participates in the qualities of God, one of which
qualities, is that of communicating itself to other souls. Or rather,
it is as a stream, which, being lost in a large river, follows the
course of the river, communicating itself where the river communicates,
watering where it waters, drawing into itself all the smaller rivers,
which are destined alike to lose themselves in the great ocean of Love.
These streams have no independent life, but proceed from, and flow back
into their origin. Here is the consummation of souls in oneness, as
Jesus Christ has expressed it,--"_One in us_."

There is divine reality in this truth. Blessed are those who
comprehend it! How many walk side by side along these rivers, and yet
never mingle their waters! And many there are, also, who haste with
eagerness, to precipitate themselves into this divine stream, and flow
together, as the souls of the celestial ones, in the fulness of divine
love.

This is not a chimera of the fancy; it is the wonderful economy of
divinity. It is the end and object of the creation of the soul--the
end and compass of all the efforts of God, regarding his creatures.
Here is consummated all the glory, God derives from their existence.
All beside are only the means approaching this final end, this glorious
termination, and absorption of the soul in Deity. Here is the light
which ravishes the soul. A light which does not precede, but follows
the soul in its progress; unfolding more and more, as a man in a dark
cavern, discovers the concealed places, only when he has remained in it
for some time.

This is the pure Theology in which God instructs the angels and the
saints. It is the Theology of Experience, that God teaches only to his
children, who having abandoned their own wisdom, he has himself become
their wisdom and their life. This is the law of wisdom, my friend, for
us,--the way of the Lord in us. In him we are one.

NO UNION WITH SELFISH SOULS.

There are some souls which cause me great suffering. These are selfish
souls, full of compromises, speculations and human arrangements, and
desiring others to accommodate themselves to their humors and
inclinations. I find myself unable to administer in the least degree
to their self-love; and when I would be a little complaisant, a Master,
more powerful than myself, restrains me. I cannot give such persons
any other place in my heart, than God gives them. I cannot adapt
myself to their supe