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," Pere 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 Pere 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 Pere 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 Pere 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."
Pere 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.