Human destiny

“ And just as the dark forces that sweep through our life are not necessarily hostile forces but form part of the order of the world, so things that we regard as haphazard, merely cast into the lap of chance, may be divine agents working out a marvellous equality of opportunity throughout our human life. I affirm it without a shadow of qualification, that chance has no place whatever in the responsible formation of character, and the formation of character is the decision of destiny. ”

“ Again have we been reminded that the whole course of human life and destiny hinges often upon a single circumstance, and that in the loom of fate the breaking of a single strand is adequate to mar forever life's golden cloth. ”

“ Other elements of that force are the physical needs; the push and play of passions ingrained in human nature; the inherited bias; the strength of habits formed before childhood had begun to reflect,—the thousand forces which blend with reason and choice to make up our destiny. ”

“ But these faculties, in envisaging the past or the ideal, envisage the eternal, and the man in whose mind they predominate is to that extent detached in his affections from the world of flux, from himself, and from his personal destiny. ”

“ Here, as elsewhere, the gain of creation consists always in the growth of individual minds, which live and aspire, as flowers bloom and birds sing, in the midst of morasses; and in the continual development of that thought, the thought of human destiny, which is given to eternity adequately to express, and which ages of failure only seemingly impede. ”

“ We doubt not the destiny of our country—that she is to accomplish great things for human nature, and be the mother of a nobler race than the world has yet known. But she has been so false to the scheme made out at her nativity, that it is now hard to say which way that destiny points. ”

“ The good or bad result which proceeds from the accomplished acts of successful activity, is expressed by the word destiny.
5. The wished for and unwished for consequences resulting from the good and bad deeds of human activity, are termed the effects of destiny by people.
6. Human activity which is the only cause of some unavoidable future consequence, is called as destiny by the majority of mankind.
7. Truly, O Rághava! destiny though void as vacuity, appears as real to some body, who thinks it to be an active agent, while others know it to be inactive. ”

“ This is the Christian hope, definite in principle, if quite unaccompanied by any anticipated knowledge of method or details. And this destiny of the human body cannot be separated from the destiny of the material universe as a whole. Matter as a whole is to have an unending development like spirit, and a development with a justifying purpose of glory in it. ”

“ What matters to them, first and foremost—what would give fresh life to all their efforts—would be the provision of a new motive power, a new hope for the individual life in God, a new respect for man’s destiny. ”

“ Theologians and moralists, historians and poets, impressed by a sense of the infinite responsibilities of mankind, awed by a just prevision of the great destinies in store for the only earthly being of practically unlimited powers, or touched by the tragic dignity of the ever-recurring struggle of human will with circumstance, have always tended to conceive of their kind as something apart, separated by a great and impassable barrier, from the rest of the natural world. ”

“ This fair earth, with its fir-clad hills, its snowy mountains, its sparkling seas, its azure vaults, and the holy light of the stars, is but a painted screen behind which lurks the true reality.
The beauty of this earth and all that is precious and great in this human life of ours is but a hint and a suggestion of an eternal fairness, an eternal rightness. ”

“ For, equal through the day and night,
The wise Eternal oversight
And love and power and righteous will
Remain: the law of destiny
The best for each and all must be,
And life its promise shall fulfil. ”

“ And this has been the universal truth since those days—the one unchangeable, pregnant, vital truth of development, of progress, of civilization, of happiness, of freedom, of charity. The perpetual presence, the ceaseless personal influence, the potent force of His continual association alone renders human history intelligible or makes possible the solution of any grave problem which man meets in his upward march to better life and more wholesome conditions. ”

“ You see, owing to our all living such perfect lives, and there being no wrong, or sorrow, or joy, or hope, or love, or grief in the world, and everything being so regular and so proper, there is really nothing much to write about—except, of course, the Destiny of Humanity. ”

“ For my part, I believe that throughout the whole known history of mankind, even in epochs when reason is most misled and conscience most perverted, there runs visible, though fine and threadlike, the chain of destiny, which has its roots in the throne of an All-wise and an All-good ”

“ Does not the soul either go back to the one source from which it sprung, and become a part of the whole, or does it not throw off its material environment and continue with individual consciousness to work out its final destiny? ”

“ I thought, so far as I can recollect my thoughts after so many years, that if a powerful and benevolent spirit has shaped the destiny of this world, we can better discover that destiny from the words that have gathered up the heart's desire of the world, than from historical records, or from speculation, wherein the heart withers. ”

“ And of the great past of life, of the races of men and their slow growth in knowledge, of fears and dark superstitions and the dawning victories of truth, of the conquest and sublimation of human passions through the ages, of the divinity of research and discovery, of the latent splendour of our bodies and senses, and the present dangers and possibilities amidst which the continually more crowded masses of our race were then blundering so tragically and yet with such bright gleams of hope and promise, we heard no talk at all. ”

“ The rise, the long, slow upward struggle of the soul of man was as destined and inevitable as its fall; all human achievement, material or spiritual, was founded in the baseness of mire and clay—and rose towering above its foundations. ”

“ But in the history of the human race the fact of transcending significance is the presence in man of instincts, emotions, mind, reason, will, conscious hunger, and conscious love of one's neighbor,—all the constituents of that personality of supreme worth whose ceaseless struggle for mastery over the forces of nature, for escape from hunger, want, and war into a world of plenty, beauty, mutual aid, and service is the epic of civilization. ”

“ I confess it all, yet I see in these men promise of a better wisdom than in their opponents. Their hope for man is grounded on his destiny as an immortal soul, and not as a mere comfort-loving inhabitant of earth, or as a subscriber to the social contract. ”

