Manifest Destiny

“ We should remember that Nature in her operations aims at the universal, and never spares individuals, but uses them as means for the accomplishment of her ends. It is, therefore, for us to submit to Destiny, cultivating, as the things necessary to virtue, knowledge, temperance, fortitude, justice. ”

“ It most clearly emerges when, in moments of reflection, we enlarge the circuit of our thoughts beyond the needs of action, and, in a mood untouched by personal hopes or fears, endeavour to survey man’s destiny as a whole. ”

“ And each soul, without one word of commendation or approval, by its own inner tendency, seeks its own place.... The freeing of souls is the judging of souls. A liberated nature dictates its own destiny. ”

“ Will you not cease to lend an ear to those orators of mysticism who tell you to pray and to wait, preaching salvation now through religion, now through power, and whose vehement and sonorous words captivate you? Your destiny is an enigma which neither physical force, nor courage of soul, nor the illuminations of enthusiasm, nor the exaltation of any sentiment, can solve. Those who tell you to the contrary deceive you, and all their discourses serve only to postpone the hour of your deliverance, now ready to strike. ”

“ We come from the Infinite and we are on our journey back to it; we have its push behind us to impel us to perform the smallest service with the realization that it is related to the infinite dignity, power and peace of our Source, but the way to understand our nature, our purpose and our destiny is to center our thought on the allinclusive personality of which each created being is a manifestation. ”

“ Thus Destiny is seen to be the true existence-mode of the prime phenomenon, that in which the living idea of becoming unfolds itself immediately to the intuitive vision. And therefore the Destiny-idea dominates the whole world-picture of history, while causality, which is the existence-mode of objects and stamps out of the world of sensations a set of well-distinguished and well-defined things, properties and relations, dominates and penetrates, as the form of the understanding, the Nature-world that is the understanding’s “alter ego.” ”

“ Think of the unfathomable yearnings, the infinite ecstasies of desire and faith from age to age swelling in the very heart of the world, all set on the one hope of future union, and who then can believe that God will coldly blast them all? ”

“ The doubt which perplexes us as to the great problem of our destiny,—the doubt which allows so much latitude to the workings of our conscience,—does it not indicate the path we ought to follow? Should not men regard their freedom with peculiar reverence, when the Divinity they invoke has mercifully refrained from fettering it? ”

“ The battle of sensualism, the scramble over material interests, the wearing absorption in the small and evanescent struggles of social rivalry, the irritated attention given to the ever thickening claims of external things, the pulverizing discussions of all sorts of opinions by hostile schools, are fatal to that concentrated calmness of mood, that unity of passion, that serene amplitude of intellectual and imaginative scope, that docile religious receptiveness of soul, requisite for the fit contemplation of a doctrine so solemn and sublime as that of immortality. ”

“ Fade, terrible dream, painted by superstition on the cope of the sky, picture of contending fiends and angels, fiery rain, a frowning God, and shuddering millions of victims! Away forever, and leave the blue space free for the benignant mysteries of the unknown eternity to lure us blessedly forward to our fate. Come, believers in the merciful God of truth, lend your aid to the glorious work of spiritual emancipation. In this benign battle for the deliverance of the world from error and fear, every free mind should be a champion, every loving heart a volunteer. ”

“ With pincers of practical logic the wires that are held by Destiny are, not drawn, but neatly cut, and you are severed from the Tyrant forever. You become a free being, an infinite Mind, a divine Personality. ”

“ The invariable laws under which Humanity is placed have received various names at different periods. Destiny, Fate, Necessity, Heaven, Providence, all are so many names of one and the same conception: the laws which man feels himself under, and that without the power of escaping from them. We claim no exemption from the common lot. We only wish to draw out into consciousness the instinctive acceptance of the race, and to modify the spirit in which we regard them. ”

“ In the creed of the ancients, as we know, necessity figured as Destiny. The modern point of view, on the contrary, is that of Consolation. And Consolation means that, if we renounce our aims and interests, we do so only in prospect of receiving compensation. Destiny, on the contrary, leaves no room for Consolation. ”

“ There are, therefore, two supreme maxims for souls conditioned in time and space 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 pass 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! ”

“ But we will pursue this no farther, for it leads to a wisdom of over-much theory. For all that a brilliant exterior destiny is not indispensable, still should we always regard it as wholly desirable, and pursue it as keenly as though we valued it highly. It behoves the sage to knock at the door of every temple of glory, of every dwelling where happiness, love, and activity are to be found. ”

“ Temptation, trial, sorrow, pain; hope, fear, self-hatred, love and joy, with ever-renewed and increased aspiration and effort, all variously change and deepen their combinations and qualities, outlook and ideals. But they do not for one moment cease. All things but grow in depth and significance, in variety within unity, in interiority and interpenetration. ”

“ Where was the hope of making reason and the will of God prevail among people who had a routine which they had christened reason and the will of God, in which they were inextricably bound, and beyond which they had no power of looking? But now the iron force of adhesion to the old routine,—social, political, religious,—has wonderfully yielded; the iron force of exclusion of all which is new has wonderfully yielded. ”

“ But though we cannot tell why the principles of our destiny should be as we find them, we can see what the facts of the case actually are as revealed in the history of human experience. And this is what chiefly concerns us. Let us, then, try to penetrate a little more thoroughly into the nature of hell. ”

“ What balance of mind, what reticence and self-control, what peace resulting from deep and settled faith, is there in this history, and what a cooling power it must have to the hot and fevered human heart that burns in view of the much that is to be done to bring the world right! ”

