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The Deeper Life

not, into beauty, love, or truth. But this atmosphere enwraps those only who have been heedful to ventilate their life sufficiently by at times flinging open the gates of the other world. It is when we are near to those gates that we see; it is when we are near to those gates that we love. For to love one's neighbour does not mean only to give oneself to him, to serve, help, and sustain others. We may possibly be neither good, nor noble, nor beautiful, even in the midst of the greatest sacrifice; and the sister of charity who dies by the bedside of a typhoid patient may perchance have a mean, rancorous, miserable soul. To love's one neighbour in the immovable depths means to love in others that which is eternal; for one's neighbour, in the truest sense of the term, is that which approaches the nearest to God; in other words, all that is best and purest in man; and it is only by ever lingering

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