. thus, the only object of the benedictine rule was the fostering of goodness in those who adopted it, the education of the soul; and it became one of the chief instruments in the civilization of europe, carrying forward not only religion, but education, pure scholarship, art, and industrial reform. the object of st. bernard's reform was the restoration of the life of prayer. his monks, going out into the waste places with no provision but their own faith, hope and charity, revived agriculture, established industry, literally compelled the wilderness to flower for god. the brothers of the common life joined together, in order that, living simply and by their own industry, they might observe a rule of constant prayer: and they became in consequence a powerful educational influence. the object of wesley and his first companions was by declaration the saving of their own souls and the living only to the glory of god; but they were impelled at once by this to practical deeds of mercy, and ultimately became the regenerators of religion in the english-speaking world. it is well to emphasize this truth, for it conveys a lesson which we can learn from history at the present time with much profit to ourselves. it means that reconstruction of character and reorientation of attention must precede reconstruction of society; that the sufi is right when he declares that the whole secret lies in looking in one direction and living in one way. again and again it has been proved, that those who aim at god do better work than those who start with the declared intention of benefiting their fellow-men. we must _be_ good before we can _do_ good; be real before we can accomplish real things. no generalized benevolence, no social christianity, however beautiful and devoted, can take the place of this centring of the spirit on eternal values; this humble, deliberate recourse to reality. to suppose that it can do so, is to fly in the face of history and mistake effect for cause. this brings us to the _second character_: the rich completeness of the spiritual life, the way in which it fuses and transfigures the complementary human tendencies to contemplation and action, the non-successive and successive aspects of reality. "the love of god," said ruysbroeck, "is an indrawing _and_ outpouring tide";[ ] and history endorses this. in its greatest representatives, the rhythm of adoration and work is seen in an accentuated form. these people seldom or never answer to the popular idea of idle contemplatives. they do not withdraw from the stream of natural life and effort, but plunge into it more deeply, seek its heart. they have powers of expression and creation, and use them to the full. st. paul, st. benedict, st. bernard, st. francis, st. teresa, st. ignatius organizing families which shall incarnate the gift of new life; fox, wesley and booth striving to save other men; mary slessor driven by vocation from the dundee mill to the african swamps--these are characteristic of them. we perceive that they are not specialists, as more earthly types of efficiency are apt to be. theirs are rich natures, their touch on existence has often an artistic quality, st. paul in his correspondence could break into poetry, as the only way of telling the truth. st. jerome lived to the full the lives of scholar and of ascetic. st. francis, in his perpetual missionary activities, still found time for his music songs; st. hildegarde and st. catherine of siena had their strong political interests; jacopone da todi combined the careers of contemplative politician and poet. so too in practical matters. st. catherine of genoa was one of the first hospital administrators, st. vincent de paul a genius in the sphere of organized charity, elizabeth fry in that of prison reform. brother laurence assures us that he did his cooking the better for doing it in the presence of god. jacob boehme was a hard-working cobbler, and afterwards as a writer showed amazing powers of composition. the perpetual journeyings and activities of wesley reproduced in smaller compass the career of st. paul: he was also an exact scholar and a practical educationist. mary slessor showed the quality of a ruler as well as that of a winner of souls. in the intellectual region, richard of st. victor was supreme in contemplation, and also a psychologist far in advance of his time. we are apt to forget the mystical side of aquinas; who was poet and contemplative as well as scholastic philosopher. and the third feature we notice about these men and women is, that this new power by which they lived was, as ruysbroeck calls it, "a spreading light."[ ] it poured out of them, invading and illuminating other men: so that, through them, whole groups or societies were re-born, if only for a time, on to fresh levels of reality, goodness and power. their own intense personal experience was valid not only for themselves. they belonged to that class of natural, leaders who are capable,--of infecting the herd with their own ideals; leading it to new feeding grounds, improving the common level it is indeed the main social function of the man or woman of the spirit to be such a crowd-compeller in the highest sense; and, as the artist reveals new beauty to his fellow-men, to stimulate in their neighbours the latent human capacity for god. in every great surge forward to new life, we can trace back the radiance to such a single point of light; the transfiguration of an individual soul. thus christ's communion with his father was the life-centre, the point of contact with eternity, whence radiated the joy and power of the primitive christian flock: the classic example of a corporate spiritual life. when the young man with great possessions asked jesus, "what shall i do to be saved?" jesus replied in effect, "put aside all lesser interests, strip off unrealities, and come, give yourself the chance of catching the infection of holiness from me." whatever be our view of christian dogma, whatever meaning we attach to the words "redemption" and "atonement," we shall hardly deny that in the life and character of the historic christ something new was thus evoked from, and added to, humanity. no one can read with attention the gospel and the story of the primitive church, without being struck by the consciousness of renovation, of enhancement, experienced by all who received the christian secret in its charismatic stage. this new factor is sometimes called re-birth, sometimes grace, sometimes the power of the spirit, sometimes being "in christ." we misread history if we regard it either as a mere gust of emotional fervour, or a theological idea, or discount the "miracles of healing" and other proofs of enhanced power by which it was expressed. everything goes to prove that the "more abundant life" offered by the johannine christ to his followers, was literally experienced by them; and was the source of their joy, their enthusiasm, their mutual love and power of endurance. on lower levels, and through the inspiration of lesser teachers, history shows us the phenomena of primitive christianity repeated again and again; both within and without the christian circle of ideas. every religion looks for, and most have possessed, some revealer of the spirit; some prophet, buddha, mahdi, or messiah. in all, the characteristic demonstrations of the human power of transcendence--a supernatural life which can be lived by us--have begun in one person, who has become a creative centre mediating new life to his fellow-men: as were buddha and mohammed for the faiths which they founded. such lives as those of st. paul, st. benedict, st. francis, fox, wesley, booth are outstanding examples of the operation of this law. the parable of the leaven is in fact an exact description of the way in which the spiritual consciousness--the supernatural urge--is observed to spread in human society. it is characteristic of the regenerate type, that he should as it were overflow his own boundaries and energize other souls: for the gift of a real and harmonized life pours out inevitably from those who possess it to other men. we notice that the great mystics recognize again and again such a fertilizing and creative power, as a mark of the soul's full vitality. it is not the personal rapture of the spiritual marriage, but rather the "divine fecundity" of one who is a parent of spiritual children; which seems to them the goal of human transcendence, and evidence of a life truly lived on eternal levels, in real union with god. "in the fourth and last degree of love the soul brings forth its children," says richard of st. victor.[ ] "the last perfection to supervene upon a thing," says aquinas, "is its becoming the cause of other things."[ ] in a word, it is creative. and the spiritual life as we see it in history is thus creative; the cause of other things. history is full of examples of this law: that the man or woman of the spirit is, fundamentally, a life-giver; and all corporate achievement of the life of the spirit flows from some great apostle or initiator, is the fruit of discipleship. such corporate achievement is a form of group consciousness, brought into being through the power and attraction of a fully harmonized life, infecting others with its own sharp sense of divine reality. poets and artists thus infect in a measure all those who yield to their influence. the active mystic, who is the poet of eternal life, does it in a supreme degree. such a relation of master and disciples is conspicuous in every true spiritual revival; and is the link between the personal and corporate aspects of regeneration. we see it in the little flock that followed christ, the little poor men who followed francis, the friends of fox, the army of general booth. not christianity alone, but hindu and moslem history testify to this necessity. the hindu who is drawn to the spiritual life must find a _guru_ who can not only teach its laws but also give its atmosphere; and must accept his discipline in a spirit of obedience. the s[=u]fi neophyte is directed to place himself in the hands of his _sheikh_ "as a corpse in the hands of the washer"; and all the great saints of islam have been the inspiring centres of more or less organized groups. history teaches us, in fact, that god most often educates men through men. we most easily recognize spirit when it is perceived transfiguring human character, and most easily achieve it by means of sympathetic contagion. though the new light may flash, as it seems, directly into the soul of the specially gifted or the inspired, this spontaneous outbreaking of novelty is comparatively rare; and even here, careful analysis will generally reveal the extent in which environment, tradition, teaching literary or oral, have prepared the way for it. there is no aptitude so great that it can afford to dispense with human experience and education. even the noblest of the sons and daughters of god are also the sons and daughters of the race; and are helped by those who go before them. and as regards the generality, not isolated effort but the love and sincerity of the true spiritual teacher--and every man and woman of the spirit is such a teacher within his own sphere of influence--the unselfconscious trust of the disciple, are the means by which the secret of full life has been handed on. "one loving spirit," said st. augustine, "sets another on fire"; and expressed in this phrase the law which governs the spiritual history of man. this law finds notable expression in the phenomena of the religious order; a type of association, found in more or less perfection in every great religion, which has not received the attention it deserves from students of psychology. if we study the lives of those who founded these orders--though such a foundation was not always intended by them--we notice one general characteristic: each was an enthusiast, abounding in zest and hope, and became in his lifetime a fount of regeneration, a source of spiritual infection, for those who came under his influence. in each the spiritual world was seen "through a temperament," and so mediated to the disciples; who shared so far as they were able the master's special secret and attitude to life. thus st. benedict's sane and generous outlook is crystallized in the benedictine rule. st. francis' deep sense of the connection between poverty and freedom gave franciscan regeneration its peculiar character. the heroisms of the early jesuit missionaries reflected the strong courageous temper of st. ignatius. the rich contemplative life of carmel is a direct inheritance from st. teresa's mystical experience. the great orders in their purity were families, inheriting and reproducing the salient qualities of their patriarch; who gave, as a father to his children, life stamped with his own characteristics. yet sooner or later after the withdrawal of its founder, the group appears to lose its spontaneous and enthusiastic character. zest fails. unless a fresh leader be forthcoming, it inevitably settles down again towards the general level of the herd. thence it can only be roused by means of "reforms" or "revivals," the arrival of new, vigorous leaders, and the formation of new enthusiastic groups: for the bulk of men as we know them cannot or will not make the costing effort needed for a first-hand participation in eternal life. they want a "crowd-compeller" to lift them above themselves. thus the history of christianity is the history of successive spiritual group-formations, and their struggle to survive; from the time when jesus of nazareth formed his little flock with the avowed aim of "bringing in the kingdom of god"--transmuting the mentality of the race, and so giving it more abundant life. christians appeal to the continued teaching and compelling power of their master, the influence and infection of his spirit and atmosphere, as the greatest of the regenerative forces still at work within life: and this is undoubtedly true of those devout spirits able to maintain contact with the eternal world in prayer. the great speech of serenus de cressy in "john inglesant" described once for all the highest type of christian spirituality.[ ] but in practice this link and this influence are too subtle for the mass of men. they must constantly be re-experienced by ardent and consecrated souls; and by them be mediated to fresh groups, formed within or without the institutional frame. thus in the thirteenth century st. francis, and in the fourteenth the friends of god, created a true spiritual society within the church, by restoring in themselves and their followers the lost consistency between christian idea and christian life. in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, fox and wesley possessed by the same essential vision, broke away from the institution which was no longer supple enough to meet their needs, and formed their fresh groups outside the old herd. when such creative personalities appear and such groups are founded by them, the phenomena of the spiritual life reappear in their full vigour, and are disseminated. a new vitality, a fresh power of endurance, is seen in all who are drawn within the group and share its mind. this is what st. paul seems to have meant, when he reminded his converts that they had the mind of christ. the primitive friars, living under the influence of francis, did practice the perfect poverty which is also perfect joy. the assured calm and willing sufferings of the early christians were reproduced in the early quakers, secure in their possession of the inner light. we know very well the essential characters of this fresh mentality; the power, the enthusiasm, the radiant joy, the indifference to pain and hardship it confers. but we can no more produce it from these raw materials than the chemist's crucible can produce life. the whole experience of st. francis is implied in the beatitudes. the secret of elizabeth fry is the secret of st. john. the doctrine of general booth is fully stated by st. paul. but it was not by referring inquirers to the pages of the new testament that the first brought men fettered by things to experience the freedom of poverty; the second faced and tamed three hundred newgate criminals, who seemed at her first visit "like wild beasts"; or the third created armies of the redeemed from the dregs of the london slums. they did these things by direct personal contagion; and they will be done among us again when the triumphant power of eternal spirit is again exhibited, not in ideas but in human character. i think, then, that history justifies us in regarding the full living of the spiritual life as implying at least these three characters. first, single-mindedness: to mean only god. second, the full integration of the contemplative and active sides of existence, lifted up, harmonized, and completely consecrated to those interests which the self recognizes as divine. third, the power of reproducing this life; incorporating it in a group. before we go on, we will look at one concrete example which illustrates all these points. this example is that of st. benedict and the order which he founded; for in the rounded completeness of his life and system we see what should be the normal life of the spirit, and its result. benedict was born in times not unlike our own, when wars had shaken civilization, the arts of peace were unsettled, religion was at a low ebb. as a young man, he experienced an intense revulsion from the vicious futility of roman society, fled into the hills, and lived in a cave for three years alone with his thoughts of god. it would be easy to regard him as an eccentric boy: but he was adjusting himself to the real centre of his life. gradually others who longed for a more real existence joined him, and he divided them into groups of twelve, and settled them in small houses; giving them a time-table by which to live, which should make possible a full and balanced existence of body, mind and soul. thanks to those years of retreat and preparation, he knew what he wanted and what he ought to do; and they ushered in a long life of intense mental and spiritual activity. his houses were schools, which taught the service of god and the perfecting of the soul as the aims of life. his rule, in which genial human tolerance, gentle courtesy, and a profound understanding of men are not less marked than lofty spirituality, is the classic statement of all that the christian spiritual life implies and should be.[ ] what, then, is the character of the life which st. benedict proposed as a remedy for the human failure and disharmony that he saw around him? it was framed, of course, for a celibate community: but it has many permanent features which are unaffected by his limitation. it offers balanced opportunities of development to the body, the mind and the spirit; laying equal emphasis on hard work, study, and prayer. it aims at a robust completeness, not at the production of professional ascetics; indeed, its rule says little about physical austerities, insists on sufficient food and rest, and countenances no extremes. according to abbot butler, st. benedict's day was divided into three and a half hours for public worship, four and a half for reading and meditation, six and a half for manual work, eight and a half for sleep, and one hour for meals. so that in spite of the time devoted to spiritual and mental interests, the primitive benedictine did a good day's work and had a good night's rest at the end of it. the work might be anything that wanted doing, so long as the hours of prayer were not infringed. agriculture, scholarship, education, handicrafts and art have all been done perfectly by st. benedict's sons, working and willing in quiet love. this is what one of the greatest constructive minds of christendom regarded as a reasonable way of life; a frame within which the loftiest human faculties could grow, and man's spirit achieve that harmony with god which is its goal. moreover, this life was to be social. it was in the beginning just the busy useful life of an italian farm, lived in groups--in monastic families, under the rule and inspiration not of a master but of an abbot; a father who really was the spiritual parent of his monks, and sought to train them in the humility, obedience, self-denial and gentle suppleness of character which are the authentic fruits of the spirit. this ideal, it seems to me, has something still to say to us; some reproof to administer to our hurried and muddled existence, our confusion of values, our failure to find time for reality. we shall find in it and its creator, if we look, all those marks of the regenerate life of the spirit which history has shown to us as normal: namely the transcendent aim, the balanced career of action and contemplation, the creative power, and above all the principle of social solidarity and discipleship. we go on to ask history what it has to tell us on the second point, the process by which the individual normally develops this life of the spirit, the serial changes it demands; for plainly, to know this is of practical importance to us. the full inwardness of these changes will be considered when we come to the personal aspect of the spiritual life. now we are only concerned to notice that history tends to establish the constant recurrence of a normal process, recognizable alike in great and small personalities under the various labels which have been given to it, by which the self moves from its usually exclusive correspondence with the temporal order to those full correspondences with reality, that union with god, characteristic of the spiritual life. this life we must believe in some form and degree to be possible for all; but we study it best on heroic levels, for here its moments are best marked and its fullest records survive. the first moment of this process seems to be, that man falls out of love with life as he has commonly lived it, and the world as he has known it. dissatisfaction and disillusion possess him; the negative marks of his nascent intuition of another life, for which he is intended but which he has not yet found. we see this initial phase very well in st. benedict, disgusted by the meaningless life of roman society; in st. francis, abandoning his gay and successful social existence; in richard rolle, turning suddenly from scholarship to a hermit's life; in the restless misery of st. catherine of genoa; in fox, desperately seeking "something that could speak to his condition"; and also in two outstanding examples from modern india, those of the maharishi devendranath tagore and the sadhu sundar singh. this dissatisfaction, sometimes associated with the negative vision or conviction of sin, sometimes with the positive longing for holiness and peace, is the mental preparation of conversion; which, though not a constant, is at least a characteristic feature of the beginning of the spiritual life as seen in history. we might, indeed, expect some crucial change of attitude, some inner crisis, to mark the beginning of a new life which is to aim only at god. here too we find one motive of that movement of world-abandonment which so commonly follows conversion, especially in heroic souls. thus st. paul hides himself in arabia; st. benedict retires for three years to the cave at subiaco; st. ignatius to manresa. gerard groot, the brilliant and wealthy young dutchman who founded the brotherhood of the common life, began his new life by self-seclusion in a carthusian cell. st. catherine of siena at first lived solitary in her own room. st. francis with dramatic completeness abandoned his whole past, even the clothing that was part of it. jacopone da todi, the prosperous lawyer converted to christ's poverty, resorted to the most grotesque devices to express his utter separation from the world. others, it is true, have chosen quieter methods, and found in that which st. catherine calls the cell of self-knowledge the solitude they required; but _some_ decisive break was imperative for all. history assures us that there is no easy sliding into the life of the spirit. a secondary cause of such world refusal is the first awakening of the contemplative powers; the intuition of eternity, hitherto dormant, and felt at this stage to be--in its overwhelming reality and appeal--in conflict with the unreal world and unsublimated active life. this is the controlling idea of the hermit and recluse. it is well seen in st. teresa; whom her biographers describe as torn, for years, between the interests of human intercourse and the imperative inner voice urging her to solitary self-discipline and prayer. so we may say that in the beginning of the life of the spirit, as history shows it to us, if disillusion marks the first moment, some measure of asceticism, of world-refusal and painful self-schooling, is likely to mark the second moment. what we are watching is the complete reconstruction of personality; a personality that has generally grown into the wrong shape. this is likely to be a hard and painful business; and indeed history assures us that it is, and further that the spiritual life is never achieved by taking the line of least resistance and basking in the divine light. with world-refusal, then, is intimately connected stern moral conflict; often lasting for years, and having as its object the conquest of selfhood in all its insidious forms. "take one step out of yourself," say the s[=u]fis, "and you will arrive at god."[ ] this one step is the most difficult act of life; yet urged by love, man has taken it again and again. this phase is so familiar to every reader of spiritual biography, that i need not insist upon it. "in the field of this body," says kabir, "a great war goes forward, against passion, anger, pride and greed. it is in the kingdom of truth, contentment and purity that this battle is raging, and the sword that rings forth most loudly is the sword of his name."[ ] "man," says boehme, "must here be at war with himself if he wishes to be a heavenly citizen ... fighting must be the watchword, not with tongue and sword, but with mind and spirit; and not to give over."[ ] the need of such a conflict, shown to us in history, is explained on human levels by psychology. on spiritual levels it is made plain to all whose hearts are touched by the love of god. by this way all must pass who achieve the life of the spirit; subduing to its purposes their wayward wills, and sublimating in its power their conflicting animal impulses. this long effort brings, as its reward a unification of character, an inflow of power: from it we see the mature man or woman of the spirit emerge. in st. catherine of genoa this conflict lasted for four years, after which the thought of sin ceased to rule her consciousness.[ ] st. teresa's intermittent struggles are said to have continued for thirty years. john wesley, always deeply religious, did not attain the inner stability he calls assurance till he was thirty-five years old. blake was for twenty years in mental conflict, shut off from the sources of his spiritual life. so slowly do great personalities come to their full stature, and subdue their vigorous impulses to the one ruling idea. the ending of this conflict, the self's unification and establishment in the new life, commonly means a return more or less complete to that world from which the convert had retreated; taking up of the fully energized and fully consecrated human existence, which must express itself in work no less than in prayer; an exhibition too of the capacity for leadership which is the mark of the regenerate mind. thus the "first return" of the buddhist saint is "from the absolute world to the world of phenomena to save all sentient beings."[ ] thus st. benedict's and st. catherine of siena's three solitary years are the preparation for their great and active life works. st. catherine of genoa, first a disappointed and world-weary woman and then a penitent, emerges as a busy and devoted hospital matron and inspired teacher of a group of disciples. st. teresa's long interior struggles precede her vigorous career as founder and reformer; her creation of spiritual families, new centres of contemplative life. the vast activities of fox and wesley were the fruits first of inner conflict, then of assurance--the experience of god and of the self's relation to him. and on the highest levels of the spiritual life as history shows them to us, this experience and realization, first of profound harmony with eternity and its interests, next of a personal relation of love, last of an indwelling creative power, a givenness, an energizing grace, reaches that completeness to which has been given the name of union with god. the great man or woman of the spirit who achieves this perfect development is, it is true, a special product: a genius, comparable with great creative personalities in other walks of life. but he neither invalidates the smaller talent nor the more general tendency in which his supreme gift takes its rise. where he appears, that tendency is vigorously stimulated. like other artists, he founds a school; the spiritual life flames up, and spreads to those within his circle of influence. through him, ordinary men, whose aptitude for god might have remained latent, obtain a fresh start; an impetus to growth. there is a sense in which he might say with the johannine christ, "he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me"; for yielding to his magnetism, men really yield to the drawing of the spirit itself. and when they do this, their lives are found to reproduce--though with less intensity--the life history of their leader. therefore the main characters of that life history, that steady undivided process of sublimation; are normal human characters. we too may heal the discords of our moral nature, learn to judge existence in the universal light, bring into consciousness our latent transcendental sense, and keep ourselves so spiritually supple that alike in times of stress and hours of prayer and silence we are aware of the mysterious and energizing contact of god. psychology suggests to us that the great spiritual personalities revealed in history are but supreme instances of a searching self-adjustment and of a way of life, always accessible to love and courage, which all men may in some sense undertake. footnotes: [footnote : everard, "some gospel treasures opened," p. ] [footnote : _canor dulcor, canor;_ cf. rolle: "the fire of love," bk. , cap. ] [footnote : rolle: "the mending of life," cap. xii.] [footnote : benedetto croce: "theory and history of historiography," trans. by douglas ainslie, p. .] [footnote : "donne's sermons," p. .] [footnote : b.h. streeter, in "the spirit," p. _seq_.] [footnote : "autobiography of maharishi devendranath tagore," cap. .] [footnote : r.a. nicholson: "studies in islamic mysticism," cap. i.] [footnote : baron von hügel in the "hibbert journal," july, .] [footnote : ruysbroeck: "the sparkling stone," cap. .] [footnote : ruysbroeck: "the adornment of the spiritual marriage," bk. ii, cap. .] [footnote : r. of st. victor: "de quatuor gradibus violentæ charitatis" (migne, pat. lat.) t. , col. .] [footnote : "summa contra gentiles," bk. iii, cap. .] [footnote : j.e. shorthouse: "john inglesant," cap. .] [footnote : cf. delatte: "the rule of st. benedict"; and c. butler: "benedictine monachism."] [footnote : r.a. nicholson: "studies in islamic mysticism," cap. .] [footnote : "one hundred poems of kabir," p. .] [footnote : boehme: "six theosophic points," p. .] [footnote : cf. von hügel: "the mystical element of religion," vol. i, pt. ii.] [footnote : mcgovern: "an introduction to mahãyãna buddhism," p. .] chapter iii psychology and the life of the spirit (i) the analysis of mind having interrogated history in our attempt to discover the essential character of the life of the spirit, wherever it is found, we are now to see what psychology has to tell us or hint to us of its nature; and of the relation in which it stands to the mechanism of our psychic life. it is hardly necessary to say that such an inquiry, fully carried out, would be a life-work. moreover, it is an inquiry which we are not yet in a position to undertake. true, more and more material is daily becoming available for it: but many of the principles involved are, even yet, obscure. therefore any conclusions at which we may arrive can only be tentative; and the theories and schematic representations that we shall be obliged to use must be regarded as mere working diagrams--almost certainly of a temporary character--but useful to us, because they do give us an interpretation of inner experience with which we can deal. i need not emphasize the extent in which modern developments of psychology are affecting our conceptions of the spiritual life, and our reading of many religious phenomena on which our ancestors looked with awe. when we have eliminated the more heady exaggerations of the psycho-analysts, and the too-violent simplifications of the behaviourists, it remains true that many problems have lately been elucidated in an unexpected, and some in a helpful, sense. we are learning in particular to see in true proportion those abnormal states of trance and ecstasy which were once regarded as the essentials, but are now recognized as the by-products, of the mystical life. but a good deal that at first sight seems startling, and even disturbing to the religious mind, turns out on investigation to be no more than the re-labelling of old facts, which behind their new tickets remain unchanged. perhaps no generation has ever been so much at the mercy of such labels as our own. thus many people who are inclined to jibe at the doctrine of original sin welcome it with open arms when it is reintroduced as the uprush of primitive instinct. opportunity of confession to a psychoanalyst is eagerly sought and gladly paid for, by troubled spirits who would never resort for the same purpose to a priest. the formulæ of auto-suggestion are freely used by those who repudiate vocal prayer and acts of faith with scorn. if, then, i use for the purpose of exposition some of those labels which are affected by the newest schools, i do so without any suggestion that they represent the only valid way of dealing with the psychic life of man. indeed, i regard these labels as little more than exceedingly clever guesses at truth. but since they are now generally current and often suggestive, it is well that we should try to find a place for spiritual experience within the system which they represent; thus carrying through the principle on which we are working, that of interpreting the abiding facts of the spiritual life, so far as we can, in the language of the present day. first, then, i propose to consider the analysis of mind, and what it has to tell us about the nature of sin, of salvation, of conversion; what light it casts on the process of purgation or self-purification which is demanded by all religions of the spirit; what are the respective parts played by reason and instinct in the process of regeneration; and the importance for religious experience of the phenomena of apperception. we need not at this point consider again all that we mean by the life of the spirit. we have already considered it as it appears in history--its inexhaustible variety, its power, nobility, and grace. we need only to remind ourselves that what we have got to find room for in our psychological scheme is literally, a changed and enhanced life; a life which, immersed in the stream of history, is yet poised on the eternal world. this life involves a complete re-direction of our desires and impulses, a transfiguration of character; and often, too, a sense of subjugation to superior guidance, of an access of impersonal strength, so overwhelming as to give many of its activities an inspirational or automatic character. we found that this life was marked by a rhythmic alternation between receptivity and activity, more complete and purposeful than the rhythm of work and rest which conditions, or should condition, the healthy life of sense. this re-direction and transfiguration, this removal to a higher term of our mental rhythm, are of course psychic phenomena; using this word in a broad sense, without prejudice to the discrimination of any one aspect of it as spiritual. all that we mean at the moment is, that the change which brings in the spiritual life is a change in the mind and heart of man, working in the stuff of our common human nature, and involving all that the modern psychologist means by the word psyche. we begin therefore with the nature of the psyche as this modern, growing, changing psychology conceives it; for this is the raw material of regenerate man. if we exclude those merely degraded and pathological theories which have resulted from too exclusive a study of degenerate minds, we find that the current conception of the psyche--by which of course i do not mean the classic conceptions of ward or even william james--was anticipated by plotinus, when he said in the fourth ennead, that every soul has something of the lower life for the purposes of the body and of the higher for the purposes of the spirit, and yet constitutes a unity; an unbroken series of ascending values and powers of response, from the levels of merely physical and mainly unconscious life to those of the self-determining and creative consciousness.[ ] we first discover psychic energy as undifferentiated directive power, controlling response and adaption to environment; and as it develops, ever increasing the complexity of its impulses and habits, yet never abandoning anything of its past. instinct represents the correspondence of this life-force with mere nature, its effort as it were to keep its footing and accomplish its destiny in the world of time. spirit represents this same life acting on highest levels, with most vivid purpose; seeking and achieving correspondence with the eternal world, and realities of the loftiest order yet discovered to be accessible to us. we are compelled to use words of this kind; and the proceeding is harmless enough so long as we remember that they are abstractions, and that we have no real reason to suppose breaks in the life process which extends from the infant's first craving for food and shelter to the saint's craving for the knowledge of god. this urgent, craving life is the dominant characteristic of the psyche. thought is but the last come and least developed of its powers; one among its various responses to environment, and ways of laying hold on experience. this conception of the multiplicity in unity of the psyche, conscious and unconscious, is probably one of the most important results of recent psychological advance. it means that we cannot any longer in the good old way rule off bits or aspects of it, and call them intellect, soul, spirit, conscience and so forth; or, on the other hand, refer to our "lower" nature as if it were something separate from ourselves. i am spirit when i pray, if i pray rightly. i am my lower nature, when my thoughts and deeds are swayed by my primitive impulses and physical longings, declared or disguised. i am most wholly myself when that impulsive nature and that craving spirit are welded into one, subject to the same emotional stimulus, directed to one goal. when theologians and psychologists, ignoring this unity of the self, set up arbitrary divisions--and both classes are very fond of doing so--they are merely making diagrams for their own convenience. we ourselves shall probably be compelled to do this: and the proceeding is harmless enough, so long as we recollect that these diagrams are at best symbolic pictures of fact. specially is it necessary to keep our heads, and refuse to be led away by the constant modern talk of the primitive, unconscious, foreconscious instinctive and other minds which are so prominent in modern psychological literature, or by the spatial suggestions of such terms as threshold, complex, channel of discharge: remembering always the central unity and non-material nature of that many-faced psychic life which is described under these various formulæ. if we accept this central unity with all its implications, it follows that we cannot take our superior and conscious faculties, set them apart, and call them "ourselves"; refusing responsibility for the more animal and less fortunate tendencies and instincts which surge up with such distressing ease and frequency from the deeps, by attributing these to nature or heredity. indeed, more and more does it become plain that the sophisticated surface-mind which alone we usually recognize is the smallest, the least developed, and in some respects still the least important part of the real self: that whole man of impulse, thought and desire, which it is the business of religion to capture and domesticate for god. that whole man is an animal-spirit, a living, growing, plastic unit; moving towards a racial future yet unperceived by us, and carrying with him a racial past which conditions at every moment his choices, impulses and acts. only the most rigid self-examination will disclose to us the extent in which the jungle and the stone age are still active in our games, our politics and our creeds; how many of our motives are still those of primitive man, and how many of our social institutions offer him a discreet opportunity of self-expression. here, as it seems to me, is a point at which the old thoughts of religion and the new thoughts of psychology may unite and complete one another. here the scientific conception of the psyche is merely restating the fundamental christian paradox, that man is truly one, a living, growing spirit, the creature and child of the divine life; and yet that there seem to be in him, as it were, two antagonistic natures--that duality which st. paul calls the old adam and the new adam. the law of the flesh and the law of the spirit, the earthward-tending life of mere natural impulse and the quickening life of re-directed desire, the natural and the spiritual man, are conceptions which the new psychologist can hardly reject or despise. true, religion and psychology may offer different rationalizations of the facts. that which one calls original sin, the other calls the instinctive mind: but the situation each puts before us is the same. "i find a law," says st. paul, "that when i would do good evil is present with me. for i delight in the law of god after the inward man _but_ i see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind.... with the mind i myself serve the law of god, but with the flesh the law of sin." without going so far as a distinguished psychoanalyst who said in my hearing, "if st. paul had come to me, i feel i could have helped him," i think it is clear that we are learning to give a new content to this, and many other sayings of the new testament. more and more psychology tends to emphasize the pauline distinction; demonstrating that the profound disharmony existing in most civilized men between the impulsive and the rational life, the many conflicts which sap his energy, arise from the persistence within us of the archaic and primitive alongside the modern mind. it demonstrates that the many stages and constituents of our psychic past are still active in each one of us; though often below the threshold of consciousness. the blindly instinctive life, with its almost exclusive interests in food, safety and reproduction; the law of the flesh in its simplest form, carried over from our pre-human ancestry and still capable of taking charge when we are off our guard. the more complex life of the human primitive; with its outlook of wonder, self-interest and fear, developed under conditions of ignorance, peril and perpetual struggle for life. the history of primitive man covers millions of years: the history of civilized man, a few thousand at the most. therefore it is not surprising that the primitive outlook should have bitten hard into the plastic stuff of the developing psyche, and forms still the infantile foundation of our mental life. finally, there is the rational life, so far as the rational is yet achieved by us; correcting, conflicting with, and seeking to refine and control the vigour of primitive impulse. but if it is to give an account of all the facts psychology must also point out, and find place for, the last-comer in the evolutionary series: the rare and still rudimentary achievement of the spiritual consciousness, bearing witness that we are the children of god, and pointing, not backward to the roots but onward to the fruits of human growth. but it cannot allow us to think of this spiritual life as something separate from, and wholly unconditioned by, our racial past. we must rather conceive it as the crown of our psychic evolution, the end of that process which began in the dawn of consciousness and which st. paul calls "growing up into the stature of christ." here psychology is in harmony with the teaching of those mystics who invite us to recognize, not a completed spirit, but rather a seed within us. in the spiritual yearnings, the profound and yet uncertain stirrings of the religious consciousness, its half-understood impulses to god, we perceive the floating-up into the conscious field of this deep germinal life. and psychology warns us, i think, that in our efforts to forward the upgrowth of this spiritual life, we must take into account those earlier types of reaction to the universe which still continue underneath our bright modern appearance, and still inevitably condition and explain so many of our motives and our deeds. it warns us that the psychic growth of humanity is slow and uneven; and that every one of us still retains, though not always it is true in a recognizable form, many of the characters of those stages of development through which the race has passed--characters which inevitably give their colour to our religious no less than to our social life. "i desire," says à kempis, "to enjoy thee inwardly but i cannot take thee. i desire to cleave to heavenly things but fleshly things and unmortified passions depress me. i will in my mind be above all things but in despite of myself i am constrained to be beneath, so i unhappy man fight with myself and am made grievous to myself while the spirit seeketh what is above and the flesh what is beneath. o what i suffer within while i think on heavenly things in my mind; the company of fleshly things cometh against me when i pray."[ ] "oh master," says the scholar in boehme's great dialogue, "the creatures that live in me so withhold me, that i cannot wholly yield and give myself up as i willingly would."[ ] no psychologist has come nearer to a statement of the human situation than have these old specialists in the spiritual life. the bearing of all this on the study of organized religion is of course of great importance; and will be discussed in a subsequent section. all that i wish to point out now is that the beliefs, and the explanations of action, put forward by our rationalizing surface consciousness are often mere veils which drape the crudeness of our real desires and reactions to life; and that before life can be reintegrated about its highest centres, these real beliefs and motives must be tracked down, and their humiliating character acknowledged. the ape and the tiger, in fact, are not dead in any one of us. in polite persons they are caged, which is a very different thing: and a careful introspection will teach us to recognize their snarls and chatterings, their urgent requests for more mutton chops or bananas, under the many disguises which they assume--disguises which are not infrequently borrowed from ethics or from religion. thus a primitive desire for revenge often masquerades as justice, and an unedifying interest in personal safety can be discerned in at least some interpretations of atonement, and some aspirations towards immortality.[ ] i now go on to a second point. it will already be clear that the modern conception of the many-levelled psyche gives us a fresh standpoint from which to consider the nature of sin. it suggests to us, that the essence of much sin is conservatism, or atavism: that it is rooted in the tendency of the instinctive life to go on, in changed circumstances, acting in the same old way. virtue, perfect rightness of correspondence with our present surroundings, perfect consistency of our deeds with our best ideas, is hard work. it means the sublimation of crude instinct, the steady control of impulse by such reason as we possess; and perpetually forces us to use on new and higher levels that machinery of habit-formation, that power of implanting tendencies in the plastic psyche, to which man owes his earthly dominance. when our unstable psychic life relaxes tension and sinks to lower levels than this, and it is always tending so to do, we are relapsing to antique methods of response, suitable to an environment which is no longer there. few people go through life without knowing what it is to feel a sudden, even murderous, impulse to destroy the obstacle in their path; or seize, at all costs, that which they desire. our ancestors called these uprushes the solicitations of the devil, seeking to destroy the christian soul; and regarded them with justice as an opportunity of testing our spiritual strength. it is true that every man has within him such a tempting spirit; but its characters can better be studied in the zoological gardens than in the convolutions of a theological hell. "external reason," says boehme, "supposes that hell is far from us. but it is near us. every one carries it in himself."[ ] many of our vices, in fact, are simply savage qualities--and some are even savage virtues--in their old age. thus in an organized society the acquisitiveness and self-assertion proper to a vigorous primitive dependent on his own powers survive as the sins of envy and covetousness, and are seen operating in the dishonesty of the burglar, the greed and egotism of the profiteer: and, on the highest levels, the great spiritual sin of pride may be traced back to a perverted expression of that self-regarding instinct without which the individual could hardly survive. when therefore qualities which were once useful on their own level are outgrown but unsublimated, and check the movement towards life's spiritualization, then--whatever they may be--they belong to the body of death, not to the body of life, and are "sin." "call sin a lump--none other thing than thyself," says "the cloud of unknowing."[ ] capitulation to it is often brought about by mere slackness, or, as religion would say, by the mortal sin of sloth; which julian of norwich declares to be one of the two most deadly sicknesses of the soul. sometimes; too, sin is deliberately indulged in because of the perverse satisfaction which this yielding to old craving gives us. the violent-tempered man becomes once more a primitive, when he yields to wrath. a starved and repressed side of his nature--the old adam, in fact--leaps up into consciousness and glories in its strength. he obtains from the explosion an immense feeling of relief; and so too with the other great natural passions which our religious or social morality keeps in check. even the saints have known these revenges of natural instincts too violently denied. thoughts of obscene words and gestures came unasked to torment the pure soul of catherine of siena.[ ] st. teresa complained that the devil sometimes sent her so offensive a spirit of bad temper that she could eat people up.[ ] games and sport of a combative or destructive kind provide an innocent outlet for a certain amount of this unused ferocity; and indeed the chief function of games in the modern state is to help us avoid occasions of sin. the sinfulness of any deed depends, therefore, on this theory, on the extent in which it involves retrogression from the point we have achieved: failure to correspond with the light we possess. the inequality of the moral standard all over the world is a simple demonstration of this fact: for many a deed which is innocent in new guinea, would in london provoke the immediate attention of the police. does not this view of sin, as primarily a fall-back to past levels of conduct and experience, a defeat of the spirit of the future in its conflict with the undying past, give us a fresh standpoint from which to look at the idea of salvation? we know that all religions of the spirit have based their claim upon man on such an offer of salvation: on the conviction that there is something from which he needs to be rescued, if he is to achieve a satisfactory life. what is it, then, from which he must be saved? i think that the answer must be, from conflict: the conflict between the pull-back of his racial origin and the pull-forward of his spiritual destiny, the antagonism between the buried titan and the emerging soul, each tending towards adaptation to a different order of reality. we may as well acknowledge that man as he stands is mostly full of conflicts and resistances: that the trite verse about "fightings and fears within, without" does really describe the unregenerate yet sensitive mind with its ineffective struggles, its inveterate egotism, its inconsistent impulses and loves. man's young will and reason need some reinforcement, some helping power, if they are to conquer and control his archaic impulsive life. and this salvation, this extrication from the wrongful and atavistic claims of primitive impulse in its many strange forms, is a prime business of religion; sometimes achieved in the sudden convulsion we call conversion, and sometimes by the slower process of education. the wrong way to do it is seen in the methods of the puritan and the extreme ascetic, where all animal impulse is regarded as "sin" and repressed: a proceeding which involves the risk of grave physical and mental disorder, and produces even at the best a bloodless pietism. the right way to do it was described once for all by jacob boehme, when he said that it was the business of a spiritual man to "harness his fiery energies to the service of the light--" that is to say, change the direction of our passionate cravings for satisfaction, harmonize and devote them to spiritual ends. this is true regeneration: this is the salvation offered to man, the healing of his psychic conflict by the unification of his instinctive and his ideal life. the voice which st. mechthild heard, saying "come and be reconciled," expresses the deepest need of civilized but unspiritualized humanity. this need for the conversion or remaking of the instinctive life, rather than the achievement of mere beliefs, has always been appreciated by real spiritual teachers; who are usually some generations in advance of the psychologists. here they agree in finding the "root of evil," the heart of the "old man" and best promise of the "new." here is the raw material both of vice and of virtue--namely, a mass of desires and cravings which are in themselves neither moral nor immoral, but natural and self-regarding. "in will, imagination and desire," says william law, "consists the life or fiery driving of every intelligent creature."[ ] the divine voice which said to jacopone da todi "set love in order, thou that lovest me!" declared the one law of mental growth.[ ] to use for a moment the language of mystical theology, conversion, or repentance, the first step towards the spiritual life, consists in a change in the direction of these cravings and desires; purgation or purification, in which the work begun in conversion is made complete, in their steadfast setting in order or re-education, and that refinement and fixation of the most desirable among them which we call the formation of habit, and which is the essence of character building. it is from this hard, conscious and deliberate work of adapting our psychic energy to new and higher correspondences, this costly moral effort and true self-conquest, that the spiritual life in man draws its earnestness, reality and worth. "oh, academicus," says william law, in terms that any psychologist would endorse, "forget your scholarship, give up your art and criticism, be a plain man; and then the first rudiments of sense may teach you that there, and there only, can goodness be, where it comes forth as a birth of life, and is the free natural work and fruit of that which lives within us. for till goodness thus comes from a life within us, we have in truth none at all. for reason, with all its doctrine, discipline, and rules, can only help us to be so good, so changed, and amended, as a wild beast may be, that by restraints and methods is taught to put on a sort of tameness, though its wild nature is all the time only restrained, and in a readiness to break forth again as occasion shall offer."[ ] our business, then, is not to restrain, but to put the wild beast to work, and use its mighty energies; for thus only shall we find the power to perform hard acts. see the young salvation army convert turning over the lust for drink or sexual satisfaction to the lust to save his fellow-men. this transformation or sublimation is not the work of reason. his instinctive life, the main source of conduct, has been directed into a fresh channel of use. we may now look a little more closely at the character and potentialties of our instinctive life: for this life is plainly of the highest importance to us, since it will either energize or thwart all the efforts of the rational self. current psychology, even more plainly than religion, encourages us to recognize in this powerful instinctive nature the real source of our conduct, the origin of all those dynamic personal demands, those impulses to action, which condition the full and successful life of the natural man. instincts in the animal and the natural man are the methods by which the life force takes care of its own interests, insures its own full development, its unimpeded forward drive. in so far as we form part of the animal kingdom our own safety, property, food, dominance, and the reproduction of our own type, are inevitably the first objects of our instinctive care. civilized life has disguised some of these crude demands and the behaviour which is inspired by them, but their essential character remains unchanged. love and hate, fear and wonder, self-assertion and self-abasement, the gregarious, the acquisitive, the constructive tendencies, are all expressions of instinctive feeling; and can be traced back to our simplest animal needs. but instincts are not fixed tendencies: they are adaptable. this can be seen clearly in the case of animals whose environment is artificially changed. in the dog, for instance, loyalty to the interests of the pack has become loyalty to his master's household. in man, too, there has already been obvious modification and sublimation of many instincts. the hunting impulse begins in the jungle, and may end in the philosopher's exploration of the infinite. it is the combative instinct which drives the reformer headlong against the evils of the world, as it once drove two cave men at each others' throats. love, which begins in the mergence of two cells, ends in the saint's supreme discovery, "thou art the love wherewith the heart loves thee."[ ] the much advertized herd instinct may weld us into a mob at the mercy of unreasoning passions; but it can also make us living members of the communion of saints. the appeals of the prophet and the revivalist, the psalmist's "taste and see," the baptist's "change your hearts," are all invitations to an alteration in the direction of desire, which would turn our instinctive energies in a new direction and begin the domestication of the human soul for god. this, then, is the real business of conversion and of the character building that succeeds it; the harnessing of instinct to idea and its direction into new and more lofty channels of use, transmuting the turmoil of man's merely egoistic ambitions, anxieties and emotional desires into fresh forms of creative energy, and transferring their interest from narrow and unreal to universal objectives. the seven deadly sins of christian ethics--pride, anger, envy, avarice, sloth, gluttony, and lust--represent not so much deliberate wrongfulness, as the outstanding forms of man's uncontrolled and self-regarding instincts; unbridled self-assertion, ruthless acquisitiveness, and undisciplined indulgence of sense. the traditional evangelical virtues of poverty, chastity and obedience which sum up the demands of the spiritual life exactly oppose them. over against the self-assertion of the proud and angry is set the ideal of humble obedience, with its wise suppleness and abnegation of self-will. over against the acquisitiveness of the covetous and envious is set the ideal of inward poverty, with its liberation from the narrow self-interest of i, me and mine. over against the sensual indulgence of the greedy, lustful and lazy is set the ideal of chastity, which finds all creatures pure to enjoy, since it sees them in god, and god in all creatures. yet all this, rightly understood, is no mere policy of repression. it is rather a rational policy of release, freeing for higher activities instinctive force too often thrown away. it is giving the wild beast his work to do, training him. since the instincts represent the efforts of this urgent life in us to achieve self-protection and self-realization, it is plain that the true regeneration of the psyche, its redirection from lower to higher levels, can never be accomplished without their help. we only rise to the top of our powers when the whole man acts together, urged by an enthusiasm or an instinctive need. further, a complete and ungraduated response to stimulus--an "all-or-none reaction"--is characteristic of the instinctive life and of the instinctive life alone. those whom it rules for the time give themselves wholly to it; and so display a power far beyond that of the critical and the controlled. thus, fear or rage will often confer abnormal strength and agility. a really dominant instinct is a veritable source of psycho-physical energy, unifying and maintaining in vigour all the activities directed to its fulfilment.[ ] a young man in love is stimulated not only to emotional ardour, but also to hard work in the interests of the future home. the explorer develops amazing powers of endurance; the inventor in the ecstasy of creation draws on deep vital forces, and may carry on for long periods without sleep or food. if we apply this law to the great examples of the spiritual life, we see in the vigour and totality of their self-giving to spiritual interests a mark of instinctive action; and in the power, the indifference to hardship which these selves develop, the result of unification, of an "all-or-none" response to the religious or philanthropic stimulus. it helps us to understand the cheerful austerities of the true ascetic; the superhuman achievement of st. paul, little hindered by the "thorn in the flesh"; the career of st. joan of arc; the way in which st. teresa or st. ignatius, tormented by ill-health, yet brought their great conceptions to birth; the powers of resistance displayed by george fox and other quaker saints. it explains mary slessor living and working bare-foot and bare-headed under the tropical sun, disdaining the use of mosquito nets, eating native food, and taking with impunity daily risks fatal to the average european.[ ] it shows us, too, why the great heroes of the spiritual life so seldom think out their positions, or husband their powers. they act because they are impelled: often in defiance of all prudent considerations! yet commonly with an amazing success. thus general booth has said that he was driven by "the impulses and urgings of an undying ambition" to save souls. what was this impulse and urge? it was the instinctive energy of a great nature in a sublimated form. the level at which this enhanced power is experienced will determine its value for life; but its character is much the same in the convert at a revival, in the postulant's vivid sense of vocation and consequent break with the world? in the disinterested man of science consecrated to the search for truth, and in the apostle's self-giving to the service of god, with its answering gift of new strength and fruitfulness. its secret, and indeed the secret of all transcendence is implied in the direction of the old english mystic: "mean god all, all god, so that nought work in thy wit and in thy will, but only god,"[ ] the over-belief, the religious formula in which this instinctive passion is expressed, is comparatively unimportant the revivalist, wholly possessed by concrete and anthropomorphic ideas of god which are impossible to a man of different--and, as we suppose, superior--education, can yet, because of the burning reality with which he lives towards the god so strangely conceived, infect those with whom he comes in contact with the spiritual life. we are now in a position to say that the first necessity of the life of the spirit is the sublimation of the instinctive life, involving the transfer of our interest and energy to new objectives, the giving of our old vigour to new longings and new loves. it appears that the invitation of religion to a change of heart, rather than a change of belief, is founded on solid psychological laws. i need not dwell on the way in which divine love, as the saints have understood it, answers to the complete sublimation of our strongest natural passion; or the extent in which the highest experiences of the religious life satisfy man's instinctive craving for self-realization within a greater reality, how he feels himself to be fed with a mysterious food, quickened by a fresh dower of life, assured of his own safety within a friendly universe, given a new objective for his energy. it is notorious that one of the most striking things about a truly spiritual man is, that he has achieved a certain stability which others lack. in him, the central craving of the psyche for more life and more love has reached its bourne; instead of feeding upon those secondary objects of desire which may lull our restlessness but cannot heal it he loves the thing which he ought to love, wants to do the deeds which he ought to do, and finds all aspects of his personality satisfied in one objective. every one has really a forced option between the costly effort to achieve this sublimation of impulse, this unification of the self on spiritual levels, and the quiet evasion of it which is really a capitulation to the animal instincts and unordered cravings of our many-levelled being. we cannot stand still; and this steady downward pull keeps us ever in mind of all the backward-tending possibilities collectively to be thought of as sin, and explains to us why sloth, lack of spiritual energy, is held by religion to be one of the capital forms of human wrongness. i go on to another point, which i regard as of special importance. it must not be supposed that the life of the spirit begins and with the sublimation of, the instinctive and emotional life; though this is indeed for it a central necessity. nor must we take it for granted that the apparent redirection of impulse to spiritual objects is always and inevitably an advance. all who are or may be concerned with the spiritual training, help, and counselling of others ought clearly to recognize that there are elements in religious experience which represent, not a true sublimation, but either disguised primitive cravings and ideas, or uprushes from lower instinctive levels: for these experiences have their special dangers. as we shall see when we come to their more detailed study, devotional practices tend to produce that state which psychologists call mobility of the threshold of consciousness; and may easily permit the emergence of natural inclinations and desires, of which the self does not recognize the real character. as a matter of fact, a good deal of religious emotion is of this kind. instances are the childish longing for mere protection, for a sort of supersensual petting, the excessive desire for shelter and rest, voiced in too many popular hymns; the subtle form of self-assertion which can be detected in some claims to intercourse with god--e.g. the celebrated conversation of angela of foligno with the holy ghost;[ ] the thinly veiled human feelings which find expression in the personal raptures of a certain type of pious literature, and in what has been well described as the "divine duet" type of devotion. many, though not all of the supernormal phenomena of mysticism are open to the same suspicion: and the church's constant insistence on the need of submitting these to some critical test before, accepting them at face value, is based on a most wholesome scepticism. though a sense of meek dependence on enfolding love and power is the very heart of religion, and no intense spiritual life is possible unless it contain a strong emotional element, it is of first importance to be sure that its affective side represents a true sublimation of human feelings and desires, and not merely an oblique indulgence of lower cravings. again, we have to remember that the instinctive self, powerful though it be? does not represent the sum total of human possibility. the maximum of man's strength is not reached until all the self's powers, the instinctive and also the rational, are united and set on one objective; for then only is he safe from the insidious inner conflict between natural craving and conscious purpose which saps his energies, and is welded into a complete and harmonious instrument of life, "the source of power," says dr. hadfield in "the spirit," "lies not in instinctive emotion alone, but in instinctive emotion expressed in a way with which the whole man can, for the time being at least, identify himself. ultimately, this is impossible without the achievement of a harmony of all the instincts _and_ the approval of the reason."[ ] thus we see that any unresolved conflict or divorce between the religious instinct and the intellect will mar the full power of the spiritual life: and that an essential part of the self's readjustment to reality must consist in the uniting of these partners, as intellect and intuition are united in creative art. the noblest music, most satisfying poetry are neither the casual results of uncriticized inspiration nor the deliberate fabrications of the brain, but are born of the perfect fusion of feeling and of thought; for the greatest and most fruitful minds are those which are rich and active on both levels--which are perpetually raising blind impulse to the level of conscious purpose, uniting energy with skill, and thus obtaining the fiery energies of the instinctive life for the highest uses. so too the spiritual life is only seen in its full worth and splendour when the whole man is subdued to it, and one object satisfies the utmost desires of heart and mind. the spiritual impulse must not be allowed to become the centre of a group of specialized feelings, a devotional complex, in opposition to, or at least alienated from, the intellectual and economic life. it must on the contrary brim over, invading every department of the self. when the mind's loftiest and most ideal thought, its conscious vivid aspiration, has been united with the more robust qualities of the natural man; then, and only then, we have the material for the making of a possible saint. we must also remember that, important as our primitive and instinctive life may be--and we should neither despise nor neglect it--its religious impulses, taken alone, no more represent the full range of man's spiritual possibilities than the life of the hunting tribe or the african kraal represent his full social possibilities. we may, and should, acknowledge and learn from our psychic origins. we must never be content to rest in them. though in many respects, mental as well as physical, we are animals still; yet we are animals with a possible future in the making, both corporate and individual, which we cannot yet define. all other levels of life assure us that the impulsive nature is peculiarly susceptible to education. not only can the whole group of instincts which help self-fulfilment be directed to higher levels, united and subdued to a dominant emotional interest; but merely instinctive actions can, by repetition and control, be raised to the level of habit and be given improved precision and complexity. this, of course, is a primary function of devotional exercises; training the first blind instinct for god to the complex responses of the life of prayer. instinct is at best a rough and ready tool of life: practice is required if it is to produce its best results. observe, for instance, the poor efforts of the young bird to escape capture; and compare this with the finished performance of the parent.[ ] therefore in estimating man's capacity for spiritual response, we must reckon not only his innate instinct for god, but also his capacity for developing this instinct on the level of habit; educating and using its latent powers to the best advantage. especially on the contemplative side of life, education does great things for us; or would do, if we gave it the chance. here, then, the rational mind and conscious will must play their part in that great business of human transcendence, which is man's function within the universal plan. it is true that the deep-seated human tendency to god may best be understood as the highest form of that out-going instinctive craving of the psyche for more life and love which, on whatever level it be experienced, is always one. but some external stimulus seems to be needed, if this deep tendency is to be brought up into consciousness; and some education, if it is to be fully expressed. this stimulus and this education, in normal cases, are given by tradition; that is to say, by religious belief and practice. or they may come from the countless minor and cumulative suggestions which life makes to us, and which few of us have the subtlety to analyze. if these suggestions of tradition or environment are met by resistance, either of the moral or intellectual order, whilst yet the deep instinct for full life remains unsatisfied, the result is an inner conflict of more or less severity; and as a rule, this is only resolved and harmony achieved through the crisis of conversion, breaking down resistances, liberating emotion and reconciling inner craving with outer stimulus. there is, however, nothing spiritual in the conversion process itself. it has its parallel in other drastic readjustments to other levels of life; and is merely a method by which selves of a certain type seem best able to achieve the union of feeling, thought, and will necessary to stability. now we have behind us and within us all humanity's funded instinct for the divine, all the racial habits and traditions of response to the divine. but its valid thought about the divine comes as yet to very little. thus we see that the author of "the cloud of unknowing" spoke as a true psychologist when he said that "a secret blind love pressing towards god" held more hope of success than mere thought can ever do; "for he may well be loved but not thought--by love he may be gotten and holden, but by thought never."[ ] nevertheless, if that consistency of deed and belief which is essential to full power is to be achieved by us, every man's conception of the god whom he serves ought to be the very best of which he is capable. because ideas which we recognize as partial or primitive have called forth the richness and devotion of other natures, we are not therefore excused from trying all things and seeking a reality which fulfils to the utmost our craving for truth and beauty, as well, as our instinct for good. it is easy, natural, and always comfortable for the human mind to sink back into something just a little bit below its highest possible. on one hand to wallow in easy loves, rest in traditional formulæ, or enjoy a "moving type of devotion" which makes no intellectual demand. on the other, to accept without criticism the sceptical attitude of our neighbours, and keep safely in the furrow of intelligent agnosticism. religious people have a natural inclination to trot along on mediocre levels; reacting pleasantly to all the usual practices, playing down to the hopes and fears of the primitive mind, its childish craving for comfort and protection, its tendency to rest in symbols and spells, and satisfying its devotional inclinations by any "long psalter unmindfully mumbled in the teeth."[ ] and a certain type of intelligent people have an equally natural tendency to dismiss, without further worry, the traditional notions of the past. in so far as all this represents a slipping back in the racial progress, it has the character of sin: at any rate, it lacks the true character of spiritual life. such life involves growth, sublimation, the constant and difficult redirection of energy from lower to higher levels; a real effort to purge motive, see things more truly, face and resolve the conflict between the deep instinctive and the newer rational life. hence, those who realize the nature of their own mental processes sin against the light if they do not do with them the very best that they possibly can: and the penalty of this sin must be a narrowing of vision, an arrest. the laws of apperception apply with at least as much force to our spiritual as to our sensual impressions: what we bring with us will condition what we obtain. "we behold that which we are!" said ruysbroeck long ago.[ ] the mind's content and its ruling feeling-tone, says psychology, all its memories and desires, mingle with all incoming impressions, colour them and condition those which our consciousness selects. this intervention of memory and emotion in our perceptions is entirely involuntary; and explains why the devotee of any specific creed always finds in the pure immediacy of religious experience the special marks of his own belief. in most acts of perception--and probably, too, in the intuitional awareness of religious experience--that which the mind brings is bulkier if less important than that which it receives; and only the closest analysis will enable us to separate these two elements. yet this machinery of apperception--humbling though its realization must be to the eager idealist--does not merely confuse the issue for us; or compel us to agnosticism as to the true content of religious intuition. on the contrary, its comprehension gives us the clue to many theological puzzles; whilst its existence enables us to lay hold of supersensual experiences we should otherwise miss, because it gives to us the means of interpreting them. pure immediacy, as such, is almost ungraspable by us. as man, not as pure spirit, the high priest entered the holy of holies: that is to say, he took to the encounter of the infinite the finite machinery of sense. this limitation is ignored by us at our peril. the great mystics, who have sought to strip off all image and reach--as they say--the bare pure truth, have merely become inarticulate in their effort to tell us what it was that they knew. "a light i cannot measure, goodness without form!" exclaims jacopone da todi.[ ] "the light of the _world_--the good _shepherd_," says st. john, bringing a richly furnished poetic consciousness to the vision of god; and at once gives us something on which to lay hold. generally speaking, it is only in so far as we bring with us a plan of the universe that we can make anything of it; and only in so far as we bring with us some idea of god, some feeling of desire for him, can we apprehend him--so true is it that we do, indeed, behold that which we are, find that which we seek, receive that for which we ask. feeling, thought, and tradition must all contribute to the full working out of religious experience. the empty soul facing an unconditioned reality may achieve freedom but assuredly achieves nothing else: for though the self-giving of spirit is abundant, we control our own powers of reception. this lays on each self the duty of filling the mind with the noblest possible thoughts about god, refusing unworthy and narrow conceptions, and keeping alight the fire of his love. we shall find that which we seek: hence a richly stored religious consciousness, the lofty conceptions of the truth seeker, the vision of the artist, the boundless charity and joy in life of the lover of his kind, really contribute to the fulness of the spiritual life; both on its active and on its contemplative side. as the self reaches the first degrees of the prayerful or recollected state, memory-elements, released from the competition of realistic experience, enter the foreconscious field. among these will be the stored remembrances of past meditations, reading, and experiences, all giving an affective tone conducive to new and deeper apprehensions. the pure in heart see god, because they bring with them that radiant and undemanding purity: because the storehouse of ancient memories, which each of us inevitably brings to that encounter, is free from conflicting desires and images, perfectly controlled by this feeling-tone. it is now clear that all which we have so far considered supports, from the side of psychology, the demand of every religion for a drastic overhaul of the elements of character, a real repentance and moral purgation, as the beginning of all personal spiritual life. man does not, as a rule, reach without much effort and suffering the higher levels of his psychic being. his old attachments are hard; complexes of which he is hardly aware must be broken up before he can use the forces which they enchain. he must, then, examine without flinching his impulsive life, and know what is in his heart, before he is in a position to change it. "the light which shows us our sins," says george fox, "is the light that heals us." all those repressed cravings, those quietly unworthy motives, those mean acts which we instinctively thrust into the hiddenness and disguise or forget, must be brought to the surface and, in the language of psychology, "abreacted"; in the language of religion, confessed. the whole doctrine of repentance really hinges on this question of abreacting painful or wrongful experience instead of repressing it. the broken and contrite heart is the heart of which the hard complexes have been shattered by sorrow and love, and their elements brought up into consciousness and faced: and only the self which has endured this, can hope to be established in the free spirit. it is a process of spiritual hygiene. psycho-analysis has taught us the danger of keeping skeletons in the cupboards of the soul, the importance of tracking down our real motives, of facing reality, of being candid and fearless in self-knowledge. but the emotional colour of this process when it is undertaken in the full conviction of the power and holiness of that life-force which we have not used as well as we might, and with a humble and loving consciousness of our deficiency, our falling short, will be totally different from the feeling state of those who conceive themselves to be searching for the merely animal sources of their mental and spiritual life. "meekness in itself," says "the cloud of unknowing," "is naught else but a true knowing and feeling of a man's self as he is. for surely whoso might verily see and feel himself as he is, he should verily be meek. therefore swink and sweat all that thou canst and mayst for to get thee a true knowing and feeling of thyself as thou art; and then i trow that soon after that thou shalt have a true knowing and feeling of god as he is."[ ] the essence, then, of repentance and purification of character consists first in the identification, and next in the sublimation of our instinctive powers and tendencies; their detachment from egoistic desires and dedication to new purposes. we should not starve or repress the abounding life within us; but, relieving it of its concentration on the here-and-now, give its attention and its passion a wider circle of interest over which to range, a greater love to which it can consecrate its growing powers. we do not yet know what the limit of such sublimation may be. but we do know that it is the true path of life's advancement, that already we owe to it our purest loves, our loveliest visions, and our noblest deeds. when such feeling, such vision and such act are united and transfigured in god, and find in contact with his living spirit the veritable sources of their power; then, man will have resolved his inner conflict, developed his true potentialities, and live a harmonious because a spiritual life. we end, therefore, upon this conception of the psyche as the living force within us; a storehouse of ancient memories and animal tendencies, yet plastic, adaptable, ever pressing on and ever craving for more life and more love. only the life of reality, the life rooted in communion with god, will ever satisfy that hungry spirit, or provide an adequate objective for its persistent onward push. footnotes: [footnote : ennead iv. . .] [footnote : de imit. christi, bk. iii, cap. .] [footnote : boehme, "the way to christ," pt. iv.] [footnote : unamuno has not hesitated to base the whole of religion on the instinct of self-preservation: but this must i think be regarded as an exaggerated view. see "the tragic sense of life in men and in peoples," caps. and .] [footnote : boehme: "six theosophic points," p. .] [footnote : "the cloud of unknowing," cap. .] [footnote : e. gardner: "st. catherine of siena," p. .] [footnote : "life of st. teresa," by herself, cap. .] [footnote : "liberal and mystical writings of william law" p. .] [footnote : jacopone da todi, lauda .] [footnote : "liberal and mystical writings of william law," p. .] [footnote : "amor tu se'quel ama donde lo cor te ama." --jacopone da todi: lauda .] [footnote : cf. watts: "echo personalities," for several illustrations of this law.] [footnote : livingstone: "mary slessor of calabar," p. .] [footnote : "the cloud of unknowing," cap, .] [footnote : "and very often did he say unto me, 'bride and daughter, sweet art thou unto me, i love thee better than any other who is in the valley of spoleto.'" ("the divine consolations of blessed angela of foligno," p. .)] [footnote : "the spirit," edited by b.h. streeter, p. .] [footnote : cf. b. russell: "the analysis of mind," cap. .] [footnote : op. cit., cap. .] [footnote : "cloud of unknowing," cap. .] [footnote : ruysbroeck: "the sparkling stone," cap. .] [footnote : lauda .] [footnote : op. cit., cap. .] chapter iv psychology and the life of the spirit (ii) contemplation and suggestion in the last chapter we considered what the modern analysis of mind had to tell us about the nature of the spiritual life, the meaning of sin and of salvation. we now go on to another aspect of this subject: namely, the current conception of the unconscious mind as a dominant factor of our psychic life, and of the extent and the conditions in which its resources can be tapped, and its powers made amenable to the direction of the conscious mind. two principal points must here be studied. the first is the mechanism of that which is called autistic thinking and its relation to religious experience: the second, the laws of suggestion and their bearing upon the spiritual life. especially must we consider from this point of view the problems which are resumed under the headings of prayer, contemplation, and grace. we shall find ourselves compelled to examine the nature of meditation and recollection, as spiritual persons have always practised them; and, to give, if we can, a psychological account of many of their classic conceptions and activities. we shall therefore be much concerned with those experiences which are often called mystical, but which i prefer to call in general contemplative and intuitive; because they extend, as we shall find, without a break from the simplest type of mental prayer, the most general apprehensions of the spirit, to the most fully developed examples of religious mono-ideism. to place all those intuitions and perceptions of which god or his kingdom are the objects in a class apart from all other intuitions and perceptions, and call them "mystical," is really to beg the question from the start. the psychic mechanisms involved in them are seen in action in many other types of mental activity; and will not, in my opinion, be understood until they are removed from the category of the supernatural, and studied as the movements of the one spirit of life--here directed towards a transcendent objective. and further we must ever keep in mind, since we are now dealing with specific spiritual experiences, deeply exploring the contemplative soul, that though psychology can criticize these experiences, and help us to separate the wheat from the chaff--can tell us, too, a good deal about the machinery by which we lay hold of them, and the best way to use it--it cannot explain the experiences, pronounce upon their object, or reduce that object to its own terms. we may some day have a valid psychology of religion, though we are far from it yet: but when we do, it will only be true within its own system of reference. it will deal with the fact of the spiritual life from one side only. and as a discussion of the senses and their experience explains nothing about the universe by which these senses are impressed, so all discussion of spiritual faculty and experience remains within the human radius and neither invalidates nor accounts for the spiritual world. when the psychologist has finished telling us all that he knows about the rules which govern our mental life, and how to run it best, he is still left face to face with the mystery of that life, and of that human power of surrender to spiritual reality which is the very essence of religion. humility remains, therefore, not only the most becoming but also the most scientific attitude for investigators in this field. we must, then, remember the inevitably symbolic nature of the language which we are compelled to use in our attempt to describe these experiences; and resist all temptation to confuse the handy series of labels with which psychology has furnished us, with the psychic unity to which they will be attached. perhaps the most fruitful of all our recent discoveries in the mental region will turn out to be that which is gradually revealing to us the extent and character of the unconscious mind; and the possibility of tapping its resources, bending its plastic shape to our own mould. it seems as though the laws of its being are at last beginning to be understood; giving a new content to the ancient command "know thyself." we are learning that psycho-therapy, which made such immense strides during the war, is merely one of the directions in which this knowledge may be used, and this control exercised by us. that regnancy of spirit over matter towards which all idealists must look, is by way of coming at least to a partial fulfilment in this control of the conscious over the unconscious, and thus over the bodily life. such control is indeed an aspect of our human freedom, of the creative power which has been put into our hands. in all this religion must be interested: because, once more, it is the business of religion to regenerate the whole man and win him for reality. if we could get rid of the idea that the unconscious is a separate, and in some sort hostile or animal entity set over against the conscious mind; and realize that it is, simply, our whole personality, with the exception of the scrap that happens at any moment to be in consciousness--then, perhaps, we should more easily grasp the importance of exploring and mobilizing its powers. as it is, most of us behave like the owners of a well-furnished room, who ignore every aspect of it except the window looking out upon the street. this we keep polished, and drape with the best curtains that we can afford. but the room upon which we sedulously turn our backs contains all that we have inherited, all that we have accumulated, many tools which are rusting for want of use; machinery too which, left to itself, may function satisfactorily, or may get out of order and work to results that we neither desire nor dream. the room is twilit. only by the window is a little patch of light. beyond this there is a fringe of vague, fluctuating, sometimes prismatic radiance: an intermediate region, where the images and things which most interest us have their place, just within range, or the fringe of the field of consciousness. in the darkest corners the machinery that we do not understand, those possessions of which we are least proud, and those pictures we hate to look at, are hidden away. this little parable represents, more or less, that which psychology means by the conscious, foreconscious, and unconscious regions of the psyche. it must not be pressed, or too literally interpreted; but it helps us to remember the graded character of our consciousness, its fluctuating level, and the fact that, as well as the outward-looking mind which alone we usually recognize, there is also the psychic matrix from which it has been developed, the inward-looking mind, caring for a variety of interests of which we hardly, as we say, think at all. we know as yet little about this mysterious psychic whole: the inner nature of which is only very incompletely given to us in the fluctuating experiences of consciousness. but we do know that it, too, receives at least a measure of the light and the messages coming in by the window of our wits: that it is the home of memory instinct and habit, the source of conduct, and that its control and modification form the major part of the training of character. further, it is sensitive, plastic, accessible to impressions, and unforgetting. consider now that half-lit region which is called the foreconscious mind; for this is of special interest to the spiritual life. it is, in psychological language, the region of autistic as contrasted with realistic thought.[ ] that is to say, it is the agent of reverie and meditation; it is at work in all our brooding states, from day-dream to artistic creation. such autistic thought is dominated not by logic or will, but by feeling. it achieves its results by intuition, and has its reasons which the surface mind knows not of. here, in this fringe-region--which alone seems fully able to experience adoration and wonder, or apprehend the values we call holiness, beauty or love--is the source of that intuition of the heart to which the mystic owes the love which is knowledge, and the knowledge which is love. here is the true home of inspiration and invention. here, by a process which is seldom fully conscious save in its final stages, the poet's creations are prepared, and thence presented in the form of inspiration to the reason; which--if he be a great artist--criticizes them, before they are given as poems to the world. indeed, in all man's apprehensions of the transcendental these two states of the psyche must co-operate if he is to realize his full powers: and it is significant that to this foreconscious region religion, in its own special language, has always invited him to retreat, if he would know his own soul and thus commune with his god. over and over again it assures him under various metaphors, that he must turn within, withdraw from the window, meet the inner guest; and such a withdrawal is the condition of all contemplation. consider the opening of jacob boehme's great dialogue on the supersensual life. "the scholar said to his master: how may i come to the supersensual life, that i may see god and hear him speak? "his master said: when thou canst throw thyself for a moment into that where no creature dwelleth, then thou hearest what god speaketh. "the scholar said: is that near at hand or far off? "the master said: it is in thee, if thou canst for a while cease from all thinking and willing, thou shalt hear the unspeakable words of god. "the scholar said: how can i hear when i stand still from thinking and willing? "the master said: when thou standest still from the thinking and willing of self, then the eternal hearing, seeing and speaking will be revealed in thee."[ ] in this passage we have a definite invitation to retreat from volitional to affective thought: from the window to the quiet place where "no creature dwelleth," and in patmore's phrase "the night of thought becomes the light of perception."[ ] this fringe-region or foreconscious is in fact the organ of contemplation, as the realistic outward looking mind is the organ of action. most men go through life without conceiving, far less employing, the rich possibilities which are implicit in it. yet here, among the many untapped resources of the self, lie our powers of response to our spiritual environment: powers which are kept by the tyrannical interests of everyday life below the threshold of full consciousness, and never given a chance to emerge. here take place those searching experiences of the "inner life" which seem moonshine or morbidity to those who have not known them. the many people who complain that they have no such personal religious experience, that the spiritual world is shut to them, are usually found to have expected this experience to be given to them without any deliberate and sustained effort on their own part. they have lived from childhood to maturity at the little window of consciousness and have never given themselves the opportunity of setting up correspondences with any other world than that of sense. yet all normal men and women possess, at least in a rudimentary form, some intuition of the transcendental; shown in their power of experiencing beauty or love. in some it is dominant, emerging easily and without help; in others it is latent and must be developed in the right way. in others again it may exist in virtual conflict with a strongly realistic outlook; gathering way until it claims its rights at last in a psychic storm. its emergence, however achieved, is a part--and for our true life, by far the most important part--of that outcropping and overflowing into consciousness of the marginal faculties which is now being recognized as essential to all artistic and creative activities; and as playing, too, a large part in the regulation of mental and bodily health. all the great religions have implicitly understood--though without analysis--the vast importance of these spiritual intuitions and faculties lying below the surface of the everyday mind; and have perfected machinery tending to secure their release and their training. this is of two kinds: first, religious ceremonial, addressing itself to corporate feeling; next the discipline of meditation and prayer, which educates the individual to the same ends, gradually developing the powers of the foreconscious region, steadying them, and bringing them under the control of the purified will. without some such education, widely as its details may vary, there can be no real living of the spiritual life. "a going out into the life of sense prevented the exercise of earnest realization."[ ] psychologists sometimes divide men into the two extreme classes of extroverts and introverts. the extrovert is the typical active; always leaning out of the window and setting up contacts with the outside world. his thinking is mainly realistic. that is to say, it deals with the data of sense. the introvert is the typical contemplative, predominantly interested in the inner world. his thinking is mainly autistic, dealing with the results of intuition and feeling, working these up into new structures and extorting from them new experiences. he is at home in the foreconscious, has its peculiar powers under control; and instinctively obedient to the mystic command to sink into the ground of the soul, he leans towards those deep wells of his own being which plunge into the unconscious foundations of life. by this avoidance of total concentration on the sense world--though material obtained from it must as a matter of fact enter into all, even his most "spiritual" creations--he seems able to attend to the messages which intuition picks up from other levels of being. it is significant that nearly all spiritual writers use this very term of introversion, which psychology has now adopted as the most accurate that it can find, in a favourable, indeed laudatory, sense. by it they intend to describe the healthy expansion of the inner life, the development of the soul's power of attention to the spiritual, which is characteristic of those real men and women of prayer whom ruysbroeck describes as:-- "gazing inward with an eye uplifted and open to the eternal truth inwardly abiding in simplicity and stillness and in utter peace."[ ] it is certain that no one who wholly lacks this power of retreat from the surface, and has failed thus to mobilize his foreconscious energies, can live a spiritual life. this is why silence and meditation play so large a part in all sane religious discipline. but the ideal state, a state answering to that rhythm of work and prayer which should be the norm of a mature spirituality, is one in which we have achieved that mental flexibility and control which puts us in full possession of our autistic _and_ our realistic powers; balancing and unifying the inner and the outer world. this being so, it is worth while to consider in more detail the character of foreconscious thought. foreconscious thinking, as it commonly occurs in us, with its unchecked illogical stream of images and ideas, moving towards no assigned end, combined in no ordered chain, is merely what we usually call day-dream. but where a definite wish or purpose, an _end_, dominates this reverie and links up its images and ideas into a cycle, we get in combination all the valuable properties both of affective and of directed thinking; although the reverie or contemplation place in the fringe-region of our mental life, and in apparent freedom from the control of the conscious reason. the object of recollection and meditation, which are the first stages of mental prayer, is to set going such a series and to direct it towards an assigned end: and this first inward-turning act and self-orientation are voluntary, though the activities which they set up are not. "you must know, my daughters," says st. teresa, "that this is no supernatural act but depends on our will; and that therefore we can do it, with that ordinary assistance of god which we need for all our acts and even for our good thoughts."[ ] consider for a moment what happens in prayer. i pass over the simple recitation of verbal prayers, which will better be dealt with when we come to consider the institutional framework of the spiritual life. we are now concerned with mental prayer or orison; the simplest of those degrees of contemplation which may pass gradually into mystical experience, and are at least in some form a necessity of any real and actualized spiritual life. such prayer is well defined by the mystics, as "a devout intent directed to god."[ ] what happens in it? all writers on the science of prayer observe, that the first necessity is recollection; which, in a rough and ready way, we may render as concentration, or perhaps in the special language of psychology as "contention." the mind is called in from external interests and distractions, one by one the avenues of sense are closed, till the hunt of the world is hardly perceived by it. i need not labour this description, for it is a state of which we must all have experience: but those who wish to see it described with the precision of genius, need only turn to st. teresa's "way of perfection." having achieved this, we pass gradually into the condition of deep withdrawal variously called simplicity or quiet; a state in which the attention is quietly and without effort directed to god, and the whole self as it were held in his presence. this presence is given, dimly or clearly, in intuition. the actual prayer used will probably consist--again to use technical language--of "affective acts and aspirations"; short phrases repeated and held, perhaps expressing penitence, humility, adoration or love, and for the praying self charged with profound significance. "if we would intentively pray for getting of good," says "the cloud of unknowing," "let us cry either with word or with thought or with desire, nought else nor on more words but this word god.... study thou not for no words, for so shouldst thou never come to thy purpose nor to this work, for it is never got by study, but all only by grace."[ ] now the question naturally arises, how does this recollected state, this alogical brooding on a spiritual theme, exceed in religions value the orderly saying of one's prayers? and the answer psychology suggests is, that more of us, not less, is engaged in such a spiritual act: that not only the conscious attention, but the foreconscious region too is then thrown open to the highest sources of life. we are at last learning to recognize the existence of delicate mental processes which entirely escape the crude methods of speech. reverie as a genuine thought process is beginning to be studied with the attention it deserves, and new understanding of prayer must result. by its means powers of perception and response ordinarily latent are roused to action; and thus the whole life is enriched. that faculty in us which corresponds, not with the busy life of succession but with the eternal sources of power, gets its chance. "though the soul," says von hügel, "cannot abidingly abstract itself from its fellows, it can and ought frequently to recollect itself in a simple sense of god's presence. such moments of direct preoccupation with god alone bring a deep refreshment and simplification to the soul."[ ] true silence, says william penn, of this quiet surrender to reality, "is rest to the mind, and is to the spirit what sleep is to the body; nourishment and refreshment."[ ] psychology endorses the constant statements of all religions of the spirit, that no one need hope to live a spiritual life who cannot find a little time each day for this retreat from the window, this quiet and loving waiting upon the unseen "with the forces of the soul," as ruysbroeck puts it, "gathered into unity of the spirit."[ ] under these conditions, and these only, the intuitive, creative, artistic powers are captured and dedicated to the highest ends: and in these powers rather than the rational our best chance of apprehending eternal values abides, "taste and _see_ that the lord is sweet." "be still! be still! and _know_ that i am god!" since, then, the foreconscious mind and its activities are of such paramount interest to the spiritual life, we may before we go on glance at one or two of its characteristics. and first we notice that the fact that the foreconscious is, so to speak, in charge in the mental and contemplative type of prayer explains why it is that even the most devout persons are so constantly tormented by distractions whilst engaged in it. very often, they are utterly unable to keep their attention fixed; and the reason of this is, that conscious attention and thought are not the faculties primarily involved. what is involved, is reverie coloured by feeling; and this tends to depart from its assigned end and drift into mere day-dream, if the emotional tension slackens or some intruding image starts a new train of associations. the religious mind is distressed by this constant failure to look steadily at that which alone it wants to see; but the failure abides in the fact that the machinery used is affective, and obedient to the rise and fall of feeling rather than the control of the will. "by love shall he be gotten and holden, by thought never." next, consider for a moment the way in which the foreconscious does and must present its apprehensions to consciousness. its cognitions of the spiritual are in the nature of pure immediacy, of uncriticized contacts: and the best and greatest of them seem to elude altogether that machinery of speech and image which has been developed through the life of sense. the well-known language of spiritual writers about the divine darkness or ignorance is an acknowledgment of this. god is "known darkly." our experience of eternity is "that of which nothing can be said." it is "beyond feeling" and "beyond knowledge," a certitude known in the ground of the soul, and so forth. it is indeed true that the spiritual world is for the human mind a transcendent world, does differ utterly in kind from the best that the world of succession is able to give us; as we know once for all when we establish a contact with it, however fleeting. but constantly the foreconscious--which, as we shall do well to remember, is the artistic region of the mind, the home of the poem, and the creative phantasy--works up its transcendent intuitions in symbolic form. for this purpose it sometimes uses the machinery of speech, sometimes that of image. as our ordinary reveries constantly proceed by way of an interior conversation or narrative, so the content of spiritual contemplation is often expressed in dialogue, in which memory and belief are fused with the fruit of perception. the "dialogue of st. catherine of siena," the "life of suso," and the "imitation of christ," all provide beautiful examples of this; but indeed illustrations of it might be found in every school and period of religious literature. such inward dialogue, one of the commonest spontaneous forms of autistic thought, is perpetually resorted to by devout minds to actualize their consciousness of direct communion with god. i need not point out how easily and naturally it expresses for them that sense of a friend and companion, an indwelling power and support, which is perhaps their characteristic experience. "blessed is that soul," says à kempis, "that heareth the lord speaking in him and taketh from his mouth the word of consolation. blessed be those ears that receive of god's whisper and take no heed of the whisper of this world."[ ] though st. john of the cross has reminded us with blunt candour that such persons are for the most part only talking to themselves, we need not deny the value of such a talking as a means of expressing the deeply known and intimate presence of spirit. moreover, the thoughts and words in which the contemplative expresses his sense of love and dedication reverberate as it were in the depths of the instinctive mind, now in this quietude thrown open to these influences: and the instinctive mind, as we have already seen, is the home of character and of habit formation. where there is a tendency to think in images rather than in words, the experiences of the spirit may be actualized in the form of vision rather than of dialogue: and here again, memory and feeling will provide the material. here we stand at the sources of religious art: which, when it is genuine, is a symbolic picture of the experiences of faith, and in those minds attuned to it may evoke again the memory or very presence of those experiences. but many minds are, as it were, their own religious artists; and build up for themselves psychic structures answering to their intuitive apprehensions. so vivid may these structures sometimes be for them that--to revert again to our original simile--the self turns from the window and the realistic world without, and becomes for the time wholly concentrated on the symbolic drama or picture within the room; which abolishes all awareness of the everyday world. when this happens in a small way, we have what might be called a religious day-dream of more or less beauty and intensity; such as most devout people who tend to visualization have probably known. when the break with the external world is complete, we get those ecstatic visions in which mystics of a certain type actualize their spiritual intuitions. the bible is full of examples of this. good historic instances are the visions of mechthild of magdeburg or angela of foligno. the first contain all the elements of drama, the last cover a wide symbolic and emotional field. those who have read canon streeter's account of the visions of the sadhu sundar singh will recognize them as being of this type.[ ] i do not wish to go further than this into the abnormal and extreme types of religious autism; trance, ecstasy and so forth. our concern is with the norm of the spiritual life, as it exists to-day and as all may live it. but it is necessary to realize that image and vision do within limits represent a perfectly genuine way of doing things, which is inevitable for deeply spiritual selves of a certain type; and that it is neither good psychology nor good christianity, lightly to dismiss as superstition or hysteria the pictured world of symbol in which our neighbour may live and save his soul. the symbolic world of traditional piety, with its angels and demons, its friendly saints, its spatial heaven, may conserve and communicate spiritual values far better than the more sophisticated universe of religious philosophy. we may be sure that both are more characteristic of the image-making and structure-building tendencies of the mind, than they are of the ultimate and for us unknowable reality of things. their value--or the value of any work of art which the foreconscious has contrived--abides wholly in the content: the quality of the material thus worked up. the rich nature, the purified love, capable of the highest correspondences, will express even in the most primitive duologue or vision the results of a veritable touching and tasting of eternal life. its psychic structures--however logic may seek to discredit them--will convey spiritual fact, have the quality which the mystics mean when they speak of illumination. the emotional pietist will merely ramble among the religious symbols and phrases with which the devout memory is stored. it is true that the voice or the picture, surging up as it does into the field of consciousness, seems to both classes to have the character of a revelation. the pictures unroll themselves automatically and with amazing authority and clearness, the conversation is with another than ourselves; or in more generalized experiences, such as the sense of the divine presence, the contact is with another order of life. but the crucial question which religion asks must be, does fresh life flow in from those visions and contacts, that intercourse? is transcendental feeling involved in them? "what fruits dost thou bring back from this thy vision?" says jacopone da todi;[ ] and this remains the only real test by which to separate day-dreams from the vitalizing act of contemplation. in the first we are abandoned to a delightful, and perhaps as it seems holy or edifying vagrancy of thought. in the second, by a deliberate choice and act of will, foreconscious thinking is set going and directed towards an assigned end: the apprehending and actualizing of our deepest intuition of god. in it, a great region of the mind usually ignored by us and left to chance, yet source of many choices and deeds, and capable of much purifying pain, is put to its true work: and it is work which must be humbly, regularly and faithfully performed. it is to this region that poetry, art and music--and even, if i dare say so, philosophy--make their fundamental appeal. no life is whole and harmonized in which it has not taken its right place. we must now go on--and indeed, any psychological study of prayerful experience must lead us on--to the subject of suggestion, and its relation to the inner life. by suggestion of course is here meant, in conformity with current psychological doctrine, the process by which an idea enters the deeper and unconscious psychic levels and there becomes fruitful. its real nature, and in consequence something of its far-reaching importance, is now beginning to be understood by us: a fact of great moment for both the study and the practice of the spiritual life. since the transforming work of the spirit must be done through man's ordinary psychic machinery and in conformity with the laws which govern it, every such increase in our knowledge of that machinery must serve the interests of religion, and show its teachers the way to success. suggestion is usually said to be of two kinds. the first is hetero-suggestion, in which the self-realizing idea is received either wittingly or unwittingly from the outer world. during the whole of our conscious lives for good or evil we are at the mercy of such hetero-suggestions, which are being made to us at every moment by our environment; and they form, as we shall afterwards see, a dominant factor in corporate religious exercises. the second type is auto-suggestion. in this, by means of the conscious mind, an idea is implanted in the unconscious and there left to mature. thus do willingly accepted beliefs, religious, social, or scientific, gradually and silently permeate the whole being and show their results in character. a little reflection shows, however, that these two forms of suggestion shade into one another; and that no hetero-suggestion, however impressively given, becomes active in us until we have in some sort accepted it and transformed it into an auto-suggestion. theology expresses this fact in its own special language, when it says that the will must co-operate with grace if it is to be efficacious. thus the primacy of the will is safe-guarded. it stands, or should stand, at the door; selecting from among the countless dynamic suggestions, good and bad, which life pours in on us, those which serve the best interests of the self. as a rule, men take little trouble to sort out the incoming suggestions. they allow uncriticized beliefs and prejudices, the ideas of hatred, anxiety or ill-health, free entrance. they fail to seize and affirm the ideas of power, renovation, joy. they would be more careful, did they grasp more fully the immense and often enduring effect of these accepted suggestions; the extent in which the fundamental, unreasoning psychic deeps are plastic to ideas. yet this plasticity is exhibited in daily life first under the emotional form of sympathy, response to the suggestion of other peoples' feeling-states; and next under the conative form of imitation, active acceptance of the suggestion made by their appearance, habits, deeds. all political creeds, panics, fashion and good form witness to the overwhelming power of suggestion. we are so accustomed to this psychic contagion that we fail to realize the strangeness of the process: but it is now known to reach a degree previously unsuspected, and of which we have not yet found the limits. in the religious sphere, the more sensational demonstrations of this psychic suggestibility have long been notorious. obvious instances are those ecstatics--some of them true saints, some only religious invalids--whose continuous and ardent meditation on the cross produced in them the actual bodily marks of the passion of christ. in less extreme types, perpetual dwelling on this subject, together with that eager emotional desire to be united with the sufferings of the redeemer which mediæval religion encouraged, frequently modified the whole life of the contemplative; shaping the plastic mind, and often the body too, to its own mould. a good historic example of this law of religious suggestibility is the case of julian of norwich. as a young girl, julian prayed that she might have an illness at thirty years of age, and also a closer knowledge of christ's pains. she forgot the prayer: but it worked below the threshold as forgotten suggestions often do, and when she was thirty the illness came. its psychic origin can still be recognized in her own candid account of it; and with the illness the other half of that dynamic prayer received fulfilment, in those well-known visions of the passion to which we owe the "revelations of divine love."[ ] this is simply a striking instance of a process which is always taking place in every one of us, for good or evil. the deeper mind opens to all who knock; provided only that the new-comers be not the enemies of some stronger habit or impression already within. to suggestions which coincide with the self's desires or established beliefs it gives an easy welcome; and these, once within, always tend to self-realization. thus the french carmelite thérèse de l'enfant-jésus, once convinced that she was destined to be a "victim of love," began that career of suffering which ended in her death at the age of twenty-four.[ ] the lives of the saints are full of incidents explicable on the same lines: exhibiting again and again the dramatic realization of traditional ideas or passionate desires. we see therefore that st. paul's admonition "whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things be of good report, think on these things" is a piece of practical advice of which the importance can hardly be exaggerated; for it deals with the conditions under which man makes his own mentality. suggestion, in fact, is one of the most powerful agents either of self-destruction or of self-advancement which are within our grasp: and those who speak of the results of psycho-therapy, or the certitudes of religious experience, as "mere suggestion" are unfortunate in their choice of an adjective. if then we wish to explore all those mental resources which can be turned to the purposes of the spiritual life, this is one which we must not neglect. the religious idea, rightly received into the mind and reinforced by the suggestion of regular devotional exercises, always tends to realize itself. "receive his leaven," says william penn, "and it will change thee, his medicine and it will cure thee. he is as infallible as free; without money and with certainty. yield up the body, soul and spirit to him that maketh all things new: new heaven and new earth, new love, new joy, new peace, new works, a new life and conversation."[ ] this is fine literature, but it is more important to us to realize that it is also good psychology: and that here we are given the key to those amazing regenerations of character which are the romance and glory of the religious life. pascal's too celebrated saying, that if you will take holy water regularly you will presently believe, witnesses on another level to the same truth. fears have been expressed that, by such an application of the laws of suggestion to religious experience, we shall reduce religion itself to a mere favourable subjectivism, and identify faith with suggestibility. but here the bearing of this series of facts on bodily health provides us with a useful analogy. bodily health is no illusion. it does not consist in merely thinking that we are well, but is a real condition of well-being and of power; depending on the state of our tissues and correct balance and working of our physical and psychical life. and this correct and wholesome working will be furthered and steadied--or if broken may often be restored--by good suggestions; it may be disturbed by bad suggestions; because the controlling factor of life is mind, not chemistry, and mind is plastic to ideas. so too the life of the spirit is a concrete fact; a real response to a real universe. but this concrete life of faith, with its growth and its experiences, its richly various working of one principle in every aspect of existence, its correspondences with the eternal world, its definitely ontological references, is lived here and now; in and through the self's psychic life, and indeed his bodily life too--a truth which is embodied in sacramentalism. therefore, sharing as it does life's plastic character, it too is amenable to suggestion and can be helped or hindered by it. it is indeed characteristic of those in whom this life is dominant, that they are capable of receiving and responding to the highest and most vivifying suggestions which the universe in its totality pours in on us. this movement of response, often quietly overlooked, is that which makes them not spiritual hedonists but men and women of prayer. grace--to give these suggestions of spirit their conventional name--is perpetually beating in on us. but if it is to be inwardly realized, the divine suggestion must be transformed by man's will and love into an auto-suggestion; and this is what seems to happen in meditation and prayer. everything indeed points to a very close connection between what might be called the mechanism of prayer and of suggestion. to say this, is in no way to minimize the transcendental character of prayer. in both states there is a spontaneous or deliberate throwing open of the deeper mind to influences which, fully accepted, tend to realize themselves. look at the directions given by all great teachers of prayer and contemplation; and these two acts, rightly performed, fuse one with the other, they are two aspects of the single act of communion with god. look at their insistence on a stilling and recollecting of the mind, on surrender, a held passivity not merely limp but purposeful: on the need of meek yielding to a greater inflowing power, and its regenerating suggestions. then compare this with the method by which health-giving suggestions are made to the bodily life. "in the deeps of the soul his word is spoken." is not this an exact description of the inward work of the self-realizing idea of holiness, received in the prayer of quiet into the unconscious mind, and there experienced as a transforming power? i think that we may go even further than this, and say that grace, is, in effect, the direct suggestion of the spiritual affecting our soul's life. as we are commonly docile to the countless hetero-suggestions, some of them helpful, some weakening, some actually perverting, which our environment is always making to us; so we can and should be so spiritually suggestible that we can receive those given to us by all-penetrating divine life. what is generally called sin, especially in the forms of self-sufficiency, lack of charity and the indulgence of the senses, renders us recalcitrant to these living suggestions of the spirit. the opposing qualities, humility, love and purity, make us as we say accessible to grace. "son," says the inward voice to thomas à kempis, "my grace is precious, and suffereth not itself to be mingled with strange things nor earthly consolations. wherefore it behoveth thee to cast away impediments to grace, if thou willest to receive the inpouring thereof. ask for thyself a secret place, love to dwell alone with thyself, seek confabulation of none other ... put the readiness for god before all other things, for thou canst not both take heed to me and delight in things transitory.... this grace is a light supernatural and a special gift of god, and a proper sign of the chosen children of god, and the earnest of everlasting health; for god lifteth up man from earthly things to love heavenly things, and of him that is fleshly maketh a spiritual man."[ ] could we have a more vivid picture than this of the conditions of withdrawal and attention under which the psyche is most amenable to suggestion, or of the inward transfiguration worked by a great self-realizing idea? such transfiguration has literally on the physical plane caused the blind to see, the deaf to hear, the dumb to speak: and it seems to me that it is to be observed operating on highest levels in the work of salvation. when further à kempis prays "increase in me more grace, that i may fulfil thy word and make perfect mine own health" is he not describing the right balance to be sought between our surrender to the vivifying suggestions of grace and our appropriation and manly use of them? this is no limp acquiescence and merely infantile dependence, but another aspect of the vital balance between the indrawing and outgiving of power; and one of the main functions of prayer is to promote in us that spiritually suggestible state in which, as dionysius the areopagite says, we are "receptive of god." it is, then, worth our while from the point of view of the spiritual life to inquire into the conditions in which a suggestion is most likely to be received and realized by us. these conditions, as psychologists have so far defined them, can be resumed under the three heads of quiescence, attention and feeling: outstanding characteristics, as i need not point out, of the state of prayer, all of which can be illustrated from the teaching and experience of the mystics. first, let us take _quiescence_. in order fully to lay open the unconscious to the influence of suggested ideas, the surface mind must be called in from its responses to the outer world, or in religious language recollected, till the hum of that world is hardly perceived by it. the body must be relaxed, making no demands on the machinery controlling the motor system; and the conditions in general must be those of complete mental and bodily rest. here is the psychological equivalent of that which spiritual writers call the quiet: a state defined by one of them as "a rest most busy." "those who are in this prayer," says st. teresa, "wish their bodies to remain motionless, for it seems to them that at the least movement they will lose their sweet peace."[ ] others say that in this state we "stop the wheel of imagination," leave all that we can think, sink into our nothingness or our ground. in ruysbroeck's phrase, we are "inwardly abiding in simplicity and stillness and utter peace";[ ] and this is man's state of maximum receptivity. "the best and noblest way in which thou mayst come into this work and life," says meister eckhart, "is by keeping silence and letting god work and speak ... when we simply keep ourselves receptive we are more perfect than when at work."[ ] but this preparatory state of surrendered quiet must at once be qualified by the second point: _attention_. it is based upon the right use of the will, and is not a limp yielding to anything or nothing. it has an ordained deliberate aim, is a behaviour-cycle directed to an end; and this it is that marks out the real and fruitful quiet of the contemplative from the non-directed surrender of mere quietism. "nothing," says st. teresa, "is learnt without a little pains. for the love of god, sisters, account that care well employed that ye shall bestow on this thing."[ ] the quieted mind must receive and hold, yet without discursive thought, the idea which it desires to realize; and this idea must interest and be real for it, so that attention is concentrated on it spontaneously. the more completely the idea absorbs us, the greater its transforming power: when interest wavers, the suggestion begins to lose ground. in spite of her subsequent relapse into quietism madame guyon accurately described true quiet when she said, "our activity should consist in endeavouring to acquire and maintain such a state as may be most susceptible of divine impressions, most flexible to all the operations of the eternal word."[ ] such concentration can be improved by practice; hence the value of regular meditation and contemplation to those who are in earnest about the spiritual life, the quiet and steady holding in the mind of the thought which it is desired to realize. psycho-therapists tell us that, having achieved quiescence, we should rapidly and rythmically, but with intention, repeat the suggestion that we wish to realize; and that the shorter, simpler and more general this verbal formula, the more effective it will be.[ ] the spiritual aspect of this law was well understood by the mediæval mystics. thus the author of "the cloud of unknowing" says to his disciple, "fill thy spirit with ghostly meaning of this word sin, and without any special beholding unto any kind of sin, whether it be venial or deadly. and cry thus ghostly ever upon one: sin! sin! sin! out! out! out! this ghostly cry is better learned of god by the proof than of any man by word. for it is best when it is in pure spirit, without special thought or any pronouncing of word. on the same manner shalt thou do with this little word god: and mean god all, and all god, so that nought work in thy wit and in thy will but only god."[ ] here the directions are exact, and such as any psychologist of the present day might give. so too, religious teachers informed by experience have always ascribed a special efficacy to "short acts" of prayer and aspiration: phrases repeated or held in the mind, which sum up and express the self's penitence, love, faith or adoration, and are really brief, articulate suggestions parallel in type to those which baudouin recommends to us as conducive to bodily well-being.[ ] the repeated affirmation of julian of norwich "all shall be well! all shall be well! all shall be well!"[ ] fills all her revelations with its suggestion of joyous faith; and countless generations of christians have thus applied to their soul's health those very methods by which we are now enthusiastically curing indigestion and cold in the head. the articulate repetition of such phrases increases their suggestive power; for the unconscious is most easily reached by way of the ear. this fact throws light on the immemorial insistence of all great religions on the peculiar value of vocal prayer, whether this be the _mantra_ of the hindu or the _dikr_ of the moslem; and explains the instinct which causes the catholic church to require from her priests the verbal repetition, not merely the silent reading of their daily office. hence, too, there is real educative value, in such devotions as the rosary; and the protestant churches showed little psychological insight when they abandoned it. such "vain" repetitions, however much the rational mind may dislike, discredit or denounce them, have power to penetrate and modify the deeper psychic levels; always provided that they conflict with no accepted belief, are weighted with meaning and desire, with the intent stretched towards god, and are not allowed to become merely mechanical--the standing danger alike of all verbal suggestion and all vocal prayer. here we touch the third character of effective suggestion: _feeling_. when the idea is charged with emotion, it is far more likely to be realized. war neuroses have taught us the dreadful potency of the emotional stimulus of fear; but this power of feeling over the unconscious has its good side too. here we find psychology justifying the often criticized emotional element of religion. its function is to increase the energy of the idea. the cool, judicious type of belief will never possess the life-changing power of a more fervid, though perhaps less rational faith. thus the state of corporate suggestibility generated in a revival and on which the success of that revival depends, is closely related to the emotional character of the appeal which is made. and, on higher levels, we see that the transfigured lives and heroic energies of the great figures of christian history all represent the realization of an idea of which the heart was an impassioned love of god, subduing to its purposes all the impulses and powers of the inner man, "if you would truly know how these things come to pass," said st. bonaventura, "ask it of desire not of intellect; of the ardours of prayer, not of the teaching of the schools."[ ] more and more psychology tends to endorse the truth of these words. quiescence, attention, and emotional interest are then the conditions of successful suggestion. we have further to notice two characteristics which have been described by the nancy school of psychologists; and which are of some importance for those who wish to understand the mechanism of religious experience. these have been called the law of unconscious teleology, and the law of reversed effort. the law of unconscious teleology means that when an end has been effectively suggested to it, the unconscious mind will always tend to work towards its realization. thus in psycho-therapeutics it is found that a general suggestion of good health made to the sick person is often enough. the doctor may not himself know enough about the malady to suggest stage by stage the process of cure. but he suggests that cure; and the necessary changes and adjustments required for its realization are made unconsciously, under the influence of the dynamic idea. here the direction of "the cloud of unknowing," "look that nothing live in thy working mind but a naked intent directed to god"[ ]--suggesting as it does to the psyche the ontological object of faith--strikingly anticipates the last conclusions of science. further, a fervent belief in the end proposed, a conviction of success, is by no means essential. far more important is a humble willingness to try the method, give it a chance. that which reason may not grasp, the deeper mind may seize upon and realize; always provided that the intellect does not set up resistances. this is found to be true in medical practice, and religious teachers have always declared it to be true in the spiritual sphere; holding obedience, humility, and a measure of resignation, not spiritual vision, to be the true requisites for the reception of grace, the healing and renovation of the soul. thus acquiescence in belief, and loyal and steady co-operation in the corporate religious life are often seen to work for good in those who submit to them; though these may lack, as they frequently say, the "spiritual sense." and this happens, not by magic, but in conformity with psychological law. this tendency of the unconscious self to realize without criticism a suggested end lays on religious teachers the obligation of forming a clear and vital conception of the spiritual ideals which they wish to suggest, whether to themselves in their meditations or to others by their teaching: to be sure that they are wholesome, and really tend to fullness of life. it should also compel each of us to scrutinize those religious thoughts and images which we receive and on which we allow our minds to dwell: excluding those that are merely sentimental, weak or otherwise unworthy, and holding fast the noblest and most beautiful that we can find. for these ideas, however generalized, will set up profound changes in the mind that receives them. thus the wrong conception of self-immolation will be faithfully worked out by the unconscious--and has been too often in the past--in terms of misery, weakness, or disease. we remember how the idea of herself as a victim of love worked physical destruction in thérèse de l'enfant jésus: and we shall never perhaps know all the havoc wrought by the once fashionable doctrines of predestination and of the total depravity of human nature. all this shows how necessary it is to put hopeful, manly, constructive conceptions before those whom we try to help or instruct; constantly suggesting to them not the weak and sinful things that they are, but the living and radiant things which they can become. further, this tendency of the received suggestion to work out its whole content for good or evil within the unconscious mind, shows the importance which we ought to attach to the tone of a religions service, and how close too many of our popular hymns are to what one might call psychological sin; stressing as they do a childish weakness love of shelter and petting, a neurotic shrinking from full human life, a morbid preoccupation with failure and guilt. such hymns make devitalizing suggestions, adverse to the health and energy of the spiritual life; and are all the more powerful because they are sung collectively and in rhythm, and are cast in an emotional mould.[ ] there was some truth in the accusation of the indian teacher ramakrishna, that the books of the christians insisted too exclusively on sin. he said, "he who repeats again and again 'i am bound! i am bound!' remains in bondage. he who repeats day and night 'i am a sinner! i am a sinner!' becomes a sinner indeed."[ ] i go on to the law of reversed effort; a psychological discovery which seems to be of extreme importance for the spiritual life. briefly this means, that when any suggestion has entered the unconscious mind and there become active, all our conscious and anxious resistances to it are not merely useless but actually tend to intensify it. if it is to be dislodged, this will not be accomplished by mere struggle but by the persuasive power of another and superior auto-suggestion. further, in respect of any habit that we seek to establish, the more desperate our struggle and sense of effort, the smaller will be our success. in small matters we have all experienced the working of this law: in frustrated struggles to attend to that which does not interest us, to check a tiresome cough, to keep our balance when learning to ride a bicycle. but it has also more important applications. thus it indicates that a deliberate struggle to believe, to overcome some moral weakness, to keep attention fixed in prayer, will tend to frustration: for this anxious effort gives body to our imaginative difficulties and sense of helplessness, fixing attention on the conflict, not on the desired end. true, if this end is to be achieved the will must be directed to it, but only in the sense of giving steadfast direction to the desires and acts of the self, keeping attention orientated towards the goal. the pull of imaginative desire, not the push of desperate effort, serves us best. st. teresa well appreciated this law and applied it to her doctrine of prayer. "if your thought," she says to her daughters, "runs after all the fooleries of the world, laugh at it and leave it for a fool and continue in your quiet ... if you seek by force of arms to bring it to you, you lose the strength which you have against it."[ ] this same principle is implicitly recognized by those theologians who declare that man can "do nothing of himself," that mere voluntary struggle is useless, and regeneration comes by surrender to grace: by yielding, that is, to the inner urge, to those sources of power which flow in, but are not dragged in. indications of its truth meet us everywhere in spiritual literature. thus jacob boehme says, "because thou strivest against that out of which thou art come, thou breakest thyself off with thy own willing from god's willing."[ ] so too the constant invitations to let god work and speak, to surrender, are all invitations to cease anxious strife and effort and give the divine suggestions their chance. the law of reversed effort, in fact, is valid on every level of life; and warns us against the error of making religion too grim and strenuous an affair. certainly in all life of the spirit the will is active, and must retain its conscious and steadfast orientation to god. heroic activity and moral effort must form an integral part of full human experience. yet it is clearly possible to make too much of the process of wrestling evil. an attention chiefly and anxiously concentrated on the struggle with sins and weaknesses, instead of on the eternal sources of happiness and power, will offer the unconscious harmful suggestions of impotence and hence tend to frustration. the early ascetics, who made elaborate preparations for dealing with temptations, got as an inevitable result plenty of temptations with which to deal. a sounder method is taught by the mystics. "when thoughts of sin press on thee," says "the cloud of unknowing," "look over their shoulders seeking another thing, the which thing is god."[ ] these laws of suggestion, taken together, all seem to point, one way. they exhibit the human self as living, plastic, changeful; perpetually modified by the suggestions pouring in on it, the experiences and intuitions to which it reacts. every thought, prayer, enthusiasm, fear, is of importance to it. nothing leaves it as it was before. the soul, said boehme, stands both in heaven and in hell. keep it perpetually busy at the window of the senses, feed it with unlovely and materialistic ideas, and those ideas will realize themselves. give the contemplative faculty its chance, let it breathe at least for a few moments of each day the spiritual atmosphere of faith, hope and love, and the spiritual life will at least in some measure be realized by it. footnotes: [footnote : on all this, cf. j. varendonck, "the psychology of day-dreams."] [footnote : jacob boehme: "the way to christ," pt. iv.] [footnote : patmore: "the rod, the root and the flower: aurea dicta," .] [footnote : ruysbroeck: "the book of the xii béguines," cap. .] [footnote : "the book of the xii béguines," cap. .] [footnote : "the way of perfection," cap. .] [footnote : "the cloud of unknowing," cap. .] [footnote : _ibid_.] [footnote : "eternal life," p. .] [footnote : penn: "no cross, no crown."] [footnote : "the book of the xii béguines," cap, .] [footnote : de imit. christi, bk. iii, cap. i] [footnote : streeter and appasamy: "the sadhu, a study in mysticism and practical religion," pt. v.] [footnote : que frutti reducene de esta tua visione? vita ordinata en onne nazione. --jacopone da todi: lauda .] [footnote : julian of norwich: "revelations of divine love," caps. , , .] [footnote : "soeur thérèse de l'enfant-jésus," cap. .] [footnote : william penn: "no cross, no crown."] [footnote : de imit. christi, bk. iii, cap. .] [footnote : "way of perfection," cap. .] [footnote : "the book of the xii béguines," cap. .] [footnote : meister eckhart, pred. i.] [footnote : "the way of perfection," cap. .] [footnote : "a short and easy method of prayer," cap. .] [footnote : baudouin: "suggestion and auto-suggestion," pt. ii, cap .] [footnote : op. cit. cap. .] [footnote : baudouin: "suggestion and auto-suggestion," loc. cit.] [footnote : "revelations of divine love," cap. .] [footnote : "de itinerario mentis in deo," cap. .] [footnote : op. cit., cap. .] [footnote : hymns of the weary willie type: e.g. "o paradise, o paradise who does not sigh for rest?" should never be sung in congregations where the average age is less than sixty. equally unsuited to general use are those expressing disillusionment, anxiety, or impotence. any popular hymnal will provide an abundance of examples.] [footnote : quoted by pratt: "the religious consciousness," cap. .] [footnote : "the way of perfection," cap. .] [footnote : "the way to christ," pt. iv.] [footnote : op. cit., cap. .] chapter v institutional religion and the life of the spirit so far, in considering what psychology had to tell us about the conditions in which our spiritual life can develop, and the mental machinery it can use, we have been, deliberately, looking at men one by one. we have left on one side all those questions which relate to the corporate aspect of the spiritual life, and its expression in religious institutions; that is to say, in churches and cults. we have looked upon it as a personal growth and response; a personal reception of, and self-orientation to, reality. but we cannot get away from the fact that this regenerate life does most frequently appear in history associated with, or creating for itself, a special kind of institution. although it is impossible to look upon it as the appearance of a favourable variation within the species, it is also just as possible to look upon it as the formation of a new herd or tribe. where the variation appears, and in its sense of newness, youth and vigour breaks away from the institution within which it has arisen, it generally becomes the nucleus about which a new group is formed. so that individualism and gregariousness are both represented in the full life of the spirit; and however personal its achievement may seem to us, it has also a definitely corporate and institutional aspect. i now propose to take up this side of the subject, and try to suggest one or two lines of thought which may help us to discover the meaning and worth of such societies and institutions. for after all, some explanation is needed of these often strange symbolic systems, and often rigid mechanizations, imposed on the free responses to eternal reality which we found to constitute the essence of religious experience. any one who has known even such direct communion with the spirit as is possible to normal human nature must, if he thinks out the implications of his own experience, feel it to be inconsistent that this most universal of all acts should be associated by men with the most exclusive of all types of institution. it is only because we are so accustomed to this--taking churches for granted, even when we reject them--that we do not see how odd they really are: how curious it is that men do not set up exclusive and mutually hostile clubs full of rules and regulations to enjoy the light of the sun in particular times and fashions, but do persistently set up such exclusives clubs full of rules and regulations, so to enjoy the free spirit of god. when we look into history we see the life of the spirit, even from its crudest beginnings, closely associated with two movements. first with the tendency to organize it in communities or churches, living under special sanctions and rules. next, with the tendency of its greatest, most arresting personalities either to revolt from these organisms or to reform, rekindle them from within. so that the institutional life of religion persists through or in spite of its own constant tendency to stiffen and lose fervour, and the secessions, protests, or renewals which are occasioned by its greatest sons. thus our lord protested against jewish formalism; many catholic mystics, and afterwards the best of the protestant reformers, against roman formalism; george fox against one type of protestant formalism; the oxford movement against another. this constant antagonism of church and prophet, of institutional authority and individual vision, is not only true of christianity but of all great historical faiths. in the middle ages kabir and nanak, and in our own times the leaders of the brahmo samaj, break away from and denounce ceremonial hinduism: again and again the great sufis have led reforms within islam. that which we are now concerned to discover is the necessity underlying this conflict: the extent in which the institution on one hand serves the spiritual life, and on the other cramps or opposes its free development. it is a truism that all such institutions tend to degenerate, to become mechanical, and to tyrannize. are they then, in spite of these adverse characters, to be looked on as essential, inevitable, or merely desirable expressions of the spiritual life in man; or can this spiritual life flourish in pure freedom? this question, often put in the crucial form, "did jesus christ intend to form a church?" is well worth asking. indeed, it is of great pressing importance to those who now have the spiritual reconstruction of society at heart. it means, in practice: can men best be saved, regenerated, one by one, by their direct responses to the action of the spirit; or, is the life of the spirit best found and actualized through submission to tradition and contacts with other men--that is, in a group or church? and if in a group or church, what should the character of this society be? but we shall make no real movement towards solving this problem, unless we abandon both the standpoint of authority, and that of naïve religious individualism; and consent to look at it as a part of the general problem of human society, in the light of history, of psychology, and of ethics. i think we may say without exaggeration that the general modern judgment--not, of course, the clerical or orthodox judgment--is adverse to institutionalism; at least as it now exists. in spite of the enormous improvement which would certainly be visible, were we to compare the average ecclesiastical attitude and average church service in this country with those of a hundred years ago, the sense that religion involves submission to the rules and discipline of a closed society--that definite spiritual gains are attached to spiritual incorporation--that church-going, formal and corporate worship, is a normal and necessary part of the routine of a good life: all this has certainly ceased to be general amongst us. if we include the whole population, and not the pious fraction in our view, this is true both of so-called catholic and so-called protestant countries. professor pratt has lately described per cent. of the population of the united states as being "unchurched"; and all who worked among our soldiers at the front were struck by the paradox of the immense amount of natural religion existing among them, combined with almost total alienation from religious institutions. those, too, who study and care for the spiritual life seem most often to conceive it in the terms of william james's well-known definition of religion as "the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine."[ ] such a life of the spirit--and the majority of educated men would probably accept this description of it--seems little if at all conditioned by church membership. it speaks in secret to its father in secret; and private devotion and self-discipline seem to be all it needs. yet looking at history, we see that this conception, this completeness of emphasis on first-hand solitary seeking, this one-by-one achievement of eternity, has not in fact proved truly fruitful in the past. where it seems so to be fruitful, the solitude is illusory. each great regenerator and revealer of reality, each god-intoxicated soul achieving transcendence, owes something to its predecessors and contemporaries.[ ] all great spiritual achievement, like all great artistic achievement, however spontaneous it may seem to be, however much the fruit of a personal love and vision, is firmly rooted in the racial past. if fulfills rather than destroys; and unless its free movement towards novelty, fresh levels of pure experience, be thus balanced by the stability which is given us by our hoarded traditions and formed habits, it will degenerate into eccentricity and fail of its full effect. although nothing but first-hand discovery of and response to spiritual values is in the end of any use to us, that discovery and that response are never quite such a single-handed affair as we like to suppose. memory and environment, natural and cultural, play their part. and the next most natural and fruitful movement after such a personal discovery of abiding reality, such a transfiguration of life, is always back towards our fellow-men; to learn more from them, to unite with them, to help them,--anyhow to reaffirm our solidarity with them. the great men and women of the spirit, then, either use their new power and joy to restore existing institutions to fuller vitality, as did the successive regenerators of the monastic life, such as st. bernard and st. teresa and many sufi saints; or they form new groups, new organisms which they can animate, as did st. paul, st. francis, kabir, fox, wesley, booth. one and all, they feel that the full robust life of the spirit demands some incarnation, some place in history and social outlet, and also some fixed discipline and tradition. in fact, not only the history of the soul, but that of all full human achievement, as studied in great creative personalities, shows us that such achievement has always two sides. ( ) there is the solitary vision or revelation, and personal work in accordance with that vision. the religious man's direct experience of god and his effort to correspond with it; the artist's lonely and intense apprehension of beauty, and hard translation of it; the poet's dream and its difficult expression in speech; the philosopher's intuition of reality, hammered into thought. these are personal immediate experiences, and no human soul will reach its full stature unless it can have the measure of freedom and withdrawal which they demand. but ( ) there are the social and historical contacts which are made by all these creative types with the past and with the present; all the big rich thick stream of human history and effort, giving them, however little they may recognize it, the very initial concepts with which they go to their special contact with reality, and which colour it; supporting them and demanding from them again their contribution to the racial treasury, and to the present too. thus the artist, as, well as his solitary hours of contemplation and effort, ought to have his times alike of humble study of the past and of intercourse with other living artists; and great and enduring art forms more often arise within a school, than in complete independence of tradition. it seems, then, that the advocates of corporate and personal religion are both, in a measure, right: and that once again a middle path, avoiding both extremes of simplification, keeps nearest to the facts of life. we have no reason for supposing that these principles, which history shows us, have ceased to be operative: or that we can secure the best kind of spiritual progress for the race by breaking with the past and the institutions in which it is conserved. institutions are in some sort needful if life's balance between stability and novelty, and our links with history and our fellow-men, are to be preserved; and if we are to achieve such a fullness both of individual and of corporate life on highest levels as history and psychology recommend to us. the question of this institutional side of religion and what we should demand from it falls into two parts, which will best be treated separately. first, that which concerns the character and usefulness of the group-organization or society: the church. secondly, that which relates to its peculiar practices: the cult. we must enquire under each head what are their necessary characters, their essential gifts to the soul, and what their dangers and limitations. first, then, the church. what does a church really do for the god-desiring individual; the soul that wants to live a full, complete and real life, which has "felt in its solitude" the presence and compulsion of eternal reality under one or other of the forms of religious experience? i think we can say that the church or institution gives to its loyal members:-- ( ) group-consciousness. ( ) religious union, not only with its contemporaries but with the race, that is with history. this we may regard as an extension into the past--and so an enrichment--of that group-consciousness. ( ) discipline; and with discipline a sort of spiritual grit, which carries our fluctuating souls past and over the inevitably recurring periods of slackness, and corrects subjectivism. ( ) it gives culture, handing on the discoveries of the saints. in so far as the free-lance gets any of these four things, he gets them ultimately, though indirectly, from some institutional source. on the other hand the institution, since it represents the element of stability in life, does not give, and must not be expected to give, direct spiritual experience; or any onward push towards novelty, freshness of discovery and interpretation in the spiritual sphere. its dangers and limitations will abide in a certain dislike of such freshness of discovery; the tendency to exalt the corporate and stable and discount the mobile and individual. its natural instinct will be for exclusivism, the club-idea, conservatism and cosiness; it will, if left to itself, revel in the middle-aged atmosphere and exhibit the middle-aged point of view. we can now consider these points in greater detail: and first that of the religious group-consciousness which a church should give its members. this is of a special kind. it is axiomatic that group-organization of some sort is a necessity of human life. history showed us the tendency of all spiritual movements to embody themselves, if not in churches at least in some group-form; the paradox of each successive revolt from a narrow or decadent institutionalism forming a group in its turn, or perishing when its first fervour died. but this social impulse, these spontaneous group-formations of master and disciples, valuable though they may be, do not fully exhibit all that is meant or done by a church. true, the church is or should be at each moment of its career such a living spiritual society or household of faith. it is, essentially, a community of persons, who have or should have a common sentiment--belief in, and reverence for, their god--and a common defined aim, the furtherance of the spiritual life under the special religious sanctions which they accept. but every sect, every religious order or guild, every class-meeting, might claim this much; yet none of these can claim to be a church. a church is far more than this. in so far as it is truly alive, it is a real organism, as distinguished from a crowd or collection of persons with a common purpose. it exhibits on the religious plane the ruling characters of such organized life: that is to say, the development of tradition and complex habits, the differentiation of function, the docility to leadership, the conservation of values, or carrying forward of the past into the present. it is, like the state, embodied history; and as such lives with its own life, a life transcending and embracing that of the individual souls of which it is built. and here, in its combined social and historic character, lie the sources alike of its enormous importance for human life and of its inevitable defects. professor mcdougall, in his discussion of national groups,[ ] has laid down the conditions which are necessary to the development of such a true organic group life as is seen in a living church. these are: first, continuity of existence, involving the development of a body of traditions, customs and practices--that is, for religion, a cultus. next, an authoritative organization through which custom and belief can be transmitted--that is, a hierarchy, order of ministers, or its equivalent. third, a conscious common interest, belief, or idea--creed. last, the existence of antagonistic groups or conditions, developing loyalty or keenness. these characters--continuity, authority, common belief and loyalty--which are shown, as he says, in their completeness in a patriot army, are i think no less marked features of a living spiritual society. plain examples are the primitive christian communities, the great religious orders in their flourishing time, the society of friends. they are on the whole more fully evident in the catholic than in the protestant type of church. but i think that we may look upon them, in some form or another, as essential to any institutional framework which shall really help the spiritual life in man. we find ourselves, then, committed to the picture of a church or spiritual institution which is in essence liturgic, ecclesiastical, dogmatic, and militant, as best fulfilling the requirements of group psychology. four decidedly indigestible morsels for the modern mind. yet, group-feeling demands common expression if it is to be lifted from notion to fact. discipline requires some authority, and some devotion to it. culture involves a tradition handed on. and these, we said, were the chief gifts which the institution had to give to its members. we may therefore keep them in mind, as representing actual values, and warning us that neither history nor psychology encourages the belief that an amiable fluidity serves the highest purposes of life. some common practice and custom, keeping the individual in line with the main tendencies of the group, providing rails on which the instinctive life can run and machinery by which fruitful suggestions can be spread. some real discipline and humbling submission to rule. some traditional and theological standard. some missionary effort and enthusiasm. for these four things we must find place in any incorporation of the spiritual life which is to have its full effect upon the souls of men. and as a matter of fact, the periodical revolts against churches and ecclesiasticism, are never against societies in which all these characteristics are still alive; but against those which retain and exaggerate formal tradition and authority, whilst they have lost zest and identity of aim. a real church has therefore something to give to, and something to demand from each of its members, and there is a genuine loss for man in being unchurched. because it endures through a perpetual process of discarding and renewal, those members will share the richness and experience of a spiritual life far exceeding their own time-span; a truth which is enshrined in the beautiful conception of the communion of saints. they enter a group consciousness which reinforces their own in the extent to which they surrender to it; which surrounds them with favourable suggestions and gives the precision of habit to their instinct for eternity. the special atmosphere, the hoarded beauty, the evocative yet often archaic symbolism, of a gothic cathedral, with its constant reminiscences of past civilizations and old levels of culture, its broken fragments and abandoned altars, its conservation of eternal truths--the intimate union in it of the sublime and homely, the successive and abiding aspects of reality--make it the most fitting of all images of the church, regarded as the spiritual institution of humanity. and the perhaps undue conservatism commonly associated with cathedral circles represents too the chief reproach which can be brought against churches--their tendency to preserve stability at the expense of novelty, to crystallize, to cling to habits and customs which no longer serve a useful end. in this a church is like a home; where old bits of furniture have a way of hanging on, and old habits, sometimes absurd, endure. yet both the home and the church can give something which is nowhere else obtainable by us, and represent values which it is perilous to ignore. when once the historical character of reality is fully grasped by us, we see that some such organization through which achieved values are conserved and carried forward, useful habits are learned and practised, the direct intuitions of genius, the prophet's revelation of reality are interpreted and handed on, is essential to the spiritual continuity of the race; and that definite churchmanship of some sort, or its equivalent, must be a factor in the spiritual reconstruction of society. as, other things being equal, a baby benefits enormously by being born within the social framework rather than in the illusory freedom of "pure" nature; so the growth of the soul is, or should be, helped and not hindered by the nurture it receives from the religious society in which it is born. only indeed by attachment, open or virtual, through life or through literature, to some such group can the new soul link itself with history, and so participate in the hoarded spiritual values of humanity. thus even a general survey of life inclines us at least to some appreciation of the principle laid down by baron von hügel in "eternal life"--namely, that "souls who live an heroic spiritual life _within_ great religious traditions and institutions, attain to a rare volume and vividness of religious insight, conviction and reality"[ ]--seldom within reach of the contemplative, however ardent, who walks by himself. history has given one reason for this; psychology gives another. these souls, living it is true with intensity their own life towards god, share and are bathed in the group consciousness of their church; as members of a family, distinct in temperament, share and are modified by the group consciousness of the home. the mental process of the individual is profoundly affected when he thus thinks and acts as a member of a group. suggestibility is then enormously increased; and we know how much suggestion means to us. moreover, suggestions emanating from the group always take priority of those of the outside world: for man is a gregarious animal, intensely sensitive to the mentality of the herd.