The
result of my journey was to bring a certain mental peace. Where there
had been chaos there was now order. My mind was at rest. I had a
philosophy at last. The words of Christ "The Kingdom of Heaven is
within you," had a new meaning for me. Not in the past or in the
future, but now and here is Heaven within us. All our duties lie in
this world and in the present, and trying impatiently to peer into
that which lies beyond is as vain as fruitless.
All the remnants of theology in which I had been born and bred, all
the impressions that Swedenborg had made upon me, now ceased to
influence me or to occupy my thoughts. I found that no nation had all
the truth in the revelation it regards as divine, and no tribe is so
low as to be left without some truth; that every people has had its
great teacher; Buddha for one; Confucius for another; Zoroaster for a
third; Christ for a fourth. The teachings of all these I found
ethically akin so that I could say with Matthew Arnold, one I was so
proud to call friend:
"Children of men! the unseen Power, whose eye
For ever doth accompany mankind
Hath looked on no religion scornfully
That men did ever find.
Which has not taught weak wills how much they can?
Which has not fall'n in the dry heart like rain?
Which has not cried to sunk, self-weary man,
_Thou must be born again_.
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