The Soul of Things

 

The Soul of Things

There are many phases—or spheres through which the spirit has to grow to become an independent spirit of the spheres. 

Many linger around earth years, having so much of the earthly about them that it attracts to itself all that belongs to it.

 

If the spirit has not grown to a condition to free itself from its material, it will cling around until it grows into a more spiritual condition.

We all recognise a Divine Hand—or Intelligence guiding us.

Wonderful are Thy works Oh! God who giveth such abundance for all―freely, and without cost—

Yet we suffer for nourishment both physically and spiritually because we—not God—have monopolised the earth and grasped to us that which belongs to all.

Who gave the right to buy and sell that which belongs to God?

It is time the world was aroused to a sense of its wrongs and darkness—

We must awaken to the truth of reason and knowledge from a higher standpoint—when bigotry and oppression will lose their power, and love and charity will look upon us all as Children of One Father.

How much good a happy, bright countenance gives to those who look upon it. 

It is like sunshine beaming through a cloud. 

It drives darkness and gloom from its presence and gives gladness and joy to hearts filled with sadness. 

It is like a light set upon a hill to guide the wanderer.

The food for the soul lies buried beneath the rubbish of forms and pride, withholding the true wealth that was given by God to bestow upon humanity without money—or price.

How little we understand life—its principles, its bearings, and surroundings upon other elements and associations of life. 

You are constantly repelling—or attracting other elements—

You are not an independent being—

You are constantly dependent one upon another as a Child of One Great Family, and cannot do wrong to yourself without injury to others surrounding you. 

In marring God's beautiful structure, you render inharmony to others and break the beautiful links, which serve as ladders to reach the upper realms.

Seeing one thing and having one desire binds the soul in chains and bondage while on earth―

Drags it to a darkened condition in sphere-life—

There to await release by gradual, spiritual development.

Give, and ye shall receive more abundantly was the teaching of an inspired man. 

You find the truth of that remark in spiritual faith, as well as in physical life.

When the aged can no longer gather up the beauty and knowledge of earth because of their physical and mental decay, then does the spirit revel again in the knowledge of past experiences of love and happiness, living over again those bright and happy associations, reviewing the past to prepare it to be linked to the spiritual when the worn-out casket is broken, and it is released from the confinement of material that is no longer needed to protect—or develop the soul. 

Truly, there is nothing lost, for the spirit takes to itself all that it has gathered of experience—or happiness while inhabiting the form, carrying its treasures to its spiritual home—there to blend and beautify in its future growth and associations in the spheres. 

Also, the material though falling to decay is not lost, for each and every particle has its place—its mission—a new field of action through which new forms will take possession to work out new developments. 

Thus, there is a continuation of life, giving variety and beauty through this ever-working law of the Infinite.

The Great Principle of All Life—

The Universal Spirit of All Matter—whether spiritual—or material—

The Divine Architect of All has always led, and will always lead you up through the developing process of growth, knowledge and spiritual advancement. 

It is the inevitable law of life and regeneration. 

Production and reproduction can never cease in the material and will be wrought out in beauty and perfectness in the spiritual spheres.

If you reason—

Reason honestly. 

If one is necessary for physical life, the other is necessary for spiritual life, for the natural and spiritual are so nearly blended that you cannot mar the one without injury to the other. 

Therefore, to grow beautiful, you must allow the spirit to unfold in goodness and freedom, believing that an enlarged spiritual condition will produce a harmonious, physical organisation, as a healthy, well-developed body produces a free and independent spirit.

I have met Him in the brightest glory—

A glorified saintly expression pervades His divine countenance—

With a sweet smile, He beckons all to him who can approach his bright surroundings—

A train of brightness follows him in his mission through the spheres, for He is still fulfilling his mission of love and kindness—still carrying out the great principle He advocated while on earth.

There is much to learn, and you never cease to learn throughout eternity.

You are placed here—as the beginning of life—to use the blessings of this world in preparing and fitting you for another.

