 These essays have appeared in the editorial columns of the Outlook from time to time for several years past. The present volume is a result of a desire frequently expressed that the timely messages so fully reflecting the author's loyalty to his country and his love for his fellow men in their highest destinies should be grouped in convenient form in order to perpetuate the potent influence they are known to have exerted upon the conduct and thought of many people. Their wide range brings them into touch with eager youth seeking inspiration, with those weary and well-doing needing encouragement, with those bringing the fruits of experience to enrich the activities of our busy age, and with those who face the sunset in serene quiet. Here all my fine breadth of vision, renewed courage, clearer insight into the complexities of life and profound spiritual meanings. It is significant that the latest essays written in 1916 during a period of great physical depression are concerned with the fundamentals of faith, action and achievement. The titles seem to form themselves into a triumphant progression, character first, meeting life squarely, what can I do, and the test of courage. They would march steadily on, vibrant with the belief in the ultimate victory of good and of God, a belief that inspired every word from the pen now laid down in the calm assurance of perfect realisation. Introduction Hamilton writes, maybe. No one disciple of Christ can give all that his master gave, but each one of us can by his life and teaching give to his own circle some portion of the message which the master gave to the world. I have a friend who's inexhaustible energy and enthusiasm of service always says, though quite unconsciously, to everyone he meets, son, go to work today in my vineyard. I had another friend not living now, whose serene temper and reposeful spirit always said, come ye yourselves apart and rest awhile. Her home was to every guest that entered it, like the arbor which Christian found in his climb up the hill difficulty. The message which Hamilton write, maybe, brought to those who knew him with any intimacy was, I have come that they may have life and that they might have it more abundantly. Not that he was extraordinarily active. Not that he was in the least characterised by that bustling energy which is at once the virtue and the vice of the American. I do not recall that I ever saw him in a hurry. On the contrary, if I were to select a single word to indicate not perhaps his most distinguishing but his most apparent characteristic, I should choose the word reposeful. In one of his essays he writes, the man who is in haste is always out of relation to things. His haste implies maladjustment. It means he has blundered or that he is inadequate to the task he has assumed. Some scientist has told us that there is more power in an acre of forest trees than in any ordinary manufacturing town with all its bustle and noise. I use the word life as Berkson uses it, as Sir Oliver Lodge uses it, as Mr Mayby himself in other of his essays has used it. There is therefore in every bit of life noble or ignoble, beautiful or repulsive, great or small, traces of a thought, evidences of an order, lines of design. Every bit of life is a bit of revelation. It brings us face to face with the great mystery and the great secret. In every such disclosure we are not only looking at ourselves, but we are catching a glimpse of God. All revelation of life has the spell therefore of a discovery. We hold our breath when we hear a great line on the stage for the first time, or come upon it in a book, because we are discovering something. We are awed and hushed because we are looking into the mystery. There is the thrill, the wonder, the joy of seeing another link in the invisible chain which binds us to the past and unites us to the future. In every bit of life that is a phrase very characteristic of Mr Mayby's writing because it was characteristic of his experience. He lived in the world and rejoiced in all that it had to give him. He had neither the medieval nor the Puritan conscience. To him nothing was taboo. He had no sympathy with the doctrine of Thomas a campus, that one must choose between this world and the next. He believed that the father had made both worlds and given them both to his children to enjoy. He believed with Paul that all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Kephas or the world or life or death or things present or things to come, all are yours. All teachers, all material things, all human faculties and activities, the present world, death, the gateway to a larger life and the world to come. This fullness of life defined and determined his literary judgments. Tain has said that as behind the fossil there was an animal, so behind the folio there was a life. It was this life behind the printed page which interested Mr Mayby. Language was to him but the tool by which thought and feeling are expressed. He was skillful in the use of this tool and he had a mild interest in the skill with which other word artists used their tool, but his vital interest was not in their tool but in their message. Literature appealed to him because it was an interpretation of life, not merely the life of the author but the life of his age or in the case of a few of the greatest authors, the life of all the ages. He himself was an interpreter rather than a critic and was more concerned to enable his readers to see life through the author's eyes than to give them a judgment on the question whether the author had given his interpretation skillfully. Mr Mayby was more than a literary critic and he was more than a literary interpreter. He was interested both in nature and in humanity because he saw in both the expression of what he has called the universal life. Nature is both a machine and a book. The scientific mind is interested in nature's mechanical aspects and its material values. For example, in finding and realising the practical value of electricity as a means of carrying our message and giving light to our homes. Mr Mayby was interested in nature as an interpretation of that infinite and eternal energy from which all things proceed and in detecting the unity of man and nature, not by interpreting man as a mechanical toy, but by interpreting nature as a body in which dwells a life-giving spirit. God, he said, is the force which permeates nature and gives her forms their meaning and their beauty. And this also is the force which lifts humanity out of the dust and gives it its dignity and opportunity. So every bit of nature, stone, fish, bird or leaf, becomes precious, they are all parts of a whole, they are links in a chain. Seen in the light of this sublime discovery, all matter is penetrated with thought. In like manner, through human life in all its forms, under all its conditions, in all stages of its unfolding, a great thought or order is being wrought out. It was this almost oriental faith in the unity of life which gave Mr Mayby his interest in social problems. Economics, sociology, politics were interesting to him mainly because they were human problems, because in them, as seen in actual human conditions, they showed how a great thought or order is being wrought out. The goal which he saw, and to which he believed all transitions, all struggles, all revolutions are gradually leading the human race, is a divinely predestined human brotherhood. It was this too that made him a universal friend. He desired to help not merely the lame, the halt and the blind out of their handicap, he desired to do what he could to promote the gradual creation of an orderly world out of chaos. He was a brother in this universal but imperfectly developed brotherhood, because good or evil, high or low, illustrious or obscure, all human lives disclose something above and beyond them. This same spirit of abundant life characterised his religious experience. He regarded all theologies, all liturgies, all ecclesiastical organisations, as instruments either to express or to promote the spiritual life. He was always a loyal member of the Episcopal Communion, and in his later life active and influential in the organisation, but he never identified himself with any of the parties in that Communion. I have often heard him say that the Church of Christ ought to be large enough to embrace men of all opinions and all temperaments. He believed that the bond of union and the test of fellowship should be not agreement upon a dogma but loyalty to a person, not intellectual nor emotional but vital. For nearly forty years Hamilton W. Mayby and I worked together as brothers in an educational enterprise. We came of different ancestry, and possessed different temperaments. I was a child of Puritan ancestry, he a son of the church. I was temperamentally philosophical, he was temperamentally poetical. But a mystical faith in the unseen united us in a friendship which strengthened and deepened with the passing years. We not only shared in each other's work, we were companions in each other's sorrows. Each profoundly affected the other's life. This etching is of my friend as I understood him. Doubtless it will seem erroneous to some, inadequate to others. But I hope it may serve to help many readers to get from his pen something of the illumination and inspiration which I derived from him through a very sacred personal friendship. Lyman Abbott. End of introduction. 1. The Truest Commemoration Memorials of every kind in every age and country bear witness to the depth and tenderness of human love and to its guardianship of the memory of those who have passed beyond its care into the keeping of the eternal love. Passionate grief, despair, dumb submission, victorious faith have found expression in every form that heart could devise. Beautiful, stately, tender. Great leaders, daring soldiers, saints, prophets, statesmen, women whose loveliness made the air about them sweet and warm, young girls in whose charm all that was sweetest in nature and most appealing in prediction of the richer growth to come, little children holding the pilgrim's staff like a toy in their hands. For each and all there are memorials which record the wealth of achievement or promise that went with them out of the world. To be surrounded by the visible memorials of those who have gone before is to have continually present the sense of the unbroken life of the race, of the line of descent from parent to child in continuous generations, of the unity of those who have passed through the education of Earth and those who are learning its lessons as best they can, of the fellowship of that invisible host of witnesses which gives human struggle its immense spiritual significance. As children ought everywhere to read the story, not of their country's wealth and power, but of its heroes, its courage, its achievements in the emancipation of the human spirit. So ought every child to come into consciousness of the ties that bind the latest to the earliest men and women in vital and unescapable relationship in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of Christ. By memorials on every side of those who have made life great, rich, pure, tender, and fruitful, if they whom we call the dead have escaped out of sleep and are now alive in a fullness of life which it has not entered into the mind of man to conceive, then surely they who remain to endure and struggle toward the light ought to be lifted up by the companionship of the vast company who have achieved freedom and harmony of deed with thought and of reality with vision. There is one form of memorial, however, that all love and sorrow must take if they are to touch the heart of this living relationship which death only brings into clearer light and which bears the same relation to all forms of honor to those who have gone before that writes, ceremonies, splendor of structure, costiness of gifts, bear to the complete service of God. It is the honor that we express in our own lives. The heroic are most notably commemorated by heroism indeed rather than in stone. The pure are best kept in mind by a new purity in