UNCONSCIOUS GOODNESS
THIS is not written for the many, but for the few who understand.
Confess your sins, if you will, but not your goodness.
A high and noble quality in you, if it is once brought to light, withers as a flower plucked from its bed in the woods and worn on your dress.
There is no real purity but that of which you are unconscious. This permeates you and flavors your personality. The minute it is exposed by boasting it becomes offensive.
I doubt if preaching, moralizing, arguing and otherwise definitely laboring with people to make them good has ever been of much real benefit.
The actual uplift is that force that lies within our nature, concealed in the texture of the soul.
The cosmic powers of souls are silent and invisible; as the sun attracts the planets by its mass, as the hyacinth perfumes the room by its presence.
When you tell of a good deed you have done you have spoiled it. That instinct is correct which leads the brave man to belittle his own courage.
No act is fine unless it be done solely to gratify ourself, solely to win the praise of our own exacting soul; the bloom of virgin beauty is rubbed off from our nobleness when it is to get the approbation of others.
We complain that our efforts are not appreciated. Whatever is appreciated is depreciated. Only those helpful deeds that no one knows, which we ourselves do not recognize, are of the purest gold.
No one will be more surprised on the day of judgment than the genuine saints, who will exclaim in amazement: "Lord, when saw we thee sick, or ahungered, or in prison, and ministered unto thee?"
Action and speech, doing and talking, and all sorts of conscious exertion, are of second class, compared with the high worth of being.
This is proved by little children, who, we are shocked to discover, are not much influenced by our lecturings, and disregard our advice, but whose eyes penetrate to what we really are, whose ears hear the voices of our character; so that they follow us, but not our words.
No deeds of mine can counteract the subtle dynamic of my personal influence. If I endow churches and colleges, if I feed multitudes of the poor, if I give my body to be burned, and yet if I am essentially mean, my net result in the world is bad. On Time's books the debit of my character will outbalance the credit of my effort.
The day will come, when humanity is mature, that there shall be no more of what we now call charity or benevolence. For charity is the conscious attempt to correct the injustice of our acceptance of unjust customs.
In the perfect day to come no man will give to relieve another's distress, none will work to convert and redeem, for each shall try to do justice; and where there is universal justice all charity is swallowed up.
Then set loyalty to yourself as your goal. Think, speak and act to get that inner praise of your own being. Regard yourself as fortunate when you can do good without being found out.
And consider yourself most fortunate of all when you are not appreciated, when you are misunderstood, and when yolir good is called evil.
For then you are one of the real aristocrats of virtue. Then you are truly of a kin to God, who is forever silent, forever cavilled at, yet forever healing and helping by His very existence.
END.