The sacrifices made for others are not
infrequently met by envy, ingratitude, and enmity, which smite the heart
and threaten to paralyze its beneficence. The unavailing tear is shed both
for the living and the dead.
Nothing except sin, in the students themselves, can separate them from me.
Therefore we should guard thought and action, keeping them in accord with
Christ, and our friendship will surely continue.
The letter of the law of God, separated from its spirit, tends to
demoralize mortals, and must be corrected by a diviner sense of liberty and
light. The spirit of Truth extinguishes false thinking, feeling, and
acting; and falsity must thus decay, ere spiritual sense, affectional
consciousness, and genuine goodness become so apparent as to be well
understood.
After the supreme advent of Truth in the heart, there comes an overwhelming
sense of error's vacuity, of the blunders which arise from wrong
apprehension. The enlightened heart loathes error, and casts it aside; or
else that heart is consciously untrue to the light, faithless to itself and
to others, and so sinks into deeper darkness. Said Jesus: "If the light
that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!" and Shakespeare
puts this pious counsel into a father's mouth:--
This above all: To thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
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