Spiritual struggle

“ But when, in the regular course of our duty, temptations are presented to us, inviting us to sin,—"Now," we should say to ourselves, "now is the opportunity for self-conquest,—now is the opportunity for moral and spiritual advancement,—now can we, by an effort, take a leap towards the kingdom of heaven." ”

“ Accordingly, what difference does it make if we attain this end by riches or poverty, health or sickness, spiritual consolation or aridity, by the esteem or contempt of our fellow-men? So say faith and reason; but human nature revolts against this indifference, as it is well it should, else how could we acquire merit? Hence there is a conflict on this point between the flesh and the spirit, and it is this conflict that for a Christian is called life. ”

“ The suffering, the sorrowing, the weary, and broken-hearted ever seek a sorrowless refuge, a haven of perpetual peace. Let such fly to the refuge of the righteous life; let them come now and enter the haven of the sinless state, for sorrow cannot overtake the righteous; suffering cannot reach him who does not waste in self-seeking his spiritual substance ”

“ They think they have crushed us, when they say to us men of the church: 'You take the spiritual, but we will keep the temporal!'—Oh, their conscience or their modesty inspires them well, when it bids them not meddle with spiritual things! They abandon the spiritual! ”

“ Do not let that distress your happy and innocent soul, if you believe that you have accomplished every duty by carrying the external practice of religion to the verge of folly and by worshipping words, symbols, dogma and routine with superstitious fervency, while your spirit lies cold and torpid, devoid of joy or sorrow, of struggle or of victory, lulled to sleep by the drone of sermons, the braying of organs, and the rustle of silken vestments! ”

“ How constantly do I read this in the countenances of those I meet in the world!—They do not know themselves why there should be this perpetual uneasiness, this jarring and discord within; but it is the vain struggle of the soul, which God created in his own image, to fit its strong, immortal nature for the society which men have framed after their own devices. ”

“ In sorrow, and with a mind broken with grief, We address you—you, whom We know from your devotedness to religion, to have suffered proportional anxiety of mind in witnessing the depravity of the times with which religion has now to struggle. ”

“ Take also other spiritual principles, such as Purity and Compassion, and apply them in the same way, and, so exacting is Truth, you will be able to make no stay, no resting-place until the inmost garment of your soul is bereft of every stain, and your heart has become incapable of any hard, condemnatory, and pitiless impulse. ”

“ So that suffering, physical and spiritual, is the cry for mercy from the depths of transgression, and is the sign of hope and the assurance of a "present help in time of need," unless the desire of sufferers exceeds the measure of the divine and human compassion. ”

“ And nothing but opposition, opposition, opposition now!
Only we advanced thinkers know what it is to suffer! To go through fire for our ideals!
And what is physical suffering by the side of spiritual suffering? ”

“ But if we fear to do the dictates of our angels, and tremble at the tasks set before us; if we refuse to do spiritual acts because of natural fears or natural desires; who can describe the dismal torments of such a state!—I too well remember the threats I heard!—'If you, who are organized by Divine Providence for spiritual communion, refuse, and bury your talent in the earth, even though you should want natural bread,—sorrow and desperation pursue you through life, and after death shame and confusion of face to eternity. ”

“ You have chosen and are being prepared to give to your despairing peoples a message so glorious that its Divine effulgence will dissipate the shadows of the hopeless beliefs which so long have held them in Spiritual bondage. Already in the minds of many of your people there is a sense of unrest and discontent with old beliefs and forms of worship. ”

“ The first lessons consist in overcoming those wrong mental conditions which are the most easily eradicated, and which are the common barriers to spiritual progress, as well as in practising the simple domestic and social virtues ”

“ He has himself given a very simple and penetrating account of this type of experience drawn from what he calls his own book of life: "Finding within myself a powerful contrarium, namely, the desires that belong to flesh and blood, I began to fight a hard battle against my corrupted nature, and with the aid of God I made up my mind to overcome the inherited evil will, to break it, and to enter wholly into the Love of God. ”

