3it)le Mystery
and
Bible Meanings

T, Troward

I 1 1
: iii

CARL \^M VeCHTEN

THE EDINBURGH LECTURE SERIES
BIBLE MYSTERY and
BIBLE MEANING BY
T. TROWARD Author of
"The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science," "The
Dore Lectures," " Creative Process in
the Individual," Etc,

ifiDfft tt ^mor ]0mta0 tt Hobur

NEW YORK
ROBERT McBRIDE & CO.
1919

Copyright, 1913, By T. Troward
Second Printing, December, 1916
Ttiird Priating, February, 1919

CONTENTS

Page
I. — The Creation ----- i
IL— The Fall  25
III. — Israel - _ . - _ - 42
IV. — The Mission of Moses - - 73
V. — The Mission of Jesus - - - 99
VI. — The Building of the Temple - - 119
VII. — The Sacred Name - - 149
VIIL— The Devil - - - 187
IX. — The Law of Liberty - - 203
X. — The Teaching of Jesus - - 221
XI, — The Forgiveness of Sin - - - 255
XII. — Forgiveness, Its Relation to Healing
AND TO THE StATE OF THE DEPARTED
IN THE Other World - - 269
Xlll. — The Divine Giving - - - - 285
XIV. — The Spirit of Antichrist - - 301

PUBLISHER'S NOTE
For several years we have watched carefully the
literary trend of the metaphysical movement and with
out disparaging the excellent work of many other
writers, we have no hesitation in saying that the books
written by Judge Troward are unique in circulating
themselves. The explanation for this is simple.
There is such a wealth of philosophic thought in each
chapter that the reader of one book is not satisfied
until all of the series have been read.
The author of these books is a profound psychol
ogist. He is a master of English. Through years of
scholarly research he has penetrated into the depths
of divine truth. Therefore his works are deservedly
recognized as classics in the metaphysical field. He
combines delicacy of feeling and expression, forceful
logic and scholarly simplicity. Moreover, he imparts
the fundamental principles governing the "finer forces^'
in such a manner as to inspire certainty in regard to
the correctness of the methods advocated, for meet
ing "life problem^' on the objective plane.
It is significant to note that societies, study clubs
and classes are now taking up the study of
ix

X Publisher's Note
TROWARD just as they have for so long studied
Browning and Emerson. We would be grateful for
information regarding the work of such organiza
tions in any locality.
We invite those who are interested, to send us their
names, in order that we may advise them of other
forth-coming books and to the end that we may co
operate in any constructive work, of common interest,
that may present itself.

FOREWORD
THE favorable reception accorded to my Edin
burgh Lectures on Mental Science has en
couraged me to offer another book to my
readers. The present volume is written from the
standpoint that we possess latent powers which a bet
ter knowledge of the truth regarding ourselves will
enable us to develop, and that the purpose of the
Bible is to lead us into this knowledge in a perfectly
natural manner, while guarding us against the dangers
arising from misuse of it. That we should ever ar
rive at a point when we shall be no longer confronted
by the element of mystery which is inherent in the
livingness of Life is impossible; but this mystery is
the Mystery of Light and not of darkness, and will
continually unfold itself into more light in response
to our earnest inquiry into its meaning; and I have
therefore given this book a title indicative of the ever-
presence of an august Mystery together with intel
ligible Law.
Although my presentment of the Bible is in many
respects very different from the generally accepted
one, it will be found in no way really at variance
with the doctrines of Christianity; on the contrary,
xi

xii Forward
1 hope that by helping, in however small a measure,
to elucidate them, it will show the reasonableness of
great truths which those who reject them as unreason
able discredit to their own incalculable loss.
This book was originally the outcome of a number
of lectures given by me in London, Edinburgh, Glas
gow, Birmingham and elsewhere, but the great inter
est shown in it by a continually increasing circle of
readers has led me to extend the present volume by
four additional chapters touching on certain topics
holding a pre-eminent place in Bible study. There is
one other subject to which I have only been able to
advert casually in the concluding pages, but which is
of peculiar importance at the present day, that of
chronological prophecy. The march of events and the
•apid developments in various fields of knowledge show
such a marked correspondence with the prophetic
measures of time given in the Bible that the serious
student cannot but feel convinced that we are very
rapidly approaching that climax which the Bible speaks
of as the End of the Age. I would most earnestly ask
my readers to give this subject their attention, for
the time is at hand. Its wide extent makes it impos.-
sible for me to treat of it in this book, but if such
be^he Lord's will, I may make it the subject of an
other volume,
T, Troward,
Ruan Minor, August, 1913,

Bible Mystery and Bible
Meaning I,
THE CREATION
THE BIBLE is the Book of the Emancipation
of Man. Tne emancipation of man means his
deliverance from sorrow and sickness, from
poverty, struggle, and uncertainty, from ignorance
and limitation, and finally from death itself. This
may appear to be what the euphuistic colloquialism
of the day would call "a tall order," but nevertheless
it is impossible to read the Bible with a mind unwarped
by antecedent conceptions derived from traditional
interpretation without seeing that this is exactly what
it promises, and that it professes to contain the secret
whereby this happy condition of perfect liberty may
be attained, Jesus says that if a man keeps his
saying he shall never see death (John viii, 51): in
the Book of Job we are told that if a man has with
him "a messenger, an interpreter," he shall be deliv
ered from going down to the pit, and shall return to

2 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
the days of his youth (Job xxxiii, 24) : the Psalms
speak of our renewing our youth (Psalm ciii, S) : and
yet again we are told in Job that by acquainting our
selves with God we shall be at peace, we shall lay
up gold as dust and have plenty of silver, we shall
decree a thing and it shall be established unto us
(Job xxii, 21-23),
Now, what I propose is that we shall re-read the
Bible on the supposition that Jesus and these other
speakers really meant what they said. Of course,
from the standpoint of the traditional interpretation
this is a startling proposition. The traditional
explanation assumes that it is impossible for these
things to be literally true, and therefore it seeks
some other meaning in the words, and so gives them
a "spiritual" interpretation. But in the same manner
we may spiritualize away an Act of Parliament, and
it hardly seems the best way of getting at the meaning
of a book to follow the example of the preacher who
commenced his discourse with the words, "Beloved
brethren, the text doth not mean what it saith," Let
us, however, start with the supposition that these texts
do mean what they say, and try to interpret the Bible
on these lines: it will at least have the attraction of
novelty, and I think if the reader gives his careful
attention to the following pages, he will see that this
method carries with it the conviction of reason.

The Creation 3
If a thing is true at all there is a way in which it is
true, and when the way is seen, we find that to be per
fectly reasonable which, before we understood the way,
appeared unreasonable: we all go by railroad now,
yet they were esteemed level-headed practical men in
their day who proposed to confine George Stephenson
as a lunatic for saying that it was possible to travel
at thirty miles an hour.
The first thing to notice is that there is a common
element running through the texts I have quoted;
they all contain the idea of acquiring certain infor
mation, and the promised results are all contingent
on our getting this information, and using it. Jesus
says it depends on our keeping his saying, that is,
receiving the information which he had to give and
acting upon it. Job says that it depends on rightly
interpreting a certain message, and again that it
depends on our making ourselves acquainted with
something; and the context of the passage in the
Psalms makes it clear that the deliverance from
death and the renewal of youth there promised are
to be attained through the "ways" which the Lord
"made known unto Moses." In all these passages
we find that these wonderful results come from the
attainment of certain knowledge, and the Bible there
fore appeals to our Reason. From this point of view
we may speak of the Science of the Bible, and as we

4 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
advance in our study we shall find that this is not a
misuse of terms, for the Bible is eminently scientific,
only its science is not primarily physical but mental.
The Bible contemplates Man as composed of "Spirit,
soul, and body" (I. Thess. v, 23), or in other words
as combining into a single unity a threefold nature,
spiritual, psychic, and corporeal; and the knowledge
which it proposes to give us is the knowledge of the
true relation between these three factors. The Bible
also contemplates the totality of all Being, manifested
and unmanifested, as likewise constituting a threefold
unity, which may be distributed under the terms
"God," "Man," and "the Universe"; and it occupies
itself with telling us of the interaction, both positive
and negative, which goes on between these three.
Furthermore, it bases this interaction upon two great
psychological laws, namely, that of the creative power
of Thought and that of the amenability of Thought
to control by Suggestion; and it afiirms that this
Creative Power is as innately inherent in Man's
Thought as in the Divine Thought,
But it also shows how through ignorance of these
truths we unknowingly misuse our creative power,
and so produce the evils we deplore; and it also
realizes the extreme danger of recognizing our power
before we have attained the moral qualities which will
fit us to use it in accordance with those principles

The Creation 5
which keep the great totality of things in an abiding
harmony, and to avoid this danger the Bible veils its
ultimate meaning under symbols, allegories, and par
ables. But these are so framed as to reveal this ultimate
meaning to those who will take the trouble to compare
the various statements with one another, and who are
sufficiently intelligent to draw the deductions which
follow from thus putting two and two together ; while
those who cannot thus read between the lines are
trained into the requisite obedience to the Universal
Law by means of suggestions suited to the present
extent of their capacity, and are thus gradually pre
pared for the fuller recognition of the Truth as they
advance. Seen in this light, the Bible is found not to be a
mere collection of old-world fables or unintelligible
dogmas, but a statement of great universal laws, all
of which proceed simply and naturally from the
initial truth that Creation is a process of Evolution,
Grant the evolutionary theory, which every advance
in modern science renders clearer, and all the rest
follows, for the entire Bible is based upon the prin
ciple of Evolution. But the Bible is a statement of
universal Law, of that which obtains in the realm of
the invisible as well as that which obtains in the
realm of the visible, and therefore it deals with facts
of a transcendental nature as well as with those of

6 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
the physical plane, and acordingly it contemplates an
earlier process anterior to Evolution, the process,
namely, of Involution, the passing of Spirit into Form
as antecedent to the passing of Form into Conscious
ness. If we bear this in mind, it will throw light on
many passages which must remain wrapped in impen
etrable obscurity until we know something of the
psychic principles to which they refer. The fact that
the Bible always contemplates Evolution as necessarily
preceded by Involution should never be lost sight of,
and therefore much of the Bible requires to be read
as referring to the involutionary process taking place
upon the psychic plane. But Involution and Evolu
tion are not opposed to one another, they are only the
earlier and later stages of the same process, the
perpetual urging onward of Spirit for Self-expression
in infinite varieties of Form ; and therefore the grand
foundation on which the whole Bible system is built
up is that the Spirit which is thus continually passing
into manifestation is always the same Spirit, in other
words it is only ONE.
These two fundamental truths, that under whatever
varieties of Form the Spirit is only ONE, and that
the creation of all forms, and consequently of the
whole world of conscious relations is the result of
Spirit's ONE mode of action, which is Thought, are
the basis of all that the Bible has to teach us, and

The Creation 7
therefore from its first page to its last, we shall find
these two ideas continually recurring in a variety of
different connections, the ONE-ness of the Divine
Spirit and the Creative Power of Man's Thought,
which the Bible expresses in its two grand statements,
that "God is ONE," and that Man is made "in the
image and likeness of God." These are the two
fundamental statements of the Bible, and all its other
statements flow logically from' them and since the
whole argument of Scripture is built up from these
premises, the reader must not be surprised at the
frequency with which our analysis of that argument
will bring us back to these two initial propositions;
so far from being a vain repetition, this continual
reduction of the statements of the Bible to the prem
ises with which it originally sets out, is the strongest
proof that we have in them a sure and solid founda
tion on which to base our present life and our future
expectations. But there is yet another point of view from which
the Bible appears to be the very opposite of a logically
accurate system built up on the broad foundations of
Natural Law. From this point of view it at first
looks like the egotistical and arrogant tradition of a
petty tribe, the narrow book of a narrow sect, instead
of a statement of universal Truth ; and yet this aspect
of it is so prominent that it can by no means be

8 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
ignored. It is impossible to read the Bible and shut
our eyes to the fact that it tells us of God making
a covenant with Abraham, and thenceforward separ
ating his descendants by a divine interposition from
the remainder of mankind, for this separation of a
certain portion of the race as special objects of the
Divine favour, forms an integral part of Scripture
from the story of Cain and Abel to the description of
"the camp of the saints and the beloved city" in the
Book of Revelation. We cannot separate these two
aspects of the Bible, for they are so interwoven with
one another that if we attempt to do so, we shall end
by having no Bible left, and we are therefore compelled
to accept the Bible statement as a whole or reject
it altogether, so that we are met by the paradox of a
combination between an all-inclusive system of
Natural Law and an exclusive selection which at
first appears to flatly contradict the processes of
Nature. Is it possible to reconcile the two?
The answer is that it is not only possible, but that
this exclusive selection is the necessary consequence
of the Universal Law of Evolution when working in
the higher phases of individualism. It is not that
those who do not come within the pale of this Selec
tion suffer any diminution, but that those who do
come within it receive thereby a special augmentation,
and, as we shall see by and by, this takes place by

The Creation 9
a purely natural process resulting from the more intel
ligent employment of that knowledge which it is the
purpose of the Bible to unfold to us. These two
principles of the inclusive and the exclusive are inter
twined in a double thread which runs all through
Scripture, and this dual nature of its statements must
always be borne in mind if we would apprehend its
meaning. Asking the reader, therefore, to carefully
go over these preliminary remarks as affording the
clue to the reason of the Bible statements, I shall now
tum to the first chapter of Genesis,
The opening announcement that "In the beginning
God created the heaven and the earth" contains the
statement of the first of those two propositions which
are the fundamental premises from which the whole
Bible is evolved. From the Master's instruction to
the woman of Samaria we know that "God" means
"Spirit"; not "a Spirit," as in the Authorised Ver
sion, thus narrowing the Divine Being with the limi
tations of individuality, but as it stands in the original
Greek, simply "Spirit" — that is, all Spirit, or Spirit
in the Universal. Thus the opening words of the
Bible may be read, "in the beginning Spirit" — which
is a statement of the underlying Universal Unity.
Here let me draw attention to the two-fold meaning
of the words "in the beginning." They ma_\' mean

lo Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
first in order of time, or first in order of causation,
and the latter meaning is brought out by the Latin
version, which commences with the words "in prin
cipio" — that is, "in principle." This distinction should
be borne in mind, for in all subsequent stages of
evolution the initial principle which gives rise to the
individualised entity must still be in operation as the
fans et origo of that particular manifestation just as
much as in its first concentration ; it is the root of the
individuality, without which the individuality would
cease to exist. It is the "beginning" of the individu
ality in order of causation, and this "beginning" is,
therefore, a continuous fact, always present, and not
to be conceived of as something which has been
left behind and done with. The same principle was,
of course, the "beginning" of the entity in point of
time also, however far back in the ages we may
suppose it to have first evx>lved into separate existence,
so that whether we apply the idea to the cosmos or
to the individual, the words "in the beginning" both
carry us back to the primordial out-push from non-
manifestation into manifestation, and also rivet our
attention upon the same power as still at work as the
causal principle both in ourselves and in everything
else around us. In both these senses, then, the open
ing words of the Bible tell us that the "beginning"
of everything is "God," or Spirit in the universal.

The Creation ii
The next statement, that God created the heaven
and the earth, brings us to the consideration of the
Bible way of using words. The fact that the Bible
deals with spiritual and psychic matters, makes it
of necessity an esoteric book, and therefore, in
common with all other esoteric literature, it makes
a sjnnboUc use of words for the purpose of succienctly
expressing ideas which would otherwise require
elaborate explanation, and also for the purpose of
concealing its meaning from those who are not yet
safely to be entrusted with it. But this need not
discourage the earnest student, for by comparing one
part of the Bible with another he will find that the
Bible itself affords the clue to the translation of its
own symbolical vocabulary. Here, as in so many
other instances, the Master has given us the key to
the right interpretation. He says that the Kingdom
of Heaven is within us ; in other words, that "Heaven"
is the kingdom of the innermost and spiritual, and if
so, then by necessary implication "Earth" must be
the symbol of the opposite extreme, and must meta
phorically mean the outermost and material. We are
starting the history of the evolution of the world in
which we live, that is to say, this Power which the
Bible calls "God" is first presented to us in the
opening words of Genesis at a stage immediately
preceding the commencement of a stupendous work.

12 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
Now what are the conditions necessary for the doing
of any work? Obviously there must be something
that works and something that is worked upon; an
active and a passive factor ; an energy and a materi?il
on or in which that energy operates. This, then, is
what is meant by the creation of Heaven and Earth ; it
is that operation of the eternally subsisting ONE upon
Itself which produces its dual expression, as Energy
and Substance. And here remark carefully that this
does not mean a separation, for Energy can only be
exhibited by reason of something which is energized,
or, in other words, for Life to manifest at all there
must be something that lives. This is an all-important
truth, for our conception of ourselves as beings
separate from the Divine Life is the root of all our
troubles. In its first verse, therefore, the Bible starts us with
the conception of Energy or Life inherent in substance,
and shows us that the two constitute a dual-unity
which is the first manifestation of the Infinite
Unmanifested ONE ; and if the reader will think these
things out for himself, he will see that these are
primary intuitions the contrary of which it is impos
sible to conceive. He may, if he please, introduce a
Demiurge as part of the machinery for the production
of the world, but then he has to account for his
Demiurge, which brings him back to the Undistributed

The Creation 13
ONE of which I speak, and its first manifestation as
Energy-inherent-in-Substance ; and if he is driven
back to this position, then it becomes clear that his
Demiurge is a totally unnecessary wheel in the train
of evolutionary machinery, and the gratuitous intro
duction of a factor which does no work but what
could equally be done without it, is contrary to any
thing we can observe in Nature or can conceive of a
Self-evolving Power.
But we are particularly cautioned against the
mistake of supposing that Substance is the same
thing as Form, for we are told that the "earth was
without form." This is important because it is just
here that a very prolific source of error in meta
physical studies creeps in. We see Forms which,
simply as masses, are devoid of an organized life
corresponding to the particular form, and therefore
we deny the inherency of Energy or Life in ultimate
substance itself. As well deny the pungency of
pepper because it is not in the particular pepper-pot
we are accustomed to. No, that primordial state of
Substance with which the opening verse of the Bible
is concerned, is something very far removed from
any conception we can have of Matter as formed
into atoms or electrons. Wc are here only at the
first stage of Invcfatjon, a^ the presence of material

14 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
atoms is a stage, and by no means the earliest, in
the process of Evolution.
We are next told that the Spirit of God moved
upon the face of the waters. Here we have two
factors, "Spirit" and "Water," and the initial move
ment is attributed to Spirit. This verse introduces
us to that particular mode of manifestation of the
Universal Substance which we may denominate the
Psychic, This psychic mode of the Universal Sub
stance may best be described as Cosmic Soul-Essence,
not, indeed, universal in the strictest sense otherwise
than as always included in the original Primorial
Essence, but universal to the particular world-system
under formation, and as yet undifferentiated into any
individual form's. This is what the mediaeval writers
spoke of as "the Soul of the Universe," or Anima
Mundi, as distinguished from the Divine Spirit or
Animus Dei, and it is the universal psychic medium
in which the nuclei of the forms hereafter to become
consolidated on the plane of the concrete and material,
take their inception in obedience to the movement of
the Spirit, or Thought. This is the realm of Potential
Forms, and is the connecting link between Spirit, or
pure Thought, and Matter, or concrete Form, and as
such plays a most important part in the constitution
of the Cosmos and of Man. In our reading of the
Bible as well as in our pi'actical application of Mental

The Creation 15
Science, the existence of this intermediary between
Spirit and Matter must never be lost sight of. We
may call it the Distributive Medium in passing through
which the hitherto undistributed Energy of Spirit
receives differentiation of direction, and so ultimately
produces differentiation of forms and relations on
the outermost or visible plane. This is the Cosmic
Element which is esoterically called "Water," and
so long ago as the reign of Henry VIII, Dean Collet
explains it thus in a letter to his friend Randulph.
Dean Collet was very far from being a visionary.
He was one of the precursors of the Reformation in
England, and among the first to establish the study of
Greek at Oxford, and as the founder of St. Paul's
School in London, he took a leading part in intro
ducing the system of public school education, which
is still in operation in this country. There is no
mistaking Dean Collet for any other than a thoroughly
level-headed and practical man, and his opinion as to
the meaning of the word "Water" in this connection
therefore carries great weight.
But we have the utterance of a yet higher
authority on this subject, for the Master Himself
concentrates His whole instruction to Nicodemus on
the point that the New Birth results from the
interaction of "Spirit" and "Water," especially
emphasizing the fact that "thc flesh" has no share

l6 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
in the operation. This distinction between "the
flesh," or the outermost principle, and "Water" should
be carefully noted. The emphasis laid by the Master
on the nothingness of "the flesh," and the essential-
ness of "Water," must mark a distinction of the most
important kind, and we shall find it very helpful in
unravelling the meaning of many passages of the Bible
to grasp this distinction at the outset. The action
of "Spirit" upon "Water" is that of an active upon
a passive principle, and the result of any sort of
Work is to reconstruct the material worked upon
into a form which it did not possess before. Now the
new form to be produced, whatever it may be, is a
result, and therefore is not to be enumerated among
the causes of its own production. Hence it is a
self-obvious truism that any act of creative power
must take place at a more interior level than that of
the form to be created, and accordingly, whether in
the Old or the New Testament, the creative action
is always contemplated as taking place between the
Spirit and the Water, whether we are thinking of
producing a new world or a new man. We must
always go back to First Cause operating on Primary
Substance. We are told that the first product of the movement
of Spirit upon Water was Light, thereby suggesting
an analogy with the discoveries of modem science

The Creation 17
that light and heat are modes of motion; but the
statement that the Sun was not created till the fourth
day guards us against the mistake of supposing that
what is here meant is the light visible to the physical
eye. Rather it is that all-pervading Inner Light, of
which I shall have more to say by and by, and which
pnly becomes visible as the corresponding sense of
inward vision begins to be developed ; it is that psychic
condition of the Universal Substance in which the
auras of the potentials of all forms may be discov
ered, and where, consciously or unconsciously, the
Spirit determines the forms of those things which are
to be. Like all other knowledge, the knowledge of
the Inner Light is capable of application at higher and
at lower levels, and the premature recognition of its
power at the lower levels, uncontrolled by the recog
nition of its higher phases, is one of the most danger
ous acquisitions; but duly regulated by the higher
knowledge, the lower is both safe and legitimate, for
in its due order it also is part of the Universal Har
mony. The initial Light having thus been produced, the
introduction of the firmament on the second day
indicates the separation of the spiritual principles of
the different members of the world-system from one
another, and the third day sees the emanation of
Earth from "the Water," or the production of the

i8 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
actual corporeal system of Nature — the commence
ment of the process of Evolution. Up to this point
the action has been entirely upon the inner plane of
"Water," that is to say, a process of Involution, and
consistently with this it was impossible for the
heavenly bodies to begin giving physical light until
the fourth day, for until then no physical sun or
planets could have existed. With the fourth day,
however, the physical universe is differentiated into
shape ; and on the fifth day the terrestrial waters begin
to take their share in the evolutionary process, by
spontaneously producing fish and fowl: and here we
may remark in passing how Genesis has forestalled
modern science in the discovery that birds are
anatomically more closely related to fishes than to
land animals. The terrestrial earth (I call it so to
distinguish it from symbolic "earth"), already on
the third day impregnated with the vegetable principle,
takes up the evolutionary work on the sixth day,
producing all those other animal races which had
not already originated in the waters, and thus the
preparation of the world as an abode for Man is
completed. It would be difficult to give a more concise state
ment of Evolution, Oripnating Spirit subsists at
first as simple Unity, then it differentiates itself into
the active and passive principles spoken of as

The Creation 19
"Heaven" and "Earth," or "Spirit" and "Water."
From these proceed Light and the separation into
their respective spheres of the spiritual principles of
the different planets, each carrying with it the poten
tial of the self-reproducing power. Then we pass
into the realm of realization, and the work that has
been done on the interior planes is now reproduced
in physical manifestation, thus marking a still further
unfoldment ; and finally, in the phrases "let the waters
bring forth" and "let the earth bring forth," the land
and water of our habitable globe are distinctly stated
to be the sources from which all vegetable and animal
forms have been evolved. Thus creation is described
as the self-transforming action of the ONE unanalys
able Spirit passing by successive transitions into all
the varieties of manifestations that fill the universe.
And here we may notice a point which has puzzled
commentators unacquainted with the principles on
which the Bible is written ; this is the expression "the
evening and the morning were the first, second, etc.,
day." Why, it is asked, does each day begin with
the evening? and various attempts have been made to
explain it in accordance with Jewish methods of reck
oning time. But as soon as we see what the Bible
statement of creation is, the reason at once becomes
clear. The second verse of the Bible tells us that the
starting-point was Darkness, and the coming forth of

20 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
Light out of Darkness cannot be stated in any other
order than the dawning of morning from night.
It is the dawning into manifestation out of non-
manifestation, and this happens at each successive
stage of the evolutionary process. We should notice,
also, that nothing is said as to the remainder of each
day. All that we hear of each day is as "the morn
ing," thus indicating the grand truth that when once
a Divine day opens it never again descends into the
shades of night. It is always "morning."
The Spiritual Sun is always climbing higher and
higher, but never passes the zenith or commences to
decline, a truth which Swedenborg expresses by saying
that the Spiritual Sun is always seen in the eastern
heavens at an angle of forty-five degrees above the
horizon. What a glorious and inspiring truth: when
once God begins a work, that work will never cease,
but will go on for ever expanding into more and
more radiant forms of strength and beauty, because
it is the expression of the Infinite, which is Itself
Love, Wisdom, and Power. These days of creation
are still in their prime, and for ever will be so, and
the germs of the New Heavois and the New Earth
which the Bible promises are already maturing in
the heavens and earth that now are, waiting only, as
St. Paul tells us, for the manifestation of the Srais
of God to fallow up tiie odd principle of Evolution to

The Creation 21
still further expansion in the glory that shall be
revealed. As himself included in the great Whole, Man is
no exception to the Universal Law of Evolution, It
has often been remarked that the account of his
creation is two-fold, the two statements being con
tained in the first and second chapters of Genesis
respectively. But this is precisely in accordance with
the method adopted regarding the rest of creation.
First we are told of the creation in the realm of the
invisible and psychic, that is to say, the process of
Involution, and afterwards we are told of the creation
on the plane of the concrete and material, that is to
say, the process of Evolution ; and since Involution is
the cause and Evolution the effect, the Bible observes
this order both in the account of the creation of the
world and in that of the creation of Man. In regard
to his physical structure, Man's body, we are told,
is formed from the "earth," that is, by a combination
of the same material elements as all other concrete
forms, and thus in the physical Man, the evolutionary
process attains its culmination in the production of a
material vehicle capable of serving as the starting-
point for a further advance, which has now to be
made on the plane of the Intellectual and Spiritual.
The principle of Evolution is never departed from,
but its further action now includes the intelligent

22 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
co-operation of the evolving Individuality itself as a
necessary factor in the work. The development of
merely animal Man is the spontaneous operation of
Nature, but the development of the mental Man
can only result from his own recognition of the Law
of the self-expression of Spirit as operating in him
self. It is, therefore, for the setting forth of Man's
power tp use this Law that the Bible , was written,
and, accordingly, the great fact on which it seeks to
rivet our attention in its first utterance regarding
Man is that he is made in the image and likeness of
God. A very little reflection will show us that this
likeness cannot be in the outward form, for the
Universal Spirit in which all things subsist cannot
be limited by a shape. It is a Principle permeating
all things as their innermost substance and vivifying
energy, and of it the Bible tells us that "in the
beginning" there was nothing else. Now the one
and only conception we can have of this Universal
Life-Principle is that of Creative Power producing
infinitely varied expressions of itself by Thought, for
we cannot ascribe any other initial mode of movement
to Spirit but that of thought, although as taking place
in the universal, this mode of Thought must neces
sarily be, relatively to the individual and particular, a
sub-conscious activity. The likeness, therefore,
between God and Man must be a mental likeness.

The Creation 23
and since the only fact which, up to this point, the
Bible has told us regarding the Universal Mind is
its Creative Power, the resemblance indicated can
only consist in the reproduction of the same Creative
Power in the Mind of Man. As we progress we shall
find that the whole Bible turns on this one funda
mental fact. The Creative Power is inherent in our
Thought, and we can by no means divest ourselves
of it, but because we are ignorant that we possess
this power, or because we misapprehend the conditions
for its beneficial employment, we need much instruc
tion in the nature of our own as yet unrecognized
possibilities, and it is the purpose of the Bible to
give us this teaching.
A little consideration of the terms of the evolu-
tibnary process will show us that since there is no
other source from which it can proceed, the Individual
Mind, which is the essential entity that we call Man,
can be no other than a concentration of the Universal
Mind into individual consciousness. Man's Mind is,
therefore, a miniature reproduction of the Divine
Mind, just as fire has always the same igneous
qualities whether the centre of combustion be large
or small ; and so it is on this fact that the Bible would
fix our attention from first to last, knowing that if
the interior realm of Causation be maintained in a
harmonious order the external realm of Effects is

24 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
certain to exhibft corresponding health, happiness, and
beauty. And further, if the human mind is the exact
image and likeness of the Divine, then its creative
power must be equally unlunited. Its mode is
different, being directed to the individual and par
ticular, but its quality is the same; and this becomes
evident if we reflect that it is not possible to set any
limit to Thought, and that its only limitations are
such as are set by the limited conceptions of the
individual who thinks. And it is precisely here that
the difficulty comes in. Our Thought must necessarily
be limited by our conceptions. We cannot think of
something which we cannot conceive, and, therefore,
the more limited our conceptions the more limited
will be our thought, and its creations will accordingly
be limited in a corresponding degree. It is for this
reason that the ultimate purpose of all true instruc
tion is to lead us into that Divine Light where we
shall see things beyond the range of any past experi
ences — things which have not entered into the heart
of man to conceive, revealings of the Divine Spirit
opening to us untold worlds of splendour, delight,
and unending achievement; but in our earlier stages
of development, where we are still surrounded by the
mists of ignorance, this correspondence between the
range of Thought's creations and the range of our
conceptions brings about the catastrophe of "the
FaU" ^hu^ ioxms the subject of our next chapter.

n.
THE FALL
IN the last chapter we reached the conclusion that
in the nature of things Thought must always be
limited by the range of the intelligence which
gives rise to it. The power of Thought as the crea
tive agent is perfectly unlimited in itself, but its ac
tion is limited by the particular conception which it is
sent forth to embody. If it is a wide conception based
upon an enlarged perception of truth, the thought
which dwells upon it will produce corresponding con
ditions. This is self-evident: it is simply the state
ment that an instrument will not do work to which
the hand of the workman does not apply it; and if
the student will only fix this very simple idea in his
mind, he will find in it the key to the whole mystery
of man's power of self-evolution. Let us make our
first use of this key to unlock the mystery of the story
of Eden.
It is hardly necessary to say that the story of Eden
is an allegory: that is clearly shown by the nature
of the two trees that grew in the centre of the gar
den, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil
25

26 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
and the Tree of Life. This allegory is one repeated
in many lands and ages, as in the classical fable of
the Garden of the Hesperides and in the mediaeval Ro
mance of the Rose — always the idea is repeated of
a garden in whose centre grows some life-giving fruit
or flower which is the reward of him who discovers
the secret by which the centre of the garden may be
reached. The meaning in all these stories is the same. The
garden is the Garden of the Soul, and the Tree of
Life is that innermost perception of Spirit of which
the Master said that it would be a well of water
springing up to everlasting life to all who realized it.
It is the garden which elsewhere in Scripture is called
"the garden of the Lord," and in accordance with
the nature of the garden the plants which grow in it,
and which man has to tend and cultivate, are thoughts
and ideas ; and the chief of them are his idea of Life
and his idea of Knowledge, and these occupy the
centre of the garden because all our other ideas must
take their colour from them.
We must recollect that human life is a drama whose
action takes place in three worlds, and therefore, in
reading the Bible, we must always make sure which
world we are at any moment reading about, the
spiritual, the intellectual, or the physical. In the
spiritual world, which is that of the supreme ideal.

The Fall 27
there exists nothing but the potential of the absolutely
perfect: and it is on this account that in the open
ing chapter of the Bible we read that God saw that
all his work was good, the Divine eye could find no
flaw anywhere ; and we should note carefully that this
absolutely good creation included Man also. But
as soon as we descend to the Intellectual world,
which is the world of man's conception of things, it
is quite different; and until man comes to realize the
truly spiritual, and therefore perfectly good, essential
nature of all things, there is room for any amount
of wjj-conception, resulting in a corresponding mis
direction of man's creative instrument of Thought,
which thus produces correspondingly misformed
realties. Now the perfect life of Adam and Eve in Eden
is the picture of Man as he exists in the spiritual
world. It is not the tradition of some bygone age,
but a symbolical representation of what we all are in
our innermost being, thus recalling the words of the
Master recorded in the Gospel of the Egyptians. He
was asked when the Kingdom of Heaven should come,
and replied, "When that which is without shall be as
that which is within;" in other words, when the per
fection of the innermost spiritual essence shall be re
produced in the external part. In the story of Man's
pristine life of innocence and joy in Paradise, we are

28 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
reading on the level of the highest of the three worlds.
The story of "the Fall" brings us to the envelop
ment of this spiritual nature in the lower intellectual
and material natures, through which alone it can
obtain perfect individuaUzation and Man become a
reality instead of remaining only a Divine dream. In
the allegory Man is warned by God that Death will
be the consequence of eating the fruit of the tree of
the Knowledge of Good and Evil, This is not the
threat of a sentence to be passed by God, but a warn
ing as to the nature of the fruit itself ; but this warn
ing is disregarded by Eve, and she shares the forbid
den fruit with Adam, and they are both expelled from
Eden and become subject to Death as the consequeftce.
Now, if Eden is the garden of the Soul, it is clear
that Adam and Eve cannot be separate personages, but
must be two principles in the human individuality
which are so closely united, as to be represented by
a wedded pair. What, then, are these principles ? St.
Paul makes a very remarkable statement regarding
Adam and Eve. He tells us that "Adam was not de
ceived, but the woman being deceived was in the trans
gression" (I Tim. ii. 14). We have, therefore, Bible
warrant for saying that Adam was not deceived ; but
at the same time the story of the Fall clearly shows
that he was expelled from Eden from partaking of the
fruit at Eve's instigation.

The Fall 29
To satisfy both statements, therefore, we require
to find in Adam and Eve two principles, one of
which is capable of being deceived, and is deceived,
and falls in consequence of the deception; and the
other of which is incapable of being deceived but
yet is involved in the fall of the former. This
is the problem which has to be worked out, and
the names of Adam and Eve supply the solution.
Eve, we are told, was so called because she was the
mother of all living (Gen. iii. 20). Eve, then, is the
Mother of Life, a subject to which I shall have to
refer again by and by. Eve, both syllables being pro
nounced, is the same word which in some Oriental
languages is written "Hawa," by which name she is
called in the Koran, and signifies Breath, the principle
which we are told in Genesis ii. 7, constitutes Man a
living Soul. Adam is rendered in the margin of the
Bible "earth," or "red earth," and according to another
derivation the name may also be rendered as Not-
breath; and thus in these two names we have the
description of two principles, one of which is "Breath"
and Life-conveying, while the other is "Not-breath"
and is nothing but earth.
It requires no great skill to recognize in these the
Soul and the Body. Then St, Paul's meaning becomes
clear. Any work on physiology will tell you that
the human body is made up of certain chemical mate-

30 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
rials, so much chalk, so much carbon, so much water,
etc., etc. Obviously these substances cannot be de
ceived because they have no intelligence, and any
deception that occurs must be accepted by the soul or
intellectual principle, which is Eve, the mother of the
individual life.
New-Thought readers will have no difficulty in fol
lowing the meaning of the poet Spencer when he
says — "For of the soul the body form doth take,
For soul is form and doth the body make;"
and since the soul is "the builder of the body," the
deception which causes wrong thinking on the part of
the intellectual man reproduces itself in physical im
perfection and in adverse external circumstances.
What, then, is the deception which causes the
"Fall?" This is figured by the Serpent. The serpent,
is a very favourite emblem in all ancient esoteric lit
erature and symbolism, and is sometimes used in a
positive and sometimes in a negative sense. In either
case it means life — not the Originating Life-Principle
but the ultimate outcome of that Life-Principle in its
most external form of manifestation. This, of course,
is not bad in itself. Recognized in full realization of
the fact that it comes from God, it is the completion of
the Divine work by outward manifestation ; and in this
sense it becomes the serpent which Moses lifted up in
the wilderness.

The Fall 31
But without the recognition of it as the ultimate
mode of the Divine Spirit (which is all that is), it
becomes the deadly reptile, not lifted up, but crawling
flat upon the ground : it is that ignorant conception of
things which cannot see the spiritual element in them,
and therefore attributes all their energy of action and
re-action to themselves, not perceiving that they are
the creations of a higher power.
Ignorant of the Divine Law of Creation, we do not
look beyond secondary causes; and therefore because
our own creative thought-power is ever externalizing
conditions representative of our conceptions, we neces
sarily become more and more involved in the meshes
of a net-work of circumstances from which we can
find no way of escape. How these circumstances come
about we cannot tell. We may call it blind chance, or
iron destiny, or inscrutable Providence; but because
we are ignorant of the true Law of Primary Causa
tion, we never suspect the real fact, which is that the
originating power of all this inharmony is ourself ,
This is the great deception. We believe the serpent,
or that conception of life which sees nothing beyond
secondary causation, and consequently we accept the
Knowledge of Evil as being equally necessary with the
Knowledge of Good, and so we eat of the tree of the
Knowledge of Good and of Evil. It is this dual aspect
of knowledge that is deadly, but knowledge itself is

32 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
nowhere condemned in Scripture; on the contrary, it
is repeatedly stated to be the foundation of all prog
ress. "Wisdom is a Tree of Life to them that lay
hold upon her," says the Book of Proverbs; "Salva
tion is of the Jews because we know what we wor
ship," says Jesus, and so on throughout the Bible,
But what is deadly to the soul of Man is the concep
tion that Evil is a subject of Knowledge as well as
Good; for this reason, that by thinking of Evil as a
subject to be studied, we thereby attribute to it a sub
stantive existence of its own, in other words, we look
upon it as something having a self-originating power,
which, as we advance in our studies, we shall find
more and more clearly is not the case ; and so by the
Law of the creative working of Thought, we bring the
Evil into existence: we have not yet penetrated the
great secret of the difference between causes and con
ditions.* But this knowledge of pur thought-action is not
reached in the earlier history of the race or of the
individual, for the simple reason that all evolution
takes place by Growth; and consequently the history
of Adam and Eve in realisation, that is the external
life of humanity as distinguished from our simulta
neous existence on the supreme plane of Spirit, com-

"^See my Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science.

