Beautiful Thoughts | Page 7

April 10th. God is not confined to the outermost circle of environment,
He lives and moves and has His being in the whole. Those who only
seek Him in the further zone can only find a part. The Christian who
knows not God in Nature, who does not, that is to say, correspond with
the whole environment, most certainly is partially dead. Natural Law,
Death, p. 163.
April 11th. After you have been kind, after Love has stolen forth into
the world and done its beautiful work, go back into the shade again and
say nothing about it. The Greatest Thing in the World.
April 12th. The absence of the true Light means moral Death. The
darkness of the natural world to the intellect is not all. What history
testifies to is, first the partial, and then the total eclipse of virtue that
always follows the abandonment of belief in a personal God. Natural
Law, Death, p. 167.
April 13th. The only greatness is unselfish love. . . . There is a great
difference between TRYING TO PLEASE and GIVING PLEASURE.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
April 14th. The conception of a God gives an altogether new colour to
worldliness and vice. Worldliness it changes into heathenism, vice into

blasphemy. The carnal mind, the mind which is turned away from God,
which will not correspond with God--this is not moral only but spiritual
Death. And Sin, that which separates from God, which disobeys God,
which CAN not in that state correspond with God--this is hell. Natural
Law, Death, p. 169.
April 15th. If sin is estrangement from God, this very estrangement is
Death. It is a want of correspondence. If sin is selfishness, it is
conducted at the expense of life. Its wages are Death--"he that loveth
his life," said Christ, "shall lose it." Natural Law, Death, p. 170.
April 16th. Obviously if the mind turns away from one part of the
environment it will only do so under some temptation to correspond
with another. This temptation, at bottom, can only come from one
source--the love of self. The irreligious man's correspondences are
concentrated upon himself. He worships himself. Self-gratification
rather than self-denial; independence rather than submission--these are
the rules of life. And this is at once the poorest and the commonest
form of idolatry. Natural Law, p. 170.
April 17th. You will find . . . that the people who influence you are
people who believe in you. The Greatest Thing in the World.
April 18th. The development of any organism in any direction is
dependent on its environment. A living cell cut off from air will die. A
seed-germ apart from moisture and an appropriate temperature will
make the ground its grave for centuries. Human nature, likewise, is
subject to similar conditions. It can only develop in presence of its
environment. No matter what its possibilities may be, no matter what
seeds of thought or virtue, what germs of genius or of art, lie latent in
its breast, until the appropriate environment present itself the
correspondence is denied, the development discouraged, the most
splendid possibilities of life remain unrealized, and thought and virtue,
genius and art, are dead. Natural Law, p. 171.
April 19th. The true environment of the moral life is God. Here
conscience wakes. Here kindles love. Duty here becomes heroic; and
that righteousness begins to live which alone is to live forever. But if
this Atmosphere is not, the dwarfed soul must perish for mere want of
its native air. And its Death is a strictly natural Death. It is not an
exceptional judgment upon Atheism. In the same circumstances, in the
same averted relation to their environment, the poet, the musician, the

artist, would alike perish to poetry, to music, and to art. Natural Law, p.
171.
April 20th. Every environment is a cause. Its effect upon me is exactly
proportionate to my correspondence with it. If I correspond with part of
it, part of myself is influenced. If I correspond with more, more of
myself is influenced; if with all, all is influenced. If I correspond with
the world, I become worldly; if with God, I become Divine. Natural
Law, Death, p. 171.
April 21st. You can dwarf a soul just as you can dwarf a plant, by
depriving it of a full environment. Such a soul for a time may have a
"name to live." Its character may betray no sign of atrophy. But its very
virtue somehow has the pallor of a flower that is grown in darkness, or
as the herb which has never seen the sun, no fragrance breathes from its
spirit. Natural Law, p. 173.
April 22d. I shall pass through this world but once. Any good thing,
therefore, that I can do, or any kindness that I can