the hearts that remember, greatness of service and nobility of nature by the quickening of all that is unselfish and self-sacrificing in those who guard the memory of a life once hidden by its very loveliness and now hidden in the light of God. It is the unbroken continuity of influence and power that bears witness to the vital family relationship of the present with the farthest past. It is the bequest not of rank or arms or property that affirms the honorable descent of those who remain from those who have gone. It is rather the quick and sense of honor, of loyalty, of the service due in all love from the fortunate to the unfortunate. This is the spiritual remembrance that must be sweeter to those whom it commemorates than statues or tablets or blazoned windows. Here, too, sorrow finds the past to peace through action. Not often has this highest form of remembrance, this refuge for the sorrowful, been more simply and strongly brought to mind than in this letter from Charles Godfrey Leland to a friend. It is truly with grief I learn that a great loss has befallen you. As regards terrible bereavements, there is but one thing to do wisely, to draw nearer to those who remain or whatever is near and dear to us in life and love them the more and become gentler and better ourselves, making more of what is left. There are people who wail and grieve incessantly and neglect the living to extravagance. It seems always as if they attracted further losses and deeper miseries. Weak and simple minds grieve most. Melancholy becomes a kind of painful indulgence and finally a deadly habit. Work is the great remedy. I think a great deal of the old northern belief that if we lament too much the dead, they cannot rest in their graves and are tormented by our tears. It is a pity that the number of our years is not written on our foreheads when we are born. Keep up your heart, work hard, live in hope, study. There is a great deal in you. As in China, we ennoble the dead by ennobling ourselves. CHAPTER II UNDER THE ASPECT OF ETERNITY Men suffer immense loss of reserve power for dealing with the work and problems of the time and of deep flowing consolation in their sorrows and anxieties by reason of their intense absorption in the interests of the hour and their preoccupation with affairs. Never before has this present life laid hold upon conscience, thought, and will with such searching and compelling forces. Those who are eager to deal with life on the highest plane find it difficult to penetrate the multitude of details that press upon attention with the sense of a greater order in which all things find their place and are moved to some great end. Work of such magnitude awaits capable men and taxes thought and strength to such a degree that many men put such heroic labour into the day that night overtakes them unawares, and they awake with surprise to find that their work is only a part of a gigantic scheme of construction. Their tasks have absorbed them so completely that they have never realised their relations to a spiritual order. This is a far more fruitful way of life than that of the man who dreams of purely spiritual activities but never sets his hand to any real task or binds on his shoulders any of the burdens which humanity must carry in its mysterious journey toward the unseen country. To preach idleness, withdrawal from the world, escape from the manifold tasks of modern society, to men who have become heroic workers by virtue of the inward force which makes them men and the outward opportunities with which God has encircled them to draw out their power and evoke character on a vast scale, is as idle as to command them to go back to the Ptolemaic astronomy or the geography that was studied before Columbus enlarged the world by the discovery of another continent. There is no solution of the problem of the soul by taking it out of its normal relations in human society. There could be no return to the patriarchal days when men lived in tents and watched their flocks and spent their days in a vast leisure of mind nor to those middle-years in the history of the human spirit when they lived in little walled towns and served their kings and obeyed their spiritual willers with unthinking obedience. There must be room for the spirit and time for its ripening but these conditions must be secured not by going back but by going forward. It would be well if the preoccupied men and women of today would take time to read Dante's Divine Comedy to climb from time to time that great peak which overtops the poetry of the world. Probably no form of expression could be further from the habitual thought and speech of the day than this report of the journey of the soul through the three worlds but no modern writing is so clear and authoritative in its setting of the life that now is indefinite and unescapable relation to the life which is to come in this sublime epic of the soul of man in all conditions. There is no idle dreaming, no vague and easy speculation concerning the growth of the spirit and its union with God. On the contrary the poem stands four square to all the winds of shifting opinion based on an internal order pervaded throughout by a vivid realism. The poet escaped by virtue of his genius from the tyranny of types and personifications which gave unreality to much medieval art and built a world as solid as the Florence which drove him into exile. No other poet of the heavenly vision has dared to give his interpretation of the life of man such massive reality and none has touched it with such compelling power. For this reason among others Dante is a teacher at whose feet the men and women of this busy age ought to sit. He is no master of beautiful dreams, no magician dexterously spinning a web of iridescent words over the abysses. He sees real things with clear and fearless glance and he teaches us not to evade, to escape, to renounce, to comfort and mislead ourselves with idle visions but to look at the great facts of life, to accept its duties, do its work, live in its relations, in the light of the world to come. He has as Dean Church has said too strong a sense of the reality of this familiar life to reduce it merely to a shadow and type of the unseen. What he struggles to express in countless ways with all the resources of his strange and gigantic power is that this world and the next are both equally real and both one. In a word Dante saw the world under the aspect of eternity. In that attitude is found our escape from the tyranny of the tremendous tasks laid on the shoulders of modern men by the growth of power within and without. It is impossible to go back to the more leisurely periods when interests were free and simple. If it were possible we should not win the victory and find the peace which our souls crave. These things are not gifts from God to be had for the asking. They are achievements which we must make by conquest of ourselves and our conditions. The problem of life is never one of external conditions. It is always one of inward energy, purity, nobility. The way out for those who would live the life of the spirit in this age of tumultuous activity is to realise, R by R, that the life that now is and the life that is to come however different in condition and occupation are parts of one indivisible and unbroken life. It is to see the world steadily and clearly under the aspect of eternity. It does not matter how vast the works of the time are, if in accepting their reality we understand how subordinate they are in the spiritual order. It does not matter how heavy the burdens of society are if we carry them with the conviction that they are part of that spiritual discipline which is the rational and inspiring explanation of life. The world that surrounds us is not a mirage, it is a deep going and unescapable reality and woe to the man or woman who tries to ignore it to treat it as a figment of the imagination to escape from it but that which is visible is only a little section of the whole as the earth which seems so vast to us is only a little star in a universe of suns. When a man sees through the material which piles itself about him to the spiritual which is its master when he rolls all the works of his hands by virtue of the sovereignty of his soul puts his hand to his task and gives his whole strength to it because it is a reality in vital relation with a greater reality gains wealth with full knowledge that money come by many things for his body but nothing for his spirit organizes great enterprises with clear understanding that he is the servant of an irresistible movement in human affairs he is saved from the blindness corruption, deadness of mere material activity and achievement he has learned to see life under the aspect of eternity. End of section two recording by Chad Horner from Ballyclair in County Andrum, Northern Ireland Chapter three of Fruits of the Spirit this is the LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Chad Horner from Ballyclair in County Andrum, Northern Ireland Fruits of the Spirit by Hamilton Wright maybe Chapter three the practice of immortality the gains which men and women have made in self-control understanding of life beauty and nobility of character have been secured by those who have lived in advance of the standards of their time in most cases the separation has not been so great as to involve the tragedy of persecution but sometimes it has led straight to the hemlock the block or the cross in every generation and in every country there has been a grip of those upon him the light of the morning rested and who have pressed on into the new day they were not reformers in the sense of aggressively attacking the things in which they did not believe they were always so intent on bringing their own into their lives the power of higher ideals that they served their fellows best not by what they destroyed but by what they revealed and made credible to many who surrounded them those eager seekers for the better life seemed to be pursuing dreams as evanescent as the rainbow and seeking ends as unreal as the pot of gold that lies concealed where the arch of radiant mist rests on the ground but the mountains stand distinct and immovable though the near-sided do not see them to the fore-sided they are as real and solid as the earth beneath their feet men have followed dreams and fallen in a vein though not always barren percent of them but those who see further than their fellows and live in the larger relations which their vision reveals to them are of all men most rational one need not wait for the banishment of greed from society to practice unselfishness one need not wait for a clean and civilized legal treatment of marriage relations to keep the home pure and sacred one need not wait until public life is cleansed from dishonesty to serve his fellows with a heart that knows no treachery to the great interests of the nation and with hands that have never taken bribes one need not wait until war is abolished to live the life of peace that rests on the love of god expressed in the love of man society is made up of those who live by the standards of the day and of those who live by the standards of tomorrow and the real dreamers are those who accept things as they are and followers after the higher realities are those who have wakened out of sleep and have looked upon life as it is to these clear-sighted men and women the standards they recognize are made more definite and commanding by living as if these standards were already universally accepted and they gradually conform their aims and deeds to these higher requirements and are more alive than their fellows because they are in touch with a greater number of real things the discussion of the credibility of immortality has its uses and becomes imperative from time to time but the final demonstration of this great fact is never made as a result of a process of reasoning it is ultimately and convincingly revealed in the experience those who do not know immortality as a fact of experience often have opinions about it but can never have knowledge of it and when that knowledge has been