It always avails. It matters little as to ama.s.sing of possessions; but it matters greatly as to the purity of a man"s motives and the degree to which he keeps faith with his ideals. Unfalteringly, even unto death, did Nathan Cook Meeker keep faith with those ideals that revealed themselves to him.
A n.o.ble work like that of Mr. Meeker is like the seed sown which is not quickened except it die. Sown in weakness, it is raised in power; sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. The three years of the ministry of Jesus on earth ended in defeat, disaster, and death. Was his life thereby a failure? Who has won the triumph"s evidence--Pilate or Christ?
Lincoln had to die that the nation might live. Heroism is forever being crowned with martyrdom.
All life is better to-day for every n.o.ble individual life that has been lived in the world. Nathan Cook Meeker was one who literally gave his life to lofty ideals, and this hero whom the Silver State holds in honor and reverence merits the recognition of the nation.
[Sidenote: A Remarkable Mystic.]
"The only affections which live eternally are those of the soul--those which have struck deep into the man and made part of his inmost being. The loves of the earthly mind die with it and form no part of the permanent man.... To enter the heavenly sphere and to come into communion with souls a generated state is necessary. There are four atmospheres surrounding us, and only in the highest of these do we find the freed soul. Interior knowledge, earnest aspiration, and purity of thought and life, are the keys by which alone can be opened the gates of the inmost and highest sphere. The lowest is enlightened by the natural sun. It is that of the present life of the body. The next is enlightened by the astral or magnetic light, and it is that of the sidereal body. The next is that of the soul, and it is enlightened by the spiritual sun. And the highest is the immediate presence of G.o.d."
Since the days of Jacob Behmen there have been no such remarkable series of mystic writings as are contained in the two volumes called "The Perfect Way" and "Clothed with the Sun," by Doctor Anna Kingsford. Her belief and her illuminations were crystallized in the affirmation, "Life is the elaboration of soul through the varied transformations of matter." She saw the entire purpose of creation to be the evolution and elaboration of the soul. Very little is generally known of Doctor Kingsford. She was descended from an old Italian family, one of whom had been the architect of the Vatican, and, on her mother"s side, from mingled German and Irish ancestry. She was the daughter of John Bonus, born in England in 1846, and she married, in 1867, Algernon G.o.dfrey Kingsford, who subsequently took orders in the English Church. Three years later Mrs. Kingsford entered the Catholic communion, and some years afterward she studied medicine in Paris and received her degree.
She is said to have been very beautiful, with great talent in painting and in music, a poet of lyric gifts, and from her childhood she saw visions and dreamed dreams. She died in 1888, and is buried in Atcham, near Shrewsbury, where her husband had his parish.
In 1881 Doctor Kingsford delivered in London, before drawing-room audiences, comprising representatives of literature, art, fas.h.i.+on, and the peerage,--audiences inclusive of the most notable people in London, the nine lectures that are published under the t.i.tle of "The Perfect Way," and at the time these lectures inspired a profound interest. Their central theme is the Pre-existence and Perfectibility of the soul. "The intuition," she says, "is that portion of the mind whereby we are enabled to gain access to the interior and permanent region of our nature, and there to possess ourselves of the knowledge which in the long ages of her past existence the soul has made her own. For that in us which perceives and permanently remembers is the soul. And all that she has once learned is at the service of those who duly cultivate relations with her." And those relations, she taught, are cultivated by living so purely in thought and deed as to prevent the interposition of any barrier between the phenomenal (or the outer) and the substantial (or the inner) self; and by steadfastly cultivating harmonious relations between those two, by subordinating the whole system to the Divine will,--thus does one gain full access to the stores of knowledge in the soul. Doctor Kingsford further explains:--
"For, placed as is the soul between the outer and the inner mediator, between the material and the spiritual, she looks inwards as well as outwards, and by experience learns the nature and method of G.o.d; and according to the degree of her elevation, purity, and desire, sees, reflects, and transmits G.o.d. It is in virtue of the soul"s position between the worlds of substance and of phenomenon, and her consequent ability to refer _things_ to their essential _ideas_, that in her, and her alone, resides an instrument of knowledge competent for the comprehension of truth, even the highest, which she only is able to behold face to face. It is no hyperbole that is involved in the saying, "The pure in heart see G.o.d." True, the _man_ cannot see G.o.d. But the divine in man sees G.o.d. And this occurs when, by means of his soul"s union with G.o.d, the man becomes "one with the Father", and beholds G.o.d _with the eyes of G.o.d_....
