submit, to be able to trust that infinite Love which embraces us on
all sides, which speaks to us through every flower and every worm,
which always shows us beauty and perfection, which never mars, never
destroys, never wastes, never deceives, never mocks.
_MS._
There is but one help and one comfort in these trials, that is, to
know by whom they are sent. If one knows that nothing can happen to
us without Him, one does not feel quite helpless, even under the
greatest terrors of this life.
_MS._
How little one thinks that many trials and afflictions may come upon
us any day. One lives as if life were to last for ever, and as if we
should never part with those who are most dear to us. Life would be
intolerable were it otherwise, but how little one is prepared for
what life really is.
_MS._
Why is there so much suffering in this world? I cannot think it
improves us much, and yet it must have its purpose. All these are
questions far too high for us--we are like children, and more
than children, when we come to think of them. All we know is that
where we catch a glimpse of God's handiwork, either in the natural
or moral world, it is so wonderfully perfect, so beyond all our
measures, that we feel safe as in a good ship, however rough the sea
may be. Whatever we may believe, or hope, or wish for, will be far
exceeded by that Higher Will and Wisdom which supports all, even us
little souls.
_MS._
The sorrows of life are inevitable, but they are hard to bear, for
all that. They would be harder still if we did not see their purpose
of reminding us that our true life is not here, but that we are here
on a voyage that may be calm or stormy, and which is to teach us
what all sailors have to learn, courage, perseverance, kindness, and
in the end complete trust in a Higher Power.
_MS._
Sorrow is necessary and good for men; one learns to understand that
each joy must be indemnified by suffering, that each new tie which
knits our hearts to this life must be loosed again, and the tighter
and the closer it was knit, the keener the pain of loosening it.
Should we then attach our hearts to nothing, and pass quietly and
unsympathetically through this world, as if we had nothing to do
with it? We neither could nor ought to act so. Nature itself knits
the first tie between parents and children, and new ties through
our whole life. We are not here for reward, for the enjoyment
of undisturbed peace or from mere accident, but for trial, for
improvement, perhaps for punishment; for the only union which can
secure the happiness of men, the union between our Self and God's
Self, is broken, or at least obscured, by our birth, and the
highest object of our life is to find this bond again, to remain
ever conscious of it and hold fast to it in life and in death. This
rediscovery of the eternal union between God and man constitutes
true religion among all people.
_Life._
Every one carries a grave of lost hope in his soul, but he covers it
over with cold marble, or with green boughs. On sad days one likes
to go alone to this God's acre of the soul, and weep there, but only
in order to return full of comfort and hope to those who are left to
us.
_Life._
The sorrows of life, like all other things, pass away, and the
larger the number who await us beyond, the easier the parting from
those we leave behind.
_Life._
Grief is a sweet remembrance of happiness that was.
_MS._
There is the old riddle always before me, why was ... taken from me?
Human understanding has no answer for it, and yet I feel as certain
as I can feel of anything that as it is, it is good, it is best,
better than anything I can wish for. One feels one's own ignorance
why what seems so right and natural should not be, and yet one knows
it could not be. One hides one's head in the arms of a Higher Power,
a Friend, a Father, and more than a Father. Wait, and you will know.
Work, and you will be able to bear it.
_MS._
People think that grief is pain, but it is not so: Grief, the
absorption in the quiet recollection of what was, but is no longer,
is a pleasure, a consolation, a blessing.
_MS._
Those who would comfort us by bidding us forget our grief, and join
their happy gatherings, do not know what comfort is. Hearts which
have suffered have a right to what the world may call grief and
sorrow, but what is really a quiet communion with those whom we
love, and whom we can find no longer among the laughter of the happy.
_MS._
What can we pray for? Not for special gifts, but only for God's
mercy. We do not know what is good for us, and for others. What
would become of the world if all our prayers were granted? And yet
it is good to pray--that is, to live in all our joys and sorrows
with God, that unknown God whom we cannot reason with, but whom we
can love and trust. Human misery, outward and inward, is certainly
a great problem, and yet one knows from one's own life how just the
heaviest burdens have been blessings. The soul must be furrowed if
it is to bear fruit.
_MS._
What is the tenure of all our happiness? Are we not altogether
at the mercy of God? Would it not be fearful to live for one day
unless we knew, and saw, and felt His Presence and Wisdom and Love
encompassing us on all sides? If we once feel that, then even death,
even the death of those we love best and who love us best, loses
much of its terror: it is part and parcel of one great system of
which we see but a small portion here, and which without death,
without that bridge of which we see here but the first arch, would
seem to be a mere mockery. That is why I said to you it is well that
human art cannot prolong our life for ever, and in that sentiment I
should think we both agree. I have felt much for you, more than I
cared to say. We are trained differently, but we are all trained for
some good purpose, and the suffering which you have undergone is to
me like deep ploughing, the promise of a rich harvest.
