in companionship with his chosen friends who have gone on into that
world. There is nothing in this theory that is incompatible with the
teachings of the Church, with all that makes up for us the religious
life. On the contrary, it vitalizes and reinforces that life. This life
of the spirit must be in God. Let one, indeed, on his first waking each
day, place his entire life, all his heart, mind, and faculties, in God's
hands; asking Him "to take entire possession, to be the guide of the
soul." Thus one shall dwell hourly, daily, in the divine atmosphere, and
spirit to spirit may enjoy their communion and companionship. The
experience of personal spiritual companionship between those here and
those on the next plane of life is included in the higher religious life
of the spirit while living here on earth. It vivifies and lends joy to
it; for the joy of sympathetic companionship is the one supreme and
transcendent happiness in life. And to live in this atmosphere requires
one absolute and inevitable condition, the constant exercise of the
moral virtues,--of truth, rectitude, generosity, and love. The life held
amenable to these, the life which commits itself utterly into the divine
keeping, is not a life of hardship; the "road that winds up hill" is the
road of perpetual interest and exhilaration. It is a fatal fallacy to
invest it with gloom and despair. It is the only possible source of the
constant, intellectual energy of life, of sweetness, of joy, of
happiness.
The only standard which is worthy for one to hold as that by which he
measures his life is the divine one illustrated in the character of
Jesus. To measure one's quality of daily life by this is always to fall
short of satisfactory achievement; and still there is always the
realization that its achievement is only a question of persistence and
of time. It is the direction in which one is moving that determines his
final destination. There is the deepest inspiration to the soul in
taking for one's perpetual watchword, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as
your Father in heaven is perfect." Not that this divine state is
attained; but there is perpetual aid in the conviction that one's
self--his spiritual self--_can_ "press on to the high calling of God."
Man is a divine being; the divine life is his only true life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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