LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

your own, and you can cling to them or you can give them up. Of your own accord you cling to your unrest; of your own accord you can come to abiding peace. No one else can give up sin for you; you must give it up yourself. The greatest teacher can do no more than walk the way of Truth for himself, and point it out to you; you yourself must walk it for yourself. You can obtain freedom and peace alone by your own efforts, by yielding up that which binds the soul, and which is destructive of peace.

      The angels of divine peace and joy are always at hand, and if you do not see them, and hear them, and dwell with them, it is because you shut yourself out from them, and prefer the company of the spirits of evil within you. You are what you will to be, what you wish to be, what you prefer to be. You can commence to purify yourself, and by so doing can arrive at peace, or you can refuse to purify yourself, and so remain with suffering.

      Step aside, then; come out of the fret and the fever of life; away from the scorching heat of self, and enter the inward resting-place where the cooling airs of peace will calm, renew, and restore you.

      Come out of the storms of sin and anguish. Why be troubled and tempest-tossed when the haven of Peace of God is yours!

      Give up all self-seeking; give up self, and lo! the Peace of God is yours!

      Subdue the animal within you; conquer every selfish uprising, every discordant voice; transmute the base metals of your selfish nature into the unalloyed gold of Love, and you

      shall realize the Life of Perfect Peace. Thus subduing, thus conquering, thus transmuting, you will, O reader! while living in the flesh, cross the dark waters of mortality, and will reach that Shore upon which the storms of sorrow never beat, and where sin and suffering and dark uncertainty cannot come. Standing upon that Shore, holy, compassionate, awakened, and self-possessed and glad with unending gladness, you will realize that

      "Never the Spirit was born, the Spirit will cease to be never;

      Never was time it was not, end and beginning are dreams;

      Birthless and deathless and changeless remaineth the Spirit for ever; Death hath not touched it at all, dead though the house of it seems."

      You will then know the meaning of Sin, of Sorrow, of Suffering, and that the end thereof is Wisdom; will know the cause and the issue of existence.

      And with this realization you will enter into rest, for this is the bliss of immortality, this the unchangeable gladness, this the untrammeled knowledge, undefiled Wisdom, and undying Love; this, and this only, is the realization of Perfect Peace.

      O thou who wouldst teach men of Truth!

      Hast thou passed through the desert of doubt? Art thou purged by the fires of sorrow? hath ruth The fiends of opinion cast out

      Of thy human heart? Is thy soul so fair

      That no false thought can ever harbor there?

      O thou who wouldst teach men of Love!

      Hast thou passed through the place of despair? Hast thou wept through the dark night of grief? does it move

      (Now freed from its sorrow and care)

      Thy human heart to pitying gentleness,

      Looking on wrong, and hate, and ceaseless stress?

      O thou who wouldst teach men of Peace!

      Hast thou crossed the wide ocean of strife? Hast thou found on the Shores of the Silence, Release from all the wild unrest of life?

      From thy human heart hath all striving gone, Leaving but Truth, and Love, and Peace alone?

4. All These Things Added

      Contents

       Foreword

      I. Entering the Kingdom

      II. The Heavenly Life

      Foreword

      In seeking for pleasures here and rewards hereafter men have destroyed (in their hearts) the Temple of Righteousness, and have wandered from the Kingdom of Heaven. By ceasing to seek for earthly pleasures and heavenly rewards, the Temple of Righteousness is restored and the Kingdom of Heaven is found. This truth is for those who are ready to receive it; and this book also is for those whose souls have been prepared for the acceptance of its teaching.

      James Allen.

Part I

      Contents

      1. The Soul’s Great Need

      2. The Competitive Laws and the Law of Love

      3. The Finding of a Principle

      4. At Rest in the Kingdom and All Things Added

      1

      The Soul’s Great Need

      I sought the world, but Peace was not there;

      I courted learning, but Truth was not revealed;

      I sojourned with philosophy, but my heart was sore with vanity. And I cried, Where is Peace to be found!

      And where is the hiding place of truth!

      Filius Lucis

      EVERY HUMAN SOUL IS IN NEED. The expression of that need varies with individuals, but there is not one soul that does not feel it in some degree. It is a spiritual and casual need which takes the form, in souls of a particular development, of a deep and inexpressible hunger which the outward things of life, however abundantly they may be possessed, can never satisfy. Yet the majority, imperfect in knowledge and misled by appearances, seek to satisfy this hunger by striving for material possessions, believing that these will satisfy their need, and bring them peace.

      Every soul, consciously or unconsciously, hungers for righteousness, and every soul seeks to gratify that hunger in its own particular way, and in accordance with its own particular state of knowledge. The hunger is one, and the righteousness is one, but the pathways by which righteousness is sought are many.

      They who seek consciously are blessed, and shall shortly find that final and permanent satisfaction of soul which righteousness alone can give, for they have come into a knowledge of the true path.

      They who seek unconsciously, although for a time they may bathe in a sea of pleasure, are not blessed, for they are carving out for themselves pathways of suffering over which they must walk with torn and wounded feet, and their hunger will increase, and the soul will cry out for its lost heritage—the eternal heritage of righteousness.

      Not in any of the three worlds (waking, dream and sleep) can the soul find lasting satisfaction, apart from the realization of righteousness. Bodied or disembodied, it is ceaselessly driven on by the discipline of suffering, until at last, in its extremity, it flies to its only refuge—the refuge of righteousness—and finds that joy, satisfaction, and peace which it had so long and so vainly sought.

      The great need of the soul, then, is the need of this permanent principle, called righteousness, on which it may stand securely and restfully amid the tempest of earthly existence, no more bewildered, and whereon it may build the mansion of a beautiful, peaceful, and perfect life.

      It is the realization of this principle where the Kingdom of Heaven, the abiding home of the soul, resides, and which is the source and storehouse of every permanent

Скачать книгу