attained all the argument in the world will disturb the faith which springs out of it as little as the skepticism of the short-sighted will disturb those who see the mountains whenever they lift their eyes the fact that many good and true men and women doubt the immortality of the soul has no more weight with those who have learned it by experience than has the inability of the good and true to appreciate music power to disturb the faith or destroy the joy of those who know that Beethoven was as authentic a voice as Shakespeare and that the symphony pathetic has a real and substantial a cry from the soul of Russia as was Dostoevsky's poor folk immortality is not a future state it is a present condition it is not a gift to be conferred hereafter it is a power inherent in the human soul it is not a fact to be proved by logical demonstration any more than the reality of the life of which we are now conscious it is not a truth to be revealed in some remote heaven it is a fact to be accepted as life is accepted and to be lived as life is lived in thought emotion and action if we would know immortality we must write it on our hearts that we are now immortal if we would get the peace and joy of it we must rest securely in it if we would have it become steadily more real, commanding and inspiring we must live as immortals for immortality is no more a dream than those higher realities which have led us firing souls in every generation step by step upward we have gone only a little way in the full unfolding of the human spirit but we have gone so far that our commonplace realities of the relations of man with man would have seemed to our remote ancestors like the idle dreams of children to be laughed to scorn by all men who wish to deal with life as it is they have not discovered that life is a different matter to each succeeding generation that in the sense of a reality which is the same everywhere and to all there is no such thing as life as it is life was one thing to Socrates and another thing to Cleon one thing to Judas and another to the Christ one thing to Lincoln and another to Burr does any one question which kind of life was the largest and most real it is idle to tell the man who practices a virtue above the standard of his time that he is a dreamer he knows what has actually happened in his own experience he knows that he is living in a larger world than the doubters and skeptics and he knows that the virtue he strives to attain is real because he practices it in like manner the men and women who have dreamed what Dr Gladen has finally called the practice of immortality are not dreaming of a possible revelation to be made hereafter they are living now in a larger view of the world and acting day by day in the light of present knowledge they do not search the books for arguments in support of the truth of immortality nor are they disturbed by the fluctuations of opinion regarding it they are absorbed in the practice of it they think of themselves always as immortal they live day by day in the immediate presence of that spiritual order in this present stage of life though invisible constantly and with increasing clearness bears witness to itself in current history they strive in all their intercourse with others to bear themselves as immortals and to reverence their fellows as sharers in the great gift of life they make immortality credible by purity healthiness and fertility by courage, calmness and the sweetness that streams from a great vision become the feeder of character they think always of those who have passed through the gate of death as possessed of a more vital and transcendent life it is the dead only who really live it is we who are dying if it comforts and freshens their sense of the reality of the one life elsewhere they pray for those who have gone on as freely and confidently as for those who remain they think of the whole universe visible and invisible as the home in which God lives of life as one and indivisible of immortality as a present possession and of its practice as its only real evidence and demonstration they find no incredible mystery in the empty tomb from which the Christ walked unharmed because in thought, word and deed he lived as an immortal from the hour of his birth to the hour of his ascension and in all this they are no more dreamers than his demand in the little remote country who by education and travel has so widened his relations that he lives in the world instead of the place where he does his work finds his shelter and takes his daily rest than the man who in this present stage of war greed and selfishness lives in the reality of a nobler age as surely coming out of the travail of today as his age of spiritual and moral striving has come out of the age of barbarism, lust and fear End of Chapter 3 Recording by Choud Horner from Ballyclair in County Undrum, Northern Ireland Chapter 4 of Fruits of the Spirit This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Maria Fatima the Silver Fruits of the Spirit by Hamilton Wright-Mavy Chapter 4 Who are the Experts? The Christ story which the world loves even in its most skeptical moments curiously relates itself to the highest moods of the Spirit and its symbolism has an interior and convincing relation with the aspirations and hopes of men One determining element in the discovery of spiritual and moral truth is strangely overlooked in our processes of investigation and that is purity of life and harmony with its invisible order In every other field of knowledge we demand the most sensitive and accurate instruments of observation The appliances which equip our laboratories are made with the nicest art and kept with the most painstaking care Mechanism of exquisite delicacy of construction registers the faintest perturbation of earth or air Microscopes of the highest power reinforce the eye Telescopes planted where vibration is at the minimum and clarity of air at the maximum record the movements of stars on the far boundaries of space and analyze the fires that burn in the suns The authority of the observer depends on the perfection of his vision One of the foremost astronomers of the time owes his emptiness to his extraordinary power of sight Physicians build great reputations on the intelligence which resides in their fingertips and the acuteness of their faculty of hearing In all other fields of knowledge we insist on special qualifications and peculiar gifts and insist that the expert shall keep the organs he uses in the most perfect condition If he violates the laws of health and his hand loses its steadiness his eye its clear sighted and farsighted vision his ear its acuteness we set him aside as we set aside the instrument or mechanism that has lost its perfect adjustment When an observer falls into this condition his authority departs and he no longer counts among the instruments of research When it comes to the world of spiritual knowledge however where the most delicate and sensitive instruments of observation are required we forget the tests which science has taught us and we in turn apply to science and listen to the reports of any man or woman who lays claim to that gift of prophecy which is the knowledge of invisible things without looking at his or her credentials The man in the street does not assume to know astronomy and if he did we should give him small shrift of attention But when the same man begins to speak of things which involve rare qualities of mind and character we listen as to an oracle Spiritual things are spiritually discerned Men and women of spiritual genius and of moral achievements alone speak with authority on these great matters The faculty of spiritual observation rests primarily on harmony with those laws of health which are the expression of right relations to the universe The man who violates these laws whatever his gifts of mind may be is as little entitled to credence when he speaks of spiritual things as is the astronomer when his sight has failed or the physician when his hearing has become dull The only expert in the knowledge of the spiritual order is the man who has kept his faculty observation in the highest condition but we take our views of life from moral invalids from the morally insane from those whose hands are incapable of steadiness whose sight is a half blindness and whose hearing is a partial deafness There are scores of books in our libraries which assume to reveal the invisible order of life to us to interpret that life and to put the key to the mystery in our hands which are mere transcriptions of temperament reflections of moods revelations of abnormal individual experience and we accept these purely personal reports of moral and spiritual phenomena as if they were authoritative reflections of that vast order which reveals itself only to the sane the humble the pure in heart The work of a deceased man of genius often possesses the fascination which resides in pathology and often imparts the joy of art but it is a personal memorandum and not a record of universal truth The exaltation of personality which is one of the great notes of modern as contrasted with ancient literature and the immense emphasis on the authority of individuality in a democratic society have given us a vast rich literature which is of the highest importance as a disclosure of what is in man but some of which has not authority as a revelation of what life is in its fullness nor of a man in the highest reaches of his nature A man of genius who is insane is vastly more interesting than a commonplace lunatic but they are both mad and the ravings and illusions of an entire asylum do not count against the word of one sane man End of chapter 4 by Hamilton Wright Maybe Chapter 5 A saint of today Every age has its saints but it often happens that an age does not recognise its holy men and women until the light of immortality interprets him This lack of discernment is due not to any unwillingness to see but to the tenacity of accepted forms and ways of expression Saint Hood is still identified in many minds with asceticism and the saint who appears among us living in all the great human relations bearing the common lot speaking the universal human speech passes on her way unnoticed because those who surround and love her are looking for the medieval dress the withdrawal from the world the crossed hands the downcast eyes Blessed are the saints who sought holiness in other times in escape from the world and became types of the pure and good in ages of violence, passion and corruption In its calendar of saints as in its tender and reverent regard for the mother of Christ the Roman Catholic Church has recognised and responded to a deep and wholesome human instinct men need the vision of holy men and women walking stainless among the perilous ways of life indifferent to petty ambitions lifted above the pride of place and power consecrated to purity to righteousness, to sweetness and to service the beautiful company of those who use lives are revelations of the heart of the infinite and upon whom amid the shadows of time the light of immortality visibly rests but these stainless and radiant spirits have not ceased to walk among men because ideals of service have changed their forms and the act of modern age has succeeded the meditative middle ages the saint of today is not less saintly because she wears no distinctive garb and seeks no refuge from the storms of life in all the ways of life today in every field of work in a thousand obscure households there are saints who are loved but who are not recognised to know the saint under all garbs is perhaps to have something in oneself which responds to holiness to possess something akin in its possibilities though not in its development to saintliness in any event to know the saint when she comes among us is not only to render what is due of reverence but to receive most fully and intelligently what she has to give us this saint of today was known as saints are always known by her beautiful humility when her friends addressed her as they sometimes did with perfect sincerity but under the mask of humour as a saint she