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THE DIVINE TRAVAIL
IN
NATURE, MAN & THE BIBLE
AS TRACED BY
Science and the Method of Christ.

By

JOHN COUTTS,

AUTHOR OP "MAN'S OROANIC CONSTITUTION," "BRAIN AND INTELLECT,'! "THE SEVEN
PRINCIPLES," " THE TREE OP LIFE," " CHRIST'S KINGDOM,' " THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH
AS REVEALED IN LAW," " THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO THE METHOD OF
CHRIST'S KINGDOM," "SCIENTIFIC ORDER ANn LAW," ETC., ETC.

LONDON: NATIONAL HYGIENIC COMPANY, LIMITED, PUBLISHERS, &c,
26, GREAT QUEBEC STREET, W.
BIRMINGHAM : LYAL BROTHERS, 52, NEW STREET.
MELBOURNE : M. L. HUTCHINSON, 305, LITTLE COLLIN'S STREET.
1905.

Printed by Wyman &• Sons, Ltd.,
Fetter Lane, London, E.C,
and Reading.

PREFACE.

The pursuit after knowledge, science and wisdom, may be fitly compared to a long
journey of discovery in an unknown country ; the daily scenes change, differences
are observed, and thus the traveller passes from desert places to peaceful valleys,
from wide plains to mountain ranges. It may be that if his pathway is across a con
tinent, then he leaves the ocean from whence he came, he arrives at another ocean,
and, although he may not know it, these oceans are one, for they embrace that con
tinent which he has traversed. The traveller would see many things, and solve
some interesting problems in his travels ; but the mysterious ocean would seem
boundless ; in that realm there is no change of scenery ; only the great arch over
head in boundless space ; the line on the horizon where sea and heavens meet ; and
the great depths in the waters that cannot be fathomed. The ocean is like eternity :
the continent is like the Hfe of a man ; and thus the great importance of what the man
can see, hear, learn, think and do ; he is being prepared, trained, educated for a future
life, and across the ocean there is another continent toward the sunset, which, in its
turn, may also be conceived to be the land of the rising sun. The German thinker,
Goethe, gives a word of wise counsel for those who are preparing for the great journey
of Ufe, in these words : " Man is born not to solve the problem of the universe, but to
find out where the problem begins, and then to restrain himself within the limits
of the comprehensible." In other words, there is a universal problem not solvable
by man ; and there are many problems, which he may be able to solve, if he can
only find the true and right beginning, and is wise enough to recognise the Divine
limitations. It is being recognised more clearly by men that ihe problem of Being is that one
which they require to leave alone : it is the Eternal Mystery, not a problem ; it is Light
Ineffable or Darkness Inscrutable as men are found to respond to the Mystery ; thus
if Light, then correspondence, absorption and answering radiation ; but if darkness,
then night and death. The difference is not in the Mystery, it is in men, in their
state of spiritual para-magnetism, or dia-magnetism ; they are in either of these
conditions ; and thus the paramount importance of being in harmonious correspondence
with the Magnetic Mystery of the universe. If men are found to be dia-magnetic
and earthly, how will they discover where the problem of life begins ; how are they
to see and understand where new problems arise ; and where it is necessary to restrain
enquiry and observe definable limits of thought ? It can be seen that when men use
their intellectual powers to find out conditions, relations and harmonies, they place
before themselves what they are studying as a problem, or a series of problems ; if
they begin where the problem begins, and follow true and right rules, making no
mistakes in the process of reasoning, the result will be the solution of the problem ;
and that solution will be capable of proof. The analogy here is that of mathematics
as a science dealing with problems of space, time, numbers, energy and motion ;
there is the greatest care taken as to the limitation of what is comprehensible, thus
of necessity all scientific thinkers who follow the same processes of reasoning will
solve their problems in the same way.
It may be that the science of mathematics is the proto-type of all the sciences ; that

IV PREFACE.
is to say, every science is a problem ; it has a beginning ; it has to be studied upon
true and right lines, and if true thinkers, in the light of truth, work out their problems
correctly, the results attained must be the same, the end must be agreement. If error
has arisen in the process of study then there will be want of harmony, and scientific
students must reconsider their problems so that they may find, if possible, what they
conceive to be truth. The end which men of science keep in view is, that all thoughts
in all realms, as problems, should be brought into conformity and harmony with
facts as abstract truth ; thus it is impossible for them to conceive any terminus to
their labours until the problems they are studying are solved. To this aspect of
science it would be unreasonable to object ; but, men must remember that this
claim is a very great one ; it is all-inclusive of the relations of all thoughts ; it means
that science asserts that the conceptions of men are in chaotic confusion, and that
science, and science only, can place them in their order according to law. Of course,
it is granted that the Mystery problem is not included ; it must stand apart from all
other problems ; and, what is of importance, it is not, as First Cause, in any sense subject
to science. It is hardly necessary to add that morals and religion, as problems, are
subject to science ; only to each science its own realm of thought ; thus no question
arises as to the physical dictating to the spiritual ; or the spiritual as limiting the physi
cal ; each problem has its own beginning and process of development, and each
realm must be studied in harmony with the rules that govern the problems being
studied. Further, this limitation must also be carefully noted, the intellect of man
is not a dictator as to duty, but the power used to place in order and harmony the
thoughts possessed, so that they may be seen to be true, right and good.
These thoughts have been expressed in former works ; they are fundamental ;
and, if they are not understood, progress will be found to be impossible. The aspect
of the problem in this work seems to take this form : Have the travellers in the dark
coutinent perished by the way ; or, have they, at last, reached the mountain top on
the further side ; and can they sec the ocean and the way that leads to it ? Can
the travellers say that behind them there is a clear roadway ; that the hght of truth
shines upon it ; that they have seen the angel of science face to face ; and thus they
are able to utter words of encouragement to other travellers upon the great highway
of hfe ? It would almost appear as if this suggestion is a true one ; not that prob
lems are solved, but that it is made possible for men to take up their problems at the
beginning, and to work them out in scientific order. Men require to realise the differ
ence betwixt veteran travellers and those who are beginning the journey of hfe ; the
veterans can leave their maps and books for the inexperienced ; but they cannot' help
those who will not study and think ; for beginners the road is made plainer and easier,
but if they prefer by-paths and pleasure, instead of earnest study, then they make
the wrong choice, and when it is too late they may discover that they have missed
their golden opportunities. With these remarks it may be found helpful to glance verv
briefly at the different stages of life, in the light of development, and by this means
indicate where men have gone wrong in the past ; and, if possible, point out the better
way to the City of Truth.
The infant, at birth, emerges from what is, to the creature, the ocean of eternity ;
it finds a home of love in the lap of the mother; and the mother and nature are, to the
child objective, visible and sensuous realities. They pre-exist and co-exist, and the
babe in its physical organism is a portion of the great physical world. This physical
world is developed from two correlated ultimates— force and life— and these, as
problems of science, have been carefully and extensively studied with satisfactory
results. The child, as psychical being, learns to distinguish betwixt what is self and
what is not self ; the self is the thinking power or sphit within, and the mind or the
soul, and it is by these powers, through the special senses, that there is correspondence
betwixt the objective world of things and signs, aud the internal or subjective world
of thoughts, ideas and images. These two worlds are in harmonious correspondence,
although the child is ignorant oi the means used, or the results attained • thus there
is being inwoven into the soul of the child a whole realm of experiences known to
be psychical and these may be said to be spiritual copies of tho forms that exist in the
physical world. The child, iu the realm of experience, developes beyond the psychical

PREFACE. V
stage of the lower creatures, because there are latent powers possessed that are being
awakened to relate abstract signs as words, and reasoning upon what is correlated,
and thus there is in the realm of experience development, so that there may be
treasured up in the soul a great subjective world of thought that transcends by a new
realm, the world of the physical. This is the critical stage for child, boy or man ; it
is that of tuition and education, submission and guidance. It is where wisdom watches
over the student with words of warning and encouragement ; and it is where the
tempter comes to entice the simple one, so that the choice may be to possess what is
beautiful and pleasant, and what will convey the wisdom of the gods with their power.
The choice here is of great importance ; if the first, then science and wisdom will take
the student by the hand and lead him in safety to the City of Truth ; if the second,
then his companions will be the serpent with his wiles, the ambitious men who desire
to rule by power, or the prodigals who seek after pleasure ; and the meaning of this
way is empiricism, autocracy, the world, the flesh, amusements, the great desert and
death, and, so far as can be seen, at the end there is no city to be found that is radiant
with the hght of truth. As being conceived by modern thought, this is like what is
meant by the Fall ; the man, as student, would not wait to be instructed by the angel
of science ; he thought that he could attain to wisdom by a shorter and less arduous
route ; he put out his hands and took what he could not comprehend ; he would
study all problems by his own rules and find their solutions ; and this is where the
intellect of man failed, the result being empiricism and moral degradation from like
ness to God to that of a lower creature. There fell upon man what was equivalent
to spiritual dia-magnetism ; there was perversion from truth and righteousness, dark
ness within the soul, the tendency to cross purposes, and because of this fallen state
men have throughout history chosen the wrong way instead of the right path, and
error in place of truth. History and the Bible are full of examples of what is meant
here ; {hus it is not necessary to enlarge upon this waywardness of the human race,
as fallen from the Divine likeness.
What can now be seen by the hght of science and wisdom, order and law, is that the
highest in man was his moral nature ; thus when it was trodden down by the intellect
and debased by passion and desire, there was no power in man that could restore him
to the hfe Divine. The man is conceived to be a moral man, reduced to chaos, without
personal power of restoration to harmony with the Divine Cosmos; hisrealmis darkness,
not hght, death, not Hfe, and thus only by hght and hfe from heaven, of a special kind,
could he be restored to the realm of truth and righteousness. This event, it is assumed,
took place in the infancy of mankind; thus the record given is that of allegory as to
form. Man is found outside that garden, where there was safety and protection ;
and there lay before him the great continent of hfe, an untrodden wilderness, that
had to be traversed under many disadvantages. It would be a serious mistake to
suppose that the Lord of the Garden, and the Father of His children, sent the wanderers
upon their journey without guides ; there were two who were specially selected for
this service ; and men may know them under the familiar names of Grace and Sacrifice.
The former was ever found at the right hand of the wanderers, giving them encourage
ment and shedding light upon their pathway ; the latter seemed to be clothed with
patience, kindness, helpfulness, and self-renunciation ; a somewhat sad companion
in the sorrowful way, and yet as sensitive as Divine Love, with a face radiant with
joy, when pilgrims could catch a glimpse of the countenance shrouded behind the
veil. The story of the journey, and what happened to the travellers and their guides,
will be found recorded in a Book that the recording angel has preserved for men ;
it is called tha Word of God, and the Book of Life ; and, it is so named because it
contains the history of the Divine Life as revealed to experience, as conceived by
empiricism, and as being studied by the law of development and the method of Christ.
It is hardly necessary to state that these angels were not visible to earthly men ; and
that they did not always appear to lovers of truth under the same forms ; but these
are details which all wise men will study for themselves ; what they have to try to
keep in view is that although the phenomena that clothed the angels changed, the
veal angels did not, neither did they in any way lose their identity, or forget the- re-
soonsibilities entrusted to them. In the Book referred to, men were encouraged by

VI PREFACE.
the angel of Grace to pursue their journey by the promise of a land as an inheritance ;
by the hope of a better country ; by taking possession of a land ; by the prospect
of a Kingdom and a King ; by a universal Kingdom that could not change or pass
away ; and by a City of God, where all the citizens are to be true righteous men. The
journey has been a long and trying one ; and men have no conception how much they
owe to the twin angels who have been their guides and friends, their succourers in
trouble and their saviours in days of danger and of death.
When infants smile in their sleep wise mothers say that their angels are speaking
to them ; when children grow up they look for angels and do not see them, but some
times in the darkness they hear the angel voices, and they may even talk with them
and be instructed in the Divine way. The critical period of life is when no angels
can be seen or heard; when doubts ariseas to the existence of angels; when the earthly,
the visible, the beautiful and the desirable have strong voices and wily tongues ; then,
indeed, it is the mother-angel that is found to be the gracious wise and safe guide ;
and failing her loving ministrations, and wise counsel from true friends, there is great
danger of wandering away into the realm of empiricism and the land of earthly power
and wisdom. Wise men and women have realised this truth; thus their anxiety to
lead their children to the heavenly angels so that they may be influenced and guided
by them in the way everlasting. What thoughtful men are beginning to perceive
is that the angel Science was prepared to teach men the way of Hfe at the earliest
possible period, but they went away into the land of empiricism, and there they have
wandered even to this day. It has followed that men, as prodigals, wise or foolish,
have had their opportunities to carry out their plans and schemes ; that they have
not been successful is engraven upon the face of the earth and fully explained in history ;
the question now is, Whether the wanderers and prodigals have realised their un
happy condition, and if they can now decide to arise and return to their Father, and
make honest confession of sin and waywardness ? That the Father has waited long
for this return and sent many angel -messengers to encourage the repentant is an old
old story ; but what may not be so well known is that the angel of Science has tarried
with men through all the centuries ; that he still waits to give to men blessings beyond
their conceptions ; and that he is actually in the midst, waiting to be recognised as
the Divine teacher and guide. It is not to be supposed that the twin angels, Grace
and Sacrifice, will be disappointed when their friend Science becomes the guide of the
wanderers ; it is to this end that they have laboured and suffered ; they will be glad
and rejoice that their work has come to fruition ; a great transformation scene will
take place ; they will not be guides and servants any longer ; they will enter in and
abide, in Divine fellowship, as the friends and companions of those who are on the
way to the City of God.
It is strange that history and experience should appear to be so closely related to
each other ; and that it is history that supplies the material with which experience
and the sciences build up spiritual visions of truth. It is in this realm that men
see visions and dream dreams ; here also voices in the past come to life again, and
they are heard with greater clearness and fulness than when first uttered upon the
earth in the ears of sinful men. An example of what is meant here can be taken
from the story of the spies who went through the land for forty days and returned
with their report to Moses and to Israel. Men are familiar with the story in all its
tragic details ; but, at the present time, they are called to consider the words of
Joshua, and the solemn oath and promise of God to Israel. The land is a <*ood land,
but the people are strong, the cities great and walled ; the sons of the giants dwell
there, and to the faint-hearted they are so terrible, that unbelievers seem to be in
themselves more like grasshoppers than men. This, of course, is the voice of unbelief
in every age ; the children of God have no chance against the sons of men ; it is better
to hve and die in the desert than to fight against and oppose such enemies • to them
the physical is ever the greatest of powers ; thus they forget that it is the spiritual
that wields the physical, and that without the spiritual the physical is powerless
The report of Joshua runs thus : " The land which we passed through to search it is an
exceeding good land. If the Lord delight in us then He will bring us into this land
and give it us; a land which floweth with milk and honey. Onlyrebel not ye against

PREFACE. Vll
the Lord ; neither fear ye the peopie of the land, for they are bread for us ; their
defence is departed from them, and the Lord is with us, fear them not." Israel
rebelled against the Lord and the nation was rejected ; but this rejection was the
means used to reveal to men, as by the voice of God, the fact that the Divine purpose
of Grace will be fulfilled, as found in these words, " But as truly as I live, all the earth
shall be filled with the glory of the Lord." What men may in the light of science
and the method of Christ begin to perceive, in the story of the Desert, is the near
fulfilment of a great ideal that is found to persist throughout the Bible ; the glory
of the Lord will, in the fulness of time, fill the earth ; it was involved in the seed and
promise to Abraham ; thus no matter what men may say or do, or what forms their
unbehef and rebellion may take, these will be overruled for the good of men and the
glory of God. Men have said, in this age, that the Bible had become a dead book,
and that God had become the unknowable ; that philosophy, literature, and criticism
had become like the sons of Anak, and that they were living in strong cities with great
walls that were impregnable ; therefore the children of God could not face their
enemies, and they could not beheve that God could help them under such conditions.
The reply to this faint-hearted unbelieving folly is heard from the voice of Science
and of Christ ; it is the double-edged sword of science that divides hght and darkness,
error and truth, and men are plainly told that such powers of evil are powerless, because
they are found to be centres of disease, disorder and sin, ready to die and be disin
tegrated, seeing that they have perverted truth and righteousness, and are thus
spiritually dead and dia-magnetic to all that is heavenly. It is science, not agnos
ticism, truth, not error, health, not disease, order, not disorder, law, not lawlessness,
life not death, that is going to conquer in this campaign ; and it is Science, as the
angel of hght and truth, that is going to lead men against their enemies so that they
may be victorious in the Day of Christ.
It is interesting to observe in what way themes of the highest spiritual importance
find their homeliest method of expression in analogy and allegory ; the physical
forms and signs are required to express spiritual thoughts. With such thoughts
before them as unbehef and rejection, the hfe and death in the desert, the followers
of Christ may well be conceived, as anxiously asking one another, whether the doom
of the Children of Israel and of the Jews is to be their portion also ; or whether in
the grace, mercy, and love of God, there is going to be a break in the law of heredity ;
and if at this time God will be pleased to grant forgiveness to men and manifest His
glory to all nations. What Christians, and Christian nations, deserve in the form
of justice and judgment, and what the purposes of God can be conceived to be, are
very different questions. The man who can read history truly, and justify Christendom,
is not to be found. When Gentiles and Jews have been condemned, then how can
Christians put in the plea of innocence and perfect obedience ? It is written, " There
is none righteous, no, not one " ; and this is a judgment before which all heads should
be bent, and recognised to be true, just, and righteous. God is just, and He is also
the justifier of sinful men through Christ; therefore what men are invited specially
to consider is not their own evil thoughts or ways, but the mercy of God in Christ as
this is so fully revealed in the Bible.
From the standpoint of science and the method of Christ, there is a great vision
of hope ; because men may safely reason, in the light of the past, that unless the
great purpose of God is about to be fulfilled upon a world-wide stage, there would not
have been granted to them the revelations of science, and they would not have been
privileged to perceive the great vision of the glory of Christ as made known by the
Spirit of Truth. It is not easy to express all that is summed up in these conceptions ;
and perhaps it is extremely difficult so to convey the thoughts to others, that they
may not be the cause of offence and produce the spirit of strife. When strong words
and burning thoughts are found expressed against agnosticism and empiricism, it
is not to be conceived that these are the greatest of sinners against truth ; there is
want of agreement as to the methods of thought, and it is necessary that this should
be fully expressed. It is not to be conceived that agnostics are not lovers of truth ;
or that philosophers or theologians have not sought after truth in past ages ; the
arguments used are to be interpreted in the hght of science and the method of Christ ;

