all its desires? It will answer: "To love, to love the good; to love the supreme and infinite good;-to love God and all things else because of some reflect of God!" Shall we ask the will of man its purpose? It will reply: "To act; to act in accordance with the primal truth for the Supreme Good; to do God's will." The head, the heart, the hand of man with one voice proclaim that the end of man is to know, to love, to live for God! This is God's own destiny. Man's destiny, therefore, is Godlike. For God created man in his " own image and likeness !" The destiny of the soul, then, is to come to God; to be one with God. To live, is to think for God, to love for God, to act for God. A truthful life is one in which all the thoughts of the mind, all the affections of the heart, all the acts of the will, are directed to God. A truthful life is one in which all the faculties and energies of the soul tend to God. But God's happiness is one and the same with his life. Man, therefore, living the same life as God, participates in God's happiness, and his life here is the beginning of his eternal beatitude hereafter. What higher end can be conceived than that of God; what more beautiful life can be imagined than that of God; what more blissful can be thought of, than the happiness of God? Say not that in making God "the limit where all our wishes end," we isolate man from nature and humanity? Is not God in nature? in humanity? in all things? If so, then to see God is to see and know all things eminently ;-to love God and be one with him, is to love and be one with all things most intimately;-to do God's will, is to do every thing and serve all things most effectually. With God and one with God, man, like God, embraces all, and is eminently practical; without God, he is incomplete and his actions ineffectual. We may be told that this is all poetry, rhapsody, moonshine, smoke, and will, like "Yon wavering column, perish!"* *Schiller. To some these thoughts may appear so; the world is wide, and leaving such by the way, we say this is "A truth too vast for spirits lost in sloth, But to those who feel within their hearts the strivings of a noble enterprise, we have a word of hope. Ye, whose thoughts make the world a solitude, and who feel a bliss by you not understood, we have a word of hope. Ye, to whom God has given generous views of life and courage to act for Eternity; to you we have a word of hope, and, with assurance, say : "These are not dreams for laughter. IV. Special Destiny. "Could I find a path to follow, Ah, how glad I were, and blest!" SCHILLER. AN not only has a destiny, but each in MAN dividual of the race has a special destiny, a definite work to do; and this work is a great, an important, a divine work. For, whatever God appoints, is great, great in its purpose, important in its accomplishment, divine in its results. At the same time that God gave to each soul a definite work to do, and marked out for it a special path in life, which, following faithfully, it will attain its beatitude, he gave also to the soul the strength, courage, talent, grace to do the work well; and more, to do it with a certain degree of facility and pleasure. Moments come to every soul when the iron hand of its destiny is laid upon it with an irresistible power. A higher power directs it, and it is an awful moment when the soul feels, for the first time, that it is under an influence that it cannot control, and all before it is dark: "My will is bondsman to the dark, When the world loses all its charms, the sweet ties of human friendship are snapped asunder; the heart's affections are torn up by their roots with a ruthless hand, and the soul, in throes of agony, cries out to its invisible antagonist, ""Tis o'er." One thing it knows amidst its darkness, and that is, that to resist the power that leads it on, Iwould be its death. One thing it is sure of, amidst its uncertainties, that the path in which it has entered will terminate in a plenitude of life; and exclaims, * Tennyson. |