Never was there a more fatally erroneous conception. In the spiritual
world there are no limits, no boundaries, no arbitrary divisions. Just
so far as the soul conquers, is it free. Conquer ignorance, and one
enters the realm of education, of culture; conquer vice, and he enters
into the realm of virtue; conquer impatience and irritability and
bitterness, and their result in gloom and despondency, and he enters
into the realm of serenity and sweetness and exaltation with their
result in power of accomplishment. The Life Radiant can be achieved, and
is within the personal choice of every individual. One may place himself
in relation with this infinite and all-potent current of divine energy
and receive its impetus and its exhilaration and its illumination every
hour in the day. The toiler in manual labor may lead this twofold life.
On the visible side he is pushing onward in the excavation of a tunnel;
he is laying the track of a new railroad; he is engaged in building a
house; he stands at his appointed place in a great factory,--but is this
all? His real work lies both in the visible and in the invisible. On
the one hand he is contributing to the material resources of the world,
and he is earning his wage by which to live; on the other hand he is
developing patience, faithfulness, and judgment,--quantities of the
spiritual man and possessions of the spiritual life which extend the
spiritual territory. Faithfulness to the immediate duty creates a larger
theatre for duty. There are not wanting examples that could be named of
statesmen,--senators, governors, and others in high places, to say
nothing of the supreme example of a Lincoln; there are not wanting
examples of professional men in high and important places who initiated
their work by any humble and honest industrial employment that chanced
to present itself at the moment. Conquering this rudimentary realm, they
passed on to others successively. Integrity is a spiritual quantity, and
it insures spiritual aid. The cloud of witnesses is never dispersed. The
only imprisonment is in limitations, and limitations can be constantly
overcome. The horizon line of the impossible recedes as we advance. In
the last analysis nothing is too sublime or too beautiful to be
entirely possible. Its attainment is simply a question of conditions.
These conditions lie in entering into this inner realm of spiritual
energy in which the personal will is increasingly identified with the
will of God.
Like an echo of celestial music are these lines by Sully-Prudhomme:--
"The lilies fade with the dying hours,
Hushed is the song-bird's lay;
But I dream of summers and dream of flowers
That last alway."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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