_Life._
There is a large and secret brotherhood in this world, the members
of which easily recognise each other, without any visible outward
sign. It is the band of mourners. The members of this brotherhood
need not necessarily wear mourning; they can even rejoice with the
joyful, and they seldom sigh or weep when others see them. But they
recognise and understand each other, without uttering a word, like
tired wanderers who, climbing a steep mountain, overtake other tired
wanderers, and pause, and then silently go on again, knowing that
they all hope to see the same glorious sunset high up above. Their
countenances reflect a soft moonlight; when they speak, one thinks
of the whispering of the leaves of a beech forest after a warm
spring shower, and as the rays of the sun light up the drops of dew
with a thousand colours, and drink them up from the green grass, a
heavenly light seems to shine through the tears of the mourners, to
lighten them, and lovingly kiss them away. Almost every one, sooner
or later, enters this brotherhood, and those who enter it early may
be considered fortunate, for they learn, before it is too late, that
_all_ which man calls his own is only lent him for a short time, and
the ivy of their affections does not cling so deeply and so strongly
to the old walls of earthly happiness.
_Life._
We cannot know, we cannot name the Divine, nor can we understand
its ways as manifested in nature and human life. We ask why there
should be suffering and sin, we cannot answer the question. All we
can say is, it is willed to be so. Some help our human understanding
may find, however, by simply imagining what would have been our
life if the power of evil had not been given us. It seems to me
that in that case we, human beings as we are, should never have had
a conception of what is meant by good: we should have been like
the birds in the air, happier, it may be, but better, no. Or if
suffering had always been reserved for the bad, we should all have
become the most cunning angels. Often when I am met by a difficulty
which seems insoluble, I try that experiment, and say, Let us see
what would happen if it were otherwise. Still, I confess there is
some suffering on earth which goes beyond all understanding, which
even the truest Christian love and charity seems unable to remove
or mitigate. It can teach us one thing only, that we are blind, and
that in the darkness of the night we lose our faith in a Dawn which
will drive away darkness, fear, and despair. Much, no doubt, could
be done even by what is now called Communism, but what in earlier
days was called Christianity. And then one wonders whether the
world can ever again become truly Christian. I dare not call myself
a Christian. I have hardly met the men in all my life who deserved
that name. Again, I say, let us do our best, knowing all the time
that our best is a mere nothing.
_Life._
THE SOUL
The name of the immortal element (in man) was not given to man as a
gratuitous gift. It had to be gained, like the name of God, in the
sweat of his face. Before man could say that he believed his soul
to be immortal, he had to discover that there was a soul in man. It
required as great an effort to form such a word as _anima_, breath,
and to make it signify the infinite in man, as to form such a word
as _diva_, bright, and to make it signify the infinite in nature.
_Gifford Lectures, III._
To us the two words 'body and soul' are so familiar that it seems
almost childish to ask how man came at first to speak of body and
soul. But what did he mean by soul? What do we ourselves mean by
soul? Think of the many meanings contained in our word soul. Our
soul may mean the living soul; it may mean the sentient soul; it may
mean the seat of the passions, whether good or bad; it may mean
the organ of thought; and lastly, the immortal element in man. The
question we have to ask is not how man arrived at a name for soul,
but how he came for the first time to speak of something different
from the body.
_Gifford Lectures, III._
The discovery of the soul, the first attempts at naming the soul,
started everywhere from the simplest observations of material facts.
The lesson cannot be inculcated too often that the whole wealth of
our most abstract and spiritual words comes from a small number of
material or concrete terms.
_Gifford Lectures, III._
We see that the way which led to the discovery of a soul was pointed
out to man as clearly as was the way which led him to the discovery
of the gods. It was chiefly the breath, which almost visibly
left the body at the time of death, that suggested the name of
breath, and afterwards the thought of something breathing, living,
perceiving, willing, remembering, and thinking within us. The name
came first, the name of the material breath. By dropping what seemed
material even in this airy breath, there remained the first vague
and airy concept of what we call soul.
_Gifford Lectures, III._
The worship of the spirits of the departed which, under various
forms, was so widely spread over the ancient world, could not but
accustom the human mind to the idea that there was something in man
which deserved such worship. The souls of the departed were lifted
higher and higher, till at last they reached the highest stage which
existed in the human mind, namely, that of divine beings, in the
ancient sense of that word.
_Gifford Lectures, III._
The problem of uniting the invisible and visible worlds presented
itself under three principal aspects. The first was the problem
of creation, or how the invisible Primal Cause could ever come in
contact with visible matter and impart to it form and meaning. The
second problem was the relation between God and the individual
soul. The third problem was the return of the soul from the visible
to the invisible world, from the prison of its mortal body to the
freedom of a heavenly paradise. The individual soul as dwelling in a
material body forms part of the created world, and the question of
the return of the soul to God is therefore closely connected with
that of its creation by, or its emanation from, God.
