Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold

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and leaving out the rest. Spirit is the great life
on which matter rests, as does the rocky world
on the free and fluid ether; whenever we can
break our limitations we find ourselves on that
marvellous shore where Wordsworth once saw
the gleam of the gold. When we enter there
all the present must disappear alike,--virtue
and vice, thought and sense. That a man reaps
what he has sown must of course be true also;
he has no power to carry virtue, which is of the
material life, with him; yet the aroma of his
good deeds is a far sweeter sacrifice than the
odor of crime and cruelty. Yet it may be,
however, that by the practice of virtue he will
fetter himself into one groove, one changeless
fashion of life in matter, so firmly that it is
impossible for the mind to conceive that death
is a sufficient power to free him, and cast him
upon the broad and glorious ocean,--a sufficient
power to undo for him the inexorable
and heavy latch of the Golden Gate. And
sometimes the man who has sinned so deeply
that his whole nature is scarred and blackened
by the fierce fire of selfish gratification is at
last so utterly burned out and charred that
from the very vigor of the passion light leaps
forth. It would seem more possible for such
a man at least to reach the threshold of the
Gates than for the mere ascetic or philosopher.

But it is little use to reach the threshold of
the Gates without the power to pass through.
And that is all that the sinner can hope to
do by the dissolution of himself which comes
from seeing his own soul. At least this appears
to be so, inevitably because his condition is
negative. The man who lifts the latch of the
Golden Gate must do so with his own strong
hand, must be absolutely positive. This we can
see by analogy. In everything else in life, in
every new step or development, it is necessary
for a man to exercise his most dominant will
in order to obtain it fully. Indeed in many
cases, though he has every advantage and
though he use his will to some

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