always and with kindred touch of humour spoke of herself as the sinner of the rare loveliness of her nature the beautiful and winning sweetness of her life she was as unconscious as is the flower of its delicate colouring and as the flower breeze its fragrance into the air without knowing that virtue has gone from it so did she exhale a rare and uplifting influence of which she took no note in all the long and shining calendar of saints none was more simple unaffected and childlike in spirit than she holiness clothed her like a garment but she was free from conventional pietyism as the child who knows his father intimately and loves him with a perfect love is free from conventional phrases of formal affection life was so deeply and wholly religious to her that she had long ceased to think of it as a form of faith a kind of activity a field of endeavour this childlike unconsciousness made her the most delightful of companions the gentlest of teachers the most faithful of friends she could speak of the highest things without affectation she could touch the most sensitive places without giving pain she could make the divinest credible without the aid of text or argument she was indeed a beautiful version of the gospel in the most human speech like all true saints she was intensely and unaffectedly human for more than 70 years she had seen life in many remote places had known many kinds of men had done many kinds of work with unfeeling freshness of feeling and with the strength and joy of perfect health then came sickness and for seven years she lay helpless in her room watched over with tireless vigilance and cared for with beautiful devotion for such as she evoked from others that which they give freely from their own natures in that change from free activity to helpless invalidism there must have been a terrible spiritual struggle and in those long days and longer nights there must have been hours of inexpressible weariness but no repining ever came from her lips in the time of most acute suffering there was no touch of quirklessness she always spoke of her sufferings if she spoke at all in an impersonal way she was always well though her frail body was often sorely afflicted her spirit securely housed in undisturbed and serene faith was impregnable so deep was her faith that it gave her a beautiful freedom in the world she lived joyously in her father's house and because she was free she had one great resource which some saints have denied themselves a delightful and never-failing humour this great gift so often misunderstood is itself an evidence of immortality for the soul of humour is the unconscious of the contrast between the greatness of man's destiny and the absurdity of some of his interests and occupations it is pre-eminently the resource of those who can play with the incongruities of life because they know its transcendent significance of those who can give themselves the liberty of the house because they aren't home in it so there came to her a vivacity and ease a charm of disposition and of talk which made her rim a place of peace and joy and often of gaiety she was not afraid to be happy and her happiness pervaded the place in which she suffered among those who read these words few will recognise the portrait if it were otherwise even this slight sketch could not have been written the record is made to remind the despondent the sceptical the scoffing and all who bear heavy crosses that in this age of immense practical activity of vast enterprises of absorbing pursuit of the things that perish in the using of haste, tumult and restlessness holy men and women still walk the earth as of old certainly lives still bear the fruit of peace and love in quiet places and the highest virtue still have their eloquent witnesses 84 years this saint of today breathed the air of the modern world shared in its work and spoke its language and went out of life as stainless as she entered it leaving behind her a memory which has become part of the imperishable wealth of all who passed her way and felt the spell of her radiant spirit End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Of Fritz of the Spirit This is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Chad Orner from Benadorm in the province of Alicante in southeast Spain on the Mediterranean coast Fritz of the Spirit by Hamilton Wright maybe Chapter 6 The Mask of the Years The sunlight has marked the hours for centuries on old dials in English gardens but there remains no record of their number or their beginning in the heart of the earth there are ancient memories which have been deciphered and men have kept for a part of their life in the world a register of their thoughts and deeds but no one knows when time began nor does anyone foresee its ending so accustomed are we to its divisions and subdivisions that we forget that it has no real existence outside our own minds it is a universal convention but it is only a convention something agreed upon and accepted for convenience an accommodation to our limited vision and knowledge so long has this convention been established and so universal is its acceptance that we have fallen into the habit of setting it in antithesis with eternity forgetting that it is only a very imperfect attempt to bring eternity within the range of our experience and to make it if not comprehensible at least usable time is one way of reckoning the bit of eternity which our earth or our race remembers there is nothing outside ourselves which corresponds to it it is a convenient unnecessary fiction eternity is the only reality the time sense is of importance because it helps us to give our lives order and to keep us in working relations with our fellows but it is the sense of eternity which makes deep thinking and noble living possible time is a little section of the great whole which is eternity it is a detail of a great plan to live as if it were all of life to see things as if their time relations expressed their real significance to value our opportunities and tasks and burdens as if they were related to the years which we number is to put a part in place of the whole and to miss the meaning and glory of living it has been said of Dante that he saw life under the aspect of eternity when he looked at the seed the tree stood before him when he saw the sowing he saw in the same vision the harvesting in every act he discerned a cause whose effect was present in every deed he foresaw the free-utage in power or in misery he did not look ahead he simply looked into the heart of things he saw things through the sense of eternity the greatness and the terror of the divine comedy lies in the fact that it destroys the fiction of time and makes us suddenly aware that on this very today the hours of which are registered on dials in sunny gardens we are in eternity insofar as art is noble and significant it annihilates the sense of time and brings us face to face with the beauty and the terror of eternity the Sistine Madonna sets the mother in the light of eternity and all heads are uncovered and all voices are hushed in the sudden discernment of the meaning of motherhood in that language of the spirit which is the speech of eternity when all disguises are torn away and the divinity of true living is revealed the last judgment fills us with awe not because it is a picture of a great event to come in some distant age but because it makes us aware that we are stifed, tried and judged hour by hour and that the great artist has dramatized in a moment of time the eternal process we are portrait painters who have such power of the definition of penetrating the mask of the countenance to a character that their canvases are revelations of the eternal elements in the nature of the man or woman behind the touches and moldings of time whenever the soul comes into view the man is seen under the aspect of eternity it is one of the highest services of art that it shows life under the aspects of eternity the fiction of time dissolves under the searching glance of the great artist or thinker Shakespeare's genius lies in the unique power with which he gives us the feature of the time and the hidden soul which is eternal behind it the graphic dramatic force with which he delineates the deed, the masterful insight with which he relates it to the man and his fortunes in this double power the bible is unique among the books of the world concrete, pictorial, historic it flashes light at every turn on the ultimate results and conditions picturing with marvellous vividness the sewing of the seat it instantly discloses the harvest in this lies its pervading prophetic quality its steady discernment of things that are to come because at every stage it lays bare the hidden process which in the eye of the prophet it accomplished as soon as it is set in motion so the Christ moves to his martyrdom with such certainty that long before the star shines over Bethlehem the agony of the cross is announced the years come out of the great silence and unbroken succession because we need their divisions in our endeavour to realise in daily experience the continuity of eternity they give us something to grasp and use but they must not confuse or blind us to the truth that the life we now live is eternal and that while we number our years and distinguish them one from another we are already in eternity tomorrow is already in today the distant future is part of this swiftly departing present what we think and do in this brief instant we are and shall be in the far off cycles to which we move our deeds are not of the day they are of eternity below all the shiftings and changes the moods and emotions the depressions and exaltations something indestructible as shaping itself as surely as below the barness an icy bondage of winter a vast life is organising itself our sorrows are registered by the days but if the root of submission and faith is in them they are as certainly overpassed as if already the shadows were gone and the heavens were soft and gracious over our heads so far as the righteous are able to look through the mask of the years light is not only soon for them it already floods the skies so far as the high purpose is deep rooted and loyally held nobility and strength and freedom are all ready achieved so far as love is pure and selfish and sacrificial it is already safe against the ravages of death life is not yet at the flood but it is ours as truly as if we were in full possession of its unbounded resources the perfect stature is yet a far off but the law of growth is working on us it is already ours as surely as if we had already attained the sorrows which the years bring the years take away they are of the time and the place and we are not the slaves of time and place but our joys having their source in the soul are indestructible in the darkest night we know that the day is below the horizon the shadow on the dial does not confuse us we know that the sun is on the way in our deepest griefs if we look into our souls the joy of eternal possession already stirs it needs but the ripening of our faith and patience to bear its perfect flower the life of love is not counted by the years once born in the heart it abides forever soon in the furrows of time it blims in those immortal fields where no shadows wait to hide the sun and no chill of death checks the eternal growth End of Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Of Fruits of the Spirit This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Chad from Benadorm in the province of Alicante in southeast Spain on the Mediterranean coast Fruits of the Spirit by Hamilton Wright maybe Chapter 7 Love and Work Idealism as an interpretation of life a vision of ultimate ends and conditions has always won to itself the ardent, the poetic and the high-minded the great company of seekers after light and love in every generation who rebel against the hardness and injustice of the world its noise and brutality its fierce competitions and its stolid indifference to the defeated even in the presence of the great purpose which runs through the visible order of things and the society in