Beautiful Thoughts | Page 6

is done. How instantaneously it
acts. How infallibly it is remembered. How superabundantly it pays
itself back --for there is no debtor in the world so honourable, so
superbly honourable as Love. The Greatest Thing in the World.
March 24th. To love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love
forever is to live forever. Hence, eternal life is inextricably bound up
with love. The Greatest Thing in the World.
March 25th. Man is a mass of correspondences, and because of these,
because he is alive to countless objects and influences to which lower
organisms are dead, he is the most living of all creatures. Natural Law,
Death, p. 155.
March 26th. All organisms are living and dead--living to all within the
circumference of their correspondences, dead to all beyond. . . . Until
man appears there is no organism to correspond with the whole
environment. Natural Law, Death, p. 155.
March 27th. Is man in correspondence with the whole environment or
is he not? . . . He is not. Of men generally it cannot be said that they are

in living contact with that part of the environment which is called the
spiritual world. Natural Law, Death, p. 156.
March 28th. The animal world and the plant world are the same world.
They are different parts of one environment. And the natural and
spiritual are likewise one. Natural Law, Death, p. 157.
March 29th. What we have correspondence with, that we call natural;
what we have little or no correspondence with, that we call Spiritual.
Natural Law, Death, p. 157.
March 30th. Those who are in communion with God live, those who
are not are dead. Natural Law, Death, p. 158.
March 31st. This earthly mind may be of noble calibre, enriched by
culture, high-toned, virtuous, and pure. But if it know not God? What
though its correspondences reach to the stars of heaven or grasp the
magnitudes of Time and Space? The stars of heaven are not heaven.
Space is not God. Natural Law, Death, p. 158.
April 1st. We do not picture the possessor of this carnal mind as in any
sense a monster. We have said he may be high-toned, virtuous, and
pure. The plant is not a monster because it is dead to the voice of the
bird; nor is he a monster who is dead to the voice of God. The
contention at present simply is that he is DEAD. Natural Law, Death, p.
159.
April 2d. What is the creed of the Agnostic, but the confession of the
spiritual numbness of humanity? Natural Law, Death, p. 160.
April 3d. The nescience of the Agnostic philosophy is the proof from
experience that to be carnally minded is Death. Natural Law, p. 161.
April 4th. The Christian apologist never further misses the mark than
when he refuses the testimony of the Agnostic to himself. When the
Agnostic tells me he is blind and deaf, dumb, torpid, and dead to the
spiritual world, I must believe him. Jesus tells me that. Paul tells me
that. Science tells me that. He knows nothing of this outermost circle;
and we are compelled to trust his sincerity as readily when he deplores
it as if, being a man without an ear, he professed to know nothing of a
musical world, or being without taste, of a world of art. Natural Law,
Death, p. 160.
April 5th. It brings no solace to the unspiritual man to be told he is
mistaken. To say he is self-deceived is neither to compliment him nor
Christianity. He builds in all sincerity who raises his altar to the

UNKNOWN God. He does not know God. With all his marvellous and
complex correspondences, he is still one correspondence short. Natural
Law, Death, p. 161.
April 6th. Only one thing truly need the Christian envy, the large, rich,
generous soul which "envieth not." The Greatest Thing in the World.
April 7th. Whenever you attempt a good work you will find other men
doing the same kind of work, and probably doing it better. Envy them
not. The Greatest Thing in the World.
April 8th. I say that man believes in a God, who feels himself in the
presence of a Power which is not himself, and is immeasurably above
himself, a Power in the contemplation of which he is absorbed, in the
knowledge of which he finds safety and happiness. Natural Law, Death,
p. 162.
April 9th. What men deny is not a God. It is the correspondence. The
very confession of the Unknowable is itself the dull recognition of an
Environment beyond themselves, and for which they feel they lack the
correspondence. It is this want that makes their God the Unknown God.
And it is this that makes them DEAD. Natural Law, Death, p. 163.