ppetite for
things divine. Then follows the life which seeks in silence the traces
of the Word; in which the soul grows humble and charitable. Next the
life of longing; and lastly, the life of prayer. In that is the noonday
sun; there are the flowers, there the harvest!

"The virtues we acquire, which develop slowly within us, are
the invisible links that bind each one of our existences to the
others,--existences which the spirit alone remembers, for Matter has no
memory for spiritual things. Thought alone holds the tradition of the
bygone life. The endless legacy of the past to the present is the secret
source of human genius. Some receive the gift of form, some the gift
of numbers, others the gift of harmony. All these gifts are steps of
progress in the Path of Light. Yes, he who possesses a single one of
them touches at that point the Infinite. Earth has divided the Word--of
which I here reveal some syllables--into particles, she has reduced it
to dust and has scattered it through her works, her dogmas, her poems.
If some impalpable grain shines like a diamond in a human work, men cry:
'How grand! how true! how glorious!' That fragment vibrates in their
souls and wakes a presentiment of heaven: to some, a melody that
weans from earth; to others, the solitude that draws to God. To all,
whatsoever sends us back upon ourselves, whatsoever strikes us down and
crushes us, lifts or abases us,--_that_ is but a syllable of the Divine
Word.

"When a human soul draws its first furrow straight, the rest will follow
surely. One thought borne inward, one prayer uplifted, one suffering
endured, one echo of the Word within us, and our souls are forever
changed. All ends in God; and many are the ways to find Him by walking
straight before us. When the happy day arrives in which you set your
feet upon the Path and begin your pilgrimage, the world will know
nothing of it; earth no longer understands you; you no longer understand
each other. Men who attain a knowledge of these things, who lisp a few
syllables of the Word, often have not where to lay their head; hunted
like beasts they perish on the scaffold, to the joy of assembled
peoples, while Angels open to them the gates of heaven. Therefore, your
destiny is a secret between yourself and God, just as love is a secret
between two hearts. You may be the buried treasure, trodden under the
feet of men thirsting for gold yet all-unknowing that you are there
beneath them.

"Hencefor