Page:The Life and Works of Christopher Dock.djvu/144

132 of finding chapters. This has been quite successful, so that when a passage was mentioned, they turned to it and read it without being prompted.

When this door is opened, I have aimed that they should cull the flowers in this Garden of Eden, — Holy Writ, — not only for their beauty, but also for their fragrance, by pointing out to them, to the best of my feeble power, which have a fragrance of life unto life when put to the use that is revealed in them. Also which have an odor of death unto death, that they might have knowledge from both sides of Holy Writ and might be able to see. Then just as truth has the odor of life unto life and when we follow it leads to life, thus lies have the odor of death unto death in them and lead to death if we follow them. For the reward of liars is the fiery pit, which is the other death. (Revel, xxi, 8.) Truth, however, frees him who follows it. (John viii, 31-35.)

Now as opposite qualities have opposite effects, some leading to life and others to death, so it is with love. Love has the odor of life, but hate, envy and enmity have the odor of death and lead to death, for they are the opposite of love.

Thus it is also with faith and faithlessness, charity and lack of charity, justice and injustice, chastity and unchasteness, humility and vanity. In fine, all Godlike qualities have life in them and lead to life; whoever trusts in their efficacy is born again from death into life. All Godless things and their qualities are of death, and lead to damnation, if one persists in them until death.