Vlll PREFACE.
and it is for wise men to consider whether the reasoning is relevant, and if the con
clusions are true and right. The position and the claim of science is unique ; it differs
from experience and empiricism in this: that it is not of the senses and sensuous ; it
is not the wise reasonings of men out of their self-consciousness, and their great acquire
ments of knowledge ; it is all these and more, and that more is the inductive know
ledge of order, as ascertained truth, in harmony with universal order and law. Science
stands as the angel of light and truth upon the great plateau in sight of the ocean of
the West, and the face is turned eastward as if looking back upon all the past. Science
is not conceived as the strenuous work of discovery, not hypothesis and theories, not
even the assertions of men who think that they have been illuminated ; it is Divine
truth as men can conceive the representation, and thus a heavenly Spirit and not an
earthly intelligence. Those who have been privileged to see the face of this angel
of light are unable to degrade science to the earthly and the sensuous. Science is
the ideal, the pure Spirit of Truth ; thus men ought to remember that what they have
seen up to the present is only to be compared to a few Divine rays of light, just enough
to cast light upon the pathway of the past, the law of development, the method of
Christ and the work of the Spirit ; but what the effulgence of the glory of the light
that is in science will become passes the compichension of the wisest scientists and
philosophers. The physical and the spiritual have in a very wonderful manner become
in a measure para-magnetic; the light from the physical permeates the spiritual;
the spiritual has become radiant ; light responds to Ught, and truth to truth ; and
science seems to say that this is what ought to be ; this is what men ought to have
been expecting, because it is the spiritual in Christ that is regnant and radiant in
both worlds. Further, men may try to conceive the thought that where the darkness
and the dia-magnetism continue as a veil, hindering the perfect hght of truth, this
must be traced to the realms of the psychical and the moral, that is to man's conscious
inner being, what is most truly himself, and thus it is the changes in man to light,
knowledge, truth and righteousness that are the great problems of thought for the
future. The problems considered in this book do not require special consideration here ;
what men require to consider is whether they desire to have any interest in this great
continent of life ? Have they found the true way, and is it that of Divine wisdom,
as found by the law of development ? Is it worth while to welcome science as a guide
to truth and righteousness ? And will science lead men fco the Life Eternal, the better
country and the City of God ? Is the method of Christ the true way ? Is science
to be trusted to make manifest the truth and the harmony to be found as reconciling
all things in the way ? Is it life, the very life of the Eternal, to hve in this way in
grace and sacrifice, truth and righteousness ? Then if the answers are in the affirma
tive, this is to accept the Words of Christ when He said, " I am the Way, the Truth
and the Life ; no man cometh unto the Father but by me. If ye had known Me
ye should have known my Father also ; and from henceforth ye know Him, and
have seen Him."
88, Highbury New Park, London N.
23rd January, 1905.

CONTENTS. CHAPTER I.
Pages
Introduction . . ."  j_<>4
CHAPTER II.
Thoughts about Matter, Electricity and Gravi-
TATI0N  25-50
CHAPTER III.
Life, Organism and Development . . . . . . 51-65
CHAPTER IV.
Health and Disease  66-104
CHAPTER V.
Disease, Disorder, Evil, and Sin  105-121
CHAPTER VI.
The Bible in the Light of the Law of Develop
ment  122-186
CHAPTER VII.
Parables of the Generations of Heavens and
Earth ,. ,. .. ., .. 187-202

X contents.
CHAPTER VIII.
Pages
Problems of Sin and Sacrifjce Considered . . 203-289
CHAPTER IX.
The Order of Development in History . . . . 290-302
CHAPTER X.
Review — Thoughts on Physical Nature . . . . 303-325
CHAPTER XI.
Man, the Family, Society, State and Church . . 326-359
CHAPTER XII.
Unities and Harmonies Considered . . . . 360-395
CHAPTER XIII.
The Seed and Divine Standards . . . . . . 396-435
CHAPTER XIV.
The Divine Travail in Nature, Man and the Bible 436r469
CHAPTER XV.
Incarnation, Inspiration and Resurrection . . 470-491
CHAPTER XVI.
Problem of Phenomena and Reality .. .. 492-512

THE DIVINE TRAVAIL
IN
NATURE, MAN, AND THE BIBLE
AS TRACED BY
SCIENCE, DEVELOPMENT, AND THE METHOD OF CHRIST.
CHAPTER I.
introduction.
In former works in the pursuit of truth, the chief object kept
in view has been that of discovering in what way the light of
science tends to make known to men Divine order and law, as
conceived to be the Will of God. This has been done in the light
of the method of the teaching of Christ, as fully explained, and
the results have been, as related to Nature, Man and the Bible,
such as require the careful consideration of thoughtful men.
It is assumed here that unity and harmony of thought have
been attained in this direction ; thus what is required at the
present time is not the further study of that line of thought. It
is, however, one thing to perceive that such agreement exists
in the light of science and the method of Christ, and to apply
these conceptions to the more practical problems of life as these
are studied by thoughtful men. When men by the inductive,
or scientific, method of thought seek to discover truth, what
they desire to know is the true relations that exist, what truly is
and what ought to be ; they seek after definable order, and when
that discovered order is verified, then this becomes law, what
men ought ever to expect under similar conditions. The position
which science has reached, as related to order and law in the
physical world is unique in history ; it is not what men expected ;
in fact, they have had revealed to them a new universe that
transcends in glory all the experiences and empiric reasonings
of men. It is true that science works for practical ends ; but
it can now be seen that the results of scientific work, in every
direction, tend toward a perfect idealism ; an intellectual cosmic
universe in which order and law are found to be regnant.

u introduction.
Science, though practical, seeks after the ideal ; it may not be
intentionally, but the ideal is there to be found, and science
cannot find rest until the ideal that is in nature is realised. The
fair vision of science, as to order and law, is ever widening before
men ; it is as an avenue of light, or like an electric beam in the
darkness, where it reaches there is light, but the light is in a
dark world, and thus, although there is revelation in and by
the light, there is also a clearer recognition of the darkness by
which the light is surrounded. To know scientific truth is one
thing ; but how to utilise the truth so that the darkness may be
dispelled is something different ; and thus it is not always easy
to apply what is known so that knowledge and action may proceed
side by side. This knowledge that order and law are the Will
of God will not, in itself, banish from the earth disease, disorder
and sin ; the light of truth has to be cast full upon these con
ditions ; and it is by this means that these creatures of the dark
ness will be overcome and be compelled to vanish away into
the outer darkness.
It is this more practical aspect of truth that requires con
sideration ; but it has to be remembered that in turning the
thoughts in this direction there must be taken, at the same time,
all the light of truth derived from past studies ; and it is in this
light that what is abnormal, dark, and evil are to be studied.
In the past this important lesson has been apprehended ; that
the Divine law of development is not one straightforward march —
it is an ever-recurring series of advances to be followed by changes
of order ; and thus, series, cycles and even spirals, are what men
find in the Revelation of the Kingdom of God. It is a new
departure from the study of order and law to begin to think
upon what is disordered and lawless ; and this is the reason why
it is found necessary to begin with what may appear to be ele
mentary in the physical world to reach onward and upward to
what is spiritual. The Divine Order, as traced by the law of
development, is found to be similar in Nature, Man, and in the
Bible ; thus, in advancing by this new route into the dark realm
of the abnormal, it is well to possess the light of truth to shine
upon this pathway. It is important to possess positive light
in such a quest as this, even though there may be truth in the
conception that the realm to be travelled over is that of nega
tions and of lawlessness. Whether such studies are to be con
sidered as scientific is an open question ; assuredly they are in

INTRODUCTION. 6
their nature intellectual, and they have to do with relations and
conditions of thought. It is one thing to assert that pure science,
as related thoughts, order and law, is positive in its nature ;
but it is not easy to prove that evil, sin, disorder and disease
are negations, non-scientific, or that they are non-existent.
Such terms as positive and negative may be misunderstood ;
what is termed a negation and negative, may have very positive
influences ; and it may be taken for granted that men, limited
by their experiences, would say that, in their opinion, the posi
tives of pure science have more of negation in them than pain,
disease, sorrow, suffering, and the manifold evils that abound
in the earth. It would be utterly useless to attempt to prove
that pain, disease and evil are non-existent ; they exist as facts
of experience, and thus what men wish to know is how these
may be abolished, so that pleasure, health and goodness may
become regnant in the earth.
It is very easy for science to assert that order and law, as
discovered, tend to prove that disease, disorder and sin ought
not to exist ; and that they are contrary to law and tend to
disintegration. The difficulty is not with the theory, it is in
getting the theory to work and thus to prove the theory to be
true. The difficulty of the problem, to people of experience,
is that sin, evil, disorder, disease, death and disintegration are
regnant in the earth ; they have been so for many generations,
there is no appearance of a change for good, and thus to those
who do not understand the methods of science, the theories that
are suggested are not of any greater value than the wise phil
osophies of men in past ages. What such men really want to
know is not scientific truth ; it is what is practical and empiric ;
they wish for results, not true principles of thought that lead
to wise definite issues. In fact, it is not true knowledge that
they desire ; and they will not consider how the fruit grows, is
ripened, and reproduces its seed. The fruit is there, it seems to
be good for food to allay present hunger, therefore, let men take
and eat, whether the result be good or evil. It is not enough
for men to ask the questions : how they can be saved from sin
and its consequences % how evil may be changed into good \
how disorder may be changed into order \ how disease and pain
may be cured ? and how deathand the grave may be conquered ?
These are the questions men have been asking all down the
centuries ; they have found many wise teachers who have
a 2

4 INTRODUCTION.
professed to give the right answers ; but it has yet to be discov
ered that such teachers have profited from their own theories ;
or, indeed, that they have been truly wiser than their neighbours.
It is against all such charlatanism that science sets its face ; it
will not recommend any patent nostrum to destroy the virus
of sin ; and it has no pill, powder, or elixir of life, by which pain
may be soothed sway and disease cured. What science seems
to say is this, " Learn what I have learned ; understand what I
have to teach ; make my message living truth in your own soul,
and then you will have done with all shams and pretensions to
knowledge ; you will have the light of law in your own soul, and
this will be something to begin with, a starting point to make
practical use of what is known." It is true, in a sense, that
men of science do their thinking for the ignorant ; they take
them by the hand and lead them onward from stage to stage
of developed thought ; but science will not, cannot, minister to
the lazy and the thoughtless ; students must respond to their
teachers ; they must be humble enough to learn, earnest enough
to appreciate what they are taught, and zealous to put in prac
tical forms or actions what they attain and possess. Science is
a thorough- going reformer and an iconoclast that has no mercy ;
it may even be described as a revolutionist, therefore, it is a
guide that indolent, ignorant, self-satisfied people will not follow.
What the scientific teacher desires above all things is that students
should be truthful, and lovers of the truth ; it is the true rela
tions of thoughts to each other that science seeks after ; the
proof and verification of these truths follow after ; and it may
be in many branches of the advanced sciences these are not so
much in theoretical formulas as in practical life. Science may
be compared to an angel messenger of truth to men ; those who
prepare themselves and wait for the coming of the angel will
receive their reward ; but, if there is no preparation and no
fitness to receive and translate the message into human thought,
then they are blind and deaf, and for them the heavenly messenger
has no message. It is well to ask this messenger about the
coming of the Deliverer from Sin ; the Restorer of Order ; the
Healer of Disease ; the Lawgiver for the new life ; the Saviour
from evil ; and the Destroyer of Death ; but men ought not to
be disappointed if what they are told is not what they think
and all they wish to know. In this matter there is true reci
procity ; it is not a question of juggling with words and signs ;

INTRODUCTION. 5
the angel will teach men what they are capable of being taught ;
but there are some lessons that men are not able to understand
yet, and thus it is reasonable that they should be willing to wait,
to study, and be ever preparing for those higher truths yet to be
revealed. To think upon science as an elementary teacher is
a proof of ignorance ; it is science that is the chief guide for stu
dents in the great university. There are many who love to serve
as teachers under such a guide ; but it may happen that even
here, where no supremacy is recognised, that foolish men will
be found who seek to prejudge in matters where they are not
fit to be judges. At present, where men are groping their way
onward in the twilight and darkness, teachers do well to be
careful ; it is not so very easy at all times to catch the words
that fall from the guide's lips, to understand the signs, and to
get behind the visible changing forms that can be seen. It is
a great thought to know that there are many men whose faces
are turned toward the realm of truth ; and, it is not out of place
to believe the fact that such men, in their own way, are seeking
after a " better country " and a " heavenly city " ; in the dark
ness of their pilgrimage they may not discern their guide or
understand all that he is teaching them, but the end must be
the conviction that the country they seek has been prepared
for them beforehand, and that the Builder of the City is God.
It has to be assumed as true, as proved by experience, that
evil exists ; that sin as the wilful transgression of moral law is
a well-known fact ; that disorders of all kinds are found in Society,
the State, and in the human Soul ; that disease in manifold
forms abound ; that men are subject to such evil conditions ;
and that the issue of these is ever toward disintegration and
death. What men seek after is that their pains may be relieved
and disease healed ; that disorders of all kinds may be put right,
so that order may reign ; and that sin being forgiven and the way
of righteousness known, evil may be cast out, so that men may
live in the fear and love of God, and in a true brotherhood of
sympathy and love.
In seeking for the principle that underlies the healing art for
the cure of disease, it would seem that the result is not encourag
ing ; the study, in the light of science, leads straight to doubt
and scepticism ; and the question may be seriously raised whether
there is any physical science of healing ? If healing is an art,
then whether the art must remain empiric ? And, whether in

O INTRODUCTION.
the long run, men may not be compelled to seek after healing
in realms of thought which transcend what is physical ?
It is to be observed that the knowledge sought after heie,
is equivalent to the modern conception of science, as applied to
nature, in what is known as order and law. Three stages of
development are kept in view, and the issue desired is to find
the harmony that exists in these realms of thought. The first
stage, that of experience, is simple, being that of known effect
and cause, and the linking of these together as in pain, the cause
of pain, and how pain can be relieved ; yet simple as these rela
tions may seem to be they reveal the rational man as dealing
with facts of experience, with words or names that are symbols
of thought, and the seeking after the solution of the problem of
pain, by a remedy, and restoration to health. The empiric
stage is very wide, and yet upon reflection it will be seen that
this is an extension upon the stage of experience, and the highest
point reached may be conceived as the medical art as known at
the beginning of the 20th century. The stage of experience
may be conceived as personal ; it is what the individual feels
and thinks. Tne stage of empiricism is the accumulated wisdom
of the many experiences, of the many wise men who have studied
this problem ; and the result is not unity and harmony of thought,
but the greatest diversities of opinions and the hopeless feeling
that in this realm and stage of thought it is useless to expect
that there will come to men, guided by such principles, any
solution upon which they will be able to agree. The stage of
science is different ; it is quite true that science builds upon,
or uses, all the material produced by experience and empiricism ;
but the stand-point of study is quite different, the centre of
thought is changed ; and it is from the newly discovered universal
centre that men begin to think and to put in order the cosmos
that was formerly a chaos. There are two outstanding examples
of this revolution of thought ; that of Copernicus when he proved
that the Ptolemaic system of astronomy was wrong, in assuming
that the universe moved round the earth ; when, as he was able
to show, the earth moved round upon its axis daily, thus causing
day and night ; and that the sun is the centre of the solar system
around which all the planets move in their due order. The
centre it will be observed was changed from the earth to the
sun, and the movements and order of the universe had to be
studied in the light of this truth. This is an example of the

