The Course of Divine Love 2vols Author:F. Fitzgerald, F. Fitzgerald General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1868 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III. PARADISE. Rapid as thought, to which no distance, however great, opposes the smallest obstacle or impediment -- thought that mounts instantaneous to the farthest orb in space ; -- but here let us pause. Does this untrammelled power of thought prove nothing ? This marvel of man's being, has it no argument? Does it not rather furnish a most sublime proof, that ought to confound the fool who deems the immortal soul of man to be a mere attribute of clay -- the fruit of some fine accidental portion of the visible material organism -- the marvellous product of some solely terrestrial root alone ? -- who maintains that dust, allied with more subtle elements, holds, not an imparted, but an inherent mind ; or, that the mental flame, extraneous like that of a taper, burns clear and lustrous only while the union lasts, ending suddenly in dirty darkness, and in mephytic night ? Such a being, in order that he may have an undisturbed enjoyment of thepestilential reign of sin within him, welcomes dishonour, and estimates destruction as a gain. He scorns the glorious truth revealed by inspiration, which contains the Divine promise of immortal youth when the soul, freed from the chains and fetters of corruptible matter and incorporated with eternity, shall view and know, where thought is now lost in speculation, and where all hope of knowledge dies. With suicidal rage, he demands extinction as a bliss; and steels himself against any other conviction than that he is like the beasts that perish. Poor, wretched, abused immortal, clothed in mortal dust -- if thou who readest art thus unhappy -- hasten to cle...« less