Page:Science and Health.djvu/328

324 making his Xanthippe a discipline for his philosophy. Sorrow has its reward, and never leaves man where it found him; it is the furnace that separates the gold from the dross, and gives back the image of God. The cup our Father hath given, shall we not drink it? and learn the lesson He inculcates.

When the ocean is stirred by a storm, the clouds lower, the wind screams through the straitened canvas, and waves lift themselves to mountains, we ask the helmsman, “Do you know your course, and can you steer your vessel amid the storm?” Even the dauntless seaman is not sure of his fate, well knowing the science of navigation is not equal to the Science of God; but acting up to his highest understanding, firm at the post of duty, awaits the issue. Thus should we deport ourself in the seething ocean of sorrow, hoping and working, stick to the wreck, until the logic of events precipitates the doom, or sunshine gladdens the wave.

The possibility that animal natures give more force to character than the spiritual, is too absurd to consider, when we remember the exemplar of man healed the sick, raised the dead, and commanded even the winds and waves to obey him, through the ascendency of the spiritual over the material. What we avail ourselves of God, is as potent with us as it was with Jesus, and our want of spiritual strength speaks the rebuke it deserves; and our limited demonstration puts to shame the labor of centuries. We should hold our body not so much in personal, as spiritual consciousness, even as the orange we have just eaten, and of which only the idea is left, then would there be neither