"And he to whom the soul lends her ears and eyes, may have knowledge not only of his own past history, but of the past history of the planet, as beheld in the pictures imprinted in the magnetic light whereof the planet"s memory consists. For there are actually ghosts of events, manes of past circ.u.mstances, shadows on the protoplasmic mirror, which can be evoked.
"But beyond and above the power to read the memory of himself or of the planet, is the power to penetrate to that innermost sphere wherein the soul obtains and treasures up her knowledge of G.o.d.
This is the faculty whereby true revelation occurs. And revelation, even in this, its highest sense, is, no less than reason, a natural appanage of man, and belongs of right to man in his highest and completest measure of development."
Doctor Kingsford was an evolutionist, holding that development along evolutionary lines is a true doctrine, but she held that this development was not of the original substance, because that, being infinite and eternal, is always perfect; and that the development lay in the manifestation of the qualities of that substance, in the individual.
"The highest product, man," she said, "is the result of the spirit working intelligently within. But man attains his highest and becomes perfect _only through his own voluntary_ co-operation with the Spirit."
Doctor Kingsford regarded Jesus as a spiritual Ideal and an Eternal Verity, and Religion as an ever-present actuality.
We find her saying:--
"For every man makes his own fate, and nothing is truer than that character is destiny. It is by their own hands that the lines of some are cast in pleasant places, of some in vicious, and of some in virtuous ones, so that there is nothing arbitrary or unjust. But in what manner soever a soul conducts itself in one incarnation, by that conduct, by that order of thought and habit, it builds for itself its destiny in a future incarnation. For the soul is enchained by these prenatal influences, which irresistibly force it into a new nativity at the time of such conjunction of planets and signs as oblige it into certain courses and incline it strongly thereto. But if the soul oppose itself to these influences and adopt some other course,--as it well may to its own real advantage,--it brings itself under a "curse" for such period as the planets and ruling signs of that incarnation have power. But though this means misfortune in a worldly sense, it is true fortune for the soul in a spiritual sense. For the soul is therein striving to atone and make rest.i.tution for the evil done in its own past; and thus striving, it advances towards higher and happier conditions.
Wherefore man is, strictly, his own creator, in that he makes himself and his conditions, according to the tendencies he encourages. The process of such reformation, however, may be a long one. For tendencies encouraged for ages cannot be cured in a single lifetime, but may require ages for their cure. And herein is a reflection to make us as patient towards the faults of others as we ought to be impatient of our own faults."
The entire interpretation of life, as given by Doctor Kingsford in these books, is remarkable, and is one of singular clearness in tracing the law of cause and effect.
[Sidenote: The Momentous Question.]
"The question for man most momentous of all is whether or no he has an immortal soul; or--to avoid the word immortal, which belongs to the realm of infinities--whether or no his personality involves any element which can survive bodily death. In this direction have always lain the gravest fears, the farthest reaching hopes, which could either oppress or stimulate mortal minds.... The method of modern science--that process which consists in an interrogation of Nature entirely dispa.s.sionate, patient, systematic ... has never yet been applied to the all-important problem of the existence, the powers, the destiny of the human soul."
The Rev. Doctor Alexander Whyte of Edinborough, one of the few greatest and most celebrated preachers in Europe, said, in a sermon recently delivered in London, that the spiritual, like the physical life, required constant sustenance. Doctor Whyte dwelt with marked emphasis on the important truth that no one who does not give at least one hour of the day to the concentration of thought on the higher purposes of life, and devote himself, essentially and especially, to aspiration and prayer, can live aright, and live up to his higher possibilities. Doctor Whyte especially recommended the last hour before sleep as the best season for this uplift of the soul to its native atmosphere. "It is not necessary," he said, "that one should be kneeling, in the att.i.tude of prayer, all the time. Walk about. Go out and look at the stars. Read, if you prefer, some enn.o.bling book. But, in whatever form thought and meditation may take, keep the key held to the divinest melody of life.