which men have arranged themselves and which has come to light as one of the most spiritual men of the day has said just in time to save some of the best men and women from despair it is hard for the sensitive and aspiring and tender-hearted to bear the sorrows of the world and to sit with a cheerful spirit while so many losses ravage the homes that are dear to them and to spoil the best fortunes of men there are hosts of men and women who go through life with a noble discontent in their hearts a sense of loneliness and isolation in their souls they are homesick for a world in which men help instead of smite bind up instead of wind or quick to recognize the good instead of eager to find the evil stand ready in all crises to rebuild the fallen or patient of spirit with the weak love the sinner while they loathe the sin or kindly in speech because kindly in thought are indifferent to external conditions because conditions are the happenings of life while the soul is its great and enduring reality or bound together in a vast conspiracy to cheer to aid to give heart and hope to make the highways of life bloom with spontaneous kindnesses and to make the lonely world a warm hospitable many windowed home for all he pass this way on the journey of life if the truth were told what conversions of solitude of heartache of loneliness of spirit will come like a flood from those whom men count happy because they are entrenched against the blows of disaster by all manner of material possession the heart knoweth his own bitterness is one of the truest and saddest of all the summings up of the experience in the book of proverbs and where there is no bitterness there is always loneliness in whatever circumstances men are born in this world they are all born in exile and in exile palaces are often as present like us hobbles this is the penalty of immortality the price we pay for the birthright of the divine in us to have the power of creating heaven in the imagination is to bear one's heart to the coldness and hardness of the world to see paradise at a distance is to make the desert in which we are travelling more barren and lonely as one who loves the sweetness of the open meadow the solitude of woods and the cool musing of running bricks finds the noise and odor and crowding of the city almost intolerable as those who carry a vision of heaven in their souls find the unkindness the tumult and the hardness of this present world almost unbearable they have often flared from it and sought refuge in isolation they have made homes for themselves in the vast quiet of the Nile Valley they have built monasteries on almost inaccessible heights they have buried themselves out of the sight and sound of the world in all manner of lonely refuges but wherever they have gone they have carried the passionate human heart with them and even when they have found the peace which sometimes flows out of the heart of silence they have never found the perfect society the cloudless day of joy the redeemed world if idolism were at bottom an explanation of life as it reveals itself within the limits of time it would often seem the idealist of dreams the most untenable of philosophies but it is a solution of the great problem only at the end of a worldwide and an almost elimitable process of growth and unfolding it is the vision of an ultimate perfection not a statement of present condition it is at the heart a glimpse into the great mystery of education which makes this life not only bearable but marvellously spiritual and open-spiring the idealism which lies within every man's reach and in every man's need is surrender to the urgent and passionate desire to give his own spirit the shape and quality of the divine spirit and to create in himself those traits and that attitude which he yearns to find wrought into the fibre of society to be in his own soul that which he wishes all men were conditions whether easy or difficult or secondary the eternal element of peace and happiness lies in every man's soul beyond the reach of accident they who seek heaven must take refuge in their own spirits not in some solitary place at a distance and they must find it not in more congenial circumstances but in a freer and nobler putting forth of the best in themselves the true idealist is not a dreamer in a world of realities which make his dream incredible nor is he a refugee escaping from conditions which he cannot bear to a more comfortable place he is a man who is patiently and often painfully shaping his life in harmony with an inward purpose who is mastering crude materials that he may make the vision in whose light he lives shine before the eyes of man whose sight is less clear than his who is doing commonplace things in a spirit which gives them the beauty of a high purpose as the greatest architect redeems the meanness of the hidden stone by the splendour of the structure in which it finds its place men are made happy not by the things which surround them nor by the things which they take to themselves but by the noble putting forth of the soul in love and work the two great activities which are never divorced in the harmonious and balanced life the two languages in which every true idealist makes confession of his faith and gives evidence of its reality for love is the ultimate expression of faith and without works faith is a vain shadow of reality End of chapter 7 Chapter 8 of fruits of the spirit This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Larry Wilson Fruits of the Spirit by Hamilton Wright Mayby A text from Luther Luther who at his best had command of that kind of speech which combines clearness of statement beauty of imagination and warmth of heart whose words as Carlisle has said were half battles has left an exhortation to fraternal love and sacrifice which is a noble sermon compacted into a paragraph Every Christian should be unto his fellow man a willing servant willing to help and aid his neighbor even as God acts towards us through Christ Thus all of God's gifts must flow from one into the other and be common to all flowing from Christ to us from us to our neighbor who stands indeed thereof These words might be taken as a description of the fundamental office of the Christian church which is not only to bear testimony to the Christ who lived and died 1900 years ago but to share with all men that truth which he communicated to divide with all men the love of which his life was the supreme expression and to include all men in the universal care of God for the individual man or woman who is trying to repeat the life of Christ these words have the most searching significance over the portal of every day's life they ought to be written for unless the truth which they contain is practiced there is no real religion the final evidence of religion is always the fruit it bears no conformity to creed no rigidity of observation of ritual no devotion to any church as an organization no ritualistic act of service can be the final test of the love of Christ in a man's heart the final test of the presence of that love is always the disposition to treat others as Christ treats us to do unto others as Christ has done unto us and to illustrate in our relations with others the charity kindness and sacrificial spirit which gave the life of Christ and his death their beautiful and supreme significance in the climber of contending interpretations of the Christian life in the tumult of antagonistic claims of authority from this church or that in all the uncertainty of thought or practice or of organization which prevails throughout the world today the spirit of Christ manifested in our relations with our fellows is the definite and fixed thing which any man or woman may learn and which every man and woman ought to practice better a thousand times heterodoxy of opinion than heterodoxy of spirit better a thousand times the imperfect ritual than the selfish heart it is best to think right and to worship God wisely and nobly but if the Bible teaches anything definitely it teaches the great fundamental fact that what the infinite cares for supremely is not correctness of opinion or of ritual but the right spirit not only towards man but towards every creature he has made this the test to which the Old Testament through its great teachers was constantly bringing the Jewish people and it is one of the awful tragedies of the race that those who were highest in the church most orthodox in opinion most scrupulous in ritual failed the most completely to interpret and practice the spirit of Christ no man is saved by his orthodoxy but any man may be saved by his life no man is saved by his churchmanship but any man may be saved by his character men are not likely to undervalue the importance of correct opinion and proper ritual but they have shown a constant tendency to undervalue and obscure the supreme importance of the right relations towards their fellows and Luther's words spoken in the 16th century are as applicable to the 20th century as if they had been written by a contemporary prophet or teacher in the exact degree in which God's gifts in our keeping are made common to all in which the spirit of Christ received by us is illustrated in our lives in which the love of God accepted by us is not only passed on but interpreted by our own attitude toward others in thought word indeed have we a right to consider ourselves followers of Christ end of chapter eight chapter nine of fruits of the spirit this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Elsie Selwyn fruits of the spirit by Hamilton Wright maybe chapter nine the escape from fear the story of man in this world is the story of getting away from fear fear was the universal shadow that rested over the forefathers of the race they were afraid of everything and they had reason to be because everything seemed hostile to them even now after thousands of years of observation experience discovery and obedience there are moments when nature seems to be the enemy of man in spite of the fact that science has taught us that nature as our beneficent and wonderful friend of whose services the achievements of the magicians were faint symbols the earliest men were surrounded by perils which must have sunk deep into their consciousness and made life one prolonged and painful watchfulness the suns moat them with fire the winter froze them with ice the great storms which they could not predict and against which they could not provide destroyed them wild beasts poisonous serpents and venomous insects devoured or poisoned them tempests swept their fragile homes out of existence the lightning blasted them disease came out of the ground and death awaited them at every turn and when in the crude beginnings of thought they felt the presence of a personal power behind all these forces that power was malignant and threatening the fear of god with early men was a cowering and crushing fear god was pursuing them their safety lay in escaping his attention he was angry with them they placated him he was jealous of them they concealed their good fortune he was envious of them they hardly dared to be happy a man's life was a long struggle to protect himself from a god who beset him behind and before not to protect but to blight and destroy and to the first men their fellow men were as dangerous as nature and god the stranger was necessarily an enemy to meet him safely one must always be ready with a weapon or with a blow all differences of race of country of language were the symbols of an alienation full of hatred and antagonism before the first christmas fear was a universal emotion and such happiness and peace as man got out of life he snatched with a fearful joy of escaping the relentless bitterness of nature the jealousies of the gods and the antagonism and hatred of his fellows when the shepherds saw the angels above their flocks their first feeling was not one of the exaltation enjoyed but a fear and the first words the angel said were spoken to calm those fears before the great and beautiful him which heaven has sung on earth peace and goodwill towards men could be heard the angels had to say