World spirit

“ The world, in this sense, is not primarily a thing, or a collection of people, but a spiritual influence poured out into the very atmosphere of our lives.
The spirit of the world insinuates itself everywhere. It is what we call society; the consensus of fashionable opinion; the spirit which finds its satisfaction in the seen and transient; the ambition that is encircled by the rim of an earthly horizon ”

“ Then the sense of discrepancy between things great and small, things important and unimportant, the world of the senses and the world of the spirit, began to enter the popular perception, the impossibility of reconciliation, and, as a consequence, the pleasure of turning this world topsy-turvy, and so demonstrating the supremacy of the individual. ”

“ Look upon and treat others as you do your own hands, your own eyes, your very heart and soul—with infinite care and compassion—as suffering and enjoying members of the same Great Being with yourself. This is the spirit of the ideal universe—the spirit of your own being. It is this alone that can redeem this world, and give to it the peace and harmony for which it longs. ”

“ In other words, he has best reconciled World with the final vessel of its uses, Man,—and best reconciled actual civilization and the fixed conditions of man with the uses of that in which all the meaning of his existence is summed, his seeing and unseen spirit. ”

“ If they do grasp it, they may prove to be the bringers in of a new world, a fresh and vigorous social order, which is based upon true values, controlled by a spiritual conception of life; a world in which this factor is as freely acknowledged by all normal persons, as is the movement of the earth round the sun. ”

“ Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house, a world; and beyond its world, a heaven. Know then, that the world exists for you. ”

“ What balance of mind, what reticence and self-control, what peace resulting from deep and settled faith, is there in this history, and what a cooling power it must have to the hot and fevered human heart that burns in view of the much that is to be done to bring the world right! ”

“ They habitually look, not only "through nature up to nature's God," but through the wide expanse of the social and moral world around them,—through the habits, opinions, and institutions, of their time and country,—through the strife of politics, and the din of the unruly multitude,—to that eternal Being who reigns above them all; whose will and whose counsels are in truth interwoven with them all,—and who works out His own great designs as surely by the operation of these jarring and unruly elements, as by the more tranquil and steady processes of the world of inanimate nature. ”

“ Here I found, also, warm faith in the human, glowing idealism, sweetnesses of unselfishness, renunciation, and martyrdom — all the splendid, stinging things of the spirit. Here life was clean, noble, and alive. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the surface of things there is discord, confusion and want of adaptation; but dig down, first to the centre of the world, and then to the centre of your own nature, and you will find a most wonderful correspondence, a most beautiful harmony, between the two—the world made for the hero and the hero made for the world. ”

“ A living, personal, moral God, the faith of nations, the watch-word of tradition, the cry of nature, the demand of mind, received not invented, existing in the soul not reasoned into it—this is the gravitating point of the moral world, the only intelligible centre of any world ”

“ These three views of life are as follows: First, embracing the individual, or the animal view of life; second, embracing the society, or the pagan view of life; third, embracing the whole world, or the divine view of life. ”

“ It is just because all meanings, in the end, will prove to be internal meanings, that this which the internal meaning most loves, namely the presence of concrete fulfilment, of life, of pulsating and originative will, of freedom, and of individuality, will prove, for our view, to be of the very essence of the Absolute Meaning of the world. ”

“ The constancy of the relations and forces of the universe, their impassibility to the force which man's will can bring to bear upon them, of which his husbandry gives him full experience, is an essential element, perhaps we might say the essential element, in that higher culture which they offer to his spirit; it is this which makes the life of even the workman something higher than a lottery, and the toils of earth an education for the works and the joys of heaven. ”

“ Then you are the world, the measure of right, of truth, of beauty. If we will not be mar-plots with our miserable interferences, the work, the society, letters, arts, science, religion of men would go on far better than now, and the heaven predicted from the beginning of the world, and still predicted from the bottom of the heart, would organize itself, as do now the rose, and the air, and the sun. ”

“ They have reached a high state of civilization and, being gifted with the spirit life, they are still forging ahead toward perfection, unconsciously competing with their fellow spirits in millions of worlds. ”

“ Thou shalt speak the truth as thou seest it, without fear, in the spirit of kindness to all thy fellow-creatures, dealing with the manifold interests of life and the typical characters of history.
Nature shall be to thee as a symbol. The life of the soul, in conscious union with the Infinite, shall be for thee the only real existence. ”

“ This variety gives birth to that continual series of action and reaction, which constitutes the life of the moral world: from this discordance results the harmony which at once maintains and preserves the human race. ”

“ His spirituality, beauty and tenderness, are these fostered in the civilizations of today? I say if questions like these bearing upon that inner life wherein is the real greatness of nations cannot be answered satisfactorily, that it is our duty to maintain our struggle, to remain aloof, lest by accepting a delusive prosperity we shut ourselves from our primitive sources of power. For this spirit of the modern, with which we are so little in touch, is one which tends to lead man further and further from nature. ”

“ It is your power to see that “soul in things” which we call Ideals, to bring to life the truth you have seen, and so to concrete and shape your vision that it becomes the rock spiritual on which nations stand. Because you are the living incarnation of your clear, unflinching spirit, we others love you. ”

