I might go on to illustrate the application of this truth to self-knowledge, but it is one easily made, by each for himself. Its bearing upon our moral growth must not be so lightly passed over.
You have learned that you have a spirit which _may_ be, _must_ be trained for immortality and heaven. You have found too that there are difficulties in the way of this training. There is a constant under-current of selfishness ready to insinuate itself into all you do; there is contempt for your inferiors in birth or cultivation, ever offering to start up, and there is a spirit of resentment against those who have injured you ready to take fire on the least provocation. What is to be done with these? You do not forget that to Him, whose "still, small voice" can speak with authority to the spirits He has made, must be your first appeal; but neither do you forget that his help is vouchsafed to those only who help themselves. And how will you help yourself? Will you in the plenitude of your might, and the resoluteness of kindled energy, _will_ the extinction of those unruly passions? Try it; exert the volition; _will_ to stop the flowing tide of revenge in your breast, and to cause love and forgiveness to spring up in its place. Well, have you done it? But what means that glowing cheek--that flashing eye--that compressed brow? Is such the expression of _love_? Nay brother, you have mistaken the way. Not the straight path of direct volition will ever lead you to your object.
But come forth with me into the field. Here are "sweet, strange flowers," to glad thy heart with their innocent beauty, and delight thee with their fragrance; here is the broad and blessed "sky bending over" thee, and the quiet lake at thy feet.
"The air is spread with beauty; and the sky Is musical with sounds that rise and die, Till scarce the ear can catch them; then they swell, Then send from far a low, sweet, sad farewell."
And who art thou that bringest discord and rough, angry passions into a scene like this? Ah, thou bringest not discord, it has stolen from thy heart; thou art at peace. For it is not a poetic fiction when we are told that a wayward spirit, is subdued by nature's loveliness and _lovingness_.