INTRODUCTION. I
great revolution in the physical realm of thought ; the other is
that of Dr. Darwin in the realm of life as made known in his
work " The Origin of Species." The change of view which has
taken place through this revolution may not be so easily seen
as in the revolution headed by Copernicus ; but it is being studied
under the conception of evolution, or development, as a principle
or law, and the results that must follow are quite as wonderful
as those which have followed from the Copernican revolution.
The Copernican revolution is the application of scientific reason
ing to the universe of matter, energy and motion ; the Dar
winian revolution is that of conceptions as to life, primarily as
to physical life, but now seen to be as a scientific order, appli
cable as ideal and model, to psychical, moral and spiritual life.
To put this matter in another light, the Copernican revolution
changed the order of thought from the earth as centre of the
universe to universal conceptions, with the sun as centre of the
Solar system ; and the Darwinian revolution changed the order
of thought from the man with his personal views of creation,
and of all men with their diversified conceptions, to Nature,
life, order, development and law. The standards for thought
are not to be sought for in the earthly, or in the individual, but
in the universal ; in the Divine order that has been made mani
fest ; and it is life that is symbol, ideal, and model to study.
It is science that has brought about these great changes in the
order of the thoughts of men ; in the past they had many vain
thoughts as to their own power, wisdom and glory ; the scene
is being changed ; men are being taught their true place and
position in the universe ; and they require this humbling lesson
as preparatory to that higher stage of being toward which they
are being guided by the Divine Hand. As dealing with princi
ples it is not necessary here to enter into detailed explanations
as to the works of men of science in the spheres in which they
labour ; what is aimed at is to get a bird's-eye view of the posi
tion as it is related to health, disease and the remedying of dis
ease, as seen from the stand-point of science. It may not be
easy to see at the first glance why such a line of thought should
be taken to reach those principles which underlie the physical.
realm of life, but careful study will show that this is necessary
if men would rise above experience and empiricism, and find
permanent unity, harmony and satisfaction in their studies.
The cry that is being forced from the lips of mankind to-day is

INTRODUCTION.

that of utter weariness and impatience with what is empiric ; they
are walking as in an unsatisfactory twilight, they see many
men moving about as with patent lanterns that are useless for
permanent light ; and thus they sigh, and say : " It is all in vain,
what is wanted is the daylight and. the sunrise, and unless these
come there is no deliverance from the evil that is in empiricism.
To put this matter in another light men may be conceived
as saying : " We know all the facts of experience ; we have had
ten thousand explanations from men as to the relations of the
facts empirically, and we find that they do not agree among them
selves ; what science has promised to give us is the true, con
sistent, harmonious explanation of the relations of all the facts,
and it is this we hunger and thirst after, because it is conceivable
that this will prove to be what we require as truth and righteous
ness." Doubtless, this may be conceived as a child-like utter
ance with very little conception of all that it means ; still it is
a cry for truth and right ; and it is, at the least, a living seed
of truth longing for increasing light and life. The life of ex
perience and of empiricism may be said to be inorganic ; it is
cohesive and tends to increased aggregation ; the life scientific
is organic, there is life within the living, and thus the issue will
be the manifestation of that scientific organic life that is the
life of the universe.
These examples and illustrations ought to be sufficient to
indicate the real difference that is to be found in the scientific
order of thought as compared with experience and empiricism ;
and, perhaps, there is no better way of apprehending what is
meant by science than by conceiving it as organic in its order,
with all relations and correlations of thought, in the varied sciences
fitting into each other as cell-tissues, as organs with function
for work, and as forming one increasing body with new forms
differing from each other, and yet, as one united body, with
all its diverse organs working together as one harmonious whole.
In past days, when philosophers reigned in all realms of thought,
the thinkers usually commenced their philosophies deductively
from their inner consciousness evolving their wise systems of
thought ; in these later days it has become the fashion to
systematise thought inductively, and thus science is said to be
inductive in its order as beginning with the physical world and
advancing to what is psychical and moral. The whole of this
system is said to be monistic because it arises out of a First Prin-

INTRODUCTION. »
ciple, or Cause, and it is assumed that there is one evolution of all
things from that which men name the Unknowable, the Absolute,
or God. This conception, however, is philosophy and not science ;
it is philosophy that indicates the unity and the harmony of the
whole order ; and, against such a theory science finds no fault ;
such conceptions are beyond the range of inductive scientific
enquiry, but they are not in any sense out of harmony with the
findings of science. If the problem of inductive science is that of
the physical inorganic world, then the studies branch out into
such divisions as Astronomy, Geology, Chemistry, as qualitative
and quantitative, or as analytic and synthetic, Physics as dealing
with energy and motion, Crystallization, Electricity and Mag
netism, and that very wonderful science known as Spectrum
Analysis. Of course there are many branches of this tree which
have not been named, but it will be seen that those named deal
with what is physical matter and energy from the aspect of
space, of time, of matter as it can be analysed into chemical
elements in their proportions in quantities and in their pro
portions in which they are found to combine to form things
that exist. With physics the study is that of energy in its re
lations and correlations ; thus it is stated that whilst there is
conservation of energy, so that no energy can be lost, at the
same time there are correlations of known forces such as light
and heat, electricity and magnetism, and these can be changed
into each other. Spectrum analysis, it would appear, may be
conceived as a microcosm of all that exists in space, time, matter,
and energy ; from light there is produced the solar spectrum,
and the analysis of the spectrum reveals the unity that exists
in light and the diversity that exists in nature ; and, this spec
trum, by using a second prism, can be synthesised from heat,
colours, actinic and other lines of force and motion back again
into pure white light. The parable of light, the prism and the
spectrum is without doubt the most wonderful parable in the
inorganic world ; it is prophetic as a sign from Heaven, and it
seems to whisper to the soul of the student that it is here that
the mystery of the One and the many is to be specially studied. It
is Light, not darkness, that is the Revealer of truth in all its
diversities ; and all forms of matter, modes of energy, ether,
electricity and magnetism, elements, ions, electrons, and rays
or lines of force are derived from the One uniting Principle to
be found at the root of the inorganic realm.

10 INTRODUCTION.
To men not familiar with scientific subjects, and this special
line of thought, such a concise bird's-eye view will not convey
much information ; but if it conveys this impression that men of
science have so analysed what is known as matter and energy, and
so systematised their conceptions that they are to be found in
order in the various branches of Science, then at least an outline
of the truth will be traceable and the definition of what is the realm
of Science will be understood. It is true that, in a sense, men of
science deal with matter, things, energy and forces, but they do
so intellectually, analytically, and synthetically ; they take to
pieces all forms of matter by analysis and they find that they can
be reduced to about seventy elements. These elements differ
from each other quantitatively, from hydrogen gas as one, up to
the heaviest metals, but what is known is that these elements
differ from each other ; that they can be classed and even put
into families ; they are named, only the names whilst they may
appear to give positive information, only state differences as to
quantitative forms. When it is asked what elements of matteT
are in themselves it is found that the information obtained is
negative as to the nature of the thing and relative as to values.
In fact, the chemist deals with names, symbols, and relations,
and he discovers that he remains totally ignorant of that wliich
is the being that underlies all elements. When the physicist
analyses his modes of force and motion the result is similar, he
finds that he is dealing with a Proteus power that is ever changing
its mode of action, and thus he thinks upon all forces as correlated
and interchangeable, and he calls that ideal power at the root of
all forces and motion, energy. For a considerable time it was
thought that matter and energy could be kept apart as separate
entities ; but it would seem as if this line of demarcation has also
given way, and that what exists is not matter, or energy, ether,
ions, electrons, or lines of force, but one Power, named Force,
and that all related and correlated conditions of matter and energy
are the manifestations of this One Power from whence they are
all derived. If this explanation is understood it will be seen that
science has brought about a revolution of thought which even
now is not fully realised ; to pure science, matter and things do not
exist, and even elements, ions, electrons, forces and motion, have
become intellectual symbols of thought by which the relations of
the One Power is conceived as operative in nature. In other
words Science has transfigured the inorganic realm in which men

INTRODUCTION. ll
see things and movements, and what appears is an ideal realm of
thought, a new heaven and earth as made visible to the spiritual
vision of the scientific seer.
The definite point reached here is that of a universal principle,
named Force, and of a universal realm of order within which law
reigns. The Power cannot be questioned as to its existence ; it is
a First Cause, and from this Power, it is conceived, there is
derived all that is in scientific order within this realm. It is
useless to try to deny the existence of this Power, it is Being ;
and it is folly to call it the Unknowable, ignore it, and pass on to
the study of the order and the laws of that which has been mani
fested. The Power and the order are joined together by links
which men cannot break ; whether they are willing or not they
are compelled to confess that the Power exists ; and the order
studied and conceived by Science is the spiritual law reigning
in that realm. It must be confessed that the result here is not
what men would have expected j if in thought they have travelled
far and studied much, what they see as the goal of their labours
is a Mystery that they cannot solve ; a Reality they cannot
define ; a Power they cannot circumvent or overcome ; that
this Being exists they must believe, but what the Being is in
essence, this is not a problem for the intellect of man, and it is
not to be solved by scientific inquiry. On the other hand, the
realm of Science is, in a sense, equally mysterious to all scientific
thinkers ; the Mystery is still in the midst of the garden, and the
fruit of the tree to them is still good and evil. If the order is
studied and understood, and conceived as Divine law, the fruit
will be good and good only, but if the evil spirit of unbelief, of
self-assertion, seeks to reign, then the fruit may be evil and not
good. The lesson here is a very important one ; it is that law is
limitation ; thus the issue even in the physical world, as con
ceived by Science, is that Being is a mystery which men cannot
solve ; and that law is the Sacred Will, the all-embracing arms
of Divine Being. It is quite true that men have said, it may be
even thought, that they had solved this mystery of Being ; thu3
the phrases, that matter is eternal ; that energy is persistent ;
and that a law of substance covers and explains the fact ; but
all such reasoning is vain ; it is only adding names and wotcIs
which do not interpret the facts ; even the name Almighty, fails
to express what men believe as to this Power conceived as the
Cause of the visible creation.

12 INTRODUCTION.
But the question may be asked, What is the practical good
that is to be expected from such abstract conceptions, and from
Science, if it is to be thus conceived as the interpreter of order
and the verifier of law ? The lesson is one not easily understood,
but the practical issue must be valuable, because it is by this
means that limitation is discovered, that scientific order is found,
and that the reign of law is made known. To limit the range of
the intellect is very important, because by this means a great
principle is established, and the wild vagaries of rationalistic
self-assertion curbed. It is not necessary to describe the benefits
that have come to men through scientific knowledge of the order
in the physical realm ; and it is when order is verified as law that
men may be said to arise and take possession of their inheritance ;
and, through the knowledge attained they make the physical
world their servant in thousands of ways that minister for the well-
being of mankind. It is for men to understand that they are not
supreme in power, and that their powers are limited by what is
Divine ; whilst realising this to the full, it is well to enter in and
possess this land of promise, with all its rich endowments ; and
it is as master over order, as conforming to law, that men over
come, subdue, and make subservient to their will that realm of
thought conceived as Science. It is a peculiar thought, and it is
a true one, that it is only when men reach this stage of develop
ment that they can perceive the glory of their divine birthright ;
they are being changed within ; they are becoming men in the
likeness of God ; they know spiritually His Will as law ; and the
result will be conformity to the Divine ideal, ability to understand
the Divine thoughts, with power to use God's gifts in harmony
with the Divine order conceived and interpreted as law.
It is with such thoughts as these that an advance is made
to study, upon similar lines of thought, the realm of physical
organic life, as supplementary to the realm of the inorganic.
Much has been written about life, by agnostic thinkers as a
product of the inorganic ; or as new forms or relations of one
power that underlies all nature. Others have maintained that
life is a new power, that organisms are vitalised ; that life can
only come from the living, and thus it may have been derived
from wandering meteors in space, or specially produced by the
Divine fiat. The facts upon which agnostics lay much stress
are that living protoplasm when analysed reveals no new chem
ical elements ; that the elements found in organisms are few

INTRODUCTION. 13
and that they are all known ; and that whilst it has to be admitted
that organic laws differ from the inorganic, there is no new power
introduced to carry on the work of evolution. It is here that
the value of the great principle of limitation is found to be valuable
as a means of putting an end to endless, fruitless discussions.
The fact is realised that Being cannot be defined by the intellect ;
and, it cannot be related or conditioned, or its essential nature
known by science. Just as reasoning about the inorganic realm
ends in a principle named Force, so the reasoning about the
living organic forms ends in the same way, there is a principle
of Life, the cause of all that is organic, but what that principle
is in its Being it is not given to men to comprehend. Life is
an ultimate fact ; men cannot doubt that life exists ; and, the
work of science is to discover the order of the living ; and the
order in which the living has developed. The arguments used
on either side of this subject are gross in their nature ; men do
not enter into the delicate conceptions which appear to be in
harmony with this subject ; and they fail to perceive in what
way their arguments are not applicable to the inwardness of
the position. It is deeply interesting to follow the very learned
arguments that seek to prove that the spontaneous generation
of life is possible and provable ; and the contrary opinions, from
scientific experiments, that this is not so, and that life as organic
is only known to come from that which possesses, or is possessed
by, life. The truth here seems to take this shape ; so far as man
can know, life is an ultimate principle and thus it is not cog
nizable as such by the intellect which deals with related truths ;
it is being not related manifestation; it is a name and reality
not phenomena or what is related and conditioned. If this
thought is understood, then it is unwise to seek to limit the
illimitable ; life may exist universally just as power is conceived
to exist ; it is not outside nature, and it is movement within
being ; and, under definite conditions and relations it becomes
operative upon what men think is matter. It is not conceived,
here that life is a product of force ; but from the stand-point of
science it may be correct to say that it is found that when matter
takes the condition of protoplasm, then life finds the necessary
conditions and there is the manifestation of life in what becomes
living and organic. It seems to be a mistake for scientific men
to say whether there is, or is not, spontaneous generation ;
or to commit themselves tothe theory that life is the product

14 INTRODUCTION.
of force ; let the theorists wrangle about such matters, and if
able to prove that force and life are the same being, they will
not carry the argument any further forward, because, as can
be seen, in either case they are dealing with being and not with
related physical conditions. This argument is applicable to
all ultimate and related ultimate principles ; they are all involved
in the universal postulate of Being ; and scientists and philos
ophers seem to agree in this, that this problem is entirely beyond
their realms of relating or defining, as science, or as philosophy.
The words "Force" and "Life" are intellectual symbols ;
they stand for ultimate facts of being ; and, it may be said that
they express two facts in their relations to ultimate being. It
is the truth that Force may be personified and named the
Almighty Power ; and, that the organic may in a similar manner
be conceived as Life ; but what must be felt here is that men
are straining all their powers to give form, shape, living organised
power to nature, and to their own bodies as the product of nature.
These related ultimates are separable into units ; but, in the
order of development they are united, and they become one-
organic flesh. Force is not life ; but when life comes and finds
what can be made into an organized home, then the union takes
place, and life vitalizes, and produces, the living. It is not
force as involving and evolving itself ; there is an added power ;
it is not chemical elements, but that which apprehends these,
aid begins to work and to build up an organic cell with its nucleus
where life lives and reigns. There is no inorganic addition,
nor of necessity any new mode of force or motion as elements ;
there is an ideal, an archetypic power, and the method of oper
ation of life is to individualise organs, and out of the simplest,
forms of life, cause to develop what is very complex, even the
bodily structure of man. It is true, in a sense, that nature is
potential with all that is to be developed ; but this is only saying
that Being is the mystery of all that becomes, lives, thinks and
acts ; with the universal postulate there is no limitation possible ;
it is man that is limited in his knowledge, on the one hand by
the First Cause, or Principle, and on the other by the order of
nature as discoverable by science and by spiritual laws.
Into the great realm of darkness and ignorance men take these
principles of . Force and Life ; and they are to them as great
lights ; the agnostics may say that to them they are as dark
ness, and. as the Unknowable ; but to behevers in God, they are