_Gifford Lectures, IV._
When the original oneness of earth and heaven, of the human and
the divine natures, has once been discovered, the question of the
return of the soul to God assumes a new character. It is no longer
a question of an ascension to heaven, an approach to the throne of
God, an ecstatic vision of God, and a life in a heavenly Paradise.
The vision of God is rather the knowledge of the divine element
in the soul, and of the consubstantiality of the divine and human
natures. Immortality has no longer to be asserted, because there
can be no death for what is divine, and therefore immortal, in man.
There is life eternal and peace eternal for all who feel the divine
Spirit as dwelling within them, and have thus become the children of
God.
_Gifford Lectures, IV._
No doubt the soul must find it difficult in childhood to accustom
itself to the human body, and it takes many years before it is quite
at home. Then for a time all goes well, and the soul hardly knows it
is hidden in a strange garment till the body begins to be weakly,
and can no longer do all the soul wishes, and presses it everywhere,
so that the soul appears to lose all outward freedom and movement.
Then one can well understand that we long to be gone, and death is
a true deliverance. God always knows best when the right time comes.
_Life._
Let us remember that we do not know what the soul was before this
life--nay, even what it was during the first years of our childhood.
Yet we believe on very fair evidence that what we call our soul
existed from the moment of our birth. What ground have we, then, to
doubt that it was even before that moment? To ascribe to the soul a
beginning on our birthday would be the same as to claim for it an
end on the day of our death, for whatever has a beginning has an
end. If then, in the absence of any other means of knowledge, we
may take refuge in analogy, might we not say that it will be with
the soul hereafter as it has been here, and that the soul after its
earthly setting will rise again, much as it rose here? This is not
a syllogism, it is analogy, and in a cosmos like ours analogy has
a right to claim some weight, in the absence of any proof to the
contrary.
_Last Essays._
There is a question which has probably been asked by every human
heart--Granting that the soul cannot, without self-contradiction,
be mortal, will that soul be itself, know itself, and will it know
others whom it has known before? For the next life, it is said,
would not be worth living if the soul did not recollect itself,
recognise not only itself, but those whom it has known and loved on
earth. Here analogy alone can supply some kind of answer: 'It will
be hereafter as it has been' is not, in the absence of any evidence
to the contrary, an argument that can be treated with contempt. Our
soul here may be said to have risen without any recollection of
itself and of the circumstances of its former existence. But it has
within it the consciousness of its eternity, and the conception of
a beginning is as impossible for it as that of an end, and if souls
were to meet again hereafter as they met in this life, as they loved
in this life, without knowing that they had met and loved before,
would the next life be so very different from what this life has
been here on earth--would it be so utterly intolerable and really
not worth living?
_Last Essays._
When the soul has once reached that union with God, nay, when
it lives in the constant presence of God, evil becomes almost
impossible. We know that most of the evil deeds to which human
nature is prone are possible in the dark only. Before the eyes of
another human being, more particularly of a beloved being, they
become at once impossible. How much more in the real presence of a
real and really beloved God, as felt by the true mystic, not merely
as a phrase, but as a fact? As long as there is no veil between
him and God, evil thoughts, evil words, and evil deeds are simply
impossible to one who feels the actual presence of God. Nor is he
troubled any longer by questions, such as how the world was created,
how evil came into the world. He is satisfied with the Divine Love
that embraces his soul; he has all that he can desire, his whole
life is hid through Christ in God, death is swallowed up in victory,
the mortal has become immortal, neither death nor life, nor things
present, nor things to come, is able to separate his soul from the
love of God.
_Gifford Lectures, IV._
THEOSOPHY
This venerable name (Theosophy), so well known among early Christian
thinkers, as expressing the highest conception of God within the
reach of the human mind, has of late been so greatly misappropriated
that it is high time to restore it to its proper function. It should
be known once for all that one may call oneself a theosophist
without ... believing in any occult sciences and black art.
_Gifford Lectures, IV._
There is nothing esoteric in Buddhism. Buddhism is the very opposite
of esoteric--it is a religion for the people at large, for the
poor, the suffering, the ill-treated. Buddha protests against the
very idea of keeping anything secret. There was much more of that
esoteric teaching in Brâhmanism. There was the system of caste,
which deprived the Sûdras, at least, of many religious privileges.
But I do say that even in Brâhmanism there is _no such thing as
an esoteric interpretation of the Sâstras._ The Sâstras have but
one meaning, and all who had been properly prepared by education
had access to them. There are some artificial poems, which are
so written as to admit of two interpretations. They are very
wonderful, but they have nothing to do with philosophical doctrines.
