Page:From Passion to Peace - Allen - 1910.djvu/28

Rh guided by low thoughts and base desires.

Aspiration can be fed, fostered, and strengthened by daily habit, just as is desire. It can be sought, and admitted into the mind as a divine guide, or it can be neglected and shut out. To retire for a short time each day to some quiet spot, preferably in the open air, and there call up the energies of the mind in surging waves of holy rapture, is to prepare the mind for great spiritual victories and destinies of divine import; for such rapture is the preparation for wisdom and the prelude to peace. Before the mind can contemplate pure things it must be lifted up to them, it must rise above impure things; and aspiration is the instrument by which this is accomplished. By its aid the mind soars swiftly and surely into heavenly places, and begins to experience divine things; begins to accumulate wisdom, and to learn to guide itself by an ever increasing measure of the divine light of pure knowledge.