“ There have been myriads upon myriads of human creatures who have obeyed this law—who have put every breath and nerve of their being into its toil—who have devoted every hour, and exhausted every faculty—who have bequeathed their unaccomplished thoughts at death—who, being dead, have yet spoken, by majesty of memory, and strength of example. And, at last, what has all this “Might” of humanity accomplished, in six thousand years of labour and sorrow? What has it done? Take the three chief occupations and arts of men, one by one, and count their achievements. ”

“ With a dark and shifting near future, and a bright and fixed ultimate destiny, what is the true, the only wisdom? Not to pry into the fogs and thickets round about, or to stand still for fear of what may next occur in the path ”

“ When you begin to live and work for a great purpose, you get into the current of great forces, great minds and great souls. You gain from every source; all the powerful lives in the world will work with you; you become a living part of that movement in the world that determines the greater destiny of man ”

“ But while I draw this impassable circle around me, and confine myself within the bounds of present existence, this small point of time, which I was in danger of neglecting in useless researches, becomes the more important to me. What you call the chief end and aim of my existence concerns me no longer. I cannot escape my destiny; I cannot promote its consummation; but I know, and firmly believe, that I am here to accomplish some end, and that I do accomplish it. But the means which nature has chosen to fulfil my destiny are so much the more sacred to me ”

“ At the threshold of this new era to which we have come, with our old civilisation so broken and shattered about us by our own civilising hands, the guiding spirit of man's destiny has its new word to say, to which we must listen with brave ears. ”

“ Our destiny is ideal. We are on our way to the Unseen. The ideal draws us upward,--real now, to the spirits of just men made perfect--to be real to us when we are perfect--once ideal to them, as now to us. ”

“ Countless {40} souls, trusting to their individual experience, have learned, as we at the last time indicated, to define their ideal, and their need, and, upon occasion, to discover the power that they took to be their saving principle--their deliverer. Who amongst all these were right, either in their judgment as to their need or in their consciousness that they had found the way that leads to peace, to triumph, to union with the goal of human life? Were all of them more or less right? Were any of them wholly deluded? Are there as many supreme aims of life as there are individuals? ”

“ And what do men whose destiny is to live for ever want but something that shall go with them through all changes of condition, and, like a light in the midst of the darkest tunnel, shall burn in the passage between this and the other world, and shall never be taken away from them? We want a Person to be everything to us. ”

“ This principle is of very wide application.
What produces the noblest human creature now in our nineteenth century? What inspires hope? What sustains us most bravely to fight the battle of life? What makes life most worth living?
When we have ascertained these facts in the present, they will explain the past, and give the foundations of right for guidance in the future. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We are here collected to carry into execution the last wishes of one whose mortal career, prolonged far beyond the usual [Pg 34] limits of man’s existence, has been devoted with almost unexampled energy and perseverance to the establishment of those great moral and political truths, on which the happiness and the enlightenment of the human race are founded. ”

“ They connect the present with the past, and help on the increasing purpose of the future; holding aloft the standard of principle, maintaining the dignity of human character, and filling the mind with traditions and instincts of all that is most worthy and noble in life. ”

“ And nevertheless, your future and your past, your aspect of individuality, and of freedom, and the various aspects wherein you are dependent upon the rest of the world, your whole life of deeds, and your attainment of your individual goal through your deeds, — all these manifold facts that are yours and that constitute you, are present at once to the Absolute, — as facts in the world, as temporal contents eternally viewed, — as a process eternally finished, — but eternally finished precisely by virtue of the temporal sequence of your deeds. ”

“ We give our destiny from our own hands,
And trust to those most frail of all frail things,
The chances of humanity. ”

“ The great human type of which you dreamed—have you succeeded in giving it life in yourself?
You know what is common knowledge about the progress of humanity; its struggle towards higher forms, its gropings up by many ways toward the infinite which it calls God. ”

“ Having once come to this resolution, we cheerfully shared together the labours of the field. One in heart and purpose, we dared remain true to ourselves, true to our high destiny as immortal creatures, in our conflict with temporal and physical wants. ”

“ And blessed is that nation alone. Here is the solution of the question of our destiny. It is in making the Lord the God of our country, that we are safe—that we are prosperous—that our glorious destiny becomes inevitable. Our destiny is left to ourselves. ”

“ Each day of your life will prove that you have decided, and are acting upon the decision you make on this momentous point. Your conduct in society proves it, your behaviour in your family, every thought which occupies your mind, every wish you breathe, every plan you form, every pleasure you enjoy, every pain you suffer—all prove whether it is your object to live for yourself, or for others.
Again, is it your aim to live for this world only, or for eternity? ”

“ You recall that we have succeeded in discovering the harmony of destinies, which we need in order to lift humanity on the palm of our thought to the next plane of existence. You know, this wandering century-is going somewhere! ”

“ But the abodes of man, and all that he has accomplished, the footprints of his wanderings and the results of his toil, the visible symbols of his intellectual cultivation and moral progress,--in short, everything physical that can give evidence of his present position,--shall remain untouched by the hand of destiny. ”

“ There amidst the world new-builded shall our earthly deeds abide,
Though our names be all forgotten, and the tale of how we died.
Life or death then, who shall heed it, what we gain or what we lose?
Fair flies life amid the struggle, and the Cause for each shall choose.
Hear a word, a word in season, for the day is drawing nigh,
When the Cause shall call upon us, some to live, and some to die! ”