more attractive form occupy her agitated heart and brain. What is the
awakening of these new emotions, the unfolding of these new sentiments,
that seem to linger on the borderland of restrained passion? Is it
not the dawn of love, the transitory period, that bridge of nervous
exaltation that leads from puberty to maternity? She has her own god,
a figure to her notion as pure, refined, and beautiful as she can
picture in the visions of her waking or sleeping dreamland mind. Her
sighs, her prayers, her devotions, are directed to him. This is her
coming Messiah, her angel, her everything, that is to realize all
her hopes and expectations. It is her God.
Can a jockey or a prizefighter have feelings like these? The former
has a horsey god, the latter a muscular. The fisherman, the sailor,
the soldier, each in his sphere has his or her god. Underlying all the
busy activities of daily life, whatever feelings of care or pleasure
each may experience, it is but upon rare occasions he puckers his
lips to give vent to his devotional feelings and whistles his Yankee
Doodle--his God!
Our gods are as we make them. If we are good our god is good, if we are
pure our god is pure, and if our senses are subordinate to our reason
and understanding our god will be one of reason and understanding,
but if we are impure, bad, and evil-minded, our senses and passions
ruling supreme, reason and understanding are subordinate in our god,
and the evils of animal sense predominate.
Every man is his own god. As he is, so is his god. As he makes himself,
so will his god be. As he protects himself, so God will protect him. As
he guides himself, so will God guide him. Whatsoever a man accomplishes
for himself, that will God accomplish for him. Whatsoever a man does
for himself, that God will do for him. If a man supports himself, God
will support him. If he neglects himself, God will neglect him. The
more he depends on himself, the surer is his dependence on God. As he
saves himself, so God will surely save him. As he injures himself,
so will he be injured by God. As a man punishes himself, so will he
be punished by God. God will help him who can help himself. If a man
is true to himself, God will be true to him.
By industry, economy, and sobriety you will confer blessings on
yourself; you have no need of God to bless you.
Make yourself a good man or woman, and you will surely have a good God.
A brutal man never has a meek god, a stingy man a generous god, nor
a vicious man a merciful god. Every man brings himself to the level
of a brute or lower, or to the highest type of nobility of man.
God never made man, but every man makes his god.
THE GATEWAYS THROUGH WHICH KNOWLEDGE ENTERS THE SENSES.
The functions of the brain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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