Master of Life

“ Perhaps this is one of the unfailing laws of progress in our being. Perhaps the Master of Life always rewards those who do their little faithfully by giving them some greater opportunity for faithfulness. ”

“ Their creed includes even some lofty and pure conceptions. Under the title of the Great Spirit, the Master of Life, the Maker of heaven and earth, they distinctly recognise a supreme ruler of the universe and an arbiter of their destiny. ”

“ What an example is set before us in our blessed master! How is his whole life, from earliest youth, dedicated to the pursuits of true wisdom, and to the practice of the most exalted virtue! When you see him, at twelve years of age, in the temple amongst the doctors, hearing them, and asking them questions on the subject of religion, and astonishing them all with his understanding and answers—you will say, perhaps, "Well might the Son of God, even at those years, be far wiser than the aged; but, can a mortal child emulate such heavenly wisdom! ”

“ Education will teach you, Bernard, what you ought to think about the things which must concern you—about your position, your duties, your feelings. At present you see but dimly into your heart and conscience. And I, who am accustomed to question myself on all subjects and to discipline my life, how can I take for master a man governed by instinct and guided by chance? ”

“ The Master said: “He that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.... Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.” And to the young man who asked him what he should do to inherit eternal life, he replied, “Sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me.” ”

“ In whatever rank of life the ‘case’ occurred, if it was one of difficulty or interest, this master of his art was ready with the potent spell of his unerring bistoury, and his reward was in the consciousness of his own power, and in the noble pride of having been ministrant to the relief of suffering humanity. ”

“ The boys had received an object lesson, and would long carry in their minds the picture of the mysterious arm and cane.
In a right intention one is master of the ideal of life. If circumstances favor, he becomes conscious that life is no longer master of him, but that he is the master of life. ”

“ Again the disciple said to his master: "Since worldly things are so transitory, why should we make just as great preparations as if they were lasting?" The master: "Because the end of life is uncertain." ”

“ Here again, innumerable small efforts of attention will accumulate into mastery, and a mastery worth winning. For a concrete example, take the gradual conquest of each day, the effort to live that day for the Soul. To him that is faithful unto death, the Master gives the crown of life.
11. The gradual conquest of the mind's tendency to flit from one object to another, and the power of one-pointedness, make the development of Contemplation. ”

“ A poet of our day quaintly but not irreverently writes of the future life, “When the Master of all Good Workmen shall set us to work anew.” There we shall work for the joy of it; there we shall know things in their reality; there we shall enjoy the perfect appreciation of the Master, and know the blessedness of labor performed in His service. ”

“ He must deliberately dethrone himself from the centre of the circle of his life, and he must enthrone the Master there instead. He has been in the habit of thinking instinctively how everything will affect him, or what he can make of it, how he can turn it to is profit and pleasure. Instead of that he must now learn to think of everything as it affects the Master, and since the Master lives only to help the evolution of humanity, that means that he must regard everything from the stand-point of its helpfulness or hindrance to the cause of evolution. ”

“ Author of our nature has implanted in us as a great means of self-preservation. To hope as well as to fear much is addressed in the Bible, and the missionary who would approve himself to his Master is bound to appeal to both principles, while, like his Master, he makes his constant and main appeal to the higher part of man's nature. ”

“ I cannot deny that I felt I was in danger of violence at times, but when I took up the work of my Master I expected that, and therefore was not disappointed. If it was the will of Heaven that I should yield my life at any time, I was always ready. You know, my son, that that is the true way to live. ”

“ If we follow the command of our Master, “Take no thought for your life,” we shall never depend on bodily conditions, structure, or economy, but we shall be masters of the body, dictate its terms, and form and control it with Truth. ”

“ He believed that he was living in a real sense—I mean in the most real sense of all, in the life of his personal will—before the standards of his master, and by those standards as in the light of his master’s countenance he insisted that he would uncompromisingly live. ”

“ CHAPTER VI. Engagements at and about home, 1813.—Visit to Friends in the middle and southern states, 1813.
Sixth day, 26th of 3d month, 1813. My worldly concerns engrossed much of my time to-day. How true is that saying, “No man can serve two masters.” O, how hard a master the world is; and from whose servitude I often feel strong desires to be fully redeemed; so that all my time may be more fully dedicated to the service of my heavenly master, whom, I often feel, I sincerely love. ”

“ And after you have done that, you needn't do anything else to-day; for you must know it is an easy master you have come to. But what is set you to do you must do well, and you mustn't think of going into any of the rooms which are beyond that in which you slept, for if you do, I'll take your life. ”

“ In short, he feels that if his life were prolonged a thousand years, and youth and health were restored to him, he should choose to spend his strength and the utmost length of his days in the service of the same Master, and to be a laborer in the same vineyard. ”

“ Nor as a general rule are any special trials or difficulties put in his way; he is simply carefully watched in his attitude towards all the little daily troubles of life. For convenience of observation the Master makes what is called a “living image” of each such probationary pupil — that is to say, an exact duplicate of the man's astral and mental bodies. ”

“ The Master is evidently talking about what a man has over and above his personal and family needs. It's a law of life, from Eden on, that a man should work to supply his daily needs and the needs of those dependent upon him. ”

“ Many people don't know the blessing of real life, and I feel sorry for all of them, and would like to open what I know to everyone. As a master is not able to handle the entire field and gets workers to harvest it, so do I. Go to different cities and proclaim the teaching of the kingdom of God everywhere. Tell people the commandments of the kingdom, and fulfill these commandments yourself. ”