The Fall 33
mences with their expulsion from Eden and their con
flict with a world of sorrows and difficulties.
If the reader realizes how this expulsion results
from the soul accepting Evil as a subject of Knowl
edge, he will now be able to understand certain fur
ther facts. We are told that "the Lord God said,
'Behold the man is become as one of us to know good
and evil' ; and now lest he put forth his hand and take
of the tree of life and eat and live for ever; the Lord
God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden" (Gen.
iii. 22). Looked at superficially, this seems like jeal
ousy that Man should have attained the same knowl
edge as God, and fear lest he should take the further
step that would make him altogether God's equal.
But such a reading of the text is babyish, and indicates
no conception of God as Universal All-originating
Spirit, and we must therefore look for some deeper
interpretation. The First Commandment is the recognition of the
Divine Unity, a fact on which Jesus laid special em
phasis when he was asked which was the chief com
mandment of the Law; and the purpose is to guard
us against the root-error from which all other forms
of error spring. If the mathematical statement of
Truth is that God is ONE, then the mathematical
expression of error is that God is Zero, and as the
latter position has sometimes been taken by teachers

34 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
of reputation, it may be well to show the student
where the fallacy lies. The conclusion that the math
ematical expression for God is Zero is reached in this
way : as soon as you can conceive of anything as being,
you can also conceive of it as not-being, in other
words, the conception of any positive implies also the
conception of its corresponding negative ; consequently
the conception of the positive or of the negative by
itself is only half the conception, and a whole concep
tion implies the recognition of both.
Therefore, since God contains the all. He must con
tain the negative as well as the positive of all poten
tiality, and the equal balance of positive and negative
is Zero, But the radical error of this argument is the
assumption that it is possible for two principles to
neutralize each other, one of which is, and the other
of which is not. We find the principle of neutral
ization by means of equilibriation throughout Nature,
but the equilibriation is always between two 'things
each of which actually exists. Thus in chemistry we
find an acid exactly equilibriating an alkali and pro
ducing a neutral substance which is neither acid nor
alkali ; but this is because the acid and the alkali both
really exist, each of them is something that is; but
what should we say to a chemical formula which
required us to produce a neutral substance by equilib
riating an acid which did exist by an alkali which did

The Fall 35
not? Yet this is precisely the sort of equilibriation
we are asked to accept by those who would make Zero
the mathematical expression of All-originating Being.
They say that a Universal Principle which is is exactly
balanced by a Universal Principle which is not; they
affirm that Nothing is the equivalent of Something.
This is mere juggling with words and figures, and
wilfully shutting our eyes to the fact that the only
quality of Nothing is Nothingness. Can anything be
plainer than the old philosophic dictum, "ex nihilo
nihil fit"? (nothing is made out of nothing). Disin
tegrating forces there are in Nature, but they do not
proceed out of Nothing. They are the ONE positive
power acting at lower levels ; not the absence of the
One Universal Energy, but that same Energy working
with less complex concentration and specific purpose
than when directed by those higher modes of itself
which constitute individual intelligences.
There is no such thing as a Negative Power, in the
sense of power which is not the ONE All-originating
Power. All energy is some mode of manifestation
of the ONE, and it is always making something,
though in doing so it may unmake something else;
and what we loosely speak of as negative forces are
the operation of the cosmical Law of Transition from
one Form to another. Above this there is a higher
Law, to lead us to the realization of which is the whole

36 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
object of the Bible, and that is the Law of Individual
Selection. It does not do away with the Law of
Transition, for without transition there could be no
Evolution, and the glory of Eternal Life is in con
tinuous Evolution; but it substitutes the Individual
Law of conscious Life for the Impersonal Cosmic
Law, and effects transition by living processes of as
similation and readjustment which more perfectly
build up the individuality, instead of by a process of
unbalanced disintegration which would destroy it.
This is the Living Law of Liberty, which at every
stage of its progress makes us, not less, but more and
yet more ourselves.
It is for this reason that the Bible so strongly insists
upon the mathematical statement that God is ONE,
and in fact makes this the basis of all that it has to
say. God is Life, Expression, Reality; and how can
these things comport with Nothingness ? All we can
know of any invisible power is through the effects we
see it produce. Of electricity and chemical attraction
it may be truly said that "no man hath seen them or
can see them;" yet we know them by their working,
and we rightly argue that if they work they exist.
The same argument applies to the Divine Spirit. It
is that which is and not that which is not; and there
fore I ask the student who would realize reality and
not nothingness once for all to convince himself of

The Fail 37
the fallaciousness of the argument that the Divine
Being is Not-being, or that Naught is the same thing
as ONE,
If he starts his search for Reality by assuming what
contradicts mathematics and common-sense, he can
never expect to find Reality, for he has denied its ex
istence at the very outset and carries that initial denial
all the way along with him. But if he realizes that
all relations, whether relatively positive or negative,
must necessarily be relations between factors which
actually exist, and that there can be no relation with
nothing, then, because he has assumed Reality in his
premises he will eventually find it in his conclusions,
and will leam that the Great Reality is the ONE
expressing itself as the MANY, and the MANY
recognizing themselves in the ONE.
The more advanced student will have no difficulty
in recognizing the particular schools of teaching to
which these remarks apply; their mathemathics are
unassailable, but the assumptions on which they make
their selection of terms in the first instance are totally
inapplicable to the subject-matter to which they apply
them, for that subject is Life-in-itself.
Now, the deception into which Eve falls is math
ematically represented by saying that God ^ Zero,
and thus attributing to Evil the same self-existence
as to Good, There is no such thing as Absolute Evil ;

38 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
and what we recognize as Evil is the ONE Good
Power working as Disintegrating Force, because we
have not yet learnt to direct it in such a way that it
shall perform the functions of transition to higher
degrees of Life without any disintegration of our
individuality either in person or circumstances. It is
this disintegrating action that makes the ONE Power
appear evil relatively to ourselves ; and, so long as we
conceive ourselves thus related to it, it does look as
though it were Zero balancing in itself the two oppo
site forces of Life and Death, Good and Evil, and it is
in this sense that "God" is said to know both.
But this is a conception very different to that of the
all-productive ONE, and arises, not from the true
nature of Being, but from our own confused Thought.
But because the action of our Thought is always crea
tive, the mere fact of our regarding Evil as an affirma
tive force in itself makes it so relatively to ourselves;
and therefore no sooner do we fear evil than we begin
to create the evil that we fear. To extinguish evil we
must learn not to fear it, and that means to cease
recognizing it as having any power of its own, and so
our salvation comes from realizing that in truth there
is nothing but the good.
But this knowledge can only be attained through
long experience, which will at last bring Man to the
place where he is able to deduce Truth from a priori

The Fall 39
principles, and to learn that his past experiences of
evil have proceeded from his own inverted concep
tions, and are not founded upon Truth but upon its
opposite. If then it were possible for hun to attain
the knowledge which would enable him to live for
ever before gaining this experience, the result would
be an immortality of misery, and therefore the Law
of Nature renders it impossible for him to reach the
knowledge which would place immortality within his
g;rasp, until he has gained that deep insight into the
true working of causation which is necessary to make
Eternal Life a prize worth having. For these reasons
Man is represented as being expelled from Eden lest
tie should eat of the Tree of Life and live for ever.
Before quitting this subject we must glance briefly
it the sentences pronounced upon the man, the woman,
and the serpent. The serpent in this connection being
the principle of error, which results in Death, can
lever come into any sort of reconciliation with the
Divine Spirit, which is Truth and Life, and, therefore,
:he only possible pronouncement upon the serpent is a
:urse — that is, a sentence of destruction ; and the Bible
joes on to show the stages by which this destruction
!s ultimately worked out. The penalty to Adam, or
:h« corporeal body, is that of having to earn his bread
jy the sweat of his brow — ^that is, by toilsome labor,
vbich would not be necessary if the true law of the

40 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
creative exercise of our Thought were understood.
The woman passes under a painful physiological law,
but at the same time final deliverance and restoration
from the "Fall" is promised through her instrumen
tality: her seed shall crush the serpent's head, that is,
shall utterly destroy that false principle which the
serpent represents.
Since the Woman is the Soul, or Individual Mind,
her progeny must be thoughts and ideas. New ideas
are not brought forth easily, they are the result of
painful experiences and of long mental labor, and thus
the physiological analogy contained in the text exactly
illustrates the birth of new ideas into the world. And
as the evolution of the Soul proceeds toward highei
and higher intelligence, there is a corresponding in
crease in the lifeward tendency of its ideas, and thus
there is enmity between the seed of "the Woman" or
the enlightened conception of the principles of Life,
and the seed of "the Serpent" or the opposite and
unenlightened conception.
This is the same warfare which we find in Revela
tions between "the Woman" and "the Dragon." But
in the end the victory remains with "the Woman" and
her "Seed." During the progress of the struggle the
Serpent miP^ bruise the heel of the Divine Seed —
that is to sp/, must impede and retard the progress of
Truth on the earth; but Truth must conquer at last

The Fall 41
and crush the Serpent's head so that it shall never
rise up again for ever. The "Seed of the Woman,"
the Fruit of the spiritually enlightened Mind, which
must at last achieve the final victory, is that supreme
ideal which is the recognition of Man's Divine Son-
ship. It is the realization of the fact that he is, indeed,
the image and likeness of God. This is the Truth the
knowledge of which Jesus said would set us free, and
each one who attains to this knowledge realizes that
he is at once the Son of Man and the Son of God.
Thus the story of the Fall contains also the state
ment of the principle of the Rising-again. It is the
history of the human race, because it is first the his
tory of the individual soul, and to each one of us the
ancient wisdom says, "de te fabula narratur." These
opening chapters of Genesis are, therefore, an epitome
of all that the Bible afterwards unfolds in fuller detail,
and the whole may be summed up in the following
terms : —
The great Truth concerning Man is that he is the
image and likeness of God.
Man is at first ignorant of this Truth, and this
ignorance is his Fall.
Man at last comes to the perfect knowledge of this
Truth, and this knowledge is his Rising-again, and
these principles will expand until they bring us to the
full Expression of the Life that is in us in all the
glories of the Heavenly Jerasalem.

in.
ISRAEL
THE space at my disposal will allow me only to
touch upon a few of the most conspicuous
points in that portion of the Bible narrative
which takes us from the story of Eden to the Mission
of Moses, for the reader will kindly bear in mind that
I am not writing a commentary on the whole Bible,
but only a brief introduction to its study.
The episode of Cain and Abel will be dealt with in
the next chapter, and I will, therefore, pass on at once
to the Deluge. As most of my readers probably know,
this story is not confined to the Jewish and Christian
Scriptures, but is met with in one form or another
in all the most ancient traditions of the world, and this
universal consensus of mankind leaves no doubt of
the occurrence of some overwhelming cataclysm which
has indelibly stamped itself upon the memory of all
nations. Whether science will ever succeed in working out
the problem of its extent and of the physical condi
tions that gave rise to it, remains to be seen, but it
does not appear unreasonable to associate it with the
42

Israel 43
tradition handed down to us by Plato of the sinking
of the great continent of Atlantis, which is said to
have once occupied the area now covered by the
Atlantic ocean. I am well aware that some geologists
dispute the possibility of any radical changes having
ever taken place in the distribution of the land and
water surfaces of the globe, but there are at least
equally good opinions on the other side, and if there
is any fact in the world's history regarding which
tradition is unanimous, it is the catastrophe of the
Deluge. And here I would draw attention to the fact that
the Bible specially warns us against the opinion that
no such catastrophe ever took place, and points out
this opinion as one of the signs of the time of the
end ; speaking of it as determined ignorance, and tell
ing us that a similar catastrophe, only by fire instead
of water, will at some future period overwhelm the
existing world (II. Peter iii.) ; and I would add that
the possible conditions for such an event may not
unreasonably be inferred from certain facts in the
science of astronomy. It is not my present purpose,
however, to enter into the scientific and historical
aspects of the Deluge tradition, but to point out its
significance in that inner meaning of the Bible which
I wish the student to grasp.
In the story as handed down by all nations, the

44 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
Deluge is attributed to the wickedness of mankind,
and according to some very ancient traditions this
wickedness took largely the form of sorcery, a word
which may perhaps provoke a smile in the uninitiated
reader, but which holds a conspicuous place in the
list of those causes which in the Book of Revelations
are enumerated as leading to exclusion from the
Heavenly City, and it will become sufficiently clear
why it should do so when we learn what it really
means. Coupling this tradition with the symbolical
significance of "water," a deluge would indicate a
total submergence in a psychic environment which
had become too powerful to be held under control.
The psychic world is an integral part of the uni
verse, and the psychic element is an integral part of
man; and it is in this circulus that we find the plastic
material which forms the nucleus for those attrac
tions which eventually consolidate as external facts.
The psychic realm is therefore the realm of tre
mendous potentialities, and the deeper our knowl
edge of its laws the greater we see to be the need
for bringing these potentialities under a higher con
trol. Now the opening verses of Genesis have shown us
that "water" without the movement of the Spirit
is darkness and the abode of chaos. The movement
of the Spirit is the only power that can control the

Israel 45
turbulence of "the waters," and bring them into that
harmonious action which will result in forms of Life,
Beauty, and Peace; and in the world of Man's Mind
this movement of the Spirit upon "the waters" takes
place exactly in proportion as the individual recog
nizes the true nature of the Divine Spirit, and wills
to reflect its image and likeness. Where this recog
nition takes place the psychic forces are brought under
the control of a harmonizing power which, reflecting
itself into them, can only produce that which is Good
and Beautiful, on a small scale at first because of
our infantine knowledge of the powers with which we
are dealing, but continually growing with our growth
until the whole psychic world opens out before us as
a limitless realm filled with the Glory of God and
the Love of Man and the shapes of beauty to which
these give rise.
But if a man forces his way into that realm on no
other basis than his individual strength of will, he
does so without reckoning that his will is itself a
product of the psychic plane, and only one among
untold organized entities and unorganized forces
which sooner or later will overpower him and hurry
him to age-long destruction — "age-long," for I use
the Bible word aionios, which, as the learned Farrar
has shown in his Eternal Hope, does not mean abso
lutely endless ; yet, if we rteSfect w^hat may be included

46 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
in this word, infinite periods perhaps of withdrawal
and renewal of our whole planetary system, we may
well stand aghast at such prodigious ruin.
But if such dangers are in it, may we not say that
we will have nothing to do with the psychic realm?
No, for by our nature we are always immersed in
it: it is within us, and we are, and always must be,
inhabitants of it, and we are always unconsciously
using its forces and being re-acted upon by them.
What we need, therefore, is, not to escape from what
is an essential part of our nature, but to learn to
vivify this otherwise dark realm with the warmth
of Divine Love and the illumination of Divine Light.
But the Bible tells how very far the antediluvian
world was from recognizing these Divine principles,
for "the earth was filled with violence," and, except
in the family of Noah, the true worship of God had
ceased among men. And remark this word "vio
lence" as the summing-up of human iniquity. Vio
lence is the clashing of individual wills not harmonized
by the recognition of any unifying principle. The
ONE-ness of the Spirit from which all individualiza
tion proceeds is entirely lost sight of, and "each for
himself" becomes the ruling principle — a principle
which cannot but result in violence under whatever
disguise it may be masked for a time.
The earth filled with violence was the outward cor-

Israel 47
respondence of the inward mental state of the masses
of mankind, and we may, therefore, well imagine
what the nature of their operations in the symbolic
world of "Water" must have been. This state of
things had been growing for generations until at last
the inevitable result arrived, and the moral deluge
produced its correspondence in the physical world.
The uninstructed reader will doubtless smile at
my reference to a psychic environment, but those who
have obtained at least some glimpses beyond the
threshold will see the force of my argument when I
direct their attention to the signs of a recurrence of
a similar state of things at the present day. Research
in various directions is making clearer and clearer
the reality of the psychic forces, and increasing num
bers are beginning to get some measure of practical
insight into them ; and while I rejoice to say, we see
that for the most part these opening powers are being
employed under the direction of sincere religious feel
ing and with charitable intention, yet there are not
wanting reports of opposite uses, and this in connec
tion with specific localities where the inverted em
ployment of these great powers is secretly practised
according to methodized systesm,
I cannot too strongly warn the student against any
connection with such societies, and their existence
is a terrible comment upon the Master's description

48 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
of the latter days, which. He expressly tells us, will
reproduce the character of those which immediately
preceded the flood. The sole safeguard is in recog
nizing the Divine Spirit as the only Source of Power,
and in regarding every action, whether of thought,
word, or deed, as being in its form and measure an
act of Divine worship. This is what St, Paul means
when he says "Pray without ceasing," What needs
to be cultivated is the habitual mental attitude that
leads us to see God in all things, and it is for this
reason that the foundation of conscious spiritual
Life is that First Commandment to the consideration
of which we are approaching.
It was, therefore, in consequence of their entire
denial of the Divine Spirit that the antediluvians raised
up an adverse power which at last became too strong
for them to control. And here let me once for all
set the student right with regard to those passages
of the Bible in which God is represented as making up
His mind to inflict injury, as in the aimouncement
of the impending Deluge, These expressions are
figurative. They represent the entrance upon the
scene of that Cosmic Law of Disintegration which
necessarily comes into play as soon as the highest di
recting power of Intelligence is inhibited, and, there
fore, as soon as a man wilfully thmsts from him the
recognition of the Universal Spirit in its higher mani-

Israel 4g
festations as the Guardian and the Guide, he, ipso
facto, calls it into action in its lower manifestations
as the Universal Cosmic Force,
The reason for this will appear more clearly from
a careful study of the relations between the Personal
and the Impersonal modes of Spirit, but the explana
tion of these relations would occupy too large a space
to be entered upon here, and the reader must be re
ferred to other works on the subject; in the present
connection it is sufficient to say that we can never
get rid of God, for we ourselves are manfestations
of His Being, and if we will not have Him as the
Good, we shall be compelled to accept It as the Evil.
This is what the Master meant when He said in the
parable that on the lord's return to his city, he or
dered those who would not accept him to reign over
them to be slain before him.
Noah and his three sons are rescued from the uni
versal overthrow by means of the Ark. As I am con
cerned in the present book with the inner meaning
of the Bible rather than with the historical facts, I
must leave the reader to form his own conclusions
regarding the literal measurements of that vessel;
but I would take this opportunity of observing that
where distinct numbers and measurements are given
in the Bible, they are not introduced at haphazard.
From the standpoint of ordinary arithmetic they may

50 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
seem to be so, and the main argument of Bishop
Colenso's great work on the Pentateuch is based on
these apparent discrepancies. For instance, speak
ing of the sacrifices to be offered for women after
child-birth, he points out that during the march
through the desert these could, according to the text,
only be offered by Aaron and his two sons, and that
calculated on ordinary averages, the offering of these
sacrifices would have occupied each of these three
priests fourteen hours a day without one moment's
rest or intermission (vol. i., 123). From the point
of view of simple arithmetic this result is unavoid
able; but I cannot endorse the Bishop's conclusion
that the scribes who wrote the Pentateuch under the
direction of Ezra introduced any numbers that oc
curred to them without considering how they would
work out.
On the contrary, such investigation as I have been
able to make into the subject, convinces me that the
Bible numbers are calculated with the most rigid
accuracy, and with the very deepest thought of the
results to which they will work out, only this is done
according to a certain symbolic system known as
Sacred Numeration; and the very impracticability of
the figures when tested by ordinary arithmetic is in
tended to put us upon enquiry for some deeper mean
ing below the surface. To explain the principles of

Israel 51
Sacred Numeration would be beyond the scope of an
elementary book like the present, and probably few
readers would care to undertake the requisite amount
of study; but we must not suppose that the numbers
given in the Bible are without significance whenever
ordinary methods of calculation fail to elucidate them.
The whole meaning of Scripture is not upon the sur
face, and in the present connection we are expressly
pointed to a symbolic signification in I. Peter, iii.
20-21 ; and the recurrence of the Ark as a sacred em
blem in the great race-religions clearly indicates it as
representing some universal principle.
The Zoroastrian legend of the flood throws some
light upon the subject, for Yima, the Persian Noah,
is bidden by Ahura Mazda, the Deity, to bring "the
seeds of sheep, oxen, men and women, dogs and birds,
and of every kind of tree and fruit, two of every kind,
into the ark and to seal it up with a golden ring and
make in it a door and a window." The significance of
the Ark is that of a vehicle for the transmission of
the life-principle of beings from an old to a new or
der of life, and all that is not included in the Ark
perishes. This is the generalized statanent of relations which
the Ark sets forth, and, like all other generalizations,
it admits of a great many particular applications,
ranging from those which are purely physiological

52 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
to those which are in the highest degree spiritual,
and the study of comparative religions will show us
that the idea has been employed in all its most varied
applications; yet, however varied, they all have this
common feature that they signify something which
conveys individual life safely through a period of
transition from one order of manifestation to another.
The Ark, as the sacred vessel, plays a conspicuous
part throughout Scripture, but in the present con
nection we shall best realize its meaning by consider
ing it as the opposite principle to that from which
it affords deliverance. If "Water" signifies the psy
chic principle, then the Ark signifies that which the
psychic principle supports, and which has an opposite
but correspondent nature, that is to say, the Body.
The Ark is not independent of the Water but is con-
stmcted for the purpose of floating upon it and simi
larly the body is expressly adapted to man's psychic
nature so as to make with it and the spiritual prin
ciple of Life, a Whole individuality.
Now, it is precisely in the recognition of this Whole
ness that refuge from all psychic entanglements is to
be found. We must always remember that the body
equaUy with the soul is the instrument of the mani
festation of the Spirit, It is the union of the three
into a single Whole that constitutes the full reality of
lAh aad it is this sacredness of the bofdy tet is typi-

Israel 53
fied by the sacredness of the Ark. The Ark of
Noah was a solid construction, built on a pattern all
the details of which were laid down to scale by the
Divine Architect and thus exemplifies the accurate
proportions of the human body ; and in passing it may
interest the reader to note that the proportions of the
human body numerically represent the principal
measurements of the solar system, and also form the
basis of the proportions observed in such ecclesias
tical architecture as is designed according to canonical
rules, of which Westminster Abbey and Milan Ca
thedral are good examples.
I cannot, however, stop to digress into this very in
teresting subject, and for our present purpose it will
be sufficient to say that the Ark with its living freight
is typical of the fact that the full realisation of Life
is only attained in the Threefold Unity of body, soul
and spirit, and not by their dissociation. It is the
assertion of the solid, living. Reality of the work
of the Spirit as distinguished from those imperfect
manifestations which are the subterranean roots of
the true manifestation, but are not the real solid thing
itself. It is the protest of healthy reality, which in
cludes the psychic element in its proper order as the
intermediary between the purely spiritual and the
purely material, as against the rejection of the cor
poreal element and total absorption in the psychic, a

54 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
condition which prevents the spirit from attaining
to self-expression as a synthesis, which alone is the
completion of its evolutionary work.
For this reason undue absorption in the psychic
sphere is contrary to the Spirit ; and however we may
apply to it the word "spiritual" in the sense of not
being corporeal, if the psychic element is not taken
in its proper connection with the two others, it is
as far from being "spiritual" in the true sense of the
word as the material element itself. The true reality
is in the harmonious interaction of the Three-in-ONE.
God's world is a world of Truth in which evanescent
shapes do not take the place of Reality, and for these
reasons the Bible everywhere insists on nothing short
of the fulness of perfect realization, and the Ark is
one of the figures under which it does so.
This realization of the Triple-Unity of Man is the
first step towards our final enfranchisement ; but in the
very act of escaping from the danger of the Deluge we
are exposed to a danger of the opposite kind, that of
regarding the corporeal side of life as everything, and
this is typified by the building of the Tower of Babel,
This tower, note carefully, was built of brick, that is
of a substance which is nothing but clay, the same "red
earth" out of which Adam is formed, and it is there
fore the very opposite to the Heavenly Jerusalem which
is built of gold and precious stones. Now, a building

Israel 55
naturally signifies a habitation, and the building of the
Tower of Babel to escape the waters of a flood is that
reaction against the psychic element which denies
spiritual things altogether, and makes of the body
and its physical environment the one and only dwelling-
place of man. It is the same error as before of trying
to erect the edifice of Wholeness on the foundation
merely of a part, only now the part selected is the cor
poreal instead of the psychic. Arithmetically it is the
attempt to make out that one-third is the same as
ONE. The natural consequences soon follow in the
confusion of tongues. Language is the expression of
Thought, and if our ideas of reality include nothing
more than the infinitude of secondary causes which
appear in the material world, there is no central Unit
around which they can be grouped, and consequently,
instead of any certain knowledge, we have only a
multitude of conflicting opinions based upon the ever-
changing aspects of the world of appearances. Quot
homines tot sententiae, and so the builders are dis
persed in confusion, for theirs is not "the city that
hath foundations whose builder and maker is God."
From this point in the Bible story a stretch of many
ages brings us to the times of the Patriarchs, Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, We are here in the transition stage
from allegory to history, and St, Paul points out this
intermingling of the two elements when he tells us that

56 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
Hagar and Sarah represent the two covenants, and the
earthly and heavenly Jerusalems, And here I would
impress upon the student the dual character of scrip
tural personages and events. Because a personage or
evenf is typical it does not follow that it is not also
historical; on the contrary, certain personages, sys
tems, and events, become typical, that is, specially em
phasize certain principles, for the very reason that they
give them concrete expression. As Johnson says of
the Swedish monarch —
"He left the name at which the world grew pale.
To point a moral or adorn a tale."
In other words, historical realities become the very
summing-up and visible form of abstract principles,
and therefore we are justified by the Bible itself in
finding in its personages types of principles as well
as historical characters.
I will not, however, here open the question whether
the three Patriarchs were actual personages, or, as
some critics tell us, were merely the legendary an
cestors of certain groups of wandering tribes, the
Beni-Ibrahim, the Beni-Ishak, and the Beni-Yakub,
which subsequently coalesced into the Hebrew nation.
However interesting, the discussion of the historical
facts would be remote from my present object, which
is to throw some light upon the inner meaning of the
Bible, and for this purpose we may be content to take

Israel 57
the simple narrative of the text, for, whether actual
or legendary, the only way in which Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob can affect us at the present day is as char
acters in a history the significance of which will be
come clear if we read between the lines.
But from this latter point of view the biblical state
ment of the national origin of Israel carries enfolded
within it the hidden statement of those great prin
ciples which it is the purpose of the Bible to reveal.
And here let me draw attention to the method adopted
in Scripture. There are certain great universal prin
ciples which permeate all planes of being from the
highest to the lowest. They are not many in number,
and the relations between them are not difficult of
comprehension when clearly stated, but we find diffi
culty in recognizing the identity of the same principles
when we meet with them, so to say, at different levels,
as for example on the physical and the psychic planes
respectively, and consequently we are apt to imagine
them much more numerous and complicated than they
really are.
Now, the purpose of the Bible is to convey in
struction in the nature and use of these principles to
those in whose hands this knowledge would be safe
and useful, while concealing it from others, and in a
manner appropriate to this object it continually re
peats the same few all-embracing principles over and

58 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
over and over again. This repetition is firstly un
avoidable because the principles themselves are few
in number, next it is necessary as a process of ham-
mering-in and fixing it in our minds, and lastly it is
not a bare repetition, but there is a progressive ex
pansion of the statement so as to conduct us step by
step to a further comprehension of its meaning. Now,
this is done in a variety of ways and one of frequent
occurrence is through the use of Names.
Sacred Nomenclature is as large a study as Sacred
Numeration and indeed the two so shade off into one
another that they may be regarded as forming a single
study, and I will therefore no more attempt in the
present book to elucidate the one system than the
other, for they require a volume to themselves; but
this need not prevent us considering occasional in
stances of both and the names of the Patriarchs are
too important to be passed over without notice. The
frequency with which God is called in Scripture the
God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, shows that
something more must be referred to than the mere
fact that the ancestors of the Jews worshipped Him,
and the consideration of some of the prominent points
in the history of these allegorical personages will
throw a light on the subject which will be very helpful
in our further investigations.
If we realize the truth of St, Paul's statement that

Israel 59
the real object of the Bible is to convey the history
of the spiritual Israel under the figure of Israel after
the flesh, we shall see that the descent of Israel from
the three Patriarchs must be a spiritual descent, and
we may therefore expect to find in the Patriarchs
themselves an adumbration of the principles which
give rise to the spiritual Israel. Now, we should
particularly notice that the name "Israel" was be
stowed on Jacob, the third Patriarch, on the occasion
when he wrestled with the angel at the ford Jabbok,
and he obtained this name as the result of his success
ful wrestling. We are told that Jacob recognized
that it was the Divine Being, the Nameless ONE, with
whom he wrestled, and this at once gives us the key
to the allegory; for we know from the Master's in
struction to the woman of Samaria that God is Uni
versal Spirit, and though the Universal is that which
gives rise to all manifestations of the particular, yet
it is logically and mathematically impossible for the
Universal as such to assume individual personality.
Under the figure, therefore, of wrestling with "a
man," we perceive that what Jacob wrestled with was
the great problem of his own relation to the Universal
Spirit under its two-fold aspect of Universal Energy
and Universal Intelligence, allegorically represented as
a powerful man ; and he held on and wrestled till he
gained the blessing, and the New Name in which the

6o Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
nature of that blessing was summed up. The condi-
ditions are significant. He was alone. Father of a
large family as he was, none of his dear ones could
help him in the struggle.
We must each solve the problem of our relation to
the Infinite Mind for ourselves; and not our nearest
and dearest can wrestle for us. And the struggle
takes place in the darkness. It is when we begin to
find that the light we thought we possessed is not the
true light, when we find that its illuminating power is
gone, that we rise nerved with an energy we never
knew before, and commence in earnest the struggle
for the Light, determined never to let go until we
win the victory. And so we wrestle till the day begins
to break, but even then we must not quit our hold;
we must not be content until we have received the
New Name which marks our possession of that prin
ciple of Light and Life which will for ever expand
into brighter day and fuller livingness. "To him that
overcometh will I give ... a New Name" (Rev.
ii. 17).
But Jacob carries with him the mark of the struggle
throughout his earthly career. The angel touched
the hollow of his thigh, and thenceforward he was
lame. The meaning is simple enough to those who
have had some experience of the wrestling. They can
never again walk in earthly things with the same step

Israel 5i
as before. They have seen the Truth, and they can
never again unsee it ; their whole standpoint has been
altered and is no longer understood by those around
them ; to those who have not wrestled with the angel,
they appear to walk lamely.
What, then, was the New Name that was thus
gained by the resolute wrestler? His original name
of Jacob was changed to Israel. The definition given
of Israel in the seventy-third Psalm is "such as are of
a clean heart," and Jesus expressed the same idea
when he said of Nathanael, "Behold an Israelite in
deed in whom is no guile ;" for the emphasis laid upon
the word "Israelite" at once suggests some inner
meaning, since Nathaneal's nationality was no more
remarkable under the circumstances than that of an
Englishman in Piccadilly.
The great fact about the spiritual Israel is there
fore cleanness of heart and absence of guile, in other
words, perfect sincerity, which again implies single
ness of purpose in the right direction. It is precisely
that quality which our Buddhist friends call "one-
pointedness," and on which, under various similitudes,
the Master laid so much stress. This, then, is the
distinctive characteristic which attaches to the name
of Israel, for it is this concentration of effort that is
the prime factor in gaining the victory which leads to
the acquisition of the name. This is fundamental.

62 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
and without it nothing can be accomplished; it in
dicates the sort of mental character which we must
aim at, but it is not the meaning of the Name itself.
The name of Israel is composed of three sylaMes,
each of which carries a great meaning. The first
syllable "Is" is primarily the sound of the indraw-
ing of the breath, and hence acquires the significance
of the Life-principle in general, and more particularly
of individual Life. This recognition of the individu
alization of the Life-principle formed the basis of the
Assyrian worship. The syllable "Is" was also ren
dered "As," "Ish," and "Ash," and gave rise to the
worship of the Life-principle under the plural name
"Ashur," which thus represented the male and female
elements, the former being worshipped as Ashr, or
Asr, and the latter as Ashre, Ashira, Astarte, lastara
or Ishtar, and lunar goddess of Babylon, and the
same idea of femininity is found in the Egyptian
"Isis." Hence the general conception conveyed by
the syllable "Is" is that of a feminine spiritual prin
ciple manifesting itself in individuality, that is to say
the "Soul" or formative element, and it is thus in
dicative of all that we mean when we speak of the
psychic side of nature. How completely the Assy
rians identified themselves with the cultus of this
principle is shown by the name of their country,
which is derived from "Ashur."
The second syllable, "Ra," is the name of the great

Israel 63
Egyptian sun-god, and is thus the complementary
of everything that is signified by "Is," It is primarily
indicative of physical life rather than psychic life, and
in general represents the Universal Life-giving power
as distingiuished from its manifestation in particular
individuality, Ra symbolizes the Sun, while Is is
symbolized by the Moon, and represents the mascu
line element as emphatically as Is represents the
feminine. The third syllable, "El," has the significance of
Universal Being. It is "THE," i.e.. The nameless
Principle which includes in itself both the masculine
and feminine elements, both the physical and the
psychic, and is greater than them and gives rise to
them. It is another form of the word Al, Ale, or
Ala, which means "High," and is indicative of the
Supreme Principle before it passes into any differen
tiated mode. It is pure Spirit in the universal.
Now, if Man is to attain liberty, it can only be
by the realization of these Three Modes of Being —
the physical, the psychic, and the spiritual, or as the
Bible expresses it. Body, Soul, and Spirit. He must
know what these three are in himself and must also
recognize the Source from which they spring, and
he must at least have some moderately definite idea
of their genesis into individuality. Therefore the
man "instructed unto the kingdom of heaven" com
bines a threefold recognition of himself and of God

64 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
which is accurately represented by the combination
of the three syllables Is, Ra and El. Unless these
three are joined into a single unity, a single word,
the recognition is incomplete and the full knowledge
of truth has not been attained. "Ra" by itself im
plies only the knowledge of the physical world, and
results in Materialism. "Is" by itself realizes only
the psychic world, and results in Sorcery. "El" by
itself corresponds only with a vague apprehension
of some over-ruling power, capricious and devoid of
the element of Law, and thus results in Idolatry.
It is only in the combination of all three elements
that the true Reality is to be found, whether we study
it in its physical, psychic, or spiritual aspect. We may
for particular purposes give special prominence to
one aspect over the two others, but this is for a time
only, and even while we do so we realize that the
particular mode of Life-power with which we are
dealing derives its efficiency only from the fact of
its being permeated by the other two. We cannot
too firmly impress upon our minds that, though there
are three modes, there is only ONE LIFE; and in
all our studies, and in their practical application, we
must never forget the great truth that the Living
power which we use is a Synthesis, and that whenever
we make an analysis we theoretically destroy the syn'
thesis. The only purpose of making an analysis is
to learn how to build up the synthesis ; and it is for

Israel 65
this reason that the Bible equally condemns the oppo
site extremes of materialism and sorcery. It tells us
that "dogs and sorcerers" are excluded from the
heavenly city, and when we understand what is meant
by these terms it becomes self-evident that it cannot
be otherwise.
It is for this reason, also, that we find the Israelites
so often warned both against the Babylonian and the
Egyptian idolatries; not because there was no great
underlying truth in the worship of those nations, but
because it was a worship that excluded the idea of
WHOLENESS. "WiU thou be made whole?" is
the Divine invitation to us all; and the Egyptian and
Assyrian worships were eminently calculated to lead
their votaries away from this Wholeness in opposite
directions. But that both the Assyrian and the Egyptian wor
ship had a solid basis of truth is a fact to which the
Bible itself bears this remarkable testimony: — "In
that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and
Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land;
whom the Lord of Hosts shall bless, saying. Blessed
be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my
hands, and Israel mine inheritance" (Isaiah xix. 24).
The Israelite worship was as essentially that of the
principle represented by "EI" as those of Egypt and
Assyria were of the two others, and it needed the
balancing of those two extremes by the recognition

66 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
of their relation to the central, or spiritual, principle
to constitute the realization of the true Divine Son-
ship of Man in which no element of his threefold
being — body, soul or spirit — is alien from unity with
"the Father."
This, then, was the significance of the New Name
given to Jacob. He had wrestled with the Divine
until the light had begun to dawn upon him, and he
thus acquired the right to a name which should cor
rectly describe what he had now become. Formerly
he had been Jacob, i.e., Yakub, a name derived from
the root "Yak" or "One." This signifies the third
stage of apprehension of the Divine problem which
immediately precedes the final discovery of the great
secret of the Trinity-in-Unity of Beipg. We realize
the ONE-ness of the Universal Divine Principle,
though we have not yet realized its Three-fold nature
both in ourselves and in the Universal,
But there are two other stages before this, the first
of which is represented by Abraham and the second
by Isaac. It should be noted that the two syllables
"Ra" and "Is" reappear in these names, the former
indicative, as we have seen, of the masculine element
of Spirit, and the latter of the feminine, while Jacob,
or simple unity, is indicative of the neuter.
If we look through the history of Abraham we find
the masculine element especially predominant in it.
He is the father of the nations that are to spring

Israel by
from him, he receives the covenant of circumcision,
he is a warrior, and goes forth to victorious battle,
and the change of his name from Abram to Abraham
is the substitution of a masculine for a neuter element.
In Isaac's history the feminine element is equally
predominant. His name is connected with the laugh
ter of his mother (Genesis xviii.), and his marriage
with Rebekah is the pivot round which all the events
of his life center; and again, his acquiescence in his
own sacrifice marks the predominance of the passive
element in his character. To him there comes no
change of name; he is neither leader, warrior, nor
spiritual wrestler, but the calm, contemplative man
who "went out to meditate in the field at eventide";
he is typical of the purely receptive attitude of mind,
and therefore the syllable "Is" is as indicative of
his nature as the masculine syllable "Ra" is of his
father's, or the neutral and purely mathematical con
ception indicated by the syllable "Yak" is of his son's.
This affords a good instance of the way in which
the deepest truths are often concealed in Bible names,
and it should lead us to see that the value of the
record does not turn on its literal accuracy at every
point, but on its correct representation of the great
principles to the knowledge of which it seeks to
lead us.
It is of little moment to us at the present date
how much of the book of Genesis is legendary and

68 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
how much historical, and we can afford to view
calmly such little inaccuracies on the face of the
document as when we are told, in Exodus vi. 3, that
God was not known to Abraham by the name Jeho
vah, and in Genesis xxii. 14, that Abraham called
the place where he was delivered from sacrificing
Isaac "Jehovah-jireh." There are two typical schools
of Biblical interpretation, one of which is historically
represented by St. Augustine, and the other by St.
Jerome. Augustine, who was not an Orientalist and
had not studied the original Hebrew, took his stand
upon the textual accuracy of the Bible, and urged that
if once any inaccuracy were admitted to exist in it,
we could never be certain of anything in the whole
book. Jerome, who had made an accurate study of
the original Hebrew, admitted the existence of inac
curacies in the text from the operation of the same
natural causes which affect other ancient literature,
such as errors of copyists, variations of oral tradition,
and even possible adaptation to the requirements of
something which the transcriber believed to be an
essential doctrine.
These two representative men were not separated
by an interval of centuries, but were contemporaries,
and actually in communication with each other, and
we may therefore see from how early a date Christen
dom has been divided into blind reverence for the
letter and intelligent inquiry into the history of its

Israel 69
documents, St, Jerome was the father of the Higher
Criticism, and with such a respectable authority to
back us, we need not be afraid to attribute any such
casual errors as the one now in question to those
natural causes which render all ancient documents
liable to variation, and the point to which I would
draw attention is that merely superficial contradic
tions which can be reasonably accounted for on purely
natural grounds, in no way affect the general inspira
tion of the Bible,
And by "inspiration" I mean an inner illumination
on the part of the writers leading them to the imme
diate perception of Truth, which illumination is itself a
fact in the regular order of Nature, the reason of
which I hope to make clear in a subsequent volume.
The books of the Pentateuch, as we possess them,
were written by Ezra and his scribes after the return
from the Babylonian captivity — those writers whom
the Jews call "the men of the Great Synagogue," and
whose writings were separated from the time of
Moses by exactly the same interval that separates
Tennyson's Idylls of the King from the date of the
actual King Arthur.
This alone leaves a sufficiently wide margin for
errors to creep into such earlier documents as these
writers may have availed themselves of; and we
must next reflect that another interval of several
centuries separated them from the copies conveyed

70 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
to Egypt in the second century before Christ for
Ptolomy Soter's Greek translation, commonly known
as the Septuagint. The "Temple Standard" Pen
tateuch, preserved at Jerusalem at the time of Jesus,
can hardly have been the original document written
by Ezra, but even supposing it to have been so, what
became of it at the destruction of Jerusalem? Tra
dition says it was sent by Josephus to the Emperor
of Rome, and written, as it is said to have been, on
bulls' hides, we may well imagine that it perished
by damp or other agencies, neglected as a barbarous
relic in a city whose energies were concentrated on
maintaining its position as arbitress of the world by
conquest and diplomacy; at any rate the document
was never heard of again, and the oldest Jewish ver
sions of the Pentateuch now extant are not older than
the tenth century. Under these circumstances we need
not be surprised if variations have found their way
into the text, nor need we trouble ourselves much
about them if we reflect that the real place where
Truth exists is in Nature, and not in books, and that
the book is merely a record of what others have learnt
without book; and, moreover, owing to the deep
reverence with which both Jewish and Christian
Scriptures have been preserved, we may say that any
errors or contradictions discovered in the text no
more affect the body of the Truth contained in the
Bible as a whole than the dust on the outside of an

Israel 71
orange affects the value of the fruit. It is this inner
Truth that we are seeking, and if we at all reaUze
the Master's statement that the Kingdom is within,
superficial discrepancies will not present any diffi
culties to us.
We see, then, in the typical history of the three
Patriarchs the announcement of the three great prin
ciples into which all forms of manifestation may be
analyzed — the Masculine, Positive, or generating prin
ciple; the Feminine, Receptive, or formative prin
ciple ; and the Neuter or Mathematical principle, which,
by determining the proportional relations between
the other two, gives rise to the principle of variety
and multiplicity. Their successive statement in the
symbolical history indicates the need for the prepara
tory study of each in detail if we would arrive at the
True Light; and it is precisely the discovery that this
separate study is by itself insufficient that brings us
to the point where we have to wrestle in the darkness
with the Divine Angel until the day dawns; we must
unite the three principles into a single Unity, and
thus learn to form the name "Israel" ; and in so doing
we discover that it has now become our own name, for
we find that the kingdom of heaven — the realm of
eternal principles — is within us, and that, therefore,
whatever we discover there is that which we our
selves are. Our wrestling ceases : the Divine Wrestler
has put his name upon us, and the day is beginning

72 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
to dawn; but as yet it is only the earliest hour of
daybreak; it is the true sunlight, but it is still low on
the horizon, and we must not make the mistake of
supposing that this early morning hour is the same as
the mid-day glory — in other words, we must not sup
pose that because we have once and for ever finished
wrestling with an unknown antagonist in darkness
therefore we have nothing more to do.
Life is a perpetual doing, though, thank God, not a
perpetual wrestling. Our doing is the measure of
our living, although the plane on which our doing is
carried on may not be immediately patent to all ob
servers; and it is exactly in proportion as we expand
our doing that we expand our livingness. No one
can grow for us, and it all depends upon ourselves
how rapidly and how strongly we shall grow.

IV.
THE MISSION OF MOSES,
HAVING now gathered up in the briefest pos
sible fashion the general gist of the history
of the Patriarchs, we must pass on to the Mis
sion of Moses. And -here let me again impress upon
the reader that the Bible repeats its few grand prin
ciples over and over again, only with greater detail
as it proceeds, so that we shall find precisely the
same principles involved in the history of the march
of Israel into Canaan as in that of the three Patri
archs. It is the same statement as is contained in
the story of Eden and in the tradition of the Flood,
and we shall find it repeated throughout the Bible
under other varieties of form which admit of more
and more specific application of these principles to
individual cases. I mention this to explain why we
may sometimes appear to go over old ground: there
is only ONE Tmth, and more detailed acquaintance
with it will not change its fundamentals.
We have seen that the Bible teaching regarding
Man starts with two great facts: first, that he is
the image of God reproducing in individuality the
73

74 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
same Universal Mind which is the Origin of all
things, and thus reproducing also its creative process
of Thought; and, secondly, that he is ignorant of this
truth, and so brings upon himself all sorts of trouble
and limitation; and it is the purpose of the Bible to
lead us step by step out of this ignorance into this
knowledge — step by step, for it is a process of growth,
first in the individual, then in the race, and this growth
depends on certain clear and ascertainable Laws in
herent in the constitution of Man. Now the peculi
arity of inherent Law is that it always acts uniformly,
making no exception in favor of anyone, and it does
this as well positively as negatively.
Our ignorance of any Law of Nature will never
exempt us from its operation, and this is as true of
ignorant obedience as of ignorant disobedience: the
natural reward of ignorant obedience is no less cer
tain than the natural punishment of ignorant dis
obedience; and it is on this principle that the great
leaders of the race have always worked. They them
selves knew the Law; but to impart the understand
ing of the Law to people in general was not the work
of a day, nor of a generation, nor of many generations
— ^in fact it is a work which is still only in its infancy
— ^and, therefore, if people were to be saved from
the consequences of disobedience to the Law it could
only be by some method of training which would
lead them into ignorant obedience to it. But this was

The Mission of Moses 75
not to be done by making any false statement of
the Law, for Truth can never come out of false
hood; it must be done by presenting the Truth under
such figures as would indicate the real relations of
things, though not explaining how these relations
arise, because to undeveloped minds such an explana
tion would be worse than useless. Hence came the
whole system of the Mosaic Law.
On one occasion^ when the Master Was asked
which was the greatest commandment of the Law,
He replied by quoting the fourth verse of the sixth
chapter of Deuteronomy, "Hear, O Israel; the Lord
our God is one Lord," or, as the Revised Version
has it in Mark xii. 29, "the Lord is ONE," This,
He says, is the first of all the commandments; and
we may therefore expect to find in this statement of
the Divine Unity the foundation on which every
thing else rests. Nor need we look far to find the
reason of it, for we have already seen in the opening
words of Genesis that in principio — ^that is, as the
originating principle in all things — there can be noth
ing else but God or Spirit, That is a conclusion which
becomes unavoidable if we simply follow up the chain
of cause and effect until we reach a Universal First
Cause. We may call it by what name we choose:
that will make no difference so long as we realize
what must be its inherent nature and what must be our
necessary relation to it.

76 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
Whatever name we give it, it is always the ONE
self-existent and self-transforming Power of which
everything is some mode of manifestation, simply
because there is no other source from which any
thing could come. This uhimate deduction of rea
son is the recognition of the Unity of God, and could
not be more clearly stated than in the words which
Isaiah puts into the mouth of the Divine Being, re
peating the phrase in two consecutive sentences as
though to lay additional stress upon it: — "There is
none beside Me." "I am God and there is none else"
(Isaiah xlv. 21, 22). That is to say, "God," or, as
we have learnt from the instructions to the woman
of Samaria, Universal Spirit, is all that is.
This is the great Truth on which the mission of
Moses was founded, and therefore that mission
starts with the announcement of the Divine Name at
the Burning Bush. "Moses said unto God, Behold
when I come unto the children of Israel and shall say
unto them. The God of your fathers hath sent me unto
you ; and they shall say unto me, What is His name ?
what shall I say unto them? And God said unto
Moses, I AM THAT I AM ; and He said. Thus shalt
thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent
me unto you." So the name after which Moses
inquired turned out to be no name, but the first per
son singular of the present tense of the verb TO BE,
in its indicative mood. It is the announcement of

The Mission of Moses 77
BEING in the Absolute, in that first originating
plane of Pure Spirit where, because the Material
does not yet exist, there can be no extension in space,
and consequently no sequence in time, and where,
therefore, the only possible mode of being is the con
sciousness of Self-existence without limitation either
of space or time, the realization of the "universal Here
and the everlasting Now," the concentration of the
All into the Point and the expansion of the Point
into the All.*
But though this may have been a new announce
ment to the masses of the Hebrew people, it could
have been no new announcement to Moses, for we
are told in the Acts that Moses was learned in all
the wisdom of the Egyptians, a circumstance which
is fully accounted for by his education at the court
of Pharaoh, where he would be as a matter of course
initiated into the deepest mysteries of the Egyptian
religion. He must therefore have been familiar from
boyhood with the words, "I AM that I AM," which
as the inscription "Nuk pu Nuk" appeared upon the
walls of every temple; and having received the high
est instruction in the land, brought up as the son of
Pharaoh's daughter, he must have been well aware
of their significance. But this instruction had hitherto

*For further elucidation the reader is referred to my
Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science.