INTRODUCTION. 15
as the Realities of all physical being ;- they are the fountains of
all light and life. Thus what men see, touch, handle, perceive,
conceive, correlate, systematise in order, and think of as law,
are the divergent rays of the true light passing through the
three-sided prism of man's complex being ; and as the lines con
verge together and fill the soul, there is transfiguration into the
light and life of God, as revealed to men. From these principles
there emerges the whole realm of organic life with which men of
science are familiar ; and what is developed may be studied in
two ways : in the great book of nature now open to all men who
care to study the wonderful works of God as they have been
interpreted by scientific thinkers ; and, in individual types which
may be considered as milestones in the great journey of life
from its beginnings in simple cell structures onward to the advent
of man to whom the lordship over the creation was given. This
story of the development of Hfe through many milleniums is
not one that can be entered upon here ; it is one upon which much
has been written ; it is now so far discovered by explorers that
they can describe the pathways that life has followed ; if there
are still many problems unsolved and questions unanswered,
and it may be divisions of opinion on minor points, these do not
interfere with the great highways in their order as described
by science and verified as the law of development through the
ages of the past.
What has been suggested thus far is that in the physical
world there are two great realms, the inorganic and the organic ;
and that at the roots of these there are principles named Force
and Life. These principles are unit ideas, ultimate thoughts,
and symbol names for great realities ; and it is because they are
unit concepts, facts believed, not related scientific truths, man
cannot know or understand what these are in their essence or
being. They are mysteries, or one mystery, and it is conceived
by thinkers that there is no possible avenue that man can dis
cover by which he will be able to enter into this sacred place to
perceive, conceive, or define, the nature or the essence of Being.
To agnostics it is as darkness, yet some of them think that they
have solved the riddle, and answered the question of the Sphinx,
when they say the mystery is eternal matter, persistent energy,
or a law uniting substance. To believers it is as Light, because,
even although it is so subtle that the intellect cannot seize, divide,
relate, or correlate what they, spiritually see, as by intuitive

16 INTRODUCTION.
faith ; it is by this very Light, and in the Hght of that Light,
that they see, by means of the intellect, all that is related and
conditioned. Without this Light all is darkness ; and apart
from this Life all is death ; in fact, this is where man begins to
learn to see, to read, and think ; the symbol forms in these realms
are his alphabet ; they are also his school books, his school and
university. All the visible and tangible is parable and symbol ;
and it is through these, as the means of education, that he
advances to higher realms of thought.
It is clear that men who thus think about the physical world,
its principles, sciences, and history, must become in some sense
greater intellectually ; they have been looking into a mirror,
the mirror of nature ; these physical objects have passed before
their vision, at first apparently real, stable, unchangeable, it
may seem to be even eternal ; but, the figures change by the hand
of time, matter is analysed and seems to vanish away, and
even energy seems to get dissipated, thus the frame-work of all
material things have been completely analysed. In scientific
order it comes to pass that, in a new and true sense, men find
that the " Kingdom of God " is not here, or there, but within
themselves ; and it is in the soul that the true and the abiding
must be sought for and found. To think thus about the physical
world, in a sober, scientific manner, must seem very strange
to those who as yet are subject to the earthly, the seen and the
temporal ; and it is not to be wondered at if they think upon
such men as visionaries who have in some strange way lost
their hold upon the world of facts within which men live and
have their being. But it ought not to be assumed that because
science leads men inevitably to this goal of thought, that scientists
forget their experiences, or reject empiric knowledge ; the reverse
is the case ; they alone are able to prize all that experience and
empiricism truly mean, because, in this new region of thought,
they perceive the unity and harmony that exists throughout
the whole order of development. In plain words, this is the stage
where the spiritual rises above the natural ; where appearances
are judged at their true value ; it is where men become men
in the image of the Divine, and thus they discover that, by a
great process of development, the time has come when the mirror
is purified and the reflection is not what men thought them
selves to be, but in a true sense they are divine and like the
Divine in knowledge. It is at this point that thoughtful men

INTRODUCTION. 17
will see the uselessness of limiting the study of the physical
from principle to laws ; the problems to be studied are wider
and different in their order, and it is now calmly asserted that
the physical is not like the earthly, or matter ; it is intellectual
and spiritual, angelic and divine. When men arrive at such
conclusions it seems to be reasonable to suppose that it is not
necessary to prove that they are spiritual ; the fact stares them
in the face ;• it is because they are spiritual that they have over
come the natural ; this is their state, the stage to which they have
developed ; and it is for them to try to understand what this
truly means. When men can conceive the order of the universe,
even imperfectly, and perceive and verify in a measure that
order to be law, then the day is past to count men among the
earthly creatures, for they have become the sons of God. The
great struggle of the past fifty years may be summed up in the
two lines of thought that men have followed ; the conceptions
of agnostics have been in their order natural and mechanical ;
whilst believers in God have asserted the spiritual, and, more
or less definitely, the supreme spiritual governance of God
throughout the universe.
" The Kingdom of God " is within men when they reach this
stage of development ; that is to say it becomes conscious truth,
and they enter upon the enjoyment of their inheritance. But,
it may be asked, was not the kingdom there all the time being
developed ? The children have been at school ; the young men
have been under tutors ; the men have been at the university,
and they may have been teachers of others ; but the kingdom
cannot come with spiritual power until men are spiritual, and,
by the aid of the Spirit of Truth, they are able to decipher, inter
pret, and understand the books written by God upon wliich His
Sign Manual rests. Nature is one of these books, and the physi
cal world, with its two realms and many sciences, is one great
volume. Another very important volume is thrown open to
students when they begin to study instinct, feeling, sensation,
the special senses, desires, affections, and all those wonderful
powers with wliich living creatures are endowed. In all these
men are akin to the lower creatures ; they may be said to possess
the same nature and to be found in the same likeness ; here also
there is unity and the widest diversities ; but it can be seen,
by those who are instructed in the psychological sciences, that
wh^.t is conceived as the Soul in nature is one, even as force
B

18 INTRODUCTION.
and life are in their principles one. The meaning of psychology
is a treatise explaining in scientific order what can be known
about the soul or the mind ; and psychism could be conceived
and defined as the teaching of wise men upon the doctrine of
the soul, as universal or as individual. This is a very complex,
difficult study, it is one about which there has been, and still
is, much disputing, and thus much depends upon the attitude
of the inquirer, agnostic or beheving, what the results of the
study will be at the present time. The great fact to be reaHsed
is that the Book of Nature is being opened to men ; they are
taking wide and comprehensive views of what is to be seen in
nature ; and they find that there is perfect correspondence with
what nature is found to be, and what they are in themselves. •
The discrepancies, difficulties, and even apparent contradictions
that exist are not in the books, but in the ignorance and pre
conceptions of the students ; thus the want of harmony must be
ascribed to the fact that men have not attained sufficient know
ledge to understand the books and their harmonies.
The physical world gives outward form and symbol signs for
objective study ; organisms, specially by nerves, are brought into
contact with what is outside their own bodies ; and the whole
order of development in nature from the Amoeba, a single cell
creature, upward through all the divisions of the lower creatures
to man is that of increasing differentiation and complexity of
organs. As men are unable to say, as- regards the physical world,
that they cannot tell when or how the inorganic and the life
organic blend into one ; so it seems to be admitted that there is
no definite point observed where the life organic unites with a
spirit that knows, sees, observes, and that as mind, or soul, is the
psychic life. It is not to be conceived that the physical life or
ganic develops and becomes spirit and soul ; it is not a mere
involution of the physical, and in harmony with it ; there are
new principles in operation ; these form a psychic realm within
the soul, and this is the realm of sensation, of seeing images,
hearing sounds, and other special sense perceptions ; these being
perceived, they become ideas, thoughts, related thoughts, and
thus the psychic realm becomes organised, through, by means of,
and in harmony with, the special sense organs and the world that is
objective. The conception is that the psychicrealmof sensationand
thought is just as definite in its order as the physical realm ; and,
that here also there are twin powers which form one psychic world!

INTRODUCTION. 19
It is not necessary to enter into details as to the relations of
these twin powers ; they are named Spirit and Mind, or Soul ;
they are analogous with force, and life physical ; they are built
up upon the same lines of diversity and organic unity, only the
physical is form and order whilst the psychical is spiritual percept
and concept, with the addition of a whole realm within which
sensations, desires, affections, and many other psychic powers
find their place. By the law of development it is conceived that
the psychical follows, and is in harmony with the physical ; thus
the more simple the organism, the more limited the spirit-range
and capacity of soul-life, and the more complex and fully de
veloped, the more wide and extensive the soul-life. The highest
results are in the highest developed men ; it is the spirit that
knows, perceives, etc., it is the soul that receives and conceives
all that constitutes the psychical world of thought. This is a
very complex problem to reason out, and it is not very easy to
see why man differs from the lower creatures if the spirit and soul
or mind is the same in all creatures. The point here is that as
already explained with Force and Life, so also with Spirit and Mind,
or Soul, these have to be conceived as unit ultimate powers of
being ; and, it is only by thus limiting them that the scientific
order can be followed. These are two more ultimate principles
of being, and to be conceived as such ; what they are in essence
cannot be known ; and what their relations and conditions are
found to be this is the work of science.
The position now attained from the study of the Book of
Nature is that there is an outward physical creation in which
physical life is the result, and that this outward and visible realm
is specially that which gives form and order to the thoughts of
men. There is also an inner psychic realm of ideas, thoughts,
perceptions and conceptions, and this will range from a state in
which it may be there is no consciousness, only the glimmer of a
something that is more than reflex nerve action, up through all
grades of creatures to man, the highest inteUigence. It is when
the development to man takes place that there is conceived to be
a new departure ; a breaking in or an intervening of new powers
into this psychic realm, by which man is made different from all
the lower creatures, at once their head, lord and master. The two
powers that enter this psychic realm are the intellect that relates
and correlates thoughts in their order ; and a moral nature that
verifies law and influences men to conform to order, and to obey
b 2

20 INTRODUCTION.
law. The glory of man is not that, physically or psychically, he
differs from the lower creatures ; but, that to him is granted these
higher endowments by which he is raised above them to know
truth and to obey righteous law. These powers are not to be
conceived as mere developments of the psychic, though they are
conceived as giving possible universal scientific knowledge to the
soul ; what they really do is a special work, it is that of tracing
the thoughts of God as made manifest in creation ; and the
perfect results of science and wisdom will be, as it were, a new
Book in which the Divine and the human, raised to be divine,
meet face to face, and the man reads and understands the wise
thoughts of God in their order. This is what men are groping
after ; they have found the way, they are pressing forward, they
have hope in their hearts, and this Kingdom of God, this city
most glorious, will be the reward given to those who serve and
labour in this kingdom of patience and of grace. It is true that
in the past this differentiation of principles, their unity and their
development, was not known ; it is the light of science that has
impelled men to take this line of study ; and it is hoped that the
result will be satisfactory. By the empiric methods of the past,
which were egocentric, harmony was not possible ; but now, in
the light of the Divine principles and scientific order, there is
hope for the future.
It is at this stage of intellectual and moral manifestation and
development that there arises the problems of knowledge of good
and evil and of conformity in the life to moral law. To walk in
the light of truth, seeking good and obeying moral law this is
right ; but to turn toward the darkness and to seek for, and find
evil, this is wrong ; it is self-assertion, sin, evil ; it is the perversion
of what is true, the reversion of what is right and good ; in fact it
is what leads to disobedience, disorder, disease, and death ; not
because of any arbitrary power or rule, but simply because this is
a departure from the Divine order in the universe and contrary to
moral law. There is no change in nature, in the lower creatures,
in Divine order and law, the change is in man ; he has fallen from
his state of manhood, thus he has become dia-magnetic and dark,
to the Divine order. It may be that in this matter men require
instruction ; they think that all has gone wrong because they
are so as individuals, and as a race ; whilst the truth may well
be that if men were personally set right, and understood law and
order perfectly, this earth and the whole universe would appear

INTRODUCTION. 2l
to be quite different. What men are beginning to see is that the
principles named are really the Divine attributes ; that the method
of creation was not by fiat as formerly conceived, but by the
slow process of development ; that the order of the development
is that conceived by science ; and, that the conceptions of order
and law exclude, to the divine man in the image of God, all
thoughts of error, disorder, disease or lawlessness. This is the ideal ;
and the difficulty for men wiU be to keep this ideal in view, and to
follow on until it is realised. The fact, not to be questioned by
men who know about such things, is that men have gone wrong ;
that they have been walking on the down grade ; that an ideal
manhood has been perceived ; and, it is to realise that ideal men
•ought to aspire and not continue to wrangle about mere symbols
and words. The story of how the first parents of mankind went
out of the way may be Hteral truth, or spiritual parable ; but the
all important matter now is the way of restoration to peace and
to the realm of law and order.
It is here that the problems of disorder, disease and death
really take shape ; to the lower creatures there is no realm of in
tellectual order, no true recognition of what is meant by disease,
and no conception of death as compared with life ; their stage
of development is below that of manhood ; and degraded man
hood is found out of harmony with, and rebelling against, what
is conceived to be the ideal- of man as moral being. What men
discern, and try to express in myths, fairy tales, and in their
reHgions, is that mankind is so fallen, that a Deliverer, a Saviour
is required, and it is no ordinary man that will prove himself to be
Champion of the race and restore them to freedom and manhood.
The thoughts of men on this subject in past ages, and amongst all
peoples, have a substantial agreement ; only, it is necessary to
observe, in each case, the stage of development attained, and not
to seek for more than that stage warrants. History, it ought to
be remembered, is not a single line of development straight
onward ; rather it follows the order of Nature, and what men see
is the beginnings of new movements ; a falling back again into
¦chaos and disorder, followed by other movements which, in the
long run, by diverse methods, raises portions of the race to higher
levels of thought, and truer conceptions of what truth and right-
-eousness mean. The greatest of these movements is known as
the Christian era ; there was involved in it that which was unique,
.and the history of Christianity is that of a development in which

22 INTRODUCTION.
the spiral and not the straight line would be the fitting symbol.
In the past men have been very careful to discern betwixt what
is natural and what is spiritual ; to define what is secular and
what is sacred ; but the time is come when in the light of prin
ciples, of order and law, it is found that there is nothing natural or
secular, but that all thoughts are spiritual and sacred. It is being:
realised that Jesus, the Christ, embodies in Himself the hopes
and aspirations conceived by men in all past ages ; He is the
Deliverer longed for, the Saviour from sin, and He is so, because-
in a unique sense, He is the Son of God, the revelation of the
Divine mercy, peace and grace to men. In brief, He is Deliverer,.
Saviour, Healer, Supreme Teacher, and Manifestor of the Grace of
God to mankind. It is conceived that in Christ the principles
that constitute manhood were regnant ; that in Him order was
perfect ; that He perfectly conformed to law ; and thus when
tested by what is Divine the response is perfect, there is no flaw
in His character, and no stain upon His earthly garments. It is
strange but true, that it is Christ that supplies to men the Divine
standard as thus indicated ; it is the key He bestows that opens
all doors into the unseen ; and failing His coming, life, teaching,
work, death and resurrection, the maze of human life would have
remained inscrutable and no man could have extricated himself
therefrom. Jesus Christ, as the Man of the first century, A.D., re
quires to be studied ; but not as Jews, Greeks, Romans and others
studied Him. It is really the twentieth century that reveals the
true Christ ; and it does so in the light of Science and of the prin
ciples involved in His Being. That His life is health in the truest
sense is seen at a glance ; it is Divine order and perfect harmony
with the Will of God ; that He healed all manner of diseases by
His word of power was made manifest ; and that He raised the
dead from the sleep of death is also testified. He has proved
Himself to be perfect Man as subject to order and law ; to be
Son of God in Grace as Deliverer and Saviour, and it is by His
rejection, suffering and death that there is peace and reconciUation.
Men have foolishly tried to measure Christ by standards which
they have set up ; the time has come to reverse the order, and to
know and remember that He is the Measurer who measures all
men, and that His standards are universal.
These thoughts are only suggestions as to the trend of the
conceptions of men as they advance stage by stage in scientific
knowledge of the order in nature, in the verification of law, and

