Worship, beliefs about God, adherence to creeds?these are some of the means ; goodness, virtue, morality?these are the end. The methods are many and Various, and they are embodied in countless forms of faith; but the end is one?it is moral grandeur !
Thus the moral man, far from being irreligious because he. may not openly profess some form of worship, possesses the substance of religion, diffuses its spirit, has attained its end ; and when the sweet Kernel of religion is found and enjoyed, the shell, protective and necessary in its place, has served its purpose, and may be dispensed with.
Let not this, however, be misunderstood. The "moral" man does not refer to one who has only the outward form of morality, appearing moral in the eyes of the world, but keeping his vices secret; nor does it refer to him whose morality extends only to legal limits; nor to those who are proud of their morality?for pride is the reverse of moral?but to those who delight in purity, who are gracious, gentle, unselfish, and thoughtful, who, being good at heart, pour forth the fragrance of pure thoughts and good deeds. By the "moral" is meant the good, the pure, the noble, and the true-hearted.
A man may call himself Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Mohammedan, Hindu?or by any other name?and
be immoral ; but if one is pure-hearted, if he is true and noble and beautiful in character?in a word, if he is moral?then he is an inhabitant of the "Holy City" in which, there is "no temple"; he is, by example and influence, a regenerator of mankind; he is one of the company of the Children of Light.
6. Memory, repetition, and habit
I shall gain.
By purity and strong self-mastery,
The awakened vision that doth set men free
From painful slumber and the night of grief.
When a particular combination of words has been repeated a number of times, it is said to have been committed to memory?that is, it can then be repeated without visual reference to the words
themselves, and without pause or effort; indeed, the words have then a tendency to repeat themselves in the mind, and sometimes people are troubled with the ringing of a refrain, or the repetition of a sentence in the mind, which they find it very difficult to get rid of and forget.
There is a sense in which the whole of life is a process of committing to memory. At first there is act, from act springs experience, from experience arises recollection, from recollection repetition, and from repetition is formed habit; hence proceeds impulse, faculty, character, individualised existence.
Life is a repetition of the same things over again. There is very little difference between the days and years in the life of a man ; one is almost entirely a repetition of the other. Every being is an accumulation of experiences gathered, learnt, and woven into the life by a ceaseless series of repetitions extending over an incalculable number of lives which thread their way through eons of time.
The life of a man, from the germ-cell to maturity, is a repetition, in synthesis, of the entire process of evolution. There is a cosmic memory at the root of all growth and progress, which is an informing and sustaining principle in the process of evolution.
The sensuous memory of man is fickle and ephemeral, but the supersensuous memory which is
inherent in all matter, building up forms and faculty is infallible in its reproduction of experiences.
Life is ceaseless reiteration. Nature ever travels over old and familiar ground. Man is daily repeating that which he has learnt though: the schools of experience in which the lessons were acquired may be long forgotten; but the acquired habit is not forgotten; it is carried forward and continues to act. The unconscious and automatic ease which marks the play of faculty is not the ready-made mechanism of an arbitrary creator; it is skill acquired by practice ; it is the consummation of millions of repetitions of.
the same thought and act.
Thoughts and deeds long persisted in become at last spontaneous impulses.