78 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
been confined to those who had been initiated into
the great mysteries of Osiris.
In whatever way we may interpret the story of
Moses meeting with the Divine Being at the burning
bush, one thing is evident, it indicates the point in
his career when it became plain to him that the only
possible way for the Liberation of mankind was
through the universal recognition of that Truth which
till now had been the exclusive secret of the sanc
tuaries. What, then, was the great central Truth
which was thus announced in this proclamation of
the Divine Name? It has two sides to it. First, that
Pure Spirit is the ultimate essence of all that is, and
as a consequence the All-presence, the All-knowledge,
the AU-livingness, and the All-lovingness of "God."
Then as the corollary of the proposition that "Spirit
is all that is," there must be the converse proposition
that "all that is is Spirit" ; and since Man is included
in the "all" we are again brought back to the original
description of him as the image and likeness of God,
But in those days people had to be educated up to
these two great truths, and they have not advanced
very far in this education yet ; so from the time when
Moses' eyes were opened to see in these truths, not
a secret to be guarded for his private benefit, but the
power which was to expand to the renovation of the
world, he realized that it was his mission to set men
free by educatmg them gradually into the true knowl-

The Mission of Moses 79
edge of the Divine Name, Then he conceived a great
scheme. Modern research has shown us that the
knowledge of this great fundamental truth was not
confined to Egypt, but formed the ultimate centre of
all the religions of antiquity; it was that secret in
which the supreme initiation of all the highest mys
teries culminated. It could not be otherwise, for it
was the only ultimate conclusion to which genera
tions of clear-headed thinkers could come. But these
were sages, priests, philosophers, men of education
and leisure; and this final deduction was beyond the
reach of the toiling multitudes, whose whole energies
had to be devoted to the earning of their daily bread.
Still it was impossible for these thinkers who had
arrived at the great knowledge to pass over the mul
titudes without allowing them at least a few crumbs
from their table. The true recognition of the "Self"
must always carry with it the purpose of helping
others to acquire it also; but it does not necessarily
imply the immediate perception of the best means of
doing so, and hence throughout antiquity we find an
inner religion, the Supreme Mysteries, for the in
itiated few; and an outer religion, for the most part
idolatrous, for the people. The people were not to
be left without any religion, but they were given a
religion which was deemed suited to their gross ap
prehension of things, and in the hands of lower orders
of priestSj themselves little, if at all, better instructed
\

So Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
than the worshippers, these conceptions often became
very gross indeed. Nevertheless, in their first inten
tion the "idols" were not without meaning.
The cultured Greeks laughed at the Egyptian tem
ples as places where, in the midst of a magnificent
edifice, when the sacred curtain of the innermost
sanctuary was withdrawn, there was revealed an
onion or a cat. Yet here was surely enough to
prompt an intelligent person to enquiry. Why did
the innermost sanctuary contain no Apollo Belvedere
or other marvel unique and worthy to be enshrined,
but only one of those wretched animals which dis
turbed the rest of the Greek traveller newly arrived
in Egypt, by nocturnal caterwaulings which must have
been a marked feature in cities where pussy held un
disputed sway? Or why was the odoriferous onion
that lay by tons for sale in the markets here set up
upon a pedestal as an object of reverence? Surely
there must be some deep significance in elevating
such common objects to the central place of mystery.
Yes, because in these commonest of common things
there appeared the Great Central Mystery of LIFE
more than in the sculptured marble of Phidias or
Praxiteles. Thus the Egyptian religion signified, to all who
had the "nous" to penetrate it, the All-presence of
the Eternal Living Spirit as the ONE true object of
worship, to be found, not only in temples, but in

The Mission of Moses 8 1
streets and fields, in all places alike. It signified
this to those who had the intelligence to lift the veil,
and this meant, perhaps, one in ten .thousand of the
population; and as soon as he had penetrated the
real meaning his lips were sealed, for he was admitted
to the Mysteries. For the rest, the priests had such
trivial superficial explanations as those which ages
later they sought to palm off upon Herodotus ; it was
no part of their business to lift the veil of Isis.
And so Moses saw the generations toiling on and
on in an ignorance which could not but have disas
trous consequences sooner or later. Under the pa
ternal rule of a truly illuminated priesthood, such a
relation between the inner and the outer religion might
be employed to maintain a condition of peaceful well-
being for the masses during their intellectual infancy ;
but he saw that this state of things could not go on
indefinitely. With a general advance in intelligence
must come a general disposition to question the out
ward forms of religion, while yet this general advance
fell very far short of that fuller development which
in solitary instances led the individual to grasp the
meaning of the inner Tmth. Then, when to any
nation comes the ridicule of all it has hitherto held
sacred, because it has never learnt the Eternal Truth
itself, but has placed its faith in forms and cere
monies and traditions, which, useful in their day and
generation, should have been unfolded to meet grow-

82 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
ing intelligence — ^when this condition of the national
mind supervenes, woe to that nation, for it is left
without God and without hope, and by the inevitable
Law of Nature on the plane of MIND, it cannot but
bring upon itself dire calamity. From the stand
point of the governed, this benign, paternal govern
ment could not go on for ever, and equally so from
that of the rulers. What guarantee was there of a
perpetual succession of priests illuminated not only in
head but also in heart? Egypt was old when Moses
was a youth, and the signs of decadence were not
wanting; for the cruel oppression of the Irsaelites,
whom four centuries of naturalization should have
placed on equality with their fellow-subjects, was
the very reverse of all that was tmest in the inner
teaching of the Egyptian temples. It was the index
of practical atheism. The Science of the temples
continued, but it had reached the Ijifurcation of the
Way, and it had taken the Left-hand Path,
And if this was the case in Egypt, which led the
van of civilization, what was to be expected from the
rest of the world? What was the outlook into the
future with an intellectual development expanding
only on the material side, without any knowledge of
those spiritual truths in which lies the real livingness
of Life? Surely nothing but the ultimate destmction
of mankind in internecine strife, led up to by long
ages of that awful spiritual condition in which the

The Mission of Moses 83
outward polish of materialized intellectuality only
serves to place additional resources at the disposal
of the unmitigated savage within.
The system then in vogue had once been a valuable
system, perhaps the only one possible, but Egypt was
no longer young, and the day of that system had pal
pably gone by. What was to be done? That great
central Truth which the old system had handed down
from hoary antiquity must be made the common ap
panage of mankind. "Nuk-pu-Nuk" must no longer
be the mysterious legend of the temples, but it must
become the household word of every family through
out the world. This is the work of generation upon
generation, very far from being accomplished yet;
and the only way to inaugurate it was by a new
departure in which the great announcement that had
hitherto been reserved as the last and final teaching
must become the first and initial teaching ; the supreme
secret of the Mysteries must be made the starting-
point of the child's education ; and, therefore, the mis
sion to Israel must open with the declaration of the
I AM as the all-embracing ONE.
A sentence consists of a subject, copula, and predi
cate, but in the announcement of the Divine Name
made to Moses, there is no predicate. The reason
is that to predicate anything of a subject implies some
special aspect of it, and thus by implication limits it,
however extensive the predicate may be; and it is

84 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
impossible to apply this mode of statement to the
Universal Living Spirit. There can be nothing out
side it. Itself is the Substance and the Life of all
that is or ever can be: that is an ultimate conception
from which it is impossible to get away.
Therefore, the only predicate corresponding to the
Universal Subject must be the enumeration of the
innumerable — ^the statement of all that is contained in
infinite possibility — and, consequently, the place of the
predicate must be left apparently unfilled, because it is
that fulness which includes all. The only possible
statement of the Divine is that of Present Subjective
Being, the universal "I" and the ever-present "AM."
Therefore I AM is the Name of God; and the First
of all the Commandments is the announcement of the
Divine Being as the Infinite ONE,
I have discussed the subject of the Unity of Spirit
in my Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science, but I
may repeat here the truth that, mathematically, the
Infinite must be Unity. We cannot think of two
Infinites, for as soon as duality appears, each member
of it is limited by the other, else there would be no
duality: therefore we cannot multiply the Infinite.
Similarly, we cannot divide it, for division again im
plies multiplicity or Numbers, and though these may
be conceived of as existing relatively to each other
within the Infinite, the very relation between them

The Mission of Moses 85
establishes limits where one begins and the other ends,
and thus we are no longer dealing with the Infinite.
Of course all this is self-evident to the mathema
tician, who at once sees the absurdity of attempting
to multiply or divide infinity; but the non-mathe
matical reader should endeavor to realize the full
meaning of the word "Infinite" as that which, being
without limits, necessarily occupies all space, and,
therefore, includes all that is. The announcement
that God is ONE is, therefore, the mathematical
statement of the Universal Presence of Spirit, and
the phrase "I AM" is the grammatical statement of
the same thing. And because the Universal Spirit
is the Universal Life Itself, "over all, through all, and
in all," there is yet a third statement of it, which is
its Living statement, the reproduction of it in the man
himself; and these three statements are one, and can
not be separated. Each imphes the two others, like
the three sides of an equilateral triangle, and, there
fore, the First of all the Commandments is that we
shall recognize THE ONE. As numerically all other
numbers are developed from unity, so all the possi
bilities of ever expanding Life are developed from the
all-including UNIT of Being, and, therefore, in this
Commandment we find the root of our future growth
to all eternity. This is why both Moses and Jesus
assign to it the supreme place.
And here let me point out the intimate relation

86 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
between the teaching of Jesus and the teaching of
Moses. They are the two great figures of the Bible,
As the Old Testament centres round the one, so the
New Testament centres round the other. Each ap
peals to the other. Moses says, "Of thy brethren,
shall the Lord thy God raise up a prophet like unto
me" — the prophet that was to come should duplicate
Moses — and when that prophet came, he said, "If they
hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be
persuaded though one rose from the dead." Each is
the complement of the other. We shall never under
stand Jesus until we understand Moses, and we shall
never understand Moses until we understand Jesus,
Yet this is not a paradox, for to grasp the meaning
of either we must find the key to their utterances in
our own hearts, and on our own lips in the words "I
AM" ; that is, we must go back to that Divine Uni
versal Law of Being which is written within us, and
of which both Moses and Jesus were the inspired ex
ponents. The mission of Moses, then, was to build up a
nationahty which should be independent both of time
and country, and which should derive its solidarity
from its recognition of the principle of THE ONE.
Its national being must be based upon its expanding
realization of the great central Truth, and to the
guarding and developing of that Tmth this nation
must be consecrated; and in the enslaved but not

The Mission of Moses 87
subdued children of the desert — the children of Israel
— Moses found ready to hand the material which he
needed. For these erstwhile wanderers had brought
with them a simple monotheistic creed, a belief in
the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, which, vaguely
though it might be, already touched the threshold of
the sacred mystery, and four hundred years of resi
dence in Egypt had not extinguished, however it may
have obscured, the great tradition. Here, then, Moses
found the nucleus for the nationality he designed to
found, and so he led forth the people in that great
symbolic march through the wilderness whose story
is told in the Exodus.
To the details of that history we may tu.rn more
intelligently after we have gained a clearer idea of
what the great work really was which Moses in
augurated on the night of the first Passover. Per
haps some of my readers may be surprised to learn
that it is still going on, and that they are called upon
to take a personal part in continumg the work of
Moses, which has now so expanded as to reach them
selves. But all this is contained in the commission which
Moses first announced to those he was to deliver, and
grows naturally out of its unfoldment. The people
he was to lead into liberty were "the people of God,"
and since "God" is the I AM, they were "The Peo
ple OF THE I AM." This was the tme Name of this

88 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
nation, which was to be founded upon an Eternal
Ideal instead of on the historical conditions of time
and the geographical conditions of place; and this
essential name of the New Nation has been as accu
rately translated into its equivalent of "Israel" as we
shall later see that the essential Name of God has been
translated by the word "Jehovah." "The People of
God" led forth by Moses were proclaimed by the very
terms of his commission to be "The People of the I
AM."
Now, the history of this people is dignified by a
succession of Prophets such as no other nation lays
claim to ; yet the great Prophet who first consolidated
their scattered tribes into a,, compact community, in
prophesying of the future of the people he had
founded, passes over all these and, looking down the
long centuries, points only to one other Prophet "like
unto me." We constantly miss those little indications
of Scripture on which the fuller understanding of
it so greatly depends; and just as we miss the point
when we are told that Man is created in the likeness
of God, so we miss the point when we are told that
this other Prophet, Jesus, is a Prophet of the same
type as Moses.
The whole line of intervening prophets were not
of that type. They had their own special work, but
it was not a work like that of Moses. Isaiah, Jere
miah, Ezekiel, and the rest sink out of sight, and the

The Mission of Moses 89
only Prophet whom Moses sees in the future is
brought into his field of vision by His likeness to
himself. Any child in a Sunday-school, if asked
what it knew about Moses, would answer that he
brought the children of Israel out of Egypt. No one
would question that this was the distinctive fact re
garding him, and therefore if we are to find a Prophet
of the same type as Moses, we should expect to find
in Him the founder of a New Nationality of the same
order as that founded by Moses: that is to say, a
nationality subsisting independently of time and place
and cohering by reason of its recognition of an Eternal
Ideal. To make Jesus a Prophet like unto Moses, he must
in some way repeat the Exodus and re-establish "the
people of the I AM." Now, turning to the teaching
of Jesus, we find that this is exactly what He did.
There was nothing on which he laid greater stress than
the I AM. "Except ye believe that I AM ye shall
perish in your sins," was the emphatic summary of
His whole teaching. And here read carefully. Dis
tinguish between what Jesus said and what the trans
lators of our English Bible say that he said, for it
makes all the difference. Our English version runs,
"If ye believe not that I am He ye shall die in your
sins" (John viii. 24), thus by the introduction of a
single word assuming all sorts of theological doctrines
having their origin in Persian and Neo-platonic specu-

90 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
lations, the discussion of which would require a
volume to itself. Not false doctrines, but great truths
are presented in such infantine notions as to convey
the most limiting conception of ideals whose vitality
consists in their transcending all limitations.
Thus both as theologians and grammarians the trans
lators of the Authorized Version felt the want of a
predicate to complete the words I AM, and so they
added the word "he,-" but faithful according to their
light, they were careful to draw attention to the fact
that there was no "he" in the original, and therefore
that word is printed in italics to show that it was
supplied by the translators; and the Revised Version
carefully notes this fact in the margin.
In the parallel case of the announcement to Moses
at the burning bush, the translators did not attempt
to introduce any predicate; they felt what I have
pointed out, that no predicate could be sufficiently ex
tensive to define Infinite Being; but here, supposing
that Jesus was speaking of Himself personally they
thought it necessary to introduce a word which should
limit His statement accordingly. Now the only com
ment to be made on this passage of the English Bible
is to note carefully that it is exactly what Jesus never
said. In this connection He made no personal applica
tion of the verb "to be." What he said was, "Except
ye believe that I AM, ye shall die in your sins" (R.
v.). Now, if the criterion by which we are to recog-

The Mission of Moses 91
nize Him as the Prophet predicted by Moses, is His
reproduction of the doings of Moses, then we cannot
be wrong in supposing that His use of the I AM
was as complete a generalisation as was employed by
Moses. On the same principle on which theologians or
grammarians would particularize the words to the in
dividuality of Jesus, they might particularize them to
Moses also. But going back to that generalized
statement of Man which is the very first intimation
the Bible gives of him, we find that if I AM is the
generalized statement of "God," it must also be the
generalized statement of "Man," for man is the image
and likeness of God. Whatever is true of one is true
of the other, only conversely, and, as it were, by re
flection, so that whatever is universal in God becomes
individual in man.
If, then, Jesus was to duplicate the work of Moses,
it could only be by taking as the fotmdation of His
teaching the same statement of essential Being that
Moses took as the foundation of his; and therefore
we must look for a generic, and not for a specific, ap
pHcation of the I AM in his teaching also. And as
soon as we do this the veil is lifted and a power
streams forth from all his instructions which shows
us that it was no mere figure of speech when He said
that the water which He should give would become
in each one who drank of it a well of water springing

92 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
up into everlasting life. He came, not to proclaim
Himself, but Man ; not to tell us of His Own Divinity
separating Him from the race and making Him the
Great Exception, but to tell us of our Divinity and
to show in Himself the Great Example of the I AM
reaching its full personal expression in Man.
This Prophet is raised up "of our brethren," He is
one of ourselves, and therefore He said, "The disciple
when he is perfected shall be as his Master." It is
the Universal I AM reproducing itself in the indi
viduality of Man that Jesus would have us believe in.
He is preaching nothing but the same old Truth with
which the Bible begins, that Man is the image and
likeness of God. He says in effect. Make this recog
nition the centre of your life, and you have tapped
the source of everlasting life ; but refuse to believe it,
and you will die in your sins. Why? As a Divine
vengeance upon you for daring to question a theo
logical formulary to which some narrow-minded ec
clesiastic applies the words of the Vincentian canon,
"Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus," when
his formulary has never even been heard of outside
such limits as both historically and geographically give
the lie direct to his assertion of "always," "every
where," and "by all men"? Certainly not. Tmth
hks a surer foundation than forms of words; it is
deep down in the foundations of Being; and it is the
failure to realize this Truth of Being in ourselves

The Mission of Moses 93
that is the refusal to believe in the I AM which must
necessarily cause us to perish in our sins. It is not
a theological vengeance, but the Law of Nature. Let
us enquire, then, what this Law is.
It is the great Law that, to live at all, we must pri
marily live in ourselves. No one can live for us. We
can never get away from being the centre of our own
world; or, in scientific language, our life is essentially
subjective. There could be no objective life with
out a subjective entity to receive the perceptions which
the objective faculties convey to it; and since the re
ceiving entity is ourself, the only life possible to us
is that of living in our own perceptions. Whatever
we believe, does, for us, in very fact exist. Our be
liefs may be erroneous from the standpoint of a hap
pier belief, but this does not alter the fact that for
ourselves our beliefs are our realities, and these
realities must continue until some ground is found
for a change of belief.
And in turn the subjective entity re-acts upon the
objective life, for if there is one fact which the ad
vance of modern psychological science is making more
clear than another it is that the subjective entity is
"the builder of the body." And this is precisely what,
on the information we have already gleaned from the
Bible, it ought to be ; for we have seen that the state
ment that Man is the image of God can only be inter
preted as a statement of his having in himself the

94 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
same creative process of Thought to which alone it is
possible to attribute the origin of anything. He is
the image of God because he is the individualization
of the Universal Mind at that stage of self-evolution
in which the individual attains the capacity for rea
soning from the seen to the unseen, and thus penetrat
ing behind the veil of outward appearances; so that,
because of the reproduction of the Divine creative
faculty in himself, the man's mental states or modes
of thought are bound to externalize themselves in his
body and his circumstances.
This, then, is the Law of Man's Being, I do not
stop to discuss it in detail, as, writing for New
Thought readers, I assume at least an elementary
knowledge of these things on their part; and accord
ingly this being the Law we see that the more closely
our conception of ourselves approximates to a broad
generalisation of the factors which go to make human
personality, rather than that narrow conception which
limits our notion of ourselves to certain particular
relations that have gathered around us, the more fully
we shall externalize this idea of ourselves; and be
cause this idea is a generalisation independent of any
particular circumstance, it must necessarily externalize
as a corresponding independence of circumstances, in
other words, it must result in a control over condi
tions, whether of body or environment, proportioned
to the completeness of our generalization.

The Mission of Moses 95
The more perfect the generalization the more per
fect the corresponding control over conditions, and
therefore to attain the most complete control, which
means the most perfect Liberty, we need to conceive
of ourselves as embodying the idea of the most perfect
generalization. But complete generalization is only
another expression for infinitude, and therefore we
have again reached the point where it becomes im
possible to attach any predicate to the verb "to Be,"
and so the only statement which contains the whole
Law of Man's Being is identical with the only state
ment which contains the whole Law of God's Being,
and consequently I AM is as much the correct for
mula for Man as for God.
But if we do not believe this and make it the centre
of our life, we must perish in our sins. The Bible
defines "sin" as "the transgression of the Law," and
Jesus' warning is that by transgressing the Law of
our own Being we shall die. It would carry me
beyond the general lines of this book to discuss the
question of what is here meant by "Death;" but that
it is not the everlasting damnation of the Western
creeds is obvious from the single statement of the
Bible, that the Master employed the interval between
His death and resurrection in teaching those souls
who had passed out of physical life in the catastrophe
of the Deluge, persons who most assuredly had per
ished on account of their transgression of the Law.

96 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
For further study of this subject I would refer the
reader to the works of two orthodox divines, Farrar's
Eternal Hope, and Plumptree's Spirits in Prison.
The transgression of which Jesus speaks is the
transgression of the Law of the I AM in ourselves, the
non-recognition of the fact that we are the image and
likeness of God. This is the old original sin of Eve.
It is the belief in Evil as a substantive self-originating
power. We believe ourselves under the control of all
sorts of evils having their climax in Death; but
whence does the evil get its power? Not from God,
for no diminution of Life can come from the Fountain
of Life. And if not from God, then from where else ?
God is the ONLY BEING— that is the teaching of
the First Commandment — and therefore whatever is
is some mode of God : and if this be so, then however
evil may have relative existence, it can have no sub
stantive existence of its own. It is not a Living Orig
inating Power. God, the Good, alone is that; and it
is for this reason that in the doctrine of THE ONE
and in the statement of the I AM, is the foundation of
eternal individual Life and Liberty.
So then the transgression is in supposing that there
is, or can be, any Living Originating Power outside
the I AM. Let us once see that this is impossible, and
it follows that evil has no more dominion over us and
we are free. But so long as we limit the I AM in
ourselves to the narrow boundaries of the relative and

The Mission of Moses 97
conditioned, and do not realize that, personified in
ourselves, it must by its very nature still be as tmfet-
tered as when acting in the first creation of the uni
verse, we shall never pass beyond the Law of Death
which we thus impose upon ourselves.
In this way, then, Jesus proved himself to be the
Prophet of whom Moses had spoken. He made the
recognition of the I AM the sole foundation of his
work ; in other words. He placed before men the same
radical and ultimate conception of Being that Moses
had done. But with a difference. Moses elaborated
this conception from the standpoint of the Universal :
Jesus elaborated it from that of the Individual. The
work of Moses must necessarily precede that of Jesus,
for if the Universal Mind is not in some measure
apprehended first, the individual mind cannot be ap
prehended as its image and reflection.
But it takes the teaching both of Moses and Jesus
to make the complete teaching, for each is the com
plement to the other, and it is for this reason that
Jesus said he came not to destroy the Law but to
fulfil. Jesus took up the work where Moses left it
off, and expanded Moses' initial conception of a people
founded on the recognition of the unity of God into
its proper outcome of the conception of a people
founded on the recognition of the unity of Man as
the expression of the Unity of God.
How can we doubt that this latter conception also

98 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
was in the mind of Moses ? Had it not been he would
not have spoken of the Prophet like unto himself that
should come hereafter. But he saw the ages during
which his great idea must germinate within the limits
of a single nationality before it could expand to
humanity at large; and therefore before Jesus could
gather into one the "People of the I AM" from every
nation under heaven, it was necessary that one exclu
sive nation should be the official custodians of the
great secret, and mature it till the time was ripe for
the formation of that great international nationality
which is only now beginning to show forth its earliest
blossoms.

THE MISSION OF JESUS
HITHERTO, our interpretation of the Bible has
worked along the line of great Universal Laws
naturally inherent in the constitution of Man
and thus applicable to all men alike ; but now we must
turn to that other line of an Exclusive Selection to
which I referred in the opening chapter. This is not
an arbitrary selection, for that would contradict the
very conception of unchangeable Universal Law on
which the whole Bible is founded, but it is a process
of "natural selection" arising out of the Law itself,
and results, not from any change in the Law, but
from the attainment of an exalted realization of what
the Law really is.
The first suggestion of this process of separation is
contained in the promise that the deliverance of the
race should come through "the Seed of the Woman,"
for in contradistinction to this "Seed" there is the
seed of the Serpent; "I will put enmity between thy
seed and her seed." Again we see the process of
selection coming out in the preference given to the
offering of Abel over that of Cain, and again the
99

lOO Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
selection is repeated in the intimation that Seth took
the place of Abel, while it is to be remarked that the
New Testament genealogy traces the ancestry of Jesus
to Seth; so that the line of Seth is clearly indicated
as carrying on the selection originally made in favor
of Abel. In this line we find Noah, who, with his
family, was alone excepted from the universal over
throw of the Deluge; and many centuries later we
find one man, Abraham, selected by means of a special
covenant to be the progenitor of a chosen race from
which in process of time the Messiah, the Promised
Seed of the Woman, was to be born.
Now, was there in these things any arbitrary selec
tion? After due consideration, we shall find that
there was not, and that they arose out of the perfectly
natural operation of mental laws working on the
higher levels of Individualism, and the indications of
this operation are given in the story of Cain and Abel.
Abel was a keeper of sheep and Cain was a tiller of
the earth, and if the reader will bear in mind what
I have said regarding the symbolic character of Bible
personages and the metaphorical use of words, the
meaning of the story will become clear.
There is a great difference between animal and
vegetable life: the one is cold and devoid of any
apparent element of volition, the other is full of
warmth and adumbrates the quality of Will-, ^so that
as symbols the animal represents the emotional quali-

The Mission of Jesus lOl
ties in Man, while the vegetable, following a mere law
of sequence without the exercise of individual choice,
more fitly represents the purely logical processes of
reasoning. Now, we all know that the first spring of
action in any chain of cause and effect which we set
going starts with some emotion, some manner of
feeling and not with a mere argument. Argument, a
reasoning process, may cause us to change the stand
point of our feeling and to conceive that as desirable,
which at first we did not consider so, but at the end it
is the recognition of a desire which is the one and
only spring of action. It is, therefore, the feelings and
desires that give the true key to our life, and not mere
logical statements; and so if the feelings and desires
are going in the right direction we may be very sure
that the logic will not be wrong in its conclusions,
even though it may be blundering in its method : take
care of the heart, and the head will take care of itself.
This, then, is the meaning of the story of Cain and
Abel. If we realize that the Universal Mind, as the
all-pervading undistributed Creative Power must be
subjective mind, we shall see that it can only respond
in accordance with the Law of subjective mind; that
is to say, its relation to the individual mind must
always be in exact correspondence to what the in
dividual mind conceives of it. This is unequivocally
stated in a passage which is twice repeated in Scrip
ture: "With the pure Thou wilt show Thyself pure,

102 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
and with the froward Thou wilt show Thyself fro-
ward" (Psalm xviii. 26, and II. Sam. xxii. 27), where
the context makes it clear that these words are ad
dressed to the Divine Being. If, therefore, we grasp
this Law of Correspondence, we shall see that the onlj
conception of the Divine Mind which will really vivify
our souls with living and life-giving power is to realize
it, not merely as a tremendous force to be mapped out
intellectually according to its successive stages of
sequence — though it is this also — ^but above all things
as the Universal Heart with which our own must beat
in sympathetic vibration if we would attain the true
development of that power, the possession of which
constitutes "the glorious liberty of the sons of God,"
In all our operations we must always remember
that the Creative Power is a process of feeling and
not of reasoning. Reasoning analyzes and dissects;
feeling evolves and builds up. The relation between
them is that reasoning explains how it is that feeling
has this power, and the more plainly we see why it
should be so the more completely we are delivered
from those negative feelings which act destructively
by the same law by which affirmative feelings work
constructively. The first requisite, therefore, for drawing to our
selves that creative action of the Universal Spirit,
which alone can set us free from the bondage of Lim
itation, is to call up its response on the side of feeling ;

The Mission of Jesus 103
and unless this be done first, no amount of argument,
mere intellectuality, can have the desired effect, and
this is what is symbolically represented in the state
ment that God accepted Abel's offering and rejected
Cain's. It is the veiled statement of the truth that
the action of the intellect alone, however powerful,
is not sufficient to move the Creative Power. This
does not in the least mean that the intellectual process
is hurtful in itself or unacceptable before God, but
it must come in its proper order as joining with feel
ing instead of taking its place. When a mere cold
ratiocination is substituted for hearty warmth of voli
tion, then Abel is symbolically slain by Cain.
But the allegory goes further. It tells us that the
particular animal which Abel offered in sacrifice was
the sheep, and from this point onward we find the
metaphor of the shepherd and the sheep recurring
throughout Scripture, and the reason is that the rela
tion between the Shepherd and the Sheep is pecu
liarly one of Guidance and Protection. Now, this
brings us to the point which we may call the "Sev
erance of the Way," When we realize the Unity of
the I AM, the identity, that is, of the Self -recognizing
Principle in the Universal and in the Individual, we
may form three conceptions of it: one according to
which the Universal I AM is reduced to a mere un
conscious force, which the individual mind can mani
pulate without any sort of responsibility ; another, the

104 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning ^
converse of this, in which Volition remains entirely
on the side of the Universal Mind, and the individual
becomes a mere automaton; and the third, in which
each phase of Mind is the reciprocal of the other, and
consequently the inceptive action may commence on
either side.
Now, it is this reciprocal action that the Bible all
along puts before us as the true Way. From the
centre of his own smaller circle of perception the in
dividual is free to make any selection that he will,
and if he acts from a clear recognition of the true
relations of things, the first use he will make of this
power will be to guard himself against any possible
misuse of it by recognizing that his own circle re
volves within the greater circle of that Whole of
which he is an infinitesimal part; and, therefore, he
will always seek to conform his individual action to
the movement of the Universal Spirit.
His sense of the Wholeness of that Universal Life
which finds Individual centre in himself, and his con
sciousness of his identity with it, will lead him to see
that there must be, above his own individual view of
things derived from a merely partial knowledge, a
higher and more far-seeing Wisdom which, because
it is the Life-in-itself, cannot be in any way adverse
to him; and he will, therefore, seek to maintain such
a mental attitude as will draw towards himself the
response of the Universal Mind as a Power of un-

The Mission of Jesus 105
failing Guidance, Provision and Protection. But to
do this means the curbing of that self-will which is
guided only by the narrow perception of expediency
derived from past experiences; in other words, it
requires us to act from trust in the Universal Mind,
thus investing it with a Personal character, rather
than from calculations based on our own objective
view, which is necessarily limited to secondary causes ;
in a word, we must learn to walk by faith and not
by sight.
Now the institution of Sacrifice is the most effec
tive way for impressing this mental attitude. Viewed
merely superficially, it implies the desire of the wor
shipper to submit himself to the Divine Guidance by
reconciliation through a propitiatory offering, and
thus the required mental attitude is maintained. If
we see that the blood of bulls and goats and the
ashes of an heifer can have no power in themselves
to effect reconciliation, and yet cannot see any more
ihtelligible reason, then, if we will to accept the prin
ciple of sacrifice in the light of a mere mystery, we
hereby still submit our individual will to the concep
tion of a Higher Guidance, and so in this view also
the desired mental attitude is maintained.
And at last when we reach the point where we see
that the Universal Mind, which is also the Universal
LAW, cannot have a retrospective vindictive charac
ter any more than any of the Laws of Nature which

io6 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
emanate from it, we see that the true sacrifice is the
willingness to give up smaller personal aims for the
purpose of bringing into concrete manifestation those
great principles of universal harmony which are the
foundations of the Kingdom of God; and when we
reach this point we see the philosophical reasons why
the maintenance of this attitude of the individual to
wards the Universal Mind is the one and only basis
on which the individuality can expand, or, indeed,
continue to exist at all.
It is in correspondence with these three stages that
the Bible first puts before us the patriarchal and Le
vitical sacrifices, next explains these as symbols of
the Great Sacrifice of the Suffering Messiah, and final
ly tells us that God does not require the death of any
victim, and that the true offering is that of the heart
and will ; and so the Psalms sum up the whole matter
by saying, "Sacrifice and burnt-offering thou wouldest
not," and instead of these, "Lo, I come to do Thy
will, O my God ; yea. Thy law is within my heart."
But the idea of Sacrifice has the idea of Covenant
for its correlative. If the acceptance of the prin
ciple of Sacrifice brings the worshipper into a pecu
liarly close relation to the Divine Mind, it equally
brings the Divine Mind into a peculiarly close rela
tion to the worshipper ; and since the Divine Mind is
the Life-in-itself, the very Essence-of-Being which is
the root of all conscious individuality, this identifica-

The Mission of Jesus 107
tion of the Divine with the Individual results in his
continual expansion, or, to use the Master's words, in
his having Life and having it .more abundantly ; and,
consequently, his powers steadily increase, and he
is led by the most unlooked-for sequences of cause and
effect into continually improving conditions which
enable him to do more and more effectual work, so as
to make him a centre of power, not only to himself,
but to all with whom he comes in contact.
This continual progress is the result of the natural
Law of the relation between himself and the Uni
versal Mind when he does not invert its attion, and
because it works with the same unchangeableness as
all other Natural Laws, it constitutes an Everlasting
Covenant which can no more be broken than those
astronomical laws , which keep the planets in their
orbits, the smallest infraction of which would destroy
the entire cosmic system ; and it is for this reason that
we find in the Bible such frequent allusions to the
Laws of Nature as typical of the certainty of the re
lation between God and his people, "Gather My saints
(separated ones) together unto Me; those that have
made a covenant with me by sacrifice" (Psalm 1.5) ;
the two principles of Sacrifice and Covenant rightly
understood will always be found to go hand in hand.
The idea of Guidance and Protection which is thus
set forth, recurs, throughout the Bible under the em
blem of the Shepherd and the Sheep, and it is in a

io8 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
peculiar manner appropriated to "the People of the
I AM;" "From thence is the Shepherd the Stone of
Israel" (Gen. xlix, 24) ; "Give ear, O Shepherd of
Israel, Thou that leadest Joseph like a flock" (Psalm
Ixxx, i); "The Lord is My Shepherd I shall not
want" (Psalm xxiii. i) ; "I am the Good Shepherd,"
and similarly in many other passages. If then this
conception of the Shepherd and the Sheep repre
sents the mental attitude of "Israel," we may rea
sonably expect it to be precisely opposite to all that
is symbolically meant by "Egypt." If "Israel" takes
for its Stone of Foundation the principle of Guid
ance by the Supreme Power, then "Egypt" must base
itself on the contrary principle of making its own
choice without any guidance, that is to say, deter
mined self-will, and hence we find it written that
"every Shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians"
(Gen. xlvi. 34).
Now, it is a very remarkable thing that tradition
points to the Great Pyramid as having been erected
by a "Shepherd" power which dominated Egypt,
not by force of arms, but by a mysterious influence,
which, although they detested it, the Egyptians found
it impossible to resist. These "Shepherds" built the
Great Pyramid, and then, having accomplished their
work, returned to the land from whence they came.
So says the tradition. The Pyramid remains to this
day, and the researches of modern science show us

The Mission of Jesus 109
that it is a monumental statement of all the great
measures of the cpsmic system wrought out with an
accuracy which can only be accounted for by more
than human knowledge.
And where should we find this knowledge except
in the Universal Mind, of which the cosmic system is
the visible manifestation? If, as it appears to me,
that mind is primarily subconscious, then by the gen
eral law of relation between subjective and objective
mind it could reproduce its inherent knowledge of
all cosmic facts in any individual mind that had sys
tematically trained itself into sympathy with the Uni
versal Mind in that particular direction. But such
training is impossible imless the individual mind first
recognizes the Universal Mind as an Intelligence
capable of giving the highest instruction, and to which,
therefore, the individual mind is bound to look for
guidance. We must carefully avoid the mistake of supposing
that ,yM&-cQnsciousness means wwconsciousness. That
idea is clearly negatived by the fact of hypnotism.
Whatever tmconsciousness there may be is on the part
of the objective mind, which is unconscious of the ac
tion of the subjective mind, but a careful study of the
subject shows that subjective mind, so far from know^
ing less than the objective mind, knows infinitely
more ; and if this be trae of the individual subjective
mind, how much more must it be trae of the Universal

no Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
Subjective Mind, of which all individual conscious
ness is a particular mode of manifestation?
For these reasons, the only people who could build
such a monument as a Great pyramid must be those
who realized the principles of Divine Guidance or the
Power which is set forth under the emblem of the
Shepherd and the Sheep, and, therefore, we can see
how it is that tradition associates the building of the
Pyramid with a Shepherd Power.
Nor is this all. Having first demonstrated its trast-
worthiness by the refined accuracy of its astronomical
and geodetic measurements, the Pyramid challenges
our attention with a series of time measurements, all
of which were prophetic at the date of its erection,
and some of which have already become historic,
while the period of others is now rapidly running out.
The central point of these time-measurements is the
date of the birth of Christ, and if we think of Him in
His character of "the Good Shepherd" we have yet
another testimony to the supreme importance which
Scripture attaches to the relation between the Shep
herd and the Sheep, For the Great Pyramid is a
Bible in stone, and there can be no doubt that it is
this marvel of the ages which is referred to in the
nineteenth chapter of Isaiah, where it says— "In that
day there shall be an altar to the Lord in the midst
of the land of Egypt." And so we find that the cen
tral fact to which the Great Pyramid leads up is the

The Mission of Jesus in
coming of "the Good Shepherd;" and Jesus explains
the reason for this title in the fact that "the Good
Shepherd giveth His life for the Sheep ;" that is what
distinguishes Him from the hireling who is not a true
shepherd; so that here we find ourselves back again
at the idea of Sacrifice, only now it is not the Sheep
that are sacrificed but the Shepherd. Could anything
be plainer? The sacrifice is not an offering of blood
to a sanguinary Deity, but it is the Chief Shepherd
sacrificing Himself to the necessities of the case.
And what are the necessities of the case? The
student of Mental Science should see here the grandest
application of the Law of Suggestion in a supreme
act of self-devotion logically proceeding from the
knowledge of the fundamental truths regarding Sub
jective and Objective Mind. Jesus stands before us
as the Grand Master of Mental Science. It is written
that "He knew what was in man," and in His mis
sion we have the practical fruits of that knowledge.
The Great Sacrifice is also the Great Suggestion. If
we realize that the Creative Power of our Thought is
the root from which all our experiences, whether sub
jective or objective, arise, we shall see that every
thing depends on the nature of the suggestions which
give color to our Thought. If from our conscious
ness of guilt they are suggestions of retribution, then
in accordance with the predominating tone of our
Thought we shall externalize the evil that we fear;

1 12 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
and if we carry this terrible suggestion with us
through the gate of death into that other life which
is purely subjective, then assuredly it will work itself
out in our realizations, and so we must continue to
suffer until we believe that we have paid the utter
most farthing. This is not a judicial sentence, but
the inexorable working of Natural Law. But if we
can find a counter-suggestion of such paramount mag
nitude as to obliterate all sense of liability to punish
ment, then by the same Law our fears are removed,
and, whether in the body or out of the body, we
rejoice in the sense of pardon and reconciliation to
our Father which is in heaven.
Now we can well imagine that one who has attained
the supreme knowledge of all Laws, and, as a conse
quence, has developed the powers which that knowl
edge must necessarily carry with it, would find in the
conveying of such an incalculably valuable suggestion
to the race an object worthy of his exalted capacities.
For such a one ordinary ambitions would have no
meaning, he has already left them far behind; but
if he elect to devote himself to this great work he
must count the cost, for nothing short of delivering
himself to death can accomplish it. The Master
said, "Greater love hath no man than this that a man
lay down his life for his friends," and if the Law
of Suggestion was to be employed in such a way
as to appeal to the whole race, it could only be by

The Mission of Jesus 113
so deeply impressing them with the realization of
the Divine Love that all fear should be for ever cast
out; therefore, the suggestion must be that of a Love
which nothing can exceed, and so it must consist
in him who undertakes the mission giving himself to
Voluntary Death.
For herein is the difference between the cmcifixion
of Jesus and those thousands of other cmcifixions
which disgraced the annals of Rome; it was entirely
voluntary. This also places it above all other acts of
heroism. Many have died for the sake of others,
but to them death was a necessity, and their devo
tion consisted in accepting it when and how they
did. But with Jesus the case was entirely differ
ent. He was beyond the necessity of death, and
no man could take His life from Him; He Himself
had power to lay it down and to take it up again
(John X. 17), but He was under no compulsion to
do so; therefore. His yielding Himself to a death of
excruciating agony was the master-stroke of Love
and the supreme practical application of Mental
Science. When He said "It is finished," He had accomplished
a work which is aptly represented by The Cubical
Stone, which is The Figure of the New Jerusalem,
of which it is written that ''the length, and the breadth,
and the height thereof are equal;" for turn it which
way you will it still always serves its great purpose

114 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
of impressing the suggestion of superlative Love
which can be trusted to the uttermost. Even the crude
conception of the Father's "justice" being satisfied by
the sacrifice of "the Son," however faulty both as
Law and as Theology, in no way misses the mark
from the metaphysical standpoint of Suggestion; and
those who have not yet got beyond this stage in their
conception of the Divine Being, receive the assurance
of the Divine Love towards themselves as completely
as those who are able to grasp most clearly the se
quence of cause and effect really involved; and for
these latter it resolves itself into the simple argument
a fortiori that if the Universal Spirit could thus in
spire one to die for us who was already beyond the
necessity of death, then It cannot be less loving in
the bulk than it has shown Itself in the sample. It is
an axiom that the Universal cannot act on the plane
of the Particular except by becoming individualized
upon that plane, and therefore we may argue that
so far as it was possible for the Universal Spirit to
give Itself to death for us It did so in the person of
Jesus Christ; and so we may say that to all intents
and purposes God died for us upon the Cross to
prove to us the Love of God.
Let us, then, no longer doubt the fact of this Love,
but realizing it to the full let us make the Cross of
Christ, not the mysterious end of an unintelligent
religion, but the beginning of a bright, practical, and

The Mission of Jesus 115
glorious New Life, taking for our starting-point the
apostolic words, "there is now no condemnation to
them that are in Christ Jesus." We have now con
sciously left all condemnation behind us, and we set
forward on our New Life with the self-obvious
maxim that "if God be for us, who can be against
us?" We may meet with opposition, but there is
with us a Power and an Intelligence which no op
position can overcome, and so we become "more than
conquerors through Him that loved us" (Rom, viii,
37)- This is the nature of the Great Suggestion wrought
out by Jesus ; so that here again we find that the ac
ceptance of the Great Sacrifice gives rise to the con
sciousness of a peculiarly close and endearing relation
between the Individual and the Universal Mind, which
may well be described as an Everlasting Covenant
because it is founded, not on any favoritism on the
part of God, neither on any deeds of merit on the part
of Man, but on the accurate working of Universal
Law when realized in the higher manifestations of In
dividualism ; and so it is truly written, "by His Knowl
edge shall My righteous servant justify many." Thus
it is that Jesus completes the work of Moses in build
ing up into a peculiar people, a chosen generation,
"the People of the I AM" (I. Peter ii. 9),
It was this conception of themselves as a chosen
nation, separate from all others, and united to God

1 16 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
by a special covenant based upon sacrifice, that did
in effect operate to produce the reality of this ideal
in the people of Israel. Here again we see the Law
of Suggestion at work. All their institution^,
whether religious or political, were based upon the
assumption of a covenant with Abraham for ever
ratified to his descendants, and centering round the
promised Messiah; and so, whether looking at the
past, the present, or the future, an Israelite was per
petually met by the most powerful suggestion of his
peculiar position in the Divine favor.
If we recognize in Abraham one whose deep realiza
tion of the truth concerning the promised "Seed"
had specially placed him in touch with the Universal
Mind in that particular direction, we may naturally
suppose a special illumination on this subject which
would lead him to impress this idea upon his son
Isaac as the foundation-fact of his life; and so frcwn
generation to generation the supreme realization to
all his descendants would be that of their covenant
relation to God. And besides the impression con
veyed by personal teaching, the law of heredity would
cause each member of this race to be bom with a
pre-natal subjective consciousness of this great Sug
gestion, which would carry its effect into the build
ing up of his life, quite independently of any ob
jectively conscious knowledge of the subject. This
involves intricate pyschological problems which I can-

The Mission of Jesus 117
not stop to discuss here, but all New Thought readers
are sufficiently acquainted with the potency of "race-
beliefs" to realize how powerful a factor this sub
jective transmission of a hereditary suggestion would
be in forming "the People of the I AM."
And there is yet another aspect of this subject
which is of peculiar interest to the British and Ameri
can nations, into which, however, I shall not enter
in this book; but it will be sufficient for me to say
that when a suggestion has once been implanted by
the Divine Mind, as the Bible tells us that God did
to Abraham in the most emphatic manner, taking
oath by His own Being because He could swear by
none greater (Heb. vi. 13), that suggestion is bound
to grow to the most magnificent fulfillment: "My
word that goeth forth out of My mouth shall not
return unto Me void, but shall accomplish that which
I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereunto
I sent it" (Isaiah Iv. 11).
For the reasons which I have now endeavored to
explain, the principle of "the Shepherd" is "the
Stone of Israel"; it is that great ideal by which the
nationality of the "People of the I AM" coheres,
and it is, therefore, at once the Foundation Stone
and the Crowning Stone of the whole edifice. To
those who cannot realize the great universal truths
which are summed up in the two-fold ideal of Sacri
fice and Covenant, it must always be the Stone of

ii8 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
stumbling and the Rock of offence; but to "the Peo
ple of the I AM," whether individually or collectively,
it must for ever be "the Stone of Israel," and "the
Rock of our Salvation." To lay in Zion this Chief
Corner Stone was the mission of Jesus Christ.