“ I choose to dwell, in a few, inadequate words, on the element of the remarkably fruitful life which helped to give to my mind its favourite bent and served to determine for me my life work— namely, the Master's pre-eminence as a Teacher. ”

“ According to your theory of your Master’s life, you would have it that He faced the temptations of this world at such an advantage that they were only harmless leaden things, and not the sharp assailants which we find them. ”

“ But, reverend master, it is not sufficient to pass one’s life, one must earn the means for life.” ”

“ Since the advice was proffered, generation after generation of mighty wits have taken counsel with the Master, and his wisdom has through them been passed out into the practice of life, the evolution of society, the development of humanity. ”

“ In the former, he emphasized the fact that what they accomplished in life would depend largely on their own ‘resolves’, that they had not ‘finished’ their education but merely laid the foundation, that they should desire to master the specialty they took up but not to become narrow-minded, and that they should form the habit of observing nature for there they would see God. ”

“ Youth, Manhood, and Age. In Youth, as Entered Apprentices, we ought industriously to occupy our minds in the attainment of useful knowledge; in Manhood, as Fellow Crafts, we should apply our knowledge to the discharge of our respective duties to God, our neighbor, and ourselves; so that in Age, as Master Masons, we may enjoy the happy reflections consequent on a well-spent life, and die in the hope of a glorious immortality. ”

“ There are three grand steps in the unfoldment of the human soul before it completes the dwelling place of the spirit. These have been caged respectively youth, manhood, and old age; or, as the Mason would say, the Entered Apprentice, the Fellow Craft, and the Master Builder. All life passes through these three grand stages of human consciousness. They can be listed as the man on the outside looking in, the man going in, and the man inside. ”

“ But the Master knows the movement of the age he belongs to; and if he seems to be busy with what looks like a small piece of trivial experimenting, one may feel pretty sure that he knows what he is about, and that his minute operations are looking to a result that will help him towards attaining his great end in life,—an insight, so far as his faculties and opportunities will allow, into that order of things which he believes he can study with some prospect of taking in its significance. ”

“ I will get a release from my Master, and I will serve another Master, where my life may be made sweeter, where I may have plenty of meat, and drink, where I may wear better clothes, have little work and much wages, where there shall bee no danger of the mountain hanging over mee, and ready to fall upon me, &c. ”

“ I am entirety satisfied that by personal effort and experience along these lines of normal higher evolution, there comes a time and a degree of unfoldment and power when, from knowledge and self-mastery, the Master—the Individual Intelligence—having evolved and learned to control the spiritual body, can consciously and deliberately pass out of the physical body and return to it at will. ”

“ Fear not; thy ideal will be reached at last.
To do the grandest work one must needs be
Endowed by Nature for the master task;
Yea more, he must possess the light to see
Those mysteries which nature seems to mask,
And this can gain but in the royal way—
'Tis dread experience leads from gloom to-day.
The Master saw a struggling youth, and smiled,
Pleased with his work in main; but, knowing too
His latent power, if it could be beguiled
From hiding-place, much greater work would do,
He took His servant's hand and led the way
Through vale of sorrow up to brighter day. ”

“ The time is coming when, in place of your one master, you will have a thousand masters—masters of duty, of business, of pleasure, and of grief—giving you harder lessons, each one of them, than any of your Fluxions. ”

“ But as an immortal, with this broken wreck of mortality before me, with this scene as the ‘end-all’ of human glory, I feel that no career is truly great but that of him who, whether he be illustrious or obscure, lives to the future in the present, and linking himself to the spiritual world, draws from God the life, the rule, the motive, and the reward of all his labor. ”

“ Master. “It will be easy to show you the way of wisdom, provided you seek it purely for God’s sake to preserve the purity of your own soul, and for the love of virtue; if you love it for its own sake, and do not seek in it any worldly honour and glory or, still less, riches or pleasure.”
Dis. “Master, raise us up from the earth where our ignorance now detains us, lead us to those heights of science where you passed your own early years. For if we may listen to the fables of the poets, they would seem to tell us that the sciences are the true banquets of the gods.” ”

“ It was a century or more before these men, finding themselves in the presence of a master—finding that all their lives were occupied in attempting to ascertain for themselves that which was familiar to him—I say it took the best part of a hundred years before they could fairly see that their business was not to follow him, but to follow his example—namely, to look into the facts of nature for themselves, and to carry on, in his spirit, the work he had begun. ”

“ He shall have a master to teach him, and in time we shall see whether he is one of the many in whom the divine fire burns, but whose bodies are instruments too coarse to carry out the thoughts of the soul, or whether he is one of the few who are able to do that of which others vainly dream. ”

“ You may be driving sheep, and you shall wander to the city—bucolic and open-mouthed; shall wander under the intrepid guidance of the spirit into the studio of the master, and after a time he shall say, ‘I have nothing more to teach you.’ And now you have become the master, who did so recently dream of great things while driving sheep. You shall lay down the saw and the plane to take upon yourself the regeneration of the world. ”

“ Each time you do something great and brave, the Master comes a step nearer. When you become your soul, the Master comes all the way down the hill and tells your brain which way to go—tells you the path, the way home. ”

“ I lay awake hour after hour, a confusion of thoughts in my mind—we worry a great deal over nice points in morals when we are young. Then, suddenly, as it seemed to me, the command of destiny came—“You can be sole master, in name as well as in fact. ”

“ Then it will teach us all things, and enlighten our mind and reveal unto us the hidden things of darkness, and give us out of that divine treasure ‘things new and old.’ Resting on God to work in us both to will and to do of his own good pleasure, we ought always to work as diligent servants, that know they have a good Master, that will surely not forget their labour of love. ”