“ To build the individual spiritual sense, conscious of only health, holiness, and Heaven, on the foundations of an Eternal Mind, which is conscious of sickness, sin, and death, is a moral impossibility ”

“ Lift your soul up to its height, now and then, and breathe a thought of the heart that may grow into a prayer as you recall the great Circle of which you are a member. Think in silence of their multiplied and varied circumstances, perils, temptations and necessities. Think of the disheartened, the bereaved, the suffering, the doubting; those who have great power, but do not know how to use it; those who are sick of sin and worldliness, and do not know how to get into the path of holiness and peace. ”

“ But the struggle is a victory, because in presence of the clearest consciousness of what it means to have His own will, He gives it up, and says, ‘Thy will be done.’ To enter into the will of God He gives up His very life. ”

“ When one knows oneself in others, and sinks into a mist of despair, hopeless and heart-wrung, then come the temptations, as the prophets call them, the miserable ambitions dressed as angels of light, the religions which have become more drugged pain-lullers, the desire to suppress thought altogether, to end life, to stupefy one's soul with bodily pain, with mental activity. ”

“ Behold, what noble and enlightened, what strong and courageous, people God produced by the discipline of cross and affliction! We, in contrast, because unwilling to experience such suffering, are weak and enervated. If but a little smoke gets into our eyes, our joy and courage are gone, likewise our perception of God's will, and we can only raise a loud lamentation and cry of woe. ”

“ The secret struggles of the heart, the temptations overcome, the tears of repentance, which no human eye beholds, must alike be hid from them, as well as the fearful effects upon the peace of mind which these inconsistencies so seriously disturb, or destroy. ”

“ The spiritual loss, the loss of living faith, is the great one: but is it for that we generally pity ourselves or any person known to us? Life and freedom are dear, the ability to put forth energy at our will, the sense of capacity ”

“ O, ye children of sorrow, racked with pain, has not religion been to you a sweet quietus in your sufferings? Is not religion worth having in the sick chamber? And ye men of business, speak for yourselves. You [68] have hard struggles to pass through life. Sometimes you have been driven to a great extremity, and whether you would succeed or not seemed to hang upon a thread. Has not your religion been a joy to you in your difficulties? ”

“ And thus with every error, every selfish desire, every human weakness; by the power of meditation is it overcome, and as each sin, each error is thrust out, a fuller and clearer measure of the Light of Truth illumines the pilgrim soul. ”

“ And in my heart fight selfishness and sin: Yet, Lord, I do not seek Thy helping hand; Rather let me my own salvation win: Let me through strife and penitential pain Onward and upward to the heights attain. Yea, let me live my life, its meaning seek; Bear myself fitly in the ringing fight; Strive to be strong that I may aid the weak; Dare to be true — O God! ”

“ And here this constantly renewed dropping and opposing of the various lower selves, in proportion as they appear and become lower, to the soul’s deepest insight, in the growing light of its conscience and the increasing elevation of the moral personality, involves that constant death to self, that perpetual conversion, that unification and peace in and through a continuous inner self-estrangement and conflict, which is the very breath and joy of the religious life. ”

“ When it will be your turn one day to dwell in those flames, and be separated from God, how happy will you not be, if others alleviate and shorten your pains! Do you desire this assistance for your own soul? ”

“ When peace is practised, and possessed, and known, then sin and remorse, grasping and disappointment, craving and temptation, desiring and grieving—all the turbulence and torment of the mind—are left behind in the dark sphere of self to which they belong, and beyond which they cannot go. ”

“ Temptation, trial, sorrow, pain; hope, fear, self-hatred, love and joy, with ever-renewed and increased aspiration and effort, all variously change and deepen their combinations and qualities, outlook and ideals. But they do not for one moment cease. All things but grow in depth and significance, in variety within unity, in interiority and interpenetration. ”

