The Life Radiant

Part 1

THE LIFE RADIANT

LILIAN WHITING

Author of "The World Beautiful," "The Spiritual Significance" "The World Beautiful in Books," "Kate Field, a Record," "Boston Days," etc.

"Follow it, follow it, Follow the Gleam."

Boston Little, Brown, and Company 1903

ARVILLA DELIGHT MEEKER (MRS. NATHAN COOK MEEKER)

IN WHOSE BEAUTIFUL LIFE PATIENCE HAS DONE HER PERFECT WORK, AND WHOSE UNFALTERING AND JOYFUL FAITH IN GOD REVEALS IMPRESSIVE TRUTH IN THE LIFE RADIANT OF HOLY LIVING

THESE PAGES ARE INSCRIBED WITH THE DEVOTION OF LILIAN WHITING

CONTENTS.

PAGE THE GOLDEN AGE LIES ONWARD.

THE SUPREME ILLUMINATION 24 CREATING THE NEW WORLD 26 ELIMINATING ANXIETIES 33 HEAVEN'S PERFECT HOUR 37 LOVE AND GOOD WILL 46 THE DIVINER POSSIBILITIES 51 THE WEIGHT OF THE PAST 64

DISCERNING THE FUTURE.

A DETERMINING QUESTION 85 IN PROPORTION TO POWER 99

THE ETHEREAL REALM.

A SCIENTIFIC FACT 124 A GLORIOUS INAUGURATION 136 FINER COSMIC FORCES 149 HEALTH AND HAPPINESS 158 A NEW FORCE 172 THE SERVICE OF THE GODS 174

THE POWER OF THE EXALTED MOMENT.

OBEY THE VISION 192 THE OPEN DOOR 201 INTERRUPTIONS AS OPPORTUNITIES 204 THE CHARM OF COMPANIONSHIP 214 A SUMMER PILGRIMAGE IN ARIZONA 226 A TRAGIC IDYL OF COLORADO 237 A REMARKABLE MYSTIC 254 THE MOMENTOUS QUESTION 261

THE NECTAR OF THE HOUR.

A PROFOUND EXPERIENCE 285 THE LAW OF PRAYER 299 CONDUCT AND BEAUTY 313 THE DIVINE PANORAMA 321 ALSO THE HOLY GHOST, THE COMFORTER 331

THE LIFE RADIANT.

"I am Merlin Who follow the Gleam."

* * * * *

Know well, my soul, God's hand controls Whate'er thou fearest; Round Him in calmest music rolls Whate'er thou hearest.

What to thee is shadow, to Him is day, And the end He knoweth. And not on a blind and aimless way The spirit goeth.

WHITTIER.

THE GOLDEN AGE LIES ONWARD.

"The Golden Age lies onward, not behind. The pathway through the past has led us up: The pathway through the future will lead on, And higher."

The Life Radiant is that transfiguration of the ordinary daily events and circumstances which lifts them to the spiritual plane and sees them as the signs and the indications of the divine leading. Every circumstance thus becomes a part of the revelation; and to constantly live in this illuminated atmosphere is to invest all experiences with a kind of magical enchantment. Life prefigures itself before us as a spiritual drama in which we are, at once, the actors and the spectators. The story of living goes on perpetually. The days and the years inevitably turn the pages and open new chapters. Nothing is ever hopeless, because new combinations and groupings create new results. The forces that determine his daily life are partly with man and partly with God. They lie in both the Seen and the Unseen. We are always an inhabitant of both realms, and to recognize either alone and be blind to the other is to deprive ourselves of the great sources of energy. The divine aid, infinite and all-potent as it is, capable at any moment of utterly transforming all the conditions and transferring them to a higher plane, is yet limited by the degree of spiritual receptivity in the individual. As one may have all the air that he is able to breathe, so may one have all the aid of the Holy Spirit which he is capable of receiving. Man can never accept so gladly and so freely as God offers; but in just the proportion to which he can, increasingly, lift up his heart in response, to that degree God fills his life with a glory not of earth.

Part 2

"Man may ask, and God may answer, but we may not understand, Knowing but our own poor language, all the writing of His hand."