fear not the fear of god and the old blasting sense of the word ended when christ came to cast out fear and to write in its place another love he came to teach men that even the things that seemed unfriendly were expressions of the divine friendship and the disasters sorrows and hardships of life had behind them the intelligence of an infinite to love ever since that message came men have been slowly casting out fear life long ago ceased to mean for them an attempt to elude the anger of god and has become an opportunity not a thing to run away from but to run into so to speak for as philip brooks once said quote the way to escape from god is to escape into him end quote that is to say to accept the order of life as it is revealed in our experience as a discipline of love and not of anger fear makes men cowards and the coward is as brutal on his panic as a savage fear turns civilized men into savages and humanity is never so base as when it is seeking and a great crisis to protect itself instead of seeking to protect others for the spirit of christ is the spirit of a love which casteth out fear not only because it teaches that the order of life is divinely fashioned but because by substituting the love of others for the love of self it makes us indifferent to personal danger there is no place in the world for fear if one's heart is set to deal justly to walk humbly to help gratefully and to forget oneself the greater the danger the greater the need for that valiant spirit which enables a man to walk quietly down to his own death because he is concerned not for himself but for others the root of love is faith and the goodness of god and faith is to be used not when the skies are cloudless but when they are black not when there is light on all the paths but when darkness covers the whole face of the earth and the paths are hidden in a vast confusion end of chapter nine chapter 10 of fruits of the spirit this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Larry Wilson fruits of the spirit by Hamilton Wright maybe praying and waiting it is easy to pray for things but hard to wait for them and we often rush to the conclusion that because prayers are not answered in a moment they are not answered at all a little thought would end this kind of skepticism and give us patience to wait on the Lord without repining or sinking of heart great blessings sometimes come suddenly but none before they have been prepared for by some kind of spiritual training great orators sometimes suddenly come to light and apparently commonplace careers but not unless there have been rich possibilities hidden beneath the routine of daily work no man in any great crisis shows a gift for speech or action of heroism unless the germs of those things were already in him great moments do not put great qualities into the souls of men they simply reveal what is already there the fruits of character cannot be realized until the seeds of nobility have had time to grow an education of some kind must precede all forms of sustained strength weak men have often by prayer been made strong in critical moments but they acquire the habit of strength only by exercise the weak armed does not become muscular by taking thought but by taking exercise the irritable temper is not made sweet by a sudden act of will but by patient repression of an unhappy tendency the man of unclean mind is not cleansed because he resolves to be white but because he forms the habit of purity we are continually asking God to give us the fruits of character without the discipline of training not realizing that we are asking him to do for us the work that alone would strengthen our muscles and give us the power we crave we ask to be fed by a miracle instead of tilling the ground sowing the seed and reaping the harvest with our own hands and so getting strength from the soil he is ready to help us in any time of need but moral help must be secured by moral exertion we must not ask God to popperize us men ought to pray every day for sweetness of temper since the lack of it blights countless homes and neutralizes many noble qualities but they ought to remember that sweetness is born out of the subjection of strength and mastery of temper the control of the tones of voice and that to gain the blessed gift one must wait on the Lord and let education give prayer its ultimate effectiveness end of chapter 10 chapter 11 of fruits of the spirit this is the LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Elsie Selwyn fruits of the spirit by Hamilton Wright maybe chapter 11 the bugle call years ago in a foreign city long after midnight a bugle ran out clear and penetrating in the darkness that comes before dawn it pierced the deepest recesses of sleep and sounded the great note of action and adventure to what duty it summoned and whether it led they only knew to whom it was a command but a great company of those who came out of their dreams to hear it were shaken by its imperative call and must remember it as an impersonal symbol of that divine voice which from time to time rings in the innermost courts of a man's soul with the music of great deeds on noble fields hosts of men are paralyzed because they hear no voices save those that weaken and betray them the voices of their weariness indecision skepticism weakness they sleep on their arms as if no fight were to be won no soul to be saved from its baser passions its cowardly moods if they rouse themselves it is to take account of their discomfort to note that the night is dark the air cold the ground hard they lie bound hand and foot in a stupor of uncertainty and discouragement they complain of their hardships repine in their inaction waste their courage and strength and hollow excuses and evasions so intent are they on their deprivations that they forget the cause which they set out to serve and curse the leaders whom they no longer follow again and again the bugle rings out on the night but they sleep on and take their rest even while the master is betrayed into the hands of his enemies they drug themselves with the narcotics of fatalism of the irresistible power of circumstances of the overwhelming force of the obstacles which surround them they lull themselves into sleep with a thousand excuses and evasions if they had been equipped with different arms been under another command had another sort of drill been better cared for received a larger measure of strength they would have done such heroic things and won victories on such glorious fields and while they lie in a stupor of weakness the bugles ring and a thousand men about them spring to arms and march singing to the good fortune of those dangers in which men rise to sublime heights of self-forgetful courage the chance which is the divine opportunity of life comes to them all and they make that great refusal which defeats the very ends for which they were made and leaves them laggards and deserters while their fellows who carry the same weapons are chilled by the same air and endure the same hardness arise and are gone before the dawn among the pitiful tragedies of life there is none more pitiful than that which overtakes the man who was more intent on his discomforts and the things which are denied him then on his opportunities of work and self-denial and service savannah rola was one of those whose careers be set with every sort of difficulty whose path is hard and solitary who is alone in a world of enemies he might have cried out to his leader that the task laid upon him was too great for his strength that the fight was against overwhelming odds that if he was to win he ought to have had a thousand things which were denied him but he thought not of his weakness but of the strength of his cause not of his danger but of the greatness of the service to which he was called not of his hardships but of his glorious chance to live and die fighting the good fight of faith to him as to all men came the doubts the questionings the weariness the sense of great weakness and there is a little poem of his and what she tells us how he met them down by the road of evil wanders my spirit if it receive not sucker it will die shortly the devil he deceives it with his false reasoning the senses they promise it every possible pleasure the world ever invites it to indulge itself in an equity my spirit thus tempted who now will help it help thyself good for nothing with the gift that god gives thee thou hast full power to make thyself worthy thou canst not be conquered save thou art willing stronger is grace than every adversity there are times when a man must say to his own spirit up thou sluggard in a way the bugle calls the day of battle dawns let no man be deceived the fortunes of his soul are in his own hands he may beguile himself for a time with the dream of fatalism but even mahi dreams he knows in his heart that he is deceiving himself he may talk of his limitations his difficulties his conditions his temperament but in his heart he knows that these are mere subterfuges that he has bound himself with imaginary fetters and that if he will arise and stand erect these elusive bonds will fall from him he may not be able to do the work of some other man but he can do his own work and that is all that is required every man has the strength to do his duty if he chooses to put it forth to be a man and not a dumb driven creature the mere shape of a man driven by a cloud of dust across the field of life by the wind of destiny he may go to suffering hardness and death as savona rola did but these things are mere incidents the great thing is that he shall strive and not sleep the prodigal slept long but he heard the call at last awoke and became a man once more when he turned from the beasts and said i will go to my father end of chapter 11 chapter 12 of fruits of the spirit this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Larry Wilson fruits of the spirit by Hamilton Wright maybe the upper room when the first day of 11 bread king Jesus sent Peter and John into the city and told them that they would meet a man whom they were to follow and who would show them a room in which the Passover could be eaten he will show you a large upper room furnished and prepared there make ready for us when the hour was come he sat down in the twelve apostles with him no scene in history is more simple in its setting none more memorable it has been described with beautiful and reverent eloquence it has been painted with supreme skill by a master of the art it has been rehearsed times without number in many different forms according to the most diverse rituals it has been observed as a simple breaking of bread and pouring of wine and it has been celebrated at blazing altars by richly vested priests but its innermost significance can ever be entirely expressed in any worship nor formulated in any creed the beauty and wonder of it lie on the further side of any kind of language which men have fashioned to give ease to their souls but one great fact stands out in this wonderful scene the upper room was the place of meeting between Christ and his apostles it will remain forever the symbol of the communion between God and man the quiet place hidden from the world where man meets God and is fed by the bread of life that food by which the soul lives bestowed only by the hand of God the world is full of men and women who have eaten the fruit of every tree except the tree of life who partake of everything that gives vigor to the body but never sit at the invisible table where that bread is spread which makes one stronger than death among all the manifold ironies of life there is none so terrible as our well nourished body and the starving soul as there are beautiful faces in which no spirit irradiates the mask of bones and flesh so there are prosperous men and women whose lot awakens the envy of their fellows whose outward success is without spiritual dignity or meaning men can exist without the words that proceed from the mouth of God but they cannot live without them they build themselves policies and lay the skill of the world under contribution to make them stately without and