“ These friends and servants of mankind have used, in fact, that source of insight which I mentioned in the closing words of the last lecture, a source by means of which the results and the moving principles of individual experience, of social experience, of reason, and of will are brought into a certain creative unity to which the noblest spiritual attainments of our world are due. ”

“ And whenever, or wherever, this kind of ideal comes, and rings out through the land, with compelling inspiration, I venture the prophecy that the prevailing spirit of civilization will be ripe and ready to receive it with open arms. ”

“ Nor present good or ill, the joy or curse, But future views of better or of worse, Oh, sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise, By mountains piled on mountains, to the skies, Heaven still with laughter the vain toil surveys, And buries madmen in the heaps they raise. Know, all the good that individuals find, Or God and Nature meant to mere mankind, Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense, Lie in three words, health, peace, and competence. But health consists with temperance alone; And peace, oh, virtue! peace is all thy own. ”

“ Are there not certain intellects at the fore-front of the world’s progress, and certain hearts filled above the ordinary measure with the love of mankind, who are thus centres of power, from whom spread ever widening circles of vibratory emanations that gradually involve all minds in a common thought and all hearts in a common purpose? ”

“ The excellence of a national spirit thus composed is freedom from whim, flightiness, perverseness; patient fidelity to Nature, in a word, science,—leading it at last, though slowly, and not by the most brilliant road, out of the bondage of the humdrum and common, into the better life. ”

“ These philosophical systems, full of a dreamy poetry, were nothing but humanitarian idyls, delightful pastorals, pointing in the future, through a tinted medium, to a rose-colored humanity smiling under blue skies and an unclouded sun—a humanity free from all the contradictions and antagonisms of the past, and, like the planets, or better even than 394they, revolving round its centre in the undisturbed and beatific equilibrium of universal harmony. ”

“ There is a lofty philosophic tone, a thoughtful humanity, infused into his pastoral vein. Remote from the passions and events of the great world, he has communicated interest and dignity to the primal movements of the heart of man, and ingrafted his own conscious reflections on the casual thoughts of hinds and shepherds. ”

“ Now, where in this system is that cultivation of mind, which lifts society from the depths of barbarism to the mountain heights of power and civilization? Where those brilliances and glories of intellect, which die not with nations but live in the admiration of all coming time? Where that eloquence of the heart which flows from the deep well of the affections? That eloquence which strengthens and chastens the social relations; which, silent, unobserved, connects men together by chains of sympathetic love and benevolence? ”

“ So far as morality is concerned, millions of the inhabitants of the earth live according to the best light they have—according to the best knowledge they possess. I have told you frequently that they will receive according to their works; and all who live according to the best principles in their possession, or that they can understand, will receive peace, glory, comfort, joy, and a crown that will be far beyond what they are anticipating. ”

“ It embraces history, economics, science, art, religion, literature and every phase of human activity. It explains life, points the way to better things, gives us hope, strengthens the weary and heavy-laden, bids us look upward and onward, and constitutes the most sublime ideal ever conceived by the soul of man! ”

“ Now if, with this fact in mind, I look back on the world which I attempted thus to describe, I find that the limitation which experience often seems to set to my postulates about the discrimination of facts, may well be founded in the deepest nature of things. The true world, the World of Values or of Appreciation, as rightly viewed by an absolute insight, would be a world of Selves, forming in the unity of their systems One Self. ”

“ His spirit state was revealed to me as among those arisen workers and reformers, whose work for humanity he loved and shared on earth, and learning of the wise ones,—a vast and wonderful sphere of individualities, who are still laboring for the good of humanity. ”

“ For this new spirit, this love of the fact and of truth, this passion for reality will do away with the foolish fears and futile hopes which have fretted the childhood of our race, and will slowly but surely establish on broad foundations the Kingdom of Man upon Earth. ”

“ By showing how the people of other worlds have fallen into their sad conditions the author sounds a note of warning to the people of this world, and by giving a glimpse of the manner in which other worlds have reached their great triumphs, he gives to the people of our world a spur to loftier ideals, to greater inventions, and to a purer life. ”

“ 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? ”

“ The inspirations or revelations of the common sense, in and through which the Almighty Power gives us an understanding of the life and world in which we find ourselves, inspirations in which all men are believed more or less to participate, require us to distinguish the solid and extended pin, as something public or outward, in contrast to the private feeling of pain, of which no one except the person who feels it is conscious. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our efforts have united us with our utmost zeal and devotion to loftier ideals and higher principles, and is the fundamental force that sustains, creates, constructs, and accelerates the continual perfection of the elements necessary to our harmonious, contented and happy life. ”

“ What is life to you and me? It is the utmost extent of our desires. Do you wish to increase, to continue? Do you wish to possess kingdoms and, thrones, principalities and powers; to exist, and continue to exist; to grow in understanding, in wisdom, in knowledge, in power, and in glory throughout an endless duration? Why, yes, is the reply natural to every heart that has been warmed with the life-giving influences of the Holy Ghost. ”