Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

the body? Just in that degree that we have a constant and ruling consciousness of our divine birthright. A minor order of events, such as personal misfortune and disease, also gain their sombre aspect from our homage to matter. With a ruling spiritual consciousness, disease would finally disappear, for inner health and harmony would have exact correspondence in outward expression. "A good tree cannot bring forth corrupt fruit."

It is only to our color-blind and inverted vision that there appears to be two great opposing principles at warfare in the Universe. With the telescope of spirit, which reveals all that is real, we may sweep the illimitable Cosmos, and find harmony without discord, One Principle, One Good.

[ocr errors]

Is not, then, the material or the physical life of value? Yes, it is sacred as an expression of what is within it. Only when mistaken for the Reality, and thereby idolized, does it become discordant and tyrannical. Viewed as external manifestation, it grows beautiful, and also becomes harmonious with the environment of its own plane.

We are utterly unable to discern the true God objectively, until the subjective torch in our own souls has been lighted. Darkness within, directly reflects outer darkness. The beloved disciple says: "God is light, and in him is no darkness." Darkness in the spiritual as in the physical world is negation. Its delusive appearance of reality comes from idolizing unreality. To clarify our vision we must centre our pure desire and aspiration upon the Supreme Good, and hold it there until the surrounding negation fades out of view. When the sun rises, the moon and stars disappear. When God is beheld in his Allness, opposites vanish into their native oblivion. Then selfhood is put under foot, and we are filled with the "mind of Christ.'

[ocr errors]

"Having promise of the life that now is." God is our life, though we feel vitality as if it were our own. All life is God manifested. When selfhood is our life-centre, our orbit is eccentric and confused. God is the Living One, comprising both centre and circumference. Spirit is eternal, and death non-existent except to the eye of sense. Death is the

casting-off of a crude form of expression for one which is more perfect, and therefore it is not death, but fuller life. A sense of matter is decay. An homage of the unreal is idolatry. Such senses of false life must die, but souls live, because they are images of God. Spirit is indestructible.

The cry of the human soul after God, and its restlessness until it finds Him, is because of its intrinsic oneness with Him. God is the counterpart and complement of humanity. Man is like a discordant musical instrument until he comes into recognized unison with his Maker.

There is an aspect of God which presents him as a Trinity. The threefold nature, as seen by man, furnishes a fulcrum as an aid to the finite in comprehending the Infinite. It is impossible for sensuous man to interpret Spirit (God) except through divine manifestation. In Christ, God filled the human mould perfectly, and that demonstration was an expression of divinity to mankind on the human plane. The Holy Spirit, as God, becomes a Guest of the human spirit, and thus a great seeming chasm between them is filled. God is

one God, but to human view there is a threefold Deific demonstration. It is not God, composed of three distinct persons, but a triple manifestation of God to human consciousness, that constitutes the Trinity. To know God aright is "life eternal." To our rudimentary spiritual vision the Incomprehensible One is resolved. Our eyes would be blinded by the full effulgence of the white light of One Spirit and Life, and so it comes to us softened, divided, and expressed.

And yet, Beloved, God is not complex, and to know him, a child-like transparency is requisite, while the mightiest intellect may cry: "Oh, that I might find him!" A view from the top of the loftiest tower which can be built upon the intellectual plane, will not bring Him within the field of vision; but at the centre of every soul there is a "Mount of Transfiguration," from the summit of which we may get veritable glimpses of the Beautiful Reality. In the clear azure spanning that "Mount" we read a Name in letters of light, and that Name is LOVE.

II.

REVELATION THROUGH NATURE.

"Earth's crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes."

THE Kingdom of Nature intermingles with the Kingdom of Spirit. Each is the complement of the other, and no arbitrary boundary exists between them. Truth is a rounded unit. Any distortion or suppression of it, however narrowly localized, involves general loss. The scientist, while studying forms and laws, may be color-blind to the presence of an infinite spiritual dominion. If he dissociates Nature from her vital relations, his accomplishment can be but partial. So far as he fails to recognize her as a Theophany, he misses her true significance. Likewise the theologian, who has eyes only for the supernatural, fails to find the vital supports and relations of his own

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »