Text of the meditation
When divine good is practised, life is bliss. To have transcendent virtue is to enjoy transcendent felicity. The beatific blessedness that Jesus holds out is promised to those who have the beatific virtues: to the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and so on.
The higher virtue does not merely and only lead to happiness; it is happiness. It is impossible for a person of transcendent virtue to be unhappy. The cause of unhappiness must be sought and found in the self-loving elements, and not in the self-sacrificing qualities.
A person may have virtue and be unhappy, but not if they have divine virtue. Human virtue is mingled with self, and therefore with sorrow; but from divine virtue every taint of self has been purged away, and with it every vestige of misery. Truth lies upward and beyond.
James Allen (1864–1912), Book of Meditations for Every Day in the Year (1913) – public-domain text, gently modernised.
The original 1913 text is in the public domain.
