“The individuality that finds its first expression in your life is never
absorbed or broken up. I speak of the forces of disintegration, composed
of more individuals than the greatest army, as being routed. We mass
ourselves and our purposes against them and theirs, when we fight in the
open here. But as has been explained in the Lessons, the very material
form you have was originally an effort to evolve a force not conquerable
by purpose alone. Both good and evil forces, in your phrase—constructive
and destructive, in ours—took possession of these concrete forms, and now
the bitterness of the fight is greatest where both forces are represented
in one individual. The only way we can fight that effectively is to sit
on the job, and try to call to the purpose that is ours more clearly and
appealingly, or more commandingly, than the other fellow does. That’s the
reason we are begging you now to work with us. A great crisis is at hand,
and we want you to meet it consciously in your life there, knowing its
nature, so that we can have your help, not only in withstanding material
onslaughts, like Germany’s invasions and brutality, but in things of the
spirit—the real things, the eternal things—so that together we may win a
real victory. The individual whose purposes are fundamentally destructive
is not damned nor lost. He is just delayed. Sooner or later he must
work his way up, and it is entirely up to him whether he does it sooner
or later—after he reaches this life, especially. In your life, he is
sometimes confused or misled. He pays for that, too—not pays, but makes
good for it, by working here for the development he had not sense enough
to take there. But his delay is brief, beside that of the essentially
destructive force.”
A little later, Mrs. Wylie spoke again of her uneasiness about her
mother’s visit to K——, and some one suggested telegraphing her that
Frederick had been with us that evening.
“Give her my love when you wire,” he directed, “and tell her I’m on the
crossing, still ringing that bell. Don’t you worry, Sis. I’ll go and stay
with her most of the time she’s there, and she’ll know it. I’ll come to
you, Easter, too, for a little while.... Tell Dad I’ll be taking care of
Mother. He needn’t fret about it.”
“Do you want me to look up ‘Bob’ and tell him about his little girl?” she
asked.
He replied, “Yes, do.” And when she asked if he could give her something
more definite than a Christian name by which to trace this unknown man
among his large and scattered acquaintance, he wrote the name of a Middle
Western city, adding: “You can find out from the fellows. All of them
know Bob.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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