In that way shall the spiritual life gather its rich strength and infinite energy." The principle is one that every life which has given to the world n.o.ble results, has acted upon, consciously or unconsciously, as may be. No one can live, in the sense of that life which is alone worth the living, without definite and constant periods of seeking that refreshment which is found in communion with G.o.d, and in setting one"s spiritual forces in touch anew with the infinite spiritual energy. Poet and prophet have emphasized this truth. Stephen Phillips, in his poem of "The Dead Soul," touches it most impressively.
Without its own sustenance from the spiritual world, how could it survive?
"She felt it die a little every day, Flutter more wildly and more feebly pray."
The soul is ever "imploring dimly something beautiful," and it must have this or its powers remain latent and undeveloped. "Not in dead matter do we live," said Lord Kelvin, in his recent address before the British scientists, "but we live and move in the creative and directing power that science compels to be accepted as an article of faith. We are forced to believe, with absolute confidence, in a directive power,--in an influence other than the physical, dynamic, and electric powers.
Science is not antagonistic to religion, but a help to religion," he added; "science positively affirms creative power, and makes every one feel a miracle in himself."
The soul has certainly a door into infinite beauty, and through the portals must it fare forth to renew its activities in its own atmosphere. The question as to whether the individual survives bodily death is one that the Twentieth Century will answer with no unmistakable reply. The investigation into the very nature of man is one possible on strictly scientific lines, whose results agree with and confirm all that Faith has intuitively divined.
This investigation--pursued in many ways--is best of all pursued in keeping some hour apart, each day, for absolute _re_union and _com_munion with the Holy Spirit. To lift up the heart to G.o.d in deepest aspiration and prayer is to come into an increasing knowledge of one"s own spiritual self, and into increasing harmony with the divine world in whose atmosphere, alone, we live and breathe and have our being. In love and sympathy lie the daily solution of all the problems of the spiritual life.
These are the divine attributes, and they are as indispensable to life to-day as they were when Christ walked in Galilee. Compa.s.sion and love are the handmaids of hope and faith and joy. The heart to sympathize, the love to aid, lead on to the radiant atmosphere of happiness.
There is a deep and impressive significance in the lesson of the music-drama of "Parsifal." "Only those of pure heart can be strong." And that "the Knights in the play were saved by Parsifal _who was willing to encounter anything_." This alone is the diviner quality of love,--to be willing to "encounter anything;"--to meet pain, disaster, defeat, if so it be the appointed way to serve. There is a consecration in pain that purifies and refines and exalts all effort. It may be the very divine sign and seal of approval when the way leads to personal sacrifice rather than to personal joy.
"The Magi," it is said, "have but to follow their Star in peace.... The Divine action marvellously adjusts all things. The order of G.o.d sends each moment the appropriate instrument for its work, and the soul, enlightened by faith, finds all things good, desiring neither more nor less than she possesses."
One may tread,--not the "whole round of creation," as Browning phrases it, but a minor segment of it, at least, and come back with added and more profound conviction that happiness is a condition of the spirit; that "the soul is ceaselessly joyful"; that the incidents and accidents of the outward life cannot mar nor lessen that sense of higher peace and joy and harmony which is the atmosphere of any true spiritual life. One may recognize and affirm this truth by spiritual intuition, and he may then be led through many phases of actual tests in actual life; he may, for a time, lose his hold on it and come to say that happiness is a thing that depends on so many causes outside one"s own control; that illness, death, loss of friends, adverse circ.u.mstances, failures and trials of all kinds may come into his experience, and that one is at the mercy of all these vicissitudes. Can the individual be happy, he will ask, when all that made happiness is taken away? Can he be happy if he has lost all his worldly goods? or if death has taken those nearest and dearest to him? or if the separations of life, far harder to bear than those of death, have come into his experience with their almost hopeless sense of desolation? And yet, until he has learned to answer these questions with the most triumphant affirmative, he has not learned the measure nor sounded the depth of a true and n.o.ble order of Happiness.
