The contemplation of this divinity excites the religious emotions of awe, veneration, wonder and worship. It is a world of correlation. The All is right here. There is no outside force or energy-no god or supreme being that looks on, interferes, dictates and decides. To admit there is an outside power, something uncorrelated, is to invite fear, apprehension, uncertainty and terror. This undissolved residuum is the nest-egg of superstition. The man who believes that God is the Whole, and that every man, is a necessary part of the Whole, has no need to placate or please an intangible Something. All there is for him to do is to be true to his own nature—to live his life—to understand himself. And this takes us back to the Socratic maxim, "Know Thyself." No man ever expressed one phase of Monism so beautifully and well as Emerson has in his "Essay on Compensation." This intelligence in which we are bathed rights every wrong, equalizes every injustice, balances every perversion, punishes the wrong and rewards the right. The Universe is self-lubricating and automatic. The Greeks beheld the sublime truths of Compensation when they pictured Nemesis. It is absurd to punish-leave it to Nemesis-she never forgets-nothing can escape her. Our duties lie in service to ourselves, and we best serve self by serving humanity. This is the only religion that pays compound interest to both borrower and lender. Worship Humanity and you honor yourself. LITTLE LITTLE And the world has ever dimly perceived this, for hisJOURNEYS tory honors no men save those who have given their lives that others might live. The saviors of the world are only those who loved Humanity more than all else. All men who live honest lives are saviors-they live that others may live. He that saveth his life shall lose it. We grow through radiation, not by absorption or annexation. To him that hath shall be given. We keep things by giving them to others. The dead carry in their clenched hands only that which they have given away; and the living carry only that love in their hearts which they have bestowed on others. "I and my Father are one"-the thought is old, very old, but to prove it from the so-called material world through the study of biology has been the life work of Ernst Hæckel. UNDAUNTED WE PRESS EVER ON. |