The elements of characterWare, Mary G. (Mary Greene)
Philosophy
The elements of character
Ware, Mary G. (Mary Greene)
Character
their energies in feeding and clothing and sheltering the natural body,
leaving the spiritual body hungry and naked and cold. We sometimes hear
wonder expressed that a mind thus starved has become super-annuated and
doating, while the body still carries on its functions with vigor; but
had the body been treated with a similar neglect, it would have long
before returned to the dust. The growth of the spiritual body should be
continuous from the cradle through eternity; and seldom can any other
reason, than our own neglect, be assigned for its disease or decay. The
bread of life is perpetually offered for its support, and if it refuses
to eat, its death is on its own head.
Infants who pass into the spiritual world before they are touched by a
taint of earth are, probably, through the absence of all evil in those
who are suffered to approach them, trained into a purity of Affection
that fills their whole being with its genial warmth, descending, or
raying out, into all the imaginations of the soul and all the thoughts
of the mind. Thus they serve God in the order which the Saviour
commanded, with all the heart, and soul, and mind. They, however, who
remain long on earth, almost without exception, have the order of their
nature so reversed, that their powers must be converted to the right,
in the order of St. Paul, ascending from the lowest to the highest; or,
which is the same thing, passing from the outmost to the inmost. The
lowest and most external part of the being must be made obedient to the
laws of Divine Order, and on this as a foundation must the higher and
internal nature be built up, until it forms a sanctuary; and upon its
altar shall fire from heaven descend so often as a gift is offered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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