“If you would teach your feet to tread the Path to heaven, know that the way is hard at first,” said the weary sufferer; “God wills that you shall seek Him for Himself.  In that sense, He is jealous; He demands your whole self.  But when you have given Him yourself, never, never will He abandon you.  I leave with you the keys of the kingdom of His Light, where evermore you shall dwell in the bosom of the Father, in the heart of the Bridegroom.  No sentinels guard the approaches, you may enter where you will; His palaces, His treasures, His sceptre, all are free.  ‘Take them!’ He says.  But—­you must will to go there.  Like one preparing for a journey, a man must leave his home, renounce his projects, bid farewell to friends, to father, mother, sister, even to the helpless brother who cries after him,—­yes, farewell to them eternally; you will no more return than did the martyrs on their way to the stake.  You must strip yourself of every sentiment, of everything to which man clings.  Unless you do this you are but half-hearted in your enterprise.

“Do for God what you do for your ambitious projects, what you do in consecrating yourself to Art, what you have done when you loved a human creature or sought some secret of human science.  Is not God the whole of science, the all of love, the source of poetry?  Surely His riches are worthy of being coveted!  His treasure is inexhaustible, His poem infinite, His love immutable, His science sure and darkened by no mysteries.  Be anxious for nothing, He will give you all.  Yes, in His heart are treasures with which the petty joys you lose on earth are not to be compared.  What I tell you is true; you shall possess His power; you may use it as you would use the gifts of lover or mistress.  Alas! men doubt, they lack faith, and will, and persistence.  If some set their feet in the path, they look behind them and presently turn back.  Few decide between the two extremes,—­to go or stay, heaven or the mire.  All hesitate.  Weakness leads astray, passion allures into dangerous paths, vice becomes habitual, man flounders in the mud and makes no progress towards a better state.

“All human beings go through a previous life in the sphere of Instinct, where they are brought to see the worthlessness of earthly treasures, to amass which they gave themselves such untold pains!  Who can tell how many times the human being lives in the sphere of Instinct before he is prepared to enter the sphere of Abstractions, where thought expends itself on erring science, where mind wearies at last of human language? for, when Matter is exhausted, Spirit enters.  Who knows how many fleshly forms the heir of heaven occupies before he can be brought to understand the value of that silence and solitude whose starry plains are but the vestibule of Spiritual Worlds?  He feels his way amid the void, makes trial of nothingness, and then at last his eyes revert upon the Path.  Then follow other existences,—­all