[ ] the mind of the church is therefore a real thing. the individual easily takes colour from it and the tradition it embodies, tends to imitate his fellow-members: and each such deed and thought is a step taken in the formation of habit, and leaves him other than he was before. to say this is not to discredit church-membership as placing us at the mercy of emotional suggestion, reducing spontaneity to custom, and lessening the energy and responsibility of the individual soul towards god. on the contrary, right group suggestion reinforces, stimulates, does not stultify such individual action. if the prayerful attitude of my fellow worshippers helps me to pray better, surely it is a very mean kind of conceit on my part which would prompt me to despise their help, and refuse to acknowledge creative spirit acting on me through other men? it is one of the most beautiful features of a real and living corporate religion, that within it ordinary people at all levels help each other to be a little more supernatural than would have been alone. i do not now speak of individuals possessing special zeal and special aptitude; though, as the lives of the saints assure us, even the best of these fluctuate, and need social support at times. anyhow such persons of special spiritual aptitude, as life is now, are as rare as persons of special aptitude in other walks of life. but that which we seek for the life of to-day and of the future, is such a planning of it as shall give all men their spiritual chance. and it is abundantly clear upon all levels of life, that men are chiefly formed and changed by the power of suggestion, sympathy and imitation; and only reach full development when assembled in groups, giving full opportunity for the benevolent action of these forces. so too in the life of the spirit, incorporation plays a part which nothing can replace. goodness and devotion are more easily caught than taught; by association in groups, holy and strong souls--both living and dead--make their full gift to society, weak, undeveloped, and arrogant souls receive that of which they are in need. on this point we may agree with a great ecclesiastical scholar of our own day that "the more the educated and intellectual partake with sympathy of heart in the ordinary devotions and pious practices of the poor, the higher will they rise in the religion of the spirit."[ ] yet this family life of the ideal religious institution, with its reasonable and bracing discipline, its gift of shelter, its care for tradition, its habit-formation and group consciousness--all this is given, as we may as well acknowledge, at the price which is exacted by all family life; namely, mutual accommodation and sacrifice, place made for the childish, the dull, the slow, and the aged, a toning-down of the somewhat imperious demands of the entirely efficient and clear-minded, a tolerance of imperfection. thus for these efficient and clear-minded members there is always, in the church as in the family, a perpetual opportunity of humility, self-effacement, gentle acceptance; of exerting that love which must be joined to power and a sound mind if the full life of the spirit is to be lived. in the realm of the supernatural this is a solid gain; though not a gain which we are very quick to appreciate in our vigorous youth. did we look upon the religious institution not as an end in itself, but simply as fulfilling the function of a home--giving shelter and nurture, opportunity of loyalty and mutual service on one hand, conserving stability and good custom on the other--then, we should better appreciate its gifts to us, and be more merciful to its necessary defects. we should be tolerant to its inevitable conservatism, its tendency to encourage dependence and obedience to distrust individual initiative. we should no longer expect it to provide or specially to approve novelty and freedom, to be in the van of life's forward thrust. for this we must go not to the institution, which is the vehicle of history; but to the adventurous, forward moving soul, which is the vehicle of progress--to the prophet, not to the priest. these two great figures, the keeper and the revealer, which are prominent in every historical religion, represent the two halves of the fully-lived spiritual life. the progress of man depends both on conserving and on exploring: and any full incorporation of that life which will serve man's spiritual interests now, must find place for both. such an application of the institutional idea to present needs is required, in fact, to fulfil at least four primary conditions:-- ( ) it must give a social life that shall develop group consciousness in respect of our eternal interests and responsibilities: using for this real discipline, and the influences of liturgy and creed. ( ) yet it must not so standardize and socialize this life as to leave no room for personal freedom in the realm of spirit: for those "experiences of men in their solitude" which form the very heart of religion. ( ) it must not be so ring-fenced, so exclusive, so wholly conditioned by the past, that the voice of the future, that is of the prophet giving fresh expression to eternal truths, cannot clearly be heard in it; not only from within its own borders but also from outside. but ( ) on the other hand, it must not be so contemptuous of the past and its priceless symbols that it breaks with tradition, and so loses that very element of stability which it is its special province to preserve. i go on now to the second aspect of institutional religion: cultus. we at once make the transition from church to cultus, when we ask ourselves: how does, how can, the church as an organized and enduring society do its special work of creating an atmosphere and imparting a secret? how is the traditional deposit of spiritual experience handed on, the individual drawn into the stream of spiritual history and held there? remember, the church exists to foster and hand on, not merely the moral life, the life of this-world perfection; but the spiritual life in all its mystery and splendour--the life of more than this-world perfection, the poetry of goodness, the life that aims at god. and this, not only in elect souls, which might conceivably make and keep direct contacts without her help, but in greater or less degree in the mass of men, who _do_ need help. how is this done? the answer can only be, that it is mostly done through symbolic acts, and by means of suggestion and imitation. all organized churches find themselves committed sooner or later to an organized cultus. it may be rudimentary. it may reach a high pitch of æsthetic and symbolic perfection. but even the successive rebels against dead ceremony are found as a rule to invent some ceremony in their turn. they learn by experience the truth that men most easily form religious habits and tend, to have religious experiences when they are assembled in groups, and caused to perform the same acts. this is so because as we have already seen, the human psyche is plastic to the suggestions made to it; and this suggestibility is greatly increased when it is living a gregarious life as a member of a united congregation or flock, and is engaged in performing corporate acts. the soldiers' drill is essential to the solidarity of the army, and the religious service in some form is--apart from all other considerations--essential to the solidarity of the church. we need not be afraid to acknowledge that from the point of view of the psychologist one prime reason of the value and need of religious ceremonies abides in this corporate suggestibility of man: or that one of their chief works is the production in him of mobility of the threshold, and hence of spiritual awareness of a generalized kind. as the modern mother whispers beneficent suggestions into the ear of her sleeping child[ ] so the church takes her children at their moment of least resistance, and suggests to them all that she desires them to be. it is interesting to note how perfectly adapted the rituals of historic christianity are to this end, of provoking the emergence of the intuitive mind and securing a state of maximum suggestibility. the more complex and solemn the ritual, the more archaic and universal the symbols it employs, so much the more powerful--for those natures able to yield to it--the suggestion becomes. music, rhythmic chanting, symbolic gesture, the solemn periods of recited prayer, are all contributory to this, effect in churches of the catholic type every object that meets the eye, every scent, every attitude that we are encouraged to assume, gives us a push in the same direction if we let it do its rightful work. for other temperaments the collective, deliberate, and really ceremonial silence of the quakers--the hush of the waiting mind, the unforced attitude of expectation, the abstraction from visual image--works to the same end. in either case, the aim is the production of a special group-consciousness; the reinforcing of languid or undeveloped individual feeling and aptitude by the suggestion of the crowd. this, and its result, is seen of course in its crudest form in revivalism: and on higher levels, in such elaborate dramatic ceremonies as those which are a feature of the catholic celebrations of holy week. but the nice warm devotional feeling with which what is called a good congregation finishes the singing of a favourite hymn belongs to the same order of phenomena. the rhythmic phrases--not as a rule very full of meaning or intellectual appeal--exercise a slightly hypnotic effect on the analyzing surface-mind; and induce a condition of suggestibility open to all the influences of the place and of our fellow worshippers. the authorized translation of ephesians v. : "_speaking to yourselves_ in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs," whatever we may think of its accuracy does as it stands describe one of the chief functions of religious services of the "hearty congregational" sort. we do speak to ourselves--our deeper, and more plastic selves--in our psalms and hymns; so too in the common recitation, especially the chanting, of a creed. we administer through these rhythmic affirmations, so long as we sing them with intention, a powerful suggestion to ourselves and every one else within reach. we gather up in them--or should do--the whole tendency of our worship and aspiration, and in the very form in which it can most easily sink in. this lays a considerable responsibility on those who choose psalms and hymns for congregational singing; for these can as easily be the instruments of fanatical melancholy and devitalizing, as of charitable life-giving and constructive ideas. in saying all this i do not seek to discredit religious ceremony; either of the naïve or of the sophisticated type. on the contrary, i think that in effecting this change in our mental tone and colour, in prompting this emergence of a mood which, in the mass of men, is commonly suppressed, these ceremonies do their true work. they should stimulate and give social expression to that mood of adoration which is the very heart of religion; helping those who cannot be devotional alone to participate in the common devotional feeling. if, then, we desire to receive the gifts which corporate worship can most certainly make to us, we ought to yield ourselves without resistance or criticism to its influence; as we yield ourselves to the influence of a great work of art. that influence is able to tune us up, at least to a fleeting awareness of spiritual reality; and each such emergence of transcendental feeling is to the good. it is true that the objects which immediately evoke this feeling will only be symbolic; but after all, our very best conceptions of god are bound to be that. we do not, or should not, demand scientific truth of them. their business is rather to give us poetry, a concrete artistic intuition of reality, and to place us in the mood of poetry. the great thing is, that by these corporate liturgic practices and surrenders, we can prevent that terrible freezing up of the deep wells of our being which so easily comes to those who must lead an exacting material or intellectual life. we keep ourselves supple; the spiritual faculties are within reach, and susceptible to education. organized ceremonial religion insists upon it, that at least for a certain time each day or week we shall attend to the things of the spirit. it offers us its suggestions, and shuts off as well as it can conflicting suggestions: though, human as we are, the mere appearance of our neighbours is often enough to bring these in. nothing is more certain than this: first that we shall never know the spiritual world unless we give ourselves the chance of attending to it, clear a space for it in our busy lives; and next, that it will not produce its real effect in us, unless it penetrates below the conscious surface into the deeps of the instinctive mind, and moulds this in accordance with the regnant idea. if we are to receive the gifts of the cultus, we on our part must bring to it at the very least what we bring to all great works of art that speak to us: that is to say, attention, surrender, sympathetic emotion. otherwise, like all other works of art, it will remain external to us. much of the perfectly sincere denunciation and dislike of religious ceremony which now finds frequent utterance comes from those who have failed thus to do their share. they are like the hasty critics who dismiss some great work of art because it is not representative, or historically accurate; and so entirely miss the æsthetic values which it was created to impart. consider a picture of the madonna. minds at different levels may find in this pure representation, bible history, theology, æsthetic satisfaction, spiritual truth. the peasant may see in it the portrait of the mother of god, the critic a phase in artistic evolution; whilst the mystic may pass through it to new contacts with the spirit of life. we shall receive according to the measure of what we bring. now consider the parallel case of some great dramatic liturgy, rich with the meanings which history has poured into it. take, as an example which every one can examine for themselves, the roman mass. different levels of mind will find here magic, theology, deep mystery, the commemoration under archaic symbols of an event. but above and beyond all these, they can find the solemn incorporated emotion, of the christian church, and a liturgic recapitulation of the movement of the human soul towards fullness of life: through confession and reconciliation to adoration and intercession--that is, to charity--and thence to direct communion with and feeding on the divine world. to the mind which refuses to yield to it, to move with its movement, but remains in critical isolation, the mass like all other ceremonies will seem external, dead, unreal; lacking in religious content. but if we do give ourselves completely and unselfconsciously to the movement of such a ceremony, at the end of it we may not have learnt anything, but we have lived something. and when we remember that no experience of our devotional life is lost, surely we may regard it as worth while to submit ourselves to an experience by which, if only for a few minutes, we are thus lifted to richer levels of life and brought into touch with higher values? we have indeed only to observe the enrichment of life so often produced in those who thus dwell meekly and without inner conflict in the symbolic world of ceremonial religion, and accept its discipline and its gifts, to be led at least to a humble suspension of judgment as to its value. a whole world of spiritual experience separates the humble little church mouse rising at six every morning to attend a service which she believes to be pleasing to a personal god, from the philosopher who meditates on the absolute in a comfortable armchair; and no one will feel much doubt as to which side the advantage lies. here we approach the next point. the cultus, with its liturgy and its discipline, exists for and promotes the repetition of acts which are primarily the expression of man's instinct for god; and by these--or any other repeated acts--our ductile instinctive life is given a definite trend. we know from semon's researches[ ] that the performance of any given act by a living creature influences all future performances of similar acts. that is to say, memory combines with each fresh stimulus to control our reaction to it. "in the case of living organisms," says bertrand russell, "practically everything that is distinctive both of their physical and mental behaviour is bound up with this persistent influence of the past": and most actions and responses "can only be brought under causal laws by including past occurrences in the history of the organism as part of the causes of the present response."[ ] the phenomena of apperception, in fact, form only one aspect of a general law. as that which we have perceived conditions what we can now perceive, so that which we have done conditions what we shall do. it therefore appears that in spite of angry youthful revolts or mature sophistications, early religious training, and especially repeated religious _acts_, are likely to influence the whole of our future lives. though all they meant to us seems dead or unreal, they have retreated to the dark background of consciousness and there live on. the tendency which they have given persists; we never get away from them. a church may often seem to lose her children, as human parents do; but in spite of themselves they retain her invisible seal, and are her children still. in nearly all conversions in middle life, or dramatic returns from scepticism to traditional belief, a large, part is undoubtedly played by forgotten childish memories and early religious discipline, surging up and contributing their part to the self's new apprehensions of reality. if, then, the cultus did nothing else, it would do these two highly important things. it would influence our whole present attitude by its suggestions, and our whole future attitude through unconscious memory of the acts which it demands. but it does more than this. it has as perhaps its greatest function the providing of a concrete artistic expression for our spiritual perceptions, adorations and desires. it links the visible with the invisible, by translating transcendent fact into symbolic and even sensuous terms. and for this reason men, having bodies no less surely than spirits, can never afford wholly to dispense with it. hasty transcendentalists often forget this; and set us spiritual standards to which the race, so long as it is anchored to this planet and to the physical order, cannot conform. a convert from agnosticism with whom i was acquainted, was once receiving religious instruction from a devout and simple-minded nun. they were discussing the story of the annunciation, which presented some difficulties to her. at last she said to the nun, "well, anyhow, i suppose that one is not obliged to believe that the blessed virgin was visited by a solid angel, dressed in a white robe?" to this the nun replied doubtfully, "no, dear, perhaps not. but still, you know, he would have to wear _something_." now here, as it seems to me, we have a great theological truth in a few words. the elusive contacts and subtle realities of the world of spirit have got to wear something, if we are to grasp them at all. moreover, if the mass of men are to grasp them ever so little, they must wear something which is easily recognized by the human eye and human heart; more, by the primitive, half-conscious folk-soul existing in each one of us, stirring in the depths and reaching out in its own way towards god. it is a delicate matter to discuss religious symbols. they are like our intimate friends: though at the bottom of our hearts we may know that they are only human, we hate other people to tell us so. and, even as the love of human beings in its most perfect state passes beyond its immediate object, is transfigured, and merged in the nature of all love; so too, the devotion which a purely symbolic figure calls forth from the ardently religious nature--whether this figure be the divine krishna of hinduism, the buddhist's mother of mercy, the s[=u]fi's beloved, or those objects of traditional christian piety which are familiar to all of us--this devotion too passes beyond its immediate goal and the relative truth there embodied, and is eternalized. it is characteristic of the primitive mind that it finds a difficulty about universals, and is most at home with particulars. the success of christianity as a world-religion largely abides in the way in which it meets this need. it is notorious that the person of jesus, rather than the absolute god, is the object of average protestant devotion. so too the catholic peasant may find it easier to approach god through and in his special saint, or even a special local form of the madonna. this is the inevitable corollary of the psychic level at which he lives; and to speak contemptuously of his "superstition" is wholly beside the point. other great faiths have been compelled by experience to meet need of a particular object on which the primitive religious consciousness can fasten itself: conspicuous examples being the development within buddhism of the cult of the great mother, and within pore brahminism of krishna worship. wherever it may be destined to end, here it is that the life of the spirit begins; emerging very gently from our simplest human impulses and needs. yet, since the universal, the idea, is manifested in each such particular, we need not refuse to allow that the mass of men do thus enjoy--in a way that their psychic level makes natural to them--their own measure of communion with the creative spirit of god; and already live according to their measure a spiritual life. these objects of religious cultus, then, and the whole symbolic faith-world which is built up of them, with its angels and demons, its sharply defined heaven and hell, the divine personifications which embody certain attributes of god for us, the purity and gentleness of the mother, the simplicity and infinite possibility of the child, the divine self-giving of the cross;--more, the lamb, the blood and the fire of the revivalists, the oil and water, bread and wine, of a finished sacramentalism--all these may be regarded as the vestures placed by man, at one stage or another of his progress, on the freely-given but ineffable spiritual fact. like other clothes, they have now become closely identified with that which wears them. and we strip them off at our own peril: for this proceeding, grateful as it may be to our intellects, may leave us face to face with a mystery which we dare not look at, and cannot grasp. so, cultus has done a mighty thing for humanity, in evolving and conserving the system of symbols through which the infinite and eternal can be in some measure expressed. the history of these symbols goes back, as we now know, to the infancy of the race, and forward to the last productions of the religious imagination; all of which bear the image of our past they are like coins, varying in beauty, and often of slight intrinsic value; but of enormous importance for our spiritual currency, because accepted as the representatives of a real wealth. in its symbols, the cultus preserves all the past levels of religious response achieved by the race; weaving them into the fabric of religion, and carrying them forward into the present. all the instinctive movements of the primitive mind; its fear of the invisible, its self-subjection, its trust in ritual acts, amulets, spells, sacrifices, its tendency to localize deity in certain places or shrines, to buy off the unknown, to set up magicians and mediators, are represented in it. its function is racial more than individual. it is the art-work of the folk-soul in the religious sphere. here man's inveterate creative faculty seizes on the raw material given him by religious-intuition, and constructs from it significant shapes. we misunderstand, then, the whole character of religious symbolism if we either demand rationality from it, or try to adapt its imagery to the lucid and probably mistaken conclusions of the sophisticated, modern mind. we are learning to recognize these primitive and racial elements in popular religion, and to endure their presence with tolerance; because they are necessary, and match a level of mental life which is still active in the race. this more primitive life emerges to dominate all crowds--where the collective mental level is inevitably lower than that of the best individuals immersed in it--and still conditions many of our beliefs and deeds. there is the propitiatory attitude to unseen divine powers; which the primitive mind, in defiance of theology, insists on regarding as somehow hostile to us and wanting to be bought off. there is the whole idea and apparatus of sacrifice; even though no more than the big apples and vegetable marrows of the harvest festival be involved in it. there is the continued belief in a deity who can and should be persuaded to change the weather, or who punishes those who offend him by famine, earthquake and pestilence. vestigial relics of all these phases can still be discovered in the book of common prayer. there is further the undying vogue of the religious amulet. there is the purely magical efficacy which some churches attribute to their sacraments, rites, shrines, liturgic formulæ and religious objects; others, to the texts of their scriptures.[ ] these things, and others like them, are not only significant survivals from the past. they also represent the religious side of something that continues active in us at present. since, then, it should clearly be the object of all spiritual endeavor to win the whole man and not only his reason for god, speaking to his instincts in language that they understand, we should not too hurriedly despise or denounce these things. far better that our primitive emotions, with their vast store of potential energy, should be won for spiritual interests on the only terms which they can grasp, than that they should be left to spend themselves on lower objects. if therefore the spiritual or the regenerate life is not likely to prosper without some incorporation in institutions, some definite link with the past, it seems also likely to need for its full working-out and propaganda the symbols and liturgy of a cultus. here again, the right path will be that of fulfilment, not of destruction; a deeper investigation of the full meaning of cultus, the values it conserves and the needs it must meet, a clearer and humbler understanding of our human limitations. we must also clearly realize as makers of the future, that as the church has its special dangers of conservatism, cosiness, intolerance, a checking of initiative, the domestic tendency to enclose itself and shirk reality; so the cultus has also its special dangers, of which the chief are perhaps formalism, magic, and spiritual sloth. receiving and conserving as it does all the successive deposits of racial experience, it is the very home of magic: of the archaic tendency to attribute words and deeds, special power to a priestly caste, and to make of itself the essential mediator between creative spirit and the soul. further, using perpetually as it does and must symbols of the most archaic sort, directly appealing to the latent primitive in each of us, it offers us a perpetual temptation to fall back into something below our best possible. the impulsive mind is inevitably conservative; always at the mercy of memorized images. hence its delighted self-yielding to traditional symbols, its uncritical emotionalism, its easy slip-back into traditional and even archaic and self-contradictory beliefs: the way in which it pops out and enjoys itself at a service of the hearty congregational sort, or may even lead its unresisting owner to the revivalists' penitent-bench. but on the other hand, creative spirit is not merely conservative. the lord and giver of life presses forward, and perpetually brings novelty to birth; and in so far as we are dedicated to him, we must not make an unconditional surrender to psychic indolence, or to the pull-back of the religious past. we may not, as christians, accept easy emotions in the place of heroic and difficult actualizations: make external religion an excuse for dodging reality, immerse ourselves in an exquisite dream, or tolerate any real conflict between old cultus and actual living faith. a most delicate discrimination is therefore demanded from us; the striking of a balance between the rightful conservatism of the cultus and the rightful independence of the soul. yet, this is not to justify even in the most advanced a wholesale iconoclasm. time after time, experience has proved that the attempt to approach god "without means," though it may seem to describe the rare and sacred moments of the personal life of the spirit, is beyond the power of the mass of men; and even those who do achieve it are, as it were, most often supported from behind by religious history and the religious culture of their day. i do not think it can be doubted that the right use of cultus does-increase religious sensitiveness. therefore here the difficult task of the future must be to preserve and carry forward its essential elements, all the symbolic significance, all the incorporated emotion, which make it one of man's greatest works of art; whilst eliminating those features which are, in the bad sense, conventional and no longer answer to experience or communicate life. were we truly reasonable human beings, we should perhaps provide openly and as a matter of course within the christian frame widely different types of ceremonial religion, suited to different levels of mind and different developments of the religious consciousness. to some extent this is already done: traditionalism and liberalism, sacramentalism, revivalism, quietism, have each their existing cults. but these varying types of church now appear as competitors, too often hostile; not as the complementary and graded expressions of one life, each having truth in the relative though none in the absolute sense. did we more openly acknowledge the character of that life, the historic churches would no longer invite the sophisticated to play down to their own primitive fantasies; to sing meaningless hymns and recite vindictive psalms, or lull themselves by the recitation of litany or rosary which, admirable as the instruments of suggestion, are inadequate expressions of the awakened spiritual life. on the one hand, they would not require the simple to express their corporate religious feeling in elizabethan english or patristic latin; on the other, expect the educated to accept at face-value symbols of which the unreal character is patent to them. nor would they represent these activities as possessing absolute value in themselves. to join in simplicity and without criticism in the common worship, humbly receiving its good influences, is one thing. this is like the drill of the loyal soldier; welding him to his neighbours, giving him the corporate spirit and forming in him the habits he needs. but to stop short at that drill, and tell the individual that drill is the essence of his life and all his duty, is another thing altogether. it confuses means and end; destroys the balance between liberty and law. if the religious institution is to do its real work in furthering the life of the spirit, it must introduce a more rich variety into its methods; and thus educate souls of every type not only to be members of the group but also to grow up to the full richness of the personal life. it must offer them--as indeed catholicism does to some extent already--both easy emotion and difficult mystery; both dramatic ceremony and ceremonial silence. it must also give to them all its hoarded knowledge of the inner life of prayer and contemplation, of the remaking of the moral nature on supernatural levels: all the gold that there is in the deposit of faith. and it must not be afraid to impart that knowledge in modern terms which all can understand. all this it can and will do if its members sufficiently desire it: which means, if those who care intensely for the life of the spirit accept their corporate responsibilities. in the last resort, criticism of the church, of christian institutionalism, is really criticism of ourselves. were we more spiritually alive, our spiritual homes would be the real nesting places of new life. that which the church is to us is the result of all that we bring to, and ask from, history: the impact of our present and its past. footnotes: [footnote : william james: "the varieties of religious experience," p. .] [footnote : on this point compare von hügel: "essays and addresses on the philosophy of religion," pp. et seq.] [footnote : w. mcdougall: "the group mind," cap. .] [footnote : von hügel "eternal life," p. .] [footnote : cf. trotter: "instincts of the herd in peace and war."] [footnote : dom cuthbert butler in the "hibbert journal," , p. .] [footnote : baudouin: "suggestion and auto-suggestion," cap. vii.] [footnote : cf. r. semon: "die mneme."] [footnote : bertrand russell: "the analysis of mind," p. .] [footnote : a quaint example of this occurred in a recent revival, where the exclamation "we believe in the word of god from cover to cover, alleluia!" received the fervent reply, "and the covers too!"] chapter vi the life of the spirit in the individual in the last three chapters we have been concerned, almost exclusively, with those facts of psychic life and growth, those instruments and mechanizations, which bear upon or condition our spiritual life. but these wanderings in the soul's workshops, and these analyses of the forces that play on it, give us far too cold or too technical a view of that richly various and dynamic thing, the real regenerated life. i wish now to come out of the workshop, and try to see this spiritual life as the individual man may and should achieve it, from another angle of approach. what are we to regard as the heart of spirituality? when we have eliminated the accidental characters with which varying traditions have endowed it, what is it that still so definitely distinguishes its possessor from the best, most moral citizen or devoted altruist? why do the christian saint, indian _rishi,_ buddhist _arhat,_ moslem _s[=u]fi,_ all seem to us at bottom men of one race, living under different sanctions one life, witnessing to one fact? this life, which they show in its various perfections, includes it is true the ethical life, but cannot be equated with it. wherein do its differentia consist? we are dealing with the most subtle of realities and have only the help of crude words, developed for other purposes than this. but surely we come near to the truth, as history and experience show it to us, when we say again that the spiritual life in all its manifestations from smallest beginnings to unearthly triumph is simply the life that means god in all his richness, immanent and transcendent: the whole response to the eternal and abiding of which any one man is capable, expressed in and through his this-world life. it requires then an objective vision or certitude, something to aim at; and also a total integration of the self, its dedication to that aim. both terms, vision and response, are essential to it. this definition may seem at first sight rather dull. it suggests little of that poignant and unearthly beauty, that heroism, that immense attraction, which really belong to the spiritual life. here indeed we are dealing with poetry in action: and we need not words but music to describe it as it really is. yet all the forms, all the various beauties and achievements of this life of the spirit, can be resumed as the reactions of different temperaments to the one abiding and inexhaustibly satisfying object of their love. it is the answer made by the whole supple, plastic self, rational and instinctive, active and contemplative, to any or all of those objective experiences of religion which we considered in the first chapter; whether of an encompassing and transcendent reality, of a divine companionship or of immanent spirit. such a response we must believe to be itself divinely actuated. fully made, it is found on the one hand to call forth the most heroic, most beautiful, most tender qualities in human nature; all that we call holiness, the transfiguration of mere ethics by a supernatural loveliness, breathing another air, satisfying another standard, than those of the temporal world. and on the other hand, this response of the self is repaid by a new sensitiveness and receptivity, a new influx of power. to use theological language, will is answered by grace: and as the will's dedication rises towards completeness the more fully does new life flow in. therefore it is plain that the smallest and humblest beginning of such a life in ourselves--and this inquiry is useless unless it be made to speak to our own condition--will entail not merely an addition to life, but for us too a change in our whole scale of values, a self-dedication. for that which we are here shown as a possible human achievement is not a life of comfortable piety, or the enjoyment of the delicious sensations of the armchair mystic. we are offered, it is true, a new dower of life; access to the full possibilities of human nature. but only upon terms, and these terms include new obligations in respect of that life; compelling us, as it appears, to perpetual hard and difficult choices, a perpetual refusal to sink back into the next-best, to slide along a gentle incline. the spiritual life is not lived upon the heavenly hearth-rug, within safe distance from the fire of love. it demands, indeed, very often things so hard that seen from the hearth-rug they seem to us superhuman: immensely generous compassion, forbearance, forgiveness, gentleness, radiant purity, self-forgetting zeal. it means a complete conquest of life's perennial tendency to lag behind the best possible; willing acceptance of hardship and pain. and if we ask how this can be, what it is that makes possible such enhancement of human will and of human courage, the only answer seems to be that of the johannine christ: that it does consist in a more abundant life. in the second chapter of this book, we looked at the gradual unfolding of that life in its great historical representatives; and we found its general line of development to lead through disillusion with the merely physical to conversion to the spiritual, and thence by way of hard moral conflicts and their resolution to a unification of character, a full integration of the active and contemplative sides of life; resulting in fresh power, and a complete dedication, to work within the new order and for the new ideals. there was something of the penitent, something of the contemplative, and something of the apostle in every man or woman who thus grew to their full stature and realized all their latent possibilities. but above all there was a fortitude, an all-round power of tackling existence, which comes from complete indifference to personal suffering or personal success. and further, psychology showed us, that those workings and readjustments which we saw preparing this life of the spirit, were in line with those which prepare us for fullness of life on other levels: that is to say the harnessing of the impulsive nature to the purposes chosen by consciousness, the resolving of conflicts, the unification of the whole personality about one's dominant interest. these readjustments were helped by the deliberate acceptance of the useful suggestions of religion, the education of the foreconscious, the formation of habits of charity and prayer. the greatest and most real of living writers on this subject, baron von hügel, has given us another definition of the personal spiritual life which may fruitfully be compared with this. it must and shall, he says, exhibit rightful contact with and renunciation of the particular and fleeting; and with this ever seeks and finds the eternal--deepening and incarnating within its own experience this "transcendent otherness."[ ] nothing which we are likely to achieve can go beyond this profound saying. we see how many rich elements are contained in it: effort and growth, a temper both social and ascetic, a demand for and a receiving of power. true, to some extent it restates the position at which we arrived in the first chapter: but we now wish to examine more thoroughly into that position and discover its practical applications. let us then begin by unpacking it, and examining its chief characters one by one. if we do this, we find that it demands of us:--( ) rightful contact with the particular and fleeting. that is, a willing acceptance of all this-world tasks, obligations, relations, and joys; in fact, the active life of becoming in its completeness. ( ) but also, a certain renunciation of that particular and fleeting. a refusal to get everything out of it that we can for ourselves, to be possessive, or attribute to it absolute worth. this involves a sense of detachment or asceticism; of further destiny and obligation for the soul than complete earthly happiness or here-and-now success. ( ) and with this ever--not merely in hours of devotion--to seek and find the eternal; penetrating our wholesome this-world action through and through with the very spirit of contemplation. ( ) thus deepening and incarnating--bringing in, giving body to, and in some sense exhibiting by means of our own growing and changing experience--that transcendent otherness, the fact of the life of the spirit in the here-and-now. the full life of the spirit, then, is once more declared to be active, contemplative, ascetic and apostolic; though nowadays we express these abiding human dispositions in other and less formidable terms. if we translate them as work, prayer, self-discipline and social service they do not look quite so bad. but even so, what a tremendous programme to put before the ordinary human creature, and how difficult it looks when thus arranged! that balance to be discovered and held between due contact with this present living world of time, and due renunciation of it. that continual penetration of the time-world with the spirit of eternity. but now, in accordance with the ruling idea which has occupied us in this book, let us arrange these four demands in different order. let us put number three first: "ever seeking and finding the eternal." conceive, at least, that we do this really, and in a practical way. then we discover that, placed as we certainly are in a world of succession, most of the seeking and finding has got to be done there; that the times of pure abstraction in which we touch the non-successive and supersensual must be few. hence it follows that the first and second demands are at once fully met; for, if we are indeed faithfully seeking and finding the eternal whilst living--as all sane men and women must do--in closest contact with the particular and fleeting, our acceptances and our renunciations will be governed by this higher term of experience. and further, the transcendent otherness, perpetually envisaged by us as alone giving the world of sense its beauty, reality and value, will be incarnated and expressed by us in this sense-life, and thus ever more completely tasted and known. it will be drawn by us, as best we can, and often at the cost of bitter struggle, into the limitations of humanity; entincturing our attitude and our actions. and in the degree in which we thus appropriate it, it will be given out by us again to other men. all this, of course, says again that which men have been constantly told by those who sought to redeem them from their confusions, and show them the way to fullness of life. "seek first the kingdom of god," said jesus, "and all the rest shall be added to you." "love," said st. augustine, "and _do_ what you like"; "let nothing," says thomas à kempis, "be great or high or acceptable to thee but purely god";[ ] and kabir, "open your eyes of love, and see him who pervades this world! consider it well, and know that this is your own country."[ ] "our whole teaching," says boehme, "is nothing else than how man should kindle in himself god's light-world."[ ] i do not say that such a presentation of it makes the personal spiritual life any easier: nothing does that. but it does make its central implicit rather clearer, shows us at once its difficulty and its simplicity; since it depends on the consistent subordination of every impulse and every action to one regnant aim and interest--in other words, the unification of the whole self round one centre, the highest conceivable by man. each of man's behaviour-cycles is always directed towards some end, of which he may or may not be vividly conscious. but in that perfect unification of the self which is characteristic of the life of spirit, all his behaviour is brought into one stream of purpose, and directed towards one transcendent end. and this simplification alone means for him a release from conflicting wishes, and so a tremendous increase of power. if then we admit this formula, "ever seeking and finding the eternal"--which is of course another rendering of ruysbroeck's "aiming at god"--as the prime character of a spiritual life, the secret of human transcendence; what are the agents by which it is done? here, men and women of all times and all religions, who have achieved this fullness of life, agree in their answer: and by this answer we are at once taken away from dry philosophic conceptions and introduced into the very heart of human experience. it is done, they say, on man's part by love and prayer: and these, properly understood in their inexhaustible richness, joy, pain, dedication and noble simplicity, cover the whole field of the spiritual life. without them, that life is impossible; with them, if the self be true to their implications, some measure of it cannot be escaped. i said, love and prayer properly understood: not as two movements of emotional piety, but as fundamental human dispositions, as the typical attitude and action which control man's growth into greater reality. since then they are of such primary importance to us, it will be worth while at this stage to look into them a little more closely. first, love: that over-worked and ill-used word, often confused on the one hand with passion and on the other with amiability. if we ask the most fashionable sort of psychologist what love is, he says that it is the impulse urging us towards that end which is the fulfilment of any series of deeds or "behaviour-cycle"; the psychic thread, on which all the apparently separate actions making up that cycle are strung and united. in this sense love need not be fully conscious, reach the level of feeling; but it _must_ be an imperative, inward urge. and if we ask those who have known and taught the life of the spirit, they too say that love is a passionate tendency, an inward vital urge of the soul towards its source;[ ] which impels every living thing to pursue the most profound trend of its being, reaches consciousness in the form of self-giving and of desire, and its only satisfying goal in god. love is for them much more than its emotional manifestations. it is "the ultimate cause of the true activities of all active things"--no less. this definition, which i take as a matter of fact from st. thomas aquinas,[ ] would be agreeable to the most modern psychologist; he might give the hidden steersman of the psyche in its perpetual movement towards novelty a less beautiful and significant name. "this indwelling love," says plotinus, "is no other than the spirit which, as we are told, walks with every being, the affection dominant in each several nature. it implants the characteristic desire; the particular soul, strained towards its own natural objects, brings forth its own love, the guiding spirit realizing its worth and the quality of its being."[ ] does not all this suggest to us once more, that at whatever level it be experienced, the psychic craving, the urgent spirit within us pressing out to life, is always _one;_ and that the sublimation of this vital craving, its direction to god, is the essence of regeneration? there, in our instinctive nature--which, as we know, makes us the kind of animal we are--abides that power of loving which is, really, the power of living; the cause of our actions, the controlling factor in our perceptions, the force pressing us into any given type of experience, turning aside for no obstacles but stimulated by them to a greater vigour. each level of the universe makes solicitations to this power: the worlds of sense, of thought, of beauty, and of action. according to the degree of our development, the trend of the conscious will, is our response; and according to that response will be our life. "the world to which a man turns himself," says boehme, "and in which he produces fruit, the same is lord in him, and this world becomes manifest in him."[ ] from all this it becomes clear what the love of god is; and what st. augustine meant when he said that all virtue--and virtue after all means power not goodness--lay in the right ordering of love, the conscious orientation of desire. christians, on the authority of their master, declare that such love of god requires all that they have, not only of feeling, but also of intellect and of power; since he is to be loved with heart and mind and strength. thought and action on highest levels are involved in it, for it means, not religious emotionalism, but the unflickering orientation of the whole self towards him, ever seeking and finding the eternal; the linking up of all behaviour on that string, so that the apparently hard and always heroic choices which are demanded, are made at last because they are inevitable. it is true that this dominant interest will give to our lives a special emotional colour and a special kind of happiness; but in this, as in the best, deepest, richest human love, such feeling-tone and such happiness--though in some natures of great beauty and intensity--are only to be looked upon as secondary characters, and never to be aimed at. when st. teresa said that the real object of the spiritual marriage was "the incessant production of work, work,"[ ] i have no doubt that many of her nuns were disconcerted; especially the type of ease-loving conservatives whom she and her intimates were accustomed to refer to as the pussy-cats. but in this direct application to religious experience of st. thomas' doctrine of love, she set up an ideal of the spiritual life which is as valid at the present day in the entanglements of our social order, as it was in the enclosed convents of sixteenth-century spain. love, we said, is the cause of action. it urges and directs our behaviour, conscious and involuntary, towards an end. the mother is irresistibly impelled to act towards her child's welfare, the ambitious man towards success, the artist towards expression of his vision. all these are examples of behaviour, love-driven towards ends. and religious experience discloses to us a greater more inclusive end, and this vital power of love as capable of being used on the highest levels, regenerated, directed to eternal interests; subordinating behaviour, inspiring suffering, unifying the whole self and its activities, mobilizing them for this transcendental achievement. this generous love, to go back to the quotation from baron von hügel which opened our inquiry, will indeed cause the behaviour it controls to exhibit both rightful contact with and renunciation of the particular and fleeting; because in and through this series of linked deeds it is uniting with itself all human activities, and in and through them is seeking and finding its eternal end. so, in that rightful bringing-in of novelty which is the business of the fully living soul, the most powerful agent is love, understood as the controlling factor of behaviour, the sublimation and union of will and desire. "let love," says boehme, "be the life of thy nature. it killeth thee not, but quickeneth thee according to its life, and then thou livest, yet not to thy own will but to its will: for thy will becometh its will, and then thou art dead to thyself but alive to god."[ ] there is the true, solid and for us most fruitful doctrine of divine union, unconnected with any rapture, trance, ecstasy or abnormal state of mind: a union organic, conscious, and dynamic with the creative spirit of life. if we now go on to ask how, specially, we shall achieve this union in such degree as is possible to each one of us; the answer must be, that it will be done by prayer. if the seeking of the eternal is actuated by love, the finding of it is achieved through prayer. prayer, in fact--understood as a life or state, not an act or an asking--is the beginning, middle and end of all that we are now considering. as the social self can only be developed by contact with society, so the spiritual self can only be developed by contact with the spiritual world. and such humble yet ardent contact with the spiritual world--opening up to its suggestions our impulses, our reveries, our feelings, our most secret dispositions as well as our mere thoughts-is the essence of prayer, understood in its widest sense. no more than surrender or love can prayer be reduced to "one act." those who seek to sublimate it into "pure" contemplation are as limited at one end of the scale, as those who reduce it to articulate petition are at the other. it contains in itself a rich variety of human reactions and experiences. it opens the door upon an unwalled world, in which the self truly lives and therefore makes widely various responses to its infinitely varying stimuli. into that world the self takes, or should take, its special needs, aptitudes and longings, and matches them against its apprehension of eternal truth. in this meeting of the human heart with all that it can apprehend of reality, not adoration alone but unbounded contrition, not humble dependence alone but joy, peace and power, not rapture alone but mysterious darkness, must be woven into the fabric of love. in this world the soul may sometimes wander as if in pastures, sometimes is poised breathless and intent. sometimes it is fed by beauty, sometimes by most difficult truth, and experiences the extremes of riches and destitution, darkness and light. "it is not," says plotinus, "by crushing the divine into a unity but by displaying its exuberance, as the supreme himself has displayed it, that we show knowledge of the might of god."[ ] thus, by that instinctive and warmly devoted direction of its behaviour which is love, and that willed attention to and communion with the spiritual world which is prayer, all the powers of the self are united and turned towards the seeking and finding of the eternal. it is by complete obedience to this exacting love, doing difficult and unselfish things, giving up easy and comfortable things--in fact by living, living hard on the highest levels--that men more and more deeply feel, experience, and enter into their spiritual life. this is a fact which must seem rather awkward to those who put forward pathological explanations of it. and on the other hand it is only by constant contacts with and recourse to the energizing life of spirit, that this hard vocation can be fulfilled. such a power of reference to reality, of transcending the world of succession and its values, can be cultivated by us; and this education of our inborn aptitude is a chief function of the discipline of prayer. true, it is only in times of recollection or of great emotion that this profound contact is fully present to consciousness. yet, once fully achieved and its obligations accepted by us, it continues as a grave melody within our busy outward acts: and we must by right direction of our deepest instincts so find and feel the eternal all the time, if indeed we are to actualize and incarnate it all the time. from this truth of experience, religion has deduced the doctrine of grace, and the general conception of man as able to do nothing of himself. this need hardly surprise us. for equally on the physical plane man can do nothing of himself, if he be cut off from his physical sources of power: from food to eat, and air to breathe. therefore the fact that his spiritual life too is dependent upon the life-giving atmosphere that penetrates him, and the heavenly food which he receives, makes no fracture in his experience. thus we are brought back by another path to the fundamental need for him, in some form, of the balanced active and contemplative life. in spite of this, many people seem to take it for granted that if a man believes in and desires to live a spiritual life, he can live it in utter independence of spiritual food. he believes in god, loves his neighbour, wants to do good, and just goes ahead. the result of this is that the life of the god-fearing citizen or the social christian, as now conceived and practised, is generally the starved life. it leaves no time for the silence, the withdrawal, the quiet attention to the spiritual, which is essential if it is to develop all its powers. yet the literature of the spirit is full of warnings on this subject. _taste_ and see that the lord is sweet. they that wait upon the lord shall renew their _strength_. in quietness and confidence shall be your _strength_. these are practical statements; addressed, not to specialists but to ordinary men and women, with a normal psycho-physical make-up. they are literally true now, or can be if we choose. they do not involve any peculiar training, or unnatural effort. a sliding scale goes from the simplest prayer-experience of the ordinary man to that complete self-loss and complete self-finding, which is called the transforming union of the saint; and somewhere in this series, every human soul can find a place. if this balanced life is to be ours, if we are to receive what st. augustine called the food of the full-grown, to find and feel the eternal, we must give time and place to it in our lives. i emphasize this, because its realization seems to me to be a desperate modern need; a need exhibited supremely in our languid and ineffectual spirituality, but also felt in the too busy, too entirely active and hurried lives of the artist, the reformer and the teacher. st. john of the cross says in one of his letters: "what is wanting is not writing or talking--there is more than enough of that--but, silence and action. for silence joined to action produces recollection, and gives the spirit a marvellous strength." such recollection, such a gathering up of our interior forces and retreat of consciousness to its "ground," is the preparation of all great endeavour, whatever its apparent object may be. until we realize that it is better, more useful, more productive of strength, to spend, let us say, the odd ten minutes in the morning in feeling and finding the eternal than in flicking the newspaper--that this will send us off to the day's work properly orientated, gathered together, recollected, and really endowed with new power of dealing with circumstance--we have not begun to live the life of the spirit, or grasped the practical connection between such a daily discipline and the power of doing our best work, whatever it may be. i will illustrate this from a living example: that of the sadhu sundar singh. no one, i suppose, who came into personal contact with the sadhu, doubted that they were in the presence of a person who was living, in the full sense, the spiritual life. even those who could not accept the symbols in which he described his experience and asked others to share it, acknowledged that there had been worked in him a great transformation; that the sense of the abiding and eternal went with him everywhere, and flowed out from him, to calm and to correct our feverish lives. he fully satisfies in his own person the demands of baron von hügel's definition: both contact with and renunciation of the particular and fleeting, seeking and finding of the eternal, incarnating within his own experience that transcendent otherness. now the sadhu has discovered for himself and practises as the condition of his extraordinary activity, power and endurance, just that balance of life which st. benedict's rule ordained. he is a wandering missionary, constantly undertaking great journeys, enduring hardship and danger, and practising the absolute poverty of st. francis. he is perfectly healthy, strong, extraordinarily attractive, full of power. but this power he is careful to nourish. his irreducible minimum is two hours spent in meditation and wordless communication with god at the beginning of each day. he prefers three or four hours when work permits; and a long period of prayer and meditation always precedes his public address. if forced to curtail or hurry these hours of prayer, he feels restless and unhappy, and his efficiency is reduced. "prayer," he says, "is as important as breathing; and we never say we have no time to breathe."[ ] all this has been explained away by critics of the muscular christian sort, who say that the sadhu's christianity is of a typically eastern kind. but this is simply not true. it were much better to acknowledge that we, more and more, are tending to develop a typically western kind of christianity, marked by the western emphasis on doing and western contempt for being; and that if we go sufficiently far on this path we shall find ourselves cut off from our source. the sadhu's christianity is fully christian; that is to say, it is whole and complete. the power in which he does his works is that in which st. paul carried through his heroic missionary career, st. benedict formed a spiritual family that transformed european culture, wesley made the world his parish, elizabeth fry faced the newgate criminals. it is idle to talk of the revival of a personal spiritual life among ourselves, or of a spiritual regeneration of society--for this can only come through the individual remaking of each of its members--unless we are willing, at the sacrifice of some personal convenience, to make a place and time for these acts of recollection; this willing and loving--and even more fruitful, the more willing and loving--communion with, response to reality, to god. it is true that a fully lived spiritual life involves far more than this. but this is the only condition on which it will exist at all. love then, which is a willed tendency to god; prayer, which is willed communion with and experience of him; are the two prime essentials in the personal life of the spirit. they represent, of course, only our side of it and our obligation. this love is the outflowing response to another inflowing love, and this prayer the appropriation of a transcendental energy and grace. as the "german theology" reminds us, "i cannot do the work without god, and god may not or will not without me."[ ] and by these acts alone, faithfully carried through, all their costly demands fulfilled, all their gifts and applications accepted without resistance and applied to each aspect of life, human nature can grow up to its full stature, and obtain access to all its sources of power. yet this personal inward life of love and prayer shall not be too solitary. as it needs links with cultus and so with the lives of its fellows, it also needs links with history and so with the living past. these links are chiefly made by the individual through his reading; and such reading--such access to humanity's hoarded culture and experience--has always been declared alike by christian and non-christian asceticism to be one of the proper helps of the spiritual life. though höffding perhaps exaggerates when he reminds us that mediæval art always depicts the saints as deeply absorbed in their books, and suggests that such brooding study directly induces contemplative states,[ ] yet it is true that the soul gains greatly from such communion with, and meek learning from, its cultural background. ever more and more as it advances, it will discover within that background the records of those very experiences which it must now so poignantly relive; and which seem to it, as his own experience seems to every lover, unique. there it can find, without any betrayal of its secret, the wholesome assurance of its own normality; standards of comparison; companionship, alike in its hours of penitence, of light, and of deprivation. yet such fruitful communion with the past is not the privilege of an aristocratic culture. it is seen in its perfection in many simple christians who have found in the bible all the spiritual food they need. the great literature of the spirit tells its secrets to those alone who thus meet it on its own ground. not only the works of thomas à kempis, of ruysbroeck, or of st. teresa, but also the biblical writers--and especially, perhaps, the psalms and the gospels--are read wholly anew by us at each stage of our advance. comparative study of hindu and moslem writers proves that this is equally true of the great literatures of other faiths.[ ] beginners may find in all these infinite stimulus, interest, and beauty. but to the mature soul they become road-books, of which experience proves the astonishing exactitude; giving it descriptions which it can recognize and directions that it needs, and constituting a steady check upon individualism. now let us look at the emergence of this life which we have been considering, and at the typical path which it will or may follow, in an ordinary man or woman of our own day. not a saint or genius, reaching heroic levels; but a member of that solid wholesome spiritual population which ought to fill the streets of the city of god. we noticed when we were studying its appearance in history, that often this life begins in a sort of restlessness, a feeling that there is something more in existence, some absolute meaning, some more searching obligation, that we have not reached. this dissatisfaction, this uncertainty and hunger, may show itself in many different forms. it may speak first to the intellect, to the moral nature, to the social conscience, even to the artistic faculty; or, directly, to the heart. anyhow, its abiding quality is a sense of contraction, of limitation; a feeling of something more that we could stretch out to, and achieve, and be. its impulsion is always in one direction; to a finding of some wider and more enduring reality, some objective for the self's life and love. it is a seeking of the eternal, in some form. i allow that thanks to the fog in which we live muffled, such a first seeking, and above all such a finding of the eternal is not for us a very easy thing. the sense of quest, of disillusion, of something lacking, is more common among modern men than its resolution in discovery. nevertheless the quest does mean that there is a solution: and that those who are persevering must find it in the end. the world into which our desire is truly turned, is somehow revealed to us. the revelation, always partial and relative, is of course conditioned by our capacity, the character of our longing and the experiences of our past. in spiritual matters we behold that which we are: here following, on higher levels, the laws which govern æsthetic apprehension. so, dissatisfied with its world-view and realizing that it is incomplete, the self seeks at first hand, though not always with clear consciousness of its nature, the reality which is the object of religion. when it finds this reality, the discovery, however partial, is for it the overwhelming revelation of an objective fact; and it is swept by a love and awe which it did not know itself to possess. and now it sees; dimly, yet in a sufficiently disconcerting way, the pattern in the mount; the rich complex of existence as it were transmuted, full of charity and beauty, governed by another series of adjustments. life looks different to it. as fox said, "creation gives out another smell than before."[ ] there is only one thing more disconcerting than this, and that is seeing the pattern actualized in a fellow human being: living face to face with human sanctity, in its great simplicity and supernatural love, joy, peace. for, when we glimpse eternal beauty in the universe, we can say with the hero of "callista," "it is beyond me!" but, when we see it transfiguring human character, we know that it is not beyond the power of the race. it is here, to be had. its existence as a form of life creates a standard, and lays an obligation on us all. suppose then that the self, urged by this new pressure, accepts the obligation and measures itself by the standard. it then becomes apparent that this fact which it sought for and has seen is not merely added to its old universe, as in mediæval pictures paradise with its circles over-arches the earth. this reality is all-penetrating and has transfigured each aspect of the self's old world. it now has a new and most exacting scale of values, which demand from it a new series of adjustments; ask it--and with authority--to change its life. what next? the next thing, probably, is that the self finds itself in rather a tight place. it is wedged into a physical order that makes innumerable calls on it, and innumerable suggestions to it: which has for years monopolized its field of consciousness and set up habits of response to its claims. it has to make some kind of a break with this order, or at least with its many attachments thereto; and stretch to the wider span demanded by the new and larger world. and further, it is in possession of a complex psychic life, containing many insubordinate elements, many awkward bequests from a primitive past. that psychic life has just received the powerful and direct suggestion of the spirit; and for the moment, it is subdued to that suggestion. but soon it begins to experience the inevitable conflict between old habits, and new demands--between a life lived in the particular and in the universal spirit--and only through complete resolution of that conflict will it develop its full power. so the self quickly realizes that the theologian's war between nature and grace is a picturesque way of stating a real situation; and further that the demand of all religions for a change of heart--that is, of the deep instinctive nature--is the first condition of a spiritual life. and hence, that its hands are fairly full. it is true that an immense joy and hope come with it to this business of tackling imperfection, of adjusting itself to the newly found centre of life. it knows that it is committed to the forward movement of a power, which may be slow but which nothing can gainsay. nevertheless the first thing that power demands from it is courage; and the next an unremitting vigorous effort. it will never again be able to sink back cosily into its racial past. consciousness of disharmony and incompleteness now brings the obligation to mend the disharmony and achieve a fresh synthesis. this is felt with a special sharpness in the moral life, where the irreconcilable demands of natural self-interest and of spirit assume their most intractable shape. old habits and paths of discharge which have almost become automatic must now, it seems, be abandoned. new paths, in spite of resistances, must be made. thus it is that temptation, hard conflict, and bewildering perplexities usher in the life of the spirit. these are largely the results of our biological past continuing into our fluctuating half-made present; and they point towards a psychic stability, an inner unity we have not yet attained. this realization of ourselves as we truly are--emerging with difficulty from our animal origin, tinctured through and through with the self-regarding tendencies and habits it has imprinted on us--this realization or self-knowledge, is humility; the only soil in which the spiritual life can germinate. and modern man with his great horizons, his ever clearer vision of his own close kinship with life's origin, his small place in the time-stream, in the universe, in god's hand, the relative character of his best knowledge and achievement, is surely everywhere being persuaded to this royal virtue. recognition of this his true creaturely status, with its obligations--the only process of pain and struggle needed if the demands of generous love are ever to be fulfilled in him and his many-levelled nature is to be purified and harmonized and develop all its powers--this is repentance. he shows not only his sincerity, but his manliness and courage by his acceptance of all that such repentance entails on him; for the healthy soul, like the healthy body, welcomes some trial and roughness and is well able to bear the pains of education. psychologists regard such an education, harmonizing the rational or ideal with the instinctive life--the change of heart which leaves the whole self working together without inner conflict towards one objective--as the very condition of a full and healthy life. but it can only be achieved in its perfection by the complete surrender of heart and mind to a third term, transcending alike the impulsive and the rational. the life of the spirit in its supreme authority, and its identification with the highest interests of the race, does this: harnessing man's fiery energies to the service of the light. therefore, in the rich, new life on which the self enters, one strand must be that of repentance, catharsis, self-conquest; a complete contrition which is the earnest of complete generosity, uncalculated response. and, dealing as we are now with average human nature, we can safely say that the need for such ever-renewed self-scrutiny and self-purgation will never in this life be left behind. for sin is a fact, though a fact which we do not understand; and now it appears and must evermore remain an offence against love, hostile to this intense new attraction, and marring the self's willed tendency towards it. the next strand we may perhaps call that of recollection: for the recognizing and the cure of imperfection depends on the compensating search for the perfect and its enthronement as the supreme object of our thought and love. the self, then, soon begins to feel a strong impulsion to some type of inward withdrawal and concentration, some kind of prayer; though it may not use this name or recognize the character of its mood. as it yields to this strange new drawing, such recollection grows easier. it finds that there is a veritable inner world, not merely of phantasy, but of profound heart-searching experience; where the soul is in touch with another order of realities and knows itself to be an inheritor of eternal life. here unique things happen. a power is at work, and new apprehensions are born. and now for the first time the self discovers itself to be striking a balance between this inner and the outer life, and in its own small way--but still, most fruitfully--enriching action with the fruits of contemplation. if it will give to the learning of this new art--to the disciplining and refining of this affective thought--even a fraction of the diligence which it gives to the learning of a new game, it will find itself repaid by a progressive purity of vision, a progressive sense of assurance, an ever-increasing delicacy of moral discrimination and demand. psychologists, as we have seen, divide men into introverts and extroverts; but as a matter of fact we must regard both these extreme types as defective. a whole man should be supple in his reactions both to the inner and to the outer world. the third strand in the life of the spirit, for this normal self which we are considering; must be the disposition of complete surrender. more and more advancing in this inner life, it will feel the imperative attraction of reality, of god; and it must respond to this attraction with all the courage and generosity of which it is capable. i am trying to use the simplest and the most general language, and to avoid emotional imagery: though it is here, in telling of this perpetually renewed act of self-giving and dedication, that spiritual writers most often have recourse to the language of the heart. it is indeed in a spirit of intensest and humble adoration that generous souls yield themselves to the drawing of that mysterious beauty and unchanging love, with all that it entails. but the form which the impulse to surrender takes will vary with the psychic make-up of the individual. to some it will come as a sense of vocation, a making-over of the will to the purposes of the kingdom; a type of consecration which may not be overtly religious, but may be concerned with the self-forgetting quest of social excellence, of beauty, or of truth. by some it will be felt as an illumination of the mind, which now discerns once for all true values, and accepting these, must uphold and strive for them in the teeth of all opportunism. by some--and these are the most blessed--as a breaking and re-making of the heart. whatever the form it takes, the extent in which the self experiences the peace, joy and power of living at the level of spirit will depend on the completeness and singlemindedness of this, its supreme act of self-simplification. any reserves, anything in its make-up which sets up resistances--and this means generally any form of egotism--will mar the harmony of the process. and on the other hand, such a real simplification of the self's life as is here demanded--uniting on one object, the intellect, will and feeling too often split among contradictory attractions--is itself productive of inner harmony and increased power: productive too of that noble endurance which counts no pain too much in the service of reality. here then we come to the fact, valid for every level of spiritual life, which lies behind all the declarations concerning surrender, self-loss, dying to live, dedication, made by writers on this theme. all involve a relaxing of tension, letting ourselves go without reluctance in the direction in which we are most profoundly drawn; a cessation of our struggles with the tide, our kicks against the pricks that spur us on. the inward aim of the self is towards unification with a larger life; a mergence with reality which it may describe under various contradictory symbols, or may not be able to describe at all, but which it feels to be the fulfilment of existence. it has learnt--though this knowledge may not have passed beyond the stage of feeling--that the universe is one simple texture, in which all things have their explanation and their place. combing out the confusions which enmesh it, losing its sham and separate life and finding its true life there, it will know what to love and how to act. the goal of this process, which has been called entrance into the freedom of the will of god, is the state described by the writer of the "german theology" when he said "i would fain be to the eternal goodness what his own hand is to a man."[ ] for such a declaration not only means a willed and skilful working for god, a practical siding with perfection, becoming its living tool, but also close union with, and sharing of, the vital energy of the spiritual order: a feeding on and using of its power, its very life blood; complete docility to its inward direction, abolition of separate desire. the surrender is therefore made not in order that we may become limp pietists, but in order that we may receive more energy and do better work: by a humble self-subjection more perfectly helping forward the thrust of the spirit and the primal human business of incarnating the eternal here and now. its justification is in the arduous but untiring, various but harmonious, activities that flow from it: the enhancement of life which it entails. it gives us access to our real sources of power; that we may take from them and, spending generously, be energized anew. so the cord on which those events which make up the personal life of the spirit are to be strung is completed, and we see that it consists of four strands. two are dispositions of the self; penitence and surrender. two are activities; inward recollection and outward work. all four make stern demands on its fortitude and goodwill. and each gives strength to the rest: for they are not to be regarded as separate and successive states, a discrete series through which we must pass one by one, leaving penitence behind us when we reach surrendered love; but as the variable yet enduring and inseparable aspects of one rich life, phases in one complete and vital effort to respond more and more closely to reality. nothing, perhaps, is less monotonous than the personal life of the spirit. in its humility and joyous love, its adoration and its industry, it may find self-expression in any one of the countless activities of the world of time. it is both romantic and austere, both adventurous and holy. full of fluctuation and unearthly colour, it yet has its dark patches as well as its light. since perfect proof of the supersensual is beyond the span of human consciousness, the element of risk can never be eliminated: we are obliged in the end to trust the universe and live by faith. therefore the awakened soul must often suffer perplexity, share to the utmost the stress and anguish of the physical order; and, chained as it is to a consciousness accustomed to respond to that order, must still be content with flashes of understanding and willing to bear long periods of destitution when the light is veiled. the further it advances the more bitter will these periods of destitution seem to it. it is not from the real men and women of the spirit that we hear soft things about the comfort of faith. for the true life of faith gives everything worth having and takes everything worth offering: with unrelenting blows it welds the self into the stuff of the universe, subduing it to the universal purpose, doing away with the flame of separation. though joy and inward peace even in desolation are dominant marks of those who have grown up into it, still it offers to none a succession of supersensual delights. the life of the spirit involves the sublimation of that pleasure-pain rhythm which is characteristic of normal consciousness, and if for it pleasure becomes joy, pain becomes the cross. toil, abnegation, sacrifice, are therefore of its essence; but these are not felt as a heavy burden, because they are the expression of love. it entails a willed tension and choice, a noble power of refusal, which are not entirely covered by being "in tune with the infinite." as our life comes to maturity we discover to our confusion that human ears can pick up from the infinite many incompatible tunes, but cannot hear the whole symphony. and the melody confided to our care, the one which we alone perhaps can contribute and which taxes our powers to the full, has in it not only the notes of triumph but the notes of pain. the distinctive mark therefore is not happiness but vocation: work demanded and power given, but given only on condition that we spend it and ourselves on others without stint. these propositions, of course, are easily illustrated from history: but we can also illustrate them in our own persons if we choose. should we choose this, and should life of the spirit be achieved by us--and it will only be done through daily discipline and attention to the spiritual, a sacrifice of comfort to its interests, following up the intuition which sets us on the path--what benefits may we as ordinary men expect it to bring to us and to the community that we serve? it will certainly bring into life new zest and new meaning; a widening of the horizon and consciousness of security; a fresh sense of joys to be had and of work to be done. the real spiritual consciousness is positive and constructive in type: it does not look back on the past sins and mistakes of the individual or of the community, but in its other-world faith and this-world charity is inspired by a forward-moving spirit of hope. seeking alone the honour of eternal beauty, and because of its invulnerable sense of security, it is adventurous. the spiritual man and woman can afford to take desperate chances, and live dangerously in the interests of their ideals; being delivered from the many unreal fears and anxieties which commonly torment us, and knowing the unimportance of possessions and of so-called success. the joy which waits on disinterested love and the confidence which follows surrender, cannot fail them. moreover, the inward harmony and assurance, the consciousness of access to that spirit who is in a literal sense "health's eternal spring" means a healing of nervous miseries, and invigoration of the usually ill-treated mind and body, and so an all-round increase in happiness and power. "the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." this, said st. paul, who knew by experience the worlds of grace and of nature, is what a complete man ought to be like. compare this picture of an equable and fully harmonized personality with that of a characteristic neurasthenic, a bored sensualist, or an embittered worker, concentrated on the struggle for a material advantage: and consider that the central difference between these types of human success and human failure abides in the presence or absence of a spiritual conception of life. we do not yet know the limits of the upgrowth into power and happiness which complete and practical surrender to this conception can work in us; or what its general triumph might do for the transformation of the world. and it may even be that beyond the joy and renewal which come from self-conquest and unification, a level of spiritual life most certainly open to all who will really work for it; and beyond that deeper insight, more widespreading love, and perfection of adjustment to the here-and-now which we recognize and reverence as the privilege of the pure in heart--beyond all these, it may be that life still reserves for man another secret and another level of consciousness; a closer identification with reality, such as eye hath not seen, or ear heard. and note, that this spiritual life which we have here considered is not an aristocratic life. it is a life of which the fundamentals are given by the simplest kinds of traditional piety, and have been exhibited over and over again by the simplest souls. an unconditional self-surrender to the divine will, under whatever symbols it may be thought of; for we know that the very crudest of symbols is often strong enough to make a bridge between the heart and the eternal, and so be a vehicle of the spirit of life. a little silence and leisure. a great deal of faithfulness, kindness, and courage. all this is within the reach of anyone who cares enough for it to pay the price. footnotes: [footnote : this doctrine is fully worked out in the last two sections of "eternal life."] [footnote : de imit. christi, bk. ii, cap. .] [footnote : "six theosophic points," p. .] [footnote : "one hundred poems of kabir," p. .] [footnote : cl. ruysbroeck: "the mirror of eternal salvation," cap. viii] [footnote : "in librum b. dionysii de divinis nominibus commentaria."] [footnote : ennead iii. , .] [footnote : boehme: "six theosophic points," p. .] [footnote : "the interior castle"; seventh habitation, cap. iv.] [footnote : boehme; "the way to christ," pt. iv.] [footnote : ennead ii. . .] [footnote : "streeter and appasamy: the sadhu," pp. , et seq., .] [footnote : "theologia germanica," cap. iii.] [footnote : höffding, "the philosophy of religion," iii, b.] [footnote : there are, for instance, several striking instances in the autobiography of the maharishi devendranath tagore.] [footnote : "fox's journal," vol. i, cap. .] [footnote : "theologia germanica," cap. .] chapter vii the life of the spirit and education in the past six chapters we have been considering in the main our own position, and how, here in the present, we as adults may actualize and help on the spiritual life in ourselves. but our best hope of giving spirit its rightful, full expression within the time-world lies in the future. it is towards that, that those who really care must work. anything which we can do towards persuading into better shape our own deformed characters, compelling our recalcitrant energy into fresh channels, is little in comparison with what might be achieved in the plastic growing psychic life of children did we appreciate our full opportunity and the importance of using it. this is why i propose now to consider one or two points in the relation of education to the spiritual life. since it is always well, in a discussion of this kind, to be quite clear about the content of the words with which we deal, i will say at once, that by education i mean that deliberate adjustment of the whole environment of a growing creature, which surrounds it with the most favourable influences and educes all its powers; giving it the most helpful conditions for its full growth and development. education should be the complete preparation of the young thing for fullness of life; involving the evolution and the balanced training of all its faculties, bodily, mental and spiritual. it should train and refine senses, instincts, intellect, will and feeling; giving a world-view based on real facts and real values and encouraging active correspondence therewith. thus the educationist, if he be convinced, as i think most of us must be, that all isn't quite right with the world of mankind, has the priceless opportunity of beginning the remaking of humanity from the right end. in the child he has a little, supple thing, which can be made into a vital, spiritual thing; and nothing again will count so much for it as what happens in these its earliest years. to start life straight is the secret of inward happiness: and to a great extent, the secret of health and power. that conception of man upon which we have been working, and which regards his psychic life on all its levels as the manifold expressions of one single energy or urge in the depths of his being, a life-force seeking fulfilment, has obvious and important applications in the educational sphere. it indicates that the fundamental business of education is to deal with this urgent and untempered craving, discipline it, and direct it towards interests of permanent value: helping it to establish useful habits, removing obstacles in its path, blocking the side channels down which it might run. especially is it the task of such education, gradually to disclose to the growing psyche those spiritual correspondences for which the religious man and the idealist must hold that man's spirit was made. such an education as this has little in common with the mere crude imparting of facts. it represents rather the careful and loving induction of the growing human creature into the rich world of experience; the help we give it in the great business of adjusting itself to reality. it operates by means of the moulding influences of environment, the creation of habit. suggestion, not statement, is its most potent instrument; and such suggestion begins for good or ill at the very dawn of consciousness. therefore the child whose infancy is not surrounded by persons of true outlook is handicapped from the start; and the training in this respect of the parents of the future is one of the greatest services we can render to the race. we are beginning to learn the overwhelming importance of infantile impressions: how a forgotten babyish fear or grief may develop underground, and produce at last an unrecognizable growth poisoning the body and the mind of the adult. but here good is at least as potent as ill. what terror, a hideous sight, an unloving nurture may do for evil; a happy impression, a beautiful sight, a loving nurture will do for good. moreover, we can bury good seed in the unconscious minds of children and reasonably look forward to the fruit. babyish prayers, simple hymns, trace whilst the mind is ductile the paths in which feelings shall afterwards tend to flow; and it is only in maturity that we realize our psychological debt to these early and perhaps afterwards abandoned beliefs and deeds. so the veritable education of the spirit begins at once, in the cradle, and its chief means will be the surroundings within which that childish spirit first develops its little awareness of the universe; the appeals which are made to its instincts, the stimulations of its life of sense. the first factor of this education is the family: the second the society within which that family is formed. though we no longer suppose it to possess innate ideas, the baby has most surely innate powers, inclinations and curiosities, and is reaching out in every direction towards life. it is brimming with will power, ready to push hard into experience. the environment in which it is placed and the responses which the outer world makes to it--and these surroundings and responses in the long run are largely of our choosing and making--represent either the helping or thwarting of its tendencies, and the sum total of the directions in which its powers can be exercised and its demands satisfied: the possibilities, in fact, which life puts before it. we, as individuals and as a community, control and form part of this environment. under the first head, we play by influence or demeanour a certain part in the education of every child whom we meet. under the second head, by acquiescence in the social order, we accept responsibility for the state of life in which it is born. the child's first intimations of the spiritual must and can only come to it through the incarnation of spirit in its home and the world that it knows. what, then, are we doing about this? it means that the influences which shape the men and women of the future will be as wholesome and as spiritual as we ourselves are: no more, no less. tone, atmosphere are the things which really matter; and these are provided by the group-mind, and reflect its spiritual state. the child's whole educational opportunity is contained in two factors; the personality it brings and the environment it gets. generations of educationists have disputed their relative importance: but neither party can deny that the most fortunate nature, given wrongful or insufficient nurture, will hardly emerge unharmed. even great inborn powers atrophy if left unused, and exceptional ability in any direction may easily remain undeveloped if the environment be sufficiently unfavourable: a result too often achieved in the domain of the spiritual life. we must have opportunity and encouragement to try our powers and inclinations, be helped to understand their nature and the way to use them, unless we are to begin again, each one of us, in the stone age of the soul. so too, even small powers may be developed to an astonishing degree by suitable surroundings and wise education--witness the results obtained by the expert training of defective children--and all this is as applicable to the spiritual as to the mental and bodily life. that life is quick to respond to the demands made on it: to take every opportunity of expression that comes its way. if you make the right appeal to any human faculty, that faculty will respond, and begin to grow. thus it is that the slow quiet pressure of tradition, first in the home and then in the school, shapes the child during his most malleable years. we, therefore, are surely bound to watch and criticize the environment, the tradition, the customs we are instrumental in providing for the infant future: to ask ourselves whether we are _sure_ the tradition is right, the conventions we hand on useful, the ideal we hold up complete. the child, whatever his powers, cannot react to something which is not there; he can't digest food that is not given to him, use faculties for which no objective is provided. hence the great responsibility of our generation, as to providing a complete, balanced environment _now_, a fully-rounded opportunity of response to life physical, mental and spiritual, for the generation preparing to succeed us. such education as this has been called a preparation for citizenship. but this conception is too narrow, unless the citizenship be that of the city of god; and the adjustments involved be those of the spirit, as well as of the body and the mind. herbert spencer, whom one would hardly accuse of being a spiritual philosopher, was accustomed to group the essentials of a right education under four heads:[ ] first, he said, we must teach self-preservation in all senses: how to keep the body and the mind healthy and efficient, how to be self-supporting, how to protect oneself against external dangers and encroachments. next, we must train the growing creature in its duties towards the life of the future: parenthood and its responsibilities, understood in the widest sense. thirdly; we must prepare it to take its place in the present as a member of the social order into which it is born. last: we must hand on to it all those refinements of life which the past has given to us--the hoarded culture of the race. only if we do these four things thoroughly can we dare to call ourselves educators in the full sense of the word. now, turning to the spiritual interests of the child:--and unless we are crass materialists we must believe these interests to exist, and to be paramount--what are we doing to further them in these four fundamental directions? first, does the average good education train our young people in spiritual self-preservation? does it send them out equipped with the means of living a full and efficient spiritual life? does it furnish them with a health-giving type of religion; that is, a solid hold on eternal realities, a view of the universe capable of withstanding hostile criticism, of supporting them in times of difficulty and of stress? secondly, does it give them a spiritual outlook in respect of their racial duties, fit them in due time to be parents of other souls? does it train them to regard humanity, and their own place in the human life-stream, from this point of view? this point is of special importance, in view of the fact that racial and biological knowledge on lower levels is now so generally in the possession of boys and girls; and is bound to produce a distorted conception of life, unless the spirit be studied by them with at least the same respectful attention that is given to the flesh. thirdly, what does our education do towards preparing them to solve the problems of social and economic life in a spiritual sense--our only reasonable chance of extracting the next generation from the social muddle in which we are plunged to-day? last, to what extent do we try to introduce our pupils into a full enjoyment of their spiritual inheritance, the culture and tradition of the past? i do not deny that there are educators--chiefly perhaps educators of girls--who can give favourable answers to all these questions. but they are exceptional, the proportion of the child population whom they influence is small, and frequently their proceedings are looked upon--not without some justice--as eccentric. if then in all these departments our standard type of education stops short of the spiritual level, are not we self-convicted as at best theoretical believers in the worth and destiny of the human soul? consider the facts. outside the walls of definitely religious institutions--where methods are not always adjusted to the common stuff and needs of contemporary human life--it does not seem to occur to many educationists to give the education of the child's soul the same expert delicate attention so lavishly bestowed on the body and the intellect. by expert delicate attention i do not mean persistent religious instruction; but a skilled and loving care for the growing spirit, inspired by deep conviction and helped by all the psychological knowledge we possess. if we look at the efforts of organized religion we are bound to admit that in thousands of rural parishes, and in many towns too, it is still possible to grow from infancy to old age as a member of church or chapel without once receiving any first-hand teaching on the powers and needs of the soul or the technique of prayer; or obtaining any more help in the great religious difficulties of adolescence than a general invitation to believe, and trust god. morality--that is to say correctness of response to our neighbour and our temporal surroundings--is often well taught. spirituality--correctness of response to god and our eternal surroundings--is most often ignored. a peculiar british bashfulness seems to stand in the way of it. it is felt that we show better taste in leaving the essentials of the soul's development to chance, even that such development is not wholly desirable or manly: that the atrophy of one aspect of "man's made-trinity" is best. i have heard one eminent ecclesiastic maintain that regular and punctual attendance at morning service in a mood of non-comprehending loyalty was the best sort of spiritual experience for the average englishman. is not that a statement which should make the christian teachers who are responsible for the average englishman, feel a little bit uncomfortable about the type which they have produced? i do not suggest that education should encourage a feverish religiosity; but that it ought to produce balanced men and women, whose faculties are fully alert and responsive to all levels of life. as it is, we train boy scouts and girl guides in the principles of honour and chivalry. our bible-classes minister to the hungry spirit much information about the journeys of st. paul (with maps). but the pupils are seldom invited or assisted to _taste_, and see that the lord is sweet. now this indifference means, of course, that we do not as educators, as controllers of the racial future, really believe in the spiritual foundations of our personality as thoroughly and practically we believe in its mental and physical manifestations. whatever the philosophy or religion we profess may be, it remains for us in the realm of idea, not in the realm of fact. in practice, we do not aim at the achievement of a spiritual type of consciousness as the crown of human culture. the best that most education does for our children is only what the devil did for christ. it takes them up to the top of a high mountain and shows them all the kingdoms of this world; the kingdom of history, the kingdom of letters, the kingdom of beauty, the kingdom of science. it is a splendid vision, but unfortunately fugitive: and since the spirit is not fugitive, it demands an objective that is permanent. if we do not give it such an objective, one of two things must happen to it. either it will be restless and dissatisfied, and throw the whole life out of key; or it will become dormant for lack of use, and so the whole life will be impoverished, its best promise unfulfilled. one line leads to the neurotic, the other to the average sensual man, and i think it will be agreed that modern life produces a good crop of both these kind of defectives. but if we believe that the permanent objective of the spirit is god--if he be indeed for us the fountain of life and the sum of reality--can we acquiesce in these forms of loss? surely it ought to be our first aim, to make the sense of his universal presence and transcendent worth, and of the self's responsibility to him, dominant for the plastic youthful consciousness confided to our care: to introduce that consciousness into a world which is really a theocracy and encourage its aptitude for generous love? if educationists do not view such a proposal with favour, this shows how miserable and distorted our common conception of god has become; and how small a part it really plays in our practical life. most of us scramble through that practical life, and are prepared to let our children scramble too, without any clear notions of that hygiene of the soul which has been studied for centuries by experts; and few look upon this branch of self-knowledge as something that all men may possess who will submit to education and work for its achievement. thus we have degenerated from the mediæval standpoint; for then at least the necessity of spiritual education was understood and accepted, and the current psychology was in harmony with it. but now there is little attempt to deepen and enlarge the spiritual faculties, none to encourage their free and natural development in the young, or their application to any richer world of experience than the circle of pious images with which "religious education" generally deals. the result of this is seen in the rawness, shallowness and ignorance which characterize the attitude of many young adults to religion. their beliefs and their scepticism alike are often the acceptance or rejection of the obsolete. if they be agnostics, the dogmas which they reject are frequently theological caricatures. if they be believers, both their religious conceptions and their prayers are found on investigation still to be of an infantile kind, totally unrelated to the interests and outlook of modern men. two facts emerge from the experience of all educationists. the first is, that children are naturally receptive and responsive; the second, that adolescents are naturally idealistic. in both stages, the young human creature is full of interests and curiosities asking to be satisfied, of energies demanding expression; and here, in their budding, thrusting life--for which we, by our choice of surroundings and influence, may provide the objective--is the raw material out of which the spiritual humanity of the future might be made. the child has already within it the living seed wherein all human possibilities are contained; our part is to give the right soil, the shelter, and the watering-can. spiritual education therefore does not consist in putting into the child something which it has not; but in educing and sublimating that which it has--in establishing habits, fostering a trend of growth which shall serve it well in later years. already, all the dynamic instincts are present, at least in germ; asking for an outlet. the will and the emotions, ductile as they will never be again, are ready to make full and ungraduated response to any genuine appeal to enthusiasm. the imagination will accept the food we give, if we give it in the right way. what an opportunity! nowhere else do we come into such direct contact with the plastic stuff of life; never again shall we have at our disposal such a fund of emotional energy. in the child's dreams and fantasies, in its eager hero-worship--later, in the adolescent's fervid friendships or devoted loyalty to an adored leader--we see the search of the living growing creature for more life and love, for an enduring object of devotion. do we always manage or even try to give it that enduring object, in a form it can accept? yet the responsibility of providing such a presentation of belief as shall evoke the spontaneous reactions of faith and love--for no compulsory idealism ever succeeds--is definitely laid on the parent and the teacher. it is in the enthusiastic imitation of a beloved leader that the child or adolescent learns best. were the spiritual life the most real of facts to us, did we believe in it as we variously believe in athletics, physical science or the arts, surely we should spare no effort to turn to its purposes these priceless qualities of youth? were the mind's communion with the spirit of god generally regarded as its natural privilege and therefore the first condition of its happiness and health, the general method and tone of modern education would inevitably differ considerably from that which we usually see: and if the life of the spirit is to come to fruition, here is one of the points at which reformation must begin. when we look at the ordinary practice of modern "civilized" europe, we cannot claim that any noticeable proportion of our young people are taught during their docile and impressionable years the nature and discipline of their spiritual faculties, in the open and common-sense way in which they are taught languages, science, music or gymnastics. yet it is surely a central duty of the educator to deepen and enrich to the fullest extent possible his pupil's apprehension of the universe; and must not all such apprehension move towards the discovery of that universe as a spiritual fact? again, in how many schools is the period of religious and idealistic enthusiasm which so commonly occurs in adolescence wisely used, skilfully trained, and made the foundation of an enduring spiritual life? here is the period in which the relation of master and pupil is or may be most intimate and most fruitful; and can be made to serve the highest interests of life. yet, no great proportion of those set apart to teach young people seem to realize and use this privilege. i am aware that much which i am going to advocate will sound fantastic; and that the changes involved may seem at first sight impossible to accomplish. it is true that if these changes are to be useful, they must be gradual. the policy of the "clean sweep" is one which both history and psychology condemn. but it does seem to me a good thing to envisage clearly, if we can, the ideal towards which our changes should lead. a garden city is not utopia. still, it is an advance upon the victorian type of suburb and slum; and we should not have got it if some men had not believed in utopia, and tried to make a beginning here and now. already in education some few have tried to make such a beginning and have proved that it is possible if we believe in it enough: for faith can move even that mountainous thing, the british parental mind. our task--and i believe our most real hope for the future--is, as we have already allowed, to make the idea of god dominant for the plastic youthful consciousness: and not only this, but to harmonize that conception, first with our teachings about the physical and mental sides of life, and next with the child's own social activities, training body, mind and spirit together that they may take each their part in the development of a whole man, fully responsive to a universe which is at bottom a spiritual fact. such training to be complete must, as we have seen, begin in the nursery and be given by the atmosphere and opportunities of the home. it will include the instilling of childish habits of prayer and the fostering of simple expressions of reverence, admiration and love. the subconscious knowledge implicit in such practice must form the foundation, and only where it is present will doctrine and principle have any real meaning for the child. prayer must come before theology, and kindness, tenderness and helpfulness before ethics. but we have now to consider the child of school age, coming--too often without this, the only adequate preparation--into the teacher's hands. how is he to be dealt with, and the opportunities which he presents used best? "when i see a right man," said jacob boehme, "there i see three worlds standing." since our aim should be to make "right men" and evoke in them not merely a departmental piety but a robust and intelligent spirituality, we ought to explain in simple ways to these older children something at least of that view of human nature on which our training is based. the religious instruction given in most schools is divided, in varying proportions, between historical or doctrinal teaching and ethical teaching. now a solid hold both on history and on morals is a great need; but these are only realized in their full importance and enter completely into life when they are seen within the spiritual atmosphere, and already even in childhood, and supremely in youth, this atmosphere can be evoked. it does not seem to occur to most teachers that religion contains anything beyond or within the two departments of historical creed and of morals: that, for instance, the greatest utterances of st. john and st. paul deal with neither, but with attainable levels of human life, in which a new and fuller kind of experience was offered to mankind. yet surely they ought at least to attempt to tell their pupils about this. i do not see how christians at any rate can escape the obligation, or shuffle out of it by saying that they do not know how it can be done. indeed, all who are not thorough-going materialists must regard the study of the spiritual life as in the truest sense a department of biology; and any account of man which fails to describe it, as incomplete. where the science of the body is studied, the science of the soul should be studied too. therefore, in the upper forms at least, the psychology of religious experience in its widest sense, as a normal part of all full human existence, and the connection of that experience with practical life, as it is seen in history, should be taught. if it is done properly it will hold the pupil's interest, for it can be made to appeal to those same mental qualities of wonder, curiosity and exploration which draw so many boys and girls to physical science. but there should be no encouragement of introspection, none of the false mystery or so-called reverence with which these subjects are sometimes surrounded, and above all no spirit of exclusivism. the pupil should be led to see his own religion as a part of the universal tendency of life to god. this need not involve any reduction of the claims made on him by his own church or creed; but the emphasis should always be on the likeness rather than the differences of the great religions of the world. moreover, higher education cannot be regarded as complete unless the mind be furnished with some _rationale_ of its own deepest experiences, and a harmony be established between impulse and thought. advanced pupils should, then, be given a simple and general philosophy of religion, plainly stated in language which relates it with the current philosophy of life. this is no counsel of perfection. it has been done, and can be done again. it is said of edward caird, that he placed his pupils "from the beginning at a point of view whence the life of mankind could be contemplated as one movement, single though infinitely varied, unerring though wandering, significant yet mysterious, secure and self-enriching although tragical. there was a general sense of the spiritual nature of reality and of the rule of mind, though what was meant by spirit or mind was hardly asked. there was a hope and faith that outstripped all save the vaguest understanding but which evoked a glad response that somehow god was immanent in the world and in the history of all mankind, making it sane." and the effect of this teaching on the students was that "they received the doctrine with enthusiasm, and forgot themselves in the sense of their partnership in a universal enterprise."[ ] such teaching as this is a real preparation for citizenship, an introduction to the enduring values of the world. [ jones and muirhead: "life and philosophy of edward caird," pp. , .] every human being, as we know, inevitably tends to emphasize some aspects of that world, and to ignore others: to build up for himself a relative universe. the choices which determine the universe of maturity are often made in youth; then the foundations are laid of that apperceiving mass which is to condition all the man's contacts with reality. we ought, therefore, to show the universe to our young people from such an angle and in such a light, that they tend quite simply and without any objectionable intensity to select, emphasize and be interested in its spiritual aspect. for this purpose we must never try to force our own reading of that universe upon them; but respect on the one hand their often extreme sensitiveness and on the other the infinitely various angles of approach proper to our infinitely various souls. we should place food before them and leave them to browse. only those who have tried this experiment know what such an enlargement of the horizon and enrichment of knowledge means to the eager, adolescent mind: how prompt is the response to any appeal which we make to its nascent sense of mystery. yet whole schools of thought on these subjects are cheerfully ignored by the majority of our educationists; hence the unintelligent and indeed babyish view of religion which is harboured by many adults, even of the intellectual class. though the spiritual life has its roots in the heart not in the head, and will never be brought about by merely academic knowledge; yet, its beginnings in adolescence are often lost, because young people are completely ignorant of the meaning of their own experiences, and the universal character of those needs and responses which they dimly feel stirring within them. they are too shy to ask, and no one ever tells them about it in a business-like and unembarrassing way. this infant mortality in the spiritual realm ought not to be possible. experience of god is the greatest of the rights of man, and should not be left to become the casual discovery of the few. therefore prayer ought to be regarded as a universal human activity, and its nature and difficulties should be taught, but always in the sense of intercourse rather than of mere petition: keeping in mind the doctrine of the mystics that "prayer in itself properly is not else but a devout intent directed unto god."[ ] we teach concentration for the purposes of study; but too seldom think of applying it to the purposes of prayer. yet real prayer is a difficult art; which, like other ways of approaching perfect beauty, only discloses its secrets to those who win them by humble training and hard work. shall we not try to find some method of showing our adolescents their way into this world, lying at our doors and offered to us without money and without price? again, many teachers and parents waste the religious instinct and emotional vigour which are often so marked in adolescence, by allowing them to fritter themselves upon symbols which cannot stand against hostile criticism: for instance, some of, the more sentimental and anthropomorphic aspects of christian devotion. did we educate those instincts, show the growing creature their meaning, and give them an objective which did not conflict with the objectives of the developing intellect and the will, we should turn their passion into power, and lay the foundations of a real spiritual life. we must remember that a good deal of adolescent emotion is diverted by the conditions of school-life from its obvious and natural objective. this is so much energy set free for other uses. we know how it emerges in hero-worship or in ardent friendships; how it reinforces the social instinct and produces the team-spirit, the intense devotion to the interests of his own gang or group which is rightly prominent in the life of many boys. the teacher has to reckon with this funded energy and enthusiasm, and use it to further the highest interests of the growing child. by this i do not mean that he is to encourage an abnormal or emotional concentration on spiritual things. most of the impulses of youth are wholesome, and subserve direct ends. therefore, it is not by taking away love, self-sacrifice, admiration, curiosity, from their natural objects that we shall serve the best interests of spirituality: but, by enlarging the range over which these impulses work--impulses, indeed, which no human object can wholly satisfy, save in a sacramental sense. two such natural tendencies, specially prominent in childhood, are peculiarly at the disposal of the religious teacher: and should be used by him to the full. it is in the sublimation of the instinct of comradeship that the social and corporate side of the spiritual life takes its rise, and in closest connection with this impulse that all works of charity should be suggested and performed. and on the individual side, all that is best, safest and sweetest in the religious instinct of the child can be related to a similar enlargement of the instinct of filial trust and dependence. the educator is therefore working within the two most fundamental childish qualities, qualities provoked and fostered by all right family life, with its relation of love to parents, brothers, sisters and friends; and may gently lead out these two mighty impulses to a fulfilment which, at maturity, embrace god and the whole world. the wise teacher, then, must work with the instincts, not against them: encouraging all kindly social feelings, all vigorous self-expression, wonder, trustfulness, love. recognizing the paramount importance of emotion--for without emotional colour no idea can be actual to us, and no deed thoroughly and vigorously performed--yet he must always be on his guard against blocking the natural channels of human feeling, and giving them the opportunity of exploding under pious disguises in the religious sphere. here it is that the danger of too emotional a type of religious training comes in. sentimentalism of all kinds is dangerous and objectionable, especially in the education of girls, whom it excites and debilitates. boys are more often merely alienated by it. in both cases, the method of presentation which regards the spiritual life simply as a normal aspect of full human life is best. no artificial barrier should be set up between the sacred and the profane. the passion for truth and the passion for god should be treated as one: and that pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, those adventurous explorations of the mind, in which the more intelligent type of adolescent loves to try his growing powers, ought to be encouraged in the spiritual sphere as elsewhere. the results of research into religious origins should be explained without reservation, and no intellectual difficulty should be dodged. the putting-off method of meeting awkward questions, now generally recognized as dangerous in matters of natural history, is just as dangerous in the religious sphere. no teacher who is afraid to state his own position with perfect candour should ever be allowed to undertake this side of education; nor any in whom there is a marked cleavage between the standard of conduct and the standard of thought. the healthy adolescent is prompt to perceive inconsistency and unsparing in its condemnation. moreover, a most careful discrimination is daily becoming more necessary, in the teaching of traditional religion of a supernatural and non-empirical type. many of its elements must no doubt be retained by us, for the child-mind demands firm outlines and examples and imagery drawn from the world of sense. yet grave dangers are attached to it. on, the one hand an exclusive reliance on tradition paves the way for the disillusion which is so often experienced towards the end of adolescence, when it frequently causes a violent reaction to materialism. on the other hand it exposes us to a risk which we particularly want to avoid: that of reducing the child's nascent spiritual life to the dream level, to a fantasy in which it satisfies wishes that outward life leaves unfulfilled. many pious people, especially those who tell us that their religion is a "comfort" to them, go through life in a spiritual day-dream of this kind. concrete life has starved them of love, of beauty, of interest--it has given them no synthesis which satisfies the passionate human search for meaning--and they have found all this in a dream-world, made from the materials of conventional piety. if religion is thus allowed to become a ready-made day-dream it will certainly interest adolescents of a certain sort. the naturally introverted type will become meditative; whilst their opposites, the extroverted or active type, will probably tend to be ritualistic. but here again we are missing the essence of spiritual life. our aim should be to induce, in a wholesome way, that sense of the spiritual in daily experience which the old writers called the consciousness of the of god. the monastic training in spirituality, slowly evolved under pressure of experience, nearly always did this. it has bequeathed to us a funded wisdom of which we make little use; and this, reinterpreted in the light of psychological knowledge, might i believe cast a great deal of light on the fundamental problems of spiritual education. we could if we chose take many hints from it, as regards the disciplining of the attention, the correct use of suggestion, the teaching of meditation, the sublimation and direction to an assigned end of the natural impulse to reverie; above all, the education of the moral life. for character-building as understood by these old specialists was the most practical of arts. further, in all this teaching, those inward activities and responses to which we can give generally the name of prayer, and those outward activities and deeds of service to which we can give the name of work, ought to be trained together and never dissociated. they are the complementary and balanced expressions of one spirit of life: and must be given together, under appropriately simple forms. concrete application of the child's energies, aptitudes and ideals must from the first run side by side with the teaching of principle. young people therefore should constantly be encouraged to face as practical and interesting facts, not as formulæ, those reactions to eternal and this-world reality which used to be called our duty to god and our neighbour; and do concrete things proper to a real citizen of a really theocratic world. they must be made to realize that nothing is truly ours until we have expressed it in our deeds. moreover, these deeds should not be easy. they should involve effort and self-sacrifice; and also some drudgery, which is worse. the spiritual life is only valued by those on whom it makes genuine demands. almost any kind of service will do, which calls for attention, time and hard work. though voluntary, it must not be casual: but, once undertaken, should be regarded as an honourable obligation. the boy scouts and girl guides have shown us how wide a choice of possible "good deeds" is offered by every community: and such a banding together of young people for corporate acts of service is strongly to be commended. it encourages unselfish comradeship, satisfies that "gang-instinct" which is a well-known character of adolescence, and should leave no opening for self-consciousness, rivalry, and vanity in well-doing or in abnegation. wise educators find that a combined system of organized games in which the social instinct can be expressed and developed, and of independent constructive work, in which the creative impulse can find satisfaction, best meets the corporate and creative needs of adolescence, favours the right development of character, and produces a harmonized life. on the level of the spiritual life too this principle is valid; and, guided by it, we should seek to give young people both corporate and personal work and experience. on the one hand, gregariousness is at its strongest in the healthy adolescent, the force of public opinion is more intensely felt than at any other time of life, that priceless quality the spirit of comradeship is most easily educed. we must therefore seek to give the spiritual life a vigorous corporate character; to make it "good form" for the school, and to use the team-spirit in the choir and the guild as well as in the cricket field. by an extension of this principle and under the influence of a suitable teacher, the school-mob may be transformed into a co-operative society animated by one joyous and unselfish spirit: all the great powers of social suggestion being freely used for the highest ends. thus we may introduce the pupil, at his most plastic age, into a spiritual-social order and let him grow within it, developing those qualities and skills on which it makes demands. the religious exercises, whatever they are, should be in common, in order to develop the mass consciousness of the school and weld it into a real group. music, songs, processions, etc., produce a feeling of unity, and encourage spiritual contagion. services of an appropriate kind, if there be a chapel, or the opening of school with prayer and a hymn (which ought always to be followed by a short silence) provide a natural expression for corporate religious feeling: and remember that to give a feeling opportunity of voluntary expression is commonly to educe and affirm it. as regards active work, whilst school charities are an obvious field in which unselfish energies may be spent, many other openings will be found by enthusiastic teachers, and by the pupils whom their enthusiasm has inspired. on the other hand, the spare-time occupations of the adolescent; the independent and self-chosen work, often most arduous and always absorbing, of making, planning, learning about things--and most of us can still remember how desperately important these seemed to us, whether our taste was for making engines, writing poetry, or collecting moths--these are of the greatest importance for his development. they give him something really his own, exercise his powers, train his attention, feed his creative instinct. they counteract those mechanical and conventional reactions to the world, which are induced by the merely traditional type of education, either of manners or of mind. and here, in the prudent encouragement of a personal interest in and dealing with the actual problems of conduct and even of belief--the most difficult of the educator's tasks--we guard against the merely acquiescent attitude of much adult piety, and foster from the beginning a vigorous personal interest, a first-hand contact with higher realities. the heroic aspect of history may well form the second line in this attempt to capture education and use it in the interests of the spiritual life. by it we can best link up the actual and the ideal, and demonstrate the single character of human greatness; whether it be exhibited, in the physical or the supersensual sphere. such a demonstration is most important; for so long as the spiritual life is regarded as merely a departmental thing, and its full development as a matter for specialists or saints, it will never produce its full effect in human affairs. we must exhibit it as the full flower of that reality which inspires all human life. _"all_ kinds of skill," said tauler, "are gifts of the holy ghost," and he might have said, all kinds of beauty and all kinds of courage too. the heroic makes a direct appeal to lads and girls, and is by far the safest way of approach to their emotions. the chivalrous, the noble, the desperately brave, attract the adolescent far more than passive goodness. that strong instinct of subjection, of homage, which he shows in his hero-worship, is a most valuable tool in the hands of the teacher who is seeking to lead him into greater fullness of life. yet the range over which we seek material for his admiration is often deplorably narrow. we have behind us a great spiritual history, which shows the highest faculties of the soul in action: the power and the happiness they bring. do we take enough notice of it? what about our english saints? i mean the real saints, not the official ones. not st. george and st. alban, about whom we know practically nothing: but, for instance, lancelot andrewes, john wesley, elizabeth fry, about whom we know a great deal. children, who find difficulty in general ideas, learn best from particular instances. yet boys and girls who can give a coherent account of such stimulating personalities as julius caesar, william the conqueror, henry viii. and his wives, or napoleon--none of whom have so very much to tell us that bears on the permanent interests of the soul--do not as a rule possess any vivid idea, say, of gautama, st. benedict, gregory the great, st. catherine of siena, st. francis xavier, george fox, st. vincent de paul and his friends: persons at least as significant, and far better worth meeting, than the military commanders and political adventurers of their time. the stories of the early buddhists, the sufi saints, st. francis of assisi, st. ignatius, the early quakers, the african missionaries, are full of things which can be made to interest even a young child. the legends which have grown up round some of them satisfy the instinct that draws it to fairy tales. they help it to dream well; and give to the developing mind food which it could assimilate in no other way. older boys and girls, could they be given some idea of the spiritual heroes of christendom as real men and women, without the nauseous note of piety which generally infects their biographies, would find much to delight them: romance of the best sort, because concerned with the highest values, and stories of endurance and courage such as always appeal to them. these people were not objectionable pietists. they were persons of fullest vitality and immense natural attraction; the pick of the race. we know that, by the numbers who left all to follow them. ought we not to introduce our pupils to them; not as stuffed specimens, but as vivid human beings? something might be done to create the right atmosphere for this, on the lines suggested by dr. hayward in that splendid little book "the lesson in appreciation." all that he says there about æsthetics, is applicable to any lesson dealing with the higher values of life. in this way, young people would be made to realize the spiritual life; not as something abnormal and more or less conventionalized, but as a golden thread running right through human history, and making demands on just those dynamic qualities which they feel themselves to possess. the adolescent is naturally vigorous and combative, and wants, above all else, something worth fighting for. this, too often, his teachers forget to provide. the study of nature, and of æsthetics--including poetry--gives us yet another way of approach. the child should be introduced to these great worlds of life and of beauty, and encouraged but never forced to feed on the best they contain. by implication, but never by any method savouring of "uplift," these subjects should be related with that sense of the spiritual and of its immanence in creation, which ought to inspire the teacher; and with which it is his duty to infect his pupils if he can. children may, very early, be taught or rather induced to look at natural things with that quietness, attention, and delight which are the beginnings of contemplation, and the conditions, under which nature reveals her real secrets to us. the child is a natural pagan, and often the first appeal to its nascent spiritual faculty is best made through its instinctive joy in the life of animals and flowers, the clouds and the winds. here it may learn very easily that wonder and adoration, which are the gateways to the presence of god. in simple forms of verse, music, and rhythmical movement it can be encouraged--as the salvation army has discovered--to give this happy adoration a natural, dramatic, and rhythmic expression: for the young child, as we know, reproduces the mental condition of the primitive, and primitive forms of worship will suit it best. it need hardly be said that education of the type we have been considering demands great gifts in the teacher: simplicity, enthusiasm, sympathy, and also a vigorous sense of humour, keeping him sharply aware of the narrow line that divides the priggish from the ideal. this education ought to inspire, but it ought not to replace, the fullest and most expert training of the body and mind; for the spirit needs a perfectly balanced machine, through which to express its life in the physical world. the actual additions to curriculum which it demands may be few: it is the attitude, the spirit, which must be changed. specifically moral education, the building of character, will of course form an essential part of it: in fact must be present within it from the first. but this comes best without observation, and will be found to depend chiefly on the character of the teacher, the love, admiration and imitation he evokes, the ethical tone he gives. childhood is of all ages the one most open to suggestion, and in this fact the educator finds at once his best opportunity and greatest responsibility. ruysbroeck has described to us the three outstanding moral dispositions in respect of god, of man, and of the conduct of life, which mark the true man or woman of the spirit; and it is in the childhood that the tendency to these qualities must be acquired. first, he says,--i paraphrase, since the old terms of moral theology are no longer vivid to us--there comes an attitude of reverent love, of adoration, towards all that is holy, beautiful, or true. and next, from this, there grows up an attitude towards other men, governed by those qualities which are the essence of courtesy: patience, gentleness, kindness, and sympathy. these keep us both supple and generous in our responses to our social environment. last, our creative energies are transfigured by an energetic love, an inward eagerness for every kind of work, which makes impossible all slackness and dullness of heart, and will impel us to live to the utmost the active life of service for which we are born.[ ] but these moral qualities cannot be taught; they are learned by imitation and infection, and developed by opportunity of action. the best agent of their propagation is an attractive personality in which they are dominant; for we know the universal tendency of young people to imitate those whom they admire. the relation between parent and child or master and pupil is therefore the central factor in any scheme of education which seeks to further the spiritual life. only those who have already become real can communicate the knowledge of reality. it is from the sportsman that we catch the spirit of fair-play, from the humble that we learn humility. the artist shows us beauty, the saint shows us god. it should therefore be the business of those in authority to search out and give scope to those who possess and are able to impart this triumphing spiritual life. a head-master who makes his boys live at their highest level and act on their noblest impulses, because he does it himself, is a person of supreme value to the state. it would be well if we cleared our minds of cant, and acknowledged that such a man alone is truly able to educate; since the spiritual life is infectious, but cannot be propagated by artificial means. finally, we have to remember that any attempt towards the education of the spirit--and such an attempt must surely be made by all who accept spiritual values as central for life--can only safely be undertaken with full knowledge of its special dangers and difficulties. these dangers and difficulties are connected with the instinctive and intellectual life of the child and the adolescent, who are growing, and growing unevenly, during the whole period of training. they are supple as regards other forces than those which we bring to bear on them; open to suggestion from many different levels of life. our greatest difficulty abides in the fact that, as we have seen, a vigorous spiritual life must give scope to the emotions. it is above all the heart rather than the mind which must be won for god. yet, the greatest care must be exercised to ensure that the appeal to the emotions is free from all possibility of appeal to latent and uncomprehended natural instincts. this peril, to which current psychology gives perhaps too much attention, is nevertheless real. candid students of religious history are bound to acknowledge the unfortunate part which it has often played in the past. these natural instincts fall into two great classes: those relating to self-preservation and those relating to the preservation of the race. the note of fear, the exaggerated longing for shelter and protection, the childish attitude of mere clinging dependence, fostered by religion of a certain type, are all oblique expressions of the instinct of self-preservation: and the rather feverish devotional moods and exuberant emotional expressions with which we are all familiar have, equally, a natural origin. our task in the training of young people is to evoke enthusiasm, courage and love, without appealing to either of these sources of excitement. generally speaking, it is safe to say that for this reason all sentimental and many anthropomorphic religious ideas are bad for lads and girls. these have, indeed, no part in that austere yet ardent love of god which inspires the real spiritual life. our aim ought to be, to teach and impress the reality of spirit, its regnancy in human life, whilst the mind is alert and supple: and so to teach and impress it, that it is woven into the stuff of the mental and moral life and cannot seriously be injured by the hostile criticisms of the rationalist. remember, that the prime object of education is the moulding of the unconscious and instinctive nature, the home of habit. if we can give this the desired tendency and tone of feeling, we can trust the rational mind to find good reasons with which to reinforce its attitudes and preferences. so it is not so much the specific belief, as the whole spiritual attitude to existence which we seek to affirm; and this will be done on the whole more effectively by the generalized suggestions which come to the pupil from his own surroundings, and the lives of those whom he admires, than by the limited and special suggestions of a creed. it is found that the less any desired motive is bound up with particular acts, persons, or ideas, the greater is the chance of its being universalized and made good for life all round. i do not intend by this statement to criticize any particular presentation of religion. nevertheless, educators ought to remember that a religion which is first entirely bound up with narrow and childish theological ideas, and is then presented as true in the absolute sense, is bound to break down under greater knowledge or hostile criticism; and may then involve the disappearance of the religious impulse as a whole, at least for a long period. did we know our business, we ought surely to be able to ensure in our young people a steady and harmonious spiritual growth. the "conversion" or psychic convulsion which is sometimes regarded as an essential preliminary of any vivid awakening of the spiritual consciousness, is really a tribute exacted by our wrong educational methods. it is a proof that we have allowed the plastic creature confided to us to harden in the wrong shape. but if, side by side and in simplest language, we teach the conceptions: first, of god as the transcendent yet indwelling spirit of love, of beauty and of power; next, of man's constant dependence on him and possible contact with his nature in that arduous and loving act of attention which is the essence of prayer; last, of unselfish work and fellowship as the necessary expressions of all human ideals--then, i think, we may hope to lay the foundations of a balanced and a wholesome life, in which man's various faculties work together for good, and his vigorous instinctive life is directed to the highest ends. footnotes: [footnote : spencer: "education," cap. .] [footnote : "the cloud of unknowing," cap. .] [footnote : ruysbroeck: "the adornment of the spiritual marriage," bk. i, caps. - .] chapter viii the life of the spirit and the social order we have come to the last chapter of this book; and i am conscious that those who have had the patience to follow its argument from the beginning, may now feel a certain sense of incompleteness. they will observe that, though many things have been said about the life of the spirit, not a great deal seems to have been said, at any rate directly, about the second half of the title--the life of to-day--and especially about those very important aspects of our modern active life which are resumed in the word social. this avoidance has been, at least in part, intentional. we have witnessed in this century a violent revulsion from the individualistic type of religion; a revulsion which parallels upon-its own levels, and indeed is a part of, the revolt from victorian individualism in political economic life. those who come much into contact with students, and with the younger and more vigorous clergy, are aware how far this revolt has proceeded: how completely, in the minds of those young people who are interested in religion, the social gospel now overpowers all other aspects of the spiritual life. again and again we are assured by the most earnest among them that in their view religion is a social activity, and service is its proper expression: that all valid knowledge of god is social, and he is chiefly known in mankind: that the use of prayer is mainly social, in that it improves us for service, otherwise it must be condemned as a merely selfish activity: finally, that the true meaning and value of suffering are social too. a visitor to a recent swanwick conference of the student christian movement has publicly expressed his regret that some students still seemed to be concerned with the problems of their own spiritual life; and were not prepared to let that look after itself, whilst they started straight off to work for the social realization of the kingdom of god. when a great truth becomes exaggerated to this extent, and is held to the exclusion of its compensating opposite, it is in a fair way to becoming a lie. and we have here, i think, a real confusion of ideas which will, if allowed to continue, react unfavourably upon the religion of the future; because it gives away the most sacred conviction of the idealist, the belief in the absolute character of spiritual values, and in the effort to win them as the great activity of man. social service, since it is one form of such an effort, a bringing in of more order, beauty, joy, is a fundamental duty--the fundamental duty--of the active life. man does not truly love the perfect until he is driven thus to seek its incarnation in the world of time. no one doubts this. all spiritual teachers have said it, in one way or another, for centuries. the mere fact that they feel impelled to teach at all, instead of saying "my secret to myself"--which is so much easier and pleasanter to the natural contemplative--is a guarantee of the claim to service which they feel that love lays upon them. but this does not make such service of man, however devoted, either the same thing as the search for, response to, intercourse with god; or, a sufficient substitute for these specifically spiritual acts. plainly, we are called upon to strive with all our power to bring in the kingdom; that is, to incarnate in the time world the highest spiritual values which we have known. but our ability to do this is strictly dependent on those values being known, at least by some of us, at first-hand; and for this first-hand perception, as we have seen, the soul must have a measure of solitude and silence. therefore, if the swing-over to a purely social interpretation of religion be allowed to continue unchecked, the result can only be an impoverishment of our spiritual life; quite as far-reaching and as regrettable as that which follows from an unbridled individualism. without the inner life of prayer and-meditation, lived for its own sake and for no utilitarian motive, neither our judgments upon the social order nor our active social service will be perfectly performed; because they will not be the channel of creative spirit expressing itself through us in the world of to-day. christ, it is true, gives nobody any encouragement for supposing that a merely self-cultivating sort of spirituality, keeping the home fires burning and so on, is anybody's main job. the main job confided to his friends is the preaching of the gospel. that is, spreading reality, teaching it, inserting it into existence; by prayers, words, acts, and also if need be by manual work, and always under the conditions and symbolisms of our contemporary world. but since we can only give others that which we already possess, this presupposes that we have got something of reality as a living, burning fire in ourselves. the soul's two activities of reception and donation must be held in balance, or impotence and unreality will result. it is only out of the heart of his own experience that man really helps his neighbour: and thus there is an ultimate social value in the most secret responses of the soul to grace. no one, for instance, can help others to repentance who has not known it at first-hand. therefore we have to keep the home fires burning, because they are the fires which raise the steam that does the work: and we do this mostly by the fuel with which we feed them, though partly too by giving free access to currents of fresh air from the outer world. we cannot read st. paul's letters with sympathy and escape the conviction that in the midst of his great missionary efforts he was profoundly concerned too with the problems of his own inner life. the little bits of self-revelation that break into the epistles and, threaded together, show us the curve of his growth, also show us how much, lay behind them, how intense, and how exacting was the inward travail that accompanied his outward deeds. here he is representative of the true apostolic type. it is because st. augustine is the man of the "confessions" that he is also the creator of "the city of god." the regenerative work of st. francis was accompanied by an unremitting life of penitence and recollection. fox and wesley, abounding in labours, yet never relaxed the tension of their soul's effort to correspond with a transcendent reality. these and many other examples warn us that only by such a sustained and double movement can the man of the spirit actualize all his possibilities and do his real work. he must, says ruysbroeck, "both ascend and descend with love."[ ] on any other basis he misses the richness of that fully integrated human existence "swinging between the unseen and the seen" in which the social and individual, incorporated and solitary responses to the demands of spirit are fully carried through. instead, he exhibits restriction and lack balance. this in the end must react as unfavourably on the social as on the personal side of life: since the place and influence of the spiritual life in the social order will depend entirely on its place in the individual consciousness of which that social order will be built, the extent in which loyalty to the one spirit governs their reactions to common daily experience. here then, as in so much else, the ideal is not an arbitrary choice but a struck balance. first, a personal contact with eternal reality, deepening, illuminating and enlarging all of our experience of fact, all our responses to it: that is, faith. next, the fullest possible sense of our membership of and duty towards the social organism, a completely rich, various, heroic, self-giving, social life: that is, charity. the dissociation of these two sides of human experience is fatal to that divine hope which should crown and unite them; and which represents the human instinct for novelty in a sublimated form. it is of course true that social groups may be regenerated. the success of such group-formations as the primitive franciscans, the friends of god, the quakers, the salvation army, demonstrates this. but groups, in the last resort, consist of individuals, who must each be regenerated one by one; whose outlook, if they are to be whole men, must include in its span abiding values as well as the stream of time, and who, for the full development of this their two-fold destiny, require each a measure both of solitude and of association. hence it follows, that the final answer to the repeated question: "does god save men, does spirit work towards the regeneration of humanity (the same thing), one by one, or in groups?" is this: that the proposed alternative is illusory. we cannot say that the divine action in the world as we know it, is either merely social or merely individual; but both. and the next question--a highly practical question--is, "how _both_?" for the answer to this, if we can find it, will give us at last a formula by which we can true up our own effort toward completeness of self-expression in the here-and-now. how, then, are groups of men moved up to higher spiritual levels; helped to such an actual possession of power and love and a sound mind as shall transfigure and perfect their lives? for this, more than all else, is what we now want to achieve. i speak in generalities, and of average human nature, not of these specially sensitive or gifted individuals who are themselves the revealers of reality to their fellow-men. history suggests, i think, that this group-regeneration is effected in the last resort through a special sublimation of the herd-instinct; that is, the full and willing use on spiritual levels of the characters which are inherent in human gregariousness.[ ] we have looked at some of these characters in past chapters. our study of them suggests, that the first stage in any social regeneration is likely to be brought about by the instinctive rallying of individuals about a natural leader, strong enough to compel and direct them; and whose appeal is to the impulsive life, to an acknowledged of unacknowledged lack or craving, not to the faculty of deliberate choice. this leader, then, must offer new life and love, not intellectual solutions. he must be able to share with his flock his own ardour and apprehension of reality; and evoke from them the profound human impulse to imitation. they will catch his enthusiasm, and thus receive the suggestions of his teaching and of his life. this first stage, supremely illustrated in the disciples of christ, and again in the groups who gathered round such men as st. francis, fox, or booth, is re-experienced in a lesser way in every successful revival: and each genuine restoration of the life of spirit, whether its declared aim be social or religious, has a certain revivalistic character. we must therefore keep an eye on these principles of discipleship and contagion, as likely to govern any future spiritualization of our own social life; looking for the beginnings of true reconstruction, not to the general dissemination of suitable doctrines, but to the living burning influence of an ardent soul. and i may add here, as the corollary of this conclusion, first that the evoking and fostering of such ardour is in itself a piece of social service of the highest value, and next that it makes every individual socially responsible for the due sharing of even the small measure of ardour, certitude or power he or she has received. we are to be conductors of the divine energy; not to insulate it. there is of course nothing new in all this: but there is nothing new fundamentally in the spiritual life, save in st. augustine's sense of the eternal youth and freshness of all beauty.