You progress from lower to higher conditions, and what you do not learn—or live up to while on earth, you must learn—or grow to after changing forms and worlds, for you have only passed to another sphere of action where you continue to unfold in that the spiritual world has to give.

With what joy do those living witnesses greet you, as you silently—though truthfully—give a demonstration of continued life.

Deviations from natural laws only debar, for a time, spirit progress to higher conditions.

 

Those beautiful inspirations in your earthly-life are realised in your spiritual progression—

Those beautiful interior thoughts become living truths to your spiritual senses.

The poet, and the painter, in their inspirational moments, illustrate the soul of things to the world in a language, which inspires those who read―or look upon the canvas with the wonderful and beautiful in Nature and art—

That soul language you take with you to your beautiful home, as mementoes of past ages when you were mortal and an inhabitant of the physical sphere—

When the soul had a mortal covering to protect and perfect a divinity―

An independent form to be retained and perfected in its organisation while a dweller on earth—

A recognised, identified spiritual being in its progression through the different spheres of spiritual life.

Worlds cannot hold you—

You are ever moving onward and upward to an unknown intelligence, which will give you—as fast as you can comprehend it—the infinite instinct to draw you unto that protection and nourishment, which is designed for your use.

Must every flower grow upon a rock because one chanced to be born there―or in the dark cavern―or does God bless them everywhere? 

Do they not flourish best where Nature is best adapted to their wants—the morning sunshine―fertile soil―sparkling dewdrops?

Yet those beautiful flowers, which are so lovely are in as sweet communion with their Creator, as those more blessed with congenial life.

Every soul longs for freedom and feels a mysterious tie binding him to a future—a different life. 

You try to overcome it by rendering yourself happy to present surroundings, but you inevitably feel that you are to act some part to you yet unknown. 

You cannot chain the soul—

It is linked with the unfathomable—

You are a being of change—

The Infinite has written out your life on the great future.

You have not understood God's laws that the soul has its requirements, as well as the physical body, and that to nourish it, you must understand what those wants are and supply them as readily as you would the starving body with its desire for nourishment.

Every element in life must be free to receive the fullness of the Maker's Love—

Unbounded—

Unbroken.

 

Life once given ever liveth in and through all eternity.

All are One Great Family, working out principles of life, and assisting one another in the Great Workshop of Eternity―

All being perfectly arranged in harmony and beauty.

All must work out their own salvation in earth-life―or in the life to come.

Such were Christ's words―

As were impressed upon him―

Such all find it on passing into spirit life.

Those who do not live with and by the spirit in earth-life must work through that darkness after coming to spirit-life. 

You commence at the primary and rise in the progressive scale of intelligence. 

Infants are beautiful as miniature men and women, but they are not men and women for want of experience and knowledge gained by progressive life. 

This beautiful law of development gives a new light of usefulness through time and throughout eternity.

If you would take Christ's example and teachings as your guide, striving to do as He did, with the same simple faith, doing good and persecuting none, you would not remain idle, waiting for him to cleanse you from your sins by the blood He shed upon the cross. 

All that fail to learn that lesson in earth-life will have to learn it in the spirit—will have to learn that you have a work to do, and that if not done in earth-life must be done in spirit-life—

No one can escape his mission. 

All must work out their own salvation in earth-life—or in the life to come.

Wonderful indeed are thy works O God, Thou great Divine—should you not give thanks to Him whom to know is to love unspeakable and full of glory.

Spirit-life conceives and impregnates earth with its conception of everything that was made—whether life, vegetable—or mineral. 

All inventions—or designs are preconceived in spirit-life and impressed upon those minds most susceptible and best adapted to such controls given at the time the world most needs them—or can appreciate them, thus supplying her wants as fast as she demands, showing an All-wise Power creating wants and supplying them. 

What a thought! that souls that hunger after food find their supply in spirit communion whether through mechanical labour, mental lore—or inspirational wisdom.