INTRODUCTION. 23
in the intuitive, and philosophic conceptions of ultimate and
related ultimate principles of Being. It is the law of development
that requires special study, and this it may be assumed will be
found even more complex and wonderful than men suppose. In
the physical world, as already suggested, this law has been freely
applied, with marvellous results ; the psychical realm will in due
time be tested bythe same law ; and the intellectual and moral world
of manhood is of necessity that of development. The disturber that
causes disorder, disease, strife, hatred, sin and death, does notf ollow
this law ; it is a wrecker of good, it is the cause of pain, it causes
disintegration, and thus it matters not whether it is life physical,
psychical, or moral, it brings about disorganisation and death.
Sin, disease and death are conceived as regnant until the resurrec
tion of Christ, then the new era begins, and the spiritual realm of
Grace is revealed to, and made manifest in men. If men could
understand the law of development, they would find that
the point of focus for all developments is Christ. He is the
Beginning and the End of all ; and it is in Him that they all
subsist and consist. It may be said that the genealogy given in
the Gospel of Luke may prove to be an illustration of this truth ;
the beginning is God, Adam is the son of God, and then stage
upon stage, for many generations, there is onward development
in the old world, in Mesopotamia, Canaan, Egypt, the Desert,
the Land of Promise, the captivity in Babylon and the East, in the
Restoration, in Galilee and Judea, and, at last, there comes Jesus,
the Christ, the Son of God, and it is in Him that all men are
blessed. They came from God and they return to .Him in Christ ;
and all between is development. This may be interpreted by order ;
by the laws of Nature ; by mankind ; or by a man ; but these
men, as names, or as peoples, or as experiences, express, as in
symbol forms, the story of the development of the restoration of
mankind to God by Christ.
If the law of development can be fitly expressed, symbolised
and indicated, by genealogies and generations, then it will not
appear so very strange if men expect to find a symboHc form
of thought which will both hide, and reveal, what is conceivable
as the unity and the harmony of creation. It may be suggested
that such a symbol exists, and it is to be found in the Book of
Revelation. The ideal is the apostle John on the small island
of Patmos, and being in the Spirit, there was given to him the
revelation of Christ, the living, ascended Lord and King. He

24 INTRODUCTION.
is the perfection of glory, and He walks in the midst of, and is
surrounded by, seven golden candlesticks. He is Light ; they
receive and reflect His Hght of truth, and apart from Him they
have no existence. It is true that this vision, in the first instance,
is applied to seven churches in Asia, but there may be a more
subtle and mystic interpretation of the symbol ; it may be ex
tended to humanity, to the seven principles that constitute
being, and to these as regenerated and restored to their true
place in the midst of fallen humanity. This interpretation at
the first glance may seem to be a sport of the imagination, but,
after thoughtful study, after considering the messages that
follow the vision, there remains the conviction that this is the
highest conception of the glory of Christ. It fits into nature,
history, man and the Bible ; and, as symboHc truth, it is the
highest development of what has been repeated over and over
again in manifold ways throughout history. In this symbol
there is Alpha to Omega, the whole range of abstract truth as
conceived in letters of the alphabet, and what is developed out
of them ; and the symbol changes not from beginning to end,
for He is First and Last, the Eternal. All this is something
like the vision that is dawning upon men in the twentieth century.
The old Hnes of thought have broken down ; the geo-centric and
self-centred systems of thought are vanishing away ; it is Christ
in the midst that is the vision of the future ; it is His image and
Hkeness that men will desire to possess ; and this means, the
strange conception, that the related ultimates of nature reveal
God ; and that science, in its fullest meaning, makes manifest
the thoughts, the order and the laws of God. It is the Beatific
Vision dawning upon men, and the recognition of the thought
of the ancient Greek poet, that in God men live, move, and
have their being. The Greek poet was gifted with this great
poetical vision ; there has come a great change in the thoughts
of men, for it is now science and philosophy that read and
confirm the vision of the poet.

CHAPTER II.
THOUGHTS ABOUT MATTER, ELECTRICITY AND GRAVITATION.
In addition to these introductory thoughts, it may not be
out of place to consider, as briefly as possibly, the tendency of the
conceptions of leading scientific thinkers upon the problem of the
development of matter. The physical world may be conceived
as that of parables ; and, as explained by the Master Teacher, all
that is seen in Nature is like the Kingdom of Heaven. In their
relations aU conditions of matter and energy are like something
in the Kingdom, but it is not until the phenomenal stage is past,
and the ultimate, and laws, are recognised, is the Kingdom of
God reached as taught by science and divine wisdom. If the
Master could give oral instruction to His disciples, it is possible
he would tell them that all nature is parable, and only by the
study of nature can men really understand parables and what
they mean. The ilHmitable, the eternal, power and motion,
as abstract thoughts, are not parables ; they are not Hke anything
that man knows. On the other hand space, time, matter and
energy, even as concepts, have their likenesses because portions
of these could be conceived as Hke an ideal. It is by such thoughts
as these that men test themselves as to the meaning of words ;
they try to find a real that will correspond with the ideal. Thus
men may say they see into space, but not into the illimitable ;
they can count, or measure time, but not eternity ; they think
upon, and reason about, the effects of power, but they cannot
comprehend the Almighty ; they may think about the corre
lations of motion, but they do not understand the words " the
Spirit moved." It is conceived that the power known as the
attraction of gravitation is universal, and the law of gravitation
is expressed in these words, that " two masses in the universe
attract each other with a force which varies according to the
inverse square of the distance." Gravitation is conceived to be

26 THOUGHTS ABOUT MATTER, ELECTRICITY AND GRAVITATION
a constant universal power ; and thus, although the law of its
action is known, no one has been able to declare what that
power is ; it seems to be thought of as the power that regulates
the motions of all bodies throughout space ; thus it is conceivable
as the supreme controlling power in the universe. Gravitation
may become a cause of motion, and thus bring about the corre
lations of motion ; but it does not seem clear that the correlated
forces can be changed into gravitation as a force, unless these
are changed into matter and mass. Is it then supposed that
gravitation is unique, in this sense, that it is the inherent foun
tain of motion and matter, and thus it can be thought upon as
distinct from, and yet the cause of, all other forces ? Gravitation
may be a parable in this sense, that it reveals to men one con
trolling power that governs or regulates motion in masses of
what is known as matter. With gravitation there is the con
ception of bodies, or masses of matter. Thus men turn from gravi
tation to matter to enquire what it is, how it can be torn to
pieces, or how it can be made to stick together. The physical
force conceived to be the one most useful for overcoming that
power in matter that is cohesive is heat ; it is heat that
separates particles of matter that adhere together by a cohesive
force, and thus these two forces may be conceived to be the
analytical and synthetical forces in matter. Thus far the know
ledge gained is that matter may be thus taken to pieces and put
together again under certain related conditions ; and the next
stage of inquiry is to find out what matter is in its elementary or
atomic forms. For this purpose it is necessary to go to the
chemist, and the information to be obtained from him is to the
effect that all kinds of matter have been analysed chemically, and
the result has been that about seventy elementary forms have been
found that are in some way or other quantitatively different, they
seem to be separate entities, such as hydrogen or oxygen, iron
or copper, but what these elements are in themselves the chemist
cannot tell. The chemist tries by synthesis to compound these
elements of matter, and he discovers that they unite together
qualitatively in definite proportions. That there are particular
affinities, attractions or repulsions in such combinations, and thus
the chemist, though he thus reduces matter to elements, and can
produce thousands of combinations, remains ignorant of what these
elements are in themselves. They are correlated ; they have
definite relations and proportions, but he is unable to discover

THOUGHTS ABOUT MATTER, ELECTRICITY AND GRAVITATION. 27
the secret of their being. This analysis of matter can be carried
still further by the science of spectrum analysis by means of light
and a prism ; thus if pure light passes through the prism it is
refracted, or bent out of the straight path in which it was travelling,
and the result is the solar spectrum with its bands of colours,
heat and chemical action. By analysis it has been discovered
that chemical elements find their places on this spectrum by radia
tion and absorption, and thus it has been conceived that if all the
elements of matter could be thrown upon a spectrum the result
would be like the one produced from pure white light. In this
region also there can be a synthesis of the rays of light. They
can be re-refracted through a second prism, and the result will be
the spot of white light upon the screen where they are converged
together. Let it be assumed that the second prism is imperfect,.
broken, or full of flaws, then the result would not be true re-refrac
tion, but a mixture, thus the order would be destroyed and the
spectrum a chaos. The thing with flaws is useless to verify order
and law. What is required is a new prism, one that is perfect,
and without this the synthesis cannot be accomplished. This line
of thought leads onward to the conception, not that the prism full
of flaws can be polished and made right, but that a new prism is
required to take the place of the fractured prism ; but the diffi
culty is how these chaotic rays, all mixed together, are to be acted
upon so as to bring them into order again. How are the de
magnetised, or dia-magnetised, rays to become polarized again
so that being in their order they can be re-refracted and changed
into light ? The conception to consider is that electricity and
magnetism may be able to accomplish this apparently impossible
work, because it is assumed that light, chemical analysis or syn
thesis, heat or cohesion, could not realise this task. The thought
is that these forces are, in a sense, heavenly ; they move in ether ;
they penetrate matter in all its forms ; they are greater than Hght ;
therefore, it is possible that by electricity and magnetism the
broken rays may be polarized into their order, and what seemed to
be lost in chaos and darkness, may again be made useful, put in
order and changed into light. It is not assumed that this has been
done ; it is not asserted that this is possible ; it is not recorded
that anyone has tried to do this ; and yet the truth may be as sug
gested because, as matter of fact, it is electric motion from the-
sun, in or by light, that polarizes the sun rays in the earth, the:
result being the magnetic polarity of the earth. The object in.

28 THOUGHTS ABOUT MATTER, ELECTRICITY AND GRAVITATION.
view here is the parable of the physical forces in their correlations,.
and, as has been pointed out, they are united two and two to form
one order, and they are correlated to form one physical universe.
The suggestions that have been made as to the correlated physi
cal forces are, it will be observed, in line with the method of Christ ;
they may seem to transcend the conceptions of scientists, and
it is quite possible that they may not see their way to agree with
.such a theory. The point here, however, is that the physical forces
are the central points of great parables ; and, if these can be under
stood, then all other parables would follow in their order, and the
physical, in a sense, would give the form, as well as the key, to
what is more highly developed. This is like going to school again
and beginning with the first chapter of Genesis ; as in the Bible,
so in nature and man, the importance of this interpretation is the
finding of the key by the application of the method of Christ. It
is quite true, and this ought to be constantly remembered, that
the physical forces are not to be conceived as rising above what is
physical ; and thus it is all the more wonderful that this first
series of the order, as in a parable, holds within itself all that will
be developed out of it. But this is the rule in the Kingdom of
God ; the first is as a germ, and a key to what follows ; although
what is developed is not physically the same, the likeness is in the
parable and in the spiritual development. The physical forces
are the parables to be studied as giving form to the thoughts ; and
¦each new realm of thought as it arises requires to be studied with
an eye upon the parables of the forces. The parable of physical
life is that of a new power. In the parable of the forces the analogy
falls in with that of cohesion by which matter is brought together,
and forms one solid mass. Just as homogeneous bodies have a
mutual attraction, and the particles unite into one mass, so the
power of life, in an altogether new form, absorbs protoplasm, and
out of this builds up organic forms in which there is life. There
is a likeness in form ; matter is increased in bulk by cohesion, and
life is increased, as in organic forms by growth. When the or
ganic bodies lose sap, circulation, blood, heat, vitality, then they
tend to get hard, to solidify; and thus the organs that were healthy
lose the power to live ; they are overmastered by what is inorganic,
what was living dies, is disintegrated, and returns to dust, or be
comes petrified like a stone, and would not be known from stone
by those who were unable to read the lines that were once living
structures. The parable of life is not that it has been crushed by

THOUGHTS ABOUT MATTER, ELECTRICITY AND GRAVITATION. 29
the iron heel of matter, but that supported by matter it has be
come a great realm of being, a marvellous tree of life that has filled
the earth. There was an ideal in the first germ of life ; there was.
plan, purpose and design, there was order and law, all pre-ordained.
and pre-arranged, and the development was carried forward in
ten thousand types and forms until the body of man was produced
and it is this Divine work that is conceived to be the master-piece
of nature, or of the Spirit of God. It cannot be said that physical!
life has been a failure physically. The parable is in the beginning
of things, and thus it seems out of place to think upon that which
is physical as becoming spiritual and being transfigured so that
there might not be physical death. It is true that the lower forms
of organic life can take from the inorganic all that they require
for life ; but the higher forms live upon what is living, and what
was once living and is petrified, as coal, may be of immense service-
for the generations of men upon the earth. All that lives has some
form of enjoyment or satisfaction in life ; but there is not any
thing that lives for itself alone ; it is part of an organic whole, and
it is not by the law of self, but the law of Sacrifice, that all life is.
given, sustained and given back to the Giver of Life.
Just as there may be said to be a parable of life that finds its.
first form and likeness in cohesion and matter, so there may be a
parable of spirit with a something in physical nature that is its,
analogue. What the spirit in man is specially known to do int
its relations with the external world, from whence the elements
of knowledge are derived, is to perceive, through sensation and
the special sense OTgans, effects which are named sensations. If
men will take the trouble to analyse their words and thoughts the
result will be that the final analysis is that of seeing, hearing, tast
ing, smelHng, etc., and the correlations which exist betwixt thought
and things that are sensuous. What is suggested in this analysis
is that there is the spirit power ; but spirit power, as an abstrac
tion, a principle, can only be known by relations and conditions.
The pre-existing relations are the body with its special organs,
at the service of the spirit, prepared for it, and that external
world which is in correspondence with the special senses. Into.
these the spirit comes as into an inheritance, and its functions.
become known by response to sensation, observation, perception,
reception and conception. The spirit may be conceived as a free-
agent within the bounds of the body, and by the nerves of sensa
tion and the special senses it is active to see, to know, to enquire.

30 THOUGHTS ABOUT MATTER, ELECTRICITY AND GRAVITATION.
what aH changing things mean ? The spirit may be said to begin
thus early to enquire into what is parabolic, and all the signs and
¦symbols of nature are parables that pre-exist in nature, and have
an existence in the physical body. It is not necessary to extend
this argument ; but this is the analogy, even as a chemist in
analysing matter is poised so to speak, betwixt the objective world
¦of nature and the senses, and the subjective world of the mind,
and from these chooses and separates things which seem to differ
until the elements of matter are found, so the spirit in man in all
that pertains to man and nature carries on similar processes.
There is a difference in the initiatory stage of life, as in a child ;
there is separation and differences, but not in the way, or to the
same extent, as carried on by a chemist ; the child is unconsciously
or semi-consciously, learning his primary lessons ; the chemist
has become conscious that order and law exist, and he is trying
to solve the parables that exist in matter. Care must be taken in
¦carrying out these analogies,to keep the realms of thought distinct,
and also to remember the stage of development which the enquiry
Has reached. What is of chief importance to remember here is
that the forms are the objective things or conditions ; the thoughts
are in a realm that corresponds with the objective, but is inward
and subjective ; the spirit is poised between these, like a magnet
in a compass, and by that freedom possessed, it ought to move
in harmonious communion with the Spirit in the universe. Thus
far, the assumption is that the spirit of man has power to move ;
if spirituaUy magnetised, it will be attracted by what is in harmony
with its being, and it will become repellent to what is contrary.
If this spiritual magnet is changed and made dia-magnetic, then
the result will be chaos and darkness ; if para-magnetic, then
the universe will be as Hght and the issue will be order. It is the
mind, or soul, that is the co-agent, the help-meet of the spirit.
What this means in chemistry is that the chemist tries to solve
the parable of matter synthetically ; having taken to pieces all
forms of matter and reduced them to elements, the questions to
be asked and answered is how, in what manner, under what con
ditions and relations these elements will be led, by affinity, choice,
preference, by order, or laws of nature, to combine and form
chemical unions, and what proportions of the varied elements
will thus attract or repel each other ; will unite or remain neutral,
will take kindly to each other or, as if fired by hatred, explode
.and destroy each other. In the soul, as men know, analogical

THOUGHTS ABOUT MATTER, ELECTRICITY AND GRAVITATION. 31
conditions exist ; it is a universe of elementary forms, it is a
world of correlated conditions, it has affinities, kindnesses and
spiritual attractions ; and there is also in it what will not unite,
is not of the same nature, is mutually repellent ; and yet, there
the Heavens may dwell in Hght, peace and love, or there the devil
may reign in darkness, causing destruction as by the fires of hell.
This parable, it will be seen, has now assumed a new form, the
things and thoughts analysed take the second place, it is not
nature and its actions that are of chief importance, but the spirit
of man that possesses the power to analyse what is natural, and
tries to put it together again under new forms, relations and con
ditions. Without the spirit all is chaos ; if the spirit is in a state
of dia-magnetism all is confusion ; but when the spirit becomes
para-magnetic in harmony with order and law, then the great
change has come, the Heavens are overcoming the Earth, and
men begin to feel as if they were entering a new world of thought.
This is how men look upon the past ; before the days of true
physical science all was chaos and confusion, they had not ad
vanced to the chemical stage of enquiry, they only knew about
heat and matter in a few forms and conditions, and they had no
conception of what men would be privileged to see, when they
became so far para-magnetic as to begin in a scientific spirit to
analyse matter. It must be noticed here that the chemical stage,
although in a measure para-magnetic, is not so fully. This is as
the breaking of the dawn in the east, or rather of men changing
their position from that of dia-magnetism toward fuller know
ledge. In this stage the conception of Hmitations begin, and
negative and positive knowledge take shape ; thus men discover
that matter is reducible to elements, but this form of knowledge
is negative as to the reafity, and positive as to relations ; in fact,
in this realm the spirit and the spiritual reign, and forms and
things are giving place to relations and thoughts. The chemist
might be supposed to ask the question, " What is it that carries
out the work of analysis ? Is it heat, chemical affinity, magne
tism etc. ? " The reply would be that these are agents used for
this purpose, but the real power is above these physical agents ;
it is the man, the spirit, that is directing these forces to find out
truth, order and law. The parables are in the visible, tangible,
dissolving forms of matter ; but the man is above aU these, and,
it may be that unwittingly he is searching for design, purpose, and
an ideal ; but they are not to be found in chemistry. The Hght