VI.
THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE
IN our study of the Bible, we must always remem
ber that what it is seeking to teach us is the
knowledge of the grand universal principles
which are at the root of all modes of living activity,
whether in that world of environment which we com
monly speak of as Nature, or in those human rela
tions which we call the World of Man, or in those
innermost springs of being which we speak of as
the Divine World. The Bible is throughout dealing
with those three factors, which I have spoken of in
the commencement of this book as "God," "Man,"
and "the Universe," and is explaining the Law of
Evolution by which "God" or Universal Undiffer
entiated Spirit continually passes into more and more
perfect forms of self-expression culminating in Per
fected Man.
However deep the mysteries we may encounter,
there is nothing unnatural anywhere. Everything has
its place in the due order of the Great Whole. A
mistaken conception of this Order may lead us to
invert it, and by so doing we provide those negative
119

I20 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
conditions whose presence calls forth the Power of
the Negative with all its disastrous consequences ;
but even this inverted action is perfectly natural, for
it is all according to recognizable Law whether on
the side of calculation or of feehng.
These Laws of the universe whether within or around
us, are always the same, and the only question is
whether through our ignorance we shall use them in
that inverted sense which sums them all up in the Law
of Death, or in that true and harmonious order which
sums them up in the Law of Life. These are the
things which under a variety of figures the Bible pre
sents to us, and it is for us by reverent, yet intelligent,
inquiry to penetrate the successive veils which hide
them from the eyes of those who will not take the
trouble to investigate for themselves. It is this Grand
Order of the Universe that is symbolized by Solo
mon's Temple.
We have seen that it was the mission of Moses to
mould into definite form the material which ages of
unnoticed growth had prepared, to consolidate into
national being "the People of the I AM," and to lead
them out of Egypt. This work, with which the traly
national history of Israel commenced, had its com
pletion in the reign of Solomon, when all enemies had
been extirpated from the Promised Land, and the state
founded by Moses out of wandering tribes had cul
minated in a powerful monarchy, raled over by a king

The Building of the Temple 121
whose name has ever since become both in East and
West the synonym for the supreme attainment of
wisdom, power, and glory.
If the purpose of Moses had been only that of a
national law-giver and the founder of a political state,
a Lycurgus or a Rollo, it would have found its perfect
attainment in the reign of Solomon ; but Moses had a
far grander end in view, and looking down the long
vista of the ages he saw, not Solomon, but the Car
penter, who said "a greater than Solomon is here;"
and the way for the Carpenter could only be prepared
by that long period of decadence which set in with
the first days of Solomon's successor. "The People
of the I AM" are concealed among all nations, and
must be brought forth by the Prophet, who should
realize the work of Moses, not only in a national,
but also in a universal significance.
These are the three typical figures of Hebrew his
tory, the beginning, the middle, and the end — Moses,
Solomon, Jesus — and the three are distinguished by
one common characteristic; they are all Builders of
the Temple. Moses erected the tabernacle, that por
table temple which accompanied the Israelites in their
joumeyings. Solomon) reproduced it in an edifice
of wood and stone fixed firmly upon its rocky founda
tion. Jesus said, "Destroy this temple, and in three
days I will raise it up again; but He spake of the
temple of His body."

122 Bible Mystery and Bible lideaning
Thus they stand before us the Three Great Builders,
each building with a perfect knowledge according to
a Divine pattern; and if the Divine is that in which
there is no variableness nor shadow of turning, how
can we suppose that the pattern was other than one
and the same? We may, therefore, expect to find in
the work of the Three Builders the same principles
however differently expressed; for they each in dif
ferent ways proclaimed the same all-embracing truth
that God, Man, and the Universe, however varied
may be the multiplicity of outward forms, are ONE.
St, Paul gives us an important key to the interpre
tation of Scripture, when he tells us that its leading
characters also represent great universal principles,
and this is pre-eminently the case with Solomon. His
name, in common with the names Salem and Jeru
salem, is derived from a word signifying Wholeness
(Salim, the Whole), and therefore means the man
who has reaHzed "the Wholeness," or in other words
the Universal Unity. This is the secret of his great
ness. He who has found the Unity of the Whole has
obtained "the Key of Knowledge," and it is now in
his power to enter intelligently upon the study of his
own being and of the relations which arise out of
it, and to help others as he himself advances into
greater light. This is the man who is able to become
a Builder.

The Building of the Temple 123
But such a man cannot come of any parentage ; he
must be the "Son of David" ; and it was to test their
knowledge in this respect that the Master posed the
carping scribes with the question as to how the Son
of David could also be his Lord. As rulers in Israel
they should have known these things, and instracted
the people in them, but they would not come as Nico
demus to Him who could teach them, and so, like
Hiram, the architect of Solomon's Temple, the Master
was murdered by those who should have been His
scholars and helpers.
The Builder of the Temple, then, must be "the
Son of David" ; and again we find that much of the
significance of this saying is concealed in the names.
David is the English form of the Oriental "Daud,"
which means "Beloved," and the Builder is there
fore the Son of the Beloved. David is called in
Scripture "the man after God's own heart," a descrip
tion exactly answering to the name; and we, there
fore, find that Solomon the Builder is the son of the
man who has entered into that reciprocal relation
with "God," or the Universal Spirit, which can only
be described as Love.
To define what is primarily feeling is to attempt
the impossible ; but the essence of the feeling consists
in the recognition of such a reciprocity of nature
that each supplies what the other wants, and that
neither is complete without the other. In the last

124 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
analysis, the reason for this feeling is to be discov
ered in the relation of the Individual to the Universal
Mind as each being the necessary correlative of the
other, and it is the recognition of this tmth that
makes David the father of Solomon.
When this recognition by the individual mind of
its own nature and of its relation to the Universal
Mind takes place, it gives birth to a new being in
the man; for he now finds, not that he has ceased
to be the self he was before, but that that self includes
a far greater self, which is none other than the repro
duction of the Universal Self in his individual con
sciousness. Thenceforward he works more and more
of set purpose by means of this greater self, the self
within the self, as he grows into fuller understand
ing of the Law by which this greater self has become
developed within him.
He learns that it is this greater self within the
self that is the true Builder, because it is none other
than the reproduction of the Infinite Creative Power
of the Universe. He realizes that the working of this
power must always be a continual building up. It is
the Universal Life-Principle, and to suppose that to
have any other action than continual expansion into
more and more perfect forms of self-expression,
would be to suppose it acting in contradiction of its
own nature, which, whether on the colossal scale of a
solar system or on the miniature one of a man, must

The Building of the Temple 125
be that of a self-inherent activity which is for ever
building up.
When any one is thus intellectually enlightened, he
has reached that stage of development which is signi
fied by the name David : he is "beloved," that is to say,
he is exercising a specific individual attraction towards
the Spirit in its universal and undifferentiated mode.
We are here dealing with the Principle of Evolution
in its highest phases, and if we keep this in mind, it
becomes clear that the intellectual man, who perceives
this, is himself the evoluting principle manifesting at
that stage where it becomes an individuality capable of
understanding its own identity with the Spiritual Force
which, by self -evolution, produces all things. He
thus realizes himself to be the Reciprocal of the Uni
versal Mind, which is the Divine Spirit, and he sees
that his reciprocity consists in Evolution having
reached in him the point where that factor is devel
oped, which cannot have a place in the Universal
Mind as such, but without which the continuation of
Evolution in its higher phases is impossible, the factor,
namely, of individual will.
We lose the key to the whole teaching of the Bible
if we lose sight of the truth that the Universal cannot,
as such, initiate a course of action on the plane of tlie
particular. It can do so only by becoming the individ
ual, which is precisely the production of the intellec
tually enlightened man we are speaking about. The

126 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
failure to see this very obvious Law is the root of all
the theological discordances that have retarded the
work of trae religion to the present time, and, there
fore, the sooner we see through the error the better.
Any one, who has advanced to the perception of this
Law, necessarily becomes a centre of attraction to
Undifferentiated Spirit in its highest modes, the modes
of Intelligence and Feeling, as well as in its lower
modes of Vital Energy, This results from the very
nature of the evolutionary hypothesis. All creation
commences with the primary movement of the Spirit,
and since the Spirit is Life-in-itself, this movement
must be for ever going on.
To take an analogy from chemistry, it is perpetually
in the nascent state, that is, continually pressing for
ward to find the most suitable affinities with which
to coalesce into self-expression. This is exactly what
Jesus said to the woman of Samaria: "The Father
(Universal Spirit) seeketh such to worship Him ;" and
it is because of this mutual attraction between the
individual mind, that has come to the knowledge of
its own true nature, and the Universal Mind, that the
person who is thus enlightened is called "the Be
loved"; he is beginning to understand what is meant
by man being the image of God, and to grasp the
significance of the old-world saying that "Spirit is the
power that knows itself."
As this intellectual comprehension of the great

The Building of the Temple 127
truth matures, it gives rise to the recognition of an in
terior power which is something beyond the intellect,
but yet not independent of it, something regarding
which we can make intellectual statements that clear
the way for its recognition, but which is itself a Living
Power and not a mere statement about such a power.
It may seem a truism to say that no statement about
a thing is the thing, yet we are apt to miss this in prac
tice. The Master pointed this out very clearly when
He said to the Jews, "Search the Scriptures, for in
them ye think ye have everlasting life, and they are
they which testify of Me." "You make a mistake,"
He said in effect, "by supposing that the reading of a
book can in itself confer Life. What your Scriptures
do is to make statements regarding that which I am.
Realize what those statements mean, and then you
will see in Me the Living Example of the Living
Truth ; and seeing this you will seek for the develop
ment of the same thing in yourselves — the disciple
when he is perfected shall be as his Master,"
The Building-Power is that innermost spiritual fac
ulty which is the reproduction in the individual of the
same Universal Building-Power by which the whole
creation exists, and the purpose of intellectual state
ments regarding it is to remove mental obstacles and
to induce the mental state, which will enable this su
preme innermost power to work in accordance with
conscious selection on the part of the individual. It

128 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
is the same power which has brought the race up to
where it is, and which has evolved the individual as
part of the race.
All further evolution must result from the conscious
employment of the Evolutionary Law by the intelli
gence of the individual himself. Now, it is this recog
nized innermost creative power that is signified by
Solomon — it must be preceded by the purified and en
lightened intellect — and therefore it is called the Son
of David, and becomes the Builder of the Temple.
For the Master's statement shows that, in its tme sig
nificance, the Temple is that of Man's individuality;
and if this is so with the individual, equally it must
be so in the totality of manifested being, and thus it is
also true that the whole universe is none other than
the Temple of the Living God.
This great truth of the Divine Presence is what
the instracted builders sought to symbolize in Solo
mon's Temple, whether that Presence be considered
on the scale of the universe or of an individual man.
If the Universal Divine Presence is a fact, then the
Individual Divine Presence is a fact also, because
the individual is included in the universal; it is the
working of the general Law in a particular instance,
and thus we are brought to one of the great statements
of the ancient wisdom, that Man is the Microcosm,
that is to say, the reproduction of all the principles
which give rise to the manifestation of the universe.

The Building of the Temple 129
or the Macrocosm; and therefore, to serve its proper
emblematical purpose, the Temple must represent both
the Macrocosm and the Microcosm,
It would be far too elaborate a work, for the pres
ent volume, to enter in detail into the symbolical state
ments of both physical and supra-physical nature con
tained first in the Tabernacle and afterwards in the
Temple : but as the Universal Mind inspired the build
ers of the Pyramid with the correct knowledge of the
cosmic measures, so the Bible tells us that Moses was
inspired to produce in the Tabernacle the symbolic
representation of great universal truths; he was bid
den to make all things accurately according to the
pattern showed him in the Mount, and the same truths
received a more permanent symbolization in Solomon's
Temple. An excellent example of this symbolism is af
forded by the two pillars set up by Solomon at the
entrance to the Temple: the one on the right hand
called Jachin, and the one on the left called Boaz (I.
Kings vii. 21). They seemed to have had no struc
tural connection with the building, but merely to have
stood at its entrance for the purpose of bearing these
symbolic names. What, then, do they signify? The
English J often stands for the Oriental Y, and the
name Jachin is therefore Yakhin, which is an intensi
fied form of the word Yak or ONE, thus signifying
first the principle of Unity as the Foundation of all

130 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
things, and then the Mathematical element through
out the universe, since all numbers are evolved from
the ONE, and under certain methods of treatment
will always resolve themselves again into it.
But the Mathematical element is the element of
Measurement, Proportion, and Relation. It is not the
Living Life, but only the recognition of the propor
tional adjustments which the Life gives rise to. To
balance the Mathematical element we require the
Vital element, and this element finds its most perfect
expression in that wonderful complex of Thought,
Feeling, and Volition which we call Personality. The
pillar Jachin is therefore balanced by the pillar Boaz, a
name connected with the root of the word "awaz" or
Voice, Speech is the distinguishing characteristic of Per
sonality. To clothe a conception in adequate language
is to give it definition, and thus make it clear to our
selves and to others. A distinct statement of our idea
is the first step in the operation of consciously build
ing it up into concrete existence, and therefore we find
that, in all the great religions of the race, the Divine
Creative Power is spoken of as "the Word,"
Let us get away from all confused mysticism regard
ing this term. The formulated Word is the expression
of a definite Purpose, and therefore it stands for the
action of Intelligent Volition; and it is as showing
the place which this factor holds in the evolutionary

The Building of the Temple 131
process that the pillar Boaz stands opposite the pillar
Jachin as its necessary complement and equilibriation.
The union of the two signifies Intelligent Purpose
working by means of Necessary Law, and the only
way of entering into "the Temple," whether of the
cosmos or of the individual, is by passing between
these Two Pillars of the Universe, and realizing the
combined action of Law and Volition.
This is the Narrow Way that leads us into the
building not made with hands, within which all the
mysteries shall be unfolded before us in a regular
order and succession. He who climbs up some other
way is a thief and a robber, and brings punishment
upon himself as the natural effect of his own rashness,
for knowing nothing of the true Order of the Inner
Life, he plunges prematurely into the midst of things
of whose real nature he is ignorant, and sooner or
later learns to his cost the truth of the Scriptural
warning, "whoso breaketh an hedge a serpent shall
bite him" (Eccl. x. 7).
We may not enter the Temple save by passing be
tween the pillars, and we cannot pass between them
till we can tell their meaning. It is the purpose of the
Bible to give us the Key to this Knowledge : it is not
the only instruction it has to give, but it is its initial
course, and when this has been mastered it will open
out deeper things, the inner secrets of the sanctuary.
But the first thing is to pass between Jachin and Boaz,

132 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
and then the Divine Interpreter will meet us on the
threshold and will unfold the mysteries of the Temple
in their due order, so that as each one is opened to
us in succession, we are prepared for its reception
and thus need fear no danger, because at each step we
always know what we are dealing with, and have at
tained the spiritual, intellectual, and physical de
velopment qualifying us to employ each new revelation
in the right way.
For the opening of the inner mysteries is not for the
gratification of mere idle curiosity; it is for the in
creasing of our Livingness ; and the highest quality of
Livingness is Life-givingness ; and every measure of
Life-givingness, be it only the giving of a cup of cold
water, means use of the powers and knowledge which
we possess. The Temple instruction is therefore in
tended to qualify us as workers, and the value to our
selves of what we receive within is seen in the measure
of intelligence and love with which we transmute
our Temple gold into the current coin of daily life.
The building-up process is that of Evolution,
whether in the material world or in the human indi
viduality or in the race as a whole, and the Bible
presents the analogy to us very forcibly under the
metaphor of "the Stone." Speaking of the rejection
of His own teaching, the Master said, "What is this,
then, that is written, the Stone which the builders
rejected the same is become the head of the corner?"

The Building of the Temple 133
referring to the ii8th Psalm (Luke xx, 17), A
careful perasal of the Master's history as given in
the Gospel, will show us very clearly what "the Stone"
is ; it is the material out of which the Temple of the
Spirit is to be built up, which we now see is nothing
else than Perfected Humanity.
Each individual is a temple himself, as St. Paul
tells us, and at the same time a single stone in the
constraction of the Great Temple which is the re
generated race, that "People of the I AM," which
was inaugurated when Moses first pitched the taber
nacle in the wilderness. But the process must always
be an individual one, for a nation is nothing but an
aggregation of individuals, and therefore in consid
ering the metaphor of "the Stone" as applied to the
individual, we shall realize its wider application also.
Now the Master was executed on the charge of
blasphemy for asserting the identity of His own nature
with that of God. The subjection of the Jews to the
Roman rale placed the power of life and death in
the hands of a tribunal which could not take cog
nizance of such an offence — "Take ye Him and judge
Him according to your law," said Pilate, when the
charge of blasphemy was preferred before him — and
in order to bring Him to execution it became neces
sary to substitute for the original charge of blas
phemy one of high treason, so as to bring it within
the jurisdiction of the court. "Whosoever maketh

134 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
himself a king speaketh against Caesar" — and so the
inscription fastened to the cross was "Jesus of Naza
reth, the King of the Jews." But the true reason
why He was hunted to death was expressed by the
scribes, who mocked the Sufferer with the words,
"He trusted in God; let Hun deliver Him now if
He will have Him, for He said, 'I am the Son of
God'." The teaching of Jesus was the inversion of all that
was taught by the official priesthood. Their whole
teaching rested on the hypothesis that God and Man
are absolutely distinct in nature, thus directly contra
dicting the earliest statement of their own Scriptures
regarding Man, that he is the image and likeness of
God. As a consequence of this false assumption,
they supposed that the whole Mosaic Law and Ritual
was intended to pacify God and make Him favorable
to the worshipper, and so in their minds the entire
system tended only to emphasize the gulf that sepa
rated Man from God.
What was the nexus of cause and effect by which this
system operated to produce the result of reconciling
God to the worshipper was a question which they
never attempted to face, for had they, after the ex
ample of their patriarch, determinedly wrestled with
the problem of why their Law was what it was, that
Law would have shone forth with a self-illuminating

The Building of the Temple 135
light which would have made clear to them that all
the teaching of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms
was concerning that grand ideal of a Divine Humanity
which it was the mission of Jesus to proclaim and
exemplify. But they would not face the question of the reason
of these things. They had received a certain tradi
tional interpretation of their Scriptures and their
Ritual, and, as Jesus said, made the real commands of
God void by their traditions. They were tied by "au
thorities," and this at second-hand. They did not in
quire what Moses meant, but only followed on the
lines of what somebody else said he meant; in other
words, they would not think for themselves. They
were content to say, "Our Law and Ritual are what
they are because God has so ordered them" ; but they
would not go further and inquire why God ordered
them so.
With them the whole question of revelation
became the question whether Moses had or
had not made such an announcement of the Divine
will, and so their religion rested ultimately only on
historical evidences. But they did not face the ques
tion, "How am I to know that the so-called prophet
ever received any communication from the Divine at
all?" In the last resort, there can be only one cri
terion by which to judge the truth of any claim to a

136 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
Divine communication, which is that the message
should present an intelligible sequence of cause and
effect. No man can prove that God has spoken to him;
the only possible proof is the inherent truth of the
message, making it appeal to our feelings and our rea
son with a power that carries conviction with it. The
Spirit of Truth shall convince you, said the Master;
and when this inner conviction of Truth is felt, it
will invariably be found that, by thinking it out care
fully, the reason of the feeling will manifest itself in
an intelligible sequence of cause and effect. Short of
realizing such 'a sequence, we have not realized the
Truth. The only other proof is that of practical re
sults, and to this test the Master tells us to bring
the teaching that we hear, and the teaching He bid
us judge by this standard was His own.
It is a principle that no great system can endure for
ages, exercising a wide-spread and permanent influ
ence over large masses of mankind without any ele
ment of Truth in it. There have been, and still are,
great systems influencing mankind which contain many
and serious errors, but what has given them their
power is the Truth that is in them and not the error :
and careful inquiry into the secret of their vitality will
enable us to detect and remove the error.
Now, had the leaders of the Jews investigated their
national system with intelligence and moral courage.

The Building of the Temple 137
they would have argued that its manifest vitality and
elevating spiritual tone showed that it contained a
great and livmg Truth. This Truth could not be
in the mere external observances prescribed by its
Law, for no nexus of cause and effect was traceable
between the external observances and the promised
results, and therefore the vitalizing Truth must be
in some principle which supplied the connection that
was apparently wanting. They would have argued
that God could not have arbitrarily commanded a
set of meaningless observances, and that therefore
these observances must be the expression of some
LAW inherent in the very nature of Man's being.
In a word, they would have realized that, to be
trae at all, a thing must be within the all-embracing
Law of cause and effect, and that religion itself could
be no exception to the rule — it must, in short, be
natural because, if God be ONE, He cannot intro
duce anywhere an arbitrary and meaningless caprice
subversive of the principle of Order throughout the
universe. To suppose the introduction of anything
by a mere act of Divine Volition, without a founda
tion in the sequence of the Universal Order, would
be to deny the Unity of God, and thus to deny the
Divine Being altogether.
Had the rulers of Israel, therefore, understood the
meaning of the first two Commandments, they would
have realized that their first duty, as instructors of

138 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
the people, was to probe the whole Mosaic system
until they reached the bed-rock of cause-and-effect
on which it rested. But this is just what they did
not do. Their reverence for names was greater than
their reverence for Truth, and, assuming that Moses
taught what he never did, they put to death the
Teacher of whom Moses had prophesied as the One
who should complete his work in building up "the
People of the I AM."
Thus they rejected "the Stone of Israel," and in
so doing they fought against God, that is, against
the Law of Spirit in Self-evolution. For it was this
Law, and this only, that the Carpenter of Nazareth
taught. He came, not to destroy the teachings of
Moses and of the Prophets, but to fulfill by showing
what it was that, under various veils and coverings,
had been handed down through the generations. It
was His mission to complete the Building of the
Temple by exhibiting Perfected Man as the apex
of the Pyramid of Evolution.
Broad and strong and deep was laid the foundation
of this Pyramid, in that first movement of the ONE
which the Bible tells of in its opening words; and
thenceforward the building has progressed through
countless ages till Man, now sufficiently developed in
tellectually, requires only the final step of recognizing
that the Universal Spirit reaches, in him, the repro
duction of itself in individuality to take his proper

The Building of the Temple 139
place as the crown and completion of the whole evolu
tionary process. He has to realize that the opening
statement of Scripture concerning himself is not a
mere figure of speech, but a practical fact, and that
he really is the image and likeness of the Universal
Spirit. This was the teaching of Jesus. When the Jews
sought to stone Him for saying that God was His
Father (John x. 34), He replied by quoting the 82d
Psalm, "I said ye are gods," and laid stress on this
as "Scripture that cannot be broken" ; that is, as writ
ten in the very nature of things, that signatura rerum
by which each thing has its proper place in the univer
sal order. He replied in effect, "I am only saying
of Myself what your own Law says of every one of
you, I do not set Myself forth as an exception, but
as the example of what the nature of every man truly
is." The same mistake has been perpetuated to the
present day; but gradually people are beginning to
see what the great truth is which Jesus taught, and
which Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms had
proclaimed before Him.
Perfected Man is the apex of the Evolutionary
Pyramid, and this by a necessary sequence. First
comes the Mineral Kingdom, lying inert and motion
less, without any sort of individual recognition. Then
comes the Vegetable Kingdom, capable of assimilat
ing its food, with individual life, but with only the

140 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
most mdimentary intelligence, and rooted to one spot.
Next comes the Animal Kingdom, where intelligence
is manifestly on the increase, and the individual is no
longer rooted to a single spot physically, yet is so
intellectually, for its round of ideas is limited only
to the supply of its bodily wants.
Then comes the fourth or Human Kingdom, where
the individual is not rooted to one spot either physical
ly or intellectually, for his thought can penetrate all
space. But even he has not yet reached Liberty, for
he is still the slave of "circumstances over which he
has no control" — his thoughts are unlimited, but they
remain mere dreams until he can attain the power
of giving them realization. Unlimited power of
conception is his, but to complete his evolution he
must acquire a corresponding power of creation —
with that he will arrive at Perfect Liberty,
Throughout the Four Kingdoms which have yet
been developed, the progress from the lower to the
higher is always towards greater liberty, and, there
fore, in accordance with that principle of Continuity
which Science recognizes as nowhere broken in Na
ture, Perfect Liberty must be the goal towards which
the evolutionary process is tending.
One stage more is necessary to complete the Pyra
mid of Manifested Nature, the addition of a Fifth
Kingdom, which shall complete the work for which
the four lower Kingdoms are the preparation — the

The Building of the Temple 141
Kingdom in which Spirit shall be the ruling factor,
and thus the Kingdom of Spirit which is the Kingdom
of God,
These considerations bring out into a very clear
light one meaning of Daniel's prophecy of "the Stone,"
cut out without hands, which grew until it filled the
whole earth. It is the same "Stone" of which Jesus
spoke, and is bound by the inevitable sequence of Evo
lution to become the Chief Corner-Stone ; that is, the
angular or five-pointed stone in which all four sides
of the Pyramid find their completion. It is that head
stone capping the whole, of which it is written that
it shall be brought forth with shoutings of "Grace,
grace unto it" (Zech. iv. 7).
The Fifth Kingdom, the Kingdom of spiritually
developed Man, is that which is now slowly growing,
as one individual after another awakes to the recog
nition of his own spiritual nature, seeing in it, not
a mere vague religious sentiment, but an actual work
ing principle to be consciously used in everything
that concerns himself. This "Kingdom of God,"
or of Spirit, was compared by the Master to leaven
hidden in meal, which spread by a silent process until
the whole was leavened.
The establishment of this Fifth Kingdom is a nat
ural process of growth, a great silent revolution which
will gradually change the face of society by first
changing its spirit; and for this reason the Master

142 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
said, "The Kingdom of God cometh not with observa
tion." Outward forms of government will perhaps
always vary in different countries, but the recognition
of Man as the true Temple must produce the same
effects of "justice, mercy, and truth" in every land,
so that war and crime, ignorance and want, sickness
and fear, shall be known no more, and sorrow and
sighing shall flee away (Isaiah xxxv. lo).
This is the meaning of the Building of the Temple,
and in studying it we must remember that the sacred
symbols apply, not only to Man, but also to his
environment. The Tabernacle of Moses and the
Temple of Solomon not only represent the Microcosm
but also the Macrocosm. And this leads us to the
threshold of a very deep mystery, the effect of the
spiritual condition of the human race upon Nature
as a whole, regarding which St. Paul tells us that the
entire creation is waiting in anxious expectation for
the revealing of the sons of God (Rom, viii,).
The Building of the Temple is thus a three-fold
process, commencing with the individual man, spread
ing from the individual to the race, and from the
race to the whole environment in which we live.
This is the return to Eden, where there is nothing
hurtful or destractive.
The expulsion from the spiritual "Garden of the
Land" led man into a world that brought forth
thorns and thistles, and the earth was cursed for his

The Building of the Temple 143
sake"; that is to say, the mental attitude resulting
from "the Fall" induced a corresponding condition
in Nature; and by the same Law the mental attitude
which is restoration from "the Fall," will produce
a corresponding renovation of the material world, a
state of things which is described with poetic imagery
in the eleventh chapter of Isaiah.
This influence of the human race upon their sur
roundings, whether for good or for evil, is only the
natural result of carrying out to its final consequences
the initial proposition of the Bible that Man is the
image of God. This is the affirmation of the inher
ently creative power of his Thought; and if this be
true, then the collective Thought of the race must be
the subtle power which determines the prevailing
conditions of the natural world.
The uncertain mixed conditions among which we
live very accurately represent our uncertain and mixed
modes of Thought. We think from the standpoint
of a mixture of good and evil, and have no certainty
as to which is really the controlling power. Good,
we say, works "within certain limits"; but who or
what fixes those limits we cannot guess — in short, if
we analyze the average belief of mankind as repre
sented in Christian countries at the present day, it
resolves itself into belief in a sort of rough-and-
tumble between God and the Devil, in which some
times one is uppenhost and sometimes the other;

144 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
and so we entirely lose the conception of a definite
control by the Power of Good steadily acting in ac
cordance with its own character, and not subject to
the dictation of some Evil Power which prescribes
"certain limits" for it.
This balance between good and evil is undoubtedly
the present state of things, but it is the reflection of
our own Thought, and the remedy for it is there
fore that knowledge of the inner Law which shows
us that we ourselves are producing the evils we de
plore. It is for this reason that the Apostle warns
us against emulations, wrath, and strife (Gal. v. 20).
They all proceed from a denial of the Creative Power
of our Thought; in other words, the denial that Man
is the "image of God." They proceed from the hy
pothesis that good can exist only "within certain
limits," and that, therefore, our work must not be
directed towards the producing of more good, but to
scrambling for a larger share of the limited quantity
of good that has been doled out to the world by a
bankrupt Deity.
Whether this scramble be between individuals in
the commercial world, or between classes in social
life, or between nations in the glorious game of mur
der with the best modern appliances, the tmderlying
principle is always that of competition based on the
idea that the gain of one can only accrue by another's
loss; and, therefore, what prevents us to-day from

The Building of the Temple ,145
"entering into rest" is the same cause that produced
the same effect in the time of the Psalmist, "they
could not enter in because of unbelief," and "they
limited the Holy ONE of Israel."
So long as we persist in the belief that the truly
originating causes of things are to be found anywhere
but in our own mental attitude, we condemn our
selves to interminable toil and strife.
But if, instead of looking at conditions, we en
deavored to realize First Cause as that which acts
independently of all conditions, because the condi
tions flow from it and not vice versa, we should see
that the whole teaching of the Bible is to lead us to
understand that, because Man is the image of God,
he can never divest his Thought of its inherent crea
tive power; and for this reason it sets before us the
limitless goodness of the Heavenly Father as the model
which in our own use of this power we are to fol
low. "He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and
on the good, and sendeth His rain on the just and on
the unjust." In other words, the Universal First
Cause is not concerned with pre-existing conditions,
but continually radiates forth its creative energy, trans
muting the evil into the good and the good into some
thing still better; and since it is the prerogative of
Man to use the same creative power from the stand
point of the individual, he must use it in the same

146 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
manner, if he would produce effects of Life and not
of Death,
He cannot divest his Thought of its creative power,
but it rests with him to choose between Life and Death
according to the way in which he employs it. As each
one realizes that conditions are created from within
and not from without, he begins to see the force of
the Master's invitation: "Come unto Me all ye that
labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" ;
he sees that the only thing that has prevented him
from entering into rest has been unbelief in the limit
less goodness of God, and in his own limitless power
of drawing from that inexhaustible storehouse; and
when we thus realize the true nature of the Divine
Law of Supply, we see that it depends, not on taking
from others without giving a fair equivalent, but rather
on giving good measure pressed down and shaken to
gether. The Creative Law is that the quality of the Thought,
which starts any particular chain of cause and effect,
continues through every link of the chain, and there
fore, if the originating Thought be that of the abso
lute goodness-in-itself of the intended creation, irre
spective of all circumstances, then this quality will be
inherent not only in the thing immediately created,
but also in the whole incalculable series of results flow
ing from it.
Therefore, to make our work good for its own sake

The Building of the Temple ¦ 147
is the surest way to make it return to us in a rich har
vest, which it will do by a natural Law of Growth
if we only allow it time to grow. By degrees, one
after another finds this out for himself, and the
eventual recognition of these truths by the mass of
mankind must make "the desert rejoice and blossom
as the rose" (Isaiah xxxv. i). Let each one, there
fore, take part joyfully in the Building of the Temple,
in which shall be offered, for ever, the two-fold wor
ship of Glory to God and Goodwill to Man,

VIL
THE SACRED NAME
A POINT that can hardly fail to strike the
Bible student is the frequency with which we
are directed to the Name of the Lord, as the
source of strength and protection, instead of to God
Himself, and the steady uniformity of this practice,
both in the Old and New Testaments, clearly indi
cates the intention to put us upon some special line
of inquiry with regard to the Sacred Name. Not
only is this suggested by the frequency of the expres
sion, but the Bible gives a very remarkable instance
which shows that the Sacred Name must be consid
ered as a formula containing a summary of all wis
dom. The Master tells us that the Queen of the South
came to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and if we turn
to I, Kings X. I, we find that the fame of Solomon's
wisdom, which induced the Queen of Sheba to come
to prove him with hard questions, was "concerning
the Name of the Lord." This accords with the im
memorial tradition of the Jews, that the knowledge
of the secret Name of God enables him who pos
sesses it to perform the most stupendous miracles.
149

150 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
This Hidden Name — the "Schem-hammaphoraseh"—
was revealed, they say, to Moses and taught by him
to Aaron and handed on by him to his successors ; it
was the secret enshrined in The Holy of Holies, and
was scrupulously guarded by the successive High
Priests ; it is the supreme secret, and its knowledge is
the supreme object of attainment; thus tradition and
Scripture alike point to "The NAME" as the source
of Light and Life, and Deliverance from all evil.
May we not therefore suppose that this must be
the veiled statement of some great Truth? The pur
pose of a name is to call up, by a single word, the
complete idea of the thing named, with all those
qualities and relations that make it what it is, in
stead of having to describe all this in detail every
time we want to suggest the conception of it. The
correct name of a thing thus conveys the idea of its
whole nature, and accordingly the correct Name of
God should, in some manner, be a concise statement
of the Divine Nature as the Source of all Life, Wis
dom, Power, and Goodness, and the Origin of all
manifested being.
For this reason the Bible puts before us "the Name
of the Lord," not only as the object of supreme ven
eration, but also as the grand subject of study, by
means of which we may command the Power that
will provide us with all good and protect us from

The Sacred Name 151
all ill. Let US, then, see what we can learn regard
ing this marvellous Name.
The Bible calls the Divine Being by a variety of
Names, but when we have once got the general clue
to the Sacred Name, we shall find that each of them
implies all the others, since each suggests some par
ticular aspect of THAT which is the all-embracing
UNIT, the everlasting ONE, which cannot be divided,
and any one aspect of which must therefore convey
to the instructed mind the suggestion of all the others.
We will therefore seek first this general clue which
will throw light on more particular appellations.
I think most people will agree that the specially
personal Name by which the Divine Being is called
in the Bible is Jehovah. If any Name, throughout the
entire range of Scriptures, seems to invest the Divine
Being with a distinct individuality it is this one, and
yet when we come to inquire into its meaning, we find
that it is precisely the most emphatic statement of a
universality, which is the very antithesis of all that
we understand by the word "individual."
The clue to this discovery is contained in the state
ment that God revealed Himself to Moses by the
Name Jehovah (Ex. vi. 3) ; for since the Bible con
tains no statement of any other revelation of the
Divine Name to Moses, except that made at the burn
ing bush, we are at once put upon the track of some
connection between the Name Jehovah and the com-

152 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
mand received by Moses to tell the children of Israel
that I AM had commissioned him to deliver them.
Now, the Name which in English is rendered "Je
hovah," is composed of four Hebrew letters, Yod, He,
Wau, He, thus spelling "Yeve," and this is the word
which we have to analyze. And this brings us to
the fact that the whole Hebrew alphabet is invested
with a certain symbolical character, because, in the
estimation of learned Jews, it exemplifies the great
principle of Evolution, for they rightly consider that
Evolution is nothing else than the working of the
Divine Spirit through all worlds, whether visible or
invisible. It would require a long study to take the reader
through the detailed examination of every letter,
but the general idea may be stated as follows: The
letter Yod is a minute mark of a definite shape, though
little more than a point, and a careful inspection of
the Hebrew alphabet shows that all the other letters
are combinations of this initial form. It is thus the
"generating point" from which all the other letters
proceed, each letter being in some way or other a
reproduction of the Yod; and, accordingly, it has not
inaptly been regarded as a symbol of the all-originat
ing First Principle.
If, therefore, a Name was to be devised which
should represent the mystery of the Divine Being
as at once the Unity, which includes all Multiplicity

The Sacred Name 153
and the Multiplicity which is included in the Unity,
the logical sequence of ideas required that the Hebrew
form of such a word should commence with the letter
Yod. The name of the letter is suggested by the
sound of the in-drawing of the breath, and thus indi
cates self-containedness. The opposite conception
is that of the sending forth of the breath, which is
represented by the sound He, and this letter thus
indicates that which is not self-contained, but which
emanates from the Source of Life. Yod thus repre
sents Essential Life, while He represents Derived
Life. The letter "Wau" or "Vau," taken alone, signifies
"and," and thus conveys the idea of a "Link." This
is followed by a repetition of the "He," so that the
second portion of the Sacred Name conveys the idea
of a plurality of derived lives connected together by
some common link, and is, therefore, the symbol of
the Unity passing into manifestation as the Multi
plicity of all individual beings.
The whole Name thus constitutes a most perfec'^
statement of the Divine Being, as that Universal
Life, which, to use the apostolic words, is "over all,
and through all, and in all" ; so that once more we are
brought back to what the Master said was the funda
mental statement of all Trath, namely, that God is
THE ONE, thus indicating that Unity of Spirit from

154 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
which all individualities proceed and in which they
are all included.
But the second portion of the Divine Name is EVE
(the Hebrew He corresponds with the English E),
which we have found to be the individualised Life-
principle or the Soul, and thus this portion of the
Sacred Name not only denotes Multiplicity, but also
indicates the fact that the derived life stands towards
the Originating Life in the relation of the feminine
to the masculine. If this feminine nature of the Soul
relatively to the Universal Spirit be steadily kept in
mind, it will be found to contain the key not only
to many passages of Scripture, but also to many facts
of Nature both in the inner and outer worlds. The
words of Isaiah liv. 5, "Thy Maker is thine husband,"
are not a mere figure of speech, but a statement of
the great fundamental law of human personality ; and
this relative femininity of the Soul, which in this pas
sage is pronounced so unequivocally, will be found,
on investigation, to be assumed as a general prin
ciple throughout Scripture.
We have already seen from the story of "the Fall,"
that Eve represents the soul as distinguished from
the body; and just as the Bible opens with this as
sertion of the feminine nature of the Soul, so it closes
with it, and a large portion of the magnificent sym
bolism of Revelation is occupied in depicting, under
the form of two mystical "Women," the generalized

The Sacred Name 155
history of the adulterous soul and of the faithful soul,
which as "the Bride" joins with "the Spirit" in the
universal invitation to all who will, to drink of the
water of Life and live for ever.
It is, then, this mystery of the femininity of the
soul as a general principle of Nature, and its neces
sary relation to the corresponding Masculine principle,
that is the great truth enshrined in the Sacred Name
Jehovah. The first letter of the name implies "self-
containedness," the statement in the universal of all
that we mean individually when we speak of our
selves as "I"; and the remaining portion is the form
of a verb expressing continuous Being, and the whole
Name therefore is the exact statement of "I AM"
which was made to Moses at the burning bush.
The Name "Jehovah" is thus the concealed state
ment of the great doctrine of Evolution seen in its
spiritual aspect. It is the statement that every form
of manifestation is an unfolding of the ONE original
principle, and that beside this original ONE reap
pearing under infinite variety of forms there is no
other. But further, this Name is a statement that the pass
ing of the Unity into that infinite galaxy of Life
which, though now sometimes sorrowing, is destined
to become one glorious rose of myriad petals, each
of which is a rejoicing creative being, can take place
only through Duality, Is this a mystery? Yes, the

156 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
greatest of mysteries, including all others, for it is
that universal mystery of Attraction upon which all
research, even in physical science, eventually abuts;
and yet that Duality must be established before Unity
can pass into all the powers and beauties of external
manifestation, is a proposition so self-evident as to
be almost absurd in its simplicity; indeed, the very
simplicity of the great universal truths is a stumbling-
block to many who, like Naaman, expect something
sensational. Now, this very simple proposition is, that in order
to do any kind of work there must not only be some
thing that works, but also something that is worked
upon; in other words, there must be both an active
and a passive factor. The scope of this book will
not allow me to discuss the process by which the
Duality is evolved from the Unity, though physical
science supplies us with very clear analogies. But
in general terms, the Universal Passive is evolved by
the Universal Active as its necessary complement, and
provides all those conditions which are required to
enable the Active Principle to manifest itself in the
varied forms that constitute the successive stages of
Evolution ; and the interaction of these two reciprocal
principles throughout Nature is as clearly indicated by
the Sacred Name as the principle of Unity itself.
And the Threefold nature of all defined being at
once follows from the recognition of these two inter-

The Sacred Name 157
acting principles, for whatever is produced by their
interaction can be neither a simple reproduction of
the Active principle alone, nor of the Passive alone,
but must be an intermingling of the two, combining
in itself the nature of both, and thus possessing an in
dependent nature of its own, which is not exactly
that of either of the originating principles.
Other and very important deductions again follow
from this one, but they cannot be adequately entered
upon in an introductory book like the present; still,
enough has now been said to show that the Name
"Jehovah" contains in itself the statement of the
Three Fundamental Principles of the Universe, the
Unity, the Duality, and the Trinity; and by their in
clusion in a single word affirms that no contradiction
exists between them, but that they are all necessary
phases of the Universal Truth which is only ONE.
Much search has been made by many for what
the Cabalists call "the Lost Word," that "Word of
Power," the possession of which makes all things
possible to him who discovers it. Great students in
by-gone days devoted their lives to this search, such
as Reuchlin in Germany, and Pico Delia Mirandola
in Italy, and, so far as the outside world judges,
without any result; while later centuries discredited
their studies by comparison with the practical nature
of the Baconian philosophy, not wotting that Bacon

158 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
himself was a leader in the school to which these
men belonged.
But now the tide is beginning to tum, and improved
methods of scientific research are approaching, from
the physical side, that One Great Centre in which all
lines of trath eventually converge; and so the fast-
spreading recognition of Man's spiritual nature is
leading once more to the search for "the Word of
Power." And rightly did the old Hebrew builders
and their followers in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and
seventeenth centuries connect this "Lost Word" with
the Sacred Name ; but whether because they purposely
surrounded it with mystery, or because the simplicity
of the trath proved a stumbling block to them, their
open writings only indicate a search through endless
mazes, while the clue to the labyrinth lay in the Word
itself. Are we any nearer its discovery now ? The answer
is at once Yes and No. The "Lost Word" was as
close to those old thinkers as it is to us, but to those
whose eyes and ears are sealed by prejudice, it will
always remain as far off as though it belonged to
another planet. The Bible, however, is most explicit
upon this subject, and as in the children's game the
hidden thimble is concealed from the seekers by its
very conspicuousness, so the concealment of the "Lost
Word" lies in its absolute simplicity.
Nothing so common-place could possibly be it, and

The Sacred Name 159
yet the Scripture plainly tells us that its intimate
famiUarity is the token by which we shall know it.
We need not say "Who shall go up for us to heaven
and bring it unto us, that we may hear it and do it?
Neither is it beyond the sea that thou shouldest say.
Who shall go over the sea for us and bring it unto
us, that we may hear it and do it? But the Word is
very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart,
that thou mayest do it" (Deut. xxx, 12). Realize that
the only "Word of Power" is the Divine Name, and
the mystery at once flashes into light.
The "Lost Word" which we have been seeking to
discover with pain, and cost, and infinite study, has
been all the time in our heart and in our mouth — it is
nothing else than that familiar expression which we
use so many times a day — I AM. This is the Divine
Name revealed to Moses at the burning bush, and
it is the Word that is enshrined in the Name Jehovah ;
and if we believe that the Bible means what it says,
when it tells us that Man is the image and likeness
of God, then we shall see that the same statement
of Being, which in the universal applies to God, must
in the individual and particular apply to Man also.
This "Word" is always in our hearts, for the con
sciousness of our own individuality consists only in
the recognition that I AM, and the assertion of our
own being, as one of the necessities of ordinary speech
is upon our lips continually. Thus the "Word of

l6o Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
Power" is close at hand to every one, and it continues
to be the "Lost Word" only because of our ignorance
of all that is enfolded in it.
A comparison of the teaching of Moses and Jesus
will show that they are two complementary statements
of the one fundamental truth of the "I AM." Moses
views this truth from the standpoint of universal
being, and sees Man evolving from the Infinite Mind
and subject to it as the Great Law-giver, Jesus views
it from the standpoint of the individual, and sees Man
comprehending the Infinite by limitless expansion of
his own mind, and thus returning to the Universal
Mind as a son coming back to his natural place in
the house of his father.
Each is necessary to the correct understanding of
the other, and thus Jesus came, not to abrogate the
work of Moses but to complete it. The "I AM"
is ever in the forefront of His teaching: "I AM
the Way, the Truth, and the Life"— "I AM the Resur
rection and the Life" — "Except ye believe I AM ye
shall perish in your sins." These and similar say
ings shine forth with marvellous radiance when once
we see that He was not speaking of Himself per
sonally, but of the Individualized Principle of Being
in the generic sense which is applicable to all man
kind. What is wanted is our recognition of that innermost
self which is pure spirit, and therefore not subject

The Sacred Name i6i
to any conditions whatever. All conditions arise
from one combination or another of the two original
conditions. Time and Space; and since these two
primary conditions can have no place in essential
being, and are only created by its Thought, the trae
recognition of the "I AM" is a recognition of the
Self, which sees it as eternally subsisting in its own
Being, sending forth all forms at its will and with
drawing them again at its pleasure.
To know this is to know Life-in-itself; and any
knowledge short of this is only to know the appear
ance of Life, to recognize merely the activity of the
vehicles through which it functions, while failing to
recognize the motive power itself — it is recognizing
only "EVE" without "YOD." The "Word of Power"
which sets us free is the whole Divine Name, and not
one part of it without the other. It is the separation
of its two portions, the Masculine and the Feminine,
that has caused the long and weary pilgrimage of
mankind through the ages.
This separation of the two elements of the Divine
Name is not true in the Heart of Being, but Man,
by reasoning only from the testimony of the outward
senses, forcibly puts asunder what God for ever joins
together; and it is because the Bridegroom has thus
been taken away that the children of the bridechamber
have been starved upon meagre fare, coarse and hardly

i62 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
earned, when they ought to have feasted with con
tinual joy.
But the Great Marriage of Heaven and Earth at
last takes place, and all Nature joins in the song of
exultation, a glorious epithalamium, whose cadences
roll on through the ages, ever spreading into fresh
harmonies as new themes evolve from that first
grand wedding march which celebrates the eternal
union of the Mystical Marriage,
When this union is realized by the individual as
subsisting in himself, then the I AM becomes to him
personally all that the Master said it would. He
realizes that it is in him a deathless principle, and
that though its mode of self-,expression may alter,
its essential Beingness, which is the I Myself con
sciousness in each of us, never can : and so this prin
ciple is found to be in us both Life and Resurrection.
As Life it never ceases, and as Resurrection it is
continually providing higher and higher forms for
its expression of itself, which is ourself.
No matter what may be our particular theory of
the specific modus operandi by which this renewal
takes place, there can be no mistake about the prin
ciple ; our physical theory of the Resurrection may be
wrong, but the Law that Life will always provide a
suitable form for its self-expression is unchangeable
and universal, and must, therefore, be as tme of the

The Sacred Name 163
Life-principle manifesting itself as the individuality
which I AM, as in all its other modes of manifesta
tion. When we thus realize the true nature of the I AM
that I AM, that is, the Beingness that I Myself AM,
we discover that the whole principle of Being is in
ourselves, not "Eve" only, but "YOD" also ; and this
being the case, we no longer have to go with our
pitcher to draw temporary draughts from a well out
side, for now we discover that the exhaustless spring
of Living Water is within ourselves.
Now, we can see why it is that except we believe
in the I AM we must perish in our sins, for "sin is
the transgression of the Law," and ignorant infrac
tion of the Law wiU bring its penalty as certainly as
wilful infraction. "Ignorantia legis neminem excusat"
is a legal maxim which obtains throughout Nature, and
the innocent child, who ignorantly applies a light to
a barrel of gunpowder, will be as ruthlessly blown up
as the anarchist who perishes in the perpetration of
some hideous outrage; if, therefore, we ignorantly
controvert the Law of our own Being we must suffer
the inevitable consequences by our failure to rise into
that Life of Liberty and Joy, which the full knowl
edge of the power of our I AMness must necessarily
carry with it.
Let us remember that Perfect Liberty is our goal.

