Light of life

“ And if at times a flash of light suddenly gleam athwart the mind, and it seem as though we were about to get a glimpse into the inner heart of being, the brightness quickly dies, and only the surfaces of things remain visible. Oh, the unimaginable length of ages when on the earth there was no living thing! then life's ugly, slimy beginnings; then the conscious soul's fitful dream stretching forth to endless time and space; then the final sleep in abysmal night with its one star of hope twinkling before the all-hidden throne of God, in the shadow of whose too great light faith kneels and waits! ”

“ He is the true light who scattered the darkness of this life, as he himself said in his gospel, "I am the light of all the world; he who followeth me shall not come into darkness, but he shall have the light of life." ”

“ If the light shall thus come in, and of its mere loveliness overcome every aspect of dreariness, why shall not the light of thought, and hope—the light of the soul—overcome and sweep away the dust of our lives? ”

“ To him who, neglecting the revelations of immediate duty, looks regretfully behind and fearfully before him, life may well seem a solemn mystery, for, whichever way he turns, a wall of darkness rises before him; but down upon the present, as through a skylight between the shadows, falls a clear, still radiance, like beams from an eye of blessing; and, within the circle of that divine illumination, beauty and goodness, truth and love, purity and cheerfulness blend like primal colors into the clear harmony of light. ”

“ Then, through the parted clouds, the rays of truth illumine the mind again, and we take up the life-song once more, not as we laid it down, but with a richer melody, a fuller and sweeter strain. The soul feels new pinioned, and spreads its wings for loftier flights, rising, height after height, up and on to the fields of the infinite.
This questioning state is sure to come to the most earnest, truthful, and thoughtful worker. All along the pathway of life these weary, yet hopeful pilgrims, sit waiting for “light, more light.” ”

“ We doubt not but there is in the heart of the reader a strong desire to live life as it should be lived. Thank God, you can. You desire your life to be like the fertile oasis, where the weary traveler refreshes himself. You have seen the rays of light lingering upon the hillside and treetop and gilding the fleecy cloud after the sun had gone down. You desire the beautiful rays of light from your life to linger long after your sun has gone down. You can have it that way. The deeds you do will live after you are gone. They are the footprints. ”

“ As life is internal, as all its movements and operations are secret, though its effects are so palpable; so the Light which proceeds from this Life—that which is emphatically the Light of men, as distinguished from mere animals—must be light penetrating into the inner being, filling the heart, reason, and conscience, scattering darkness in them, preparing them hereafter,—since the Light is not put into any one to be hid under a bushel, but to be set upon a candlestick,—to show forth what had so marvellously affected and changed them, to the world. ”

“ That invulnerable spark of vivid life, that "inward light" which these men find at their own centres when they seek for it, is for them an earnest of the Uncreated Light, the ineffable splendour of God, dwelling at, and energising within the heart of things: for this spark is at once one with, yet separate from, the Universal Soul. ”

“ It is with a man's soul as it is with nature: the beginning of Creation is—Light. Till the eye have visions the whole members are in bonds. Divine moment, when over the tempest-tost Soul, as once over the wild-weltering Chaos, it is spoken: Let there be Light! ”

“ 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 ”

“ Outsprings, flooding the soul with poignant joy,
As the harmonious chords to harsh succeed,
And the rapt spirit climbs through pain to bliss:
Eternal question, answer infinite;
As day to night replies; as light to shade;
As summer to rough winter; death to life—
Death not a closing, but an opening door ”

“ Try to imagine the whole universe filled with and consisting of an immense torrent of living light, and in it a vividness of life and an intensity of bliss altogether beyond all description, a hundred thousand times beyond the greatest bliss of heaven. ”

“ Life was being spent in watching the glint of sunlight upon waves, believing it her own sunlight and permanent, while all the time it was light created by others, by millions of lives in the past, by all the labour that now kept the world going. ”

“ We would only ask it to be observed how great an influence light has on the system of the intellectual functions. The soul finds in it the least deceiving of the consolations it seeks for the eternal sadness of our destiny—the bitter melancholy of life. Thought, fettered and dumb in a dark place, springs into freedom and spirit at evening, in a room brilliant with light. We cannot shun the sad moods caused by gloomy and rainy weather, nor resist the impulse of joy given by the spectacle of a brilliant day. ”

“ Produce the inner radiance infinite;
Art, pure as Christ, is heartened to exclaim:
I am indeed the Life, the Truth, the Light!
The Life is mystery; the Light is blind;
The Truth beyond our reach both daunts and fades ”

“ Light is not much either, probably only vibration, but what would the world be without it? Did we not begin this life simply with this Self, continue it with this Self, and bring it to an end with this Self? ”

“ When frail Nature can no more, Then the Spirit strikes the hour: My servant Death, with solving rite, Pours finite into infinite. Wilt thou freeze love's tidal flow, Whose streams through Nature circling go? Nail the wild star to its track On the half-climbed zodiac? Light is light which radiates, Blood is blood which circulates, Life is life which generates, And many-seeming life is one,— Wilt thou transfix and make it none? ”

“ From the wide-spreading earth—from the limitless heaven, There have vanished an eloquent glory and gleam; To my veil'd mind no more is the influence given, Which coloureth life with the hues of a dream: The bloom-purpled landscape its loveliness keepeth— I deem that a light as of old gilds the wave;— But the eye of my spirit in heaviness sleepeth, Or sees but my youth, and the visions it gave. ”

“ In that long ago, that age just following the period when darkness covered the face of the earth, that age when God dispelled that darkness by issuing his fiat, “Let there be light,” we are told in the Good Book that God followed the birth of the light with the creation of man, that He breathed the breath of life into his nostrils and that man became thereby a living soul. ”

