nless you do this you are but half-hearted in your
enterprise.

"Do for God what you do for your ambitious projects, what you do in
consecrating yourself to Art, what you have done when you loved a human
creature or sought some secret of human science. Is not God the whole
of science, the all of love, the source of poetry? Surely His riches
are worthy of being coveted! His treasure is inexhaustible, His poem
infinite, His love immutable, His science sure and darkened by no
mysteries. Be anxious for nothing, He will give you all. Yes, in His
heart are treasures with which the petty joys you lose on earth are not
to be compared. What I tell you is true; you shall possess His power;
you may use it as you would use the gifts of lover or mistress. Alas!
men doubt, they lack faith, and will, and persistence. If some set their
feet in the path, they look behind them and presently turn back. Few
decide between the two extremes,--to go or stay, heaven or the mire. All
hesitate. Weakness leads astray, passion allures into dangerous paths,
vice becomes habitual, man flounders in the mud and makes no progress
towards a better state.

"All human beings go through a previous life in the sphere of Instinct,
where they are brought to see the worthlessness of earthly treasures,
to amass which they gave themselves such untold pains! Who can tell how
many times the human being lives in the sphere of Instinct before he
is prepared to enter the sphere of Abstractions, where thought expends
itself on erring science, where mind wearies at last of human language?
for, when Matter is exhausted, Spirit enters. Who knows how many fleshly
forms the heir of heaven occupies before he can be brought to understand
the value of that silence and solitude whose starry plains are but the
vestibule of Spiritual Worlds? He feels his way amid the void, makes
trial of nothingness, and then at last his eyes revert upon the Path.
Then follow other existences,--all to be lived to reach the place
where Light effulgent shines. Death is the post-house of the journey. A
lifetime may be needed merely to gain the virtues which annul the
errors of man's preceding life. First comes the life of suffering, whose
tortures create a thirst for love. Next the life of love and devotion
to the creature, teaching devotion to the Creator,--a life where the
virtues of love, its martyrdoms, its joys followed by sorrows, its
angelic hopes, its patience, its resignation, excite an a