Let us pray more frequently than we do: "My Lord, increase my faith, increase my love, and increase my understanding of how to use this faith and this love when they have been begotten in me."
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On every side we hear complaints against the Church. It is suggested that we are falling away from God because of some lack in the Church. But this fault of the Church is exactly the same fault which is to be found in the members of the congregation which compose it—a tepid love for a dimly known Lord. When the priest and every member of the congregation in his own heart worships the beloved Christ, then the Church will be found to have gained just that which is now lacking, and which we attribute to some priestly failure and not our own also.
Of Church ceremonials it is hard to speak, for the lover of God can have no eyes for them: he is all heart, but sees it this way—that set rules, regulations, and ceremonials in prayers and worship are most right and proper for the creature publicly worshipping its Creator. That the assembling together in church is the outward and visible acknowledgment of the creature's worship of God and also a looking for the fulfilling of the promise "where two or three are gathered together in My name." The redeemed creature worships very ardently with all its little heart and mind and all its tiny strength, learning in its own self the words of David: "I was glad when they said unto me, We will go into the house of the Lord." But the soul cannot worship in set words, neither can she have need or use for the ceremonials invented by and for the creature, but worships God in another manner altogether, as she is taught by the Holy Spirit, and in the greatness of her worship mounts to God, and closes with God. For holy love cannot long be divided.
Often when the creature is alone, and eating, its Lord will visit it, causing the soul and the mind and the heart of it to cry out: "But of what use to me is this meat and drink which is before me? I have no need of it, I can do nothing other than sip of the holy beauty of my Lord." And immediately we are so pressed the earthly cup must be set down, and in very great ecstasy we sup in spirit with the Lord. The unnameable Elixir of God is the Wine, and Love is the Bread.
When holy love grows great in us we wonder that we ever thought that human love was love at all, for no matter how great it may once have seemed it now seems so small it is no greater than the humming of a bee around a flower in summer time. But holy love—who can commence to describe it? It rides upon great wings, it burns like a devouring fire, it makes nothing of Space and comes before Him like the lightnings, saying, "Here am I," and, gathering all things, all loves into itself, pours them out at the feet of God.
By baptism we are named and called for election by the Church. Through personal and individual repentance and connection by faith and love with Christ we enter election by baptism of the Holy Spirit. By the mere following of rituals, doctrines, dogmas, ceremonies, we are in great danger of introducing the mind of the Pharisee with his reliance as means of salvation upon the washing of hands and cups, and except we exceed this righteousness we do not enter the Kingdom. Or the mind of the lawyer, which type of mind seeks obstinately, forcefully, to mould the secrets of the soul's communion with God and fix them upon cold documents where they quickly cease to have life.
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Above the fretful and contentious human reason is the intelligence of the soul, and this soul has in itself a higher part for we become acutely aware of it—that part of it with which we come in contact with God, with which we respond to God, receive His manifestations, are laid bare to His blisses. Separated from worldly things by an impalpable veil, it rests above all such things in serene calm, and, strangest of all, has no comprehension whatever of sin: when we enter this part of the soul and live with it sin and evil become not only non-existent but unthinkable, unimaginable: we are totally removed from any such order of existence. It communicates its knowledge to the lower part of the soul, the soul to the Reason, the Reason to the rest of the creature.
We say we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and in saying this we think of the body, but far more wonderful is the making of the spiritual of us. O man, climb out of the gross materialism of thy fleshly self, for thou canst do it! As out of the heavy earth come the delicate flowers of spring, so out of the heavy body, because of that divine which is within it, come the marvellous flowers of the soul.