Life path

“ When you begin to realize this you will begin to control your thoughts, to regulate and discipline your mind, and to rebuild the inward temple of your soul, eliminating all useless and superfluous material, and incorporating into your being thoughts alone of joy and serenity, of strength and life, of compassion and love, of beauty and immortality; and as you do this you will become joyful and serene, strong and healthy, compassionate and loving, and beautiful with the beauty of immortality. ”

“ How much life means, words refuse to tell, because they can not. The very doorway of life is hung around with flowery emblems, to indicate that it is for some purpose. The mystery of our being, the necessity of action, the relation of cause to effect, the dependence of one thing upon another, the mutant influence and affinity of all things, assure us that life is for a purpose to which every outward thing doth point. ”

“ The pursuit of this Path brings about the development of still higher powers of mind, and these powers are—divine patience, spiritual equanimity, non-resistance, and prophetic insight. By prophetic insight I do not mean, the foretelling of events, but direct perception of those hidden causes which operate in human life, and, indeed, in all life, and out of which spring the multifarious and universal effects and events. ”

“ Your own thoughts, desires, and aspirations comprise your world, and, to you, all that there is in the universe of beauty and joy and bliss, or of ugliness and sorrow and pain, is contained within yourself.
By your own thoughts you make or mar your life, your world, your universe, As you build within by the power of thought, so will your outward life and circumstances shape themselves accordingly. ”

“ Now let us look at the emergence of this life which we have been considering, and at the typical path which it will or may follow, in an ordinary man or woman of our own day. Not a saint or genius, reaching heroic levels; but a member of that solid wholesome spiritual population which ought to fill the streets of the City of God. We noticed when we were studying its appearance in history, that often this life begins in a sort of restlessness, a feeling that there is something more in existence, some absolute meaning, some more searching obligation, that we have not reached. ”

“ As we press onward in the journey of life, to each of us the path is new and strange. Often it is rough and thorny; often it winds through places beset with difficulties and danger; often the sky is so dark that we can scarcely see the narrow line upon which our advancing footsteps may rest in safety. As "Finger-Posts on the Way of Life," pointing the wary traveller in the right direction, has this little book been written. It does not, professedly, take the high mission of the preacher ”

“ With the development of this soul-vision, judgment and mental penetration will be incalculably increased, and there will evolve within you that prophetic vision by the aid of which you will be able to sense coming events, and to forecast, with remarkable accuracy, the result of your efforts.
And in just the measure that you alter from within will your outlook upon life alter; and as you alter your mental attitude towards others they will alter in their attitude and conduct toward you. ”

“ At any rate, I might pursue some path, however solitary and narrow and crooked, in which I could walk with love and reverence. ”

“ Iakchos!" the voices about her shouted, and it sounded as gleeful as though the breasts of the revelers were overflowing with gladness; and as the scented curls of Diodoros bent over her head, as his hand closed on hers, and his whispered words of love were in her ear, she murmured: "Alexander is right; the world is a banqueting-hall, and life is fair."
"So fair!" echoed the youth, pensively. Then he shouted aloud to his companions: "The world is a banqueting-hall! Bring roses, bring wine, that we may sacrifice to Eros, and pour libations to Dionysus. Light the flaming torches! Iakchos! ”

“ But these wanderings in the soul's workshops, and these analyses of the forces that play on it, give us far too cold or too technical a view of that richly various and dynamic thing, the real regenerated life. ”

“ The Human Trail.—The trail of human life beginning in the mists of the past, winding through the ages and stretching away toward an unknown future, is a subject of perennial interest and worthy of profound thought. ”

“ Are the spell and the life of each path we pursue; ”

“ Those strange roads in life, unknown roads, by which I pass into changed circumstances and surroundings! But the discipline of the change is only to bring me into new pastures, that I may gain fresh nutriment for my soul. “Because they have no changes they fear not God.” ”

“ As the seed is cast into the bosom of nature in order that its energies may be called forth and its destinies accomplished, so do you cast yourselves into active life, determined in it to exercise, and by exercise to increase those mental powers that the training of the past has given you—determined that by continual accessions to your knowledge, the stream of thought shall be kept flowing constantly within you and bearing health, activity and growth into the very recesses of your being. ”

“ In that moment of experience, when at the portals of the unknown we found Life instead of death, and health that we never before had, we saw dimly the grand truth of those inspired pages, recording spiritual Life and its every idea, harmonious and eternal. ”

“ I should be inclined, therefore, as I have hinted before, to consider the world and this life as the mighty process of God, not for the trial, but for the creation and formation of mind, a process necessary to awaken inert, chaotic matter into spirit, to sublimate the dust of the earth into soul, to elicit an ethereal spark from the clod of clay. ”

“ Now, as the tree of life was the Lord who is love, perceived as the life principle of the soul, and as a consequence, spiritual wisdom in its broadest sense intuitively perceived, the tree of knowledge was self and the consequent self-derived intelligence perceived as the all in all of life, and sensuous evidence and natural science the arbiter of spiritual things. Is it strange that the Lord should commend the one and forbid the other? The one in his eyes was life, the other death. The one was purity, the other passion. ”

“ Life Force.—To every thinking mind the question often recurs, What makes the fragrant flower so different from the dead soil from which it grows? the trilling bird, so vastly superior to the inert atmosphere in which it flies? What subtle power paints the rose, and tunes the merry songster's voice? To explain this mystery, philosophers of olden time supposed the existence of a certain peculiar force which is called life, or vital force, or vitality. ”