32 THOUGHTS ABOUT MATTER, ELECTRICITY AND GRAVITATION.
divine is not in matter that can be analysed, and it is not in matter
when compounded in definite proportions and into thousands of
products. It is true that order and law are there, but they are
not conscious and luminous, they are of the earth and earthly, and
thus the vision of truth is not to be found in the parable of chemi
stry. The analogy here seems to be that as in the world of nature
chemists analyse and synthesise matter, so in the spiritual world
at this psychical stage of thought, within the realm of science,
there is not the abiHty to rise above what is earthly order and law ;
the analogies are earthly, limited differences, but there is no unity
or harmony in things and thoughts divine.
Into this realm there comes light, not as cause but as effect ; and
the parable is that studied by Newton in light, the prism and the
solar spectrum ; it is not spectrum analysis and its revelations
as in these days, but the ideal as seen by Newton, and light as
analysed and synthesised by him. The parable is an ideal, and
the ideal is a great parable ; and it may fairly be conceived that
a more lovely and perfect ideal could not have been presented to
m-3n. Newton saw the beauty of the symbol, but he had scarcely
a conception of the glory that it contained. The revelation was
beautiful and true ; but what was hidden, unrevealed, was far
more wonderful ; and it is only now that men are beginning to
apprehend the glories that are represented by this vision of truth.
The analogy here is that of light as truth ; and of intellectual
power in man to place truth in order. Truth is one even as Hght
is one ; but when truth is refracted, made manifest in lines or
rays, then the truth is diversified and manifold. It is with truth
as with all the correlated forces ; they are correlated, and yet
when they pass through the spiritual prism all the forces are placed
in their order ; and the intellectual spectrum of truth if it is not
more wonderful than the solar spectrum, it is actually Divine in
what it reveals to men. One very important lesson men may
learn from the parable of the solar spectrum and it is this, that the
things that are visible are very limited as compared with what is
invisible ; and the sensuous world is very small as compared
with what is unseen and eternal. It is not necessary here to enter
more fully into this interesting subject ; the interest of a special
kind is not the work of Newton ; and it is not the light of truth
in all its relations ; it is that strange vision of a marred prism
that failed to re-refract the light rays in their diversified forms and
relations, and thus left men wandering in a realm of darkness,

THOUGHTS ABOUT MATTER, ELECTRICITY AND GRAVITATION. 33
with only the light of a solar spectrum of truth to guide them in
the great desert of life. Wise men may shake their heads with
doubt as to such a vision being found in the realm of physics ; but
there cannot be any doubt as to its being there ; in fact it is
everywhere, and it is because men are in the darkness that they
do not see what is of the greatest importance for their own well-
being. A more perfect parable of truth and order, moral purity,
righteousness and law could not be found in the universe than
light, the prism, the spectrum, a second prism, re-refraction and
light ; it is all comprehensive as symbol of truth and righteousness,
and it ought, when understood, to completely shut the mouths of
all those who say they can find no Divine Truth in Nature, and
no purpose, design, or ideal. God speaks to men in the light of
truth and by means of it ; they have chosen the wrong way ; in
fact they have sinned, fallen from the ideal, and they have been
lost in the darkness. This is the parable of parables to teach men
about truth, sin, and the results that follow ; and until they have
fully mastered this parable of Hght and truth, they will do wejl
to keep their mouths shut, not to speak unadvisedly with their
lips, and truly and honestly try to comprehend what God means
by giving to men such revelations.
The parables of heat and cohesion speak to men of what they
can feel by sensation ; and what they can see and handle ; it is
the physical world in which the masses of men live and have their
being, and they do not doubt for a moment that sensuous things
are real and abiding. This is their world ; they are as children
in it, and it is not to be expected that in such a state and con
dition they can believe what men tell them about what is unseen
and spiritual. There are people in the world who have, even in
the light of science, analysed what is known as matter ; they
believe that it can be reduced to elements, to relations and con
ditions, but they do not see into the unseen world ; they are lost
in the differences of the earthly and the related ; thus, there is
no unity or harmony in their lives ; life is a thing of divisions, of
phenomena, of what is ever-changing, and thus they have lost
the vision of reality, of magnetic polarity, they are in the darkness
and they know not whither they are going. God has revealed
light and truth ; if men were true and right, then they would
receive the light of truth and walk in it ; this would be to them
as manhood ; they would see the face of God in light and live, and,
in their lives reflect the image and the glory of God. This is an
C

34 THOUGHTS ABOUT MATTER, ELECTRICITY AND GRAVITATION.
ideal ; it is what might have been ; it is what science longs to see ;
but the ideal is not to be found ; what some men see, is that dark
ness reigns and it is still night ; to some it is the darkest hour
preceding the dawn ; to others more advanced, enjoying greater
privileges, the dawn has come, and the Day of the Lord is very
near. It is in connection with this Day of the Lord that the
parable of electricity and magnetism is found ; they are being
considered as heavenly symbols ; and they seem to suggest that
the day when the Heavens will reign is drawing near. It is not
easy to set this parable in order ; or to express in thoughts the
day that is dawning upon men through the discoveries that are
being made, and utilised, by these powers. There are men living
who can remember the time when the darkness was made visible
by the use of tallow-dips and rushlight oil lamps, and now their
eyes and their hearts rejoice in electric light. Not very long ago
men had to wait days, hours, weeks and months for news from
their loved ones ; now, by electro-magnetism, time is left behind
in the race in the service of mankind. To recount the wonders of
electro-magnetism, as power and light, is not necessary ; they
have come, they are taking the first place in all civilised countries ;
they are the willing servants of men, and the services that they
will render in the future cannot be fully known by men in their
present state of knowledge. It is largely by means of electric
light that the science of spectrum analysis has been advanced ;
and by means of light, ether and electro-magnetism the work of
analyses of stars and sun, as to their elements of matter, rates of
motion, lines of colour, are progressing. They have also operated
upon invisible atoms and electrons, and thus it is suggested that
men suppose it to be possible that they have not only entered the
realm of the invisible and intangible, they have nearly reached
that reality which is known by its related conditions. It is
electro-magnetism that will bring all other forces of a physical
kind under their sway ; they reign in ether and in matter ; and
thus they are a wonderful parable for men to study of what is not
earthly but from the Heavens by ways which men cannot see,
handle or understand. The analogue of electricity is conceived
to be Divine Grace ; and the analogue of magnetism, Sacrifice ;
they have come to men as great revelations when they were much
required ; and what wise men have to do is to study these powers,
their methods of operation, order and laws, and see in what way
they are going to reveal to men by analogy great spiritual truths.

THOUGHTS ABOUT MATTER, ELECTRICITY AND GRAVITATION. 35
As these powers operate in a realm beyond matter, in the ether,
and are correlated for great purposes where matter becomes
subject ; as they are heavenly, and polarise or magnetise the
earthly, so the conception arises that these powers may be used
in the future much more than in the past for the restoration of
man to his normal para-magnetic state. The line of thought
that seems to be pointed out by science is that these two powers
wiU be commissioned to place all the other powers in their natural
order ; there will be a great revolution ; heat and matter will not
destroy any more what is possessed by life ; spirit will not be
demagnetised by matter ; the soul will not be darkened by dis
order ; the intellect will see truth in its beauty, perfection, unity
and harmony ; and the moral man, being pure of heart, will see
God, and all these changes will come about through Divine Grace,
and be made effectual by the Divine Sacrifice which will draw all
men unto Himself in the Heavens. What men cannot as yet
conceive or understand is that parable of the resurrection to a
new, risen, eternal Hfe ; they may, however, perceive that the
truth Hes in this direction ; there must be knowledge of the order
of the universe as indicated by Science ; the Fear of the Lord in
the soul ; conformity to law in the spirit of goodness and love ;
Divine Grace regnant in body, soul and spirit, and likeness to
Christ in His Spirit of Sacrifice. All this would mean conformity
to His image and Hkeness, preparation and fitness for the Divine
life in Hght and love.
It has been assumed that the study of physical nature is that
of outward form ; it is that with which men's thoughts are clothed,
and thus they may be said to become the raiment of the soul in its
stages of development. The child is clothed as with physical
matter, and he is surrounded by a world of matter ; but as he grows
in knowledge to manhood this conception tends to be dissipated,
and the end tends to be that the thoughts find themselves home
less, apparently without limitations ; the reaHty undiscoverable,
and the relations and conditions of the soul that of darkness or of
light. The visible creation is gone and there is no matter. The
spiritual world has been born out of the natural, and somehow or
other the realities men seem to have to deal with are electricity
and magnetism, or, what is analogous with these, heavenly forces.
In other words the parables of Hfe and thought in scientists are
being centred upon these powers ; and they begin to think that
if they could understand electricity and magnetism then all the
c 2

36 THOUGHTS ABOUT MATTER, ELECTRICITY AND GRAVITATION.
secrets of the universe would be open to them ; they would have
escaped from " Maya," from what deceives, or from what is
phenomena, the ever-changing, and they would at last reach an
indefinable something which will give satisfaction to the souls
of men. It is to be feared that this delusion will prove to be as
delusive as all others, for the simple reason that these powers are
not ends in themselves, they are forms which are analogous with
what will come ; they point to a future, and, if rightly understood,
they may throw light upon the pathway the thoughts of men must
tread in their pilgrimage to that better land. It is for this reason
that the thoughtful utterances of masters in the physical sciences
are so valuable ; and it is a great privilege to sit at their feet as they
give to mankind from time to time the rich results of their labours,
and also the visions they are able to see from the vantage ground
upon which they stand. They are not to be conceived as infallible
teachers, and they make no such claim ; but, because they claim
the right to speak the truth as they see it, and they are known to
be men who love the truth for the truth's sake, they are to be
revered and loved for the work they do.
A few thoughts bearing upon this subject may be found useful ;
what is aimed at be;ng to apprehend the parables these teachers are
uttering, and to try to understand what they mean. It is taken
for granted that all the studies and experiments of science have
been to discover, in the physical realm, what matter is, and its
correlations. This is the issue of the separations of things that
differ in appearance ; the work of chemists in the analysis and
synthesis of matter, as to elements and compounds ; in light and
crystals ; in the physical forces in their conservation and their
correlations. There has ever been a beyond toward which men
kept moving ; but, at last, they seem to unite in saying that they
think they have almost reached the end of their intellectual efforts,
and that there is no beyond upon this road in which they can
travel ; they have reached the verge of the region of Ether, and,
as they look upon it they seem to say that they have no instru
ments to divide this unique condition, or state of existence ; and
that they are unable to correlate, or put in related thoughts, what
they see. To philosophic thinkers such a confession will not seem
strange ; it is what they have expected, and they could not see
any other issue to the works of Science. The issue takes this
particular form at the present time ; Science has asked what is
matter ? The reply given is, it is electricity. What then is electricity ?

THOUGHTS ABOUT MATTER, ELECTRICITY AND GRAVITATION. 37
It is that out of which aU matter is made or developed. In
other words all the analysed conditions, relations and correlations
of matter end in electricity ; and when men know how to synthesise,
manipulate, relate and correlate, electricity, then they will be able
to produce matter in its varied forms. This is not a practical
fact ; it is a philosophic vision in the light of science, and, however
strange it may seem, it is not to be put aside as worthless ; men
ought to take it for what it is worth ; it is a faith not to be despised;
and the vision is worthy of study because of the outlook it gives
into the future. What is electricity 1 The scientists confess
that they do not know, and therefore they cannot tell ; but they
go on to say that they do know something of its movements, con
ditions and relations. The thing in itself is a mystery ; but when
the thing moves, or is moved, then it reveals certain phenomena,
and the relations of these become known. Electricity is said to
manifest two conditions ; these being positive and negative ; and
these conditions are said to act in different ways, the positive repels
positive and attracts negative, and the negative repels negative
and attracts positive. When there is excess of negative, then the
electricity is said to be negatively charged ; and when there is
less of the negative than of the other it is positively charged ; if
the condition is that of a balance then it is neutral and there is no
action. What is the positive electricity ? What the negative ?
The positive, as related to the negative, seems to have this pecu
liarity, it is not so active, does not move so freely, it is more Hke
a reservoir out of which the negative flows, and thus the negative
is conceived to be the worker, the power that manifests itself most
readily in action. Students are warned not to think upon the
negative flow as an energy Hke heat, or other forces, but rather
Hke water moving from a high to a low level ; there is energy in
its motion, but it is as that of strain motion. When this strain
is produced then this is the charged condition, and when the nega
tive is in motion it is a current, and accompanying it there is
magnetism as surrounding the current. Under certain conditions
when there is vibration in the motion the result is Hght ; but it is
not made clear that the electric current in ether produces light ;
or if the light is correlated with atomic conditions of matter, as
in the atmosphere of the earth. Positive electricity is conceived
in this way as a great unknown power, it may be symbolised as
a dark circle or globe ; but within that circle, permeating the mass
in minute quantities, there are free negative points that move

38 THOUGHTS ABOUT MATTER, ELECTRICITY AND GRAVITATION.
about, that are ready to escape and if they can be brought to
gether they do escape in the form of electrons. The point of
their escape is the terminal ; and as these electrons are in a
specially active condition they are conceived as emerging with
great speed ; they can be confined in a narrow tube ; they can be
directed so as to strike a target, and thus they can be seen to
possess propelHng power, they cause heat, and there is luminosity.
What are the electrons ; are they a unit electric force that
cannot be divided, or do they cany with them in their rapid
flight that which is divisible ? It is not explained that the
effects of the electrons upon the target is that they carry power to
move, that the motion causes heat, or that the heat causes lu
minosity ; this it may be assumed is true, but the fact made known
specially is that the stream of electrons can be influenced by a mag
net, and then it is seen that this stream is divided into three rays, or
divisions, presumably a negative, a positive, and a straight for
ward moving ray, that is luminous. The 6 ray is the negative
ray, and the electrons are shot off in it as by radiation ; the y rays
are like ethereal luminous pulses ; the a rays seem to be Hke a
new substance, thrown off with violence, the atoms seem to break
up, there is light flash, and heat. Electricity is conceived as the
last stage in analysis ; and electricity as thus conceived is the
first stage in the process of the formation of matter ; but it is not
to be supposed that thus far any matter has been formed. These
electrons are inconceivably small ; it would take 800 of them to
make up an atom of hydrogen ; and it is a problem how many
atoms of hydrogen would be required to make it a visible thing.
The conception is that this region of experimenting is far beyond
that of the senses, or of atoms of elements ; it is where all the
atoms of all the elements will give the same kind of electrons,
thus a long long way beyond the stage where matter begins to
take a chemical elemental form. It may be conceived that nega
tive electricity, in this sense, is a kind of discharge ; in its motion
there is what is termed self-induction ; as it moves it generates a
magnetic field in which it is encircled ; and the result is con
ceived to be inertia in, what is most heavy, the a rays ; thus mass
concentration, and the greater the concentration, the heavier the
mass and the inertia. If then it would take 800 electrons to be
equivalent to an atom of hydrogen ; for sodium it would be 23
times that of hydrogen ; and for lead about 200 times that of
hydrogen ; thus radium would be about 200,000 electrons to the

THOUGHTS ABOUT MATTER, ELECTRICITY AND GRAVITATION. 39
atom, and this would be the stage where matter would begin to
be radio-active.
In thus indicating the line of thought that masters in physical
.science think themselves free to order their thoughts and to express
them, the object in view is not to discuss their conceptions, but to
accept the forms of thought they give, and from these to discover
the analogies that exist throughout nature, man and the Bible.
What physical science supplies is physical forms of thought ;
they are as parables, things and thoughts that are like what is
higher and different ; thus, it must follow that the parable must
fail to interpret its own meaning ; and, it is only when the spiri
tual becomes radiant that men ought to expect to find out how
the parable iUustrates the spiritual. Thus the physical realm is
of great importance for the forms it supplies ; but, there is the
beyond, and it is toward the spiritual that man aspires. The
physical realm is Hke unto the Kingdom of Heaven in this way :
it is a kingdom, say of electricity, an unknowable reahty that lies
behind all electrical manifestations, and out of the three primary
rays or manifestations, there arises the visible and invisiblephysical
world with all its relations, order and laws. In harmony with
the physical forces and forms there is made manifest a realm
within which life reigns ; and it may be conceived that the mag
netism that follows the self-induction of electricity is, if not tha
cause, the co-ordinate power that maintains harmony throughout
the physical world. Again the Kingdom of Heaven is like that
power named the spirit in creation endowed with conscious powers
and these when manifested may be like unto the power that sees
in Hght, that receives images as thoughts, and that wills, or
chooses as to actions from thoughts known. This involves the
conception of the recipient mind or soul of the psychical life, and
it is around this co-ordinate realm that there is a psychic mag
netism which would keep all within its range in harmony with
psychical order. Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like unto
these physical and psychical realms as form, and as thought
representing form ; the objective has been involved in the sub
jective ; they are correlations, and together they represent
nature ; they are the soul of nature, of man, or, in a spiritual
sense, of God ; and it is into this world that man as intellectual,
as fit to attain to divine knowledge, to the Hkeness of God, is born.
The man conceives what is abstract symbol of thought, he com
pares the thoughts that are known and correlates them in their

