How utterly inadequate must be any knowledge of a human being which
does not get beneath the surface? How difficult to do so to any good
purpose! For that “inner,” or “eternal,” or “religious” life (call it
which you will, they all mean the same thing) is so entirely a matter
between each human soul and God, is at best so feebly and imperfectly
expressed by the outer life.
There are none of us but must be living two lives—and the sooner we
come to recognize the fact clearly the better for us—the one life in
the outward material world, in contact with the things which we can
see, and taste, and handle, which are always changing and passing
away; the other in the invisible, in contact with the unseen; with
that which does not change or pass away—which is the same yesterday,
to-day, and forever. The former life you must share with others, with
your family, your friends, with everyone you meet in business or
pleasure. The latter you must live alone, in the solitude of your own
inmost being, if you can find no spirit there communing with yours—in
the presence of, and in communion with, the Father of your spirit, if
you are willing to recognize that presence. The one life will no doubt
always be the visible expression of the other; just as the body is
the garment in which the real man is clothed for his sojourn in time.
But the expression is often little more than a shadow, unsatisfying,
misleading. One of our greatest English poets has written:
“The one remains, the many change and pass,
Heaven’s light forever shines, earth’s shadows fly.
Time, like a dome of many-colored glass,
Stains the bright radiance of eternity,
Until death tramples it to fragments.”
And so you and I are living now under the dome of many-colored glass,
and shall live as long as we remain in these bodies, a temporal and an
eternal life—“the next world,” which too many of our teachers speak of
as a place which we shall first enter after death, being in fact “next”
only in the truest sense of the word; namely, that it is nearest to
us now. The dome of time can do nothing more (if we even allow it to
do that) than partially to conceal from us the light which is always
there, beneath, around, above us.
“The outer life of the devout man,” it has been well said, “should
be thoroughly attractive to others. He would be simple, honest,
straightforward, unpretending, gentle, kindly;—his conversation
cheerful and sensible; he would be ready to share in all blameless
mirth, indulgent to all save sin.”