In Love With the Divine Outcast

Now it is gone, for we have come in sight of what is more worth having. The growth in the spiritual life is thus a constant exchange: first the giving up of what is positively bad for good, then the surrender of things good in themselves for better: "For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I will bring silver, and for wood brass, and for stones iron." (Isa. 60/17.) Such is the promise in the kingdom of the Messias, and at last  "The sun shall be no more thy light of the day, neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee; but the Lord shall be unto thee an Everlasting Light, and thy God thy Glory." (Isa. 16/19.)

This is the meaning of the life of sacrifice; it has ever before it a positive rather than a negative end, and it aims at life, not at death, only as the gateway to a better life. It looks with no puritan eye of contempt at the fair things of the world, nor at those whose lives are less stern; it gives up what it does surrender only to gain something better.

For the power to give up many things―every earthly thing―is at the bottom a power of not being able to do without other things. He to whom honor is P. 49 necessary can do without money. (Continued Here)