[ ] the only novelty which we can safely introduce will be in the terms in which we describe it; the perpetual new exhibition of it within the time-world, the fresh and various applications which we can give to its abiding laws, in the special circumstances and opportunities of our own day. but the influence of the crowd-compeller, the leader, whether in the crude form of the revivalist or in the more penetrating and enduring form of the creative mystic or religious founder, the loyalty and imitation of the disciple, the corporate and generalized enthusiasm of the group can only be the first educative phase in any veritable incarnation of spirit upon earth. each member of the herd is now committed to the fullest personal living-out of the new life he has received. only in so far as the first stage of suggestion and imitation is carried over to the next stage of personal actualization, can we say that there is any real promotion of spiritual _life_: any hope that this life will work a true renovation of the group into which it has been inserted and achieve the social phase. if, then, it does achieve the social phase what stages may we expect it to pass through, and by what special characters will it be graced? let us look back for a moment at some of our conclusions about the individual life. we said that this life, if fully lived, exhibited the four characters of work and contemplation, self-discipline and service: deepening and incarnating within its own various this-world experience its other-world apprehensions of eternity, of god. its temper should thus be both social and ascetic. it should be doubly based, on humility and on given power. now the social order--more exactly, the social organism--in which spirit is really to triumph, can only be built up of individuals who do with a greater or less perfection and intensity exhibit these characters, some upon independent levels of creative freedom, some on those of discipleship: for here all men are not equal, and it is humbug to pretend that they are. this social order, being so built of regenerate units, would be dominated by these same implicits of the regenerate consciousness; and would tend to solve in their light the special problems of community life. and this unity of aim would really make of it one body; the body of a fully socialized _and_ fully spiritualized humanity, which perhaps we might without presumption describe as indeed the son of god. the life of such a social organism, its growth, its cycle of corporate behaviour, would be strung on that same fourfold cord which combined the desires and deeds of the regenerate self into a series: namely, penitence, surrender, recollection, and work. it would be actuated first by a real social repentance. that is, by a turning from that constant capitulation to its past, to animal and savage impulse, the power of which our generation at least knows only too well; and by the complementary effort to unify vigorous instinctive action and social conscience. i think every one can find for themselves some sphere, national, racial, industrial, financial, in which social penitence could work; and the constant corporate fall-back into sin, which we now disguise as human nature, or sometimes--even more insincerely--as economic and political necessity, might be faced and called by its true name. such a social penitence--such a corporate realization of the mess that we have made of things--is as much a direct movement of the spirit, and as great an essential of regeneration, as any individual movement of the broken and contrite heart. could a quick social conscience, aware of obligations to reality which do not end with making this world a comfortable place--though we have not even managed that for the majority of men--feel quite at ease, say, after an unflinching survey of our present system of state punishment? or after reading the unvarnished record of our dealings with the problem of indian immigration into africa? or after considering the inner nature of international diplomacy and finance? or even, to come nearer home, after a stroll through hoxton: the sort of place, it is true, which we have not exactly made on purpose but which has made itself because we have not, as a community, exercised our undoubted powers of choice and action in an intelligent and loving way. can we justify the peculiar characteristics of hoxton: congratulate ourselves on the amount of light, air and beauty which its inhabitants enjoy, the sort of children that are reared in it, as the best we can do towards furthering the racial aim? it is a monument of stupidity no less than of meanness. yet the conception of god which the whole religious experience of growing man presses on us, suggests that both intelligence and love ought to characterize his ideal for human life. look then at these, and all the other things of the same kind. look at our attitude towards prostitution, at the drink traffic, at the ugliness and injustice of the many institutions which we allow to endure. look at them in the universal spirit; and then consider, whether a searching corporate repentance is not really the inevitable preliminary of a social and spiritual advance. all these things have happened because we have as a body consistently fallen below our best possible, lacked courage to incarnate our vision in the political sphere. instead, we have, acted on the crowd level, swayed by unsublimated instincts of acquisition, disguised lust, self-preservation, self-assertion, and ignoble fear: and such a fall-back is the very essence of social sin. we have made many plans and elevations; but we have not really tried to build jerusalem either in our own hearts or in "england's pleasant land." blake thought that the preliminary of such a building up of the harmonious social order must be the building up or harmonizing of men, of each man; and when this essential work was really done, heaven's "countenance divine" would suddenly declare itself "among the dark satanic mills."[ ] what was wrong with man, and ultimately therefore with society, was the cleavage between his "spectre" or energetic intelligence, and "emanation" or loving imagination. divided, they only tormented one another. united, they were the material of divine humanity. now the complementary affirmative movement which shall balance and complete true social penitence will be just such a unification and dedication of society's best energies and noblest ideals, now commonly separated. the spectre is attending to economics: the emanation is dreaming of utopia. we want to see them united, for from this union alone will come the social aspect for surrender. that is to say, a single-minded, unselfish yielding to those good social impulses which we all feel from time to time, and might take more seriously did, we realize them as the impulsions of holy and creative spirit pressing us towards novelty, giving us our chance; our small actualization of the universal tendency to the divine. as it is, we do feel a little uncomfortable when these stirrings reach us; but commonly console ourselves with the thought that their realization is at present outside the sphere of practical politics. yet the obligation of response to those stirrings is laid on all who feel them; and unless some will first make this venture of faith, our possible future will never be achieved. christ was born among those who _expected_ the kingdom of god. the favouring atmosphere of his childhood is suggested by these words. it is our business to prepare, so far as we may, a favourable atmosphere and environment for the children who will make the future: and this environment is not anything mysterious, it is simply ourselves. the men and women who are now coming to maturity, still supple to experience and capable of enthusiastic and disinterested choice--that is, of surrender in the noblest sense--will have great opportunities of influencing those who are younger than themselves. the torch is being offered to them; and it is of vital importance to the unborn future that they should grasp and hand it on, without worrying about whether their fingers are going to be burnt. if they do grasp it, they may prove to be the bringers in of a new world, a fresh and vigorous social order, which is based upon true values, controlled by a spiritual conception of life; a world in which this factor is as freely acknowledged by all normal persons, as is the movement of the earth round the sun. i do not speak here of fantastic dreams about utopias, or of the coloured pictures of the apocalyptic imagination; but of a concrete genuine possibility, at which clear-sighted persons have hinted again and again. consider our racial past. look at the piltdown skull: reconstruct the person or creature whose brain that skull contained, and actualize the directions in which his imperious instincts, his vaguely conscious will and desire, were pressing into life. they too were expressions of creative spirit; and there is perfect continuity between his vital impulse and our own. now, consider one of the better achievements of civilization; say the life of a university, with its devotion to disinterested learning, its conservation of old beauty and quest of new truth. even if we take its lowest common measure, the transfiguration of desire is considerable. yet in the things of the spirit we must surely acknowledge ourselves still to be primitive men; and no one can say that it yet appears what we shall be. all really depends on the direction in which human society decides to push into experience, the surrender which it makes to the impulsion of the spirit; how its tendency to novelty is employed, the sort of complex habits which are formed by it, as more and more crude social instinct is lifted up into conscious intention, and given the precision of thought. in our regenerate society, then, if we ever get it, the balanced moods of repentance of our racial past and surrender to our spiritual calling, the pull-forward of the spirit of life even in its most austere difficult demands, will control us; as being the socialized extensions of these same attitudes of the individual soul. and they will press the community to those same balanced expressions of its instinct for reality, which completed the individual life: that is to say, to recollection and work. in the furnishing of a frame for the regular social exercise of recollection--the gathering in of the corporate mind and its direction to eternal values, the abiding foundations of existence; the consideration of all its problems in silence and peace; the dramatic and sacramental expression of its unity and of its dependence on the higher powers of life--in all this, the institutional religion of the future will perhaps find its true sphere of action, and take its rightful place in the socialized life of the spirit. finally, the work which is done by a community of which the inner life is controlled by these three factors will be the concrete expression of these factors in the time-world; and will perpetuate and hand on all that is noble, stable and reasonable in human discovery and tradition, whether in the sphere of conduct, of thought, of creation, of manual labour, or the control of nature, whilst remaining supple towards the demands and gifts of novelty. new value will be given to craftsmanship and a sense of dedication--now almost unknown--to those who direct it. consider the effect of this attitude on worker, trader, designer, employer: how many questions would then answer themselves, how many sore places would be healed. it is not necessary, in order to take sides with this possible new order and work for it, that we should commit ourselves to any one party or scheme of social reform. still less is it necessary to suppose such reform the only field in which the active and social side of the spiritual life is to be lived. repentance, surrender, recollection and industry can do their transfiguring work in art, science, craftsmanship, scholarship, and play: making all these things more representative of reality, nearer our own best possible, and so more vivid and worth while. if tauler was right, and all kinds of skill are gifts of the holy ghost--a proposition which no thorough-going theist can refuse--then will not a reference back on the part of the worker to that fontal source of power make for humility and perfection in all work? personally i am not at all afraid to recognize a spiritual element in all good craftsmanship, in the delighted and diligent creation of the fine potter, smith or carpenter, in the well-tended garden and beehive, the perfectly adjusted home; for do not all these help the explication of the one spirit of life in the diversity of his gifts? the full life of the spirit must be more rich and various in its expression than any life that we have yet known, and find place for every worthy and delightful activity. it does not in the least mean a bloodless goodness; a refusal of fun and everlasting fuss about uplift. but it does mean looking at and judging each problem in a particular light, and acting on that judgment without fear. were this principle established, and society poised on this centre, reforms would follow its application almost automatically; specific evils would retreat. new knowledge of beauty would reveal the ugliness of many satisfactions which we now offer to ourselves, and new love the defective character of many of our social relations. certain things would therefore leave off happening, would go; because the direction of desire had changed. i do not wish to particularize, for this only means blurring the issue by putting forward one's own pet reforms. but i cannot help pointing out that we shall never get spiritual values out of a society harried and tormented by economic pressure, or men and women whose whole attention is given up to the daily task of keeping alive. this is not a political statement: it is a plain fact that we must face. though the courageous lives of the poor, their patient endurance of insecurity may reveal a nobility that shames us, it still remains true that these lives do not represent the most favourable conditions of the soul. it is not poverty that matters; but strain and the presence of anxiety and fear, the impossibility of detachment. therefore this oppression at least would have to be lightened, before the social conscience could be at ease. moreover as society advances along this way, every--even the most subtle--kind of cruelty and exploitation of self-advantage obtained to the detriment of other individuals, must tend to be eliminated; because here the drag-back of the past will be more and more completely conquered, its instincts fully sublimated, and no one will care to do those things any more. bringing new feelings and more real concepts to our contact with our environment, we shall, in accordance with the law of apperception, see this environment in a different way; and so obtain from it a fresh series of experiences. the scale of pain and pleasure will be altered. we shall feel a searching responsibility about the way in which our money is made, and about any disadvantages to others which our amusements or comforts may involve. here, perhaps, it is well to register a protest against the curious but prevalent notion that any such concentrated effort for the spiritualization of society must tend to work itself out in the direction of a maudlin humanitarianism, a soft and sentimental reading of life. this idea merely advertises once more the fact that we still have a very mean and imperfect conception of god, and have made the mistake of setting up a water-tight bulkhead; between his revelation, in nature and his discovery in the life of prayer. it shows a failure to appreciate the stern, heroic aspect of reality; the element of austerity in all genuine religion, the distinction between love and sentimentalism, the rightful place of risk, effort, even suffering, in all full achievement and all joy. if we are surrendered in love to the purposes of the spirit, we are committed to the bringing out of the best possible in life; and this is a hard business, involving a quite definite social struggle with evil and atavism, in which some one is likely to be hurt. but surely that manly spirit of adventure which has driven men to the north pole and the desert, and made them battle with delight against apparently impossible odds, can here find its appropriate sublimation? if anyone who has followed these arguments, and now desires to bring them from idea into practice, asks: "what next?" the answer simply is--begin. begin with ourselves; and if possible, do not begin in solitude. "the basal principles of all collective life," says mcdougall, "are sympathetic contagion, mass suggestion, imitation":[ ] and again and again the history of spiritual experience illustrates this law, that its propagation is most often by way of discipleship and the corporate life, not by the intensive culture of purely solitary effort. it is for those who believe in the spiritual life to take full advantage now of this social suggestibility of man; though without any detraction from the prime importance of the personal spiritual life. therefore, join up with somebody, find fellowship; whether it be in a church or society, or among a few like-minded friends. draw together for mutual support, and face those imperatives of prayer and work which we have seen to be the condition of the fullest living-out of our existence. fix and keep a reasonably balanced daily rule. accept leadership where you find it--give it, if you feel the impulse and the strength. do not wait for some grand opportunity, and whilst you are waiting stiffen in the wrong shape. the great opportunity may not be for us, but for the generation whose path we now prepare: and we do our best towards such preparation, if we begin in a small and humble way the incorporation of our hopes and desires as for instance wesley and the oxford methodists did. they sought merely to put their own deeply felt ideas into action quite simply and without fuss; and we know how far the resulting impulse spread. the bab movement in the east, the salvation army at home, show us this principle still operative; what a "little flock" dominated by a suitable herd-leader and swayed by love and adoration can do--and these, like christianity itself, began as small and inconspicuous groups. it may be that our hope for the future depends on the formation of such groups--hives of the spirit--in which the worker of every grade, the thinker, the artist, might each have their place: obtaining from incorporation the herd-advantages of mutual protection and unity of aim, and forming nuclei to which others could adhere. such a small group--and i am now thinking of something quite practical, say to begin with a study-circle, or a company of like-minded friends with a definite rule of life--may not seem to the outward eye very impressive. regarded as a unit, it will even tend to be inferior to its best members: but it will be superior to the weakest, and with its leader will possess a dynamic character and reproductive power which he could never have exhibited alone. it should form a compact organization, both fervent and business-like; and might take as its ideal a combination of the characteristic temper of the contemplative order, with that of active and intelligent christianity as seen in the best type of social settlement. this double character of inwardness and practicality seems to me to be essential to its success; and incorporation will certainly help it to be maintained. the rule should be simple and unostentatious, and need indeed be little more than the "heavenly rule" of faith, hope, and charity. this will involve first the realization of man's true life within a spiritual world-order, his utter dependence upon its realities and powers of communion with them; next his infinite possibilities of recovery and advancement; last his duty of love to all other selves and things. this triple law would be applied without shirking to every problem of existence; and the corporate spirit would be encouraged by meetings, by associated prayer, and specially i hope by the practice of corporate silence. such a group would never permit the intrusion of the controversial element, but would be based on mutual trust; and the fact that all the members shared substantially the same view of human life, strove though in differing ways for the same ideals, were filled by the same enthusiasms, would allow the problems and experiences of the spirit to be accepted as real, and discussed with frankness and simplicity. thus oases of prayer and clear thinking might be created in our social wilderness, gradually developing such power and group-consciousness as we see in really living religious bodies. the group would probably make some definite piece of social work, or some definite question, specially its own. seeking to judge the problem this presented in the universal spirit, it would work towards a solution, using for this purpose both heart and head. it would strive in regard to the special province chosen and solution reached to make its weight felt, either locally or nationally, in a way the individual could never hope to do; and might reasonably hope that its conclusions and its actions would exceed in balance and sanity those which any one of the members could have achieved alone. i think that these groups would develop their own discipline, not borrow its details from the past: for they would soon find that some drill was necessary to them, and that luxury, idleness, self-indulgence and indifference to the common-good were in conflict with the inner spirit of the herd. they would inevitably come to practise that sane asceticism, not incompatible with gaiety of heart, which consists in concentration on the real, and quiet avoidance of the attractive sham. plainness and simplicity do help the spiritual life, and these are more easy and wholesome when practised in common than when they are displayed by individuals in defiance of the social order that surrounds them. the differences of temperament and of spiritual level in the group members would prevent monotony; and insure that variety of reaction to the life of the spirit which we so much wish to preserve. those whose chief gift was for action would thus be directly supported by those natural contemplatives who might, if they remained in solitude, find it difficult to make their special gift serve their fellows as it must. group-consciousness would cause the spreading and equalization of that spiritual sensitiveness which is, as a matter of fact, very unequally distributed amongst men. and in the backing up of the predominantly active workers by the organized prayerful will of the group, all the real values of intercession would be obtained: for this has really nothing to do with trying to persuade god to do specific acts, it is a particular way of exerting love, and thus of reaching and using spiritual power. this incorporation, as i see it, would be made for the express purpose of getting driving force with which to act directly upon life. for spirituality, as we have seen all along, must not be a lovely fluid notion or a merely self-regarding education; but an education for action, for the insertion of eternal values into the time-world, in conformity with the incarnational philosophy which justifies it. such action--such insertion--depends on constant recourse to the sources of spiritual power. at present we tend to starve our possible centres of regeneration, or let them starve themselves, by our encouragement of the active at the expense of the contemplative life; and till this is mended, we shall get nothing really done. forgetting st. teresa's warning, that to give our lord a perfect service, martha and mary must combine,[ ] we represent the service of man as being itself an attention to god; and thus drain our best workers of their energies, and leave them no leisure for taking in fresh supplies. often they are wearied and confused by the multiplicity in which they must struggle; and they are not taught and encouraged to seek the healing experience of unity. hence even our noblest teachers often show painful signs of spiritual exhaustion, and tend to relapse into the formal repetition of a message which was once a burning fire. the continued force of any regenerative movement depends above all else on continued vivid contact with the divine order, for the problems of the reformer are only really understood and seen in true proportion in its light. such contact is not always easy: it is a form of work. after a time the weary and discouraged will need the support of discipline if they are to do it. therefore definite role of silence and withdrawal--perhaps an extension of that system of periodical retreats which is one of the most hopeful features of contemporary religious life--is essential to any group-scheme for the general and social furtherance of the spiritual life. it is not to be denied for a moment, that countless good men and women who love the world in the divine and not in the self-regarding sense, are busy all their lives long in forwarding the purposes of the spirit: which is acting through them, as truly as through the conscious prophets and regenerators of the race. but, to return for a moment to psychological language, whilst the divine impulsion remains for us below the threshold, it is not doing all that it could for us nor we all that we could do for it; for we are not completely unified. we can by appropriate education bring up that imperative yet dim impulsion to conscious realization, and wittingly dedicate to its uses our heart, mind and will; and such realization in its most perfect form appears to be the psychological equivalent of the state which is described by spiritual writers, in their own special language, as "union with god." i have been at some pains to avoid the use of this special language of the mystics; but now perhaps we may remind ourselves that, by the declaration of all who have achieved it, the mature spiritual life is such a condition of completed harmony--such a theopathetic state. therefore here to-day, in the worst confusions of our social scramble, no less that in the indian forest or the mediæval cloister, man's really religious method and self-expression must be harmonious with a life-process of which this is the recognized if distant goal: and in all the work of restatement, this abiding objective must be kept in view. such union, such full identification with the divine purpose, must be a social as well as an individual expression of full life. it cannot be satisfied by the mere picking out of crumbs of perfection from the welter, but must mean in the end that the real interests of society are indentical with the interests of creative spirit, in so far as these are felt and known by man; the interests, that is, of a love that is energy and an energy that is love. towards this identification, the willed tendency of each truly awakened individual must steadfastly be set; and also the corporate desire of each group, as expressed in its prayer and work. for the whole secret of life lies in directed desire. a wide-spreading love to all in common, says ruysbroeck in a celebrated passage, is the authentic mark of a truly spiritual man.[ ] in this phrase is concealed the link between the social and personal aspects of the spiritual life. it means that our passional nature with its cravings and ardours, instead of making self-centred whirlpools, flows out in streams of charity and power towards all life. and we observe too that the ninth perfection of the buddhist is such a state of active charity. "in his loving, sympathizing, joyful and steadfast mind he will recognize himself in all things, and will shed warmth and light on the world in all directions out of his great, deep, unbounded heart."[ ] let this, then, be the teleological objective on which the will and the desire of individual and group are set: and let us ask what it involves, and how it is achieved. it involves all the ardour, tenderness and idealism of the lover, spent not on one chosen object but on all living things. thus it means an immense widening of the arc of human sympathy; and this it is not possible to do properly, unless we have found the centre of the circle first. the glaring defect of current religion--i mean the vigorous kind, not the kind that is responsible for empty churches--is that it spends so much time in running round the arc, and rather takes the centre for granted. we see a great deal of love in generous-minded people, but also a good many gaps in it which reference to the centre might help us to find and to mend. some christian people seem to have a difficulty about loving reactionaries, and some about loving revolutionaries. and in institutional religion there are people of real ardour, called by those beautiful names catholic and evangelical, who do not seem able to see each other in the light of this wide-spreading love. yet they would meet at the centre. and it is at the centre that the real life of the spirit aims first; thence flowing out to the circumference--even to its most harsh, dark, difficult and rugged limits--in unbroken streams of generous love. such love is creative. it does not flow along the easy paths, spending itself on the attractive. it cuts new channels, goes where it is needed, and has as its special vocation--a vocation identical with that of the great artist--the "loving of the unlovely into lovableness." thus does it participate according to its measure in the work of divine incarnation. this does not mean a maudlin optimism, or any other kind of sentimentality; for as we delve more deeply into life, we always leave sentimentality behind. but it does mean a love which is based on a deep understanding of man's slow struggles and of the unequal movements of life, and is expressed in both arduous and highly skillful actions. it means taking the grimy, degraded, misshapen, and trying to get them right; because we feel that essentially they can be right. and further, of course, it means getting behind them to the conditions that control their wrongness; and getting these right if we can. consider what human society would be if each of its members--not merely occasional philanthropists, idealists or saints, but financiers, politicians, traders, employers, employed--had this quality of spreading a creative love: if the whole impulse of life in every man and woman were towards such a harmony, first with god, and then with all other things and souls. there is nothing unnatural in this conception. it only means that our vital energy would flow in its real channel at last. where then would be our most heart-searching social problems? the social order then would really be an order; tallying with st. augustine's definition of a virtuous life as the ordering of love. what about the master and the worker in such a possibly regenerated social order? consider alone the immense release of energy for work needing to be done, if the civil wars of civilized man could cease and be replaced by that other mental fight, for the upbuilding of jerusalem: how the impulse of creative spirit, surely working in humanity, would find the way made clear. would not this, at last, actualize the pauline dream, of each single citizen as a member of the body of christ? it is because we are not thus attuned to life, and surrendered to it, that our social confusion arises; the conflict of impulse within society simply mirrors the conflict of impulse within each individual mind. we know that some of the greatest movements of history, veritable transformations of the group-mind, can be traced back to a tiny beginning in the faithful spiritual experience and response of some one man, his contact with the centre which started the ripples of creative love. if, then, we could elevate such universalized individuals into the position of herd-leaders, spread their secret, persuade society first to imitate them, and then to share their point of view, the real and sane, because love-impelled social revolution might begin. it will begin, when more and ever more people find themselves unable to participate in, or reap advantage from, the things which conflict with love: when tender emotion in man is so universalized, that it controls the instincts of acquisitiveness and of self-assertion. there are already for each of us some things in which we cannot participate, because they conflict too flagrantly with some aspect of our love, either for truth, or for justice, or for humanity, or for god; and these things each individual, according to his own level of realization, is bound to oppose without compromise. most of us have enough widespreading love to be--for instance--quite free from temptation to be cruel, at any rate directly, to children or to animals. i say nothing about the indirect tortures which our sloth and insensitiveness still permit. were these first flickers made ardent, and did they control all our reactions to life--and there is nothing abnormal, no break in continuity involved in this, only a reasonable growth--then, new paths of social discharge would have been made for-our chief desires and impulses; and along these they would tend more and more to flow freely and easily, establishing new social-habits, unhampered by solicitations from our savage past. to us already, on the whole, these solicitations are less insistent than they were to the men of earlier centuries. we see their gradual defeat in slave emancipation, factory acts, increased religious tolerance, every movement towards social justice, every increase of the arc over which our obligations to other men obtain. they must now disguise themselves as patriotic or economic necessities, if we are to listen to them: as, in the freudian dream, our hidden unworthy wishes slip through into consciousness in a symbolic form. but when their energy has been fully sublimated, the social action will no longer be a conflict but a harmony. then we shall live the life of spirit; and from this life will flow all love-inspired reform. yet we are, above all, to avoid the conclusion that the spiritual life, in its social expression, shall necessarily push us towards mere change; that novelty contains everything, and stability nothing, of the will of the spirit for the race. surely our aim shall be this: that religious sensitiveness shall spread, as our discovery of religion in the universe spreads, so that at last every man's reaction to the whole of experience shall be entinctured with reality, coloured by this dominant feeling-tone. spirit would then work from within outwards, and all life personal and social, mental and physical, would be moulded by its inspiring power. and in looking here for our best hope of development, we remain safely within history; and do not strive for any desperate pulling down or false simplification of our complex existence, such as has wrecked many attempts to spiritualize society in the past. consider the way by which we have come. we found in man an instinct for a spiritual reality. a single, concrete, objective fact, transcending yet informing his universe, compels his adoration, and is apperceived by him in three main ways. first, as the very being, heart and meaning of that universe, the universal of all universals, next as a presence including and exceeding the best that personality can mean to him, last as an indwelling and energizing life. we saw in history the persistent emergence of a human type so fully aware of this reality as to subdue to its interests all the activities of life; ever seeking to incarnate its abiding values in the world of time. and further, psychology suggested to us, even in its tentative new findings, its exploration of our strange mental deeps, reason for holding such surrender to the purposes of the spirit to represent the condition of man's fullest psychic health, and access to his real sources of power. we found in the universal existence of religious institutions further evidence of this profound human need of spirituality. we saw there the often sharp and sky-piercing intensity of the individual aptitude for reality enveloped, tempered and made wholesome by the social influences of the cultus and the group: made too, available for the community by the symbolisms that cultus had preserved. so that gradually the life of the spirit emerged for us as something most actual, not archaic: a perennial possibility of newness, of regeneration, a widening of our span of pain and joy. a human fact, completing and most closely linked with those other human facts, the vocation to service, to beauty, to truth. a fact, then, which must control our view of personal self-discipline, of education, and of social effort: since it refers to the abiding reality which alone gives all these their meaning and worth, and which man, consciously or unconsciously, must pursue. and last, if we ask as a summing up of the whole matter: _why_ man is thus to seek the eternal, through, behind and within the ever-fleeting? the answer is that he cannot, as a matter of fact, help doing it sooner or later: for his heart is never at rest, till it finds itself there. but he often wastes a great deal of time before he realizes this. and perhaps we may find the reason why man--each man--is thus pressed towards some measure of union with reality, in the fact that his conscious will thus only becomes an agent of the veritable purposes of life: of that power which, in and through mankind, conserves and slowly presses towards realization the noblest aspirations of each soul. this power and push we may call if we like in the language of realism the tendency of our space-time universe towards deity; or in the language of religion, the working of the holy spirit. and since, so far as we know, it is only in man that life becomes self-conscious, and ever more and more self-conscious, with the deepening and widening of his love and his thought; so it is only in man that it can dedicate the will and desire which are life's central qualities to the furtherance of this divine creative aim. footnotes: [footnote : "the mirror of eternal salvation," cap. .] [footnote : a good general discussion in tansley: "the new psychology and its relation to life," caps. , .] [footnote : aug. conf., bk. x, cap. .] [footnote : blake; "jerusalem."] [footnote : "social psychology," cap. i.] [footnote : "the interior castle": sleuth habitation, cap. iv.] [footnote : "the adornment of the spiritual marriage," bk. ii, cap. .] [footnote : warren: "buddhism in translations," p. .] principal works used or cited. _s. alexander_. space, time, and deity. london, . _blessed angela of foligno_. book of divine consolations (new mediæval library). london, . _st. thomas aquinas_. summa contra gentiles (of god and his creatures), trans. by j. rickaby, london, . _st. augustine_. confessions, trans. by rev. c. bigg. london, . _venerable augustine baker_. holy wisdom, or directions for the prayer of contemplation. london, . _charles baudouin_. suggestion et auto-suggestion. paris, . _harold begbie_. william booth, founder of the salvation army. london, . _william blake_. poetical works, with variorum readings by j. sampson, oxford, . --jerusalem, edited by e.r.d. maclagan and a.e.b. russell. london, . _jacob boehme_. the aurora, trans. by j. sparrow, london, . --six theosophic points, trans. by j.r. earle, london, . --the way to christ. london, . _st. bonaventura_. opera omnia. paris, - . _bernard bosanquet_. what religion is. london, . _dan cuthbert butler_. benedictine monachism. london, . _st. catherine of siena_. the divine dialogue, trans. by algar thorold. london, . the cloud of unknowing, edited from b.m. harl, , with an introduction by evelyn underhill. london, . _g.a. coe_. a social theory of religious education. new york, . _benedetto croce_. Æsthetic, or the science of expression, trans. by d. ainslie. london, . --theory and history of historiography, trans. by d. ainslie. london, . _dante alighieri_. tutte le opere. rived. nel testo da dr. e. moore. oxford, . _abbot delatte_. the benedictine rule. eng. trans. london, . _john donne_. sermons: selected passages, with an essay by l. pearsall smith. oxford, . _meister eckhart_. schriften und predigten aus dem mittelhochsdeutschen. ubersetzt und herausgegeben von buttner. leipzig, . _john everard_. some gospel treasures opened. london, . _george fox_. journal, edited from the mss. by n. penney. cambridge, . _elizabeth fry_. memoir with extracts from her journals and letters, edited by two of her daughters, nd. ed. london, . _edmund gardner_. st. catherine of siena. london, . _gabriela cunninghame graham_. st. teresa, her life and times. london, . _viscount haldane_. the reign of relativity. london, . _j.o. hannay_. the spirit and origin of christian monasticism. london, . _f.h. hayward_. the lesson in appreciation. new york, . _f.h. hayward and a. freeman_. the spiritual foundations of reconstruction. london, . _violet hodgkin_. a book of quarter saints. london, . _harold höffding_. the philosophy of religion. london, . _edmond holmes_. what is and what might be. london, . --give me the young, london, . _baron fredrick von hügel_. the mystical element of religion. london, . --eternal life: a study of its implications and applications. london, . --essays and addresses on the philosophy of religion. london, . _jacopone da todi_. le laude, secondo la stampa fiorentino del . a cura di g. ferri. bari, . _william james_. the varieties of religious experience. london, . _william james_. the will to believe and other essays. london, . --principles of psychology. london, . _st. john of the cross_. the ascent of mount carmel, trans. by david lewis. london, . --the dark night of the soul, trans. by david lewis. london, . _sir henry jones and j.h. muirhead_. the life and philosophy of edward caird. glasgow, . _rufus jones_. studies in mystical religion. london, . --spiritual reformers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. london, . _julian of norwich_. revelations of divine love, edited by grace warrack. london, . _c.g. jung_. the psychology of the unconscious. london, . _kabir_. one hundred poems, edited by rabindranath tagore and evelyn underhill. london, . _thomas à kempis_. the imitation of christ: the earliest english translation (everyman's library). london, n.d. _s. kettlewell_. thomas à kempis and the brothers of the common life. london, . _william law_. liberal and mystical writings, edited by w. scott palmer. london, . _w.p. livingstone_. mary slessor of calabar. london, . journal spirituel de lucie-christine. paris, . _w. mcdougall_. an introduction to social psychology, th ed. london, . --the group mind. cambridge, . _w.m. mcgovern_. an introduction to mahãyãna buddhism. london, . _mechthild of magdeburg_. das fliessende licht der gottheit. regensburg, . _reynold nicholson_. selected poems from the divãni, shamsi tabriz. cambridge, . --studies in islamic mysticism. cambridge, . _j.h. overton_. john wesley. london, . _william penn_. no cross, no crown. london, . _plotinus_. the ethical treatises, trans. from the greek by stephen mackenna. london, . _plotinus_. the physical and psychical treatises, trans. from the greek by stephen mackenna. london, . _j.b. pratt_. the religious consciousness; a psychological study. new york, . _richard of st. victor._ opera omnia. migne, pat lat., t. . _w.h.r. rivers_. instinct and the unconscious, cambridge, . _richard rolle of hampole_. the fire of love and mending of life, englished by r. misyn (e.e.t.s. ).london, . _bertrand russell_. the analysis of mind, london, . _john ruysbroeck_. the adornment of the spiritual marriage, the book of truth, and the sparkling stone, trans. from the flemish by c.a. wynschenk dom. london, . --the book of the xii béguines, trans. by john francis. london, . _r. semon_. die mneme, nd ed. leipzig, . _herbert spencer_. education: intellectual, moral, and physical london, . _b.h. streeter and a.j. appasamy_. the sadhu: a study in mysticism and practical religion. london, . _b.h. streeter_. (edited by). the spirit: god and his relation to man. london, . _blessed henry suso_. life, by-himself, trans. by t.f. knox. london, . _devendranath tagore._ autobiography, trans. by s. tagore and i. devi, london, . _a.g. tansley_. the new psychology and its relation to life london, . _st. teresa_. the life of st. teresa written by herself, trans. by d, lewis. london, . --the interior castle, trans. by the benedictines of stanbrook, nd ed. london, . --the way of perfection, ed. by e.r. waller. london, . theologia germanica, ed. by susanna winkworth, th ed. london, . _soeur thérèse de l'enfant-jésus:_ histoire d'une ame. paris, . _francis thompson._ st. ignatius loyola. london, . _w.f. trotter._ instincts of the herd in peace and war, rd ed. london, . _miguel da unamuno._ the tragic sense of life in men and in peoples, eng. trans. london, . _evelyn underhill._ jacopone da todi, poet and mystic. london, . _c.b. upton._ the bases of religious belief. london, . _j. varendonck._ the psychology of day-dreams. london, . _h.c. warren._ buddhism in translations. cambridge, mass., . _john wesley._ journal, from original mss. standard edition, vols - . london, - . index abreaction, abu said, adolescence, seq. alexander, s. angela of foligno, blessed, , apperception, , aquinas, st. thomas, , , asceticism, , , augustine, st., , , , , , , , , , autistic thought, , , seq. auto suggestion _see_ suggestion baudouin, c., , benedict, st. , , seq., , benedictine order, , , , seq. bernard, st. bhakti marga, , bible-reading, blake, w., , , , , boehme, jacob, , , , , , , , , , seq., , , , bonaventura, st., booth, general, , , , bosanquet, bernard brahmo samaj, brothers of common life, buddhism, , , , butler, dom c., , caird, edward, catherine of genoa, st., , , , catherine of siena, st., , , , christianity, primitive, , church, , seq. essentials of, , seq., future, , gifts of, limitations, cloud of unknowing, the, , , , seq., , , , , , , , complex, , seq. conflict, psychic, , , , , , seq. consciousness, , seq. group, , seq., , seq. spiritual, , contemplation, , , seq., , seq., , in children, conversion, , , , , , croce, benedetto, , cultus, , seq. dante, delatte, abbot, dionysius, the areopagite, , discipleship, , , seq. donne, john, , eckhart, master, , education, , seq., seq. factors of, , seq. spencer on, spiritual, , , , seq., , seq., , dangers of, , seq., emotion, religious, , , , , eternal life, , , , everard, john, , fox, george, , , , , , , , , , , francis of assisi, st., , , , , , , , friends of god, , fry, elizabeth, , , gardner, edmund, god, experience of, seq., , , , , seq., , , personality of, , seq., seq. grace, , seq., , groot, gerard, groups, , , , seq. guyon, madame, habit, , , , hadfield, j.a., haldane, viscount, hayward, f.h., hinduism, , , , , , history and spiritual life, , seq., in education, , seq. höffding, h., , hügel, baron, f. von, , , , , , on spiritual life, , seq. humility, , , , hymns, , , seq. ignatius, loyola, st., , , instinct, , , seq., , seq., , herd, in children, intercession, introversion, isaiah, jacopone da todi, , , , , , , james, william, jerome, st., jesus christ, , , , , , , , , , , , , , joan of arc, st., "john inglesant", john, st., , john of the cross, st., , julian of norwich, , , , kabir, , , , , lawrence, brother, law, william, , , liturgy, _see_ cultus livingstone, w.p., love, , , , , , seq., , seq. defined, , seq. lucie, christine, mass, the, mcdougall, w., , mcgovern, w.m., mechthild of magdeburg, st., , memory, , seq. methodists, , , mind, analysis of, , seq. foreconscious, , seq. instinctive, , seq., , seq. primitive, , , , , seq. rational, , seq. unconscious, , seq., , seq., , motive, , mystical experience, , , nanak, nicholson, reynold, , , , , pascal, patmore, coventry, paul, st., , , , , , , , , , , , penn, william, , , plotinus, , , , , , , , , pratt, j.b., , , prayer , , , , seq., , , seq., , , , seq. childrens', , corporate, , distractions in, , education in, , of quiet, , sadhu on, short act, and suggestion , seq. vocal, and work, psyche, the, , seq., , , purgation, , , , , seq., quakers, , , , ramakrishna, recollection, , seq., , , , seq. corporate, regeneration, , , corporate, , seq., , seq. religious ceremonies, , seq., education, , seq. institutions, , seq., magic , seq. orders, repentance, , seq., , social, , seq. reverie, , , seq. richard of st. victor, , rolle, richard, , seq., rosary, russell, bertrand, , ruysbroeck, , , , , seq., , , seq., , , , , , , sacrifice, sadhu, sundar, singh, , , saints, , salvation, , , seq. salvation army, , , , semon, r., sin, , , , seq., , , corporate, sins, seven deadly, slessor, mary, , seq., social reform, , seq., service, , seq. spencer, herbert, spirit of power, , , , , spiritual life in adolescence, , seq. characters of, , seq., , , , , , , , seq., , seq., , seq., , seq., , , , seq., , , contagious, , seq., , , , , , seq., corporate, , , seq., , , , , seq., , seq. dangers of , seq., development of, , seq., , , seq. and education, , seq. and history, , seq., , seq., and institutions , seq. personal, , seq., , seq., , , and prayer, , seq. and, psychology, , seq., , seq. and reading, social, aspect of, , seq. and work, , , , spiritual type, , , seq., stigmata, streeter, b.h., , sublimation, , , seq., , . sufis, , , , , , , , suggestion, , , , seq., and faith, laws of, , seq. in worship, , , seq. surrender, , symbols, , seq., , seq., , seq. tagore, maharerhi devendranath, , , , , tansley, c., tauler, , teresa, st, , , , , , , , , , , , , theologia, germanica, , thérèse de l'enfant, jésus, vénérable, , thomas à kempis, , , , , , trinity, doctrine of, trotter, w.f., unamuno, don m. de, , unification, , seq., , , , , , union with god, , , , , upton, t., varendonck, j., vincent de paul, st. virtues, evangelical, visions, , seq. vocation, , , , wesley, john, , , , , , work, , , worship, , , proofreading team the practice of the presence of god the best rule of a holy life. brother lawrence. being conversations and letters of nicholas herman, of lorraine (brother lawrence). _translated from the french._ fleming h. revell company, new york. chicago. toronto. _publishers of evangelical literature._ preface. this book consists of notes of several conversations had with, and letters written by nicholas herman, of lorraine, a lowly and unlearned man, who, after having been a footman and soldier, was admitted a lay brother among the barefooted carmelites at paris in , and was afterwards known as "brother lawrence." his conversion, which took place when he was about eighteen years old, was the result, under god, of the mere sight in midwinter, of a dry and leafless tree, and of the reflections it stirred respecting the change the coming spring would bring. from that time he grew eminently in the knowledge and love of god, endeavoring constantly to walk "_as in his presence_." no wilderness wanderings seem to have intervened between the red sea and the jordan of his experience. a wholly consecrated man, he lived his christian life through as a pilgrim--as a steward and not as an owner, and died at the age of eighty, leaving a name which has been as "ointment poured forth." the "conversations" are supposed to have been written by m. beaufort, grand vicar to m. de chalons, formerly cardinal de noailles, by whose recommendation the letters were first published. the book has, within a short time, gone through repeated english and american editions, and has been a means of blessing to many souls. it contains very much of that wisdom which only lips the lord has touched can express, and which only hearts he has made teachable can receive. may this edition also be blessed by god, and redound to the praise of the glory of his grace. conversations. first conversation. the first time i saw _brother lawrence_, was upon the d of august, . he told me that god had done him a singular favor, in his conversion at the age of eighteen. that in the winter, seeing a tree stripped of its leaves, and considering that within a little time the leaves would be renewed and after that the flowers and fruit appear, he received a high view of the providence and power of god, which has never since been effaced from his soul. that this view had perfectly set him loose from the world, and kindled in him such a love for god, that he could not tell whether it had increased during the more than forty years he had lived since. that he had been footman to m. fieubert, the treasurer, and that he was a great awkward fellow who broke everything. that he had desired to be received into a monastery, thinking that he would there be made to smart for his awkwardness and the faults he should commit, and so he should sacrifice to god his life, with its pleasures: but that god had disappointed him, he having met with nothing but satisfaction in that state. that we should establish ourselves in a sense of god's presence, by continually conversing with him. that it was a shameful thing to quit his conversation, to think of trifles and fooleries. that we should feed and nourish our souls with high notions of god; which would yield us great joy in being devoted to him. that we ought to _quicken_, i.e., _to enliven, our faith_. that it was lamentable we had so little; and that instead of taking _faith_ for the rule of their conduct, men amused themselves with trivial devotions, which changed daily. that the way of faith was the spirit of the church, and that it was sufficient to bring us to a high degree of perfection. that we ought to give ourselves up to god, with regard both to things temporal and spiritual, and seek our satisfaction only in the fulfilling of his will, whether he lead us by suffering or by consolation, for all would lie equal to a soul truly resigned. that there needed fidelity in those dryness, or insensibilities and irksomenesses in prayer, by which god tries our love to him; that _then_ was the time for us to make good and effectual acts of resignation, whereof one alone would oftentimes very much promote our spiritual advancement. that as for the miseries and sins he heard of daily in the world, he was so far from wondering at them, that, on the contrary, he was surprised that there were not more, considering the malice sinners were capable of; that for his part he prayed for them; but knowing that god could remedy the mischiefs they did when he pleased, he gave himself no farther trouble. that to arrive at such resignation as god requires, we should watch attentively over all the passions which mingle as well in spiritual things as in those of a grosser nature; that god would give light concerning those passions to those who truly desire to serve him. that if this was my design, viz., sincerely to serve god, i might come to him (b. lawrence) as often as i pleased, without any fear of being troublesome; but if not, that i ought no more to visit him. second conversation. that he had always been governed by love, without selfish views; and that having resolved to make the love of god the _end_ of all his actions, he had found reasons to be well satisfied with his method. that he was pleased when he could take up a straw from the ground for the love of god, seeking him only, and nothing else, not even his gifts. that he had been long troubled in mind from a certain belief that he should be damned; that all the men in the world could not have persuaded him to the contrary; but that he had thus reasoned with himself about it: _i engaged in a religious life only for the love of_ god, _and i have endeavored to act only for him; whatever becomes of me, whether i be lost or saved, i will always continue to act purely for the love of_ god. _i shall have this good at least, that till death i shall have done all that is in me to love him_. that this trouble of mind had lasted four years; during which time he had suffered much. but that at last he had seen that this trouble arose from want of faith; and that since then he had passed his life in perfect liberty and continual joy. that he had placed his sins betwixt him and god, as it were, to tell him that he did not deserve his favors, but that god still continued to bestow them in abundance. that in order to form a habit of conversing with god continually, and referring all we do to him, we must at first apply to him with some diligence: but that after a little care we should find his love inwardly excite us to it without any difficulty. that he expected after the pleasant days god had given him, he should have his turn of pain and suffering; but that he was not uneasy about it, knowing very well, that as he could do nothing of himself, god would not fail to give him the strength to bear it. that when an occasion of practicing some virtue offered, he addressed himself to god, saying, lord, _i cannot do this unless thou enablest me_: and that then he received strength more than sufficient. that when he had failed in his duty, he only confessed his fault, saying to god, _i shall never do otherwise, if you leave me to myself; it is you who must hinder my falling, and mend what is amiss_. that after this, he gave himself no further uneasiness about it. that we ought to act with god in the greatest simplicity, speaking to him frankly and plainly, and imploring his assistance in our affairs, just as they happen. that god never failed to grant it, as he had often experienced. that he had been lately sent into burgundy, to buy the provision of wine for the society, which was a very unwelcome task for him, because he had no turn for business, and because he was lame and could not go about the boat but by rolling himself over the casks. that however he gave himself no uneasiness about it, nor about the purchase of the wine. that he said to god, _it was his business he was about_, and that he afterwards found it very well performed. that he had been sent into auvergne, the year before, upon the same account; that he could not tell how the matter passed, but that it proved very well. so, likewise, in his business in the kitchen (to which he had naturally a great aversion), having accustomed himself to do everything there for the love of god, and with prayer, upon all occasions, for his grace to do his work well, he had found everything easy, during fifteen years that he had been employed there. that he was very well pleased with the post he was now in; but that he was as ready to quit that as the former, since he was always pleasing himself in every condition, by doing little things for the love of god. that with him the set times of prayer were not different from other times; that he retired to pray, according to the directions of his superior, but that he did not want such retirement, nor ask for it, because his greatest business did not divert him from god. that as he knew his obligation to love god in all things, and as he endeavored so to do, he had no need of a director to advise him, but that he needed much a confessor to absolve him. that he was very sensible of his faults, but not discouraged by them; that he confessed them to god, but did not plead against him to excuse them. when he had so done, he peaceably resumed his usual practice of love and adoration. that in his trouble of mind, he had consulted nobody, but knowing only by the light of faith that god was present, he contented himself with directing all his actions to him, _i.e._, doing them with a desire to please him, let what would come of it. that useless thoughts spoil all: that the mischief began there; but that we ought to reject them, as soon as we perceived their impertinence to the matter in hand, or our salvation; and return to our communion with god. that at the beginning he had often passed his time appointed for prayer, in rejecting wandering thoughts, and falling back into them. that he could never regulate his devotion by certain methods as some do. that nevertheless, at first he had _meditated_ for some time, but afterwards that went off, in a manner he could give no account of. that all bodily mortifications and other exercises are useless, except as they serve to arrive at the union with god by love; that he had well considered this, and found it the shortest way to go straight to him by a continual exercise of love, and doing all things for his sake. that we ought to make a great difference between the acts of the _understanding_ and those of the _will_: that the first were comparatively of little value, and the others, all. that our only business was to love and delight ourselves in god. that all possible kinds of mortification, if they were void of the love of god, could not efface a single sin. that we ought, without anxiety, to expect the pardon of our sins from the blood of jesus christ, only endeavoring to love him with all our hearts. that god seemed to have granted the greatest favors to the greatest sinners, as more signal monuments of his mercy. that the greatest pains or pleasures of this world, were not to be compared with what he had experienced of both kinds in a spiritual state: so that he was careful for nothing and feared nothing, desiring only one thing of god, viz., that he might not offend him. that he had no scruples; for, said he, when i _fail_ in my duty, i readily acknowledge it, saying, _i am used to do so: i shall never do otherwise, if i am left to myself_. i fail not, then i give god thanks, acknowledging the strength comes from him. third conversation. he told me that the _foundation of the spiritual life_ in _him_, had been a high notion and esteem of god in faith; which when he had once well conceived, he had no other care at first, but faithfully to reject every other thought, _that he might perform all his actions for the love of_ god. that when sometimes he had not thought of god for a good while, he did not disquiet himself for it; but after having acknowledged his wretchedness to god, he returned to him with so much the greater trust in him, as he had found himself wretched through forgetting him. that the trust we put in god, honors him much, and draws down great graces. that it was impossible, not only that god should deceive, hut also that he should long let a soul suffer which is perfectly resigned to him, and resolved to endure everything for his sake. that he had so often experienced the ready succors of divine grace upon all occasions, that from the same experience, when he had business to do, he did not think of it beforehand; but when it was time to do it, he found in god, as in a clear mirror, all that was fit for him to do. that of late he had acted thus, without anticipating care; but before the experience above mentioned, he had used it in his affairs. when outward business diverted him a little from the thought of god, a fresh remembrance coming from god invested his soul, and so inflamed and transported him that it was difficult for him to contain himself. that he was more united to god in his outward employments, than when he left them for devotion in retirement. that he expected hereafter some great pain of body or mind; that the worst that could happen to him was, to lose that sense of god which he had enjoyed so long; but that the goodness of god assured him he would not forsake him utterly, and that he would give him strength to bear whatever evil he permitted to happen to him; and therefore that he feared nothing, and had no occasion to consult with anybody about his state. that when he had attempted to do it, he had always come away more perplexed; and that as he was conscious of his readiness to lay down his life for the love of god, he had no apprehension of danger. that perfect resignation to god was a sure way to heaven, a way in which we had always sufficient light for our conduct. that in the beginning of the spiritual life, we ought to be faithful in doing our duty and denying ourselves; but after that, unspeakable pleasures followed; that in difficulties we need only have recourse to jesus christ, and beg his grace; with that everything became easy. that many do not advance in the christian progress because they stick in penances, and particular exercises, while they neglect the love of god, which is the _end_. that this appeared plainly by their works, and was the _reason_ why we see so little solid virtue. that there needed neither art nor science for going to god, but only a heart resolutely determined to apply itself to nothing but him, or for _his_ sake, and to love him only. fourth conversation. he discoursed with me very frequently, and with great openness of heart concerning his manner of _going_ to god, whereof some part is related already. he told me that all consists _in one hearty renunciation_ of everything which we are sensible does not lead to god; that we might accustom ourselves to a continual conversation with him, with freedom and in simplicity. that we need only to recognize god intimately present with us, to address ourselves to him every moment, that we may beg his assistance for knowing his will in things doubtful, and for rightly performing those which we plainly see he requires of us, offering them to him before we do them, and giving him thanks when we have done. that in this conversation with god, we are also employed in praising, adoring and loving him incessantly, for his infinite goodness and perfection. that, without being discouraged on account of our sins, we should pray for his grace with a perfect confidence, as relying upon the infinite merits of our lord jesus christ. that god never failed offering us his grace at each action; that he distinctly perceived it, and never failed of it, unless when his thoughts had wandered from a sense of god's presence, or he had forgotten to ask his assistance. that god always gave us light in our doubts, when we had no other design but ask to please him. that our sanctification did not depend upon _changing_ our works, but in doing that for god's sake, which we commonly do for our own. that it was lamentable to see how many people mistook the means for the end, addicting themselves to certain works, which they performed very imperfectly, by reason of their human or selfish regards. that the most excellent method he had found of going to god, was that of doing our common business without any view of pleasing men,[ ] and (as far as we are capable) purely for the love of god. that it was a great delusion to think that the times of prayer ought to differ from other times: that we are as strictly obliged to adhere to god by action in the time of action, as by prayer in the season of prayer. that his prayer was nothing else but a sense of the presence of god, his soul being at that time insensible to everything but divine love: and that when the appointed times of prayer were past, he found no difference, because he still continued with god, praising and blessing him with all his might, so that he passed his life in continual joy; yet hoped that god would give him somewhat to suffer, when he should grow stronger. that we ought, once for all, heartily to put our whole trust in god, and make a total surrender of ourselves to him, secure that he would not deceive us. that we ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of god, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed. that we should not wonder if, in the beginning, we often failed in our endeavors, but that at last we should gain a habit, which will naturally produce its acts in us, without our care, and to our exceeding great delight. that the whole substance of religion was faith, hope and charity; by the practice of which we become united to the will of god: that all besides is indifferent, and to be used as a means that we may arrive at our end, and be swallowed up therein, by faith and charity. that all things are possible to him who _believes_--that they are less difficult to him who _hopes_--that they are more easy to him who _loves_, and still more easy to him who perseveres in the practice of these three virtues. that the end we ought to propose to ourselves is to become, in this life, the most perfect worshippers of god we can possibly be, as we hope to be through all eternity. that when we enter upon the spiritual life, we should consider, and examine to the bottom, what we are. and then we should find ourselves worthy of all contempt, and not deserving indeed the name of christians: subject to all kinds of misery and numberless accidents, which trouble us and cause perpetual vicissitudes in our health, in our humors, in our internal and external dispositions; in fine, persons whom god would humble by many pains and labors, as well within as without. after this we should not wonder that troubles, temptations, oppositions and contradictions happen to us from men. we ought, on the contrary, to submit ourselves to them, and bear them as long as god pleases, as things highly advantageous to us. that the greater perfection a soul aspires after, the more dependent it is upon divine grace. [ ]being questioned by one of his own society (to whom he was obliged to open himself) by what means he had attained such an habitual sense of god, he told him that, since his first coming to the monastery, he had considered god as the end of all his thoughts and desires, as the mark to which they should tend, and in which they should terminate. that in the beginning of his novitiate, he spent the hours appointed for private prayer in thinking of god, so as to convince his mind of, and to impress deeply upon his heart, the divine existence, rather by devout sentiments, and submission to the lights of faith, than by studied reasonings and elaborate meditations. that by this short and sure method, he exercised himself in the knowledge and love of god, resolving to use his utmost endeavor to live, in a continual sense of his presence, and if possible, never to forget him more. that when he had thus in prayer filled his mind with great sentiments of that infinite being, he went to his work appointed in the kitchen (for he was cook to the society); there having first considered severally the things his office required, and when and how each thing was to be done, he spent all the intervals of his time, as well before as after his work, in prayer. that when he began his business, he said to god, with a filial trust in him, "o my god, since thou art with me, and i must now, in obedience to thy commands, apply my mind to these outward things, i beseech thee to grant me the grace to continue in thy presence; and to this end do thou prosper me with thy assistance, receive all my works, and possess all my affections." as he proceeded in his work, he continued his familiar conversation with his maker,--imploring his grace, and offering to him all his actions. when he had finished, he examined himself how he had discharged his duty; if he found _well_, he returned thanks to god; if otherwise, he asked pardon; and without being discouraged, he set his mind right again, and continued his exercise of the _presence_ of god, as if he had never deviated from it. "thus," said he, "by rising after my falls, and by frequently renewed acts of faith and love, i am come to a state wherein it would be as difficult for me not to think of god as it was at first to accustom myself to it." as brother lawrence had found such an advantage in walking in the presence of god, it was natural for him to recommend it earnestly to others; but his example was a stronger inducement than any arguments he could propose. his very countenance was edifying, such a sweet and calm devotion appearing in it as could not but effect the beholders. and it was observed that in the greatest hurry of business in the kitchen, he still preserved his recollection and heavenly-mindedness. he was never hasty nor loitering, but did each thing in its season, with an even, uninterrupted composure and tranquility of spirit. "the time of business," said he, "does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, i possess god in as great tranquility as if i were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament." letters. first letter. since you desire so earnestly that i should communicate to you the method by which i arrived at that _habitual sense of_ god's _presence_, which our lord, of his mercy, has been pleased to vouch-safe to me, i must tell you that it is with great difficulty that i am prevailed on by your importunities; and now i do it only upon the terms that you show my letter to nobody. if i knew that you should let it be seen, all the desire that i have for your advancement would not be able to determine me to it. the account i can give you is: having found in many books different methods of going to god, and divers practices of the spiritual life, i thought this would serve rather to puzzle me than facilitate what i sought after, which was nothing but how to become wholly god's. this made me resolve to give the all for the all; so after having given myself wholly to god, that he might take away my sin, _i renounced, for the love of him, everything that was not he; and i began to live as if there was none but he and i in the world_. sometimes i considered myself before him as a poor criminal at the feet of his judge; at other times i beheld him in my heart as my father, as my god: i worshipped him the oftenest that i could, keeping my mind in his holy presence, and recalling it as often as i found it wandered from him. i found no small pain in this exercise, and yet i continued it, notwithstanding all the difficulties that occurred, without troubling or disquieting myself when my mind had wandered involuntarily. i made this my business as much all the day long as at the appointed times of prayer; for at all times, every hour, every minute, even in the height of my business, i drove away from my mind everything that was capable of interrupting my thought of god. such has been my common practice ever since i entered in religion; and, though i have done it very imperfectly, yet i have found great advantages by it. these, i well know, are to be imputed to the mere mercy and goodness of god, because we can do nothing without him; and _i_ still less than any. but when we are faithful to keep ourselves in his holy presence, and set him always before us, this not only hinders our offending him, and doing anything that may displease him, at least wilfully, but it also begets in us a holy freedom, and, if i may so speak, a familiarity with god, wherewith we ask, and that successfully, the graces we stand in need of. in fine, by often repeating these acts, they become _habitual_, and the presence of god rendered as it were _natural to_ us give him thanks, if you please, with me, for his great goodness towards me, which i can never sufficiently admire, for the many favors he has done to so miserable a sinner as i am. may all things praise him. amen. i am, in our lord, yours, &c. second letter. _to the reverend_-- not finding my manner of life in books, although i have no difficulty about it, yet, for greater security, i shall be glad to know your thoughts concerning it. in a conversation some days since with a person of piety, he told me the spiritual life was a life of grace, which begins with servile fear, which is increased by hope of eternal life, and which is consummated by pure love. that each of these states had its different stages, by which one arrives at last at that blessed consummation. i have not followed all these methods. on the contrary, from i know not what instincts, i found they discouraged me. this was the reason why, at my entrance into religion, i took a resolution to give myself up to god, as the best return i could make for his love; and, for the love of him, to renounce all besides. for the first year i commonly employed myself during the time set apart for devotion with the thought of death, judgment, heaven, hell, and my sins, thus continued some years, applying my mind carefully the rest of the day, and even in the midst of my business, _to the presence of_ god, whom i considered always as _with_ me, often as _in_ me. at length i came insensibly to do the same thing during my set time of prayer, which caused in me great delight and consolation. this practice produced in me so high an esteem for god, that _faith_ alone was capable to satisfy me in that point.[ ] such was my beginning; and yet i must tell you that for the first ten years i suffered much: the apprehension that i was not devoted to god as i wished to be, my past sins always present to my mind, and the great unmerited favors which god did me, were the matter and source of my sufferings. during this time i fell often, and rose again presently. it seemed to me that all creatures, reason, and god himself were against me; and _faith_ alone for me. i was troubled sometimes with thoughts that to believe i had received such favors was an effect of my presumption, which pretended to be _at once_ where others arrive with difficulty; at other times that it was a wilful delusion, and that there was no salvation for me. when i thought of nothing but to end my days in these troubles (which did not at all diminish the trust i had in god, and which served only to increase my faith), i found myself changed all at once; and my soul, which, till that time, was in trouble, felt a profound inward peace, as if she were in her centre and place of rest. ever since that time i walk before god simply, in faith, with humility and with love; and i apply myself diligently to do nothing and think nothing which may displease him. i hope that when i have done what i can, he will do with me what he pleases. as for what passes in me at present, i cannot express it. i have no pain or difficulty about my state, because i have no will but that of god, which i endeavor to accomplish in all things, and to which i am so resigned that i would not take up a straw from the ground against his order, or from any other motive than purely that of love to him. i have quitted all forms of devotion and set prayers but those to which my state obliges me. and i make it my business only to persevere in his holy presence, wherein i keep myself by a simple attention, and a general fond regard to god, which i may call an _actual presence of_ god; or, to speak better, an habitual, silent and secret conversation of the soul with god, which often causes me joys and raptures inwardly, and sometimes also outwardly, so great, that i am forced to use means to moderate them and prevent their appearance to others. in short, i am assured beyond all doubt that my soul has been with god above these thirty years. i pass over many things that i may not be tedious to you, yet i think it proper to inform you after what manner i consider myself before god, whom i behold as my king. i consider myself as the most wretched of men, full of sores and corruption, and who has committed all sorts of crimes against his king; touched with a sensible regret, i confess to him all my wickedness, i ask his forgiveness, i abandon myself in his hands that he may do what he pleases with me. the king, full of mercy and goodness, very far from chastising me, embraces me with love, makes me eat at his table, serves me with his own hands, gives me the key of his treasures; he converses and delights himself with me incessantly, in a thousand and a thousand ways, and treats me in all respects as his favorite. it is thus i consider myself from time to time in his holy presence. my most useful method is this simple attention, and such a general passionate regard to god; to whom i find myself often attached with greater sweetness and delight than that of an infant at the mother's breast; so that, if i dare use the expression, i should choose to call this state the bosom, of god, for the inexpressible sweetness which i taste and experience there. if sometimes my thoughts wander from it by necessity or infirmity, i am presently recalled by inward motions so charming and delicious that i am ashamed to mention them. i desire your reverence to reflect rather upon my great wretchedness, of which you are fully informed, than upon the great favors which god does me, all unworthy and ungrateful as i am. as for my set hours of prayer, they are only a continuation of the same exercise. sometimes i consider myself there as a stone before a carver, whereof he is to make a statue; presenting myself thus before god, i desire him to form his perfect image in my soul, and make me entirely like himself. at other times, when i apply myself to prayer, i feel all my spirit and all my soul lift itself up without any care or effort of mine, and it continues as it were suspended and firmly fixed in god, as in its centre and place of rest. i know that some charge this state with inactivity, delusion and self-love. i confess that it is a holy inactivity, and would be a happy self-love, if the soul in that state were capable of it; because, in effect, while she is in this repose, she cannot be disturbed by such acts as she was formerly accustomed to, and which were then her support, but which would now rather hinder than assist her. yet i cannot bear that this should be called delusion; because the soul which thus enjoys god desires herein nothing but him. if this be delusion in me, it belongs to god to remedy it. let him do what he pleases with me; i desire only him, and to be wholly devoted to him. you will, however, oblige me in sending me your opinion, to which i always pay a great deference, for i have a singular esteem for your reverence, and am in our lord, yours, &c. third letter. we have a god who is infinitely gracious and knows all our wants. i always thought that he would reduce you to extremity. he will come in his own time, and when you least expect it. hope in him more than ever; thank him with me for the favors he does you, particularly for the fortitude and patience which he gives you in your afflictions. it is a plain mark of the care he takes of you. comfort yourself, then, with him, and give thanks for all. i admire also the fortitude and bravery of mr. ----. god has given him a good disposition and a good will; but there is in him still a little of the world, and a great deal of youth. i hope the affliction which god has sent him will prove a wholesome remedy to him, and make him enter into himself. it is an accident which should engage him to put all his trust in _him_ who accompanies him everywhere. let him think of him as often as he can, especially in the greatest dangers. a little lifting up of the heart suffices. a little remembrance of god, one act of inward worship, though upon a march, and a sword in hand, are prayers, which, however short, are nevertheless very acceptable to god; and far from lessening a soldier's courage in occasions of danger, they best serve to fortify it. let him then think of god the most he can. let him accustom himself, by degrees, to this small but holy exercise. no one will notice it, and nothing is easier than to repeat often in the day these little internal adorations. recommend to him, if you please, that he think of god the most he can, in the manner here directed. it is very fit and most necessary for a soldier, who is daily exposed to the dangers of life. i hope that god will assist him and all the family, to whom i present my service, being theirs and yours, &c. fourth letter. i have taken this opportunity to communicate to you the sentiments of one of our society, concerning the admirable effects and continual assistances which he receives from _the presence of_ god. let you and me both profit by them. you must know his continual care has been, for about forty years past that he has spent in religion, to be _always with_ god, and to do nothing, say nothing, and think nothing which may displease him; and this without any other view than purely for the love of him, and because he deserves infinitely more. he is now so accustomed to that _divine presence_, that he receives from it continual succors upon all occasions. for about thirty years, his soul has been filled with joys so continual, and sometimes so great, that he is forced to use means to moderate them, and to hinder their appearing outwardly. if sometimes he is a little too much absent from that _divine presence_, god presently makes himself to be felt in his soul to recall him, which often happens when he is most engaged in his outward business. he answers with exact fidelity to these inward drawings, either by an elevation of his heart towards god, or by a meek and fond regard to him, or by such words as love forms upon these occasions, as for instance, _my god, here i am all devoted to thee_: lord, _make me according to thy heart_. and then it seems to him (as in effect he feels it) that this god of love, satisfied with such few words, reposes again, and rests in the fund and centre of his soul. the experience of these things gives him such an assurance that god is always in the fund or bottom of his soul, that it renders him incapable of doubting it upon any account whatever. judge by this what content and satisfaction he enjoys while he continually finds in himself so great a treasure. he is no longer in an anxious search after it, but has it open before him, and may take what he pleases of it. he complains much of our blindness, and cries often that we are to be pitied who content ourselves with so little. god, saith he, _has infinite treasure to bestow, and we take up with a little sensible devotion, which passes in a moment. blind as we are, we hinder god, and stop the current of his graces. but when he finds a soul penetrated with a lively faith, he pours into it his graces and favors plentifully: there they flow like a torrent, which, after being forcibly stopped against its ordinary course, when it has found a passage, spreads itself with impetuosity and abundance_. yes, we often stop this torrent by the little value we set upon it. but let us stop it no more; let us enter into ourselves and break down the bank which hinders it. let us make way for grace; let us redeem the lost time, for perhaps we have but little left. death follows us close; let us be well prepared for it: for we die but once; and a miscarriage _there_ is irretrievable. i say again, let us enter into ourselves. the time presses, there is no room for delay: our souls are at stake. i believe you have taken such effectual measures that you will not be surprised. i commend you for it; it is the one thing necessary. we must, nevertheless, always work at it, because not to advance in the spiritual life is to go back. but those who have the gale of the holy spirit go forward even in sleep. if the vessel of our soul is still tossed with winds and storms, let us awake the lord, who reposes in it, and he will quickly calm the sea. i have taken the liberty to impart to you these good sentiments, that you may compare them with your own. it will serve again to kindle and inflame them, if by misfortune (which god forbid, for it would be indeed a great misfortune) they should be, though never so little, cooled. let us then _both_ recall our first fervors. let us profit by the example and the sentiments of this brother, who is little known of the world, but known of god, and extremely caressed by him. i will pray for you; do you pray instantly for me, who am, in our lord. yours, &c. fifth letter. i received this day two books and a letter from sister ----, who is preparing to make her profession, and upon that account desires the prayers of your holy society, and yours in particular. i perceive that she reckons much upon them; pray do not disappoint her. beg of god that she may make her sacrifice in the view of his love alone, and with a firm resolution to be wholly devoted to him. i will send you one of these books which treat of _the presence of_ god; a subject which, in my opinion, contains the whole spiritual life; and it seems to me that whoever duly practices it will soon become spiritual. i know that for the right practice of it, the heart must be empty of all other things; because god will possess the heart _alone_; and as he cannot possess it _alone_ without emptying it of all besides, so neither can he act _there_, and do in it what he pleases, unless it be left vacant to him. there is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of a continual conversation with god. those only can comprehend it who practice and experience it; yet i do not advise you to do it from that motive. it is not pleasure which we ought to seek in this exercise; but let us do it from a principle of love, and because god would have us. were i a preacher, i should, above all other things, preach the practice of _the presence of_ god; and, were i a director, i should advise all the world to do it, so necessary do i think it, and so easy too. ah! knew we but the want we have of the grace and assistance of god, we should never lose sight of him, no, not for a moment. believe me; make immediately a holy and firm resolution never more wilfully to forget him, and to spend the rest of your days in his sacred presence, deprived for the love of him, if he thinks fit, of all consolations. set heartily about this work, and if you do it as you ought, be assured that you will soon find the effects of it. i will assist you with my prayers, poor as they are. i recommend myself earnestly to yours and those of your holy society being theirs, and more particularly yours, &c. sixth letter. _to the same_. i have received from mrs. ----, the things which you gave her for me. i wonder that you have not given me your thoughts of the little book i sent to you, and which you must have received. pray set heartily about the practice of it in your old age: it is better late than never. i cannot imagine how religious persons can live satisfied without the practice of _the presence of_ god. for my part. i keep myself retired with him in the fund or centre of my soul as much as i can; and while i am so with him i fear nothing, but the least turning from him is insupportable. this exercise does not much fatigue the body; it is, however, proper to deprive it sometimes, nay often; of many little pleasures which are innocent and lawful, for god will not permit that a soul which desires to be devoted entirely to him should take other pleasures than with him: that is more than reasonable. i do not say that therefore we must put any violent constraint upon ourselves. no, we must serve god in a holy freedom; we must do our business faithfully; without trouble or disquiet, recalling our mind to god mildly, and with tranquility, as often as we find it wandering from him. it is, however, necessary to put our whole trust in god, laying aside all other cares, and even some particular forms of devotion, though very good in themselves, yet such as one often engages in unreasonably, because these devotions are only means to attain to the end. so when by this exercise of _the presence of_ god we are _with him_ who is our end, it is then useless to return to the means; but we may continue with him our commerce of love, persevering in his holy presence, one while by an act of praise, of adoration or of desire; one while by an act of resignation or thanksgiving; and in all the ways which our spirit can invent. be not discouraged by the repugnance which you may find in it from nature; you must do yourself violence. at the first one often thinks it lost time, but you must go on, and resolve to persevere in it to death, notwithstanding all the difficulties that may occur. i recommend myself to the prayers of your holy society, and yours in particular. i am, in our lord, yours, &c. seventh letter. i pity you much. it will be of great importance if you can leave the care of your affairs to ----, and spend the remainder of your life only in worshiping god. he requires no great matters of us; a little remembrance of him from time to time; a little adoration; sometimes to pray for his grace, sometimes to offer him your sufferings, and sometimes to return him thanks for the favors he has given you, and still gives you, in the midst of your troubles, and to console yourself with him the oftenest you can. lift up your heart to him, sometimes even at your meals, and when you are in company: the least little remembrance will always be acceptable to him. you need not cry very loud; he is nearer to us than we are aware of. it is not necessary for being with god to be always at church: we may make an oratory of our heart wherein to retire from time to time to converse with him in meekness, humility and love. every one is capable of such familiar conversation with god, some more, some less: he knows what we can do. let us begin, then. perhaps he expects but one generous resolution on our part. have courage. we have but little time to live; you are near sixty-four, and i am almost eighty. let us live and die with god. sufferings will be sweet and pleasant to us while we are with him; and the greatest pleasures will be, without him, a cruel punishment to us. may he be blessed for all. amen. accustom yourself, then, by degrees thus to worship him, to beg his grace, to offer him your heart from time to time in the midst of your business, even every moment, if you can. do not always scrupulously confine yourself to certain rules, or particular forms of devotion, but act with a general confidence in god, with love and humility. you may assure ---- of my poor prayers, and that i am their servant, and particularly yours in our lord, &c. eighth letter. _(concerning wandering thoughts in prayer.)_ you tell me nothing new; you are not the only one that is troubled with wandering thoughts. our mind is extremely roving; but, as the will is mistress of all our faculties, she must recall them, and carry them to god as their last end. when the mind, for want of being sufficiently reduced by recollection at our first engaging in devotion, has contracted certain bad habits of wandering and dissipation, they are difficult to overcome, and commonly draw us, even against our wills, to the things of the earth. i believe one remedy for this is to confess our faults, and to humble ourselves before god. i do not advise you to use multiplicity of words in prayer: many words and long discourses being often the occasions of wandering. hold yourself in prayer before god, like a dumb or paralytic beggar at a rich man's gate. let it be _your_ business to keep your mind in the presence of the lord. if it sometimes wander and withdraw itself from him, do not much disquiet yourself for that: trouble and disquiet serve rather to distract the mind than to re-collect it: the will must bring it back in tranquility. if you persevere in this manner, god will have pity on you. one way to re-collect the mind easily in the time of prayer, and preserve it more in tranquility, is _not to let it wander too far at other times_: you should keep it strictly in the presence of god; and being accustomed to think of him often, you will find it easy to keep your mind calm in the time of prayer, or at least to recall it from its wanderings. i have told you already at large, in my former letters, of the advantages we may draw from this practice of the presence of god: let us set about it seriously, and pray for one another. yours, &c. ninth letter. the enclosed is an answer to that which i received from ----; pray deliver it to her. she seems to me full of good will, but she would go faster than grace. one does not become holy all at once. i recommend her to you: we ought to help one another by our advice, and yet more by our good examples. you will oblige me to let me hear of her from time to time, and whether she be very fervent and very obedient. let us thus think often that our only business in this life is to please god, and that all besides is but folly and vanity. you and i have lived about forty years in religion (_i.e._, a monastic life). have we employed them in loving and serving god, who by his mercy has called us to this state and for that very end? i am filled with shame and confusion when i reflect on one hand upon the great favors which god has done, and incessantly continues to do me; and on the other, upon the ill use i have made of them, and my small advancement in the way of perfection. since by his mercy he gives us still a little time, let us begin in earnest: let us repair the lost time: let us return with a full assurance to that father of mercies, who is always ready to receive us affectionately. let us renounce, let us generously renounce, for the love of him, all that is not himself; he deserves infinitely more. let us think of him perpetually. let us put all our trust in him. i doubt not but we shall soon find the effects of it in receiving the abundance of his grace, with which we can do all things, and without which we can do nothing but sin. we cannot escape the dangers which abound in life without the actual and _continual_ help of god: let us then pray to him for it _continually_. how can we pray to him without being with him? how can we be with him but in thinking of him often? and how can we often think of him, but by a holy habit which we should form of it? you will tell me that i am always saying the same thing. it is true, for this is the best and easiest method i know; and as i use no other, i advise all the world to do it. we must _know_ before we can _love_. in order to _know_ god, we must often _think_ of him; and when we come to _love_ him, we shall then also think of him often, for our heart will be with our treasure. this is an argument which well deserves your consideration. i am, yours, &c. tenth letter. i have had a good deal of difficulty to bring myself to write to mr. ----, and i do it now purely because you and madam ---- desire me. pray write the directions and send it to him. i am very well pleased with the trust which you have in god: i wish that he may increase it in you more and more. we cannot have too much in so good and faithful a friend, who will never fail us in this world nor in the next. if mr. ---- makes his advantage of the loss he has had, and puts all his confidence in god, he will soon give him another friend, more powerful and more inclined to serve him. he disposes of hearts as he pleases. perhaps mr. ---- was too much attached to him he has lost. we ought to love our friends, but without encroaching upon the love due to god, which must be the principal. pray remember what i have recommended to you, which is, to think often on god, by day, by night, in your business, and even in your diversions. he is always near you and with you: leave him not alone. you would think it rude to leave a friend alone who came to visit you: why then must god be neglected? do not then forget him, but think on him often, adore him continually, live and die with him; this is the glorious employment of a christian. in a word, this is our profession; if we do not know it, we must learn it. i will endeavor to help you with my prayers, and am, in our lord, yours, &c. eleventh letter. i do not pray that you may be delivered from your pains, but i pray god earnestly that he would give you strength and patience to bear them as long as he pleases. comfort yourself with him who holds you fastened to the cross. he will loose you when he thinks fit. happy those who suffer with him: accustom yourself to suffer in that manner, and seek from him the strength to endure as much, and as long, as he shall judge to be necessary for you. the men of the world do not comprehend these truths, nor is it to be wondered at, since they suffer like what they are, and not like christians. they consider sickness as a pain to nature, and not as a favor from god; and seeing it only in that light, they find nothing in it but grief and distress. but those who consider sickness as coming from the hand of god, as the effect of his mercy, and the means which he employs for their salvation--such, commonly find in it great sweetness and sensible consolation. i wish you could convince yourself that god is often (in some sense) nearer to us, and more effectually present with us, in sickness than in health. rely upon no other physician; for, according to my apprehension, he reserves your cure to himself. put, then, all your trust in him, and you will soon find the effects of it in your recovery, which we often retard by putting greater confidence in physic than in god. whatever remedies you make use of, they will succeed only so far as he permits. when pains come from god, he only can cure them. he often sends diseases of the body to cure those of the soul. comfort yourself with the sovereign physician both of the soul and body. be satisfied with the condition in which god places you: however happy you may think me, i envy you. pains and sufferings would be a paradise to me while i should suffer with my god; and the greatest pleasures would be hell to me if i could relish them without him. all my consolation would be to suffer something for his sake. i must, in a little time, go to god. what comforts me in this life is, that i now see him _by faith_; and i see him in such a manner as might make me say sometimes, _i believe no more, but i see_. i feel what faith teaches us, and in that assurance and that practice of faith, i will live and die with him. continue then always with god: it is the only support and comfort for your affliction. i shall beseech him to be with you. i present my service. yours, &c. twelfth letter. if we were well accustomed to the exercise of _the presence of_ god, all bodily diseases would be much alleviated thereby. god often permits that we should suffer a little to purify our souls and oblige us to continue _with_ him. take courage: offer him your pains incessantly: pray to him for strength to endure them. above all, get a habit of entertaining yourself often with god, and forget him the least you can. adore him in your infirmities, offer yourself to him from time to time, and in the height of your sufferings, beseech him humbly and affectionately (as a child his father) to make you conformable to his holy-will. i shall endeavor to assist you with my poor prayers. god has many ways of drawing us to himself. he sometimes hides himself from us, but _faith_ alone, which will not fail us in time of need, ought to be our support, and the foundation of our confidence, which must be all in god. i know not how god will dispose of me. i am always happy. all the world suffer; and i, who deserve the severest discipline, feel joys so continual and so great that i can scarce contain them. i would willingly ask of god a part of your sufferings, but that i know my weakness, which is so great, that if he left me one moment to myself i should be the most wretched man alive. and yet i know not how he can leave me alone, because faith gives me as strong a conviction as sense can do, that he never forsakes us until we have first forsaken him. let us fear to leave him. let us be always with him. let us live and die in his presence. do you pray for me, as i for you. i am, yours, &c. thirteenth letter. _to the same_. i am in pain to see you suffer so long. what gives me some ease and sweetens the feelings i have for your griefs is, that they are proofs of god's love towards you. see them in that view and you will bear them more easily. as your case is, it is my opinion that you should leave off human remedies, and resign yourself entirely to the providence of god: perhaps he stays only for that resignation and a perfect trust in him to cure you. since, notwithstanding all your cares, physic has hitherto proved unsuccessful, and your malady still increases, it will not be tempting god to abandon yourself in his hands, and expect all from him. i told you in my last that he sometimes permits bodily diseases to cure the distempers of the soul. have courage then: make a virtue of necessity. ask of god, not deliverance from your pains, but strength to bear resolutely, for the love of him, all that he should please, and as long as he shall please. such prayers, indeed, are a little hard to nature, but most acceptable to god, and sweet to those that love him. love sweetens pains; and when one loves god, one suffers for his sake with joy and courage. do you so, i beseech you: comfort yourself with him, who is the only physician of all our maladies. he is the father of the afflicted, always ready to help us. he loves us infinitely more than we imagine. love him, then, and seek no consolation elsewhere. i hope you will soon receive it. adieu. i will help you with my prayers, poor as they are, and shall always be, in our lord yours, &c. fourteenth letter. _to the same_. i render thanks to our lord for having relieved you a little, according to your desire. i have been often near expiring, but i never was so much satisfied as then. accordingly, i did not pray for any relief, but i prayed for strength to suffer with courage, humility and love. ah, how sweet it is to suffer with god! however great the sufferings may be, receive them with love. it is paradise to suffer and be with him; so that if in this life we would enjoy the peace of paradise we must accustom ourselves to a familiar, humble, affectionate conversation with him. we must hinder our spirits wandering from him upon any occasion. we must make our heart a spiritual temple, wherein to adore him incessantly. we must watch continually over ourselves, that we may not do, nor say, nor think anything that may displease him. when our minds are thus employed about god, suffering will become full of unction and consolation. i know that to arrive at this state the beginning is very difficult, for we must act purely in faith. but though it is difficult, we know also that we can do all things with the grace of god, which he never refuses to them who ask it earnestly. knock, persevere in knocking, and i answer for it that he will open to you in his due time, and grant you all at once what he has deferred during many years. adieu! pray to him for me, as i pray to him for you. i hope to see him quickly. i am, yours, &c. fifteenth letter. _to the same_. god knoweth best what is needful for us, and all that he does is for our good. if we knew how much he loves us, we should always be ready to receive equally and with indifference from his hand the sweet and the bitter: all would please that came from him. the sorest afflictions never appear intolerable, except when we see them in the wrong light. when we see them as dispensed by the hand of god, when we know that it is our loving father who abases and distresses us, our sufferings will lose their bitterness, and become even matter of consolation. let all our employment be to _know_ god: the more one _knows_ him, the more one _desires_ to know him. and as _knowledge_ is commonly the measure of _love_, the deeper and more extensive our _knowledge_ shall be, the greater will be our _love_: and if our love of god were great, we should love him equally in pains and pleasures. let us not content ourselves with loving god for the mere sensible favors, how elevated soever, which he has done, or may do us. such favors, though never so great, cannot bring us so near to him as faith does in one simple act. let us seek him often by faith. he is within us: seek him not elsewhere. if we do love him alone, are we not rude, and do we not deserve blame, if we busy ourselves about trifles which do not please and perhaps offend him. it is to be feared these _trifles_ will one day cost us dear. let us begin to be devoted to him in good earnest. let us cast everything besides out of our hearts. he would possess them alone. beg this favor of him. if we do what we can on our parts, we shall soon see that change wrought in us which we aspire after. i cannot thank him sufficiently for the relaxation he has vouchsafed you. i hope from his mercy the favor to see him within a few days.[ ] let us pray for one another. i am, in our lord, yours, &c. notes: [ : gal. i, ; eph. vi, , .] [ : the particulars which follow are collected from other accounts of brother lawrence.] [ : _i suppose he means_ that all distinct notions he could form of god, were unsatisfactory, because he perceived them to be unworthy of god; and therefore his mind was not to be satisfied but by the views of _faith_, which apprehend god as infinite and incomprehensible, as he is in himself, and not as he can be conceived by human ideas.] [ : he took to his bed two days after, and died within the week.] none matelda and the cloister of hellfde _by the same author_ _trees planted by the river_. crown vo, s. d. "this excellent book will commend itself to many a contemplative christian during hours of quiet communion with his own soul and with god."--_christian commonwealth._ "a delightful book, and presents points of interest quite novel."--_rock._ "there are some exquisite sketches of the religious history of individuals who exerted a powerful influence in their day, but of whom we know nothing now, which will be highly appreciated by every spiritually-minded christian."--_methodist times._ "a deeply interesting book."--_aberdeen free press._ _three friends of god._ records from the lives of john tauler, nicholas of basle, henry suso. by frances a. bevan, author of "the story of wesley," etc. crown vo, s. "fascinating glimpses of the strange religious life of mediæval europe. no student of history and human nature can fail to be interested by this book, while to pious minds it will bring stimulus and edification."--_scotsman_. _hymns of ter steegen, suso, and others._ edited by mrs. frances bevan, author of "trees planted by the river," etc. crown vo, s. d. "some of the hymns are very beautiful, calculated to strengthen the weary, comfort the sad, stimulate the down-hearted, and draw the soul nearer to god."--_record._ "the literary quality of many of the hymns will be welcome to many lovers of sacred poetry."--_manchester guardian._ matelda and the cloister of hellfde extracts from the book of matilda of magdeburg selected and translated by frances bevan author of "three friends of god," "trees planted by the river," "hymns of ter steegen, suso, and others," etc. __london__ james nisbet & co. berners street _printed by_ ballantyne, hanson & co. _at the ballantyne press_ preface to most of us the matelda of dante has been scarcely more than a shape existing in the mind of a poet. it may be that she now stands before us not only as a woman of flesh and blood, but as one who has for us in these days a marvellous message. one of the great cloud of witnesses to the love and glory of the lord jesus christ, speaks to us in a german béguine, who is now recognised by many as the original of her who conducted dante into "the terrestrial paradise." whether or no we regard her as the guide of dante, may she be to us a means whereby we "forget the things that are behind, and press forward to those that are before." may she yet be to some sorrowful souls the guide into the blessed garden of god--the garden no longer guarded by a flaming sword, but opened to the sinner who "has washed his robes, and made them white in the blood of the lamb." may some to whom the future is dark and fearful, and who carry as a heavy burden the sin of past years, be led on across the river into the light, the sweetness, and the rest of the green pastures of christ--the sin and sorrow left behind, remembered no more, for the lord remembers them not. and in his presence, where there is the fulness of joy, the sufferings of this present time can also be forgotten, for sorrow rejoiceth before him. six persons have up to this time been regarded as the original of the matelda of dante. the countess matilda of tuscany most commonly till modern times; matilda, mother of otto the great; the nun of hellfde, matilda of hackeborn; the "gentle lady" of the _vita nuova_, and of the _convito_; vanna, the lover of guido cavalcanti; and finally, the béguine, also of hellfde, known as matilda of magdeburg. the claims of the countess matilda appear to rest on her name only, without further traits of resemblance; those of matilda of hackeborn have been disproved by the chronological researches of preger; of the rest, only matilda of magdeburg shows any resemblance striking enough to lead to the conclusion that she was in the mind of dante when he described the lady who sang the sweet songs of paradise. scartazzini, who regards the gentle lady of the _vita nuova_ as the true matelda, can assign no valid reason for doubting that matilda the béguine has a better claim. i think that few can doubt it who have carefully read the proofs furnished by the ancient records of the convent of hellfde, and by the book of matilda of magdeburg. these proofs will be found summarised in a brochure published at munich in , "dante's matelda, _ein akademischer vortrag von wilhelm preger_." the extracts from her book, which i have endeavoured to translate, are chosen from the passages in her prose and poetry which best exemplify the divine teaching, rather than from those which identify her with the matelda of dante. that which is useless, except for purposes of historic research, has been passed over. the writing of mechthild, especially when in rhyme and measure, is difficult to translate, and i am conscious that the rendering of her poems is extremely imperfect. in one case extracts from more than one have been placed together; in others, only a part of a longer poem has been given. the object has been rather to pass on mechthild's message than to give an adequate idea of the whole book, a great deal of which is defaced by the superstition of her times. but the truth which is eternal is found richly in the midst of much that is false, and thus far, she being dead yet speaketh. that she learnt so fully much that we are now very slow to learn, is a fact the more remarkable when we consider, how lost and buried was the gospel teaching of the apostles in the ages that succeeded them. their "successors" had been too often employed in "darkening counsel by words without knowledge." all the more do the love and wisdom of god shine forth in the teaching which those who turned to him only, received from his lips. mechthild was one who sat at his feet and heard his words, and it is well for us to hear that which she learnt of him. a somewhat free translation has been necessary, in order to render in english the equivalent to german mediæval language; but i trust that the sense and meaning have been faithfully, however unworthily, rendered. the cloister of hellfde _how, and by whom the cloister was founded and built, in which the two blessed maidens, mechthild and gertrude, served god._ when men had counted one thousand two hundred and nineteen years since the birth of christ our dear lord and saviour, it came to pass, by the special grace of god, that the mighty and noble count burkhardt of mansfeldt built a convent of nuns near to the castle of mansfeldt. this convent was dedicated by count burkhardt to mary the blessed virgin; and therein did he place pious nuns, taken from the convent of s. james, called burckarsshoff, of the cistercian order, near halberstatt. the wife of the above-mentioned count burkhardt was a countess of schwarzbruck, elisabeth by name. she was the mother of two daughters--one named gertrude, the other sophia. gertrude married a young count of mansfeldt, the cousin of count burkhardt, and sophia married a burggraf of querfurdt. now count burkhardt, in the same year that he finished the building and furnishing of the aforesaid convent, departed joyfully from this present life; and after his departure the noble countess, frau elisabeth, his widow, found that the place chosen near the castle of mansfeldt was not suitable for a spiritual life, and therefore, in the fifth year after the death of her lord, by the advice of persons of good understanding, she removed and rebuilt the convent at a place called rodardsdorff. and when it had remained there twenty-four years it was again removed to helpede or hellfde, as the following history relates. now when the above-named countess, frau elisabeth, had removed the convent to rodardsdorff, she betook herself thither, and there did she serve god, and ended her life well and blissfully. the first abbess of this convent was frau kunigunde of halberstatt, and a truly god-fearing and devout woman. and when she had lived seventeen years at rodardsdorff, she there died a blessed death in the year . and on the day following her departure there was chosen by the direction of the holy ghost, as the above-named abbess, frau kunigunde, had predicted, to be abbess in her room, the sister gertrude, born of the noble family of hackeborn, and a sister by birth of the blessed and marvellously endowed mechthild, of whom the book of spiritual graces gives the history. this abbess gertrude was chosen unanimously, as being of a wholly spiritual and devout manner of life. she was nineteen years old at the time of her election, and she filled her office for forty years and eleven days; and during her time the nuns of the cloister lived holy and god-fearing lives, and god bestowed upon them marvellous gifts. and when she had lived fifty-nine years, she was taken away from this world, joyfully and piously, and entered into the gladness and the glory of the everlasting kingdom in the year of our lord . and when the cloister had now been standing twenty-four years at rodardsdorff, and she had been abbess at that place seven years, then for the third time was the site of the convent changed, and it was renewed and rebuilt as follows:-- it was seen and observed by count hermann of mansfeldt, a son of frau gertrude, the elder daughter, and burggraf burkhardt of querfurdt, a son of frau sophia, the younger daughter of the mighty count burkhardt of mansfeldt, the founder of the convent, that at rodardsdorff there was a great want of water, so that it could not have been well for the convent longer to remain there. therefore these two counts made an exchange of the convent with the two barons, the lord albert and the lord ludolf of hackeborn, for the manor and village of hellfde, adding on their part other estates. and at hellfde was the cloister for the third time rebuilt. the nuns of the convent of rodardsdorff were removed to the convent of hellfde in the year , on the sunday of the holy trinity. to this inauguration of the convent did the aforesaid two counts of mansfeldt and querfurdt invite many lords and gentlemen, such as rupert, the archbishop of magdeburg, bishop volradt, of halberstatt, also many other lords and prelates, spiritual and temporal. count hermann of mansfeldt had no male issue, but only three daughters. two of these, sophia and elisabeth, did he place in the convent of hellfde, where they lived godly lives. one of them became an able writer, who wrote many good and useful books for the convent, and afterwards became the abbess thereof. the other was for a long time prioress, and was a skilful painter, who laboured industriously at the adorning of the books and of other things which pertained to the service of god. the third daughter was given in marriage by count hermann of mansfeldt to a baron von rabbinswalt. and because the aforesaid count hermann had no male heirs, he sold the castle and the county of mansfeldt to the burggraf burkhardt of querfurdt. and thus did mansfeldt and the land come into the family of querfurdt, as also other estates of count hermann in the land of thuringia. in the cloister of hellfde there lived many most excellent persons, the children of counts and lords, and of nobles and common people. and for near ninety years the community lived after the manner of cloistered nuns, a life as it were angelic. and the lord jesus was so intimately known to the persons of this community that they communed with him, as with their most dearly beloved lord and bridegroom, as one good friend would speak with another. and the angels of heaven had a special joy and gladness in beholding this blessed company, of which much might be written, but which for brevity's sake we will not write, as much is told of these things in the book of spiritual graces. at last, in the year , after the birth of christ our dear lord, there arose a great dispute between the duke of brunswick and the count of mansfeldt, whose name was burkhardt. and this dispute arose because a duke of brunswick, albert by name, was chosen by some to be bishop of halberstatt, and by others there was chosen the son of count burkhardt of mansfeldt, whose name was also albert. and the choice of this latter was confirmed by the pope. therefore there arose war and fighting, so that the dukes of brunswick invaded the land of the count of mansfeldt with rage and violence, and spoiled and wasted and burned all before them. and by means of this visitation of god was the convent burned to the ground, and utterly ruined and destroyed. and as the chronicles relate, it was duke albert of brunswick (the bishop-elect) and a lord of weringenrod, who with their own hands set fire to the convent. what it was that moved them to do this, is known to him who knoweth all things. there were also several horsemen, and others with cross-bows and other murderous weapons, who ran to seize the abbess and some of her godly spiritual children, intending to do them grievous harm. yet, as the enemies themselves bore witness, when they were a stone's throw from these maidens they lost, as it were, their strength and force, and could proceed no further. and although it was against the will and desire of duke henry of brunswick (who was also bishop of heldesheim) and of duke otto of brunswick, and of others who were with duke albert, and though these endeavoured with all possible good faith to prevent it, the cloister was nevertheless pillaged and burnt. after this, in the year , the convent was for the fourth time again rebuilt, in the outer part of the town of eisleben. (from the german edition of the _mechthilden buch_ .) gertrude von hackeborn. it was during the forty years in which the convent was under the able direction of the abbess gertrude von hackeborn, that it became distinguished for the high attainments of its inmates. gertrude was of the family of the barons of hackeborne, whose castle and manor was situated a little to the east of the town of eisleben. at the age of nineteen she was already marked out, by her spiritual and mental endowments, as a capable directress of the nuns placed beneath her care. it was she who persuaded her brothers albert and ludolf to give the manor of hellfde for the new site of the convent, which had been for twenty-four years at rodardsdorff. many gifts were afterwards given to the convent by the barons of hackeborn, in consideration of the distinguished place held there by their two sisters, gertrude and matilda. for a long time gertrude was supposed to be the author of the book known as the _gertruden buch_, out of which ter steegen made the extracts which he published in his "lives of holy souls," assigning them to the abbess gertrude von hackeborn. it seems now, however, clearly ascertained that the book so long attributed to the abbess was the work of a nun of the convent, also named gertrude, to whom reference will be made later on. in this book, as also in the book called the _mechthilden buch_, which was dictated chiefly by matilda of hackeborn, and completed by the writers (also nuns of the convent) after her death, much is related of the abbess gertrude. she is described as a woman of remarkable character, uniting love, gentleness, and piety with practical wisdom, good sense, and mental culture. the chief feature which appears to have impressed the sisterhood, was "the sweetness of the love which dwelt in her innermost heart." up to the last her love was active and practical. when in her latter days she was completely crippled, and in constant suffering, she insisted upon being carried to the sisters who were ill in bed, that she might speak to them a word of comfort. when at last her speech failed her, her beaming eyes, her loving countenance, and the gentle movement of her hand assured the sisters who stood around her that her affection for them remained untouched by her bodily infirmities. the sisters said it was not a melancholy, but a joyful, duty to watch by her bed of weakness and suffering. but it was never the case during her long superintendence of the convent that this remarkable power of loving interfered with the strictest discipline, or with the wise and careful ordering of the convent life. she had no easy task when many daughters of the highest families of the north german nobles were committed to her care. they were accustomed to rule rather than to obey, and to live idle lives of pleasure and self-indulgence. but under the loving direction of the abbess gertrude order and industry flourished, and a desire to learn became very remarkable amongst these german ladies. gertrude taught by her example, by the power of her word, by the decision and good sense which made themselves felt in all she said and did. above all things, are we told, she required and insisted upon a thorough and careful knowledge of the bible. she made it her constant care that the convent should have an increasing supply of the best books, which she either bought, or copied by means of some of the nuns. "it is certain," she said, "that if the zeal for study should decrease, and the knowledge of holy scripture diminish, all true spiritual life would come to an end." there was soon an excellent school formed in the convent, which has left proofs of its remarkable character, as in the case of the books of gertrude and matilda, which were written by nuns of the convent. the second part of the _gertrude book_, written by the nun gertrude herself, is said to be an example of fluency in latin rarely found amongst the women of the middle ages. the life at hellfde was a very busy life, and had nothing of the usual littleness of convent rule. with great spiritual fervour, there was at the same time a spirit of liberty and cheerfulness that helped forward the constant, serious, diligent work of the house. studying and copying, illuminating, working and singing, occupied the sisters, as well as the care of the poor and the sick; and above all, the study of the word of god. besides the two sisters, the abbess gertrude and matilda of hackeborn, two other nuns were distinguished by remarkable gifts. one of these, called on account of her office the lady matilda, was the leader and teacher of the choir, and also the chief teacher in the school of the convent. she appears to be the same as matilda von wippra mentioned in the querfurdt chronicles. much is related of her great gift as a teacher, and of the power which accompanied her words. "her words," so it is said in the _gertrude book_, "were sweeter than honey, and her spirit was more glowing than fire." to her mainly was the school of hellfde indebted for its wide reputation. when the abbess sophia von querfurdt (the successor of gertrude) resigned her office in the year , it was the lady matilda who took the direction of the convent, which remained without an abbess for five years. matilda, however, filled this post for one year only, as she died in . she was remembered for "the burning desire which she had for the salvation of souls," and was deeply lamented by the sisters whom she had loved. they spoke often of her sweet voice, and her friendliness, and her holy conversation. last, but not least, was the nun gertrude, whose name is attached to the _gertrude book_, four of the five books of which were written in latin by an unnamed sister, and one book, the second, was the work of gertrude herself. her history is but little known. she was born on january , , apparently in thuringia, and of poor parents, and from her fifth year she had been an inmate of the convent. very early she became remarkable for her thirst for knowledge, and as a girl she devoted herself to severe study, having the singular predilection of an enthusiastic love of grammar. she soon left far behind her all the other nun-students, and till her twenty-fifth year was entirely absorbed in secular learning. it was then that the great era in her life, described by her in the _gertrude book_, is to be dated. it was her conversion to god,[ ] her passage from death to life. she knew for the first time the love of him who had borne her sins; she knew herself justified by faith in him. this happened in the year . more will be related of this remarkable woman. it may have been that amongst the means which led to her conversion was an event which happened sixteen years earlier, and which has yet to be related. but before entering upon this part of the history of hellfde, a few words must be said regarding the dark side of the picture presented to us in the records of this and other convents of the thirteenth century. the dark side of hellfde. that to christian life in each of the past nineteen centuries there is a dark side, is an obvious fact. but as the dark side has been constantly regarded as the bright side by the christians of each century, our task in discovering it must not consist merely of a study of old records. we have to compare the facts related, and the praise and blame attached to them, with something less variable than the human conscience and human opinion. the "piety," attributed to the mediæval saints, even when, as in the case of the nuns of hellfde, it actually existed, included a mass of heathenish superstition, of unwholesome excitement of the brain and nerves; of blank ignorance of the true meaning of a great part of the word of god; and in most cases, of abject submission to a fallen and heretical church. the "best books" of which the abbess gertrude formed her convent library contained grains of truth in masses of error, and some true facts smothered beneath piles of legendary rubbish. to find the pearls at the bottom of the sea of superstition and senseless legend, is at times a despairing endeavour. yet the pearls are there, and must have been there; for the gates of the grave have never prevailed against the true church of god. some there always were taught by the holy spirit of god, and believing in the midst of their errors and wanderings the great eternal truths of the gospel. if we are to find true faith, if we are to find truth at all in the middle ages, we must find it amongst innumerable human inventions, and shining like a gem in the dark caverns of human folly. can we say that in the nineteenth century it is otherwise? it were well to consider, and use for the search-light we so deeply need, the unchangeable word of the living god. apart from the error taught by "the church" in those past ages--saint-worship, purgatory, the merit of human works, and many more--a bewildering element of confusion presents itself in the atmosphere of visions and revelations in which the "pious" perpetually lived, or desired to live. for to live what has been called in our times "the higher christian life," meant at that time to be a seer of visions, and a dreamer of dreams. the seeing of visions was an attainment as much to be desired as to live in temperance, or godliness, or honesty. whilst in our days the wholesome fear of being sent to a lunatic asylum serves as a check upon the wild imagination of undisciplined woman kind, the strangest performances and utterances might in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries procure for the unfortunate woman a halo in the pictures which perpetuated her memory. it is well to look at the matter of visions and revelations in the light of holy scripture. that the servants of god have seen visions divinely shown to them, no one can doubt who believes the bible; nor that they have from time to time received direct revelations from god. also, we read as a promise made to christian people, that "your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; and on my servants and on my hand-maidens i will pour out in those days of my spirit, and they shall prophesy." in the first place, therefore, we must admit that visions and revelations are, in the cases here mentioned, a reality, and a special gift of god, in consequence of the exaltation of christ to the right hand of god, this is the explanation of these facts given by the apostle peter in the rd verse of the nd chapter of the acts. but when we read the various accounts in the acts of the fulfilment of this promise, or the accounts in the old testament of similar visions and revelations, we find one marked distinction between these accounts and those given in mediæval legends. in the bible the point is, not the state of exaltation to which such and such a man or woman attained, but, leaving them out of the question altogether, we are simply told what it was god showed or revealed to his servants. the seeing of visions is never spoken of as being the highest state of christian life in the new testament, or of spiritual life in the old testament. on the contrary, god on some occasions gave revelations to the most unworthy, and simply used them to speak the words he put into their mouths, whether they would or no--a truth which he taught to balaam by using an ass as an example. but in mediæval times, a _state_ in which the man, or more frequently the woman, became liable to visions, was the thing mainly to be desired. it was not as in the case of amos, who was content to go on herding his cows and picking his figs till the lord gave him his message. the mediæval saint was trained and wrought upon by fasting and watching, by the study of the wildest legends, and by a conviction that the seeing of visions betokened a state of special holiness. this preparation of the mind, and one may say mainly of the _body_, for an unnatural and unwholesome condition produced the desired effect. the attacks of catalepsy, of convulsions and other diseased symptoms, were hailed as supernatural signs, and the disorder of the brain as a work of the spirit. and from one to another the infection spread, as the convulsions and delusions excited envy and admiration, and a straining of the mind after something of like sort. the atmosphere, therefore, of the convent of hellfde, and of many other convents of germany and belgium, was scarcely a wholesome one; and we must disentangle the spiritual teaching, which truly came from god, from the "revelations" which, if spiritual at all, and not wholly the result of disease, were the work of the evil one. but whilst amongst facts well known to medical scientists, and amongst facts belonging to still unexplored and unknown regions of psychology, there may be quite enough to account for the stories, if really true, of the mass of mediæval visions, we must remember, also, that a great many of these stories were the inventions of those whose interest it was to compose them. the disastrous fact remained that, by means of these fables, or of real hallucinations, errors in belief and in practice were taught and encouraged. it would not occur to those brought up in a belief of superstitions, which had descended, under other names, from heathen times, to sift or examine the legends which were their daily food. it is for us to sift out from amongst the working of disordered brains, and the inventions of ignorant people, the true teaching which they received from the only wise god, who cared for his loving, but ignorant, children of the middle ages, as he cares now for his more enlightened, but alas! more lukewarm, children of the nineteenth century. there is one more remark to be made with regard to the accounts given by really holy people of their visions and dreams. occasionally, it was merely a form of writing in symbol, as when john bunyan describes having seen in his dream christian escaping from the city of destruction. there were two reasons for this in the case of the mediæval "friends of god." it was, in the first place, dangerous to say in plain words that which would have brought down upon them the curse of the church. they spoke, therefore, largely in symbol, whether by word or by forms and devices of architecture. this language was common to them, and it was well understood by those who had the key in their common faith. in the second place, the want of adequate words to express spiritual truths must always be felt, and much can be said in symbol which could not be said at much greater length in plain speech. in how many words could that be taught us which we learn from the one expression, "the lamb of god"? and that many of those of whom the histories remain, were truly god's children, truly taught by the holy ghost, and in continual communion with him as a real and solid fact, we cannot doubt. they lived a true life of intercourse with him, clouded and bewildered by the errors of their times, by their unnatural bodily conditions, and by the fear of sinning against the authority which some of them believed to be from god--the fatal power of the roman church. in this dreamland of visions and revelations the nuns of hellfde lived--or rather, into it they frequently wandered. they certainly at times trod the solid earth, and fulfilled their various duties in a practical manner. they also spent much time, more, no doubt, than many spend now, in "the good land, the land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valley and hills, and that drinketh water of the rain of heaven." it was a familiar land to those who abode in him who is there. and it is a relief to find that, in spite of their extreme love and reverence for the abbess gertrude, they had no visions to report as seen by her. she probably had more to do with creatures of flesh and blood, with the strong wills and natures of the girls sent to her from the castles of the nobles, than with creatures of her own imagination; and she looked for revelations, and found them in the word of god. "she undertook the most menial work," writes one of the compilers of the _mechthild book_, "and took a considerable part in the common employments of the sisters. sometimes she was the first and the only one at work till she called others to help her, or led them to do so by her example and her pleasant, friendly words. however busy she might be, she always found time to visit each one who was sick, and inquire if there was anything she needed. and with her own hands she waited upon them, either bringing them refreshments, or soothing and comforting them. "she read the holy scriptures very diligently, and with great delight, as often as she could, and required of those under her care that they should do the same. in prayer she was very fervent and reverent, she seldom prayed without tears. she had a wonderful quietness of spirit; and at her hours of prayer her heart was so peaceful and free from care, that if she were called to speak to any one, or to other business, she went back afterwards and prayed as quietly as if she had not been disturbed. amongst the children she was the gentlest and kindest, and with the older maidens the holiest and most sensible of friends, and with the elder women the most affectionate and wise. she was never to be seen idle; either she had a piece of work on hand, or she was reading, or teaching, or praying." it can, therefore, easily be imagined that the abbess gertrude suffered neither from catalepsy nor convulsions, but that she was a wholesome and cheerful woman. in her last days she had a paralytic seizure, which deprived her of the power of speech for some time before her death; but she appeared to be fully conscious, and interested as before in the sisters of the convent. matilda. we must now go back to the time when the abbess gertrude was in full strength and activity at the age of thirty-three. in that year, , there arrived at the convent of hellfde an infirm, worn-out béguine, a namesake of two inmates of the convent--matilda von hackeborn and the lady matilda of the choir. the béguine went by the name of matilda of magdeburg. it would be interesting to know as much of her history as she related to the nuns of hellfde. as it is, we have but an outline of it. we know thus much, that for christ's sake she had "renounced worldly honour and worldly riches." she had evidently been brought up, writes preger, "under the influence of court life and of knightly company, and we see that she was accustomed to the manners of noble ladies, and to the language of the higher classes. there is a chivalric tone in her expressions which seems to link her words with the knightly poetry of her time, a poetry then at the height of its cultivation. and as in her words, so in her actions--there was a freedom and powerful independence which betoken high birth." yet of her family and of her birthplace nothing is known. the date of her birth we know, the year . apparently her home was not far from magdeburg. we are told of her brother baldwin, later a dominican friar, that from a child he had been "brought up in all good manner of living and in virtuous habits." matilda, therefore, had no doubt been carefully educated. others said of her, "that from her childhood she had led an innocent, unsullied life." of herself she says, "that in her earliest childhood her sins were many and great. but that even then, whenever she had a trouble and was sad, she prayed to god. i knelt down before my beloved, and said, o lord, now i am unhappy. can it be for thy glory that i should go away uncomforted! but i was the most simple and ignorant of any who ever desired to walk in the way of life. of the malice of the devil, i knew nothing; of the misery of the world, i knew nothing whatsoever; and the false profession of people who are called spiritual was also unknown to me. "but i must say this for the honour of god, that one day in my twelfth year, when i was all alone, i received the greeting of the holy ghost, unworthy sinner as i was, in such overflowing measure, that i never afterwards could endure the thought of committing a great and deadly sin. this blessed greeting was repeated day after day, and it filled me with love and sorrow. i had learnt from god alone what is christian faith, and i made it my rule of life; thus my heart was kept pure, but of the mysteries of god i knew nothing as yet. "whilst during my youth i lived with my friends and relations, amongst whom i was the best beloved, the mysteries of god remained unknown to me. but during that time i long had the desire that, without any fault of mine, i might be despised by the world, whilst meanwhile the sweetness and honour of the world seemed greater to me day by day." this is all we can learn of the early years of matilda in her unknown home; but we have in few touches a picture of a rare and simple nature, humbled by the sense of sin, but proud enough to desire to be despised; sweet enough also to be loved with unusual love, and to find it a delight. in the year , at the age of twenty-three, she tore herself from those who thus loved her and went to magdeburg, where she only knew one person, a friend of her family. but she avoided this one friend, lest he should persuade her to give up her determination to live alone for god. she asked to be received in a convent, but she was refused. she was unknown and without any means, and she was looked upon with suspicion and contempt. she had her desire. she was alone and despised. "but god," she says, "never forsook me. he filled me so continually with the sweetness of his love, he drew me into such intimacy with himself, and he showed me such unspeakable wonders of his heart, that i could well afford to lose the world and all that is in it." what were the further wanderings of matilda we do not know, but it was only a little while after her refusal at the convent that she became one of the persecuted order of the béguines. a word as to the béguines. there lived at liège, at the end of the twelfth century, a priest named lambert le bègues. his name does not prove him to have been a stammerer; on the contrary, he was a preacher of great fervour, and attracted multitudes to his sermons. le bègues was probably the name of his family. at that time the bishop of liège, whose name was raoul, was a man of evil reputation. he had formerly been archbishop of mainz, but had been deposed from his office on account of simony. at liège he sold by auction in the market-place the church preferments that fell to his share. the clergy of liège, who had not been shining examples of holy living even before the arrival of bishop raoul, were now encouraged by his example to live in a disorderly manner, and the morals of the town of liège were at a very low ebb when lambert began his preaching there. it would seem that at that time, both in towns and country places, there were a number of wandering priests, who went about preaching and administering the sacraments, without being under the orders of any special bishop. probably they were more or less associated with the lay preachers of the "brethren," called in a vague way the waldensian brethren, whose evangelising was carried on so extensively as to bring upon them much persecution in the whole of western europe. it was in order to direct this zeal for evangelising into more catholic channels that francis of assisi and dominic founded the orders of predicant friars; just as in our days the "church army" in england has been formed to bring under church authority the work of evangelisation, which had been set on foot by the salvation army. lambert was apparently one of the independent priests who preached on their own account, and was, therefore, free to speak unwelcome truths. he had been originally a chorister in s. paul's church at liège. he was probably a man with means of his own; for not only did he preach earnestly and constantly against the worldliness of the professing church, but he provided a practical means of separating from the world. in a large garden which he had by the river side beyond the city walls he built a number of small separate houses, which he filled with women of all classes who desired to live a secluded life and devote themselves to good works. in the middle of the garden he built a church, dedicated to s. christopher, which was finished in the year . lambert then placed his community under the care of a priest. these béguine sisters took no vows; they were free to leave the community when they chose to do so. they retained possession of their money and property. they were under no convent rules; they simply promised obedience to their superior as long as they remained in the béguinage. but if they wished to return to ordinary life, or to marry, they had a right to do so, as married women living, of course, no longer in the community. they were not required to wear any special dress, but to be clothed in "modest apparel." they lived either alone in one of the little houses, or two or more together, keeping house for themselves, and having their rooms very simply furnished. they did their own baking and brewing; and if they had no means of their own, they had some employment by which to gain their living. this béguine life was, therefore, regarded by the church as less meritorious than convent life, notwithstanding the fact that the béguines were employed in nursing the sick, attending to the poor, and in teaching young girls reading, writing, and needlework. they were free to go out with leave of the superior and visit their friends, or the poor in the town outside of which the béguinage was built. some of them might even live in the town, wearing ordinary dresses, and keeping shops, or maintaining themselves by their labour. these rules of béguine life were multiplied in various ways as béguine communities became rapidly very numerous in belgium, holland, and germany. but to return to lambert, their founder. his sermons, which contained solemn warnings addressed to the higher clergy by reason of their evil ways, very soon brought upon him persecution and ill-usage. during one of his sermons in the great church of s. lambert he was seized by order of the bishop, and imprisoned in the castle of revogne. he employed himself in his dungeon in translating the acts of the apostles from latin into french. amongst other accusations which had been brought against him, it was said that he had prophesied the destruction of s. lambert's church. whilst he was translating in his dungeon, it came to pass, on the th of april , that the sexton of the church went up into the belfry to ring the bell. he had taken with him a pan of hot coals in order to warm his hands. a coal must have fallen through a crack in the floor into a space below, where wood and straw were stored up. in the following night the tower was seen to be in flames. the fire spread quickly, burning not only the church, but the bishop's palace, which stood near, the houses of the canons, and the neighbouring churches of s. peter, s. trudo, s. clement, and the eleven thousand virgins. for three days the whole town was in the greatest danger. the charge against lambert was now changed into an accusation of sorcery. he was brought to his trial, but the "four discreet and learned men" appointed by the bishop to judge his cause, could find no proof of any offence with which he was charged. the people of liège, who were displeased at his imprisonment, began to clamour for his release; and he himself demanded to be set free, that he might go to rome and appeal to the pope. his request was granted. the pope acquitted him of all charges brought against him, and authorised his work by instituting him formally as the patriarch of the béguines. he only survived this journey to rome six months, and died at liège towards the end of the year . he was buried before the high altar in his church of s. christopher. some chroniclers relate these facts in a slightly different way, according to which lambert was sent to rome by the bishop with a list of charges brought against him. but the important point remains proved, that he was the founder of the widely-spread community of men and women known later as beghards and béguines. for after his death, possibly before, communities of men were formed on the plan of the béguine communities. these men maintained themselves by weaving or other handicrafts. they met together for meals and for prayer, but did not have their possessions in common. they had no rule, but were accustomed to wear simple clothes--brown, white, black, or grey. as time went on, the ranks of the beghards or béguines were largely recruited by the "friends of god," with whom they seem at all times to have been in constant intercourse; so that in the fourteenth century to be a beghard or béguine, meant much the same thing as to belong to the waldensian brethren. in consequence, their persecutions during the fourteenth century amounted at last to extermination, their houses being replenished from the ranks of "orthodox" roman catholics. the persons, therefore, from that time onwards bearing the name of beghards or béguines differed in nothing from members of roman catholic orders. the great sorrow. but to return to matilda, who joined the béguines at the time when they had already earned for themselves the reproach of christ, and when, on the other hand, there were those amongst them who had wandered far from the primitive simplicity of the first inhabitants of lambert le bègues garden-houses. by these latter (though they, too, claimed to be the "friends of god,") matilda was "bitterly despised." and she who had lived during her youth in ignorance of "the false profession of people called spiritual" had to learn amongst "the religious" many a sorrowful lesson. not amongst béguines only, but on all sides the fact forced itself upon the heart of matilda that the church was fallen from her first estate. "i, poor creature as i was, could yet be so presumptuous as to lift up the whole of corrupt christendom upon the arms of my soul, and hold it up in lamentation before god. "and our lord said, 'leave it alone, it is too heavy for thee.' and i made answer, 'o my beloved lord, i will lift it, and bear it to thy feet, and cast it into thine own arms, which bore it on the cross.' and god in his pity let me have my will, that i might find rest in casting it upon him. "and this poor christendom, brought into the presence of the lord, seemed to me as a maiden of whom i felt bitterly ashamed. "and the lord said, 'yea, behold her, blind in her belief, and lame in her hands which do no good works, and crippled in her feet with evil desires, and seldom and idly does she think of me; and she is leprous with impurity and uncleanness.'" and the foremost in the guilt of christendom she found to be those who should have been the pastors and teachers, "the great he-goats, who are defiled with all uncleanliness, and with frightful greed and avarice." to the lord, "the high pope in heaven," matilda turned for guidance and consolation. "when i wake in the night," she said, "i think, have i the strength to pray as i desire for unfaithful christendom, which is a sorrow of heart to him i love." she prayed for the priests, that from goats they might become lambs, that they might forget the law of the jews, and think of the blood of the lamb who was slain, and mourn over the sufferings of the lord. "alas for holy christendom, for the crown is fallen from thy head, thy precious jewels are lost; for thou art a troubler and a persecutor of the holy faith. thy gold is dimmed in the mire of evil pleasures, thy purity is burnt up in the consuming fire of greed, thy humility is sunk in the swamp of the flesh, and thy truth has been swept away by the lying spirit of the world! "alas for the fallen crown, the holy priesthood! for thee there remains nothing but ruin and destruction, for with spiritual power thou makest war upon god, and upon his friends. therefore god will humble thee before thou art aware, he will smite the heart of the pope at rome with bitter grief. "and in that grief and calamity the lord will speak to him and accuse him, saying, 'thy shepherds have become murderers and wolves, before my eyes they slaughter the white lambs, and the sheep are weak and weary, for there is none to lead them to the wholesome pastures on the high mountain side; that is, to the love and the nurture of god. but if any know not the way to hell, let him look at the corrupted clergy, and see how straightly they go thither. therefore must i take away the worn-out mantle and give a new mantle to my bride, to holy christendom. "if thou, son pope, shouldst bring that to pass, thy days might be lengthened. for that the popes before thee lived short lives, was because they did not fulfil my will.' and it was as if i could see the pope at his prayers, and god thus answering him.[ ] and in the night i saw the lord in the dress of a pilgrim, and as if he had journeyed through the whole of christendom. and i fell at his feet and said, 'beloved pilgrim, whence comest thou?' and he answered, 'i come from jerusalem'--by which name he meant the holy church--'and i have been driven forth from my dwelling. the heathen knew me not, the jews suffered me not, and the christians fought against me.' "then i prayed for christendom; but the lord answered with bitter sorrow that he had been dishonoured and put to grievous shame by christian people, though for them he had done so great wonders, and had suffered so great anguish. "and so it is with me, that longing and humility and love, these three blessed handmaidens, lead my soul up to god, and the soul beholds her beloved and says, 'lord, i mourn because thou art thus warred against by those who are the dearest to thee on the earth, by christian people. i mourn because thy friends are sorely hindered by thine enemies.' "and the lord answered me, 'all that befalls my friends, sin only excepted, shall turn to them to joy, and for the glory of god. for the suffering calls with a mighty voice saying, that beyond all worship that can be offered me is the patience that suffers, and if for a while i comfort not, it is far better than that comfort should come from another will than mine.'" that there were some, the "friends of god," who shone like stars in the dark night matilda thus found, and rejoiced to find. "but that the eagle soars to heaven," she said, "no thanks is there to the owl." it was no wonder that matilda was "much and continually despised" by the priests of whom she gave so bold a testimony. the lord, she said, suffered in like manner, for thus was he put to shame because in him was the truth. it was probably for some such plain speaking that matilda was refused as an inmate of the convents to which she applied for admittance. matilda and dante. it was during the thirty years of matilda's béguine life that she began writing the book which has preserved her memory down to the days in which we live. not only does the book itself present matilda to us as one of the most remarkable people of her age, but in a book more widely known is found, in all probability, the echo of her words, and the picture of herself as she appeared to the imagination of dante. it is not necessary here to go into the proofs of this identification of the béguine matilda with the "lady all alone who went along singing and culling flower after flower with which her pathway was all painted over;" the "beauteous lady, who in rays of love did warm herself." for those who desire to trace the connection of matilda's book with dante's poem, the proofs will be found in the first volume of preger's "history of german mysticism," and in a lecture delivered by preger in the year on the subject of dante's matilda. the resemblances between dante and eckhart have been remarked upon in a recent work on dante, where, however, no allusion is made to other german writers. "any one who has read the discourses of meister eckhart, ... will be struck by the frequent and close resemblances, not of thought only, but of expression and illustration, which exist between him and dante. so frequent and so close are these, that the reader can hardly conceive the possibility of their being due to mere coincidence." but whence did eckhart derive his expressions which reappear in dante? "matilda," says preger, "expresses herself in a language higher than that of ordinary speech, and more fitted to the nature of heavenly things. and it may here be remarked, how frequently the elements of the speech of speculative mysticism, such as we may call the speech of eckhart, are previously to be found in the writing of matilda. but matilda herself was not the creator of these expressions, for her poetical nature was inclined rather to expressions of thought in a manner less abstract, and appealing more vividly to the senses. but it would seem that before matilda and eckhart, certain characteristic theorems of speculative mysticism had become stereotyped in the german language. they form the stock of that capital of speech by which, especially through eckhart's writings, the german language has been enriched. matilda is, therefore, of importance in leading us to the discovery of how far eckhart was indebted for his expressions to that more ancient store of language." it would occupy too much space to trace here the remarkable connection not only in general between the book of matilda and that of dante, but between certain passages which almost repeat themselves in the later book. others, again, which are not similar, yet stand in relation to one another. the city of woe, for example, seen by dante, is found also in matilda's book, but there it is "the city of eternal hate;" and thus in many instances. matilda's book is commonly known by the name, "the flowing forth of the light of the godhead." she wrote it originally in low german, but of this original no copy is at present known to exist. soon after her death, which occurred in , a latin translation was made by a predicant friar at cologne, known as brother henry. of this two copies remain, one of the fourteenth the other of the sixteenth century. the loose leaves had been first collected by another brother henry, also a predicant friar. afterwards a translation was made from low german into high german by a priest, henry von nordlingen, assisted by a friend. it was completed after two years' labour in . this henry von nordlingen, a friend of suso, gave the high german translation to margaret of the golden ring. margaret gave it to the waldschwestern in einsiedeln. it was discovered in the convent library of einsiedeln by dr. greith in the year . in the year it was published in two forms by dr. gall morel--first, the high german copy as discovered at einsiedeln; secondly, a translation into modernised german. it is from the latin translation that it could be known to dante.[ ] the original book is the oldest work of its sort hitherto known to have existed in the german tongue. "it may justly be said," writes preger, "that this book denotes a high degree in the measurement of the culture of german women, and of religious life in the middle ages. with freedom and clearness of thought, the writer combines tender and deep feeling; with a childlike and naïve perceptiveness, a true sublimity of conception. matilda frequently touches the depths in which speculative mysticism is formed, and her influence is to be traced even in the work of the deep thinker who was her compatriot, namely, meister eckhart, in whose language we find the echo of matilda's speech. this language, which she employs with freedom and ease, takes at times the form of didactic speech, but it often rises to musical rhythm, to lyric song, and to epic portraiture. by the variety and life, as well as by the plastic intuition of expression, this work is distinguished from the monotonous writings on similar subjects by older authors."[ ] much more might yet be said of matilda as a writer and a poet. but it is with matilda, the persecuted "friend of god," the witness for christ in a time dark as she describes it, that we have to do in the present instance. the book and its origin. we have matilda's own account of the origin of her book. she says that when she began to live a spiritual life, and "took leave of the world," she found that the fulness of her bodily life and strength was a danger to her spiritual life, and, therefore, after the manner of her times she regarded the body as an enemy against which she was called to wage continual war. "i saw that the weapons furnished to my heart were the sufferings and the death of christ, and yet i was in great and constant fear, and i thought to deal violent blows to my enemy with sighs and confession, and weeping, with fasting, watching, and prayer, and with blows and stripes. and by this means for two and twenty years i kept my body in subjection, and had no illness. "but after this illness came. and then came to me the mighty power, even the love of god, and filled me to overflowing with his wonders, so that i dared no longer keep silence, though to one so simple as i it was hard to speak. and i said to the lord, 'o loving god, what canst thou find in me? thou knowest well i am a fool and a sinner, and a miserable creature in soul and body. it is to the wise that thou shouldst commit thy wonders, then mightest thou be praised aright.' "but the lord was displeased at my words, and he rebuked me, saying, 'tell me now, art thou not mine?' "'yes, lord, that hast thou granted me!' "'may i not, then, do with thee as i will?' "'yes, my beloved; and i am willing to be brought to nought if thou willest it.' "then, poor creature as i was, i went to my confessor, and told him what the lord had put into my heart, and asked his counsel. and he said i ought cheerfully to do that to which god had called me. and yet did i weep with shame, seeing before my eyes my great unworthiness, and that god should lead a despicable woman to write the things which come from the heart and mouth of god." then matilda, as is her wont, runs on into rhyme-- "the love of god has moved my pen, my book is not from the mind of men." and afterwards, she says, "i was warned by some that my book might give much offence, and that it would be burnt as evil teaching. and i turned to my beloved, as was my wont, and said to him that if it were so, he had himself misled me, for it was he who commanded me to write it. then did he reveal himself to my sorrowful heart, as if he held the book in his right hand, and said, 'my beloved one, do not be sorrowful. the truth can be burnt by no man. he who would take it out of my hand must be stronger than i.' "and yet i still answered him, 'o lord, if i were a learned clerk to whom thou hadst shown these wonders, then might i write so as to bring thee eternal glory. but how can it be that thou shouldst build a golden house, the house of thy dwelling place, in a miry pool?' "and he answered me, that when he gave the gifts of his grace, he sought for the lowest and the smallest and the most unnoticed treasure houses. 