The Ascent of the Soul | Page 5

which they dwell. Individuality has to do with
spirits. We think, love, and choose in ways that differ quite as much as
our bodily appearance. There is no uniformity in the spiritual
sphere;--this we know from its manifestations in conduct and history.
One man is heroic and another tender, one a reformer and another a
recluse, one conservative and another radical. The same Bible has
passages as widely contrasted as the twenty-third and the fifty-eighth
Psalms, and characters as unlike as Jacob and Jesus. Indeed, may it not
be assumed that physical differences are but expressions of still more
clearly marked differences in spirits? If this is true it will follow that, as
we move toward the goal of our being, while all will be under the same
good care, we will move along different, though converging, paths.
There are many roads to the "Celestial City" and, possibly, some of
them do not lead through the Slough of Despond, or go very near to the
realms of Giant Despair.
I cannot leave this part of my subject without dwelling for a moment
upon two thoughts which to me seem to be full of significance.
This wonderfully complex nature of ours,--this power of thinking,

choosing, loving, these mysterious inner depths out of which come
strange suggestions, and within which, all the time, processes are
carried on which may rise into consciousness and startle with their
beauty or shame with their ugliness--does no suggestion come from it
concerning its origin and destiny? Until they pass mid-life few men
realize the terrible significance of the command of the oracle at Delphi,
"Know Thyself." Who is not surprised every day at what he finds
within himself? It sometimes seems as if two beings dwelt in every
body, one in the region of consciousness, and one down below
consciousness steadily forging the material which, sooner or later, must
be forced up for the conscious man to think about.
In proportion as we know ourselves more accurately it becomes
increasingly evident that as spirits we are allied to the great Spirit. Few
who earnestly think can believe that their power of thought could have
grown out of the earth; few when they love can believe that there is no
fountain of love, unlimited and free; and few, when they choose one
course and refuse another, would be willing to affirm that they are
without the power of choice, and have no destiny but the grave. In other
words, is not the fact that we are spirits all the proof that we need to
have of the Father of Spirits? Is not a single ray of light all the evidence
which any one needs of the reality of the sun? Is not the presence of
one spiritual being a demonstration of a greater Spirit somewhere?
Every soul indicates that, whatever the process by which it has reached
its present development, it came originally from God. "In the beginning
God" is a phrase which applies to the spiritual as well as to the material
universe.
The soul is not only a witness concerning its own origin, but it is also a
prophecy concerning its destiny. The more thoroughly it is studied the
more convincing becomes the evidence that it must some time reach its
perfected state. The perfection of intelligence, love, and will require
endless growth. The great words of Pascal can hardly be recalled too
frequently:
"Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. It is
not necessary that the entire universe arm itself to crush him. A breath

of air, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But were the universe to
crush him, man would still be more noble than that which kills him,
because he knows that he dies; and the universe knows nothing of the
advantage it has over him."
We can as yet hardly begin to comprehend that for which we were
created;--now we see through a glass darkly. A caterpillar on the earth
cannot appreciate a butterfly in the air. Jesus was the typical man, as
well as the revelation of God. St. Paul has set our thoughts moving
toward the "fullness of Christ" as the final goal of humanity. We may
not, for many milleniums, know all that is contained in that phrase "the
fullness of Christ;" but no one ever attentively listened to the voices
which speak in his own soul, no one has even asked himself the
meaning of the fact that nothing earthly ever completely satisfies, no
one ever saw another in the ripeness of splendid powers growing more
intelligent, loving, and spiritually beautiful, without feeling that if death
were really the end no being is so much to be pitied as man, and no fate
so much to be coveted