happiness they lose the deeper, purer, and more abiding bliss. Says
Carlyle--"There is in man a higher than love of happiness. He can do
without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness.

... Love not pleasure, love God. This is the Everlasting Yea, wherein all
contradiction is solved; wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with
him."

He who has yielded up that self, that personality that men most love, and
to which they cling with such fierce tenacity, has left behind him all
perplexity, and has entered into a simplicity so profoundly simple as to be
looked upon by the world, involved as it is in a network of error, as
foolishness. Yet such a one has realized the highest wisdom, and is at rest
in the Infinite. He "accomplishes without striving," and all problems melt
before him, for he has entered the region of reality, and deals, not with
changing effects, but with the unchanging principles of things. He is
enlightened with a wisdom which is as superior to ratiocination, as reason
is to animality. Having yielded up his lusts, his errors, his opinions and
prejudices, he has entered into possession of the knowledge of God, having
slain the selfish desire for heaven, and along with it the ignorant fear of
hell; having relinquished even the love of life itself, he has gained
supreme bliss and Life Eternal, the Life which bridges life and death, and
knows its own immortality. Having yielded up all without reservation, he
has gained all, and rests in peace on the bosom of the Infinite.

Only he who has become so free from self as to be equally content to be
annihilated as to live, or to live as to be annihilated, is fit to enter
into the Infinite. Only he who, ceasing to trust his perishable self, has
learned to trust in boundless measure the Great Law, the Supreme Good, is
prepared to partake of undying bliss.