Path of life

“ Oft leading fancy's train she sports with youth,
Or lights the sage's eye with rays of truth;
With reason then she holds her measured tread,
And seeks the path where wisdom's flowers are shed;
Next hand in hand with hope her track pursues,
And brighter worlds in raptur'd vision views;
Now aids the prayer of piety to breathe,
Gives light to life, or calms the hour of death. ”

“ Then the dim lips of the shadow moved—I heard a faint voice call:
‘On! on! Time must never linger; Death, the king, is end of all.’
So along the path we wandered—oh! the bliss of those short hours!
Youth and Hope and Joy together 'mid the everblooming flowers
That on life's smooth path were glowing soft beneath my naked feet,
Till I envied nought in Heaven, thinking here my lot complete.
As I raised the flowering branches that across my path would stray,
Lo! I found amidst the blossoms at my feet Love sleeping lay. ”

“ Try to live up high! Escape, if you can, the malarious damps of the lowlands. Make an upward path for your feet. Though your spirit may be destined to live isolated, you cannot be alone, for God is there. Your best strivings of soul are there! Your standard ground should be there! Live upward! The cedar is always developing its branches toward the top while the lower ones are dropping away. Let our soul-life be so! Upward! Upward!
"Drink deep, or taste not," is a direction fully as applicable to religion, if we would find it a source of pleasure, as it is to knowledge. ”

“ We are started on our journey beyond, and it will be enough if we can throw each other a glance, or feel the touch of each other's hands in passing. After that? After that there is the larger world-path, the endless current of universal life. ”

“ Wherefore I charge you that ye come unto me in the Beginning; for if ye take but one step in this Path, ye must arrive inevitably at the end thereof.
20. This Path is beyond Life and Death; it is also beyond Love; but that ye know not, for ye know not Love. ”

“ We have never been out of our right path, only we have been walking in it backwards instead of forwards, [104] and now that we have begun to follow the path in the right direction, we find that it is none other than the way of peace, the path of joy, and the road to eternal life. These things we may attain by simply living naturally with ourselves. ”

“ 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 way along which the Christian walks is a narrow way. "Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, that leadeth unto life." But we need have no fear; for although it is narrow, it is not dark. "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path." ”

“ The best path through life is the high road, which initiates us at the right moment into all experience. Exceptional itineraries are suspicious, and matter for anxiety. What is normal is at once most convenient, most honest, and most wholesome. ”

“ It expressed an opposite need to that of contemplation, but in the monotonous round of its activity appeared to symbolize that view of life which shows it as a ceaseless movement along a path that leads nowhere, progressing without change and never arriving save at some part of its many times traversed orbit identical with all the rest. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We do not yet know what the limit of such sublimation may be. But we do know that it is the true path of life's advancement, that already we owe to it our purest loves, our loveliest visions, and our noblest deeds. When such feeling, such vision and such act are united and transfigured in God, and find in contact with His living Spirit the veritable sources of their power; then, man will have resolved his inner conflict, developed his true potentialities, and live a harmonious because a spiritual life. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Should we choose this, and should life of the Spirit be achieved by us—and it will only be done through daily discipline and attention to the Spiritual, a sacrifice of comfort to its interests, following up the intuition which sets us on the path—what benefits may we as ordinary men expect it to bring to us and to the community that we serve? It will certainly bring into life new zest and new meaning; a widening of the horizon and consciousness of security ”

“ He who in final choice elects the path of Division, chooses Death eternal. You may indeed wend homeward through the devious tangle of reflected rays, but how long, how hard are such paths! I would see your souls with eagle365 swoop make straight for the Central Sun. Look then within you. Man! Woman! Are you what you seem? Till this thought daily; it will bear the harvest of Life.
With analogy for our guide we observe that the first forms of life are crystalline and have two poles. You man, are also a magnetic sphere with physical and spiritual poles. ”

“ And apart from that, taking life in its first tendency, and in the general direction of its current, it is ascent, growth, upward effort, and a work of spiritualising and emancipating creation: by that we might define Good, for Good is a path rather than a thing.
But life may fail, halt, or travel downwards. "Life in general is mobility itself; the particular manifestations of life accept this mobility only with regret, and constantly fall behind. ”

“ But to simply take the path pointed out in the Gospel, by those who have given us the plan of salvation, is to take the path that leads to life, to eternal increase; it is to pursue that course wherein we shall NEVER, NEVER lose what we obtain, but continue to collect, to gather together, to increase, to spread abroad, and extend to an endless duration. ”

