The Equinox (Volume I, Number IX)

THE KEY OF THE MYSTERIES Soft tears come to moisten the eyes, and sighs escape like incense smoke. One feels oneself in love, ineffably in love, with all that is beauty, truth, and justice; one throbs with a new life, and one fears no more to die. For prayer is the eternal life of intelligence and love; it is the life of God upon earth. Love one another—that is the Law and the Prophets! Meditate, and understand this word. And when you have understood, read no more, seek no more, doubt no more—love ! Be no more wise, be no more learned—love! That is the whole doctrine of true religion; religion means charity, and God Himself is only love. I have already said to you, to love is to give. The impious man is he who absorbs others. The pious man is he who loses himself in humanity If the heart of man concentrate in himself the fire with which God animates it, it is a hell which devours all, and fills itself only with ashes ; if he radiates it without, it becomes a tender sun of love. Man owes himself to his family; his family owes itself to the fatherland; and the fatherland to humanity. The egoism of man merits isolation and despair ; that of the family, ruin and exile ; that of the fatherland, war and invasion. The man who isolates himself from every human love, saying, ‘I will serve God,” deceives himself. For, said St. John the Apostle, if he loveth not his neighbour whom he hath seen, how shall he love God whom he hath not seen? One must render to God that which is God’s, but one must not refuse even to Czesar that which is Czesar’s. 29