39. Across birth's hidden harbour bar,

Past youth where shoreward shallows are,
Through age that drives on toward the red
Vast void of sunset hailed from far,
To the equal waters of the dead;

40. Save his own soul he hath no star,
And sinks, except his own soul guide,
Helmless in middle turn of tide.

THE INNER LIGHT IS BRIGHTER THAN THE

SUN

1. The soul itself is its own witness and its own refuge. Offend not thy conscious soul, the supreme

internal witness of men.

THE HIGHEST

IS WITHIN

2. Let man then learn the revelation of all nature and all thought to his heart; this, namely, that the highest dwells in him, that the sources of nature are in his own mind, if the sentiment of duty is there.

3. The faith that stands on authority is not faith. The reliance on authority measures the decline of religion.

4. Jesus astonishes and overpowers sensual people. They cannot unite Him to history, or reconcile Him with themselves.

5. As they come to revere their intuitions and aspire to live holily, their own piety explains every fact, every word.

6. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.

7. High instincts

Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing,

INTUITION

8. Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal silence.

9. We are not quite so sunk that moments
Sure though seldom are denied us,
When the spirit's true endowments
Stand out plainly from its false ones,
And apprise it if pursuing

Or the right way or the wrong way,
To its triumph or undoing.

10. Ah, there is something here

Unfathomed by the cynic's sneer ;

11. A seed of sunshine that can leaven

Our earthly dulness with the beams of stars,
And glorify our clay

With light from fountains elder than the day;

12. A light across the sea,

Which haunts the soul and will not let it be,

Still beaconing from the heights of undegenerate

years.

13. What do we gather hence but firmer faith,

That virtue and the faculties within

Are vital?

WORLDLY INTERESTS DISSIPATE THE SOUL

1. When the stag has waxed fat he hides himself amid the thicket, conscious that his fleetness

DETACH-
MENT

is impaired should he be in need to fly; in the same way the human heart which is cumbered with superfluous attachments becomes conscious of its incapacity for the true life of service.

2. There are amusements involving passion and vanity, which dissipate the soul; and there are others, only entered upon with simplicity, for recreation and refreshment, while the heart remains steadfast to its secret moorings.

3. Would a man attain to such a point that the outward things should not hinder the inward workings of the soul, that would be indeed above all a blessed thing.

4. But if thou find that the outward work hinders the inward working of the soul, then boldly let it go, and turn thou with all thy might to that which is inward.

5. Ask for a bold spirit, free from all dread of death ; that can endure labour, whatever it be; that knows not the passion of anger; that covets nothing.

6. The mind which is free from the bondage of passions is a citadel, for man has nothing more secure to which he can fly for refuge.

7. When thou hast assumed these qualities:-good, modest, true, rational, and magnanimous, take ABOVE THE care that thou dost not change them for others, and if thou shouldst lose them, quickly

LIVING

WORLD

return to them.

8. Fix thyself in the possession of them; and if thou art able to abide in them, abide as if thou wast removed to certain Islands of the Happy.

9. The life which depends on fortune is like a winter torrent; for it is turbulent, and full of mud, and difficult to cross, and tyrannical, and noisy, and of short duration. 10. He that loveth his life shall lose it.

11. Consider how much more often thou sufferest from thine anger and grief, than from those very things for which thou art angry and grieved.

12. Pain is either an evil to the body or to the soul, but it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquillity, and not to think that pain is an evil;

13. For every judgment and movement and desire and aversion is within, and no evil ascends so high.

14. Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what thou liv'st, Live well.

15. Too great earnestness and vehemency, and too greedy delight in bodily work and external doings, scattereth and loseth the tranquillity and calmness of the mind.

16. A horse is not elated nor proud of his manger and trappings and coverings, nor a bird of his little shreds of cloth and of his nest; but both of them are proud of their swiftness, one proud of the swiftness of the feet, and the other of the wings.