“ The Line of Life, it must be remembered, merely relates to the promised length of life from heredity and natural causes, but the Line of Health denotes the effect of the class of life the subject has led. ”

“ If our minds are wandering to the nations of the earth, what will it benefit us? The grand place for our operations to begin is in our bosoms, and to see that our minds and bodies are influenced by those principles that pertain to light, life, and immortality. ”

“ Is it not right, by the eternal law of cause and sequence and unanswerable logic, that life should return to the fountain of life? That life, soul life and material life, which the sun nurtures, builds and vitalizes here, when its usefulness here is ended that it should return to the luminous bosom of its great mother—the source of all life, light and power ”

“ The moist, crumbling soil beneath the man's body was opening itself—stirring, awakening, preparing, for the gigantic tasks of renewal, of re-creation, of conception and birth. An immense, powerful, impersonal life, the greatest Life of all, was going forward all about him. ”

“ Having myself long since recognized the three categories of an elevated consciousness—faith, hope, and love—to be also the essential elements and primary foundation of all higher thought and knowledge, so far at least as the latter, having life for its matter and subject, must take life for its starting-point and foundation, I have therefore publicly advanced this doctrine. ”

“ Living gateways as the sense organs are between ourselves and our ever-changing surroundings, both spiritual and material, they constitute the channels not only of our life-satisfaction, but of all our immediate knowledge as well. ”

“ Truly do we carry in us, each human of us alive on the planet to-day, the incorruptible history of life from life’s beginning. This history is written in our tissues and our bones, in our functions and our organs, in our brain cells and in our spirits, and in all sorts of physical and psychic atavistic urgencies and compulsions. ”

“ The purpose of these outlines, suggestions, analogies, and inferences, is to show that this life is a period of gestation, in close analogy and comparable with that of the child in utero; that with the web and woof of character, organ and function, impulse and use, opportunity and destiny, we are building a spiritual body, the immediate vehicle of the soul, as literally as is the physical body on the outer material plane; that the laws of Spiritual health and vitality are as concrete, apprehensible, and demonstrable as those of physiology. ”

“ The thorns in the flesh of our spiritual nature will be plucked out, the spiritual life will be developed, and our peace shall flow as the river. This condition we constantly invoke, and by all the means within our reach we try to stimulate the desire for a better life. ”

“ All exalted lives (spiritually) moving and living in similar planes of thought—born of their spiritual states—are attracted to each other in spirit life for the interchange of perceptions of Truth and bearing forward the work of illuminating such minds on Earth as are ready to receive along the lines of human progress and unfoldment, imparting “the things they are ready to know.” ”

“ Here we are in this world of time making the journey of life. Each day we are farther from the cradle and nearer the grave. Solemn thought. See the mighty concourse of human lives; hear their heavy tread in their onward march. Some are just beginning life's journey; some are midway up the hill, some have reached the top, and some are midway down the western slope. But where are we all going? Listen, and you will hear but one answer—"Eternity." Beyond the fading, dying gleams of the sunset of life lies a boundless, endless ocean called Eternity. ”

“ Applying this to the spiritual world, we may say that though we cannot know how spiritual life begins it must develop after it begins. And development implies different grades or orders of beings; name them angels, or what you will. ”

“ Because the thing he revered in nature, the spirit, the universal, the life that was God, had created at his birth or before his birth the three tremendous instincts of nature—to fight for life, to feed himself, to reproduce his kind. ”

“ Your course is onward and upward, although you do not improve as rapidly as you should. You should walk continually in the light of God's countenance, and no more walk in darkness. Were such the case, would you hear of any contention—of those those little, frivolous, trifling difficulties that now too frequently occur? Would you hear,"The world is something to me!" "My farm is something to me!" ”

“ The whole journey of life on the physical plane here below is so designed and planned as to make the natural aging and decay of the physical body supplement, unfold and develop the Spiritual Body, through the right use of the faculties, capacities, and powers of the Human Soul—the Individual Intelligence.
These are aspects, uses and powers of that subtle something we call Life; that Principle that
Normal use that insures growth and development, range and power of action, is also, from first to last, a refining process ”

“ But that life receives its modification and change, according to the character of the mind, soul, or spiritual organism into which it flows,—just as the pure rays of light from the sun are changed into different colours, according to the structure of the recipient objects. ”

“ There is no absolute line of demarcation between these three life spheres, just as there is DO difference between the material and the spiritual life. The three life spheres do, however, form sharply defined grades or epochs within the unified and indivisible universal life. ”

“ But habits and instincts are as strongly inherited as structure, so that, as it appears to me, the study of life is, even from the orthodox scientific point of view, as important as the study of death. ”

“ As we had occasion to see in our last lecture, the fifth day of creation represented that stage of regeneration where, under the influence of a deep faith in the Lord and an earnest love for Him, the beginnings of a truly spiritual life are made. The earth was said to bring forth the living soul as a symbol of the mind making, in a spiritual sense, its first living efforts. In other words, the soul became, in a strict sense, truly living for the first time. ”

“ By this inner movement it throws out vehicles through which to function, and these become living forms because of the inner-principle which is sustaining them; so that the Life with which we are primarily concerned in the new order is the life of thought and feeling in ourselves as the vehicle, or distributing medium, of the Life of the Spirit. ”

“ That is to say, our reason and understanding are advanced to that stage wherein we perceive all things of life spiritually, or see its spiritual meaning in its every phase; and our affections are advanced to that stage where they are placed upon the Lord and spiritual things. True, life in the world compels them to go forth to natural things ”