19/115 SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS By FRANK H. SPRAGUE
One of the most beautiful allegories in literature, illustrating the realization of ideals through right-thinking, is Hawthorne’s sketch, “The Great Stone Face.” That remarkable curiosity of nature became the ideal of the peasant boy, Ernest. Gradually the lineaments of his features assumed the aspect of his ideal, until one day the bystanders, to whom he was declaring its beauty, discovered in him its embodiment.
As we gaze up into the heavens on a clear night, an atmosphere of serenity seems to pervade the entire creation. Worlds on worlds, infinite in number, extend out into space, moving silently and harmoniously on their courses, realizing their ideals without friction or effort. Turning from this picture to the world of practical human affairs, evil, unrest, antagonism, discord, sin, and misery seem to rule.
Skepticism, atheism, and pessimism are widespread. Men are everywhere saying: “All is evil.” “What shall I believe?” “Can I believe anything?” “Is life worth living?” “Does death end all?” “Can we really know anything?” “What is the purpose of life?” “Has it any, indeed?” “Is there a God, or is the world a game of chance?” Whence comes this spirit of inharmony and uncertainty? Shall man alone fail to realize his ideal?
Is not the power that moves the worlds harmoniously, also operative in the heart of man? How then shall we reconcile these apparently inconsistent manifestations? Such a state of affairs will prevail just as long as men’s thought is centered on the planes of sense and understanding. We have trusted our lower faculties to lead us to a knowledge of the Truth, but they have only led us out into the wilderness of materialism.
Contemplating the world of finite things radiating manifestations of the Eternal Principle we soon grow bewildered by its inconceivable variety and endless complexity. We follow one clue after another, until it is lost in a confusing labyrinth of ramifications, or until it passes beyond the range of our perceptive powers;
on the one hand into boundless immensities of space and time, and on the other within inapproachably minute limits. Then, having lost our clues in both directions, we pause to consider other external features of the world. Baffled in our attempts to fathom its quantitative relations, we try to discover its qualitative meaning.
At first everything seems beautiful; but in scrutinizing any one thing more closely, we see that each exquisite feature is destined sooner or later to be marred by apparent ugliness. We detect laws which, although good and beneficent of themselves,
seem to conflict with one another so as to render each other’s operation ineffective. We discern purposes and meanings deep and true in intent; yet their ends appear to be frustrated, or their significance perverted, by misdirected exercise and ill-considered adaptation.