What All The World's A-Seeking: The Vital Law of True Life, True Greatness Power and HappinessTrine, Ralph Waldo
Religion
What All The World's A-Seeking: The Vital Law of True Life, True Greatness Power and Happiness
Trine, Ralph Waldo
Character; Christian life; Conduct of life
The Master Teacher, he who appeals most strongly and comes nearest to us
of this western civilization, has told us that the whole and the highest
duty of man is comprised in two great, two simple precepts--- love to
God and love to the fellow-man. The latter we have already fully
considered. We have found that in its real and true meaning it is not a
mere indefinite or sentimental abstraction, but that it is a vital,
living force; and in its manifestation it is life, it is action, it is
service. Let us now for a moment to the other,--love to God, which in
great measure however let it be said, has been considered in dealing
with love to the fellow-man. Let us see, however, what it in its true
and full nature reveals.
The question naturally arising at the outset is, Who, what is God? I
think no truer, sublimer definition has ever been given in the world's
history, in any language, in any clime, than that given by the Master
himself when standing by the side of Jacob's well, to the Samaritan
woman he said, God is Spirit; and they that worship Him must worship Him
in spirit and in truth. God is Spirit, the Infinite Spirit, the Infinite
Life back of all these physical manifestations we see in this changing
world about us, and of which all, including we ourselves, is the body or
outer form; the one Infinite Spirit which fills all the universe with
Himself, so that all is He, since He is all. All is He in the sense of
being a part of Him; for, if He is all, there can be nothing that is
outside of, that is not a part of Him, so that each one is a part of
this Eternal God who is not separate from us, and, if not separate from
us, then not afar off, for in Him we live and move and have our being,
_He is the life of our life_, our very life itself. The life of God is
in us, we are in the life of God; but that life transcends us so that it
includes all else,--every person, every animal, every grass-blade, every
flower, every particle of earth, every particle of everything, animate
and inanimate. So that God is _All_; and, if all, then each individual,
you and I, must be a vital part of that all, since there can be nothing
separate from it; and, if a part, then the same in nature, in
characteristics,--the same as a tumbler of water taken from the ocean
is, in nature, in qualities, in characteristics, identical with that
ocean, its source. God, then, is the Infinite Spirit of which each one
is a part in the form of an individualized spirit. God is Spirit,
creating, manifesting, ruling through the agency of great spiritual laws
and forces that surround us on every side, that run through all the
universe, and that unite all; for in one sense, there is nothing in all
this great universe but law. And, oh, the stupendous grandeur of it all!
These same great spiritual laws and forces operate within us. They are
the laws of our being. By them every act of each individual life is
governed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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