'it is not on the high mountains that men drink of the fountains, for the stream of my holy spirit flows downwards to the valleys below. there are many wise in the scriptures, who are but fools and unlearned in other learning.'" further on matilda says that in the german tongue she found it hard to speak of that which god had shown her, and "of latin i know nothing. for that which the eye can see, and the ear can hear, and the mouth can speak, is as unlike the truth which is revealed to the soul who loves, as a candle is to the glorious sun. of the heavenly things which god has shown me i can speak but, as it were, a little word, not more than the honey which a little bee could carry away on his foot from an overflowing vessel. "and now, lord, i will commend these writings to thy tender mercy; and with a heart that sighs, and with eyes that weep, and with a downcast spirit, i pray that they never may be read by a pharisee, and i pray also that thy children may so receive them into their hearts, as thou, o lord, hast of thy truth given out of thy store to me." matilda's book grew in an irregular manner from year to year. she wrote from time to time on loose sheets that which she believed she had received from god. there is, therefore, no connection in these writings, nor is there any plan in her manner of writing. sometimes she wrote in prose, or in prose running from time to time into metre and rhyme. sometimes she wrote in verse, in irregular measure, and with or without irregular rhymes, each division with a heading. the friar henry of halle collected the loose leaves, and before the death of matilda he divided them into six books. a seventh book was added by matilda after the death of brother henry. five of these books appear to have been written before matilda entered the convent of hellfde, and some can be dated by allusions to contemporary events.[ ] apart from all that is interesting in these books, as literature or as history, there remains for the christian reader who "is not a pharisee" the far more interesting field of research into their value as spiritual teaching. the pharisee will find much to blame and to despise in the ignorance and superstition of this béguine of the middle ages. and in sifting matilda's writings, as indeed the writings of any man or woman, the gold, if there be any, has to be separated from the dross. the dross which had been accumulating for twelve centuries formed a large amount of that which matilda believed she had learnt from god. we can recognise the gold by the one test furnished to us by him who despises not any, but teaches the most ignorant who come to him. if we apply to the writings of matilda this infallible test, of conformity to the word of god, we may be enriched by the gold without being encumbered by the dreary heaps of dross from which we have to sift it. the book is supposed to be the expression of the intercourse of the soul with god. that it is really so _in part_, can be verified by any christian reader who will compare it with the bible and with the experience common to christian believers. that this true christian teaching should be mixed with the errors of her time is natural, and we know that the errors of each successive age leave their traces in the books that are the most enlightened, and that our own age is no exception. the object in view in making the following extracts from matilda's book is not to present it as a literary or historical study. were it so, it would be needful to give extracts from the false as well as from the true teaching, so as to give a correct idea of matilda and her times. but writing simply with a desire that the truth taught to matilda by the spirit of god should be made available for those in these later days who are glad of spiritual food, the false and the imaginary will be passed over, and the remainder given as much as possible in matilda's own words. it must be remarked, however, that certain expressions which in mediæval german conveyed no impression of irreverence would sound painfully familiar in modern english. an equivalent has, therefore, to be found conveying to readers now the same sense which the original words would have conveyed to the readers of the thirteenth century. it may also be remarked that the chief errors to be noted in matilda's book are a tendency to the worship (in a lower sense of the word) of the virgin and the saints, a belief in purgatory, and a certain weight attached to the merit of human works. of the first of these, it may truly be said that matilda's references to the virgin mother stand in remarkable contrast to the writings of later times. if compared with "the glories of mary," now in popular use, they serve as a landmark showing the downward course of error and superstition in the church of rome during the past six hundred years, though there were already those, such as bonaventura,[ ] who hastened the fall. it must be observed, too, in reference to matilda's allusions to the virgin mary, that the chasm between the mother of the lord and all ordinary believers is very much reduced if compared with that which exists in modern roman catholic books of devotion, from the fact that the place assigned to every redeemed soul in matilda's writings is far higher than in most catholic or protestant teaching. even amongst protestants it is not uncommon to regard the redeemed as in a place below the angels, or on a level with them. but to matilda the power and the value of the work of christ were so fully recognised, that she regarded the bride of the lamb, or the individual who is made a member of the body of christ, as in the highest place next to the bridegroom, the head of the body. as regards human merit, matilda only appears occasionally to attach some weight to it in speaking of others; of herself, she says she has nothing to bring to god but her sin. the journey to eternal peace. it will be best to describe matilda's spiritual life as far as possible from her own words. she gives us in parables the history of her soul. sometimes it seems well to give these in full, at other times to give the sense whilst omitting repetitions. she tells us that for a long time she was without rest or peace, knowing not only the guilt, but the power of sin, and she looked hither and thither for that which would meet her need. and the mind, as it were, disputed with the soul, for the mind would have her to seek her peace in the things that could be seen. and thus it said-- "o soul, in the magdalen's bitter tears do the streams of comfort flow." but the soul made answer-- "hold thy peace, for my need thou dost not know. the comfort i crave is joy divine, i needs must drink the unmingled wine." "soul, if as a virgin pure thou art, a river of love will fill thy heart." "and if in troth it so might be, the fountain of love is not in me." "rejoice in the blood the martyrs shed." "in the path of the martyrs i daily tread, but i have not found my rest." "in the wisdom the lord's apostles taught, is there peace, o soul, for thee." "i have the wisdom that is the best, he abideth ever with me." "the angels in heaven are bright and fair, for solace, o soul, betake thee there." "the joy of the angels is grief to me, if the lord of the angels i may not see." "in fastings and labours manifold, did john in the wilderness toil of old, and so may peace be thine." "to labour and suffer my heart is fain, but love is more than all toil and pain." "o soul, the virgin is kind and sweet, and fair the child on her breast, and thou, adoring, before her feet shalt find thy rest." "my beloved is mine, and i am his, i seek the joy where the bridegroom is; for a full-grown bride am i."... then doth the mind warn the soul, saying-- "in his terrible glory no foot hath trod, a devouring fire dread to see; in the blinding light of the face of god no soul can be. for thou knowest that all high heaven is bright with a glory beyond the sun, with the radiance of the saints in light, and the fount of that light is one. from the breath of the everlasting god, from the mouth of the man divine, from the counsel of god the holy ghost, doth that awful glory shine. soul, couldst thou abide for an hour alone in the burning fire around his throne?" "the fish drowns not in the mighty sea, the bird sinks not in the air, the gold in the furnace fire may be, and is yet more radiant there. for god to each of his creatures gave the place to its nature known, and shall it not be that my heart should crave for that which is mine own? for my nature seeketh her dwelling-place, that only and none other; the child must joy in the father's face, the brethren in the brother. to the bridal chamber goeth the bride, for love is her home and rest; and shall not i in his light abide, when i lean upon his breast?" . . . . . . . and she who is beloved with love untold, thus goes to him who is divinely fair, in his still chamber of unsullied gold, and love all pure, all holy, greets her there-- the love of his eternal godhead high, the love of his divine humanity. then speaketh he and saith, "beloved one, what would'st thou? it is thine. from self shalt thou go forth for evermore, for thou art mine. o soul, no angel for an hour might dream of all the riches that i give to thee, the glory and the beauty that beseem the heritage of life that is in me. yet satisfied thou shalt for ever long, thus sweeter shall be thine eternal song."[ ] "o lord my god, so small, so poor am i, and great, almighty, o my god, art thou." "yet thou art joined to christ eternally; my love a changeless, everlasting now." and thus the joyful soul is still at rest in god's eternal will, and she is his, and thus delighteth he her own to be. the path of love. we have the same history, the same "pilgrim's progress," given to us in another form. matilda calls it "the path of love."--it is her own story, the years of dreary penance, followed by the revelation of christ to the soul. "o thou that lovest, wouldst thou know the path wherein thy feet should go?" "yea, teach it, lord, to me." "through drear repentance leads the way, and the shame of sin confessed-- and when thou hast trod on the world's display, and on the devil's behest, and on the flesh in its haughty pride, and on thy helpless will, that holds the soul of the chosen bride in bonds and slavery still, and when the enemy conquered lies, and weary art thou and athirst-- then to him whom thou lovest lift thine eyes, to him who loved thee first." then shall he speak and say-- "i hear a voice that calleth amain, a voice of love and tears; i have wooed, and i have listened in vain through long, long years-- and it speaks to-day. my heart is troubled, and i must haste to the sad sweet voice across the waste." . . . . . . . and in the morning, when the dew is sweet, she hears the gentle music of his feet-- she hears him speak and say, "i heard thy voice." the glorious one draws nigh; amidst the dew when all the woods rejoice with gladsome melody. and she arrays herself in fair attire, in raiment of a bride; her mantle is the holy judgment fire wherein the gold is tried. of meek humility her stole is spun, her robe is white as snow, for unto him, the high and holy one, she fain would go. and thus she passeth through the forest dim, where holy people dwell, and day and night, with dance and song and hymn, their gladness tell; with solemn dance of praise that knows no end, hands linked with other hands of ancient years; the mighty faith of abraham his friend, the longing of his seers; the chaste humility of her who bore god's blessed son; and all the victories that in days of yore his saints have won-- these join in dance attuned to glorious song and move in cadence sweet, and multiplied as ages pass along are those rejoicing feet. he saith-- "beloved, do as they have done who praise my name alway." and she makes answer-- "thou must lead me on, and i will dance as they; i move to music of thy song rejoicing over me, and so my halting steps are strong to follow after thee; to pass within thy love's eternal rest, and onwards to confess thee undismayed; and onwards yet, till on my saviour's breast my soul is stayed; and yet beyond that rest and joy of mine, to joy which heart of man hath never known, where christ rejoiceth in his song divine-- that joy of perfect love, o lord, is thine, and thine alone." then doth he speak and say-- "beloved, thou hast praised me in the dance and weary are thy feet-- behold in shadow of the trees of god the rest is sweet, rest, rest with me." "o lord, too great this love of thine, thine only can it be; for, lo! my love, lord, is not mine, it comes from thee." the journey through the wilderness. thus much do we know of the journey of this redeemed soul from self-occupation and self-discipline, whilst christ listened for her voice in vain, to the knowledge of the peace and joy that is in him. and we know something also of her earthly path, told us in a spiritual song, which she calls "how fair is the bridegroom, and how the bride followeth him." "behold, my bride, how fair my mouth, mine eyes; my heart is glowing fire, my hand is grace; and see how swift my foot, and follow me. for thou with me shalt scorned and martyred be, betrayed by envy, tempted in the wilds, and seized by hate, and bound by calumny, and they shall bind thine eyes lest thou shouldst see, by hiding mine eternal truth from thee. and they shall scourge thee with the worlds despite, and shrive thee with the ban of doom and dread, for penance thy dishonoured head shall smite, by mockery thou to herod shalt be led, by misery left forlorn-- and scourged by want, and by temptation crowned, and spit upon by scorn. the loathing of thy sin thy cross shall be; thy crucifixion, crossing of thy will; the nails, obedience that shall fasten thee; and love shall wound, and steadfastness shall slay, yet thou shalt love me still. the spear shall pierce thine heart, and mine shall be the life that lives and moves henceforth in thee. then as a conqueror loosened from the cross, laid in the grave of nothingness and loss, thou shalt awaken, and be borne above upon the breath of mine almighty love." thus the revelation of the love of god, which was to the soul the opening of heaven, the entrance into the father's house where was the feast of joy, the music, and the dancing, was to lead to a walk of faithfulness here below, which would bring upon the witness of god persecution and shame and reproach. was it, therefore, that when the lord had spoken to the pharisees of the love which welcomes the publican and the sinner, of the joy and gladness into which the returning son was brought, he spoke to the disciples the solemn warning lest the riches, not only temporal, but spiritual, entrusted to them as stewards should be wasted by them? is it not true that the revelation to the soul of that which is in the father's house, the joy and the love, and the unspeakable riches of christ, needs nothing less than divine grace and power to keep us from misusing the treasure entrusted to us, and making it an occasion for feeding and exalting the fleshly mind? therefore paul needed the thorn in the flesh, not to fit him for entering the third heaven, but after he had been there; so that the riches bestowed on him were not made an occasion for self-glorification, but he became a good steward of the manifold grace of god. it is to be carefully remarked in the writings of matilda, that she does not speak of this entrance into the gladness of heaven as an attainment. on the contrary, as we have seen, she speaks of the result of her repentance, of her conflict with the world, the flesh, and the devil, as being but weariness and thirst. it is only when christ comes into the parable that the heavenly experience begins. "for," she says, "before the time when jesus christ opened heaven with the key of his cross, there was no man so holy that he could, or that he might, ascend up into the eternal heavens--not with labour or with the soaring of the imagination, not with longing or the stretching forth of imploring arms, not with the utmost yearning of his love. for adam had fastened the bolt so firmly, that no man could open it. shouldst thou, then, o eternal father, keep fast the door of heaven with the bolt of thy justice, so that sinners must remain without, i turn me to jesus, thy beloved son, who holds in his hands the key of thine almighty power. "that key was forged in the land of the jews, (and truly the jews now would lock thy people out of heaven and keep them in bondage), but when by jesus the key was turned, the outcast sinner could enter into thy love. but it is also the love of the father who speaketh, and saith, 'my soul endureth not that any sinner should be turned away who cometh to me; therefore do i follow after many a soul for long, long years, till i lay hold upon him, and hold him fast.'" by the jews who would lock the people of god out of heaven matilda, it need not be said, had in her mind the jews of christendom, the professing church being constantly called by her jerusalem, and the formalist priests "those who follow the law of the jews." but the name of jerusalem was also employed by her as a name of honour, applied to the true church of god, the true bride of christ. for within the outward profession of christianity, matilda recognised the living body of christ. it is true that the two should have been one and the same, as the soul and the visible body are one person. but it was no longer so, and matilda therefore saw the professing church, christendom, divided into two parts, the living and the dead, the true and the false, the children of god and the children of this world. to her the true and living church was yet glorious and undivided, for it was united in one by the spirit of god. whether amongst professing catholics or amongst the "friends of god" who stood apart from rome these living stones were found, there was yet but the one building, the dwelling-place of god. if matilda had no thoughts respecting the "reunion of christendom," she had a firm belief in the unity of the church of god. it could not be reunited, for it was the body of christ. the prayer of the lord "that they all may be one," had been heard. "i know," he said, "that thou hearest me always." through the ages when christendom had been divided into countless sects, the true members of christ, whether they knew it or not, had been, and must be, one. it needed but to believe it, and to own it. but in order to recognise it as true, it was necessary that the eyes should be opened to see that the same profession of faith, or all varying professions of christian faith, included the two classes, the living and the dead; the living, united together as the living members of the body; the dead, but separate particles of mouldering dust. a "reunion of christendom," which would have as its object to form into one mass the living and the dead, can be but a denial of the great truth that "there _is_ one body and one spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling." matilda, in a parable, describes the true church of god as a beautiful maiden standing upon a mighty stone, which was as a mountain of spices, and the name of which was christ, her feet adorned with a jasper stone, which is christian faith; and in her hand a cup, of which she drank alone "in unspeakable blessedness," for the angels in heaven might not drink of it--it was "the blood of the eternal son." matilda knew, and rejoiced to know, that she was one with all the saints of all the ages, and she tells us her experience of it also. as mary, she said, she knew how the sword had pierced through her own soul also, because so many who seem "religious" are lukewarm and undecided for christ. as john, "i know what it is to rest in the unspeakable love upon the bosom of jesus christ." and as paul, "yes, paul, i was caught up with thee, and i saw so marvellous a place, that thenceforth i could but long ever to be there. and i drank of the wine of which the heavenly father is the cup-bearer, and christ is the cup, and the holy ghost the pure, clear wine, and love is the plenishing. and love invited me and welcomed me to drink thereof, so that now i am well content to drink gall and vinegar here below." and further, "stephen, i kneel beside thee before the jews who hated thee, amongst the sharp stones, which fall upon me, great ones and small ones, all my days. those who seem to be good people stone me in the back, and run away, for they would not have me know it was they who did it. god, however, saw it." "mary magdalene, i live with thee in the wilderness, for all is sorrow to me except my god." practice. of matilda's daily life we know but little, having scarcely any incidents recorded in her book. apparently, from various passages, we can learn that, like most béguines, her time was chiefly occupied in tending the sick and poor. she considered it needful to visit the sick in the béguinage daily, "to comfort them with the lovely words of god, and to refresh them also in a gentle way with earthly things, for god is very rich. it is needful also to bestow much care on the cleanliness of the sick-room, and it is a good thing to be merry and to laugh with them, but in a godly manner. and it is well to serve them with ready hands, and to ask them kindly to tell what are their pains and complaints, and to show them that they have a friend who will stand by them and care for them." household matters, too, were a part of matilda's experience. "it is right to go every day into the kitchen, and to see that the needful provisions are good, so that our stinginess, or the cook's laziness, may not rob the lord of the bodily strength of his servants. a hungry mouth will sing the lord's praises ill, and a hungry man is little fit for study, and this is so much taken from the lord's service." matilda also wrote letters, containing much wholesome advice. from a letter to a prior is the following:-- "we should listen to any complaints with sympathy, and be very faithful in giving counsel. if the brethren desire to build magnificently, you should hinder this, and say, 'ah, dearest brethren, let us rather build for god a beautiful palace in our souls, with the stones of holy scripture and holy graces.' "the first stone of such a palace, in which the eternal god may dwell, and where his beloved may dwell with him, is deep humility. we do not desire to build in pride and vanity, as the lords and ladies of this world; but we do need to build as heavenly princes upon earth, knowing that at the last day we shall sit on thrones with the despised jesus. "and make sure that during the day or the night you find a full spare hour to converse with our dear lord and god, praying to him without let or hindrance. for the heavenly gift which god loves to give to his elect, his beloved children, is of a fine and noble sort, and it flows freely to the soul that draws near to him, and to whom he bends down in his infinite love. "for his heart was so smitten with love to us that he gave up all things, and emptied himself for more than thirty years, that he might at last embrace his beloved, and give free course to his love. "will you not think of this? could you be so uncourteous to him, as to refuse him one hour a day in return for these thirty years? "when i, the lowest of the least, go to my prayers, i adorn myself for this hour. i put on as my only ornament my unworthiness, i array myself in the miry slough that i am, and i am shod with the precious time that i have lost day by day, and i am girded with the pain which i have caused to others. and i am wrapped in the cloak of my sinfulness, of which i am full; and i put on my head the crown of my secret faults, wherewith i have trespassed against the lord. then i take the glass of the truth and look in it to see myself therein, and alas! i see but sorrow and shame. i would rather put on this dress than any rich attire, although it were better to be clothed in hell, and crowned with devils, than to be sinful as i am. "and in this dress do i go to seek jesus, my blessed lord, and i find him in no other way so truly as in my sin. "therefore with joy do i go to him, with love and fear, and the uncleanness of my sin vanishes before his holy eyes, and he looks on me with such love, that my heart overflows with love to him. and all the guilt and grief are gone, and he teaches me his will, and makes me to taste his sweetness, and he overwhelms me with his tender love. "prayer has a marvellous power, it makes the bitter heart sweet, and the sorrowful heart glad, and the poor rich, and the foolish wise, and the fearful bold, and the sick strong, and the blind to see, and the cold to burn. it draws the great god down into the small heart, and lifts the hungry soul up to god, the living fountain. it brings together the loving god and the loving soul in a blessed meeting-place, and they speak together of love." in another letter she says, "that which hinders spiritual people more, perhaps, than anything, is the little importance attached to small sins. i tell you in truth, when i neglect a pleasant laugh that would have hurt nobody, or when i allow bitterness in my heart even without showing it in word or action, or when i feel a little impatience in suffering pain, my soul becomes so dark, and my mind so dull, and my heart so cold, that i have to go and confess my sin with shame and tears. i feel like a dog who has been beaten till i breathe again freely in the love and mercy of god, and find myself again in the sweet garden of paradise, out of which my sin had driven me." gleanings from matilda's book. the seven books which compose "the flowing forth of the light of the godhead" being composed of detached papers put together by brother henry, have, as has been remarked, no special connection one with another. it may be as well to give detached poems from the first five books, and thoughts in prose, or rather not in rhyme, asking indulgence for the imperfect rendering of either into modern english. the titles given are from the original. how god is to be praised for eight things. o dew, abundant from the depths of heaven; o sweet white flower, pure as mountain snow; o precious fruit of that celestial flower; o ransom from the everlasting woe; the holy sacrifice for sins of men; the gift that the eternal father gave; o dew of life, by thee i live again, by thee who camest down to seek and save. i see thee small, in low and humble guise; and me thou seest, great in shame and sin: lord, i would be thy daily sacrifice, though i am worthless, vile, and foul within. yet into that mean cup thy grace will pour the love that overflows for evermore. how god draweth the soul to himself. eagle of the highest heaven, gentle lamb, infolding fire, kindle, glow in me. barren, thirsty, do i seek thee, through the ages of desire, one day as a thousand winters, waiting, lord, for thee. bitterer to the soul that loveth far from her beloved to dwell, than the pit of doom to sinners-- an abyss there is profounder than the depths of hell. . . . . . . . the nightingale she can but sing, for she is made of love's delight, of love bereft, what else were left than death and night? then spake the spirit to the soul-- "arise, o queen, and sing! behold, he comes, the beloved one, behold the bridegroom king!" then spake the soul in joyful fear-- "o blessed herald, so might it be! for i am faithless, guilty, vile, in him alone is there rest for me. for me is no home beneath the skies, no summer land, and no resting-place, but the marvellous pity of his eyes, and the sweetness of his face; and when all around the lights are dim, the heart that sorroweth turns to him." the herald said-- "thou must watch and wait, and water the earth, and strew the flowers." but the soul made answer-- "the desolate must watch in prayer, and must wait in shame, in tears must water, and long for the day; but if as i strew the flowers he came, from myself and my tears i should pass away. for he strikes the chords of the heavenly lyre, and sorrow and sadness turn and flee, and the earthly love, and the earth's desire, in that music sweet depart from me." the soul's desire sent forth to seek the beloved one. thus spake the soul to her desire-- "speed forth afar and see where may my belovèd be, and say to him, 'his love i crave.'" then fled the swift desire afar, and rose beyond sun, moon, and star, and called before the heavenly door, "lord, open unto me!" then spake the host-- "what need hast thou, that thou dost thus implore?" "o lord, i come with the prayer of one who weepeth upon the earth alone-- the fish on the sand must pine." "go back! no door is unbarred to thee till thou bring the sorrowful soul to me, for the need is _mine_." then sped the messenger swiftly home, and said-- "the master calleth come! arise and shine!" then she as on summer winds doth rise in joyful flight through the starry skies, and there meet her angels twain; for god hath sent two angels fleet, the well-belovèd soul to meet. and they ask-- "what seekest thou thus afar? with the dark earth art thou clad." the soul said-- "greet me better than so, for to him who loveth me well i go, and i am no more sad. lo! dimmed as ye near the earth below, is the sweet light of your eyes; and with light of god do i shine and glow as aloft i rise." then with an angel on either hand, the soul sped through the skies, and when she came to the angel land, to the country of paradise, she was a stranger guest no more, for to her was opened the heavenly door, she saw the beloved face. forth flowed her heart in weeping blest, she said, "my lord, i have found my rest in the glory of thy grace. i needs must praise thee and adore, for evermore, for evermore. whence came i here? i am lost in thee; i can think no more of the earth below, nor of the sorrow and weeping there. i had thought to tell thee my grief and woe, but, lord, i have seen thee, and nought i know, but that thou art fair." the complaint of the loving soul, and the answer of god. "o lord, too long thou dost guard and spare this dungeon-house of clay, where i drink the water of sorrow and care, and the ashes of emptiness are my fare, from day to day." "where is thy patience, o my queen? let thy sorrow be sore as it may, i heal it as if it never had been, when i speak, it has passed away. my riches of glory for ever are thine, thy might has prevailed over me, for i love thee for ever with love divine; if thou hast the token, the gold is mine, and i weigh full measure to thee. for all things renounced, and for all things wrought, all sorrow, and all endeavour, i give thee beyond all desire or thought, for i give thee myself for ever." how god comes into the soul. he comes to me in silent hours, as morning dew to summer flowers. how the soul receiveth god, and how god receiveth the soul. o sweet enfolding in the arms divine, o blessed vision, welcome passing sweet, i bow beneath the joy that i am thine, a weight of gladness cast i at thy feet. o heights of god! within thy clefts i hide, the home where dove and nightingale abide. "all hail, my dove! on earth below thou hast roamed afar and long, until should grow the strong swift wings, that should bear thee aloft from thy wanderings to the rest and song." the soul's fivefold praise of god. o blessed god, who pourest forth thy store; o god, whose love flows on for evermore; o god, whose longing burns eternally; o god, in whom i dwell, whose dwelling is in me; o god, whose rest is in my love-- in thee alone i live and move. of the soul's complaint, of the garden, and of the new song. "when mine eyes are dim with weeping, and my tongue with grief is dumb; and it is as if thou wert sleeping when my heart calleth, 'come;' when i hunger with bitter hunger, o lord, for thee. where art thou, then, belovèd? speak, speak to me." "i am where i was in the ancient days, i in myself must be; in all things i am, and in every place, for there is no change in me. where the sun is my godhead, throned above,[ ] for thee, o mine own, i wait; i wait for thee in the garden of love, till thou comest irradiate with the light that shines from my face divine, and i pluck the flowers for thee; they are thine, belovèd, for they are mine, and thou art one with me. in the tender grass by the waters still, i have made thy resting-place; thy rest shall be sweet in my holy will, and sure in my changeless grace. and i bend for thee the holy tree, where blossoms the mystic rod; the highest of all the trees that be in the paradise of god. and thou of that tree of life shalt eat, of the life that is in me; thou shalt feed on the fruit that is good for meat, and passing fair to see. there overshadowed by mighty wings of the holy spirit's peace, beyond the sorrow of earthly things, the toil and the tears shall cease. and there beneath the eternal tree, i will teach thy lips to sing the sweet new song that no man knows in the land of his banishing. they follow the lamb where'er he goes, to whom it is revealed; the pure and the undefiled are those, the ransomed and the sealed. thou shalt learn the speech and the music rare, and thou shalt sing as they, not only there in my garden fair, but here, belovèd, to-day." "o lord, a faint and a feeble voice is mine in this house of clay, but thy love hath made my lips rejoice, and i can sing and say, 'i am pure, o lord, for thou art pure, thy love and mine are one; and my robe is white, for thine is white, and brighter than the sun. thy mouth and mine can know no moan, no note of man's sad mirth, but the everlasting joy alone, unknown to songs of earth; and for ever fed on that living tree, i will sing the song of thy love with thee.'" god's fivefold comparing of the soul. rose, most fair amidst the briars; harmless dove, so pure and white; honey-bee that never tires; sun of everlasting light; full fair moon in cloudless skies-- joy and gladness to mine eyes. god's sixfold delight in the soul. o soul, thou art the pillow for my head, my still sweet rest, my longing deep and strong, my godhead's joy, my manhood's solace sweet, my cooling fountain in love's furnace heat, my music, and my song. knowledge and enjoyment. to love, and not to know, is through a dark wild land to go; to know, and not possess, is hell's dread bitterness; possess, yet not be where thou art, hath rent my heart. the prayer for love, and the answer thereof. "o lord my saviour, love me well, and love me often and long-- often, that pure my soul may be; well, that so i be fair to see; long, and for ever, for thee apart shall be my heart." "that often i love thee needs must be, for i am love from eternity; and i love thee well, because i long for thy love with a yearning deep and strong; and i love thee long, for no end can be to my divine eternity." love unto death; love immeasurable; love eternal. i rejoice that i cannot but love him, because he first loved me; i would that measureless, changeless, my love might be; a love unto death, and for ever; for, soul, he died for thee. give thanks that for thee he delighted to leave his glory on high; for thee to be humbled, forsaken, for thee to die. wilt thou render him love for his loving? wilt thou die for him who died? and so, by thy living and dying, shall christ be magnified. and deep in the fiery stream that flows from god's high throne, in the burning tide that for ever glows of the marvellous love unknown; for ever, o soul, thou shalt burn and glow, and thou shalt sing and say, "i need no call at his feet to fall, for i cannot turn away. i am the captive led along with the joy of his triumphal song; in the depths of love do i live and move, i joy to live or to die; for i am borne on the tide of love to all eternity: the foolishness of the fool is this, the sorrow sweeter than joy to miss." god asks the soul what she brings, and she answereth. "what dost thou bring me, o my queen? love maketh thy steps to fly." "lord, to thee my jewel i bring, greater than mountains high; broader than all the earth's broad lands, heavier than the ocean sands, and higher it is than the sky: deeper it is than the depths of the sea, and fairer than the sun, unreckoned, as if the stars could be all gathered into one." "o thou, my godhead's image fair, thou eve, from adam framed, my flesh, my bone, my life to share, my spirit's diadem to wear, how is thy jewel named?" "lord, it is called my heart's desire, from the world's enchantments won; i have borne it afar through flood and fire, and will yield it up to none; but the burden i can bear no more-- where shall i lay it up in store?" "there is no treasure-house but this, my heart divine, my manhood's breast; there shall my spirit's sacred kiss fill thee with rest." how the soul praises god for seven things, and god praiseth the soul who loves him. o jesus lord, most fair, most passing sweet, in darkest hours revealed in love to me, in those dark hours i fall before thy feet, i sing to thee. i join the song of love, and i adore with those who worship thee for evermore. thou art the sun of every eye, the gladness everywhere, the voice that speaks eternally, the strength to do and bear, the sacred lore of wisdom's store, the life of life to all, the order mystic, marvellous in all things great and small. then doth god praise the soul, and the words of his praise sound sweetly, thus-- thou art light to mine eyes, and a harp to mine ears, and the voice of my words, and my wisdom's crown, the love that cheers mine eternal years, my music, and my renown. wherever thy pilgrim steps may be, thou longest, belovèd, thou longest for me. the soul saith-- thy love hast thou told from the days of old, thou hast written my name in thy book divine; engraved on thy hands and thy feet it stands, and on thy side as a sign. o glorious man in the garden of god, thy sacred manhood is mine. i kneel on the golden floor of heaven with my box of ointment sweet, grant unto me, thy much forgiven, to kiss and anoint thy feet. where wilt thou find that ointment rare, o my belovèd one? thou brakest my heart and didst find it there, rest sweetly there alone. there is no embalming so sweet to me, as to dwell, my well-beloved, in thee. the soul saith-- lord, take me home to thy palace fair, so will i ever anoint thee there. "i will. but my plighted troth saith, 'wait;' and my love saith, 'work to-day;' my meekness saith, 'be of low estate;' and my longing, 'watch and pray;' my shame and sorrow say, 'bear my cross;' my song saith, 'win the crown;' my guerdon saith, 'all else is loss;' my patience saith, 'be still,' till thou shalt lay the burden down, then, when i will. then, belovèd, the crown and palm, and then the music and the psalm; and the cup of joy my hand shall fill till it overflow; and with singing i strike the harp of gold i have tuned below, the harp i tune in desolate years of sorrow and tears, till a music sweet the chords repeat, which all the heavens shall fill; for the holy courts of god made meet, then, when i will." a fivefold song of the soul to god, and how god is a robe of the soul, and the soul a robe of god. thou hast shone within this soul of mine, as the sun on a shrine of gold; when i rest my heart, o lord, on thine, my bliss is manifold. my soul is the gem on thy diadem, and my marriage robe thou art; if aught could sever my heart from thine, the sorrow beyond all sorrows were mine, alone and apart. could i not find thy love below, then would my soul as a pilgrim go to thy holy land above; there would i love thee as i were fain, with everlasting love. now have i sung my tuneless song, but i hearken, lord, for thine; then shall a music, sweet and strong, pass into mine. "i am the light, and the lamp thou art; the river, and thou the thirsty land; to thee thy sighs have drawn my heart, and ever beneath thee is my hand. and when thou weepest, it needs must be within mine arms that encompass thee; thy heart from mine can none divide, for one are, the bridegroom and the bride: it is sweet, belovèd, for me and thee, to wait for the day that is to be." o lord, with hunger and thirst i wait, with longing before thy golden gate, till the day shall dawn, when from thy lips divine have passed the sacred words that none may hear but the soul who, loosed from the earth at last, hath laid her ear to the mouth that speaks in the still sweet morn apart and alone; then shall the secret of love be told, the mystery known. the lord giveth a tenfold honour to the soul. the mouth of the lord hath spoken, hath spoken a mighty word; my sinful heart it hath broken, yet sweeter i never heard. "thou, thou art, o soul, my deep desire, and my love's eternal bliss; thou art the rest where leaneth my breast, and my mouth's most holy kiss. thou art the treasure i sought and found, rejoicing over thee; i dwell in thee, and with thee i am crowned, and thou dost dwell in me. thou art joined to me, o mine own, for ever, and nearer thou canst not be; shall aught on earth or in heaven sever myself from me?" between god and the soul only love. 'twixt god and thee but love shall be, 'twixt earth and thee distrust and fear, 'twixt sin and thee shall be hate and war, and hope shall be 'twixt heaven and thee, till night is o'er. how god maketh the soul to be free and wise in his love. my love, my dove, thy feet are red, thy wings are strong, thy mouth is sweet, thine eyes are fair, erect thy head, beside the waters dost thou tread, thy flight is far and fleet. o lord, the blood that hath ransomed me hath dyed my feet; with thy faithfulness my wings are strong, with thy spirit my mouth is sweet. and my eyes are fair with the light of god, and safe in thy shelter i lift my head, and beside the waters of life i tread, i follow where thou hast trod; and my flight is swift, for thy love hath need of me, lord, even me. when from the earthly prison freed my soul shall be; then shall she rest through the ages blest, o lord, in thee. the road wherein the soul leadeth the senses, and where the soul is free from care. it is a wondrous and a lofty road wherein the faithful soul must tread; and by the seeing there the blind are led, the senses by the soul acquaint with god. on that high path the soul is free, she knows no care nor ill, for all god wills desireth she, and blessed is his will. how the bride casts away the solace of created things, and seeks only the comfort of god. thus speaks the bride, whose feet have trod the chamber of eternal rest, the secret treasure-house of god, where god is manifest: "created things, arise and flee, ye are but sorrow and care to me." this wide, wide world, so rich and fair, thou sure canst find thy solace there? "nay, 'neath the flowers the serpent glides, amidst the bravery envy hides." and is not heaven enough for thee? "were god not there 'twere a tomb to me." o bride, the saints in glory shine, can they not fill that heart of thine? "nay, were the lamb, their light, withdrawn, the saints in gloom would weep and mourn." can the son of god not comfort thee? "yea, christ and none besides for me! for mine is a soul of noble birth, that needeth more than heaven and earth; and the breath of god must draw me in to the heart that was riven for my sin. for the sun of the godhead pours his rays through the crystal depths of his manhood's grace; and the spirit sent by father and son hath filled my soul, and my heart hath won; and the longing and love are past and gone, for all that is less than god alone-- god only, sweet to this heart of mine-- o wondrous death that is life divine!" of love, the handmaiden of the soul, and of the soul whom love hath smitten. of old, belovèd damsel, my handmaid thou wouldst be; but thy ways are strange and wondrous, thou hast chased and captured me. thou hast wounded me right sore, thou hast smitten me amain, and i know that never more can my heart be whole again. can the hand that has wounded heal? or slay, if no balm there be? else had it been for my weal thou wert all unknown to me. "i chased thee, for so was my will; i captured thee, for my need; i bound thee, and bind thee still, for i would not have thee freed; i wounded thee sore, that for evermore thou shouldest live by my life alone: when i smote thee, mine wert thou life and limb; i drave the almighty god from his throne, of the life of his manhood despoiled i him. i brought him back in glorious might to the father in heaven's eternal light; and thou, poor worm, shouldst thou go free, as if my hand had not smitten thee?" be thou in suffering a lamb, a dove, and a bride. thou art my lamb in patience dumb, my dove in sighing for me, my bride in waiting till i shall come in the day that is to be. of the two golden chalices of sorrow and of comfort. i, slothful sinner that i am, knelt down at my hour of prayer, and it seemed to me as if god were unwilling to give me the least measure of his grace. then would i fain have wept and mourned, because of my sinful desires; for it seemed to me that they were the hindrance to my spiritual gladness. but no, said my soul, think rather of the faithfulness of god, and praise him for his goodness. glory be to god in the highest! and as i praised, there shone a great light into my soul; and in the light, god showed himself to me in great majesty, and in unspeakable glory. and it was as if he held up in his hands two golden chalices, and both were full of living wine. in the left hand was the red wine, the wine of sorrow, and in the right hand the most holy consolation. then did the lord say, "there are some who drink of this wine alone, although i pour out both in my divine love. yet the golden wine is in itself the noblest, and most noble are those who drink of both, the red wine and the golden." the working of blessed love. it were bitterer than death to me if ever i did that which is good, without god. this is the nature of the great love which is of god. she does not flow forth in tears, but burns in the great fire of heavenly glory. and thus she spreads to the farthest distances, and yet remains in herself steadfast and still. she rises up into the nearest converse with god, and remains in herself in the lowest measure. she grasps the most, and retains the least. o blessed love, who are they who know thee? they are those through whom the light of god glows and burns. they dwell not in themselves. the more they are tried, the stronger they grow. why so? because the longer they are in conflict, yet abiding in love, the more glorious is god to their souls, and the more do they see themselves to be unworthy and vile. why so? because the greater the love, the greater is holy fear; and the fuller the comfort, the stronger the dread of sin. the loving soul does not fear with terror, but she fears nobly. there are two things over which i cannot mourn enough--one is, that god is so forgotten in the world; the other, that his people are so imperfect. therefore many fall, because the godly have fallen before them. how god speaks to the soul in three places. in the first of these places does the devil also speak, which he cannot do in the other two. the first place is the mind of man, and this stands open not to god only, but to the devil and to all creatures, who enter in as they will, and hold converse with the soul through the mind. the second place in which god speaks, is in the soul itself. and into the soul none can enter but god only. when god speaks to the soul, it is without the aid of the senses. it is in a mighty, strong, and swift communication, in a speech the mind cannot comprehend, unless the mind is so humbled as to take the lowest place amongst created things. the third place where god speaks with the soul is in heaven, when god draws the soul up thither, and brings her into his secret place, where he shows her all his wonders. of false love. all, who do not in all things cleave to the truth of god, must fall with bitter loss. for love, which has not humility for her mother, and holy fear for her father, will be a barren love. matilda's faith. thus far in the five first books of matilda's writings can we trace the history of her soul before she found her last refuge in the convent of hellfde. preger's remarks are valuable as showing how matilda, in expressions which she borrowed from the common stock of the writings of the mystics, as well as in expressions of her own, might appear to have wandered into the regions of pantheism. that she herself attached a meaning to these expressions, which those who were simply mystics, and not believers in christ as their saviour, could not understand, seems, however, clear. but the expressions were open to the danger of being thus misunderstood. to those who were mystics, and nothing more, intercourse with god was a vague sentiment; and what they called the love of god, was merely a name given to their own human thoughts of god, the god of their imagination. but matilda insisted strongly upon the truth, that there is no way to god but through the lord jesus christ, the saviour of sinners. that otherwise all communication between the soul and god is cut off, "the bolt fastened by adam" holding fast the door between god and men. in speaking of some (no doubt the "brethren of the free spirit"), she mentions as the greatest sin, and as the highest degree of unbelief, that "men should think to enter into the presence of the eternal god, passing by the holy manhood of our lord jesus christ. when such people imagine themselves to have entered into communication with the being of god, they enter instead into eternal condemnation. and yet by that means they intend to become holier than others. they set at nought and deride the words of god, which are written regarding the manhood of our lord." thus to an unbelieving mystic, the term "union with god" was familiar, and meant nothing better than the dreams of a buddhist. but to matilda, though she did not, and no doubt could not, clearly define it, the truth was revealed, expressed in so few words in the fifth chapter of the epistle to the ephesians, where, with reference to christ and the church, it is written, "he that loveth his wife loveth _himself_. for no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth it and cherisheth it, even as the lord the church: for we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. for this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. this is a great mystery: but i speak concerning christ and the church." and again, in cor. xii. , "as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also _is christ_." that this truth, taught so plainly in many passages of scripture, notably by the lord himself in the one word which smote the heart of paul, "why persecutest thou _me_?" was the truth matilda believed, seems to be clear. but she was apt to use, when speaking of it, the stereotyped expression "union with god," not perceiving that this is untrue, and incapable of being symbolised, as in ephesians, by the figure of adam and eve. it is not christ as god, but as the second adam, who is there symbolised. many such incorrect expressions may, no doubt, be found now in modern protestant books.[ ] preger further remarks, "if we would describe religious life, as shown in matilda, by its distinctive features, we should remark, in the first place, that she is seeking after a consciousness, or is, in fact, conscious of being in immediate intercourse with god. whilst the majority of her contemporaries knew of no relation with god, except through culture or learning, or the medium of saints, or the ordinances of the church, and were satisfied to know no more, matilda looked upon all these things merely as helps to personal and immediate communion with god. this alone could satisfy her. "and further, she was aware that into this communion with god she could only be brought through god's free grace. and only by free grace could she retain it. it is true she speaks of human merit, and alludes to the intercession of mary, but in so doing was rather expressing the ruling thoughts of her age than her own innermost convictions. for it is only in speaking of others that she admits the merit of human works; she has another law for herself, finding, as she says, no peace in the good works of the saints, 'and as for me, unhappily i have no good works to find peace in.' "that which is the important matter with regard to matilda's faith is this--she grounds her peace not on imparted, but on imputed righteousness. 'it is a fathomless mystery,' she says, 'that god can look upon a sinner as a converted man.' "but in spite of this evangelical tendency in her writings, we cannot but receive the impression that in the heights of her communion with god she at times loses the safe path. the reason of this is, that the subordinate place which she gives to all relations between god and men by church ordinances is also given more or less to the knowledge of god by means of the written word. it does not appear to be the ring in which her new life is set; it would seem as though she endeavoured to soar above it, in order to assure herself more firmly of her state of grace by immediate communications from god to her soul. "therefore she seems in some passages to regard the written word and the divine word spoken to her as distinct, and on the same level. thus, as in mysticism generally, the safe path is lost, and the soul is cast forth upon the wide sea of subjective self-consciousness. "we feel the presentiment of this danger, and the need of a safer path, in which the security of divine teaching is ours. this can only be when the written word is the seed of divine knowledge, and the faculties of man the ground in which the seed takes root." so far preger. it may also be remarked, that whilst matilda evidently grounded her salvation and enjoyment of god upon the atoning work of christ, she does not allude to it very frequently. we must remember that amongst all the errors of mediæval catholicism, the blood-shedding of christ was still regarded as the means by which sin was expiated. it was still an article of faith, though disfigured, and often kept out of sight by all that man had added to the scriptures. matilda, therefore, regarded it as an understood necessity in christian faith, and as not demanding frequent assertion or proof. had she lived in our days it might have been otherwise. that "christ once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to god," was a truth known and believed amongst the "friends of god," catholic or waldensian. that "it is the blood that maketh atonement for the soul," that "without shedding of blood there is _no remission_," that on christ, the lamb who was slain, did "the lord lay the iniquity of us all," they knew, and rejoiced to know. however overlaid in roman catholicism by the teaching of human merit, and of the mediation and intercession of the saints, this truth was preserved through god's great mercy in the corruption of the church. it may be found yet as the anchor of the soul in the confession of faith of many an ignorant and unlearned roman catholic, who know little of the doctrines of their church, but who do know from their service-books that "christ died for our sins." the three have ever borne witness on earth, the spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three agree in one--a witness never silenced through the darkest ages of the church. it was during the last years of matilda's life that she wrote for "the children of the world" a call to christ. wilt thou, sinner, be converted? christ, the lord of glory, see by his own denied, deserted, bleeding, bound, and scourged for thee. look again, o soul, behold him on the cross uplifted high; see the precious life-blood flowing, see the tears that dim his eye. love has pierced the heart that brake, loveless sinner, for thy sake: hearken till thy heart is broken to his cry so sad and sweet; hearken to the hammer smiting nails that pierce his hands and feet. see the side whence flows the fountain of his love and life divine, riven by a hand unthankful-- lo! that hand is thine. see the crown of thorns adorning god's belovèd holy son, then fall down in bitter mourning, weep for that which _thou_ hast done. thank him that his heart was willing so to die for love to thee; thank him for the joy that maketh this world's joy but gall to be. and till thou in heaven adore him fight for him in knightly guise; joy in shame and toil and sorrow, glorious is the prize! the echo of the book. matilda had a friend, called jutta von sangershausen. a relation of hers, anno von sangershausen, was the grand-master of the teutonic order of knights. other members of the family had offered their services to the order in defence of their country from the invasions of the heathen prussians. jutta's husband had died on a pilgrimage to jerusalem. her children entered various convents. jutta then joined herself to the béguines, and was employed for a time in nursing the sick, especially those afflicted with leprosy. in the year she determined to go forth as a missionary amongst the prussians. she took up her abode in a forest near culm, where she lived as a hermitess, making known the faith of christ by word and example. matilda for a time resolved to go also as a missionary to the heathen. but she was now growing old, and worn-out by labours and persecutions. it was evident that she no longer had the needful strength. she was grieved to the heart that she could not thus make christ known, and she laid the matter before the lord. he consoled her, and showed her that as he had sent jutta to the heathen, so had he also given her his message, which should be sent far and wide in the book which she was writing. and so it proved, as her book was widely known and read for a considerable time after her death. even now it may be that the words so lately brought to light in the convent of einsiedeln may lead some weary souls to christ. and still the reflection of the light which shone into the heart of matilda shines forth more faintly in the poem known and read through so many ages, and in so many lands--the great poem of dante. it is now more than seventy years ago that a young man travelling in italy employed himself at venice in reading the _divine commedia_, for the sake of learning italian. he had cared till then for the things of this world only, but he left venice with the first beginning of a love which was to shape his long life, and make him the means of life to many. it was from the poem of dante, he said, that he had first learnt to know christ as his saviour. he may be known to many as the writer of the hymn so often sung-- "a pilgrim through this lonely world the blessed saviour passed; a mourner all his life was he, a dying lamb at last"-- a distant echo of matilda's voice sounding in many places still. what was it that dante learnt, or believed that he learnt, from the lady whose joyful singing sounded to him across the river of forgetfulness, whose eyes shone with a light greater than that of earthly love? she explained to him her joy by the words of that psalm, the ninety-second, which forms a key-note to the poems of the béguine matilda, of her to whom the lord had taught "the song and the music of heaven," whom he had made glad through _his_ work, who triumphed in the work of his hands. it was in the work "wrought in the land of the jews," the great work that "loosed the bolt with which adam had barred the heavenly door," that matilda the béguine rejoiced, showing forth the lord's lovingkindness in the morning, and his faithfulness every night--the work which "the brutish man knoweth not, neither doth the fool understand it," for "the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness," "the foolishness of god that is wiser than men." in the work which brought her into the "sweet garden of paradise," where she was no more a stranger, which had won for her the right to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of god, and to pluck the flowers, which were hers, because they were christ's. it may truly be said that if there is anything distinctive in the writing of matilda the béguine, it is that she wrote from her own experience of the gladness of the heavenly place, revealed to her whilst yet in the body on the earth. she had learnt that there is an "earthly paradise," earthly not because it is of the earth, but because it is a foretaste and earnest of the heavenly, given to those who are still pilgrims upon the earth. to reach it the river had to be crossed, wherein the old things pass away, and all things become new; where the things that are behind are forgotten, and the things that are before become the possession, by faith, of the redeemed soul. her sins were amongst the forgotten things, for god remembered them no more, and the sorrow of the earth was forgotten, swallowed up in the tide of eternal joy, and "the longing and love were past and gone, for all that is less than god alone." thus, in the poem of dante, does matelda draw him through the water of the river at the moment when the remembrance of his sin had stung him at the heart, so that he fell overpowered and helpless and ashamed. it needed that the sin should be left behind amongst the former things that had passed away. those who have known the redemption that is in christ jesus, the fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness, will gladly own that this is the true christian experience of the saints of god--the land of canaan beyond the river, reached and entered before the warfare and the trial of faith are over; the father's house become a familiar place before the murmuring of the self-righteous is for ever silenced. did dante know it as the béguine knew it? was it in his case but a vague sense of a place of joy and beauty which the soul might find on this side of heaven? did he know that the river was a river of death--the death which is the death of deaths, "in the land of the jews" so long ago? we cannot know. it needs the simple faith of those who have become fools that they may be wise. then does the garden of the lord become a blessed reality, no dreamland, but an eternal inheritance. the béguine had seen by faith her name engraved on the pierced hands and feet of christ. should she not rejoice and sing? should she not praise him that he was wounded for her transgressions, that he was bruised for her iniquities, that the chastisement of her peace was upon him, that by his stripes she was healed? and thus she knew that her "robe was white, for christ's was white, and brighter than the sun." how far this was the experience of dante, his poem does not tell us. but he knew that there was an earthly paradise, and it seems all but certain that in matilda's book he had found one who was rejoicing there with unspeakable joy. the remarks of preger in his lecture on dante's matelda confirm the thought that this is the true key to his description of the beautiful lady, whose appearance formed the great era in his spiritual life. the song taken from the words of the fifty-first psalm, "wash me and i shall be whiter than snow," the introduction into the knowledge of heavenly things, are but an echo of the songs of the béguine. but the heavenly things of dante are far more clouded with the evil teaching of his age than the heavenly experiences of matilda of magdeburg. the glory of the catholic church, rather than the glory of christ, is the light that lightens his heavenly paradise. it was the lamb who was the light of matilda's heaven. in the bewildering medley of catholic and heathen mythologies in dante's poem, it is only here and there that a gleam of the true light can make its way. but matilda the béguine rose above the clouds and mists of man's imagination, and she saw jesus. preger refers us to the ordinary explanation of matelda and beatrice; namely, that like leah and rachel in mediæval theology, they represent the life of action and the life of contemplation. this theory as regards matelda was, as preger observes, founded on the idea that the countess matilda of tuscany was the matelda of dante. that the warlike countess was a fair specimen of activity, we cannot doubt; but that it had any resemblance to christian activity, is more than doubtful. probably the identity of name was the only foundation of this idea. "it is true," writes preger, "that dante saw these two women prefigured in a dream as leah and rachel, and that leah said, referring to her sister, 'her seeing, and me doing, satisfies.' but that therefore doing and seeing are the only characteristics of these women is a conclusion to which dante did not advance, nor need we do so. they _both_ looked in the mirror, but leah first crowned herself with flowers; and it was after hearing the call, 'blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see god,' that this dream presented itself to dante." matelda, who corresponds to leah in the dream, conducts dante into the earthly paradise, and the place accords with the guide. she was not yet in heaven, the working-day was not yet over, but matelda was rejoicing, not in _her_ work, but in _the work of god_. she was glad that the flowers of his garden were her crown of beauty. so wrote matilda the béguine-- "i pluck the flowers for thee; they are thine, beloved, for they are mine, and thou art one with me." it was a place in which the flowers of the earth had never grown, and it needed the washing which makes whiter than snow to fit the soul for that garden of god upon the earth. therefore the song which came to dante across the river was the ancient song of the soul that is washed from sin: "blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, whose sins are covered." virgil never crossed the river. however clouded may have been the faith of mediæval christendom, the need of christ was felt. the distinction between a christian and a heathen was acknowledged as one which told upon the eternal destiny of men. by means of christ the saviour could the christian man pass on, washed and sanctified, into the land beyond the river. a "land beyond," was that paradise to men of the world of sense and of earthly knowledge, but without the knowledge of god, and of jesus christ, whom he has sent. and singing the song of the forgiven, whilst she made garlands of the flowers, matelda appeared to dante, separated from him at first by the river of forgetfulness. she drew near to him as one who dances. she spoke to him of the nature of the mysterious wind that moved the branches of the trees which grew in the land "given as the earnest of eternal peace"--the earnest whilst here on earth of heavenly things, of the flowers that grew from no earthly seed, and of the river that flows from no earthly source, and of the other river which divides the earthly paradise from the heavenly, as the river lethe divided it from all that was before. and we see that matelda is to dante the medium of supernatural revelations, just as afterwards, beatrice. matelda, then, in the earthly paradise appears as the representative of the insight into the heavenly joy whilst still on earth, beatrice as the beholding of it when the earthly life is past. and this knowledge of the heavenly things was to be brought back by him who had seen them whilst still in the body, as the palm-leaves upon the staff of the pilgrim who had been within the boundary of the holy land. and it was matelda who drew dante through the river into that land whilst still upon the earth--the land where he should hear the singing, and know the sweetness, and learn more in the paradise here of the paradise hereafter. it was the earnest of the inheritance which was given to him through matelda. and truly this is the message and mission of the béguine, not as matelda's, to dante only, but to us also, who can receive the message without the bewildering counter teaching of the corrupted church. it is true the message, more clearly given, is in the bible we have known so long; and it was through the blessed teaching of that bible that matilda the béguine learnt it. but it is well for us not only to read the glorious promises of god, but to meet with those to whom they have been fulfilled, the sharers of the like precious faith with us, who now believe in jesus. now, from the holy women of hellfde have the clouds passed away which at times hid from them the brightness of the glory, but the words of love spoken to their hearts by the mouth of their beloved remain to them as an everlasting possession. and are not the same words still spoken day by day to those who have ears to hear? and in the midst of this sorrowful world, is there not still a blessed company who have entered the same paradise, and learnt the same songs, taught by the lips of christ? it will not render us less fit for the common earthly life, that we have been there, in the garden where the lord god walks, and his own are not afraid. in truth, it is only those who have been there who have the healing leaves for the sick and the suffering ones around them. it is only those who see the son, and believe on him, who are thus brought back to the garden of the lord, to feed upon the fruit of the tree of life. and these are they who are again sent forth as his messengers into the world of man's exile. "as my father hath sent me into the world, even so have i also sent them into the world." thus the lord spake of all who believe on his name. the message sent long ago by matilda the béguine has been heard again after the silence of ages, and it is once more a call to the sinful, the sorrowful, and the fearful, who have been living in ignorance of the marvellous love which is unchanged, and which answers to the great need of our age, as to that of the thirteenth century. may god the holy ghost open the hearts of many to hear and to rejoice. matilda's last years. matilda was fifty-three years old when, in the year , she took refuge in the convent of hellfde. gertrude von hackeborn was not one who would refuse admission to a persecuted "friend of god." gertrude had now been abbess fourteen years, and was in the prime of her life and activity. mechthild von hackeborn, "the maiden so marvellously lovable," as they said in the convent, was then twenty-five. the little gertrude, who was to be the brightest star amongst the sisters of hellfde, was only nine. but during the twelve remaining years of the life of matilda of magdeburg there was time enough for some good seed to be sown in the heart of gertrude, which should one day spring up and bear much fruit. soon after matilda's entrance into the convent she had a severe and painful illness. but she was tended with loving care, and found amongst her sisters of hellfde a happy and peaceful home. she in her turn was regarded by them as an honoured teacher, and her influence made itself quickly felt. it was at hellfde that she wrote the two remaining books, "rich," says preger, "in light and instruction." when she had finished the sixth book she thought that her task was done. she therefore concluded it with a word of farewell--"this book was begun in love, it shall also end in love; for there is nought so wise, nor so holy, nor so beautiful, nor so strong, nor so perfect as love." but afterwards matilda felt herself led to write "more of that which god had shown her," although she had prayed that she might now lay down her pen and cease from her labours.[ ] in the last years of her life she was obliged to write by dictation, her eyes and hands having failed her. the following extracts from the last two books will show an advance in the knowledge of him she loved, and for whom she laboured to the last. the labour of the lord. the lord showed me in a parable that which he has ever done, and will ever do, to fulfil to me the meaning thereof. i saw a poor man rise up from the ground where he was sitting. he was dressed like a workman, in common linen clothing, and he had a crowbar in his hand, which he thrust under a heavy burden that was as large as the earth. i said to him, "good man, what is it you are lifting?" "i am going to lift and carry your sorrows," said he. "try it thyself," he said; "with all thy might, lift and carry." then did i answer him, for i knew him, "lord, i am so poor, i have no strength." and he answered me, "so did i teach my disciples. i said, 'blessed are the poor in spirit.'" and my soul spake to him, and i said, "o lord, it is thyself. turn thou thy face to me that i may know thee." and he answered, "learn to know me inwardly." i said, "o lord, if i saw thee amongst thousands, i could not but know thee." and then i said further, "this burden is too heavy for me." and he answered me, "i will lay it so close to myself, that thou mayest easily bear it. follow me, and see how i stood before my father on the cross, sustaining all." then did i ask him to bless me; and he said, "i always bless thee. thy sorrow shall turn to a good blessing for thee." and i said no more but this, "o lord, come thou thus to the help of all who love to suffer for thee." the prayer of the longing heart. there was one who for a long while, amidst the mercies of god, and also many sorrows, longed continually that god would release the soul and take her to himself. and the lord said to her, "wait." then did the suffering one answer, "lord, i cannot cease from longing. oh, how gladly would i be with thee!" then said the lord-- "before the worlds, o soul, i longed for thee; and still i long, and thou dost long for me; and when two longings meet, for ever stilled, the cup of love is filled." prayers. give me, o lord, and take from me all that thou willest, and leave me but the desire to pass away to thee in thy love, and to thy love. o well is me, and i thank thee, king of heaven and son of god, that whilst i was in the world thou didst choose me, and call me out of the world. for this will i thank thee eternally. thy holy sorrow, all that thou hast suffered for me, is mine. therefore all that i suffer i offer up to thee, though how little is my suffering like to thine! keep me always in thy love, that for ever i may praise thee, jesus, my most beloved; and i pray thee to loosen the cords, and let me be for ever with thee. o thou beloved lord jesus christ, thou eternal god, one with the eternal father, think upon me. i thank thee, lord, for the grace of thine atonement, wherewith thou hast touched the depths of my heart, and pierced me through with the power of thy love. but when thou dost touch my heart with thine awful, thy holy tenderness, which flows through soul and body, i fear lest i, who am so unworthy of thee, should be overwhelmed with the blessedness of thy love. therefore i turn at times to pray for others more than for myself, and withdraw myself, as it were, from the fulness of the joy, through love to thee and christian faithfulness. for i fear the rising up within my heart of the pride which cast down the most glorious of the angels of heaven, and the voice of the serpent who deceived eve with the promise of vainglory. i pray, o my god, that in continual love i may receive and enjoy the gifts thou givest. i ask for the fulness of thy love, that shame and pain and bitterness may be sweet to me, and that i may desire thy will and not mine, and that the fire of my love may burn in me to all eternity. of the good works of men, how they shine by the work of the lord. how it is that the works of godly men shall shine and glow in the glory of heaven, understand from these words. wherein we were innocent of aught, in this our innocence, the pure holiness of god shines and glows. in so far that we laboured in good works, the holy working of god shines forth. in so far as we clave to god with trustful hearts, the tenderness and faithfulness of god shines brightly. in so far as we receive our sorrows thankfully, do the sufferings of christ shine forth. in so far as we wrought diligently in holy graces, does the holy grace of god shine and glow in manifold brightness to all eternity. and as here we loved, and as here we shed forth the light of a holy life, in this does the love of god burn and shine, more and more unto the perfect eternal day. for all that shone forth from us was the light of the eternal godhead. the good works we did were given to us through the holy manhood of the son of god, and we wrought them by the power of the holy ghost. thus all our works, our love, our sufferings, flow back thither whence they came, from the three in one, to his eternal praise. the soul that loveth speaketh to her lord. if the world were mine and all its store, and were it of crystal gold; could i reign on its throne for evermore, from the ancient days of old, an empress noble and fair as day, o gladly might it be, that i might cast it all away, christ, only christ for me. for christ my lord my spirit longs, for christ, my saviour dear; the joy and sweetness of my songs, the whilst i wander here. o lord, my spirit fain would flee from the lonely wilderness to thee. seven things known to the longing of love. i bring unto thy grace a sevenfold praise, thy wondrous love i bless-- i praise, remembering my sinful days, my worthlessness. i praise that i am waiting, lord, for thee, when, all my wanderings past, thyself wilt bear me, and wilt welcome me to home at last. i praise thee that for thee i long and pine, for thee i ever yearn; i praise thee that such fitful love as mine thou dost not spurn; i praise thee for the hour when first i saw the glory of thy face, here dimly, but in fulness evermore, in that high place; i praise thee for a mystery unnamed, unuttered here below, unspeakable in words the lips have framed, yet passing sweet to know. it is the still, the everlasting tide, the stream of love divine, that from the heart of god for evermore flows into mine. to that deep joy that bindeth heart to heart in one eternal love, a still small stream that flows unseen below, an endless sea above, to that high love, that fathomless delight, no thought of man may reach; and yet behind it is a sevenfold bliss, most holy of god's holy mysteries, untold in speech. faith only hath beheld that secret place, faith only knows how great, how high, how fair the temple where the lord unveils his face to his belovèd there. o how unfading is the pure delight, how full the joy of that exhaustless tide which flows for ever in its glorious might, so still, so wide; and deep we drink with sweet, eternal thirst, with lips for ever eager as at first, yet ever satisfied. of a sin that is worse than all other sins. i have heard men speak of a sin, and i thank god that i have not known it, for it seems to me, and it is, more sinful than all other sins, for it is the height of unbelief. i grieve over it with body and soul, and with all my five senses, from the depth of my heart, and i thank the living son of god that into my heart it never came. this sin did not have its source in christian people, but the vile enemy of god has by means of it deceived the simple. for, led by him, they would fain be so holy as to enter into the depths of the eternal godhead, and to sound the secret abyss of the eternal sacred manhood of the lord. if thus they became blinded with pride, they bring themselves under the eternal curse. they would attain to a holiness which is reached by mocking at the written word of god, which speaks to us of the manhood of our lord. thou poorest of the poor! didst thou indeed know and confess truly the eternal god, then wouldst thou also confess of necessity the eternal manhood that dwelleth in the godhead, and thou wouldst of necessity confess the holy ghost, who enlightens the heart of the christian, who is the source of all his blessedness and joy, and who teaches the mind of man far better than all other teachers, and leads us to confess in humility that which he has taught us to know of the perfection of god. how love was seen with her handmaidens--a parable. in the night i spoke thus to our lord, "lord, i live in a land that is called misery; it is this evil world, for all that is in it cannot comfort me, nor give me joy unmixed with sorrow. in this land i have a house, which is called painful. it is the house in which my soul lives, namely, my body. this house is old, and small, and dark. in this house i have a bed, which is called unrest, for all things are a grief to me which have not to do with god. near this bed i have a chair, called discomfort, wherein i hear of sins committed by others in which i had no part. before this chair i have a table, that is called distress, for i am grieved to find so few spiritual people. on this table lies a clean tablecloth, which is called poverty, that has much good in it, and if it were rightly used it would be dear to those who use it. on this table my food is placed for me; it is called the bitterness of sin, and willing suffering. the drink is called 'scanty praise,' because, alas! i have far too few good works to be remembered." all this i saw as it were dimly in my soul. and then was the true love of god revealed to me. she stood before me as a noble and royal maiden, of stately presence, fair, and with the roses of her youth, and around her stood many maidens, who were the graces of the spirit, and they were come to be my handmaidens if i desired to have them as mine, for they were willing to serve me. they wore crowns brighter than shining gold, and their clothing was of green sendal. and as i beheld her my dark house was lighted up, so that i could see all that was therein, and all that happened there. and i knew the damsel well, for she had often been my dear companion, and her face was familiar to me. but as i have written of her oftentimes in this book, i will not speak of her further. then said i to her, "o beloved damsel, that art a thousandfold higher than i am, yet thou dost serve me with honour and reverence, as if i were greater than an empress." and she said, "when i saw that it was thy desire to renounce earthly things i desired to be thy constant handmaiden, for i was seeking those who from the love of god turned away from the things on earth." and i said, "beloved damsel, so long hast thou served me, i would gladly give thee for thy service all that i have or might have on the earth." she answered, "i have gathered up thy gift, and will restore it to thee at last with glory and honour." then said i, "lady, i know not what more to give but myself." "and that," she said, "i have long desired, and now at last thou hast given me my desire...." the parable proceeds to relate the service of each handmaiden bestowed by love upon the soul, first true repentance--then the maiden called humility--gentleness--obedience, tenderness (who was to give her help in tending the sick, and in making coarse food and hard labour sweet to her who served). then came the "beloved damsel" purity, then patience, holiness, hope, and the "glorious and holy maiden called faith." then watchfulness, moderation, contentment, "the dear maiden who made the hard bed soft, and the coarse food pleasant." then the mistress of the maidens, wisdom, and a "maiden unwillingly praised," called bashfulness. and lastly came fear and constancy. and these all being ready to serve, the soul gave thanks, "o thou dear love of god, i thank thee that thou hast brought to me so many helpers on my way to heaven." and the soul saw how all the saints and angels bowed down in the wonderful glory of god, because all they were, and all they did, was a gift of grace from god to them. "the saints kneel down and bow themselves before god in blessed love, and in joyful longing. they thank god that his grace was ready and waiting to bring them through this earthly need, and to bear their sorrows." four things that belong to faith. that we believe in christ as god, loving god from the heart, truly confessing jesus christ, and faithfully following his teaching even unto death. i think that in these four things we find eternal life. but our faith must be a christian faith, not the faith of jews, or of unbelieving christians, who also profess to believe in one god, but who believe not in the holy works which he has wrought. his work they despise, as we grieve to know. but for us, our belief is that god sent his only-begotten son into the world, and that it was his will to do so. we believe in the work and death of our lord jesus christ, whereby he has redeemed our souls. we believe in the holy ghost, who has perfected our blessedness in the father and in the son, and who brings forth in us all the works that are pleasing to god. from a friend to a friend. great and overflowing is the love of god, that never standeth still, but floweth on for ever and without ceasing, with no labour or effort, but freely and fully, so that our little vessel is full and over-full. if we do not stop the channel by our self-will it will never slacken in its flowing, but the gift of god will ever make our cup to run over. lord, thou art full of grace, and therewith thou fillest us. but thou art great, and we are small, how then can we receive that which thou givest? lord, whilst thou givest to us, it is for us to give to others. truly our vessel that thou hast filled is a small one, but a small one can be emptied and filled anew, till it has filled a large one. the great vessel is full sufficiency of grace, but we, alas! are so small, that one little word from god, one little verse of the holy scriptures, so fills us, that we can contain no more. let us then empty forth the little vessel into the great vessel, that is, god. how are we to do this? we should pour forth that which we have received in holy longing and desire for the salvation of sinners. then will the little vessel be filled again. let us empty it forth anew on the imperfections of the people of god, that they may fight more valiantly, and may become perfected in grace. let us pour it forth in holy pity for the need of the christian church, that is sunk so deeply in sin. god has first loved us, first laboured for us, first suffered for us, let us therefore be followers of him, and restore to him in the way that i have described that which he gave. our lord suffered for us unto death, but a very small suffering of ours seems great to us. but the thoughts of god and those of the loving soul meet together, as the air and the sunlight are mingled by the mighty power of god in sweet union, so that the sun overcomes the frost and the darkness, one knows not how. it comes all and alone from the sun. so comes our blessedness from the joy of god. god grant us, and preserve to us, this blessedness! amen. something of paradise. it was shown to me, and in my mind i saw, what manner of place is paradise. of its breadth and length i could see no end. first came i to a place that was between this world and the beginning of paradise. there saw i trees with much shade and fair green grass, but weeds were there none. some trees bore fruit, but most of them only beautiful and sweet smelling leaves. swift streams of water divided the ground, and warm south winds moved onward towards the north. in the waters were mingled earthly sweetness and heavenly delight. the air was sweet and soft beyond all words. yet were no birds or beasts in that place; for god had prepared it for men only, that they might be there in stillness and in peace.... i saw a twofold paradise. it is of the earthly one that i have spoken. the heavenly paradise is in the heights above, and shields the earthly from all harm. but of the heavenly paradise matilda only says that it is for a time, and that it is the place wherein the souls who have had no purgatory await the kingdom of the lord, "they move in sweet delight, as the air moves in the sunshine," and will one day have their crowns of glory, and will reign with christ. the end of the journey. it was evident to matilda that her end was near. her age was what would be called old age in the middle ages, when life was so much shorter than in our time. "i asked the lord," she said, "how i should conduct myself in these last days of my life. he answered me, 'thou shouldst do in thy last days as in thy first days. love and longing, repentance and fear, these four things were the beginning of thy course, and must therefore be the end also.' "then said i, 'beloved lord, where, then, are the two things that are the foundation and crown of heavenly blessedness, where are faith and full assurance?' "then said our lord, 'thy faith becometh knowledge, and thy longing is turned into full assurance.' this i understood from the speaking of the lord to me, and i know it also in my heart. "i am a wonder to myself, and am indeed a wonder. for when i think of death, my soul rejoices so mightily in the thought of going forth from earthly life, that my body is lulled, as it were, in an inexpressible supernatural quietness, soft and sweet, and my mind is awakened to see the unspeakable wonders that attend the going forth of the soul. meanwhile i would desire most to die at the time which god has before appointed. yet at the same time i would willingly live till the last great day. and my heart longs oftentimes to live in the days of the martyrs, that i might shed my sinful blood in true christian faith for jesus my beloved. "that i dare to say i love god, is a gift of his pure grace. for it is when my sins and sufferings are before my eyes that my soul begins to burn in the fire of the true love of god, and the sweetness is so surpassing, that even my body shares in the divine blessedness. i write this as it were by compulsion, for i would rather hold my peace, because i live in fear and dread of secret tendency to vainglory. yet i am more afraid, when god has been so gracious to me, that i, poor and empty as i am, have kept silence too often and too long. "from my childhood onwards i was troubled with fear, dread, and constant sorrow of heart in thinking of my end. now in my last days god has given me peace. and i have said to him, 'lord, it likes me well to think of the light and blessedness of thy heavenly glory, of which i am so unworthy, but i still have a great fear as to how my soul shall pass from my body.' and the lord answered, 'it shall be thus--i draw my breath, and the soul will follow on to me, as the needle to the magnet stone.'" and again she prayed that at that last moment the lord would come to her, as "the dearest friend," as the "confessor," as the father. "o lord, i pray, when dawneth the last day these weary eyes shall see, come as a father to his darling child, and take me home to thee." in these prayers and longings we find no thought of purgatory. yet as an article of her creed matilda believed in it. nor did any thought of superior holiness make her overlook it in her own case. but the true spiritual instinct of the new nature was stronger than the force of education and of the authority of the church. how true is it that in spiritual matters the head is no match for the heart. so in the case of saint-worship--matilda had never renounced it, yet we see her heart turn instinctively to god, as the needle to the pole. the waiting time was one of suffering, but cheered by the love and tenderness of the sisters, who delighted to wait upon her. "thus does a beggar woman speak in her prayers to god--lord, i thank thee that since in thy love thou hast taken from me all earthly riches, thou now feedest and clothest me by the means of others; for everything which i can now call my own, and all that gives joy to my heart, must now come to me from strangers. "lord, i thank thee that since thou hast taken away the power of sight from mine eyes, thou hast appointed other eyes to serve me. lord, i thank thee that since thou hast taken the strength from my hands, thou servest me with other hands. lord, i thank thee that since thou hast taken away the strength of my heart, thou servest me now by the hearts of strangers. lord, i pray thee reward them here on earth with thy divine love, and grant to them to serve thee faithfully till they reach a blessed end." the last poem. _thus speaks the suffering body to the patient soul._ with the wings of longing when wilt thou fly to the hills of the glorious land on high, to christ thine eternal love? thank him for me, though vile i be, that his grace for me hath a share; that he took our sorrows and felt our need, that we are his love and care. ask him, that safe in his tender hand in sweet rest i may lie, when we part at the bounds of the pilgrim land, thou, soul and i. _then doth the soul make answer._ i thank thee that thou on the pilgrim road hast been my comrade true; often wert thou a weary load, yet didst thou bear me through. when the day shall come that is to dawn shall all thy sorrows be past and gone; therefore let us give thanks and praise, for his love who guarded us all our days, and for hope of the joy that is to be, for thee and me. how did matilda die? we know no more. her death is mentioned in the _mechthild book_, matilda von hackeborn being one of those present at her death. but, alas! as it often happens in the search for mediæval facts, we are met instead by a relation of visions and dreams. matilda von hackeborn tells us no more than how she beheld in a vision the departure of the soul of her namesake.[ ] the difficulty is to realise that in these imaginary histories we are reading the writings of some who, like matilda of hackeborn, had, in spite of their visions, real intercourse with god. that matilda of magdeburg had this true intercourse, based upon the written word of god, that she was one of those of whom the lord jesus said, "i will love him, and will manifest myself to him," there can be no doubt in any christian mind. it was the time of the conflict of light with darkness, of the prejudices of early education with the experiences of communion with the living god. the heart received much that contradicted the nominal belief, and this inconsistency was not remarked by the recipient of the truth, because the mind was not called upon to act in the matter. it was left in inert subjection to the teaching of the church. when nearly three hundred years later the mind asserted its rights, and the reformers gave at length scriptural proofs of that which the "friends of god" had experienced, all might have been well. but, alas! the weight was shifted to the other side, and that which had been a matter of the heart became after a while a matter of the reason, to be discussed and assented to by those who had no heart in the question. we have to suffer for this in our days. let us learn not to be contented with proofs in black and white, valuable as they are. we need that communion of heart with god by the power of the holy ghost, which needs no proof, and which is the only remedy for our lukewarmness, our worldliness, and our joylessness. the nun gertrude. it is of interest to trace in the convent of hellfde the results of the work and the teaching of the abbess gertrude and of the béguine matilda. it was not in vain that the abbess had given to the scriptures such a place of honour, and had so diligently studied them, and insisted upon their study. nor was it in vain that matilda of magdeburg had spoken and written of the free grace of god, and of the love of christ that passeth knowledge. this teaching was the beginning of a stream of life and light, which became deeper and wider as it flowed along. and we find in the next book written in the convent a clearer and fuller confession of the truth. this book, written in part by the nun gertrude, in part by an unnamed sister, consists of five separate books, together called _insinuationes divinæ pietatis_. of four of these books little can be said, except that they consist chiefly of the visions and revelations of the authoress, and accounts of visions seen by the nun gertrude. it is in the second of the five books, the only one written by gertrude herself, that we find that which repays the trouble of sifting the true from the false, and the gems of marvellous lustre from the dust-heaps in which they lie buried. a translation of some of the most remarkable passages in this second book has already been given, as mentioned above, in the book, "trees planted by the river." but a few more short extracts will perhaps add to the proof of gertrude's clear and simple trust in christ, as revealed in the gospel. "when i consider," she writes, "the character of my life from the beginning and onwards i have to confess in truth it is a history of nothing but grace, grace without the smallest deserving on the part of one so unworthy as i am. for thou didst of thy free grace bestow upon me clearer light in the knowledge of thyself, and thou didst lead me on by the alluring sweetness of thy love and kindness. i was more attracted by thy love, than i could have been driven by the punishment which, on the part of thy holy justice, was due to me." "the great power and sound strength of gertrude's mind," writes preger, "could not allow her to satisfy herself with the visions in which she had a share. she sought a firmer foothold for her new life, a source which should lastingly and invariably satisfy her inmost being. and with the whole energy of the mind, which had formerly been absorbed in secular learning, she gave herself to the study of the holy scriptures, and of such commentaries as she could find to explain them, amongst others those of augustine and bernard. "how deeply she felt the value of the treasures laid up for her in the scriptures, we learn from the joyful inspiration which filled her soul when reading them. 'she could not,' writes the unnamed nun, 'drink in enough each day of the wonderful sweetness she found in meditating on the word of god, and in searching for the hidden light which she found in it. it was sweeter to her than honey, and more lovely than the sound of the organ, and consequently it seemed as though her heart was filled with an almost unceasing joy.' "'she copied out from the scriptures and from commentators whole books of extracts, which she wrote for the convent sisters; and was often employed from early in the morning till late at night in endeavouring to write explanations of difficult passages, so as to render them more intelligible to her sisters. for it was a part of her nature to lead on others in the same path, and to work for those around her, so as to exercise a wholesome influence, forming them and helping them. "'she also provided other convents which had few books with extracts from the bible. thus the scriptures were the alpha and omega of her thoughts. all her reflections, warnings, and consolations had a bible passage as their source. it was astonishing, her friend said, how invariably the right word from the scriptures was ready to hand in each case; and whether she reproved or counselled, she made use of the witness of holy scripture as that which no one might dare to gainsay. "'this universal tendency of her mind to draw others into the enjoyment of that which she possessed, and to work for this end, explains how instantly and willingly she would tear herself away from silent contemplation, to use any occasion that presented itself for active work for others. to return to contemplation again was then easy for her.' "we perceive from this remark the breadth, and at the same time the strength, of her mind, as well as the harmony of her inner and outer life. this is not contradicted by the fact that her friend mentions as her chief fault a certain impatience and vehemence, for which she often blamed herself. it arose from her strong impulse to work for others." preger further remarks: "it was in the ninth year after her conversion, and , that she wrote that remarkable book which forms the second of the five books of the _insinuationes_. it consists of confessions in forcible language, from the heights of the strongest feeling and the clearest perception. at the same time, the great gifts with which she was endowed shine the more brightly from their accompaniment of the most touching humility. this book, together with her 'practices of piety,' a book of prayers, belong to the most beautiful products of mystical literature. "in her case, a progress from legal bondage to ever-increasing liberty of spirit is clearly marked. when once her new spiritual life had had its beginning in evangelical faith, it followed from the strength and wholesome soundness of her mind, that the unfolding of this spiritual freedom should proceed in spite of the opposition of religious tradition, and should prove victorious. it is of the greatest interest to trace this progress as far as we have the means of doing so." this onward path from asceticism, self-chastisement, and bitter sorrow over the fallen church, to calm and happy communion with christ, was remarked by others, and the passage from bondage to liberty was a cause of joyful thanksgiving to herself. "at all times," writes her anonymous friend, "she rejoiced in such assured confidence, that neither calamity, nor loss, nor any other hindrance, nay, not even her sins or shortcomings, could overcloud it; for she had always the full and firm assurance of the rich grace and mercy of god. if she felt herself stained by daily sins, it was her custom to take refuge at the feet of christ, to be washed in his blood from all spot and stain." it will be remarked that gertrude had not yet fully apprehended the great truth that the worshipper once purged has no more conscience of sin, that "by one offering christ hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified," and that for this reason there is no repetition of sacrifice. for "without _shedding_ of blood is no remission," and the blood of expiation once shed, can be shed no more for ever. but it may be that gertrude, like many now, confused the recalling of that blood-shedding which put away sin, a recalling which gives comfort when we feel that we have sinned afresh, with the actual cleansing, once and for ever, in the precious blood of christ--the actual cleansing never to be repeated, but the comfort and peace founded upon it a constant experience, which the heart may rejoice in on every fresh occasion of the confession of sin. "when she felt," continues her friend, "the marvellous power of the grace of god, she did not betake herself to penances, but, committing herself freely to the drawing of that grace, she yielded herself as an instrument for loving service, free to receive all that god gave, and to be used by him for his work." it is further remarked that she looked upon god's gift of grace in his son as so immeasurable and marvellous, that all human endeavour and doings vanished to a point when compared with it, and were not worth mentioning. and with regard to her own assurance of faith, she saw that also was a gift of god's free grace bestowed on her in spite of her undeservings. it would seem as if this strong faith and sense of god's unutterable love, had led her entirely beyond the land of bondage in which her fellow-christians were living. she was as a child at liberty in the father's home. on one occasion when taking a walk, she fell down a steep place, and getting up unhurt, she said, "o my beloved jesus, how well it had been for me had that fall brought me quickly home to thee!" and when the sisters who were with her said in wonderment, "would you not be afraid to die without the sacrament?" she answered, "i would desire the sacrament if i were dying, but far, far more do i desire the will of my god and his appointment for me. that is the best preparation for death; for however i die, my hope is in the mercy that will never fail me. without that i should be lost, whether i died suddenly, or with a sure knowledge beforehand that the time was come." for she no longer regarded herself as apart from christ, but as in him, and as one in whom he dwelt, and therefore looked upon herself as belonging to him, and, consequently, instead of mortifying her body, she looked upon taking food or rest as something done for the lord. "not," says preger, "that in regard to others she had fully cast aside the prevailing belief in the merit of works, but in her own case she saw but her own sin and god's free grace. and with regard to the works of others, she considered no value attached to them if they were done with a view to reward. those good works, she said, which people do from habit, have a black mark set against them; those done for christ's sake, and by his power, a red mark. but the red mark has a black mark across it, if there is any thought of gaining merit by those works. they have a golden mark when they are done simply for his honour, with no other aim in view." it should be remarked also that gertrude entertained strong misgivings with regard to the common practices of exciting devotion by appeals to the senses. the erection of mangers at christmas, and the representations in pictures and images of the sufferings and the death of christ, appeared to her useless and dangerous. she feared that true personal intercourse with god in the spirit and in truth, would be hindered by these means. nor did she share the devotion of her contemporaries to relics of any sort. "the lord has shown me," she said, "that the most worthy relics which remain of him are his words." "in such a soul," writes preger, "in which christ was so entirely the central point, it was natural that mary should recede into the background. it is true that the spirit of the age was not wanting in the influence brought to bear upon her, and the cult of mary does not disappear, therefore, from the pages of her book. but she tells us that she was filled with bitter grief when, on one of the festivals of the virgin, she heard a sermon which contained nothing but the praises of mary, and of the value of the incarnation of the lord not a word. after this sermon, as she passed by the altar of the virgin, she could not feel in her heart the sweet devotion to her which she had sometimes known. she was roused into a sort of displeasure with mary herself, because she seemed to her to stand in the way of her beloved." it is a painful example of the arguing of an enlightened conscience with a conscience shackled and enslaved by superstition. she imagined the lord would have her salute his mother, and her heart answered "never." and at last she resolved the difficulty by the belief that in doing that which she was unwilling to do, rather than that which would have satisfied her heart, she was pleasing the lord himself. it is useful for us to follow these conflicts of a heart devoted to christ, with the awful power of generally accepted evil teaching. the spirit of the age is not at any time the spirit of god. how much power does the spirit of unbelief, of lukewarmness, of corrupted christianity, exercise upon us? it matters little that the errors are of a different order. if mary stood in the way of christ in the days of gertrude, is there nothing that amongst "enlightened protestants" stands now between the soul and the saviour? is there nothing believed and taught amongst us which blinds the eyes of lost and helpless sinners to their need of a saviour? nothing which blinds the guilty to their need of the atoning blood? nothing which turns the eyes from christ, the coming one, to look for a millennium, not of his presence, but rather a time when grapes grow on thorns, and figs on thistles? to return to gertrude, groping her way from the dim twilight around her to the glorious gospel day. she was once told that there was to be an indulgence of many years proclaimed to those who were willing to sacrifice their riches to buy it. for a moment gertrude wished she had "many pounds of gold and silver." but the lord spoke to her heart and said, "hearken! by virtue of my authority receive thou perfect and full forgiveness of all thy sins and shortcomings." and she saw at that moment that her soul in the eyes of god was whiter than snow. when, some days later, this confidence still filled her with joy, she began to fear lest she had deceived herself. "for," she thought, "if the lord really gave me that white raiment, surely i must have stained it many times since then by my many faults." but the lord comforted her, saying, "is it not true that i always retain in my hand a greater power than i bestow upon my creatures? hast thou not seen how the sun by the power of its heat draws out the spots and stains from the white linen that it bleaches, and makes it whiter than it was before? how much more can i, the creator of the sun, keep in stainless whiteness the soul upon whom i have had mercy, pouring forth upon it the warmth of my burning love?" here, again, we see that gertrude arrived at the right sense of perfect forgiveness, though it was rather the love of christ than his bloodshedding which gave her this assurance. she no doubt had an unclouded belief in the expiation made by his blood, as we see from other passages in her book. but in resting her assurance on his love, if that were (as happily it was not) the whole ground of her confidence, she would have failed in the possession of unchanging peace. she would have rejoiced at the moments when she realised his great love, and have feared and trembled when the sense of it was overclouded by sin and infirmity. the christian taught of god looks back to see how christ once bore his sins in his own body on the cross, and looks up to see christ in glory as the proof that those sins are for ever put away. he rests upon these unchangeable facts--all _the more_, therefore, realising the marvellous love of the divine saviour who died for him, and rose again for his justification. gertrude did seek and find this solid foundation. "the longing for certainty," writes preger, "characterises her inner life. her powerful mind could only be satisfied in the firm grasping of evident truth. this led her to feel the necessity of immediate intercourse with god." and when she had the assurance of knowing the will of god, she acted, therefore, with an extraordinary decision and promptness. the sisters were astonished at the suddenness of her determinations, and the speed with which she carried them out. they suspected at first that she was self-willed, but they came afterwards to the conclusion that she was carrying out the will of god. in the last years of her life her longing to depart and to be with christ became so intense, that she fought against it as a mark of an impatient spirit. "but," says preger, "to what clearness and assurance of divine truth she had been led, we see from the joyful confidence with which she looked forward to death and judgment." in the last chapters of her book of prayers, before mentioned, we find a passage with which it is well to conclude the history of her spiritual life. "o truth, thou hast for thine inseparable companions justice and equity. in number, measure, and weight thy judgment stands firm. that which thou weighest, thou weighest in a perfect balance. woe is me, a thousandfold woe, if i fall into thine hands and there should be found no substitute to take my place. "o love divine, thou wilt provide the substitute. thou wilt answer for me. thou wilt undertake my cause, that i may live because of thee. "i know what i will do. i will take the cup of salvation. the cup, which is jesus, i will place in the empty scale. thus--thus all my deficiency will be made up, all my sin covered, all my ruin restored, and all my imperfection will become more than perfect. "lord, at this hour (six o'clock) thy son jesus was brought to judgment. thou didst lay upon him the sin of the whole world, upon him who was sinless, but who was called to render account for my sin and my guilt. yea, o my god, i receive him from thine hand as my companion in the judgment; i receive him, the most innocent, the most beloved, him who was condemned and slain for love to me, and now thy gift, o my loving god, to me. "o blessed truth, to come before thee without my jesus would be my fear and terror, but to come with him is joy and gladness. o truth, now mayest thou sit down on the judgment-seat and bring against me what thou wilt. i fear nothing. i know--i know that thy glorious face will have no terror for me, for he is with me, who is all my hope and all my assurance. i would ask, how canst thou now condemn me when i have my jesus as mine, that dearest, that truest saviour, who has borne all my sin and misery that he might win for me eternal pardon. "my beloved jesus, blessed pledge of my redemption, thou wilt appear before the judgment-seat for me. by thy side do i stand there. thou the judge, and thou the substitute also. then wilt thou recount what thou didst become for love of me, how tenderly thou hast loved me, how dearly thou hast bought me, that i through thee might be righteous before god. "thou hast betrothed me to thyself; how could i be lost? thou hast borne my sins. thou hast died, that to all eternity i might never die. all that is thine thou hast freely given me, that i through thy deserving might be rich. even so, in the hour of death, i shall be judged according to that innocence, according to that purity, which thou hast freely given me, when thou didst pay the whole debt for me by giving thyself. thou wert judged and condemned for my sake, that i, poor and helpless as i am, might be more than rich in all the wealth that is thine, and mine through thee." the voice that for ever speaks. thus to the ear that listens for the one beloved voice, come from those old times the familiar tones, the household words of the family of god. these souls, so misled, so darkened by the mists of evil teaching, yet by the power of the holy ghost saw the son and believed on him, and had everlasting life. his sheep followed him, for they knew his voice, and their souls were filled with love and praise. did they not often mistake for his voice the imaginations of their own hearts? yes, often they did so, and perhaps we do it less often, because less often do we listen for his voice. he speaks and we are deaf, and we go on our way expecting no word from his lips, and therefore there is nothing which we suppose to be that voice, and our delusions are altogether of another nature. our delusion in these days is that there is no immediate, daily, hourly communication between the soul and god. we do not mistake by regarding false coin as true; our mistake is that the true coin has ceased to exist since the days when john and paul spoke to the lord and he answered them, and the holy spirit spoke, and they listened. yet still as of old there are those whose eyes have been anointed with eye-salve and they see him, and their ears unstopped and they hear him, and they can bear witness to the truth that the comforter abides with us for ever, and takes still of the things of jesus and shows them unto us; and these can recognise in the old histories of the saints of god the same voice and the same teaching, and can trace it back to the written word, to which it answers as the stamp to the seal. it is well for us also to bear in mind the delusions, and, to us, inconceivable errors which were mistaken in past ages for the voice of god. that the chief work of satan has been from the beginning to counterfeit the work of god, we know from revelation. nor have we to be on our guard against satanic power alone. the tremendous force of early education, of the general opinion of the world around us, do not act less powerfully upon us than upon those in former days. it is true that the course of this age is "according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience." the course of each age since adam sinned has been thus shaped. but mere natural tendency to receive what we call truths, without taking the trouble to think, and to form opinions, as well as courses of action, by habit simply and only, can lead us far enough astray without any other misleading force. the convent of hellfde is a remarkable proof of the power of satan, and of the distortion of our nature, acting upon those who were true-hearted believers in the lord jesus christ, true children of god, and truly taught by him in the midst of many delusions. had they applied the test of holy scripture to all which they believed to be the voice of god, a very small part of it would have stood the test, in the case of the sister, for example, who wrote four of the five parts of the _gertrude book_. the remarkable difference of the second book written by gertrude herself from the four others, remains as a proof of the fact that the "entrance of the lord's word giveth light and understanding to the simple." but in the case of communications regarded as the voice of god, and _not_ standing in opposition to his word, must not a further distinction be made? even then the mind may possibly be exercised in simply recalling passages of scripture, and may be influenced by them as in the case of ordinary writings. is there nothing more than this which is meant by the statements of the lord jesus christ when speaking of the intercourse between the soul and himself? "why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word." there is, then, a hearing of which the unbelieving man is incapable. "he that is of god heareth god's words. ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of god." thus there are those who "hear indeed and understand not, and see indeed but perceive not." on the other hand, there are the sheep of christ, "who follow him, for they know his voice." "my sheep hear my voice, and i know them, and they follow me." how, then, was it that the true sheep of christ in the convent of hellfde followed at times the voice of strangers, and mistook it for his own?[ ] should we therefore conclude that _all_ they received as his was but the working of their own minds, or a snare of the evil one? if so, the lord himself is no longer the truth. he has solemnly declared to us, that for ever he would hold intercourse with his saints by the power of the holy ghost. he has given us the plain assurance, "lo, i am with you always, even unto the end of the world (the age)." the saints of all ages have claimed these promises, and have found them true. but the world cannot receive the spirit of truth, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him. nevertheless "_ye_ know him, for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. i will not leave you comfortless, i will come to you. yet a little while _the world_ seeth me no more; but ye see me: because i live ye shall live also. at that day ye shall know that i am in my father, and ye in me, and i in you." and again, "he that loveth me shall be loved of my father, and i will love him, and will manifest myself to him." thus in spite of delusions caused by the false teaching of the corrupted church, in spite of the hallucinations caused by unnatural bodily conditions, the lord was true to his word, and made to his servants that revelation of his love that passeth knowledge, which marks their testimony. and because it passeth knowledge, and all that it is possible for the heart of man to conceive, we recognise it as his revelation to the soul. the god of catholicism was a judge, awful and terrible. even the thought that the righteous anger of the father needed to be appeased by the merciful intervention of the son, gave place in time to the thought that the son also was but a righteous judge, in whom was justice without mercy. therefore it was necessary that his mother should be the hope and refuge of sinners, and that her intercession should incline his heart to pity. and there followed in due time a host of other mediators between god and man, to whom the sinful and the suffering should turn rather than to the great and dreadful god. and it was in the face of this teaching that those who knew his voice had the absolute assurance of his immeasurable and unspeakable love. they passed, as it were, through the host of mediators and intercessors to cast themselves at his feet, and to wash them with their tears, and anoint them with the love which the holy spirit of god had shed abroad in their hearts. nor had they, as some protestants in our days, the strange delusion that there is a something called "religion" to which, if they turn in their last days, they may perhaps be fit for heaven. they knew, and we know, if we will look into our hearts, that this is not the answer to our need. can "religion" love us? we need love. we need a living heart who can love us with a love utterly unchangeable and eternal. and we find it in him whose name is love; in him who is absolutely just, but who is also the justifier of him that believeth in jesus. "the just god and the saviour"--well may it be added, "there is none besides me." no god has ever been invented by the thoughts of man who can be at once the just one and the saviour, in whom "mercy and truth are met together, in whom righteousness and peace have kissed each other." we find this revelation of himself all through the ages, and it is thus that he is now revealed to every soul whose eyes have been opened to see him, whose ears have been unstopped to hear that marvellous voice, which is as clear and distinct to the soul now, as will be the shout, and the voice of the archangel, and the trumpet of god in the day that is to be. is it not by the teaching of god himself, through his word and spirit, that we find the solid path upon which to walk, day by day, in all circumstances of our ordinary life? he thus becomes wisdom to the foolish, and strength to the weak. he directs the path of those who in all their ways acknowledge him. we find a safer guide than our own understanding, than the "common-sense" of the natural heart, which may mislead, and will mislead, those who have no better teacher, as dreams and visions misled the true-hearted servants of god in former days. the guidance and teaching of him who is the wisdom of god, and who hears and answers the prayers of those who seek him, will assuredly not lead us to commit acts of folly; but the common-sense will be more fully exercised, because all existing facts will then be taken into account. the greatest and most universal failure in common-sense must be the leaving out of god in all our thoughts; and therefore is it written of the natural man, not only "there is none that doeth good, no not one," but also, "there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after god." [ ]described in her own words in "trees planted by the river" (nisbet). [ ]this pope was gregory x. [ ]the latin translation of matilda's book appears to have been published very early, as it does not contain the seventh book, probably, therefore, considerably earlier than the year . we know that the th and th cantos of the _purgatorio_ were written between and ; the th canto after the year . if dante passed through cologne in his wanderings, as appears probable from his reference to cologne in the _inferno_, xxiii. , he may there have seen the book. it was, however, no doubt widely circulated before the end of the thirteenth century. the supposition that matilda of hackeborn was the origin of dante's matilda is disproved by the later date of the _mechthilden buch_, which could scarcely have been published before the year . [ ]in his lecture on dante's matilda, delivered at a later period, preger raises the question whether the book of the béguine is of such a nature as to have attracted in so considerable a measure the appreciation of a dante. "i must here only repeat," he says, "that which i have formerly written with regard to the spirit and poetical power of this work, as it appears in morel's edition. i think i may say that amongst all the known works of this nature up to the end of the thirteenth century, there is none that attains to the importance of this work. only the second part of the book of the nun gertrude, written by herself, can be placed in any point of view in comparison with it. it is evident that the béguine matilda was of sufficient significance to make an impression on dante, and to be used by him as a type of that form of contemplation which i have described under the name of practical mysticism." [ ]the contents of the seven books may be thus summarised:-- . disconnected passages--visions, or parables related as visions. . disconnected parables, visions, and prophecies. with regard to one of these visions matilda remarks, "that this so happened is not to be understood literally, but spiritually; it was that which the soul saw, and recognised, and rejoiced in. the words sound human, but the natural mind can but partly receive that which the higher sense of the soul perceives of spiritual things." commendations of the preaching friars of the order of s. dominic. references to passing events and contemporary persons, or persons lately departed. . refers chiefly to ecclesiastical matters. contains prophecies of the last days, of the antichrist, of the return of enoch and elijah. in these prophecies occur passages reproduced in the _divine commedia_. . the book of love, between god and the soul. . practical. . descriptions of hell (the city of eternal hate) and purgatory, with which the _divine commedia_ may be compared. preparation for death. . various and disconnected. references to contemporary persons and events. [ ]author of the "psalter of the blessed virgin." [ ]see _purgatoria_, canto xxxi. . "my soul was tasting of the food that while it satisfies us, makes us hunger for it." [ ]see isaiah lx. , , as explaining this thought: "the sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee: but the lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy god thy glory. thy sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon withdraw itself: for the lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended." [ ]in which the church, the body of christ, is spoken of as existing not only before his death and resurrection, but before he became incarnate. [ ]"why did i thus pray?" she writes. "because i find that i am still just as despicable and unworthy as i was thirty years ago when i began to write. but the lord showed me that he had healing roots stored, as it were, in a little sack, and with them should the sick be refreshed, and the healthy strengthened, and the dead raised, and the godly sanctified." [ ]matilda the béguine's own words relating to the death of a friend may better describe her own-- "he laid him down upon the breast of god in measureless delight, enfolded in the tenderness untold, the sweetness infinite." the account given by matilda of hackeborn is but an evidence of the unreal state of those who were for ever craving for some fresh revelations to supplement the word of god; who unconsciously to themselves were walking, so far, by sight, and not by faith, and by the sight, moreover, of a disordered body. [ ]in general no doubt their delusions arose from the fact that the falsehood presented itself in the form of authorised teaching. they were not on their guard against those whom they had learnt from their cradles to reverence--who represented to them the apostles of christ. and these delusions, acting upon over-strained and ill-taught minds and half-starved bodies, kept up a state of mental disease, in which clear and reasonable thought was at times obliterated. it was a spiritual alcohol or opium that was constantly measured out by the accredited teachers of the church. the end. _printed by_ ballantyne, hanson & co. _edinburgh and london_ transcriber's notes --silently corrected a handful of typos: mostly missing quotation marks. transcriber's notes: italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal signs=. small uppercase have been replaced with regular uppercase. characters after a carat are superscripts. blank pages have been eliminated. variations in spelling and hyphenation have been left as in the original. the incarnate purpose the incarnate purpose essays on the spiritual unity of life by g. h. percival london williams & norgate henrietta street, covent garden contents chap. page . the spirit of truth . the evidence of things unseen . the alchemy of love . the heritage of pain . the vesture of god . spiritual correspondence the incarnate purpose i the spirit of truth there exists in certain religious circles the idea that criticism of christian doctrine is an undesirable thing, because indicative of a spirit of irreverence and faithlessness that is at variance with the fundamental principles of christianity. according to catholic teaching, the church is founded upon divine revelation, to doubt the reality of which is to question the truth of the word of god. it is not to be supposed that the finite understandings of men can fathom the infinite mysteries of god. does not the conception that it _is_ possible for the divine truths of religion to be comprehended by means of the same evidential methods adopted in the acquisition of secular knowledge, imply a practical denial of the existence of a supreme god, since the creature would thus be made to appear as equal in wisdom and power with the creator? most seekers after the word of god meet at one time or other with some such argument against the propriety of their endeavours to obtain evidence of the intrinsic truth of christian teaching. but the charge of irreverence brought against honest inquiry is powerless to affect the belief, held by many educated men and women, that a pure desire to know and to do the will of god necessitates the exercising of intellectual as well as of spiritual faculties, in order that what is true in the teaching offered to them in the name of christ may be separated from what is false, to the greater glory of god and to the furthering of the divine purpose of life. hostility towards criticism of religious doctrine appears to all impartial minds to be not only of doubtful service to the cause of religion as a whole, but also to cast discredit on the ability of any particular creed to sustain an examination in detail of its articles. in an era when most things touching the health and general well-being of men are subjected to critical inquiry, it would be strange if their spiritual welfare should escape remark. science has much to say about the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the habits of our daily lives; and we listen to what is said with due respect, because we know the aim of science to be the improvement of the conditions of life through the elimination of error and harmful prejudice from the paths of progress; and because, by regulating our conduct by the reasonable principles recommended, we may contribute towards the amelioration of those conditions under which future generations of men will enter upon their inheritance of the earth. is the authority claimed and exercised by the church over the souls and minds of men to be unquestioned? is the training of spiritual consciousness less important than the education and nourishment of the body? scientific criticism may not be perfect, or its judgments infallible; but such as it is to-day, why may not its methods be applied to the elimination of falsehood and ignorance from things religious as well as from things secular? the acquisition of knowledge has afforded throughout recorded history a perpetual basis for controversy on all matters which have excited sufficient interest or curiosity to command serious attention. it is difficult to think of any so-called natural phenomenon that has not at one time or other given rise to critical investigation, pursuit of which has sharpened the perceptions and widened the understandings of those whose energies have been engaged, and has thus contributed towards elucidation of the controverted subject. especially is this remarkable in the declared differences between the exponents of scientific and religious doctrine. by reason of an intimate concern with the affairs of men, the methods of acquiring and imparting knowledge employed by the authoritative instructors of sacred and secular consciousness, offer an open field for controversy and challenge the criticism of all thinking persons. it will be admitted that the manner in which discussion is carried on, no less than the character of the conclusions arrived at, exerts an educative influence upon all questions of contemporary interest, so that, apart from the elucidation of truth (which is the ideal end of controversy, but rarely its immediate outcome), an examination of the merits of conflicting opinions, or, in other words, a criticism of opposing opinions, would appear desirable if only as prefatory to the attainment of a more complete comprehension of the matter under dispute. the ultimate value of all such controversy is to a large extent determined by criticism, which acts as a salutary check on the tendency of most disputants to devote more attention to the question of who is right than of what is true; and where discussion is unattended by such restraint, a certain vagueness of purpose and procedure is apt to seduce controversy from the path of rectitude into a ramble among the byways of personal prejudice, which argues ill for the elucidation of the original subject under dispute. but in considering the utility of controversy between the exponents of scientific and religious doctrine, it should be borne in mind that a victory accruing to either disputant can be of tentative value only unless and until its permanent worth be certified by course of time to be indeed demonstrated evidence of intrinsic verity. until this is so proven the last word has not been said, although the path towards a more complete settlement of the point at issue may have been in some measure cleared of an impeding refuse of erroneous ideas and prejudices. therefore verdicts determining the merits of conflicting opinions relating to abstract or speculative thought can rarely be regarded as final, and it appears unreasonable for either priest or scientist to resent as an outcome of controversial differences an issue favourable to his opponent, since only in the event of a subsequent endorsement of its intrinsic truth by inclusion in the commonly accepted facts of natural knowledge can the ruling of the judgment remain in force. therefore, since the avowed object of both disputants is the elucidation of truth, which process necessitates a concomitant elimination of falsehood, neither priest nor scientist should resent such a satisfactory outcome of their contentions. for if the results of controversial criticism be not endorsed by the course of time, but are shown instead to be errors of judgment, rectifiable by succeeding generations of men whose advance in power of discernment is attested by the ability to eradicate from doctrine errors hitherto undemonstrable as such, the justification of controversy is even so sufficiently proven, inasmuch as its employment has brought about an expurgation of falsehood, which accomplishment is, in the dual interests of science and religion, as important as the affirmation and confirmation of truth. a retrospective view of religious and scientific doctrine does indeed reveal controversy, accompanied by criticism, as a considerable factor in the evolution of knowledge, and its employment is clearly recognisable as a means of expurgating much that was false in ideas held in former days. it is reasonable to suppose that the same drastic spirit of controversial criticism so apparent in the past and so active in the present, will continue to operate in the future. but an examination of the controversial methods exercised to-day shows a remarkable change of tactics from those in use, say two hundred years ago--a change that is the direct result of the displacement of ancient weapons of war by modern arms. evidence has supplanted the use of subtle verbal argument and carefully constructed syllogisms, whose premises were frequently contrived to corroborate foregone conclusions--a method not compatible with that earnest desire for truth above all things which is the war-cry of modern times. evidence is everywhere proclaimed as the proper test for truth; and he who enters the field of controversy to-day, whether he be the champion of scientific or of religious doctrine, must, if he wish to obtain a serious hearing, come equipped with evidence of the truth of what he propounds, and with evidence of the falsehood of what he refutes. this change in the method of controversial criticism affects all branches of learning, and is gradually bringing about a reform in educational matters that bids fair to shake the foundations of many lines of long-established conventional thought. nowhere is the change more apparent than in the working of our schools. a child is no longer punished for asking the reason of what he is taught; lessons learnt by rote are a disgrace alike to schoolmaster and scholar. it is not the pupil who is impertinent in demanding, but the teacher who is inefficient and culpable if he cannot supply satisfactory evidence of the truth, the reality, the reason of his instruction. the kindergarten system; the elaborate construction of object-lessons contrived by means of illustration to exercise the child's reasoning faculties; the nature study, so swiftly establishing its place in the national curricula--all these are the outcome of the demand for evidence as the proper test of supposed truth, and are significant of the spirit of the age. young people are encouraged to think for themselves; to accept authority only when there is evidence forthcoming of its right to be so acknowledged; to look for evidential testimony of all that they are called upon to receive as facts. upon the subject of education, science and ecclesiasticism are now engaged in what, seen in the light of after days, may well appear as one of the most important controversies of the age. and it is upon the very question of the fitness of evidence as a legitimate test of truth, especially with regard to the suitability of its application to religious as well as to secular instruction, that the chief difference turns. while science, convinced of the efficacy of evidential testimony, employs the principle as a weapon of attack and defence in controversial warfare, the ambiguous attitude of ecclesiasticism towards a similar mode of procedure places her at a hopeless disadvantage against her antagonists, deprives her of influence in most matters of intellectual importance, and stamps her as a deterring factor in the progress of the world. what fighting power, equipped with obsolete weapons of the eighteenth century, would be justified in hoping to meet with success in an engagement with a foe who carried modern arms? if children are taught to regard evidence as a proper test of truth in matters of secular interest, and to disregard that principle in connection with their religious instruction, it follows as a matter of course that a line of distinction must be drawn between secular and religious education. it is regrettable that, interwoven as the two elements have been for centuries in the training of children, their division now seems necessary and imminent. had they continued to work harmoniously together, the present differences between scientific and ecclesiastical methods of instruction might have been averted. but it is lamentably evident that in adopting an attitude of disapproval towards criticism of her articles, the church is bringing about a division in educational matters that is becoming more and more pronounced. what kingdom divided against itself can stand? how can we expect to train our children in the ways of truth if we give them no consistent standard for estimating what is true? how dare we hope to rear a generation worthy of its inheritance of nearly twenty centuries of established christianity, when we formulate a religious standard of integrity in opposition to that of the secular knowledge of the world? but it is not only over the education question that science and ecclesiasticism are virtually at war, although the conflicting principles underlying this controversial difference are illustrated by that dispute. it is not only children who suffer bewilderment by being asked to reconcile irreconcilable elements in their education. both science and the catholic church profess to be searchers after and upholders of truth, yet year by year a chasm between them widens as their fundamental differences in procedure become defined; and year by year the number of honest thinkers who cease to regard themselves as members of the church, or as under her authority, increases. so long as ecclesiasticism continues to maintain an attitude of resentment towards criticism of religious doctrine, so long must this exodus of intelligence from the church induce a practical development of the christian ideals outside ecclesiastical circles. it cannot be too vigorously affirmed that criticism of the pretensions of ecclesiasticism is not necessarily an attack upon christianity. scientific research has never harmed or demolished the truth in doctrine attributed to christ. indeed, the simplicity and beauty of his teaching (in so far as this can be ascertained from a careful study of the gospels) never shines so convincingly, and never exerts greater influence for good upon mankind, than when, under rational criticism, it is freed in some measure from the accumulation of centuries of superstitious ideas too long supported by the approval of ecclesiasticism. science has no quarrel with christianity as such. a christian church, cleansed from all that obscures and dishonours truth--a church devoted to the practical furtherance of the ideals contained in christ's gospel of love--would always have the ready help and support of science. it is not from the gospel of love that men turn away to-day, but from dogmas antagonistic to reason, substituted for that gospel and taught by the church as truth in the name of christ. it is not out of a spirit of irreverence that men demand evidence of the truth of what the church offers them as christian doctrine, but from an earnest desire to be faithful to that ideal of truth which is surely the religious, as well as the secular, glory of life. the figure of christ stands as the centre of certain axioms professedly conducive to a right understanding of life and the right conduct of men, and he drew to himself as supporters of his doctrine all sorts and conditions of men who became more or less imbued with the ideas of their master. the accounts of his three years' mission which have come down to us in the present forms of the gospels may or may not truly report his actual sayings and doings, and may or may not contain doctrine actually taught by him. what is written, or by whom written, matters less than an assurance of its intrinsic truth when such is interpreted as doctrine applicable to the spiritual needs of men to-day. all that is true in the writings connected with the mission of christ requires no miraculous accompaniment to demonstrate its truth: the only requisite standard by which its verity should be tested is that afforded from generation to generation by the current standard of knowledge. is not the application of scientific methods of criticism to that grand conception of life and its responsibilities which we associate with the name of christ, the highest compliment we can pay to his memory? for whether he really spoke certain words, did certain deeds, and taught certain doctrines, as in the gospels he is reported to have done; whether he shared the errors of his age and is directly responsible for the introduction of teaching that is incompatible with known scientific facts; or whether he has not, perhaps, been made the scapegoat for the ignorance of those who came after him--are questions of insignificant importance compared with the necessity for eliminating falsehood, by whomsoever spoken or written, from doctrine put forth as spiritual truth for thinking men of to-day. in the estimation of many educated and unprejudiced persons, the fabric of church government seems to have its origin in the perverted imaginations of men rather than in the ethical teaching of christ, so far as this can be ascertained by a careful study of the books constituting the new testament. considering the discrepancies in the various sayings and doings of christ as reported by the authors of those several books, the solution of the question as to what he really said and did becomes very difficult, and is complicated in all branches and phases of the history of the christian faith by subsequent accretions, finding their origins in the superstitions of the age, and for which no reasonable warrant seems to exist. we have, therefore, in an endeavour to reconcile the teaching of the church with the supposed teaching of christ, to fall back on the internal evidence of the intrinsic truth contained in his accepted sayings and doings. acceptance of these as true occurrences depends upon how far they are consistent with established scientific facts. truth is truth, whether its unveiling to the understanding be achieved by science or religion. investigation of the evidence of a supposed truth either, by certifying its verity, leads to its surer stability, with proportionate increase of honour; or, by tracing and eliminating error, gives higher value to the remaining purified residue. if the supposed teaching of christ were found to be consistent with the modern teaching of science, the mutual endorsement would be a further guarantee of the verity of the question in point, both in its religious and its scientific aspect. but if an examination of christian doctrine reveals the presence of dogma utterly irreconcilable with known scientific facts, then, if the cry for truth raised by both teachers is sincere, the rejection of that which defiles truth is incumbent upon the disciples of religion as well as upon those of science. the belligerent attitude of ecclesiasticism towards criticism of her doctrine reflects indirectly discredit upon the founder of christianity. to bolster up falsehood taught and written in christ's name is no honour to him. the magnification of natural into supernatural occurrences, out of mistaken zeal for his glory, and the refusal to accept the verdict of rational investigation of the evidence for the truth of such occurrences, is not the way to further the ends of christianity. is it conceivable that the founder of a code of ethics calculated to meet the needs of men could desire exemption from an examination of the doctrine he taught and believed to be true, or, still less, of doctrine taught in his name, for the truth of which he has given no guarantee? is it possible that christ would have resented the idea of a future amplification of his doctrine on the lines of truth by men who perceived the spirit of his teaching, and who desired to honour him by freeing it from its envelope of superstition, reflecting the errors of the ages through which it had passed? did not he promise to men a comforter who would abide with them for ever: "even the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him.... the comforter, which is the holy ghost, whom the father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever i have said unto you.... when the comforter is come, whom i will send unto you from the father, even the spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the father, he shall testify of me" (st john xiv. and xv.). did not christ thus challenge the criticism of the future? did not he plead for his teaching to be tested by the spirit of truth which, proceeding from god, the father of all life, is present in the world as the guiding principle of all knowledge then, now, and to come? what is that sin against the holy ghost impossible of forgiveness, but sin against the spirit of truth, which is a deliberate falling short of the glory of god? ii the evidence of things unseen the difficulty felt in reconciling the idea of man's possession of an immortal soul with his supposed evolutionary physical descent is in many cases responsible for the exclusion of the scientific interpretation of life from the religious outlook. it is very naturally asked at what point in his development man obtained the spiritual faculty designated by the name of soul, possession of which constitutes his chief claim to immortality. if he be indeed the product of an evolutionary process entailing the precursion and sacrifice of millions of generations of beings inferior to his present organisation; if his progenitors existed at some remote and unrecorded period of the history of the world, when distinction between man and beast was unknown, when did his separation as a spiritual creature occur? if some process of psychical evolution endowed him with a soul, may not other creatures than man, as yet insufficiently developed, obtain eventually similar spiritual attributes? how then, can the destiny of man be said to be superior to that of the beasts? is there really such a thing as the soul? what are its distinctive qualities, and how is its presence in personality to be recognised? in short, is a belief in the immortal soul of man compatible with the evolutionary theory of his physical descent? if acceptance of the scientific explanation of his ancestry destroys the justification of his hope for immortality, is not life thereby robbed of its spiritual significance? the history of mankind is a history of religion, wherein we may observe man's idea of the nature of god and of his own relation towards god, keeping pace with his development as an intellectual and spiritual creature. when we review this evolutionary process, involving millions of generations of progenitors and covering immeasurable æons of time, we see emerging the creature destined to be known as man. with the slow dawn and growth of his intelligence, accompanied by a reaching out into an ever-widening environment, comes a dim perception of life and power outside himself--an acting force that is greater than his own. in apprehending the existence of god, man is evolved as a spiritual creature and stands in a kingdom of his own, destined to realise his essential unity with god as the spirit of life, in whose likeness he is made. _his apprehension of the existence of a spiritual god has given him a soul._ he sets about fulfilling his destiny. his attitude towards other organisms is that of providence--of that over-lord who before his own spiritual birth was his own providence, _i.e._ an active power outside himself and greater than his own. from this time forth his dominion is felt in the world as a governing force. his ability and authority increase with intellectual growth, until, as in the present day, the generation, development and extinction of species in the animal and vegetable kingdoms are to a certain extent modified by him according to his will and for his own ends. throughout his wonderful career we find his deity representative of his own growing powers, and of his own attitude towards the governing forces of nature. his conception of god is, in fact, the chronicle in serial form of his evolution as an intellectual and spiritual creature, a chronicle which faithfully records his progress and reflects his changing conditions of life. a study of the religions of men of past ages is thus a study of the index of their lives, their thought, their social and moral status, enabling us to estimate their positions in the evolutionary scale of humanity. as we review this register of the life-stories of mankind, we find the idea of the nature of god keeping pace with intellectual advance. but although the distinguishing characteristic of man, even in his crudest stage, is always his idea of and his worship of a deity, mankind as a whole has never worshipped at any one time the same idea of god. in the past as well as in the present, the many religions existing and obtaining credence and support all over the inhabited world give a fair idea of the intellectual and moral status of the people they represent. the ethical value of any religion is not gauged by an estimate of the number of its devotees as compared with those of any other religion. its existence merely represents the mental state of those who are its adherents. as a rule, a religious creed is built upon a supposed special revelation of god; but to the scientist religions appear also as revelations of mankind. to him their value is retrospective and deductive, inasmuch as they offer evidence of intellectual growth, which he perceives to be the natural precursor of those spiritual conceptions of the nature of god which may become in course of time consolidated into dogmatic formulæ. the extinction or survival of a religious creed as an active force points to the extinction or survival of that type of mind of which the creed was the reflection. progress forbids uniformity of type and equality of structure on the spiritual as well as on the physical plane of life. change and variety of religious feeling are necessary to the evolution of the soul, and should be welcomed as evidence of its growth. but not until, from the several types of man now inhabiting the earth, one were proved fit to survive in the struggle for existence and capable of maintaining its supremacy, could mankind worship the same idea of god. if this should ever occur, the change in the spiritual consciousness of man might be as stupendous and of consequences as far-reaching as that crisis in his physical evolution when the brute, becoming apprehensive of a god, was born into spiritual life and became possessed of a soul. but the inequality of species cannot be adopted as the calculative basis of comparative virtue in the evolutionary scale, since the relative positions of organisms can only be determined by an examination of the degree of consciousness possessed by each in comparison with the others. for instance, although we say that a horse is a more highly organised creature than a rabbit, meaning thereby that according to our estimation he presents a more complicated mechanism, yet such a comparison of physical susceptibility is necessarily imperfect, because limited by the degree of our own discrimination. for since the correctness of our judicial opinions rests upon our ability properly to appreciate the true relation between intelligences and their environments different from our own, it follows that our criticism of their comparative complexity can be no criterion of intrinsic individual merit. the same inadequacy of human judgment applies to any attempt to estimate the degree of spiritual consciousness possessed by various organisms. such endeavour may be successful in establishing a comparative standard for a rational criticism of religious creeds in their relation to physical evolution; but it is powerless to affix a stationary standard of morality to differently constructed intelligences. the possession by creatures of faculties differing from those of others does not necessarily make for superiority or inferiority. that is to say, differentiation of type does not determine merit. a man is not superior to a horse because his structure and powers are unlike those of the horse; nor is a rabbit or a bird inferior either to a horse or to a man, since the organisation of all these creatures is adapted to different usage. thus, the possession of a highly specialised brain does not in itself make of man a superior order of creation. the use or abuse of faculties, and the obedience or disobedience to the laws of being, offer the only standard by which the comparative superiority, inferiority, or equality of creatures of different organisation can be fairly estimated. and only by a similar comparison of the response to spiritual environment displayed by the followers of religious creeds can an approximate idea of their value be formed. it is unreasonable to dissociate the evolution of any one organism from the evolution of the whole of life. all creatures have a common origin in the spirit of life, and if we believe that all things work together for good in the manifestation through love of this vital energy, all organisms are seen to be of mutual help in the development of spiritual consciousness as well as in the perfecting of physical form. there exists, therefore, no warrant for assuming that the physical and spiritual evolution of man is achieved more for his own separate good than for the common benefit of all forms of life; or that organisms other than man have not, or will never have, those spiritual conceptions of the nature of god which signify the development of what we designate as soul. because all creatures are the works of god's hand--images of the divine will--evolutionary growth must surely bring them increasing consciousness of union with the essential spirit of life, which is at once the source and end of their beings. we are justified in assuming that the creator does indeed draw from all his creatures recognition of an order dependent upon the manner and purpose of their kind. but though it be granted that perception of the presence of spiritual attributes in organisms may be resolved into an appreciation of the ability of creatures to conceive ideas of the nature of god, verification of any such supposed ability depends upon the standard of truth upon which investigation is based. now, although evidence is rightly regarded as a proper test of all truth possible of comprehension, there may be apprehended the existence of infinite truths not demonstrable in their entirety, because their adequate expression necessitates faculties not possessed by the finite intelligence of man. when essential truth is in some measure perceived, it is always evidence that brings about comprehension; but when only dimly apprehended and shrouded in mystery, the intellect reaches forward into realms too hazy and undefined to allow of a deduction of evidential testimony in support of something not yet within the demonstrable scope of reason. the ability to adduce evidential testimony in support of a declaration of supposed facts is essentially an artistic faculty, and a necessary part of the equipment of every teacher, whether he draw his accredited inspiration from religious, scientific, or artistic sources, if he desire to perform effectually his educational function. the work of an artist is the evidence of his art, by means of which he may promulgate his convictions and secure converts to his creed. but while, comparatively speaking, few men set out to preach and teach some special gospel for the purpose of urging it upon their brethren, every man offers in his own person evidence of character which may become an educational factor in the lives of his fellow-men. we know and esteem a man by his works, which are the expression of his convictions and the fruit of his being. without the evidence of virtue in the lives of those who profess to possess it, we are not justified in believing in its reality. the artistic power of producing and recognising evidential testimony of supposed truths is part of the divine birthright of all men. the supreme artist of life, god, through whose works of art men may perceive the spirit of life, through whose creative energy the gospel of infinite truth is continuously made manifest, has given to man his body as a temple of truth, whereby the light of the spirit may shine out in evidence of its being. made in the likeness of god, the handiwork of the divine artist, he manifests the glory of his creator in his own human works of art--his creative powers witnessing to the essential divinity of his being. his senses give him evidence of his physical environment, and his reason, as the summary of sense, rightly seeks for verification of all that is announced to him as fact. but his senses cannot give him adequate evidence of his psychical environment, because its mere apprehension entails a transcending of the spirit over the medium of the flesh, thereby carrying vision beyond the point where verification of what is seen is possible, and where, attempting its expression, the vision becomes a shrunken incoherent thing, utterly inadequate as a likeness of what it is supposed to represent. the poet, the seer, the musician, the sculptor know something of this inability to reach in their work expression worthy of its conception. and if this is so with the artist, how much more so with the genius, who is compelled by a force he does not wholly understand, and yet is possessed of some executive power of demonstration! the genius lives in advance of his time, having a flash-like insight into knowledge hidden as mystery from the understandings of his fellow-men. he suffers the loneliness of the pioneer who, treading a path where none has trod before, leaves an open way with marks of guidance and explanation for those who come after him. but such a man has compensation for the lack of human fellowship in his consciousness of achieving work capable of raising the standard of thought in the minds of those who behold it. they may not understand, but they can admire. they acknowledge the work of genius--an attitude which is conducive towards a fuller appreciation of what they admire. they behold, in fact, evidence of something they do not fully understand, but which they apprehend to be true. thus art fulfils its divinely ordered purpose in the evolution of the human mind, its educational influence being traceable in all records of human progress. but there are spiritual ideals, visions of beauty, symphonies of harmony, unseen by earthly eyes, unheard by earthly ears, wholly impossible of demonstration, which remain for ever unexpressed and uncomprehended by those who have apprehended them. these seers of visions and dreamers of dreams have not, perhaps, the artistic power by which an attempt could be made to transcribe the vision in a manner legible to the ordinary human understanding. or there exists, perhaps, no adequate evidence by which even a genius is able to express what he has apprehended in ideal and abstract thought. yet to the dreamer, the seer, the genius an ideal is none the less true because he cannot certify its truth by evidence that would convey its verity to other persons. one of the facts that the theory of the evolutionary descent of man and the