Living the Radiant Life: A Personal NarrativeJames, George Wharton
Religion
Living the Radiant Life: A Personal Narrative
James, George Wharton
Conduct of life
What I am getting at is this, that, though we may not always see it at
first, or even at second or third sight, the moral world is governed by
a multiplication table as sure and certain, as unchangeable and fixed
as is the mathematical world. And it is the acceptance of the moral
multiplication table that I call being "Divine-Willed." A man may live
for years swindling his neighbors and giving them fourteen ounces for a
pound, and think he has fooled the multiplication table as easily as he
has fooled his customers, but the rate never changed; it was sixteen
ounces all the time. A man may fool his neighbors and himself in regard
to the _moral_ multiplication table, but sooner or later, here or
hereafter, in this incarnation or some other, he will have to learn to
accept, love, and live by it in every act, thought, and word. It cannot
be any other--there is no other door--this is the only salvation. _This_
is accepting Christ--the Truth, the Way, the Life, living the Life He
lived, filled with the Divine-Will, the Divine Spirit, that filled him.
Whether you are a gambler, a sport, a liar, a cheat, a Sunday-school
superintendent, a fool, a drunkard, a senator, a professor of religion,
an agnostic, a wise man or a mere child in knowledge, you can never
enter the Kingdom of Joy, Peace, Blessedness, that we call Heaven,
unless you conform to the Divine Moral Multiplication Table. This is
what I am endeavoring to radiate--that I am trying to set aside my
imperfect human will, which sometimes kicks against the unchangeable and
immovable, and accept the perfect, complete, and unchangeable.
But you ask: How am I to know this moral multiplication table? Easy
enough. Don't try to take it all in at once. Begin at the beginning.
Learn the "twos" first. Twice one are two, twice two are four, twice
three are six, and so on. Start on the Ten Commandments. Master and
_live_ them. Then absorb the Golden Rule. Then try the Sermon on the
Mount.
There's enough to keep you busy for a few days, anyhow. But I suppose
some of you will say you can't do it. Nonsense! You've got to do it, and
you won't _really_ live until you do. You can't dodge the multiplication
table; nor can you dodge these. There is no escape. Divinity never made
any man or any woman who could get away from them. Creeds, church
dogmas, men's ideas about religion or what they call religion may be
true, or may not be true, but the fundamental principles of the life of
the Spirit always have existed, always will exist, and every man, sooner
or later, must come into perfect harmony with them. This is what I want
to radiate--my desire that I should become Divine-willed and that every
one else should be the same--quick, soon, now.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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