Page:OptimismBlood.djvu/109

This page needs to be proofread.

His vaulting curiosity and his fears alike are smothered in the gentle simmering of the flesh. His soul will not rush unbidden on the infinite; and the mystery of his unaccountable existence is forgiven and forgotten in the warm joy of existence itself.

To us, this carnal carelessness, or stupidity if you please, is a redeeming feature in man's life, here or hereafter. Wherever we exist, through a thousand progressive changes, we see this mantle of divine charity protecting us from the chilling winds that would otherwise blow in on us from off the vasty deep, where God walks, now as ever, alone. We believe in a "spiritual body," growing within this body of flesh, as a child grows in its mother, to be delivered into a finer sphere. And this new body shall lie down in the world to which it enters, and from it shall go forth another—and from this another—far into the depths of the eternal divinity. The soul shudders at any other existence than that of body—shudders at any direct partnership in God's majesty, and fondly clings to those carnal and spiritual bodies which hold us asunder, alike from the universe and him.

Founded upon and deriving its usefulness from the necessity of finite abstraction from the infinite, and from that useless self-contemplation into which, without some diversion, the finite will ever fall, is Labor. For this we are given desires and necessities, to provide for which keeps us occupied and diverted. Those who have not immediate necessities have ambitions, whims, and theories, to attain which keeps busy the ever-wakeful spirit. Without this diversion even

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.