What is it to be spiritual?
Is this fine quality of the mind destroyed by the development of the
brain? As the domain wrested by science from ignorance increases--as
island after island and continent after continent are discovered--as
star after star and constellation after constellation in the
intellectual world burst upon the midnight of ignorance, does the
spirituality of the mind grow less and less? Like morality, is it only
found in the company of ignorance and superstition? Is the spiritual man
honest, kind, candid?--or dishonest, cruel and hypocritical? Does he
say what he thinks? Is he guided by reason? Is he the friend of the
right?--the champion of the truth? Must this splendid quality called
spirituality be retained through the loss of candor? Can we not
truthfully say that absolute candor is the beginning of wisdom?
To recognize the finer harmonies of conduct--to live to the ideal--to
separate the incidental, the evanescent, from the perpetual--to be
enchanted with the perfect melody of truth--open to the influences of
the artistic, the beautiful, the heroic--to shed kindness as the sun
sheds light--to recognize the good in others, and to include the world
in the idea of self--this is to be spiritual.
There is nothing spiritual in the worship of the unknown and unknowable,
in the self-denial of a slave at the command of a master whom he fears.
Fastings, prayings, mutilations, kneelings, and mortifications are
either the results of, or result in, insanity.
This is the spirituality of Bedlam, and is of no kindred with the soul
that finds its greatest joy in the discharge of obligation perceived.