“ For progress, for organization, for life, for spirituality, stand, as the best forces, our healthier social instincts, our courage, our endurance, and our insight. Civilization depends upon these. How hopeless every task of humanity, were not instinct often on the side of order and of spirituality. How quick would come our failure, were not courage and endurance ours. How blindly chance would drive us, did we not love insight for its own sake, and cultivate contemplation even when we know not yet what use we can make of it. ”

“ People shall witness to-day the power of Destiny and manliness; this day shall appear which of them is more powerful. Those who have witnessed before the prevention of thy installation by the evil agency of Destiny, shall see it defeated, even this very day, by my manliness. Thwart shall I that assailing Destiny by my prowess like unto a terrible elephant, freed of its shackles past the restraining power of a goading hook and inflamed with the juice issuing out of its temples. ”

“ There is real conflict between such a creed, centred on the idea of something done once for all to the soul—to the world—from outside, and that which is centred on the idea of a life perpetually welling up in the soul, on growth, movement, organic change. ”

“ It should be resisted by a devout culture courting the smiles of God, by rising into the loftier airs of meditation and duty, by imaginative sentiment and practical philanthropy, until the eternal instinct, long smothered under sluggish loads of sense and sin, reached by a soliciting warmth from heaven, stirs with demonstrating vitality. ”

“ Fortunately, intellect and soul could not slumber forever, nor the mediaval nightmares always keep their torturing seat on the bosom of humanity. Noble men arose to vindicate the rights of reason and the divinity of conscience. The world was circumnavigated, and its revolution around the sun was demonstrated. A thousand truths were discovered, a thousand inventions introduced. Papacy tottered, its prestige waned, its infallibility sunk. The light of knowledge shone, the simplicity of nature was seen, and the benignity of God was surmised. ”

“ Why should the power of hope, and joy, and faith, change into inanity and oblivion? What crucible shall burn up the ultimate of force? What material processes shall ever disintegrate the simplicity of spirit? Earth and plant, muscle, nerve, and brain, belong to one sphere, and are subject to the temporal fates that rule there; but reason, imagination, love, will, belong to another, and, immortally fortressed there, laugh to scorn the fretful sieges of decay. ”

“ The wide sweep of moral victory, still open to you, is closed to us for ever. But what triumphs may you not achieve, if you are true to yourselves? What instruments may you not be in God's hands, if only you will yield yourselves to Him—not with a timid, passive, half-hearted acquiescence, but with the active concentration of all your powers of body and soul and spirit?
And again I ask, is not this the time? The first volume of your life's history is closed. A clean page lies open, and with what writing shall it be filled? This is the great crisis of your life. ”

“ It is the dawn and beginning of the triumphing spirit of freedom which wills to draw all things back to one centre, one harmony, one unity, in which wild will and selfish passion and isolating pride, and all that springs from the dark fire-root are quenched, and instead the central principle of the spiritual world—Love—comes into play. ”

“ And Man saw that all is passing in this mad, monstrous world, that all is struggling to snatch, at any cost, a few brief moments of life before Death's inexorable decree. And Man said: 'There is a hidden purpose, could we but fathom it, and the purpose is good; for we must reverence something, and in the visible world there is nothing worthy of reverence.' And Man stood aside from the struggle, resolving that God intended harmony to come out of chaos by human efforts. ”

“ And the purposes of things, so far as we can discern them, the nature of our spiritual constitution, the meaning of our circumstances and probation, the resulting tendencies of our experience, all seem to prophesy, not the destruction, but the perfection and perpetuation, of individual being. ”

“ Admire the beautiful, love the good, obey the true, worship the right, aspire to the highest, subordinate or sacrifice everything base or wrong in a generous service of duty, and thus nourish a consciousness of those ontological relations by which the soul is rooted in the Godhead, and stimulate that intuitive efflorescence of faith which grows out of progressive fulfillment and which prophecies perpetuity of fulfillment. ”

“ To the mass of men this Divine Idea lies hidden; yet, to discern it, to seize it, and live wholly in it, is the condition of all genuine virtue, knowledge, freedom, and the end, therefore, of all spiritual effort in every age. ”

“ Final success and triumph come largely by this kind of condensation and concentration, and the stern and severe lopping off of the indulgence of the egotistical genius, which is human discipline, and the best exponent of the doctrine of unity also. This is the straight and the narrow way along which genius, if it walk but faithfully, sows as it goes in the dramatic pathway all the flowers of human passion, hope, love, terror, and triumph. ”

“ And what does the spirit need in the face of modern life? The sense of freedom. That naïve, rough sense of freedom, which supposes man's will to be limited, if at all, only by a will stronger than his, he can never have again. ”

“ Here, then, we may see the impress of a Single Mind, in the unity and harmony which pervade the visible universe; while, at the same time, we discern the qualities of that Mind,—its Power, in the grandeur of the plan, its Wisdom in the perfectness of its beauty and order, and its Love in the presence of that great pervading force which draws into intimate connection and union its innumerable parts. ”

“ Meantime the ethical sense and the spiritual aspiration of mankind have asserted themselves, sometimes as slow-working, permanent forces, sometimes in revolutionary upheaval. With change both of material condition and of ways of thought, new forms of sentiment and aspiration have appeared,—a wider and tenderer humanity; a reverence for the order of nature and dependence upon the study of that order for human progress; a consciousness of the sublimity and beauty of nature as a divine revelation; a reliance upon the powers and intuitions of the human spirit as its only and sufficient guides ”

“ These breadths draw out the soul; we feel that we have wider thoughts than we knew; the soul has been living, as it were, in a nutshell, all unaware of its own power, and now suddenly finds freedom in the sun and the sky. ”