164 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
The perfect Law is the Law of Liberty. The Tree
of Life is the Tree of Liberty, and it is not a plant of
spontaneous growth; but as the centre of the Mys
tical Garden it is its chief glory, and, therefore, de
serves the most assiduous cultivation. But it yields
its produce as it grows, and does not keep us waiting
till it reaches maturity before giving us any reward
for work; for if maturity means a point at which it
will grow no more, then it will never reach maturity,
for since the ground in which this Tree has its root
is the Eternal Life-in-itself, there is nowhere in the
universe any power to limit its growth, and so, under
intelligent cultivation, it will go on expanding into
increasing strength, beauty, and fruitfulness for ever.
This is the meaning of the Scriptural saying, "His
reward is with him and his work before him." Ordi
narily, we should suppose it would be the other way;
but when we see that the possibilities of self-expansion
are endless and depend on our intelligent study and
work, and that at every step of the way we are bound
to derive all present benefit from the degree of knowl
edge we are working up to, it becomes clear that the
sacred text has kept the right order, and that always
our reward is with us and our work before us ; for the
reward is the continually increasing joy and glory of
perpetually unfolding Life,
All along the line our progress depends on working
up to the knowledge we possess, for what we do not

The Sacred Name 165
act up to we do not really believe; and the power
which will overcome all difficulties is confidence in
the Eternal Life-in-ourself, which is the individualized
expression of the ONE I AM that spoke to Moses
at the burning bush.
For what is meant by the burning bush? Surely,
as we see the refugee feeding Jethro's flock in the
solitudes of the desert, and gazing on the Fire en
veloping the bush without consuming it, we realize
that here again we are turning over the pages of a
sacred picture-book, which first attracts the little child
with its vivid scenes painted in glowing colors of a
wonderful Eastern life in the dim far-back ages —
that prompts him as he grows older to ask the mean
ing of the pictures — and at last reveals it to him in
the discovery that they are pictures neither of the
East nor of the West, not of this century nor of that,
but of all time and of all place, and that he himself is
the central figure in them all.
The Bible is the picture-book of the evolution of
Man, and this particular picture of the "burning-bush"
is that of human individuality in its unity with the all-
enveloping Fire of the Universal Spirit of Life. The
"bush" represents "Wood," which, under its Greek
name of "hule," we recognize as the generic term for
"Matter"; and the "burning bush" thus signifies the
union of Spirit and Matter into a single whole, that
perfectness of manifested Being in which the lower

1 66 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
principles of the individual are recognized as form
ing the vehicle for the. concentration of the All-orig
inating Spirit. The "bush" still remains a bush,
but it is a glorified bush sending forth a glorious
aura of warmth and light, from the midst of which
proceeds the creative voice of the I AM.
This is the great truth symbolized by the revelation
to Moses as he fed his father-in-law's flock in the
wilderness, and, as the same revelation comes to each
one of us now, the words of that other Prophet of
whom Moses spoke become clear to us, and we see
that by realizing the true being of the I AM in our
selves, we grasp that principle which will put an end
to our infraction of the Law, because it is t}ie very
Law itself for ever becoming personal with our own
personality. This, then, is the great truth which we learn from
the Name "Jehovah." As the Name is infinite, so
also will be the expansions of its meaning, but this
book not being infinite, I have been able only to
touch on the broad outlines of its vastness; still
enough has been said to give the clue we were seek
ing, to elucidate the meaning of other forms of the
Sacred Name.
Naturally, the reader will first think of that other
Name, of which it is written that there is none other
under heaven whereby we may be saved, which state
ment at once confronts us with the astonishing as-

The Sacred Name 167
sertion that we are saved by a Name. "What's in a
name?" asks Shakespeare — or Bacon (?) A good deal,
we may suppose, when we meet with such a statement
as this, or its Old Testament equivalent, "the Name
of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous runneth
into it and is safe,"
But we have already found that the Great Name of
the Old Testament is something very different from a
merely personal appellation, and the same is true of
the Great Name of the New Testament also. It is,
indeed, the Name of that Prophet of the I AM whom
Moses predicted as completing the work which he had
begun; but precisely because he is the Representative
Man of all ages, his Name must represent all that
constitutes Perfected Humanity.
And it is so with a Divine simplicity. It is the
combination of the earthly name with the heavenly;
Jesus, at that time a very common name among the
Jews, and Christ, which is not a name but a descrip
tion, "the Anointed One." Each name is the proper
complement of the- other, and together they indicate
the sublime truth that the anointing of the Divine
Spirit is the birthright of every human being, only
awaiting our recognition of our true nature to show
itself with power. The carpenter — the workman
with his everyday name — is the Christ; and the les
son to be learned is that the ONE I AM is in every
man, and that that forming of Christ in us, which St.

1 68 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
Paul speaks of, is a personal development in accord
ance with recognizable laws inherent in every human
being. If Christ is the Great Example, it must be as
the Example of that which we have it in us to become,
and not of something entirely foreign to our nature;
and it is because of this community of nature that
He is "the first-born among many brethren,"
The space at my disposal will not allow me to
enter here into the deeply important questions of
the Nativity and the Resurrection. The Bible affirms
them both, and they are the necessary and logical
results of that specialized and selective line of Evolu
tion of which I have spoken on page 5 ; but to show
the sequence of cause and effect by which this is
brought about, and its dependence upon the initial
Impersonal nature of the Universal Mind is not to
be done in a few pages.
If, however, I should meet with sufficient encour
agement from the readers of the present volume, I
hope to follow it up with another in which these topics
will be discussed, and in the meanwhile we may learn
from the generalization contained in the Great Name
of the New Testament, that lesson of the Brotherhood
of Humanity which the Master has impressed upon
us in the words, "The King shall answer and say
unto them. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye
have done it unto one of the least of these My
brethren, ye have done it unto Me" (Matt, xxv, 40),

The Sacred Name 169
The Name of Jesus Christ is, therefore, the proclama
tion of the inherent Divine nature of Man, with all
its limitless possibilities, and is thus once more the
statement of the Bible's initial proposition that Man
is made in the image and likeness of God,
And these thoughts recall yet another of the Divine
Names which teaches the same lesson, Immanuel,
"God with us," or, as it might perhaps be better ren
dered, "God in us," "Immanent God," the finding of
God in ourselves, which is in exact accordance with
the Master's teaching that the Kingdom of Heaven
is within us. This Name, which occurs in Isaiah vii.
14, speaks for itself, and should be compared with the
description given in Isaiah ix. 6, 7, which is the old
familiar Christmas text, "Unto us a child is born,"
etc. Now, whoever the "us" may be, the prophet
clearly speaks of the Wonderful Child as being born
to them, they are the parents and He is their Child;
but in the description which follows we are told equal
ly clearly that He is "the Everlasting Father"; and
the teaching of Jesus leaves us in no doubt that "the
Father" is the Divine All-creating Spirit, which is
therefore "the Father" of the "us" who are the par
ents of the Child.
This lands us in a curious paradox. There can
be no reasonable doubt that the word "us" is here
spoken of human personalities, and that in the same
breath the Divine Being who is spoken of as their

170 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
Father is announced to them as their Child. We
have therefore here a sequence of three generations,
the Father of the parents, the "us" who are the parents,
and the Child who is born to them; and since the
Father of the parents and the Child of the parents
is said to be the same Being, there is no avoiding
the conclusion that the Wonderful Child is his own
Grandfather, and vice versa.
This is one of those sacred puzzles of which many
instances occur in the Bible, and whose meaning is
clear enough when we know the answer, and the pur
pose of which is to lead us to look for an answer,
which will put us in possession of the great tmth
which it is the purpose of all Scripture to teach us.
The riddle propounded by Isaiah, "What is that which
becomes its own grandson?" is substantially the same
with which the Master posed the scribes when He
asked them how David's son could at the same time
be his Lord (Luke xx. 41) ; and the identity of the
question is apparent from the fact that in the passage
in Isaiah we are told that this Wonderful Child shall
sit on the throne of David.
A further description of him occurs in Isaiah xi. i,
where we again find the same three stages — first Jesse,
next the stem proceeding out of Jesse, and lastly the
Rod or Branch growing out of the stem. Now Jesse
is the father of David, and, therefore, "the Branch"
is the same person regarding whom Isaiah and Jesus

The Sacred Name 171
propounded their conundrums. Placing these four
remarkable passages together, we get the following
description of the Wonderful Child :
His name is Immanuel.
His father's name is David.
His grandfather's name is Jesse.
And He is His own grandfather and Lord over
His father.
What is it that answers to this description? Again
we find the solution of the enigma in the names.
"Jesse" means "to be," or "he that is," which at
once brings us back to all we have learned concerning
the Universal I AM — the ONE Eternal Spirit which
is "the Everlasting Father."
"David" means "the Beloved," or the man who
realizes his true relation to the Infinite Spirit; and
the description of Daniel as a man greatly beloved
and who had set his heart to understand (Daniel
x. 11), shows us that it is this set purpose of seeking
to understand the nature of the Universal Spirit and
the mode of our own relation to it, that raises the
individual to the position of David or "the Beloved."
This is in strict agreement with the Master's teach
ing to the woman of Samaria, that the Eternal Spirit,
which is "the Father," seeks those who will worship,
not according to this or that traditionary form, but
in spirit and in truth, having a real knowledge of
what it is they worship and of the true nature of

172 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
the mental act they perform — "we know what we
worship" is the mark by which Jesus distinguishes
the worship of the "Israelites indeed," the "People
of the I AM," from that of the Samaritans, though
fully recognizing the right intention of their worship
of the "unknown God."
It was after his successful wrestling with the Divine
Being, and in consequence of his determination not
to let go until it had been fully revealed, that Jacob
obtained the name of "Israel."
Then from the individual's illuminated recognition
of the Truth of Being — the discovery that he him
self is the concentration of the Universal Spirit into
particular personality — there necessarily arises the re
production of the Universal Spirit in the Individual
Mind. This is j-e-generation ; that is to say, the sec
ond generating of the Divine UNIT as another Unity
or manifestation of itself in the form of the Indi
vidual, in no way differing in nature from the original
all-embracing Unit, but only in mode of expression,
having now become individual personality with all the
attributes of personality.
On the plane of the universal, the place of these
more highly specialized attributes was held by a
generic tendency towards life-givingness, increase,
and beauty ; and this generic tendency the reproduced
Unit now follows up with the additional powers it

The Sacred Name 173
has evolved by the attainment of self-recognizing in
dividuality. The new personality thus generated may be con
sidered as the child of the individual soul which gives
birth to it; and since there is only ONE Spirit any
where and everywhere, it can be only another mode
of the original ONE — consequently the "Son" who
is thus born to David "the Beloved," is Himself "the
Everlasting Father," and thus the answer to the sacred
puzzle is that the man, who has really learned the
inner meaning of the words "know thyself," discovers
that the true I AM in himself is one with the Univer
sal I AM, which is the root of all individualized being.
It is in the light of these sublime truths, that the
Name of "the Son" is equally with that of "the
Father" the Sacred Name, in the true knowledge of
which salvation is alone to be found. For what do
we mean by "Salvation?" "That we might be saved
from the hand of all that hate us," is the answer;
that is, from the power of everything that in any way
militates against our enjoyment of the fullest life.
That we might attain to continually increasing degrees
of Life was the declared object of the Master's mis
sion, and, therefore, salvation means the power to
ask and receive that our joy may be full; and the
only way this power can ever come to us is by the
recognition of our own possibilities as being each of
us the image and likeness of God,

174 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
Therefore it is written, "to them gave He power to
become the Sons of God, even to them that believe
in His Name"; and the word rendered "power" may
also be rendered as "right," so that this passage assures
us both of our power and right to take possession of
our inheritance as sons and daughters of the Almighty.
Now, mark well that this promise is not held forth
as a reward for the acceptance of some theological
speculation, which conveys no real meaning to us,
and which by its very terms must be incapable of
proof; but it is the natural and logical outcome of
the initial proposition with which the Bible opens,
that Spirit is the ONE and Only Source, Origin, and
Substance of all things, a self-evident truth the con
trary of which it is impossible to conceive.
What I here call "Spirit" you may, if you please,
call "the Unknowable," or x, or denote it by a single
stroke; the name or symbol we choose is quite im
material, so long as we grasp the fact that the initial
originating Power must of necessity reproduce itself
all the way down the scale, no matter how different
the forms under which it does so. In whatever way
we may denote it, it is always the Great Expressor;
and all that is, we ourselves included, is its Expression
of itself ; so that the whole teaching of Trath may be
summed up in the words, "The Expressor and the
Expressed are ONE."
Work out the problem in any way you will and you

The Sacred Name I75
will never arrive at any other final result than this;
and so we always come back to that fundamental
axiom which Jesus announced as the supreme state
ment of the LAW. This is the great truth enshrined
in every form of the Sacred Name; and therefore, it
is that every form of the Great Name, when rightly
understood, is found to be "the Word of Power."
But we must never forget that the opening descrip
tion of Man, as made in the image and likeness of God,
has added to it the words "male and female created
He them;" and if we grasp the full significance of
this statement; we shall see that the recognition of
Truth is not complete unless we realize the place of
the Passive or Feminine element in Being.
It is for this reason that in ancient times initiation
could be entered upon either along the Doric or Ionic
line, the former being more especially the initiation for
males and the latter for females; but by whichever
line it was commenced, a perfect initiation implied a
return along the opposite line, in accordance with St.
Paul's dictum that "neither is the man without the
woman, neither the woman without the man, in the
Lord" (I. Cor. xi. 2), and, therefore, there are not
wanting in Scripture statements of the Sacred Name
answering to this fact.
One of the most remarkable of these is found in
Hosea, ii. 16: "And it shall be at that day, saith the
Lord, that thou shalt call Me Ishi, and shalt call Me no

176 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
more Baali." What is the meaning of this change of
Name? Realize that a name has a meaning, and it
becomes clear that some radical change must be in
tended. But this cannot be any change in the Divine
Being, for from first to last the Scripture bears em
phatic testimony to the unchangeableness of "God,"
"I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of
Jacob are not consumed," says the Old Testament,
"The Father of lights with whom there is no variable
ness, neither shadow of turning," says the New (Mal
achi, iii. 6, and James i. 17).
The change cannot, then, be in the nature of "God,"
and, therefore, cannot be a change in the Law by which
that nature expresses itself; consequently, it can only
be a change in the conditions under which that Law
is working. Now, this is precisely the sort of change
that is spoken of. "Baali" means Lord, the master of
a servant, the proprietor of a slave. "Ishi," on the
other hand, means "Husband," and the change of
name, therefore, indicates a change in the condition of
some feminine element towards its correlative mascu
line element.
This corresponding change is stated in Isaiah Ixii.
4: "Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken, neither
shall thy land any more be termed Desolate ; but thou
shalt be called Hephzibah and thy land Beulah; for
the Lord delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be mar
ried," The word "Hephzibah" is rendered in the

The Sacred Name 177
margin "my delight," which is sufficiently significant,
but its derivation is from the Semitic root "hafs,"
which in all its combinations always carries the idea
of protection or guarding; and the name Hephzibah
may, therefore, be more accurately rendered "a
guarded one," thus at once recalling the words in
which the New Testament describes those "who by
the power of God are guarded through faith unto sal
vation" (i Peter i, 5, R. V.).
Now, the change indicated by these names is that
of a female slave who is set free by her master and
then married by him, and I think it would be impos
sible to hit upon a more accurate analogy for describ
ing the emancipation of the soul from bondage, and
its establishment in a relation of confidence and love
towards the Divine Universal Mind.
We must never forget the feminine nature of the
soul relatively to the Universal Mind. Their union
produces the Wonderful Child who shall rule all
things, and who is the Essential Male called in the
Bible "the Son"; but the soul itself is, and always
must be, feminine. Until she becomes illuminated,
the soul can only conceive of God as a master whom
she is bound to obey, and hence she strives to keep
in His good graces by sacrifices, ceremonies, and
observances of all sorts — ^he is "Baali" and must be
propitiated. But when the liberating light breaks
upon her, she discovers that the Universal Principle

178 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
has hitherto held this relation to her because she
had conceived of it only in this way, and had thus
provided it only with such conditions as compelled
it to exhibit itself in this form.
Now she learns that these conditions are not im
posed by the Universal Principle itself, but that it
must of necessity follow that line of expression which
each particular individuality opens up for it; and
when this is clearly perceived, with all the conse
quences that flow from it, the soul finds that she is
no longer a slave but is in perfect Liberty, and that
her relation to the Great Mind is that of a beloved
wife, guarded, honored, and treated on terms of
equality. This is the truth illustrated, as St, Paul tells us,
in the allegory of Sarah and Hagar. Hagar, the
slave, is expelled, and Sarah, the Princess, takes
her place. These two symbolical women, like the
two "women" of Revelations, indicate two opposite
conditions of the soul; and similarly their "sons,"
like the offspring of those two other "women," repre
sent the respective powers which these two conditions
of soul generate — the one living in the wilderness of
secondary causes and becoming an archer, that is, re
lying upon the use of external means, not understand
ing the true nature of causation, and therefore depend
ent for his results upon just happening to make a
good shot, and often making very bad ones — the other,

The Sacred Name 179
like Isaac, the acknowledged heir of all the Father's
possessions, assuming gradually more and more of
his powers and responsibilities, until by the com
bined influence of natural growth and careful training,
he at last attains that mature development which
qualifies him to participate in the administration of
the paternal authority.
The true relation of the individual soul to the Uni
versal Principle could not be more perfectly depicted
than by the names Ishi and Hephzibah. We have
only to turn to any well-ordered family to see the
force of the illustration. The respective spheres of
the husband and wife as the heads of such a house
hold are clearly defined. The husband provides the
supplies and the wife distributes them, and each has
that confidence in the other which renders any inter
ference with one another's action quite unnecessary.
This is the precise analogue of the relation between
the individual and the Universal Mind. The indi
vidual mind is not the creator of power, but the dis
tributor of it; just as in physical science we realize
that we do not create energy, but only change its form
and direction. But exactly as the universal store of
Nature from which we draw physical energy does not
dictate to us in what form, in what quantities, or for
what purpose we shall use it, so in like manner the
Universal Principle does not dictate the specific con
ditions under which it is to be employed, but will

i8o Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
manifest itself according to any conditions that we
may provide for it by our own mental attitude; and
therefore the only limitations to be laid upon our
use of it are those arising from the Law of Love.
Liberty without Love is Destruction, and Love with
out Liberty is Despair.
Just as in photography we need for the production
of a perfect image the combined action of an ac
celerator and a restrainer, so to produce perfect images
of the Divine strength, beauty and gladness, we re
quire a self -projecting force, which is- the full liberty
of Creative Power combined with a directing and re
straining force which is the tenderness of wisdom and
love ; and so in the description of the Perfect Woman
we read that in her mouth is the Law of Kindness.
Hephzibah, the Perfect Woman, rules her household
wisely in love, and so applies the raw material which
she can draw from her husband's storehouse without
stint that, by her diligence and understanding, she
converts it into all those varied forms of use and
beauty, which are indicated under the similitudes of
domestic provision and merchandise in the thirty-
first chapter of Proverbs*
We find, then, two aspects of the Sacred Name,
one which presents it aS the Universal I AM, the
all-productive Power which is the root of all mani
festation, and thus includes all individualities within
itself, involving them in the circulus of its own move-

The Sacred Name i8i
ment; and the other indicative of the reciprocal rela
tion between this Power and the individual soul. But
there is yet a third aspect under which this Power
may be viewed, and that is as working through the
individual who has become conscious of his own rela
tion to it, and of his consequent direction and instruc
tion by it. In this sense the Old Testament enumerates
its Names in the text I have already quoted, "His
Name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the
Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, and the Prince
of Peace" (Isaiah ix. 6). In the Book of Job this
is called "the Interpreter" (xxxiii. 23), and in the
New Testament this Name is called "The Word."
What may be the nature of the Divine self -con
sciousness in itself is a matter on which we can in no
way profitably speculate — to do so is trying to analyze
that which, as the starting-point of all else, must neces
sarily be incapable of analysis for the simple reason
that there can be nothing before the First. But what
we can realize is the mode in which we experience
our own relation to the Originating Spirit, and this
will be found to form a threefold recognition of it,
corresponding with what I have said above. Our
primary recognition of the Spirit is that of an all-
embracing Universal Principle, a simple Unity; but
gradually we shall come to find that our perception
of this Unity contains enfolded in it a threefold rela
tion to our personality which implies the existence

i82 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
of a corresponding threefold aspect in the Unity.
We must always recollect that all we can know of
God is our own consciousness of our relation to Him,
and eventually we shall find that this relation is first,
generic, as to the Creating Spirit; secondly, specific,
as forming a particular class of individuals holding a
special relation to the Spirit; and thirdly, individual,
as differentiated units of this particular class. Thus
by a Law of Reciprocity, we realize "the Father" or
Parent Spirit, "the Son" or Divine Ideal of Human
Personality, and "the Holy Spirit" as the operation
of the Original Spirit upon the individual, resulting
from the individual's recognition of his relation to
the Father in a Divine Sonship, Seen in this light,
the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity ceases to be
either a contradiction in terms or the conception of
a limiting anthropomorphism, but on the contrary it is
found to be the statement of the highest experiences
of the human soul.
With these preliminary remarks, I would lay par
ticular stress upon the Name given to the Universal
Principle in its Third aspect, that of manifestation
through the individual mind. In this sense it is
emphatically called "The Word," and a study of com
parative religions shows that this conception of the
Universal Mind, manifesting itself as Speech, has
been reached by all the great race-religions in their
deeper significances. The "Logos" of Greek phi-

The Sacred Name 183
losophy, the "Vach" of the Sanskrit, are typical in
stances, and the reason is to be found, as in all state
ments of truth, in the nature of the thing itself.
The Biblical account of creation represents the
work as completed by the appearing of Man; that
is to say, the evolutionary process culminates in the
Creative Principle expressing itself in a form differing
from all lower ones in its capacity for reasoning.
Now, reasoning implies the use of words either spoken
or employed mentally, for whether we wish to make
the stages of an argument plain to another or to our
selves, it can only be done by putting the sequence of
cause and effect into words.
The first idea suggested by the principle of Speech
is, therefore, that of individual intelligence, and next,
as following from this, we get the idea of expressing
individual will; then, as we begin to realize the re
ciprocal relation between the Universal Mind and the
individual mind, which necessarily results from the
latter being an evolution from the former, our con
ception of intelligence and volition becomes extended
from the individual to the Universal, and we see that
because these qualities exist in human personality, they
must exist in some more generalised mode in that
Universal Mind, of which the individual mind is a
more specialized reproduction ; and so we arrive at the
result that the Speech-principle is the highest expres-

184 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
sion of the Divine Wisdom, Power, and Love, whose
combined action produces what we call Creation,
In this sense, then, the Bible attributes the creation
of the world to the Divine Word, and it therefore
rightly says that "In the beginning was The Word, and
The Word was with God, and The Word was God,"
and that without The Word "was not anything made
that was made"; and from this commencement, the
natural sequence of evolution brings us to the crown
ing result in the manifestation of The Word as Man,
at first ignorant of his Divine origin, but nevertheless
containing all the potentialities which the recognition
of his true nature as the image of God will enable him
to develop. And when at length this recognition
comes to any one he arises and returns to "The
Father," and in the discovery of his true relation to
the Divine Mind, finds that he also is a child of the
Almighty and can speak "the Word of Power."
He may have been the prodigal who has wasted his
substance, or the respectable brother who thought that
only limited supplies were doled out to him; but as
soon as the truth dawns upon him he realizes the
meaning of the words, "Son, thou art ever with Me,
and all that I have is thine." In its Third aspect
as "the Word," the Universal Principle becomes
specialized. In its earlier modes it is the Life-prin
ciple working by a Law of Averages, and thus main
taining the race as a whole, but not providing special

The Sacred Name 185
accommodation for the individual. And it is incon
ceivable that the Cosmic Power, as such, should ever
pass beyond what we may call the administration of
the world in globo, for to suppose it doing so would
involve the self-contradiction of the Universal acting
on the plane of the Particular without becoming the
particular; and it precisely by becoming the par
ticular, or by evolution into individual minds, that
it carries on the work beyond the stage at which
things are governed by a mere Law of Averages.
It is thus that we become "fellow- workers with
God," and that "the Father" is represented as invit
ing His sons to work in His vineyard. By recogni
tion of his own true place in the scheme of evolution,
Man learns that his function is to carry on the work
which has been begun in the Universal, to still fur
ther applications in the Particular, thus affording
the key to the Master's words, "My Father worketh
hitherto, and I work"; and the instrument by which
the instructed man does this is his knowledge of the
Sacred Name in its Threefold significance.
The study of the Sacred Name is the study of the
Livingness of Being and of the Law of Expression
in all its phases, and no book or library of books is
sufficient to cope with such a vast idea. All any
writer can do is to point out the broad lines of the
subject, and each reader must make his own personal
application of it. But the Law remains for ever.

1 86 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
that the sincere desire for Truth produces a corre
sponding unfoldment of Truth, and the supreme Truth
is reached in that final recognition of the Divine Name,
"God is Love."

VIIL
THE DEVIL
IT is impossible to read the Bible and ignore the
important part which it assigns to the Devil.
The Devil first appears as the Serpent in the
story of "the Fall," and figures throughout Scrip
ture till the final scene in Revelations, where "the
old Serpent, which is the Devil and Satan," is cast
into the lake of fire. What, then, is meant by the
Devil ? We may start with the self-obvious proposition
that "God" and the "Devil" must be the exact op
posites of each other. Whatever God is, the Devil
is not. Then, since God alone is, the Devil is not.
Since God is Being, the Devil is Not-Being. And so
we are met by the paradox that though the Bible says
so much about the Devil, yet the Devil does not exist.
It is precisely this fact of non-existence that makes
up the Devil; it is that power which in appearance
is, and in reality is not; in a word, it is the Power
of the Negative.
We are put upon this track by the statement in II.
Corinthians, i. 20, that in Christ, all the promises of
God are Yea and Amen, that is essentially Affirm-
187

i88 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
ative; in other words, that all our growth towards
Perfected Humanity must be by recognition of the
Positive and not by recognition of the Negative. The
prime fact of Negation is its Nothingness ; but owing
to the impossibility of ever divesting our Thought of
its Creative Power, our conception of the Negative
as something having a substantive existence of its
own becomes a very real power indeed, and it is this
power that the Bible calls "the Devil and Satan,"
the same old serpent which we find beguiling Eve in
the Book of Genesis. It is equally a mistake to say
that there is an Evil Power or that there is not. Let
us examine this paradox.
A little consideration will show us that it is im
possible for there to be an Infinite and Universal
Power of Evil, for unless the Infinite and Universal
Power were Creative nothing could exist. If it be
creative then it is the Life-principle working always
for self-expression, and to suppose the undifferen
tiated principle of Life acting otherwise than life-
givingly, would contradict the very idea of its living
ness. Whatever tends to expand and improve life is the
Good, and therefore it is a primary intuition from
which we cannot'get away, that the Infinite, Originat
ing, and Maintaining Power can only be Good. But
to find this absolute and unchangeable "Good," we
require to get to the very bed-rock of Being, to that

The Devil 189
as yet undifferentiated Life-in-itself inherent in, and
forming one with, universal primordial Substance, of
which I have spoken in a former chapter. This all-
underlying Life is for ever expressing itself through
Form; but the Form is not the Life, and it is from
not seeing this that so much confusion arises.
The Universal Life-principle, simply as such, finds
expression as much in one form as another, and is
just as active in the scattered particles which once
made a human body as it was in those particles when
they cohered together in the living man ; this is merely
the well-recognized scientific truth of the Conservation
of Energy,
On the other hand, we cannot help perceiving that
there is something in the individual which exercises
a greater power than the perpetual energy residing in
the ultimate atoms; for, otherwise, what is it that
maintains in our bodies for perhaps a century the
unstable equilibrium of atomic forces which, when that
something is withdrawn, cannot continue for twenty-
four hours ? Is this something another something than
that which is at work as the perpetual energy within
the atoms? No, for otherwise there would be two
originating powers in the universe, and if our study
of the Bible teaches us anjrthing; it is that the Orig
inating Power is only ONE; and we must therefore
conceive of the Power we are examining as the same
Power that resides in the ultimate atoms, only now

190 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
working at a higher level. It has welded the atoms
into a distinct organism, however lowly, and so to
distinguish this mode of power from the mere atomic
energies, we may call it the Integrating Power, or
the Power which Builds-up,
Now, evolution is a continuous process of building-
up, and what makes the world of to-day a different
world from that of the ichthyosaurus and the
pterodactyl, is the successive building up of more and
more complex organisms, culminating at last in the
production of Man as an organism, both physically
and mentally capable of expressing the Life of the
Supreme Intelligence by means of Individual Con
sciousness, Why, then, should not the Power, which
is able to carry on the race as a perpetually improv
ing expression of itself, do the same thing in the in
dividual? That is the question with which we have
to deal ; in other words. Why need the individual die ?
Why should he not go on in a perpetual expansion?
This question may seem absurd in the light of past
experience. Those who believe only in blind forces,
answer that death is the law of Nature, and those who
believe in the Divine Wisdom answer that it is the
appointment of God, But, strange as it may seem,
both these answers are wrong. That death should be
the ultimate law of Nature contradicts the principle
of continuity as exemplified in the Lifeward ten
dency of evolution; and that it is the will of God is

The Devil 191
most emphatically denied by the Bible, for that tells
us that he that has the power of death is the Devil
(Hebrews ii, 14) , There is no beating about the bush ;
not God but the Devil sends death. There is no getting
out of the plain words. Let us examine this statement.
We have seen that whatever God is, the Devil,
must be the opposite, and, therefore if God is the
Power that builds up, the Integrating Power, the
Devil must be the power that pulls down, or the Dis
integrating Power. Now, what is Disintegra
tion? It is the breaking up of what was pre
viously an "integer" or perfect Whole, the separation
of its component parts. But what is it that causes
the separation? It is still the Building-up Power,
only the Law of Affinity by which it works is now
acting from other centres, so as to build up other
organisms. The Universal Power is still at its building work,
only it seems to have lost sight of its original motive
in the organism which is falling to pieces, and to have
taken up fresh motives in other directions. And this
is precisely the state of the case; it is just the want
of continuous motive that causes disintegration. The
only possible motive of the All-originating Life-prin
ciple must be the expression of Life, and, therefore,
we may almost picture it as continually seeking to
embody itself in intelligences, which shall be able to

192 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
grasp its motive and co-operate with it by keeping
that motive constantly in mind.
Granted that this individualization of motive could
take place, there appears no reason why it should not
continue to work on indefinitely. A tree is an or
ganized centre of life, but without the intelligence
which would enable it to individualize the motive of
the Universal Life-principle. It individualizes a cer
tain measure of the Universal Vital Energy, but it
does not individualize the Universal Intelligence, and,
therefore, when the measure of energy which it has
individualized is exhausted it dies; and the same
thing happens with animals and men.
But as the particular intelligence advances in the
recognition of itself as the individualization of the
Universal Intelligence, it becomes more and more
capable of seizing upon the initial motive of the Uni
versal Mind and giving it permanence. And suppos
ing this recognition to be complete, the logical result
would be never-ceasing and perpetually-expanding in
dividual life ; thus bringing us back to those promises
which I have quoted in the opening pages of this
book, and reminding us of the Master's statement to
the woman of Samaria that "the Father" is always
"seeking" those who will worship Him in spirit and
in truth; that is, those who can enter into the spirit
of what "the Father" is aiming at.
But what happens, in the absence of a perfect recog-

The Devil 193
nition of the Universal Motive, is that sooner or later
the machinery runs down, and the "motive" is trans
ferred to other centres where the same process is re
peated, and so Life and Death alternate with each
other in a ceaseless round. The disintegrating process
is the Universal Builder taking the materials for fresh
constructions from a tenement without a tenant; that
is, from an organism which has not reached the meas
ure of intelligence necessary to perpetuate the Uni
versal Motive in itself, or, as the Master put it in the
parable of the ten virgins such as have not a supply of
oil to keep their lamps burning.
This Negative disintegrating force is the Integrat
ing Power working, so to say, at a lower level rela
tively to that at which it had been working in the or
ganism that is being dissolved. It is not another
power. Both the Bible and common-sense tell us
that ultimately there can be only ONE power in the
universe, which must, therefore, be the Building-
power, so that there can be no such thing as a power
which is negative in itself; but it shows itself negative
ly in relation to the particular individual, if through
want of recognition he fails to provide the requisite
conditions for it to work positively.
Work it always will, for its very being is ceaseless
activity; but whether it will act positively or nega
tively towards any particular individual depends en
tirely on whether he provides positive or negative

194 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
conditions for its manifestation, just as we may pro
duce a positive or a negative current according to the
electrical conditions which we supply.
We see, then, that what gives the Positive Power
a negative action is the failure to intelligently recog
nize our own individualization of it. In the lower
forms of life this failure is inevitable, because they
are not provided with an organism capable of such a
recognition. In Man the suitable organism is present,
but he seeks knowledge only from past experiences
which have necessarily been of the negative order,
and does not, by the combined action of reason and
faith, look into the Infinite for the unfoldment of
limitless possibilities; and so he employs his intelli
gence to deny that which, if he affirmed it, would
be in him the spring of perpetual renovation.
The Power of the Negative, therefore, has its root
in our denial of the Affirmative; and so we die be
cause we have not yet learned to understand the Prin
ciple of Life; we have yet to learn the great Law,
that "the higher mode of intelligence controls the
lower." In consequence of our ignorance we at
tribute an affirmative power to the Negative; that is
to say, the power of taking an initiative on its own
account, not seeing that it is a condition resulting from
the absence of something more positive; and so the
power of the Negative consists in affirming that to
be true which is not true, and for this reason it is

The Devil 195
called in Scripture the father of lies, or that prin
ciple from which all false statements are generated.
The word "Devil" means "false accuser" or "false
affirmer," and this name is, therefore, in itself suffi
cient to show us that what is meant is the creative
principle of Affirmation used in the wrong direction,
a truth which has been handed down to us from old
times in the saying "Diabolus est Deus inversus."
This is how it is that "the Devil" can be a vast im
personal power while at the same time having no ex
istence, and so the paradox' with which we started is
solved. And now also it becomes clear why we are
told that "the Devil" has the power of death. It is
not held by a personal individual, but results quite nat
urally from that ignorant and inverted Thought which
is "the Spirit that denies."
This is the exact opposite to "the Son of God," in
whom all things are only "Yea and Amen." That
is the Spirit of the Affirmative, and, therefore, the
Spirit of Life; and so it is that the Son of God was
manifested that "He might destroy him that had the
power of death, that is the Devil, and deliver them
who, through fear of death, were all their life-time
subject to bondage" (Hebrews ii. 14).
Again, we are told that the Devil is Satan, This
name appears to be another form of "Saturn," and
may also be connected with the root "sat" or "seven,"
Saturn being in the old symbolical astronomy the out-

196 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
ermost or seventh planet. In that system the centre
is occupied by Sol or the Sun, which represents the
Life-giving principle, and Saturn represents the op
posite extreme, or Matter at the point furthest re
moved from Pure Spirit,
Now, taken in due order. Matter or Concrete Form
is as necessary as Spirit itself, for without it there
could be no manifestation of Spirit, in other words,
there could be no ^.iristence at all. Seen from this
point of view, there is nothing evil in it, but on the
contrary, it may be compared to the lamp which con
centrates the light, and gives it a particular direction,
and in this aspect Matter is called "Lucifer" or the
Light-bearer. This is Matter taking its proper place
in the order of the Kingdom of Heaven. But if
"Lucifer" falls from heaven, becomes rebeUious, and
endeavors to usurp the place of "Sol," then it is the
fallen Archangel and becomes "Satan," or that outer
most planet which moves in an orbit whose remote
ness from the warmth and light of the Sun renders
all human life and joy impossible, a symbolism which
we retain in our common speech when we say that a
man has a saturnine aspect.
Thus "Satan" is the same old serpent that deceived
Eve ; it is the wrong belief that sets merely secondary
causes, which are only conditions, in the place of First
Cause or that originating power of Thought which

The Devil 197
makes enlightened Man the image of his Maker and
the Son of God.*
But we must not make the mistake of supposing
that because there is no Universal Devil in the same
sense as there is Universal God, therefore there are
no individual devils. The Bible frequently speaks of
them, and one of the commissions given by the Mas
ter to His followers was to cast out devils.
The words used for the Devil are in the Greek,
"Diabolos," and in the Hebrew, "Satan," both having
the same general meaning of the Principle of Nega
tion; but individual devils are called in the Hebrew,
"sair," a hairy one, and in the Greek, "daimon," a
spirit or shade, and these terms indicate evil spirits
having personal identity.
Now, without stopping to discuss the question
whether there are orders of spiritual individualities
which have never been human, let us confine our at
tention to the immense multitudes of disembodied
human spirits which, under any hypothesis, must
crowd the realms of the unseen. Can we suppose
them all to be good? Certainly not, for we have no
reason to suppose that mere severance from its phy
sical instrument either changes the moral quality or

*Fbr the all-important distinction between Causes and
Conditions, see chapter ix, of my Edinburgh Lectures on
Mental Science.

198 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
expands the intelligence of the mind, and therefore,
if there is such a thing as survival after death at
all, we cannot conceive of the other world otherwise
than as containing millions upon millions of spirits
in various stages of ignorance and ill-will, and con
sequently ready to make the most unscrupulous use
of their powers where opportunity offers.
The time is fast passing away when it will be pos
sible to regard such a conception as fantastic, and
taking our stand simply upon the well-ascertained
ground of thought-transference and telepathy, we may
well ask, if such powers as these can be exercised by
the spiritual entity while still clothed in flesh, why
should they not be equally, or even more powerfully,
employed by spirits out of the flesh?
This opens an immense field of inquiry which we
cannot stop to investigate; but setting aside all other
classes of evidence on this subject, the experimentally
ascertained facts of telepathy bring to light possi
bilities which would explain all that the Bible says
regarding the malific influence of evil spirits. But
the inference to be drawn from this is not that we
should go in continual terror of obsession or other
injury, but that we should realize that our position
as "sons and daughters of the Almighty," places us
beyond the reach of such malignant entities.
Our familiar principle, the Law of Attraction, is
at work here also. Like attracts like; and if we

The Devil 199
would keep these undesirable entities at a distance,
.we can do so most effectually by centering our
thoughts on those things which we know from their
nature cannot invite evil influences. Let us follow
the apostolic advice, and "whatsoever things are true,
whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are
just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things
are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if
there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think
on these things" (Philippians iv. 8).
Then, however far the Law of Attraction may
extend from us into the other world, we may rest
assured that it will only act to bring us in touch with
that innumerable company of angels and spirits of just
men made perfect, of whom we are told in the twelfth
chapter of Hebrews, and who, because they are joined
in the same worship of the ONE Divine Spirit as our
selves, can only act in accordance with the principles
of harmony and love.
I will not attempt the analysis of so important a
subject in the short space at my disposal, but I would
caution all students against tampering with anything
that savors of ceremonial magic. However little
acknowledged in public, it is by no means unfrequently
practised at the present day, and, if on no other
grounds, it should be resolutely shunned as a power
ful system of auto-suggestion capable of producing
the most disastrous effects on those who employ it.

