FIFTH MORNING
To dwell in love always
and towards all is to live the true
life, is to have Life itself. Knowing this, the good
man gives up himself unreservedly to
the Spirit of Love, and dwells in Love
towards all, contending with none, condemning
none, but loving all. The Christ Spirit of
Love puts an end, not only to all sin, but to all division and contention.
FIFTH EVENING
When sin and self are
abandoned, the heart is restored to its
imperishable Joy. Joy comes and fills the
self-emptied heart; it abides with the
peaceful; its reign is with the pure. Joy flees from the
selfish, it deserts the quarrelsome; it is
hidden from the impure. Joy cannot remain with
the selfish; it is wedded to Love.
SIXTH MORNING
In the pure heart there
is no room left where personal judgments
and hatreds can find lodgment, for it is
filled to overflowing with tenderness and
love; it sees no evil, and only as men succeed in
seeing no evil in others will they
become free from sin, and sorrow, and
suffering. If men only understood That the heart that sins
must sorrow, That the hateful mind
tomorrow Reaps its barren
harvest, weeping, Starving, resting not,
nor sleeping; Tenderness would fill
their being, They would see with
Pity’s seeing If they only understood.
SIXTH EVENING
To stand face to face
with truth; to arrive, after innumerable
wanderings and pains, at wisdom and bliss; not to
be finally defeated and cast out, but to
ultimately triumph over every inward
foe-such is man’s divine destiny, such his
glorious goal; and this, every saint, sage, and
savior has declared.
A man only begins to be
a man when he ceases to whine
and revile, and commences to search for
the hidden justice which regulates his
life. And as he adapts his mind to that
regulating factor, he ceases to accuse others
as the cause of his condition, and builds
himself up in strong and noble thoughts;
ceases to kick against circumstances, but
begins to use them as aids to his more rapid
progress, and as a means of discovering the
hidden power and possibilities within
himself.
SEVENTH MORNING
The will to evil and the
will to good Are both within thee,
which wilt thou employ? Thou knowest what is right
and what is wrong, Which wilt though love
and foster? which destroy? Thou art the chooser of
thy thoughts and deeds; Thou art the maker of
thine inward state; The power is thine to be
what thou wilt be; Thou buildest Truth and
Love, or lies and hate.
SEVENTH EVENING
The teaching of Jesus
brings men back to the simple truth that
righteousness, or right-doing, is
entirely a matter of individual conduct, and
not a mystical something apart from a
man’s thoughts and deeds.
Calmness and patience
can become habitual by first
grasping, through effort, a calm and patient
thought, and then continuously thinking
it, and living in it, until “use becomes
second nature,” and anger and impatience
pass away for ever.
EIGHTH MORNING
Man is made or unmade by
himself; in the armoury of thought he
forges the weapons
by which he destroys
himself; he also fashions the tools with
which he builds for himself heavenly
mansions of joy and strength and peace. By
the right choice and true application of
thought man ascends to the Divine
Perfection; by the abuse and wrong
application of thought he descends below the
level of the beast. Between these two
extremes are all the grades of character, and
man is their maker and master.
As a being of Power,
Intelligence, and Love, and the lord of
his own thoughts, man holds the key to
every situation.
EIGHTH EVENING
Whatsoever you harbour
in the inmost chambers of your heart
will, sooner or later, by the inevitable law of
reaction, shape itself in your
outward life. Every soul attracts its
own, and nothing can possibly
come to it that does not belong to it. To
realize this is to recognize the
universality of Divine Law. If thou would’st right
the world, And banish all its evils
and its woes. Make its wild places
bloom, And its drear deserts
blossom as the rose- Then right thyself.
