It will be something new, as we can receive it. He who can receive
little will be given little; he who can receive much will be given much.
In growth all is adjusted to capacity; it is not meant to shock, force,
or frighten. The next step in growth being always an easy step, I can
feel sure of moving onwards easily--"from strength to strength," in the
words of one of the Songs for the Sons of Korah, "until unto the God of
gods appeareth everyone of them in Zion."[33]
[33] The Book of Psalms.
CHAPTER VIII
THE FEAR OF DEATH AND ABUNDANCE OF LIFE
I
After all, the conquest of fear is largely a question of vitality. Those
who have most life are most fearless. The main question is as to the
source from which an increase of life is to be obtained.
An important psychological truth was involved when our Lord made the
declaration, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might
have it more abundantly." This, I think, was the first plain statement
ever made that life was a quantitative energy; that it is less or more
dynamic according to the measure in which the individual seizes it. But
once more the Caucasian has stultified the meaning of Jesus of Nazareth
by evaporating it to the tenuous wisp which he understands as
spiritual. Between the pale ghost of such spiritual life as he has
evoked from the Saviour's words and manly and womanly vigour in
full-blooded exercise he has seen no connection.
II
Few of us do see a connection between strength of spirit and strength of
limb; but it is there. I am not saying that a strong spirit cannot
coexist with a feeble frame; but the feeble frame is a mistake. It is
the result of apprehension and misapprehension, and bred of race-fear.
The strong spirit would have put forth a strong frame if we had given it
a chance. Abundant life must be _life_, healthy, active, and radiant. It
should show the life-principle no longer driven from sea to land, and
from land to air, or battling with a million foes, but vigorous and
triumphant.
This vigour and triumph we ought to work into our point of view, so
kneading it into our subconsciousness. Strong in proportion as our
subconsciousness is strong, fearless in proportion as our
subconsciousness is fearless, the going from strength to strength
becomes a matter of course to us. Urging us on in sheer joy of power,
abundance of life becomes still more abundant through the indwelling of
the life-principle. That mystic resistless force, which has fashioned
already so many forms, is forever at work fashioning a higher type
of man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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