200 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
No New Thought reader can be ignorant of the power
of auto-suggestion, and I would therefore ask each
one to think out for himself what the tendency of
auto-suggestion conducted on such lines as these must
be. "I speak as unto wise men, judge ye what I say."
The Bible is by no means silent on this subject,
but I may sum up its teaching in a few lines. It
assumes throughout, the possibility of intercourse be
tween men and spirits, but with the exception of the
Master's temptation, where I understand a symbolic
representation of the general principle of evil, the
Power of the Negative which we have already con
sidered, it should be remarked that all its record is of
appearances of good angels as ministering spirits to
heirs of salvation.
Nor were these visitants sought after by those who
received them, their appearance was always spon
taneous; and the solitary instance which the Bible
records of a spirit appearing whom it was sought to
raise by incantation, is of the appearance of Samuel
to Saul, announcing that his rebellion had culminated
in this act of witchcraft, and this was followed by
the suicide of Saul on the next day.
If, then, our study of the Bible has led us to the
conclusion that it is the statement of the Law of the
inevitable sequences of cause and effect, this uniform
direction of its teachings must indicate the presence
of certain sequences in this connection also, which fol-

The Devil 201
low definite laws, although we may not yet understand,
them. This knowledge will come to us by degrees
with the natural expansion of our powers, and when
it arrives in its proper order we shall be qualified to
use it; and if we realize that there is a Universal
Mind capable of guiding us at all, we may trust it
not to keep back from us anything it is necessary we
should know at each stage of our onward journey.
Do we want knowledge? The Master has promised
that the Spirit of Truth shall guide us into all truth.
"Should not a people seek unto their God instead of
unto them that have familiar spirits?" (Isaiah viii.
19) . There is a reason at the back of all these things.
We thus see that the whole question of the power
of evil turns on the two fundamental Laws which I
spoke of in the opening pages of this book, as form
ing the basis of Bible teaching ; the Law of Suggestion
and the Law of the Creative Power of Thought. The
conception of an abstract principle of evil, the Devil,
receives its power from our own auto-suggestion of
its existence; and the power of evil spirits results
from a mental attitude which allows us to receive their
suggestions. Then, in both cases, the suggestion having been ac
cepted, our own creative power of Thought does the
rest, and so prepares the way for receiving still fur
ther suggestions of the same sort. Now, the antidote
to all this is a right conception of God or the Uni-

202 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
versal Spirit of Life as the ONE and only originating
Power. If we realize that relatively to us, this Power
manifests itself through the medium of our own
Thought, and that in so doing it in no way changes
its inherent quality of Life-givingness; this recogni
tion must constitute such a supremely powerful and
all-embracing Suggestion as must necessarily eradicate
all suggestions of a contrary description; and so our
Thought being based on this Supreme Suggestion of
Good, is certain to have a correspondingly life-giving
character. To recognize the essential One-ness of this Power
is to recognize it as God, and to recognize its essential
Life-givingness is to recognize it as Love, and so we
shall realize in ourselves the truth that "God is Love."
Then, "if God be for us who can be against us ?" and
so we realize the further truth that "perfect love
casteth out fear," with the results that in our own
world there can be no devil.

IX,
THE LAW OF LIBERTY
NOTHING is more indicative of our ignorance
regarding the purpose and meaning of the
Bible, than the distinction which it is often
sought to draw between the Law and the Gospel. We
aer told of different "dispensations," as though the
Divine method of conducting the world changed after
the fashion of political constitutions. If this were
the case, we should never know under what system
of administration we were living, for we could only
be informed of these alterations by persons who were
"in the know" with the Divine Power, and we should
have nothing but their bare assertion to depend on,
that they were "in the know,"
This is the logical outcome of any system which
is based upon the allegation of specific determinations
by a Divine Autocrat, It cannot be otherwise, and
therefore all such systems are destined sooner or later
to fall to pieces, because their foundation of so-called
"authority" crumbles away under the scrutiny of intel
ligent investigation. The Divine orderings can only
be known by the Divine workings, and the intelligent
203

204 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
study of the Divine working is the only criterion which
the Bible, rightly understood, anywhere sets up for the
recognition of Truth.
The whole of the Psahns are based entirely on this
principle, and the Master claimed their testimony to
His mission. He himself spoke of tradition as ren
dering void the true Law of God; and so far from
claiming to introduce any new dispensation, he em
phatically declared that his special business was to ful
fil the Law, that is, to demonstrate it in all its com
pleteness. If the Law taught by Moses is true, and
the Gospel preached by Jesus is true, then they are
both true together, and are simply statements of the
same Truth from different standpoints ; and the proofs
of their truth will be found in their agreement with
one another, and with the universal principles of Nat
ural Law which we can learn by the study of ourselves
and of our environment.
If the Old and New Testaments are right in saying
that the foundation of all other knowledge is that God
is ONE, then we may be certain that we are on a
wrong track if we think that Divine truth can be
different at one time to what it is at another. , We
realize the principle of '"continuity" throughout phy
sical nature, and if we see that the physical must orig
inate in the spiritual, we cannot deny the extension of
"continuity" throughout the entire system; and there
fore, if the messages of the Old and New Testaments

The Law of Liberty 205
are both trae, we may expect to find the same prin
ciple of "continuity" running through both. On in
vestigation this will be found to be the case, and no
truer definition can be given of the Gospel than that
it is the Law worked out to its logical conclusions.
The Law which the Bible sets forth from first to
last is the Law of Human Individuality. The Bible
is the spiritual Natural History Book of Man. It
begins with his creation by evolution from the king
doms which had preceded him, and it terminates
with his apotheosis — the line is long, but it is straight,
and reaches its glorious destination by an orderly
sequence of cause and effect. It is the statement of
the evolution of the individual as the result of his rec
ognition of the Law by which he came to be a human
being at all.
When he sees that this happened neither by chance
nor by arbitrary command, then, and not till then,
will he wake up to the fact that he is what he is by
reason of a Law inherent in himself — the action of
which he can therefore cany on indefinitely, by cor
rectly understanding and cheerfully following it.
His first general perception that there is such a
Law at all is followed by the realization that it must
be the Law of his own individuality, for he has only
discovered the existence of the Law by recognizing
himself as the Expression of it; and therefore he finds
that before all dsie, the Law is that he shall be himsetf.

206 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
But a Law which allows us to be entirely ourselves
is Perfect Liberty, and thus we get back to St, James'
statement that the Perfect Law is the Law of Liberty.
Obviously it is not Liberty to allow ourselves to
be depressed into such a mental attitude of submission
to every form and degree of misery as coming to us
"by the will of God," that we at last reach a condition
of apathy in which one blow more or less makes very
little difference. Such teaching is based on the Devil's
beatitude — "Blessed are they that expect nothing for
they shall not be disappointed" — ^but that is not the
Gospel of Deliverance which Jesus preached in His
first discourse in the synagogue of Nazareth, Jesus'
teaching was not the deification of suffering, but the
fulness of Joy ; and He emphatically declared that all
bondage, everything which keeps us from enjoying
our life to the full, is the working of that Power of
the Negative which the Bible calls the Devil. To
give up hope and regard ourselves as the sport of
an inexorable fate is not Liberty. It is not obedience
to a higher power, but abject submission to a lower
— the power of ignorance, unintelligence, and negation.
Perfect Liberty is the consciousness that we are
not thus botmd by any power of evil, but that, on
the contrary, we are centers in which the Creative
Spirit of the Universe finds particular expression.
Then we are in harmony with its continual progressive
movement towards still more perfect modes of ex-

The Law of Liberty 207
pression, and therefore Its thought and our thought.
Its action and our action, become identical, so that
in expressing the Spirit we express ourselves. When
we reach this unity of consciousness we cannot but
find it to be perfect Liberty; for our own self-ex
pression, being also that of the All-Creating Spirit as
It manifests in our individuality, is no longer bound
by antecedent conditions, but starts fresh from the
standpoint of Origmal Creative Energy.
This is Liberty, according to Law, the law of the
All-Creating Harmony, in which God's way and our
way co-incide. The idea of Liberty, wtihout a uni
fying Harmony as its basis, is inconceivable, for with
every one struggling to get their own way at some
body else's expense, you create a pandemonium; and
that is just why there is so much of that element in
the world at the present time. But such an inverted
idea of Liberty is based on the assumption that Man
does not possess the power of controlling his condi
tions by his Thought ; in other words, the flat denial
of the initial statement of Scripture regarding him
that he is made "in the image and likeness of God,"
Once grant the creative power of our Thought and
there is an end of struggling for our own way, and
an end of gaining it at some one else's expense; for,
since by the terms of the hypothesis we can create
what we like, the simplest way of getting what we
want is, not to snatch it from somebody else, but to

2o8 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
make it for ourselves ; and, since there is no limit to
Thought there can be no need for straining, and for
every one to have his own way in this manner would
be to banish all strife, want, sickness, and sorrow from
the earth.
Now, it is precisely on this assumption of the cre
ative power of our Thought that the whole Bible
rests. If not, what is the meaning of being saved
by Faith? Faith is essentially Thought; and, there
fore, every call to have Faith in God is a call to tmst
in the power of our own Thought about God. "Ac
cording to your faith be it unto you," says the New
Testament. "As a man thinketh in his heart so is
he," says the Old Testament. The entire Book is
nothing but one continuous statement of the Creative
Power of Thought.
The whole Bible is a commentary on the text, "Man
is the image and likeness of God." And it comments
on this text sometimes by explaining why, by reason
of the ONE-ness of the Spirit, this must necessarily
be so; sometimes by incitements to emotional states
calculated to call this power into activity; sometimes
by precepts warning us agiinst those emotions which
would produce its inverse action; sometimes by the
example of those who have successfully demonstrated
this power, and conversely by examples of those who
have perverted it; sometimes by statements of the
terrible consequences that xnust inevitably follow such

The Law of Liberty 209
perversion; and sometimes by glorious promises of
the illimitable possibilities residing in this wonderful
power, if used in the right way; and thus it is that
"all Scripture is profitable for doctrine, for reproof,
for correction, for instruction in righteousness."
All this proceeds from the initial assumption with
which the Bible starts regarding Man, that he is the
reproduction in individuality of that which God is
in universality. Start with this assumption, and the
whole Bible works out logically. Deny it, and the
Book becomes nothing but a mass of inconsistencies
and contradictions. The value of the Bible as a store
house of knowledge and a guide into Life, depends
entirely on our attitude with regard to its fundamental
proposition. But this proposition contains in itself the Affirma
tion of our Liberty; and the Gospel preached by
Jesus amounts simply to this, that if any one realizes
himself as the reproduction, in conscious individuality,
of the same principles which the Law of the Old
Testament bids us recognize in the Divine Mind, he
will thereby enter upon an unlimited inheritance of
Life and Liberty. But to do this we must realize the
Divine image in ourselves on all lines.
We cannot enter upon a full life of Joy and Liberty
by trying to realize the Divine image along one line
only. If we seek to reproduce the Creative Power
without its correlatives of Wisdom and Love, we

210 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
shall do so only to our own injury; for there is one
thing which is impossible alike to God and Man, and
that is to plant a seed of one sort and make it yield
fruit of another. We can never get beyond the Law
that the effect must be of the same nature as the
cause. To abrogate this Law would be to destroy
the very foundation of the Creative Power of Thought,
for then we could never reckon upon what our
Thought might produce; so that the very same Law
which places creative power at our disposal, neces
sarily provides punishment for its misuse and re
ward for its right employment.
And this is equally the case along the two other
lines. To seek development only on the line of
Knowledge is to contemplate a store of wealth, while
remaining ignorant of the one fact which gives it any
value, that it is our own; and, in like manner, to cul
tivate only Love makes our great motive power evap
orate in a weak sentimentality which accomplishes
nothing, because it does not know how and does not
feel able. So, here we see the force of the Master's
words when he bids us aim at a perfection like that
of our "Father" in heaven, a perfection based on the
knowledge that all being is three-fold in essence and
one in expression; and that, therefore, we can attain
Liberty only by recognizing this universal Law in
ourselves also, and that accordingly the Thought that

The Law of Liberty 211
sets us free must be a simultaneous movement along
all three lines of our nature.
The Divine Mind may be represented by a large
circle and the individual mind by a small one, but
that is no reason why the smaller circle should not be
as perfect for its own area as the larger; and, there
fore, the initial statement of the Bible that Man is
the image of God is the charter of Individual Liberty
for each one, provided we realize that this likeness
must extend to the whole three-fold unity that is
ourself and not to a part only.
Our Liberty, therefore, consists in being ourselves
in our Wholeness, and this means the conscious exer
cise of all our powers, whether of our visible or in
visible personality. It means being ourselves, not try
ing to be somebody else.
The principles by which any one ever attains to self-
expression, whether in the humblest or the most ex
alted degree, are always the same, for they are uni
versal and apply to every one alike, and, therefore,
we may advantageously study their working in the
lives of others; but to suppose that the expression of
these principles is bound to take the same form in
us that it did in the individual who is the object of
our hero-worship, is to deny the first principle of mani
fested being, which is Individuality.
If some one towers above the crowd it is because
he has grown to that height, and I cannot permanently

212 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
attain the same elevation by climbing on his shoulders,
but only by growing to the same height myself. There
fore, the attempt to copy a particular individual, how
ever beautiful his character, is bondage, and a relin
quishing of our birthright of Selfhood.
What we have to do in studying those lives which
we admire, is to discover the universal principles
which those persons embodied in their way, and then
set to work to embody them in ours. To do this is to
realize the Universal I AM manifesting itself in every
Individuality; and when we see this, we find that the
statement of the Law of Individual Liberty is the
declaration that was made to Moses at the burning
bush, and is the truth which Jesus proclaimed when
He said that it was the recognition of the I AM that
would set us free from the Law of bondage and death.
In speaking of the I AM as the Principle of Life,
neither Jesus nor Moses used the words personally,
and Jesus especially avoids any such misconstraction
by saying "If I bear witnesss of Myself My witness. is
not true"; in other words. He came to set forth,
not Himself personally, but those great principles
common to all mankind, of which He exemplified the
full development.
When a little child is first told that God made the
world, it accepts the statement without doubting, but
immediately and logically follows it up with the ques-'
tion, than who made God? And the unsophisticated

The Law of Liberty 213
mother very often gives the correct answer, God made
himself. There is the whole secret, and when we
come dovm — or rather when we rise — to the level of
these souls whose pure intuitions have not been
warped by arguments drawn only from the outside
of things, we see that the principle of continual self-
creation into all varieties of individuality, affords the
true clue to all that we are and to all that is around
us; and when we see this, the teaching regarding the
I AM in ourselves becomes clear, logical, and simple.
Then we understand that the Law of our Whole
Being — that which is Cause as well as Effect — is the
reproduction in Individuality of the same power which
makes the worlds; and when this is understood in its
Wholeness, we see that this principle cannot, as mani
fested in us, be in opposition to its manifestation of
itself in other forms. The Whole must be homo
geneous — that which is homogeneous cannot act
in opposition to itself — and consequently this
homogeneous principle, which underlies all indi
viduality, and is the I AM in each, can never
act contrary to the true Law of Life; therefore, to
know ourselves as the concentration of this principle
into a focus of self-recognition, is to be at one with
the Life-Principle which is all that is in all worlds
and under all forms.
It is this recognition of our own Individuality as
being a reproduction of the Universal Principle in

214 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
the whole personality that constitutes belief in "the
Son," or the principle of spiritual sonship, which
brings us out of the bondage of ignorance and im
potence into the liberty of knowledge and power.
But the reader, who is still within the trammels ol
the traditional exegesis, will probably say, if this be
so, what is meant by such texts as that contained in
the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, "He was wounded
for our transgressions," etc.? and the answer is that
the personality here spoken of is still the same Typical
Man — the Divine Son — who is described by Isaiah as
"the Wonderful Child," only seen from another point
of view. This is the description of him in his pre
natal stage, that is, before his manifestation as the
Son whose Name is Wonderful, Counsellor, etc.
And this brings us to the consideration of a very
recondite subject, the question whether "Spirit" ever
does pass into unconsciousness. Whether from the
physiological or the psychological side, there is im
portant evidence tending to the conclusion that "Spirit"
is never in a condition of unconsciousness ; and if this
is the case with that concentration of pure Spirit
which is the individualized I AM in each of us, how
can we conceive its suffering from those transgressions
of the Law of our own being, which result in all the
misery, pain, and death that the world has witnessed.
If the Spirit in us is the very Impersonation of the
Law of Life, what woundings, what bruisings it mtist

The Law of Liberty 215
suffer in the course of educating the lower principles
into self-recognition and spontaneous compliance with
the true Law of the Individuality in its Wholeness?
Then we see that it is only by the infinite persist
ence of the Spirit, in its struggle towards perfecting
the vehicles of its self-expression, that the Individ
uality in all its completeness can ever be brought to
maturity, and the crown set to the work of Evolution
which commenced far back in the dim unfathomable
past; we realize St. Paul's meaning in saying that the
Spirit groans with unutterable groanings, for it is
that principle which St. John tells us cannot sin (I.
John iii. 9, and v. 18), that is, cannot act contrary
to the true Law of Being ; and thus a peculiar emphasis
is set on the injunctions, "Grieve not the Spirit,"
"Quench not the Spirit," for the individualized Spirit
is the intensely Living Centre of ourselves — the I AM
that I Myself AM in every one of us.
The question of the ultimate consciousness of the
individuality under the outward semblance of uncon
sciousness, as in trance, or under the conditions induced
by hypnotism, or anaesthetics, involves problems of a
scientific character which I hope to have an opportunity
of discussing on another occasion ; but even supposing
there is no such latent consciousness of suffering as
I have suggested, we may well transfer the whole
description of the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah to the
conscious sufferings of the outer man. That, at any

2i6 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
rate, is a "man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,"
and the reason of these sufferings is the want of
Wholeness; they are the result of trying to live only
in one portion of our nature — and that the lower —
instead of in the Whole, and, consequently, these suf
ferings will continue until we realize that even balance
of all parts of our nature which alone constitutes true
individuality, or that which is without division.
By the buffetting of experience, the lower person
ality is being continually driven to inquire more and
more into the reason of its sufferings, and as it grows
in intelligence, it sees that they always result from
some wilful or ignorant infraction of the Law of
Things-as-they-are, as distinguished from Things-as-
they-look; and so by degrees the lower personality
grows into union with the higher personality, which
itself is the Law of Things-as-they-are become Per
sonal, until at last the two are found to be ONE, and
the Perfected Man stands forth Whole.
This is the process to which the writer of the Epistle
to the Hebrews refers, when he says that "though he
were a son, yet learned he obedience by the things
which he suffered," thus indicating a course of edu
cation which can only apply to a personality whose
evolution is not yet completed. But by these suffer
ings of the lower personality the salvation of the
entire individuality is at length accomplished, for
being thus led to study the Law of the Whole, the

The Law of Liberty 217
lower or simply intellectual mentality, at last dis
covers its relation to the Intuitive and Creative Prin
ciple, and realizes that nothing short of the harmonious
union of the two makes a Complete Man. Until this
recognition takes place, the real meaning of suffering
is not understood.
To talk about "the Mystery of Pain" is like talking
of the mystery of broken glass if we throw a stone
at a window — it is of our own making. We attribute
our sufferings to "the will of God," simply because we
can think of nothing else to attribute them to, being
ignorant alike of ourselves as centres of causation
and of God as the Universal Life-Principle, which
cannot will evil against any one.
So long as we are at this stage of intelligence, we
esteem the lower personality (the only self we yet
know) to be "stricken and smitten of God" — we put
it all down to God's account — while all the time the
cause of our wounding and bruising was, not the will
of God, but our own transgressions and iniquities —
transgression, the infraction of the Law of Causation,
and iniquity, unequalness, or the want of even balance
between all portions of our Individuality, without
which the liberating recognition of our own I AM
ness can never take place.
This reading of this wonderful chapter takes it
out of the region of merely speculative theology, and
brings it into a region where we can understand its

2x8 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
statements as links in a chain of cause and effect con
necting the promised redemption with facts that we
know, and starting from causes whose working is
obvious to us.
This reading in no way detracts from the value of
this passage as a prophecy of the great work of the
Master, for it is a generic description applicable to
each, in his degree, who in any way labors or suffers
for the good of others; and the description is, there
fore, supremely applicable to Jesus, in whom that
perfect Individualization of the Divine of which we
speak was fully accomplished.
The Law of Man's Individuality is, therefore, the
Law of Liberty, and equally it is the Gospel of Peace ;
for when we truly understand the Law of our own
individuality, we see that the same Law finds its ex
pression in every one else, and, consequently, we shall
reverence the Law in others exactly in proportion as
we value it in ourselves. To do this is to follow the
golden rule of doing to others what we would they
should do unto us; and because we know that the
Law of Liberty in ourselves must include the free use
of our own creative power, there is no longer any
inducement to infringe the rights of others^ for we
can satisfy all our desires by the exercise of our
knowledge of the Law.
As this comes to be understood, co-operation will
take the place of competition with the result of remov-

The Law of Liberty 219
ing all ground of enmity, whether between individuals,
classes, or nations; and thus the continual recogni
tion of the Divine or "highest" principles in our
selves brings "peace on earth and good-will among
men" naturally in its train, and it is for this reason
that the Bible everywhere couples the reign of peace
on earth with the Knowledge of God.
The whole object of the Bible is to teach us to be
ourselves and yet more ourselves. It does not trou
ble itself with political or social questions, or even
with those of religious organization, but it goes to the
root of all, which is the Individual. First set people
right individually, and they will naturally set them
selves right collectively. It is only applying to man
kind the old proverb, "take care of the pence and the
pounds will take care of themselves"; and, therefore,
the Bible deals only with the two extremes of the
scale, the Universal Mind and the Individual Mind.
Let the relation between these two be clearly under
stood, and all other relations will settle themselves on
lines which, however varied in form, will always be
characterized by individual Liberty working to the
expression of perfect social harmony.

THE TEACHING OF JESUS
IN this chapter I shall endeavor to give a connected
idea of the general scope and purpose of the
Master's teachings, the point of which we, in
great measure, miss by taking particular sayings sep
arately, and so losing the force which pertains to
them, by reason of the place they hold in His system
as a whole. For, be it remembered, Jesus was teach
ing a definite system, not a creed, nor a ritual, nor a
code of speculative ethics, but a system resulting from
the threefold source of spiritual inspiration, intel
lectual reasoning, and experimental observation, which
are the three modes in which the Universal Mind
manifests itself as Conscious Reasoning Power or "the
Word." And therefore this system combines the re
ligious, philosophical, and scientific characters, be
cause it is a statement of the action of universal prin
ciples at the level where they find expression through
the human mind.
As we proceed, we shall find that the basis of this
system is the same perception of the unity between
the Expressor and the Expressed, which is also the
221

222 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
basis of the teaching of Moses, and which is summed
up in the significant phrase I AM. Jesus brings
out the consequences of this Unity in their relation
to the Individual, and therefore presupposes the teach
ing of Moses, regarding the Universal Unity, as the
necessary foundation for its reflection in the individual.
The great point to be noted, in the teaching of
Jesus, is His statement of the absolute liberty of the
individual. That was the subject of His first dis
course in the synagogue of Nazareth (Luke iv. 16) ;
He continued His teaching with the statement, "the
truth shall make you free"; and He finished it with
the final declaration before Pilate, that He had come
into the world to the end that He should bear witness
to the Truth (John xviii. 37). Thus, to teach us
the knowledge of Liberating Truth was the beginning,
the middle, and the end of the great work which the
Master set before Him,
Now, there are two facts about this teaching that
deserve our special attention. The first is that the
perfect liberty of the individual must be in accordance
with the will of God; for on any other supposition
Jesus would have been teaching rebellion against the
Divine will; and, therefore, any system of religion
which inculcates blind submission to adverse circum
stances, as submission to the will of God, must do so
at the cost of branding Jesus as a leader of rebellion
against the Divine authority.

The Teaching of Jesus 223
The other point is that this freedom is represented
simply as the result of coming to know the Truth.
If words mean anything, this means that Liberty in
truth exists at the present moment, and that what
keeps us from enjoying it is simply our ignorance of
the fact. In other words, the Master's teaching is
that the essential, and, therefore, ever-present Law
of each individual human life is absolute Liberty —
it is so in the very nature of Being, and it is only
our ingrained belief to the contrary that keeps us in
bondage to all sorts of limitation.
Of course, it is easy to explain away all that the
Master said, by interpreting it in the light of our past
experiences; but these experiences themselves consti
tute the very bondage from which He came to deliver
us, and, therefore, to do this is to destroy His whole
work. We do not require His teaching to go back
to the belittling and narrowing influence of past ex
periences; we do that naturally enough so long as
we remain ignorant of any other possibilities. It is
just this being tied up that we want to get loose from,
and He came to tell us that, when we know the
Truth, we shall find we are not tied up at all. If we
hold fast to the initial teaching of Genesis, that the
Divine Principle makes things by itself becoming
them, then it follows that when it becomes the indi
vidual man, it cannot have any other than its own
natural movement in him; that is, a continual push-

224 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
ing forward into fuller and fuller expression of itself,
which, therefore, becomes fuller and fuller life in
the individual ; and, consequently, anything that tends
to limit the full expression of the individual life must
be abhorrent to the Universal Mind expressing itself
in that individuality.
Then comes the question as to the way in which
this truth is to be realized, and the practical way in
culcated by the Master is very simple; it is only that
we are to take this truth for granted, that is all. We
may be ready to exclaim that this is a large demand
upon our faith, but after all it is the only way in which
we ever do anything. We take all the operations of
the Life-principle in our physical body for granted,
and what is wanted is a similar confidence in the work
ing of our spiritual faculties.
We trust our bodily powers because we assume
their action as the natural Law of our being; and in
just the same way we can only use our interior powers,
by tacitly assuming them to be as natural to us as
any others. We must bear in mind that from first
to last the Master's teaching was never other than a
veiled statement of Truth: He spoke "the word" to
the people in parables, and "without a parable spake
He not unto them" (Matt. iv. 34). It is indeed added
"and when they were alone He expounded all things
to His disciples" ; but if we take the interpretation of
the parable of the sower as a sample, we can see how

The Teaching of Jesus 22^
very far these expositions were from being a full and
detailed explanation.
The thickest and outermost veil is removed, but we
are still very far from that plain speaking among "the
full-grown" which St. Paul tells us was equally dis
tant from his own writing to the Corinthians. I
say this on the best authority, that of the Master
Himself. We might have supposed that in that last
discourse, which commences with the fourteenth
chapter of St. John's Gospel, He had withdrawn the
final veil from His teaching; but, no, we have His
own words for it that even this is a veiled statement
of the Truth. He tells His disciples that the time
when He shall show them plainly of "the Father" is
still future (John xiv. 25).
He left the final interpretation to be given by the only
possible interpreter, the Spirit of Truth, as the real
significance of His words should in time dawn upon
each of His hearers, with an inner meaning that would
be none other than the revelation of The Sacred
Name. As this meaning dawns upon us we find
that Jesus no longer speaks to us in proverbs, but
that His parables tell us plainly of "the Father," and
our only wonder is that we did not discern His trae
meaning long ago.
He is telling us of great universal principles which
are reproduced everywhere and in everything with
special reference to their reproduction on the plane

226 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
of Personality, He is not telling us of rules which
God has laid down in one way, and could, had He
chosen, have laid down in another, but of universal
Laws which are the very Being of God, and which
are, therefore, inherent in the constitution of Man.
Let us, then, examine some of His sayings in this
light. The thread on which the pearls of the Master's
teaching are strung together, is that Perfect Liberty
is the natural result of knowing the Truth. "When
you find what the Truth really is, you will find it to
be that you are perfectly free," is the centre from
which all His other statements radiate; but the final
discovery cannot be made for you, you must each
make it for yourself, therefore, "he that hath ears to
hear let him hear."
This is nowhere brought out more clearly than in
the parable of the Prodigal Son, The fact of son-
ship had never altered for either of the two brothers,
but in different ways they each missed the point of
their position as sons. The one limited himself by
separating off a particular share of the Father's goods
for himself, which, just because of being a limited
share and not the whole, was speedily exhausted, leav
ing him in misery and want.
The other brother equally limited himself by sup
posing that he had no power to draw from his Father's
stores, but must wait till he in some way acquired a

The Teaching of Jesus 22f
specific permission to do so, not realizing his inherent
right, as his Father's son, to take whatever he wanted.
The one son took up a false idea of independence,
thinking it consisted in separating himself and, to use
an expressive vulgarism, in being entirely "on his
own hook," while the other, in his recoil from this con
ception, went to the opposite extreme, and believed
himself to have no independence at all.
The younger son's return, so far from extinguishing
the instinct of Liberty, gratified it to the full, by plac
ing him in a position of honor and command in his
Father's house; and the elder sen is rebuked with
the simple words, "Why wait for me to give you what
is yours already ? All that I have is thine." It would
be impossible to state the relation between the Indi
vidual Mind and the Universal Mind more clearly
than in this parable, or the two classes of error which
prevent us from understanding and utilizing this re
lation. The younger brother is the man who, not realizing
his own spiritual nature, lives on the resources of the
lower personality, till their failure to meet his needs
drives him to look for something which cannot thus
be exhausted, and eventually he finds it in the recog
nition of his own spiritual being as his inalienable
birthright, because he was made in the image and
likeness of God, and could not by any possibility have
been created otherwise.

228 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
Gradually, as he becomes more and more conscious
of the full effects of this recognition, he finds that
"the Father" advances to meet him, until at last they
are folded in each other's arms, and he realizes the
true meaning of the words, "I and my Father are
ONE." Then he learns that Liberty is in union and
not in separation, and realizing his identity with the
Infinite he finds that all its inexhaustible stores are
open to him.
This is not rhapsody but simple fact, which becomes
clear if we see that the only possible action of the un
differentiated Life-Principle must be to always press
forward into fuller and fuller expression of itself, in
particular forms of life, in strict accordance with the
conditions which each form provides for its manifes
tation. And when any one thoroughly grasps this
principle of the differentiation through form of an
entirely undistributed universal potential, then he will
see that the mode of differentiation depends on the di
rection in which the specializing entity is reaching
out. If he further gets some insight into the boundless
possibilities which must result from this, he will realize
the necessity, before all things, of seeking to repro
duce in individuality that Harmonious Order which
is the foundation of the universal system.
And, since he cannot particularize the whole Infinite
at a single stroke, which would be a mathematical im-

The Teaching of Jesus 229
possibility, he utilizes its boundless stores by par
ticularizing, from moment to moment, the specific de
sires, powers, and attractions, which at that moment
he requires to employ.
And, since the Energy from which he draws is in
finite in quantity and unspecialized in quality, there is
no limit either of extent or kind to the purposes for
which he may employ it. But he can only do this by
abiding in "the Father's" house, and by conforming to
the rule of the house which is the Law of Love.
This is the only restriction, if it can be called a
restriction to avoid using our powers injuriously ; and
this restriction becomes self-obvious, when we con
sider that the very thing which puts us in possession
of this limitless power of drawing from the Infinite
is the recognition of our identity with the Universal
One, and that any employment of our powers to the
intentional injury of others is in itself a direct denial
of that "unity of the Spirit which is the bond of
peace." The binding power (religio) of Universal Love is
thus seen to be inherent in the very nature of the
Liberty, which we attain by the Knowledge of the
Truth; but except this there is no other restriction.
Why? Because, by the very hypothesis of the case,
we are employing First Cause when we consciously
use our creative power with the knowledge that our
Thought is the individual action of the same Spirit

230 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
which, in its universal action, is both the Cause and
the Being of every mode of manifestation; for the
great fact which distinguishes First Cause from sec
ondary causation is its entire independence of all
conditions, because it is not the outcome of conditions
but itself creates them — it produces its own conditions
step by step as it goes along.*
If, therefore, the Law of Love be taken as the
foundation, any line of action can be worked out suc
cessfully and profitably; but this does not alter the
fact that a higher degree of intelligence will see a
much wider field of action than a lower one, and,
therefore, if our field of activity is to grow, it can
only be as the result of the growth of our intelligence ;
and, consequently, the first use we should make of
our power of drawing from the Infinite should be
for steady growth in understanding.
Life is the capacity for action and enjoyment, and,
therefore, any extension of the field for the exercise
of our capacities is an increase of our own livingness
and enjoyment, and so the continual companionship
of the Spirit of Truth, leading us into con
tinually expanding perception of the limitless pos
sibilities that are open to ourselves and to the whole
race, is the supreme Vivifying Influence; and thus

*For fuller explanation regarding our use of First Cause,
see my Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science.

The Teaching of Jesus 231
we find that the Spirit of Truth is identical with the
Spirit of Life.
It is this consciousness of companionship that is
the Presence of the Father ; and it is in returning to
this Presence and dwelling in it that we get back to
the Source of our own spiritual nature, and so find
ourselves in possession of boundless possibilities with
out any fear of misusing them, because we do not
seek to be possessors of the Divine Power without be
ing possessors of the Divine Love and Wisdom also.
And the elder brother is the man who has not thrown
off the Divine guidance as the younger had done, but
who has realized it only in the light of a restriction.
Always his question is "Within what limits may I
act ?" and, consequently, starting with the idea of limi
tation, he finds limitation ever)rwhere; and thus,
though he does not go into a far country like his
brother, he relegates himself to a position no better
than that of a servant — his wages are measured by
his work, his creeds, his orthodoxies, his limitations of
all sorts and descriptions, which he imagines to be of
Divine appointment, while all the time he has im
ported them himself.
But him also "the Father" meets with the gracious
words, "Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I
have is thine"; and, therefore, as soon as this elder
brother becomes sufficiently enlightened to perceive
that all the elements of restriction in his beliefs, save

232 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
only the Law of Love, have no place in the ultimate
reality of Life, he too re-enters the house, now no
longer as a servant but as a son, and joins in the
festival of everlasting joy.
We find the same lesson in the parable of the
Talents, The use of the powers and opportunities
we have, just where we are now, naturally opens up
sequences by which still further opportunities, and,
consequently, higher development of our powers be
come possible ; and these higher developments in their
turn open the way to yet further expansion, so that
there is no limit to the process of growth other than
what we set to it by denying or doubting the prin
ciple of growth in ourselves, which is what is meant
by the servant burying his talent in the earth.
"The lord" is the Living Principle of Evolution
which obtains equally on all planes, and nothing has
been more fully established by science than the Law
that as soon as progress stops retrogression begins,
so that it is only by continual advance we can escape
the penalty with which Professor Aytoun threatens
us in his humorous verses, that we shall
"Return to the monad from which we all sprang,
Which nobody can deny,"
But on the other hand, the employment of our fac
ulties and opportunities, so far as we realize them,
is, by the same Law, certain to produce its own re-

The Teaching of Jesus 233
ward. By being faithful over a few things we shall
become rulers over many things, for God is not un
mindful to forget your labor of love, and so day by
day we shall enter more and more fully into the joy
of our Lord.
The same idea is repeated in the parable of the
man who contrived to get into the wedding feast
without the wedding garment. The Divine Marriage
is the attainment by the individual mind of conscious
union with the Universal Mind or "the Spirit"; and
the feast, as in the parable of the Prodigal Son, sig
nifies the joy which results from the attainment of
Perfect Liberty, which means power over all the re
sources of the universe, whether within us or around
us. Now, as I have already pointed out, the only way
in which this power can be used safely and profitably
is through that recognition of its Source, which makes
it in all points subservient to the Law of Love, and
this was precisely what the intruder did not realize.
He is the type of the man who fails in exactly the
opposite way to the servant who buries his Lord's
talent in the earth. This man has cultivated his
powers to the uttermost, and so is able to enter along
with the other guests. He has attained that Knowl
edge of the Laws of the spiritual side of Nature
fwhich gives him a place at that Table of the Lord,
which is the storehouse of the Infinite; but he has

234 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
missed the essential point of all his Knowledge, the
recognition that the Law of Power is one with the
Law of Love, and so, desiring to separate the Divine
Power from the Divine Love, and to grasp the one
while rejecting the other, he finds that the very Laws
of which he has made himself master, by his knowl
edge, overwhelm him with their own tremendousness,
and by their reflex action become the servants who
bind him hand and foot, and cast him into the outer
darkness. The Divine Power can never be separated
jvith impunity from the Divine Love and Guidance.
The parable of the unjust steward is based upon
the Law of the subjective nature of individual life.
As in all the parables, "the lord" is the supreme Self-
evolving Principle of the universe, which, relatively
to us, is purely subjective, because it acts in and
through ourselves. As such it follows the invariable
Law of subjective mind, which is that of response
to any suggestion that is impressed upon it with suf
ficient power.*
Consequently, "the lord" does not dispute the cor
rectness of the accounts rendered by the steward, but,
on the contrary, commends him for his wisdom in
recognizing the true principle by which to escape the
results of his past mal-administration of the estate.

*I have discussed tihs subject at greater length in my
Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science.

The Teaching of Jesus 235
St. Paul tells us that he is truly approved "whom
the Lord commendeth," and the commendation of the
steward is unequivocally stated by Jesus, and, there
fore, we must realize that we have here the state
ment of some principle which harmonizes with the
Life-giving tendency of the Universal Spirit. And
this principle is not far to seek. It is the acceptance
by "the Lord" of less than the full amount due to
Him. It is the statement of Ezekiel xviii. 22, that if the
wicked man forsake his way "he shall surely live and
not die. All his transgressions that he hath com
mitted shall not be mentioned unto him; in his right
eousness that he hath done he shall live." It is what the
Master speaks of as agreeing with the adversary while
we are still in the way with him; in other words, it
is the recognition that because the Laws of the uni
verse are not vindictive but simply causal, therefore,
the reversal of our former mis-employment of First
Cause, which in our case is our Thought demonstrated
in a particular line of action, must necessarily result
in the reversal of all those evil consequences which
would otherwise have flowed from our previous
wrong-doing. I have enlarged in a previous chapter on the opera
tion of the Law of Suggestion with regard to the
question of sacrifice; and when we either see that
the Law of Sacrifice culminates in No Sacrifice, or

236 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
reach the place where we realize that a Great and
Sufficient Sacrifice has been offered up once for all,
then we have that solid ground of suggestion which
results in the summing-up of the whole Gospel in the
simple words, "Don't do it again.*'
If we once realize the great truth stated in Psalm
xviii. 26 and II, Samuel xxii, 27, that the Divine
Universal Spirit always becomes to us exactly the
correlative of our own principle of action, and that it
does so naturally by the Law of Subjective Mind,
then it must become clear that it can have no vindictive
power in it, or, as the Bible expresses it, "Fury is not
in Me" (Isaiah xxvii. 9),
But for the very same reason we canot trifle with
the Great Mind by trying to impress one character
upon it by our thought, while we are impressing
another upon ourselves by our actions. This is to
show our ignorance of the nature of the Law with
which we are dealing; for a little consideration will
show us that we cannot impress two opposite sug
gestions at the same time. The man who tried to do
so is described in the parable of the servant, who threw
his fellow-servant into prison after his own debt had
been cancelled. The previous pardon availed him
nothing, and he was cast into prison till he should
pay the uttermost farthing.
The meaning becomes evident when we see that
what we are dealing with is the supreme Law of our

The Teaching of Jesus 237
own being. We do not really believe what we do
not act up to ; if, therefore, we cast our fellow-servant
into prison, no amount of philosophical speculation
in an opposite direction will set us at liberty. Why?
Because our action demonstrates that our real belief
is in limitation. Such compulsion can only proceed
from the idea that we shall be the poorer, if we do
not screw the money out of our fellow-servant, and
this is to deny our own power of drawing from the
Infinite in the most emphatic manner, and so to de
stroy the whole edifice of Liberty.
We cannot impress upon ourselves too strongly the
impossibility of living by two contradictory principles
at the same time. And the same argument holds
good when we conceive that the debt is due to our
injured feelings, our pride, and the like — the prin
ciple is always the same; it is that perfect Liberty
places us above the reach of all such considerations,
because by the very hypothesis of being absolute free
dom, it can create far more rapidly than any of our
fellow-servants can run up debts; and our attitude
towards those who are thus running up scores should
be to endeavor to lead them into that region of ful
ness where the relation of debtor and creditor cannot
exist, because it becomes merged in the radiation of
creative power.
But perhaps the most impressive of all fhe parables
was that in which, on the night when He was be-

238 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
trayed, the Master expressed the great mystery of
God and Man by symbolic action rather than by words,
girding Himself with a towel and washing the dis
ciples' feet. He assured Peter that though the mean
ing of this symbolic act was not apparent at the time,
it should become clear later on.
A wonderful light is thrown on this dramatization
of a great principle by comparing it with the Master's
utterance in Luke xiii. 35-37. The idea of girding
is very conspicuous in that parable. First, we are
bidden to have our loins girded and our lights burn
ing, like unto men that wait for their Lord. Then
we are told that, if the servants are found thus pre
pared, when the Lord does come the positions will be
reversed, and He will make them sit down and will
gird Himself and serve them.
Now, what Jesus in this parable taught in words.
He taught on the night of the Last Supper in acts.
There is a strict parallel ; in both cases the Master, the
Lord, girds Himself and serves those who had hitherto
accounted themselves His servants. The emphatic
reduplication of this parable shows that here we have
something of the very highest importance presented
to us; and, undoubtedly, it is the veiled statement of
the supreme mystery of individual being. And this
mystery is the raising to the highest spiritual levels
of the old maxim that Nature will obey us in propor
tion as we first obey Nature. This is the ordinary

The Teaching of Jesus 239
rule of all science. The universal principles can never
act contrary to themselves, whether on the spiritual
or the physical level, and, therefore, unless we are
prepared by study of the Law and obedience to it,
we cannot make use of these principles at any level;
but granted such preparation on our part, and the Law
becomes our humble servant, obeying us in every par
ticular on the one condition that we first obey it.
It is thus that modern science has made us masters
of a world of power which, for all practical purposes,
did not exist in the times of the Tudors; and, trans
ferring this truth to the highest and innermost, to the
very Principle of Life itself, the meaning becomes
plain. Because the Life-Principle is not something
separate from ourselves, but is the Supporter of our
individuality, therefore, the more we understand and
obey its great generic Law, the more fully shall we
be able to make any specific applications of it that we
like. But on one condition. We must be washed.
"If I wash thee not thou hast no part with Me," were
the words of the Master. He spoke as the conscious
mouthpiece of the Universal Spirit, and this must,
therefore, be taken as the personal utterance of the
Spirit itself; and seen in this light the meaning be
comes clear ; we must first be cleansed by the Spirit.
And here we meet with another s)mibolical fact of
the highest importance. This dramatization of the
final trath of spiritual knowledge took place after

240 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
the supper was ended. Now, as we all know, the
supper was itself of supreme symbolical significance.
It was the Jewish Passover and the Christian Com
memoration, and tradition tells us it was also the
symbohc act by which, throughout antiquity, tlje
highest initiates signified their identical realization
of Truth, however apparently separated by outward
forms or nationality.
We find these mystical emblems of bread and wine
presented to Abraham by Melchizedek, himself the
type of the man who has realized the supreme truth
of the birth which is "without father, without
mother, without beginning of days or end of years";
and, therefore, if we would grasp the full meaning
of the Master's action on that last night, we must
understand the meaning of the symbolic meal of which
He and His followers had just partaken. Briefly
stated, it is the recognition by the participant of his
unity with, and power of appropriating, the Divine
in its twofold mode of Spirit and Substance.
Science and Religion are not two separate things.
They both have the same object, to bring us nearer
and nearer to the point where we shall find ourselves
in touch with the ONE Universal Cause. There
fore, the two were never dissociated by the greatest
thinkers of antiquity, and the inseparableness of
energy and matter, which is now recognized by the
most advanced science as the starting-point of all its

The Teaching of Jesus 241
speculations, is none other than the old, old doctrine
of the identity of Spirit and ultimate Substance.
Now, it is this twofold nature of the Universal
"First Cause that is symbolized by bread and wine.
The fluid and the solid, or Spirit and Substance, as
the two universal supports of all manifested Forms —
these are the universal principles which the two typ
ical elements signify. But in order that the individual
may be consciously benefited by them, he must recog
nize his own participation in them, and he denotes
his Knowledge on this point by eating the bread and
drinking the wine; and his intention in so doing is
to signify his recognition of two great facts ; one, that
he lives by continually drawing from the Infinite
Spirit in its twofold unity; and the other, that he not
only does this automatically, but also has power to
consciously differentiate the Universal Energy for
any specific purpose that he will.
Now, this combination of dependence and control
could not be more perfectly symboHzed than by the
acts of eating and drinking — we cannot do without
food, but it is at our own discretion to select what
and when we shall eat. And if we realize the true
meaning of "the Christ," we shall see that it is that
principle of Perfected Humanity which is the highest
expression of the Universal Spirit-Substance; and
taken in this sense, the bread and wine are fitting
emblems of the flesh and blood, or Substance and