luxurious within but they provide no upper room they open their doors wide and entertain their friends lavishly but there is no place for God under the roof there are magnificent rooms where guests are welcomed with royal splendor there are great galleries into which are gathered the treasures of many ages and countries but there is no upper room the activities and rewards of the time are so engrossing that many high-minded and pure-hearted people find no time for meditation and communion in the upper room many of them are so bent on helping their fellows that they forget whence come with their help they are so eager to share the sorrows of their fellows that they forget him who bore the cross up the steep way to Calvary they are so drained by the duties they take up that they lose the inspiration which makes duty the channel through which love ports itself out they listen with such passionate attention to the cries for help that come from the world around them that they no longer hear the still small voice of the father of all men in the house of the generous and self-sacrificing as in the houses of the selfish and hard-hearted there is no upper room and yet no man can live without God it is true he comes in a thousand forms and speaks many languages but it is also true that men must make ready the room in which they can meet him face to face where there is no upper room the house however nobly appointed and dedicated may remain a place of courage and arduous endeavor but it ceases to be a place of contagious hope of that vision which enables men to look at the sorrows of the arid lives without losing heart in the infinite love for those who give themselves to works of mercy and stand ready to help in the highways no less than for those who feed their bodies and starve their souls the upper room is not only a place of refuge it is a necessity of the higher nature and the more exacting the work becomes and the greater its interest and reward the more pressing is the need of the upper room for the tumult of the world dies into silence and the ambitions of the world shrink into the rewards of a passing hour and man talks with his god end of chapter 12 chapter 13 of fruits of the spirit this is the LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Elsie Selwyn fruits of the spirit by Hamilton Wright maybe chapter 13 the price of immortality Shakespeare gives Polonis a prominent place and the early part of Hamlet and then allows him to be ignominiously mistaken for a rat and killed this end was due to Polonis but Shakespeare must have found great satisfaction in bringing it about for Polonis was essentially a coward and an atheist he was always warning people to beware of life he proposed to put everybody in a chain armor of selfish caution the substance of his advice to his son and to all the others to whom he talked was get money avoid friends beware of life George McDonald said that Polonis would have been right if the devil had been god but in a universe in which the devil is the devil and god is god Polonis was tragically wrong his attitude made it impossible for him to believe anything and he was therefore incapable of understanding anything the only man who greatly succeeds is the man who believes the unbelieving man tries to conduct the business of life alone he refuses to enter into partnership with the great force behind life he suspects that force fears it and tries to protect himself from it he makes therefore the smallest possible investment of his affections his convictions his energy instead of taking possession of the great house of life and living in it like an air to whom it has come by honorable inheritance he bolts the doors and bars the windows locks his treasures in the innermost room watches for thieves and dreads earthquakes and tempests he never takes the privileges of an heir of the world or of a son of god no man can really make a success in the supreme business of living unless he goes into partnership with the force behind life invests everybody that he is and has and commits himself gladly and boldly to that force which some people call righteousness and others call god the phrase growing up with a community which is often heard in this country is significant of one great element of success those men who foresee the growth of a locality identify themselves with it and make investment in it are lifted often on a rising tide of prosperity to great wealth they're not speculators for the speculators the gambler they are far sighted men with a prophetic instinct they have faith enough to commit themselves to the larger fortunes of a community and so they found great fortunes on insight observation and faith browning was the prophet of those who take god at his word who believe that the invisible forces behind life are friendly and bear one forward those who yield to these forces are carried to great prosperities of soul men and women of the polonist type of mind never make great ventures they never put their talents out at interest but bury them in a napkin in the great house of life they lie awake at night because they think they hear burglars or smell smoke they never hoist sail and put boldly out to see they keep within sight of the shore but the sea captain fears no storm however violent if he has plenty of sea room the wrecks lie in the shore of course life is full of danger and many things may happen to bring pain and sorrow to those who are bold because they believe profoundly in the power behind life but the man who greatly loses is a nobler man than he who ignominiously succeeds as a rule the bold men who act on their faith make the great achievements but even when they fail to command eternal success they gain nobility of soul quote he makes noble shipwreck who is lost in seeking worlds end quote if the devil were god cotton would be a supreme duty but because god is god the supreme duty is courage opportunity as never separated from danger and love always evokes the possibility of sorrow but he would be a dull man who would avoid adventure because peril is bound up with it and he would miss the whole beauty and meaning of life who would never permit himself to make a great venture of his affection because death may go with love it is the mortal part that fears it is the immortal part that dares and the great trials are the price we pay for our immortality if today Dante far on in the paradise of which he dreamed cares for the fame which shines like a light over the whole world he does not count those weary years of exile from Florence too great a price to have paid Lincoln looking down on the reunited family bound together for the first time in a household of love does not feel that his martyrdom was too great a price to have paid for such a result the great things are always to be greatly paid for an immortal spirit cannot be put into a mortal body to live immortal life without exposure to the changes sorrows and shadows of death which are part of mortality but the brave man does not shrink from the toil in danger to which his very greatness calls him in some noble task and the immortal spirit ought to be willing to face to pay the price of its own mortality the choice between following the mortal or the immortal nature is laid upon us all happy are those who dare to believe in god and to act not as if a mortality were coming to them but as if it were already theirs end of chapter 13 chapter 14 of fruits of the spirit the cedile bravox recording all the bravox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Elsie Selwyn fruits of the spirit by Hamilton Wright maybe chapter 14 light in the darkness my faith holds that i cannot see my way writes a man who was trying to live in the spirit of christ the experience is neither uncommon nor unhappy for a secure anchorage of the soul is the main thing in life to see one's way has a great deal to do with happiness but nothing to do with safety to be able to follow the path step by step through fog and storm brings one to the end of the journey as certainly as to follow it in the sunshine some men see farther than others but no man sees the whole course from start to finish the greatness of the way makes that impossible the essential thing in the life of faith is not sight but faith and faith lies the discipline of the spirit the firm and final setting of the will the deep spiritual education that is born of patience of waiting in hope of the slow strengthening of the habit of trust clearness of vision the constant sense of divine guidance the joy of cloudless faith are the possession of few men and women for this radiancy of belief is a kind of religious genius and genius is the possession of a little there are many who in lesser degree walk in the light some because they are buoyant by temperament some because the experiences that drive the spirit back on itself passed them by a few because prosperity shields them from the knowledge of the tragic facts of life from the shock of contact with the misery of the world but these exceptionally comfortable men and women are counted fortunate only by those who do not see the tremendous significance of life prosperity is not a matter of easy conditions but of large opportunity to live in a palace shut away from sorrow and care as one of the supreme misfortunes of a life that is planned not for ease but for education and the unluckiest boy in the world is the boy who is allowed to play during the years when he ought to be at school the faith that holds one securely when the mists cover the earth or the storms sweep over it it is a matter not of temperament or fortunate conditions but of deep and enduring conviction the gates of hell which are sometimes opened on a man and let lease a storming mob of temptations or doubts cannot prevail against it and he who possesses it is impregnably entrenched against their attacks he has never caught unawares or an ambush for his strength does not lie in his moods or his clearness and vision it lies in himself if he is plunged in the thick darkness of that depression and which men of weaker faith throw down their arms in despair he stands steadfast and immovable it is not his to choose the light or the darkness his duty is to stand resolutely where he is placed and there he holds his post like a soldier if doubt gathers sick around him and shut all the doors of hope he waits hopeless for the moment but incorruptibly loyal to his master it was in this temper that childa roland passed unfalteringly through the horror of desolation the slung horn at his lips until he came to an invisible terrors never for a moment in danger of any power outside himself it is in such darkness that the soul grows strong and faith justifies itself by the inward strength that increases unawares in the man and makes great deeds easy and great deeds in turn breed great natures and open the path to those ultimate heights when the world stretches an unbroken sunshine and the heavens are cloudless from horizon to horizon to a few men the pilgrimage of life leads through unbroken light to most men the light is intermittent and there are long leagues of journeying through bleak and shadowy countries but that man is happy whose course takes him where steadfastness waits on courage and light comes not as a gift but as an achievement there is a piece that comes to him whose fight has been lonely and at times without hope of victory that gets its depth and sweetness from the fierceness of the struggle through which it is won there is a purity that is the cleansing of fire there is a final certainty that is victory snatched from a thousand doubts the very throne of god is set round with clouds and darkness and the last venture of faith across the river of death is not made on a massive highway over the flood but on stepping stones receding and mist as faith passes calmly into the darkness that comes before the day breaks and the night is gone forever end of chapter 14 chapter 15 of fruits of the spirit this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Bruce Gachuk fruits of the spirit by Hamilton Wright maybe chapter 15 stirring the will the