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

“ Now understand, to choose life is to choose principles that will lead you to an eternal increase, and nothing short of them will produce life in the resurrection for the faithful. Those that choose death, make choice of the path which leads to the end of their organization. ”

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

“ There is no easy path leading out of life, and few are the easy ones that lie within it. ”

“ Down the path, with song and laughter, came three maidens hand in hand,
By their side a shadow glided that I could not understand:
For I scarce could see it coming, yet I knew that it was there,
Like a cloud upon the brightness of a sky that was all fair—
Maids more beauteous than the blossoms of the flowers which deck the lea,
Maids more joyous than the happy birds that flit from tree to tree.
‘Tell me who thou art,’ I pleaded, ‘thou with eyes of peace and love?’
‘I am Hope,’ she softly whispered, pointing with white hand above. ”

“ Perception of it lays on him the obligation of living in its atmosphere, fulfilling its meaning, if he can: and this will involve for him a measure of inward transformation, a difficult growth and change. Thus the ideas of new birth and regeneration have always been, and I think must ever be, closely associated with man's discovery of God: and the soul's true path seems to be from intuition, through adoration, to moral effort, and thence to charity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ This tour hangs on my mind; nothing would suit my feelings so well as to stay here in my present melancholy gloom, reading divinity, and endeavouring so steadily to fix my mind on eternity and the hope of joining my dear child, as to work a change in my habits, my life, my conversation, and pursuits; and to do all that human frailty will permit to reconcile myself to the Almighty. These thoughts, however, I shall try to preserve in spite of a journey. ”

“ At the birth-hour of every soul, there overhangs a divine plan directing its plans and purposes. That plan is holy and immaculate; it has neither spot nor blemish; and as the soul walks out upon the highways of its life, dim whispers and faint intuitions try to teach the road it ought to travel to the stars. Happy the man who understands the story and walks with unerring feet the divine lanes of life and light until the shadows fall again! ”

“ There--high, jagged, rapt into the sky--stood such a group of mountains as men dream of in good dreams, or see in the works of painters when old age permits them revelations. Their height was evident from the faint mist and grey of their hues; their outline was tumultuous, yet balanced; full of accident and poise. It was as though these high walls of Carrara, the western boundary of the valley, had been shaped expressly for man, in order to exalt him with unexpected and fantastic shapes, and to expand his dull life with a permanent surprise. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is not disputed that the journey of the soul towards God includes, first, perpendicular and breakneck roads—these are the roads of the life of Purification—next, narrower paths still, but well marked out and accessible—these are the paths of the life of Illumination—at length, a wide road almost smooth, the road of the life of unity, at the end of which the soul throws itself into the furnace of Love, and falls into the abyss of the most adorable Infinity! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Take this course, and the fountain of knowledge and eternal life will by-and-by be established within you. This is what we are seeking for. It is the rich boon of heaven that we are striving for; and why is it that we do not get it? It is here; it is all around us. We can look—we can travel to the place where it is. Why do we not enjoy it? ”

“ Why have not I the courage, then, to endure this time of trial they call ‘life,’ which I have wished to consider the end, but which is only a road leading to the end—a road perilous, rough, and wearing? The shortest is the one I consider the best; and he who travels over it most rapidly, has he not found true happiness? ”

“ Sometimes, as I lean over a five-barred gate or gaze stupidly into the fire, I garner a bitter-sweet contentment in making ideal reconstructions of my life, selecting my parents, the date and place of my birth, my gifts, my education, my mentors and what portions out of the infinity of knowledge shall gain a place within my mind—that sacred glebe-land to be zealously preserved and enthusiastically cultivated. ”

“ LIFE'S PATHWAY. We walk among labyrinths of wonder, but tread the mazes with
a club;
We sail in chartless seas, but behold! the Pole-star is above
us—TUPPER.
Life is a pathway, stretched from morn till eve,
O'er which, through shade and sunshine, we must go
And, whether bright or dark this life we live,
Its end must bring us unto joy or woe ”

“ We are led through life as we are allured upon a journey. Could a man see his route before him—a flat, straight road, unbroken by bush, or tree, or eminence, with the sun's heat burning down upon it, stretched out in dreary monotony—he could scarcely find energy to begin his task ”

“ 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. ”