The difference is that of being safely on board a great steamer when wind and wave are tempest-tossed, or of being helpless in the raging waters. The storm may be precisely the same; the tempest may rage as it will, but safe and secure in the cabin or stateroom, the voyager does not mind its fury. Truly may this a.n.a.logy be held in life. It is possible to emerge from the winds and waves; to enter so entirely into the sense of security in the Divine; to hold so absolutely the faith in the Divine leading, that even in the midst of trial and loss and deprivation and sorrow, one shall come to _know_, through his own experience, that "the soul is ceaselessly joyful." For it is one thing to accept a truth theoretically, to believe it intuitively, and another to prove it through experience that shall test the quality of faith and conviction. Learning this supreme truth of life through outward experiences as well as though inner revelation, is a victory of the will that may even make itself an epoch, a landmark, in spiritual progress.
One of the great discourses of Phillips Brooks had for its theme the lesson of not laying too much stress on the recognition of one"s motives or on any return of sympathetic consideration. "Let me not think," said Bishop Brooks, "that I get nothing from the man who misunderstands all my attempts to serve him and who scorns me when I know that I deserve his sympathy. Ah! it would be sad enough if only the men who understood us and were grateful to us when we gave ourselves to them had help to give us in return. The good reformer whom you try to help in his reform, and who turns off from you contemptuously because he distrusts you, seeing that your ways are different from his, does not make you happy,--he makes you unhappy; but he makes you good, he leads you to a truer insight, a more profound unselfishness. And so (it is the old lesson), not until goodness becomes the one thing that you desire, not until you gauge all growth and gain by that, not until then can you really know that the law has worked, the promise has been fulfilled.
With what measure you gave yourself to him, he has given himself--the heart of himself, which is not his favor, not his love, but his goodness, the real heart of himself to you. For the rest you can easily wait until you both come to the better world, where misconceptions shall have pa.s.sed away and the outward forms and envelopes of things shall correspond perfectly with their inner substances forever."
In the last a.n.a.lysis one comes to realize that happiness is a condition depending solely on the relation of his soul to G.o.d; that neither life, nor death, nor princ.i.p.alities, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any living creature can separate him from it, because happiness and the love of G.o.d are one and identical, and it is not in the power of this world to give, or to take away, this sense of absolute oneness with the Divine life that comes when man gives himself, his soul and body, his hopes and aspirations and ideals, in complete consecration to the will of G.o.d.
For this alone is happiness. It may not be ease nor pleasure, but it is that ceaseless joy of the soul that may be the daily experience of every human being. And to gain the deep inner conviction of this sublime truth is worth whatever it may cost of tears or trial or desolation of spirit.
It is the threshold of joy. It is the initiation into a higher spiritual state which one may gain during his progress on earth as well as in heaven. In fact, no one is really fitted for the highest privileges and sweetness he may crave, until he has learned to live well, to live joyfully, without these. No one is fitted _for_ joy until he can live well _without_ joy. It is the law and the prophets.
THE NECTAR OF THE HOUR.
I share the good with every flower, I drink the nectar of the hour.
--EMERSON.
_If we knew how to greet each moment as the manifestation of the divine will we could find in it all the heart could desire. Nor what indeed is more reasonable, more perfect, more divine, than the will of G.o.d? Can its infinite value be increased by the paltry difference of time, place, or circ.u.mstance? The present moment is always filled with infinite treasures; it contains more than one is capable of receiving. Faith is the measure of these blessings; in proportion to your faith will you receive. By love also are they measured; the more your heart loves the more it desires, and the more it desires the more it receives. The will of G.o.d is constantly before you as an unfathomable sea, which the heart cannot exhaust; only in proportion as the heart is expanded by faith, confidence, and love can it receive of its fulness.... The divine will is an abyss of which the present moment is the entrance; plunge fearlessly therein and you will find it more boundless than your desires._--THE REV. J. P. DE CAUSSADE, in "Holy Abandonment."
"The moment we desire G.o.d and His will, that moment we enjoy them, and our enjoyment corresponds to the order of our desires."
What though the bough beneath thee break?
Remember, thou hast wings.
--VICTOR HUGO.
To enter into the will of G.o.d is an initiation of such power and beauty that language falters in any effort to interpret this supreme experience. It can be indicated only in the words of the poet:--
"I share the good with every flower, I drink the nectar of the hour."