evolutionary development of his soul has made clear is that there is no limit to his future acquirements of thought and understanding. mental growth is a continual feeling after knowledge a little in advance of comprehension--of knowledge still hidden as mystery, to be approached only by a consistent application of the intellect towards the discovery of the evidence of truth in all things submitted to consideration. speculative thought acts as an impetus to the mind to set about the finding of evidence that shall induce a natural growth of knowledge from mystery. were there no knowledge inaccessible to the intellect, its development could not continue, for stagnation of thought, checking mental activity, must lead subsequently to degeneration. it is the effort to get, rather than the getting, which is the zest of existence. without the hunger of mind and body, how could the nourishment necessary for the continuity of mental and physical life be obtained? truth is infinite, as god is infinite, and apprehension of this divine fact does not rest upon evidential testimony. but comprehension entails the evidence of reason, and is necessary to the evolution of the human understanding. such evidence forms a link between mystery and knowledge, and offers a means by which the maturing intellect of man may obtain a gradual conversion of mystery into knowledge. desire must precede fulfilment. may not the longing to penetrate ever further into mysteries not as yet, by reason of our imperfections, demonstrable to our intellects, be the pioneer of the discovery of truths now unknown, but which in the fulness of time will be given as the spiritual inheritance of all those who, being pure in heart, shall see god in a light of revelation that has kept pace through all ages with the evolution of mankind? in such a manner does it seem that the desire for proof of human immortality should be considered. it is difficult to conceive how, on the physical plane of existence, evidence of the survival of human individuality after death could be obtained. the results of modern psychical research would seem to show that it is possible for the spirit of a dead person to be temporarily reinvested with a physical form other than its own body, and to communicate by this means with living persons. it is suggested that a spirit can so control a living person as to direct itself through him as a medium for some purpose not necessarily known to him. it is further suggested that, presupposing the survival of individual consciousness after death to be a fact, a disembodied spirit might so possess a living person with its influence as to become virtually reincarnate. it is known in ordinary life that the will of one person can so influence the thoughts of another as practically to annihilate his individuality, which, falling more and more completely beneath this dominating mental force, becomes finally a mere passive instrument of another's will. is it not possible that this same domination of one personality over another, so often noticed in life, may be continued after death in an even more intense degree, and thus provide proof of the survival of individuality? unfortunately, although such hypotheses have been supported by psychical evidence and phenomena seemingly confirmative of their truth, there has been as yet no positive assurance that this so-called proof of survival of individual consciousness is not the result of telepathy either deliberately or innocently evoked from an extreme sensitiveness of the medium to the mental suggestions of those who desire to see the particular phenomena that are subsequently produced. the catholic church asserts the possession of incontrovertible proof of the reality of human immortality, teaching that, unless the resurrection from the dead of the body of christ be accepted as an actual historical fact, the christian religion must of necessity become a vain and purposeless thing. but the evidence adduced in support of this doctrine is, from a scientific point of view, by no means conclusive. it is not, however, from christian dogma alone that the hope of immortality has been born in the human breast; and justification for the reasonableness of that hope does not therefore rest solely on evidential testimony of the truth of the miraculous resurrection of jesus christ. although it would seem that the survival of individual consciousness after death, whether it be attested by a possible spiritual reincarnation, or whether by the christian doctrine of the resurrection, cannot be regarded as assured by any evidence satisfying the requirements of scientific criticism, yet we are not therefore justified in assuming that confirmation of the reality of these spiritual apprehensions of human immortality will be for ever withheld from the human understanding. man, being capable of foreseeing death as an inevitable termination of his earthly existence, has conceived the idea of spiritual survival as a possible corollary of physical life. but for the justification of this hope there is as yet no conclusive evidence, since demonstration of its truth necessitates a transference of thought from the finite reckoning to that of infinite truth veiled as yet in mystery. a creature which by reason of its organisation lacked the intellectual capacity to imagine its death, could not know the desire for immortality. before man arrived at that stage in his evolution when he was able to foresee his death as an inevitable occurrence, we may suppose that he knew no craving for life after death. but the instinct of self-preservation, common to all forms of life, becomes in him the natural precursor of the hope of immortality--that spiritual desire which gives a special and divine character to humanity. that intellectual development which gives the capacity to foresee the inevitableness of physical dissolution is thus responsible for the apprehension of a spiritual survival of death. recognition of the truth that the life of the world continues after the individual has suffered physical death carries with it some consciousness of the circulation of other vital force. knowledge of death is thus preliminary to man's perception of the continuity of life, and a necessary preparation for his acquisition of such consciousness of impersonal vitality as leads to his apprehension of a spiritual god, whence he perceives his own vitality to be derived. with recognition of god as the divine spirit of life, his hope of immortality is justified of its conception. for if the life of god be in man, his spirit cannot die. is not this self-knowledge the spiritual birthright of all men, to which christ referred in the words, "except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of god" (st john iii. )? out of a knowledge of death, consciousness of spiritual life is evolved, from which springs the desire for immortality. "since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead" ( cor. xv.). the evolving intellect of man has given him knowledge of the inevitableness of death as the termination of physical existence, and from this evolution of intellect is born the spiritual apprehension of the resurrection of the dead--of that immortality of the divine spirit of life which is the veritable essence of the teaching of christ, and which finds endorsement in the modern scientific interpretation of the laws of nature. does not the evolutionary theory of the descent of man, by showing his spiritual development to be in accord with the scientific explanation of his origin, endorse the words of christ relating to his spiritual inheritance of immortality? hope, the outcome of the imaginative or creative faculty in man, is the pioneer of knowledge, for it is by that reaching out of the human mind into realms of speculative thought that ideas and apprehensions, if true, become gradually clothed with evidence of their truth, according as the spiritual and physical evolution of man makes him more capable of approaching the illimitable and infinite glory of god. the self-education of a child is achieved by a continual process of verification of his speculative thought by evidence. his ideas are regulated by the evidence he can deduce capable of realising them, when they are instantly registered as experience, which forms an ever-broadening base for further speculative flights of the imagination. as the mind matures, this faculty of speculative thought becomes, under the name of initiative, the germ of all undertakings calling for personal direction and action. a man undertakes to do certain things because he has confidence in his executive powers. he has experienced the evidence of his capability and verified his powers, and he therefore dares to go boldly forward into wider fields of action. a child still crudely experimenting for evidence of the truth of his own small infantine powers of apprehension, has as yet no conception of yet vaster knowledge awaiting his more matured mind. the knowledge and power possessed by his father are a mystery to him, calling forth his respect and awe, so that he scarcely dares to think he may one day be as wise himself. the knowledge of god and of infinite truth which a man has not in its completeness is a mystery to him, calling forth his respect and awe as his own powers inspire his little son with a like veneration. but nothing forbids a man from changing the mystery of god into a knowledge of god, _if he have understanding capable of meeting the revelation_, just as there is nothing to forbid a child from making the mystery of his father's knowledge his own possession if he have adequate power of comprehension. evidence _is_ a proper test of all truths possible of comprehension, but it is no test of the existence of infinite truth, by which the world and the affairs of men are formed for a purpose withheld as yet in its entirety from the imperfect human understanding. where it has been given to man to penetrate some way into the knowledge of so-called natural law, a beautiful coherency in the structure and continuity of life has always been observed. the unity of nature, and the working together of the whole of life, is a fact, the evidence of which has been deduced and declared over and over again in corroborative detail as the results of scientific investigation. could the history of the intellectual attainments of man be to-day unrolled before his wondering gaze, there would, we are told, appear no break in the perfect continuity of his ascending life, but instead a perpetual adjustment of the evidence of his speculative thought--of evidence so contrived as to keep pace with his capacity to understand. and could his future history be in a like manner revealed to him to-day; could he foresee that mysteries, now so incomprehensible, are yet destined to be comprehended by him as knowledge, we are justified in believing there would appear the same beautiful coherency in his spiritual evolution which has marked his material progress in the past. when man is ready to receive the verification of the immortality he hopes for, but for which he has as yet no scientific evidence, we may be sure it will be given to him. signs are not wanting that this almost universal craving of the human race is not to remain for ever unsatisfied. meanwhile, can we not watch one hour? the day is certain when we shall all in our own persons receive confirmation of the truth of our apprehensive hope for immortal life. can we not, then, in acquiescence with the will of god, which all experience teaches us to be a directing will for good, rest content in the belief that because evidence of a truth is never withheld from those capable of understanding it, so we, when we are ready for a verification of this desire of the soul, may be given the evidence for which we hope? iii the alchemy of love one of the most perplexing and saddening problems of life, which presents itself in mournful frequency to thoughtful minds, is that of so-called unmerited suffering. this seeming injustice, co-operative throughout nature with the struggle for existence, is a stumbling-block to many thinkers to whom the creed of propitiation for sin and suffering in the person and mission of christ, as well as those dicta of natural science which declare the sacrifice of the weak and helpless to be a necessary accompaniment of evolutionary life, appear rather as different aspects of vicarious suffering than as reconciliating explanations of its compatibility with the supreme government of a god of love. is it not the fact that a large proportion of our trouble and perplexity concerning certain problems of spiritual morality has origin in our resentment at the seeming injustice of the operation of the law of suffering? in grief and sadness of heart we cry out against the infliction of sorrow and pain upon those who are made to suffer vicariously for the wrong-doing of others. surely a god who wreaks vengeance for one man's sin upon his innocent children cannot be a god of justice! surely the dealing out of madness as the reward for superlative endeavour, strenuous idealism of thought, and consistent self-denial, the inflicting upon finely organised sensitive temperaments a capacity to suffer in a measure scarcely appreciable by coarser natures, cannot be by the direction of a god of love! when we behold the visitation of such mental and physical torture upon pure and upright men and women, whose conduct seems utterly undeserving of punishment, we ask ourselves if such things can be in accord with the supreme government of divine love. our hospitals and asylums are recruited largely from the ranks of those who suffer from the wrong-doing of others. inherited disease and tainted environment set from birth a handicap tantamount to foredoomed life-failure upon the children of the multiplied unfit, whose continued tenancy of the earth constitutes a deterring factor in progressive life. if these things are done by divine ordinance, surely the laws of human justice, framed for the punishment of wickedness and vice, and for the maintenance of virtue and its reward, are more in accord with a true conception of a government of love and justice! can it truly be the will of god that the innocent shall suffer for the guilty, the pure for the impure, the just for the unjust? if so, for what end are these things ordained? most of us have at one time or other "withered and agonised" under the relentless insistency with which some such ideas as these have intruded upon our spiritual tranquillity. we try to put them aside as beyond our understanding. we tell ourselves that we lack faith, that we are not meant to comprehend the mysteries of god. and yet, if the creator endows his creatures with the ability to question, and thus approach, the border-land between known and unknown, seen and unseen, can it indeed be irreverent or presumptuous to look to him for guidance from mystery into knowledge, from ignorance into understanding? if the revelation of god be indeed a revelation throughout nature, chronicled by the evolving collective consciousness of creation; and if the incarnate purpose of love be recognisable as the vesture of the spirit of life, god; can a like unfolding of the will of love be withheld from personal and individual understanding? it is clear that problems of spiritual morality must be approached from the spiritual plane of thought. that which pertains to the manifestation of spiritual consciousness and which is subject to the time-limit of human calculation must be dissociated from apprehension and contemplation of the eternal verities. if we would regard life as a whole, and thus attain a right appreciation of the relation of individual consciousness to spiritual unity, we must learn to live in the whole. if we desire a true understanding of the government of life; if we would conduct aright our critical inquiry into the methods by which the law of suffering manifests the progressively revealed will of love; if we would behold this will of love pictured upon the face of life, and receive the same spiritual illumination upon our souls, we must first establish a right attitude of heart and mind towards the divine revelation. differences noticeable between the religious and scientific interpretations of certain phenomena are not necessarily fundamentally hostile the one to the other, since each represents an opposing point of view rather than a contradictory likeness of fact. any system of reflective thought, registered as opinion and propagated as substantial truth, may appear in opposition to any other established line of thought; but neither should be on this account judged as wholly right or wholly wrong, since each may be a perfectly correct impression of the thing seen, if the reflective machinery available has been properly employed. for whether artistic perception be utilised as an aid to the desire so to interpret nature as to provide an endorsement of psychical apprehension, or whether it be directed towards the production of evidence for the verification of intellectual conjecture, the alternative result of a religious or a scientific interpretation of life is equally dependent upon focus for its representation in kind. under certain unlike conditions of light and distance, two artists engaged in the representation of the same object produce totally different impressions of the thing seen. difference of focus in the actual outward vision; difference of personality, whereby difference in the mental powers of registration, reconstruction and expression becomes apparent, are together productive of difference in representation. a discerning critic does not, however, condemn either picture as worthless or incorrect because the one does not resemble the other. he knows that a just opinion of their respective values rests upon his ability to gauge that relative difference of focus which is responsible for their dissimilarity. the worth of his criticism depends upon his capacity so to focus his own point of view as to embrace and reconcile the differences of aspect in the representations submitted to his judgment. given this ability, he is aware that his perception of the reconciled differences has enlarged his own appreciation of what he is called upon to judge. his criticism becomes his own enlightenment. thus it appears that true critical appreciation is based upon the focussing of diverging points of view into converging actuality; and only when inquiry is attended with such impartial discernment can elucidation ensue. the question of suffering, particularly of vicarious suffering, is one which, from the intimate nature of its bearing on the spiritual as well as on the physical aspect of human consciousness, gives rise to certain apparent irreconcilable differences between the religious and the scientific interpretation of its place and meaning in the scheme of life. on the one hand we have the point of view derived from that type of mind which cannot dissociate suffering from sin, regarding each as a concomitant consequence of a derangement of the divine and originally perfect order of creation by reason of the intervention of evil in opposition to god's will for good. such is the creed of pessimistic suffering--a practical denial of the progressive action of the spirit of love. on the other hand, there is the point of view derived from that type of mind which believes the susceptibility of organisms to contrasting sensations to be a necessary factor in spiritual as well as in physical evolution. such is the creed of optimistic suffering--the affirmation of the inherence of the divine spirit of life in all creatures, whereby pain and evil are shown to be as truly ordained by god as those opposing elements of consciousness known to us as joy and good, to the end that for evil so much good more, for sorrow so much joy more, may be evolved through the transmuting and progressive purpose of his will. here, then, are two aspects of the phenomenon of suffering--two pictures of life drawn from two points of view--the one apparently so irreconcilable with the other as to make it difficult to realise that it is indeed one and the same objective which is subjected to critical inquiry, _i.e._ the compatibility of sin and suffering in a world created and controlled by a god of love. but we are not justified in condemning, on the score of dissimilarity of conception and treatment, either representation as incorrect or worthless. the point of focus is responsible for their seeming contradiction. may not, therefore, some adjustment of our powers of critical discernment give us a point of focus which shall embrace both aspects, reconcile their seeming contradictions and differences, and enable us to draw one comprehensive conclusion from them both, to the enlightenment of our intellectual and spiritual consciousness? our analytical appreciation is directed towards a fair consideration of different aspects of a natural phenomenon. is it not possible to attain a vantage-ground above the divergence of aspects high enough to allow us to behold the spiritual and physical signification of suffering as one harmonious accompaniment of spiritual and physical evolution, in accord with the divine directing will of love? as, within the physical universe, sound-waves, once set in motion, must circulate for ever, ripple on ripple, in widening vistas of echoing reproduction, unless broken in their course by contact with some barrier capable of arresting and absorbing the progress of vibration; so, in spiritual consciousness, the influences for good and evil which emanate from all effort, whether individual or collective, volitionary or involuntary, must circulate for ever throughout infinity, unless checked, broken, absorbed, cancelled by centralization in some interposing and receptive agent. and so, within the communion of love, the saints on earth, chosen by god as worthy to co-operate in the divinely appointed regenerating purpose of life, may summarise and transmute the effects of evil into good by means of their own suffering; may so sanctify their minds and bodies as temples of the holy spirit, that they may be found worthy to share the passion of incarnate love in the redemption of the world. it is the will of god, it is the law of life, that we bear each other's burdens; that the just suffer for the unjust, the innocent for the guilty, the pure for the impure! not in ourselves or by ourselves alone can sins of commission and omission be expiated; not by our own unaided efforts can we arrest the consequences of action. life is a whole, and individual thought and action touch the whole, and their effects are felt by the whole. we derive no virtue in ourselves from ourselves alone. do we not owe our very ability to discriminate between good and evil, our standard of right and wrong, our civilization, our culture--nay, in short, the whole of our evolving realization of the love of god--to the collective consciousness of creation, which is a continual revelation of god? do not we stand to-day as inheritors of wisdom accumulated by the united efforts of mankind in past times, and as guardians of this, the world's increasing consciousness of god, revealed throughout all time, throughout all creation? according as our forefathers struggled and attained, do we in our generation enter upon the inheritance of the earth. thus the progressive spiritual consciousness of the world is at once our inheritance and our trust. we are debtors to the past and custodians of the future generations of our kind. through the infinite condescension of god in employing mankind as a medium of his revelation, the privilege of realising the increasing purpose of his will is placed within our keeping. made in the image of god, man is endowed with the creative faculties of his maker. the creator wills that his creatures shall consciously share in the glory of creation, whereby through the perfecting of spiritual apprehension is revealed the kingdom of god. are we willing to take up the cross of sacrifice and suffer gladly with and in the passion of incarnate love? if we are indeed judged worthy of use in the elimination of evil by conversion through suffering of the effects of evil into elements of good, must we not rejoice in our participation with divine love in the revelation of the glory of god? if we are called upon to surrender ourselves, our minds and souls and bodies, as a reasonable sacrifice in the service of love; if we are chosen by god to suffer in love and with love in the progressive redemption of the world from evil by the translation and transmutation of its effects in ourselves through suffering into recreated good; shall we not uplift our hearts and minds and souls in praise, prayer and thanksgiving, in that we are thus consciously brought into the holy communion of love? all creation groaneth and travaileth together, but it is not given to all forms of life to suffer consciously and willingly in co-operation with the divine government of life. participation in the redemption and salvation of the world through love is the privilege of those only who are born into spiritual apprehension of their essential unity with god, and who thus become one with him in the transmuting purpose of his will. these are they who, obeying the command of love to resist not evil, become agents of the divine alchemist. but the power thus to suffer willingly in the transmuting process of spiritual progress implies a dual susceptibility of physical and psychical consciousness which is the peculiar privilege of mankind. the whole organic world lies under that law of suffering which ordains that the sacrifice of individual interest shall form the collective and increasing good of life. but to humanity alone as yet has been given perception and power to share consciously in the divine government of creation. as part of the organic world we are bound by the law of suffering, but we are not condemned to suffer in total ignorance of the purpose behind the working of the will of god. we are spiritual beings, made in the image of god, and endowed with a birthright of free-will. we are called upon to suffer _gladly_ in love and for love, so that the creator may be glorified in his creatures. we are chosen instruments of the divine will, but we are free to accept or refuse our election into active service in the communion of love. shall we give ourselves to god in willing co-operation with the divine regenerating purpose of life? or shall we resent the sacrifice of ourselves in the forwarding of his will? we are offered co-operation with the spirit of life, whereby we may become the agents of divine healing in the progressive redemption of the world, and whereby the effects of evil may be transmuted into elements of good. we are called upon to share the passion of incarnate love and to take up _willingly_ the cross of sacrifice. if we disregard the divine command to suffer gladly, we reduce ourselves to the level of the unenlightened brute creation, thereby proving ourselves unworthy of our vocation to conscious and active membership of the communion of love, inasmuch as we stultify the divinely implanted powers of transmutation and redemption within us, and hinder the coming of the kingdom of god on earth. for, if men are responsible to a certain extent for their own suffering and disease of mind and body; if payment in their own persons is exacted as a just result of ignorance, or as the punishment of abuse of knowledge; yet the consequences of thought and action are not thereby entirely arrested. life is a whole, and the conduct of the members of the spiritual communion of love must affect the whole for evil or good. by our willing acceptance of our suffering as the transmuting agent for the conversion of the effects of ignorance and of active evil into elements of recreated good; by our endeavours to add to the world's accumulating consciousness of the love of god by means of our own rightly directed thought and action; by our readiness to suffer in ourselves the physical and psychical effects of evil, and translate them into good, may we not prove ourselves more worthy of our high vocation to the communion of love? iv the heritage of pain in the foregoing pages has been set forward some attempt to explain how the transmuting action of the creed of optimistic suffering operates in a progressive revelation of the spiritual unity of the whole of life, whereby pain appears as the agent of the will of a god of love in the conversion of evil into good, and whereby the perfecting consciousness of creation may be drawn into willing co-operation with the creator. such an interpretation of the presence of evil and pain in the world is in agreement with that advanced by science in support of the supposition that evolutionary growth entails the susceptibility of organisms to contrasting sensations. but is it also compatible with that other explanation of the origin of evil which holds the sin of adam accountable for the suffering of the whole world, and upon which is based the ecclesiastical doctrine of the need of the christian atonement? while affirming the interdependence of sin and suffering, there is drawn a careful distinction between the two, observation of which is necessary by the man who would avail himself of the church's aid in the salvation of his soul. supported as allegorical truth, if not as actual historical occurrences, the hebrew legends of the creation and the fall have been adopted as an explanatory foundation for the need of a new covenant between man, whose sinful conduct marred an originally perfect world, and his justly offended deity. before the advent of christ the souls of men are held to have been in bondage to the spirit of evil. but through the death of christ the wrath of god was appeased, and redemption of the sins of all who should acknowledge his redemptive power was secured. the catholic church, as the accredited representative of the divine authority of christ, teaches that by sacramental agency men may obtain remission and absolution of sins. but there is no concomitant remission of suffering, which is the consequence of evil-doing. the painful labour of men and the travail of women are the result of sin committed by their progenitors, adam and eve. it is one thing to forgive a wrong action, but another to arrest its mischievous effects. man, having marred god's scheme of creation, must suffer to the end of time from the ineradicable presence of evil in the world, although individual responsibility for its existence is secured by belief in the power of absolution claimed by the catholic church in the carrying on of christ's mission of redemption. ecclesiasticism hails christ as the saviour of the world, inasmuch as his death was a sacrifice sufficient to atone for the sins of all men. but it is reserved for science to confirm the truth of this spiritual recognition of the divine redeemer, love, by evidential testimony adduced from proven facts of so-called natural law, whereby christ is seen as the expounder of doctrine that controverts the theory of evil and suffering as opposing forces to the will of a god of love, and reveals their purpose in the spiritual evolution of mankind. to the scientific mind, sin is non-existent apart from recognition of moral law. reason asserts that a knowledge of evil is necessary to a knowledge of good, discrimination between the two being preliminary to the establishment of moral law; that such discrimination is chiefly obtained through the sensibility of organisms, the degree of whose susceptibility determines their relative positions in the evolutionary scale--a degree which terminates in man, who manifests the highest consciousness, estimated by his ability to feel, and the highest form of intelligence of any known creature. although sensory consciousness may be regarded as a register by which the relative positions of organisms in the evolutionary scale may be determined, the increasing inability to speak positively with regard to distinction between living and non-living matter forbids any dogmatism as to the impropriety of applying the term "conscious" to the inorganic world. it is, perhaps, here permissible to suggest a possible point of reconciliation between the natural desire of men to obtain evidence of their spiritual survival of organic decay and that disregard of individual importance and advantage which is characteristic of a purely secular interpretation of the laws of nature. the christian, whose creed includes immortality as the birthright of his soul and the crown of his religious faith, resents the exclusion of all personal interest from the consideration of natural phenomena. for instance, with regard to the effect which physical death is supposed to exercise on his individuality, science and religion, regarding the phenomenon from different points of view, appear to be in opposition of opinion. but is this really the case? is there not in reality fundamental unity between the secular and sacred aspects of all natural phenomena? it has been suggested that the sliding scale of physical consciousness has its psychical counterpart in moral ideals, from which the aspirations and perceptions of men reach out towards spiritual apprehension. can endorsement of this supposition be drawn from the realm of natural science? what reasonable evidence is forthcoming in support of the conjecture? although dogmatic distinction between the organic and inorganic kingdoms can be of no permanent value (since what is to-day classified as non-living matter may possibly to-morrow be declared to belong to the organic world), yet there is justification--drawn from observation of the simple characteristics of clearly defined organic and inorganic matter--for remarking the former to be distinguished by apparent sensory consciousness, which may therefore be called an active ingredient of manifested life; but the latter shows no such apparent consciousness, and can therefore be called a passive ingredient. both forms of matter react upon each other, and are inextricably present in life contemplated as a whole. and both forms of matter are interdependent upon a logical sequence of action, by which the supreme spirit of life pervades and controls all manifested life. by this maintained interaction, perpetual manifestation of life is carried on, and the cycle of birth and death as a recurring demonstration of being is shown to be the transmuting accompaniment of the progressive will of the spirit of life. continuance of sensation in an individual is dependent upon the maintenance of correspondence between its organisation and its environment, cessation of which is synonymous with death. in other words, matter hitherto possessing an individual consciousness, manifested by response to its environment, is resolved into particles of matter which show no united susceptibility to environment, and which are therefore not deserving of description as an individual living organism. conversely, birth is a resolution of (in the above sense) inorganic matter into organic. the more complicated an organism the wider its environment, and to the degree of its susceptibility the more liable to resolution into inorganic matter, unless a corresponding degree of ability to protect itself from danger continues to accompany its evolution. in the case of man, knowledge of how to maintain his bodily health must keep pace with intellectual development if the balance between physical consciousness and psychical apprehension is to be properly sustained. psychical apprehension can be translated into physical comprehension only through the medium of sense, and appreciation of the meaning and value of spiritual life through the medium of the brain. health of body is necessary for health of mind, and the co-operation of mind and body is necessary for the apprehension of spiritual truths. now consciousness, both in its physical and psychical aspects, is manifested by the response of an organism to its environment, and in the case of organisms characterised by the possession of brain, more particularly by the power to register sensation. human consciousness is achieved largely by an ability to perceive and register _contrast_ in the impressions conveyed to the understanding, and it is the exercising of this faculty which leads to an established recognition of moral law. appreciation of the existence of shadow and darkness presupposes the existence of light, and distinction between these contrasts is summarised by the sense of sight. in like manner, the perception of truth rests upon the power to recognise falsehood, and an estimation of what constitutes honesty on a corresponding idea of dishonesty. the sensation of pleasure is obtained from the possession of a correspondingly acute capacity to feel pain, discrimination placing value on either polaric contrary proportionate to the sensory capacity involved. in short, the register of abstract qualities is more or less dependent upon an appreciation of their antitheses--the moral worth of virtue being determinable by the degree of perceptive discrimination displayed in recognition of its contrast. just as vision is a result of light, only known to us as vision and formulated as such by reason of its contrast or absence, darkness, which spells blindness, so the idea of good is only known to us by force of its contrast, evil. registration of the alternating sides of the swing of this polaric machinery of sense makes for an advance in moral and spiritual, as well as in physical consciousness. evil, on the moral plane of consideration, is as entirely a result of ignorance and absence of good as blindness on the physical plane of actuality is the consequence of perpetual darkness, or insensibility to light. the negative elements of both conditions possess a potential possibility of transmutation into positive elements--the operation of psychical and physical alchemism forming the dual revelation of a god of love, whereby those who are blind in spirit and body are made to see, to the end that the whole consciousness of man may be confirmed by his increasing knowledge of the glory of his creator. to be unable to suffer would entail insensibility to pleasure, and no moral meaning could in this case be evolved from and attached to the idea of feeling. but it is precisely by reason of his attainment of a high degree of consciousness, manifested by the ability to register sensation, that man can claim a comparatively high position in the evolutionary scale; and if suffering and death be indeed a result of his prehistoric interference with an originally painless scheme of creation, it is difficult to reconcile the benefits he appears to have thereby gained with the idea of such being a punishment for his wrong-doing inflicted upon him by god. for since perception of contrast in abstract quality is absolutely necessary for the obtaining of conscience on the moral plane of thought--that is, for recognition of good and evil, and for the ability to transmute evil into good--it follows that where such perception does not exist there can be no moral responsibility attaching to individual action, no possibility of attaining a dominant spiritual consciousness, and no question of sharing the redemptive mission of love. in the words of christ, "if ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, we see; therefore your sin remaineth" (st john ix. ). it is conceivable that just as that which to the eyes of men appears as darkness is not in the same degree dark to creatures whose habits have developed visual organs differing from those of man, so on the moral plane that which appears as evil to one man may to his differently developed brother seem less evil, and to creatures less highly organised than man, even good. no quality, physical, moral or spiritual, can be restricted or finally actualised; and no one man's opinion of what is estimable can stand as a perfectly true expression of any but his own ideas. to sum up. the existence of pain is as necessary to the appreciation of pleasure as the existence of evil is to the appreciation of good. therefore we may regard the sliding scale of consciousness as a register of sensation, a scale adapted to actual physical life and necessary for its continuity and development; and a scale which has its exact psychical counterpart in moral ideals, from which the evolving aspirations and perceptions of men reach out towards spiritual life. the degree of all quality, physical and moral, appears to be primarily dependent upon the capacity to feel--the capacity of consciousness. and upon the perception of contrast rests the possibility of attaining to a dominant plane of spiritual consciousness, and the power to become an active and willing agent in the divinely ordered transmuting, redemptive, and progressive government of life. it is especially with regard to the spiritual consciousness of man, and of man's participation in the divine government of life, that the doctrine of christ controverts the idea of suffering as an evil. in his verbal teaching, and in his rite of communion established as a symbolic epitome of his spiritual convictions, there is a clear acknowledgment of the fundamental unity of nature--a basic point of argument which is also adopted to-day by every scientist in all departments of research. christ laid particular emphasis upon the spiritual unity of man with god, he himself speaking as a son of god--a manifestation of the divine spirit of life. he urged the following of his example upon his disciples, trying to open the blind eyes and deaf ears of men who had as yet so imperfect an understanding of spiritual things. he tried to teach them to look at life from his point of view. did he not regard the son of man as the expression of god, recognition of which spiritual truth gave him, as it can give to all, assurance of eternal life? the spirit of life which is in every man cannot die, for it is part of god, who is life without beginning and without end. only the expression or medium of spirit, only the finite form, is mortal. spirit is infinite and immortal. such sayings as the following, attributed to christ and his disciples, are expressive of the relation of man to god, and each may be seen to form a logical corollary of the other:-- "i and my father are one" (st john x. ). this is the simple summary of christ's conviction of fundamental union between the spirit of life, god, and manifested being. "my father is greater than i" (st john xiv. ) expresses the fact that the spirit of life as a whole is greater than its manifested parts, although those parts are contained by the whole and are at one with the whole. "he that hath seen me hath seen the father" (st john xiv. ). here christ speaks of himself as a manifested part of the spirit of life, in which sense every man can see in his fellow-creatures the same manifested spirit, who is god. he who looks at the son of man as the incarnate son of god is following the example of christ, who taught the brotherhood of man. "no man hath seen god at any time" (st john i. )--shows the futility of imagining it possible to confine the supreme spirit of life in any one form at any one period of time. all form is manifested spirit, but the spirit of life is not only in all, but over all. the following, among very many other sayings, are also susceptible of the same interpretation:-- "i came from the father, and am come into the world; again, i leave the world, and go to the father" (st john xvi. ). "as the father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the son to have life in himself" (st john v. ). this doctrine of christ, indicative of his sense of union between god as the supreme spirit of life and of individual being--a union unbroken by the incidents of birth and death attendant upon the manifestation of the spirit--harmonises with the scientific doctrine of the unity of nature, and if accepted as a fundamental clue to his reported words and deeds, very many of the difficulties and supposed inconsistencies apparent in a purely ecclesiastical interpretation of his person and mission melt away, leaving a beautiful coherency of religious truth in accord with the revelations of natural science. when men look at life from christ's point of view, thereby attaining recognition of god as their father, they become spiritual creatures who hold the moral responsibility of their beings in trust to the spirit of life. christ lived in advance of the intellectual thought of his day, having intuitive knowledge of the unity of nature, but no scientific evidence to offer in its support. but his life and doctrine afford convincing illustrations of his spiritual convictions, and the key to the mystery of his miraculous works of love may perhaps be found in our realisation of his sense of kinship with all living creatures. his acquiescence with natural laws, known by him to be the working of the will of the spirit of life, gave him influence over all persons with whom he was able to establish a spiritual relation--with all who were willing to co-operate with him in the alchemistic law of love. his own self-command gave him dominion over those weaker than himself, who did not resist his will, who, in the language of scripture, "had faith in him." without such faith we are told he could do no mighty works. but given this receptive attitude of mind, he was able to infuse strength into a sick person and thus to stimulate the spirit to resume its normal correspondence with the functions of the flesh. realisation of union with god as the supreme spirit of life entails an awakening to the significance of the unity of nature, and calls for an adjustment of the physical equipment of sense into accord with what is perceived to be the will of the spirit of life. with the desire to be at one with the will of god, consciousness of those influences hitherto dimly apprehended to control existence as though by autocratic law, widens into perception of a progressive government of the whole of life, in the ordinance of which men may take an active part. here, surely, is that recognition of god possible to all, to which christ referred in the words, "god is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth" (st john iv). this is that heaven of light and truth, to be excluded from which is to dwell in the outer darkness of spiritual ignorance. and this is the new birth unto righteousness with a death unto sin which is the epitome of the ethical teaching of christ. but, it will be asked, how does this view of life eliminate suffering as an evil from the world? how can it be shown that disease and death, the fear and danger of which cast a perpetual shadow over life, are not evil things, responsible as such for the suffering of all creatures? granted that man has attained his present high position in the evolutionary scale chiefly through his ability to feel, to suffer; granted that the establishment of morality, brought about largely by registration of contrast in sensation, leads directly to realisation of spiritual life; granted that we may be privileged thereby to exercise a transmuting influence upon evil and its effects, thus making us partakers in the progressive government of life; if our future evolution, proceeding on the same lines of development, entails an ever greater capacity to suffer, is it a desirable thing? have not less highly organised creatures, with correspondingly lower degrees of consciousness and with less knowledge of the governing principle of life and their own responsibility towards that government, happier lives than men? whither are we tending? what is the ultimate goal of the recurring cycle of birth and death, manifested by the operation of natural laws, in the general scheme of life in which the evolution of man is but a part? the welfare of individual man has no meaning apart from its relation to the benefit of mankind as a progressive whole. if a man participate in the common habits of his fellows, he must take his share in those dangers to individual existence which the development of his race necessitates. the advantages which we to-day derive from our employment of social and scientific contrivances common to civilised communities have been wrought from the effort and suffering of men of past times. we are debtors to our ancestors who, by their own labour and sacrifice, have given us a better equipment for the battle of life than was their own inheritance from their forefathers. we are under an obligation to our race which, whether we discharge it willingly or no, is drawn from us by the operation of forces beyond our own control, as the just equivalent of our gain. we cannot separate ourselves, humanly speaking, from our kind. inasmuch as the spirit of humanity reaches out towards immortality from one generation to another, our lives are not our own. rather are they hostages to fortune, to that evolutionary principle which, while allowing us as individuals to participate in the benefits actualised to-day as the results of the labours of past generations of men, also exacts from us our own contribution towards the slow perfecting of our kind. it is indubitable that suffering is an important factor in the evolution of the mind as well as of the body of man. inefficiency and defect in scientific and social contrivances are made apparent by accident, which, having entailed human suffering, is therefore productive of effort to rectify the cause of danger, and thus of reducing the risk of further punishment. could perfect correspondence between an organism and its environment be perpetually maintained, physical death could only occur as the final stage in the gradual decline of the medium of the spirit. such natural dissolution appears to be part of the order of manifested life, requisite for its continuity and for the evolution of species, and necessary for the development of the spiritual desire for immortality. it is not of necessity a painful process, since the slow decline in physical vitality implies a corresponding decrease in sensibility, or, in other words, a decrease of physical consciousness. premature death, the result of disease and accident, and accompanied by more or less suffering, constitutes the wages of ignorance, and only in this sense can pain and death be said to be a punishment for sin inflicted by god. if man, individually and socially, does not know how to protect himself from danger, he must pay the penalty for ignorance. only a perfected organism, maintaining a permanent correspondence with its environment, could be permanently capable of combating physical death. and since the cycle of the birth and death of all forms of life constitutes the central principle of natural law, it is difficult to imagine an eventual eternal preservation of individual physical life to be the ordained end of the evolution of humanity. when life is looked at as a whole--a point of view entailing perception of god as the supreme spirit of life informing and governing all matter--there appears no injustice in the suffering of the human race,or of other organisms whose evolution requires their conscious susceptibility to environment. men must suffer for their ignorance in order to become wise, and to get wisdom they must eat from the tree of good and evil. those who are ignorant of what is necessary for the preservation of health receive the wages of their imperfection--suffering, and premature death unto the third and fourth generations--not as the vindictive vengeance of an offended deity, but as the remedial vindication of a persisting will of love, a transmuting process which must endure until the result of fatal ignorance is expurgated from a progressive world. if individual thought, individual free-will and action, were more generally recognised to be the prime factors by which human evolution is forwarded or deterred; if concern for the preservation of individual advantage were dominated by a desire to promote the welfare of the race; if the willing transmutation by vicarious suffering of the effects of evil into elements of good were more readily accepted as the privilege of the members of the communion of love; we are justified in believing that unnatural suffering and death, with their manifold accompaniment of sorrow and fear, would be gradually eliminated from the lives of men according as they grew into a more perfect wisdom and understanding of the meaning and purpose of life. like christ, we must be perfected through suffering. the whole creation groaneth and travaileth together, to the end that the incarnate purpose of life may be fulfilled, and that the increasing sum of the spiritual consciousness of creation may be brought into co-operation with the divine creator and so actively and willingly share in the divine government of life. v the vesture of god when paul of tarsus reproved the men of athens for ignorantly worshipping an unknown god, he was virtually denouncing the tendency towards idolatry which is inherent in all religious symbolism. public worship of an unknown and unseen god must be more or less symbolic in order to express any particular idea of the nature of the supposed divinity. but a stranger in a strange land, uninitiated into the symbolism of the religious faith there practised, is apt to infer idolatry in the ritual he witnesses simply because he cannot discriminate between the thing seen and its esoteric significance. the programme of christianity delivered by st paul to the athenians practically excluded ceremony as a necessary accompaniment of worship. he preached a known god, a seen god, revealed in the person of jesus christ, and requiring no likening unto gold, silver, or stone images, graven by art and men's devices. it is noteworthy that every religion in its infancy is but sparely attended by forms and ceremonies, the more or less elaborate ritual that accompanies its subsequent growth being an almost inevitable result of its consolidation into a definite creed which shall stand as the supposed likeness of its original spiritual conception. this rise of ritual is largely responsible for the need of periodical reform which is a common occurrence in the development of every religion that has outlived its infancy. the history of christianity, with which alone we have here to deal, affords recurring examples of agitation directed against a perverted religious symbolism--a dangerous degeneration which, by crushing the spirit beneath the letter of observance, leads to hypocritical and idolatrous practices. it is difficult to think that st paul, when condemning the symbolic worship of the athenians and ephesians, foresaw the growth of that elaborate ritual, formulated gradually as symbolic evidence of christian doctrine, which has become so inextricably a part of the catholic faith as taught in the church to-day. christ's remark, "except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven" (matt. xviii. ), might with advantage be applied to religious organisations as well as to individuals. but although as a reformer of the jewish faith he denounced symbolism, which had become corrupt, inasmuch as undue stress was laid upon the letter to the neglect of the spirit of the law, he yet submitted to the ordinance of the law in all particulars, perceiving that a proper attention to the spirit did not necessarily entail neglect of the letter of its observance. he was a reformer, not an iconoclast. he came not to destroy, but to fulfil. but his outspoken denunciation of the hypocritical and idolatrous practices of the scribes and pharisees roused an active hostility to his teaching, since reversion to the simple ethical principles such as was advocated by the later prophets, with a proper appreciation of symbolism as symbolism, implied the downfall of those whose tenure of authority over the masses of the people depended upon the strict maintenance of a complicated and mystifying ritual. symbolic worship is an attestation to an unseen god, its ostensible purpose being of course that a gradual revelation of god may be vouchsafed to the pious devotees of sacraments and ceremonies. the inaugurator of a rite, desiring to express his ideas of abstract or absolute truth, contrives a symbol, a work of art that shall stand as the likeness of his thoughts--a likeness capable of carrying significance according to the discriminating intelligence of all who may behold it. he cannot be held responsible for any subsequent confounding of his artistic symbol with its esoteric meaning; but to those who cannot distinguish between an image and its significance--who interpret the letter as synonymous with the spirit of a rite--the observance of symbolic worship becomes perforce an introductory step towards idolatry, the practice of which is fatal to intellectual and spiritual progress. not only with regard to religion, but in every branch of art, in the common habits of daily life, in the very language that clothes thought, this dangerous tendency of the human mind towards idolatry may be observed. thus, worship of beauty for beauty's sake is idolatrous. but its recognition as the outward sign of inner grace is one of the lay sacraments of life which link the real to the ideal realm of thought and give an added glory to human existence. is not man a dual creature? is not his body an artistic expression of the divine spirit of life, in whose likeness he is made? and are not his works representations of his creative and executive powers, even as the works of nature are representations of the supreme spirit of life? the minds of individuals, as of races, find expression in their works, the worth of all artistic symbols of endeavour (whether of so-called secular or sacred significance) being determined by the evidential testimony they convey of abstract and absolute truth. now, illumination of unproven supposition being prefatory to its establishment as fact, the evidence of things unseen and unknown is resolved into the foundation of comprehension. the execution of a work of art is only truly estimable when its realism affords an adequate expression of its maker's mind--when, in short, it forms the outward sign of inward meaning, and is recognisable as such. thus considered, words stand as symbols, language being evidence of thought. the extent of a man's vocabulary may be taken as a fair criterion of his ideas about the things of which his words are the expression, always supposing he does not fall into idolatrous worship of words as words, to the neglect of their proper significance and value. again, figures as symbols of calculative thought, while valueless in themselves, are of inestimable importance when rightly utilised as an effective means to an end. through the science of mathematics, the relation between magnitudes only conceivable to the mathematician by his employment of calculative symbols, can be correctly ascertained, and a working hypothesis for practical purposes thereby obtained. mathematical formulæ thus regarded appear as the outer signs of a reasoning process that resolves the unseen and unknown into proven facts. the rituals of religious creeds, regarded as combinations of symbols as infinite in variety and arrangement as the needs of men, may surely be designated as works of art if it be remembered that admiration and imitation of natural objects is mainly responsible for the conception of those several deities whose supposed supernatural authority forms the summit of each particular creed, and whose character stands not only as a summary of a people's appreciation of what is admirable in human conduct, but also as an expression of artistic feeling. growth of art is proportionate to intellectual development. that is to say, expression follows conception--a precept evidenced by the progressive works of men, which bear witness to their makers' increasing power to give utterance to what has hitherto been unutterable because incomprehensible. thus considered, symbolism appears as the _alphabet of truth_, whereby men may read the history of past days, and write the record of their own achievements in the book of time. it is the link between seen and unseen, real and ideal, knowledge and mystery, finite and infinite. it is the seal of divinity set upon man who, made in the image of god--an artistic expression of the supreme spirit of life--is endowed with the attributes of his creator, thereby enabled to manifest his creative energy in his own works of art and so to offer continual testimony to the indwelling and divine spirit of his life. thus the glory of the creator is made visible to his creatures not only in the wonders of the natural world scientifically revealed in the course of intellectual development, but also in a correspondingly progressive spiritual revelation of essential truth behind the vesture of symbolic being. contemplative life is to men the reflection of their minds, nature acting as the mirror of those mental visions which connect thought with spiritual perception. and since psychical ideals are regulated by intellectual limitations, _understanding_ of spiritual truths must be proportionate to intellectual insight. jesus christ offered no evidence of the essential truth of his spiritual convictions save by symbolism. like all idealists, he sought by means of art to convey his ideas to the understanding of his disciples. this was done in three ways. he spoke in parables; his actions were dramatically contrived to illustrate his verbal teaching; and he ordained a ceremony, the performance of which should perpetuate the epitome of his doctrine. his view of life being the reflection of his spiritual ideals, and more or less dependent upon his intellectual perceptions, it was necessary, in order to make others see as he saw, to teach them to look at life from his point of view. he saw the earth and the fulness thereof as the outer sign of the supreme spirit of life--nature being the vesture of god, the cloak of spirit, making all creatures likenesses of god and manifestations of the divine will. god's works of art--natural phenomena--are variously interpreted, because men's spiritual perception is regulated by their intellectual capacity to understand what they perceive. in the same way the symbolic works of art employed by christ to illustrate his teaching are variously interpreted according to men's ability to grasp the true inner meaning behind the vesture of parable and ritual. his symbolic teaching was interpreted literally by the materialists among his audiences. only a few understood that he spoke in parables, and that his actions were intended to illustrate spiritual truths. even his chosen disciples failed sometimes to distinguish between the outer signs of his doctrine and their inner significance. but christ looked to the future for a wider acceptance of his gospel of love and its application to the whole scheme of life. he foresaw that by the spirit of truth inherent in all knowledge and emanating from the supreme spirit of life, his teaching would be tested and purged of whatever false interpretations idolatrous generations of men might place upon it. "heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away" (matt. xxi. ). truth is not bounded by the duration of men's finite term of earthly life. for the sake, therefore, of unborn generations of men he desired to safeguard the perpetuation of his ideas of truth, so that they might carry their message to a future and more spiritually minded age. would not a comprehensive symbol, a rite, carrying significance proportionate to the discriminating intelligence of those who should witness it, combat the danger of his doctrine becoming irretrievably corrupted? the foundation of his gospel of love lay in his sense of union between god as the supreme spirit of life and individual being--every form of life appearing to him as a manifestation of god and a part of the divine essence. the symbol he contrived must be closely associated with himself and with this doctrine. it must be the likeness of his idea, and as a true work of art it must be capable of conveying its meaning to all able to recognise a spiritual truth beneath its outward form. it must be the epitome of all that was of vital importance in his teaching. it must be suited to all countries, and to all manner of men at all times. and in order to ensure its faithful perpetuation, it must be inaugurated as a personal memorial of himself, to be celebrated through all ages as a symbol of the spiritual unity of life. what more fitting material for his purpose than the common daily food and drink of people of all classes? what could better illustrate the bond of union existing throughout nature than a ceremony which should show how living creatures are sustained by the fruits of the earth, and which should emphasise the fact that animate and inanimate nature is pervaded by the same spirit of life which works through a recurring cycle of birth and death for a perpetual manifestation of god, _who is life_, the vital principle of being? what could better illustrate this spirit of life dwelling in men's bodies and making them temples of god than a rite which drew attention to the fact that nourishment of the body is necessary for the continuance of the manifestation of the spirit? bread, the staff of life, is in some form or other the daily food of all peoples. the tilling of the fields, the garnering of the grain, the grinding of the corn, bring men into intimate relation with nature, and fittingly demonstrate that connection between natural laws and the lives of men fundamental to their existence and necessary for the maintenance of life. the vine served as the subject of some of christ's most beautiful parables; it was an object of familiar interest to the people of judæa; its cultivation was associated with the habits of their daily lives. its fruit was thus another suitable symbol of intercommunion between the products of the earth and the bodies of men. the accounts of the inauguration of the rite of communion given by st matthew, st mark, and st luke agree in the statement that it occurred when christ and his disciples met together to celebrate the feast of the passover, immediately before the betrayal by judas. the occasion was clearly chosen by christ as suitable in all respects for the institution of the ceremony he had conceived as adequately embodying a symbolic epitome of his doctrine. throughout his mission he had rigorously observed the letter of the jewish law, it being in accord with his office as a reformer of a distorted religious symbolism to utilise existing ritual in order to expatiate on its neglected spiritual significance. the keeping of the passover with his twelve disciples could be made to signify very much. it would be the last passover he would keep with them. nay, more, it would be the last meal. when the feast next occurred this present celebration would be remembered as the last occasion when he had broken bread with them. all that he had then said and done would be graven on their memories as the last words and deeds of their beloved master before he was taken from them to undergo his trial and death. he would appeal, therefore, to their affectionate memory of him in order to induce a faithful performance of the rite he was inaugurating. though they might fail to grasp its full spiritual significance, their attachment to him would ensure the carrying out of his command to fulfil it in memory of him. if the faithful celebration of the rite were secured, there was made possible a fuller understanding of its meaning by future and more enlightened generations, who would subject his doctrine to the test of the spirit of truth, proceeding from the supreme spirit of life, and inherent in all knowledge. st john gives no account of the institution of the rite at the time of the passover, although he alone of the four evangelists reports christ's verbal teaching of the doctrine thus embodied on occasions other than its inauguration as a symbol of communion. in the sixth chapter of his gospel we find christ reported as using the same symbolic phraseology with regard to his flesh and blood that he employed in his speech introducing the rite at the last supper. we read of the disciples and the jews disputing christ's words, interpreting them literally, and calling forth his explanation that "it is the spirit that quickeneth; the words that i speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." notwithstanding the implied injunction that his doctrine of the unity of life was to be interpreted in a spiritual sense, we find that "from that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him." since then, how many literal interpreters of christ's symbolic utterances have turned aside from following after him, and have been led away into idolatrous worship of the letter of his teaching to the neglect of its spiritual significance! it would appear that the symbolic epitome of the doctrine of communion had been conceived by christ some time before he introduced it as a rite on the occasion of the last supper; that the idea had already been verbally expounded by him; and that its consolidation into the form eventually chosen was achieved as a dramatic finale to the whole of his previous teaching. if the fourth gospel be the work of john, the disciple whom christ loved, it is significant that he alone reported the injunction that christ's words were to be interpreted in a spiritual sense. the doctrine of the unity of life, incorporated in the rite of communion, permeates the whole of the gospel, and lends strength to the supposition that its writer had in some special way known personal intimacy with christ. union between god as the supreme spirit of life, and the word as the expression of god, is the basis of its doctrinal construction; and the institution of the rite of communion, duly reported in the other gospels, is here shown to be the logical conclusion, in the form of a symbolic epitome, of the premisses adopted by the writer. supposition, however, is not evidence. in order to determine the significance of the rite of communion, and thus to arrive at some idea of its importance in christian doctrine, it is necessary to subject it to that test which christ himself declared to be the proper criterion of merit--the spirit of truth. in these later days, nearly two thousand years since he utilised the loving obedience of his disciples to institute symbolic evidence of the spiritual unity of life--a rite designed to give light to untold generations to come--how have men obeyed his injunction to test his words and deeds by the spirit of truth? "the comforter, which is the holy ghost, whom the father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever i have said unto you" (st john xiv. ). "when the comforter is come, whom i will send unto you from the father, even the spirit of truth which proceedeth from the father, he shall testify of me" (st john xv. ). "i have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. howbeit when he, the spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will show you things to come. he shall glorify me; for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you" (st john xvi. ). in these sayings, among very many others, we have a declaration that the spirit of truth, inherent in knowledge and proceeding from god, the supreme spirit of life, accompanies intellectual and spiritual evolution. christ's doctrine was not intended only for his immediate followers and men of his own race and time. much that was to them incomprehensible, much that by reason of their intellectual limitations he could only teach by implication, he referred to future generations of men who might discover and appreciate by the clearer light of after-days the intrinsic truth of his doctrine of spiritual unity. how has his appeal to posterity been answered? how has his recommendation to test his words by the spirit of truth been obeyed? it is part of the function of scientific criticism to examine emotional apprehension, and to corroborate or disprove by means of evidential testimony the truth in spiritual suppositions. the modern view of the universe, which recognises for the elements of matter an essential correlation of principle, may thus be regarded as the rational endorsement of christ's spiritual apprehension of the intercommunion and oneness of all forms of life. that the bodies of men are reared upon and sustained by innumerable other forms of life; that every individual is in reality an aggregate of others; that nature rests upon the continued intercommunion of all its parts; that no one part has power and meaning save in conjunction with others; that correlation is the perpetuating principle of life; that the very universe depends upon the mutual support of its component parts--are scientific facts that have their psychical counterparts in the spiritual ideals contained in christ's gospel of love, and are emphasised in the symbolic summary of his teaching--the rite of communion. let us now take the actual words supposed to have been used on the occasion of the inauguration of this rite, and examine them by the light of attested scientific facts:-- "take eat, this is my body which is given for you." "this cup is the new testament of my blood which is shed for you." christ spoke as an incarnate son of god, as a human manifestation of the spirit of life. his form, derived from and nourished by the fruits of the earth, was in its elemental essence one with the vital principle of all forms of life. the bread was his body. his physical life was sustained by his participation in the sacrificial intercommunion of nature. but the time was come when his body was to suffer death. he had risked his life by preaching reformatory doctrine. now this work was done. he was aware of his impending death, therefore he would not eat again. but his disciples were not yet to die, for their work was not yet done. therefore he bid them eat and drink, and thus continue to benefit from the intercommunion of nature, in which all forms of life obtain mutual sustenance by mutual sacrifice. the wine was his blood. in an agricultural and vine-growing country such as judæa, bread and wine were suitable examples of nutriment necessary for the maintenance of physical life. the flesh and blood of men are drawn from the products of the earth, and are resolved into their elemental parts when the spirit is separated by death from the body. starvation weakens and finally destroys the body, but nourishment restores waste and makes continued manifestation of the spirit possible. christ's blood had been formed from the fruits of the earth. now it was to be shed. sacrifice according to the jewish law necessitated the shedding of blood. was not the feast of the passover, which he was then keeping with his apostles, a sacrifice of blood? but he announced the institution of a new testimony of his blood which should not only witness to his death, but should show forth the victory of the spirit over physical dissolution. the symbol of sacrifice was to be spiritualised. whereas the old jewish idea of worship necessitated the taking of life and emphasised the shedding of blood as pleasing to god, the spiritual significance of sacrifice was now re-illustrated by christ's new interpretation of the sacrament of life. the kindly fruits of the earth; the increase of the earth; the bursting forth of vital energy from the earth--was now to yield the symbolism of the communion of life. not death, but life was to be emphasised as the will of god. the veil of the spirit was to be lifted, showing nature as the outer sign of life, as the veritable vesture of god. it is noteworthy that this interpretation of the rite of communion in no way contradicts the constructions placed upon it by the catholic church. instead, it reconciles certain differences of opinion, and may be seen to offer a point where religion and science may meet in a special endorsement of the unity of nature. the doctrine of transubstantiation is coherent and reasonable if prefaced by recognition of god as the supreme spirit of life present in all form. it is absence of this spiritual acknowledgment that has laid the teaching of the church of rome open to the charge of idolatry. both before and after the "consecration," the bread and wine are most truly the body and blood of god if nature be recognised as the vesture of the divine spirit. the repetition of the words spoken by christ at his institution of the rite serve to emphasise this spiritual truth. the idea of _corporal_ union with christ, obtained by partaking of the consecrated elements, does not adequately illustrate the fact that all life is one, and that all form is pervaded by the same one spirit of life. his body and blood is not the only touch-stone of union among men, since the whole of nature is one communion of life, wherein all creatures are one by reason of their common spiritual source of life. the same principle by which the fruits of the earth built up and sustained the human body of christ works to-day throughout nature. here, indeed, is the outer sign of the sacrament of union, as illustrated in his rite of communion. but the spiritual significance of this kinship of nature there made evident, although latent in the roman interpretation of the rite, suffers neglect in practice, and its symbolism is thus in danger of degeneration towards idolatry. the english version inclines towards the other extreme by unduly neglecting the outer sign of union, thus detracting from the full significance of the rite. it does not emphasise the corporate brotherhood of man, and it does not therefore appear fully in accord with the scientific doctrine of the unity of nature. in striving to avoid the supposed idolatrous errors of rome, the rite has been deprived of half its meaning. the church of england strains towards a spiritual interpretation at the expense of the actual; whereas the church of rome accentuates the actual to the neglect of the spiritual. neither version attains an adequate appreciation of the fact that the rite of communion is primarily a symbol, whose meaning can only be properly gauged by due attention to both its outward sign and its inner meaning. the spiritual is manifested through the actual, as the infinite through the finite. understanding of essential truth is gained through the senses, not in spite of them. but the word is neither of greater or lesser importance than the thought. is not the one an expression of the other, as nature--the vesture of god--is the expression of the spirit of life? thus, in the words of christ: "i have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: i have given them thy word. thy word is truth" (st john xvii.). if god be recognised as the supreme spirit of life, love must be seen to be the expression of life, and the perpetuating principle of life. life is a whole, and the spirit of life pervading all form is manifested by the intercommunion of all its parts. thus, the formation of flower and fruit secure the perpetuation of plant life, with whose existence is entwined the preservation of other forms of life. with higher organisms propagation is achieved by the same principle of sacrificial love, the intercommunion of all forms of life being necessary for the continuity of life as a whole. thus considered, love appears as a symbol, the outer sign of the sacrament of life, wherein individuals are united in spirit, and as a consequence of this union obtain increasing consciousness of their immortality. the attainment of such spiritual consciousness entails the subservience of personal identity to the consciousness of kinship with the whole of life. christ's gospel of love, with its repeated assertions of the necessity for self-surrender as prefatory to the acquirement of spiritual joy, finds a parallel in the pursuit of happiness undertaken by men and women in the occurrences of everyday life. do not the joys of love in its human relations between friends, husband and wife, parents and children, rest on a mutual surrender of self-interest? the rite of communion can thus be resolved into a sacramental work of art, whose outer sign is love, and whose inner meaning is life. through christ's symbolic work of art, the vesture of god which manifests the spirit of life is seen to rest upon all form. the symbols chosen by him to summarise his teaching are of an exact appropriateness. by his illustrations of bread and wine, designated by him as his flesh and blood, the gospel of love and the scientific doctrine of the common derivative union of all forms of life are brought together and shown to be the inseparable accompaniment of the whole of manifested life. therefore the declaration, "this is my body.... this is my blood ..." is not only true of the physical relationship which he himself bore to nature as the vesture of the spirit of life, but is applicable in its verity to every man who, in obedience to christ's command to "do this in remembrance of me," comes to recognise in his employment of the prescribed formula the true expression of his own union with the elements of nature, and his own relation to the supreme spirit of life as a child of god, made manifest through love. christ's words are not therefore to be repeated only as a quotation of a formula applicable solely to himself as a being differing from all other men, by reason of a divine origin possessed by him alone; but as living truth, capable of realisation by every thinking man and woman as an epitomised testimony to the essential unity of all forms of life, a unity manifested in form by the perpetuating principle of love. this unity of nature is attested by the intercommunion maintained between its parts through the mutual surrender of individual advantage and personal identity, which sacrifice enables the perpetuation of the whole of manifested life to be carried on. "for whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it" (st luke ix. ). in these words christ, conscious of himself as a manifestation of the supreme spirit of life, and speaking as incarnate love, urges a similar spiritual realisation on his fellow-men; so that they also, through voluntary self-surrender in the communion of love, may obtain spiritual union with the source of life, and become consciously clothed with the vesture of god. vi spiritual correspondence careful examination of the articles of most religious creeds reveals so remarkable a connection between the ideas of prayer and immortality inculcated therein, that in an attempt to trace and summarise the effect of either of these devotional outcomes of the religious sense over the spiritual evolution of mankind, it is expedient to subject them to a dual consideration. the infinite diversity of the human mind is made strikingly apparent by the different ideas of the significance and utility of prayer existing at various periods in the history of religion; and if this exercise of the evolving soul of man be recognised as yielding the basis of those conceptions of human immortality which, when defined as the goal of established creeds, distinguish such from all purely philosophical systems of thought, the difficulty of dissociating these two devotional factors in the development of spiritual correspondence becomes even more clearly apparent. it is noteworthy that most interpretations of the function of prayer, although acknowledging its fundamental purpose to be that of providing a means of direct communication between god and man, vary according to the different conceptions of the nature of god of which prayer is the logical corollary, and from which all ideas of immortality are derived. for instance, the notion of god as a person, made in the image of man, and endowed with his characteristics and powers in a superlatively human degree, is naturally accompanied by belief in the efficacy of prayer as a means of modifying the circumstances of life by permitting them to deviate from the normal operating sequence of cause and effect, into irregular acquiescence with the particular and changing desires of individuals. such an interpretation of the use of prayer is chiefly characteristic of the religious history of the childhood of the human race; but it also represents a type of mind surviving to-day under the domination of ecclesiastical christianity which, inculcating the theory that the government of god in the world is directed towards the especial benefit of mankind at the expense of the so-called "lower creation," is largely responsible for those ideas of inconsistency between the principles of religion and science which have led to controversial warfare between these two educative influences of the human mind. most of the conceptions of immortality which accompany belief in a purely personal deity trend towards an actual epitomised realisation of all that appears possible to obtain from god through the medium of prayer. the savage, attributing to his deity the power of capriciously inflicting upon him pain and pleasure, misery and happiness, prays for the satisfaction of his personal desires, and for immunity and protection from bodily harm. his ideas of immortality hover consequently about the imagined summarised reality of his prayers--heaven being conceived of as a place where the human joys for which he has prayed can be realised in a magnified degree for ever; and hell as the threatened compendium of all his fears, the culmination of pains and perils, to escape which he offers up propitiatory and supplicating prayer. in order to guard as far as possible against verbal misunderstanding, it is perhaps as well to offer a definition of the sense in which the word prayer is here used. _the expression of the desire to correspond with the will of god._ have we not here a basic point of spiritual correspondence, from which man's hope of immortality may be seen to justify its conception? careful consideration of the many and apparently conflicting methods of enunciating prayer leads to the observation that there exist practically but two great categories into which all varieties of prayer naturally fall:-- . "prayer of specific petition"--the outcome of the physical susceptibilities of men. . "prayer of spiritual acquiescence"--the expression of the psychical apprehensions of men working through the medium of sense into perception of god as the supreme spirit of life, revealed in form, and present as the spirit of truth in knowledge. the one is antecedent to the other. that is to say, prayer of spiritual acquiescence is a natural growth from prayer of specific petition, observation of which fact offers striking evidence of the evolution of the soul of man. it is one of the foremost characteristics of youth to demand from established authority satisfaction of those mental and physical desires which growth of consciousness entails. a child naturally attributes to his parents the ability to grant or to deny his requests. he receives from them all the necessaries of life; reward and punishment are in their keeping; and he therefore conceives the idea of propitiating their good-will towards him, trying by his conduct to rouse the approval and pleasure and avert the wrath of the parental government. he is disappointed when his requests are refused or ignored, and grateful when they are granted, perceiving himself at the mercy of a strength and power greater than his own. under precisely the same circumstances of ignorant youth, the so-called "uncivilised man" bows to the authority of what he believes to be supernatural power exerted upon him by the gods. he is, apparently, the plaything of a capricious deity, who holds as clay within his hands those conditions of life which bind him to his fate. surely he does wisely to propitiate this authoritative power by gifts, vows, and supplications; by thank-offerings for danger averted; by petitions for the deliverance from threatened evil. before all serious undertakings he tries by means of omens to read the will of his god towards him, even as the little children, studying their parents' faces, hope to discern thereon the propitious moment for the voicing of a particular request. but there comes a time when the child ceases to be a child; when he puts aside childish things--idle questions and unreasoning entreaties; when he no longer asks in words for the satisfaction of each transitory desire; when he acquiesces with perfect confidence in that loving wisdom of his father, which experience has proved to him to be a will for his own good in conjunction with the good of the whole of life; when the reasonableness of such acquiescence with his father's will controls his thoughts and pervades his consciousness; when the maturing man, looking out with awakened perceptions of the order of the world, recognises the will of god, written upon the face of nature, as the true revelation of his own will. his mode of prayer has changed. spiritual acquiescence has taken the place of specific petition. he enters into fuller understanding of the works of his father; he approaches communion of consciousness with the supreme spirit of life. development of the desire to correspond with the will of god accompanies both the spiritual progress of the individual consciousness of men and of the collective consciousness of mankind. that is to say, the evolution of prayer here suggested--showing how a faithful desire to know and to do the will of god induces its own fulfilment by growing consciousness of and acquiescence with the divine spirit of life--is not only applicable to individual effort, but also to those combinations of aspiration which we designate as public prayer. for if the repetition of a sincere desire to be, say, moral, be in an individual a strong bias towards morality, the office of general prayer, employed for a like congregational purpose, must be capable of carrying with its rehearsal a similar inducement towards its own fulfilment. but although a priest may give utterance to the noblest of sentiments, to the highest and purest aspirations of those human hearts whose mouth-piece he professedly is, if the spirit of sincere individual desire be not instilled into the spoken prayer that is supposed to represent the congregational will, performance of the office becomes a mockery of its intention, its expression as surely falling into nothingness as the echoes of the human voice fade to silence. but when the performance of public prayer is truly utilised to express the united wills of many individuals, such a concentration of desire must make for fulfilment by means as purely natural as those by which the laws of demand and supply operate in life--the medium between desire and its fulfilment being the operating power of will. if the efficacy of public prayer were more generally recognised, surely there might be added to orthodox liturgies an increasing power which would illuminate the idea of the divinity of man, witness to the glory of the government of god, and bring into a union of love the souls of the children of god. for word is the fruit of the spirit which brings into being the germ of the deed that shall, at the appointed time, fulfil the purpose of its being. to those thinkers whose spiritual perceptions have been quickened by the doctrine of the unity of nature into recognition of god as the spirit of life present in all form, a connection between prayer and immortality will be plainly evident. but if the idea of the aim of prayer which accompanies the interpretation of nature as the vesture of god be that of voluntary effort to become one with the divine will, what idea of immortality is the natural outcome of such belief? if we assume christ's conception of god to have been drawn from his interpretation of nature as the vesture of the divine spirit of life, we may expect to find some presage of his ideas relating to the immortality of man in his teaching concerning the meaning and function of prayer. the so-called "lord's prayer" is commonly accepted as summarising his doctrine relating to the right rendering of prayer, and offers a remarkable illustration of that combined specific petition and spiritual acquiescence which is characteristic of his own employment of prayer. in his dual capacity of reformer of a corrupted religious symbolism and innovator of new esoteric ideas, he sought to cultivate a new order from the old, not by grafting upon past habit and tradition the bud of an extraneous growth, but by inviting the co-operation of the free-will of men with the working of the natural laws of development, perceived by him to offer a means of attaining to a higher plane of spiritual consciousness. when he told his disciples that "all things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive," he tacitly acknowledged the value of specific petitionary prayer, the right employment of which we know to be capable of providing an educational basis for the attaining of higher ideas of the relation between things material and things spiritual. but his advocacy of all such specific petition was accompanied by a prefatory acknowledgment of god as the father of man, the natural expression of his sense of union with the supreme spirit and source of life. on the occasion of his own prayer before his betrayal, we find an expression both of his physical and spiritual desires. the man prays that suffering may be averted from him, while the spirit voices its longing to conform to god's will and thus to obtain perfect union with the spirit of life in him and over him. "abba, father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what i will, but what thou wilt" (st mark xiv. ). is not this acknowledgment of the spiritual fatherhood of god, which here prefaces christ's own employment of prayer, as well as his recommended form for the use of his disciples, another expression of the conception of god as the supreme spirit of life, manifested through love, and attested by the spirit of truth, which finds representation in his words and deeds and in his rite of communion? now, if we assume men's ideas of heaven and hell to be respectively the imagined realisation of desire and the compendium of fear, of a degree and kind consistent with their physical and spiritual evolution, and forming the basis of their prayer to god, an appreciation of the means and end of prayer as advocated by christ should in some measure reveal his ideas on the subject of human immortality. the keynote of his reported teaching on prayer is that of union with the will of god which, held by him to be the true end of all attempted spiritual correspondence with god, becomes at once the foundation of and the justification for the christian's hope of immortality. "not every one that saith unto me, lord, lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of the father which is in heaven" (st matt. vii. ). not merely by calling upon the name of christ, but by obeying his injunction to realise with him our union with god as the spirit of life, and to make our wills one with the divine will, is the certainty of our spiritual inheritance revealed to us. for, "this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true god, and jesus christ, whom thou hast sent" (st john xvii. ). we know the true god through form, through the expression of god, through the word, learning from christ to apprehend the spirit of life behind the name or manifested life. "i have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world.... i have given them the word ... thy word is truth" (st john xvii.). the mental development of man gives him vantage-ground whence he can, if he will, obtain with a clearness, certainty, and completeness proportionate to the intellectual elevation he has attained, on the one side a retrospective view of his descent, and on the other a perspective discernment of his possible destiny. in other words, the whence of his being is more remotely traceable, and the whither of his evolution more definitely perceptible, according as his growing powers of thought and reason enable him to deduce from his present circumstances certain data bearing on the past history of his life. knowledge of facts pertaining to his descent, by enlarging his consciousness of himself in his relation to the whole of life, offers an explanation of his present status that is at the same time a basis for the forecasting of his future possible fate, testifies to the continuity of his being, and brings his conception of immortality within reasonable bounds of justification. but confirmation of his ideas of human immortality is dependent upon an ability to attain an intellectual vantage-ground high enough to permit him to trace to its source the history of his life, and to throw a previsionary understanding over the destined end of his evolutionary career, wherein the blending of his physical and spiritual immortality is gradually revealed to him. for in the same way that an examination of the evolution of prayer leads to the observation of a change from specific petition to spiritual acquiescence--a change which we may interpret as evidence of the development of the soul of man, and of the collective consciousness of creation--so in the study of the life-history of mankind we reach a point whence we may behold the unbroken continuity of his physical evolution merging into that of spiritual evolution. that is to say, the physical immortality of mankind as a whole (the varied manifestation of the spirit of life through changing species) is crowned by individual consciousness of spiritual immortality, wherein the purpose of the incarnation of life finds fulfilment. pride of ancestry is so prominent a characteristic of nations, families, and individuals alike, that there is some justification for calling it a peculiarity of the human race. men glory in the possession of records that tell of mighty deeds of valour wrought by their progenitors. pride of kinship with heroes of past times breeds a sense of responsibility as an accompaniment to the inheritance of a noble name, urging the necessity of passing it on to posterity if not enriched, at least untarnished in its purity. the idea of the immortality of the individual in the race, characterising the hebrews as recorded in the books of the old testament, is one outcome of this innate pride of birth, which here becomes, as in many other instances, incorporated as part foundation of a religious creed. ancestor-worship is another such example. only, be it noted, whereas this idea of the continuity of being finds its chief expression in recognising and revering the link between present and past generations of men, that of the hebrew is built upon a conception of survival in their children. both offer a remarkable testimony to the innate desires of men to contribute towards the continuity of humanity in the establishment of the individual's relationship to the whole of life. the hebrew prays that his seed may multiply and cover the face of the earth, seeing therein the security of his own immortality. but the prayer of a devout chinaman embodies rather his recognition of honour due to his dead ancestors than his desire to secure a prolific progeny. he is the child of the past, rather than, as the hebrew, a child of expectancy. with regard to the ideas of spiritual correspondence embodied in the theories of the transmigration and reincarnation of spirits, it would appear that such are an outcome of the same search after truth that found expression nineteen hundred years ago in the christian doctrine of the spiritual immortality of all men, by reason of their derivative union with god as the spirit of life, and which are to-day confirmed and reincorporated in the scientific theories of the evolutionary descent of man and the unity of nature. but it is noteworthy that although the christian idea of immortality is dissociated from that of the survival of the individual in the race, as well as independent of the belief in the transmigration and reincarnation of spirit in ways other than by the transmission of personality from parents to their children, it is by no means antagonistic to, but rather comprehensive of, all these ideas of the continuity of being. christ's teaching adequately gathers together the truth in all the scattered and imperfect ideas of spiritual survival latent in the tenets of the religious creeds and theories to which reference has been made. but whereas the hebrew and chinese ideas inculcate the keeping apart of races and of nations, with a clinging to past tradition necessarily detrimental to progress; and whereas the transmigration and reincarnation theories constitute a practical annihilation of the survival of individual consciousness,--the christian conception makes for union among men of all peoples of all times, showing immortality to consist not only in men's relationship to past and future generations of their own race, or by connection with the inter-evolution of other organisms, but also and chiefly in their recognition of god as the supreme spirit of life manifested through love, and known to them as the father of their beings. perception of this truth establishes union among all men, and gives them consciousness of their assured spiritual and individual immortality. thus considered, the christian idea of human immortality may be seen to be a natural growth from the conception of the survival of the individual in the race. it is as remarkable a testimony to the development of spiritual consciousness, regarded as a whole, as is the evolution of prayer from its form of specific petition to that of spiritual acquiescence. for here again we can perceive how spiritual has accompanied physical evolution--how the evolving apprehension of the soul has kept pace with the confirming comprehension of the mind of man. and here again we see how the doctrine of christ unites past tradition with new developments of intellectual aspiration, his method of instruction following the perfect order of nature, wherein nothing is irregular or unreasonable, and whereby the indwelling spirit of truth affords perpetual evidence of the development of spiritual consciousness through natural evolution. the changing of the old order is a necessary accompaniment to progress. when christ announced his mission to be that of fulfilment and not of destruction, was he not inferring the expansion of knowledge physically perceived into apprehension of its spiritual significance--an expansion which, foreseen by him to be the accompaniment of the future development of man, would call for continual verification by the critical testimony of the spirit of truth? the insistence laid by him upon the necessity of the realisation by men of their spiritual union with god as the basis of all effective prayer, is fully corroborated in his teaching relating to human immortality. indeed, the whole programme of thought and conduct presented by him to his disciples can be resolved into an advocacy of prayer as the means of obtaining conscious spiritual union with god, with the attendant purpose of establishing thereby the conviction of spiritual immortality. for eternal life is perceived to be the natural inheritance of all who through prayer have established correspondence with god as the spirit of life and the father of their beings, and who therefore know themselves to be partakers of the infinite and illimitable divinity of god. whether we consider the brotherly love between men recommended by christ as the will of god; or the self-sacrifice of the individual in the interests of the community, advocated by him as the foundation of true happiness; or the indwelling spirit of life in form, manifested by love in nature and illustrated in his rite of communion--the same realisation of the kinship of all life follows the putting into practice of his commands, with the result that spiritual life is perceived to be the birthright of all the children of god. proof of immortality is thus closely associated with the desire to correspond with the will of god, for through prayer is the divine spirit of life made visible. born of the prayers of the faithful expectant, the manifested deity is the incarnation of the ideal desires of mankind--the accumulated product of those periods of anticipation which constitute the preparation for fulfilment of desire, and thus make possible some special culminating revelation which shall be adapted to human recognition. if the light of god be in men, shall they not by that light perceive his glory? designed in the image of god, shall not man become like unto god, according as the divinely implanted desire to know god shall lead him towards a more perfect correspondence with his will? all revelations of god are representative also of the spiritual progress of mankind. the cultivation of qualities considered admirable in human conduct must be preliminary to the evolution of that type of humanity which shall be capable of appreciating as a divine manifestation the incarnation of certain desired spiritual attributes which are conceived of as partaking of the nature of god. the kingdom of god is within us. therefore must the manifested divinity be born of the prayers of the devout. thus only can god be made visible to men. thus only can his kingdom be established as heaven on earth. and thus do we learn to regard immortality as the fulfilment of prayer. for since the spiritual progress of mankind is achieved and sustained by an increasing consciousness of the glory of god, men must worship as the manifested divinity of god the embodiments of those spiritual qualities which represent the ideals of their own desire. therefore, to bring about the conscious and willing co-operation of creation with the progressive will of love, we have first earnestly to desire the coming of the kingdom of god, which desire shall be the preparation for our enlightenment, when the pure in heart shall see god. his kingdom is here at hand, shaping in the midst of us, not approaching from afar as a condemnatory judgment upon our imperfections, but as the increasing revelation of divine love--a manifestation which is at once our judgment and our joy. for from the beginning the word of god, the absolute truth of god, has been one with his divine glory; and from the beginning the progressive consciousness of creation has been guided by the revelation of the will of love and sustained by the spirit of truth. therefore, if language be the sign of thought, making for progressive union of men, and thereby promoting the growth of spiritual consciousness; and form be evidence of spirit, productive through love of continuity of the manifestation of spirit; and nature be the vesture of god, wherein the intercommunion of all god's creatures is shown to rest upon mutual sacrifice for mutual continuity of being--is not the incarnate purpose of all these things the attainment by men of conscious union and co-operation with their god? index. =abyssinia=, _shihab al din_, . =agricultural chemical analysis=, _wiley_, . =alcyonium=, _liverpool marine biol. c. mems._, . =americans=, the, _münsterberg_, . =anarchy and law=, _brewster_, . =anatomy=, _cunningham memoirs_, . surgical, of the horse, . =antedon=, _liverpool mar. biol. mems._, . =anthropology=, prehistoric, _avebury_, ; _engelhardt_, . evolution 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=epizootic lymphangitis=, treatise on, _pallin_, . =ethics=, and religion, _martineau_, . data of, _spencer_, principles of e., i., individualism and collectivism, . induction of, _spencer_, principles of e., i., . kantian, _schurman_, . of evolution, _schurman_, . of individual life, _spencer_, principles of e., i., . of reason, _laurie_, . principles of, _spencer_, . =ethiopic= grammar, . =ethnology=, _cunningham mems._, x., . =evolution=, _spencer_, , . of the idea of god, _d'alviella_, . of religious thought, _d'alviella_, . =exodus=, _hoerning_, . =ezekiel=, _mosheh ben shesheth_, . =faith=, _herrmann_, ; _rix_, ; _wimmer_, =fisheries=, british, _johnstone_, . =flinders petrie papyri=, _cunningham mems._, viii., ix., . =flora of edinburgh=, _sonntag_, . =french=, _boïelle_, ; _delbos_, ; _eugène_, ; _hugo_, , ; _roget_, ; _also_ special education catalogue. literature, _roget_, . novels, _army series_, . =gammarus=, _liverpool marine biol. mems._, . =genesis=, _hebrew texts_, , ; _wright, c. h. h._, . =geography=, ancient, _kiepert_, . =geometry=, analytical, elements of, . =german=, literature, _nibelungenlied_, ; _phillipps_, . novels, _army series_, . =germany=, _marcks_, . =god=, idea of, _d'alviella_, . =gospel=, fourth, _drummond_, ; _tayler_, . social, _harnack and herrmann_, , . =gospels=, old and new certainty, _robinson_, . =greek=, modern, _zompolides_, . =gymnastics=, medical, _schreber_, . =hebrew=, biblical, _kennedy_, . language, _delitzsch_, . lexicon, _fuerst_, . new school of poets, _albrecht_, . scriptures, _sharpe_, . story, _peters_, . synonyms, _kennedy_, . text of o.t., _weir_, . texts, , . =hebrews=, history of, _kittel_, ; _peters_, ; _sharpe_, . religion of, _kuenen_, ; _montefiore_, . =heterogenesis=, _bastian_, . =hibbert lectures=, , . =horse=, life-size models of, . =hygiene=, practical, handbook of, . =hymns=, _jones_, . =icelandic=, _lilja_, ; _viga glums saga_, , dictionary, _zoega_, . grammar, _bayldon_, . =individualism=, _spencer_, man _v._ state, . =infinitesimals= and limits, . =irish=, _hogan_, ; _leabhar breac_, ; _leabhar na h-uidhri_, ; _o'grady_, ; _todd lectures_, ; _yellow book of lecan_, . =isaiah=, _diettrich_, ; _hebrew texts_, , . =israel=, history of, _kittel_, ; _peters_, ; _sharpe_, . religion of, _kuenen_, . in egypt, _wright, c. h. h._, . =jeremiah=, _mosheh ben shesheth_, . =jesus=, life of, _keim_, . sayings of, . the real, _vickers_, . times of, _hausrath_, . _see also_ =christ=. =job=, book of, _ewald_, ; _hebrew text_, , ; _wright, c. h. h._, . rabbinical comment. on, _text & trans. soc._, . =justice=, _spencer_, princ. of ethics, ii., . =kant=, _schurman_, . =kindergarten=, _goldammer_, . =knowledge=, evolution of, _perrin_, . =labour=, _harrison_, ; _schloss_, ; _vynne_, . =leabhar breac=, ; _hogan_, . =life= and matter, _lodge_, . =ligia=, _liverpool marine biol. mems._, . =liverpool=, history of, _muir_, . =lives of the saints=, _hogan_, . =logarithms=, _sang_, ; _schroen_, ; _vega_, . =london library catalogue=, . =lumbar curve=, _cunningham mems._, ii., . =mahabharata=, _sörensen_, . =malaria=, _annett_, ; _boyce_, ; _dutton_, ; _mems. of liverpool school of tropical medicine_, ; _ross_, ; _stephens_, . =maori=, dictionary, _williams_, . manual, _maori_, . =materialism=, _martineau_, . =mathematics=, _harnack_, . _see also_ =logarithms=. =mediæval thought=, _poole_, . =mesca ulad=, _todd lectures_, i., . =metallic objects=, production of, . =metaphysics=, _laurie_, . =mexico=, religions of, _réville_, . =micah=, book of, _taylor_, . =microscopy=, _journal of the roy. micro. soc._, ; _journal of the quekett micro. club_, . =midrash=, christianity in, _herford_, . =mineral systems=, _chapman_, . =molecular weights=, methods of determining, . =monasticism=, _harnack_, . =moorhouse lectures=, . =mosquitoes=, _mems. of liverpool school of trop. medicine_, . =municipal government=, a history of, in liverpool, . =mythology=, greek, _brown_, ; _st. clair_, . northern, _stephens_, . =naturalism and religion=, _otto_, . =nautical terms=, _delbos_, . =nennius=, the irish, _hogan_, . =new guinea=, _cunningham mems._, x., . =newman=, mystery of, =new testament=, _see_ =testament=, . =new testament times=, _hausrath_, , . =norwegian= dictionary, _rosing_, . =norsemen= in the orkneys, _dietrichson_, . =ophthalmic tests=, _pray_, ; _snellen_, . =optical convention=, proceedings of, . =ores=, methods for the analysis of, . =organic analysis=, elementary, . =origins=, christian, _johnson_, . of religion, _hibbert lectures_, , . =pali=, _dîpavamsa_, ; _milanda panho_, ; _vinaya pitakam_, . handbook, _frankfurter_, . miscellany, . =pathology=, inflammation idea in, _ransom_, . =paul, st.=, _baur_, ; _pfleiderer_, ; _weinel_, . =periodic law=, _venable_, . =persian=, _avesti pahlavi_, . grammar, _platts_, . =peru=, religions of, _réville_, . =philo judæus=, _drummond_, . =philosophy=, . and experience, _hodgson_, . jewish alexandrian, _drummond_, . of religion, _pfleiderer_, . reorganisation of, _hodgson_, . religion of, _perrin_, . synthetic, _collins_, ; _spencer_, . =political institutions=, _spencer_, princ. of sociology, ii., . =portland cement=, _meade_, . =pottery=, _seger's_ writings on, . =prayers=, _common prayer_, ; _jones_, ; _personal_, ; _sadler_, ; _ten services_, . =prehistoric man=, _avebury_, ; _engelhardt_, . =printing= at brescia, _peddie_, . =professional institutions=, _spencer_, princ. of sociology, iii., . =profit-sharing=, _schloss_, . =prophets= of o.t., _ewald_, . =protestant faith=, _hermann_, ; _réville_, . =psalms=, _hebrew texts_, , . and canticles, _ten services_, . commentary, _ewald_, . =psychology=, _scripture_, ; _wundt_, . of belief, _pikler_, . principles of, _spencer_, . =reconciliation=, _henslow_, . =reformation=, _beard_, . =religion=, child and, . history of, _kuenen_, , ; _réville_, , . and naturalism, _otto_, . and theology, _ménégoz_, . of philosophy, _perrin_, . philosophy of, _pfleiderer_, . struggle for light, _wimmer_, . _see also_ =christianity=, history of. =religions=, national and universal, _kuenen_, . of authority, _sabatier_, . =resurrection=, _lake_, ; _macan_, ; _marchant_, . =reviews and periodical publications=, . =rigveda=, _wallis_, . =rome=, _renan_, . =runes=, _stephens_, . =ruth=, _wright, c. h. h._, . =sanitation=, in cape coast town, _taylor_, . in para, _notes_, . =sanscrit=, _abhidhanaratnantala_, ; _sörensen_, . =sermons=, _beard_, ; _broadbent_, ; _hunter_, . =services=, _common prayer_, ; _jones_, ; _ten services_, . =silva gadelica=, _o'grady_, . =social dynamics=, _mackenzie_, . =statics=, _spencer_, . =sociology=, descriptive, _spencer_, . principles of, _spencer_, . study of, _spencer_, . =soils and fertilisers=, . =solomon=, song of, _réville_, . =south place ethical society=, _conway_, . =spanish= dictionary, _velasquez_, . =spinal cord=, _bruce_, . =sternum=, _paterson_, . =stereochemistry=, elements of, . =storms=, _piddington_, . =sun heat=, _cunningham mems._, iii., . =surgery=, system of, _von bergmann_, . =syriac=, _bernstein_, ; _diettrich_, ; _nöldeke_, . =taal=, afrikander, _oordt_, ; _werner_, . =talmud=, christianity in, _herford_, . =tennyson=, _weld_, . =tent and testament=, _rix_, . =testament, new=, apologetic of, . books of, _von soden_, . commentary, _protestant commentary_, . luke the physician, , . textual criticism, _nestle_, . times, _hausrath_, , . _see also_ =gospels=. =testament, old=, cuneiform inscriptions, _schrader_, . introduction to the canonical books of, . literature of, _kautzsch_, . religion of, _marti_, , . =test types=, _pray_, ; _snellen_, . =theism=, _voysey_, . =theological translation library=, . =theology=, analysis of, _figg_, . history of, _pfleiderer_, . =thermometer=, history of, . =trypanosomiasis=, _dutton_, . =tuberculosis=, _creighton_, . =urine analysis=, text-book of, . =virgil=, _henry_, . =virgin birth=, _lobstein_, . =weissmann=, _spencer_, . =woman's labour=, _englishwoman's review_, ; _harrison_, ; _vynne_, . =suffrage=, _blackburn_, . =yellow fever=, _durham_, . =zoology=, _fasciculi malayenses_, ; _journal of the linnean soc._, ; _liverpool marine biology committee mems._, - . a catalogue of williams & norgate's publications divisions of the catalogue page i. theology ii. philosophy, psychology iii. oriental languages, literature, and history iv. philology, modern languages v. science, medicine, chemistry, etc. vi. biography, archÃ�ology, literature, miscellaneous _full index over page_ london williams & norgate henrietta street, covent garden, w.c. i. theology and religion. theological translation library. _new series._ _a series of translations by which the best results of recent theological investigations on the continent, conducted without reference to doctrinal considerations, and with the sole purpose of arriving at the truth, are placed within reach of english readers._ vols. i.-xii. were edited by the rev. t. k. cheyne, m.a., d.d., oriel professor of interpretation in the university of oxford, canon of rochester; and the late rev. a. b. bruce, d.d., professor of apologetics, free church college, glasgow. vol. xiii. was edited by rev. allan menzies, d.d., professor of divinity and biblical criticism in the university, st andrews. vols. xv., xvii., xviii., and xxi.-xxiv. are edited by rev. w. d. morrison, m.a., ll.d. vols. xix. and xx. are edited by rev. james moffatt, b.d., d.d., st andrews. the price of vols. i.-xxi is s. d.; vol. xxii. and after, s. d. net. =subscribers= to the series obtain three volumes for = s. d.= carriage free, payable before publication, which only applies to the current year's volumes, viz., xxii.-xxiv., which are as follows. vol. xxii. ready, s. d. net. =primitive christianity, vol. i.: its writings and teachings in their historical connections.= by otto pfleiderer, professor of practical theology in the university of berlin. vol. xxiii. ready, s. d. net. =the introduction to the canonical books of the old testament.= by carl cornill, professor of old testament theology at the university of breslau. vol. xxiv. ready, s. d. net. =history of the church.= by hans von schubert, professor of church history at kiel. translated from the second german edition. by arrangement with the author, an additional chapter has been added on "religious movements in england in the nineteenth century," by miss alice gardner, lecturer and associate of newnham college, cambridge. the following volumes are published at s. d. per volume vol. xxi. =st. paul: the man and his work.= by prof. h. weinel of the university of jena. translated by rev. g. a. bienemann, m.a. edited by rev. w. d. morrison, m.a., ll.d. "prof. weinel may be described as the dean farrar of germany; the work is quite equal to dean farrar's work on the same subject. in some respects it is better."--_daily news._ vols. xix. and xx. =the expansion of christianity in the first three centuries.= by adolf harnack, ordinary professor of church history in the university, and fellow of the royal academy of the sciences, berlin. translated and edited by james moffatt, b.d., d.d., st andrews. vol. i. being out of print. second edition, entirely re-written and very much added to, with maps, in active preparation. "it is bare justice to say that in the present monograph, the outcome of his preliminary studies in the berlin academy's transactions for , harnack has once more brilliantly shown his power of combining verve and learning, mastery of salient detail, and an outlook upon the broad movements of the period in question. the 'ausbreitung' forms a sequel and supplement to works like his own 'wesen' and weiszäcker's 'apostolic age.' it is a diagnosis rather than a story, yet an analysis in which eloquent facts lose little or nothing of their eloquence."--_hibbert journal._ vol. xviii. =christian life in the primitive church.= by ernst von dobschütz, d.d., professor of new testament theology in the university of strassburg. translated by rev. g. bremner, and edited by the rev. w. d. morrison, ll.d. "it is only in the very best english work that we meet with the scientific thoroughness and all-round competency of which this volume is a good specimen; while such splendid historical veracity and outspokenness would hardly be possible in the present or would-be holder of an english theological chair."--dr rashdall in _the speaker_. "some may think that the author's finding is too favourable to the early churches; but, at any rate, there is no volume in which material for forming a judgment is so fully collected or so attractively presented."--_british weekly._ vol. xvi. =the religions of authority and the religion of the spirit.= by the late auguste sabatier, professor of the university of paris, dean of the protestant theological faculty. with a memoir of the author by jean réville, professor in the protestant theological faculty of the university of paris, and a note by madame sabatier. "without any exaggeration, this is to be described as a great book, the finest legacy of the author to the protestant church of france and to the theological thought of the age. written in the logical and lucid style which is characteristic of the best french theology, and excellently translated, it is a work which any thoughtful person, whether a professional student or not, might read without difficulty."--_glasgow herald._ vols. xv. and xvii. =the beginnings of christianity.= by paul wernle, professor extraordinary of modern church history at the university of basel. revised by the author, and translated by the rev. g. a. bienemann, m.a., and edited, with an introduction, by the rev. w. d. morrison, ll.d. vol. i. =the rise of the religion.= vol. ii. =the development of the church.= _from some of the reviews of the work._ dr. marcus dods in the _british weekly_--"we cannot recall any work by a foreign theologian which is likely to have a more powerful influence on the thought of this country than wernle's _beginnings of christianity_. it is well written and well translated; it is earnest, clear, and persuasive, and above all it is well adapted to catch the large class of thinking men who are at present seeking some non-miraculous explanation of christianity." "no english book covers the same ground, or is conceived with the same breadth and sanity; in few works in any language are learning and insight so happily combined."--_edinburgh review._ "the translation is well done, and the book is full of interest."--_athenæum._ the earlier works included in the library are:-- =history of dogma.= by adolf harnack, ordinary professor of church history in the university, and fellow of the royal academy of the sciences, berlin. translated from the third german edition. edited by the rev. prof. a. b. bruce, d.d. vols. (new series, vols. ii., vii., viii., ix., x., xi., xii.) vo, cloth, each _s._ _d._; half-leather, suitable for presentation, _s._ _d._ abbreviated list of contents:--vol. i.: introductory division:--i. prolegomena to the study of the history of dogma. ii. the presuppositions of the history of dogma. division i.--the genesis of ecclesiastical dogma, or the genesis of the catholic apostolic dogmatic theology, and the first scientific ecclesiastical system of doctrine. book i.:--_the preparation._ vol. ii.: division i. book ii.:--_the laying of the foundation._--i. historical survey.--_i. fixing and gradual secularising of christianity as a church._--_ii. fixing and gradual hellenising of christianity as a system of doctrine._ vol. iii.: division i. book ii.:--_the laying of the foundation_--continued. division ii.--the development of ecclesiastical dogma. book i.:--_the history of the development of dogma as the doctrine of the god-man on the basis of natural theology. a. presuppositions of doctrine of redemption or natural theology. b. the doctrine of redemption in the person of the god-man in its historical development._ vol. iv.: division ii. book i.:--_the history of the development of dogma as the doctrine of the god-man on the basis of natural theology_--continued. vol. v.: division ii. book ii.:--_expansion and remodelling of dogma into a doctrine of sin, grace, and means of grace on the basis of the church._ vol. vi.: division ii. book ii.:--_expansion and remodelling of dogma into a doctrine of sin, grace, and means of grace on the basis of the church_--continued. vol. vii.: division ii. book iii.:--_the threefold issue of the history of dogma._--full index. "no work on church history in recent times has had the influence of prof. harnack's _history of dogma_."--_times._ "a book which is admitted to be one of the most important theological works of the time."--_daily news._ =what is christianity?= sixteen lectures delivered in the university of berlin during the winter term, - . by adolf harnack. translated by thomas bailey saunders. (new series, vol. xiv.) demy vo, cloth, _s._ _d._; half-leather, suitable for presentation, _s._ _d._ prof. w. sanday of oxford, in the examination of the work, says:--"i may assume that harnack's book, which has attracted a good deal of attention in this country as in germany, is by this time well known, and that its merits are recognised--its fresh and vivid descriptions, its breadth of view and skilful selection of points, its frankness, its genuine enthusiasm, its persistent effort to get at the living realities of religion." "seldom has a treatise of the sort been at once so suggestive and so stimulating. seldom have the results of so much learning been brought to bear on the religious problems which address themselves to the modern mind."--_pilot._ "in many respects this is the most notable work of prof. harnack.... these lectures are most remarkable, both for the historical insight they display and for their elevation of tone and purpose."--_literature._ =the communion of the christian with god: a discussion in agreement with the view of luther.= by w. herrmann, dr. theol., professor of dogmatic theology in the university of marburg. translated from the second thoroughly revised edition, with special annotations by the author, by j. sandys stanyon, m.a. (new series, vol. iv.) vo, cloth. _s._ _d._ "it will be seen from what has been said that this book is a very important one.... the translation is also exceedingly well done."--_critical review._ "we trust the book will be widely read, and should advise those who read it to do so twice."--_primitive methodist quarterly._ "instinct with genuine religious feeling; ... exceedingly interesting and suggestive."--_glasgow herald._ =a history of the hebrews.= by r. kittel, ordinary professor of theology in the university of breslau. in vols. (new series, vols. iii. and vi.) vo, cloth. each volume, _s._ _d._ vol. i. =sources of information and history of the period up to the death of joshua.= translated by john taylor, d. lit., m.a. vol. ii. =sources of information and history of the period down to the babylonian exile.= translated by hope w. hogg, b.d., and e. b. speirs, d.d. "it is a sober and earnest reconstruction, for which every earnest student of the old testament should be grateful."--_christian world._ "it will be a happy day for pulpit and pew when a well-thumbed copy of the _history of the hebrews_ is to be found in every manse and parsonage."--_literary world._ "it is a work which cannot fail to attract the attention of thoughtful people in this country."--_pall mall gazette._ =an introduction to the textual criticism of the greek new testament.= by professor eberhard nestle, of maulbronn. translated from the second edition, with corrections and additions by the author, by william edie, b.d., and edited, with a preface, by allan menzies, d.d., professor of divinity and biblical criticism in the university of st. andrews. (new series, vol. xiii.) with eleven reproductions of texts. demy vo, _s._ _d._; half-leather, _s._ _d._ "we have no living scholar more capable of accomplishing the fascinating task of preparing a complete introduction on the new and acknowledged principles than prof. nestle. this book will stand the most rigorous scrutiny; it will surpass the highest expectation."--_expository times._ "nothing could be better than dr. nestle's account of the materials which new testament textual criticism has to deal with."--_spectator._ "we know of no book of its size which can be recommended more cordially to the student, alike for general interest and for the clearness of its arrangement.... in smoothness of rendering, the translation is one of the best we have come across for a considerable time."--_manchester guardian._ =the apostolic age.= by prof. carl von weizsäcker. translated by james millar, b.d. vols. (new series, vols. i. and v.) demy vo, cloth. each _s._ _d._ "weizsäcker is an authority of the very first rank. the present work marks an epoch in new testament criticism. the english reader is fortunate in having a masterpiece of this kind rendered accessible to him."--_expository times._ "... no student of theology or of the early history of christianity can afford to leave weizsäcker's great book unread."--_manchester guardian._ "in every direction in this work we find the mark of the independent thinker and investigator ... this remarkable volume ... this able and learned work...."--_christian world._ "the book itself ... is of great interest, and the work of the translation has been done in a most satisfactory way."--_critical review._ theological translation fund library. old series. _uniform price per volume, s._ =baur (f. c.). church history of the first three centuries.= translated from the third german edition. edited by rev. allan menzies. vols. vo, cloth. _s._ =paul, the apostle of jesus christ, his life and work, his epistles and doctrine.= a contribution to a critical history of primitive christianity. edited by rev. allan menzies. nd edition. vols. vo, cloth. _s._ =bleek (f.). lectures on the apocalypse.= translated. edited by the rev. dr. s. davidson. vo, cloth. _s._ =ewald's (dr. h.) commentary on the prophets of the old testament.= translated by the rev. j. f. smith. [vol. i. general introduction, yoel, amos, hosea, and zakharya - . vol. ii. yesaya, obadya, and mikah. vol. iii. nahûm, ssephanya, habaqqûq, zakhârya, yéremya. vol. iv. hezekiel, yesaya xl.-lxvi. vol. v. haggai, zakharya, malaki, jona, baruc, daniel, appendix and index.] vols. vo, cloth. _s._ =commentary on the psalms.= translated by the rev. e. johnson, m.a. vols. vo, cloth. _s._ =commentary on the book of job, with translation.= translated from the german by the rev. j. frederick smith. vo, cloth. _s._ =hausrath (prof. a.). history of the new testament times.= the time of jesus. translated by the revs. c. t. poynting and p. quenzer. vols. vo, cloth. _s._ the second portion of this work, "the times of the apostles," was issued apart from the library, but in uniform volumes; _see_ p. . =keim's history of jesus of nazara: considered in its connection with the national life of israel, and related in detail.= translated from the german by arthur ransom and the rev. e. m. geldart. [vol. i. second edition. introduction, survey of sources, sacred and political groundwork. religious groundwork. vol. ii. the sacred youth, self-recognition, decision. vol. iii. the first preaching, the works of jesus, the disciples, and apostolic mission. vol. iv. conflicts and disillusions, strengthened self-confidence, last efforts in galilee, signs of the approaching fall, recognition of the messiah. vol. v. the messianic progress to jerusalem, the entry into jerusalem, the decisive struggle, the farewell, the last supper. vol. vi. the messianic death at jerusalem. arrest and pseudo-trial, the death on the cross, burial and resurrection, the messiah's place in history, indices.] complete in vols. vo. _s._ (vol. i. only to be had when a complete set of the work is ordered.) =kuenen (dr. a.). the religion of israel to the fall of the jewish state.= by dr. a. kuenen, professor of theology at the university, leiden. translated from the dutch by a. h. may. vols. vo, cloth. _s._ =pfleiderer (o.). paulinism: a contribution to the history of primitive christian theology.= translated by e. peters. nd edition. vols. vo, cloth. _s._ =philosophy of religion on the basis of its history.= (vols. i. ii. history of the philosophy of religion from spinoza to the present day; vols. iii. iv. genetic-speculative philosophy of religion.) translated by prof. allan menzies and the rev. alex. stewart. vols. vo, cloth. _s._ =rÃ�ville (dr. a.). prolegomena of the history of religions.= with an introduction by prof. f. max müller. vo, cloth. _s._ =protestant commentary on the new testament.= with general and special introductions. edited by profs. p. w. schmidt and f. von holzendorff. translated from the third german edition by the rev. f. h. jones, b.a. vols. vo, cloth. _s._ =schrader (prof. e.). the cuneiform inscriptions and the old testament.= translated from the second enlarged edition, with additions by the author, and an introduction by the rev. owen c. whitehouse, m.a. vols. (vol. i. not sold separately.) with a map. vo, cloth. _s._ =zeller (dr. e.). the contents and origin of the acts of the apostles critically investigated.= preceded by dr. fr. overbeck's introduction to the acts of the apostles from de wette's handbook. translated by joseph dare. vols. vo, cloth. _s._ the crown theological library. _the volumes are uniform in size (crown octavo) and binding, but the price varies according to the size and importance of the work._ a few opinions of the series. professor marcus dods: "by introducing to the english-speaking public specimens of the work of such outstanding critics and theologians, your 'crown theological library' has done a valuable service to theological learning in this country." dr. john watson: "the library is rendering valuable service to lay theologians in this country, as well as to ministers." rev. principal p. t. forsyth: "as a whole it is an admirable series, and opens to the english reader at a low price some books which are of prime importance for religious thought." sir edward russell: "i have formed the highest opinion of this series. each of the books is animated by a fine intelligent and at the same time devout spirit." rev. principal d. l. ritchie: "i have read many of the volumes in the 'crown library,' and i think it an admirable and useful series." rev. professor a. e. garvie: "i am very grateful for the publication of these volumes, as they bring within the reach of the english student, in a correct translation and at cheap price, important theological works, which otherwise would be accessible only to those familiar with french or german." rev. r. j. campbell: "your 'crown theological library' is invaluable, and is doing excellent service for liberal christianity." professor g. currie martin: "i think you are rendering a most valuable service to all serious students of theology by your publication of the 'crown theological library.'" vol. i. _babel and bible._ by dr. friedrich delitzsch, professor of assyriology in the university of berlin. authorised translation. edited, with an introduction, by rev. c. h. w. johns. crown vo, with illustrations, cloth. _s._ vol. ii. =the virgin birth of christ: an historical and critical essay.= by paul lobstein, professor of dogmatics in the university of strassburg. translated by victor leuliette, a.k.c., b.-ès-l., paris. edited, with an introduction, by rev. w. d. morrison, ll.d. crown vo. _s._ vol. iii. =my struggle for light: confessions of a preacher.= by r. wimmer, pastor of weisweil-am-rhein in baden. crown vo, cloth. _s._ _d._ vol. iv. =liberal christianity: its origin, nature, and mission.= by jean réville, professeur adjoint à la faculté de théologie protestante de l'université de paris. translated and edited by victor leuliette, a.k.c., b.-ès-l. crown vo, cloth. _s._ vol. v. =what is christianity?= by adolf harnack, professor of church history in the university, berlin. translated by thomas bailey saunders. crown vo. _s._ vol. vi. =faith and morals.= by w. herrmann, professor of systematic theology at the university of marburg; author of "the communion of the christian with god." crown vo, cloth. _s._ vol. vii. =early hebrew story.= a study of the origin, the value, and the historical background of the legends of israel. by john p. peters, d.d., rector of st. michael's church, new york; author of "nippur, or explorations and adventures on the euphrates." crown vo, cloth. _s._ vol. viii. =bible problems and the new material for their solution. a plea for thoroughness of investigation, addressed to churchmen and scholars.= by the rev. t. k. cheyne, d.litt., d.d., fellow of the british academy; oriel professor of interpretation in the university of oxford, and canon of rochester. crown vo. _s._ "the work is remarkably interesting and learned ... those who wish to understand what problems are likely to engage attention in the near future ought not to neglect the book."--_british friend._ vol. ix. =the doctrine of the atonement and its historical evolution; and religion and modern culture.= by the late auguste sabatier, professor in the university of paris. translated by victor leuliette, a.k.c., b.-ès-l. crown vo. _s._ _d._ "... both the studies in the volume are profoundly interesting; marked everywhere by the piercing insight, philosophic grasp, and deep spirituality which are characteristic of this great and lamented christian thinker."--_the christian world._ vol. x. =the early christian conception of christ: its value and significance in the history of religion.= by otto pfleiderer, d.d., professor of practical theology in the university, berlin. crown vo. _s._ _d._ "it would be difficult to name any recent english work which could compare with this brilliant essay, as a concise but lucid presentation of the attitude of the more advanced school of german theologians to the founder of the christian religion."--_scotsman._ vol. xi. =the child and religion. eleven essays.= by prof. henry jones, m.a., ll.d., university of glasgow; c. f. g. masterman, m.a.; prof. george t. ladd, d.d., ll.d., university of yale; rev. f. r. tennant, m.a., b.sc., hulsean lecturer; rev. j. cynddylan jones, d.d.; rev. canon hensley henson, m.a.; rev. robert f. horton, m.a., d.d.; rev. g. hill, m.a., d.d.; rev. j. j. thornton; rev. rabbi a. a. green; prof. joseph agar beet, d.d. edited by thomas stephens, b.a. crown vo. _s._ "no fresher and more instructive book on this question has been issued for years, and the study of its pages will often prove a godsend to many perplexed minds in the church and in the christian home."--_british weekly._ vol. xii. =the evolution of religion: an anthropological study.= by l. r. farnell, d.litt., fellow and tutor of exeter college, oxford; university lecturer in classical archæology, etc., etc. crown vo, cloth. _s._ vol. xiii. =the books of the new testament.= by h. von soden, d.d., professor of theology in the university of berlin. translated by the rev. j. r. wilkinson, and edited by rev. w. d. morrison, ll.d. crown vo, cloth. _s._ vol. xiv. =jesus.= by wilhelm bousset, professor of theology in göttingen. translated by janet penrose trevelyan, and edited by rev. w. d. morrison, ll.d. crown vo. _s._ "it is true the writers, von soden and bousset, have in the course of their papers said things that i regard as nothing less than admirable. i very much doubt whether we have anything so admirable in english."--rev. dr. sanday in the _guardian_. vol. xv. =the communion of the christian with god.= by prof. wilhelm herrmann. translated from the new german edition by rev. j. s. stanyon, m.a., and rev. r. w. stewart, b.d., b.sc. crown vo, cloth. _s._ vol. xvi. =hebrew religion to the establishment of judaism under ezra.= by w. e. addis, m.a. crown vo, cloth. _s._ vol. xvii. =naturalism and religion.= by rudolf otto, professor of theology in the university of göttingen. translated by j. arthur thomson, professor of natural history in the university of aberdeen, and margaret r. thomson. edited with an introduction by rev. w. d. morrison, ll.d. crown vo. _s._ "... a valuable survey, and a critical estimate of scientific theory and kindred ideas as they concern the religious view of the world.... it is well written, clear, and even eloquent."--_expository times._ vol. xviii. =essays on the social gospel.= by professor adolf harnack, of berlin, and professor w. herrmann, of marburg. crown vo, cloth. _s._ _d._ vol. xix. =the religion of the old testament: its place among the religions of the nearer east.= by karl marti, professor of old testament exegesis, bern. crown vo, cloth. _s._ _d._ in a leading review _the spectator_ says:--"it is a valuable contribution to a great theme by one who has devoted his life to its study. not only the general reader, for whom it is specially intended, but the theologian will learn not a little from its pages." vol. xx. =luke, the physician.= by adolf harnack, d.d. translated by the rev. j. r. wilkinson, m.a. crown vo, cloth. _s._ "what is new and interesting and valuable is the ratiocination, the theorising, and the personal point of view in the book under review. we study it to understand professor harnack, not to understand luke; and the study is well worth the time and work. personally, i feel specially interested in the question of luke's nationality. on this the author has some admirable and suggestive pages."--prof. sir w. m. ramsay in _the expositor_. vol. xxi. =the historical evidence for the resurrection of jesus christ.= by kirsopp lake, professor of new testament exegesis in the university of leiden, holland. crown vo, cloth. _s._ vol. xxii. =the apologetic of the new testament.= by e. f. scott, m.a., author of "the fourth gospel: its purpose and theology." crown vo, cloth. _s._ vol. xxiii. =the sayings of jesus.= by adolf harnack, d.d. being vol. ii. of dr harnack's new testament studies. crown vo, cloth. _s._ (vol. iii. of these studies on the acts of the apostles is in active preparation.) vol. xxiv. =anglican liberalism.= by twelve churchmen. prof. f. c. burkitt, dr hastings rashdall, prof. percy gardner, sir c. t. dyke acland, dr a. caldecott, dr w. d. morrison, rev. a. l. lilley, etc. crown vo, cloth. _s._ "this is a stimulating volume, and we are glad to see an able body of writers uniting to claim the free atmosphere as the condition of spiritual progress."--_westminster gazette._ vol. xxv. =the fundamental truths of the christian religion.= by r. seeberg, professor of systematic theology in berlin. sixteen lectures delivered before the students of all faculties in the university of berlin. crown vo, pp. _s._ the hibbert lectures. library edition, demy vo, _s._ _d._ per volume. cheap popular edition, _s._ _d._ per volume. =alviella (count goblet d').= =evolution of the idea of god, according to anthropology and history.= translated by the rev. p. h. wicksteed. (hibbert lectures, .) cloth. _s_. _d._ cheap edition, _s._ _d._ =beard (rev. dr. c.). lectures on the reformation of the sixteenth century in its relation to modern thought and knowledge.= (hibbert lectures, .) vo, cloth. _s._ _d._ cheap edition, rd edition, _s._ _d._ =davids (t. w. rhys). lectures on some points in the history of indian buddhism.= (hib. lec., .) nd ed. vo, cloth. _s._ _d._ cheap ed., _s._ _d._ =drummond (dr.) via, veritas, vita.= lectures on christianity in its most simple and intelligible form. (the hibbert lectures, .) _s._ _d._ cheap edition, _s._ _d._ =hatch (rev. dr.). lectures on the influence of greek ideas and usages upon the christian church.= edited by dr. fairbairn. (hibbert lectures, .) rd edition. vo, cloth. _s._ _d._ cheap edition, _s._ _d._ =kuenen (dr. a.).= =lectures on national religions and universal religion.= (the hibbert lectures, .) vo, cloth. _s._ _d._ cheap edition, _s._ _d._ =montefiore (c. g.).= =origin and growth of religion as illustrated by the religion of the ancient hebrews.= (the hibbert lectures, .) nd edition. vo, cloth. _s._ _d._ cheap edition, _s._ _d._ =pfleiderer (dr. o.). lectures on the influence of the apostle paul on the development of christianity.= translated by the rev. j. frederick smith. (hibbert lectures, .) nd edition. vo, cloth, _s._ _d._ cheap edition, _s._ _d._ =renan (e.). on the influence of the institutions, thought, and culture of rome on christianity and the development of the catholic church.= translated by the rev. charles beard. (hibbert lectures, .) vo, cloth, _s._ _d._ cheap edition, rd edition, _s._ _d._ =renouf (p. le page). on the religion of ancient egypt.= (hibbert lectures, .) rd edition. vo, cloth. _s._ _d._ cheap edition, _s._ _d._ =rhys (prof. j.). on the origin and growth of religion as illustrated by celtic heathendom.= (hibbert lectures, .) vo, cloth. _s._ _d._ cheap edition, _s._ _d._ =rÃ�ville (dr. a.). on the native religions of mexico and peru.= translated by the rev. p. h. wicksteed. (hibbert lectures, .) vo, cloth. _s._ _d._ cheap edition, _s._ _d._ =sayce (prof. a. h.). on the religion of ancient assyria and babylonia.= th edition. (hibbert lectures, .) vo, cloth. _s._ _d._ cheap ed., _s._ _d._ =upton (rev. c. b.). on the bases of religious belief.= (hibbert lectures, .) demy vo, cloth. _s._ _d._ cheap edition, _s._ _d._ alphabetical list. =addis (w. e.). hebrew religion.= _s._ _see_ crown theological library, p. . =allin (rev. thos.). universalism asserted as the hope of the gospel on the authority of reason, the fathers, and holy scripture.= with a preface by edna lyall, and a letter from canon wilberforce. crown vo, cloth. _s._ _d._ net. =alviella (count goblet d'). the contemporary evolution of religious thought in england, america, and india.= translated from the french by the rev. j. moden. vo, cloth. _s._ _d._ =evolution of the idea of god.= _see_ the hibbert lectures, p. . =anglican liberalism.= by twelve churchmen. _s._ _see_ crown theological library, p. . =annotated catechism.= a manual of natural religion and morality, with many practical details. nd edition. crown vo, cloth. _s._ =baur (f. c.). church history of the first three centuries.= vols., _s._ _see_ theological translation library, old series, p. . =paul, the apostle of jesus christ.= vols., _s._ _see_ theological translation library, old series, p. . =beard (rev. dr. c.). the universal christ, and other sermons.= crown vo, cloth. _s._ _d._ =lectures on the reformation of the sixteenth century in its relation to modern thought and knowledge.= _see_ the hibbert lectures, p. . =beeby (rev. c. e., b.d., author of "creed and life"). doctrine and principles.= popular lectures on primary questions. demy vo, cloth. _s._ _d._ =bible.= translated by samuel sharpe, being a revision of the authorised english version. th edition of the old, th edition of the new testament. vo, roan. _s._ _see also_ testament. =bleek(f.). lectures on the apocalypse.= _see_ theological translation library, old series, p. . =bremond (henri). the mystery of newman.= with an introduction by rev. george tyrrell, m.a. medium vo, cloth. _s._ _d._ _net._ "from france comes a remarkable volume, excellently translated, which endeavours to probe the mystery; to realise, as it were, the soul of newman, to describe to us justly and truthfully the personality of the man."--_daily chronicle._ "no subsequent work can deprive m. bremond's book of its great psychological interest; it is a work that, unlike many books on newman and the tractarians, no student of modern christianity can afford to miss."--_pall mall gazette._ =broadbent (the late rev. t. p., b.a.). thirteen sermons, an essay, and a fragment.= with a prefatory note by rev. prof. j. estlin carpenter, m.a. crown vo, cloth. _s._ net. =campbell (rev. canon colin). first three gospels in greek.= _s._ _d._ net. _see_ testament, new, p. . =channing's complete works.= including "the perfect life," with a memoir. centennial edition. to edition. cloth. _s._ _d._ =cheyne (prof. t. k.). bible problems and the new material for their solution.= _s._ _see_ crown theological library, p. . =child and religion.= edited by thomas stephens, b.a. _s._ _see_ crown theological library, p. . =christian creed (our).= nd and greatly revised edition. crown vo, cloth. _s._ _d._ =clark (archd. jas.). de successione apostolica nec non missione et jurisdictione hierarchiÃ� anglicanÃ� et catholicÃ�.= vo. (_georgetown, guiana._) cloth. _s._ =seven ages of the church; or, exposition of the apocalypse.= sewed. _s._ =common prayer for christian worship: in ten services for morning and evening.= mo, cloth. _s._ _d._ also in vo, cloth. _s._ =conway (moncure d.). centenary history of the south place ethical society.= with numerous portraits, a facsimile of the original ms. of the hymn, "nearer, my god, to thee," and appendices. crown vo, half vellum, paper sides. _s._ =cornill (prof. carl). introduction to the canonical books of the old testament.= demy vo, cloth. s. _d._ _net._ _see_ theological translation library, new series, p. . =davids (t. w. rhys). lectures on some points in the history of indian buddhism.= _see_ the hibbert lectures, p. . =delitzsch (f.). babel and bible.= two lectures delivered before the deutsche orient-gesellschaft in the presence of the german emperor. _s._ _see_ crown theological library, p. . _see also_ harnack, a., "letter to _preuss. jahrbücher_," p. . =dobschÃ�tz (e. von). christian life in the primitive church.= demy vo. _s._ _d._ _see_ theological translation library, new series, p. . =driver (s. r.).= _see_ mosheh ben shesheth, p. . =drummond (james, m.a., ll.d., hon. litt.d., late principal of manchester college, oxford). an inquiry into the character and authorship of the fourth gospel.= demy vo, cloth. _s._ _d._ "the book is not only learned, but also reverent and spiritual in tone, and ought to find its way into the libraries of students of all shades of belief, as a very notable attempt to solve one of the most important of new testament problems."--_christian world._ =via, veritas, vita.= _see_ the hibbert lectures, p. . =philo judÃ�us.= _see_ p. . =echoes of holy thoughts: arranged as private meditations before a first communion.= nd edition, with a preface by rev. j. hamilton thom. printed with red lines. fcap. vo, cloth. _s._ =ewald (h.). commentary on the prophets of the old testament.= _see_ theological translation library, old series, p. . =commentary on the psalms.= _see_ theological translation library, old series, p. . =ewald (h.). commentary on the book of job.= _see_ theological translation library, old series, p. . =farnell (l. r.). the evolution of religion. an anthropological study.= by l. r. farnell, d.litt., fellow and tutor of exeter college, oxford. _s._ _see_ crown theological library, p. . =figg (e. g.). analysis of theology, natural and revealed.= crown vo, cloth. _s._ =four gospels (the) as historical records.= vo, cloth. _s._ =gill (c.). the evolution of christianity.= by charles gill. nd edition. with dissertations in answer to criticism. vo, cloth. _s._ =the book of enoch the prophet.= translated from an ethiopic ms. in the bodleian library, by the late richard laurence, ll.d., archbishop of cashel. the text corrected from his latest notes by charles gill. re-issue, vo, cloth. _s._ =harnack (adolf). monasticism: its ideals and history; and the confessions of st. augustine.= two lectures by adolf harnack. translated into english by e. e. kellett, m.a., and f. h. marseille, ph.d., m.a. crown vo, cloth. _s._ "the lectures impart to these old subjects a new and vivid interest which cannot but win this faithful version many admiring readers."--_scotsman._ "one might read all the ponderous volumes of montalembert without obtaining so clear a view or so rare a judgment of this immense subject as are offered in these luminous pages.... the translation is excellent, and gives us harnack in pure and vigorous english."--_christian world._ =letter to the "preussische jahrbücher" on the german emperor's criticism of prof. delitzsch's lectures on "babel and bible."= translated into english by thomas bailey saunders. _d._ net. =harnack (adolf). luke, the physician.= _s._ _see_ crown theological library. =history of dogma.= vols., _s._ _d._ each. _see_ theological translation library, new series, p. . =the sayings of jesus.= _s._ _see_ crown theological library, p. . =what is christianity?= _s._ _see_ theological translation library, new series, p. . _also_ crown theological library, p. . _see_ saunders (t. b.), "professor harnack and his oxford critics," p. . =expansion of christianity in the first three centuries.= _see_ theological translation library, p. . =and herrmann (dr. wilhelm). essays on the social gospel.= _s._ _d._ translation edited by maurice a. canney, m.a. _see_ crown theological library, p. . =hatch (rev. dr.). lectures on the influence of greek ideas and usages upon the christian church.= _see_ the hibbert lectures, p. . =hausrath (prof. a.). history of the new testament times.= the time of the apostles. translated by leonard huxley. with a preface by mrs humphry ward. vols. vo, cloth. _s._ (uniform with the theological translation library, old series.) =new testament times.= the times of jesus. vols. _s._ _see_ theological translation library, old series, p. . =hebrew texts, in large type for classes:= =genesis.= nd edition. mo, cloth. _s._ _d._ =psalms.= mo, cloth. _s._ =isaiah.= mo, cloth. _s._ =job.