Again, there are erotic poems in Sanscrit which are explained as
celebrating the love and union between the soul and God. But all
this is perfectly well known, there is no mystery in it.
_Life._
TRUTH
What is wanted is the power of sifting evidence, and a simple love
of truth. Whatever value we may attach to our own most cherished
convictions, there is something more cherished than all of them, and
that is a perfect trust in truth, if once we have seen it.
_Last Essays._
True reverence does not consist in declaring a subject, because it
is dear to us, to be unfit for free, and honest inquiry; far from
it! True reverence is shown in treating every subject, however
sacred, however dear to us, with perfect confidence, without fear
and without favour; with tenderness and love, by all means, but,
before all, with unflinching and uncompromising loyalty to truth.
_Science of Religion._
Do we lose anything if we find that what we hold to be the most
valuable truth is shared in and supported by millions of human
beings? Ancient philosophers were most anxious to support their own
belief in God by the unanimous testimony of mankind. They made the
greatest efforts to prove that there was no race so degraded and
barbarous as to be without a belief in something divine. Some modern
theologians seem to grudge to all religions but their own the credit
of having a pure and true, nay any concept of God at all, quite
forgetful of the fact that a truth does not cease to be a truth
because it is accepted universally. I know no heresy more dangerous
to true religion than this denial that a true concept of God is
within the reach of every human being, is, in fact, the common
inheritance of mankind, however fearfully it may have been misused
and profaned by Christian and un-Christian nations.
_Gifford Lectures, II._
If Comparative Theology has taught us anything, it has taught us
that there is a common fund of truth in all religions, derived from
a revelation that was neither confined to one nation, nor miraculous
in the usual sense of that word, and that even minute coincidences
between the doctrines, nay, between the external accessories of
various religions, need not be accounted for at once by disguised
borrowings, but can be explained by other and more natural causes.
_Gifford Lectures, II._
Can there be anything higher and better than truth? Is any kind of
religion possible without an unquestioning trust in truth? No one
knows what it is to believe who has not learnt to believe in truth,
for the sake of truth, and for the sake of truth only.
_Gifford Lectures, III._
It may be quite right to guard against dangers, whether real or
imaginary, so long as it is possible. But when it is no longer
possible, the right thing is to face an enemy bravely. Very often
the enemy will turn out a friend in disguise. We cannot be far
wrong, if we are only quite honest, but if we are once not quite
honest over a few things, we shall soon become dishonest over many
things. In teaching on religion, even on Natural religion, we must
look neither right nor left, but look all facts straight in the
face, to see whether they are facts or not, and, if they are facts,
to find out what they mean.
_Gifford Lectures, III._
Some people say that they can derive no help, no comfort, from what
they call spiritual _only_. Spiritual _only_--think what that _only_
would mean, if it could have any meaning at all. We might as well
say of light that it is light only, and that what we want is the
shadow which we can grasp. So long as we know the shadow only, and
not the light that throws it, the shadow only is real, and not the
light. But when we have once turned our head and seen the light, the
light only is real and substantial, and not the shadow.
_Gifford Lectures, III._
We find in the Upanishads, what has occupied the thoughts of man at
all times, what occupies them now and will occupy them for ever--a
search after truth, a desire to discover the Eternal that underlies
the Ephemeral, a longing to find in the human heart the assurance of
a future life, and an attempt to reunite the bond which once held
the human and the divine together, the true atonement between God
and man.
_Gifford Lectures, III._
We have toiled for many years and been troubled with many
questionings, but what is the end of it all? We must learn to become
simple again like little children. That is all we have a right to
be: for this life was meant to be the childhood of our souls, and
the more we try to be what we were meant to be, the better for us.
Let us use the powers of our minds with the greatest freedom and
love of truth, but let us never forget that we are, as Newton said,
like children playing on the seashore, while the great ocean of
truth lies undiscovered before us.
_Life._
Nothing I like better than when I meet a man who differs from me;
he always gives me something, and for that I am grateful. Nor am I
at all so hopeless as many people, who imagine that two people who
differ can never arrive at a mutual understanding.... Why do people
differ, considering that they all begin with the same love of truth,
and are all influenced by the same environment? Well, they often
differ because one is ignorant of facts which the other knows and
has specially studied.... But in most cases people differ because
they use their words loosely, and because they mix up different
subjects instead of treating them one by one.
_Life._
THE WILL OF GOD
Through my whole life I have learnt this one lesson, that nothing
can happen to us, unless it be the will of God. There can be no
disappointment in life, if we but learn to submit our will to the
will of God. Let us wait for a little while, and to those whose eyes
are turned to God and eternity the longest life is but a little
while,--let us wait then in faith, hope, and charity: these three
abide, but the greatest of these is charity.
_Life._
Whatever happens to us is always the best for us, even if we do not
at once understand and perceive it.
_MS._