Page:Alchemy of Happiness - Field.djvu/21



, O beloved, that man was not created in jest or at random, but marvellously made and for some great end. Although he is not from everlasting, yet he lives for ever; and though his body is mean and earthly, yet his spirit is 1ofty and divine. When in the crucible of abstinence he is purged from carnal passions he attains to the highest and in place of being a slave to lust and anger becomes endued with angelic qualities. Attaining that state, he finds his heaven in the contemplation of Eternal Beauty, and no longer in fleshly delights. The spiritual alchemy which operates this change in him, like that which transmutes base metals into gold, is not easily discovered. nor to be found in the house of every old woman. It is to explain that alchemy and its methods of operation that the author has Rh