242 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
Spirit, of "the Son of Man," the ideal Type of all
Humanity. And so it is that we cannot realize the Eternal Life
except by consciously partaking of the innermost Life-
Principle, with due recognition of its true nature —
not meaning the mere observance of a ceremonial rite,
however august in its associations, and however useful
as a powerful suggestion ; but meaning personal recog
nition of the Supreme Truth which that rite signifies.
This, then, was the meaning of the symbolic meal
which had just concluded. It indicated the partici
pant's recognition of his union with the Universal
Spirit, as being the supreme fact on which his indi
vidual life was based, the ultimate of all Truth. Now,
the word rendered "washed," in John xiii. lo, is
more correctly given in the Revised Version as
"bathed," a word which signifies total immersion. But
no "bathing" had taken place on this occasion; to
what, then, did Jesus allude when He spoke to His
disciples as men who had been "bathed"? It is pre
cisely that which, in Ephesians v. 26, is spoken of as
"the washing of water by the word"; "water" being,
as we have already seen, the Universal Substance, and
"the word" the synonym for that Intelligence which is
the very essence of Spirit. The meaning, then, is that
by partaking of this symbolic meal they had signified
their recognition of their own total immersion in the
ONE Universal Divine Being, which is at once both

The Teaching of Jesus 243
Spirit and Substance ; and since they could not con
ceive of It otherwise than as Most Holy, this recog
nition must thenceforward have a purifying influence
upon the whole man.
This great recognition does not need to be repeated
— seen once it is seen for ever; and, therefore, "he
that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but
is clean every whit." But though the principle is
grasped — ^which, of course, is the substantial founda
tion of the new life — immediate perfection does not
follow. Very far from it. And so we have to come
day by day to the Spirit, for the washing away of
those stains which we contract in our daily walk
through life. "If we say that we have no sin, the
truth is not in us; but if we confess our sin. He is
faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse
us from all unrighteousness."
It is this daily confession, not to man, but to the
Divine Spirit Itself, which produces the daily cleans
ing, and thus Its first service to us is to wash our
feet. If we thus receive the daily washing, we shall,
day by day, put away from us that sense of separa
tion from the Divine Universal Mind, which only the
conscious retention of guilt in the heart can produce,
after once we have been "bathed" by the recognition
of our individual relation to It ; and if our study of
the Bible has taught us anything, it has taught us that

244 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
the very Essence of Life is in its identity and unity
throughout all forms of manifestation.
To allow ourselves, therefore, to remain conscious
of separation from the Spirit of the Whole is to ac
cept the idea of Disintegration, which is the very prin
ciple of death; and if we thus accept death at the
fountain-head, it must necessarily spread through the
whole stream of our individual existence and poison
the waters. But it is inconceivable that any one who
has once realized the Great Unity, should ever again
willingly remain in conscious separation from it, and,
therefore, immediate open-hearted approach to the
Divine Spirit is the ever ready remedy as soon as any
consciousness of separation makes itself felt.
And the symbol includes yet another meaning. If
the bathing or total immersion signifies our unity with
the Spirit of the Whole, then the washing of the feet
must signify the same thing in a lesser degree, and
the meaning implied is the ever-present attaidance of
the Infinite Undifferentiated Spirit ready to be dif
ferentiated by us to any daily service, no matter how
lowly. Seen in this light, this acted parable is not a
mere reminder of our imperfection, which, unless
corrected by a sense of power, could only be a per
petual suggestion of weakness that would incapaci
tate us from doing an3?thing ; but it indicates our con
tinual command over ^l the resources of the Infinite,
for every object that all the endless succession of

The Teaching of Jesus 245
days can ever bring before us. We may draw from
it what we like, when we like, and for what purpose
we like ; nothing can prevent us but ignorance or con
sciousness of separation.
The idea thus graphically set forth, was expanded
throughout that marvellous discourse with which the
Master's ministry in His mortal body terminated.
As ever. His theme was the perfect Liberty of the
individual resulting from recognition of our true re
lation to the Universal Mind. The ONE great I
AM is the Vine, the lesser ones are the branches. We
cannot bear fruit except we abide in the Vine; but
abiding in it there is no limit to the developments we
may attain.
The Spirit of Truth will guide us into all Truth,
and the possession of all Truth must carry the pos
session of all Power along with it; and since the
Spirit of Truth can be none other than the Spirit
of Life, to be guided into all Truth must be to be
guided into the Power of an endless life.
This does not need our removal from the world:
"I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the
world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from the
evil." What is needed is ceasing to eat of that poi
sonous fruit, the tasting of which expelled Man from
the Paradise he is designed to inhabit. The true rec
ognition of the ONE leaves no place for any other;
and if we follow the Master's direction not to esti-

246 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
mate things by their superficial appearance, but by their
central principle of being, then we shall find that
nothing is evil in essence, and that the origin of evil
is always in a wrong application of what is good in
itself, thus bringing us back to the declaration of the
first chapter of Genesis, that God saw all that He
had created, "and behold it was very good."
If, then, we realize that our Liberty resides in the
creative power of our Thought, we shall see the im
mense importance of recognizing the essence of things
as distinguished from the misplaced order in which
we often first become acquainted with them. If we
let our Thought dwell on an inverted order we per
petuate that order; but if, going below the surface,
we fix our Thought upon the essential nature of
things, and see that it is logically impossible for any
thing to be essentially bad which is a specific expres
sion of the Universal Good, then we shall in our
Thought call all things good, and so help to bring
about that golden age when the old inverted order
shall have passed away, and a new world of joy and
liberty shall take its place.
This, then, is briefly the line followed by the Mas
ter's teaching, and His miracles were simply the nat
ural outcome of His perfect recognition of His own
principles. Already the unfolding recognition of
these principles is beginning to produce the same re
sults at the present day, and the number of well-

The Teaching, of Jesus 247
authenticated cures effected by mental means increases
every year. And this is precisely in accordance with
Jesus' own prediction. He enumerated the signs
which should follow those who really believed what
He really taught, and in so saying He was simply
making a statement of cause and effect. He never
set up His power as proof of a nature different from
our own; on the contrary. He said that those who
learned what He taught should eventually be able to
do still greater miracles, and He summed up the whole
position in the words, "the disciple when he is per
fected shall be as his Master,"
Again, He laid special stress on the perfect nat
uralness of all that He taught, by guarding us against
the error of supposing that the intervention of any
intermediary was required between us and "the
Father." If we could assign such a position to any
being it would be to Himself, but He emphatically dis
claims it. "In that day ye shall ask in My name; and
I say not unto you that I will pray the Father for you,
for the Father Himself loveth you, because ye have
loved Me and believed that I came forth from the
Father" (John xvi. 26), If the student has realized
what has been said in the chapter on "the Sacred
Name," he will see that the opening words of this
utterance can be nothing else than a statement of
universal Truth ; and that the love and belief in Him
self, spoken of in the concluding clause, are the love

248 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
of this Truth exhibited in its highest form as Man
evolved to perfection, and belief in the power of the
Spirit to produce such an evolution.
I do not say that there is nothing personal in the
statement ; on the contrary, it is eminently personal
to "the Man Christ Jesus," but as the Type of Per
fected Humanity — the first-fruit of the further evolu
tion which is to complete the pyramid of manifested
being upon earth by the introduction of the Fifth
Kingdom, which is that of the Spirit.
When we realize what is accomplished in Him,
we see what is potential in ourselves; and since we
have now reached the point beyond which any fur
ther evolution can only result from our conscious co
operation with the evolutionary principle, all our fu
ture progress depends on the extent to which we do
recognize the potentialities contained in our own in
dividuality. Therefore, to realize the manifestation of the Di
vine which Jesus stands for, and to love it, is the
indispensable condition for attaining that access to
"the Father" which means the full development in
ourselves of all the powers of the Spirit.
The point which rivets our attention in this ut
terance of the Master's is the fact that we do not
need the intervention of any third party to beseech
"the Father" for us, because "the Father" Himself
loves us. This statement, which we may well call

The Teaching of Jesus 249
the greatest of all the teachings of Jesus, setting us
free, as it does, from the cramping influences of a
limited and imperfect theology. He has bracketed
together with the recognition of Himself; and there
fore, if we would follow His teaching, we cannot
separate these two things which He has joined; but
if we realize in Him the embodiment of the Divine
Ideal of Humanity, His meaning becomes clear —
it is that our recognition of this ideal is itself the
very thing that places us in immediate touch with
"the Father."
By accepting the Divine Ideal as our own, we pro
vide the conditions under which the Undifferentiated
Universal Subconscious Mind becomes able to differ
entiate Itself into the particular and concrete expres
sion of that Potential of Personality which is eter
nally inherent in It ; and thus, in each one who realizes
the Truth which the Master taught, the Universal
Mind attains an individualization capable of con
sciously recognizing Itself.
To attain this is the great end of Evolution, and
in thus gaining Its end the OK E becomes the MANY,
and the MANY return into the ONE; not by an
absorption depriving them of individual identity,
which would be to stultify the entire operation of the
Spirit in Evolution by simply ending where it had
begun, but by impressing upon innumerable indi
vidualities the perfect and completed likeness of that

250 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
Original in the potential image of which they were
first created.
The entire Bible is the unfolding of its initial state
ment that Man is made in the image of God, and the
teaching of Jesus is the proclamation and demonstra
tion of this Truth in its complete development, the
Individual rejoicing in perfect Life and Liberty be
cause of his conscious ONE-ness with the Universal,
The teaching of Jesus, whether by word or deed,
may, therefore, be summed up as follows. He says
in effect to each of us: What you really are in es
sence is a concentration of the ONE Universal Life-
Spirit into conscious Individuality — if you live from
the recognition of this Truth as your starting-point,
it makes you Free. You cannot do this so long as
you imagine that you have one centre and the Infinite
another — you can only do it by recognizing that the
two centres coincide, and that That which, as being
Infinite, is incapable of centralization in Itself, finds
centre in you.
Think of these things until you see that it is im
possible for them to be otherwise, and then step for
ward in perfect confidence, knowing that the uni
versal principles must necessarily act with the same
mathematical precision in yourself, that they do in
the attractions of matter or in the vibrations of ether.
His teaching is identical with the teaching of Moses,
that there is only ONE Being anywhere, and that

The Teaching of Jesus 251
the various degrees of its manifested consciousness
are to be measured by one standard — the recognition
of the meaning of the words I AM,
I have endeavored to show that the Bible is neither
a collection of traditions belonging only to a petty
tribe, nor yet a statement of dogmas which can give
no account of themselves beyond the protestation that
they are mysteries which must be accepted by faith
— which faith, when we come to analyze it, consists
only in accepting the bare assertion of those very
persons who, when we ask them for the explanation
of the things they bid us believe, are unable to give
any explanation beyond the word "MYSTERY."
The true element of Mystery we shall never get
rid of, for it is inherent in the ultimate nature of all
things; but it is an element that perpetually unfolds,
inviting us at each step to still further inquiry by
satisfactorily and intelligently answering every ques
tion that we put in really logical succession, and
thus the Mystery continually opens out into Mean
ing and never pulls us up short with an anathema
for our irreverence in daring to inquire into Divine
secrets. When the interrogated is driven to the fulmination
of anathemas, it is very plain that he has reached the
end of his tether. As Byran says in "Don Juan" —
"He knew not what to say, and so he swore" ;
and therefore this mode of answering a question

252 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
always indicates one of two things, ignorance of the
subject or intentional concealment of facts, and on
either alternative, any "authority" which thus only
tells us to "shut up" thereby at once loses all claim
to our regard. Every undiscovered fact in the great
Universal Order is a Divine Secret until we find the
key that unlocks it; but the Psalmist tells us that
the secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him,
and the Master says that there is nothing hidden
that shall not be revealed.
To seek, therefore, to understand the great prin
ciples on which it is written, so far from being an
act of presumption, is the most practical proof we
can give of our reverence for the Sacred Volume;
and if the foregoing pages have in any way helped
the reader to see in the Bible a statement of the
working of Laws, which are inherent in the nature
of things and follow an intelligible sequence of cause
and effect, my purpose in writing will be answered.
The limited space at my disposal has allowed me
only to treat the whole subject in an introductory
manner, and in particular I have not yet shown the
method by which the ONE Universal Principle fol
lows out an exclusive line of unfoldment, building up
a "Chosen People" by a process of natural selection
culminating in the Great Central Figure of the Gos
pels. It does this without in any way departing from
its universal character, for it is that Power which

The Teaching of Jesus 253
cannot deny itself; but it does it as a consequence of
this very universality, and upon the importance of this
specialized action of the Universal Principle to the
future development of the race, it is impossible to
lay too much stress.
The Bible tells us that there is such a special se
lection, and if we have found truth in its more gen
eral statements, we may reasonably expect to find the
same truth in its more specialized statements also.

XI,
THE FORGIVENESS OF SIN
In the preceding chapters I have dealt principally
with the teaching of the Bible regarding the reci
procity of being between God and man, that ultimate
spiritual nature of man which affords the generic
basis in all men upon which the Spirit of God can
work to produce the further specific development of
the individual. But if we stop short at the recogni
tion of this merely generic similarity we are liable
to be led into an erroneous course of reasoning re
sulting in logical conclusions the very opposite of
all that the Bible is seeking to teach us — in a word
we shall be led into an atheism far deeper than that
of the mere materialist in that it is on the spiritual
plane, the inverted development of the supreme prin
ciple of our nature.
Such a dire result comes from a one-sided view
of things, a knowledge of certain tmths without the
knowledge of their counterbalancing truths, and the
counter-balancing truth which will preserve us from
so great a calamity is contained in the Bible teaching
regarding the forgiveness of sin.
Once grant that there is such a thing as the for-
2S5

2s6 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
giveness of sin, and the root of all possible spiritual
inversion is logically cut away, for then there must
be One who is able and willing to forgive, and who
is therefore the object of worship and is capable of
entering into a specific, conscious, personal relation
to us. It is therefore important to realize what the
Bible teaching on this subject is.
The logic of it is sufficiently simple if we grant
the premises on which it starts. It is that man, by
his essential and true innermost nature, is a being
fitted and intended to live in uninterrupted
intercourse with the All-creating Spirit, thus con
tinually receiving a ceaseless inflow of life from this
infinite source. At the same time it is impossible
for a being capable of thus partaking of the infinite
life of the Originating Spirit to be a mere piece of
mechanism, mechanically incapable of moving in more
than one direction; for if he is to reproduce in his
individuality that power of origination and initiative
which must be the very essence of the Creative Spirit's
recognition of itself he must possess a corresponding
liberty of choice as to the way in which he will use
his powers; and if he chooses wrongly the inevitable
law of cause and effect must produce the natural
consequences of his choice.
The nature of this wrong choice is told us in the
allegorical story of "the Fall." It is mistaking the
sequence of laws which necessarily proceeds from

The Forgiveness of Sin 257
any creative act for the creative power itself; the
error of looking upon secondary causes as the orig
inating cause and not seeing that they are themselves
effects of something antecedent which works
through them to the production of the ultimate ef
fect. This is the fundamental error, and the op
posite truth consists in connecting the ultimate ef
fect intended directly with the intention of the orig
inating intelligence, and (from this point of view)
excluding all consideration of the chain of interme
diary causes which links these two extremes to
gether. The exact weighing and balancing and calculating
of the action of secondary causes, or particular laws
of relation, has its proper place — it is the necessary
basis of our work when we are constructing anything
from without, just as an architect could not build a
safe house without carefully calculating the strains
and thrusts to which his materials would be sub
jected; but when we are considering an act of crea
tion we are dealing with an exactly opposite process,
one that works from within by a vital growth which
naturally assimilates to itself all that is necessary for
its completion.
In the latter case we do not have to consider the
mechanism through which the vital energy brings
forth its ultimate fruition, for by the very fact of its
being inherent energy working for manifestation in

258 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
a certain direction it must necessarily produce all
those relations, visible or invisible, which go to make
the completed whole.
The fundamental error consists in ignoring this
distinction between direct creation and external con
struction, in entirely losing sight of the former and
consequently attempting to accomplish by knowledge
of particular laws, which are applicable only to con
struction from without, what can only be accom
plished by a direct creation which produces laws in
stead of being restricted by them.
The temptation, then, is to substitute our intellec
tual knowledge of the relations between various exist
ing laws with which we are acquainted, for that Cre
ative Power which is not subject to any antecedent
conditions and can produce what it will, while con
forming always to its own recognition of itself as
perfectly harmonious Being.* This temptation is a
very subtle one. It appeals to our intellect. It ap
peals to all that we can gather from secondary causes
whether in the seen or the unseen, and to all the
deductions we can make from those observations.
To all appearances it is so entirely reasonable, only
its reasoning is restricted to the circle of secondary
causation and contemplates the great First Cause

*See my "Creative Process in the Individual,"

The Forgiveness of Sin 259
as a mere force whose action is limited by certain
particular laws.
Looked at superficially it does appear as if this
course of reasoning was correct. But in truth it
does not take into account the originating power of
the Creative Spirit, and is in reality a course of rea
soning which is only applicable to construction from
without and not to growth from within;
Now so long as we do not recognize a Power
which can transcend all our past experiences we nat
urally look to a more extended knowledge of par
ticular laws as the means by which we can attain to
a power of control which will at last place us beyond
subjection to any control — the general principle in
volved being that by our knowledge we can balance
the positive and negative aspects of law against each
other in any proportion we like and become masters
of the situation by this method.
Is not this a correct description of much of the
teaching we meet with at the present day? and does
it not exactly agree with the words of the old alle
gory, "ye shall be as gods knowing good and evil" ?
The ultimate desire of every human being is for
more fulness of life — to thoroughly enjoy living —
and the more we enjoy living the more we shall nat
urally desire to live and to enjoy living still more.
In a word our true desire, under whatever disguises
we may try to conceal it, is to "have life and to have

26o Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
it more abundantly." This desire is innate in us
because of our generic relation to the Spirit of Life,
and therefore, so far from being condemned by Scrip
ture, its fulfillment is placed before us as the one
object of attainment, and the professed purpose of
the Bible is to lead us to seek it in the right way
instead of in the wrong one. To seek it in the right
way is Righteousness or Rightness. To seek it in
the wrong way is the Inversion of Rightness, and is
what is meant by Sin.
Those grosser forms of sin, which we all recog
nize as such, are only the one original transgression
of seeking from without what can only come by
growth from within when assuming its crudest as
pect, but the underlying principle is the same; and
so the allegory of the Fall is typical of all sin, of
that inverted conception of life which, because it is
inverted, must necessarily lead us away from the
Spiritual Source of Life instead of towards it. The
story is, so to say, a sort of algebraical generalization
of the factors concerned.
When this becomes clear to us we begin to see the
necessity for the removal of sin. We see that hither
to we have been trying to live by an inverted con
ception of the principle of Life, whether this wrong
conception has shown itself in crude and gross forms,
or more subtly in the purely intellectual region.
In either case the result is the same, the conscious-

The Forgiveness of Sin 261
ness that we have not free intercourse with the
Spiritual Source of Life, and as this dawns upon us
we instinctively feel the need of some other way
than the one we have been hitherto pursuing. We
find that what we want is not Knowledge but Love.
And this is logical, for in the last analysis we shall
find that Love is the only Creative Power.*
Then we perceive that what we require for the per
petuation and continual increase of our individual life
is a mental attitude which renders us perpetually and
increasingly receptive of the Creative Love, the con
sciousness of a personal and individual relation to it
beyond, and in addition to, our merely generic rela
tion as items in the cosmic whole.
Then something must be done to assure us of this
specific relation, to assure us that neither our erro
neous thoughts in the past, nor yet the erroneous ac
tion to which they have given rise, can separate us
from this Love, either by making it turn away from
us, or by a law of cause and effect proceeding from
our wrong thoughts and acts themselves. And to
give us such a confidence we require to be assured
that the initiative movement proceeds from the side
of the Divine Spirit; for if we suppose that the
initiative starts from our side then we can have no

*See "The Creative Process in the Individual."

262 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
assurance that it has been accepted, or that the law
of "Karma" is not dogging our steps.
It is this misconception of pacifying the Almighty
by an initiative originating on our side that shows
itself in penances, sacrifices, and various rites and
ceremonies, at the end of which we do not know
whether our operations have been successful, or
whether through deficiency in quantity or quality they
have failed of the desired result.
All such performances are vitiated by the inherent
defect of making the first move towards reconcilia
tion come from our side — it is nothing else than
carrying into our highest spiritual yearnings the old
error of trying to produce by working from without
what can only be produced by growth from within
— we are still substituting the constructive process
for the creative.
Accordingly, the Bible tells us that the funda
mental proposition that there is such a thing as for
giveness of sin is enunciated by God Himself; and
so we find that the story of the Fall includes the
promise of One by whom man shall be redeemed
and released from sin, and brought into conscious
realization of that reciprocal intercourse with the
Source of Life which is the essence of his inner
most being. Man is told to look to the Divine prom
ise of forgiveness, and from this point onwards be-

The Forgiveness of Sin 263
lief in this promise is set forth as the way by which
sin and its consequences are effectually removed.
I sometimes meet with those who object to the
teaching that there is forgiveness. To such I would
say. Why do you object to this teaching? Of course,
if you are entirely without sin you have no need of
it for yourself, but then you are a very rare excep
tion, and at the same time beastly selfish not to con
sider all the rest of us who are of the more ordinary
sort. Or if you put it that everybody is without sin,
then the newspapers of all countries flatly con
tradict you with their daily details of thefts, mur
ders, swindles, and the like.
But perhaps you will say that sin must be pun
ished. Why must? What is the object of punish
ment? Its purpose is to rub it well in, so that the
offender may not do it again for fear of conse
quences. But supposing he has become convinced of
the true nature of his offence so as to hate it for its
own sake and to shrink from it with abhorrence, what
then is to be gained by going on whacking him ? The
change in his own view of things has already accom
plished all, and more than all, that any amount of
whacking could do, and this is the teaching of the
Bible. Its purpose is to see sin in its true light as
severance from the Source of Life, and if this has
been accomplished why should punishment be pro
longed ?

264 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
Again, the conception of a God who will not for
give sin when repented of is the conception of a
monstrosity. 1 It is the conception of the Spirit of
Life determining to deal death, when by its very
nature it must be seeking to express Life to the
fullest extent that the expressing vehicle will admit
of; and repentance is turning away from something
that had previously hindered this fuller expression.
Therefore such a conception is illogical, for it implies
the Spirit of Life acting in opposition to itself. Also
such a God ceases to be the object of worship, for
there is nothing to be gained by worshipping Him.
He can only be the object of our fear and hatred.
On the other hand the conception of a God who
cannot forgive sin is the conception of no God at
all. It is the conception of a mere Force, and you
cannot enter into a personal relation with unintelli
gent forces — you can only study them scientifically
and utilize them so far as your knowledge of their
law admits; and this logically brings you back to
your own knowledge and power as your only source
of life, so that in this case also there is nothing
to worship.
If, then, there is such a mental attitude as that of
worship, the looking to an Infinite Source of life
and joy and strength, it can only be based upon the
recognition that this All-creating Spirit is able to
forgive sin and desires to do so.

The Forgiveness of Sin 265
We may therefore say that the conception of itself
as pardoning all who ask for pardon is necessarily
an integral portion of the Spirit's self-recognition in
its relation to the human race, and the inherentness
of this idea is set forth in Scripture in such phrases
as "the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of
the world," and "the Lamb slain from the founda
tion of the world," thus pointing to an aspect of
the Spirit's self -contemplation exactly reciprocal to
the need of all who desire to be set free from that
inversion of their true nature which, while it con
tinues, must necessarily prevent their unimpeded ac
cess to the Spirit of Life.
Then, since the Divine self-conception is bound
to work out into realization, a supreme manifesta
tion of this eternal principle is the legitimate out
come of all that we can conceive of the creative
working of the Spirit when viewed from the par
ticular standpoint of the existence of sin in the world,
and so the appearing of One who should give com
plete expression in space and time to the Spirit's
recognition of human needs by a supreme act of
self-sacrificing Love reasonably forms the grand cen
tre of the whole teaching of the Bible.
The Great Sacrifice is the self-offering of Love to
meet the requirements of the soul of man. Our
psychological constitution requires it, and it is ade
quately adapted to fit in with every aspect of our

256 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
mental nature, whether in the least or the most ad
vanced members of the race. It is the supreme
manifestation of that Love which is the Original
Creative Power, and the Bible presents it to us as
such. Hear Christ's own description of it: "Greater
love hath no man than this, that a man lay down
his life for his friends" — "God so loved the world
that He sent His only begotten Son into the world,
that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish
but should have everlasting life."
All is attributed to Love on the one hand and
Belief on the other — the Creating Spirit and the sim
ple reception of it — thus meeting exactly those con
ditions which we found to constitute the conditions
for vital growth from within as distinguished from
mechanical construction from without, and therefore
not depending on our knowledge but on our faith.
Nor is this conception of the forgivingness of
the All-originating Love to be found in the
New Testament only. If we turn to the Old
Testament we find such statements as the following:
"And the Lord descended in a cloud and stood with
him (Moses) there, and proclaimed the Name of the
Lord. And the Lord passed by and proclaimed. The
Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-
suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keep
ing mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, trans-

The Forgiveness of Sin 267
gression, and sin" (Ex. xxxiv. 5-7). "I, even I,
am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for my
own sake, and will not remember thy sins" (Isaiah
xliii. 25). "I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy
transgressions, and as a cloud thy sins; return unto
me, for I have redeemed thee" (Isaiah xliv. 22). "If
the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath
committed, and keep my statutes, and do that which
is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not
die. All his transgressions that he hath committed
they shall not be mentioned unto him; in his right
eousness that he hath done he shall live" (Ezek.
xviii. 21-22).
No doubt on the other hand there are threatenings
against sin; but the whole tenour of the Bible is
clear, that these threatenings apply only so long as
we continue to do evil. Both the promises and the
threatenings are nothing else than the statement of
that Law of Correspondence with which my readers
are no doubt sufficiently famihar — ^the great creative
law by which spiritual causes produce their analogues
in the outer world, and which is identically the same
law whether it works positively or negatively.
The phrase, "for my own sake," in Isaiah xliii. 25,
should be noted, as it exactly bears out what I have
said about the inherent quality of forgiveness as
forming a necessary part of the Creating Spirit's
conception of itself in its relation to the human

268 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
race. This is the fundamental basis of the whole
matter, and this tmth has been dimly perceived by
all the great religions of the world; in fact, it is just
the perception of this truth that distinguishes a re
ligion from a mere philosophy on the one hand and
from magical rites on the other, and I think I can
not end this chapter more suitably than by a quo
tation which shows how, ages before Christianity
was known to them, our rude Norse ancestors had
at least some adumbration that the supreme offering
must be that of the Divine Love to itself. The pas
sage occurs in the Elder Edda, where O-din, the
Supreme God, addresses himself while hanging in
self-sacrifice in Vgdrasil the Cosmic Tree:
"I knew that I hung
In the wind-rocked tree
Nine whole nights.
Wounded with a spear.
And to O-din offered.
Myself to myself.
On that tree
Of which no one knows
From what root it springs."
(From Strange Survivals by Baring Gould.)

XII,
FORGIVENESS
ITS RELATION TO HEALING AND TO THE STATE OF THE
DEPARTED IN THE OTHER WORLD,
IF we have now grasped some conception of for
giveness as one of the essential qualities of the All-
Creating Spirit it will throw some light on several
occasions when Jesus accompanied His miracles of
healing with the words, "Thy sins are forgiven."
There must have been some intimate connection
between the forgiveness and the healing, and though
the exact nature of this connection may be beyond
our present perception, involving relations of cause
and effect too deep for our imperfect powers of
analysis, still we can see in a general way that it is
in accordance with the teaching of the Bible on the
subject. The Bible is a book about man in his relation to
God, and it therefore starts with certain fundamental
statements regarding this relation. These are to the
effect that death, and consequently disease and de
crepitude, are not laws of man's innermost being.
269

270 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
How could they be? How could the negative be the
law of the positive? How could death be the law
of Life? Therefore we are told that in the tme
order of things this is not the case.
The first thing we are told about man is that he
is made in the image and likeness of God, the Spirit
of Life; therefore capable of manifesting a similar
equality of Life. But we must note the words
'image' and 'likeness,' They do not unpart identity
but resemblance. An 'image' implies an original
to which it conforms, and so does a 'likeness.' These
words remind us of the passage in which St. Paul
speaks of our "Reflecting as a mirror the glory of the
Lord," and being thus "transformed into the same
image from glory to glory" (2 Cor. iii. 18 R,V,), It
is this same idea as in the first chapter of Genesis
only expanded so as to show the method by which
the image and likeness are produced. It is by Re
flection. Our mind is, as is were, a mirror reflect
ing that towards which it is turned. This is the nature
of Mind,
We become Hke what we contemplate. We cannot
avoid it, for we are made that way, and therefore
everything depends on what we are in the habit of
contemplating. Then if we realize that growth, or
the manifestation of the spiritual principle, always
proceeds from the innermost to the outermost, by a
creative process from within as distinguished from

Forgiveness 271
a constructive process from without we shall see
that the working of the mind upon the body and the
effect it will produce upon it depends entirely on
what form the mind itself is taking; and what form
it will take depends on what it is reflecting.
This is the key to the great enigma. In propor
tion as we reflect the Pure Spirit of Life we live;
and in proportion as we reflect the Material, con
templating it as a power in itself instead of as the
plastic vehicle of the Spirit, we bring ourselves under
a law of limitation which culminates in death. It is
the same law of Mind in both cases, only in the one
case it is employed positively and in the other nega
tively. Something like this seems to be St. Paul's idea
when he says that the Law of the Spirit of Life
makes him free from the law of sin and death (Rom.
viii. 2). It is always this law of mental reflection
that is at work within us producing its logical effects,
positively or negatively, according to the image which
it mirrors forth.
At the risk of appearing tedious I may dwell for
a while on the word 'image.' It is the substantive
corresponding to the verb 'to image,* that is to fashion
an 'image' or 'thought-form' by our mental power of
imagery. Now, as I have endeavored to make clear in my
book, the Creative Process in the Individual, the life

272 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
and substance of all things must first subsist as images
in the Divine Mind before they can come into mani
festation in the world of time and space, much as in
Plato's conception of architypal ideas; therefore we
may read the text in Genesis as indicating that Man
exists primarily in the IDivine conception of him. The
real, true Man subsists eternally in the Divine Imag
ination as the necessary correlative to the Spirit's
Self-recognition as all that constitutes Personality.
If the Universal Spirit is to realize in itself the
consciousness of Will, the perception of Beauty, and
the reciprocity of Love — all in fact that makes life
intelligently living — it can do so only by projecting
a mental image which will give rise to the correspond
ing consciousness; and so we may read the text as
meaning that Man thus subsists in the Divine image,
or creating thought of him. If the reader grasps this
idea he will find it throws light upon many otherwise
perplexing problems.
This, then, is the real nature of sin. Whatever
shape it may take, its essence is always the same;
it is turning our mental mirror the wrong way and
so reflecting the limited and negative, that which is
not Life-in-itself, and consequently forming our
selves into a corresponding image and likeness.
The story of the Fall typifies the essential quality
of all sin. It is seeking the Living among the dead
— ^trying to build up the skill and power of the

Forgiveness 273
worker out of the atoms of the material in which
he works; just as though, when you wanted a car
penter, you went into his workshop and tried to make
him out of the saw-dust.
Now if we grasp the great fundamental law that
our mind, meaning by this our spiritual creative
power, attracts conditions which correspond to its
own conception of itself, and that its conception of
itself must always be the exact reflection of its own
dominant thought, then we can in some measure un
derstand why Christ announced forgiveness of sin as
the accompaniment of physical healing.
By sin, in the sense we have now seen, death and
all lesser evils enter into the world — sin is the cause
and they are the effect. Then if the cause is removed
the effect must cease, the root of the plant has been
cut away, and so the fruit must wither; it is a simple
working of cause and effect.
It is true that Jesus is not recorded to have an
nounced forgiveness in every case in which he be
stowed healing, and no doubt he had as good reasons
for not making the announcement in some cases as
for making it in others.
I cannot pretend to analyze those reasons for that
would imply a knowledge on my part equal to his
own; but from what we do know of psychological
laws and of the power of mind over body I might
hazard the conjecture that in those cases where he

274 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
pronounced forgiveness the sufferer apprehended that
his sickness was in some way the consequence of his
sins, and therefore it was necessary to his bodily heal
ing that he should be assured of their pardon.
In other cases there may not have been such a con
viction, and to speak of forgiveness would only with
draw the mind of the sufferer from that immediately
receptive attitude which was necessary for the work
ing of the spiritual power.
But who shall say that the principle of the removal
, of the root of suffering by the forgiveness of sin was
not always present in the mind of the august Healer ?
Rather we may suppose that it always was.
On one occasion he very pointedly put this forward.
The proof, he said, that the Son of Man has power
on earth to forgive sins is this, I can say to this palsied
man, "Arise and walk," and it is accomplished (Luke
V. 20) . This was what was in the mind of the Great
Healer, and comparing it with the general teaching of
Scripture on the subject we may reasonably suppose
that he always worked from this basic principle,
whether the exigencies of the particular case made it,
or not, to impress the fact of forgiveness upon the
person to be healed.
If we start with the assumption that sickness and
death of the body result from imperfect realization
of life by the soul, and that the extent and mode of
the soul's realization of life is the result of the extent

Forgiveness 275
and mode of its realization of union with its Divine
Source, then it follows that the logical root of heal
ing must be in the removal of the sense of separa
tion — the removal, that is, of that inverted conception
of our relation to the Spirit of Life which is "sin,"
and the replacing of it by the right conception, in
accordance with which we shall more and more fully
reflect the true image of "the Father" or Parent Spirit.
When we see this we begin to apprehend more
clearly the meaning of St, Paul's words, "There is
now no condemnation to them that are in Christ
Jesus, which walk not after the flesh but after the
Spirit." Again, there is another phase of this subject which
we cannot afford to neglect. Although, as it appears
to me, there are grounds for supposing that the
present resurrection of the body, its transmutation
while in the present life into a body of another order,
like to the resurrection body of Christ, is not beyond
the bounds of possibility, stiU this supreme victory
of the Life-principle is not a thing of general realiza
tion; and so we are confronted by the question. What
happens on the other side when we get there? I
have treated this question at some length in my "Cre
ative Process in the Individual," but I would here
refer to it chiefly in connection with the subject of
the forgiveness of sin.
Now if, as I apprehend, the condition of conscious-

276 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
ness when we pass out of the body is in the majority
of cases purely subjective, then from what we know
of the laws of subjective mind we may infer that
we live there in the consciousness of whatever was
our dominant mode of thought during earth life.
We have brought this over with us on parting with
our objective mentality, as it operates through its phy
sical instrument the brain, and if this is the case, then
the nature of our experiences in the other world will
depend on the nature of the dominant thought with
which we have left this one, the idea which was most
deeply impressed upon our subjective mind.
If this be so, what a stupendous. importance it gives
to the question whether we do, or do not, believe in
the forgiveness of sin. If we pass into the unseen
with the fixed idea that no such thing is possible, then
what can our subjective experience be but the bearing
of a burden of which we can find no way to rid our
selves; for by the conditions of the case all those
objective things with which we can now distract our
attention will be beyond our reach.
When the loss of our objective mentality deprives
us of the power of inaugurating fresh trains of ideas,
which practically means new outlooks upon life, we
shall find ourselves bound within the memories of
our past life on earth, and since the outward condi
tions, which then colored our view of things, will no
longer exist we shall see the motives and feelings

Forgiveness 277
which led to our actions in their true light, making us
see what it was in ourselves rather than in our cir
cumstances which led us to do as we did.
The mode of thought which gave the key to our
past life will still be there, and no doubt the memory
of particular facts also, for this is what has been
most deeply impressed upon our subjective mind; and
since by the conditions of the case the consciousness
is entirely subjective these memories will appear to
be the re-enacting of past things, only now seen in
their true nature stripped of all the accessories which
gave a false coloring to them.
Of course what the pain of such a compulsory re-
enacting of the past life may amount to must depend
on what the past life has been; but even in the most
blameless life we can well suppose that there have
been passages which we would rather not repeat
when we saw the mental conditions in ourselves which
gave rise to them — not necessarily crimes or grave
moral delinquencies, but the shortcomings of the
every day respectable life, the unkind words we
thought so little of but which cut so deep, the selfish
ness which perhaps ran on for years, and which, be
cause of that very self-centredness, we did not see
dimming the happiness of those around us. These
and the like things of even the most blameless life we
should not like to be compelled to repeat when seen

278 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
in their true light, and how much less the episodes of
a life which has not been blameless.
That there should be such a re-enacting of past
memories is what we might infer from our knowl
edge of the law of subjective mind, but there are
not wanting certain facts of experience which go to
support the a priori argument.
Many of my readers, I daresay, will smile at the
mention of ghosts, but I can assure them there is a
good deal of reality in ghosts, especially to the ghosts
themselves. Remember that if there are such things
as ghosts they were once people such as you and I
are today, and the practical point is that the reader
may be a ghost himself before very long; therefore
one of my objects in the present chapter is to show
how to avoid becoming a ghost.
I used to laugh at ghosts when I was a young man
and thought it all bunkum, but an experience which
I went through many years ago entirely changed my
ideas on the subject, and indeed was the starting-
point of my giving consideration to the laws of the
unseen side of things — if it had not been for that
ghost you would not be reading this book. However,
I will not go into the details here, for the story has
already been published both in French and English
magazines. Of course, I don't believe everything I hear, nor
do I think that because a thing is in print it is neces-

Forgiveness 279
sarily true — heaven forbid, for then how could I read
the daily papers? — ^but applying to each case the
rules of evidence as strictly as though I were try
ing a man for his life I find a residuum of instances
in which it is impossible to come to any other con
clusion than that a haunting spirit has actually been
seen. We are often told that you never meet persons
who have themselves seen a ghost but only those who
know somebody else who has; in other words, you
can never get at the actual witness to cross-examine
him, but only at hearsay evidence. But I can con
tradict this entirely.
Since I began to investigate the subject seriously I
am surprised at the number of persons of both sexes
who have circumstantially related to me their per
sonal experiences of this sort, and have stood the
test of careful cross-examination in which I held a
brief for the standpoint of "scientific doubt," There
fore, when I say a few words about ghosts I am talk
ing on a subject that I have investigated.
In a large majority of cases it will be found that
the spirit appears to be bound to a particular spot
and to go on repeating certain actions, and the infer
ence is that the subjective dreaming, so to say, of
the departed is in these cases so intense as to create
a thought-form of their conception of themselves suf
ficiently vivid to impress itself upon the etheric at-

28o Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
mosphere of the locality and so become visible to those
who are sufficiently sensitive.
Now, that this is not always the consequence of
some great crime or other terrible happening is shown
by a case in which the former owners of a house, hus
band and wife, after having long been habitually
seen about the premises, were at last questioned by a
lady who was sufficiently sensitive to communicate
with them. They stated that the only thing that
bound them to the house was their inordinate love
of it during life. They had so centered their minds
upon it that now they could not get away though they
longed to do so; and, judging by their appearance
and the confirmation of their identity subsequently.
obtained from some old documents, it would seem
that they had been tied up like this for several gen
erations. This is an instance of having rather too much of a
"pied-a-terre," and I don't think any of us would like
it to become our own case; and a fortiori the same
must hold good where the recollections of the departed
are of a darker kind.
What, then, is the way out of the dilemma? It
must be by some working of the law of cause and
effect, and this working must take place somewhere
within our own mind — we must in some way get a
state of consciousness which will set us free from all

Forgiveness 281
troubling memories and keep before us, even in the
unseen world, the prospect of happier developments.
Then the only mental attitude which can produce
this effect is belief in forgiveness, the assurance that
all the transgressions and shortcomings of the past
have been blotted out for ever. If we attain this
realization in this present life, if this assurance is our
dominant idea, the idea upon which all our other ideas
are based, then by all the laws of mind we are bound
to carry this consciousness with us into the other
world, and thus find ourselves free from all that
would make our existence there unhappy.
Or even if we have not yet attained such a vivid
assurance as to be able to say "I know," and can as
yet only say "I hope," still the fact that we recognize
that the principle of forgiveness exists will cause us
to lay hold of it as our dominant idea in the subjec
tive state and so place us in a position to gain clearer
and clearer perception of the truth that there is for
giveness, and that it is for us.
Perhaps the critical reader may here remark that
I am attributing to the subjective mind the power of
starting a new train of ideas, and so contradicting
what I have just said about the departed being shut
up within the circle of those ideas which they have
brought over with them from this world. It looks
as if I had made a slip, but I haven't ; for if we have
carried over with us, not perhaps the full assurance

282 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
of actual pardon, but even the belief that forgiveness
is possible, we have brought along with us a root idea
whose very essence is that of making a new start.
It is the fundamental conception of a new order,
and as such carries with it the conception of ourselves
as entering upon new trains of thought and new fields
of action — in a word the dcwninant idea of the sub
jective mind is that of having brought the objective
mental faculties along with it. If this is the mode of
self-consciousness then it becomes an actual fact, and
the whole mentality is brought over in its entirety; so
that those who are thus in the light are liberated from
imprisonment within the circulus of past memories by
the very same law which binds those fast who refuse
to admit the liberating principle of forgiveness.
It is the same law of our mental constitution in both
cases, only acting affirmatively in the one and nega
tively in the other, just as an iron ship floats by the
identical law by which a solid lump of iron sinks.
Of course we may conceive of degrees in these
things. We may well suppose that some may recog
nize the actual working of forgiveness in their own
case less clearly than others ; but whatever may be the
degree of recognition of the personal fact the realiza
tion of the principle is the same for all ; and this prin
ciple must assuredly bear fruit in due time in the com
plete deliverance of the soul from all that would other
wise hold it in bondage.

