The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit by Ralph Waldo Trine online

XI SOME METHODS OF EXPRESSION

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No man of intelligence can fail to recognise the fact that life is more important than things. Life is the chief thing, and material things are the elements that minister to, that serve the purposes of the life. Whoever does anything in the world to preserve life, to better its conditions, who, recognising the Divine force at work lifting life up always to better, finer conditions, is doing God's work in the world--because cooperating with the great Cosmic world plan.

The ideal, then, is men and women of the spirit, open and responsive always to its guidance, recognising the Divine plan and the Divine ideal, working cooperatively in the world to make all conditions of life fairer, finer, more happy. He who lives and works not as an individual, that is not for his good alone, but who recognises the essential oneness of life--is carrying out his share of the Divine plan.

A man may be unusually gifted; he may have unusual ability in business, in administration; he may be a giant in finance, in administration, but if for self alone, if lack of vision blinds him to the great Divine plan, if he does not recognise his relative place and value; if he gains his purposes by selfishness, by climbing over others, by indifference to human pain or suffering--oblivious to human welfare--his ways are the ways of the jungle. His mind and his life are purely sordid, grossly and blindly self-centred--wholly material. He gains his object, but by Divine law not happiness, not satisfaction, not peace. He is outside the Kingdom of Heaven--the kingdom of harmony. He is living and working out of harmony with the Divine mind that is evolving a higher order of life in the world. He is blind too, he is working against the Divine plan.

Now what is the Divine call? Can he be made into a spiritual man? Yes. A different understanding, a different motive, a different object--then will follow a difference in methods. Instead of self alone he will have a sense of, he will have a call to service. And this man, formerly a hinderer in the Divine plan, becomes a spiritual giant. His splendid powers and his qualities do not need to be changed. Merely his motives and thereby his methods, and he is changed into a giant engine of righteousness. He is a part of the great world force and plan. He is doing his part in the great world work--he is a coworker with God. And here lies salvation. Saved from self and the dwarfed and stunted condition that will follow, his spiritual nature unfolds and envelops his entire life. His powers and his wealth are thereafter to bless mankind. But behold! by another great fundamental law of life in doing this he is blessed ten, a hundred, a millionfold.

Material prosperity is or may become a true gain, a veritable blessing. But it can become a curse to the world and still more to its possessor when made an end in itself, and at the expense of all the higher attributes and powers of human life.

We have reason to rejoice that a great change of estimate has not only begun but is now rapidly creeping over the world. He of even a generation ago who piled and piled, but who remained ignorant of the more fundamental laws of life, blind to the law of mutuality and service, would be regarded today as a low, beastly type. I speak advisedly. It is this obedience to the life of the spirit that Whitman had in mind when he said: "And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud." It was the full flowering of the law of mutuality and service that he saw when he said: "I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth. I dream'd that it was the new City of Friends. Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love; it led the rest. It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city and in all their looks and words." It is through obedience to this life of the spirit that order is brought out of chaos in the life of the individual and in the life of the community, in the business world, the labour world, and in our great world relations.

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