"Quench Not the Spirit"

"Quench not the Spirit."

We are not to be ashamed of our trust in God nor are we to deny the inner light that lights every man's reason to the ultimate reason of all. Spiritual emotion is common to all people and is one of the ways through which the Spirit works. When this emotion is blocked it hinders the currents of life from flowing and the result is stagnation. In psychology we learn that congested emotions are disastrous to health. If this is true of the physical emotions how much more must it be true of those higher emotions which are altogether spiritual. What is true on one plane is true on all. There are ascending scales of being and each reproduces the one next above or next below. But, from the highest to the lowest, each plane partakes of the nature of the whole, since all are in, and of, it. If physical emotions, unexpressed, can congest the subjective thought, -- producing mental and physical confusion, and they can, -- it

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follows that unexpressed spiritual emotions can congest the soul and hinder a more complete flow of life through the individual. This in accordance with law.

If the artist suppressed all spiritual emotion he would never be a great artist. In art we call this emotion,temperament, -- in oratory we call it inspiration, and in purely spiritual things we call it illumination. Somewhere the soul must stand naked to the Truth if it is to receive it in all its fulness. There must be an outlet as well as an inlet if there is to be a continual flow. "Quench not the Spirit," but let the intellect decide what the emotions are to respond to. This is the secret of a well-balanced life.

"Prove all things: hold fast that which is good." We are not to be afraid of strange ideas or doctrines, but are to prove them and accept only that which is true. We are to analyze, dissect and investigate until we know the truth and then we are to hold fast to it. In this way all advance must come, whether in science, ph-ilosophy, religion or in anything else.

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If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.

But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.

For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.

A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.

Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of

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God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man;

But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.

Do not err, my beloved brethren.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this,

To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction and to keep himself unspotted from the world.

~JAMES-One.