Science has discovered the existence of that incalculable energy, the ether, interpenetrated in the atmosphere. Electro-magnetic currents of power beyond all conception are revealed, and when intelligently recognized by some happy genius, like that of Marconi, they begin to be utilized in the service of human progress. Now as this ethereal energy which is only just beginning to be recognized can be drawn upon for light, for heat, for motor power, for communication, just as this hitherto undreamed-of power can be drawn upon for the fundamental needs of the physical world, so, correspondingly, does there exist the infinite reservoir of spiritual energy which God freely opens to man in precisely the proportion in which he recognizes and avails himself of its transforming power. And in this realm lies the Life Radiant. If this transfiguration of life could only be experienced by the aid of wealth and health and all for which these two factors stand, it would not be worth talking about. We hear a great deal of the "privileged classes" and of "fortunate conditions," as if there were certain arbitrary divisions in life defined by impassable boundaries, and that he who finds himself in one, is unable to pass to another.

Never was there a more fatally erroneous conception. In the spiritual world there are no limits, no boundaries, no arbitrary divisions. Just so far as the soul conquers, is it free. Conquer ignorance, and one enters the realm of education, of culture; conquer vice, and he enters into the realm of virtue; conquer impatience and irritability and bitterness, and their result in gloom and despondency, and he enters into the realm of serenity and sweetness and exaltation with their result in power of accomplishment. The Life Radiant can be achieved, and is within the personal choice of every individual. One may place himself in relation with this infinite and all-potent current of divine energy and receive its impetus and its exhilaration and its illumination every hour in the day. The toiler in manual labor may lead this twofold life. On the visible side he is pushing onward in the excavation of a tunnel; he is laying the track of a new railroad; he is engaged in building a house; he stands at his appointed place in a great factory,--but is this all? His real work lies both in the visible and in the invisible. On the one hand he is contributing to the material resources of the world, and he is earning his wage by which to live; on the other hand he is developing patience, faithfulness, and judgment,--quantities of the spiritual man and possessions of the spiritual life which extend the spiritual territory. Faithfulness to the immediate duty creates a larger theatre for duty. There are not wanting examples that could be named of statesmen,--senators, governors, and others in high places, to say nothing of the supreme example of a Lincoln; there are not wanting examples of professional men in high and important places who initiated their work by any humble and honest industrial employment that chanced to present itself at the moment. Conquering this rudimentary realm, they passed on to others successively. Integrity is a spiritual quantity, and it insures spiritual aid. The cloud of witnesses is never dispersed. The only imprisonment is in limitations, and limitations can be constantly overcome. The horizon line of the impossible recedes as we advance. In the last analysis nothing is too sublime or too beautiful to be entirely possible. Its attainment is simply a question of conditions. These conditions lie in entering into this inner realm of spiritual energy in which the personal will is increasingly identified with the will of God.

Like an echo of celestial music are these lines by Sully-Prudhomme:--

"The lilies fade with the dying hours, Hushed is the song-bird's lay; But I dream of summers and dream of flowers That last alway."

Nor is this only the day-dream of a poet. The summers and flowers that last alway are a very immediate treasure which one has only to perceive, to grasp, to recognize, and to realize. "Surely," exclaimed the Psalmist, "goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever." This dwelling in "the house of the Lord" is by no means a figure of speech. Nor is it to be regarded as some ineffable privilege to be--possibly to be--enjoyed after that change we call death. Its real significance is here and now. One must dwell in "the house of the Lord" to-day, and every day. The "house of the Lord" is a beautiful figurative expression for that spiritual atmosphere in which one may perpetually live, and in which it is his simple duty both to live and to radiate to all around him.

In these summer days of 1903, in this golden dawn of the twentieth century, the world is echoing with wonder in the discovery of a new and most mysterious force in nature,--radium. Science is, at this date, powerless to analyze or explain its marvellous power. The leading scientists of the world of learning--Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, and Professor Curie (who, with Mme. Curie, has the honor of being its discoverer)--believe that in radium will be found the true solution of the problem of matter. Radium gives off rays at the speed of one hundred and twenty thousand miles a second, and these rays offer the most extraordinary heat, light, and power. Yet with this immense radiation it suffers no diminution of energy; nor can any scientist yet discern from what source this power is fed. A grain of it will furnish enough light to enable one to read, and, as Professor J. J. Thomson has observed, it will suffer no diminution in a million years. It will burn the flesh through a metal box and through clothing, but without burning the texture of the garments. The rays given out by radium cannot be refracted, polarized, or regularly reflected in the way of ordinary light, although some of them can be turned aside by a magnet.

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