A FRAGRANT LIFE by Ralph Waldo Trine

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 25, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 33.

A FRAGRANT LIFE.

By Ralph Waldo Trine

WE are told by the mariners who sail on the Indian Seas, that many times they can tell their approach to certain islands long before they can see them, by the sweet fragrance of the sandalwood that is wafted far out upon the deep. Do you not see how it would serve to have such a soul playing through such a body that as you go here and there a subtle, silent force goes out from you that all feel and are influenced by; so that you carry with you an inspiration, and continually shed a benediction wherever you go; so that your friends and all people will say, His coming brings peace and joy into our homes; welcome his coming; so that as you pass along the street, tired, and weary, and even sin-sick men and women will feel a certain divine touch that will awaken new desires and a new life in them; that will make the very horse as you pass him turn his head with a strange, half-human, longing look? Such are the subtle powers of the human soul when it makes itself translucent to the divine. —Ralph Waldo Trine.