In the third stage of progress we have the home-coming of the soul as far as we are able to know it in the flesh: "We taste of the powers of God" (Hebrews).
But the fullness of home-coming is reserved for that day in which the greatest of all the mysteries will be revealed to us—the mystery of the Relation of the Soul to God.
In that great day we shall know God by His Own Name.
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We do not find God by denying the existence of things not pleasing to Him. We do not find the Eternal Goodness by saying that Evil does not exist. We do not find true health of spirit because we deny all sickness, pain, and disease. Such a mode of Christianity may give a sense of comfort, lend a false security to the heart and mind at once weary of God-searching, and disenchanted with the world; but it is not the Christianity which regenerates. It is a narcotic, not a Redemption. It is the way of a mind unwilling to face truths because they pain. If there was anything made plain by Christ it is that the way of Redemption lies through heroism and not cowardice. Let those of us who too much fear a passing pain of sacrifice of will remember that the deepest of all pains, the last word in the tragedy of life, is to come to old age and descend to the grave without having found the Saviour. For our calamity is that we are lost souls. Our opportunity is that in this world we find the track of Christ which leads us home.
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God does not create a new world on purpose for His lovers immediately to live in, yet though we remain our full time in this same world it is not the same world. We see a person in a severe illness and again in full health. It is the same person, and not the same person. We see a garden filled with flowers in the rain under grey clouds, and again the same garden filled with mellow sunlight under blue skies; it is the same garden, and not the same garden.
These changes could never be described or conveyed to the man blind from birth; neither can spiritual changes be described or conveyed till we ourselves gain similarity of experience. God transposes our pleasures, taking the glamour from the guilty and transferring it to the blameless; by this transforming our lives. He increases the pleasure of unworldly enjoyments so we are independent of the worldly ones. But we cannot remain in this transformed world of His unless we are at peace both with ourself and all persons around us.
Though from earliest childhood we may have found in the beauties of Nature a great delight, when we become the lover of God He passes His fingers over our hearts and our eyes and opens them to marvellous new powers for joy. Oh, the ecstasy that may be known in one short walk alone with God! The overflowing heart cries out to Him, What other lover is there can give such bliss as this, and what is all Nature but a lovely language between Thee and me! Then the soul spreads wings into the blue and sings to Him like soaring lark.
But do not let us seek Him only because of His Delights, for so we might miss Him altogether. But let it be because it is His wish: because Perfection calls, and mystery calls to mystery, and love to love, and Light calls to the darkness and the Dawn is born.