The more things we love the richer we are. The fewer things we care for the freer we are. O blessed wealth and wretched freedom, how shall we perfect and reconcile them? This is the secret: If we love the divine and eternal in everything, and care not for the limiting and perishable evil connected with it, then we shall at once be both rich and free. The former practice educates our powers; the latter emanc.i.p.ates them. The true use of renunciation is as a means for larger fulfillment. Detach from lower and lesser objects in order to attach to higher and greater ones. Be always ready to renounce the meaner at the invitation of the n.o.bler. The soul, like a grand frigate, may be loosely tied by a thousand separate strings, but should be held firm by one cable. Our relations to fellow creatures are those threads; our supreme relation to G.o.d, that cable. Those are the gossamer of time; this the adamant of eternity.
The lame man cries, O, that I could walk! He who can walk says, O, that I could fly! If he could soar, he would sigh, O, that I were omnipresent, and therefore had no need to move! The end of one wish is but the beginning of another; and the craving of every human soul, let loose in sincere expression, is absolutely illimitable. It always comes, in the last a.n.a.lysis, to this; every one really longs to be G.o.d. Therefore, unless the rational creation is mendacious, to be deified, is, in some mystical but true sense, the final destiny of all souls. Every one, in its consciousness fully developed and harmonized, shall become a focus of universal being, a finite reflex of G.o.d, the infinite G.o.d himself remaining eternally the same unescapable and incomprehensible mystery as ever.
There are, therefore, two supreme maxims for souls conditioned in time and s.p.a.ce but destined for eternity and infinity a maxim of comfort for those who suffer, and a maxim of impulse for those who aspire. The one, to be used in view of every fear, every evil or limit. This, too, shall pa.s.s away! The other, to be used in view of every insatiable desire, Over all those things for which men struggle with each other, there is one thing, out of the sphere of struggle, which indivisibly belongs to every man, and that one thing is the whole universe!
Nothing but the Absolute Good is everlasting: and that must belong to all who, being essential personalities, are superior to death.
Blessed, blessed, then, are they who hunger and thirst after G.o.d; for, by a real transubstantiation a.s.similating Him, they shall as divinely live forevermore. They shall cease to say any more of anything, This, too, shall pa.s.s away! because the infinite G.o.d shall have said to each of them, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine!
If the view above marked out, a view in many respects so sublime and satisfactory, a view which goes so far to explain the mysteries, reconcile the contradictions, and transfigure the evils of our transient life and lot below be not true, it must either be because some other higher and better view is the truth in which case we certainly ought to be contented or else the creative and providential plan of G.o.d is inferior to the thought of one of his creatures. It is not possible for me to suppose that a speculative theory of my brain can transcend in harmony and beneficence the design of the infinite G.o.d. Could it do so, then, in reality, I should be a higher being than He. I should veritably have dethroned Him and vaulted into his place. Is not that a pitch of impiety and absurdity too great even for the pride of man, insurgent atom of criticising a.s.sumption, set, baffled at every point, amidst the awful immensity of existence? Here, then, is rest. Either our highest view is the truth, or the truth is higher and better than that. For to think that his thought is superior to the purpose of G.o.d, thus making himself the real G.o.d, is too much for the extremist human egotist within the limits of sanity.
Therefore, until a better theory is propounded, we hold that the destiny of the soul is to become, through the progressive actualization of its potential consciousness, a free thinking center of the universe, an infinitesimal mirror of G.o.d. The adventures of the different souls, full of inexhaustible curiosity and relish in the mutually revealing contacts of their degrees of development and originalities of personal character and treasure, const.i.tute the endless drama of spiritual existence within the phenomenal theater of the material creation. And still the infinite One serenely smiles on the troubled play of the eternal Many; because the psychological kaleidoscope of their experience is a continuous improvisation of justice, weaving the fate of Each with the fates of All, and transfusing the monotonous unity of the Same with the zestful variety of the Other.