familiar prayer in the Episcopal Prayer Book for the Sunday before advent stir up we beseech thee O Lord the wills of thy faithful people that they plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works may by thee be plenteously rewarded through Jesus Christ our Lord amen goes to the very heart of the religious life for the root of that life is not in the emotions nor in the intellectual convictions but in the will this prayer recited for many generations has given its name to the day on which it is used and stir up Sunday is a phrase which conveys a challenge most men when they feel deeply give their emotions some form of expression but expression is largely a matter of temperament it is not a test of religious experience nor is it as it has sometimes been thought to be the conclusive evidence of a changed nature it is often the accompaniment of the change but it is not the change itself for this reason the dramatic and spectacular repentance of the criminal or the man of evil life is always looked upon with more or less suspicion there is a sound instinct in the demand that a great sinner shall prove the reality of his repentance by his full and sincere recognition of the enormity of his offense and when a man feels profoundly rather than dramatically the enormity of a sin he is likely to flee from the public gaze and to seek in silence and solitude a place of penitence the great sinner who takes the newspapers into his confidence when he makes an about face is often sincere but he is rarely a man of deep feeling or of a clear-cut conscience the transition from a life of moral anarchy to one of submission to the divine will is sometimes dramatic in its suddenness but it is rarely used as dramatic material by a man of deep experience and sincerity many people are troubled because the life of faith does not lie before their feet defined by sunshine others doubt the reality of their surrender to the divine will because their emotions are not touched and life does not become instantly one grand sweet song this means generally that emotion is not the natural expression of their temperament religion is not a reality in a man's life until it takes hold of his will and a man becomes a christian not when he says i feel or i believe but when he says i will for it is only as a man wills to make his belief a part of his life that he passes out of the region of intellectual ascent into the region of vital religion he who is doing the will of god persistently in the face of uncertainty and for long periods without joy is the kind of christian of which this world stands in sore need he will never betray his trust nor faint by the way nor lose himself in the mists and fogs of changing opinion he has the virtue of a soldier he obeys orders it is never a question with him whether orders are agreeable or not whether he is getting the recognition he deserves whether he is passed over and other men are promoted it is only a question of his understanding his orders and obeying them in these agitated and critical times christians may well pray for the descent of the spirit on all the churches and for the coming of one of those great waves of devout feeling which sometimes pass through society but the emphasis of its prayer ought to be on the words stir up we beseech thee oh lord the wills of life faithful people end of chapter 15 stirring the will chapter 16 of fruits of the spirit this is a livery box recording all livery box recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit liverybox.org recording by bruska chuck fruits of the spirit by hamilton right maybe chapter 16 life growth and heaven when people thought of the life of man as the expression of a divine purpose mysteriously frustrated and of the earth as a great ship which had drifted onto the rocks and from which a few fortunate souls were saved by supernatural lifeboats heaven was a harbor for those who survived the great disaster the supreme effort was to save oneself in a lost world and to land in safety was to be in a state of bliss a fixed condition of perpetual Thanksgiving for rescue there were always those to whom a vision of the divine nature brought a divine thought of heaven and for whom behind the most literal and rigid conception there was a glory like a golden sunset behind a sharply defined landscape in the ordered world of Dante the static world of the middle ages heaven was a place of ineffable beauty bathed in the white light of perfect holiness but it was still primarily a place of safety the very whiteness testified to the blackness of the world that world had been succeeded by a heaven in which those who had escaped the great condemnation shunted their gratitude in unending songs of praise heaven was a static state of bliss the middle ages differed fundamentally from the modern age in the omnipresence of the thought of death and the absence of the idea of progress the medieval imagination was obsessed with the thought of death it haunted the happiest hours its shadow fell on the noblest companionship it lay in wait at every turn of the road art made it terrible by a ghastly realism every man was always moving reluctant and shrinking to his open grave the symbols on the tombs were the symbols of mortality the image of the crucified christ faced one on all sides the risen christ was seen only over a few great altars and the medieval world was stationary men stood in fixed ranks and expected to remain in the state in which they were born society was arranged so to speak in tears like the audience in a great opera house rank rose above rank and the doors between the ranks were closed now and again a great man broke through the barriers and made his way from the lower to the higher places but outside the priesthood the fixed order seemed to mark the permanent structure of society of the forward movement of humanity of a divine intention in folding all things and bearing them onward of an increasing purpose running through the ages and making history significant there was no thought save in a few prophetic minds today the thoughts of men are dominated by life and death has become an incident in the unbroken life of the spirit an incident enveloped in mystery but still an incident not a final decisive event we accept no obstacles to life as insurmountable the insane are no longer given over to hopeless madness the lepers are not driven away with stones and curses and compelled to proclaim themselves unclean punishment for crime is no longer torture it is corrective like the surgeon's knife blindness is no longer a state of helplessness the blind are taught to see with their minds defective children are educated and society accepting no defect or degradation as final is becoming a great organization for overcoming disease with health and death with life the memorials of those whom we call dead are no longer the skull and crossbones the hourglass and the skeleton they recall great moments thrilling with life ferrigate with his field glass in his hand sherman riding to victory lincoln erect and commanding in the majesty of his noble simplicity even the mysterious figure in the washington cemetery from the hand of the most distinguished of american sculptors is charged with vitality as it stands baffled for the moment but with unspent power the figure which dominates the religious imagination of the world is not the dying but the living christ who brought life and immortality to light and who came that men might have life more abundantly and to a static has succeeded a dynamic world a world that was not made but has grown and still grows like the living thing it is not a noble piece of mechanism finished by the hand of god and sent whirling into space to move by an impulse imparted once for all in the pre beginning of things but the thought and purpose of the infinite taking form and motion sustained moment by moment by the power of god the witness of his constant presence the imitation of his thought growing hour by hour under his hand and society is no longer stationary but becomes more and more a living and growing organism enlarging its vision of opportunity opening its doors adapting its institutions to the needs of its deepening and widening life for that which is divine and immortal in the world is not social and political institutions but the human spirit and that which is permanent and fundamental is not the order of society but the will and purpose and power of god behind the confusion of change and the restlessness of movement in him we live and move and have our being more and more the thoughts of men turn to the future of the race more and more they realize that they have only a life interest in the treasures of civilization which god has placed in their hands and that these things must be used not selfishly but passed on to those who are to come after them more and more they realize their duty to children more and more they see that the earth ought not to be primarily a workshop and incidentally a home but primarily a home and incidentally a workshop they believe in the upward movement of the race and they stand ready to help it the modern mind is dominated by the thought of life and the inspiration of the modern world is in its faith in progress which is the social application and expression of the thought of life the life of the world is still full of pain and strife and heaven is a refuge in the thought of those upon whom crushing burdens have been laid and to whom the breath of life has meant sorrow and anguish heaven must always be a refuge but it must be infinitely more eternity is too long for rest after the struggle of earthly life and the fatigue of the body is not the fatigue of the spirit the sorrows of childhood overspread the whole sky and blot out the sun but they are forgotten the next day it may be that the first breath in the next stage of life will make disease and sorrow a faint memory nor will the chief thought of the state of being we call heaven be a sense of rescue from a great peril it will be a sense of joy in a glorious vision of the possibilities of the fuller life of those possibilities no man has yet dreamed though sometimes there come moments of rapture when for a second of time one feels the capacity of immortal joys within him as earth was a place of stationary orders so was heaven in the thoughts of many noble souls in the middle ages a place of stationary bliss requires ceaselessly thank god for deliverance but there is here on earth a nobler expression of thanksgiving than the giving of thanks far sweeter to a noble father is his son's noble use of the opportunities put in his way than any words of gratitude far sweeter that son's growth in mind and character in usefulness and influence than any expression of thanks love finds its supreme reward in the fulfillment of its highest hopes for child or friend heaven must always be a place of refuge but that will be only the beginning of the happiness it offers only the look backward at the starting point of a glorious liberation of the spirit and heaven must always be a place of gratitude but the sweetest praise of the infinite must be the fulfillment in his children of the divine possibilities he has wrought into their natures life and growth the divine elements in the life of man on this earth must be the elements of man's life in all worlds and the supreme bliss which we call heaven must be not only escape from the limitations of earth and from the evil in the world but complete liberation of the spirit strength of heart for all service vigor of mind for all truth purity of nature for the vision of god heaven is not the backward but the forward look not skirting the shore in gladness that the perils of the voyage are over but spreading the sail with confident gladness and seeking port after port in the sublime adventure of the spirit seeking god in that adventure heaven will become an ineffable joy in the fulfillment of the potencies of life not in rest but in flight without fatigue not in folding of the arms but in tireless growth will be the bliss which we call heaven end of chapter 16 life growth and heaven