“ And now, my brethren, that I have explained to you the source of the conflict that we feel within us, and the purpose it is designed to answer, you will see what the result of it must be, how it issues in the two eternities that are before us. "He that soweth in his flesh, of the flesh also shall reap corruption; but he that soweth in the Spirit, of the Spirit shall reap life everlasting." ”

“ Such a faith and such an unrest be ours: faith which is mistrust of the visible; unrest which is full of a hidden surety and radiance. We, when we fall into pleasant places, rest and dream our strength away. Before every enterprise and adventure of the soul we calculate in fear our power to do. ”

“ The solemn conflicts of reason with passion; the victories of moral and religious principles over urgent and almost irresistible solicitations to self-indulgence; the hardest sacrifices of duty, those of deep-seated affection and of the heart's fondest hopes; the consolations, hopes, joys, and peace, of disappointed, persecuted, scorned, deserted virtue; these are of course unseen, so that the true greatness of human life is almost wholly out of sight. ”

“ Oh my God, with all the strength of my soul, assisted by thy grace, I desire and resolve to resist and deny all my own will, earthly tempers, selfish views, and inclinations; every thing that the spirit of this world, and the vanity of fallen nature, prompt me to. ”

“ In an age of strife, hurry, religious controversy, heated arguments, ritual and ceremony, he came with his Message of Meditation, calling men away from the din and strife of tongues into the peaceful paths of stillness within their own souls, where "the Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world" ever burns steadily and surely for all who will turn their weary eyes from the strife without to the quiet within. ”

“ Then we shall, with all contrition and humility, but still in spirit and in truth, claim and obtain our share in the body and the blood, in the spirit and in the mind, of Him Who sacrificed Himself for a rebellious world. ”

“ The awful separating and purifying process that is ever being carried on in the fiery furnace of the Divine Holiness, ever consuming and ever assimilating, we expect to see in Him in the struggles of a truly human will. ”

“ The heart and will are intensely determined to do wrong, while the conscience is unyielding and uncompromising, and utters its denunciations, and thunders its warnings. And what a dreadful destiny awaits that soul, in whom this conflict and collision between the dictates of conscience, and the desires of the heart, is to be eternal! for whom, through all eternity, the holy law of God, which was ordained to life peace and joy, shall be found to be unto death and woe immeasurable! ”

“ The charge which is often brought against religion, as tending to abridge our comforts, and induce a melancholy and dejection of spirit, I can repel from experience. Infallible Truth declares, that her ways are ways of pleasantness, and her paths are paths of peace; and now I know, and feel it. My mind, which has been tossed about on the surging billows of doubt and perplexity, has at last gained that haven of rest, where, I trust, it is destined to remain. ”

“ But suppose that I were to tell you that I think suffering and struggling is the very essence of the soul, and that what faith teaches us is that the suffering and struggling are sacred, and not in the least that they are some day to be made as nothing? Dearest, if it is true that the soul makes this life what it is, a life of restless seeking for an infinite, would it not make the same life anywhere else? ”

“ that is, as there is no screen or ceiling between our heads and the infinite heavens, so is there no bar or wall in the soul where man, the effect, ceases, and God, the cause, begins. The walls are taken away. We lie open on one side to the deeps of spiritual nature, to the attributes of God. Justice we see and know, Love, Freedom, Power. These natures no man ever got above, but they tower over us, and most in the moment when our interests tempt us to wound them. ”

“ Let us live in corners, and do chores, and suffer, and weep, and drudge, with eyes and hearts that love the Lord. Silence, seclusion, austerity, may pierce deep into the grandeur and secret of our being, and so diving, bring up out of secular darkness, the sublimities of the moral constitution. ”

“ And so, with marvellous love-born wisdom and courage, the conflict is left open, for men's sake.
It is a spirit conflict. The earth is swung in a spirit atmosphere. There are unnumbered thousands of spirit beings good and evil, tramping the earth's surface, and filling its atmosphere. ”