Forgiveness 283
Far be it from me to say that the case of those
who pass over convinced in their denial of the prin
ciple of forgiveness is forever hopeless; but by the
nature of mental law they must remain bound until
they see it. Moreover by their denial of this prin
ciple they must fail to bring over their objective men
tality, and so they must remain shut up in the world
of their subjective memories until some of those who
have brought over their whole mentality are able to
penetrate the spheres of their subjective mind and im
press upon it a new conception, that of forgiveness, and
so plant in them the seed for the new growth of their
objective mental powers.
And perhaps we may even go so far as to suppose
that the power of those who are thus in wholeness
of mind to aid those who are not is not confined to
such as have passed over ; it may be the privilege also
of those who are still in the body, for the action of
mind upon mind is not a thing of physical substances.
If so, then we can see a reason for prayers for the
departed, to say nothing of the many instances in which
ghosts are reported to have besought the intercession
of the living for their liberation. There is, however,
in certain quarters, a lamentable inversion of this prin
ciple where prayers for the departed are turned into
an article of traffic and a means of making money. I
may have something to say about this in another

284 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
book, and in the meanwhile I would only say. Beware
of spurious imitations.
Of course this picture of the condition of souls in
the other world does not profess to be drawn from
actual knowledge, but it appears to me to be a rea
sonable deduction from all that we know of the laws
of our mental constitution; and if the experiences of
the departed logically result from the working of those
laws, then what greater action of the Divine Love and
Wisdom can we conceive than such an expression of
itself as must utilize these laws affirmatively for our
liberation instead of negatively for our bondage. The
law of Cause and Effect cannot be broken, but it can
be applied with intelligence and love instead of being
left to work itself out negatively for want of guidance.
So it is, then, that the doctrine of the forgiveness
of sins is the mainspring of the Bible — ^the promise
of a Messiah in the Old Testament and the fulfill
ment of that promise in the New ; and the realization,
whether in or out of the body, that God is both able
and desiring to forgive, freely and without any offering
save that of his own providing, and requiring nothing
in return except this— that "to whom much hath been
forgiven, the same loveth much,"

XIII,
THE DIVINE GIVING
IN the last two chapters we have considered the
principle of the forgiveness of sin, and having laid
this foundation I would now direct attention to
the working of the same principle in other directions.
In its essence it is the Quality of Givingness — Free
Giving, having Simple Accepting for its correlative, for
the clear reason that you cannot put a man in pos
session of a gift if he will not take it. Now a little
consideration will show us that Free Givingness is a
necessity of the very being of the All-Originating
Spirit, By the very fact that It is All-Originating we
have nothing to give to It, nothing except that reci
procity of feeling which, as we have seen, is funda
mental to the Divine ideal of Man, that ideal which
has called the human race into existence.
If, then, we have nothing to give but our love and
worship, why not take up the position of grateful and
expectant receivers? It simplifies matters and relieves
us of a great deal of worry, and moreover it is un
doubtedly scriptural. The reason we don't do so is
285

286 Bible Mystery and Bible Medning
because we don't believe in the free givingness and
consequently we cannot adopt a mental attitude of re
ceiving, and so the Spirit cannot make the gift.
If we seek the reason why this is so we shall find
it in our materialism, our inability to see beyond sec
ondary causes. We get things through certain visible
channels, and we mistake these for the source.
"The things I possess I got with my money, and
my money I got by my work," Of course you did.
God doesn't put dollar-bills or bank-notes into your
cash-box by a conjuring trick, God makes things
generically whether it be iron or brains, and then we
have to use them. But the iron or the brains, or
whatever else it may be, ultimately proceeds from the
All-Creating Spirit; and the more clearly we see this
the easier we shall find it to go direct to the Spirit
for all we want.
Then we shall argue that, just as the Spirit can create
the thing we desire, so it can also create the way by
which that thing shall come to us, and so we shall not
be bothered about the way. We shall work according
to the sort of abilities God has bestowed upon us, and
according to the opportunities provided; but we shall
not try to force circumstances or to do something out
of our Hne,
Then we shall find circumstances open out and our
abilities increase, and this without putting any undue

The Divine Giving 287
strain upon ourselves, but on the contrary with a great
sense of restfulness.
And the secret is this. We are not bearing the bur
den ourselves. We are not trying to force things on
the external plane by our objective powers, nor yet
on the subjective plane by trying to compel the Spirit ;
therefore, though diligent in our calling, we are at
rest. And the foundation of this rest is that we
believe in a Divine Promise, and the Promise is in the
nature of the Divine Being.
This is why the Bible lays so much stress upon the
idea of Promise. Promise is the law of Creative
Power simplified to the utmost simplicity. Faith in a
Divine Promise is the strongest attitude of mental
Affirmation. It is the affirmation of the desire of
the Creative Spirit to create the gift, and of its power
and willingness to do so, and therefore of the produc
tion also of all the means by which the gift is to be
brought to us. Also it fixes no limits, and so does
not restrict the mode of operation, and thus it con
forms exactly to the principles of the original cosmic
creation, so that the whole universe around us becomes
a testimony to the stability of the foundation on which
our hope is based. This reference to the cosmic crea
tion as bearing witness to the ground of our faith is
of constant recurrence in the Bible, and its purpose is
to impress upon us that the Power to which we look

288 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
is that Power which in the beginning made the
heavens and the earth.
The reason why this is made the starting-point of
faith is that we start with an undoubted fact — the uni
verse exists. Then a little consideration will show us
that it must have had its origin in the Thought of
the Universal Spirit before its manifestation in time
and space, so that here we start with another self-
evident fact; and these two obvious and incontrovert
ible facts supply us with premises from which to rea
son, so that knowing our premises to be true we know
that our conclusion must be true also, if we only
reason correctly from the premises. This is the logic
of it.
Then the reasoning proceeds as follows: In the
beginning there were no antecedent conditions, and
the whole creation came out of the desire of the Spirit
for self-expression. By the nature of the case the
conception 6f the existence of any antecedent condi
tions is impossible; and so we see that creation from
within (as distinguished from construction from with
out), His the enti<<Jp^ v.sence of pre-determining and
limiti{% conditions as'^dts distinguishing characteristic.
Then our thought, inspired by the promise, is, so to
say, reflected back into the mind of the Universal
Spirit in direct relation to ourselves, and thus becomes
part and parcel of the self-reaHzation of the Spirit in
connection with ourselves personally, thus bringing

The Divine Giving 289
about a working of the creative Law of Reciprocity
from the standpoint of our own individuality ; and be
cause the activity thus called forth is that of the Orig
inal Creative Energy, the First Cause itself, it is as
unhampered by antecedent conditions as was the orig
inal cosmic creation itself.
I have gone more fully into this subject in my "Cre
ative Process in the Individual," but I hope I have
now said sufficient to make the general principle clear,
and to show that the Bible promises are nothing else
than the statement of the essential creativeness of the
All-Originating Spirit when operating in reciprocity
with the individual mind. If we believe in the power
of Affirmation, then trust in the Divine promise is the
strongest affirmation we can make. And if we believe
in the power of Denials, then such a simple trust is
also the strongest denial we can make, for, being abso
lute confidence, it constitutes an emphatic denial of
any power, whether in the visible or the invisible, to
prevent the fulfillment of the promise.
It is for this reason that the Bible lays such stress
on belief in the Divine promises as the way ^ receive
the blessing. The Bible was written i .__ , aefit of
any reader, whether learned pr uuiearned, and takes
into consideration the fact that the latter are by far
the more numerous; therefore, it reduces the matter
to its simplest elements: — Hear the Promise, Believe
it, and Receive its fulfillment.

290 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
The fact that the statement of any truth has been
reduced to its simplest terms does not imply that it
cannot stand the test of investigation; all that it im
plies is that it has been put into the best shape for
immediate use alike for those who are able, and for
those who are unable, to investigate the underlying
principle. We press the button and the electric bell
rings, whether we are trained electricians or not; but
the fact that the bell rings for those who know noth
ing about electricity does not hinder the investigator
from learning why it rings. On the other hand the
greatest electrician does not have to go through the
whole theory of the working of the current when he
rings at the door of your house, which would be in
convenient to say the least of it; and still less does
he have to solve the ultimate problem of what elec
tricity actually is in itself, for he knows no more
about that than anybody else.
And so in the end he has to come back to the same
simple faith in electricity as the man who does not
know the difference between the positive and negative
poles of a battery. His greater knowledge ought to
extend his faith in electricity because he knows it can
do much greater things than ringing a bell ; and in like
manner any clearer insight we may gain into the
modus operandi of the Divine promises should in
crease our trust in them, while at the same time it

The Divine Giving 291
leaves us just on the same level with the most ignorant
as to what the Divine Spirit actually is in itself.
We all alike have to come back to the standpoint of
a simple faith in the vitalizing working of the energiz
ing power, whether God or electricity, therefore the
Bible simplifies matters by bidding us take this ulti
mate position as our starting point, and not say 'I
am confident becouse I know the law,' but 'I am con
fident because I know in whom I have believed.'
I think some such considerations as these must have
been at the back of St. Paul's mind making him draw
that distinction between Law and Faith which runs
through all his Epistles. It is trae he is, in the first
instance, speaking of the ceremonial law of the Mosaic
ritual, for he was addressing Jews for the most part ;
but if we reflect that reliance on that ceremonial was
only one particular mode of relying upon knowledge of
laws, we shall see that the principle is applicable to all
laws, and moreover the original Greek word used by
St. Paul implies law in general, thus giving a scope
to his argument which makes it as applicable to our
selves as to Jews.
And the point is this : Laws are statements of the
relations of certain things to certain other things under
certain conditions. Given the same things and the
same conditions, the same laws will come into play
because the same relation has been established between

292 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
the things ; but this is exactly the sphere which excludes
the idea of original creation.
It is the -sphere of science, of analysis, of measure
ment; it is the proper domain of all merely construc
tive work; but that is just what original creation is
not. Original creation is not troubled about ante
cedent conditions; it creates new conditions, and by
doing so establishes new relations and therefore new
laws; and since the declared purpose of the Bible is
to bring us into a new order, in which all that is meant
by "the FaU" shall be obliterated, this is nothing else
than a New Creation, which, indeed, the Bible calls it.
Therefore our knowledge of particular laws, whether
mental or material, is of no avail for this purpose, and
we have to come back to the standpoint of simple
faith. I do not wish to say anything against the knowl
edge of particular laws, either mental or material,
which is useful in its way; but what I do want to
emphasize is that this knowledge is not the Creative
Power. If we get hold of this distinction we shall
see what is meant by the promises contained in the
Bible. They are statements of the original creating
power of the spirit as it works from the standpoint
of a specific personal relation to the individual, which
relation is brought about by the expectant attitude of
the individual mind which renders it receptive to the

The Divine Giving 293
anticipated creative action of the Spirit; and it is
this mental attitude that the Bible caHs Faith.
Seen in this light faith in the promise is not a
mere unreasoning belief, neither is it in opposition to
law; but on the contrary it is the most all-embracing
conclusion to which reasoning can lead us, and the
channel through which the Supreme Law of the uni
verse, the Law of the creative activity of the All-
Originating Spirit, operates to make new conditions
for the individual. It is not trying to make yourself
believe what you know is not true; but it is the exer
cise of the highest reason based upon the knowledge
of the highest truth.
The Divine promise and the individual faith are
thus the correlatives of each other, and together con
stitute a creative power to which we can assign no
limits. When we begin to apprehend this connec
tion of Cause and Effect we see the force of the state
ments made by the Divine Master: "All things are
possible to him that believeth." "Have faith in God
and nothing shall be impossible unto you," and the
like. If we attribute any authority whatever to His say
ings we are justified by them in affirming that there
is no limit to the power of faith, and that His declara
tions on this subject are not mere figures of speech,
but statements of the special and individual working
of the Creative Law of the universe.

294 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
Viewed in this light the Bible promises assume a
practical aspect and a personal application, and we see
what is meant by beuig Children of Promise. We
are no longer under bondage to Law, that is to those
laws of sequences which arise from the relations of
existing things to one another, but have risen into
what the Bible tells us is the Perfect Law, the Law
of Liberty; and so according to the symbolism of
the two representative mothers, Hagar and Sarah, we
are now no longer children of the bond woman but
of the free (Gal. iv. 31).
Only to be "heirs according to promise" we must
be descendants of Abraham. I am not prepared to
say that the majority of readers of this book are not
so literally, though they may not be aware of the
fact, but that is another branch of the subject with
which I may deal in a subsequent volume.
But setting aside this historical question let us here
consider the question of spiritual principles. On this
point the teaching of the Bible is very plain. It is
that they are children of Abraham who are of the
faith of Abraham; they are his seed according to
promise, that is they are living by the same prin
ciple which is set forth as forming the groundwork of
Abraham's life — "Abraham believed God, and it was
counted unto him for righteousness" (Rom. iv. 3).
Now what will be the fruit of such a root? It
must necessarily produce two results in our inner life

The Divine Giving 295
— Restfulness and Enthusiasm. At first sight these
two might appear opposed to one another, but it is
not so, for Enthusiasm is born of confidence and so
also is Restfulness. Both are necessary for the work
we have to do. Without Enthusiasm there can be no
vigorous work; even if attempted it would only be
done as task-work, something which we had to grind
at compulsorily, and though I would not deny that a
certain amount of good and useful work may be done
from a mere sense of obligation still it will be of a
very inferior quality to what is done spontaneously
for love of the work itself.
Take the case of the poor artist who is the slave
of the dealer and has to labor from morning to night
to tum out scores of little pot-boilers by a more or
less mechanical process. If he be a born artist the
fact will assert itself in spite of the conditions, and
even the pot-boilers will have some degree of merit.
But put the same man in more favorable circumstances
where he is no longer restricted by trade require
ments, but is allowed to give fuU scope to his genius,
then the artist in him rises up, he gives up his own
vision of nature, and masterpieces come from his brush.
This is because he is now working from Enthusiasm
and not from Compulsion. It is also because he is
working with a sense of Restfulness ; he is no longer
obliged to tum out so many pot-boilers per week to
meet the demands of the petty dealer but can take

296 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
his own time and choose his own subject and treat it
in his own way.
Then the business side of his work wiH be nego
tiated for him by the big dealer, the man who also is
an artist in his own way and knows the difference be
tween the productions of spontaneous feeling and mere
mechanical dexterity, and who finds his own profit in
helping the artist to maintain that freedom from
anxiety and the sense of compulsion without which
such high class works as the big dealer's business de
pends on cannot be produced.
Now this is a parable. God is the big dealer, and
His best work through man is done for love and not
by compulsion, and the more we realize this the bet
ter work we shall do. Am I irreverent in comparing
God to some great picture-dealer of world-wide repu
tation and saying that He, too, gains His profits in the
transaction? I think not; for Christ Himself teUs
us of the master who looked to receive a profit out
of his servants' work, and I have only clothed the old
parable in modem garb and colored it with a familiar
coloring. And we may carry the simile yet further. The
great dealer knows how to place the masterpieces in
which he deals, he is in touch with connoisseurs with
whom the artist cannot come in contact; and if the
artist had to attend to all this what would become of
his creative vision?

The Divine Giving 297
How do you manage to paint such exquisite pic
tures, it was once asked of Corot, and he replied, "Je
reve mon tableau, et plus tard je peindrai mon reve."
There spoke the true artist, "I dream my picture,
and afterwards I paint my dream." The true artist
dreams with his eyes open looking at nature, and it
is because he thus sees the inner spirit of her beauty
through its external veil of form that he can show
others what they could not see, unaided, for them
selves. This is his function, and the large-minded
dealer enables him to perform it by taking the business
side of the matter in hand in a generous spirit com
bined with a shrewd knowledge of the market, and so
leaves the painter to his proper work by seeing his
vision of nature and interpreting it by his individual
method of interpretation.
So with the Divine Healer. He knows the ropes. He
has command of the market, and He will deal in a
liberal spirit with all who place their work in His
hands. Let us, then, do diligently, honestly, and cheer
fully the work of to-day, not as serving a hard task
master, but in happy confidence, and day by day hand
it over to the Loving Creating Spirit who will bring
out connections we had never dreamt of, and open
up fresh avenues for us where we saw no way. You
are the artist, and God is your honest, appreciative,
and powerful Dealer.
But what else is this except exchanging the burden

298 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
of Law for the peaceful liberty of Faith in the Divine
Goodness, the AU-givingness of the Heavenly Father?
To attain this is far better than puzzling our brains
over abstruse questions of theology and metaphysics.
The whole thing is summed up in this: if you take
your own knowledge of law as the starting-point of
the creative action in your personal life you have
inverted the true order, and the logical result from
your premises will be to bring the whole burden upon
yourself like a thousand of bricks ; but if you take the
AU-givingness of the Creating Spirit as your starting-
point then everything else will fall into a harmonious
order, and all you will have to do is to receive and
use what you receive, asking the Divine guidance to
use it rightly.
You throw the burden on whichever side you regard
as taking the initiative in your personal creative series.
If you take it, you make God a mere impersonal force,
and ultimately you have nothing to depend upon but
your own unaided knowledge and power. If on the
other hand you regard God as taking the initiative
by an AU-givingness peculiarly connected with your
self, then the action is reversed and you will find
yourself backed-up by the Infinite Love, Wisdom, and
Power. Of course there is a reason for these things, and
I have endeavored to suggest a few thoughts as to
the reason: but the practical advice I give to each

The Divine Giving 299
reader is: Stop arguing about it. Try it, my boy.
Try it, my dear girl — for the promise is: "Let him
take hold of my strength that he may be at peace with
me, and he shall make peace with me" (Isaiah
xxvii. 5).

XIV.
THE SPIRIT OF ANTICHRIST
WHEN we have realized the essential nature of
any principle we can form a pretty fair guess
as to the general lines on which it will show
itself in action, whether in individuals, or institutions,
or nations, or events. The evolution of principles is
the key to all history in the past, and similarly it is
the key to all the history that is to come; therefore,
if we grasp the significance of any principle, though
we may not be able to prophesy particular events, we
shall be able to form some general idea of the sort
of developmaits its prevalence must give rise to.
Now all through the Bible we find the statement
of two leading principles which are diametrically op
posed to one another — the principle of Sonship or re
liance upon God, and its opposite or the denial of God,
and it is this latter that is called the spirit of Anti
christ. This spirit, or mode of thought, is described in the
second chapter of the second epistle to the Thessa
lonians and the fourth chapter of the first epistle to
301

302 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
Timothy; and its distinctive note is that it sets itself
up in the temple of God, placing itself above all that
is worshipped, and a similar description is given in
Daniel xi. 36-39.
The widespread development of this inverted prin
ciple, the Bible tells us, is the key to the history of
"the latter days," those times in which we now live,
and the prophetic Scriptures are largely occupied with
the struggle which must take place between these op
posing principles. It is impossible for the two to
amalgamate for they are in direct antagonism; and
the Bible tells us that, though the struggle may be
severe, the victory must at last remain with those
who worship God.
And the reason for this becomes evident if we look
at the fundamental nature of the principles them
selves. One is the principle of the Affirmative and
the other is the principle of the Negative, One is
that which builds up, and the other is that which
pulls down. One consents to the initiative being
taken by that Spirit which has brought aU creation
into existence, and the other bids this Spirit take a
back seat and denies that it has any power of initia
tive. This is the essence of the opposition between
the two principles. Whatever the one affirms the other
denies; and so, since no agreement is possible, the
conflict between them must continue until one or the
other gets the final victory.

The Spirit of Antichrist 303
Now if the spirit of Antichrist is what the Bible
describes it, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that
it is now present among us, St, Paul tells us that
it was already beginning to work in his ' day, only
that at that time there was a hindrance to its fuller
development, but he adds that when that hindrance
should be removed the development of the spirit of
Antichrist would be phenomenal.
Various commentators on this text have explained
the hindrance alluded to by St. Paul to have been
the existence of the Roman Empire, and no doubt this
is true as far as it goes. In this passage (II. Thess.
ii. i-ii) St. Paul reminds the Thessalonians of some
thing he had told them on the subject, that is some
thing he had communicated verbally, and not in writ
ing, regarding the falling away which would take
place before the resurrection. He says, "Remember
ye not, when I was yet with you, I told you of these
things ? And now ye know what withholdeth that he
might be revealed in his time."
The very earfiest traditions tell us that what St.
Paul had then verbally explained to the Thessalonians
was that the Roman Empire as then existing must
pass away before these further developments could
take place; but he was careful not to put this in
writing lest it should expose the Christians to addi
tional persecution on the charge of being enemies to
the state.

304 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
The tradition that this was what St. Paul had told
the Thessalonians is by no means a vague one. We
first find it mentioned by Irenseus the disciple of
Polycarp, who was himself the disciple of St. John;
so that we get it on the authority of one who had
been instructed by a personal friend and acquaint
ance of the apostles, and we may therefore feel as
sured that in this tradition we have a correct state
ment of what St. Paul had said regarding the natu»-e
of the hindrance to which he alludes in this epistle.
The existence of the Roman Empire, then, was
doubtless the outward and immediate cause of this
hindrance to the coming of Antichrist; but we must
remember that at the back of the external and visible
circumstances which are instrumental in the history
of the world there are mental and spiritual causes,
and so the matter goes further and deeper than any
existing political conditions. It is a question of
spiritual principles, a question of causes, and so long
as any given cause is at work its effects will continue
to show themselves, though the particular form they
will assume will vary with the conditions under which
the manifestation takes place.
Therefore, we may look deeper than the political
conditions of St, Paul's time to find the spiritual and
causal nature of the hindrance to which he alludes.
He tells us that at the time when he wrote the spirit
of Antichrist was already working, but that its com-

The Spirit of Antichrist 305
plete manifestation was delayed tiU a later period by
reason of a certain impediment which would be re
moved in due time; and a comparison of his state
ment with that of St. Peter in the third chapter of the
second epistle shows that the removal of this impedi
ment and the fuU manifestation of the spirit of Anti
christ were to be looked for in the time of the end.
Now Daniel says the very same thing (Dan, xii,
1-4), and he points out the marks by which the time
of the end is to be recognized. They are two : "Many
shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be in
creased" ; and if this is not an accurate description of
things at the present time, well — I leave the reader
to fill in the blank. We may say, then, that the time
when the hindrance to the manifestation of Antichrist
is to be removed is a time when knowledge has been
increased; and if we reflect that the whole matter is
one of spiritual powers, is it not reasonable to suppose
that the hindrance which in St. Paul's time prevented
the fuller development of the spiritual power of
Antichrist was ignorance of the nature of spiritual
power in general?
Now this knowledge is becoming more and more
widely diffused, and consequently the danger of its
inverted application is today far greater than in St.
Paul's time; and therefore the more we realize what
potentialities open before us the more it behooves us
to be on our guard lest we regard them in such a

3o6 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
way as to take the place of God in the temple of
God. It may, or may not, be that "the Man of Sin" ex
hibiting himself as God in the Temple of God is to be
understood as an actual ceremony taking place in an
actual building; though even this is not altogether in
conceivable if we recollect that during the French
Revolution a notorious actress was enthroned upon
the high altar in the Cathedral of Notre Dame as the
Goddess of Reason and received the public adoration
of the official representatives of France. What has
been may be again, and we know that history re
peats itself; but I think we have to look for some
thing much more personal and powerful than any the
atrical exhibition of this kind.
If we search the Scriptures we shall find that the
real Temple of God is Man. When Christ said, "De
stroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,
he spake of the temple of his body" (John ii. 19-21) ;
and again St. Paul says, "Know ye not that ye are
the temple of God?" (I. Cor. iii. 16). Moreover, the
promise is, "I will dwell in them, and walk in them ;
and I will be their God, and they shall be my peo
ple" (II. Cor. vi. 16), and so in many similar pas
sages, a careful consideration of which leaves no doubt
but that the true significance of "the temple" in Scrip
ture is that of human individuality. The meaning
then becomes clear. The temple which is profaned

The Spirit of Antichrist 307
is the innermost sanctuary of our heart out of which
come all the issues of our individual life — "as he
thinketh in his heart so is he" (Prov, xxiii, 7) ; and
if this be true then it is of the utmost importance
who is enthroned there. Is it the All-originating
Creative Spirit with its infinite love, wisdom, and
power? or is it our personal knowledge and will? It
must be one of the two — which is it?
The difference is immense, and it consists in this.
If our personal knowledge, wisdom, and will-power
are the highest things we know, then we are left ex
actly where we were and are making no advance. We
may, indeed, accumulate a certain amount of knowl
edge of the hidden laws of physical and psychic forces
not commonly known to our fellow-men, which knowl
edge must necessarily carry a corresponding power
along with it; but this only places us in a position
where we more urgently need a higher knowledge and
a higher wisdom to guide us.
The greater the power you put into any one's hands
the more mischief wiU result if through ignorance of
its tme uses he misapplies it. He may understand
the mere mechanism, so to say, of this power per
fectly, so that he will know how to make it work —
it is not on the mechanical side that the mistake will
occur; but the mistake wiU be in the purpose to which
the power is applied, and if that be wrong, the greater
the power the worse wiU be the results. You may

3o8 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
teach a chUd to drive a motor-car, but unless you
can at the same time invest him with powers of ob
servation and caution and promptness of resource in
emergency beyond his years his driving will end in
a smash. Now it is just this inspiration of wisdom beyond
our natural acuteness, of foresight beyond our unaided
vision, that we require for the really useful employ
ment of any enhanced powers that may come to us
as the result of our increasing knowledge ; and this is
not to be drawn from the knowledge of what we may
call the merely mechanical working of the Law of
Cause and Effect, whether on the side of the visible
or of the invisible. That knowledge, taken by itself,
is only the lower knowledge, learning, so to say, how
to do the particular trick ; but to make it of real value
we need to know, not only how to do it, but why to
do it ; and since the only true why is the building up
of a harmonious whole both in ourselves and in the
race — a whole which, by an organic connection be
tween the causes sown today and the results produced
tomorrow, shall continually germinate into greater and
greater fulness of joyous life — since the production of
such a continuously growing and rejoicing wholeness
is the only reasonable purpose to which our knowl
edge and our powers, whether great or smaU, can be
appHed, how are we to get such an out-look into the
unending future and into our present relations in aU

The Spirit of Antichrist 309
their ultimate consequences by our own personal
knowledge however extended?
We are sowing causes all the time with only a
very limited outlook as to what they will produce;
but if we are conscious that we have submitted our
action to the guidance of the Supreme Wisdom' and
Love we know that we must be importing into it an
adjustment to wholeness which will make it co-opera
tive with the great purpose of the universe.
We cannot grasp that purpose in all its details and
infinite extent, but we can see that it must be an un
ending growth into ever increasing manifestation of
the Life, Love, and Beauty which the All-originat
ing Spirit is in itself.
That Spirit is in itself Unity, and its Self-expres
sion is through its manifestation in Multi-plicity ; and
the more clearly we see this the more clearly we shall
see that the way to co-operate with it is by seeking
to make our own thought the channel of its Thought.
But to do this is to recognize the presence of a Divine
Intelligence guiding our thought and a Divine Power
working through our actions; and this recognition
coupled with the desire that our thought should be
thus guided and our actions thus vi/ified is the very
essence of Worship. It is the very opposite to the
mental attitude which sets itself up as needing no
guidance and no help from a higher source, and which
denies the working of any higher power; and so

310 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
worship becomes the foundation principle of the life.
This does not mean a specific ceremonial observance
but the adoption of the principle of worship, which
is the recognition of the true relation of the individual
mind to the Parent Mind from which it springs.
If any one finds that a particular ceremonial con
duces towards this end then that ceremonial is use
ful to him, but it does not follow that the same cere
monial is necessary for somebody else. It is just
like water-color painting. One man requires to keep
his paper dry through the whole progress of the work,
while another paints entirely in the wet; yet if they
are both artists each will record his vision in a way
that will unfold to the spectator, some secret of na
ture's beauty. Each must use the means which at his
present stage he finds most conducive to the end, only
let him remember that it is the end alone yvhich really
counts. Therefore it is that the Great Teacher laid down
only one rule for worship — ^that it should be "in
spirit and in truth." The essence and not the form
is what counts, because the whole thing is a question
of mental attitude. It is that attitude of constant Re-
ceptiveness which is the only possible conscious cor
relative to the infinite Divine Givingness, To attain
this is conscious union with the All-creating Spirit.
The logic of it may be briefly put thus: we want
to come into touch with the Power which originates

The Spirit of Antichrist 311
the universe ; but we cannot do this and at the same
time disqualify it by denying that it continues to be
originative when it comes in touch with ourselves.
Therefore to be really in touch with it as the originat
ing Power we must let it lead us and not try to com
pel it; and to do this is to worship.
The mark of the opposite mental attitude is to
take no heed of such a Guiding Power, and then the
only alternative is to set one's self in its place. When
we realize that spiritual causes are always at the back
of external phenomena and the more we come to see
that particular causes can be resolved into variations
of an ultimate cause, the more our intent to rule that
ultimate cause mu?t result in self-deification.
But the bad logic comes in in not seeing that the
real ultimate cause must be entirely originative — that
this is just what makes it worth seeking — and trying
to deprive it of this power by attempting to compel
it instead of looking to it for leading.
It is just here that those who realize the nature of
spiritual causation are in greater danger than the mere
materialist. There really is an unseen Force which
can be controlled in the manner they contemplate, and
their mistake is in supposing that this Force is the ulti
mate Creating Power,
I daresay some readers will smile at this, and I
am well aware that it is quite possible to build up an
apparently logical argument to show that what I am

312 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
now speaking of is a merely fanciful idea, but to these
I wiU not now make any reply — the matter is one
requiring careful development, and a partial and in
adequate explanation would be worse than useless.
I must therefore leave its discussion to some other
occasion, and in the meanwhile ask my readers to
assume the existence of this Force simply as a work
ing hypothesis. In asking this I am not asking more
than they are ready to concede in the case of physical
science where it is necessary to assume the exist
ence of purely speculative conditions of energy and
matter if we would co-ordinate the observed phe
nomena of nature into an intelligible whole; and in
like manner I would ask the critical reader to as
sume as a working hypothesis the existence of an
Essence intermediate between the Originating Spirit
and the world of external manifestation.
The existence of such an intermediary is a conclu
sion which has been arrived at by some of the deepest
thinkers who have ever lived, and it has been called
by various names in different countries and ages;
but for the purpose of th^ present book I think I can
not do better than adopt the name given to it by the
European writers of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seven
teenth centuries. They called it "Anima Mundi," or
the Soul of the World, as distinguished from "Ani
mus Dei," or the Divine Spirit, and they were careful
to discriminate between the two.

The Spirit of Antichrist 313
If you look in a Latin dictionary you will find that
this word, which means life, mind, or soul, is given in
a twofold form, masculine and feminine, Animus and
Anima. Now it is in the dual nature thus indicated
that the action of spiritual causation consists, and we
cannot eliminate either of the two factors without in
volving a confusion of ideas which the recognition of
their interaction would prevent us falling into.
When once we recognize the nature and function
of Anima Mundi we shall find that, under a variety
of symbols, it is referred to throughout the Bible,
and indeed forms one of the principal subjects of its
teaching; but to explain these Bible references in de
tail would require a book to itself. In general terms,
however, we may say that Anima Mundi is "the Eter
nal Feminine," and the necessary correlative to Ani
mus Dei, the true Originating Spirit. It is what the
mediaeval writers called "the Universal Medium," and
is that principle which, as I pointed out in the opening
chapter of this book, is esoterically called "Water."
It is not the Originating Principle itself, but it is
that principle through which the Originating Principle
operates. It is not originative but receptive, not the
seed but the ground, formative of that with which it
is impregnated, as is indicated by the old French ex
pression for it "ventre saint gris," the "holy blue
womb" — the innermost maturing place of Nature ; and
its power is that of attracting the conditions necessary

3 14 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
for the full maturing of that seed with which it is im
pregnated, and thus bringing about the growth which
ultimately culminates in completed manifestation.
Perhaps the idea may be put into terms of mod
ern Western thought by calling it the Subconscious
Mind of the Universe; and if we regard it in this
light we may apply to it all those laws of the interac
tion between conscious and subconscious mentality
with which I conclude most of my readers are fa
miliar.* Now the two chief characteristics of subconscious
mind are its amenabUity to suggestion and its power
of working out into material conditions the logical
consequences of the suggestion impressed upon it. It
is not originative, but formative. It does not pro
vide the seed but it causes it to grow; and the seed
is the suggestion impressed upon it by the objective
mind. If, then, we credit the Universal Subjective Mind
with these same qualities we find ourselves face to
face with a stupendous power which by its nature af
fords a matrix for the germination of all the seeds
of thought that are planted in it.
Looking at the totality of Nature as we see it — ^the
various types of life, vegetable, animal, and human.

*On this subject I would refer the reader to my "Edin
burgh Lectures on Mental Science."

The Spirit of Antichrist 315
and the evolution of these types from earlier ones,
we can only come to the conclusion that the Orig
inating Mind, Animus Dei as distinguished from
Anima Mundi, must in the first instance see things
generically, the type rather than the individual, much
as Plato puts it in his doctrine of architypal ideas,
and so the world, as we know it, is governed by a
Law of Averages which maintains and advances the
race whatever may become of the individual.
We may call this a generic or type creation as dis
tinguished from the conception of a specific creation
of particular individuals; but, as I have explained
more fully in my book, "The Creative Process in
the Individual," the culminating point of such a gen
eric creation must be the production of individual
minds which are capable of realizing the general prin
ciple at work, and therefore of giving it individual
application. Now it is the imperfect apprehension of this prin
ciple that causes its inversion. It is recognizing Ani
ma Mundi without Animus Dei; and the more a
man sees of the immense possibilities of his own
thought and volition working upon Anima Mundi,
while at the same time ignoring Animus Dei, the
more likely he is to grow too big for his boots. He
then logically has nothing to guide him but his own
personal wiU, and with aU the resources of Anima
Mundi at his disposal there is no saying to what ex-

3i6 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
tremes he may not go. "L'appetit vient en mangeant,"
and the more power he gets the more he wiU want,
and the more his desires are gratified the more he will
become satiated and require fresh stimulus to his
jaded appetites.
This is no fancy picture. History tells us of the
Emperor Tiberius offering great rewards to any one
who would discover a new pleasure, and Nero burning
Rome for a sensation. Picture such men in posses
sion of a knowledge of psychic laws which would
place all the powers of Anima Mundi at their dis
posal, and then imagine, not one such, but hundreds
or thousands combining in some common enterprise
under the leadership of some pre-eminently gifted in
dividual and recollect in this connection the accumu
lated power of massed mental action — and what must
the result be? Surely just what the Bible tells us —
the working of all sorts of prodigies which to the
uninstructed multitude must appear to be nothing else
than miracles.
The knowledge, then, of the enormous possibilities
stored up in Anima Mundi, or the Soul of Nature, is
the great instrument through which the power of
Antichrist wUl work. It is, indeed, the acquisition
of this power that will more and more confirm
him in his idea of self-deification; and note
that though for convenience I use the singular
pronoun, I am speaking of a class, that is

The Spirit of Antichrist 317
of all who do not offer to God the sincere
worship of trust in the Divine Love, Wisdom,
and Power. I use the name Antichrist as that of a
class, and one which seems likely to be widespread
before long, though this in no way excludes the pos
sibility of some phenomenally powerful leader of this
class attaining to a pre-eminence which will make him
the typical manifestation of the principle of self-
deification. Antichrist, whether as class or as individual, has
attained to the recognition of a great universal prin
ciple, which I have endeavored to set forth in this and
other books, the principle of the introduction of "the
Personal Factor" into the realm of unseen causes.
He has laid hold of a great truth.
All progress beyond the merely generic working of
the Law of Averages is to be made by the introduc
tion of the Personal Factor; but the mistake which
Antichrist makes is that he cannot see any personality
but his own. He sees the Soul of Nature and the
power of its responsiveness to the Personal
elements in the mind of man, and he sees no
further. Therefore, after his own fashion, he recog
nizes a spiritual power of mere forces, but he does
not recognize beyond this the presence of "the God
of gods" (Dan. xi. 36-38). Logically therefore he
becomes to himself the Person. He rightly says that
the Law of Cause and Effect is universal, and that

3i8 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
the expansion of this law to the production of hitherto
unknown effects depends upon the introduction of the
personal factor; but he does not understand the rein
forcement of the individual human personality by a
Divine Personality, the recognition of which would
bring in that principle of Worship, which from the
standpoint of his unperfect assumption of premises he
logically denies.
To this power based upon self-deification there is
opposed the opposite power based upon the worship of
God; and the fact to be noted is that they are both
using the same instrument. Both work by the power
of the personal factor acting upon the impersonal Soul
of Nature. The Anima Mundi itself is simply neu
tral. It is responsive to impression and generative
of the conditions corresponding to the seed sown in
it, but being entirely impersonal it is without any sort
of moral consciousness, and will therefore respond
equally to the impress of good or of evil.
Therefore in estimating the final result Anima
Mundi may be entirely eliminated from our calcula
tions. To put itmathematicaUy, if Anima Mundi be
represented by the same quantity on either side of the
equation, it may be struck out from both sides, and
then the real calculation wiU involve only the remain
ing factors. In the case we are considering the only
other factor is that of Persdnality, and consequently

The Spirit of Antichrist 319
the ultimate question at issue is this — on which side
is the greater force of Personality?
The answer to this question is to be found in the
Cosmic Creation, We are part of that creation; our
personality is part of it. Our personaUty proceeds
by derivation from the All-originating Spirit, and
therefore logically that Spirit must be the Infinite of
Personality. It is true we cannot analyze or fathom the pro
fundities of that Spirit, and from this point of view
we may speak of it as "the Unknowable" ; and so we
may not be able to define what the All-creating
Spirit's consciousness of Personality may be to itself ;
but, unless we entirely deny our derivation from it,
must it not be clear that it must contain the infinite
potential of all that can ever constitute personality in
ourselves ? And if this be so, then the growth of our
own personality must be proportioned to the extent
to which this potential flows into us; and to adopt
the receptive mental attitude towards our Creator
which will allow of such an inflowing is to take that
attitude of Worship which Antichrist denies. There
fore the greater power of PersonaUty is on the side of
the worshippers of God.
Then, if this be so, their control over thc powers
of the unseen is greater than that of Antichrist, biit
they do not seek to control those powers in the same
way that he does. He knows no personality but his

320 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
own, and so he seeks to gain this control by his own
knowledge of particular laws and by his own force of
will, and is thus limited by the capacities of his own
personality, however extensive they may be. His
method is to consciously control Anima Mundi for his
own purposes by his own strength;
Those on the opposite side do not thus seek to
subject Anima Mundi to their personal will. Many,
perhaps the majority of them, do not even know that
there is any such thing as Anima Mundi, and so they
rely on a simple trust in "the Father." And those
among them who do know it know also that the wor
shipper of God may entirely eliminate it from consid
eration, as P have already said, and so they also rely
upon simple trust in "the Father"; the only differ
ence being that knowing something of the nature of
the medium through which the unseen powers are
working on both sides, and that the ultimate question
is only that of Personality, they should have a yet
stronger faith than their less instructed brethren,
though in kind it is still the same faith, that of the
Son in the Father.
Whether, then, instructed in these matters or not,
the worshippers of God wiU by their very faith and
worship be exercising a constant influence upon
Anima Mundi, attracting aU those conditions which
must tend to their final victory over the opposing
force.

The Spirit of Antichrist 321
Their worship enshrines the All-creating Spirit in
their hearts, and their thoughts of Him and desires
towards Him go forth into the Soul of Nature im
pregnating it with the seed of the good, the beautiful,
and the life-giving which must assuredly bring forth
fruit in its own likeness in due time.
Their method may not produce the sensational ef
fects which may, perhaps, be produced by their op
ponents when the development of psychic forces
reaches its climax, but in the end all such temporary
wonders will be swept away by the overflowing of
power which must result when Anima Mundi becomes
perrneated by Animus Dei, not merely as now in the
generic sense of the maintenance of the world, but
also in the specific sense of the introduction of the
Personal Factor in its complete Divine manifestation.
Thus it will be seen that in its grand delineations
of the closing scenes of the present age, the Bible no
where departs from the universal law of cause and
effect. There is a reason for everything if we can
only penetrate deep enough to find it; and the laws
of causation with which we are gradually gaining a
better acquaintance in the realm of our own mentality
are the same laws which in their wider scope em
brace nations and make history.
When we see this the why and wherefore of even
that great climax of the present age which the Bible
sets before us becomes inteUigible. We may not be

322 Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
able to predict specific events but we can recognize
the development of principles, and so we see more
clearly the meaning of those inspired prophecies which
would otherwise be enigmatical to us.
Then when we see that these prophecies are in no
way isolated from the natural laws of the universe,
but rather are based upon them, and are in fact the
description of those very laws operating in their
widest field of action on the human plane we shall
feel the more confidence in those hints of definite
measures of time which they afford us.
This is a very important part of their message, and
though we may not be able to reckon the precise day
or year we may yet come to a very close approxima
tion of our present whereabouts in the chronological
calendar, and there are many indications to show that
we are very rapidly approaching that climax which
the Bible caUs the end of the age.
This, however, is far too large a question for me
to open up in these concluding pages, and perhaps it
may be my privilege to treat of it at some future
time; but I have endeavored here to offer some sug
gestions of the general lines on which the Bible stu
dent may inteUigently approach the subject, realizing
the close connection that exists between the Bible
tea'chings regarding the forgiveness of sin, thc
spirituality of worship, the development of person
ality, and the originative action of the All-creating

The Spirit of Antichrist 323
Spirit, These are all parts of one great whole and
cannot be dissociated. To dissociate them is to pull
down the edifice of the Divine Temple; to realize
their unity is to build up — that trae Temple of God
which is the Individuality of Man made perfect by
the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
It shall COME to pass that WHOSOEVER SHALL
CALL ON THE NAME OF THE LORD SHALL BE SAVED,
Him THAT COMETH TO ME I WILL IN NO WISE CAST
OUT,
MARANATHA

THE T HOWARD INSPIRATIONAL BOOKS
BIBLE MYSTERY AND BIBLE
MEANING
Revised and Enlarged American Edition
A clear and logical interpretation of Bible truth,
from the standpoint of modem metaphysics.
Judge Troward starts with the supposition that the
statements in the Bible are literally true, and from
this point develops the thesis that the Book is
not "a mere collection of world old fables or un
inteUigible dogmas, but a statement of great
universal laws, all of which proceed simply and
logically from the initial truth that creation is a
process of evolution."
"Discloses himself a master thinker of new
thought and a master of English in the expression
of what he thinks." — Stuart Law in the Ohio
State Journal.
Cloth, ^1.50 Net - - - Postage, 10 cents

THE TROWARD INSPIRATIONAL BOOKS
THE CREATIVE PROCESS IN
THE INDIVIDUAL
The author says: "In the present volume I have
endeavored to set before the reader the conception
of a sequence of creative action, commencing with the
formation of the globe and culminating in a vista of
infinite possibiUties attainable by every one who fol
lows up the right line for their enfoldment  and
if our speculation lead us to the conclusion that we
have reached a point where we are not only able, but
also required, by the law of our own being, to take a
more active part in our personal evolution than here
tofore, this discovery will afford us a new outlook
upon life and widen our horizon with fresh interests
and brightening hopes."
"It is a book that wiU greatly interest aU who are
interested in New Thought." — Springfield (Mass.)
Union. "In the advancement of his argument Mr. Troward
bases his conclusions on scientific facts known and
proved. . . . Above aU his book is a study for the
thinker." — Salt Lake Tribune.
"The book will repay study by the inspiration it
holds for the philosophic reader." — San Francisco
Chronicle. Cloth, $1.25 - - - - Postage, 10 cents

THE TROWARD INSPIRATIONAL BOOKS
THE DORE LECTURES ON
MENTAL SCIENCE
Judge Troward supplemented his line of reasoning
in the "Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science," by a
new series of lectures, pubUshed under the above
title, deriving their name from the Dore GaUery in
London, where the lectures were deUvered. While
his second volume in itself is scarcely a complete
interpretation of Mental Science, it is a valuable
addendum to his Edinburgh Lectures, the two volumes
making plain to the seeker, by logical and scientific
reasoning, the wonderful truth that while we are in
dividuals, yet we are "one with the Father," and
possess remarkable power in ourselves that has
hitherto been overlooked.
This book was recently warmly commended in a
discourse at Westminster Abbey by Archdeacon
Wilberforce, who advised his hearers to read the work.
The chapters are: "Entering Into the Spirit of It,"
"IndividuaUty," "The New Thought and the New
Order," " The Life of the Spirit," "Alpha and Omega,"
"The Creative Power of Thought," "The Great
Affirmative," " Christ the FumUing of the Law," "The
Story of Eden," "The Worship of Ishi," "The
Shepherd and the Stone," "Salvation is of the Jews."
$1,00 Net  Postage, 10 cents

THE EDINBURGH LECTURE SERIES
By Judge Thomas Troward

THE EDINBURGH LECTURES
ON MENTAL SCIENCE
This is the first of the "Edinburgh Lecture Series."
Its purpose is to indicate the Natural Principles
governing the relation between mental action and
material conditions and thus to afford the student
an inteUigible starting point for the practical study of
th5 subject.
The late WiUiam James said of it: "Far and away
the ablest statement of that philosophy that I have
met, beautiful in its sustained clearness of thought
and style — a reaUy classic statement."
"One of the clearest, most logical and reverent, and
least dogmatic of the numerous books designed to
awaken man to practical consciousness of his in
dwelling spiritual powers," — St. Paul Dispatch.
"The author reveals himself as easily the pro
foundest thinker we have met on the subject." —
Boston Transcripts
$1.25 Net  Postage, 10 cents

3 9002 08844 9146

YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

Gift of
CARL VAN VECHTEN

IP ii iii.illii|0;i:;^^l;r|1i;;^
i||iii||iiilinili!liili':;|iil!l!'''i';';:^'m^^^^^^