Mortal things are fatal to the flow of God.
The spiritual man stands over all things of earth.
The divine light reaches only the highest love.
May my soul transcend my daily anxiety!
The work of God is the noblest product.
So my outward life is dead. Prayer,
Sorrow, anxiety, do not redeem it.
The highest love alone meets God.
There is a daily suffering and daily suffering,
But only right suffering releases.
There is a place within to suffer rightly
And when found, God enters in soul:
All riches, virtues, and suffering from the loss of them,
All wishes to be unchanged by sin,
Unchangeable, respectable, liked,
Is not suffering. To suffer is not merit.
Suffering is to know God.
Only to know God is suffering.
For if we know God is,
We know within what we are, and only thus.
To know what one is is to suffer, and this is to know God.
To know oneself is to call helplessly on God,
Self-love wanes, God enters.
Self-knowledge is knowledge of God.
If God is not, self-knowledge is not.
Knowledge is to love the unknown.
Without God we cannot no more,
All knowledge passes into Love of God.
Nothing makes a man so like God as suffering.
To suffer is to no one’s fault, not to complain,
To lose oneself in the emotion
Of self-knowing, and know God’s knowledge.
Why does suffering free from lust?
Because lust is self-will, and right suffering
Is another’s will, so infinitely greater
That all self vanishes in freedom.