= mo, cloth. _s._ =henslow(rev. g.). the argument of adaptation; 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which he sustained a near fatal injury to his sciatic nerve. the injury left him quite crippled and in chronic pain for the rest of his life. the details of his early life are few and sketchy. however, we know he was educated both at home and by his parish priest whose first name was lawrence and who was greatly admired by the young nicolas. he was well read and, from an early age, drawn to a spiritual life of faith and love for god. we also know that in the years between the abrupt end of his duties as a soldier and his entry into monastic life, he spent a period of time in the wilderness living like one of the early desert fathers. also, prior to entering the monastery, and perhaps as preparation, he spent time as a civil servant. in his characteristic, self deprecating way, he mentions that he was a "footman who was clumsy and broke everything". at mid-life he entered a newly established monastery in paris where he became the cook for the community which grew to over one hundred members. after fifteen years, his duties were shifted to the sandal repair shop but, even then, he often returned to the busy kitchen to help out. in times as troubled as today, brother lawrence, discovered, then followed, a pure and uncomplicated way to walk continually in god's presence. for some forty years, he lived and walked with our father at his side. yet, through his own words, we learn that brother lawrence's first ten years were full of severe trials and challenges. a gentle man of joyful spirit, brother lawrence shunned attention and the limelight, knowing that outside distraction "spoils all". it was not until after his death that a few of his letters were collected. joseph de beaufort, representative and counsel to the local archbishop, first published the letters in a small pamphlet. the following year, in a second publication which he titled, 'the practice of the presence of god', de beaufort included, as introductory material, the content of four conversations he had with brother lawrence. in this small book, through letters and conversations, brother lawrence simply and beautifully explains how to continually walk with god - not from the head but from the heart. brother lawrence left the gift of a way of life available to anyone who seeks to know god's peace and presence; that anyone, regardless of age or circumstance, can practice -anywhere, anytime. brother lawrence also left the gift of a direct approach to living in god's presence that is as practical today as it was three hundred years ago. brother lawrence died in , having practiced god's presence for over forty years. his quiet death was much like his monastic life where each day and each hour was a new beginning and a fresh commitment to love god with all his heart. edited by lightheart at practicegodspresence.com october conversations introduction: at the time of de beaufort's interviews, brother lawrence was in his late fifties. joseph de beaufort later commented that the crippled brother, who was then in charge of the upkeep of over one hundred pairs of sandals, was "rough in appearance but gentle in grace". first conversation: the first time i saw brother lawrence was upon the rd of august, . he told me that god had done him a singular favor in his conversion at the age of eighteen. during that winter, upon seeing a tree stripped of its leaves and considering that within a little time the leaves would be renewed and after that the flowers and fruit appear, brother lawrence received a high view of the providence and power of god which has never since been effaced from his soul. this view had perfectly set him loose from the world and kindled in him such a love for god, that he could not tell whether it had increased in the forty years that he had lived since. brother lawrence said he had been footman to m. fieubert, the treasurer, and that he was a great awkward fellow who broke everything. he finally decided to enter a monastery thinking that he would there be made to smart for his awkwardness and the faults he would commit, and so he would sacrifice his life with its pleasures to god. but brother lawrence said that god had surprised him because he met with nothing but satisfaction in that state. brother lawrence related that we should establish ourselves in a sense of god's presence by continually conversing with him. it was a shameful thing to quit his conversation to think of trifles and fooleries. we should feed and nourish our souls with high notions of god which would yield us great joy in being devoted to him. he said we ought to quicken and enliven our faith. it was lamentable we had so little. instead of taking faith for the rule of their conduct, men amused themselves with trivial devotions which changed daily. he said that faith was sufficient to bring us to a high degree of perfection. we ought to give ourselves up to god with regard both to things temporal and spiritual and seek our satisfaction only in the fulfilling of his will. whether god led us by suffering or by consolation all would be equal to a soul truly resigned. he said we need fidelity in those disruptions in the ebb and flow of prayer when god tries our love to him. this was the time for a complete act of resignation, whereof one act alone could greatly promote our spiritual advancement. he said that as far as the miseries and sins he heard of daily in the world, he was so far from wondering at them, that, on the contrary, he was surprised there were not more considering the malice sinners were capable of. for his part, he prayed for them. but knowing that god could remedy the mischief they did when he pleased, he gave himself no further trouble. brother lawrence said to arrive at such resignation as god requires, we should carefully watch over all the passions that mingle in spiritual as well as temporal things. god would give light concerning those passions to those who truly desire to serve him. at the end of this first conversation brother lawrence said that if my purpose for the visit was to sincerely discuss how to serve god, i might come to him as often as i pleased and without any fear of being troublesome. if this was not the case, then i ought visit him no more. second conversation: brother lawrence told me he had always been governed by love without selfish views. since he resolved to make the love of god the end of all his actions, he had found reasons to be well satisfied with his method. he was pleased when he could take up a straw from the ground for the love of god, seeking him only, and nothing else, not even his gifts. he said he had been long troubled in mind from a certain belief that he should be damned. all the men in the world could not have persuaded him to the contrary. this trouble of mind had lasted four years during which time he had suffered much. finally he reasoned: i did not engage in a religious life but for the love of god. i have endeavored to act only for him. whatever becomes of me, whether i be lost or saved, i will always continue to act purely for the love of god. i shall have this good at least that till death i shall have done all that is in me to love him. from that time on brother lawrence lived his life in perfect liberty and continual joy. he placed his sins between himself and god to tell him that he did not deserve his favors yet god still continued to bestow them in abundance. brother lawrence said that in order to form a habit of conversing with god continually and referring all we do to him, we must at first apply to him with some diligence. then, after a little care, we would find his love inwardly excite us to it without any difficulty. he expected after the pleasant days god had given him, he would have his turn of pain and suffering. yet he was not uneasy about it. knowing that, since he could do nothing of himself, god would not fail to give him the strength to bear them. when an occasion of practicing some virtue was offered, he addressed himself to god saying, "lord, i cannot do this unless thou enablest me". and then he received strength more than sufficient. when he had failed in his duty, he only confessed his fault saying to god, "i shall never do otherwise, if you leave me to myself. it is you who must hinder my falling and mend what is amiss." then, after this, he gave himself no further uneasiness about it. brother lawrence said we ought to act with god in the greatest simplicity, speaking to him frankly and plainly, and imploring his assistance in our affairs just as they happen. god never failed to grant it, as brother lawrence had often experienced. he said he had been lately sent into burgundy to buy the provision of wine for the community. this was a very unwelcome task for him because he had no turn for business and because he was lame and could not go about the boat but by rolling himself over the casks. yet he gave himself no uneasiness about it, nor about the purchase of the wine. he said to god, it was his business he was about, and that he afterwards found it very well performed. he mentioned that it had turned out the same way the year before when he was sent to auvergne. so, likewise, in his business in the kitchen (to which he had naturally a great aversion), having accustomed himself to do everything there for the love of god and asking for his grace to do his work well, he had found everything easy during the fifteen years that he had been employed there. he was very pleased with the post he was now in. yet he was as ready to quit that as the former, since he tried to please god by doing little things for the love of him in any work he did. with him the set times of prayer were not different from other times. he retired to pray according to the directions of his superior, but he did not need such retirement nor ask for it because his greatest business did not divert him from god. since he knew his obligation to love god in all things, and as he endeavored to do so, he had no need of a director to advise him, but he greatly needed a confessor to absolve him. he said he was very sensible of his faults but not discouraged by them. he confessed them to god and made no excuses. then, he peaceably resumed his usual practice of love and adoration. in his trouble of mind, brother lawrence had consulted no one. knowing only by the light of faith that god was present, he contented himself with directing all his actions to him. he did everything with a desire to please him and let what would come of it. he said that useless thoughts spoil all - that the mischief began there. we ought to reject them as soon as we perceived their impertinence and return to our communion with god. in the beginning he had often passed his time appointed for prayer in rejecting wandering thoughts and falling right back into them. he could never regulate his devotion by certain methods as some do. nevertheless, at first he had meditated for some time, but afterwards that went off in a manner that he could give no account of. brother lawrence emphasized that all bodily mortifications and other exercises are useless unless they serve to arrive at the union with god by love. he had well considered this. he found that the shortest way to go straight to god was by a continual exercise of love and doing all things for his sake. he noted that there was a great difference between the acts of the intellect and those of the will. acts of the intellect were comparatively of little value. acts of the will were all important. our only business was to love and delight ourselves in god. all possible kinds of mortification, if they were void of the love of god, could not efface a single sin. instead, we ought, without anxiety, to expect the pardon of our sins from the blood of jesus christ only endeavoring to love him with all our hearts. and he noted that god seemed to have granted the greatest favors to the greatest sinners as more signal monuments of his mercy. brother lawrence said the greatest pains or pleasures of this world were not to be compared with what he had experienced of both kinds in a spiritual state. as a result he feared nothing, desiring only one thing of god - that he might not offend him. he said he carried no guilt. "when i fail in my duty, i readily acknowledge it, saying, i am used to do so. i shall never do otherwise if i am left to myself. if i fail not, then i give god thanks acknowledging that it comes from him." third conversation: brother lawrence told me that the foundation of the spiritual life in him had been a high notion and esteem of god in faith. when he had once well established his faith he had no other care but to reject every other thought so he might perform all his actions for the love of god. he said when sometimes he had not thought of god for a good while he did not disquiet himself for it. having acknowledged his wretchedness to god, he simply returned to him with so much the greater trust in him. he said the trust we put in god honors him much and draws down great graces. also, that it was impossible not only that god should deceive but that he should long let a soul suffer which is perfectly resigned to him and resolved to endure everything for his sake. brother lawrence often experienced the ready succors of divine grace. and because of his experience of grace, when he had business to do, he did not think of it beforehand. when it was time to do it, he found in god, as in a clear mirror, all that was fit for him to do. when outward business diverted him a little from the thought of god a fresh remembrance coming from god invested his soul and so inflamed and transported him that it was difficult for him to contain himself. he said he was more united to god in his outward employments than when he left them for devotion in retirement. brother lawrence said that the worst that could happen to him was to lose that sense of god which he had enjoyed so long. yet the goodness of god assured him he would not forsake him utterly and that he would give him strength to bear whatever evil he permitted to happen to him. brother lawrence, therefore, said he feared nothing. he had no occasion to consult with anybody about his state. in the past, when he had attempted to do it, he had always come away more perplexed. since brother lawrence was ready to lay down his life for the love of god, he had no apprehension of danger. he said that perfect resignation to god was a sure way to heaven, a way in which we have always sufficient light for our conduct. in the beginning of the spiritual life we ought to be faithful in doing our duty and denying ourselves and then, after a time, unspeakable pleasures followed. in difficulties we need only have recourse to jesus christ and beg his grace with which everything became easy. brother lawrence said that many do not advance in the christian progress because they stick in penances and particular exercises while they neglect the love of god which is the end. this appeared plainly by their works and was the reason why we see so little solid virtue. he said there needed neither art nor science for going to god, but only a heart resolutely determined to apply itself to nothing but him and to love him only. fourth conversation: brother lawrence spoke with great openness of heart concerning his manner of going to god whereof some part is related already. he told me that all consists in one hearty renunciation of everything which we are sensible does not lead to god. we might accustom ourselves to a continual conversation with him with freedom and in simplicity. we need only to recognize god intimately present with us and address ourselves to him every moment. we need to beg his assistance for knowing his will in things doubtful and for rightly performing those which we plainly see he requires of us, offering them to him before we do them, and giving him thanks when we have completed them. in our conversation with god we should also engage in praising, adoring, and loving him incessantly for his infinite goodness and perfection. without being discouraged on account of our sins, we should pray for his grace with a perfect confidence, as relying upon the infinite merits of our lord. brother lawrence said that god never failed offering us his grace at each action. it never failed except when brother lawrence's thoughts had wandered from a sense of god's presence, or he forgot to ask his assistance. he said that god always gave us light in our doubts, when we had no other design but to please him. our sanctification did not depend upon changing our works. instead, it depended on doing that for god's sake which we commonly do for our own. he thought it was lamentable to see how many people mistook the means for the end, addicting themselves to certain works which they performed very imperfectly by reason of their human or selfish regards. the most excellent method he had found for going to god was that of doing our common business without any view of pleasing men but purely for the love of god. brother lawrence felt it was a great delusion to think that the times of prayer ought to differ from other times. we are as strictly obliged to adhere to god by action in the time of action, as by prayer in its season. his own prayer was nothing else but a sense of the presence of god, his soul being at that time insensible to everything but divine love. when the appointed times of prayer were past, he found no difference, because he still continued with god, praising and blessing him with all his might. thus he passed his life in continual joy. yet he hoped that god would give him somewhat to suffer when he grew stronger. brother lawrence said we ought, once and for all, heartily put our whole trust in god, and make a total surrender of ourselves to him, secure that he would not deceive us. we ought not weary of doing little things for the love of god, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed. we should not wonder if, in the beginning, we often failed in our endeavors, but that at last we should gain a habit which will naturally produce its acts in us without our care and to our exceeding great delight. the whole substance of religion was faith, hope, and charity. in the practice of these we become united to the will of god. everything else is indifferent and to be used as a means that we may arrive at our end and then be swallowed up by faith and charity. all things are possible to him who believes. they are less difficult to him who hopes. they are more easy to him who loves, and still more easy to him who perseveres in the practice of these three virtues. the end we ought to propose to ourselves is to become, in this life, the most perfect worshippers of god we can possibly be, and as we hope to be through all eternity. we must, from time to time, honestly consider and thoroughly examine ourselves. we will, then, realize that we are worthy of great contempt. brother lawrence noted that when we directly confront ourselves in this manner, we will understand why we are subject to all kinds of misery and problems. we will realize why we are subject to changes and fluctuations in our health, mental outlook, and dispositions. and we will, indeed, recognize that we deserve all the pain and labors god sends to humble us. after this, we should not wonder that troubles, temptations, oppositions, and contradictions happen to us from men. we ought, on the contrary, to submit ourselves to them and bear them as long as god pleases as things highly advantageous to us. the greater perfection a soul aspires after, the more dependent it is upon divine grace. being questioned by one of his own community (to whom he was obliged to open himself) by what means he had attained such an habitual sense of god, brother lawrence told him that, since his first coming to the monastery, he had considered god as the end of all his thoughts and desires, as the mark to which they should tend, and in which they should terminate. he noted that in the beginning of his novitiate he spent the hours appointed for private prayer in thinking of god so as to convince his mind and impress deeply upon his heart the divine existence. he did this by devout sentiments and submission to the lights of faith, rather than by studied reasonings and elaborate meditations. by this short and sure method he exercised himself in the knowledge and love of god, resolving to use his utmost endeavor to live in a continual sense of his presence, and, if possible, never to forget him more. when he had thus, in prayer, filled his mind with great sentiments of that infinite being, he went to his work appointed in the kitchen (for he was then cook for the community). there having first considered severally the things his office required, and when and how each thing was to be done, he spent all the intervals of his time, both before and after his work, in prayer. when he began his business, he said to god with a filial trust in him, "o my god, since thou art with me, and i must now, in obedience to thy commands, apply my mind to these outward things, i beseech thee to grant me the grace to continue in thy presence; and to this end do thou prosper me with thy assistance. receive all my works, and possess all my affections." as he proceeded in his work, he continued his familiar conversation with his maker, imploring his grace, and offering to him all his actions. when he had finished, he examined himself how he had discharged his duty. if he found well, he returned thanks to god. if otherwise, he asked pardon and, without being discouraged, he set his mind right again. he then continued his exercise of the presence of god as if he had never deviated from it. "thus," said he, "by rising after my falls, and by frequently renewed acts of faith and love, i am come to a state wherein it would be as difficult for me not to think of god as it was at first to accustom myself to it." as brother lawrence had found such an advantage in walking in the presence of god, it was natural for him to recommend it earnestly to others. more strikingly, his example was a stronger inducement than any arguments he could propose. his very countenance was edifying with such a sweet and calm devotion appearing that he could not but affect the beholders. it was observed, that in the greatest hurry of business in the kitchen, he still preserved his recollection and heavenly-mindedness. he was never hasty nor loitering, but did each thing in its season with an even uninterrupted composure and tranquillity of spirit. "the time of business," said he, "does not with me differ from the time of prayer. in the noise and clutter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, i possess god in as great tranquillity as if i were upon my knees at the blessed supper." letters introduction: brother lawrence's letters are the very heart and soul of what is titled 'the practice of the presence of god'. all of these letters were written during the last ten years of his life. many of them were to long-time friends, a carmelite sister and a sister at a nearby convent. one or both of these friends were from his native village, perhaps relatives. the first letter was probably written to the prioress of one of these convents. the second letter was written to brother lawrence's own spiritual adviser. note that the fourth letter is written in the third person where brother lawrence describes his own experience. the letters follow the tradition of substituting m-- for specific names. first letter: you so earnestly desire that i describe the method by which i arrived at that habitual sense of god's presence, which our merciful lord has been pleased to grant me. i am complying with your request with my request that you show my letter to no one. if i knew that you would let it be seen, all the desire i have for your spiritual progress would not be enough to make me comply. the account i can give you is: having found in many books different methods of going to god and divers practices of the spiritual life, i thought this would serve rather to puzzle me than facilitate what i sought after, which was nothing but how to become wholly god's. this made me resolve to give the all for the all. after having given myself wholly to god, to make all the satisfaction i could for my sins, i renounced, for the love of him, everything that was not he, and i began to live as if there was none but he and i in the world. sometimes i considered myself before him as a poor criminal at the feet of his judge. at other times i beheld him in my heart as my father, as my god. i worshipped him the oftenest i could, keeping my mind in his holy presence and recalling it as often as i found it wandered from him. i made this my business, not only at the appointed times of prayer but all the time; every hour, every minute, even in the height of my work, i drove from my mind everything that interrupted my thoughts of god. i found no small pain in this exercise. yet i continued it, notwithstanding all the difficulties that occurred. and i tried not to trouble or disquiet myself when my mind wandered. such has been my common practice ever since i entered religious life. though i have done it very imperfectly, i have found great advantages by it. these, i well know, are to be imputed to the mercy and goodness of god because we can do nothing without him; and i still less than any. when we are faithful to keep ourselves in his holy presence, and set him always before us, this hinders our offending him, and doing anything that may displease him. it also begets in us a holy freedom, and, if i may so speak, a familiarity with god, where, when we ask, he supplies the graces we need. over time, by often repeating these acts, they become habitual, and the presence of god becomes quite natural to us. please give him thanks with me, for his great goodness towards me, which i can never sufficiently express, and for the many favors he has done to so miserable a sinner as i am. may all things praise him. amen. second letter: not finding my manner of life described in books, although i have no problem with that, yet, for reassurance, i would appreciate your thoughts about it. in conversation some days ago a devout person told me the spiritual life was a life of grace, which begins with servile fear, which is increased by hope of eternal life, and which is consummated by pure love; that each of these states had its different steps, by which one arrives at last at that blessed consummation. i have not followed these methods at all. on the contrary, i instinctively felt they would discourage me. instead, at my entrance into religious life, i took a resolution to give myself up to god as the best satisfaction i could make for my sins and, for the love of him, to renounce all besides. for the first years, i commonly employed myself during the time set apart for devotion with thoughts of death, judgment, hell, heaven, and my sins. thus i continued some years applying my mind carefully the rest of the day, and even in the midst of my work, to the presence of god, whom i considered always as with me, often as in my heart. at length i began to do the same thing during my set time of prayer, which gave me joy and consolation. this practice produced in me so high an esteem for god that faith alone was enough to assure me. such was my beginning. yet i must tell you that for the first ten years i suffered a great deal. during this time i fell often, and rose again presently. it seemed to me that all creatures, reason, and god himself were against me and faith alone for me. the apprehension that i was not devoted to god as i wished to be, my past sins always present to my mind, and the great unmerited favors which god did me, were the source of my sufferings and feelings of unworthiness. i was sometimes troubled with thoughts that to believe i had received such favors was an effect of my imagination, which pretended to be so soon where others arrived with great difficulty. at other times i believed that it was a willful delusion and that there really was no hope for me. finally, i considered the prospect of spending the rest of my days in these troubles. i discovered this did not diminish the trust i had in god at all. in fact, it only served to increase my faith. it then seemed that, all at once, i found myself changed. my soul, which, until that time was in trouble, felt a profound inward peace, as if she were in her center and place of rest. ever since that time i walk before god simply, in faith, with humility, and with love. i apply myself diligently to do nothing and think nothing which may displease him. i hope that when i have done what i can, he will do with me what he pleases. as for what passes in me at present, i cannot express it. i have no pain or difficulty about my state because i have no will but that of god. i endeavor to accomplish his will in all things. and i am so resigned that i would not take up a straw from the ground against his order or from any motive but that of pure love for him. i have ceased all forms of devotion and set prayers except those to which my state requires. i make it my priority to persevere in his holy presence, wherein i maintain a simple attention and a fond regard for god, which i may call an actual presence of god. or, to put it another way, it is an habitual, silent, and private conversation of the soul with god. this gives me much joy and contentment. in short, i am sure, beyond all doubt, that my soul has been with god above these past thirty years. i pass over many things that i may not be tedious to you. yet, i think it is appropriate to tell you how i perceive myself before god, whom i behold as my king. i consider myself as the most wretched of men. i am full of faults, flaws, and weaknesses, and have committed all sorts of crimes against his king. touched with a sensible regret i confess all my wickedness to him. i ask his forgiveness. i abandon myself in his hands that he may do what he pleases with me. my king is full of mercy and goodness. far from chastising me, he embraces me with love. he makes me eat at his table. he serves me with his own hands and gives me the key to his treasures. he converses and delights himself with me incessantly, in a thousand and a thousand ways. and he treats me in all respects as his favorite. in this way i consider myself continually in his holy presence. my most usual method is this simple attention, an affectionate regard for god to whom i find myself often attached with greater sweetness and delight than that of an infant at the mother's breast. to choose an expression, i would call this state the bosom of god, for the inexpressible sweetness which i taste and experience there. if, at any time, my thoughts wander from it from necessity or infirmity, i am presently recalled by inward emotions so charming and delicious that i cannot find words to describe them. please reflect on my great wretchedness, of which you are fully informed, rather than on the great favors god does one as unworthy and ungrateful as i am. as for my set hours of prayer, they are simply a continuation of the same exercise. sometimes i consider myself as a stone before a carver, whereof he is to make a statue. presenting myself thus before god, i desire him to make his perfect image in my soul and render me entirely like himself. at other times, when i apply myself to prayer, i feel all my spirit lifted up without any care or effort on my part. this often continues as if it was suspended yet firmly fixed in god like a center or place of rest. i know that some charge this state with inactivity, delusion, and self-love. i confess that it is a holy inactivity. and it would be a happy self-love if the soul, in that state, were capable of it. but while the soul is in this repose, she cannot be disturbed by the kinds of things to which she was formerly accustomed. the things that the soul used to depend on would now hinder rather than assist her. yet, i cannot see how this could be called imagination or delusion because the soul which enjoys god in this way wants nothing but him. if this is delusion, then only god can remedy it. let him do what he pleases with me. i desire only him and to be wholly devoted to him. please send me your opinion as i greatly value and have a singular esteem for your reverence, and am yours. third letter: we have a god who is infinitely gracious and knows all our wants. i always thought that he would reduce you to extremity. he will come in his own time, and when you least expect it. hope in him more than ever. thank him with me for the favors he does you, particularly for the fortitude and patience which he gives you in your afflictions. it is a plain mark of the care he takes of you. comfort yourself with him, and give thanks for all. i admire also the fortitude and bravery of m--. god has given him a good disposition and a good will; but he is still a little worldly and somewhat immature. i hope the affliction god has sent him will help him do some reflection and inner searching and that it may prove to be a wholesome remedy to him. it is a chance for him to put all his trust in god who accompanies him everywhere. let him think of him as much as he can, especially in time of great danger. a little lifting up of the heart and a remembrance of god suffices. one act of inward worship, though upon a march with sword in hand, are prayers which, however short, are nevertheless very acceptable to god. and, far from lessening a soldier's courage in occasions of danger, they actually serve to fortify it. let him think of god as often as possible. let him accustom himself, by degrees, to this small but holy exercise. no one sees it, and nothing is easier than to repeat these little internal adorations all through the day. please recommend to him that he think of god the most he can in this way. it is very fit and most necessary for a soldier, who is daily faced with danger to his life, and often to his very salvation. i hope that god will assist him and all the family, to whom i present my service, being theirs and yours. fourth letter: i am taking this opportunity to tell you about the sentiments of one of our society concerning the admirable effects and continual assistance he receives from the presence of god. may we both profit by them. for the past forty years his continual care has been to be always with god; and to do nothing, say nothing, and think nothing which may displease him. he does this without any view or motive except pure love of him and because god deserves infinitely more. he is now so accustomed to that divine presence that he receives from it continual comfort and peace. for about thirty years his soul has been filled with joy and delight so continual, and sometimes so great, that he is forced to find ways to hide their appearing outwardly to others who may not understand. if sometimes he becomes a little distracted from that divine presence, god gently recalls himself by a stirring in his soul. this often happens when he is most engaged in his outward chores and tasks. he answers with exact fidelity to these inward drawings, either by an elevation of his heart towards god, or by a meek and fond regard to him, or by such words as love forms upon these occasions. for instance, he may say, "my god, here i am all devoted to you," or "lord, make me according to your heart." it seems to him (in fact, he feels it) that this god of love, satisfied with such few words, reposes again and rests in the depth and center of his soul. the experience of these things gives him such certainty that god is always in the innermost part of his soul that he is beyond doubting it under any circumstances. judge by this what content and satisfaction he enjoys. while he continually finds within himself so great a treasure, he no longer has any need to search for it. he no longer has any anxiety about finding it because he now has his beautiful treasure open before him and may take what he pleases of it. he often points out our blindness and exclaims that those who content themselves with so little are to be pitied. god, says he, has infinite treasure to bestow, and we take so little through routine devotion which lasts but a moment. blind as we are, we hinder god, and stop the current of his graces. but when he finds a soul penetrated with a lively faith, he pours into it his graces and favors plentifully. there they flow like a torrent, which, after being forcibly stopped against its ordinary course, when it has found a passage, spreads itself with impetuosity and abundance. yet we often stop this torrent by the little value we set upon it. let us stop it no more. let us enter into ourselves and break down the bank which hinders it. let us make way for grace. let us redeem the lost time, for perhaps we have but little left. death follows us close so let us be well prepared for it. we die but once and a mistake there is irretrievable. i say again, let us enter into ourselves. the time presses. there is no room for delay. our souls are at stake. it seems to me that you are prepared and have taken effectual measures so you will not be taken by surprise. i commend you for it. it is the one thing necessary. we must always work at it, because not to persevere in the spiritual life is to go back. but those who have the gale of the holy spirit go forward even in sleep. if the vessel of our soul is still tossed with winds and storms, let us awake the lord who reposes in it. he will quickly calm the sea. i have taken the liberty to impart to you these good sentiments that you may compare them with your own. may they serve to re-kindle them, if at any time they may be even a little cooled. let us recall our first favors and remember our early joys and comforts. and, let us benefit from the example and sentiments of this brother who is little known by the world, but known and extremely caressed by god. i will pray for you. please pray also for me, as i am yours in our lord. fifth letter: today i received two books and a letter from sister m--, who is preparing to make her profession. she desires the prayers of your holy society, and yours in particular. i think she greatly values your support. please do not disappoint her. pray to god that she may take her vows in view of his love alone, and with a firm resolution to be wholly devoted to him. i will send you one of those books about the presence of god; a subject which, in my opinion, contains the whole spiritual life. it seems to me that whoever duly practices it will soon become devout. i know that for the right practice of it, the heart must be empty of all other things; because god will possess the heart alone. as he cannot possess it alone, without emptying it of all besides, so neither can he act there and do in it what he pleases unless it be left vacant to him. there is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of a continual conversation with god. only those can comprehend it who practice and experience it. yet i do not advise you to do it from that motive. it is not pleasure which we ought to seek in this exercise. let us do it from a principle of love, and because it is god's will for us. were i a preacher, i would above all other things preach the practice of the presence of god. were i a director, i would advise all the world to do it, so necessary do i think it, and so easy too. ah! knew we but the want we have of the grace and assistance of god, we would never lose sight of him, no, not for a moment. believe me. immediately make a holy and firm resolution never more to forget him. resolve to spend the rest of your days in his sacred presence, deprived of all consolations for the love of him if he thinks fit. set heartily about this work, and if you do it sincerely, be assured that you will soon find the effects of it. i will assist you with my prayers, poor as they are. i recommend myself earnestly to you and those of your holy society. sixth letter: i have received from m-- the things which you gave her for me. i wonder that you have not given me your thoughts on the little book i sent to you and which you must have received. set heartily about the practice of it in your old age. it is better late than never. i cannot imagine how religious persons can live satisfied without the practice of the presence of god. for my part i keep myself retired with him in the depth and center of my soul as much as i can. while i am with him i fear nothing; but the least turning from him is insupportable. this practice does not tire the body. it is, however, proper to deprive it sometimes, nay often, of many little pleasures which are innocent and lawful. god will not permit a soul that desires to be devoted entirely to him to take pleasures other than with him. that is more than reasonable. i do not say we must put any violent constraint upon ourselves. no, we must serve god in a holy freedom. we must work faithfully without trouble or disquiet, recalling our mind to god mildly and with tranquillity as often as we find it wandering from him. it is, however, necessary to put our whole trust in god. we must lay aside all other cares and even some forms of devotion, though very good in themselves, yet such as one often engages in routinely. those devotions are only means to attain to the end. once we have established a habit of the practice of the presence of god, we are then with him who is our end. we have no need to return to the means. we may simply continue with him in our commerce of love, persevering in his holy presence with an act of praise, of adoration, or of desire or with an act of resignation, or thanksgiving, and in all the ways our spirits can invent. be not discouraged by the repugnance which you may find in it from nature. you must sacrifice yourself. at first, one often thinks it a waste of time. but you must go on and resolve to persevere in it until death, notwithstanding all the difficulties that may occur. i recommend myself to the prayers of your holy society, and yours in particular. i am yours in our lord. seventh letter: i pity you much. it will be a great relief if you can leave the care of your affairs to m-- and spend the remainder of your life only in worshipping god. he requires no great matters of us; a little remembrance of him from time to time, a little adoration. sometimes to pray for his grace. sometimes to offer him your sufferings. and sometimes to return him thanks for the favors he has given you, and still gives you, in the midst of your troubles. console yourself with him the oftenest you can. lift up your heart to him at your meals and when you are in company. the least little remembrance will always be pleasing to him. you need not cry very loud. he is nearer to us than we are aware. and we do not always have to be in church to be with god. we may make an oratory of our heart so we can, from time to time, retire to converse with him in meekness, humility, and love. every one is capable of such familiar conversation with god, some more, some less. he knows what we can do. let us begin then. perhaps he expects but one generous resolution on our part. have courage. we have but little time to live. you are nearly sixty-four, and i am almost eighty. let us live and die with god. sufferings will be sweet and pleasant while we are with him. without him, the greatest pleasures will be a cruel punishment to us. may he be blessed by all. gradually become accustomed to worship him in this way; to beg his grace, to offer him your heart from time to time; in the midst of your business, even every moment if you can. do not always scrupulously confine yourself to certain rules or particular forms of devotion. instead, act in faith with love and humility. you may assure m-- of my poor prayers, and that i am their servant, and yours particularly. eighth letter: you tell me nothing new. you are not the only one who is troubled with wandering thoughts. our mind is extremely roving. but the will is mistress of all our faculties. she must recall our stray thoughts and carry them to god as their final end. if the mind is not sufficiently controlled and disciplined at our first engaging in devotion, it contracts certain bad habits of wandering and dissipation. these are difficult to overcome. the mind can draw us, even against our will, to worldly things. i believe one remedy for this is to humbly confess our faults and beg god's mercy and help. i do not advise you to use multiplicity of words in prayer. many words and long discourses are often the occasions of wandering. hold yourself in prayer before god, like a dumb or paralytic beggar at a rich man's gate. let it be your business to keep your mind in the presence of the lord. if your mind sometimes wanders and withdraws itself from him, do not become upset. trouble and disquiet serve rather to distract the mind than to re-collect it. the will must bring it back in tranquillity. if you persevere in this manner, god will have pity on you. one way to re-collect the mind easily in the time of prayer, and preserve it more in tranquillity, is not to let it wander too far at other times. keep your mind strictly in the presence of god. then being accustomed to think of him often, you will find it easy to keep your mind calm in the time of prayer, or at least to recall it from its wanderings. i have told you already of the advantages we may draw from this practice of the presence of god. let us set about it seriously and pray for one another. ninth letter: the enclosed is an answer to that which i received from m--. please deliver it to her. she is full of good will but she would go faster than grace! one does not become holy all at once. i recommend her to your guidance. we ought to help one another by our advice, and yet more by our good example. please let me hear of her from time to time and whether she is very fervent and obedient. let us often consider that our only business in this life is to please god, that perhaps all besides is but folly and vanity. you and i have lived over forty years in the monastic life. have we employed them in loving and serving god, who by his mercy has called us to this state and for that very end? i am sometimes filled with shame and confusion when i reflect, on the one hand, upon the great favors which god has done and continues to do for me; and, on the other, upon the ill use i have made of them and my small advancement in the way of perfection. since, by his mercy, he gives us yet a little time, let us begin in earnest. let us repair the lost time. let us return with full assurance to that father of mercies, who is always ready to receive us affectionately. let us generously renounce, for the love of him, all that is not himself. he deserves infinitely more. let us think of him perpetually. let us put all our trust in him. i have no doubt that we shall soon receive an abundance of his grace, with which we can do all things, and, without which we can do nothing but sin. we cannot escape the dangers which abound in life without the actual and continual help of god. let us pray to him for it constantly. how can we pray to him without being with him? how can we be with him but in thinking of him often? and how can we often think of him, but by a holy habit which we should form of it? you will tell me that i always say the same thing. it is true, for this is the best and easiest method i know. i use no other. i advise all the world to do it. we must know before we can love. in order to know god, we must often think of him. and when we come to love him, we shall then also think of him often, for our heart will be with our treasure. tenth letter: i have had a good deal of difficulty bringing myself to write to m.--. i do it now purely because you desire me to do so. please address it and send it to him. it is pleasing to see all the faith you have in god. may he increase it in you more and more. we cannot have too much trust in so good and faithful a friend who will never fail us in this world nor in the next. if m.-- takes advantage of the loss he has had and puts all his confidence in god, he will soon give him another friend more powerful and more inclined to serve him. he disposes of hearts as he pleases. perhaps m.-- was too attached to him he has lost. we ought to love our friends, but without encroaching upon the love of god, which must always be first. please keep my recommendation in mind that you think of god often; by day, by night, in your business, and even in your diversions. he is always near you and with you. leave him not alone. you would think it rude to leave a friend alone who came to visit you. why, then, must god be neglected? do not forget him but think on him often. adore him continually. live and die with him. this is the glorious work of a christian; in a word, this is our profession. if we do not know it, we must learn it. i will endeavor to help you with my prayers, and am yours in our lord. eleventh letter: i do not pray that you may be delivered from your pains; but i pray earnestly that god gives you strength and patience to bear them as long as he pleases. comfort yourself with him who holds you fastened to the cross. he will loose you when he thinks fit. happy are those who suffer with him. accustom yourself to suffer in that manner, and seek from him the strength to endure as much, and as long, as he judges necessary for you. worldly people do not comprehend these truths. it is not surprising though, since they suffer like what they are and not like christians. they see sickness as a pain against nature and not as a favor from god. seeing it only in that light, they find nothing in it but grief and distress. but those who consider sickness as coming from the hand of god, out of his mercy and as the means he uses for their salvation, commonly find sweetness and consolation in it. i pray that you see that god is often nearer to us and present within us in sickness than in health. do not rely completely on another physician because he reserves your cure to himself. put all your trust in god. you will soon find the effects in your recovery, which we often delay by putting greater faith in medicine than in god. whatever remedies you use, they will succeed only so far as he permits. when pains come from god, only he can ultimately cure them. he often sends sickness to the body to cure diseases of the soul. comfort yourself with the sovereign physician of both soul and body. i expect you will say that i am very much at ease, and that i eat and drink at the table of the lord. you have reason. but think how painful it would be to the greatest criminal in the world to eat at the king's table and be served by him, yet have no assurance of pardon? i believe he would feel an anxiety that nothing could calm except his trust in the goodness of his sovereign. so i assure you, that whatever pleasures i taste at the table of my king, my sins, ever present before my eyes, as well as the uncertainty of my pardon, torment me. though i accept that torment as something pleasing to god. be satisfied with the condition in which god places you. however happy you may think me, i envy you. pain and suffering would be a paradise to me, if i could suffer with my god. the greatest pleasures would be hell if i relished them without him. my only consolation would be to suffer something for his sake. i must, in a little time, go to god. what comforts me in this life is that i now see him by faith. i see him in such a manner that i sometimes say, i believe no more, but i see. i feel what faith teaches us, and, in that assurance and that practice of faith, i live and die with him. stay with god always for he is the only support and comfort for your affliction. i shall beseech him to be with you. i present my service. twelfth letter: if we were well accustomed to the practice of the presence of god, bodily discomforts would be greatly alleviated. god often permits us to suffer a little to purify our souls and oblige us to stay close to him. take courage. offer him your pain and pray to him for strength to endure them. above all, get in the habit of often thinking of god, and forget him the least you can. adore him in your infirmities. offer yourself to him from time to time. and, in the height of your sufferings, humbly and affectionately beseech him (as a child his father) to make you conformable to his holy will. i shall endeavor to assist you with my poor prayers. god has many ways of drawing us to himself. he sometimes seems to hide himself from us. but faith alone ought to be our support. faith is the foundation of our confidence. we must put all our faith in god. he will not fail us in time of need. i do not know how god will dispose of me but i am always happy. all the world suffers and i, who deserve the severest discipline, feel joys so continual and great that i can scarcely contain them. i would willingly ask god for a part of your sufferings. i know my weakness is so great that if he left me one moment to myself, i would be the most wretched man alive. and yet, i do not know how he could leave me alone because faith gives me as strong a conviction as reason. he never forsakes us until we have first forsaken him. let us fear to leave him. let us always be with him. let us live and die in his presence. do pray for me, as i pray for you. thirteenth letter: i am sorry to see you suffer so long. what gives me some ease and sweetens the feeling i have about your griefs, is that they are proof of god's love for you. see your pains in that view and you will bear them more easily. in your case, it is my opinion that, at this point, you should discontinue human remedies and resign yourself entirely to the providence of god. perhaps he waits only for that resignation and perfect faith in him to cure you. since, in spite of all the care you have taken, treatment has proved unsuccessful and your malady still increases, wait no longer. put yourself entirely in his hands and expect all from him. i told you in my last letter that he sometimes permits bodily discomforts to cure the distempers of the soul. have courage. make a virtue of necessity. do not ask god for deliverance from your pain. instead, out of love for him, ask for the strength to resolutely bear all that he pleases, and as long as he pleases. such prayers are hard at first, but they are very pleasing to god, and become sweet to those that love him. love sweetens pains. and when one loves god, one suffers for his sake with joy and courage. do so, i beseech you. comfort yourself with him. he is the only physician for all our illnesses. he is the father of the afflicted and always ready to help us. he loves us infinitely more than we can imagine. love him in return and seek no consolation elsewhere. i hope you will soon receive his comfort. adieu. i will help you with my prayers, poor as they are, and shall always be yours in our lord. fourteenth letter: i give thanks to our lord for having relieved you a little as you desired. i have often been near death and i was never so much satisfied as then. at those times i did not pray for any relief, but i prayed for strength to suffer with courage, humility, and love. how sweet it is to suffer with god! however great your sufferings may be, receive them with love. it is paradise to suffer and be with him. if, in this life, we might enjoy the peace of paradise, we must accustom ourselves to a familiar, humble, and affectionate conversation with god. we must hinder our spirits wandering from him on all occasions. we must make our heart a spiritual temple so we can constantly adore him. we must continually watch over ourselves so we do not do anything that may displease him. when our minds and hearts are filled with god, suffering becomes full of unction and consolation. i well know that to arrive at this state, the beginning is very difficult because we must act purely on faith. but, though it is difficult, we know also that we can do all things with the grace of god. he never refuses those who ask earnestly. knock. persevere in knocking. and i answer for it, that, in his due time, he will open his graces to you. he will grant, all at once, what he has deferred during many years. adieu. pray to him for me, as i pray to him for you. i hope to see him soon. fifteenth letter: god knows best what we need. all that he does is for our good. if we knew how much he loves us, we would always be ready to receive both the bitter and the sweet from his hand. it would make no difference. all that came from him would be pleasing. the worst afflictions only appear intolerable if we see them in the wrong light. when we see them as coming from the hand of god and know that it is our loving father who humbles and distresses us, our sufferings lose their bitterness and can even become a source of consolation. let all our efforts be to know god. the more one knows him, the greater one desires to know him. knowledge is commonly the measure of love. the deeper and more extensive our knowledge, the greater is our love. if our love of god were great we would love him equally in pain and pleasure. we only deceive ourselves by seeking or loving god for any favors which he has or may grant us. such favors, no matter how great, can never bring us as near to god as can one simple act of faith. let us seek him often by faith. he is within us. seek him not elsewhere. are we not rude and deserve blame if we leave him alone to busy ourselves with trifles which do not please him and perhaps even offend him? these trifles may one day cost us dearly. let us begin earnestly to be devoted to him. let us cast everything else out of our hearts. he wants to possess the heart alone. beg this favor of him. if we do all we can, we will soon see that change wrought in us which we so greatly desire. i cannot thank him enough for the relief he has given you. i hope to see him within a few days. let us pray for one another. brother lawrence died peacefully within days of this last letter. ------- visit: practicegodspresence.com home of brother lawrence's practice of the presence of god none insights and heresies pertaining to the evolution of the soul by ammyeetis (persian) second edition christopher publishing house boston copyright by the christopher press copyright by the christopher publishing house dedication. to those heroic minds who can truly say: "my soul is my own," and bravely maintain it through everything--in spite of church or state--i do offer with earnest congratulations and my loving greetings, these fragmentary thoughts of ammyeetis. our revered emerson loaned his plato to a neighbor. meeting him some time afterward he said to him: "how did you like plato?" "very much," the farmer answered, "very much indeed. i see he has a great many of my idees." and so, my readers--if there be such--there may be herein set forth some of your own familiar thoughts which you may not have found opportunity to express in such guise as appears in this small book. contents. no new thing evolution slowness of evolution the work of nature a new science world making imperfections revealed world origin spirit individualized through matter world signs world growth death a benefactor world progress the origin of evil vibration life churches money makers life in nature heaven nature spirits experience spiritualism phenomena mediumship the migrations of our race the discipline of life homogeneity of the race of god of jesus the gods knowledge of occult law evanescence of mere beliefs the fount of inspiration for all man versus death fear of death test of character character forming man the final earth product superstitions self-justice symbolism love ideals of love the needs of woman man versus woman natural cruelty of the undeveloped the worst sin reincarnation processes of reincarnation education of children egotism responsiveness hell the commonplace petroleum law communism happiness pain foes in the household the inner life root of evils rest in change miserliness special providence human destiny ethical law human life animal likeness natural superstition adaptiveness of man devil worship fanaticism truth christs hero worship reason sympathy new religions the growth processes of the human soul necessity for phenomena will change of atoms our limitations final race experience religious performances of teachers wise use of money genius thoughts are things unfoldment inventions divine healing surplus analysis of the lord's prayer absurd beliefs the resurrection the creator retributive justice the soul woman insights and heresies pertaining to the evolution of the soul no new thing. there is no new revelation to be given to man; there is no need of it. those who have labored most strenuously to evolve from their inner consciousness a new, a better religion, have found themselves bogged in the mire of their egotism which has landed them in a police court, or they have been confronted by exactly the same problems as those from which they have sought to escape. few, indeed, have survived the test of time. there is an ancient promise that stands yet for man's use: "to him that hath (improved) shall more be given, and from him that hath not (improved) shall be taken away that which he already has." this was never meant to apply to material things--it could not--it was spoken in reference to the gift of understanding, and of using the occult, the psychic law. many psychics have lost their spiritual gifts through failing to understand that endless progress is the law that forces souls along the way of life. no stopping by the way to gather shells upon the shore, no aimless looking back; but work with stout heart and resolute will. it all means work, overmastering habits of thought and action, lifting the soul from the grooves of heredity, and in all ways making aspiration attract the inspiration that sustains the soul. evolution. all subjects pertaining to our knowledge of the soul are too subtle to be weighed and proved by external intellect alone. our lives are ruled by such a hotch-potch of inherited beliefs and tendencies, that it is almost impossible for us to use any discrimination concerning them; or to arraign ourselves before the tribunal of our own better judgment in such manner as to enable us to separate the false and effete ethical and religious influences, from the wise and true, which alone are abiding and permanent. thus we grope and stumble along through our earthly lives, burdened with ideas which were set in motion far back in a crude age, and which were so well adapted to their time that they still vibrate to the tendencies of our own day. this applies to every department of human experience, and were it not that we are, as a huge family, better than our cherished beliefs, higher in the scale of development than these would seem to indicate, we should still be under the dominion of the so-called "dark ages." the most important and the dearest phase of human experience must come, of course, through its religious beliefs, and as they are narrow and superstitious, on the one hand, or grand with faith and understanding of law, on the other, do we judge of the status of the individual, the community, and the race; and the advances made upon this line mark the progress of what we term civilization on this planet. there is no time so trying, so full of agony to the soul, as is that hour when it first begins to doubt the absolute, unquestionable truth of the creeds it has hitherto blindly accepted, and in which it has fully believed. creeds are the swaddling clothes of the soul, and must inevitably be outgrown and laid aside as the mind of man grows more and more capable of comprehending the truth which is to set it free from the trammels of mere blind belief. it is so comfortable to have our spiritual faith ready made for us, our paths all mapped out, and our final destiny made plain and sure, provided only that we remain faithful in our adherence to them as they are set forth by our parents and spiritual guardians, that when the great, ever-surging, resistless tidal wave of progress first reaches the soul, it can only stand in dumb agony, like one upon the seashore watching its last hope go down beneath the waste of mighty waters. torn from its anchorage of inherited beliefs, it is sure to be tempest-tossed, rent and torn, buffeted by conflicting tendencies, cast upon many a desert island of unfaith, and haunted by miserable doubts and black despair, ere it hears and heeds the pilot of truth, the only guide to the peaceful haven of eternal life. happy, indeed, are they who tarry not upon the weary way; but who have within them that aspiration, that endless cry for light, which shall always, in god's providence, compel the needed response and guidance; for many honest, earnest men and women, lacking this attribute of the soul, fail all through life to reach this only true solution of the riddle of human existence. kind and sincere friends say of them: "oh! if they had only remained faithful to the religion of their fathers, they would have found happiness and peace." but the law of evolution brings each and every soul to the point where it must stand alone with god, there to discover and establish its relationship to the divine, irrespective of all preconceived ideas and notions, superstitions, and ignorance. this is exactly what every soul must come to--the aggregation of powers and forces of body and soul resulting in the fully developed and rounded-out individuality of any given personality. these are the rare and unusual men and women, the fully flowered out, the richest fruitage of any and all races, and it is to these that we must look for that union of sympathy with and comprehension of the needs and requirements of all which is to usher in the reign of peace, and universal good will on earth. jesus of nazareth went before us on the path, the only way cast up for earnest souls to walk in. there has never been given to the world any system of ethics superior to his. he recognized the homogeneity of the race--"each for all, all for each," was the whole import of his teachings. in him was epitomized the experience of the race. each and every soul must wear its crown of thorns, and bear its cross and suffer crucifixion, ere the soul astray from god, immersed in, and overwhelmed by matter, can be forced to relinquish its hold on, its love for the external, material things pertaining to this world. but it has to be, it certainly must be, the experience of every creature born of woman. be sure, o soul! if none of these experiences have ever been realized by you, that you are but just now entering upon the inevitable rounds which must attend your connection with, and relationship to this earthly sphere of being. such are as the insensate clod, having as yet neither spiritual sense, nor moral responsibility. nature's processes are slow; but be sure that the goal is appointed, and that god will be there and will wait till we come. when jesus said: "the poor ye have always with you," he did not refer to dollars and cents only, but to that poverty of intellect, that barrenness of the moral nature which makes a human being a reproach and a terror to his kind. these we shall always have to deal with, to educate if we can, to constrain from overt acts of evil, and to protect ourselves from in all the works and ways of life. so painful and slow is the process of character-forming that millions of souls pass on from this sphere of life to the spirit world so lacking in individuality that they have no more power for any expression of themselves upon that plane of being than they had when they were living here. not as much, in fact, for the physical body and brain have always some possible function and use while they hold their relationship to the world of material life, which function and use are laid aside when they are put through the sifting process of physical death, and in all cases, unless the powers of the ego as exercised here are supplanted by a sufficient growth of the spiritual nature to sustain the ego in its new relationship, and give to it the impetus needed to start it forward upon lines of usefulness and growth, it naturally fails to waken to any sort of realization of itself and its possible career in its new life. this is specially true of those persons who have been psychologized by those teachings which relegate the souls of human beings to the cold clasp of the ground, until the expected day of judgment; or of those poor, overworked men and women to whom heaven seems only a place to sleep and rest in; or again, of still another class of minds that has brought itself to a belief in utter extinction after the close of this external life. these are the "shades," the "shells" we hear of, for there are times when the subtle inner sense of these sleeping ones is stirred to action by the wails of the loving, longing ones left on earth to mourn; and, as is the case with one in somnambulic sleep, the spirit walks and talks, in response to the demands of friends, through those persons who are gifted with the aura necessary for the medial agency. these excursions of the soul into the realm of matter, thus made by and through the offices of clairvoyants and seers, the repeated arousings of the ego from its contented sleep are finally highly educational, and result in resurrecting the forces of the enfranchised being, and setting them in motion on the lines of useful work for humanity. for this medial service which is thus being rendered to the spirit world by such gifted persons still living here in the body, multitudes are daily and hourly expressing their gratitude and appreciation. we have somewhat abolished our old, long-established hell, and now, to be consistent, we must also do away with our preconceived ideas of a heaven of eternal rest; for why should the souls of men be wrapped in useless slumbers, until the strong overwhelming influence of the law of progress sweeps them up like dry leaves before a whirlwind, and rushes them along to the gates of a conscious life, through a new relationship upon the physical plane? the spirit does not weary, and when the exhausted body is laid aside, why not enlist the services of all to whom any appeal can be made? thus shall we all be growing together, and death shall be forced to cast aside its grim and dreadful seeming and show for the angel it is. ah! how could we go on and on in the narrow limitations of this small beginning of a life, if nature did not kindly call a halt somewhere on the road, while we, taking fresh courage, start out in our new career with our entire being adjusted to laws which are working in harmony with the divine will. slowness of evolution there have been times in the lives of all soul-grown people when the inner consciousness has clearly perceived that some given experience may mean an important crisis in the expression of their individual character. but not frequently, in the ordinary lives of human beings, do they meet up with really great events, or personal experiences that create for them special overturnings of their ideas, or any change of personal habits. to the mind of youth, life seems a plainly simple, straight-forward way; but when overtaken by results of unconsidered actions, for which there has been no preparation, there dawns upon it the consciousness of appalling vistas, and visions of future possibilities that are overpowering. as we journey forward on the path of existence, life becomes ever more and more complicated, and the need, the overwhelming demand for an understanding of the ever-varying problems presented to the mind for consideration, and the constantly urgent necessity for wise decisions must call into action all our highest powers of the intellect and reason, in order to secure to us the best results from the opportunities given us to acquire knowledge. every one of our experiences are bits in the mosaic of our lives, and without them the picture would be incomplete. but with all, we are forced to realize how unfinished and unsatisfactory are nearly all of our experiences of earthly existence. it is, indeed, "a thing of shreds and patches." but we are caught in the web of material existence from which there can be no lawful escape, save by unpremeditated physical death. we are thrust into the seething cauldron of formative life. the entire race of man, forced forward by the resistless power of the law of progress, is on the everlasting journey to the heights of perfected being. to us, enmeshed in the ties of interest and affection, the various heredities and the worldly karmas which hold us fast, the slow, unnumbered processes of evolution on this, our home world, as recorded in history seem unendurably long. but time is naught--eternity is unending--and "ten thousand years are but as a day with god," the great maker and moulder of our immortal souls. the work of nature. the planet itself is stirred to its very centre. on one side, the earth opens its horrible maw and swallows up uncounted numbers of her children, or spews out her molten interior in vast lava tides, overwhelming and destroying all within their reach. at the opposite side, great floods of gas and rock oil, set free by the operation of the drill, shoot up in the air and fall back upon the soil in a luminous spray, as like to liquid gold as aught not filled with the beloved auriferous metal could be. the waters loosed from their fastnesses over-reach their accustomed bounds, and great tidal waves are encountered in unexpected latitudes. nature is rounding up her great circle, and making conditions for a new era. a new science. a science of spiritual evolution could be erected, based upon the teachings and ethics of jesus christ, that would put souls consciously in their true rank and grade, and make them known just as people are recognized by the college curriculums from which they have graduated. world making. the "fire-mist" and the mephitic vapors were finally swept away; another era was preparing. incorporate in the world substance of which the planet was made were the seeds and germs of all life. its crude material was made manifest in the prodigious vegetable growths, and the awful corresponding animal life. birds and beasts and reptiles, each one more hideously terrible than the others, filled the air, the earth and the waters of the earth with the abounding life of these horrible creatures. into this unaccountable menagerie came also the foreshadowing of man--a huge hairy creature possessing size and power to do battle with his animal compeers for supremacy in the seething, upgrowing land. this was only the differentiation of the animal-man from the animal per se--the beginning of the form which stood upon its hind legs. from such rudimentary forms was evolved intelligence which finally begot the human soul. this, after vast ages, grew into a state and condition through which spirit could manifest, and the human race was finally started on its endless earthly career. with the birth of the soul came what we call the religious instinct, and man began to worship natural objects; animals and reptiles, the sun and finally, superior personalities were thought to be gods. the "phallic worship," worship of the human organs of creative power, gave the males great prominence. the female, woman, the mere matrix was considered, from the first, of far less importance. no one stopped to think, what is one without the other in the great world processes. nature, ever on the alert so as not to lose any and every possible representation of her power, buried here and there specimens of her handiwork, and the exhumed remains of prehistoric monsters are even now being restored and labelled with such titles as our modern scientists have been able to invent to somewhat describe the size, the form, and the habits of these long extinct manifestations of the beginnings of life on this earth. among these, too, have also been found the bones of huge human-like beings whose decadent progeny are still alive in limited number. the gorilla is still the terror of some of the wild places of the earth; as he booms his way through the impenetrable forests, he sends forth his note of warning, beating his great hairy breast, and all living things flee before him. fancy what the awful first man--his progenitor--must have been! science has never yet been able to discover the probable length of time it required for this crude age to endure in order to lay the foundation of the world; for time was not, and existence was recorded only by ages and aeons. but seven times their infernal progeny were nearly all swept off the planet by awful cataclysms and the whole affair had to be begun over again. imperfections revealed. the soul digs deep into the age-long deposits of knowledge, the results of countless experiences, and brings up the real. this has to be, the most successful egotist, the most deluded hypocrite must inevitably meet up with himself some day and begin to know the truth versus make-believe. all souls are so veiled in the flesh, and held by the crowding necessities of their lives, that it is only on rare, unexpected occasions that the individual soul can throw down the barriers and show of what it is capable. world origin. to be able to understand, even to our limited degree, something of our origin, and the purpose of our existence is most comforting and sustaining. in the beginning, the creator sent to this planet a given number of beings intended for the exemplification of the law of evolution and soul growth. in the everlasting rounds of human life, no new souls are being created and sent here to work out their salvation through their experiences incident to the life of this young planet, earth. what appears to our limited perception to be the beginning of new lives is so only in relation to their present embodiment. all new souls now being born here are but returning from some other phase of existence. the whole human race is one family. bound to the wheel of life, every individual soul must pass through all of the varied experiences that are set for its evolution. what they are not today, they have been, or must become. but not all people march over just the same highway to reach the soul's status. details of experience do not count. it is the lesson learned, and practically applied that forwards the unfoldment of the individual in a comprehension and understanding of god's eternal truth. only results in all things, temporal and spiritual, attest the unfoldment and growth of each and every soul. it is only when man has evolved to the point of being more than a man, "a little lower than the angels," that the higher spheres of activity are necessary for his further progress. to expect to develop in the worlds of finer substance than that of earth before he has learned all that earthly experiences can teach him, is like "placing a child in the higher classes of a school before he has mastered the lessons of the lower." spirit individualized through matter. as spirit _per se_ has no entity, and only evolves individuality through its relationship with matter; and has no other conscious expression; the so long-talked-of "fall of man" was not a fall downward, but it was a process upward, necessary to his being, to his existence as man. world signs. our planet, true to her everlasting record, has put forth her potent reorganizing power to celebrate the ushering in of the new era. not less marvelous are the signs and indications of great changes taking place upon the visible planes of the lives of men. hand in hand march the visible and the imponderable forces of this earthly life. ignorance and vapid superstitions can no longer block the doorway of the living christ. god wills to know, and be known of his own, and to hold his love a free gift to all races of men. the trump of recollection and of recognition has sounded. the dead have already risen, all along the lines, and no power can hale them back to their dreams. onward, ever upward points the finger of progress. long hoarded wisdom and knowledge of the forces of nature are pouring into the minds of seers, and of wizards of science; and these long separated and divorced streams are evoluting to the unison of material and occult sciences, which is destined to bring in the reign of peace and prosperity to all the peoples of the earth, and to bring to light the relics of past ages, cunningly hidden away in the vast womb of nature that they might be preserved and brought forth to our knowledge in these later days. by the undeniable record yielded up from buried cities and storied crypts, and in the skeletons of mummies of both animals and men of those most ancient times, she is showing us where she began the present cycle, now closing in about the race, with great clattering of forces and profound portents in earth and sky. the equilibrium of the universe is maintained by the transition of its forces. atlantis, matured and ripened, sinks beneath the sea, and her accumulated wealth of wisdom and knowledge is transferred to other continents to arise at the appointed time to enrich and bless the land of their adoption; and all art and science is but shining today in the reflected, reawakened light of past ages. in view of the revelations being made on all sides, we may well reiterate solomon's wise saying: "there is nothing new under the sun." there can be nothing absolutely new. there is only endless iteration and readjustment of powers and forces to fit the need of the day and generation. nature buffets her children bitterly and wipes out her surplus of human life as she destroys the overproduction of beast and bird, of insect and reptilian life. she inspires the minds of men with an overmastering desire for possessions. she hides her wealth in inaccessible places and sets her jealous, invisible forces to guard and determinedly hold all possible avenues of approach to them. but this world was given to man to conquer and own and make much of; and the glitter of a speck of useful metal in a stray boulder in the lonely cañon; or the chance outcropping of rock which to the practised eye denotes the nearness of the deposit of oil--these, or any of the thousand and one signs, she hangs out along the path in which man is destined to march on his way to absolute sovereignty, set his forces of intellect and will in motion, and he will never rest from his labors until he stands upon the pinnacles of the gods, the crowned monarch of all nature's forces on this planet. all phenomena are negative, and are only the external garniture of the world of man, the spirit, the child of the eternal, of the father and mother creators of him. thus man is, by absolute inheritance, the king, and the ruler over all nature. but not without effort can he enter and possess and maintain his power over his own. ice and frosts, and searing sun, and lonely wilds, and trackless wastes, and countless waters, and evil beasts, and horrible reptiles--all, all he must encounter and set at naught in his trackless journey. carefully must he force the wilderness to bloom, and by his wise efforts "make glad the waste places" of the earth. wherever the foot of man has been set, there is it "hallowed ground." whatever may have been his intent or whatever his fate, in his wake shall surely follow the manifest purpose of that ever-ruling power which led him. everywhere along the way, nature trails her loose ends, well baited, with which to catch the unwary, and the whitening bones of the lonely emigrant family lost on the plains, and the snowy hair of the dead mountaineer bleaching on high summits or woven in the nests of birds, or the bodies of dead mariners, or the lonely corpse of the treacherously slain, pulsing with the tide on foreign shores, or the miners in their pits, forced by the deadly "damps" from all visible connection with human life, or the child of a superior race held captive by savages, or the beautiful white girl sold into the harem of a barbarous sultan, or any or all other of such expressions of destiny in the isolated lives of men are but pioneering the way of the race to complete homogeneousness and unquestioned ownership of the whole wide earth. world growth. all of nature's processes are slow and always evolutionary. the controlling laws are subtle and secret and can never be comprehended or understood save as they work out in visible results. there is every indication that it has required an illimitable series of ages to evolve even the physical form of man in the unnumbered races of the human family from the first semi-human life to man as we see him now--clever and strong of brain and will, daring and equal to great emergencies, and in inventive, creative and executive gifts a very god of power and might. the laws of evolution refer primarily to the individual planet, earth, and include all that it contains--in a word, all things in any way related to it. mineral deposits and crumbling rocks nourish the vegetable world; the vegetable world provides sustenance to the animal kingdom, and it, in turn, with all the others combined, sustains all human life; but its real root, its permanent existence, is in the planet itself. each and all of these diverse manifestations of law coordinated, constitute the mysterious modes and methods of the evolution of life from the lower to the higher status of being, and it works on, and ever on eternally, till human life finds its completion and satisfaction in the fulfillment of the law which merges the advanced and prepared soul in the universal spirit and crowns its final evolution with its at-one-ment with its creator. nature does not duplicate her handiwork, but cunningly sets her sign on every leaf and branch to insure individuality. she throws protecting arms around all her growing life of fruit and vegetable in order that each shall reproduce of its own kind, and thus keep intact the orderly succession, and that there shall be no lack of nourishment for the children of men. she gives without stint to all the peoples of the earth her world-stuff to be worked over into human flesh, and animal fibre. but no tiniest grain of her possessions has ever, or will ever escape from her hand, and the daily debris from all earth-made bodies is her constant toll. when the forms are set free from the life principle which has pervaded them in their earthly career, the circle is rounded, and when the grave-rite, dust to native dust we here restore to our great mother is uttered, she is the gainer; for the operation of thus passing the material of which the planet is made through the highest created forms of life, brings it into a certain relationship to spirit, and thus the evolution, the spiritualization of the world-stuff of the planet itself is going forward. death a benefactor. death is a benefactor to the human race. how could we bear the burden of existence if nature did not somewhere on the march "call a halt" while the angels of dissolution tenderly unloose our burdens of pain and sorrow, and disappointment, and stultifying regrets, and remorses for past ill doings and shortcomings? world progress. it is known only to the lesser gods, who keep the celestial "accounts," how many times the swaggering, bully-ragging, brawling, piratical, and murderous human family has swept around this globe. here and there relics of their status, their growth in the external, material conditions of life are being exhumed, wrung from the faithful clasp of mother earth, to excite the wonder of the day and time. many of the attributes of these lost races, their arts and their religions, have come to light; but whence they came, and how they perished, is an unsolved mystery. from the processes of disintegration--earthquakes, and widespread volcanic action--now going on, we can readily conceive of the manner in which vast multitudes of humanity have been removed from this planet to make room for still other races and peoples. the great pilgrimage still goes on. unnumbered hordes following the secret instinct of evolution, unceasingly press forward from the east toward the setting sun. this same army, in a former incarnation, went forth over the land where they lived to slay and exterminate; in this embodiment, here in america, they hew out the rocks, and toil in the mines. they harvest the grain that is to feed the hungry multitude that is speeding on toward this new land as fast as the modern conveniences can fetch them. thus they serve instead of destroying humanity--a great advance toward civilization. there has been, there will always be an unvarying round of tearing down and upbuilding in the whole wide realm of nature. nothing, not the tiniest grain or the most ponderous production of skilled hands, ever stands still. all things are in vibration, and their permanency depends wholly upon the rate of vibratory motion. here and there all the way along, from the earliest times of which there has been any record, great souls have blossomed out, and have carried aloft the god-given light of intelligence and culture. these inspired minds, great souls, have persisted in announcing their message to a darkened world, often in the face of direct want and persecutions; misunderstood and maligned, they were and are the saviors of the people of this undeveloped planet. even yet, they are known and valued by but a limited number of supposedly intelligent people. while these inspired light-bringers were seeking to shed abroad in the minds of men the truths that shall make men free, the church was devoted to closing, and holding fast shut every avenue of the human mind that might have a tendency to teach the people anything outside of their tenets which were the outcome of their weird imaginations. if anything could cause a doubt to arise in the creative mind as to the wisdom of letting loose on this small planet the pestiferous peoples that have swarmed over and possessed it, it must have been aroused by their demoniacal performances in the name of religion, that have disgraced the nature of man from the beginning of our knowledge of the world. while a perception of beauty and harmony is latent in the minds of men, it is the last of the attributes of the soul to develop. the figured semblances of god, hewn out of stone or wood by the primitive races, are mostly hideous inventions of the evil thoughts of evil minds. from the terrifying african god, "mumbo-jumbo," to the artistic bronze representations of the deity of the nations of the east all are marked with awe-enforcing ferocity and ugliness, instead of by the soul-inspiring lineaments of love and beauty. tremblingly the minds of men have groped their way along through the mazes of ignorance and enforced darkness to a degree of personal liberty; and every picture painted, every bit of sculpture achieved in the interest of harmony and beauty is testimony to the persistency of the inspiration vouchsafed to man of the creator's love of beauty, and of the final state of harmony to be reached by humanity. the origin of evil. "all evil is only undeveloped good" has come to be the "shibboleth" of not only the spiritualists, but of many other of the latter-day cults. it sounds fine, beautiful, and is--praise god!--in a large sense, true. it is a beautiful reaction from the ancient blasphemy taught by the priests and pastors anent hell and the devil. the comforting belief that the above quoted statement settles the whole matter is accepted and believed in. since the supposed dethronement of "auld hornie," as the scotch named him, as head devil, it has not been thought necessary to give the matter much if any consideration. mediums, especially, have gladly ignored the fact of the possibility of there often being in their séances the very presence of potent and powerful evil influences. spiritualism has flung wide the doors and given ignorant, and undeveloped humanity an equal opportunity with the refined, and good to express themselves. it is thus the only truly democratic religion ever made known on this planet! it recognizes all human beings, good and bad, as the children of one and the same father, and that not one can be lost from the hand of god! the peculiar people who have developed the strange power of mediatorship between this material world and the plane of existence known as the spiritual world have always been helped and sustained in their great work by their invisible friends and appointed spirit guardians, or they could never have carried forward their important mission to the people of this earth. regardless of all the efforts of the enemies and traducers of spiritualism, the spread of the knowledge of the unfolding spiritual philosophy has been and is marvelous; and the establishment of the fact of man's existence, continued after physical death, through varied phenomena, is in itself the proof of its being the work, not of satan, but of a beneficent god. and why not? the creator of us all must know his earth-children's needs for their further evolution and growth! there have been great searchings, at various times, trying to discover the "origin of evil." vast stores of uncanny legends, and tales of wonders have been handed down to us in explanation of this most baffling mystery. the destructive force in nature had no "origin." just as god, the constructive force, had none. it was, as god was. it is and always will be, while god and nature are. it rides the whirlwind and the flood, and differentiates itself through the smallest minutia of the affairs of human life. it is the primeval element, the "pure cussedness" which has to be conquered, or adjusted in every human being. it essays to bar all progress; ignorance and superstition are its blinded handmaids. it exacts the fearful penalties of scornfully misunderstood efforts, if not ostracism and persecution, for the use of the diviner faculties. it is the spirit of unconquered ill. it is the genius of the utterly selfish will of man. but it is when it allies itself with the intellect and will of man, and becomes the motive power, and thus expresses itself in concrete form, as is often the case, that our sympathies are touched and our sense of justice aroused, and we feel our lack of protection from the "powers and principalities of the air." our only refuge is in growing to and experiencing a perfect at-one-ment with the eternal law of the opposing, the constructive force--god. there is no protection, no safety, but in the divine love and wisdom. vibration. there was no beginning; there can be no ending. there is a constant, undeviating process of changing and readjustment of all the forces of the universe. all is vibration. none of nature's forces are at rest, at equilibrium. build you a fine dwelling, and ere it is finished for your occupancy, the disintegrating forces will have made a raid upon the material of which it is constructed. take notice of the signs of decomposition going on in everything around you--the accumulation of fluff in your rooms, in the innermost of your garments, along the seams. so also do the rocks and mountains yield themselves to dust, and so does all the planet reverberate with the resistless onward march of the law of progress, unfoldment, evolution from the lower to a higher form of expression. lands edging the seas and the inland waters, from their constant erosion, slip away and are lost. continents disappear, undermined by earthquakes and similar convulsions of nature, and new lands arise from the bowels of some faraway ocean to keep the balance even. life. from time immemorial the researches of men in the vain effort to discover and make known to the world the origin of life, of all life, on the planet earth and elsewhere, have been most anxiously considered. these efforts of the inquiring minds of men have not been altogether fruitless of results; because through them has been made manifest the most marvelous of all the facts in nature, that "there is no death," that "what seems so is transition." it has also become known and understood of late years, that from the ephemera of life, of an hour or of a day up to the highest archangel, through all the intermediate grades of being, visible and invisible, there are no vacant spaces. everywhere there is an overwhelming volume of life, actual though not conscious or individualized, until the higher ranges of human life become known and correlated. comes the man with the scalpel. he dissects the human brain, and is disgusted at finding no clew to the secret cause and source of life. he never suspects, he does not conceive of the fact that there is in everyone, an immutable, invisible power--a spirit germ--nor would he believe in its potency if he knew it were true. then there is the man with the retorts and the scales, and the "residues." he announces to the world that he can create life without any help from the "great spirit" people talk so much about. there is also the man with the bottle full of water, with a handful of mud at the bottom. he is sure he can produce living organisms; might even set agoing a new race of beings, if he only had time, and a larger bottle! back of every expression of life we know abides the source, the cause of all existence, so hid, so truly an integral part of life as never to yield a knowledge of itself either to the scalpel of the physicians or to the electrical battery of the explorer of mysteries. into this sphere can no man come. herein can be no meddling of the human intellect. through this searching for the source, the cause of life, man has been brought face to face with law, with a force he can never understand or conquer, or adjust to the demands or suggestions of his will. from ancient expressions of intelligence have been handed down to us the name, the title, god, as a concrete expression of this power that holds dominance over all created beings. another important revelation made to man is the fact that there is but one law, _per se_. it is an established, consecutive, endless chain from the beginnings of human life here up to the absolute ultimate of the immortal soul. it proves the homogeneity of the whole human race; it declares the value of existence here, and explains the logical sequence of its continuance beyond this fragment of life into nature's invisible realms. what we shall do, each one of us, with our individual portion of life; how we shall work out our personal experiences, and to what end is another matter. there is our heredity which is, in every case, so mixed as to yield but little of the primal strain, and which gives to each one of us unknown possibilities, or undesired idiosyncracies to fight out and eradicate from the nature. the many failures to discover the mystery of life surely ought to prove to all experimenters the truth that spirit holds the only key to its endless mystery. churches money makers. there is no detail of the ordinary human life of all who are in any way connected with the church, which has not been exploited for money. there is no end to the myths and fables that have been put before the superstitious and ignorant, and each and every one has its price; and every celebration draws its pay; and all for the glory of god, not at all for the help of man. the peasants and other laborers starve, and are overwhelmed by the riot of fatal disease. as a money-making concern, it leaves nothing to be wished for--it is a great success. there was no "beginning," there can be no "ending." whatever appears ended in our experience is only in seeming, and in other shapes and in transformed relationships will appear again and again, asserting "there is no death, what seems so is transition," change of elements and forces. there is but one law; one creative centre. one model for advanced individualized life in any world; in all worlds. the whole purpose and intent of all creation is simply to render all inert, unused matter into life. the universal spirit pervades all things. mineral; vegetable; animal; human; angel; one unbroken chain, from the sod up to divine perfection, from the pigmy races we see here, on this small globe, up, forever upward and onward to the courts of the "sons of god"; to the spheres of the eternally immortal. ignorant mortals assert from time to time, the day and the hour of the "end of the world," and foolishly prepare for the final destruction of this planet. it is true, this earth is always coming to an end, and always rehabilitating itself with its own unused materials. mountains slide down and fill up the valleys. the waters of the sea undermine and gnaw off big slices from the land; all, all is motion, vibration; nothing stands still. if it were possible for anything in the universe to stop, to break the everlasting chain, there would be no universe; there would be only chaos come again, and all the work of setting the planets a-spinning round and round their centres and apportioning the orbits of the stately suns, and their places in the precessions of their accompanying worlds; all would go for nothing, all would have to be begun again, and on the same lines exactly. there are no other; there is no other law, and the name of the law that holds all in imperishable harmony, is love, just love. life in nature. the microscope has revealed to us the life and habits of myriads of creatures of whose existence we had previously no knowledge. we had not even a suspicion that what to our unaided vision appeared inert elements held a rampant, multitudinous life, nowhere dead, but always surging and changing, ever replacing death and decay with a new life all its own. nature's luxuriance everywhere fills us with wonder and delight. the fragrant ferny depths of the forest, and the lush growth of the rank marsh-land, the immeasurable sands of the ocean-edge hiding in their mysterious sameness innumerable and beautiful shells and corals, and the mountain top heaped up with boulders, or crumbling by nature's processes into pebbly imponderance. life, swarming everywhere. tiny leaflets giving succor and shelter to tinier animal life--its special fairy. huge beasts couchant in majestic trees, guarding against invasions, with a fierce, jealous rage inherited from the gnomes and satyrs. deep sea depths untouched by lightnings, where the kraken makes his home; jolly dolphins disporting in the sunlight, responding to the cry of the hovering wild duck and gull. human beings overcrowding in the oldest settled portions of the globe, until nature's resources for their sustenance are wellnigh exhausted. all these, and many more, might justly be enumerated to illustrate the bountiful and inexhaustible resources of the great creative, reconstructive power in the universe of matter. life, everywhere life, forcing out death and decay. ever changing its form of expression. reforming itself upon steadily advancing models. all nature swinging in circles so wide and vast as to require centuries for their completion. one of the most fascinating doctrines of the swedish seer is contained in the "law of correspondences." by it many things, seemingly irregular, "fall into line," and become parts of a great process of development. following this method, the earnest, searching mind, looking through nature up to "nature's god," seeks to go beyond the confines of the mere animal, material existence, and come into sympathy with and get a knowledge of the world unseen, but often felt and recognized, spiritual life, filling all the spaces which seem to the earth-dimmed senses dull and void. there is no death, no vacancy in this realm of nature, any more than in that other, more tangible one, the outgrowth and the necessity of this great storm-tossed planet. but all the expressions of life in this sphere are different from those to which our material senses are accustomed, and require the action of another, a finer, more spiritual set of faculties in order to comprehend them even partially which, at the best, is all we can hope to do while we remain denizens of and subject to the laws which control this world of material substance. "jacob's dream" was not a dream only. it was a reality. from supernal heights "ladders" are ever being dropped down to our earth, into our midst, upon which forms immortal and real "ascend and descend" according to our need and our demand upon them for love and help. we are continually overshadowed by this supermundane existence. its influences are both positive and negative, good and evil. it has powers adapted to every issue of human experience; because it is the outgrowth, the fruitage of human life. its roots are planted in this earth. its topmost branches wave in the sunlight which flows from the "throne of god." it is god. not a separate and distinct being; but an intelligent principle of love abounding in everything; expressing itself through everything. knowing no "high" or "low." seeing no difference between the "just and the unjust"; showering down upon all alike, benisons of wisdom, and peace and good will. gathering all together in one embrace; the whole race of man, one undivided family. its divine "trinity" is evolution, progress, liberty. many minds reject this assumption of facts, because of the necessity which a recognition of them would involve for a readjustment of mental processes, and religious beliefs affecting their daily experience. heaven. millions of enfranchised souls pass from earth life and find the spirit world--the "summerland"--a heaven, and stay therein for vast lengths of time. the change from this life of toil, and misery to an existence of rest from all pain and sorrow of earthly existence is really heaven enough for the average human mind. a place of beautiful surroundings, where everything necessary for their comfort is furnished them, without money and without price and, best of all, where they no longer fear being grabbed up and punished by the devil for their sins of ignorance committed when in the body. it is not possible for us, plunged, as we all are, into the vortex of this difficult existence, to realize what all this means to the world-weary. if one shall halt by the way, or fall aside from the great unending procession nothing stops. the terrible, tumultuous waves of humanity roll on, and the lost are not missed or mourned for, save by the few that were responsible for their coming, or for the awful lack of help and tendance that made them failures in the battle of life. the great army of the commonplace, the neither positively good nor the very bad, is the largest class of all humanity. the most pestiferous and difficult to adjust to the law of progress and advancement. hold one of them out of hell by the hair of the head, and when he is let go he only drops further in, and nothing teaches him but the "slings and arrows" of misfortune, and every dreadful experience that can be handed out to him. much of this almost universally deplorable condition--it may be the whole of it--has been induced by false, unreasonable religious teachings. the human mind needs every inducement to effort to overcome its natural inertia instead of being put to sleep by promises of being exempt from all responsibility connected with its final redemption. nature spirits. the "dwellers at the threshold" are the individualized entities of the elements of nature. air, fire, earth depths, and seas. these belong to the domain of nature, pure and simple, and are met and controlled by the affinities of the chemicals of the material, physical organization of the individual. the most potent of these leading in the degree of material success to be achieved in dealing with material life. money getting in the mines, earth depths. all manufactories that require raging and continuous flame; ships to sail, and conquer water spirits; electrical and etherial forces that move in the air currents. these are the soulless, irresponsible "goblins" and "gnomes," "fire spirits" and "_ignes fatui_" of the nether world. all human beings who progress at all have to deal with one or more of these forces. beginning in blind ignorance, through struggle, the mortal will is developed and the mere animal man has set his foot upon a low rung of the ladder of the ascending series. next, man has to deal with the primal races. the "missing link" which will never be found save at the "threshold" where it combines its forces with those of man's other natural enemies, and keeps jealous watch and ward at every point of egress of the soul which seeks to enlarge its domain. finally the will of man, with its long heredity of war with these potentialities, "at enmity with god," resisting the divine; even as these have striven to hold him in a perpetual slavery, is in its last struggle. the vast aggregation of human will, set free from the clog of the flesh, knowing nothing of the divine, seeing no guiding light, combines its forces, and commingles its powers with whatever its endless tentacles can reach. these are the powers and principalities of the air. these are the demons, "bad spirits," "devils" and "familiars" of the literature of the ages, and the presiding geniuses of many a phenomenon resulting from modern research into the mysteries of nature. as their intelligence exceeds that of the underlying grades, so just in that degree is their power increased, and used, to block the gateway that opens upon the path. their abodes lie in outer darkness, or are illumined only by flashes of fictitious, and evanescent light from the expiring embers of earthly exhalations, and the phosphorescent gleams of decaying forms. the soul that has received an illumination from the divine has in its keeping a talisman of power, yet none can escape these watchful ones. "here eyes do regard you in eternity's stillness." "choose well; your choice is brief, but yet endless." the winged fiend, the "appolyon," must be met and settled with at every turn of the way that leads to the kingdom which the christ came to establish, and whose best name is "peace." in this grade, love finds no home, but its great prototype, the lust of the flesh, stealing ever the livery of heaven, lures on tender souls to their sad undoing. by help of divine love alone can the soul journey safely onward and upward through this great concentrated, immediately-environing earth grade. it is solidly compact, sleepless and untiring, seeking ceaselessly whom it may win to its realm. it is the unrecognized longing of the soul for restoration to its divine heritage of love. experience. experience is at the same time the surest and the slowest teacher of men. wisdom, the crowning glory of humanity, is but an enlarged perception of man's needs, and how to meet them, based upon individual experience and observation of the effects of natural law upon all. an individual is an epitome of the world--society. discipline is everywhere considered indispensable to the individual. far more is it so to the world of society. anarchy and revolution are no more efficient for the body politic than for the individual. growth, slow and gradual, aggregation of power and wisdom through the education and enlightenment of its individual members, is the only safe and sure way to permanency and enduring life. spiritualism. in spiritualism alone is to be found an expression of the religion of jesus of nazereth. it is truly democratic, giving to saint and sinner alike both here, in this life, and after death, an opportunity for redemption. its first mission to the world is the proof it gives of a continued existence in which is still experienced all the idiosyncracies which marked the individual in earth life. this fact has either been ignored by certain classes of minds, or has been taken by them as proof positive of the hellish origin of its phenomena, whereas in this very expression of characteristic life lies its wonderful power and potency. from long-continued educational influence people out of churches, as well as inside of the influence of their superstitions, have come to idealize death, its awe-inspiring mystery and its strange variety. it is thought, by them, to be a sudden translation from a lower condition to a higher, wherein, through some divine hocus-pocus, the members of certain so-called "evangelical" churches, no matter how worldly-minded, and selfish, or however false to their teachings they have been, or how false their lives to the divine ethics taught by the lord, whose name they assume as their prerogative, that their through tickets to the supernal spheres are assured. it is believed that death purges them of all their sympathy with and attraction to mortal life, and that they are forever absolved from all their responsibilities, and freed from dependence upon the inter-relationships between the two conditions. exactly the reverse is true. multitudes of souls only begin their true living, their comprehension of life's meanings, after death has sifted them out of the ashes and lifeless embers of their mistaken ideas, or vicious indulgences. shall these, then, be brought beneath the ban of limitless darkness, and exiled from the "many mansions" of our heavenly father's and mother's house? a tiny rap, untraceable to any material source, a table moved by invisible force, a closed and locked piano skillfully played upon by unseen hands; these were the first links in an endless chain of eternal benefits pouring down from the smiling heavens upon the benighted children of earth. again was heard "the voice as of one crying in the wilderness" of this world's marts for barter, and selfish gain; "let him who hath ears to hear, let him hear." "the grave has lost its victory" and death is but a halt called in mercy and loving tenderness, that your weary souls may be refreshed by a draught from nature's founts and bountiful resources that you may mount upward as on the mighty wings of eagles; or discover for your wandering feet the path of rectitude and safety. phenomena. all expressions of nature are phenomenal. man is of all the most wonderful. a tiny spark of spirit encased in matter, by the irresistible law of progress evolving powers of brain, thought, consciousness, reason, intuition; unfolding, expanding; realizing finally his at-one-ment with his source, the cause of him--god--man immortal, illimitable. at certain points of unfoldment seemingly lost, great hue and cry from many--pin heads--who think they have discovered god, a failure. watch out and see. give the lord a chance. nothing is done with yet. in a very old hook of hebrew history, there are recorded well-attested accounts of phenomena, which are so distinctly outside of the ordinary happenings of this material existence, that they were always recognized as being of a purely spiritual origin, method and purpose. within the last century the same experiences have been vouchsafed to present humanity. millions of people have attested the truth of a continuance of these same phenomena; they having taken place within the range of their own personal experience. and why not? the creator knows what his children need in this, as well as in other ages. that human souls, the lives of human beings, persist after physical death, does not prove their eternal existence along the lines of highest soul evolution. the greatest possible unfoldment is not a gift of god. it is held only by the individual soul as the result of age-long study, and toil, through manifold embodiments, long-continued self renunciation, and sacrifices not yet known or understood. its initiations are endless; its revelations of the infinite law are, at times, too seemingly trifling for recognition; but as the lapidary leaves no facet of the jewel uncut and unpolished, so the guardians--the guides and teachers of the candidates for spiritual unfoldment--omit no least lesson or discipline that can aid in perfecting the individual soul. it is the meanest kind of bosh teaching people that there will be eternal punishment for ignorant wrong-doings in this short kindergarten experience of life, making them believe their last chance for anything better is gone forever. half the sins that are committed here anyway are either sins against the conventionalities, or they have been hatched up by some unsext priests and have nothing to do with the case. besides, the sins of the body in many a poor mortal are left with the body in the grave. the ages, the aeons required for the perfecting of any given soul, are known only to its creator, or how great must be the accumulation of ages ere the whole human family--the children of god--will respond to the eternal roll-call that shall usher in the redeemed of every land and clime, not one "lost," or gone astray. those who have stepped forth into the arena of this present manifestation of life on this planet, have, each in their place, their responsibility and task, to keep alight the beacons of reason, and intelligence, as guides to truth, and to pander never to the powers of ignorance and superstition, however manifested by church or state. mediumship. mediumship today is clearly an abnormalism. but the history of the world has been that the so-called abnormalisms of one generation are the accepted, commonplace realisms of the succeeding types. sight, the desire to see, existed first in the mind of the unfolding human brain; the will joined its forces to aid the work of liberation and the visual nerves began to form and grow. the imprisoned soul within kept pushing on, until gradually the beautiful, complex organ of sight was evoluted and the soul possessed a window through which it could see things for itself. the evolutionary processes attending mediumship quite correspond to this physical process. man demands to know concerning those things that have long been hid, and to understand the "deep things of god," and so the soul of him is saying, "i, too, have visions unspeakable," and closing up the avenues of his external sight, he sees and apprehends truth, a light upon his path, of which in his previous, darkened state he had never conceived. the intuitional faculties being the true interpreters of the immortal soul, are capable of unlimited cultivation, unlike those of the intellect which have always the limitations of cerebral organization. these powers are as limitless as god, and only through the expansion and recognized rational, practical use and application of these faculties--now sometimes falsely named supernatural--can the human race pass out from its present environment of darkness, and crime, and reaching upward expand into a saving knowledge of the truth, as made known by the christs. the migrations of our race. vast numbers of times has the human race marched around this world on which we live. each journey of the whole family has embraced a cycle of time. each cycle has been rounded up by some great cataclysm of nature, which has left the earth desolated, in ruins, to rest from the invasions of its nomadic children. of the truth of these great convulsive throes of the planet we have many ancient legendary accounts. the biblical accounts, and the irrefutable testimony of the globe itself, as recorded in the veined strata which have held their record for ages inviolably concealed, until man should finally bring to the unmasking of her secrets an intelligence clarified from the mists of superstition, and illuminated by the intuition not only of the soul, but of the intellect and reason. the discipline of life. "the mills of the gods grind always, they grind exceeding small, and with great exactness grind they all." their "hoppers" are too numerous to be counted. physical pain, sorrow of many sorts and kinds, losses and crosses innumerable, unending disappointments, holding back the ambitions from all satisfactory realization of pet schemes, and finally, physical death. not one human creature escapes. into the hoppers they go, again and again, time after time, till the refining process is completed and the soul is fit to stand in holy and exalted presence, and to be set to do the work of the master. here and there some gifted soul realizes that its anguish means "growing pains." a was described as a "good man who let the lord do anything he wanted to, to him." the discipline of this life is hard to bear; but if people will not learn the lesson intended, here and now, they will be forced back through reembodiments until this life can teach them nothing more, and they have finally earned a right to a place in the heavens--the home of the gods--where perfect peace abides. men are naturally gregarious. in all phases of life they seek sympathetic comrades, or followers that they can hypnotize to do their will. they instinctively set themselves off into classes, and while this is useful as a protection from invasion, conditions in india show the evils of class-caste distinctions carried to a ridiculous extreme. the vast, surging, unyielding predatory classes on this earth consist of those who have but lately--comparatively--emerged from the animal kingdom, and have not yet been put through the mill of reincarnation times enough to rid them of their wild beast "tricks and manners," and make of them men and women fit to have around. the dreadful thing is, having to live on the same planet with them, and endure their terrible onslaughts upon the peace, and happiness of the unfolded, the civilized portions of the race. but all are of common origin. such as they are, all have been, and such as the highly developed, educated and useful class are now, they will surely become. homogeneity of the race. the "dreamer" who passes through this life, satisfied with the creations of his own fancy, adds nothing to the practical needs or demands of his day and time. in all the years and ages of the intellective life of the planet, such men and women have lived and walked their little round atween the two oceans which bound the shores of birth and death. but a truer concept of the meanings of an earthly existence has arisen in the minds of gifted humanity. the cloister gives way to the open court; the inspired ones are seeking the roads which may lead out from hazy, unproven cloud-land into the brightness of the everyday, practical life which the world must have experience of, along all lines, among all classes, high and low, ignorant and learned, ere it can dislodge the incubus of superstition, and undevelopment under which it has staggered along, through devious ways of despair and unbelief, to awaken at last to a realization of the final destiny of humanity. to the average mind the far-off, unascertained and dim, is what is most attractive. sending missionaries to the so-called "heathen," or speculating upon the social conditions of people supposed to be living on other planets, is of vital interest to their soaring minds. any amount of money and good red blood of humanity, if need be, are not too large a price to pay for the gratification of these projects of unsatisfied mentality. the vast body politic, the struggling, seething masses of humanity grope and dig along their appointed ways, and the progress of the entire race of man toward an enlightened homogeneity is at a seeming stand-still. the homogeneity of the whole race in its absolute entirety, is the key-note of the life which is to be here, on this mortal earth, and thus every experience of individuals or of nations becomes of vast importance. every event, small or great, that serves to illustrate the possibility of fellowship, and brotherhood among the children of men, is a milestone on the way to this recognition of the homogeneity of the human race. in obedience to this law, this demand of the evolutionary forces our brave sons, and lovely daughters, are, all unconsciously to themselves, following the beckoning hand of noblest progress toward peace, and mutuality, and are allying themselves with the representatives of races and peoples hitherto considered foreign and unrelated to us, in all ways save the commercial. what bonds shall ever be forged between the nations of the earth that can supersede such ties of love and fealty to family and home? the external aspects of these alliances, though yielding honors, and coveted opportunities, are of the smaller importance compared with the amazing factors of peace and amity between the nations that are silently and certainly working themselves out toward the beautiful exemplification of the universal fatherhood of god, the inextinguishable sentiment of the final unity of his earthly children. * * * * * * one of the strangest phases of human life here is the almost universal resistance to improvement. but this conservative attitude is also a balance, prevents running off on tangents. of god. it has been popularly reported that science has driven god out of the world. science has refuted ignorant beliefs, driven superstition out of the minds of people, and opened many minds to the great facts of life as against the silly beliefs of primitive peoples. it is thought by many that the history of all god's doings is writ in the holy (?) book--the bible. from the study of his character, one might fancy that "great jove of mount high olympus" was come again with only his name changed from jove to jehovah, for he brought with him all the "high days," and ceremonies, and every vice and delinquency, and outrage that had marked pagan rule. he gave special directions as to the killings-off of the hitites, and the jebusites and all the other ites. there weren't to be any ites or any other "furriners" left alive to pester his chosen people. he went right on giving directions as to how these people were to be disposed of, making such awful suggestions, specially as to the women, that if he had not been known to be god, he might have been recognized as the head-up devil. it has been written: "by their fruits ye shall know them." what are the results, the "fruits," of the jehovian dispensation? they are just exactly such as must naturally follow the teachings and influences of the spirit of hate and vengeance; the suppression of reason, holding back the progress of the race, fettering the brains of men with bonds of ignorance and superstition, a network of lies and myths. through the dominance of selfishness and greed, the boasted freedom of men has been lost--they are slaves to a man-made religion. so science has served the highest interest of humanity in doing all it can to drive out this sort of a god, with his hell and eternal punishment, from the world. the reasoning, thinking world has outgrown such a wicked, despotic god, and is demanding quite another sort of deity. humanity has to be taught what it must have to equip it for its higher, nobler destiny. justice to all in equal measure; reason and love must abide and work out their results, their "fruits," in human lives. the unanimous refusal of the framers of the "constitution" of the united states to set forth therein the will of god, and his commands was wise and farseeing. it has raised up a barrier against the encroachments of every form of popular religion and has given a semblance to freedom of thought and speech. all along the way, seers and prophets--inspired mediums--have wrought and sung of the days to come when all the earth should rejoice in peace and good will. the magnificence of their inspired and inspiring words, their immortal melodies of praise of the creator will stand while this world lasts. the fact that his people had diviner instincts than had he whom they worshipped as god, showed that "yahweh" was only the guardian spirit of the great and wonderful hebrew race. the greatest discovery of the past century, far greater than any revelation of science or knowledge of past ages, revealed by modern research is the discovery of a god of love. not of that sentimental expression of maudlin emotion that soon evaporates in hypocritical make-believe; but the profound recognition of the rightful consideration of every human being, regardless of race, color or belongings. of jesus. the knowledge we have gained through the study and research of earnest, truth-seeking souls who have found that all known religions have a common root--have the same basis of truth--is a proof of the value of the revelations given to the world through the teachings of our christ. from no other have we been given, in an externalized, practical form, those great, eternal religious principles which must forever stand as the rule and guide of human souls. no ancient philosopher had evolved to a god-likeness that enabled him to go beyond a high stand-point of moral perfection, or to give to his disciples what was most needed by the world for its comforting in the accumulating, expanding experiences incident to earthly life. jesus, our christ, the christ of the religion named for him was the transmitter of heavenly truths. to him the world owes forever a debt for making known a knowledge of the fact of the continued existence of the individual being after physical death, and it was given to him to point out the way of life that can alone lead to eternal happiness and peace. he is our teacher, our leader above all others. we have nothing to do with the impossible, faked-up personality that the priests have so long exploited as the "blood redeemer" of the world; it is to the inspired philanthropist, the greatly-loving man that we owe our allegiance. this will appear more and more as time goes on, and a lot of untruths will fade out and give place to great realities. the gods. the pagan gods were innumerable and their distinctive attributes were understood. they well might be, as they were only deified men and women. the next unfoldment caused them to raise altars to "the unknown god." then came jesus, the nazarene, who told them that the "unknown god" was their heavenly father, not of a chosen people only, but of all the human race. the new religion, inspired by jesus--our christ--and which was to bear his name, naturally brought with it all the superstitions of the pagans, and these have been handed down through the ages, and accepted and believed as true. the primitive conception of a god was of a being with qualities like their own, and as men delighted in rapine and every possible accompanying vice and crime, so they endowed their gods in like manner, fashioning beings to be feared and to whom must be given big offerings and sacrifices. so long as these were limited to beasts it was a good thing, because the priests who ate the flesh thus consecrated were sure of cheap meat for a long time thereafter. but when the "firstlings of the flock" failed to bring satisfactory responses to the demands of the suppliants, they began sacrificing human lives in the vain hope of allaying the anger and vengeance of the dissatisfied all-powerful gods, and beautiful young maidens were thrust into the fiery jaws of moloch, or crushed in the coils of sacred serpents, or slain upon altars according to the special god whose propitiation was sought. from all these inhuman practices to a recognition of a god of love and mercy was a step so long that even yet there remain in the teachings of religionists indications of similar ideas, wherein not only nature's culminating efforts, but all the painful experiences of human beings are accepted and feared as expressions of the "wrath of god." knowledge of occult law. the invitation of one of old to his followers, and fellow believers: "come let us reason together," marks the dividing line between knowledge and superstition. the daring of the mind of man proves him to be, in very truth, "a child of god." no arcana of knowledge are too deeply hid in mystery to escape the prying of his curiosity, his longing for enlightenment, his long-sustained and vigorous efforts to surprise the hidden things of god and nature. livingston and stanley wrought in the jungles of africa, audubon and agassiz in the fastnesses of tropical america. these in the material world, the world of effects. gessner and varley, darwin and spencer, together with a long list of other inspired minds, have given their best thoughts, devoted their noblest energies to the explorations of the world of causes, the occult and invisible realms of pure principles in god and nature. back of all these there lies the richest bequest ever made to humanity in the discoveries and revelations of the most ancient "adepts," the fathers of mystical lore, in the light of modern discoveries and inventions, mystical no longer; but practical and full of earnest meaning in their adaptation and adjustment to the needs and wants of the citizens of the world today. evanescence of mere beliefs. proclaim not mere beliefs today, and be not labelled and pigeon-holed and held to account on any special line of thought or action lest the individual soul be barred out from a conception and knowledge of some far grander truth. at best our view is narrow and contracted, else were we gods, and as we grow we discover our little, vaunted beliefs to be but as tiny shreds of color in god's great mosaic, our song of triumph and discovery but as the buzzing of the insect to the chorals of the chanting hosts of heaven. so, then, an eternal negation is the safest attitude of the unfolding soul. mere beliefs, unproven by facts, are so many barriers set up for the soul to overleap and leave behind on its onward march. the fount of inspiration for all. "the righteous shall inherit the earth." just so far as we are able to prove our rightness, the world--nay the whole universe of god--is ours. our heavenly father has never said: "thus far shalt thou go, and no farther, upon the road to knowledge." everything invites us; get wisdom, get understanding, and to thy knowledge add virtue are the recommendations from inspired sources, and to the soul that fears not, revelations upon every line stand invitingly open. man versus death. in all the domain of organized being, it is only man, who, in his crude egotisms, and defiant resistance to nature's laws, makes ado with death. the dainty denizen of the air, and the things that creep over the earth, the leviathan in his nature element, and his warmer-blooded brother whose passage causes the earth to tremble beneath his tread, all the multitudinous expressions of the animal kingdom, that disport themselves in fur, or feather, in filament of scales, or covering of hair, each and all recognize the approach of their final experience on earth, and hie themselves to their appointed coverts, to keep their tryst with their old mother in utter privacy. how well she loves her children! she sheds over them her varied mantle of leaf, and piney bloom, or scented brake, and soothes them with softly falling rain, or tender dew, and woos their elements back into her bosom from which they sprang. all this is in consonance with nature's arrangement for caring for her own. there is no such thing known among these as a vulgar display, or a flaunting of the deposed forces in the faces of the creatures left behind. in man's treatment of his kind, there is everywhere betokened his unfaith and fear. his undeveloped spirituality leaves him without even so much power to adjust himself to the divine order of progress, by way of the gates of death--rebirth--as have his humble progenitors, his representatives in the animal kingdom; and so he plants himself upon his fancied prerogatives, and turns his dulled senses away from the god-call: "come up higher," and moans and raves, and howls his despair in sounds and terms indicative of his tribal, or racial environment and relationship. a voice of love has sounded down throughout the ages in unmistakable terms to the children of men. "my father has many mansions, invisible to your seared, earthly vision, but beautifully furnished forth for all your needs; nor hath eye seen or ear of yours heard the wonderfulness of the great preparation he hath made to receive you into his kingdom." and seer and sage have reiterated this in unmistakable language, and the enlightened of the older races have caught the straying tones of the vibrant air of the beyond, and have beheld the mirage of the homes of the blest, and have sought to impress the truth of the living reality of the beyond upon the inchoate brains of their fellows. but superstition rears its grizzled front alike in seats of learning, in the homes of the cultured, and in the hovels of the outcasts; in this sense, all the human family are of hellish kin, and in a large percentage of them their whole lives are given over to their effort of resistance to the divine ordering which speaks ever to the soul of man in unmistakable terms of tender consideration, saying: "thy poor days here are full of pain and sorrow, because of necessary crudities. so live that when thy summons comes to join the everlasting cavalcade which sweeps across the world, thou shalt apprehend thy high emprise, and go forth exultingly to claim thine own meed of further existence in spheres yet undiscovered to thy longing ken." "earth loses thy pattern forever and aye" that thou mayst be renewed and set up in the finer mould of thy most excellent karma, which is thy hidden reality of character. rejoice then, o mortal! in the beneficence of nature and of thy parents, god, for surely it is well that they call a halt for thee and thine beside the river of death, and loosen thy burthens of pain and heart-breaking sorrow, and let loose from thy soul that raven, "never more," which has preyed long upon thy soul and held thee in the grip of unspoken despair and anguish. this is of all demons the blackest and most subtle. in tones of love it has been proclaimed by the divine mind that nought is ever taken away that shall not be restored to thee. not as thou, in thy small, limited way, wouldst hold it back from its own high place, and mission in the universe and bend it to thy purpose; but according to the wisdom of its creator and thine, shalt thou see and know and claim all that belongs to thee, be it the inspiration of thy nature, unexpressed here amid the din and rush of this chaotic existence; or power to carry forth thy grandly bold designs in conjunction with nature's illimitable chemistry; or to perfect within thy mind a knowledge of her laws; or to fold to thy bereaved heart thy lover, friend, or child, so lost to thee now in the great unexplored silences, that thou wilt not even try to see their way of life, but art ever persistent in saying they are dead. whatever thy soul shalt cherish as highest and best good to be longed for, that shall be given to thee, in its new and resurrected form, over which has passed the chrism of the immortal and everlasting life. we need a new perception of that great law of the "survival of the fittest." who are the "fit"? the nomadic tramp who yields no meed of use to his fellows? the willfully sin-sodden who poisons all his surrounding atmosphere with the noxious exhalations from his decaying organism? he who hoards and locks away from his fellows his treasures of gold or precious knowledge, and he, who having in his hands the powers of wealth and influence, never deigns to stretch forth his hand to relieve the cruel stress of the needy or to protect the helpless, or to sustain and strengthen the weaker ones of earth? nay! the true "survival" is not here on this underdone sphere, but outside, beyond, above, in the realms of the spiritual where our burdens are loosed and the souls of men are set free, and true liberty is accorded to each and everyone to be, and to do, all that in him lies toward the upbuilding of the great sum of the soul life we call god. once this perception of the soul and even some slight degree of knowledge concerning the laws which hold over the destiny of each individual being becomes, through a familiarity with phenomena now everywhere common, understood and accepted, the entire life on this planet will be changed, elevated and happified. fancy living day after day under the bondage of the fear and dread of what everyone knows to be as inevitable as is the experience of each, of physical dissolution; and yet multitudes of people do so live. it is debasing, and disennobling in every way. it robs the soul of all its natural dignity and sends it through the world orphaned, and mourning, where it might and should recognize its divine relationship, and rejoice in its unfolding powers; and so you who may be giving a moment to the reading of this brief testimony to the great truth of immortality, consider, and realize thy divine paternity and demand what is, and has always been thine own by right of interblending of thy own inner nature with that of thy soul's origin, the heart of him who hath made us. the bond is eternal and indestructible. god in all humanity and we in him, and the sooner we see this and yield ourselves in obedience, not like "dumb driven cattle" but as self-respecting, self-asserting mortals--within the law of accord with the highest--the sooner shall we enter into that "nirvana" which is "peace." fear of death. in the childhood of the race, the time of its exclusively animal life, it was necessary for its protection that there should exist in the slowly unfolding human mind a great, overwhelming terror of death. in fact at that time indifference to death would have involved the entire race of man in utter extinction. from that time have come down to us superstitions and fears which, while acting still in the minds of the ignorant as a preservative of human life even under most terrible conditions, have at the same time shrouded countless numbers of good and useful lives with gloom, overshadowing them with a horror from which they could not escape. it has been less the actual fear of death, but of what might be in store for them after they should have passed through this experience which is so inevitable to us all. jesus prophesied of a time to come wherein death should lose its sting, and thus be swallowed up in the victory of the spirit over matter. the enjoyment of this life demands that, right here and now, we should begin to know and understand how we are to establish our individual relationship to the invisible, the real world--the world of causes, the world of law--so as to bring to us a sufficient knowledge of the hidden mysteries of the future life to give us some certain grounds for faith in the unseen. this can only be accomplished by the development of our own occult powers, or by learning of the psychic experiences of others which serve to point the way to what we may come to know for ourselves. it is all one, here, hereafter, anywhere. caught in the web of life, there is no escape from its demands upon the individual soul. somewhere along the way it has to decide its own fate. upward and onward, or down into the purlieus of the crude beginnings of things. it is free to make its choice. it can pursue the hard and toilsome path of earning its right to eternal happiness, or it can flop around through all the hells of life unrelated to god, and resistant to the christ. it is the fear of death, of physical dissolution, that is to be individually conquered. this can only come as a result of a perception of spiritual law, and the unfoldment of the spiritual nature. the fear of death, of what may lie beyond, has been nature's safeguard against a universal stampede out of this life when the miseries of existence on this earthly plane become too dreadful to be borne; when the tortures of the soul in the tortured body drives out all reason and all philosophy, and the consciousness senses only the demand for surcease of agony. but when the "golden bowl" is broken--the silver cord of human life is severed--by suicide--nothing has been gained by a changed environment. there are the same responsibilities and soul needs, and the miseries and unsatisfied desires of their minds are exactly the same. nothing has been gained, but much has been lost. brave, staunch souls one by one obey the call to march over the "border land" into nature's invisible realms; they cannot help themselves, no one can. on they go, an endless caravan into the land of revelations, the place of reviews, where the utterly selfish are fetched up with a "round turn," and made to realize that a real godliness is the only thing that can "pass muster," that mere beliefs do not count, and only character tells. how swiftly, how inevitably their places are filled; nothing stops; prince or peasant, it is all one; the will of the gods--the guardians of this planet, is being fulfilled. life here is just one link in the endless, unbreakable chain of individual existence. * * * * * * most fortunate is the soul that is started out to make the journey of life without being handicapped by some narrowing religious superstition or an intellectual bias that limits the mind, preventing all unfoldment of originality. test of character. sooner or later everyone who has character enough to make any sort of a test worth while, has to have a regular bout with his "evil genius." christ said: "the devil hath desired thee that he may sift thee as wheat." the form which the test takes depends entirely upon the organization of the individual. but it is in every case the same thing. the thorough arousal of the latent powers of the nature, and the suffering which ensues from the results of its unbalanced actions, constitute the discipline of this life. we can no more escape it, or subvert the action of this law of evolution than we can put a stop to any of the upheavals of nature. the volcano and the earthquake are but the expressions of power in the globe which we inhabit to throw off her old, and ascend through violent agitation to higher conditions. there is a natural correspondence in the experience of her inhabitants and that of our old, old mother! * * * * * * back of protoplasm, back of organic human form is the soul--a thought of god, a spark of divine, eternal life; imperishable, immutable as god himself. character forming. all animals, the human creature included, are born blind and this physical condition of man absolutely typifies his life-long state, owing either to his environment, his heredity, or his false education. the great mass of humanity come into the world unmarked by any specially-developed individuality. these are the legitimate prey of priests and teachers who have their place, or use in the evolution of the lower grades of life on this planet. the smaller number of advanced souls that are "cast upon the shoals of time," the evolved thinkers, the philosophers have by far the more trying, and difficult life; for the highly individualized man or woman cannot belong to any set school of ethics; there are no fixed landmarks, religious or otherwise. blinded by inherited prejudices, if not by destructive tendencies, with ideals for which there is no seeming avenue in this commonplace, workaday world; the life of such an one is ever a grope toward the light of truth. lacking the sagacity, the primal instinct of self-protection in common with the nature children of the wilds, he plunges forward on his unlit way, and has many a fall into the bogs and morasses of life until he finally sees that only from the higher, the spiritual side of existence can come to humanity redemption from the errors, wrong thinking and action that is the cause of all sin and sorrow of the world. blessed, indeed, are those to whom this understanding comes in time to harmonize conflicting beliefs and tendencies, and to be the means of rounding out the life, and perfecting that most potent and powerful of all things, a noble human character. man the final earth product. in man nature has reached her highest evolution. his life and being are the topmost rung of the ladder, but she has not finished with him. it is universally believed that physical death severs everlastingly her dominion over him, and thus ends all her service to him. this is by no means true. man is her offspring, her child, and to her he returns again and again, drawing from her complex, multitudinous, many-chambered heart such forces as shall bring to him the experiences he requires to further unfold his nature and bring forth all his possibilities. not man alone but the planet itself is in the mills of the gods. the seeds, the germs of life that were expressed in such ways in the beginnings of life on this world, still exist in a greatly modified degree and the misunderstood phases of nature's ministry are the results of the out-working of these primitive elements still inhering in the world-stuff of which human bodies are made. nature wields her powers of fire and flood and devastating epidemics mercilessly; she constantly rids herself of her superfluous offspring, and forces them to a new environment in her invisible realms, through which they pass, gaining more or less by the experience and from which each must emerge, and continue to evolve and grow according to the law of his own being. superstitions. fear of the unknown has given birth to all the superstitions that have afflicted the minds of ignorant and unthinking people. few people escape some form of superstition. for instance, the silly sayings, anent the moon, "fair priestess of the night." it is unlucky to see it in its newness--so and so--when the real fact is, it is a merciful providence that permits us to see it in any of its phases, over the left shoulder or over the right, or through the glass, or in any way at all. there is nothing more "lucky" or glorious than to have good eyesight of one's own, with which to behold this and all the other beauties of nature. the man who chanced to be passing under a ladder just at the moment when a workman half-way up let fall a bucket of paint which struck and deluged him, had some reason for thinking it "unlucky" to go under instead of around such an impediment to travel. but not once in a lifetime would such a thing happen to any one, and it is impossible to imagine what going under ladders or meeting loads of barrels, or funerals, or opening umbrellas in the house, instead of outside of it, or any of the hundreds of silly, puerile, fool superstitions that have sprung from no one knows where, and that have no scientific meaning, and no earthly bearing upon the realities of any life have "to do with the case." these are all the offsprings of minds tinctured by fear of they know not what, and which are peddled around and handed down religiously from one generation to another, to keep alive a sensationalism whose tendency is to blind those who accept them to the great living fact of god's providence which is and has ever been ruling the lives of his earthly children. self-justice. while self-abnegation is a valued experience in the spiritual discipline which goes to the formation of a perfect character, the reaction where the ego posits itself upon the law of justice to self, is in reality the beginning of salvation to the individual. but preachment from any source cannot avail with any soul deeply immersed in work for others. there is too much in array against it. the established heredity concerning the first duty of woman is of itself alone a formidable influence to be overcome; then either the real needs, or the selfishness of others, present obstacles beyond the power of loving, sensitive souls to resist. the change must come from the consciousness of the individual of her own needs along these lines, which alone can arouse one to sufficient will, and purpose to be true to one's self if the heavens fall. this is first, and above all other considerations. symbolism. a crude and inartistic symbolism is revolting to a spiritually-unfolded consciousness. true mystic symbolisms must observe accurately the finer law of correspondences or they fail to appeal to such as these, and become to the occult a mild form of blasphemy. love. no phase of human character--of mental or spiritual philosophy--has engrossed so much attention or received such a variety of treatment as has human love. nearly everyone who thinks at all, has been brought, at some stage of experience, to an attempt at analyzing the emotional, sentimental nature, asking: "what is love?" in contradistinction to that which repels, and disintegrates, it is attraction. love is god, it draws elements together, and holds them in proper spheres. it centralizes and builds up. it is controlled by fixed laws; it is only "blind" to those who have not investigated its nature, and office unshrinkingly, with an eye to a complete understanding of its true function. devoted humanitarians have shown us how to feed, exercise, and rest the physical system, in order to produce health. ministers of the gospel have taught souls the way of life ever-lasting. professors of the various sciences and arts, useful and ornamental, have instructed the intellects of men, and now and then a woman; but with all these, the affections--the crowning--rather the integral element of all life and being, have had few, or no exponents who have ever attempted to treat them from any basis which can be called philosophical, or which could ever serve as a guide to one uninitiated in their occult phases. the ordinary expression of this part of the nature, is a vampyrism which is constantly on the alert to see what, and how much it can gobble up for its own delectation. this is the lowest grade. it begins with the selfism of the individual, its manifestations are named lust. it seeks expression through the sensuous nature, but extends to the spirit and will. o love! what crimes are committed in thy name! what laying waste of true and tender hearts, what defacing of sweet bodies, fashioned and set up as temples of the spirit! this vampyrism extends through every department of the affectional nature. it exists not only among men and women recognized as lovers, married or otherwise, but parents are ghouls to their children, and friends devour each other without stint. attraction is that law which draws together two opposite elements or forces, positive and negative, or male and female. as the nature and attributes of a human being are multiform, so are the attractions, or loves, numerous. ignorance of the laws which ought to control and adjust these loves, is the prime cause of all the misery and crime with which the earth is flooded. two people of the opposite sex are attracted through the intellect on this plane, and realizing the limit of the law which draws them together, they could be admiring friends forever; but ignorant of their needs outside of this, they attempt to force a conjugal relationship which too often ends in dislike. every grade of lust and love finds representation in the so-called marriage relation, as it stands today. intellects and spirits without any bodies--worth mentioning--and gross mortal remains unvitalized by souls. the former class ignore the claims of the physical, and gather their robes together sanctimoniously indicating: "avaunt, lest my purity be contaminated"; while the latter laugh their spiritual pride and fastidiousness to scorn. the war goes on between good and evil, whereas there is really no just ground for difference. all that is needed for the attainment of harmony and peace is a wise adjustment of these forces in individuals and in society. * * * * * * the growth of all true character must be slow and gradual. it is not enough that the soul perceives the beauty of a grand, moral life, it must also learn to live it humbly, earnestly and truly. "ideals of love." "greater love hath no man than that he shall give his life for another," whether the scene be set upon the mimic stage, or on the broad theatre of the world. heroic rescues, desperate efforts to save endangered lives, care of the battle-wounded or fatally diseased meet, from great and small, brutal and cultivated, deserved recognition, even to the extent of making the individual actors--so favored by the gods--famous, throughout the world. the patient service of men and women to their families, of children to their parents, or of friends who rejoice in serving, that goes on all around us conforms so entirely with our established ideals of what is right and becoming, that it is unnoticed and wins no applause, but oftener only calls out from the recipient demands for further sacrifice. in all such related service the real blessing comes to those who give far more than to those who receive. the operation of this law hallows all the relationships of this life, and must finally yield to the unselfish giver undreamed of compensations. not here, perhaps, but in that sphere of being where love is indeed the fulfilling of the law, shall the patient givers, those who have served at love's altars, find themselves closely allied to the immortal ones, "who do his pleasure." love, garlanded, and adorned with all that wealth can bestow, enthroned in seats of honor, and social recognition is accepted as our ideal of what love should claim, and win from life; but i have looked into the faces of humble, patient toilers, and there i have seen that the sustaining influence with them was love, and have marvelled greatly over the compelling power of their ideals of love. remembering that foundations of love upon this earthly planet were, of necessity, laid in the selfish instincts of the race--a race as yet so undeveloped in all that "makes for righteousness"--we need not despair of the final outcome, and realization of its high behest to the children of men; for no expression of love, however mean in view of our own exalted ideals, but is, in reality, an effort towards something higher and better. the obdurate and selfish are unfolded, and taught by its painful misunderstandings, and awful tragedies. those poor souls who expect everything from this life, whose ideals are bounded by their own selfishness, who have never discovered that god is love, and that only through love, purified, exalted and idealized can any of his earthly children ever reach to any conscious relationship with our father in heaven, and who, failing to realize even their low ideals, pass on from one experience to another vainly searching for the realization of what their dimly perceived intuitions of love constantly assure them should be theirs--for even such as these there must be a final redemption; for, like one of old, they have "loved much," and the sins of a vast ignorance are at last condoned by god's all pervading, untiring, illimitable law of love. o ye! who labor for humanity's uplifting; o weary workers in the homely ways of the unskilled in every relationship of life, unrecognized by your fellows be ye of good cheer! as the circling waves of a calm lake spread wider, and more widely from a center disturbed by some heavy substance, so shall your least word, or thought of pure, unselfish love, from your overburdened lives, reach out and diffuse an influence throughout the universe of god, and become a part of the life immortal! love, and love alone creates the desire for immortality, lifts up and renews the oft fainting faith, the faltering, changeful hope, and perpetuates the expectations of the restoration of beloved companions, the reunion of families, and friends. it inspires the spirit, and seals the brokenhearted to the service of "ideal love." it leads the human soul onward, and upward, until it triumphs, at last, over this life's defeats and losses, and its manifold despairs. undeterred by the alarms of war, the wails of the diseased and famine-cursed, and the violent protests of the oppressed, and misery-steeped unfortunates of this plane of being, the "prince of peace" is calling together his scattered forces. the beacon lights shine along the high places where dwell the exalted, and powerful ones of earth, and glimmer faintly from the lowlands, where the dire enemies of mankind--ignorance and superstition--are, at last, learning that god, the true god, loves, and cannot hate. the "ground-swell" of the "ideal love" cannot be resisted, nor overborne by any competing power in the universe, and with ever-increasing force and power to conquer all of earth's conditions of unrest, and dissatisfaction, born of false ideals, it will sweep resistlessly on, until it is merged in god. the recognition of the homogeneity of the race, and the "fatherhood of god," shall bring the longed for fulfillment of the ancient prophecy of "peace on earth, and good will to man." * * * * * * the priests endowed the gods with vices which they knew to be popular among their rich and powerful patrons. the needs of woman. women need any and all disciplines which teach them self-justice. there are many noble and good women who allow their whole lives to be picked away from them by demands upon their time and strength which come to them under the guise of duties. viewed from a higher standpoint, they are not duties, in that they conflict with the great underlying principle of self-justice. this is the pivotal idea of a true religion; for it is impossible to be true, to be just to others save as we are so to ourselves, and while no character can be perfected, except through the fiery ordeal of an entire self-abnegation, there is a higher, and a holier life in store for those who have the strength, and the courage to plant their feet upon this god-given and eternal law of justice to self. it is comparatively easy to gird one's self for the conflict which is apparent, nearly all women souls are equal to that heroism; but it is in the daily round of the household, in relation to the church, and to society, or to the professions where women need to watch most jealously the weakness of self-sacrifice. women have had the beauty of "unselfishness," and "amiability" dinned into their ears for so long that there is no depth of degradation, or of abnegation of true womanhood to which they will not descend for the sake of being so considered by those whose interest it is to keep them where they virtually endorse the vices of others by their own lack of self-justice. while we must grope along until we understand the wickedness of this, and until we outgrow that weakness, let us be ready for, and equal to the hour which shall give us the laurels of the victor. and why not laurels? has it not been uttered by the mouth of inspired prophecy that the "last shall be first," and that "the stone rejected by the builders shall yet be the head of the corner?" it rests with us, individually, to represent that truthfulness, and faithful adherence to the justice due to womanhood which shall yet crown her with rejoicing. to this end women must begin to gather in those pearls of unselfish devotion and self-abnegation which they have been so recklessly casting under the feet of ignorance and beastliness. it is blessed for lovely and loving woman to bestow bountifully from the richness of her nature. but every grace has its complement, and the complement of this, for the present, is the greater blessing of conserving herself until she knows her power as an individual, and thoroughly comprehends what is due to her dignity and worth. man versus woman. man, living entirely in his physical nature, goes on and on in the gratification of the senses until he becomes satiated, and "blasé," and there is nothing satisfactory left for him upon the sensuous plane. then he either crystallizes into a hard, selfish being, or plunges still deeper into the slough of sensuality from which divine love alone can rescue him. this power is most often manifested by woman, the natural law-giver and redeemer. for ages man has projected his selfish human will into all the affairs of life, thus setting aside the higher law. in the love relations he has specially dominated woman, reversing the divine order of nature, and thus killing out all possible inspiration, and consequent happiness. everywhere he has set up his own lustful desires as the rule and right of life in his relationship to woman, destroying the spiritual sacrament of marriage; and by his selfishness and greed of power, he has reduced her to a condition of prostitution. he outrages the helpless ones who have confided their honor, and their lives to his keeping, and the law--the vile, cursed, man-made law--upholds him in this slaughter of all that should make his heaven of trusting love. the wails of the wronged ones--specially those who suffer in the marriage relation--go up incessantly to god, and the woe of the children who, through these conditions, have inherited only animal love and instinct is enough to drown the "music of the spheres." parenthood being one phase of unfoldment, each individual must at some period of incarnation exercise this important function. to the uses of reproduction, the animal love with its blustering activities of expression, is, rightly understood, adjusted. but above and beyond this is the spiritual union which brings forth children of the mind, the fruitage of the soul, manifest in noble thoughts and brave deeds. every expression of love, however crude and animal, is an impulsion of the flesh-enveloped soul toward the source of all love, and however distasteful one may seem, to such as have evolved a spiritual consciousness, and the demand for soul satisfaction, it cannot be ignored. through the pain of satiety, of disease, or suspended activity of the love nature, the ego at last senses its need of god. it comes to know that nothing less than divine love can ever satisfy this demand of the heart. the constant tendency of the inspired human being is to extremes. the "golden mean" is the "high water mark" of real cultivation. we have on one side the suppression of the ascetic, and at the other end of the line the abandonment of the debauchee--both sinful and false because extreme, both casting a reproach upon the laws of god as outworked in, and through nature. the ascetic, seeing the harmful results to the soul attending the usual unlimited, and undisciplined expression of nature which man accords to his supposed necessities, draws the line by cutting off all surplus of physical supplies and, stifling the cries of passion, retires into a cave or cell, and into himself, thus totally ignoring all the necessary activities attending the development of this planet and of the human race. he may thus reach a high altitude of purely spiritual perception; but it is, after all, a sublimated selfishness. his example is of no benefit to the world's workers. he is not of those who think and feel, and who are in the way of divulging esoteric knowledges to the quest of the vast army of earnest seekers after light upon these underlying laws of human life. for the control by man of the love, and the life of woman there is a cut-and-dried sentiment and an enforced law concerning the segregated exercise of a natural function. by her acceptance, or rejection of this onesided "morale," is woman judged pure or impure, blessed or cursed, as the case may be. if this rule could be enforced equally upon both sexes, if there were not two distinct sets of moral laws, one for man, and quite another for woman, there would be no such injustice. as it is, there is but one way left open for woman. she must develop the power and will to be a law unto herself, regardless of the suspicion, and brutality of man, and with this also indifference to the foolness and the weak protest of her fellow slaves--women. these are "long, long thoughts." ages must elapse ere the males of our kind will have evoluted up to a status where they will see that through justice to woman alone can they secure to themselves any degree of worthy, or lasting happiness, or satisfaction. natural cruelty of the undeveloped. the most unaccountable phase of the minds of the leaders of religions has been their persistent effort to make their fellow beings wretched and miserable instead of glad and happy. we expect savagery from the comanchee indians and other primitive tribes and races; but from self-styled christians the history of their cruelties is astounding. it is pure devil worship--that is what it is--if they but knew it. one of the beautiful plans of theologians and priests for scaring half-witted people into their individual folds has been telling them that they were in danger of committing the most dreadful of all sins, the "sin against the holy ghost." the utterly "unpardonable sin" of all sins. this blasphemous, fiendish proposition has frightened numbers of half-baked folks, and they have pestered their small modicum of brains over this mysterious say-so of priests and parsons even to the point of committing suicide, or of landing themselves in lunatic asylums. the worst sin. the much speculated over "sin against the holy ghost," the so-called "unpardonable sin" is the sin that men and women commit against _themselves_; for the most holy of all ghosts, or spirits, is that portion of god--the universal spirit--embodied in their own separate personalities, and it is only "unpardonable" in that it sets the soul back from its possible and intended progress toward its ultimate perfection. reincarnation. the objections to the acceptance of a belief in the law of reincarnation are based upon the imperfect teaching, and the consequent inadequate understanding of the laws controlling such experiences. some of the reasons for disbelief are utterly illogical. for instance, one view is this: "i never want to come back to this earth after i once leave it." the fact is, that there could be no return to today's recognized conditions of life. if one were to return to this planet and become reembodied, he would find himself in some other country, and under such entirely changed conditions that he would be totally unconscious of being on the same world where he had formerly lived. then, again, the law of vibration is so immanent in material things, the changes are so constantly undermining conditions and setting up quite others that if one were to return in one hundred or even in fifty years, it could not be the same, and that person could not be in any way subject to the same conditions, or to the same experiences. furthermore, it is nature's wise and provident law that there is hardly ever any memory of any previous life here. still, after the soul has passed through many lives and has accumulated great knowledge, a vast consciousness which can not be laid aside, there come to individual souls faint gleams of memories of past experiences which, if heeded or understood, might become helpful and instructive, if not altogether consoling. there has never been a time when the needs of humanity have so reached the great spiritual overlords of this planet as at present. or, that those needs have been so responded to by the return to earth of wise, and godlike spirits as now. many of these have sought to approach humanity through personal reembodiment in the flesh. it would be well for the world if, instead of cramming the brains of children with effete ideas and superstitions, the messages of these wise ones could be listened to and heeded. a thorough understanding of the laws of reembodiment, so far as we can know them, entirely refutes the belief and the feeling of the injustice of the creator towards any human being. the law of evolution carries the soul along from one expression of life to another giving to each individual the opportunity to accumulate such knowledge, and to grow such character as shall finally bring it to a state of perfection. the discrepancies in human life are largely external. the millionaire, envied by less fortunate beings, may be far below the poor, struggling laborer in point of real unfoldment of soul. and again, people so favored in this material experience of life may be forced by the very nature of existence to return into humble conditions to learn the real lessons of life here. we are not the arbiters of our own destiny, and the sooner we conceive the idea of non-resistence to fate, realize that our lives are guided by unerring law, and simply set ourselves to trying to understand the meanings of our experiences, and to trying to wring from each one all that it is intended to teach us, seeking to learn from it all that we possibly can in order that we may not be forced to be taught the lessons over again, the better for our growth and happiness. this earth, our birth place, our kindergarten school, and the university from which we must each graduate, having once received us, can never let go its hold upon one of its children until this final result is attained. over and