“ And can there be any reasonable doubt that this sun is the incarnate Word—the Divine Man who, when on earth, declared: "I am the light of the world;" who is the Enlightener of all minds and the Quickener of all hearts; "in whom is life," and whose life "is the light of men"? ”

“ The light, too, is refracted, and the great background of life is not seen quite truly. It is, I think, an enchanted air, into which a man drifts upon a river of dreams and imaginations—and how hard to reascend, against the current! ”

“ In describing the pure, the basic, fundamental principle of life and creation—the pure light, the self-effulgent, self-caused Divine Intelligence—Vedic sages sang in this way: “There the sun does not shine, nor the moon, nor the lightning, what to speak of the mortal fire. That shining, everything shines; by its light everything is illumined”,—by its essence everything becomes full of consciousness. ”

“ And when, in the evening of life, the golden clouds rest sweetly and invitingly upon the golden mountains, and the light of heaven streams down through the gathering mists of death, I wish you a peaceful and abundant entrance into that world of blessedness, where the great riddle of life will be unfolded to you in the quick consciousness of a soul redeemed and purified. ”

“ We hush our thoughts to silence, we school our spirits in sincerity, and here we wait. O may we not feel once more the light upon our straining eyes, the tides of life rise again within our waiting hearts?
We never looked to meet Thee in the stress of thought, the toil of life, or in the call of duty; we only knew that somehow life had lost for us all meaning, dignity, and beauty. How then shall we turn back again and see with eyes that fear has filmed? How can we be born again, now grown so old in fatal habit? ”

“ What then can restore him to like, to energy, to activity, to fellowship and communion with the great world which God has spread around him, and which perhaps in the darkness may be passing away? LIGHT restores him to himself and to nature which seemed lost to him. Naturally, therefore, the primitive men regarded light as the principle of their real existence, without which life would be but one continued weariness and despair. ”

“ The light is perhaps never felt more strongly as a divine presence stirring all those inarticulate sensibilities which are our deepest life, than in these moments when it instantaneously awakens the shadows. ”

“ The spiritual idea is clad with the radiance of spiritual Truth, and matter is put under her feet. The light portrayed is really neither solar nor lunar, but spiritual Life, which is “the light of men.” ”

“ The external world is light with warmth and cheer. In the second it is cold and bleak and gloomy, while the ruddy glow comes from within. This growth is typical of the progress of the soul from the pride of youth and inexperience to the joy of the inner spiritual life of old age. ”

“ She was a form of life and light,
That, seen, became a part of sight;
And rose, where'er I turned mine eye,
The morning-star of memory!
'Yes, love indeed is light from heaven..
A spark of that immortal fire
With angels shared, by Allah given,
To lift from earth our low desire. ”

“ My life shall see the light.' 33:29 "Behold, God works all these things, twice, yes three times, with a man, 33:30 to bring back his soul from the pit, that he may be enlightened with the light of the living. ”

“ This Life’s dim Windows of the Soul
Distorts the Heavens from Pole to Pole,
And leads you to Believe a Lie
When you see with, not thro, the Eye,
That was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the Soul slept in the beams of Light. ”

“ It will be convenient for future reference if I draw out this parallel somewhat more fully. I compare, then, man's gradual progress in self-knowledge to his gradual decipherment of the nature and meaning of the sunshine which reaches him as light and heat indiscernibly intermingled. So also Life and Consciousness—the sense of a world within him and a world without—come to the child indiscernibly intermingled in a pervading glow. ”

“ Wisdom and Spirit of the Universe!
Thou Soul, that art the Eternity of thought!
And giv'st to forms and images a breath
And everlasting motion! not in vain,
By day or star-light, thus from my first dawn
Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me
The passions that build up our human soul;
Not with the mean and vulgar works of Man,—
But with high objects, with enduring things,
With life and nature; purifying thus
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying by such discipline
Both pain and fear,—until we recognise
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart. ”

“ In the name of the great alien life from the sublime worlds of light, which is above all works, healing and victory, strength and firmness, speech and hearing, joy of heart and a remover of sins will be given to me NN, and let my mind, my knowledge and my wisdom shine in the treasure of the first life. ”

“ The light, feeble as it is, is invaluable to him; for by its means he is enabled gradually to learn his bearings, to take note of his environment, to make occasional discoveries of the necessities of life, and finally to achieve some of the comforts of existence. ”

“ "Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the dawn of the day when we die." ”

“ But can that be the case with our world itself, with the sun from which it obtains its light and life, or with the starry splendours of the worlds beyond the sun? Will they, can they, ever fade? They are not spiritual ”

“ In the moonlight which is always sad, as the light of the sun itself is—as the light called human life is—at its coming and its going. ”

“ A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud
Enveloping the Earth— 55
And from the soul itself must there be sent
A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth,
Of all sweet sounds the life and element! ”

“ All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.” ”

“ And Man was made of Life and Light into Soul and Winde, of Life the Soul, of Light the Winde.
35. And so all the Members of the Senfible World, continued unto the period of the end, bearing rule, and generating. ”

“ Thou art, O God, the life and light
Of all this wondrous world we see;
Its glow by day, its smile by night,
Are but reflections caught from Thee.
Where'er we turn, thy glories shine,
And all things fair and bright are Thine! ”

“ I was not given to looking at life in a rosy light. ”

“ The seeker for perfection must discover in his own life the reflection of the inner light. ”

“ Life it self is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living: All things fall under this name. The Sunne it self is but the dark simulacrum, and light but the shadow of God. ”