Ralph Waldo Trine

“ But whatever changes or advances may come, the Divine reality still survives, independent of Jesus it is true, but as the world knows him still better, it will give to him its supreme gratitude and praise, in that he was the most perfect revealer of God to man, of God in man, and the most concrete in that he embodied and lived this truth in his own matchless human-divine life; and stands as the God-man to which the world is gradually approaching. For as Goethe has said—"We can never get beyond the spirit of Jesus." ”

“ To deny the possibility of a World League and a World Court is to deny the ability of men to govern themselves. The history of the American Republic [Pg 224] in its demonstration of the power and the genius of federation should disprove the truth of this. Here we have a nation composed of forty-eight sovereign states and with the most heterogeneous accumulation of people that ever came together in one country, let alone one nation, and great numbers of them from those nations that for upwards of a thousand years have been periodically springing at one another's throats. ”

“ When your life is thus touched by the spirit of God, when it is ruled by this inner Kingdom, when your constant prayer, as the prayer of every truly religious man or woman will be—Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do? My one desire is that Thy will be my will, and therefore that Thy will be done in me and through me—then you are living the Divine life; you are a coworker with God. And whether your life according to accepted standards be noted or humble it makes no difference—you are fulfilling your Divine mission. You should be, you cannot help being fearless and happy. ”

“ Of course, Mother shouldn't go and get foolish, she shouldn't go cavorting around in a sixteen-year-old hat, when the hat of the thirty-five-year-old would undoubtedly suit her better; but she should rejoice that the golden period of life is still before her. Now she has leisure to do many of those things that she has so long wanted to do.
The world's rich field of literature is before her; the line of study or work she has longed to pursue, she bringing to it a better equipped mind and experience than she has ever had before. ”

“ We have reason to rejoice that a great change of estimate has not only begun but is now rapidly creeping over the world. He of even a generation ago who piled and piled, but who remained ignorant of the more fundamental laws of life, blind to the law of mutuality and service, would be regarded today as a low, beastly type. I speak advisedly. It is this obedience to the life of the spirit that Whitman had in mind when he said: "And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud." ”

“ For their own welfare, however, to say nothing of the welfare of the nation, labour unions must purge themselves of all anarchistic and destructive elements. Force is a two-edged sword, and the force of this nation when once its sense of justice and right is outraged and its temper is aroused, will be found to be infinitely superior to any particular class, whether it be capital or whether it be labour. Organised labour stands in the way to gain much by intelligent and honest work and orderly procedure. ”

“ The most preeminent lesson of the great war for us as a nation should be this—there should be constantly a degree of preparedness sufficient to hold until all the others, the various portions of the nation, thoroughly coordinated and ready, can be summoned into action. Thus are we prepared, thus are we safe, and there is no danger or fear of militarism.
In a democracy it should, without question, be a fundamental fact that hand in hand with equal rights there should go a sense of equal duty. A call for defence should have a universal response. ”

“ The human soul and its welfare is the highest business that any state can give its attention to. To recognise or to fail to recognise the value of the human soul in other nations, determines its real greatness and grandeur, or its self-complacent but essential vacuity. It is possible for a nation, through subtle delusions, to get such an attack of the big head that it bends over backwards, and it is liable, in this exposed position, to get a thrust in its vitals. ”

“ I am well aware of the fact that the mere accumulation of wealth is not, except in very rare cases, the controlling motive in the lives of our wealthy men of affairs. It is rather the joy and the satisfaction of achievement. But nevertheless it is possible, as has so often proved, to get so much into a habit and thereby into a rut, that one becomes a victim of habit; and the life with all its superb possibilities of human service, and therefore of true greatness, becomes side-tracked and abortive. ”

“ Many still recall that not a few well-meaning people at the close of the Civil War proclaimed that, with upwards of two million trained men behind him, General Grant would become a military dictator, and that this would be followed by the disappearance of democracy in the nation. But the mind, the temper, the traditions of our people are all a guarantee against militarism. The gospel, the hallucination of the shining armour, the will to power, has no attraction for us. ”

“ Parochial schools whether Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, or Oriental, have no place in American institutions—and whether their work is carried on in English or in a foreign language. They are absolutely foreign to the spirit of our institutions. They are purely for the sake of something less than the nation itself. Blind indeed are we if we are not history-wise. Criminal indeed are we to allow any boys or girls to be diverted to them and to be deprived of the advantages of a better schooling and being brought under the influences of agencies that are thoroughly and wholly American. ”

“ The real spirit and temper of democracy has done it. But it must be the preservation of the real spirit of democracy and constant vigilance that must preserve it.
Prejudice, suspicion, hatred on the part of individuals or on the part of the people of one nation against the people of another nation, have never yet advanced the welfare of any individual or any nation and never can. The world war is but the direct result of the type of peace that preceded it. ”

“ The man who has come under the influence and the domination of the Divine rule, realises that his interests lie in the same direction as the interests of all, that he cannot gain for himself any good—that is, any essential good—at the expense of the good of all; but rather that his interests, his Welfare, and the interests and the welfare of all others are identical. God's rule, the Divine rule, becomes for him, therefore, the fundamental rule in the business [Pg 126] world, the dominating rule in political life and action, the dominating rule in the law and relations of nations. ”