over again, the lives of all who belong to this planet pass into the invisible realms of nature to rest from the sordid and wearisome experiences of material life, and again return to seek out further growth and understanding, until the final culmination is reached. the soul is hurried on through its experiences of departing and returning, until earth has no further lesson, no further service to perform. then, indeed, it may graduate and ascend to its place among the gods. * * * * * * newly-embodied souls might be considered as raw material flung out upon the sea of life to be ground and polished by experience, and grown into a semblance of perfection befitting the "children of god." processes of reincarnation. spirit has no consciousness on the material plane, except through the vibratory action of the human brain, the mortal mind. the individual ego gathers up from each incarnation--if it is true to itself--some knowledge, some wisdom, and stores it away in the spirit brain. its experiences cover every opportunity to understand, from lowest to highest, all that any single one in the whole human family has ever known. this is the justice of the great creator. the king today has been in some previous life an oppressed laborer, and if he could for a moment lay aside his egotistical pride of power and place, he might remember and know how 'tis himself. men and women of thought, of great character have returned from each separate incarnation, for rest from the destroyed physical, loaded like the honey bee with the results of labor and effort. when the practised soul familiarizes itself with the newly-born, fleshly tabernacle it is to inhabit and use for a long or a short time, it broods over the unconscious being, and at the first indication of intelligence, pours into the human brain-cells its own spiritual life, and what thus comes in is there to stay. the growth of the child, the development of the individual, depends mostly upon the capacity of the brain to receive and adjust this knowledge and inspiration to its use upon the earth plane upon which it is to live, the place, the environment in which it is to learn its next needed lessons. the soul, the ego, thus placed, is bound and shackled by its human heredity. this is inevitable, it has no choice as to its lineaments or figure. it in a sense bears the "sins of the world"; it can in no way separate itself, really, from the whole human family. when the experiences of the dual nature, the body and soul, from any cause, bring the body, or the brain into conditions where it can no longer respond to the uses of the spirit, then occurs what is called death--physical dissolution. but this change is simply the unclothing of the spirit from its earthly conditions, setting it free to return again to its home, there to review what it has gained, and added to its previous stock of knowledge. the individual soul in each incarnation forms for itself ties more or less real and lasting--with the mother, the fleshly vehicle, through whose mysterious service it enters upon its earthly life; with the male parent whose service to humanity may, or may not be godly or godlike, though natural and necessary; with family relations; and with friends, public and private. nearly every person who passes through this unveiling comes to the grave-side with trains of friends to whom he is attached, and whom he will not forget, and he will stay on and on in his heaven till every claim upon his love, or service is fully satisfied. no more severing of ties; no more broken hearts, or disappointed hopes. no injustice, full fruition in heaven. this adjustment measured by earthly reckoning may take long reaches of time, but finally, the soul, stirred by the eternal law of progress, of unfoldment, repeats its former experience, drinks of the cup of forgetfulness, and returns again to learn in the great university of unfolding life on this planet. a vast multitude, it is coming and going, unceasingly moving on. no two alike; each in its place pressing forward to the station which the totality of its experiences through many lives entitles it. there is but one law, but one method that abides. it is the spiritual law of evolution; everyone is held by it; all who seem exempt today from its influence upon their lives, have already passed the crucial tests, or are traveling forward to meet them. sooner or later every human soul must inevitably take its turn, until it passes up through the whole gamut of earthly experience. whatever character anyone achieves belongs to the individual eternally. it is the reward of patient service, of consecrated effort for the truth. great souls are what they are, in the places they now occupy by virtue of their many incarnations. through the great variety of experiences gained, they have come to know. they have earned the right to be what they are. there are usurpers in all the ways of life, ignorance and hypocracy masquerading as the real thing, but they do not last. pretenders are soon unmasked and taken at their true value. sometimes the spirit is strong enough to ignore its present surroundings and rise above all the obstacles connected with its material heredity. it depends upon the unfoldment of the spirit whether it shall espouse the cause of progress and truth, or yield to the pressure of its environment and shrink back into a lower grade, and lose the opportunity for further growth. education of children. nearly all so-called civilized people set to work to cram the minds of their children, at the first indication of any degree of intelligence, with a religious bias such as they themselves have inherited or have been taught. then the intellect must be shaped, forced and driven into accepted moulds, and the human being is considered ready to be turned out into the world to fight the battle which everyone, in one way or another, must fight all along the way of human life--to begin to test the value of the ideas and principles with which the soul has been furnished to meet all the exigencies incident to the pilgrimage from birth to the final exit from this state of being. it has taken uncounted ages to produce the perfected types of physical humanity we see on earth today. here nature calls a halt, saying: "as the handmaid, the co-worker with your creator, i have brought you along to the point where you look and seem almost as gods. there is in each of you a divine ego--a thought of your creator--a sure guide to perfection. to reach this goal must be now your constant endeavor. there is a spiritual body, the outgrowth of the physical." thousands of children, too young to choose for themselves, are being fettered in spirit by the chains of old, effete superstitions; their intellects are being stultified by the absorption of narrowing creeds and vulgarizing ideas of god and his universe. there are numbers of spiritualists and "liberal" men and women who expose the tender minds of their children to these same influences for society's sake, knowing though they do, from hard experience, what an effort it costs to free the mind of such serious bias, and re-educate it aright. * * * * * * the noblest teaching is that which puts us _en rapport_ with our own inner, unspoken and unrecognized perceptions. no truth, however manifested, can adjust itself to our soul's needs, save as it finds in us a response through that preparation which comes from a certain degree of previous knowledge. egotism. egotism is the perception, and recognition by individuals of the rights and the possibilities of their real selves, their ego. without it human beings would not stand up on their hind legs, they would crawl. it is at the same time a necessity and a danger. it has never been settled which is cause and which effect, whether insanity creates the awful manifestations of egotism or the unbalanced egotism induces insanity. "keep us sane" is the wisest of all prayers, the greatest demand one can make upon his consciousness. people pass into the spirit world in the full bloom of their egotism; hordes of them return to tell their friends things they know absolutely nothing about, and the folks on this side believe all they say, and so fool ignorance is passed along and stays in the minds of those who listen to the "messages" of egotism and ignorance. there are "dead loads" of people who think this is all there is of spiritualism. while it _is_ blessed that friends can return, and comfort the mourning ones by their assurances of remembrance and love, this should never be the final result sought for. those who have lived but a limited time in the spirit world--the world of causes, of law--cannot teach people here the knowledge that can satisfy their souls. but there are educated souls, who have once lived honored and useful lives here, who are only too glad to respond to the needs of inquiring humanity, teaching them the ways of wisdom, and lifting them out of ignorance and darkness into the light. responsiveness. surely we are trying to solve the biggest problems before the class. the people who are our profoundest teachers, through whom come our largest experiences and knowledge are often most unconscious of their influence on other minds; and this is lawful, for the moment a human soul begins to wriggle either from anxiety or egotism, the divine "chemical affinities" are disturbed. long before we get up to god, our nearer relative, "mother nature," is most gracious in her methods of unfoldment, standing ever ready to whisper in the devoted, or willing ear, her "open sesame" to the manifold workings of her secret laws. it is ever the same old exhortation: "seek and ye shall find," "knock and it shall be opened to you," and the most wonderful of all is, the amount of unexpected testimony, and endorsement which she will contrive to bring to bear to prove to you the truth of what she asserts through your own individual experience. "elective affinities" hold their own royally. you shall think and feel deeply, and the first friend you meet shall tell you--quite spontaneously--of his ponderings which tally with your own, never suspecting that they are held to you by a subtle, and beautiful chemistry, the response of soul to soul. there is but one integral law. all others are but its radiations. the natural tendency of the human mind is ever toward being satisfied with its present limitations, instead of which we ought to constantly exercise our will and aspiration to fling off the mists of prejudice which so easily envelop the soul, and strive ever to enlarge our horizon, and push on to higher and better things. hell. such men as j. knox in scotland and j. edwards in this country must have had chronic indigestion or cancers in their insides, or they could not have revelled so in hell, and "eternal damnation" as they did. what unreckoned miseries would surely have been spared their listeners if they, and thousands of their sort, could have developed a modicum of christian feeling and a little kindness toward their hypnotized hearers! not only from their immediate, personal teachings came awful fears of what must be the fate of all who were under the judgment as set forth by the unbalanced minds of such as these; but the long ineradicable chain of influences that haunt, and torture the minds of good folks, even to this day. the utter lack of wisdom and knowledge of god's laws and providence, in the realm of theological teachings, is undoubtedly the cause of much of the diablerie of the world today. if all the priests and parsons who have ever infested this earth with their blasphemous theology were to unite their fiendish forces in a concentrated effort to doom one human soul--one spirit--to be burned forever in the endless hell fires which they have so long exulted in holding up over poor, wretched, ignorant peoples, they could not do it! they have had a glorious time persecuting, torturing, burning and slaying human bodies, driving millions of innocent inhabitants off the planet, who had just as much right to this--their home--as had, or can ever have any set of bloodthirsty ruffians, claiming their commissions from god almighty! how thoughtless, expecting the religionists to put aside this, their most cherished dogma, of "eternal punishment in hell fires!" what would they have left to scare folks with, and make them hand over their dollars, and what, o what! vent could they have for their own natural, pure cussedness? the commonplace. great is the god commonplace, and his prophets of the accredited order of the "common, ornary kusses" are legion. they are of both sexes and of every race, age and condition. consent to render homage to their deity by confessing by word and deed that every man is as good as another and better too, and they will continue to smile openly; but, in secret, they will prey upon you. their capable emissaries go around with measuring line and shears, alert to discover, and ready to reduce to the proper dimensions anyone who shall dare to outgrow their prescribed proportions. you can never know when you are safe from their incursions. the dignified old man who sits next you at your hotel table seeming to be entirely preoccupied by the discussion of his dinner, may only be biding his time, waiting an excuse to deliver you over to their insatiable maw, to be dealt with according to the rules of their society. or, perhaps the lady who in the first flush of your acquaintance quite dazzles you with her fluent chat upon multitudinous topics, suddenly, upon finding you unguardedly expressing opinions not approved by the high priests of mediocrity, lets fall her mask, and shows herself to your astonished gaze a secret emissary, a determined servant of their most ancient and established order. "thus far," so far as we can accompany you, "shalt thou go and no farther" at your peril. woe to the soul that yields a ready obedience to the master's voice, that is ever calling to all who can hear: "come up higher." the sash with which he would gird up his loins, "the latchet" with which he tightens his sandals that he may run more swiftly the race set before him, the staff upon which he would lean shall all be turned by these demon worshippers into scourges. he shall be "beaten with many stripes," for so it hath been ordained from long time, until the pain of his wounded heart and hurt brain shall deaden his sensibilities so that he can no more hear the voice nor see the helping hand. defy, resist, and the limp, sprawling, accommodating god becomes a sinuous, hydracrested, overpowering dragon, stopping at nothing to "put you where you belong"--his favorite battle cry--himself judge, jury and executioner. this he has not the power to do unless he can prove to you that you "belong" where he seeks to place you, for his veins are full of mud. he is of the "earth earthy," and in the rarified atmosphere of noble ambition and great achievements, he is utterly blind and of no account. take heart, then, o aspiring soul! "prove all things; hold fast that which is good." render unto every true principle that which is its due; but beware how you worship or lean upon teachers, leaders who, beneath their proudly-worn garb, and insignia of leadership, may be all the time wearing the robes of the high priests of the god commonplace. petroleum. "'pears like" the affairs of life on this planet are dreadfully "higgledy-piggledy"; but in reality, there is a divine purpose, a use in it all. it is the soul's kindergarten. it is interesting to observe the curious and round-about ways nature takes to insure the greatest good to the greatest number of her needy children. long before the first nitro-glycerine "go-devil" was sent down, down, to the uttermost depths, to shatter the oil-bearing rock, and set free the wonderful deposit that was destined to mark a new era in the affairs of men, rang out the biblical mandate: "let there be light," and in due time the whole world was illuminated. the sorcerers, who have abstracted vast wealth from this earth product have fancied it was for their special benefit and use, that nature had garnered up her stores to be thus liberated, and chemicalized into a thousand forms, by their sagacious work. not so! quite indeed, not so! came--at last--the kerosene lamp. how marvelous the light of its clear flame, after "tallow dips" and "pine knots"! how the little lamp of the first experiment grew, and grew into gorgeous centers of sun-like radiance, shining everywhere, illuminating hitherto darkened, impenetrable places, carrying the torch of civilization round the entire world. alike in slum and palace, in homes of poverty, and set to shine in the gilded resorts of the noble and wealthy; blessing the student, and the vast army of enforced workers; lighting the paths of men, and the ways of the multitude; making vice and crime more difficult, by dispersing the darkness from hidden purlieus. through primeval depths and mountain fastnesses, wherever the footsteps of men have wandered, the magic lamp has pioneered the way. all war is horrible. through what agonies of loss, and orgies of death, and tortures of the weak driven to the wall by unscrupulous men the war against material darkness on this planet has been carried on is utterly unimaginable and impossible ever to be known. the end has been reached, the great needs of humanity at large have been and are being served, and while superior sources of light have largely taken the place of the oil lamp, it still shines calmly on in the homes of the poor, and will, for ages yet to come. * * * * * * "as a man thinketh, so is he." this may be only measurably true, in consequence of the stress of circumstances; but sooner or later, the thought moulds the individual beyond the power of disguising the real character. law. it was all in order for yahweh, the guardian spirit of the hebrew race, to "hetchel" the jews--and from all accounts they needed it--but the most anomalous phase of this whole affair consists in the fact that after having set forth to the world that the church, and all were to come under the rule of the "new dispensation," and represent the teachings of the master, they should turn back to the old, old history of the jews, and incorporate bodily into the so-called christian religion, and into the political life and jurisprudence of nations, the restrictions, the penalties, and, in a word, the hebraic law in its entirety. law, as it is applied in america, is a process lacking in equity and justice. it is circumvented by $-s for the benefit of the rich, a menace to the poor man, binding on the needy burdens that kill, or lead to despair. jesus christ did not make law; he only indicated the presence of the higher law--the scientific law--that must rule all life on this planet ere justice to all can ever prevail. the gospel of jesus--the nazarene--was the first that ever brought hope or promise of any possible good to the outcast, and the children of poverty. communism. communism is the beginning, and not the culminating state of societies and peoples. all efforts on this line fail, because they are based upon the false and impossible premise of the absolute equality of all men. there never has been, there never can be any such adjustment of the forces of nature on this planet; because no two souls are alike and there can only be equality in alikeness. spirits come here in groups. they start simultaneously on their pilgrimage across the "sands of time"; but at the very outset there are obstacles and handicaps innumerable. at once there is heredity. there is no equality in heredity. it is good, bad or indifferent as the case may be. but the great divergence is in the soul itself; it grovels or aspires, and unfolds its powers according to the laws of its own individual being, and all men, and women should not be held accountable or judged alike. it is not just. communism would seek to suppress all individuality and reduce everyone to the "dead level" of the commonplace, under the mistaken idea of universal equality. gifted persons daring to lift up their heads above the common ruck of mankind, are at once shoved back into the narrow groove the heads of the cult have decided to be the proper rut for human beings to run in. in this view, persons of ignoble and narrow natures may sit in judgment upon people of genius and refinement, and may force back the most aspiring seer into expressionless life by the utter lack of any comprehension by their dull, selfish fancy. ye gods! how they exult in doing it! this trick is played upon sensitive, modest, gifted people everywhere. fools set the pace and rule, and those who know the least of the responsibilities of living are the first to rush forward and grab them up. envy and jealousy have it all their own way, and so it is the world around; everyone is forced to pay a fearful price for his superiority. at different times poets and writers, good people of distinction and philanthropy, weary of the "storm and stress" of life and of invasions and intolerable "bumptiousness" of the vulgar and indiscriminating, have tried to secure a place and surroundings where high thinking and simple living might order their days and secure to them companionship fit for the gods; but the noblest and best of humanity are not permitted to go off by themselves in such ways and have a little heaven on earth all to themselves. this cannot be. they must stand apart each in their place, out in the world--"in the open"--that they may each one stand as a beacon light, object lesson, leader, and thus assist in "leavening the whole lump" of ignorant and unregenerate humanity. happiness. happiness is the final achievement of the human soul. perfect happiness can only come as the result of absolute at-one-ment with god, the divine will, and in this conforming there is no loss of personality, or of individuality; it only rounds out the soul into its godlike completeness. it is unimaginable that there should come loss of any attribute of the soul on its way up to the rendez-vous with its parent, god. rather, that its powers should increase in every possible direction with use, in conformity with divine law. this is the only true happiness. the ideals of happiness cherished by men take in an immensely wide range, and bring into action all the peculiar attributes of the composite natures of man. the brutal instinct cries out: "kill! kill!" bloodsheding is its ravishing delight. when it arrives at a point where it may not destroy its fellows, the whole created animal kingdom--including woman--is its prey. wars and rumors of wars will never cease on this planet until humanity at large develops out of this grade which expects to find happiness in the exercise of its very lowest, primitive instincts. further along in the line of the evolution of the soul, ideals of happiness pursued by man are simply futile and childish; the awakening to a realization of this is a commonplace, world-wide experience, and only repeated embodiments can purge the soul, educate the minds of men, and turn their attention to the only true and lasting ideals of happiness. pain. physical pain beyond a certain point ceases to be pain and becomes an ecstasy. the same beneficent law controls mental and spiritual agonies. they each have their limit. to the keenest of sorrows, the deepest of griefs our maker has spoken: "thus far shalt thou go, and no farther." nurse them as we may, draw them as deeply as we can into our soul's recesses, and make them, in our morbid states, idols to cherish, they yet lose their power to hold our souls in subjection. both physically and mentally, the nerves of feeling refuse to respond. they have their limitation, and time holds for every heart-breaking experience a consolation. if it were not so, this world would be turned into a vast, howling lunatic asylum. unseen and unrecognized by stricken hearts, "the angels of his, who do his pleasure" stand ever ready to pour healing balm upon all our wounds, and to teach the great, eternal truth that afflictions are the real educators of the soul. foes in the household. "a man's foes shall be they of his own household." this saying referred to the religious differences which the great prophet saw would arise in consequence of his peculiar teachings. there are no ill feelings between people so rancorous and lasting as those which spring from such causes, and as hate is but love inverted, the nearer and dearer the relationships, the more bitter is the feeling likely to be engendered. proverbially, family feuds are the most deadly and difficult to eradicate. the friend, the relative who knows you best, who has seen you in your hours of weakness when you have been entirely "off guard," is the one who can most injure you should anything occur to sever your hearts. there is no help for this save in that growth of charity and forbearance one toward another which teaches us to seek not our own, but to try to help each other in the great struggle of life. * * * * * * who are the "pure in heart?" those who aspire to the good, and sacrifice self to attain it. what is virtue? that which is best for the individual; not on either the animal or the spiritual plane alone; but in every lawful expression of the nature; the epitomization, and spiritualization of all past "karma" from the sod up to god. the inner life. how unreal seems the existence of the inner life! how vain our intent to catch its meaning, and portray its deepest lessons, and yet, it is the reality. it forms the center around which all external life revolves, from which all outward being receives its vitality and assurance of existence. the passive soul heeds not the ever-recurring changes which its very continued life indicates, and will, when unveiled by the transforming hand of death, wonder at its wealth of life. the conscious being, ever alert, notes the changes and the indications of ever-progressing life with delight, and awe, and a profound recognition of the law of its being which sets the star of its existence higher and higher in the heavens, and lures it on for its own perfection even unto the perfect day. to such a soul there is little peace, or rest by the way; but it may finally learn a godlike heroism and patience which will enable it to trace its steps, and see in all its life's experiences a sequence which is divine and beneficent. * * * * * * power is silent; power does not fume and bluster. it holds firmly and steadily on its way, and wins by force of its resistless and relentless sway. root of evils. the most unaccountable phase of philanthropic effort put forth by good people for the help of humanity is their utter failure to apply their remedial suggestions, or helpful agencies to the real roots, or causes, of great matters needing attention. everything is approached and dealt with entirely from the external. either from ignorance or fear of the probable results to be met with upon close inspection, the beginnings, the real causes of evil doings are let alone to grow until they become unbearable. then comes the "hue and cry" joined in by all who seek to have wrongs righted. such has been, and is the "white slave evil." ignorance is the cause of all evil; but the special cause of this great, terrible, devastating wrong starts with the utter lack of the education of children by their parents, especially of the necessary instruction of girls regarding their own natural functions, and their relationship to men. the most vitally important knowledge that can ever be theirs is left entirely out of their home education, and the natural curiosity of the young left to the foolish ignorance of their young mates, or of designing underlings. * * * * * * woman is the magnet that draws souls to this life. best in chance. there is no method so surely successful in barring the progress of the soul as that of permitting a prejudice for one phase, or presentation of occult law to so blind the perceptions of the mind as to cause it to entirely disregard all such views as are not already set forth, and accepted. it is as the old story of the two who fought over the shield with a gold side and a silver side; because, as neither could see both sides at once, each considered the statement of the other a willful falsehood. let us try, at least, to bear in mind that our relationship to this universe has been of long enough duration to permit of the evolution, and establishment of many series of laws which do not, as would seem at the first glance, conflict, or force us to a disbelief in our own well-accredited experiences. the whole united universe is moving forward upon evolutionary lines, and what was, and is true in the beliefs of the east, must be today supplemented by the further knowledge revealed by the seers of the west. the extreme likeness which exists between the different religions of the world is everywhere apparent, and the devachan of the theosophists corresponds to the expected rest in the tomb, until gabriel sounds his horn on resurrection day of the orthodox christian. the only way the priests knew to prevent the knowledge of their ignorance coming to their followers was to draw a veil over the future of the invisible soul, and promise a long, long rest to the weary and heavy-laden ones, to whom this, alone, seemed compensation for their earthly cares. people are just as tired today as they have ever been in the history of the world, but they are growing, through their superior knowledge of occult things, to see how to separate spirit and soul from matter, and to render unto each its just due in its proper sphere. in laying aside the physical body, and perceiving that the new life opening up before the spirit offers the truest possible rest to the enfranchised soul, through congenial activities, and obeying its behest finding a real heavenly experience through their recognition, and obedience to the undeviating law of uses. * * * * * * we do want god in the constitution; but not the god of any creed or ism, but of the great moral principles, the ethical philosophy taught by jesus, the christ. miserliness. there is such a thing as being miserly of thoughts and ideas as well as of lucre. one is as foolish as the other. circulation is necessary to health and comfortable living. cast off the leading strings of other minds. out of the abundance of thine own heart speak thine own truest, highest thoughts. think not thy supply will fail, or that by withholding thou shalt increase thy store. it is not possible to make a corner in this realm, or to take out a mortgage on god's gifts. freely ye have received, freely give and thy "measure shall be pressed down and running over." special providence. if the absolute homogeneity of the race were once understood and established in the minds of men, it would put an end to the varying modes and methods of thought which now only tend to separate their minds and hearts. to know, to feel the unity of soul with souls, and of the minds of men with the infinite would forever wipe out the discord and inharmony which now prevail everywhere. not my erring, and human will, but thy will of wisdom and love be done on earth as it is in heaven, must be, finally, the attitude of every aspiring soul. too long the christian world has accepted the legendary hebraic god, in the place of our real "father who art in heaven." the teachings of jesus--the testimony he gave of the love of god, if taken to the heart--must dispose forever of the perception of god as a being of cruelty and revenge, and given over to low attributes. the creator of the universe--"without whom was nothing made"--manifests to us through the action of eternal and unchangeable law. this is demonstrated to us by and through his vice-gerents, the angels of his who do his pleasure. down, down from the supernal regions, from the supernal plane of being, comes the divine mandate which is made known to the human soul through the instrumentality that can penetrate the surroundings, and best make manifest the inspiration, the warning, or the perception of the undeviating law which holds all human experience and its sure results in its care and keeping. and those who dwell upon the threshold of the door which opens upon the life eternal are those who have loved and who still do love the children of earth--fathers, mothers, children, friends who have walked the earth by our sides, and whom no starry crowns, and no glorious heaven could tempt away from the work of blessing and comforting the sorrowing souls still left on earth to mourn the loss of their loving companionship, and sympathy. and this is god's "special providence" made manifest in our lives whenever and wherever we have eyes to see and ears to hear. * * * * * * once the soul really looks forth and sees, there can be, after that, no more sleeping. all is effort, weighing, balancing, deciding, groping painfully along, or running swiftly the race, bracing against fearful odds, or bravely out-riding the storm. taking it all as it comes, it is increasing action, motion, change. human destiny. confucius, long considered the oldest and wisest of all the ancient teachers, when he was consulted upon an abtruse point of ethics, said in effect: "ask the ancients. i do not know." the results of modern research are constantly undermining the first-recorded ideas concerning the age, and the degree of scientific and religious culture of the race, and we may well feel like turning from the authenticated historical records with which we are familiar to ask of the old, old world the occult meanings of the messages graven on pillar and on chiselled stone. the records which have survived the storm and stress of the ages bringing down to us unexpected knowledge of the lives, the achievements, and the histories of far-off, long-buried, hidden and lost peoples, communities, and even distinct personalities, were carefully planned and exactly executed by those who, already perceiving the mutability of all human life, and all its affairs, who--in a word--realizing that "the fashion of this world passeth away," sought to immortalize and perpetuate forever an absolute history of their own, and kindred races, by the uprearing of vast, imperishable monuments and temples, and abodes of men. the pyramids, majestic rock-hewn places of worship, and subterranean crypts are but the fingerposts of destiny. the voice of the weird spirit of "memnon" who sits enthroned within the awful wastes of the desert sands, moans on and on, ever the same awe-inspiring warning. "listen, listen, vain, evanescent, puerile chrysalis, man! such as thou art, so were these most ancient of days over the history of whose toilsome, groping lives we keep forever jealous watch and ward. as they are today, so shall ye become. a little space, a few cycles of time, and all that lives and stalks abroad in the full plentitude of energy and ambition shall become resolved into the unfathomable the unreadable mysteries of the ages." not after such fashion shall we of this age of widespread enlightenment write our history on the annals of the planet's life, and evolution. all that has gone before this time--the closing in of the vast cycle--has been, in a way, fragmentary, comet-like; the whole race of mankind has marched around the globe again and again. the leaders--the head--were the favored few, priests and kings, warriors and nobles; the vast tail, the untaught, the unawakened, the ignorant, servile masses, the grovelling slaves, but a remove from the beasts of burden. the spur of necessity, the development of ambition, and avarice, and the unfolding of the ego in man forced him along upon unknown paths, kept him separate from his kind, and built up the distinct races, in order that the individuality of each might become distinctly marked and recognized, that each, in his own special environment, might become the highest possible expression of what climate, soil and other influences, incident to the natural heredity could evolve in the lives and beings of given races of men. it is as though nature had disported herself in bringing to life an infinite variety and diversity among her perfected children. but men, here and there, have always shown the golden cord of kinship to astonish and bewilder the unwary and unthinking. the virtue and honor of a race are considered mere superstition and a perpetuation of injustice and wrong, or are accepted as a lesson in charity and brotherhood. thus is ever growing and becoming established the entire homogeneity of the race. we have girded the earth, and established our fiery rule in the depths of the seas; the time for the fulfilling of a prophecy far reaching in its results is even now at hand. "that which is spoken in the closets, shall be shouted from the housetops." far and wide it is whispered in secret places, lest it be known of selfish greed or ambitious tyranny, and this it is that the human heart conceives, and human lips proclaim: "liberty! liberty!! liberty!!!" room for noble thought, freedom for grand and acceptable work in the cause of human enlightenment, and the soul's redemption. the whole vast aura of the earth, the illimitable ether trembles and thrills with the majesty of the word. high above the thunder-roll of human discontent and awful pain, blazes the lightning of thought, and the undying aspiration of the soul. and thus shall we tell our story--thus record the history of the now oncoming race. not in material emblems only, consecrated to the forces of nature; but in the spiritual records which tell of the freeing of humanity from the tyranny of effete religions, and the upbuilding of a new composite race, fear free, and worshipful only of recognized universal truth. ethical law. setting aside all our hereditary beliefs, all our theological teachings let us try to consider the true teachings of jesus as differentiated from the instructions given by moses for the guidance of the jews. moses never told his people to love and forgive their enemies. jesus made a strong point of this, even bidding his disciples to forgive injuries to the seventieth time. moses impressed upon his people the excellence of revenge, always demanding "an eye for an eye," a life for a life. jesus said all that sort of compensation rested forever with god, that he alone, who saw and knew the hearts of men, could deal justly with them. the old jewish law stoned to death the immoral woman--not the man--o no! certainly not! jesus said to a flagrant woman brought before him by a rabble of men: "let him that is without sin cast the first stone." what divine sarcasm, and how they are said to have slunk away under his perception of them! how is it now with the christian religion in the so-called christian nations? where on the face of the earth is there a community or a people that is governed and controlled by the real teachings of the christ? all our jurisprudence is based upon the laws given to the jews by their leader and lawgiver. we take the lives of those people who are guilty of breaking certain laws of ours based upon the laws of moses, and while we do not stone the life out of those women--not men--whom we prove guilty of breaking the seventh commandment, we do build up against them walls of conventionality, and of uncharity harder than the rocks once used for the killing of their bodies. consider this beautiful law now in operation in the state of new york. if a poor, starving, homeless, hopeless human being, maddened by the bitter woes of life, seeks surcease of pain by throwing off his own individual life, by committing suicide, the law insists that such a one shall be not only forced back to a continuance of a horrible existence here, but that each and every one of such sinners shall be punished by imprisonment and fine. if that isn't serving the devil, what in the name of common sense is it? where are the good samaritans among the pretended followers of the loving christ? what sort of a reckoning will such lawmakers have to meet, and what penalties undergo under the applied judgment of the great teacher and exemplars? "woe to him through whom offences come," he said, and again: "because ye did not give aid and comfort to the least of these, i will not call you of my flock." could anything be more brutally unmerciful than such a law as this in its dealings with the most helpless, forlorn, and seemingly godforsaken of all earth's children--the voluntary suicide? how the demons must gloat over the lost souls who formed and enforced such a fiendish law! why this everlasting "harking back" to moses, while posing as followers of teachings utterly at variance with his? let us admit that we are jews and stop persecuting them because they are not christians, or let us try to know what christ jesus really meant us to understand by his ethics of love and good will to men. many people have lost all their faith in the immortality of the soul, because moses did not preach it. it is quite possible that even the worshipped moses did not know everything that men may yet come to know about this, and anent a world of other things. neither did the troglodytes, nor the cliff dwellers know of electricity or the x-ray! but jesus knew of the life--the eternal, unquenchable life--of the soul beyond this mortal existence, and he knew and taught the way and the life that leads to that higher life. all through his teachings run this under-current of belief in the value of the individual soul, and instructions as to the highest and best way to evolve it from its lowest estate up to the infinite. fancy what a revolution would come to the whole so-called christian world if the ethics of jesus, so plainly set down in his legacy to the children of men, were understood and lived! what wrong and injustice would be done away with, what works of mercy would be wrought! human life. from the earliest soul consciousness to this very hour the mystery of human life has been, and is the subject of greatest interest. what is the origin of man? what is he here for? what is the everlasting purpose of him? and what, o what is his destiny, here or hereafter? the woeful story told in the bible of the origin and the "fall of man," entailing untold miseries and uncomprehended anguish upon the whole human race, has never been believed in by thinking minds. especially all that "rot" about god's repenting himself of having made man in his own image, and then setting himself up in his only son--a sacrifice to himself--for the sins of the folks he had just made and set agoing, and told to subdue and master the planet he had made for them to live on; but this yarn caught the fancy of infantile and puerile minds, and also of the designing priests and theologians who have never, to this day, tired of "baring the backs" of humanity to this "devil's rod," increasing, and multiplying the tortures of the minds of such as could be made to accept such stuff by fears which could never be comprehended or justified even in the minds of such children. our heavenly father has never set "metes and bounds" to the souls of his earth children; there is no hidden mystery that cannot be fathomed by them; there is no knowledge withheld from the earnest seeker after truth. but first of all, the mind must be clarified and set free from the blasphemous superstitions engendered by the crude beliefs taught by theologians. the developed mind, and reason must arouse to rage and resistance in view of the wreck and ruin of untold millions of lives, the result of false teachings. animal likeness. people have a way of saying of those they admire greatly: "she has the face of an angel," or "she is a perfect beauty," "beauty beyond compare," et al, according to their ideas of what constitutes absolute beauty; but the human countenances that have in them no faintest suggestion of the kingdom below us are very rare. if one looks attentively at the faces of the crowd as it surges along the most attractive street, there may be seen on review surprising resemblances. a man looking like an elephant, another like a toad, bull dogs and wolves galore, beneficent faces of old people, calm and patient, resembling work-worn horses, always folk of both sexes who suggest sheep,--now and again a cantankerous billy goat. you may be sure that the vast numbers of reptiles are not left out of the human representation, and the birds, too. the "eagle eye," and the carnivorous beak require no introduction to the menagerie, they belong there. but the felines have it, the cats, little and big, monopolize the show. men regard a recognized resemblance to the king of beasts--the lion--a compliment to their natural powers and rightful rulership, while women have to put up with being considered cats, and many of them prove by their cattish doings their resemblance to their animal ancestry. there are babies everywhere about. it is disheartening to peer into their tiny faces and see in so many of their eyes no "speculation," no suggestion of intelligence. they remind you of the eyes of a fish. human beings have through them strains suggestive of the animal kingdom. it seems quite right to expect each one to act like the creature he resembles, when under the stress of violent emotion. natural superstition. at the creation of the race there was thrown around it such safeguards as should tend to its continuance. these were, of course, implanted in the crude mentality of undeveloped man. underlying all the rest and the most important to its perpetuation was fear. the ignorant child has no fear of consequences attendant upon any action; experience teaches him to know what they are, and how to protect himself from them. this was the first lesson of primitive man, and when, through the exercise of his inventive faculties, he had mastered his visible foes, the animal monsters surrounding him and threatening his life, and he found himself confronted by the action of terrible forces which he could not grasp or see, he, by analogy, endowed them with personality, and such attributes as he knew himself to be possessed of, adding thereto powers and possibilities which were limited only by his own imagination. this was the very beginning of the working of the mental in him, and while it was most grotesque and unreasoning, it yet drew a sharp line between the mere animal and the animal man, and his whole life being spent in conflict with his foes, he naturally carried forward his growing perceptions of the existence of supernatural powers which were influencing his life upon the same basis, i. e., of an unending warfare, wherein he must always be the one attacked and vanquished. fear of the animal world developed into a shivering terror of the invisible, and so deep and lasting was this first impression of the spiritual world upon his crude faculties, that it was made an universal heredity among all races and peoples. it exists everywhere today, even among those who profess to be living in the light of a higher revelation of god's purpose in the life of man. adaptiveness of man. the most surprising and extraordinary quality of mind manifested by man is his ready power of adaptation to whatever may become a part of his earthly experiences. it, alone, assures his continual progress upon all lines of growth connected not only with his earthly but also his immortal career. great inventions, unexpected discoveries, and astounding revelations may stagger him for a moment; but the facility with which he finally absorbs all the hitherto unknown outworkings of science and natural law, and assimilates them to his inner sense of the fitness of things, changing all his relationship to his material life, and forcing himself to a readjustment not only of his mental perceptions, but also of his external existence gives proof sufficient of his being not only favored of the gods, but also of his near kinship with them. the marvels of mechanics, the divinely beautiful representations of art, and the exalted inspirations of literature were never so sought after, or so appreciated by large portions of the race as at the present time. the peasant's cot today is made comfortable and beautified by accessories which within our historical knowledge could not be commanded by kings and princes possessed of great riches. the spiritual origin of the splendid architecture of the great "white city" and later of the southern expositions is perfectly apparent to the eye of the mystic and the seer, and these vast, concentrated exhibits of the world's work are object lessons of which the influence can never be outlived even by the careless and unobserving. today the great leaders of men, led by inspiring thoughts which would have appalled their forefathers, perfect schemes for overcoming the obstacles inhering in the vast forces of nature, and harness them into subservience to the growing needs of the race. what devil-worshippers those old chaps were! to him they ascribed all power over things animate and inanimate, and the effrontery of the man who should have even mentioned the possibility of talking over a wire, thousands of miles, or of utilizing the forces of niagara, or of hundreds of inventions now in use in the most commonplace surroundings would have been met with condign punishment. our inventors would be in dungeons instead of their comfortable laboratories, and our great engineers would long ago have lost their heads. what a time we have had getting the devil out of our mechanical life! now he can only rule in the immaterial world, in the crude imaginations of the ignorant and superstitious. devil worship. the infinite mind is in all things, everywhere what we are not. where we are full of impatience, he is calm and unmoved; wherein we grope blindly, he, seeing the end from the beginning, is well content with his own handiwork, and with the final outcome of the souls of his earthly children. many of the imperfections and individual shortcomings of people are laid aside in the dark crucible of physical death and the grave. such of these tendencies as are carried over into the next plane of being, persisting in the spirit, are there dealt with as disease or ignorance, the results of malformation or bad environment. god is love, not hate, and "rejoiceth not in the death of the wicked," nor in the punishment of the wrongly educated; for a large portion of the sin and seeming iniquity of humanity is the result of heredity and of a misunderstanding of the laws of god expressed through nature. undoubtedly there have been good men and true among those who sought to interpret god's law aright and formulate a code for the guidance and discipline of humanity in accordance with justice and equity. but their premises were all wrong. they took for their foundation the old jewish history wherein the god of the hebrews was always represented as a jealous being, rejoicing in revenge and rapine, and in all that the enlightened world can conceive of as characterizing a devil. so the modern world has been committed to a devil worship. nowhere is the ethical teaching of jesus recognized in our laws. it is the old hebraic attitude toward life and god. fanaticism. physical death is the fulfilling of a natural law everywhere prevailing; a change, which the mutability of all material creations renders necessary, and salutary, and, when received without the prejudices engendered by education, pleasing. religion has nothing to do with it, and more than that it ought to influence every act of life. no more has religion anything to do with the intercourse of disembodied spirits with those in the form. that also is wholly controlled by laws inherent in the nature of things, and will, when the ridiculous hue and cry raised by sensualistic minds has somewhat abated, resolve itself into a fixed fact having no more direct bearing upon human affairs than any other form of social intercourse. it has taught no new code of morals; it has not overthrown, so much as it has revealed the true state of things. it has revived the spiritual teachings of him by whom the world--called from him christian--professes to be guided and controlled. fanaticism is the law of some minds, and it will display itself in whatever arena they are engaged. in politics the man they vote for is almost a god. in mechanics, they have invented a machine which shall ensure "perpetual motion;" in chemistry, the elixir of life, or a cure for all the ills of human life; in morals, the kingdom of heaven is speedily coming through the intervention of their dead friends. the truest religion is that which adheres most faithfully to nature's laws; for strive we ever so hard, we must return to them. they are god's will made manifest, and the mind most free from prejudice engendered by false education is the one which secures to itself the most harmony, making possible that removal of "mountains" so often quoted--meaning the inevitable obstacles of spiritual life. christ said: "the kingdom of heaven is within you" and he might have added that of hell also. here is the beginning, if not the ending of all growth and reform. there seems to be a universal tendency or wish to escape from one's self, and most so-called reforms begin at the surface--the ultimate--rather than at the centre. this should be an education to children, teaching them that their temptations are to be dreaded only as they are responded to by something within, and that loses all power with them as they gain self-knowledge and self-control. truth. the demand for a knowledge of the truth, god's truth, is as old as the world, the world of intellect and knowledge, the world we know about, and of which we have a more of [transcriber's note: or?] less true history. this cry of earnest and thoughtful men and women for truth, "nothing but the truth" has rung adown the ages from the pagan, and the nature worshipper through all the countless phases of belief to our modern presentations of inspired faith. everyone who dares to think must realize how this longing of humanity has been met and exploited in times past by ignorant and self-seeking people, and suffering humanity has been imposed upon by superstitions and false teachings which have left it in sorrowful dissatisfaction, or lost in the mazes of doubt and unbelief. the fool hath said in his heart "there is no god." life is too short and too full of interest in other directions for us to turn aside to combat fools of any sort. if we admit into our inner consciousness the absolute recognition of the existence of a supremely loving and wise god whose attributes are more marvelously great and grand than it can ever enter into the heart of man, or the mind of the highest archangel to conceive, we shall have taken the first step toward so positing ourselves toward him, as we perceive him embodied in his works, as to begin to see some faint indications of the divine purpose concerning the souls of men created in his image. all that we know of his laws and his intentions toward us, as indicated by our experiences here and now, embodied as we are in matter, supplies the whole of the data from which we infer truth, the truth as it is in god. we find, first of all, that we are set here a homogenous race, for as the means of communication between widely separated branches of the family become established and easy, our horizons expand, racial prejudice and antagonisms vanish, new interests and fresh sympathies arise, and we are thus brought to recognize the fact of our common origin. what a dull and deadly uninteresting place this planet would be without the differentiation of the races! what if the whole united world were irish or german, russian, or even loudly pervading, assumptive american! what an awful element of boredom would be added to our existence; and yet there are people so blind to this most wonderful expression of god's providence, that they limit their sympathetic regards to a chosen few, and virtually cast all other peoples into outer darkness. this applies especially to religious prejudices and beliefs. let's see about this: your antecedents were, so far as you know, scotch and english, but by some providential intervention you are now american. you are expected to scorn and despise all other clans and races, and to condone all the faults and crimes of these which have been so honored by you, and this is called patriotism, and makes you feel virtuous and popular, and it is necessary and right--politically considered--but not from the standpoint of the occult, the spiritual side of existence. there is a wise intention and purpose in the blending of the races in their intermarriages, it is for the breaking down of prejudices as old as the race itself, that have ever kept the peoples of the earth apart. there is but one law of evolution, and that which holds for the individual epitomizes that of a nation, or a world. so as we see people at a certain stage of their unfoldment of individuality exhibit an extreme egotism, amounting almost to an insanity, by isolating them, by confining them to the radius of their own mentality, so it is with the different tribes and races and nations of the world. they are set apart to grow their own peculiar traits of character, possible only to their prescribed environment, that they may thus push forward their own special gifts and endowments to their own ultimates. this is but a phase of their evolutionary process, a class preparation looking toward a wider experience, wherein it shall come to be seen that all the world is akin. referring again to the unit man. the shibboleth of the just present past time has been individualism which, rightly understood, means simply that the soul of man has progressed to a point where occult forces can lay hold on the crude being and shape it into a worthy likeness of its divine maker, and it must there stand alone, until it feels its at-one-ment with the divine and sees and acknowledges the higher law and purpose of its being, and furthermore recognizes why it has been called into existence. truth is like certain chemicals. it can only be retained by the mind wherein it finds an adapted affinity, and then it has in each a distinctly individual expression according to the mental and moral status of that mind. but laws and principles are stationary and unchangeable; it is our own personal knowledge which varies and changes with our growth. we may ignore and denounce certain phases of phenomena, but the phenomena work on just the same, unaffected by our beliefs or disbeliefs. the loss is ours if we willfully close our eyes and ears against the enlightening message which it would bring to us in passing our way. christs. confucius, the moralist, buddha, the intellectualist, jesus, the loving. why reject the teachings of any one of this trinity of inspired and inspiring ones? all are of god, light bringers to a darkened world. hero worship. all along the individual life, the soul's development through matter, are strewn experiences which mark the dawning force which is finally to culminate in its marked individuality, and separation from the mass of organized, created beings. these experiences are the rare awakenings of the soul to the realization and use of its own native powers which flow from its divine paternity and origin, and which constitute its birthright and ultimate inheritance. at times, the gifts and powers of certain beings burst into bloom and fruition when least expected, and cast a radiance and a halo around the personality, which mark and award it a place among its fellow men, altogether superior to the general trend and outworkings of the recognized character. around such illuminated points of high expression of the soul's possibilities gather other personalities and, by the action of a natural law, crystalize about the central magnet of the inspired, and the inspiring thought or action, and thus is leadership created. barely does the entire life outwork itself upon lines which harmoniously express the inspiration which begot the godlike union of the human with the divine, and thus through the natural falling away from the ideal, those who seek the higher life through imitation or emulation of the model so set up are finally forced to put aside their hero worship and seek their own individual growth on the lines upon which they can lawfully unfold. the varying moods, and idiosyncrasies of the hero or the saint turn away their followers to the contemplation and study of those great moral principles which rule the world and control the universe. on the physical plane great strides are being made. the suppleness of one, the power of balance of another, the feats of the acrobat, the will of the juggler which commands the action, and the seeming suspension of natural law; all these expressions are ever increasing and varying through the industry and the ingenuity of man, and point to the possibilities of the hitherto undreamed of physical perfection of development, and grand unfolding of unknown powers. man must master the earth by controlling the laws of the material world. this is the foundation of all things, and upon it shall be built all that the soul must have for its unfoldment, within the aura and the radius of this external plane. * * * * * * if there can be one thing more pitiful than all others it is to see little human bugs and reptiles mount their egotistical stilts and declare the non-existence of the creator. if the blatant critics would only give over blowing their individual horns, and remark for a little the value of quiet introspection, many mysteries would reveal themselves and much good would be realized. reason. human reason is the outgrowth of the intuition. in its final analysis, it is the comprehension by the soul of the reality of truth and of its just relationships and values. it is the power of discriminating and deciding between the perception of the intuition and the testimony of facts gathered by observation and experience. the intuition of man is of the will, that of woman is of the affections; thus it is more spiritual than man's. just as the doctors have prospected and laid out and defined the functions of the physical body, so are the psychologists and the mental scientists seeking a way and method by which the attributes of the real being may be divided off into sections and labelled accordingly. the fact is, the individual soul is all the time struggling to reach its own at-one-ment with itself. when it comes under the tuition and discipline of the gods, and begins to perceive their methods, it can understand the whys and wherefores of the intentions of life's experiences. they are to consolidate and make practical vagrant emotions and tendencies, and lop off and scorch out the idiosyncrasies of heredity and custom, and rouse the soul to a knowledge of its need of harmony with divine law. into the real soul depths can no divulging line and plummet reach. this domain belongs to its creator alone. it is only as the tests of living and doing manifest hidden motives and meanings that we catch glimpses of the ego that abides within and through this life, submerged as it is in the flesh. we can know but little of what is now, or of what yet shall be, when the wholeness of the individual is established. sympathy. be not beguiled by pity masquerading in the guise of sympathy. real sympathy comes only through an understanding of conditions as the result of the same, or of exactly similar experiences. but though experiences differ in details, according to the organizations and idiosyncrasies of individuals, the results in awakening the mind to a realization of truth, and final evolution and growth of the soul are enough alike to foster a real sympathy, and mutual understanding. souls thus linked together are truly friends and comrades. new religions. there is a great demand among the people of this, and probably of every past age, for something new in the revelations of religious thought and knowledge. when it has not been forthcoming according to the desires of aspiring worshippers, the imaginations of would-be teachers and leaders have set to work to devise new schemes for the beguiling of their fellow mortals that should hypnotize them, and hold their allegiance to some new revelation of religion, or so-called science. the following that some of the isms, and newly-hatched cults are getting together is simply amazing. they seem to reach out and pervade the world, and they are not confined to any particular grade or class of people. the "zionists," the "adventists," the "perfectionists," the "holy rollers," the "christian scientists," the "spiritualists," and unnumbered other forms of belief leave a wide margin for all sorts and kinds of people of peculiar idiosyncrasies. so much has been promised, and so little realized in the way of comfort and satisfaction that wails of doubt, and sorrow are undiminished. every bit of this "groundswell" of seeking, tortured souls is just the reaction from slavish, blasphemous, orthodox religion. from the perceptions of the primitive man to the understandings of the unfolded brains of the thinking, reasoning people of today is indeed a "far cry," and the queer vagaries, and the impossible goings on of the reputed gods, in partnership with nature, that were once received with awe and profound belief, have now nearly lost their hold upon the credulity of modern humanity. as man has unfolded and his perceptions have enlarged, his fears of the wrath of god, and of his possible interference with man's schemes and purposes have given way to man's own will, and to his determination to succeed in proving himself master of nature's forces, and of the whole planet. he has created the "new earth" of material comfort and satisfaction that has been so long foretold; while from the heavens countless multitudes of awakened, arisen souls throng all the ways of life, proclaiming the truth of the absolute present existence of a "new heaven" also. this is not a perfect time, by any means, even with all this manifestation of progressive power. perfection in anything, in all things, is a matter of growth, of evolution, and the whole world is swinging along in the pathway of progress toward that goal, the knowledge of spiritual law which is god, as fast as time can move. but we are actually living in the enjoyment of the fulfillment of a profound prophecy, with but little thought or realization of all it means or portends. the growth processes of the human soul. it is pitiful to think of all the woe and sorrow that have been shed abroad in the hearts of men and women, and even of little children, by the teachings of ignorant and designing beings anent death. fortunately, all our modern cults are emphasizing the fact that it is the fear of death that is the "last enemy" of humanity that is to be put down and shorn of its terror. physical death is only a step in our evolution. it cannot be otherwise than a progressive motion of the spirit. it recalls the spirit from the make-believe, and misunderstandings of its earthly environments, and experiences, and shows up the real and true status of life. vast numbers of human beings, passing out of the chrysalis of the fleshly embodiment leave with the body sins for which they have been condemned, and idiosyncrasies for which they are not accountable: there are, too, packs of people who have been so bamboozled by orthodox teachings, so set up in their egotism, that they die believing in their superior claim to recognition by the gods, but who find themselves elected to a long sit down in purgatory, or devachan--or whatever the place is--while they get acquainted with themselves as they really are. the most deplorable state is that of the souls who cannot rise from the earth conditions with which they are loaded down. they fill the atmosphere; they walk the earth dismayed and helpless; their whilom friends and beloved ones will have none of them. even if one such is fortunate enough to find a medium through whom he can communicate, he gets little or no recognition or welcome, unless he can absolutely conform to the wishes of the purblind folk, who, knowing nothing of spiritual law, try to insist upon making conditions, and getting tests which are so outside of the law that even the creator could not meet their demands. for those who have no aspiration toward the spiritual life, the only way is to plunge back into matter through another incarnation in the flesh. there are no new souls created and relegated to this planet. their number is fixed. they pass and pass, and come again; good, bad and indifferent all come under the same, the only law of evolution. the gates of life are crowded with such as these who, weary of prowling to no purpose, seek re-embodiment on this plane of existence. the process through which they thus pass is of itself one of refining and of readjusting to changed conditions, which means growth for the soul; for throughout the universe, the great law, the law which holds all things in equilibrium, is the law of progress, evolution, unfoldment. it must be remembered always that back of all the recognized greetings, and the assurances of the continued, conscious life of our spirit friends, back of all the lesser gods, who were human beings, like unto ourselves, back of all the inspired teachings of all the seers and prophets is god, "our heavenly father," in whom we live and have our being. through his appointed teachers is vouchsafed to his earthly children a knowledge of his love and wisdom. it is boundless and free for all, and there are no "chosen people." he is the source, the fountain head from which flows all life, and all sustaining power. the heavens declare the glory of god--the creator; and the arisen souls of men proclaim his wondrous and unfailing interest in all his created beings. necessity for phenomena. some people are born so spiritual-minded that the proper adjustment of the several functions pertaining to the moral or religious nature stand clearly defined. their immortality is never doubted, their faith in the unseen never obscured by clouds of passion, or dimmed by pressure of material necessities. these are the beacon lights in the world's progress. these are the mariners to whom has been given a sure guide and compass. the others are those who have little or no perception beyond what is seen to befall animal life, and their growth into a finer possibility must be slow and tedious. it is in fact necessary that many should "rise from the dead" and jam tables and chairs and things around their apartments, ere they can fancy the possibility of any existence separate from this material life. the most abominable of all egotisms is that which forever studies to limit the possibilities of the creator, to announce firmly that there is no further consciousness, and no need for human faculties after this life is ended. the most dignified attitude would be to give him the benefit of the doubt, to admit that he has the power to continue, and remould, and readjust through all time and all eternity. but this is not a class of subjects which can be settled by logic. it is based upon a conviction of the inner soul, and the most that anyone can do is to place himself as nearly as possible in harmony with some one law, and this will form a center around which a perception of more shall come, and revolve around it grandly and in perfect time, thus completing the rounding out--the fullness--of the character of the individual man or woman. will. will, human will, is the result of concrete perceptions of the conscious mind. its development depends upon the experiences of the individual soul, and its expression upon the environment, the education, and spiritual discipline of the individual. having its foundation in the functions necessary to the sustainment of the mortal life of man, it naturally overrides all considerations outside of the objects of its own pursuit. it is the quality _par excellence_, the power of the gods, but only as it comes to relinquish all its selfish determinations, and yield obedience to the all-pervading higher will, the will of god, in whom all life has its source and continuance of being can it march along the royal highway that leads to perfection. this must be so eternally; for there can be no division of purpose or of interest in the divine mind. * * * * * * all religions based upon or derived from sorceries obstruct the progress of the race, and will be, in the fullness of time, disintegrated and readjusted to meet the growing demands of humanity. change of atoms. there is nothing so great that it cannot be undermined and destroyed. there is nothing so established and sanctioned by age-long, consecrated usage that shall not finally be swept along into oblivion and utterly forgotten. there is no combination of material atoms--no mechanism, however strong and useful--that shall not dissolve and be rearranged, and take on ever higher forms of expression. this is, and has always been the unfailing law of progression, of the outworking of the ascending series. it involves all circumstances, and all earthly experiences. happy are those who take paul's advice, who can equip themselves with the armor of faith, which begets knowledge, and prepare to "fight the battle of life" with courage and fortitude. our limitations. much of our successful conduct of life depends upon our recognition of our limitations, and largely our limitations depend upon the will. the test lies in the power to discriminate between what one owes to one's self, and the duties and obligations imposed by responsibilities inherited or assumed. temperaments are so variable, no two human beings alike. much, too, depends upon the power and habit of observation. final race experience. the fear of death--shared in by all created beings--is nature's safeguard against a universal stampede from this life by physical death, when the miseries of existence on this earthly plane become too dreadful to be borne, when the tortures of the soul, in the tortured body drives out all reason, and all philosophy, and the consciousness senses only the demand for surcease of agony. probably most people have experienced, for a moment, in a time of terrible crisis, a thought, if not an impulse, to seek thus to end all suffering by flinging off the bonds of life here, and thus pass out into--what? simply life in a changed environment, with exactly the same responsibilities and soul needs, and the same causes of their miseries, and unsatisfied desires still existing in their minds. life here is just one link in the endless, unbreakable chain of existence. it is all one, here, hereafter, anywhere. caught in the web of life, there is no escape from its demands upon the individual soul. somewhere along the way it has to decide its own fate, upward and onward, or downward into the purlieus of the crude beginnings of things. it is free to make its choice. it can pursue the hard and toilsome path of earning its right to eternal happiness, or it can flop around through all the hells of life unrelated to god, and resistant to christ. one by one all human beings must obey the call to march over into the border land, into nature's infinite invisible realm; they cannot help themselves; no one can; on they go, an endless caravan, to the land of revelations, the place of reviews where the utterly selfish are fetched up with a "round turn" and made to realize that a real godliness is the only thing that can pass muster, that mere beliefs do not count, and only character tells. how swiftly, how inevitably their places are filled! nothing stops; prince or peasant, it is all one; the will of the gods, the guardians of this planet, is being fulfilled. religious performances. "it is to laugh" to "see the heathen rage and devise a vain thing." no hierarchy of earth, no multitudinous howl of ignorance and stupidity that "having eyes that see not; and having ears that hear not" can block the wheels of progress. it has worked in the past, "quite some," routing out tortured souls and bodies by the millions, sending them flying off from this planet which was, and is their real home, turning rack and screw, and setting baleful fires on tender flesh, threatening further eternal hell fires; all for what? why, to prove that "tweedle dee," is greater than "tweedle dum," and this is the record of religion at the hands of the theologians and the priests! this is the story of accepted orthodox religion. why, then, have a religion? why not try the altruism taught by the great master in a system of ethics that can never be superseded by one higher and more truth-inspiring, better adapted to the perfect unfoldment of the human race? no more of these awful persecutions, and massacres, and killings for the "glory of god;" for the amusement of devils, really! practical common sense, and reason will surely be, in time, the salvation of this world. of teachers. the wisest teacher is the one who shows the gradual processes of unfoldment and growth in the mind and body, and in all the outworkings of the material world. he who breaks down arbitrary distinctions in every realm of life does the most toward liberating and enlightening the world. we are from infancy so accustomed to petty distinctions which have originated in ignorance, and from long use have been formulated into laws, fixed and binding, that were some person clear-sighted enough to the truth to show us our invisible bonds, and how to sever them with the scalpel of common sense, and reason, we would be amazed at our great freedom, and astonished to see the light coming through thousands of loopholes and windows of the mind which are now closed by an accumulation of dust and cobwebs of the petty superstitions of ages. * * * * * * millions of beings are born so starved that no after nourishing can make up for it. wise use of money. the money that has been spent in building up blasphemous theologies would have rid the whole world of poverty, and ignorance, if it had been beneficently employed with the kind intention of doing the peoples of the earth good, in every way, instead of trying to fix upon them damnation now, and also arrange for it in their life hereafter. here and there, scattered along the way, are souls who have escaped the "drag-net" of theology, but there are at this present moment great spirits that, even after having passed through death's dark crucible, are haunted by damning fears of bad results possible from too much freedom. the trail of the serpent is felt by them still. genius. genius means simply a high and true sympathy with inanimate and human nature, and the power to voice their various moods and tenses. paradoxes seem to run riot in all occult things. extremes in all departments are rare. there are a far greater number of indifferently good and indifferently bad people than of the superlatively good or bad. so nature everywhere keeps the equilibrium, and the eternal processes of evolution go on, and ever onward toward perfection. all the pains of this human life come in consequence of the resistance of the souls of men to the law of progress which is always, and everywhere, laying hold of them to force them from the sod up to god. they squirm, and wriggle, and howl, and make no end of fuss, because the lord calls upon them to awake from their animalism, and sloth, and arise, and seek the kingdom. "he knoweth our frame," no more comforting, or encouraging words than these have ever been spoken. "he," the great soul-father, knoweth us as we are. he knows how to inspire with hope, and courage the most sorrowing and lost. the felon in his cell, the outcast from all that men call good, are, with those of superior spiritual attainments, subjects of this beneficence. nearly every soul feels, at some period of existence, its subtle relationship to a something, a power outside of its material life and surroundings. the experiences of this life are calculated to strengthen and perfect that relationship. jesus christ is credited with saying, "be ye lifted up even as i am lifted up." that is, in spirit, to a perception of the relationship of your souls to the great "over soul." be ye, then, patient with yourselves, and with each other. be sure that you are being taught, "lifted up" to a perception and knowledge of these things, as fast as it is lawful for you to be. in god's good time ye shall blossom and bear a goodly fruitage. "thoughts are things." but thoughts, as potent entities, must pass from the formative, nebulous condition into a crystallized state by, and through some form of externalization of language, spoken or written. thoughts must be created--born--through the absolute form-creation of the human brain, in order to secure to them potentiality, and immortality. the status of the individual brain, decides its products, the character of its brain children. thoughts that are not caught, clung to, and crystallized, through the action of the external brain can have no place in the external life of this world, although they do have their power and influence in the incorporate, silent, ever-working world of cause. * * * * * * the mind digs deep to bring forth the real. the soul dreads the edicts of its ignorant prototypes. the ego comes forward with its battle-axe, and the spirit rejoices and exults. body, soul, and spirit; nature's trinity. * * * * * * as spirit _per se_, has no entity, and only evolves individuality through its relationship with matter, and has no other conscious expression, the so-long-talked-of "fall of man" was not a fall downward, but a process upward, necessary to his being, to his existence as man. unfoldment. the persistence of the human soul after physical death proves only that it is a candidate for immortality. the race is just begun. the path that leads onward to the eternal heights is so long, so beset with difficulties, with pains and penalties, losses and crosses, and all the paraphernalia of evolution and growth that the stoutest heart, the strongest will would fail to respond to the call to "come up higher," were one to at once become aware of what inevitably lay before him. when any individual soul has dwelt long enough in the spirit realm to begin to feel the unrest of the law of eternal progress, he senses the law of reincarnation, and his earthly home draws him by attraction. he is preferred the cup of "renunciation," and forgetfulness, and is shown the way to his next embodiment. inventions. the inspired thinker sends out a thought to the world, it is taken up and passed through other brains, it becomes distorted or is recognized by them in its integrity according to the caliber of mind, or the idiosyncrasies of the one representing it. a thought or idea, once given to the world, becomes common property. it is not possible to put on mortgages or limit the use that may be made of it, or how it may be made to bring in returns to commercially-inspired minds. a woman devised a style of dress which she wore for her comfort at her own convenience. another woman gave exactly the same pattern and details to the public, and is now living in elegance on the income derived from another. a man--a worker--invents an improvement, or a better method of doing things. the firm adopts and makes money out of it, and its originator is forgotten. there are, however, clever people who know how to protect their inspirations, and get the benefit themselves. the greatest disappointment comes to the originator when the thought is intended to indicate and outline action. so few people can achieve the same point of view, so few can be depended upon for united, harmonious action that the best organizing power is at times fetched up with a "round turn," and the progress of the good work intended becomes greatly impeded, or virtually lost. divine healing. there are today many cults professing to have healing powers; but whether they are named "christian," or "mental," or "spiritual," or "divine science," or whether the place of healing be in some shrine sacred to an accredited saint, or only in the presence of the patient receiving the benediction; they all operate under the same law; there is no other. jesus was the great transmitter to humanity of a knowledge of the power of divine healing; he never specialized. he never said: "i have cured your liver complaint, or your lungs are healed," etc., according to the ailment of the person seeking his aid. he only told them: "thy [own] faith hath made thee whole." it was spoken of god long ago: "he healeth all our infirmities." the quality and the amount of personal magnetism possessed by the healer--the transmitter of the divine healing--does make a vast difference in the results of such efforts. the "nazarene" was devoid of egotism, and selfishness, and his desire to heal and bless humanity was with him an overwhelming passion. that jesus knew the value of right physical habits is evidenced by the way he had of admonishing his patients to "go and sin no more," that is, stop breaking nature's hygienic laws. he had all along told them that right thinking was necessary to right doing. * * * * * * the transcendentalism of one age, shorn of the peculiar shading given to it by the individuality of the mind through which it first manifests itself, becomes the hard "common sense" of the next. * * * * * * what is truth? truth is god. god is truth. nothing in the universe could exist for one instant unless it had in it some faint intuition of truth, and it is this that we are here to discover. surplus. human beings slaughtered on battle fields, or carried off by pestilence and famine by thousands, or perishing by accidents by sea or by land by hundreds, are individually dear and useful, and are mourned; but in the great aggregate of moving life on this planet, they count as surplus. analysis of the "lord's prayer." how shall we pray? to whom shall we pray? shall we pray at all? these are unsettled questions in the minds of many good persons who are striving to perceive the highest truth and to be guided thereby. the tests that have been applied to the usefulness of prayer by a large class of religious people have been, for ages, purely materialistic. the lord has been importuned for the bestowal of personal favors, from the manufacturing of the right kind of weather to the slaying of enemies, and from the righteous putting down of infidels, to the spending of dollars with which to build high steeples. then, too, god has had the benefit of the very best advice concerning the way he ought to deal with the heathen, how he should treat sinners of every sort, so as to show himself equal to managing his fractious subjects, and, finally, how to carry things along generally after such a fashion as should win and hold the respect of his earthly advisers. this utter misunderstanding of the true function of prayer has caused many earnest souls to sorrow over lost faith in what should have been to them a source of strength and uplifting. jesus said: "ask, and ye shall receive," and as all his teachings referred to things of the spirit, he must have meant to indicate to his followers that whatever was sought for in the line of true spiritual enlightenment would surely be given. no one prays for houses and lands, for gold and other forms of material wealth, "for jesus christ's sake. amen." all through the teachings of jesus run the mention of his and our heavenly parent, "our father," and since much of our knowledge of spiritual things comes through our perception of the law of correspondences, we naturally feel and believe that we have not only a father but also a mother in heaven. the recognition of the mother element--the divine mother--has always been a most potent factor in the power of the roman catholic church to retain the unchanging devotion of its faithful adherents. the reaction from a bigoted belief in, and a blind reliance upon a jealous and tyrannical overseer sitting in state to judge and condemn to everlasting torment all but a few of earth's children--a terror-inspiring god--has naturally turned the minds of many from recognition of any sort of relationship between humanity and a superior, divine and beneficent power. the atheist glories in his disbelief, and calls exultingly upon those whose faith has become the stepping-stone to knowledge for proofs that he is not right in assuming to occupy the superior attitude of mind. suppose for a moment, that all the world were brought to coincide with him. how would it benefit the race to prove it to be wholly orphaned--utterly left out of all consideration for its future care and happiness? "like as an earthly father pitieth his children," jesus affirmed, is the love of our father, god, for the human-race. "i and my father are one." "my father worketh hitherto, and i work." these are some of the references made by jesus to the relationship that he constantly asserted was established between his own soul and that of his father, in the supernal world, and thus he taught his followers to pray: "our father which art in heaven." this is the first recorded utterance of the modern shibboleth: "the fatherhood of god and the brotherhood of man." in this now universally employed invocation, jesus claimed for himself no other mention than that in which he instructed all of earth's children to join. "hallowed be thy name." in a sacred name there is power to hold the wavering thought; so may thy name be hallowed! _i. e._, held sacred. it is affirmed that every created thing has a real appellation, a name given to it by its creator. we pass through this rudimentary state of existence known as john or mary, or by some other of the thousand or more titles in vogue that are indicative of different personalities; but it was long ago shown to an inspired teacher that, at a given point of development, each soul should be given its true name, a new one that should be "written in the forehead." our puritan progenitors had a dim perception of a higher and inner meaning to names. by calling their children grace, mercy, patience, charity, etc., they sought to embody spiritual principles. "thy kingdom come." no heavenly kingdom can ever be "let down" to the earth. the earthly must become developed and interpenetrated by the spiritual, and thus be lifted up into an harmonious co-relationship with the divine. "thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven." there is but one will; so make it known to us that we may realize out [transcriber's note: our?] at-one-ment with the divine, even as do the "angels in heaven." "give us this day our daily bread." "the earth is the lord's and the fulness thereof." (make us partakers of thy bounty, that our bodies may have needed nourishment. illuminate our spiritual understanding that we may take to ourselves each day such spiritual food as we are best fitted to appropriate and use.) "and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." up to this point there is simply suggested the personal relationship between the petitioner and the being to whom he prays; but into this phrase quite another element is introduced--a new factor; forgive us, as we in turn forgive our enemies. this puts upon one who utters these words the responsibility of answering his own prayer, or of making the conditions whereby he shall be forgiven and accepted, that thus may be established the eternal vibrations that bind the very lowest to the highest. "and lead us not into temptation;" _i. e._, graciously protect us from following the devices of our own ignorance; but if we willfully go our own way, and are overcome with grief and disappointment because of our misdoing, "deliver us from [the] evil" consequences thereof, by inspiring our minds with courage to bear our pains and penalties with true heroism, and teach us through our experiences wherein lie our highest growth and wisdom for all our future lives. "for thine is the kingdom, and the power" to create and destroy, "and the glory." (all things begin and end in god.) "forever and ever. amen." jesus had undoubtedly learned the pure ethics of this all-embracing appeal. principles are unchanging; but, as the law of evolution carries each succeeding representation of the underlying facts of spiritual science ever higher in the ascending series, on the spiral pathway that leads to the kingdom of god, so in each is embodied a more advanced phase or externalization of such facts. the revelations vouchsafed to the world through the teachings of confucius, buddha, and other saviors of men appealed only to the intellect. jesus was the first to announce to the heart-hungry that "god so loved the world" that he sent one of his best beloved sons to bear witness to his own eternal love, and to show how all may become participators in its boundlessness. the potency of prayer corresponds to the power of the thought or to the exalted aspiration of the soul projecting it. there are some who, seeking divine aid, are too weak in this respect to realize any special results, while the prayers of others ascend as on the wings of eagles. this attitude of the soul is not to be confounded with the "communion of saints." communion indicates the existence of a degree of equality which, in the relation of finite man with his maker, cannot be. an occult wave has swept round the world. the seals are being broken, and the sphinxes are speaking wherever they find ears to hear and minds to comprehend. the heart of the mystery is this; there is no new thing to be proclaimed. "spiritual things are spiritually discerned," and, with the divine illumination vouchsafed to all, "a wayfaring man, though a fool," may see and know the deep things of god. but no door will be opened, no angel or "minister of grace" or "spirit friend" will descend the ladder of light that leads to the realms supernal, no inspiration of god will ever come to any soul on earth without prayer--in response to either conscious supplication or unconscious aspiration toward the giver of every good and perfect gift. the ultimate function and use of prayer is simply to establish our relationship with the divine and ever-lasting forces that rule and guide our lives. these are ever operating to help us to live above the purely personal relationships that limit our growth and advancement along the lines of spiritual unfoldment, and to open to our souls vistas of perfectness on the higher planes of wisdom and understanding of the mysteries of immortal life. absurd beliefs. the supreme egotism of man has been largely corrected through the influence of education and experience which have made him conscious of the ridiculousness of his demands for recognition of his supremacy. each one of those high, old eastern emperors had to have his pedestal, and his title of god, without reference to his real character. modern men do not expect to be real head-up gods. they know too much to be so ridiculous. but there are those who seem to feel that they are at least "little tin gods on wheels." when the nazarene appeared among men possessing godlike qualities, it was entirely in line with the custom of the time to call him a god. there was neither logic nor common sense in the role jesus was to play. he was god of all gods. he was, at the same time, the only begotten son of god, and, as the idea of sacrifice to the numerous gods was an important part of the religious orgies of the time, they could only bring that into their new scheme for entrapping souls by making the son--who was really god--a sacrifice to himself, to propitiate himself, and keep himself from utterly destroying and damning the folks he himself had created. so they made it out that this good man should be a propitiation for the "sins of the race." silly; improbable; unlawful; incredible; impossible. the more useless and undeveloped people were, the more they believed that the sacrifice of a very god--to their egotistical minds--was not too much for the salvation of their infinitesimal, pinhead souls. the resurrection. it has been believed that dead folks stayed boxed up under ground waiting--ages perhaps--for the last trumpet to sound to call up the sleeping billions to the surface of the earth to the final "day of judgment," when they should all swarm up out of their graves to be let to know by the great judge of all to which class they belong, the "sheep" or the "goats"--there was to be only those two kinds--sheep to go straight to heaven, all the others to be cast into hell fire to burn forever. the air would be full of toes and fingers and legs and heads coming from all directions to join themselves to the bodies from which they had been detached in their physical life; it was understood that in every case there would be no mistakes made, no white person, minus a member of his body in life, would find himself persistently chased up by arms or legs--especially by heads--of a different color, and form, from what he would know were his own; but, by some unaccountable magic, some divine law of attraction each dissevered member would instantly recognize its true belonging and fly to its former familiar location. where this great final "round up" is to be held has not yet been made known to the "true believers." "chautauqua" has been suggested, and also the lot back of the "white house" in washington, d. c. there are objections, however, to these and some other places because of the limited area, but as "with god all things are possible" either spot might be made to answer. the great open-air university at chautauqua is known everywhere on earth--and possibly beyond--and certainly would be a good point for the saints to hail from, in their upward journey, and the "white lot" in washington would shorten the journey for those who are booked for the trip in the other direction. out of this belief has grown quite a little sect which takes it upon itself to decide upon the fate of all the world outside of its very limited number. it is hard upon the methodists and presbyterians and all the other cults and sects scattered about over the whole earth that they should all be doomed to everlasting hell fires because of a little difference of opinion with these self-elected judges! the more insane of them have ignored all the claims of citizenship, have burned their fences and their barns, and given away all their earthly belongings, and refusing to be taught by the repeated failures of the many times set for the final ending of the planet, have donned their unbleached cotton "ascension robes," and have sat around on the hill-tops and waited long for the end of all things earthly, and the fun of seeing all the people who did not agree with them switched off into hell. the real beginning of this came from two sayings purported to have been the words of christ. while hanging upon the cross a man nailed to another cross, begged jesus to save him. jesus was an adept, highly clairvoyant. he saw that the man was good--probably better than the people who had hung him there to die--and that if he was a thief, as they said, he had stolen things for the benefit of his people for food and for sandals and things for the family. so he said: "this day you shall be with me in the spirit world." some clever person caught on to this and said to himself: "that settles it, if one man can go straight through without being laid up in the ground after death, all can." this view furnished an altogether different outlook and gave people a new idea of the law. jesus assured his disciples that the kingdom of heaven would come on earth very soon, in fact, while they were yet alive. well, he knew a lot about the soul, and immortality and all that, but nothing at all about evolution, or electricity, or what wonderful unfoldment of brain and magnificent works man should achieve. the nazarene, like all seers and prophets, was simply mistaken in point of time. he did not give the creator time enough to bring all things to pass, and if the people who think this world is actually coming to an end pretty soon would just think once that the creator does not set things agoing solely for the purpose of destroying his work, and let him have his own way and time, they would save themselves much trouble. the creator. god--the all-creative spirit--is the most positive element, or force in nature, and nothing is or can have existence in the external world that is not conceived and formed first in the matrix of the spirit. so it is in the realm of the invisible that the law of progress, of unending evolution takes its rise and becomes operative. still, however clearly defined may be a truth, a law in the mentality of the higher powers, it can only be externalized to the degree comprehended by the mind through which it is given to the world. all that saves this world from being in a state of utter darkness is the fact that from its very beginning there have been souls capable of being illuminated by the light from the higher life, spirits so grounded in a faith in its certainties that they have shone out upon the stern and awful path trod by the human race like beacon lights above a stormy sea, or beaming stars shedding a calm radiance upon a trackless waste. retributive justice. we know so little of the mysteries of occult, divine law, and yet taking thought of the entire history of the human race, such as we have, and our own personal experience and observation, we must recognize that there are certain fixed principles, certain laws, indicating the undying value of right living. to understand and apply these laws to the all around conduct of life, to the practical affairs of human effort, is in its highest, its spiritual sense the real business of earthly existence. those religious teachers who have had a degree of spiritual enlightenment have wrapped up their perceptions of moral law, and disguised them with creeds and dogmas, and have used them to further their personal ambitions, and to hold their power over such people as they have been able to hypnotize into believing in them as the vice-gerents of the most high. all this has been going on for long, and has been handed down through unnumbered generations until it has crystallized into forms and ceremonies, and unmoral conventionalities which stultify the race. "dead loads" of good people believe they are doing god's service in trying to live up to these, never knowing how much they are the result of fanaticism and ignorance, and the concentrated intention of every sort of priests to keep their power over unthinking minds. here and there, scattered along throughout the realms of intelligent being, there have always been noble and true men and women who have brought a sufficient comprehension of the out-working of the eternal principles of unswerving moral law to make their conduct of life here wise and dependable, and to give to them the assurance of a successful continuance of individual life in other spheres of being, beyond earthly limitations. those untrammelled souls who thus unfold grow up into an at-one-ment with the divine, all-pervading principle we call god. they have been, and are light bringers, and saviors of humanity. the perfection of individual character can only be achieved by determined effort, by unshrinking, concentrated labor. this simply means an acceptance of all the inevitable experiences incident to this life, coupled with a brave determination to wring from each and every one of them, good, or seemingly bad and unfortunate, all the lessons it can teach, and all the truth it can possibly reveal. this evolution of the soul is from the innermost sacred precincts of the personality, and it is often unrecognized by those who have the most inclusive development of the attributes and innate resources of their own souls. those people who are thus intent upon their souls' growth do not flaunt themselves in forms and ceremonies. life is too short. the chief, the most important moral law is the law of justice, absolute unerring justice. this law is the very least comprehended of men, because its majesty, its even-handedness has been so misinterpreted, so travestied by various kinds of religious teachers, rulers, and self-appointed judges. man-made laws which everywhere prevail tend always to segregate people into classes, producing results devoid of equity, favoring the materially superior. it is quite common for people who know nothing whatever of the operations of occult and spiritual law to ignore all responsibility for their unhappy earthly experiences, and "blame it all" on god. a child dies, the mother accuses god of making her the special subject of his unkindness in taking away from her the object of her love. everywhere, among all classes of people this is not at all an unusual experience. the fact is, the prevailing ignorance of natural law--moral, spiritual law--is alone the cause of nearly all the misery of humanity. god has nothing whatever to do with it. there is this about it: there are the "eternal verities," the laws which speak ever to the consciousness of man, and whether they are broken in ignorance or willfully set aside, the results are nearly the same; the penalties exacted by beneficent justice are unalterable; only in one case, there must finally be regrets for ignorance; in the other, great remorse for wickedness and ill-doing. but these results are not eternal, though the dreadfully cruel teachings of religion have made people believe so. the faintest stirrings of desire to be better, the least aspiration toward the higher life is sure of a response from loving, compassionate beings in angelic ministrations. the priests of different religions who have been most valiant and positive in preaching hell fire and eternal damnation have entirely lost sight of this fact. not the most strenuous of the whole lot has ever been able to follow one miserable wretch into the spirit world to find out whether his prognostications anent his hypnotized victims, have "come true." "_au contraire_," great numbers of reputed sinners have come back in their real personality to report to their friends that there is no such fate for anyone, that it is one great lie. but it must not be supposed that there are no sure enough hells. there have to be places for the hellish to stay till they come of a better mind. nature provides for them other opportunities for their gradual redemption through re-embodiments in the flesh on this earth. there is besides a constant outpouring from the dark abodes of estrayed and benighted souls, for the all-embracing love of our father-mother reaches even the horribly suffering lunatics, made so by their selfish, vicious lives here on earth. there is, indeed, the greatest possible difference between an intended eternal punishment of sin, such as has been preached for ages for the purpose of scaring people out of their wits, and a recognized, just retribution for broken law. punishments such as have been believed in suggest a punisher, and our father in heaven has been blasphemously represented as "angry with the wicked every day" and glad to have a chance to pour out his "bottles of wrath" on their elected heads. the torturing remorse of the slowly awakening consciousness of those who have lived selfishly and viciously is far beyond the pains of the burning, material fires. every human being that has in it a living germ of spirit shall be liberated and helped toward the light, not by any so-called personal redeemer--that is not possible--but by the power of its own aspiring soul, and even moderately decent folk shall come to enjoy all that they have imagined and longed for, and all great souls shall find the peace they have dreamed of. all souls everywhere in the spirit world will have all they have truly earned in their earthly lives. while we stay here we are hardly protected from the envious thoughts and deeds of evilly disposed and vengeful people. once safely landed in that superior and satisfactory realm no such invasions can reach us ever. the soul. the soul is the vehicle of the spirit. it passes from the earthly life along with physical death, its uses ended. developed by earthly experiences, it grows and has the power to detach itself and represent the personality of the individual to which it belongs, but only while on earth; it is not employed thus after the spirit leaves the body. it is the "similacrum" of the body, and is often mistaken for the immortal part, the enfranchised spirit. but the spirit is generally unawakened and can only grow with the pabulum of spiritual influence, in harmony with spiritual law. it is this that complicates this life and retards the at-one-ment of the greatest of all trinities; body, soul and spirit, the natural three in one. the soul element is the bequest of the parents--especially of the mother--to their progeny. if the conditions are at all in harmony with divine law, the mother pours out all her soul's influence upon the forming body of her child in the divinest love ever manifested on earth. its birth and manifestation are of the immortal spirit, and create in her offspring some consciousness of, some desire for immortality. of all earthly phenomena this of motherhood is the most marvelous, and naturally the least understood, and the most slightingly regarded. its universality reduces it to the commonplace. * * * * * * the conventionalities are not intended to keep people apart who really "belong" together and who ought to meet, but to protect those who wish to live good lives from the invasions of envious curiosity. woman. woman is the constructive, the upbuilding force. with what patient endurance she awaits the slow growth of the bodies she shelters beneath her heart that are to hold souls here and give them human instruments with which to do their work on the material plane of life. in this sphere, the destructive jealousy of man of the power of woman does not avail, her kingdom is everlasting. crushed and enslaved she is, and always has been, but only to gather to herself greater power. she is the natural lawgiver, the supreme ruler. man, the intimate holder of the material forces, dreads the power of woman, and fears her invasions of his long-established rights in his chosen domain. * * * * * * unwilling motherhood has filled the world with vice and crime. when men, women and children began to return to earth after physical death and give their recognized testimony to the fact of their spiritual resurrection, and of their continued real life with all its personal endowments exactly as they were here, the crude ideas of ignorant minds were forever set aside by millions who can now testify to the absolute truth of spirit return, instead of being buried in the earth waiting for an impossible time of reckoning and judgment. do you call all this blasphemous? open your eyes. look! listen! discriminate! know where is the real, high blasphemy. "god bless us every one." adieu. siddhartha an indian tale by hermann hesse first part to romain rolland, my dear friend the son of the brahman in the shade of the house, in the sunshine of the riverbank near the boats, in the shade of the sal-wood forest, in the shade of the fig tree is where siddhartha grew up, the handsome son of the brahman, the young falcon, together with his friend govinda, son of a brahman. the sun tanned his light shoulders by the banks of the river when bathing, performing the sacred ablutions, the sacred offerings. in the mango grove, shade poured into his black eyes, when playing as a boy, when his mother sang, when the sacred offerings were made, when his father, the scholar, taught him, when the wise men talked. for a long time, siddhartha had been partaking in the discussions of the wise men, practising debate with govinda, practising with govinda the art of reflection, the service of meditation. he already knew how to speak the om silently, the word of words, to speak it silently into himself while inhaling, to speak it silently out of himself while exhaling, with all the concentration of his soul, the forehead surrounded by the glow of the clear-thinking spirit. he already knew to feel atman in the depths of his being, indestructible, one with the universe. joy leapt in his father's heart for his son who was quick to learn, thirsty for knowledge; he saw him growing up to become great wise man and priest, a prince among the brahmans. bliss leapt in his mother's breast when she saw him, when she saw him walking, when she saw him sit down and get up, siddhartha, strong, handsome, he who was walking on slender legs, greeting her with perfect respect. love touched the hearts of the brahmans' young daughters when siddhartha walked through the lanes of the town with the luminous forehead, with the eye of a king, with his slim hips. but more than all the others he was loved by govinda, his friend, the son of a brahman. he loved siddhartha's eye and sweet voice, he loved his walk and the perfect decency of his movements, he loved everything siddhartha did and said and what he loved most was his spirit, his transcendent, fiery thoughts, his ardent will, his high calling. govinda knew: he would not become a common brahman, not a lazy official in charge of offerings; not a greedy merchant with magic spells; not a vain, vacuous speaker; not a mean, deceitful priest; and also not a decent, stupid sheep in the herd of the many. no, and he, govinda, as well did not want to become one of those, not one of those tens of thousands of brahmans. he wanted to follow siddhartha, the beloved, the splendid. and in days to come, when siddhartha would become a god, when he would join the glorious, then govinda wanted to follow him as his friend, his companion, his servant, his spear-carrier, his shadow. siddhartha was thus loved by everyone. he was a source of joy for everybody, he was a delight for them all. but he, siddhartha, was not a source of joy for himself, he found no delight in himself. walking the rosy paths of the fig tree garden, sitting in the bluish shade of the grove of contemplation, washing his limbs daily in the bath of repentance, sacrificing in the dim shade of the mango forest, his gestures of perfect decency, everyone's love and joy, he still lacked all joy in his heart. dreams and restless thoughts came into his mind, flowing from the water of the river, sparkling from the stars of the night, melting from the beams of the sun, dreams came to him and a restlessness of the soul, fuming from the sacrifices, breathing forth from the verses of the rig-veda, being infused into him, drop by drop, from the teachings of the old brahmans. siddhartha had started to nurse discontent in himself, he had started to feel that the love of his father and the love of his mother, and also the love of his friend, govinda, would not bring him joy for ever and ever, would not nurse him, feed him, satisfy him. he had started to suspect that his venerable father and his other teachers, that the wise brahmans had already revealed to him the most and best of their wisdom, that they had already filled his expecting vessel with their richness, and the vessel was not full, the spirit was not content, the soul was not calm, the heart was not satisfied. the ablutions were good, but they were water, they did not wash off the sin, they did not heal the spirit's thirst, they did not relieve the fear in his heart. the sacrifices and the invocation of the gods were excellent--but was that all? did the sacrifices give a happy fortune? and what about the gods? was it really prajapati who had created the world? was it not the atman, he, the only one, the singular one? were the gods not creations, created like me and you, subject to time, mortal? was it therefore good, was it right, was it meaningful and the highest occupation to make offerings to the gods? for whom else were offerings to be made, who else was to be worshipped but him, the only one, the atman? and where was atman to be found, where did he reside, where did his eternal heart beat, where else but in one's own self, in its innermost part, in its indestructible part, which everyone had in himself? but where, where was this self, this innermost part, this ultimate part? it was not flesh and bone, it was neither thought nor consciousness, thus the wisest ones taught. so, where, where was it? to reach this place, the self, myself, the atman, there was another way, which was worthwhile looking for? alas, and nobody showed this way, nobody knew it, not the father, and not the teachers and wise men, not the holy sacrificial songs! they knew everything, the brahmans and their holy books, they knew everything, they had taken care of everything and of more than everything, the creation of the world, the origin of speech, of food, of inhaling, of exhaling, the arrangement of the senses, the acts of the gods, they knew infinitely much--but was it valuable to know all of this, not knowing that one and only thing, the most important thing, the solely important thing? surely, many verses of the holy books, particularly in the upanishades of samaveda, spoke of this innermost and ultimate thing, wonderful verses. "your soul is the whole world", was written there, and it was written that man in his sleep, in his deep sleep, would meet with his innermost part and would reside in the atman. marvellous wisdom was in these verses, all knowledge of the wisest ones had been collected here in magic words, pure as honey collected by bees. no, not to be looked down upon was the tremendous amount of enlightenment which lay here collected and preserved by innumerable generations of wise brahmans.-- but where were the brahmans, where the priests, where the wise men or penitents, who had succeeded in not just knowing this deepest of all knowledge but also to live it? where was the knowledgeable one who wove his spell to bring his familiarity with the atman out of the sleep into the state of being awake, into the life, into every step of the way, into word and deed? siddhartha knew many venerable brahmans, chiefly his father, the pure one, the scholar, the most venerable one. his father was to be admired, quiet and noble were his manners, pure his life, wise his words, delicate and noble thoughts lived behind its brow --but even he, who knew so much, did he live in blissfulness, did he have peace, was he not also just a searching man, a thirsty man? did he not, again and again, have to drink from holy sources, as a thirsty man, from the offerings, from the books, from the disputes of the brahmans? why did he, the irreproachable one, have to wash off sins every day, strive for a cleansing every day, over and over every day? was not atman in him, did not the pristine source spring from his heart? it had to be found, the pristine source in one's own self, it had to be possessed! everything else was searching, was a detour, was getting lost. thus were siddhartha's thoughts, this was his thirst, this was his suffering. often he spoke to himself from a chandogya-upanishad the words: "truly, the name of the brahman is satyam--verily, he who knows such a thing, will enter the heavenly world every day." often, it seemed near, the heavenly world, but never he had reached it completely, never he had quenched the ultimate thirst. and among all the wise and wisest men, he knew and whose instructions he had received, among all of them there was no one, who had reached it completely, the heavenly world, who had quenched it completely, the eternal thirst. "govinda," siddhartha spoke to his friend, "govinda, my dear, come with me under the banyan tree, let's practise meditation." they went to the banyan tree, they sat down, siddhartha right here, govinda twenty paces away. while putting himself down, ready to speak the om, siddhartha repeated murmuring the verse: om is the bow, the arrow is soul, the brahman is the arrow's target, that one should incessantly hit. after the usual time of the exercise in meditation had passed, govinda rose. the evening had come, it was time to perform the evening's ablution. he called siddhartha's name. siddhartha did not answer. siddhartha sat there lost in thought, his eyes were rigidly focused towards a very distant target, the tip of his tongue was protruding a little between the teeth, he seemed not to breathe. thus sat he, wrapped up in contemplation, thinking om, his soul sent after the brahman as an arrow. once, samanas had travelled through siddhartha's town, ascetics on a pilgrimage, three skinny, withered men, neither old nor young, with dusty and bloody shoulders, almost naked, scorched by the sun, surrounded by loneliness, strangers and enemies to the world, strangers and lank jackals in the realm of humans. behind them blew a hot scent of quiet passion, of destructive service, of merciless self-denial. in the evening, after the hour of contemplation, siddhartha spoke to govinda: "early tomorrow morning, my friend, siddhartha will go to the samanas. he will become a samana." govinda turned pale, when he heard these words and read the decision in the motionless face of his friend, unstoppable like the arrow shot from the bow. soon and with the first glance, govinda realized: now it is beginning, now siddhartha is taking his own way, now his fate is beginning to sprout, and with his, my own. and he turned pale like a dry banana-skin. "o siddhartha," he exclaimed, "will your father permit you to do that?" siddhartha looked over as if he was just waking up. arrow-fast he read in govinda's soul, read the fear, read the submission. "o govinda," he spoke quietly, "let's not waste words. tomorrow, at daybreak i will begin the life of the samanas. speak no more of it." siddhartha entered the chamber, where his father was sitting on a mat of bast, and stepped behind his father and remained standing there, until his father felt that someone was standing behind him. quoth the brahman: "is that you, siddhartha? then say what you came to say." quoth siddhartha: "with your permission, my father. i came to tell you that it is my longing to leave your house tomorrow and go to the ascetics. my desire is to become a samana. may my father not oppose this." the brahman fell silent, and remained silent for so long that the stars in the small window wandered and changed their relative positions, 'ere the silence was broken. silent and motionless stood the son with his arms folded, silent and motionless sat the father on the mat, and the stars traced their paths in the sky. then spoke the father: "not proper it is for a brahman to speak harsh and angry words. but indignation is in my heart. i wish not to hear this request for a second time from your mouth." slowly, the brahman rose; siddhartha stood silently, his arms folded. "what are you waiting for?" asked the father. quoth siddhartha: "you know what." indignant, the father left the chamber; indignant, he went to his bed and lay down. after an hour, since no sleep had come over his eyes, the brahman stood up, paced to and fro, and left the house. through the small window of the chamber he looked back inside, and there he saw siddhartha standing, his arms folded, not moving from his spot. pale shimmered his bright robe. with anxiety in his heart, the father returned to his bed. after another hour, since no sleep had come over his eyes, the brahman stood up again, paced to and fro, walked out of the house and saw that the moon had risen. through the window of the chamber he looked back inside; there stood siddhartha, not moving from his spot, his arms folded, moonlight reflecting from his bare shins. with worry in his heart, the father went back to bed. and he came back after an hour, he came back after two hours, looked through the small window, saw siddhartha standing, in the moon light, by the light of the stars, in the darkness. and he came back hour after hour, silently, he looked into the chamber, saw him standing in the same place, filled his heart with anger, filled his heart with unrest, filled his heart with anguish, filled it with sadness. and in the night's last hour, before the day began, he returned, stepped into the room, saw the young man standing there, who seemed tall and like a stranger to him. "siddhartha," he spoke, "what are you waiting for?" "you know what." "will you always stand that way and wait, until it'll becomes morning, noon, and evening?" "i will stand and wait. "you will become tired, siddhartha." "i will become tired." "you will fall asleep, siddhartha." "i will not fall asleep." "you will die, siddhartha." "i will die." "and would you rather die, than obey your father?" "siddhartha has always obeyed his father." "so will you abandon your plan?" "siddhartha will do what his father will tell him to do." the first light of day shone into the room. the brahman saw that siddhartha was trembling softly in his knees. in siddhartha's face he saw no trembling, his eyes were fixed on a distant spot. then his father realized that even now siddhartha no longer dwelt with him in his home, that he had already left him. the father touched siddhartha's shoulder. "you will," he spoke, "go into the forest and be a samana. when you'll have found blissfulness in the forest, then come back and teach me to be blissful. if you'll find disappointment, then return and let us once again make offerings to the gods together. go now and kiss your mother, tell her where you are going to. but for me it is time to go to the river and to perform the first ablution." he took his hand from the shoulder of his son and went outside. siddhartha wavered to the side, as he tried to walk. he put his limbs back under control, bowed to his father, and went to his mother to do as his father had said. as he slowly left on stiff legs in the first light of day the still quiet town, a shadow rose near the last hut, who had crouched there, and joined the pilgrim--govinda. "you have come," said siddhartha and smiled. "i have come," said govinda. with the samanas in the evening of this day they caught up with the ascetics, the skinny samanas, and offered them their companionship and--obedience. they were accepted. siddhartha gave his garments to a poor brahman in the street. he wore nothing more than the loincloth and the earth-coloured, unsown cloak. he ate only once a day, and never something cooked. he fasted for fifteen days. he fasted for twenty-eight days. the flesh waned from his thighs and cheeks. feverish dreams flickered from his enlarged eyes, long nails grew slowly on his parched fingers and a dry, shaggy beard grew on his chin. his glance turned to ice when he encountered women; his mouth twitched with contempt, when he walked through a city of nicely dressed people. he saw merchants trading, princes hunting, mourners wailing for their dead, whores offering themselves, physicians trying to help the sick, priests determining the most suitable day for seeding, lovers loving, mothers nursing their children--and all of this was not worthy of one look from his eye, it all lied, it all stank, it all stank of lies, it all pretended to be meaningful and joyful and beautiful, and it all was just concealed putrefaction. the world tasted bitter. life was torture. a goal stood before siddhartha, a single goal: to become empty, empty of thirst, empty of wishing, empty of dreams, empty of joy and sorrow. dead to himself, not to be a self any more, to find tranquility with an emptied heart, to be open to miracles in unselfish thoughts, that was his goal. once all of my self was overcome and had died, once every desire and every urge was silent in the heart, then the ultimate part of me had to awake, the innermost of my being, which is no longer my self, the great secret. silently, siddhartha exposed himself to burning rays of the sun directly above, glowing with pain, glowing with thirst, and stood there, until he neither felt any pain nor thirst any more. silently, he stood there in the rainy season, from his hair the water was dripping over freezing shoulders, over freezing hips and legs, and the penitent stood there, until he could not feel the cold in his shoulders and legs any more, until they were silent, until they were quiet. silently, he cowered in the thorny bushes, blood dripped from the burning skin, from festering wounds dripped pus, and siddhartha stayed rigidly, stayed motionless, until no blood flowed any more, until nothing stung any more, until nothing burned any more. siddhartha sat upright and learned to breathe sparingly, learned to get along with only few breathes, learned to stop breathing. he learned, beginning with the breath, to calm the beat of his heart, leaned to reduce the beats of his heart, until they were only a few and almost none. instructed by the oldest of the samanas, siddhartha practised self-denial, practised meditation, according to a new samana rules. a heron flew over the bamboo forest--and siddhartha accepted the heron into his soul, flew over forest and mountains, was a heron, ate fish, felt the pangs of a heron's hunger, spoke the heron's croak, died a heron's death. a dead jackal was lying on the sandy bank, and siddhartha's soul slipped inside the body, was the dead jackal, lay on the banks, got bloated, stank, decayed, was dismembered by hyaenas, was skinned by vultures, turned into a skeleton, turned to dust, was blown across the fields. and siddhartha's soul returned, had died, had decayed, was scattered as dust, had tasted the gloomy intoxication of the cycle, awaited in new thirst like a hunter in the gap, where he could escape from the cycle, where the end of the causes, where an eternity without suffering began. he killed his senses, he killed his memory, he slipped out of his self into thousands of other forms, was an animal, was carrion, was stone, was wood, was water, and awoke every time to find his old self again, sun shone or moon, was his self again, turned round in the cycle, felt thirst, overcame the thirst, felt new thirst. siddhartha learned a lot when he was with the samanas, many ways leading away from the self he learned to go. he went the way of self-denial by means of pain, through voluntarily suffering and overcoming pain, hunger, thirst, tiredness. he went the way of self-denial by means of meditation, through imagining the mind to be void of all conceptions. these and other ways he learned to go, a thousand times he left his self, for hours and days he remained in the non-self. but though the ways led away from the self, their end nevertheless always led back to the self. though siddhartha fled from the self a thousand times, stayed in nothingness, stayed in the animal, in the stone, the return was inevitable, inescapable was the hour, when he found himself back in the sunshine or in the moonlight, in the shade or in the rain, and was once again his self and siddhartha, and again felt the agony of the cycle which had been forced upon him. by his side lived govinda, his shadow, walked the same paths, undertook the same efforts. they rarely spoke to one another, than the service and the exercises required. occasionally the two of them went through the villages, to beg for food for themselves and their teachers. "how do you think, govinda," siddhartha spoke one day while begging this way, "how do you think did we progress? did we reach any goals?" govinda answered: "we have learned, and we'll continue learning. you'll be a great samana, siddhartha. quickly, you've learned every exercise, often the old samanas have admired you. one day, you'll be a holy man, oh siddhartha." quoth siddhartha: "i can't help but feel that it is not like this, my friend. what i've learned, being among the samanas, up to this day, this, oh govinda, i could have learned more quickly and by simpler means. in every tavern of that part of a town where the whorehouses are, my friend, among carters and gamblers i could have learned it." quoth govinda: "siddhartha is putting me on. how could you have learned meditation, holding your breath, insensitivity against hunger and pain there among these wretched people?" and siddhartha said quietly, as if he was talking to himself: "what is meditation? what is leaving one's body? what is fasting? what is holding one's breath? it is fleeing from the self, it is a short escape of the agony of being a self, it is a short numbing of the senses against the pain and the pointlessness of life. the same escape, the same short numbing is what the driver of an ox-cart finds in the inn, drinking a few bowls of rice-wine or fermented coconut-milk. then he won't feel his self any more, then he won't feel the pains of life any more, then he finds a short numbing of the senses. when he falls asleep over his bowl of rice-wine, he'll find the same what siddhartha and govinda find when they escape their bodies through long exercises, staying in the non-self. this is how it is, oh govinda." quoth govinda: "you say so, oh friend, and yet you know that siddhartha is no driver of an ox-cart and a samana is no drunkard. it's true that a drinker numbs his senses, it's true that he briefly escapes and rests, but he'll return from the delusion, finds everything to be unchanged, has not become wiser, has gathered no enlightenment,--has not risen several steps." and siddhartha spoke with a smile: "i do not know, i've never been a drunkard. but that i, siddhartha, find only a short numbing of the senses in my exercises and meditations and that i am just as far removed from wisdom, from salvation, as a child in the mother's womb, this i know, oh govinda, this i know." and once again, another time, when siddhartha left the forest together with govinda, to beg for some food in the village for their brothers and teachers, siddhartha began to speak and said: "what now, oh govinda, might we be on the right path? might we get closer to enlightenment? might we get closer to salvation? or do we perhaps live in a circle-- we, who have thought we were escaping the cycle?" quoth govinda: "we have learned a lot, siddhartha, there is still much to learn. we are not going around in circles, we are moving up, the circle is a spiral, we have already ascended many a level." siddhartha answered: "how old, would you think, is our oldest samana, our venerable teacher?" quoth govinda: "our oldest one might be about sixty years of age." and siddhartha: "he has lived for sixty years and has not reached the nirvana. he'll turn seventy and eighty, and you and me, we will grow just as old and will do our exercises, and will fast, and will meditate. but we will not reach the nirvana, he won't and we won't. oh govinda, i believe out of all the samanas out there, perhaps not a single one, not a single one, will reach the nirvana. we find comfort, we find numbness, we learn feats, to deceive others. but the most important thing, the path of paths, we will not find." "if you only," spoke govinda, "wouldn't speak such terrible words, siddhartha! how could it be that among so many learned men, among so many brahmans, among so many austere and venerable samanas, among so many who are searching, so many who are eagerly trying, so many holy men, no one will find the path of paths?" but siddhartha said in a voice which contained just as much sadness as mockery, with a quiet, a slightly sad, a slightly mocking voice: "soon, govinda, your friend will leave the path of the samanas, he has walked along your side for so long. i'm suffering of thirst, oh govinda, and on this long path of a samana, my thirst has remained as strong as ever. i always thirsted for knowledge, i have always been full of questions. i have asked the brahmans, year after year, and i have asked the holy vedas, year after year, and i have asked the devote samanas, year after year. perhaps, oh govinda, it had been just as well, had been just as smart and just as profitable, if i had asked the hornbill-bird or the chimpanzee. it took me a long time and am not finished learning this yet, oh govinda: that there is nothing to be learned! there is indeed no such thing, so i believe, as what we refer to as `learning'. there is, oh my friend, just one knowledge, this is everywhere, this is atman, this is within me and within you and within every creature. and so i'm starting to believe that this knowledge has no worser enemy than the desire to know it, than learning." at this, govinda stopped on the path, rose his hands, and spoke: "if you, siddhartha, only would not bother your friend with this kind of talk! truly, you words stir up fear in my heart. and just consider: what would become of the sanctity of prayer, what of the venerability of the brahmans' caste, what of the holiness of the samanas, if it was as you say, if there was no learning?! what, oh siddhartha, what would then become of all of this what is holy, what is precious, what is venerable on earth?!" and govinda mumbled a verse to himself, a verse from an upanishad: he who ponderingly, of a purified spirit, loses himself in the meditation of atman, unexpressable by words is his blissfulness of his heart. but siddhartha remained silent. he thought about the words which govinda had said to him and thought the words through to their end. yes, he thought, standing there with his head low, what would remain of all that which seemed to us to be holy? what remains? what can stand the test? and he shook his head. at one time, when the two young men had lived among the samanas for about three years and had shared their exercises, some news, a rumour, a myth reached them after being retold many times: a man had appeared, gotama by name, the exalted one, the buddha, he had overcome the suffering of the world in himself and had halted the cycle of rebirths. he was said to wander through the land, teaching, surrounded by disciples, without possession, without home, without a wife, in the yellow cloak of an ascetic, but with a cheerful brow, a man of bliss, and brahmans and princes would bow down before him and would become his students. this myth, this rumour, this legend resounded, its fragrants rose up, here and there; in the towns, the brahmans spoke of it and in the forest, the samanas; again and again, the name of gotama, the buddha reached the ears of the young men, with good and with bad talk, with praise and with defamation. it was as if the plague had broken out in a country and news had been spreading around that in one or another place there was a man, a wise man, a knowledgeable one, whose word and breath was enough to heal everyone who had been infected with the pestilence, and as such news would go through the land and everyone would talk about it, many would believe, many would doubt, but many would get on their way as soon as possible, to seek the wise man, the helper, just like this this myth ran through the land, that fragrant myth of gotama, the buddha, the wise man of the family of sakya. he possessed, so the believers said, the highest enlightenment, he remembered his previous lives, he had reached the nirvana and never returned into the cycle, was never again submerged in the murky river of physical forms. many wonderful and unbelievable things were reported of him, he had performed miracles, had overcome the devil, had spoken to the gods. but his enemies and disbelievers said, this gotama was a vain seducer, he would spent his days in luxury, scorned the offerings, was without learning, and knew neither exercises nor self-castigation. the myth of buddha sounded sweet. the scent of magic flowed from these reports. after all, the world was sick, life was hard to bear--and behold, here a source seemed to spring forth, here a messenger seemed to call out, comforting, mild, full of noble promises. everywhere where the rumour of buddha was heard, everywhere in the lands of india, the young men listened up, felt a longing, felt hope, and among the brahmans' sons of the towns and villages every pilgrim and stranger was welcome, when he brought news of him, the exalted one, the sakyamuni. the myth had also reached the samanas in the forest, and also siddhartha, and also govinda, slowly, drop by drop, every drop laden with hope, every drop laden with doubt. they rarely talked about it, because the oldest one of the samanas did not like this myth. he had heard that this alleged buddha used to be an ascetic before and had lived in the forest, but had then turned back to luxury and worldly pleasures, and he had no high opinion of this gotama. "oh siddhartha," govinda spoke one day to his friend. "today, i was in the village, and a brahman invited me into his house, and in his house, there was the son of a brahman from magadha, who has seen the buddha with his own eyes and has heard him teach. verily, this made my chest ache when i breathed, and thought to myself: if only i would too, if only we both would too, siddhartha and me, live to see the hour when we will hear the teachings from the mouth of this perfected man! speak, friend, wouldn't we want to go there too and listen to the teachings from the buddha's mouth?" quoth siddhartha: "always, oh govinda, i had thought, govinda would stay with the samanas, always i had believed his goal was to live to be sixty and seventy years of age and to keep on practising those feats and exercises, which are becoming a samana. but behold, i had not known govinda well enough, i knew little of his heart. so now you, my faithful friend, want to take a new path and go there, where the buddha spreads his teachings." quoth govinda: "you're mocking me. mock me if you like, siddhartha! but have you not also developed a desire, an eagerness, to hear these teachings? and have you not at one time said to me, you would not walk the path of the samanas for much longer?" at this, siddhartha laughed in his very own manner, in which his voice assumed a touch of sadness and a touch of mockery, and said: "well, govinda, you've spoken well, you've remembered correctly. if you only remembered the other thing as well, you've heard from me, which is that i have grown distrustful and tired against teachings and learning, and that my faith in words, which are brought to us by teachers, is small. but let's do it, my dear, i am willing to listen to these teachings--though in my heart i believe that we've already tasted the best fruit of these teachings." quoth govinda: "your willingness delights my heart. but tell me, how should this be possible? how should the gotama's teachings, even before we have heard them, have already revealed their best fruit to us?" quoth siddhartha: "let us eat this fruit and wait for the rest, oh govinda! but this fruit, which we already now received thanks to the gotama, consisted in him calling us away from the samanas! whether he has also other and better things to give us, oh friend, let us await with calm hearts." on this very same day, siddhartha informed the oldest one of the samanas of his decision, that he wanted to leave him. he informed the oldest one with all the courtesy and modesty becoming to a younger one and a student. but the samana became angry, because the two young men wanted to leave him, and talked loudly and used crude swearwords. govinda was startled and became embarrassed. but siddhartha put his mouth close to govinda's ear and whispered to him: "now, i want to show the old man that i've learned something from him." positioning himself closely in front of the samana, with a concentrated soul, he captured the old man's glance with his glances, deprived him of his power, made him mute, took away his free will, subdued him under his own will, commanded him, to do silently, whatever he demanded him to do. the old man became mute, his eyes became motionless, his will was paralysed, his arms were hanging down; without power, he had fallen victim to siddhartha's spell. but siddhartha's thoughts brought the samana under their control, he had to carry out, what they commanded. and thus, the old man made several bows, performed gestures of blessing, spoke stammeringly a godly wish for a good journey. and the young men returned the bows with thanks, returned the wish, went on their way with salutations. on the way, govinda said: "oh siddhartha, you have learned more from the samanas than i knew. it is hard, it is very hard to cast a spell on an old samana. truly, if you had stayed there, you would soon have learned to walk on water." "i do not seek to walk on water," said siddhartha. "let old samanas be content with such feats!" gotama in the town of savathi, every child knew the name of the exalted buddha, and every house was prepared to fill the alms-dish of gotama's disciples, the silently begging ones. near the town was gotama's favourite place to stay, the grove of jetavana, which the rich merchant anathapindika, an obedient worshipper of the exalted one, had given him and his people for a gift. all tales and answers, which the two young ascetics had received in their search for gotama's abode, had pointed them towards this area. and arriving at savathi, in the very first house, before the door of which they stopped to beg, food has been offered to them, and they accepted the food, and siddhartha asked the woman, who handed them the food: "we would like to know, oh charitable one, where the buddha dwells, the most venerable one, for we are two samanas from the forest and have come, to see him, the perfected one, and to hear the teachings from his mouth." quoth the woman: "here, you have truly come to the right place, you samanas from the forest. you should know, in jetavana, in the garden of anathapindika is where the exalted one dwells. there you pilgrims shall spent the night, for there is enough space for the innumerable, who flock here, to hear the teachings from his mouth." this made govinda happy, and full of joy he exclaimed: "well so, thus we have reached our destination, and our path has come to an end! but tell us, oh mother of the pilgrims, do you know him, the buddha, have you seen him with your own eyes?" quoth the woman: "many times i have seen him, the exalted one. on many days, i have seen him, walking through the alleys in silence, wearing his yellow cloak, presenting his alms-dish in silence at the doors of the houses, leaving with a filled dish." delightedly, govinda listened and wanted to ask and hear much more. but siddhartha urged him to walk on. they thanked and left and hardly had to ask for directions, for rather many pilgrims and monks as well from gotama's community were on their way to the jetavana. and since they reached it at night, there were constant arrivals, shouts, and talk of those who sought shelter and got it. the two samanas, accustomed to life in the forest, found quickly and without making any noise a place to stay and rested there until the morning. at sunrise, they saw with astonishment what a large crowd of believers and curious people had spent the night here. on all paths of the marvellous grove, monks walked in yellow robes, under the trees they sat here and there, in deep contemplation--or in a conversation about spiritual matters, the shady gardens looked like a city, full of people, bustling like bees. the majority of the monks went out with their alms-dish, to collect food in town for their lunch, the only meal of the day. the buddha himself, the enlightened one, was also in the habit of taking this walk to beg in the morning. siddhartha saw him, and he instantly recognised him, as if a god had pointed him out to him. he saw him, a simple man in a yellow robe, bearing the alms-dish in his hand, walking silently. "look here!" siddhartha said quietly to govinda. "this one is the buddha." attentively, govinda looked at the monk in the yellow robe, who seemed to be in no way different from the hundreds of other monks. and soon, govinda also realized: this is the one. and they followed him and observed him. the buddha went on his way, modestly and deep in his thoughts, his calm face was neither happy nor sad, it seemed to smile quietly and inwardly. with a hidden smile, quiet, calm, somewhat resembling a healthy child, the buddha walked, wore the robe and placed his feet just as all of his monks did, according to a precise rule. but his face and his walk, his quietly lowered glance, his quietly dangling hand and even every finger of his quietly dangling hand expressed peace, expressed perfection, did not search, did not imitate, breathed softly in an unwhithering calm, in an unwhithering light, an untouchable peace. thus gotama walked towards the town, to collect alms, and the two samanas recognised him solely by the perfection of his calm, by the quietness of his appearance, in which there was no searching, no desire, no imitation, no effort to be seen, only light and peace. "today, we'll hear the teachings from his mouth." said govinda. siddhartha did not answer. he felt little curiosity for the teachings, he did not believe that they would teach him anything new, but he had, just as govinda had, heard the contents of this buddha's teachings again and again, though these reports only represented second- or third-hand information. but attentively he looked at gotama's head, his shoulders, his feet, his quietly dangling hand, and it seemed to him as if every joint of every finger of this hand was of these teachings, spoke of, breathed of, exhaled the fragrant of, glistened of truth. this man, this buddha was truthful down to the gesture of his last finger. this man was holy. never before, siddhartha had venerated a person so much, never before he had loved a person as much as this one. they both followed the buddha until they reached the town and then returned in silence, for they themselves intended to abstain from on this day. they saw gotama returning--what he ate could not even have satisfied a bird's appetite, and they saw him retiring into the shade of the mango-trees. but in the evening, when the heat cooled down and everyone in the camp started to bustle about and gathered around, they heard the buddha teaching. they heard his voice, and it was also perfected, was of perfect calmness, was full of peace. gotama taught the teachings of suffering, of the origin of suffering, of the way to relieve suffering. calmly and clearly his quiet speech flowed on. suffering was life, full of suffering was the world, but salvation from suffering had been found: salvation was obtained by him who would walk the path of the buddha. with a soft, yet firm voice the exalted one spoke, taught the four main doctrines, taught the eightfold path, patiently he went the usual path of the teachings, of the examples, of the repetitions, brightly and quietly his voice hovered over the listeners, like a light, like a starry sky. when the buddha--night had already fallen--ended his speech, many a pilgrim stepped forward and asked to accepted into the community, sought refuge in the teachings. and gotama accepted them by speaking: "you have heard the teachings well, it has come to you well. thus join us and walk in holiness, to put an end to all suffering." behold, then govinda, the shy one, also stepped forward and spoke: "i also take my refuge in the exalted one and his teachings," and he asked to accepted into the community of his disciples and was accepted. right afterwards, when the buddha had retired for the night, govinda turned to siddhartha and spoke eagerly: "siddhartha, it is not my place to scold you. we have both heard the exalted one, we have both perceived the teachings. govinda has heard the teachings, he has taken refuge in it. but you, my honoured friend, don't you also want to walk the path of salvation? would you want to hesitate, do you want to wait any longer?" siddhartha awakened as if he had been asleep, when he heard govinda's words. for a long time, he looked into govinda's face. then he spoke quietly, in a voice without mockery: "govinda, my friend, now you have taken this step, now you have chosen this path. always, oh govinda, you've been my friend, you've always walked one step behind me. often i have thought: won't govinda for once also take a step by himself, without me, out of his own soul? behold, now you've turned into a man and are choosing your path for yourself. i wish that you would go it up to its end, oh my friend, that you shall find salvation!" govinda, not completely understanding it yet, repeated his question in an impatient tone: "speak up, i beg you, my dear! tell me, since it could not be any other way, that you also, my learned friend, will take your refuge with the exalted buddha!" siddhartha placed his hand on govinda's shoulder: "you failed to hear my good wish for you, oh govinda. i'm repeating it: i wish that you would go this path up to its end, that you shall find salvation!" in this moment, govinda realized that his friend had left him, and he started to weep. "siddhartha!" he exclaimed lamentingly. siddhartha kindly spoke to him: "don't forget, govinda, that you are now one of the samanas of the buddha! you have renounced your home and your parents, renounced your birth and possessions, renounced your free will, renounced all friendship. this is what the teachings require, this is what the exalted one wants. this is what you wanted for yourself. tomorrow, oh govinda, i'll leave you." for a long time, the friends continued walking in the grove; for a long time, they lay there and found no sleep. and over and over again, govinda urged his friend, he should tell him why he would not want to seek refuge in gotama's teachings, what fault he would find in these teachings. but siddhartha turned him away every time and said: "be content, govinda! very good are the teachings of the exalted one, how could i find a fault in them?" very early in the morning, a follower of buddha, one of his oldest monks, went through the garden and called all those to him who had as novices taken their refuge in the teachings, to dress them up in the yellow robe and to instruct them in the first teachings and duties of their position. then govinda broke loose, embraced once again his childhood friend and left with the novices. but siddhartha walked through the grove, lost in thought. then he happened to meet gotama, the exalted one, and when he greeted him with respect and the buddha's glance was so full of kindness and calm, the young man summoned his courage and asked the venerable one for the permission to talk to him. silently the exalted one nodded his approval. quoth siddhartha: "yesterday, oh exalted one, i had been privileged to hear your wondrous teachings. together with my friend, i had come from afar, to hear your teachings. and now my friend is going to stay with your people, he has taken his refuge with you. but i will again start on my pilgrimage." "as you please," the venerable one spoke politely. "too bold is my speech," siddhartha continued, "but i do not want to leave the exalted one without having honestly told him my thoughts. does it please the venerable one to listen to me for one moment longer?" silently, the buddha nodded his approval. quoth siddhartha: "one thing, oh most venerable one, i have admired in your teachings most of all. everything in your teachings is perfectly clear, is proven; you are presenting the world as a perfect chain, a chain which is never and nowhere broken, an eternal chain the links of which are causes and effects. never before, this has been seen so clearly; never before, this has been presented so irrefutably; truly, the heart of every brahman has to beat stronger with love, once he has seen the world through your teachings perfectly connected, without gaps, clear as a crystal, not depending on chance, not depending on gods. whether it may be good or bad, whether living according to it would be suffering or joy, i do not wish to discuss, possibly this is not essential--but the uniformity of the world, that everything which happens is connected, that the great and the small things are all encompassed by the same forces of time, by the same law of causes, of coming into being and of dying, this is what shines brightly out of your exalted teachings, oh perfected one. but according to your very own teachings, this unity and necessary sequence of all things is nevertheless broken in one place, through a small gap, this world of unity is invaded by something alien, something new, something which had not been there before, and which cannot be demonstrated and cannot be proven: these are your teachings of overcoming the world, of salvation. but with this small gap, with this small breach, the entire eternal and uniform law of the world is breaking apart again and becomes void. please forgive me for expressing this objection." quietly, gotama had listened to him, unmoved. now he spoke, the perfected one, with his kind, with his polite and clear voice: "you've heard the teachings, oh son of a brahman, and good for you that you've thought about it thus deeply. you've found a gap in it, an error. you should think about this further. but be warned, oh seeker of knowledge, of the thicket of opinions and of arguing about words. there is nothing to opinions, they may be beautiful or ugly, smart or foolish, everyone can support them or discard them. but the teachings, you've heard from me, are no opinion, and their goal is not to explain the world to those who seek knowledge. they have a different goal; their goal is salvation from suffering. this is what gotama teaches, nothing else." "i wish that you, oh exalted one, would not be angry with me," said the young man. "i have not spoken to you like this to argue with you, to argue about words. you are truly right, there is little to opinions. but let me say this one more thing: i have not doubted in you for a single moment. i have not doubted for a single moment that you are buddha, that you have reached the goal, the highest goal towards which so many thousands of brahmans and sons of brahmans are on their way. you have found salvation from death. it has come to you in the course of your own search, on your own path, through thoughts, through meditation, through realizations, through enlightenment. it has not come to you by means of teachings! and--thus is my thought, oh exalted one,--nobody will obtain salvation by means of teachings! you will not be able to convey and say to anybody, oh venerable one, in words and through teachings what has happened to you in the hour of enlightenment! the teachings of the enlightened buddha contain much, it teaches many to live righteously, to avoid evil. but there is one thing which these so clear, these so venerable teachings do not contain: they do not contain the mystery of what the exalted one has experienced for himself, he alone among hundreds of thousands. this is what i have thought and realized, when i have heard the teachings. this is why i am continuing my travels--not to seek other, better teachings, for i know there are none, but to depart from all teachings and all teachers and to reach my goal by myself or to die. but often, i'll think of this day, oh exalted one, and of this hour, when my eyes beheld a holy man." the buddha's eyes quietly looked to the ground; quietly, in perfect equanimity his inscrutable face was smiling. "i wish," the venerable one spoke slowly, "that your thoughts shall not be in error, that you shall reach the goal! but tell me: have you seen the multitude of my samanas, my many brothers, who have taken refuge in the teachings? and do you believe, oh stranger, oh samana, do you believe that it would be better for them all the abandon the teachings and to return into the life the world and of desires?" "far is such a thought from my mind," exclaimed siddhartha. "i wish that they shall all stay with the teachings, that they shall reach their goal! it is not my place to judge another person's life. only for myself, for myself alone, i must decide, i must chose, i must refuse. salvation from the self is what we samanas search for, oh exalted one. if i merely were one of your disciples, oh venerable one, i'd fear that it might happen to me that only seemingly, only deceptively my self would be calm and be redeemed, but that in truth it would live on and grow, for then i had replaced my self with the teachings, my duty to follow you, my love for you, and the community of the monks!" with half of a smile, with an unwavering openness and kindness, gotama looked into the stranger's eyes and bid him to leave with a hardly noticeable gesture. "you are wise, oh samana.", the venerable one spoke. "you know how to talk wisely, my friend. be aware of too much wisdom!" the buddha turned away, and his glance and half of a smile remained forever etched in siddhartha's memory. i have never before seen a person glance and smile, sit and walk this way, he thought; truly, i wish to be able to glance and smile, sit and walk this way, too, thus free, thus venerable, thus concealed, thus open, thus child-like and mysterious. truly, only a person who has succeeded in reaching the innermost part of his self would glance and walk this way. well so, i also will seek to reach the innermost part of my self. i saw a man, siddhartha thought, a single man, before whom i would have to lower my glance. i do not want to lower my glance before any other, not before any other. no teachings will entice me any more, since this man's teachings have not enticed me. i am deprived by the buddha, thought siddhartha, i am deprived, and even more he has given to me. he has deprived me of my friend, the one who had believed in me and now believes in him, who had been my shadow and is now gotama's shadow. but he has given me siddhartha, myself. awakening when siddhartha left the grove, where the buddha, the perfected one, stayed behind, where govinda stayed behind, then he felt that in this grove his past life also stayed behind and parted from him. he pondered about this sensation, which filled him completely, as he was slowly walking along. he pondered deeply, like diving into a deep water he let himself sink down to the ground of the sensation, down to the place where the causes lie, because to identify the causes, so it seemed to him, is the very essence of thinking, and by this alone sensations turn into realizations and are not lost, but become entities and start to emit like rays of light what is inside of them. slowly walking along, siddhartha pondered. he realized that he was no youth any more, but had turned into a man. he realized that one thing had left him, as a snake is left by its old skin, that one thing no longer existed in him, which had accompanied him throughout his youth and used to be a part of him: the wish to have teachers and to listen to teachings. he had also left the last teacher who had appeared on his path, even him, the highest and wisest teacher, the most holy one, buddha, he had left him, had to part with him, was not able to accept his teachings. slower, he walked along in his thoughts and asked himself: "but what is this, what you have sought to learn from teachings and from teachers, and what they, who have taught you much, were still unable to teach you?" and he found: "it was the self, the purpose and essence of which i sought to learn. it was the self, i wanted to free myself from, which i sought to overcome. but i was not able to overcome it, could only deceive it, could only flee from it, only hide from it. truly, no thing in this world has kept my thoughts thus busy, as this my very own self, this mystery of me being alive, of me being one and being separated and isolated from all others, of me being siddhartha! and there is no thing in this world i know less about than about me, about siddhartha!" having been pondering while slowly walking along, he now stopped as these thoughts caught hold of him, and right away another thought sprang forth from these, a new thought, which was: "that i know nothing about myself, that siddhartha has remained thus alien and unknown to me, stems from one cause, a single cause: i was afraid of myself, i was fleeing from myself! i searched atman, i searched brahman, i was willing to dissect my self and peel off all of its layers, to find the core of all peels in its unknown interior, the atman, life, the divine part, the ultimate part. but i have lost myself in the process." siddhartha opened his eyes and looked around, a smile filled his face and a feeling of awakening from long dreams flowed through him from his head down to his toes. and it was not long before he walked again, walked quickly like a man who knows what he has got to do. "oh," he thought, taking a deep breath, "now i would not let siddhartha escape from me again! no longer, i want to begin my thoughts and my life with atman and with the suffering of the world. i do not want to kill and dissect myself any longer, to find a secret behind the ruins. neither yoga-veda shall teach me any more, nor atharva-veda, nor the ascetics, nor any kind of teachings. i want to learn from myself, want to be my student, want to get to know myself, the secret of siddhartha." he looked around, as if he was seeing the world for the first time. beautiful was the world, colourful was the world, strange and mysterious was the world! here was blue, here was yellow, here was green, the sky and the river flowed, the forest and the mountains were rigid, all of it was beautiful, all of it was mysterious and magical, and in its midst was he, siddhartha, the awakening one, on the path to himself. all of this, all this yellow and blue, river and forest, entered siddhartha for the first time through the eyes, was no longer a spell of mara, was no longer the veil of maya, was no longer a pointless and coincidental diversity of mere appearances, despicable to the deeply thinking brahman, who scorns diversity, who seeks unity. blue was blue, river was river, and if also in the blue and the river, in siddhartha, the singular and divine lived hidden, so it was still that very divinity's way and purpose, to be here yellow, here blue, there sky, there forest, and here siddhartha. the purpose and the essential properties were not somewhere behind the things, they were in them, in everything. "how deaf and stupid have i been!" he thought, walking swiftly along. "when someone reads a text, wants to discover its meaning, he will not scorn the symbols and letters and call them deceptions, coincidence, and worthless hull, but he will read them, he will study and love them, letter by letter. but i, who wanted to read the book of the world and the book of my own being, i have, for the sake of a meaning i had anticipated before i read, scorned the symbols and letters, i called the visible world a deception, called my eyes and my tongue coincidental and worthless forms without substance. no, this is over, i have awakened, i have indeed awakened and have not been born before this very day." in thinking these thoughts, siddhartha stopped once again, suddenly, as if there was a snake lying in front of him on the path. because suddenly, he had also become aware of this: he, who was indeed like someone who had just woken up or like a new-born baby, he had to start his life anew and start again at the very beginning. when he had left in this very morning from the grove jetavana, the grove of that exalted one, already awakening, already on the path towards himself, he had every intention, regarded as natural and took for granted, that he, after years as an ascetic, would return to his home and his father. but now, only in this moment, when he stopped as if a snake was lying on his path, he also awoke to this realization: "but i am no longer the one i was, i am no ascetic any more, i am not a priest any more, i am no brahman any more. whatever should i do at home and at my father's place? study? make offerings? practise meditation? but all this is over, all of this is no longer alongside my path." motionless, siddhartha remained standing there, and for the time of one moment and breath, his heart felt cold, he felt a cold in his chest, as a small animal, a bird or a rabbit, would when seeing how alone he was. for many years, he had been without home and had felt nothing. now, he felt it. still, even in the deepest meditation, he had been his father's son, had been a brahman, of a high caste, a cleric. now, he was nothing but siddhartha, the awoken one, nothing else was left. deeply, he inhaled, and for a moment, he felt cold and shivered. nobody was thus alone as he was. there was no nobleman who did not belong to the noblemen, no worker that did not belong to the workers, and found refuge with them, shared their life, spoke their language. no brahman, who would not be regarded as brahmans and lived with them, no ascetic who would not find his refuge in the caste of the samanas, and even the most forlorn hermit in the forest was not just one and alone, he was also surrounded by a place he belonged to, he also belonged to a caste, in which he was at home. govinda had become a monk, and a thousand monks were his brothers, wore the same robe as he, believed in his faith, spoke his language. but he, siddhartha, where did he belong to? with whom would he share his life? whose language would he speak? out of this moment, when the world melted away all around him, when he stood alone like a star in the sky, out of this moment of a cold and despair, siddhartha emerged, more a self than before, more firmly concentrated. he felt: this had been the last tremor of the awakening, the last struggle of this birth. and it was not long until he walked again in long strides, started to proceed swiftly and impatiently, heading no longer for home, no longer to his father, no longer back. second part dedicated to wilhelm gundert, my cousin in japan kamala siddhartha learned something new on every step of his path, for the world was transformed, and his heart was enchanted. he saw the sun rising over the mountains with their forests and setting over the distant beach with its palm-trees. at night, he saw the stars in the sky in their fixed positions and the crescent of the moon floating like a boat in the blue. he saw trees, stars, animals, clouds, rainbows, rocks, herbs, flowers, stream and river, the glistening dew in the bushes in the morning, distant high mountains which were blue and pale, birds sang and bees, wind silverishly blew through the rice-field. all of this, a thousand-fold and colourful, had always been there, always the sun and the moon had shone, always rivers had roared and bees had buzzed, but in former times all of this had been nothing more to siddhartha than a fleeting, deceptive veil before his eyes, looked upon in distrust, destined to be penetrated and destroyed by thought, since it was not the essential existence, since this essence lay beyond, on the other side of, the visible. but now, his liberated eyes stayed on this side, he saw and became aware of the visible, sought to be at home in this world, did not search for the true essence, did not aim at a world beyond. beautiful was this world, looking at it thus, without searching, thus simply, thus childlike. beautiful were the moon and the stars, beautiful was the stream and the banks, the forest and the rocks, the goat and the gold-beetle, the flower and the butterfly. beautiful and lovely it was, thus to walk through the world, thus childlike, thus awoken, thus open to what is near, thus without distrust. differently the sun burnt the head, differently the shade of the forest cooled him down, differently the stream and the cistern, the pumpkin and the banana tasted. short were the days, short the nights, every hour sped swiftly away like a sail on the sea, and under the sail was a ship full of treasures, full of joy. siddhartha saw a group of apes moving through the high canopy of the forest, high in the branches, and heard their savage, greedy song. siddhartha saw a male sheep following a female one and mating with her. in a lake of reeds, he saw the pike hungrily hunting for its dinner; propelling themselves away from it, in fear, wiggling and sparkling, the young fish jumped in droves out of the water; the scent of strength and passion came forcefully out of the hasty eddies of the water, which the pike stirred up, impetuously hunting. all of this had always existed, and he had not seen it; he had not been with it. now he was with it, he was part of it. light and shadow ran through his eyes, stars and moon ran through his heart. on the way, siddhartha also remembered everything he had experienced in the garden jetavana, the teaching he had heard there, the divine buddha, the farewell from govinda, the conversation with the exalted one. again he remembered his own words, he had spoken to the exalted one, every word, and with astonishment he became aware of the fact that there he had said things which he had not really known yet at this time. what he had said to gotama: his, the buddha's, treasure and secret was not the teachings, but the unexpressable and not teachable, which he had experienced in the hour of his enlightenment--it was nothing but this very thing which he had now gone to experience, what he now began to experience. now, he had to experience his self. it is true that he had already known for a long time that his self was atman, in its essence bearing the same eternal characteristics as brahman. but never, he had really found this self, because he had wanted to capture it in the net of thought. with the body definitely not being the self, and not the spectacle of the senses, so it also was not the thought, not the rational mind, not the learned wisdom, not the learned ability to draw conclusions and to develop previous thoughts in to new ones. no, this world of thought was also still on this side, and nothing could be achieved by killing the random self of the senses, if the random self of thoughts and learned knowledge was fattened on the other hand. both, the thoughts as well as the senses, were pretty things, the ultimate meaning was hidden behind both of them, both had to be listened to, both had to be played with, both neither had to be scorned nor overestimated, from both the secret voices of the innermost truth had to be attentively perceived. he wanted to strive for nothing, except for what the voice commanded him to strive for, dwell on nothing, except where the voice would advise him to do so. why had gotama, at that time, in the hour of all hours, sat down under the bo-tree, where the enlightenment hit him? he had heard a voice, a voice in his own heart, which had commanded him to seek rest under this tree, and he had neither preferred self-castigation, offerings, ablutions, nor prayer, neither food nor drink, neither sleep nor dream, he had obeyed the voice. to obey like this, not to an external command, only to the voice, to be ready like this, this was good, this was necessary, nothing else was necessary. in the night when he slept in the straw hut of a ferryman by the river, siddhartha had a dream: govinda was standing in front of him, dressed in the yellow robe of an ascetic. sad was how govinda looked like, sadly he asked: why have you forsaken me? at this, he embraced govinda, wrapped his arms around him, and as he was pulling him close to his chest and kissed him, it was not govinda any more, but a woman, and a full breast popped out of the woman's dress, at which siddhartha lay and drank, sweetly and strongly tasted the milk from this breast. it tasted of woman and man, of sun and forest, of animal and flower, of every fruit, of every joyful desire. it intoxicated him and rendered him unconscious.