Having passed the change called death, you still find yourself a living, intelligent being—actually alive to all scenes incident to earth-life, yet comprehending a fuller and happier condition—

finding there is no death, but the birth of the soul into realms of spiritual unfoldments, where—like children born into earth-life—you feel the weakness and strangeness of your situation, not comprehending the wonderful change that has come over you, but being guided and strengthened by your loved ones who meet you at the gateway to welcome you—

Yielding trustingly, lovingly to their protection—

Becoming strengthened, you learn to adapt yourself to the conditions surrounding you—

You gradually become awakened and strengthened until every fibre of the soul is pulsating with new and wonderful emotions—

Thrilling with joy to learn that you can still communicate with mortals—

Impress them with your presence—

That you still can assist and guide them by your influence and teachings, urging them to honesty and truthfulness in earthly-life as passports to a higher and more useful life.

Heaven is such a beautiful place—

You can participate in all that makes life happy—

A continuation of blessed associations—

A continuation of a renewed life to do good and receive good—

To be givers and receivers. 

What a wonderful lesson to the soul that to be happy you must impart your good gifts to others that they may be benefitted, so as to benefit others again—

A divine law of the Almighty—

The more you give, the more you receive.

The great struggle for liberty to worship God, according to the dictates of your own interior longings wrote itself on the Tablets of Eternity. 

To be compelled to worship according to another's form—or creed is as abhorrent to the soul, as to compel one living to be tied to a dead body, and drag it with him through life in anticipation of eternal repose.

There is no darkness in God's Great Universe—

No hidden laboratory where He manufactures—or creates worlds—or beings, but a beautiful and general revelation of all his works ever before the eyes of all—

Where you may study through His Works up to the divine principle—God.

In material life, you only look at the result―not the cause and effect, which produces them.

The wondrous beauty and attractive law of progress draw you on from one sphere to another of usefulness.

Could you today—with all the great inspiration of this era—realise the wonderful changes being wrought out through angel ministry, you would not so often despair for the future.

Heaven is a perpetual-living epitome where you—as a child born into spirit-life—are to grow, taking on with you such conditions as this life gave you of variety and attraction that were harmonious to your condition. 

As you awake to a higher and nobler condition, you lose those things you no longer need, rising out as it were phoenix-like from your ashes of the past to a newer and brighter sphere of usefulness, for, in laying down your earthly garments, the spirit does not find eternal rest, but has just taken up its work in this wonderful progress of eternal law.

You have a right to speak and think the thoughts―or inspirations God has given you, feeling―or upholding a self-reliant assurance that a power sustains all good and ennobling action.

God does not work in secret—

He has no secret machinations to show to a few while the multitude is in ignorance of His beautiful law, showing you that you are a recipient of His Love and Mercy.

Elevation of one's self from self is the surest religion to do right. 

Make it a business to know yourself, and you will learn to know God, for God lives within you. 

By seeking the true―the good―the beautiful in your brother man, you draw out the same in your own soul―or interior conscience.

You are a Child of the Author of All Existence, with the same divine attributes to cultivate, enlarge and unfold in this world a beautiful book of life.

The beautiful workmanship of His Divine Hand is upon all things both material and spiritual—

The more you recognise it, the more you will become reconciled to God and His beautiful creations.

If plants know how to grow, why not you?

What is life? 

 

What is death? 

One is the bud―

The other the blossom—

Eternity―

The ripe fruit.

Why then try to retain the bud?

Do you not  look forward to the harvest as the acme of all your hopes?

But as the tree is so shall the bud blossom and fruit be.

Look then to the tree—

Live your best life—

Give nothing to the swine.

Make every moment a gem to shine in the crown awaiting you. 

Bring your best thoughts to bear on that which is set before you, doing each day's duty grandly―not with weak hands and hanging heads, as though bound for the felon's death. 

So act and live that when called from this stage of action, you may come bearing a full sheaf of yellow grain, emblematic of a bountiful life and a glorious resurrection.