“ It is like an addled-brain driver in making a trip across the continent. He is possessed, obsessed with the insane desire of making a record. He plunges on and on night and day, good weather and foul—and all the time he is missing all the beauties, all the benefits to health and spirit along the way. He has none of these when he arrives—he has missed them all. He has only the fact that he has made a record drive—or nearly made one. ”

“ Like other good Jewish rabbis, for he was looked upon during his ministry and often addressed as Rabbi, he taught in the synagogues of his people; but oftener out on the hillsides and by the lake-side, under the blue sky and the stars of heaven. Giving due reverence to the Law and the Prophets—the religion of his people and his own early religion—but in spirit and in discriminating thought so far transcending them, that the people marvelled at his teachings and said—surely this a prophet come from God; no man ever spoke to us as he speaks. ”

“ Ignorance enchains and enslaves. Truth—which is but another way of saying a clear and definite knowledge of Law, the elemental laws of soul, of mind, and body, and of the universe about us—brings freedom. ”

“ In this majestic life is the full embodiment of the beauty of holiness—whose words have gone forth and whose spirit is ceaselessly at work in the world, drawing men and women up to their divine ideal, and that will continue so to draw all in proportion as his words of truth and his life are lifted up throughout the world. ”

“ Anything short of this means a periodic destruction of the finest fruits of civilisation. It means also the periodic destruction of the finest young manhood of the world. This means, in turn, the speedy degeneration of the human race. The deification of force, augmented by all the products and engines of modern science, is simply the way of sublimated savagery.
The world is in need of a new dispensation. Recent events show indisputably that we have reached the parting of the ways, the family of nations must now push on into the new day or the world will plunge on into a darker night. ”

“ When men on both sides are long-headed enough, are sensible enough to see its practical element and make it the fundamental basis of all relationships, of all negotiations, and all following activities in the relations between capital and labour, employer and employee, literally a new era in the industrial world will spring into being. Both sides will be the gainer—the dividends flowing to each will be even surprising.
There is really no labour problem outside of sympathy, mutuality, good-will, cooperation, brotherhood. ”

“ When the mental beauties of life, when the spiritual verities are sacrificed by self-surrender to and domination by the material, one of the heavy penalties that inexorable law imposes is the drying up, so to speak, of the finer human perceptions—the very faculties of enjoyment. It presents to the world many times, and all unconscious to himself, a stunted, shrivelled human being—that eternal type that the Master had in mind when he said: "Thou fool, this night shall thy soul be required of thee." ”

“ And any act that is not right and legitimate for the Sabbath day is neither right nor legitimate for the week-day. In other words, it is the spirit of righteousness that must permeate and must govern every act of life and every moment of life.
In seeking to define the spiritual life, it were better to regard the world as the expression of the Divine mind. The spirit is the life; the world and all things in it, the material to be moulded, raised, and transmuted from the lower to the higher. This is indeed the law of evolution, that has been through all the ages and that today is at work. ”

“ Love is the world's balance-wheel; and as the warming and ennobling element of sympathy, care and consideration radiates from it, increasing one's sense of mutuality, which in turn leads to fellowship, cooperation, brotherhood, a holy and diviner conception and purpose of life is born, that makes human life more as it should be, as it must be—as it will be. ”

“ We can make it a hovel or a mansion; we can make it even a pig-sty or a temple, according as the soul, the real self, chooses to function through it. We should make it servant, but through ignorance of the real powers within, we can permit it to become master. "Know ye not," said the Great Apostle to the Gentiles, "that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?"
The soul is the self, the soul made in the image of Eternal Divine Life, which, as Jesus said, is Spirit. The essential reality of the soul is Spirit. ”

“ After this study of the teachings of the Divine Master let us know this. It is the material that is the transient, the temporary; and the mental and spiritual that is the real and the eternal. We must not become slaves to habit. The material alone can never bring happiness—much less satisfaction. These lie deeper. That conversation between Jesus and the rich young man is full of significance for us all, especially in this ambitious, striving, restless age.
Abundance of life is determined not alone by one's material possessions, but primarily by one's riches of mind and spirit. ”

“ The strong nation is that in which under the leadership of universal free education and equal opportunities, a due watch is maintained to see that the rights of all individuals and all classes are nurtured and carefully guarded. In such a government the nation and its interests is and must be supreme. Then if built upon high ethical and moral standards where mutuality is the watch-word and the governing principle of its life, its motto might through right, power through justice, it becomes a fit and effective member of the Society of Nations. ”

“ There is reason to rejoice also that for the welfare of American institutions, the number of this class is continually decreasing. Did they predominate, with the unmistakable undercurrents of unrest, born of a sense of injustice, there would be in time, and in a shorter time than we perhaps realize, but one outcome. Steeped in selfishness, making themselves impervious to all the higher leadings and impulses of the soul—less than men—they are not only enemies of their own better selves, but enemies of the nation itself. ”

“ The divine right of dynasties—or rather of dynasties to persist—seems to die a little harder, but it is well on the way. We are now realising that the only divine right is the right of the people—and all the people.
Never again should it be possible for one man, or for one little group of men so to lead, or so to mislead a nation as to plunge it into war. The growth of democracy compelling the greater participation of all the people in government must prohibit this. ”