God and Nature are one; the earth and human family are one; nothing lives for itself alone. But the Divine Guest dwells only in the consciousness2 of those who—
lovingly and willingly—work and live for the progression and benefit of the whole. While all work for all by immutable laws of Divine Necessity, to make such necessity our choice is the way of blessing. We exist only as successors and heirs of departed myriads who struggled through pain and wretchedness after happiness in this world. But the fleeting excitements and sensuous pleasures of selfish natures bring no true happiness. The godly feeling goes out of the spirit when selfishness grasps the sceptre of passion. Unless you live to benefit others as well as yourself there is no felicity for you, and you can have no positive feeling of God's presence. From one point of view every condition is good; the darkest night is as good as brightest day, death as good ar life and pain as pleasure. Even selfishness is good, for it lives honestly within the five senses, walls in the land, sows and reaps, builds houses, gets married, cultivates the sciences, develops works of art, multiplies the species, prolongs individual life, and—lastly—according to natural law, all that it does for itself it leaves to those who come after; yet they only who live to benefit the world—lovingly and willingly—find true happiness in the bosom of Nature and God.
The gladdening consciousness of God can become a guest of every mind: this and this only is your saviour. It will defend you against the strong temptations of instinctive passion and the subtler, more deceitful perils of atheism and false ambition. This is the Divine Life and the Divine Light within the veil of the Temple. It makes known that which we may look for and find in others. There is a happiness in it which the unrisen intellect is incompetent to grasp or discern. It is the holy and sanctifying presence of use, justice, power, beauty, love, wisdom, truth. Exceedingly beautiful, grand, uplifting, abiding is this consciousness of God.
It is altogether clear-seeing, and looking through the externals of life it finds the saving love, the essentially divine, harmonial, everlasting truth in the very inmost soul of things. Let us open our higher faculties and welcome in our hearts a full revelation of the Divine Guest.
The light of this Guest was exalted by Plato above the intellect. Theactetus and Plotinus describe the principle of its interior illumination as "that which sees and is itself the thing which is seen." As revealed to Plotinus, the Divine Guest was "the One that is not absent from anything and yet is separated from all things, so that it is present and yet not present with them. But it is present with those things that are able and are prepared to receive it, so that they become congruous, and—as it were—pass into contact with it, through similitude and a certain inherent power allied to that which is imparted by the One. When therefore the soul is disposed in such a way as she was when she came from the One, then she is able to perceive It, so far as It is naturally capable of being seen. He therefore who has not arrived thither may consider himself as the cause of his disappointment and should endeavour, by separating himself from all things, to be above all. . . . We denominate It the One from necessity in order that we may signify It to each other by a name and may be led to an indivisible conception, being anxious that our soul may be one."
Let us hear the voice of this Divine Guest, overflowing with the quintessence of truth, speaking to us of the Mother and the Father, teaching us to love wisdom and lifting us into its holy presence.
We have seen that man cannot ascend the highest summits whereon he might comprehend the attributes of his own being, that there remains a superior part, an alpine peak of unapproachableness, a private height of consciousness which continues a supreme mystery to its
proprietor.1 It is rendered still more mysterious by the celestial influences which move about it, which touch and fill it with longings after wisdom and knowledge. Doves, descending from unknown arks, alight within its recesses. Telling of far-off things, they awaken daydreams of the lands of immortal beauty, enkindle flames of love and adoration for things and persons in a higher realm. Very few human minds are strangers to these mysterious whisperings in the heights of consciousness; but in the haste and confusion of common life it is not often that anyone enters into the golden silence long enough to interrogate them. The popular method is to gratify celestial interpositions by attending public worship or by indulgence in pictures, poetry, music and the drama. But there are always a few persons who seek to feed such longings by occasional associations with spiritual natures,2 by consolations through favourite agents of communication with the departed,3 and— most rarely of all—by the cultivation and calm enjoyment of an inner life.
It follows that there is a power enthroned in man's consciousness, to which the matter of his body and the mind in his possession are alike servants. This power is the pivot on which his universe revolves, and he may be lifted thereby above all ordinary ties and dependencies. He becomes conscious of an existence independent both
of Nature and Deity,1 and is constrained to accept the sublime responsibility of an endless individual life. This pivotal power in man is precisely that energy which is called will.2 Upon the diamond point of this power there turns the entire universe of mind. Will is the sovereign energy which moves the lever, the central force which animates and exercises all the organs, the self-conscious Jupiter, superior to the other deities, who forges and hurls his own thunderbolts through the heaven of the inner universe. Mind and matter alike obey will, for either in its absence would be destitute of life or motion. Will and causation are interchangeable terms, for causation is an exercise of will. Man is conscious therefore of what is called originating. So also through the senses without and from the spirit within he derives his dual consciousness. The perfect wisdom of the Infinite is seen in nothing so completely as in this duality of our nature and in its manifold operations.