Page:Vocation of Man (1848).djvu/195

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FAITH.
195

visible to the spiritual eye. Borne onwards in this stream of light, thought floats from soul to soul, with out pause or variation, and returns purer and brighter from a kindred mind. Through this mysterious union does each individual perceive, understand, and love himself only in another; every soul developes itself only by means of other souls, and there are no longer individual men, but only one humanity; no individual thought or love or hate, but only thought, love, and hate, in and through each other. Through this wondrous influence does the affinity of spirits in the invisible world permeate even their physical nature; manifest itself in two sexes, which, even if that spiritual bond could be torn asunder, would, simply as creatures of nature, be compelled to love each other; flow forth in the tenderness of parents and children, brothers and sisters, as if the souls were of one blood like the bodies, and their minds were branches and blossoms of the same stem; and from these, embrace, in narrower or wider circles, the whole sentient world. Even at the root of their hate, there lies a thirst after love; and no enmity springs up but from friendship denied.

Through that which to others seems a dead mass, my eye beholds this eternal life and movement in every vein of sensible and spiritual Nature, and sees this life rising in ever-increasing growth, and ever purifying itself to a more spiritual expression. The universe is to me no longer that ever-recurring circle, that eternally-repeated play, that monster swallowing itself up, only to bring itself forth again as it was before; it has be come transfigured before me, and now bears the one stamp of spiritual life,—a constant progress towards