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There is the test of love that proves its real direction—whether it runs out selfward or Godward. If we love God and souls as much as we love self, we can spend money for them just as willingly and with as little reluctance or regret to see it go as if it were being spent for ourselves.
But, dear friend, to come and to go is the law of life, and it may be that I shall be with thee longer than thou thinkest for; eighty odd years may be lengthened into ninety: the patriarchs lived till a hundred and more years, and we believe that the soul outlives the body. Out of the chrysalis we escape from our corruptible bodies, and the beautiful butterfly flutters Godward.
Into their being He injects the power of an endless life. Their hopes, faith, affections center less and less on time. The truer, fuller, richer life is felt to be coming. It is to surpass the earthly life in quantity and in quality only because the soul, as it flutters Godward, must here feel the attrition of its fleshly tabernacle. This dissolved, the fullness and the freedom come.
The prophet tells us thus: He shall be the covenant of the people, or he shall be accounted the conditions and worth of the world; He shall be the covenant, or works, or righteousness of the people; for, He as the high-priest under the law, is set for the people to Godward; that is, he standeth always in the presence of God, as the complete obedience of the people.
It is a prose essay, but written in the ecstatic mood of a poet. The theme of its meditation is the soul as related to Nature and to God. The soul is primal; Nature, in all its bountiful and beautiful commodities, exists for the training of the soul; it is the soul's shadow. And every soul has immediate access to Deity. Thus the utility and beauty and discipline of Nature lift the soul Godward.
Measure, polity, plan or scheme of public good or evil, is not in the head of Felicissimus; except, if he could but devise it, some measure that would please his horse for the moment, and encourage him to go with softer paces, godward or devilward as it might be, and save Felicissimus's leather, which is fast wearing. This is what we call a Government in England, for nearly two centuries now.
And now it was sad for her chat at such a time of peculiar emotion, when the heart is ready to turn of itself toward its unseen origin, feeling after the fountain of its love, the very occasion of the tide Godward should be an influence destructive of the same. Under the growing fascination of the handsome, noble-minded doctor, she was fast losing what little shadow of faith she had possessed.
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