40 THOUGHTS ABOUT MATTER, ELECTRICITY AND GRAVITATION.
order. Along with the intellectual power there is the self-induc
tion of the inward power to preserve these thoughts in their order
and it is in the magnetism of the moral man that there is truth,
righteousness, goodness, justice and love ; and, in the light of
these man perceives, conceives, and ought to live in the ideal image
of God in holiness. The realm of evil is like the baneful influence
that surrounded man ; there was temptation, trial, stress, the
enveloping magnetism gave way, the intellectual order was lost,
the soul became dark, the spirit was demagnetised ; the physical
life became subject to what was power without the magnetic in-
vironment ; and. thus the evils men endure, the pains they suffer
and the disorders they cannot put in divine order, in harmony
with the laws or will of God.
It ought to be remembered in looking at this subject from this
stand-point that the whole realm of thought is intellectual and
spiritual ; it does not deal with experience or empiricism, but
with symbols, and with what is intellectual order as conceived
by science, in the light of divine wisdom. The theme of the King
dom of Heaven is that of Divine Grace ; and of Grace as it is
correlated with all other realms of thought. It is a kingdom
which comes into being as a consequence of the Fall, sin, disorder,
disease and death ; and the purpose that is embodied in the
kingdom is the restoration of man, and all that he represents.
For this end the Power of Grace is conceived as an ultimate like
all other principles of being ; and it is the development in this
realm that is the great theme of the Bible. Grace is the symbol
name that is used ; but the reality behind the related ultimate
symbol is God ; and it is God, as First Cause in all that is created,
or has been made manifest. The spiritual realities are God as
Creator and Cause ; Christ as Heaven, and behind Him the earth
as in chaotic shadow ; the Spirit as power to move for salvation ;
and the results the Creation as light radiant reflecting the glory of
God. In these thoughts as found in the opening words in Genesis,
the conceptions of scientific thinkers find their fulfilment ; their
symbols as summed up in electricity, and its manifestations, are
explained and understood ; and they are seen to be trying to
express in the symbol signs of what is physical, what they ought
to know is not physical but spiritual ; and, as matter of fact it is be
cause they will degrade their own thoughts, which are spiritual, into
what is physical, that they do not understand the problems they are
studying when they seek after the interpretation in spheres

THOUGHTS ABOUT MATTER, ELECTRICITY AND GRAVITATION. 41
that are below their order of thought. It may seem strange to put
the conceptions of scientific men in this way ; but if they will care-
f uly consider the true order of thought, they ought to see that they
are placing themselves, as the thralls of what is material and
natural, under the power of what is lower in the order of develop
ment ; and they will not be aroused to think upon the great
truth that it is the intellectual in them that conceives order, and
perceives law, what is Divine wisdom ; and they will ascribe the
glory to Nature, over which they are masters in thought, and thus
they dishonour God by their thoughts and words, and degrade
themselves by the attitude of thought they persistently cherish.
If this conception is rejected as not true, and as misrepresenting
the facts, and it is assumed that man is greater than matter, or
nature, then this thought arises that those who assert that they
are the interpreters of nature, and as such above it, do not recog
nise God in His works, and they declare that by their own right
hand of power and wisdom they will go forward and overcome all
obstacles until they know all the secrets of nature, and thus make
matter, in all its forms and relations their servant. This it must
be confessed is idolatry of another form ; it is to worship and
adore the creature man, and not the Creator, God ; and it is to
fall down before that most detestable form of the spirit of evil
that exalts power, pride and earthly wisdom. That scientific
men would wilUngly take up such a position is not to be accepted
for a moment ; they also are under the influences of the " dead
hand; " thus they seem unable to breakthrough what is dead so
that they may grasp the living hand of Christ, who is at their
side, in their very thoughts, working in them the new spiritual
life, and telling them to arise and come forth from the gloomy
grave of naturalism in which they find themselves. If Christ is
really the substance, life, spirit, conception, order and law of all
that men of science seek to know, and there is no other possible
means of interpreting and understanding nature, man, and the
Bible except by Him, then what utter folly it would be to turn
the back upon Him, and by wilful choice to plunge into the dark
ness of that awful night where death reigns and God is not known.
The line of thought that is suggested through the latest con
ceptions of scientific thinkers, has not altered in any way the
results as conceived by philosophy, or by divine wisdom. The
ultimate is still ultimate ; it is God that is Being and First Cause,
whether men limit their thoughts to what is natural, or seek to

42 THOUGHTS ABOUT MATTER, ELECTRICITY AND GRAVITATION.
lise above the natural into the realm of the spiritual. It is God
that is power, the Almighty ; and the order of evolution may be
traced by this route of thought from power to altruism in the way
tnaturalists prefer ; or they may take that different order of thought
which discerns new beginnings as from new seeds, and study these
in their order of manifestation as power, life, spirit, thought,
intellect, morals, grace, and sacrifice. The order of development
in the latter is more true to the facts of life and being, and in the
long run give the unified and harmonious explanation of the
Divine order. What men require to understand, and ever keep in
mind, is that they are, in the intellectual realm of thought, dealing
with words as symbols of truth, and thus the great importance of
getting behind this last veil of what is earthly to reach what is
spiritual and heavenly. The scientific teacher conceives that the
ultimate of all thoughts and things is electricity. The spiritual
thinker will say this may be true as related to physical matter,
but matter, and. the physical realm of thought, is that which gives
form to what is spiritual thought, and thus the true related ulti
mate, or symbol, is not electricity but grace. As in the parable
of electricity and the realm of what is physical, so in the kingdom
of grace and what is heavenly, it is God as Grace, as Giver, that is
the ultimate in all the thoughts of men ; and to believe this
thought, and to act upon it, is to place spirit and soul in the right
attitude to receive Divine instruction. As electricity is mani
fested by three rays in one stream of electrons, so God is revealed
in Grace as Father, Son, and Spirit. As the result of the stream
of electrons is towards the formation of matter, with concentration
and mass, so the work of the Spirit is creation, and, the new
creation in Christ. The form of expression in the physical, as
repulsion and attraction, would not be used in the same way in the
realm of Grace ; the electrons are thought upon as active, yet
repelled ; in Grace the conception is that of free gracious action,
as of separation, of development, of becoming personal. Out of
the Eternal comes time, and in time the Son, and the children of
the Eternal take form, become individuals, and it is as individuals
they are separated from what is thought of as positive. As
electrons become separate electron things, so men become separate
persons, and this separation and individualism is the necessary
result of manifestation and of development. The electrons may
be conceived as three rays united into one being with a separated
existence ; the man is also one being, body, soul, and spirit, and a

THOUGHTS ABOUT MATTER, ELECTRICITY AND GRAVITATION. 43
resultant unity ; but he is also ten thousand times ten thousand
electrons ; he is one, and he is a million in one, and this is the
wonder, glory, harmony and unity of all the works of God. What
has to be kept in view here, and in the study of other realms of the
works of God, is that the lower is that of form for thought, the
higher is that in which the spiritual fills up and overflows all forms.
The Hkeness in the lower will not explain all that is in the higher,
but they are in the same intellectual spiritual forms, and thus the
unity and the harmony that is found to exist throughout all the
realms of the universe.
It does not seem necessary to follow out these analogies further ;
they carry their own messages, and wise, careful thinkers will
separate what is analogy from what is spiritual truth in their
studies. Still, it can be seen that the problems which occupy the
attention of scientific men, are like those which occupy the atten
tion of spiritual students. There is still a beyond, a something that
requires to be explained, and it is a practical question whether the
important subject of limitation as to intellectual order is clearly
understood, as correlated with that ultimate of thought and related
ultimates which have received so much attention. For example,
it is not unusual to find careful scientific thinkers expressing the
thought that science, as inductive thought explaining order, does
not really appear to be limited by related ultimates and the ulti
mate ; but that since it has been so successful in the past, it may
be even more successful in the future, and thus, after all, it may
possibly be found that the intellectual powers of men are not
limited in the sense that philosophers have conceived them to be.
The question for scientists, as can easily be seen, is that of order,
law, and development, but they seem to be unwilling to admit any
limits, or conceive that there can be anything that will transcend
their powers of discovering all the mysteries of the universe. To
what extent such a conception as this can be justified it is not easy
to determine ; they may not think that there is anything to prevent
their enquiry into related ultimates, with the expectation that they
may be able to break down any supposed barrier that may exist
betwixt what is inorganic or organic in the physical world ; they
may even go on to find out in what way living nerve tissue may
generate spirit, and thus trace one continuous development, from
the lowest to the highest, of what is conceived as being. In all this,
scientific workers may be conceived to be free and unfettered — only
it is necessary for them to remember that they are the servants of

44 THOUGHTS ABOUT MATTER, ELECTRICITY AND GRAVITATION.
truth ; and thus they ought not to pronounce, as inductive science,
any thoughts that they have not been inductively proved to be
true. In this subject of electricity as symbol, and grace as the
reality, there seems to arise this very question as to limitation.
The scientist strains every nerve by experiment, imagination and
reasoning, to try to conceive in what order matter begins to be
formed : the result being a theory which seems to explain the
facts. Is the scientist to be condemned when, having given
reasons for his conviction of the truth, he tells men that, so far as
he understands the problem, matter is not what men think it is,
but that it is positive and negative electricity. The spiritual
thinker will at once enquire how much further or clearer the
mystery of being is explained. The conclusion reached will be
that the position is not altered one hair-breadth ; the force of the
philosopher is substituted by the electricity of the scientist, and,
what electricity is as being, as a thing, or as a concept thought,
continues to be the same mystery that men cannot approach or
understand. It is not the legitimate use of the intellect that is to
be condemned ; it is that persistent conviction, that it is the
intellect of man by the way of the physical, the natural, the
mechanical, that is going to solve all mysteries. It is nature and
man that are to share in the glory, and the heavens, truth,
righteousness and grace, are despised and set aside as if they
were non-existent and not worth a moment's consideration.
When men have followed the scientists in their explanation of
electricity and its wonders, then what true and abiding benefits
and blessings have they attained if they are not able to translate
such thoughts into what is food for their spiritual being ? The
unknowable of the philosopher is changed into the dark mass of
electricity of a positive kind, and this darkness, even though
relieved by a vision of electrons and rays of motion, or lines of
force, with the possible formation of matter, does very little to
relieve the overshadowing darkness. The sentence upon the
whole order of thought from matter to electricity, and electricity
to matter is, " Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."
What men require to enlighten their pathway, to cheer their hearts,
to give them faith and courage, is to understand what such things
mean, and in what way they may be interpreted, so that they
may be the means of blessing by revealing thoughts of God, His
power, wisdom, goodness, mercy, grace, forgiveness of sin, and
help in the journey of life, from the womb to that state of being

THOUGHTS ABOUT MATTER, ELECTRICITY AND GRAVITATION. 45
which men by faith in God hope to enjoy. It is simply impossible
that men in the image of God, who are seeking to be like Christ,
can satisfy their souls with such food ; the devil may be able to
change good food into stones, but it is Christ alone that can change
what is matter into the food fit for angels, and as such will be found
to renew, restore, and nourish the life that is divine and spiritual.
The complaint may well be, not that scientists do not give their
best for the world's welfare, but that they seem to be willingly
convinced that what they give is the best that men can get, and
they set themselves, with set purpose, against the opening up of
any avenue of Divine grace flowing from the heavens, which
would convey blessings to themselves and to mankind.
It is conceived by scientists that in the conservation of energy
and the correlations of the physical forces they have solved
almost every mystery ; they think that the mystery of cohesion
as a force is fairly on the way to be solved ; but, they are still
doubtful as to the mystery of gravitation. It is not easy to follow
the arguments brought forward by learned men upon this very
complex subject, thus the utmost that an unlearned student
could be expected to do would be that of asking questions, as
bearing upon this problem, not so much as a physical mystery,
but as a spiritual truth ; and as a truth that seems to carry in its
bosom what may be conceived to be the final link in the unity
¦and harmony of the universe. In dealing with electricity,
positive and negative, and the formation of matter out of electrons
it would almost appear as if scientists were brooding over this
problem ; thus the wonder is that they have not found what
they conceive to be a satisfactory solution. Is this problem a
physical one 1 Is it to be conceived that Gravitation, as a unit
iorce, is discoverable ? If Gravitation is the symbol unit force in ¦
the physical realm, how is it to be discerned as separate from
other forces ? If Electricity is the related ultimate symbol for
matter then what is Ether, and in what sense is it correlated with
Electricity 1 Is it conceivable that Ether is Electricity in the
neutral state ; and that Electricity is Ether ? These questions
deal with the related ultimate reality in the physical world ; thus
they are not to be assumed to be answerable ; they raise the
question whether the symbol Ether is equivalent with Electricity
as related ultimate symbol? When the problem of negative
electricity is entered upon then the question might be asked,
.how is it that negative electrons exist in positive masses where they

46 THOUGHTS ABOUT MATTER, ELECTRICITY AND GRAVITATION.
must run the great risk of being absorbed into what is positive ?
How is it that negative electrons are able to escape from what is
positive, seeing that the positive and negative have affinity for
each other, and the mass of positive electricity is so great ? When
the stream of electrons is being cast off, expelled, or with perfect
freedom are -found leaving the positive mass, then what is this
united stream of negative electrons as related to what is positive ?
When the magnet is used upon this current and it is resolved
into three rays which differ in their order, their motions, their
conditions, then what does this mean as to physical order, and
what does it suggest in the way of analogy as to spiritual truth ?
Assuming it to be true that the rays are diverse in their motions,
and that the result of the a ray is that of the formation of matter,
as the beginning of all kinds of matter known to chemists, then
in what way is matter to be conceived as endowed with Gravita
tion ? Does the law of Gravitation exist in positive electricity
in what is conceived as its mass ? Is there Gravitation in negative
electricity, in electrons, or in the three diverse rays as separated
by a magnet ? Is it when matter is formed that Gravitation
becomes operative ; and, is it only then that the law of the inverse
square is appHcable ? Why the inverse square as to distance ?
Why the cube as to the measurements in mean distances, in the
orbits, in planets ? Why is it that attraction in the sun as centri
petal, keeps the earth in its orbit ; and why should the centripetal
and centrifugal forces balance each other as they do ? Are these
all physical problems, or do they transcend what is physical
and actually become spiritual in their order. The problem may
be in a sense physical as to its origin ; but when these questions
are being studied they become spiritual as dealing with order and
law ; philosophical as seeking after harmony and unity ; and,
Divine as they express the thoughts, or the will of God. When
the problem is that of spiritual meaning then the physical order
takes subordinate place ; they are considered to be useful if they
throw any Hght upon man's spiritual relations with his Creator and
Redeemer ; and it may be suggested that apart from this relation
ship men would not take any interest in them and would not be
able to understand them. The desire to seek after, and to find,
truth, is not intuitive in man as fallen, debased, and ignorant ;
this comes after definite stages of advancement in the Kingdom of
God ; thus it is more the work of the Spirit of God causing enquiry
in the human soul than the fallen tendency in man downward

THOUGHTS ABOUT MATTER, ELECTRICITY AND GRAVITATION. 47
to darkness and night. Christian thinkers in the light of the.
method of Christ will not expect answers to some of these questions,,
because they seem to go beyond what science can answer ; there-
would not be any wish to limit scientific enquiry, but, it seems.
plain that when relations of thoughts come to an end, then it is.
faith and the Bibkj that, is -expected to give additional Hght and
not the physical sciences. The aspect of this problem from the
standpoint of the Bible is not new ; it is the substitution of"
Electricity for Force, or the Unknowable, or the Absolute, or
Reality, or Nature, or any abstract word that is the symbol for-
God. Electricity and the Almighty may become convertible terms,
when the thinker, by the words, means the same fact. In Genesis,
Chapter I. 1-3 the symbols are God, Heaven, Spirit Motion, and.
Light, and the question takes this form, Do these symbols in
any way conform to the conceptions that arise out of Electricity ^
and, if they do, then the true explanation is to be sought in*
Genesis, and in all that arises out of that revelation which is found.
to be a Key to the Bible, Nature and Man.
The symbol words are God and Electricity, but it is electricity
in the positive state, as in ether, and before there is any mani
festation of the Works of God. The first thought is the outgoing-
power of God in Creation ; the second, Heaven, or the Heavens.
and the earth ; the third is the Spirit Motion, and the fourth is.
that of Light. Those symbols, when carried forward as already
explained, fit in with the second, third, and fourth days of the,
Creation series ; and they synchronise with the work of the Spirit
throughout the Bible, with the Generations, and with the fulfil--
mentof these generations. In this instance, as related to the
Vision of Science, the explanation runs thus : God as related to.
Creation, and Electricity as related to matter, is as in the direct
luminous rays ; the Heaven and Earth are like the electrons .
as they stream forth as negative electricity ; the Spirit as motion
is like those a rays out of which matter is supposed to be formed ;
manifestation of Light as the result of the Divine fiat is like.
matter as permeated with the Divine glory, as the Work of the.
Spirit in radiant response to the Word and Will of God. These,
are the points in which there is agreement, harmony of thought ;
scientists say this is how we conceive that matter began to be
made or developed ; and Christian thinkers say this is how we
conceive that Creation began to be made or developed ; and they
advance to say that according to the teaching in the method.

