desirest to attain to what thou art not; for where thou hast pleased thyself, there thou abidest. But if thou sayest, “I have enough," thou perishest. 18. Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll; Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast. 19. Lose not thy confidence of making progress in righteousness: there is yet time, the hour is not yet past. 20. But why wilt thou defer thy good purpose from day to day? Arise and begin in this very instant, and say: "Now is the time to be doing, now is the time to be striving, now is the fit time to amend myself." 21. Persons lightly dipped, not grained in generous honesty, are but pale in goodness, and faint-hued in integrity. 22. But be thou what thou virtuously art, and let not the ocean wash away thy tincture. 1. EQUIP THY SOUL FOR BATTLE Manifold and various are the ways To the same point, attainable by all- 2. Thou oughtest to have a good hope for getting the victory; but thou must not be secure, lest thou wax either negligent or proud. 3. Let not a man trust his victory over his nature too far; for nature will lie buried a great time, and yet revive, upon the occasion or temptation. 4. Ill foreboded is our strongest guard. 5. It is not amidst the hurly-burly of exciting temptations that we can safely look around us for motives to check evil promptings. IN QUIET HOURS GARNER WISDOM 6. Let the rules be gathered up, let the motives be fixed within us, while the temptations are absent, and it is thus, and thus only, that when the temptations are present, we shall find the motives at hand for resisting them. 7. For hearts of genuine dignity, those hours will always be productive which are consecrated to forming and imparting vitality, inwardly, to their ideals; 8. Those hours of recollection, of meditation, not only in regard to that which we know or do not know, but in regard to that which we aspire to, in regard to the idea with which our hearts are laden. 9. Every philosophic meditation has, like prayer, something in it of consolation, not of itself, for it may be concerned with most sad realities, but indirectly because it enlarges the heart by enlarging the thought. 10. When from our better selves we have too long Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop, Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired, How gracious, how benign is solitude! 11. In the still hour when passion is at rest, Gather up stores of wisdom in thy breast; 12. So when the storms awake, and in the din, Imprudence or malevolence to sin Would tempt thy frailty-thoughts of wisdom stored Shall check the passion, ere its tides are poured. 13. Be able to be alone. 14. By all means use sometimes to be alone. STORE UP Salute thyself; see what thy soul doth wear. 15. Keep the faculty of effort alive in thee by a little gratuitous exercise every day; do every day or two something for no other reason than that thou wouldst rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find thee not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. 16. Asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods. The tax does him no good at the time, and possibly may never bring him a return. But if the fire does come, his having paid it will be his salvation from ruin. 17. The man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition and selfdenial in unnecessary things, will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer. fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast. 18. Every day deny thyself some satisfaction; thine eyes, objects of mere curiosity; thy tongue, everything that may feed vanity or vent enmity; the palate, dainties; the ears, flattery; the body, ease and luxury. 19. When the fight begins within himself, A man's worth something. FLY FROM TEMPTA TION 20. They are not skilful considerers of human things, who imagine to remove sin by removing the matter of sin. Though ye take from a covetous man all his treasure, he has yet one jewel left; ye cannot bereave him of his covetousness. 21. Banish all objects of lust, shut up all youth into the severest discipline that can be exercised in any hermitage; ye cannot make them chaste that came not thither so. 22. Suppose we could expel sin by this means; look, how much we thus expel of sin, so much we expel of virtue, for the matter of them both is the same. 23. And yet there are times when the truest courage is shown in retreating from a temptation. 24. But thou wilt find it less easy to uproot faults, than to choke them by gaining virtues. 25. Do not only contend with evil thoughts or inclinations of the will, but get thyself earnestly BUSY THE MIND WITH engaged with a good thought or purpose, until those evil thoughts vanish. For never will a thought or volition be banished out of the heart unless it be by one of an opposite character. 26. Nothing makes the soul so pure, so religious, as the endeavour to create something perfect. 27. Turn all thy passions into the right channel, and make them all holy; this is the true cure, the bare restraint of them is but a palliate cure, like the easing of pain by a dose of opium. Cure fleshly desires and delights by spiritual desires and delights. |