--when siddhartha woke up, the pale river shimmered through the door of the hut, and in the forest, a dark call of an owl resounded deeply and pleasantly. when the day began, siddhartha asked his host, the ferryman, to get him across the river. the ferryman got him across the river on his bamboo-raft, the wide water shimmered reddishly in the light of the morning. "this is a beautiful river," he said to his companion. "yes," said the ferryman, "a very beautiful river, i love it more than anything. often i have listened to it, often i have looked into its eyes, and always i have learned from it. much can be learned from a river." "i thank you, my benefactor," spoke siddhartha, disembarking on the other side of the river. "i have no gift i could give you for your hospitality, my dear, and also no payment for your work. i am a man without a home, a son of a brahman and a samana." "i did see it," spoke the ferryman, "and i haven't expected any payment from you and no gift which would be the custom for guests to bear. you will give me the gift another time." "do you think so?" asked siddhartha amusedly. "surely. this too, i have learned from the river: everything is coming back! you too, samana, will come back. now farewell! let your friendship be my reward. commemorate me, when you'll make offerings to the gods." smiling, they parted. smiling, siddhartha was happy about the friendship and the kindness of the ferryman. "he is like govinda," he thought with a smile, "all i meet on my path are like govinda. all are thankful, though they are the ones who would have a right to receive thanks. all are submissive, all would like to be friends, like to obey, think little. like children are all people." at about noon, he came through a village. in front of the mud cottages, children were rolling about in the street, were playing with pumpkin-seeds and sea-shells, screamed and wrestled, but they all timidly fled from the unknown samana. in the end of the village, the path led through a stream, and by the side of the stream, a young woman was kneeling and washing clothes. when siddhartha greeted her, she lifted her head and looked up to him with a smile, so that he saw the white in her eyes glistening. he called out a blessing to her, as it is the custom among travellers, and asked how far he still had to go to reach the large city. then she got up and came to him, beautifully her wet mouth was shimmering in her young face. she exchanged humorous banter with him, asked whether he had eaten already, and whether it was true that the samanas slept alone in the forest at night and were not allowed to have any women with them. while talking, she put her left foot on his right one and made a movement as a woman does who would want to initiate that kind of sexual pleasure with a man, which the textbooks call "climbing a tree". siddhartha felt his blood heating up, and since in this moment he had to think of his dream again, he bend slightly down to the woman and kissed with his lips the brown nipple of her breast. looking up, he saw her face smiling full of lust and her eyes, with contracted pupils, begging with desire. siddhartha also felt desire and felt the source of his sexuality moving; but since he had never touched a woman before, he hesitated for a moment, while his hands were already prepared to reach out for her. and in this moment he heard, shuddering with awe, the voice of his innermost self, and this voice said no. then, all charms disappeared from the young woman's smiling face, he no longer saw anything else but the damp glance of a female animal in heat. politely, he petted her cheek, turned away from her and disappeared away from the disappointed woman with light steps into the bamboo-wood. on this day, he reached the large city before the evening, and was happy, for he felt the need to be among people. for a long time, he had lived in the forests, and the straw hut of the ferryman, in which he had slept that night, had been the first roof for a long time he has had over his head. before the city, in a beautifully fenced grove, the traveller came across a small group of servants, both male and female, carrying baskets. in their midst, carried by four servants in an ornamental sedan-chair, sat a woman, the mistress, on red pillows under a colourful canopy. siddhartha stopped at the entrance to the pleasure-garden and watched the parade, saw the servants, the maids, the baskets, saw the sedan-chair and saw the lady in it. under black hair, which made to tower high on her head, he saw a very fair, very delicate, very smart face, a brightly red mouth, like a freshly cracked fig, eyebrows which were well tended and painted in a high arch, smart and watchful dark eyes, a clear, tall neck rising from a green and golden garment, resting fair hands, long and thin, with wide golden bracelets over the wrists. siddhartha saw how beautiful she was, and his heart rejoiced. he bowed deeply, when the sedan-chair came closer, and straightening up again, he looked at the fair, charming face, read for a moment in the smart eyes with the high arcs above, breathed in a slight fragrant, he did not know. with a smile, the beautiful women nodded for a moment and disappeared into the grove, and then the servant as well. thus i am entering this city, siddhartha thought, with a charming omen. he instantly felt drawn into the grove, but he thought about it, and only now he became aware of how the servants and maids had looked at him at the entrance, how despicable, how distrustful, how rejecting. i am still a samana, he thought, i am still an ascetic and beggar. i must not remain like this, i will not be able to enter the grove like this. and he laughed. the next person who came along this path he asked about the grove and for the name of the woman, and was told that this was the grove of kamala, the famous courtesan, and that, aside from the grove, she owned a house in the city. then, he entered the city. now he had a goal. pursuing his goal, he allowed the city to suck him in, drifted through the flow of the streets, stood still on the squares, rested on the stairs of stone by the river. when the evening came, he made friends with barber's assistant, whom he had seen working in the shade of an arch in a building, whom he found again praying in a temple of vishnu, whom he told about stories of vishnu and the lakshmi. among the boats by the river, he slept this night, and early in the morning, before the first customers came into his shop, he had the barber's assistant shave his beard and cut his hair, comb his hair and anoint it with fine oil. then he went to take his bath in the river. when late in the afternoon, beautiful kamala approached her grove in her sedan-chair, siddhartha was standing at the entrance, made a bow and received the courtesan's greeting. but that servant who walked at the very end of her train he motioned to him and asked him to inform his mistress that a young brahman would wish to talk to her. after a while, the servant returned, asked him, who had been waiting, to follow him conducted him, who was following him, without a word into a pavilion, where kamala was lying on a couch, and left him alone with her. "weren't you already standing out there yesterday, greeting me?" asked kamala. "it's true that i've already seen and greeted you yesterday." "but didn't you yesterday wear a beard, and long hair, and dust in your hair?" "you have observed well, you have seen everything. you have seen siddhartha, the son of a brahman, who has left his home to become a samana, and who has been a samana for three years. but now, i have left that path and came into this city, and the first one i met, even before i had entered the city, was you. to say this, i have come to you, oh kamala! you are the first woman whom siddhartha is not addressing with his eyes turned to the ground. never again i want to turn my eyes to the ground, when i'm coming across a beautiful woman." kamala smiled and played with her fan of peacocks' feathers. and asked: "and only to tell me this, siddhartha has come to me?" "to tell you this and to thank you for being so beautiful. and if it doesn't displease you, kamala, i would like to ask you to be my friend and teacher, for i know nothing yet of that art which you have mastered in the highest degree." at this, kamala laughed aloud. "never before this has happened to me, my friend, that a samana from the forest came to me and wanted to learn from me! never before this has happened to me, that a samana came to me with long hair and an old, torn loin-cloth! many young men come to me, and there are also sons of brahmans among them, but they come in beautiful clothes, they come in fine shoes, they have perfume in their hair and money in their pouches. this is, oh samana, how the young men are like who come to me." quoth siddhartha: "already i am starting to learn from you. even yesterday, i was already learning. i have already taken off my beard, have combed the hair, have oil in my hair. there is little which is still missing in me, oh excellent one: fine clothes, fine shoes, money in my pouch. you shall know, siddhartha has set harder goals for himself than such trifles, and he has reached them. how shouldn't i reach that goal, which i have set for myself yesterday: to be your friend and to learn the joys of love from you! you'll see that i'll learn quickly, kamala, i have already learned harder things than what you're supposed to teach me. and now let's get to it: you aren't satisfied with siddhartha as he is, with oil in his hair, but without clothes, without shoes, without money?" laughing, kamala exclaimed: "no, my dear, he doesn't satisfy me yet. clothes are what he must have, pretty clothes, and shoes, pretty shoes, and lots of money in his pouch, and gifts for kamala. do you know it now, samana from the forest? did you mark my words?" "yes, i have marked your words," siddhartha exclaimed. "how should i not mark words which are coming from such a mouth! your mouth is like a freshly cracked fig, kamala. my mouth is red and fresh as well, it will be a suitable match for yours, you'll see.--but tell me, beautiful kamala, aren't you at all afraid of the samana from the forest, who has come to learn how to make love?" "whatever for should i be afraid of a samana, a stupid samana from the forest, who is coming from the jackals and doesn't even know yet what women are?" "oh, he's strong, the samana, and he isn't afraid of anything. he could force you, beautiful girl. he could kidnap you. he could hurt you." "no, samana, i am not afraid of this. did any samana or brahman ever fear, someone might come and grab him and steal his learning, and his religious devotion, and his depth of thought? no, for they are his very own, and he would only give away from those whatever he is willing to give and to whomever he is willing to give. like this it is, precisely like this it is also with kamala and with the pleasures of love. beautiful and red is kamala's mouth, but just try to kiss it against kamala's will, and you will not obtain a single drop of sweetness from it, which knows how to give so many sweet things! you are learning easily, siddhartha, thus you should also learn this: love can be obtained by begging, buying, receiving it as a gift, finding it in the street, but it cannot be stolen. in this, you have come up with the wrong path. no, it would be a pity, if a pretty young man like you would want to tackle it in such a wrong manner." siddhartha bowed with a smile. "it would be a pity, kamala, you are so right! it would be such a great pity. no, i shall not lose a single drop of sweetness from your mouth, nor you from mine! so it is settled: siddhartha will return, once he'll have what he still lacks: clothes, shoes, money. but speak, lovely kamala, couldn't you still give me one small advice?" "an advice? why not? who wouldn't like to give an advice to a poor, ignorant samana, who is coming from the jackals of the forest?" "dear kamala, thus advise me where i should go to, that i'll find these three things most quickly?" "friend, many would like to know this. you must do what you've learned and ask for money, clothes, and shoes in return. there is no other way for a poor man to obtain money. what might you be able to do?" "i can think. i can wait. i can fast." "nothing else?" "nothing. but yes, i can also write poetry. would you like to give me a kiss for a poem?" "i would like to, if i'll like your poem. what would be its title?" siddhartha spoke, after he had thought about it for a moment, these verses: into her shady grove stepped the pretty kamala, at the grove's entrance stood the brown samana. deeply, seeing the lotus's blossom, bowed that man, and smiling kamala thanked. more lovely, thought the young man, than offerings for gods, more lovely is offering to pretty kamala. kamala loudly clapped her hands, so that the golden bracelets clanged. "beautiful are your verses, oh brown samana, and truly, i'm losing nothing when i'm giving you a kiss for them." she beckoned him with her eyes, he tilted his head so that his face touched hers and placed his mouth on that mouth which was like a freshly cracked fig. for a long time, kamala kissed him, and with a deep astonishment siddhartha felt how she taught him, how wise she was, how she controlled him, rejected him, lured him, and how after this first one there was to be a long, a well ordered, well tested sequence of kisses, everyone different from the others, he was still to receive. breathing deeply, he remained standing where he was, and was in this moment astonished like a child about the cornucopia of knowledge and things worth learning, which revealed itself before his eyes. "very beautiful are your verses," exclaimed kamala, "if i was rich, i would give you pieces of gold for them. but it will be difficult for you to earn thus much money with verses as you need. for you need a lot of money, if you want to be kamala's friend." "the way you're able to kiss, kamala!" stammered siddhartha. "yes, this i am able to do, therefore i do not lack clothes, shoes, bracelets, and all beautiful things. but what will become of you? aren't you able to do anything else but thinking, fasting, making poetry?" "i also know the sacrificial songs," said siddhartha, "but i do not want to sing them any more. i also know magic spells, but i do not want to speak them any more. i have read the scriptures--" "stop," kamala interrupted him. "you're able to read? and write?" "certainly, i can do this. many people can do this." "most people can't. i also can't do it. it is very good that you're able to read and write, very good. you will also still find use for the magic spells." in this moment, a maid came running in and whispered a message into her mistress's ear. "there's a visitor for me," exclaimed kamala. "hurry and get yourself away, siddhartha, nobody may see you in here, remember this! tomorrow, i'll see you again." but to the maid she gave the order to give the pious brahman white upper garments. without fully understanding what was happening to him, siddhartha found himself being dragged away by the maid, brought into a garden-house avoiding the direct path, being given upper garments as a gift, led into the bushes, and urgently admonished to get himself out of the grove as soon as possible without being seen. contently, he did as he had been told. being accustomed to the forest, he managed to get out of the grove and over the hedge without making a sound. contently, he returned to the city, carrying the rolled up garments under his arm. at the inn, where travellers stay, he positioned himself by the door, without words he asked for food, without a word he accepted a piece of rice-cake. perhaps as soon as tomorrow, he thought, i will ask no one for food any more. suddenly, pride flared up in him. he was no samana any more, it was no longer becoming to him to beg. he gave the rice-cake to a dog and remained without food. "simple is the life which people lead in this world here," thought siddhartha. "it presents no difficulties. everything was difficult, toilsome, and ultimately hopeless, when i was still a samana. now, everything is easy, easy like that lessons in kissing, which kamala is giving me. i need clothes and money, nothing else; this a small, near goals, they won't make a person lose any sleep." he had already discovered kamala's house in the city long before, there he turned up the following day. "things are working out well," she called out to him. "they are expecting you at kamaswami's, he is the richest merchant of the city. if he'll like you, he'll accept you into his service. be smart, brown samana. i had others tell him about you. be polite towards him, he is very powerful. but don't be too modest! i do not want you to become his servant, you shall become his equal, or else i won't be satisfied with you. kamaswami is starting to get old and lazy. if he'll like you, he'll entrust you with a lot." siddhartha thanked her and laughed, and when she found out that he had not eaten anything yesterday and today, she sent for bread and fruits and treated him to it. "you've been lucky," she said when they parted, "i'm opening one door after another for you. how come? do you have a spell?" siddhartha said: "yesterday, i told you i knew how to think, to wait, and to fast, but you thought this was of no use. but it is useful for many things, kamala, you'll see. you'll see that the stupid samanas are learning and able to do many pretty things in the forest, which the likes of you aren't capable of. the day before yesterday, i was still a shaggy beggar, as soon as yesterday i have kissed kamala, and soon i'll be a merchant and have money and all those things you insist upon." "well yes," she admitted. "but where would you be without me? what would you be, if kamala wasn't helping you?" "dear kamala," said siddhartha and straightened up to his full height, "when i came to you into your grove, i did the first step. it was my resolution to learn love from this most beautiful woman. from that moment on when i had made this resolution, i also knew that i would carry it out. i knew that you would help me, at your first glance at the entrance of the grove i already knew it." "but what if i hadn't been willing?" "you were willing. look, kamala: when you throw a rock into the water, it will speed on the fastest course to the bottom of the water. this is how it is when siddhartha has a goal, a resolution. siddhartha does nothing, he waits, he thinks, he fasts, but he passes through the things of the world like a rock through water, without doing anything, without stirring; he is drawn, he lets himself fall. his goal attracts him, because he doesn't let anything enter his soul which might oppose the goal. this is what siddhartha has learned among the samanas. this is what fools call magic and of which they think it would be effected by means of the daemons. nothing is effected by daemons, there are no daemons. everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach his goals, if he is able to think, if he is able to wait, if he is able to fast." kamala listened to him. she loved his voice, she loved the look from his eyes. "perhaps it is so," she said quietly, "as you say, friend. but perhaps it is also like this: that siddhartha is a handsome man, that his glance pleases the women, that therefore good fortune is coming towards him." with one kiss, siddhartha bid his farewell. "i wish that it should be this way, my teacher; that my glance shall please you, that always good fortune shall come to me out of your direction!" with the childlike people siddhartha went to kamaswami the merchant, he was directed into a rich house, servants led him between precious carpets into a chamber, where he awaited the master of the house. kamaswami entered, a swiftly, smoothly moving man with very gray hair, with very intelligent, cautious eyes, with a greedy mouth. politely, the host and the guest greeted one another. "i have been told," the merchant began, "that you were a brahman, a learned man, but that you seek to be in the service of a merchant. might you have become destitute, brahman, so that you seek to serve?" "no," said siddhartha, "i have not become destitute and have never been destitute. you should know that i'm coming from the samanas, with whom i have lived for a long time." "if you're coming from the samanas, how could you be anything but destitute? aren't the samanas entirely without possessions?" "i am without possessions," said siddhartha, "if this is what you mean. surely, i am without possessions. but i am so voluntarily, and therefore i am not destitute." "but what are you planning to live of, being without possessions?" "i haven't thought of this yet, sir. for more than three years, i have been without possessions, and have never thought about of what i should live." "so you've lived of the possessions of others." "presumable this is how it is. after all, a merchant also lives of what other people own." "well said. but he wouldn't take anything from another person for nothing; he would give his merchandise in return." "so it seems to be indeed. everyone takes, everyone gives, such is life." "but if you don't mind me asking: being without possessions, what would you like to give?" "everyone gives what he has. the warrior gives strength, the merchant gives merchandise, the teacher teachings, the farmer rice, the fisher fish." "yes indeed. and what is it now what you've got to give? what is it that you've learned, what you're able to do?" "i can think. i can wait. i can fast." "that's everything?" "i believe, that's everything!" "and what's the use of that? for example, the fasting--what is it good for?" "it is very good, sir. when a person has nothing to eat, fasting is the smartest thing he could do. when, for example, siddhartha hadn't learned to fast, he would have to accept any kind of service before this day is up, whether it may be with you or wherever, because hunger would force him to do so. but like this, siddhartha can wait calmly, he knows no impatience, he knows no emergency, for a long time he can allow hunger to besiege him and can laugh about it. this, sir, is what fasting is good for." "you're right, samana. wait for a moment." kamaswami left the room and returned with a scroll, which he handed to his guest while asking: "can you read this?" siddhartha looked at the scroll, on which a sales-contract had been written down, and began to read out its contents. "excellent," said kamaswami. "and would you write something for me on this piece of paper?" he handed him a piece of paper and a pen, and siddhartha wrote and returned the paper. kamaswami read: "writing is good, thinking is better. being smart is good, being patient is better." "it is excellent how you're able to write," the merchant praised him. "many a thing we will still have to discuss with one another. for today, i'm asking you to be my guest and to live in this house." siddhartha thanked and accepted, and lived in the dealers house from now on. clothes were brought to him, and shoes, and every day, a servant prepared a bath for him. twice a day, a plentiful meal was served, but siddhartha only ate once a day, and ate neither meat nor did he drink wine. kamaswami told him about his trade, showed him the merchandise and storage-rooms, showed him calculations. siddhartha got to know many new things, he heard a lot and spoke little. and thinking of kamala's words, he was never subservient to the merchant, forced him to treat him as an equal, yes even more than an equal. kamaswami conducted his business with care and often with passion, but siddhartha looked upon all of this as if it was a game, the rules of which he tried hard to learn precisely, but the contents of which did not touch his heart. he was not in kamaswami's house for long, when he already took part in his landlords business. but daily, at the hour appointed by her, he visited beautiful kamala, wearing pretty clothes, fine shoes, and soon he brought her gifts as well. much he learned from her red, smart mouth. much he learned from her tender, supple hand. him, who was, regarding love, still a boy and had a tendency to plunge blindly and insatiably into lust like into a bottomless pit, him she taught, thoroughly starting with the basics, about that school of thought which teaches that pleasure cannot be taken without giving pleasure, and that every gesture, every caress, every touch, every look, every spot of the body, however small it was, had its secret, which would bring happiness to those who know about it and unleash it. she taught him, that lovers must not part from one another after celebrating love, without one admiring the other, without being just as defeated as they have been victorious, so that with none of them should start feeling fed up or bored and get that evil feeling of having abused or having been abused. wonderful hours he spent with the beautiful and smart artist, became her student, her lover, her friend. here with kamala was the worth and purpose of his present life, nt with the business of kamaswami. the merchant passed to duties of writing important letters and contracts on to him and got into the habit of discussing all important affairs with him. he soon saw that siddhartha knew little about rice and wool, shipping and trade, but that he acted in a fortunate manner, and that siddhartha surpassed him, the merchant, in calmness and equanimity, and in the art of listening and deeply understanding previously unknown people. "this brahman," he said to a friend, "is no proper merchant and will never be one, there is never any passion in his soul when he conducts our business. but he has that mysterious quality of those people to whom success comes all by itself, whether this may be a good star of his birth, magic, or something he has learned among samanas. he always seems to be merely playing with out business-affairs, they never fully become a part of him, they never rule over him, he is never afraid of failure, he is never upset by a loss." the friend advised the merchant: "give him from the business he conducts for you a third of the profits, but let him also be liable for the same amount of the losses, when there is a loss. then, he'll become more zealous." kamaswami followed the advice. but siddhartha cared little about this. when he made a profit, he accepted it with equanimity; when he made losses, he laughed and said: "well, look at this, so this one turned out badly!" it seemed indeed, as if he did not care about the business. at one time, he travelled to a village to buy a large harvest of rice there. but when he got there, the rice had already been sold to another merchant. nevertheless, siddhartha stayed for several days in that village, treated the farmers for a drink, gave copper-coins to their children, joined in the celebration of a wedding, and returned extremely satisfied from his trip. kamaswami held against him that he had not turned back right away, that he had wasted time and money. siddhartha answered: "stop scolding, dear friend! nothing was ever achieved by scolding. if a loss has occurred, let me bear that loss. i am very satisfied with this trip. i have gotten to know many kinds of people, a brahman has become my friend, children have sat on my knees, farmers have shown me their fields, nobody knew that i was a merchant." "that's all very nice," exclaimed kamaswami indignantly, "but in fact, you are a merchant after all, one ought to think! or might you have only travelled for your amusement?" "surely," siddhartha laughed, "surely i have travelled for my amusement. for what else? i have gotten to know people and places, i have received kindness and trust, i have found friendship. look, my dear, if i had been kamaswami, i would have travelled back, being annoyed and in a hurry, as soon as i had seen that my purchase had been rendered impossible, and time and money would indeed have been lost. but like this, i've had a few good days, i've learned, had joy, i've neither harmed myself nor others by annoyance and hastiness. and if i'll ever return there again, perhaps to buy an upcoming harvest, or for whatever purpose it might be, friendly people will receive me in a friendly and happy manner, and i will praise myself for not showing any hurry and displeasure at that time. so, leave it as it is, my friend, and don't harm yourself by scolding! if the day will come, when you will see: this siddhartha is harming me, then speak a word and siddhartha will go on his own path. but until then, let's be satisfied with one another." futile were also the merchant's attempts, to convince siddhartha that he should eat his bread. siddhartha ate his own bread, or rather they both ate other people's bread, all people's bread. siddhartha never listened to kamaswami's worries and kamaswami had many worries. whether there was a business-deal going on which was in danger of failing, or whether a shipment of merchandise seemed to have been lost, or a debtor seemed to be unable to pay, kamaswami could never convince his partner that it would be useful to utter a few words of worry or anger, to have wrinkles on the forehead, to sleep badly. when, one day, kamaswami held against him that he had learned everything he knew from him, he replied: "would you please not kid me with such jokes! what i've learned from you is how much a basket of fish costs and how much interests may be charged on loaned money. these are your areas of expertise. i haven't learned to think from you, my dear kamaswami, you ought to be the one seeking to learn from me." indeed his soul was not with the trade. the business was good enough to provide him with the money for kamala, and it earned him much more than he needed. besides from this, siddhartha's interest and curiosity was only concerned with the people, whose businesses, crafts, worries, pleasures, and acts of foolishness used to be as alien and distant to him as the moon. however easily he succeeded in talking to all of them, in living with all of them, in learning from all of them, he was still aware that there was something which separated him from them and this separating factor was him being a samana. he saw mankind going through life in a childlike or animallike manner, which he loved and also despised at the same time. he saw them toiling, saw them suffering, and becoming gray for the sake of things which seemed to him to entirely unworthy of this price, for money, for little pleasures, for being slightly honoured, he saw them scolding and insulting each other, he saw them complaining about pain at which a samana would only smile, and suffering because of deprivations which a samana would not feel. he was open to everything, these people brought his way. welcome was the merchant who offered him linen for sale, welcome was the debtor who sought another loan, welcome was the beggar who told him for one hour the story of his poverty and who was not half as poor as any given samana. he did not treat the rich foreign merchant any different than the servant who shaved him and the street-vendor whom he let cheat him out of some small change when buying bananas. when kamaswami came to him, to complain about his worries or to reproach him concerning his business, he listened curiously and happily, was puzzled by him, tried to understand him, consented that he was a little bit right, only as much as he considered indispensable, and turned away from him, towards the next person who would ask for him. and there were many who came to him, many to do business with him, many to cheat him, many to draw some secret out of him, many to appeal to his sympathy, many to get his advice. he gave advice, he pitied, he made gifts, he let them cheat him a bit, and this entire game and the passion with which all people played this game occupied his thoughts just as much as the gods and brahmans used to occupy them. at times he felt, deep in his chest, a dying, quiet voice, which admonished him quietly, lamented quietly; he hardly perceived it. and then, for an hour, he became aware of the strange life he was leading, of him doing lots of things which were only a game, of, though being happy and feeling joy at times, real life still passing him by and not touching him. as a ball-player plays with his balls, he played with his business-deals, with the people around him, watched them, found amusement in them; with his heart, with the source of his being, he was not with them. the source ran somewhere, far away from him, ran and ran invisibly, had nothing to do with his life any more. and at several times he suddenly became scared on account of such thoughts and wished that he would also be gifted with the ability to participate in all of this childlike-naive occupations of the daytime with passion and with his heart, really to live, really to act, really to enjoy and to live instead of just standing by as a spectator. but again and again, he came back to beautiful kamala, learned the art of love, practised the cult of lust, in which more than in anything else giving and taking becomes one, chatted with her, learned from her, gave her advice, received advice. she understood him better than govinda used to understand him, she was more similar to him. once, he said to her: "you are like me, you are different from most people. you are kamala, nothing else, and inside of you, there is a peace and refuge, to which you can go at every hour of the day and be at home at yourself, as i can also do. few people have this, and yet all could have it." "not all people are smart," said kamala. "no," said siddhartha, "that's not the reason why. kamaswami is just as smart as i, and still has no refuge in himself. others have it, who are small children with respect to their mind. most people, kamala, are like a falling leaf, which is blown and is turning around through the air, and wavers, and tumbles to the ground. but others, a few, are like stars, they go on a fixed course, no wind reaches them, in themselves they have their law and their course. among all the learned men and samanas, of which i knew many, there was one of this kind, a perfected one, i'll never be able to forget him. it is that gotama, the exalted one, who is spreading that teachings. thousands of followers are listening to his teachings every day, follow his instructions every hour, but they are all falling leaves, not in themselves they have teachings and a law." kamala looked at him with a smile. "again, you're talking about him," she said, "again, you're having a samana's thoughts." siddhartha said nothing, and they played the game of love, one of the thirty or forty different games kamala knew. her body was flexible like that of a jaguar and like the bow of a hunter; he who had learned from her how to make love, was knowledgeable of many forms of lust, many secrets. for a long time, she played with siddhartha, enticed him, rejected him, forced him, embraced him: enjoyed his masterful skills, until he was defeated and rested exhausted by her side. the courtesan bent over him, took a long look at his face, at his eyes, which had grown tired. "you are the best lover," she said thoughtfully, "i ever saw. you're stronger than others, more supple, more willing. you've learned my art well, siddhartha. at some time, when i'll be older, i'd want to bear your child. and yet, my dear, you've remained a samana, and yet you do not love me, you love nobody. isn't it so?" "it might very well be so," siddhartha said tiredly. "i am like you. you also do not love--how else could you practise love as a craft? perhaps, people of our kind can't love. the childlike people can; that's their secret." sansara for a long time, siddhartha had lived the life of the world and of lust, though without being a part of it. his senses, which he had killed off in hot years as a samana, had awoken again, he had tasted riches, had tasted lust, had tasted power; nevertheless he had still remained in his heart for a long time a samana; kamala, being smart, had realized this quite right. it was still the art of thinking, of waiting, of fasting, which guided his life; still the people of the world, the childlike people, had remained alien to him as he was alien to them. years passed by; surrounded by the good life, siddhartha hardly felt them fading away. he had become rich, for quite a while he possessed a house of his own and his own servants, and a garden before the city by the river. the people liked him, they came to him, whenever they needed money or advice, but there was nobody close to him, except kamala. that high, bright state of being awake, which he had experienced that one time at the height of his youth, in those days after gotama's sermon, after the separation from govinda, that tense expectation, that proud state of standing alone without teachings and without teachers, that supple willingness to listen to the divine voice in his own heart, had slowly become a memory, had been fleeting; distant and quiet, the holy source murmured, which used to be near, which used to murmur within himself. nevertheless, many things he had learned from the samanas, he had learned from gotama, he had learned from his father the brahman, had remained within him for a long time afterwards: moderate living, joy of thinking, hours of meditation, secret knowledge of the self, of his eternal entity, which is neither body nor consciousness. many a part of this he still had, but one part after another had been submerged and had gathered dust. just as a potter's wheel, once it has been set in motion, will keep on turning for a long time and only slowly lose its vigour and come to a stop, thus siddhartha's soul had kept on turning the wheel of asceticism, the wheel of thinking, the wheel of differentiation for a long time, still turning, but it turned slowly and hesitantly and was close to coming to a standstill. slowly, like humidity entering the dying stem of a tree, filling it slowly and making it rot, the world and sloth had entered siddhartha's soul, slowly it filled his soul, made it heavy, made it tired, put it to sleep. on the other hand, his senses had become alive, there was much they had learned, much they had experienced. siddhartha had learned to trade, to use his power over people, to enjoy himself with a woman, he had learned to wear beautiful clothes, to give orders to servants, to bathe in perfumed waters. he had learned to eat tenderly and carefully prepared food, even fish, even meat and poultry, spices and sweets, and to drink wine, which causes sloth and forgetfulness. he had learned to play with dice and on a chess-board, to watch dancing girls, to have himself carried about in a sedan-chair, to sleep on a soft bed. but still he had felt different from and superior to the others; always he had watched them with some mockery, some mocking disdain, with the same disdain which a samana constantly feels for the people of the world. when kamaswami was ailing, when he was annoyed, when he felt insulted, when he was vexed by his worries as a merchant, siddhartha had always watched it with mockery. just slowly and imperceptibly, as the harvest seasons and rainy seasons passed by, his mockery had become more tired, his superiority had become more quiet. just slowly, among his growing riches, siddhartha had assumed something of the childlike people's ways for himself, something of their childlikeness and of their fearfulness. and yet, he envied them, envied them just the more, the more similar he became to them. he envied them for the one thing that was missing from him and that they had, the importance they were able to attach to their lives, the amount of passion in their joys and fears, the fearful but sweet happiness of being constantly in love. these people were all of the time in love with themselves, with women, with their children, with honours or money, with plans or hopes. but he did not learn this from them, this out of all things, this joy of a child and this foolishness of a child; he learned from them out of all things the unpleasant ones, which he himself despised. it happened more and more often that, in the morning after having had company the night before, he stayed in bed for a long time, felt unable to think and tired. it happened that he became angry and impatient, when kamaswami bored him with his worries. it happened that he laughed just too loud, when he lost a game of dice. his face was still smarter and more spiritual than others, but it rarely laughed, and assumed, one after another, those features which are so often found in the faces of rich people, those features of discontent, of sickliness, of ill-humour, of sloth, of a lack of love. slowly the disease of the soul, which rich people have, grabbed hold of him. like a veil, like a thin mist, tiredness came over siddhartha, slowly, getting a bit denser every day, a bit murkier every month, a bit heavier every year. as a new dress becomes old in time, loses its beautiful colour in time, gets stains, gets wrinkles, gets worn off at the seams, and starts to show threadbare spots here and there, thus siddhartha's new life, which he had started after his separation from govinda, had grown old, lost colour and splendour as the years passed by, was gathering wrinkles and stains, and hidden at bottom, already showing its ugliness here and there, disappointment and disgust were waiting. siddhartha did not notice it. he only noticed that this bright and reliable voice inside of him, which had awoken in him at that time and had ever guided him in his best times, had become silent. he had been captured by the world, by lust, covetousness, sloth, and finally also by that vice which he had used to despise and mock the most as the most foolish one of all vices: greed. property, possessions, and riches also had finally captured him; they were no longer a game and trifles to him, had become a shackle and a burden. in a strange and devious way, siddhartha had gotten into this final and most base of all dependencies, by means of the game of dice. it was since that time, when he had stopped being a samana in his heart, that siddhartha began to play the game for money and precious things, which he at other times only joined with a smile and casually as a custom of the childlike people, with an increasing rage and passion. he was a feared gambler, few dared to take him on, so high and audacious were his stakes. he played the game due to a pain of his heart, losing and wasting his wretched money in the game brought him an angry joy, in no other way he could demonstrate his disdain for wealth, the merchants' false god, more clearly and more mockingly. thus he gambled with high stakes and mercilessly, hating himself, mocking himself, won thousands, threw away thousands, lost money, lost jewelry, lost a house in the country, won again, lost again. that fear, that terrible and petrifying fear, which he felt while he was rolling the dice, while he was worried about losing high stakes, that fear he loved and sought to always renew it, always increase it, always get it to a slightly higher level, for in this feeling alone he still felt something like happiness, something like an intoxication, something like an elevated form of life in the midst of his saturated, lukewarm, dull life. and after each big loss, his mind was set on new riches, pursued the trade more zealously, forced his debtors more strictly to pay, because he wanted to continue gambling, he wanted to continue squandering, continue demonstrating his disdain of wealth. siddhartha lost his calmness when losses occurred, lost his patience when he was not payed on time, lost his kindness towards beggars, lost his disposition for giving away and loaning money to those who petitioned him. he, who gambled away tens of thousands at one roll of the dice and laughed at it, became more strict and more petty in his business, occasionally dreaming at night about money! and whenever he woke up from this ugly spell, whenever he found his face in the mirror at the bedroom's wall to have aged and become more ugly, whenever embarrassment and disgust came over him, he continued fleeing, fleeing into a new game, fleeing into a numbing of his mind brought on by sex, by wine, and from there he fled back into the urge to pile up and obtain possessions. in this pointless cycle he ran, growing tired, growing old, growing ill. then the time came when a dream warned him. he had spent the hours of the evening with kamala, in her beautiful pleasure-garden. they had been sitting under the trees, talking, and kamala had said thoughtful words, words behind which a sadness and tiredness lay hidden. she had asked him to tell her about gotama, and could not hear enough of him, how clear his eyes, how still and beautiful his mouth, how kind his smile, how peaceful his walk had been. for a long time, he had to tell her about the exalted buddha, and kamala had sighed and had said: "one day, perhaps soon, i'll also follow that buddha. i'll give him my pleasure-garden for a gift and take my refuge in his teachings." but after this, she had aroused him, and had tied him to her in the act of making love with painful fervour, biting and in tears, as if, once more, she wanted to squeeze the last sweet drop out of this vain, fleeting pleasure. never before, it had become so strangely clear to siddhartha, how closely lust was akin to death. then he had lain by her side, and kamala's face had been close to him, and under her eyes and next to the corners of her mouth he had, as clearly as never before, read a fearful inscription, an inscription of small lines, of slight grooves, an inscription reminiscent of autumn and old age, just as siddhartha himself, who was only in his forties, had already noticed, here and there, gray hairs among his black ones. tiredness was written on kamala's beautiful face, tiredness from walking a long path, which has no happy destination, tiredness and the beginning of withering, and concealed, still unsaid, perhaps not even conscious anxiety: fear of old age, fear of the autumn, fear of having to die. with a sigh, he had bid his farewell to her, the soul full of reluctance, and full of concealed anxiety. then, siddhartha had spent the night in his house with dancing girls and wine, had acted as if he was superior to them towards the fellow-members of his caste, though this was no longer true, had drunk much wine and gone to bed a long time after midnight, being tired and yet excited, close to weeping and despair, and had for a long time sought to sleep in vain, his heart full of misery which he thought he could not bear any longer, full of a disgust which he felt penetrating his entire body like the lukewarm, repulsive taste of the wine, the just too sweet, dull music, the just too soft smile of the dancing girls, the just too sweet scent of their hair and breasts. but more than by anything else, he was disgusted by himself, by his perfumed hair, by the smell of wine from his mouth, by the flabby tiredness and listlessness of his skin. like when someone, who has eaten and drunk far too much, vomits it back up again with agonising pain and is nevertheless glad about the relief, thus this sleepless man wished to free himself of these pleasures, these habits and all of this pointless life and himself, in an immense burst of disgust. not until the light of the morning and the beginning of the first activities in the street before his city-house, he had slightly fallen asleep, had found for a few moments a half unconsciousness, a hint of sleep. in those moments, he had a dream: kamala owned a small, rare singing bird in a golden cage. of this bird, he dreamt. he dreamt: this bird had become mute, who at other times always used to sing in the morning, and since this arose his attention, he stepped in front of the cage and looked inside; there the small bird was dead and lay stiff on the ground. he took it out, weighed it for a moment in his hand, and then threw it away, out in the street, and in the same moment, he felt terribly shocked, and his heart hurt, as if he had thrown away from himself all value and everything good by throwing out this dead bird. starting up from this dream, he felt encompassed by a deep sadness. worthless, so it seemed to him, worthless and pointless was the way he had been going through life; nothing which was alive, nothing which was in some way delicious or worth keeping he had left in his hands. alone he stood there and empty like a castaway on the shore. with a gloomy mind, siddhartha went to the pleasure-garden he owned, locked the gate, sat down under a mango-tree, felt death in his heart and horror in his chest, sat and sensed how everything died in him, withered in him, came to an end in him. by and by, he gathered his thoughts, and in his mind, he once again went the entire path of his life, starting with the first days he could remember. when was there ever a time when he had experienced happiness, felt a true bliss? oh yes, several times he had experienced such a thing. in his years as a boy, he has had a taste of it, when he had obtained praise from the brahmans, he had felt it in his heart: "there is a path in front of the one who has distinguished himself in the recitation of the holy verses, in the dispute with the learned ones, as an assistant in the offerings." then, he had felt it in his heart: "there is a path in front of you, you are destined for, the gods are awaiting you." and again, as a young man, when the ever rising, upward fleeing, goal of all thinking had ripped him out of and up from the multitude of those seeking the same goal, when he wrestled in pain for the purpose of brahman, when every obtained knowledge only kindled new thirst in him, then again he had, in the midst of the thirst, in the midst of the pain felt this very same thing: "go on! go on! you are called upon!" he had heard this voice when he had left his home and had chosen the life of a samana, and again when he had gone away from the samanas to that perfected one, and also when he had gone away from him to the uncertain. for how long had he not heard this voice any more, for how long had he reached no height any more, how even and dull was the manner in which his path had passed through life, for many long years, without a high goal, without thirst, without elevation, content with small lustful pleasures and yet never satisfied! for all of these many years, without knowing it himself, he had tried hard and longed to become a man like those many, like those children, and in all this, his life had been much more miserable and poorer than theirs, and their goals were not his, nor their worries; after all, that entire world of the kamaswami-people had only been a game to him, a dance he would watch, a comedy. only kamala had been dear, had been valuable to him--but was she still thus? did he still need her, or she him? did they not play a game without an ending? was it necessary to live for this? no, it was not necessary! the name of this game was sansara, a game for children, a game which was perhaps enjoyable to play once, twice, ten times--but for ever and ever over again? then, siddhartha knew that the game was over, that he could not play it any more. shivers ran over his body, inside of him, so he felt, something had died. that entire day, he sat under the mango-tree, thinking of his father, thinking of govinda, thinking of gotama. did he have to leave them to become a kamaswami? he still sat there, when the night had fallen. when, looking up, he caught sight of the stars, he thought: "here i'm sitting under my mango-tree, in my pleasure-garden." he smiled a little --was it really necessary, was it right, was it not as foolish game, that he owned a mango-tree, that he owned a garden? he also put an end to this, this also died in him. he rose, bid his farewell to the mango-tree, his farewell to the pleasure-garden. since he had been without food this day, he felt strong hunger, and thought of his house in the city, of his chamber and bed, of the table with the meals on it. he smiled tiredly, shook himself, and bid his farewell to these things. in the same hour of the night, siddhartha left his garden, left the city, and never came back. for a long time, kamaswami had people look for him, thinking that he had fallen into the hands of robbers. kamala had no one look for him. when she was told that siddhartha had disappeared, she was not astonished. did she not always expect it? was he not a samana, a man who was at home nowhere, a pilgrim? and most of all, she had felt this the last time they had been together, and she was happy, in spite of all the pain of the loss, that she had pulled him so affectionately to her heart for this last time, that she had felt one more time to be so completely possessed and penetrated by him. when she received the first news of siddhartha's disappearance, she went to the window, where she held a rare singing bird captive in a golden cage. she opened the door of the cage, took the bird out and let it fly. for a long time, she gazed after it, the flying bird. from this day on, she received no more visitors and kept her house locked. but after some time, she became aware that she was pregnant from the last time she was together with siddhartha. by the river siddhartha walked through the forest, was already far from the city, and knew nothing but that one thing, that there was no going back for him, that this life, as he had lived it for many years until now, was over and done away with, and that he had tasted all of it, sucked everything out of it until he was disgusted with it. dead was the singing bird, he had dreamt of. dead was the bird in his heart. deeply, he had been entangled in sansara, he had sucked up disgust and death from all sides into his body, like a sponge sucks up water until it is full. and full he was, full of the feeling of been sick of it, full of misery, full of death, there was nothing left in this world which could have attracted him, given him joy, given him comfort. passionately he wished to know nothing about himself anymore, to have rest, to be dead. if there only was a lightning-bolt to strike him dead! if there only was a tiger to devour him! if there only was a wine, a poison which would numb his senses, bring him forgetfulness and sleep, and no awakening from that! was there still any kind of filth, he had not soiled himself with, a sin or foolish act he had not committed, a dreariness of the soul he had not brought upon himself? was it still at all possible to be alive? was it possible, to breathe in again and again, to breathe out, to feel hunger, to eat again, to sleep again, to sleep with a woman again? was this cycle not exhausted and brought to a conclusion for him? siddhartha reached the large river in the forest, the same river over which a long time ago, when he had still been a young man and came from the town of gotama, a ferryman had conducted him. by this river he stopped, hesitantly he stood at the bank. tiredness and hunger had weakened him, and whatever for should he walk on, wherever to, to which goal? no, there were no more goals, there was nothing left but the deep, painful yearning to shake off this whole desolate dream, to spit out this stale wine, to put an end to this miserable and shameful life. a hang bent over the bank of the river, a coconut-tree; siddhartha leaned against its trunk with his shoulder, embraced the trunk with one arm, and looked down into the green water, which ran and ran under him, looked down and found himself to be entirely filled with the wish to let go and to drown in these waters. a frightening emptiness was reflected back at him by the water, answering to the terrible emptiness in his soul. yes, he had reached the end. there was nothing left for him, except to annihilate himself, except to smash the failure into which he had shaped his life, to throw it away, before the feet of mockingly laughing gods. this was the great vomiting he had longed for: death, the smashing to bits of the form he hated! let him be food for fishes, this dog siddhartha, this lunatic, this depraved and rotten body, this weakened and abused soul! let him be food for fishes and crocodiles, let him be chopped to bits by the daemons! with a distorted face, he stared into the water, saw the reflection of his face and spit at it. in deep tiredness, he took his arm away from the trunk of the tree and turned a bit, in order to let himself fall straight down, in order to finally drown. with his eyes closed, he slipped towards death. then, out of remote areas of his soul, out of past times of his now weary life, a sound stirred up. it was a word, a syllable, which he, without thinking, with a slurred voice, spoke to himself, the old word which is the beginning and the end of all prayers of the brahmans, the holy "om", which roughly means "that what is perfect" or "the completion". and in the moment when the sound of "om" touched siddhartha's ear, his dormant spirit suddenly woke up and realized the foolishness of his actions. siddhartha was deeply shocked. so this was how things were with him, so doomed was he, so much he had lost his way and was forsaken by all knowledge, that he had been able to seek death, that this wish, this wish of a child, had been able to grow in him: to find rest by annihilating his body! what all agony of these recent times, all sobering realizations, all desperation had not brought about, this was brought on by this moment, when the om entered his consciousness: he became aware of himself in his misery and in his error. om! he spoke to himself: om! and again he knew about brahman, knew about the indestructibility of life, knew about all that is divine, which he had forgotten. but this was only a moment, flash. by the foot of the coconut-tree, siddhartha collapsed, struck down by tiredness, mumbling om, placed his head on the root of the tree and fell into a deep sleep. deep was his sleep and without dreams, for a long time he had not known such a sleep any more. when he woke up after many hours, he felt as if ten years had passed, he heard the water quietly flowing, did not know where he was and who had brought him here, opened his eyes, saw with astonishment that there were trees and the sky above him, and he remembered where he was and how he got here. but it took him a long while for this, and the past seemed to him as if it had been covered by a veil, infinitely distant, infinitely far away, infinitely meaningless. he only knew that his previous life (in the first moment when he thought about it, this past life seemed to him like a very old, previous incarnation, like an early pre-birth of his present self)--that his previous life had been abandoned by him, that, full of disgust and wretchedness, he had even intended to throw his life away, but that by a river, under a coconut-tree, he has come to his senses, the holy word om on his lips, that then he had fallen asleep and had now woken up and was looking at the world as a new man. quietly, he spoke the word om to himself, speaking which he had fallen asleep, and it seemed to him as if his entire long sleep had been nothing but a long meditative recitation of om, a thinking of om, a submergence and complete entering into om, into the nameless, the perfected. what a wonderful sleep had this been! never before by sleep, he had been thus refreshed, thus renewed, thus rejuvenated! perhaps, he had really died, had drowned and was reborn in a new body? but no, he knew himself, he knew his hand and his feet, knew the place where he lay, knew this self in his chest, this siddhartha, the eccentric, the weird one, but this siddhartha was nevertheless transformed, was renewed, was strangely well rested, strangely awake, joyful and curious. siddhartha straightened up, then he saw a person sitting opposite to him, an unknown man, a monk in a yellow robe with a shaven head, sitting in the position of pondering. he observed the man, who had neither hair on his head nor a beard, and he had not observed him for long when he recognised this monk as govinda, the friend of his youth, govinda who had taken his refuge with the exalted buddha. govinda had aged, he too, but still his face bore the same features, expressed zeal, faithfulness, searching, timidness. but when govinda now, sensing his gaze, opened his eyes and looked at him, siddhartha saw that govinda did not recognise him. govinda was happy to find him awake; apparently, he had been sitting here for a long time and been waiting for him to wake up, though he did not know him. "i have been sleeping," said siddhartha. "however did you get here?" "you have been sleeping," answered govinda. "it is not good to be sleeping in such places, where snakes often are and the animals of the forest have their paths. i, oh sir, am a follower of the exalted gotama, the buddha, the sakyamuni, and have been on a pilgrimage together with several of us on this path, when i saw you lying and sleeping in a place where it is dangerous to sleep. therefore, i sought to wake you up, oh sir, and since i saw that your sleep was very deep, i stayed behind from my group and sat with you. and then, so it seems, i have fallen asleep myself, i who wanted to guard your sleep. badly, i have served you, tiredness has overwhelmed me. but now that you're awake, let me go to catch up with my brothers." "i thank you, samana, for watching out over my sleep," spoke siddhartha. "you're friendly, you followers of the exalted one. now you may go then." "i'm going, sir. may you, sir, always be in good health." "i thank you, samana." govinda made the gesture of a salutation and said: "farewell." "farewell, govinda," said siddhartha. the monk stopped. "permit me to ask, sir, from where do you know my name?" now, siddhartha smiled. "i know you, oh govinda, from your father's hut, and from the school of the brahmans, and from the offerings, and from our walk to the samanas, and from that hour when you took your refuge with the exalted one in the grove jetavana." "you're siddhartha," govinda exclaimed loudly. "now, i'm recognising you, and don't comprehend any more how i couldn't recognise you right away. be welcome, siddhartha, my joy is great, to see you again." "it also gives me joy, to see you again. you've been the guard of my sleep, again i thank you for this, though i wouldn't have required any guard. where are you going to, oh friend?" "i'm going nowhere. we monks are always travelling, whenever it is not the rainy season, we always move from one place to another, live according to the rules if the teachings passed on to us, accept alms, move on. it is always like this. but you, siddhartha, where are you going to?" quoth siddhartha: "with me too, friend, it is as it is with you. i'm going nowhere. i'm just travelling. i'm on a pilgrimage." govinda spoke: "you're saying: you're on a pilgrimage, and i believe in you. but, forgive me, oh siddhartha, you do not look like a pilgrim. you're wearing a rich man's garments, you're wearing the shoes of a distinguished gentleman, and your hair, with the fragrance of perfume, is not a pilgrim's hair, not the hair of a samana." "right so, my dear, you have observed well, your keen eyes see everything. but i haven't said to you that i was a samana. i said: i'm on a pilgrimage. and so it is: i'm on a pilgrimage." "you're on a pilgrimage," said govinda. "but few would go on a pilgrimage in such clothes, few in such shoes, few with such hair. never i have met such a pilgrim, being a pilgrim myself for many years." "i believe you, my dear govinda. but now, today, you've met a pilgrim just like this, wearing such shoes, such a garment. remember, my dear: not eternal is the world of appearances, not eternal, anything but eternal are our garments and the style of our hair, and our hair and bodies themselves. i'm wearing a rich man's clothes, you've seen this quite right. i'm wearing them, because i have been a rich man, and i'm wearing my hair like the worldly and lustful people, for i have been one of them." "and now, siddhartha, what are you now?" "i don't know it, i don't know it just like you. i'm travelling. i was a rich man and am no rich man any more, and what i'll be tomorrow, i don't know." "you've lost your riches?" "i've lost them or they me. they somehow happened to slip away from me. the wheel of physical manifestations is turning quickly, govinda. where is siddhartha the brahman? where is siddhartha the samana? where is siddhartha the rich man? non-eternal things change quickly, govinda, you know it." govinda looked at the friend of his youth for a long time, with doubt in his eyes. after that, he gave him the salutation which one would use on a gentleman and went on his way. with a smiling face, siddhartha watched him leave, he loved him still, this faithful man, this fearful man. and how could he not have loved everybody and everything in this moment, in the glorious hour after his wonderful sleep, filled with om! the enchantment, which had happened inside of him in his sleep and by means of the om, was this very thing that he loved everything, that he was full of joyful love for everything he saw. and it was this very thing, so it seemed to him now, which had been his sickness before, that he was not able to love anybody or anything. with a smiling face, siddhartha watched the leaving monk. the sleep had strengthened him much, but hunger gave him much pain, for by now he had not eaten for two days, and the times were long past when he had been tough against hunger. with sadness, and yet also with a smile, he thought of that time. in those days, so he remembered, he had boasted of three things to kamala, had been able to do three noble and undefeatable feats: fasting--waiting--thinking. these had been his possession, his power and strength, his solid staff; in the busy, laborious years of his youth, he had learned these three feats, nothing else. and now, they had abandoned him, none of them was his any more, neither fasting, nor waiting, nor thinking. for the most wretched things, he had given them up, for what fades most quickly, for sensual lust, for the good life, for riches! his life had indeed been strange. and now, so it seemed, now he had really become a childlike person. siddhartha thought about his situation. thinking was hard on him, he did not really feel like it, but he forced himself. now, he thought, since all these most easily perishing things have slipped from me again, now i'm standing here under the sun again just as i have been standing here a little child, nothing is mine, i have no abilities, there is nothing i could bring about, i have learned nothing. how wondrous is this! now, that i'm no longer young, that my hair is already half gray, that my strength is fading, now i'm starting again at the beginning and as a child! again, he had to smile. yes, his fate had been strange! things were going downhill with him, and now he was again facing the world void and naked and stupid. but he could not feed sad about this, no, he even felt a great urge to laugh, to laugh about himself, to laugh about this strange, foolish world. "things are going downhill with you!" he said to himself, and laughed about it, and as he was saying it, he happened to glance at the river, and he also saw the river going downhill, always moving on downhill, and singing and being happy through it all. he liked this well, kindly he smiled at the river. was this not the river in which he had intended to drown himself, in past times, a hundred years ago, or had he dreamed this? wondrous indeed was my life, so he thought, wondrous detours it has taken. as a boy, i had only to do with gods and offerings. as a youth, i had only to do with asceticism, with thinking and meditation, was searching for brahman, worshipped the eternal in the atman. but as a young man, i followed the penitents, lived in the forest, suffered of heat and frost, learned to hunger, taught my body to become dead. wonderfully, soon afterwards, insight came towards me in the form of the great buddha's teachings, i felt the knowledge of the oneness of the world circling in me like my own blood. but i also had to leave buddha and the great knowledge. i went and learned the art of love with kamala, learned trading with kamaswami, piled up money, wasted money, learned to love my stomach, learned to please my senses. i had to spend many years losing my spirit, to unlearn thinking again, to forget the oneness. isn't it just as if i had turned slowly and on a long detour from a man into a child, from a thinker into a childlike person? and yet, this path has been very good; and yet, the bird in my chest has not died. but what a path has this been! i had to pass through so much stupidity, through so much vices, through so many errors, through so much disgust and disappointments and woe, just to become a child again and to be able to start over. but it was right so, my heart says "yes" to it, my eyes smile to it. i've had to experience despair, i've had to sink down to the most foolish one of all thoughts, to the thought of suicide, in order to be able to experience divine grace, to hear om again, to be able to sleep properly and awake properly again. i had to become a fool, to find atman in me again. i had to sin, to be able to live again. where else might my path lead me to? it is foolish, this path, it moves in loops, perhaps it is going around in a circle. let it go as it likes, i want to take it. wonderfully, he felt joy rolling like waves in his chest. wherever from, he asked his heart, where from did you get this happiness? might it come from that long, good sleep, which has done me so good? or from the word om, which i said? or from the fact that i have escaped, that i have completely fled, that i am finally free again and am standing like a child under the sky? oh how good is it to have fled, to have become free! how clean and beautiful is the air here, how good to breathe! there, where i ran away from, there everything smelled of ointments, of spices, of wine, of excess, of sloth. how did i hate this world of the rich, of those who revel in fine food, of the gamblers! how did i hate myself for staying in this terrible world for so long! how did i hate myself, have deprive, poisoned, tortured myself, have made myself old and evil! no, never again i will, as i used to like doing so much, delude myself into thinking that siddhartha was wise! but this one thing i have done well, this i like, this i must praise, that there is now an end to that hatred against myself, to that foolish and dreary life! i praise you, siddhartha, after so many years of foolishness, you have once again had an idea, have done something, have heard the bird in your chest singing and have followed it! thus he praised himself, found joy in himself, listened curiously to his stomach, which was rumbling with hunger. he had now, so he felt, in these recent times and days, completely tasted and spit out, devoured up to the point of desperation and death, a piece of suffering, a piece of misery. like this, it was good. for much longer, he could have stayed with kamaswami, made money, wasted money, filled his stomach, and let his soul die of thirst; for much longer he could have lived in this soft, well upholstered hell, if this had not happened: the moment of complete hopelessness and despair, that most extreme moment, when he hung over the rushing waters and was ready to destroy himself. that he had felt this despair, this deep disgust, and that he had not succumbed to it, that the bird, the joyful source and voice in him was still alive after all, this was why he felt joy, this was why he laughed, this was why his face was smiling brightly under his hair which had turned gray. "it is good," he thought, "to get a taste of everything for oneself, which one needs to know. that lust for the world and riches do not belong to the good things, i have already learned as a child. i have known it for a long time, but i have experienced only now. and now i know it, don't just know it in my memory, but in my eyes, in my heart, in my stomach. good for me, to know this!" for a long time, he pondered his transformation, listened to the bird, as it sang for joy. had not this bird died in him, had he not felt its death? no, something else from within him had died, something which already for a long time had yearned to die. was it not this what he used to intend to kill in his ardent years as a penitent? was this not his self, his small, frightened, and proud self, he had wrestled with for so many years, which had defeated him again and again, which was back again after every killing, prohibited joy, felt fear? was it not this, which today had finally come to its death, here in the forest, by this lovely river? was it not due to this death, that he was now like a child, so full of trust, so without fear, so full of joy? now siddhartha also got some idea of why he had fought this self in vain as a brahman, as a penitent. too much knowledge had held him back, too many holy verses, too many sacrificial rules, to much self-castigation, so much doing and striving for that goal! full of arrogance, he had been, always the smartest, always working the most, always one step ahead of all others, always the knowing and spiritual one, always the priest or wise one. into being a priest, into this arrogance, into this spirituality, his self had retreated, there it sat firmly and grew, while he thought he would kill it by fasting and penance. now he saw it and saw that the secret voice had been right, that no teacher would ever have been able to bring about his salvation. therefore, he had to go out into the world, lose himself to lust and power, to woman and money, had to become a merchant, a dice-gambler, a drinker, and a greedy person, until the priest and samana in him was dead. therefore, he had to continue bearing these ugly years, bearing the disgust, the teachings, the pointlessness of a dreary and wasted life up to the end, up to bitter despair, until siddhartha the lustful, siddhartha the greedy could also die. he had died, a new siddhartha had woken up from the sleep. he would also grow old, he would also eventually have to die, mortal was siddhartha, mortal was every physical form. but today he was young, was a child, the new siddhartha, and was full of joy. he thought these thoughts, listened with a smile to his stomach, listened gratefully to a buzzing bee. cheerfully, he looked into the rushing river, never before he had liked a water so well as this one, never before he had perceived the voice and the parable of the moving water thus strongly and beautifully. it seemed to him, as if the river had something special to tell him, something he did not know yet, which was still awaiting him. in this river, siddhartha had intended to drown himself, in it the old, tired, desperate siddhartha had drowned today. but the new siddhartha felt a deep love for this rushing water, and decided for himself, not to leave it very soon. the ferryman by this river i want to stay, thought siddhartha, it is the same which i have crossed a long time ago on my way to the childlike people, a friendly ferryman had guided me then, he is the one i want to go to, starting out from his hut, my path had led me at that time into a new life, which had now grown old and is dead--my present path, my present new life, shall also take its start there! tenderly, he looked into the rushing water, into the transparent green, into the crystal lines of its drawing, so rich in secrets. bright pearls he saw rising from the deep, quiet bubbles of air floating on the reflecting surface, the blue of the sky being depicted in it. with a thousand eyes, the river looked at him, with green ones, with white ones, with crystal ones, with sky-blue ones. how did he love this water, how did it delight him, how grateful was he to it! in his heart he heard the voice talking, which was newly awaking, and it told him: love this water! stay near it! learn from it! oh yes, he wanted to learn from it, he wanted to listen to it. he who would understand this water and its secrets, so it seemed to him, would also understand many other things, many secrets, all secrets. but out of all secrets of the river, he today only saw one, this one touched his soul. he saw: this water ran and ran, incessantly it ran, and was nevertheless always there, was always at all times the same and yet new in every moment! great be he who would grasp this, understand this! he understood and grasped it not, only felt some idea of it stirring, a distant memory, divine voices. siddhartha rose, the workings of hunger in his body became unbearable. in a daze he walked on, up the path by the bank, upriver, listened to the current, listened to the rumbling hunger in his body. when he reached the ferry, the boat was just ready, and the same ferryman who had once transported the young samana across the river, stood in the boat, siddhartha recognised him, he had also aged very much. "would you like to ferry me over?" he asked. the ferryman, being astonished to see such an elegant man walking along and on foot, took him into his boat and pushed it off the bank. "it's a beautiful life you have chosen for yourself," the passenger spoke. "it must be beautiful to live by this water every day and to cruise on it." with a smile, the man at the oar moved from side to side: "it is beautiful, sir, it is as you say. but isn't every life, isn't every work beautiful?" "this may be true. but i envy you for yours." "ah, you would soon stop enjoying it. this is nothing for people wearing fine clothes." siddhartha laughed. "once before, i have been looked upon today because of my clothes, i have been looked upon with distrust. wouldn't you, ferryman, like to accept these clothes, which are a nuisance to me, from me? for you must know, i have no money to pay your fare." "you're joking, sir," the ferryman laughed. "i'm not joking, friend. behold, once before you have ferried me across this water in your boat for the immaterial reward of a good deed. thus, do it today as well, and accept my clothes for it." "and do you, sir, intent to continue travelling without clothes?" "ah, most of all i wouldn't want to continue travelling at all. most of all i would like you, ferryman, to give me an old loincloth and kept me with you as your assistant, or rather as your trainee, for i'll have to learn first how to handle the boat." for a long time, the ferryman looked at the stranger, searching. "now i recognise you," he finally said. "at one time, you've slept in my hut, this was a long time ago, possibly more than twenty years ago, and you've been ferried across the river by me, and we parted like good friends. haven't you've been a samana? i can't think of your name any more." "my name is siddhartha, and i was a samana, when you've last seen me." "so be welcome, siddhartha. my name is vasudeva. you will, so i hope, be my guest today as well and sleep in my hut, and tell me, where you're coming from and why these beautiful clothes are such a nuisance to you." they had reached the middle of the river, and vasudeva pushed the oar with more strength, in order to overcome the current. he worked calmly, his eyes fixed in on the front of the boat, with brawny arms. siddhartha sat and watched him, and remembered, how once before, on that last day of his time as a samana, love for this man had stirred in his heart. gratefully, he accepted vasudeva's invitation. when they had reached the bank, he helped him to tie the boat to the stakes; after this, the ferryman asked him to enter the hut, offered him bread and water, and siddhartha ate with eager pleasure, and also ate with eager pleasure of the mango fruits, vasudeva offered him. afterwards, it was almost the time of the sunset, they sat on a log by the bank, and siddhartha told the ferryman about where he originally came from and about his life, as he had seen it before his eyes today, in that hour of despair. until late at night, lasted his tale. vasudeva listened with great attention. listening carefully, he let everything enter his mind, birthplace and childhood, all that learning, all that searching, all joy, all distress. this was among the ferryman's virtues one of the greatest: like only a few, he knew how to listen. without him having spoken a word, the speaker sensed how vasudeva let his words enter his mind, quiet, open, waiting, how he did not lose a single one, awaited not a single one with impatience, did not add his praise or rebuke, was just listening. siddhartha felt, what a happy fortune it is, to confess to such a listener, to bury in his heart his own life, his own search, his own suffering. but in the end of siddhartha's tale, when he spoke of the tree by the river, and of his deep fall, of the holy om, and how he had felt such a love for the river after his slumber, the ferryman listened with twice the attention, entirely and completely absorbed by it, with his eyes closed. but when siddhartha fell silent, and a long silence had occurred, then vasudeva said: "it is as i thought. the river has spoken to you. it is your friend as well, it speaks to you as well. that is good, that is very good. stay with me, siddhartha, my friend. i used to have a wife, her bed was next to mine, but she has died a long time ago, for a long time, i have lived alone. now, you shall live with me, there is space and food for both." "i thank you," said siddhartha, "i thank you and accept. and i also thank you for this, vasudeva, for listening to me so well! these people are rare who know how to listen. and i did not meet a single one who knew it as well as you did. i will also learn in this respect from you." "you will learn it," spoke vasudeva, "but not from me. the river has taught me to listen, from it you will learn it as well. it knows everything, the river, everything can be learned from it. see, you've already learned this from the water too, that it is good to strive downwards, to sink, to seek depth. the rich and elegant siddhartha is becoming an oarsman's servant, the learned brahman siddhartha becomes a ferryman: this has also been told to you by the river. you'll learn that other thing from it as well." quoth siddhartha after a long pause: "what other thing, vasudeva?" vasudeva rose. "it is late," he said, "let's go to sleep. i can't tell you that other thing, oh friend. you'll learn it, or perhaps you know it already. see, i'm no learned man, i have no special skill in speaking, i also have no special skill in thinking. all i'm able to do is to listen and to be godly, i have learned nothing else. if i was able to say and teach it, i might be a wise man, but like this i am only a ferryman, and it is my task to ferry people across the river. i have transported many, thousands; and to all of them, my river has been nothing but an obstacle on their travels. they travelled to seek money and business, and for weddings, and on pilgrimages, and the river was obstructing their path, and the ferryman's job was to get them quickly across that obstacle. but for some among thousands, a few, four or five, the river has stopped being an obstacle, they have heard its voice, they have listened to it, and the river has become sacred to them, as it has become sacred to me. let's rest now, siddhartha." siddhartha stayed with the ferryman and learned to operate the boat, and when there was nothing to do at the ferry, he worked with vasudeva in the rice-field, gathered wood, plucked the fruit off the banana-trees. he learned to build an oar, and learned to mend the boat, and to weave baskets, and was joyful because of everything he learned, and the days and months passed quickly. but more than vasudeva could teach him, he was taught by the river. incessantly, he learned from it. most of all, he learned from it to listen, to pay close attention with a quiet heart, with a waiting, opened soul, without passion, without a wish, without judgement, without an opinion. in a friendly manner, he lived side by side with vasudeva, and occasionally they exchanged some words, few and at length thought about words. vasudeva was no friend of words; rarely, siddhartha succeeded in persuading him to speak. "did you," so he asked him at one time, "did you too learn that secret from the river: that there is no time?" vasudeva's face was filled with a bright smile. "yes, siddhartha," he spoke. "it is this what you mean, isn't it: that the river is everywhere at once, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains, everywhere at once, and that there is only the present time for it, not the shadow of the past, not the shadow of the future?" "this it is," said siddhartha. "and when i had learned it, i looked at my life, and it was also a river, and the boy siddhartha was only separated from the man siddhartha and from the old man siddhartha by a shadow, not by something real. also, siddhartha's previous births were no past, and his death and his return to brahma was no future. nothing was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has existence and is present." siddhartha spoke with ecstasy; deeply, this enlightenment had delighted him. oh, was not all suffering time, were not all forms of tormenting oneself and being afraid time, was not everything hard, everything hostile in the world gone and overcome as soon as one had overcome time, as soon as time would have been put out of existence by one's thoughts? in ecstatic delight, he had spoken, but vasudeva smiled at him brightly and nodded in confirmation; silently he nodded, brushed his hand over siddhartha's shoulder, turned back to his work. and once again, when the river had just increased its flow in the rainy season and made a powerful noise, then said siddhartha: "isn't it so, oh friend, the river has many voices, very many voices? hasn't it the voice of a king, and of a warrior, and of a bull, and of a bird of the night, and of a woman giving birth, and of a sighing man, and a thousand other voices more?" "so it is," vasudeva nodded, "all voices of the creatures are in its voice." "and do you know," siddhartha continued, "what word it speaks, when you succeed in hearing all of its ten thousand voices at once?" happily, vasudeva's face was smiling, he bent over to siddhartha and spoke the holy om into his ear. and this had been the very thing which siddhartha had also been hearing. and time after time, his smile became more similar to the ferryman's, became almost just as bright, almost just as throughly glowing with bliss, just as shining out of thousand small wrinkles, just as alike to a child's, just as alike to an old man's. many travellers, seeing the two ferrymen, thought they were brothers. often, they sat in the evening together by the bank on the log, said nothing and both listened to the water, which was no water to them, but the voice of life, the voice of what exists, of what is eternally taking shape. and it happened from time to time that both, when listening to the river, thought of the same things, of a conversation from the day before yesterday, of one of their travellers, the face and fate of whom had occupied their thoughts, of death, of their childhood, and that they both in the same moment, when the river had been saying something good to them, looked at each other, both thinking precisely the same thing, both delighted about the same answer to the same question. there was something about this ferry and the two ferrymen which was transmitted to others, which many of the travellers felt. it happened occasionally that a traveller, after having looked at the face of one of the ferrymen, started to tell the story of his life, told about pains, confessed evil things, asked for comfort and advice. it happened occasionally that someone asked for permission to stay for a night with them to listen to the river. it also happened that curious people came, who had been told that there were two wise men, or sorcerers, or holy men living by that ferry. the curious people asked many questions, but they got no answers, and they found neither sorcerers nor wise men, they only found two friendly little old men, who seemed to be mute and to have become a bit strange and gaga. and the curious people laughed and were discussing how foolishly and gullibly the common people were spreading such empty rumours. the years passed by, and nobody counted them. then, at one time, monks came by on a pilgrimage, followers of gotama, the buddha, who were asking to be ferried across the river, and by them the ferrymen were told that they were most hurriedly walking back to their great teacher, for the news had spread the exalted one was deadly sick and would soon die his last human death, in order to become one with the salvation. it was not long, until a new flock of monks came along on their pilgrimage, and another one, and the monks as well as most of the other travellers and people walking through the land spoke of nothing else than of gotama and his impending death. and as people are flocking from everywhere and from all sides, when they are going to war or to the coronation of a king, and are gathering like ants in droves, thus they flocked, like being drawn on by a magic spell, to where the great buddha was awaiting his death, where the huge event was to take place and the great perfected one of an era was to become one with the glory. often, siddhartha thought in those days of the dying wise man, the great teacher, whose voice had admonished nations and had awoken hundreds of thousands, whose voice he had also once heard, whose holy face he had also once seen with respect. kindly, he thought of him, saw his path to perfection before his eyes, and remembered with a smile those words which he had once, as a young man, said to him, the exalted one. they had been, so it seemed to him, proud and precocious words; with a smile, he remembered them. for a long time he knew that there was nothing standing between gotama and him any more, though he was still unable to accept his teachings. no, there was no teaching a truly searching person, someone who truly wanted to find, could accept. but he who had found, he could approve of any teachings, every path, every goal, there was nothing standing between him and all the other thousand any more who lived in that what is eternal, who breathed what is divine. on one of these days, when so many went on a pilgrimage to the dying buddha, kamala also went to him, who used to be the most beautiful of the courtesans. a long time ago, she had retired from her previous life, had given her garden to the monks of gotama as a gift, had taken her refuge in the teachings, was among the friends and benefactors of the pilgrims. together with siddhartha the boy, her son, she had gone on her way due to the news of the near death of gotama, in simple clothes, on foot. with her little son, she was travelling by the river; but the boy had soon grown tired, desired to go back home, desired to rest, desired to eat, became disobedient and started whining. kamala often had to take a rest with him, he was accustomed to having his way against her, she had to feed him, had to comfort him, had to scold him. he did not comprehend why he had to go on this exhausting and sad pilgrimage with his mother, to an unknown place, to a stranger, who was holy and about to die. so what if he died, how did this concern the boy? the pilgrims were getting close to vasudeva's ferry, when little siddhartha once again forced his mother to rest. she, kamala herself, had also become tired, and while the boy was chewing a banana, she crouched down on the ground, closed her eyes a bit, and rested. but suddenly, she uttered a wailing scream, the boy looked at her in fear and saw her face having grown pale from horror; and from under her dress, a small, black snake fled, by which kamala had been bitten. hurriedly, they now both ran along the path, in order to reach people, and got near to the ferry, there kamala collapsed, and was not able to go any further. but the boy started crying miserably, only interrupting it to kiss and hug his mother, and she also joined his loud screams for help, until the sound reached vasudeva's ears, who stood at the ferry. quickly, he came walking, took the woman on his arms, carried her into the boat, the boy ran along, and soon they all reached the hut, were siddhartha stood by the stove and was just lighting the fire. he looked up and first saw the boy's face, which wondrously reminded him of something, like a warning to remember something he had forgotten. then he saw kamala, whom he instantly recognised, though she lay unconscious in the ferryman's arms, and now he knew that it was his own son, whose face had been such a warning reminder to him, and the heart stirred in his chest. kamala's wound was washed, but had already turned black and her body was swollen, she was made to drink a healing potion. her consciousness returned, she lay on siddhartha's bed in the hut and bent over her stood siddhartha, who used to love her so much. it seemed like a dream to her; with a smile, she looked at her friend's face; just slowly she, realized her situation, remembered the bite, called timidly for the boy. "he's with you, don't worry," said siddhartha. kamala looked into his eyes. she spoke with a heavy tongue, paralysed by the poison. "you've become old, my dear," she said, "you've become gray. but you are like the young samana, who at one time came without clothes, with dusty feet, to me into the garden. you are much more like him, than you were like him at that time when you had left me and kamaswami. in the eyes, you're like him, siddhartha. alas, i have also grown old, old--could you still recognise me?" siddhartha smiled: "instantly, i recognised you, kamala, my dear." kamala pointed to her boy and said: "did you recognise him as well? he is your son." her eyes became confused and fell shut. the boy wept, siddhartha took him on his knees, let him weep, petted his hair, and at the sight of the child's face, a brahman prayer came to his mind, which he had learned a long time ago, when he had been a little boy himself. slowly, with a singing voice, he started to speak; from his past and childhood, the words came flowing to him. and with that singsong, the boy became calm, was only now and then uttering a sob and fell asleep. siddhartha placed him on vasudeva's bed. vasudeva stood by the stove and cooked rice. siddhartha gave him a look, which he returned with a smile. "she'll die," siddhartha said quietly. vasudeva nodded; over his friendly face ran the light of the stove's fire. once again, kamala returned to consciousness. pain distorted her face, siddhartha's eyes read the suffering on her mouth, on her pale cheeks. quietly, he read it, attentively, waiting, his mind becoming one with her suffering. kamala felt it, her gaze sought his eyes. looking at him, she said: "now i see that your eyes have changed as well. they've become completely different. by what do i still recognise that you're siddhartha? it's you, and it's not you." siddhartha said nothing, quietly his eyes looked at hers. "you have achieved it?" she asked. "you have found peace?" he smiled and placed his hand on hers. "i'm seeing it," she said, "i'm seeing it. i too will find peace." "you have found it," siddhartha spoke in a whisper. kamala never stopped looking into his eyes. she thought about her pilgrimage to gotama, which she wanted to take, in order to see the face of the perfected one, to breathe his peace, and she thought that she had now found him in his place, and that it was good, just as good, as if she had seen the other one. she wanted to tell this to him, but the tongue no longer obeyed her will. without speaking, she looked at him, and he saw the life fading from her eyes. when the final pain filled her eyes and made them grow dim, when the final shiver ran through her limbs, his finger closed her eyelids. for a long time, he sat and looked at her peacefully dead face. for a long time, he observed her mouth, her old, tired mouth, with those lips, which had become thin, and he remembered, that he used to, in the spring of his years, compare this mouth with a freshly cracked fig. for a long time, he sat, read in the pale face, in the tired wrinkles, filled himself with this sight, saw his own face lying in the same manner, just as white, just as quenched out, and saw at the same time his face and hers being young, with red lips, with fiery eyes, and the feeling of this both being present and at the same time real, the feeling of eternity, completely filled every aspect of his being. deeply he felt, more deeply than ever before, in this hour, the indestructibility of every life, the eternity of every moment. when he rose, vasudeva had prepared rice for him. but siddhartha did not eat. in the stable, where their goat stood, the two old men prepared beds of straw for themselves, and vasudeva lay himself down to sleep. but siddhartha went outside and sat this night before the hut, listening to the river, surrounded by the past, touched and encircled by all times of his life at the same time. but occasionally, he rose, stepped to the door of the hut and listened, whether the boy was sleeping. early in the morning, even before the sun could be seen, vasudeva came out of the stable and walked over to his friend. "you haven't slept," he said. "no, vasudeva. i sat here, i was listening to the river. a lot it has told me, deeply it has filled me with the healing thought, with the thought of oneness." "you've experienced suffering, siddhartha, but i see: no sadness has entered your heart." "no, my dear, how should i be sad? i, who have been rich and happy, have become even richer and happier now. my son has been given to me." "your son shall be welcome to me as well. but now, siddhartha, let's get to work, there is much to be done. kamala has died on the same bed, on which my wife had died a long time ago. let us also build kamala's funeral pile on the same hill on which i had then built my wife's funeral pile." while the boy was still asleep, they built the funeral pile. the son timid and weeping, the boy had attended his mother's funeral; gloomy and shy, he had listened to siddhartha, who greeted him as his son and welcomed him at his place in vasudeva's hut. pale, he sat for many days by the hill of the dead, did not want to eat, gave no open look, did not open his heart, met his fate with resistance and denial. siddhartha spared him and let him do as he pleased, he honoured his mourning. siddhartha understood that his son did not know him, that he could not love him like a father. slowly, he also saw and understood that the eleven-year-old was a pampered boy, a mother's boy, and that he had grown up in the habits of rich people, accustomed to finer food, to a soft bed, accustomed to giving orders to servants. siddhartha understood that the mourning, pampered child could not suddenly and willingly be content with a life among strangers and in poverty. he did not force him, he did many a chore for him, always picked the best piece of the meal for him. slowly, he hoped to win him over, by friendly patience. rich and happy, he had called himself, when the boy had come to him. since time had passed on in the meantime, and the boy remained a stranger and in a gloomy disposition, since he displayed a proud and stubbornly disobedient heart, did not want to do any work, did not pay his respect to the old men, stole from vasudeva's fruit-trees, then siddhartha began to understand that his son had not brought him happiness and peace, but suffering and worry. but he loved him, and he preferred the suffering and worries of love over happiness and joy without the boy. since young siddhartha was in the hut, the old men had split the work. vasudeva had again taken on the job of the ferryman all by himself, and siddhartha, in order to be with his son, did the work in the hut and the field. for a long time, for long months, siddhartha waited for his son to understand him, to accept his love, to perhaps reciprocate it. for long months, vasudeva waited, watching, waited and said nothing. one day, when siddhartha the younger had once again tormented his father very much with spite and an unsteadiness in his wishes and had broken both of his rice-bowls, vasudeva took in the evening his friend aside and talked to him. "pardon me." he said, "from a friendly heart, i'm talking to you. i'm seeing that you are tormenting yourself, i'm seeing that you're in grief. your son, my dear, is worrying you, and he is also worrying me. that young bird is accustomed to a different life, to a different nest. he has not, like you, ran away from riches and the city, being disgusted and fed up with it; against his will, he had to leave all this behind. i asked the river, oh friend, many times i have asked it. but the river laughs, it laughs at me, it laughs at you and me, and is shaking with laughter at our foolishness. water wants to join water, youth wants to join youth, your son is not in the place where he can prosper. you too should ask the river; you too should listen to it!" troubled, siddhartha looked into his friendly face, in the many wrinkles of which there was incessant cheerfulness. "how could i part with him?" he said quietly, ashamed. "give me some more time, my dear! see, i'm fighting for him, i'm seeking to win his heart, with love and with friendly patience i intent to capture it. one day, the river shall also talk to him, he also is called upon." vasudeva's smile flourished more warmly. "oh yes, he too is called upon, he too is of the eternal life. but do we, you and me, know what he is called upon to do, what path to take, what actions to perform, what pain to endure? not a small one, his pain will be; after all, his heart is proud and hard, people like this have to suffer a lot, err a lot, do much injustice, burden themselves with much sin. tell me, my dear: you're not taking control of your son's upbringing? you don't force him? you don't beat him? you don't punish him?" "no, vasudeva, i don't do anything of this." "i knew it. you don't force him, don't beat him, don't give him orders, because you know that 'soft' is stronger than 'hard', water stronger than rocks, love stronger than force. very good, i praise you. but aren't you mistaken in thinking that you wouldn't force him, wouldn't punish him? don't you shackle him with your love? don't you make him feel inferior every day, and don't you make it even harder on him with your kindness and patience? don't you force him, the arrogant and pampered boy, to live in a hut with two old banana-eaters, to whom even rice is a delicacy, whose thoughts can't be his, whose hearts are old and quiet and beats in a different pace than his? isn't forced, isn't he punished by all this?" troubled, siddhartha looked to the ground. quietly, he asked: "what do you think should i do?" quoth vasudeva: "bring him into the city, bring him into his mother's house, there'll still be servants around, give him to them. and when there aren't any around any more, bring him to a teacher, not for the teachings' sake, but so that he shall be among other boys, and among girls, and in the world which is his own. have you never thought of this?" "you're seeing into my heart," siddhartha spoke sadly. "often, i have thought of this. but look, how shall i put him, who had no tender heart anyhow, into this world? won't he become exuberant, won't he lose himself to pleasure and power, won't he repeat all of his father's mistakes, won't he perhaps get entirely lost in sansara?" brightly, the ferryman's smile lit up; softly, he touched siddhartha's arm and said: "ask the river about it, my friend! hear it laugh about it! would you actually believe that you had committed your foolish acts in order to spare your son from committing them too? and could you in any way protect your son from sansara? how could you? by means of teachings, prayer, admonition? my dear, have you entirely forgotten that story, that story containing so many lessons, that story about siddhartha, a brahman's son, which you once told me here on this very spot? who has kept the samana siddhartha safe from sansara, from sin, from greed, from foolishness? were his father's religious devotion, his teachers warnings, his own knowledge, his own search able to keep him safe? which father, which teacher had been able to protect him from living his life for himself, from soiling himself with life, from burdening himself with guilt, from drinking the bitter drink for himself, from finding his path for himself? would you think, my dear, anybody might perhaps be spared from taking this path? that perhaps your little son would be spared, because you love him, because you would like to keep him from suffering and pain and disappointment? but even if you would die ten times for him, you would not be able to take the slightest part of his destiny upon yourself." never before, vasudeva had spoken so many words. kindly, siddhartha thanked him, went troubled into the hut, could not sleep for a long time. vasudeva had told him nothing, he had not already thought and known for himself. but this was a knowledge he could not act upon, stronger than the knowledge was his love for the boy, stronger was his tenderness, his fear to lose him. had he ever lost his heart so much to something, had he ever loved any person thus, thus blindly, thus sufferingly, thus unsuccessfully, and yet thus happily? siddhartha could not heed his friend's advice, he could not give up the boy. he let the boy give him orders, he let him disregard him. he said nothing and waited; daily, he began the mute struggle of friendliness, the silent war of patience. vasudeva also said nothing and waited, friendly, knowing, patient. they were both masters of patience. at one time, when the boy's face reminded him very much of kamala, siddhartha suddenly had to think of a line which kamala a long time ago, in the days of their youth, had once said to him. "you cannot love," she had said to him, and he had agreed with her and had compared himself with a star, while comparing the childlike people with falling leaves, and nevertheless he had also sensed an accusation in that line. indeed, he had never been able to lose or devote himself completely to another person, to forget himself, to commit foolish acts for the love of another person; never he had been able to do this, and this was, as it had seemed to him at that time, the great distinction which set him apart from the childlike people. but now, since his son was here, now he, siddhartha, had also become completely a childlike person, suffering for the sake of another person, loving another person, lost to a love, having become a fool on account of love. now he too felt, late, once in his lifetime, this strongest and strangest of all passions, suffered from it, suffered miserably, and was nevertheless in bliss, was nevertheless renewed in one respect, enriched by one thing. he did sense very well that this love, this blind love for his son, was a passion, something very human, that it was sansara, a murky source, dark waters. nevertheless, he felt at the same time, it was not worthless, it was necessary, came from the essence of his own being. this pleasure also had to be atoned for, this pain also had to be endured, these foolish acts also had to be committed. through all this, the son let him commit his foolish acts, let him court for his affection, let him humiliate himself every day by giving in to his moods. this father had nothing which would have delighted him and nothing which he would have feared. he was a good man, this father, a good, kind, soft man, perhaps a very devout man, perhaps a saint, all these were no attributes which could win the boy over. he was bored by this father, who kept him prisoner here in this miserable hut of his, he was bored by him, and for him to answer every naughtiness with a smile, every insult with friendliness, every viciousness with kindness, this very thing was the hated trick of this old sneak. much more the boy would have liked it if he had been threatened by him, if he had been abused by him. a day came, when what young siddhartha had on his mind came bursting forth, and he openly turned against his father. the latter had given him a task, he had told him to gather brushwood. but the boy did not leave the hut, in stubborn disobedience and rage he stayed where he was, thumped on the ground with his feet, clenched his fists, and screamed in a powerful outburst his hatred and contempt into his father's face. "get the brushwood for yourself!" he shouted foaming at the mouth, "i'm not your servant. i do know, that you won't hit me, you don't dare; i do know, that you constantly want to punish me and put me down with your religious devotion and your indulgence. you want me to become like you, just as devout, just as soft, just as wise! but i, listen up, just to make you suffer, i rather want to become a highway-robber and murderer, and go to hell, than to become like you! i hate you, you're not my father, and if you've ten times been my mother's fornicator!" rage and grief boiled over in him, foamed at the father in a hundred savage and evil words. then the boy ran away and only returned late at night. but the next morning, he had disappeared. what had also disappeared was a small basket, woven out of bast of two colours, in which the ferrymen kept those copper and silver coins which they received as a fare. the boat had also disappeared, siddhartha saw it lying by the opposite bank. the boy had ran away. "i must follow him," said siddhartha, who had been shivering with grief since those ranting speeches, the boy had made yesterday. "a child can't go through the forest all alone. he'll perish. we must build a raft, vasudeva, to get over the water." "we will build a raft," said vasudeva, "to get our boat back, which the boy has taken away. but him, you shall let run along, my friend, he is no child any more, he knows how to get around. he's looking for the path to the city, and he is right, don't forget that. he's doing what you've failed to do yourself. he's taking care of himself, he's taking his course. alas, siddhartha, i see you suffering, but you're suffering a pain at which one would like to laugh, at which you'll soon laugh for yourself." siddhartha did not answer. he already held the axe in his hands and began to make a raft of bamboo, and vasudeva helped him to tie the canes together with ropes of grass. then they crossed over, drifted far off their course, pulled the raft upriver on the opposite bank. "why did you take the axe along?" asked siddhartha. vasudeva said: "it might have been possible that the oar of our boat got lost." but siddhartha knew what his friend was thinking. he thought, the boy would have thrown away or broken the oar in order to get even and in order to keep them from following him. and in fact, there was no oar left in the boat. vasudeva pointed to the bottom of the boat and looked at his friend with a smile, as if he wanted to say: "don't you see what your son is trying to tell you? don't you see that he doesn't want to be followed?" but he did not say this in words. he started making a new oar. but siddhartha bid his farewell, to look for the run-away. vasudeva did not stop him. when siddhartha had already been walking through the forest for a long time, the thought occurred to him that his search was useless. either, so he thought, the boy was far ahead and had already reached the city, or, if he should still be on his way, he would conceal himself from him, the pursuer. as he continued thinking, he also found that he, on his part, was not worried for his son, that he knew deep inside that he had neither perished nor was in any danger in the forest. nevertheless, he ran without stopping, no longer to save him, just to satisfy his desire, just to perhaps see him one more time. and he ran up to just outside of the city. when, near the city, he reached a wide road, he stopped, by the entrance of the beautiful pleasure-garden, which used to belong to kamala, where he had seen her for the first time in her sedan-chair. the past rose up in his soul, again he saw himself standing there, young, a bearded, naked samana, the hair full of dust. for a long time, siddhartha stood there and looked through the open gate into the garden, seeing monks in yellow robes walking among the beautiful trees. for a long time, he stood there, pondering, seeing images, listening to the story of his life. for a long time, he stood there, looked at the monks, saw young siddhartha in their place, saw young kamala walking among the high trees. clearly, he saw himself being served food and drink by kamala, receiving his first kiss from her, looking proudly and disdainfully back on his brahmanism, beginning proudly and full of desire his worldly life. he saw kamaswami, saw the servants, the orgies, the gamblers with the dice, the musicians, saw kamala's song-bird in the cage, lived through all this once again, breathed sansara, was once again old and tired, felt once again disgust, felt once again the wish to annihilate himself, was once again healed by the holy om. after having been standing by the gate of the garden for a long time, siddhartha realised that his desire was foolish, which had made him go up to this place, that he could not help his son, that he was not allowed to cling him. deeply, he felt the love for the run-away in his heart, like a wound, and he felt at the same time that this wound had not been given to him in order to turn the knife in it, that it had to become a blossom and had to shine. that this wound did not blossom yet, did not shine yet, at this hour, made him sad. instead of the desired goal, which had drawn him here following the runaway son, there was now emptiness. sadly, he sat down, felt something dying in his heart, experienced emptiness, saw no joy any more, no goal. he sat lost in thought and waited. this he had learned by the river, this one thing: waiting, having patience, listening attentively. and he sat and listened, in the dust of the road, listened to his heart, beating tiredly and sadly, waited for a voice. many an hour he crouched, listening, saw no images any more, fell into emptiness, let himself fall, without seeing a path. and when he felt the wound burning, he silently spoke the om, filled himself with om. the monks in the garden saw him, and since he crouched for many hours, and dust was gathering on his gray hair, one of them came to him and placed two bananas in front of him. the old man did not see him. from this petrified state, he was awoken by a hand touching his shoulder. instantly, he recognised this touch, this tender, bashful touch, and regained his senses. he rose and greeted vasudeva, who had followed him. and when he looked into vasudeva's friendly face, into the small wrinkles, which were as if they were filled with nothing but his smile, into the happy eyes, then he smiled too. now he saw the bananas lying in front of him, picked them up, gave one to the ferryman, ate the other one himself. after this, he silently went back into the forest with vasudeva, returned home to the ferry. neither one talked about what had happened today, neither one mentioned the boy's name, neither one spoke about him running away, neither one spoke about the wound. in the hut, siddhartha lay down on his bed, and when after a while vasudeva came to him, to offer him a bowl of coconut-milk, he already found him asleep. om for a long time, the wound continued to burn. many a traveller siddhartha had to ferry across the river who was accompanied by a son or a daughter, and he saw none of them without envying him, without thinking: "so many, so many thousands possess this sweetest of good fortunes--why don't i? even bad people, even thieves and robbers have children and love them, and are being loved by them, all except for me." thus simply, thus without reason he now thought, thus similar to the childlike people he had become. differently than before, he now looked upon people, less smart, less proud, but instead warmer, more curious, more involved. when he ferried travellers of the ordinary kind, childlike people, businessmen, warriors, women, these people did not seem alien to him as they used to: he understood them, he understood and shared their life, which was not guided by thoughts and insight, but solely by urges and wishes, he felt like them. though he was near perfection and was bearing his final wound, it still seemed to him as if those childlike people were his brothers, their vanities, desires for possession, and ridiculous aspects were no longer ridiculous to him, became understandable, became lovable, even became worthy of veneration to him. the blind love of a mother for her child, the stupid, blind pride of a conceited father for his only son, the blind, wild desire of a young, vain woman for jewelry and admiring glances from men, all of these urges, all of this childish stuff, all of these simple, foolish, but immensely strong, strongly living, strongly prevailing urges and desires were now no childish notions for siddhartha any more, he saw people living for their sake, saw them achieving infinitely much for their sake, travelling, conducting wars, suffering infinitely much, bearing infinitely much, and he could love them for it, he saw life, that what is alive, the indestructible, the brahman in each of their passions, each of their acts. worthy of love and admiration were these people in their blind loyalty, their blind strength and tenacity. they lacked nothing, there was nothing the knowledgeable one, the thinker, had to put him above them except for one little thing, a single, tiny, small thing: the consciousness, the conscious thought of the oneness of all life. and siddhartha even doubted in many an hour, whether this knowledge, this thought was to be valued thus highly, whether it might not also perhaps be a childish idea of the thinking people, of the thinking and childlike people. in all other respects, the worldly people were of equal rank to the wise men, were often far superior to them, just as animals too can, after all, in some moments, seem to be superior to humans in their tough, unrelenting performance of what is necessary. slowly blossomed, slowly ripened in siddhartha the realisation, the knowledge, what wisdom actually was, what the goal of his long search was. it was nothing but a readiness of the soul, an ability, a secret art, to think every moment, while living his life, the thought of oneness, to be able to feel and inhale the oneness. slowly this blossomed in him, was shining back at him from vasudeva's old, childlike face: harmony, knowledge of the eternal perfection of the world, smiling, oneness. but the wound still burned, longingly and bitterly siddhartha thought of his son, nurtured his love and tenderness in his heart, allowed the pain to gnaw at him, committed all foolish acts of love. not by itself, this flame would go out. and one day, when the wound burned violently, siddhartha ferried across the river, driven by a yearning, got off the boat and was willing to go to the city and to look for his son. the river flowed softly and quietly, it was the dry season, but its voice sounded strange: it laughed! it laughed clearly. the river laughed, it laughed brightly and clearly at the old ferryman. siddhartha stopped, he bent over the water, in order to hear even better, and he saw his face reflected in the quietly moving waters, and in this reflected face there was something, which reminded him, something he had forgotten, and as he thought about it, he found it: this face resembled another face, which he used to know and love and also fear. it resembled his father's face, the brahman. and he remembered how he, a long time ago, as a young man, had forced his father to let him go to the penitents, how he had bid his farewell to him, how he had gone and had never come back. had his father not also suffered the same pain for him, which he now suffered for his son? had his father not long since died, alone, without having seen his son again? did he not have to expect the same fate for himself? was it not a comedy, a strange and stupid matter, this repetition, this running around in a fateful circle? the river laughed. yes, so it was, everything came back, which had not been suffered and solved up to its end, the same pain was suffered over and over again. but siddhartha want back into the boat and ferried back to the hut, thinking of his father, thinking of his son, laughed at by the river, at odds with himself, tending towards despair, and not less tending towards laughing along at himself and the entire world. alas, the wound was not blossoming yet, his heart was still fighting his fate, cheerfulness and victory were not yet shining from his suffering. nevertheless, he felt hope, and once he had returned to the hut, he felt an undefeatable desire to open up to vasudeva, to show him everything, the master of listening, to say everything. vasudeva was sitting in the hut and weaving a basket. he no longer used the ferry-boat, his eyes were starting to get weak, and not just his eyes; his arms and hands as well. unchanged and flourishing was only the joy and the cheerful benevolence of his face. siddhartha sat down next to the old man, slowly he started talking. what they had never talked about, he now told him of, of his walk to the city, at that time, of the burning wound, of his envy at the sight of happy fathers, of his knowledge of the foolishness of such wishes, of his futile fight against them. he reported everything, he was able to say everything, even the most embarrassing parts, everything could be said, everything shown, everything he could tell. he presented his wound, also told how he fled today, how he ferried across the water, a childish run-away, willing to walk to the city, how the river had laughed. while he spoke, spoke for a long time, while vasudeva was listening with a quiet face, vasudeva's listening gave siddhartha a stronger sensation than ever before, he sensed how his pain, his fears flowed over to him, how his secret hope flowed over, came back at him from his counterpart. to show his wound to this listener was the same as bathing it in the river, until it had cooled and become one with the river. while he was still speaking, still admitting and confessing, siddhartha felt more and more that this was no longer vasudeva, no longer a human being, who was listening to him, that this motionless listener was absorbing his confession into himself like a tree the rain, that this motionless man was the river itself, that he was god himself, that he was the eternal itself. and while siddhartha stopped thinking of himself and his wound, this realisation of vasudeva's changed character took possession of him, and the more he felt it and entered into it, the less wondrous it became, the more he realised that everything was in order and natural, that vasudeva had already been like this for a long time, almost forever, that only he had not quite recognised it, yes, that he himself had almost reached the same state. he felt, that he was now seeing old vasudeva as the people see the gods, and that this could not last; in his heart, he started bidding his farewell to vasudeva. throughout all this, he talked incessantly. when he had finished talking, vasudeva turned his friendly eyes, which had grown slightly weak, at him, said nothing, let his silent love and cheerfulness, understanding and knowledge, shine at him. he took siddhartha's hand, led him to the seat by the bank, sat down with him, smiled at the river. "you've heard it laugh," he said. "but you haven't heard everything. let's listen, you'll hear more." they listened. softly sounded the river, singing in many voices. siddhartha looked into the water, and images appeared to him in the moving water: his father appeared, lonely, mourning for his son; he himself appeared, lonely, he also being tied with the bondage of yearning to his distant son; his son appeared, lonely as well, the boy, greedily rushing along the burning course of his young wishes, each one heading for his goal, each one obsessed by the goal, each one suffering. the river sang with a voice of suffering, longingly it sang, longingly, it flowed towards its goal, lamentingly its voice sang. "do you hear?" vasudeva's mute gaze asked. siddhartha nodded. "listen better!" vasudeva whispered. siddhartha made an effort to listen better. the image of his father, his own image, the image of his son merged, kamala's image also appeared and was dispersed, and the image of govinda, and other images, and they merged with each other, turned all into the river, headed all, being the river, for the goal, longing, desiring, suffering, and the river's voice sounded full of yearning, full of burning woe, full of unsatisfiable desire. for the goal, the river was heading, siddhartha saw it hurrying, the river, which consisted of him and his loved ones and of all people, he had ever seen, all of these waves and waters were hurrying, suffering, towards goals, many goals, the waterfall, the lake, the rapids, the sea, and all goals were reached, and every goal was followed by a new one, and the water turned into vapour and rose to the sky, turned into rain and poured down from the sky, turned into a source, a stream, a river, headed forward once again, flowed on once again. but the longing voice had changed. it still resounded, full of suffering, searching, but other voices joined it, voices of joy and of suffering, good and bad voices, laughing and sad ones, a hundred voices, a thousand voices. siddhartha listened. he was now nothing but a listener, completely concentrated on listening, completely empty, he felt, that he had now finished learning to listen. often before, he had heard all this, these many voices in the river, today it sounded new. already, he could no longer tell the many voices apart, not the happy ones from the weeping ones, not the ones of children from those of men, they all belonged together, the lamentation of yearning and the laughter of the knowledgeable one, the scream of rage and the moaning of the dying ones, everything was one, everything was intertwined and connected, entangled a thousand times. and everything together, all voices, all goals, all yearning, all suffering, all pleasure, all that was good and evil, all of this together was the world. all of it together was the flow of events, was the music of life. and when siddhartha was listening attentively to this river, this song of a thousand voices, when he neither listened to the suffering nor the laughter, when he did not tie his soul to any particular voice and submerged his self into it, but when he heard them all, perceived the whole, the oneness, then the great song of the thousand voices consisted of a single word, which was om: the perfection. "do you hear," vasudeva's gaze asked again. brightly, vasudeva's smile was shining, floating radiantly over all the wrinkles of his old face, as the om was floating in the air over all the voices of the river. brightly his smile was shining, when he looked at his friend, and brightly the same smile was now starting to shine on siddhartha's face as well. his wound blossomed, his suffering was shining, his self had flown into the oneness. in this hour, siddhartha stopped fighting his fate, stopped suffering. on his face flourished the cheerfulness of a knowledge, which is no longer opposed by any will, which knows perfection, which is in agreement with the flow of events, with the current of life, full of sympathy for the pain of others, full of sympathy for the pleasure of others, devoted to the flow, belonging to the oneness. when vasudeva rose from the seat by the bank, when he looked into siddhartha's eyes and saw the cheerfulness of the knowledge shining in them, he softly touched his shoulder with his hand, in this careful and tender manner, and said: "i've been waiting for this hour, my dear. now that it has come, let me leave. for a long time, i've been waiting for this hour; for a long time, i've been vasudeva the ferryman. now it's enough. farewell, hut, farewell, river, farewell, siddhartha!" siddhartha made a deep bow before him who bid his farewell. "i've known it," he said quietly. "you'll go into the forests?" "i'm going into the forests, i'm going into the oneness," spoke vasudeva with a bright smile. with a bright smile, he left; siddhartha watched him leaving. with deep joy, with deep solemnity he watched him leave, saw his steps full of peace, saw his head full of lustre, saw his body full of light. govinda together with other monks, govinda used to spend the time of rest between pilgrimages in the pleasure-grove, which the courtesan kamala had given to the followers of gotama for a gift. he heard talk of an old ferryman, who lived one day's journey away by the river, and who was regarded as a wise man by many. when govinda went back on his way, he chose the path to the ferry, eager to see the ferryman. because, though he had lived his entire life by the rules, though he was also looked upon with veneration by the younger monks on account of his age and his modesty, the restlessness and the searching still had not perished from his heart. he came to the river and asked the old man to ferry him over, and when they got off the boat on the other side, he said to the old man: "you're very good to us monks and pilgrims, you have already ferried many of us across the river. aren't you too, ferryman, a searcher for the right path?" quoth siddhartha, smiling from his old eyes: "do you call yourself a searcher, oh venerable one, though you are already of an old in years and are wearing the robe of gotama's monks?" "it's true, i'm old," spoke govinda, "but i haven't stopped searching. never i'll stop searching, this seems to be my destiny. you too, so it seems to me, have been searching. would you like to tell me something, oh honourable one?" quoth siddhartha: "what should i possibly have to tell you, oh venerable one? perhaps that you're searching far too much? that in all that searching, you don't find the time for finding?" "how come?" asked govinda. "when someone is searching," said siddhartha, "then it might easily happen that the only thing his eyes still see is that what he searches for, that he is unable to find anything, to let anything enter his mind, because he always thinks of nothing but the object of his search, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed by the goal. searching means: having a goal. but finding means: being free, being open, having no goal. you, oh venerable one, are perhaps indeed a searcher, because, striving for your goal, there are many things you don't see, which are directly in front of your eyes." "i don't quite understand yet," asked govinda, "what do you mean by this?" quoth siddhartha: "a long time ago, oh venerable one, many years ago, you've once before been at this river and have found a sleeping man by the river, and have sat down with him to guard his sleep. but, oh govinda, you did not recognise the sleeping man." astonished, as if he had been the object of a magic spell, the monk looked into the ferryman's eyes. "are you siddhartha?" he asked with a timid voice. "i wouldn't have recognised you this time as well! from my heart, i'm greeting you, siddhartha; from my heart, i'm happy to see you once again! you've changed a lot, my friend.--and so you've now become a ferryman?" in a friendly manner, siddhartha laughed. "a ferryman, yes. many people, govinda, have to change a lot, have to wear many a robe, i am one of those, my dear. be welcome, govinda, and spend the night in my hut." govinda stayed the night in the hut and slept on the bed which used to be vasudeva's bed. many questions he posed to the friend of his youth, many things siddhartha had to tell him from his life. when in the next morning the time had come to start the day's journey, govinda said, not without hesitation, these words: "before i'll continue on my path, siddhartha, permit me to ask one more question. do you have a teaching? do you have a faith, or a knowledge, you follow, which helps you to live and to do right?" quoth siddhartha: "you know, my dear, that i already as a young man, in those days when we lived with the penitents in the forest, started to distrust teachers and teachings and to turn my back to them. i have stuck with this. nevertheless, i have had many teachers since then. a beautiful courtesan has been my teacher for a long time, and a rich merchant was my teacher, and some gamblers with dice. once, even a follower of buddha, travelling on foot, has been my teacher; he sat with me when i had fallen asleep in the forest, on the pilgrimage. i've also learned from him, i'm also grateful to him, very grateful. but most of all, i have learned here from this river and from my predecessor, the ferryman vasudeva. he was a very simple person, vasudeva, he was no thinker, but he knew what is necessary just as well as gotama, he was a perfect man, a saint." govinda said: "still, oh siddhartha, you love a bit to mock people, as it seems to me. i believe in you and know that you haven't followed a teacher. but haven't you found something by yourself, though you've found no teachings, you still found certain thoughts, certain insights, which are your own and which help you to live? if you would like to tell me some of these, you would delight my heart." quoth siddhartha: "i've had thoughts, yes, and insight, again and again. sometimes, for an hour or for an entire day, i have felt knowledge in me, as one would feel life in one's heart. there have been many thoughts, but it would be hard for me to convey them to you. look, my dear govinda, this is one of my thoughts, which i have found: wisdom cannot be passed on. wisdom which a wise man tries to pass on to someone always sounds like foolishness." "are you kidding?" asked govinda. "i'm not kidding. i'm telling you what i've found. knowledge can be conveyed, but not wisdom. it can be found, it can be lived, it is possible to be carried by it, miracles can be performed with it, but it cannot be expressed in words and taught. this was what i, even as a young man, sometimes suspected, what has driven me away from the teachers. i have found a thought, govinda, which you'll again regard as a joke or foolishness, but which is my best thought. it says: the opposite of every truth is just as true! that's like this: any truth can only be expressed and put into words when it is one-sided. everything is one-sided which can be thought with thoughts and said with words, it's all one-sided, all just one half, all lacks completeness, roundness, oneness. when the exalted gotama spoke in his teachings of the world, he had to divide it into sansara and nirvana, into deception and truth, into suffering and salvation. it cannot be done differently, there is no other way for him who wants to teach. but the world itself, what exists around us and inside of us, is never one-sided. a person or an act is never entirely sansara or entirely nirvana, a person is never entirely holy or entirely sinful. it does really seem like this, because we are subject to deception, as if time was something real. time is not real, govinda, i have experienced this often and often again. and if time is not real, then the gap which seems to be between the world and the eternity, between suffering and blissfulness, between evil and good, is also a deception." "how come?" asked govinda timidly. "listen well, my dear, listen well! the sinner, which i am and which you are, is a sinner, but in times to come he will be brahma again, he will reach the nirvana, will be buddha--and now see: these 'times to come' are a deception, are only a parable! the sinner is not on his way to become a buddha, he is not in the process of developing, though our capacity for thinking does not know how else to picture these things. no, within the sinner is now and today already the future buddha, his future is already all there, you have to worship in him, in you, in everyone the buddha which is coming into being, the possible, the hidden buddha. the world, my friend govinda, is not imperfect, or on a slow path towards perfection: no, it is perfect in every moment, all sin already carries the divine forgiveness in itself, all small children already have the old person in themselves, all infants already have death, all dying people the eternal life. it is not possible for any person to see how far another one has already progressed on his path; in the robber and dice-gambler, the buddha is waiting; in the brahman, the robber is waiting. in deep meditation, there is the possibility to put time out of existence, to see all life which was, is, and will be as if it was simultaneous, and there everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is brahman. therefore, i see whatever exists as good, death is to me like life, sin like holiness, wisdom like foolishness, everything has to be as it is, everything only requires my consent, only my willingness, my loving agreement, to be good for me, to do nothing but work for my benefit, to be unable to ever harm me. i have experienced on my body and on my soul that i needed sin very much, i needed lust, the desire for possessions, vanity, and needed the most shameful despair, in order to learn how to give up all resistance, in order to learn how to love the world, in order to stop comparing it to some world i wished, i imagined, some kind of perfection i had made up, but to leave it as it is and to love it and to enjoy being a part of it.--these, oh govinda, are some of the thoughts which have come into my mind." siddhartha bent down, picked up a stone from the ground, and weighed it in his hand. "this here," he said playing with it, "is a stone, and will, after a certain time, perhaps turn into soil, and will turn from soil into a plant or animal or human being. in the past, i would have said: this stone is just a stone, it is worthless, it belongs to the world of the maja; but because it might be able to become also a human being and a spirit in the cycle of transformations, therefore i also grant it importance. thus, i would perhaps have thought in the past. but today i think: this stone is a stone, it is also animal, it is also god, it is also buddha, i do not venerate and love it because it could turn into this or that, but rather because it is already and always everything-- and it is this very fact, that it is a stone, that it appears to me now and today as a stone, this is why i love it and see worth and purpose in each of its veins and cavities, in the yellow, in the gray, in the hardness, in the sound it makes when i knock at it, in the dryness or wetness of its surface. there are stones which feel like oil or soap, and others like leaves, others like sand, and every one is special and prays the om in its own way, each one is brahman, but simultaneously and just as much it is a stone, is oily or juicy, and this is this very fact which i like and regard as wonderful and worthy of worship.--but let me speak no more of this. the words are not good for the secret meaning, everything always becomes a bit different, as soon as it is put into words, gets distorted a bit, a bit silly--yes, and this is also very good, and i like it a lot, i also very much agree with this, that this what is one man's treasure and wisdom always sounds like foolishness to another person." govinda listened silently. "why have you told me this about the stone?" he asked hesitantly after a pause. "i did it without any specific intention. or perhaps what i meant was, that love this very stone, and the river, and all these things we are looking at and from which we can learn. i can love a stone, govinda, and also a tree or a piece of bark. this are things, and things can be loved. but i cannot love words. therefore, teachings are no good for me, they have no hardness, no softness, no colours, no edges, no smell, no taste, they have nothing but words. perhaps it are these which keep you from finding peace, perhaps it are the many words. because salvation and virtue as well, sansara and nirvana as well, are mere words, govinda. there is no thing which would be nirvana; there is just the word nirvana." quoth govinda: "not just a word, my friend, is nirvana. it is a thought." siddhartha continued: "a thought, it might be so. i must confess to you, my dear: i don't differentiate much between thoughts and words. to be honest, i also have no high opinion of thoughts. i have a better opinion of things. here on this ferry-boat, for instance, a man has been my predecessor and teacher, a holy man, who has for many years simply believed in the river, nothing else. he had noticed that the river's spoke to him, he learned from it, it educated and taught him, the river seemed to be a god to him, for many years he did not know that every wind, every cloud, every bird, every beetle was just as divine and knows just as much and can teach just as much as the worshipped river. but when this holy man went into the forests, he knew everything, knew more than you and me, without teachers, without books, only because he had believed in the river." govinda said: "but is that what you call `things', actually something real, something which has existence? isn't it just a deception of the maja, just an image and illusion? your stone, your tree, your river-- are they actually a reality?" "this too," spoke siddhartha, "i do not care very much about. let the things be illusions or not, after all i would then also be an illusion, and thus they are always like me. this is what makes them so dear and worthy of veneration for me: they are like me. therefore, i can love them. and this is now a teaching you will laugh about: love, oh govinda, seems to me to be the most important thing of all. to thoroughly understand the world, to explain it, to despise it, may be the thing great thinkers do. but i'm only interested in being able to love the world, not to despise it, not to hate it and me, to be able to look upon it and me and all beings with love and admiration and great respect." "this i understand," spoke govinda. "but this very thing was discovered by the exalted one to be a deception. he commands benevolence, clemency, sympathy, tolerance, but not love; he forbade us to tie our heart in love to earthly things." "i know it," said siddhartha; his smile shone golden. "i know it, govinda. and behold, with this we are right in the middle of the thicket of opinions, in the dispute about words. for i cannot deny, my words of love are in a contradiction, a seeming contradiction with gotama's words. for this very reason, i distrust in words so much, for i know, this contradiction is a deception. i know that i am in agreement with gotama. how should he not know love, he, who has discovered all elements of human existence in their transitoriness, in their meaninglessness, and yet loved people thus much, to use a long, laborious life only to help them, to teach them! even with him, even with your great teacher, i prefer the thing over the words, place more importance on his acts and life than on his speeches, more on the gestures of his hand than his opinions. not in his speech, not in his thoughts, i see his greatness, only in his actions, in his life." for a long time, the two old men said nothing. then spoke govinda, while bowing for a farewell: "i thank you, siddhartha, for telling me some of your thoughts. they are partially strange thoughts, not all have been instantly understandable to me. this being as it may, i thank you, and i wish you to have calm days." (but secretly he thought to himself: this siddhartha is a bizarre person, he expresses bizarre thoughts, his teachings sound foolish. so differently sound the exalted one's pure teachings, clearer, purer, more comprehensible, nothing strange, foolish, or silly is contained in them. but different from his thoughts seemed to me siddhartha's hands and feet, his eyes, his forehead, his breath, his smile, his greeting, his walk. never again, after our exalted gotama has become one with the nirvana, never since then have i met a person of whom i felt: this is a holy man! only him, this siddhartha, i have found to be like this. may his teachings be strange, may his words sound foolish; out of his gaze and his hand, his skin and his hair, out of every part of him shines a purity, shines a calmness, shines a cheerfulness and mildness and holiness, which i have seen in no other person since the final death of our exalted teacher.) as govinda thought like this, and there was a conflict in his heart, he once again bowed to siddhartha, drawn by love. deeply he bowed to him who was calmly sitting. "siddhartha," he spoke, "we have become old men. it is unlikely for one of us to see the other again in this incarnation. i see, beloved, that you have found peace. i confess that i haven't found it. tell me, oh honourable one, one more word, give me something on my way which i can grasp, which i can understand! give me something to be with me on my path. it is often hard, my path, often dark, siddhartha." siddhartha said nothing and looked at him with the ever unchanged, quiet smile. govinda stared at his face, with fear, with yearning, suffering, and the eternal search was visible in his look, eternal not-finding. siddhartha saw it and smiled. "bend down to me!" he whispered quietly in govinda's ear. "bend down to me! like this, even closer! very close! kiss my forehead, govinda!" but while govinda with astonishment, and yet drawn by great love and expectation, obeyed his words, bent down closely to him and touched his forehead with his lips, something miraculous happened to him. while his thoughts were still dwelling on siddhartha's wondrous words, while he was still struggling in vain and with reluctance to think away time, to imagine nirvana and sansara as one, while even a certain contempt for the words of his friend was fighting in him against an immense love and veneration, this happened to him: he no longer saw the face of his friend siddhartha, instead he saw other faces, many, a long sequence, a flowing river of faces, of hundreds, of thousands, which all came and disappeared, and yet all seemed to be there simultaneously, which all constantly changed and renewed themselves, and which were still all siddhartha. he saw the face of a fish, a carp, with an infinitely painfully opened mouth, the face of a dying fish, with fading eyes--he saw the face of a new-born child, red and full of wrinkles, distorted from crying--he saw the face of a murderer, he saw him plunging a knife into the body of another person--he saw, in the same second, this criminal in bondage, kneeling and his head being chopped off by the executioner with one blow of his sword--he saw the bodies of men and women, naked in positions and cramps of frenzied love--he saw corpses stretched out, motionless, cold, void-- he saw the heads of animals, of boars, of crocodiles, of elephants, of bulls, of birds--he saw gods, saw krishna, saw agni--he saw all of these figures and faces in a thousand relationships with one another, each one helping the other, loving it, hating it, destroying it, giving re-birth to it, each one was a will to die, a passionately painful confession of transitoriness, and yet none of them died, each one only transformed, was always re-born, received evermore a new face, without any time having passed between the one and the other face--and all of these figures and faces rested, flowed, generated themselves, floated along and merged with each other, and they were all constantly covered by something thin, without individuality of its own, but yet existing, like a thin glass or ice, like a transparent skin, a shell or mold or mask of water, and this mask was smiling, and this mask was siddhartha's smiling face, which he, govinda, in this very same moment touched with his lips. and, govinda saw it like this, this smile of the mask, this smile of oneness above the flowing forms, this smile of simultaneousness above the thousand births and deaths, this smile of siddhartha was precisely the same, was precisely of the same kind as the quiet, delicate, impenetrable, perhaps benevolent, perhaps mocking, wise, thousand-fold smile of gotama, the buddha, as he had seen it himself with great respect a hundred times. like this, govinda knew, the perfected ones are smiling. not knowing any more whether time existed, whether the vision had lasted a second or a hundred years, not knowing any more whether there existed a siddhartha, a gotama, a me and a you, feeling in his innermost self as if he had been wounded by a divine arrow, the injury of which tasted sweet, being enchanted and dissolved in his innermost self, govinda still stood for a little while bent over siddhartha's quiet face, which he had just kissed, which had just been the scene of all manifestations, all transformations, all existence. the face was unchanged, after under its surface the depth of the thousandfoldness had closed up again, he smiled silently, smiled quietly and softly, perhaps very benevolently, perhaps very mockingly, precisely as he used to smile, the exalted one. deeply, govinda bowed; tears he knew nothing of, ran down his old face; like a fire burnt the feeling of the most intimate love, the humblest veneration in his heart. deeply, he bowed, touching the ground, before him who was sitting motionlessly, whose smile reminded him of everything he had ever loved in his life, what had ever been valuable and holy to him in his life.