48 THOUGHTS ABOUT MATTER, ELECTRICITY AND GRAVITATION.
of Christ, the same thoughts are found in their order in the first
revelation, as to the first day of Creation. The portion that
follows the Creation of Light synchronises with the fifth and
sixth days of Creation ; with the intellect and moral nature
of man, and thus they are not considered as related to the Creation
of matter or of Nature. The teaching spiritually may' be ex
pressed in this form : God is All in all, the Fountain of all Being,
and from Him there is derived all the luminous direct rays
that cannot be turned aside, and that penetrates all substances ;
Christ is the true electron stream from God, the power electric,
and the Light of the World. The Spirit is the series of rays in
which there is plan, purpose, design ; and the concentration of
electrons, positive in their nature, as matter, with what is con
ceived as weight or mass and all that is involved in the conception
of matter and Nature, is the work of the Spirit. When the pro-
. blem of Gravitation is considered from this stand-point, the
chief thought is not that of the sun and planets ; but that of
God, Christ, the Spirit, and the individual soul as an electron,
a person, an individual atom in the universe subject to all the
laws of God. The man is an emanation from God, like an elec
tron, concentrated into a mass, but he is not, ought not to think
of himself as a wandering star, without an orbit in space, but as
truly kept within a definite orbit Hnked with the bonds of love
and grace to God's throne of Grace in light ; kept in that orbit
by the Spirit of God in harmony with the Will of God ; and,
in immediate spiritual communication with the Heavens, and
God the Fountain of all Grace. The atom does not for a moment
suppose that its tiny mass has any Gravitative influence upon
God ; but God gives the assurance that there is a mutual attraction
and affinity, and, the atom, in proportion to its size, is really an
attractive power in the universe of God. Why then the inverse
square as the law of Gravitation ? It is the spiritual order,
God, Christ, the Spirit, the earth or the atom ; and it is just
because earth or the atom have so much of God in them that thev
are subject to this law, and cannot by any means break away
from it. The law of unity is in, and is summed up as, love to
God. The two-fold law, whatever this may mean, as Ideal, and as
man in the image of God, may be summed up in that mutual
love of man to man and to the Man Christ. The third law is
that of the Spirit in love, as the plan, purpose and orbit of man's
being in love. The fourth is love regnant in God and man, as

THOUGHTS ABOUT MATTER, ELECTRICITY AND GRAVITATION. 49
Light to Hght, Life to life, the Pure, and Good to what is pure and
good ; and, Gracious Self-Sacrificing Love as it is revealed to men
in the Bible. When men read the revelations of scientists, and
in this way compare them with the revelation from God ; the
wonder is not that men -are so clever and wise, but that God is
so gracious, kind, pitiful, powerful, wise and considerate, as to
lead men by His Spirit to know and to understand such thoughts ;
and the wonder above all other wonders is, that men so truth-
Loving and wise, should Hnger so long in the outer court, gazing
at the stars and the fire-mist, when they might be at home in
their Father's House of Mercy and Gracious Love. If scientists
continue to suggest that all this reasoning fails to satisfy their
desires to know this particular truth as to Gravitation, then,
these questions may be asked — Do they recognise the fact
that there is an absolute limit to the knowledge of relations
when unity is reached 1 Have they studied this problem in the
light of such a Hmitation ? Is it not true that this limitation
as related to man is found in God, in Nature, and in Man, and it
is that of Being, and being ; thus when this stage of thought is
reached rational knowledge is at an end, and men have no choice,
they must beheve in the existence of the fact. If then the thought
is conceived that Gravitation is Hke this related ultimate thought
in God, nature and man ; and this word is a synonym for Force,
the Unknowable, the Absolute, ReaHty, and God, can men
discover more than Newton discovered, when he told them
what they were to understand by the law of Gravitation ? Not
what Gravitation is, but how it is related to, or correlated with,
electrons, atoms, elements, masses of matter, the earth, the moon,
the planets, the sun and the whole universe. If this line of
reasoning is appHcable to the problem of Gravitation, then it is
possible that it may also be useful in connection with other
physical forces where the inverse square is said to be a law, as
with heat and light ; the conception being that it is this fourth
law, as a Tule, that apphes to all that is physical, natural, and
earthly as the work of the Spirit. On the other hand, in the
realms of thought that have to do with space, plans and designs,
then it is Geometry, and the Cube, that is used ; that is to say,
by these things men are taught that they have not to do with
Nature only ; but, that behind nature with all its four-square
ideals, there is the Spirit that produced nature according to the
Divine purpose and Will ; that Christ is the Ideal, that the Spirit
D

50 THOUGHTS ABOUT MATTER, ELECTRICITY AND GRAVITATION.
interprets and makes manifest ; and that beyond Christ, the
Word of God, there is Thought, the Eternal Spirit, God, as con
ceived under many Ultimate Names.
It will be observed that this reasoning applies to the first series
of four generations or principles in the Kingdom of God ; it is
the revelation of Nature and what Nature means in the light of
the method of Christ and the Bible. There follows a second
series of four which are quite different as looked at from the
human standpoint ; these being in their order of development
the intellect and the moral nature in Man ; the endowment given
by God for the purpose of discovering truth or order, and for
regulating life and its actions as moral law, so that man may
attain to likeness to God in all that is true and right, good and
just, scientific and wise. Man fell from his state of innocence,
and then for his salvation and restoration there was revealed
Grace and Sacrifice ; and this is where Christ is revealed to men
as the Man and Son of God, as Saviour and Redeemer, as the High
Priest of Mankind, and Sacrifice for Sin. It is not necessary
to point out the share of mankind in this second series ; it is
fully explained in the Bible ; and it will be well for men when
they can realise what their evil deeds mean and the results they
have produced. The Christ and His Works of Grace and Sacrifice
are also known, but it is to be feared that in this matter men
require special teaching so that they may discover their own
shame and fully discern the Glory of Christ. The third series
of four is that of the work of the Spirit revealing and making
manifest the Name, the Work and the Glory of Christ ; this is
the new Spiritual Creation ; it is analogous with the first ; only
it is laid in the revealed Foundation of Divine Self-sacrificing
Love ; the ideal is actually made manifest to men in Jesus Christ ;
the Holy Spirit, as the Spirit of Christ and of Truth reveals Christ
in the souls of men ; and the issue will be the new Heavens and
Earth in Truth and Righteousness, in Grace and Sacrifice. Christ
will become consciously the Universal Centre of spiritual attraction
and gravitation, and thus in and by Him men will be restored
to their inheritance in the Heavens.

CHAPTER III.
LIFE, ORGANISM AND DEVELOPMENT.
The brief sketch that has been given of the outlook of science,
as it is being- transfigured and translated into human thought,
may be found' helpful to enlarge the horizon by which men are
surrounded. The ocean of being is not limited to one continent ;
there are other continents and even worlds for men to discover,
and no matter whether the evidences are trade-winds, ocean
currents, drift-wood, or the scented air from lands unseen, they
all tend to prove to those who see and think that the promised
land is near and that the pleasures that follow discovery cannot
be far off. It may be conceivable that the limitations as to
principles, order and law, suggest the thought that these are
universal, and thus that no new principles of Being are likely
to be discovered ; but the conception that development as to
order and law may be almost infinite in variety opens up new
vistas of thought and of life. The unity, harmony, and the
universality of nature are great truths ; out of the first there
arises all that science can discover, and thus the link that unites
the Ultimate and the Infinite variety ought not to be lightly
esteemed. What is this uniting link by which men are able on
the one side to conceive, to believe in, unity ; and, on the other
able to take the wings of night and morning and fly to the utter
most parts of space and time 1 It is faith in God, and in truth.
The agnostic who believes himself to be only a mere bubble on the
surface of the great stream of the evolution of nature is not in
a position to find this link ; he is environed by nature and is a
portion of it, therefore he has no choice, he can only drift with
the current out into the great ocean ; he knows not his Whence
or Whether ; he fails to interpret the signs in nature ; and thus
to him the Vision is as night, darkness and the Unknowable.
The agnostic conception is not a true and fair representation of
d 2

52 LIFE, ORGANISM AND DEVELOPMENT.
man or of nature ; it is not what men will'accept as to their origin
or destiny, and thus agnosticism must be ruled out of court as
an imperfect system of education and of thought. The agnostic
limitation is fatal ; it is ego-centric and nature- centred ; it is the
strangest of strange philosophies, for it is built upon nature ;
the man finds himself crushed by his own creation ; he is beneath
the mass, and thus he cannot escape from the bondage, the
crushing weight he has brought upon himself. This figure of
thought expresses the danger of looking at creation from only
one stand-point; this order of thought is an inversion, because,
as men know, it is not nature that interprets man, it is man that
interprets nature. It is quite true that as already suggested
nature is developed up to manhood ; but it is man that discovers
this truth by the special powers with which he is endowed. It is
not sufficient to study nature from the stand-point of the natural ;
it is equally important to study man as natural and as spiritual ;
and, only by doing so is there any Ukelihood of being able to dis
cover the unity and harmony that subsists in both. The wise
Greeks many centuries ago discovered this great truth that nature
is the great macrocosm in order and law ; and that man is the
microcosm of the same, the epitome of all that is in nature.
Modern thinkers do not greatly surpass the Greeks in their dis
coveries of intuitive truths ; where they show greater wisdom
is in their scientific studies, and these tend, to confirm much of the
intuitive wisdom of the Greeks. The Book of Nature in the
light of science is a very large volume, the concentrated accumu
lations of the thoughts of the wisest men during past centuries ;
the Book of Man is a smaller volume, yet in every man it is de
veloped ; he carries it along with him through life ; and, it is an
important question to ask, Whether he will, ere he reaches the
end of the journey, be able to comprehend the unity and harmony
that subsists betwixt these two books ? By science, and through.
the law of development, this knowledge is being attained, and
men perceive, by the revealing light of a third Book, that of
Revelation, that it is the spiritual, not the natural, that is all
important in this study.
As already suggested, agnostics who study Nature as a natural
evolution, find in the long run that Nemesis is upon their track •
they are submerged in the natural and mechanical ; the issue is
darkness, and the anxious peering vision that seeks to pierce
through to the Unknowable. To them there is no response from

LIFE,^ ORGAN ISM AND DEVELOPMENT. 53
within the veil ; being natural in their minds, and dia-magnetic in
their spirits, there is no light visible and no voice from the Unseen.
Is it that there is no light and no voice, or, is it that the spiritual
conditions are not recognised, and thus the natural cannot receive,
perceive, or apprehend the spiritual ? If there is a class of men
more fitted than others to understand all that is implied in true
relations, and right conditions for attaining true knowledge, that
class is those trained in the school of science. Yet it is known
that some of these would raise the natural above the spiritual ;
make the spiritual an efflux from the natural ; and thus the
natural would be regnant and the spiritual in subjection. It is
a strange paradox in the world of thought that men who have
attained to a spiritual realm, that of intellectual science, in which
order and law are supreme ideas, should at the same time abdicate
the spiritual in'favour of the natural, try to reduce all order and
law to the natural level, and shut out from view what men, through
all the ages, have known to be intuitive truths that could not be
doubted or denied. It is quite true that the modern conceptions
of an Absolute, the Unknowable, an Ultimate, and related ulti
mates, differ in their form from the metaphysical conceptions of
experience and of empiricism in the past ; but there is really no
difference in the facts conceived, and scientific men do not suppose
that there is ; all that is necessary to be said is that the work has
been more thorough in the reduction, or analysis, of nature, in the
widest sense, to a few related ultimates and one ultimate ; and
the synthesis has become more perfect in conceiving the realms of
science as developing from these related ultimates. To the agnostic,
and the believer in God, the facts are really the same ; there
is no cause for strife or even difference of opinion ; if they differ it
is about names not realities, and this becomes a matter of defini
tion to ascertain what is meant by the names used. Throughout
the realm of science there ought not to be any differences when
all the facts are known ; and the differences, when ultimates are
considered, are not in the facts, but in the relations or the spiritual
attitudes of those concerned. In the case of the believer in God
he is thought upon as receptive to Divine truth, as having turned
an attentive ear to the Voice from heaven, and the result is the
life of faith, the light of truth, reception of great promises, and a
great hope for the future. In the case of the agnostic, there is a
magnetic repulsion to what is spiritual. Self conceptions are set
up in preference to the revealed Will of God ; the ear is closed to

54 LIFE, ORGANISM AND DEVELOPMENT.
the Divine Voice, and thus darkness reigns, the spiritual life
cannot prosper, and the outlook for the future is dim and uncertain.
It is necessary, however, to recognise this fact, the agnostic must
believe in the Unseen, to him the Unknowable, and he may even
be compelled to confess, with compressed lips, and with a stam
mering tongue, that in this Unknowable there exists as in a
fountain, a seed, all the power, wisdom, plan, purpose, thought,
truth, order, law, life, and love, that is by evolution made"manifest
in creation. The believer in God conceives that his faith is in
perfect harmony with reason and science ; the agnostic must
eventually discover that his agnosticism is unreasonable, simply
because he makes an unnatural division where no division exists ;
and, in an arbitrary manner, he attempts to cut himself adrift
from the Source of power, the Fountain of life, the Spirit that
discerns, the Soul that conceives, the Truth that reveals order, the
Good that bestows good, and the Grace that forgives and loves.
Agnosticism, unbelief, or self-assertion, is the root of all evil ; it
is self as preferred before God, it is disorder in the place of order,
it is disease in place of law and health, and the end of this way, as
men know to their cost, is death. The difference, to begin with,
seems insignificant to the agnostic, but to the spiritual seer this is
the pivot upon which the destinies of men turn ; and the issues
are as opposite as heaven and hell, as health and corruption, as
life and death. The difference is that by the one way men see,
perceive, conceive, and walk in the light of the truth of God ; in
the other it is puny man in the darkness kindling a fire that will
only reveal the darkness. Men look upon the fire and its sparks,
and it is to see that it is dying away, the sparks are falling to the
earth ; and in the light of the breaking day in the east there is no
fire and no human light ; it is the Light Divine that precedes the
rising of the Sun of Glory.
When man is studied, not apart from, but in harmony with
Nature, then it follows that all that science has discovered is im
plied, or is involved in, his bodily form. The inorganic has
become organised, and it is by the law of development that the
order of becoming has been carried forward. Men do not see the
inorganic in man, it has been transfigured by life ; but the order
and laws of the inorganic in gravitation, heat, chemical analysis
and synthesis, light, form, electricity and magnetism, are all
operative in his body. In the past men may have been inclined
to dispute this aspect of the operations of force in the body, and to

LIFE, ORGANISM AND DEVELOPMENT. 55
conjure up as cause, vital power, or some other name, to express
the facts ; but this is not necessary, the truer thought seems to be
that life utilises all forces, and they are the servants of life in the
body. What life seems to do is to separate the inorganic from the
organic, to place a barrier betwixt the non-living and the living.
And it is inside this sacred enclosure that the weaving of warp and
woof, the building up of cells and bodily organs take place. The
interest is transferred from the material and the forces ; and the
attention is fixed upon the work of the architect and the builder.
In the vision of creation it is like that of division of waters, a
firmament that separates, and within that firmament, or that seed
or germ, there is heaven. This separation, as will be observed, is
summed up in the thought of correspondence, the one and the all
is as the waters ; the separated portion is also as the waters, and
in like manner it involves, as in a germ, all that is in the one ;
thus here also there is heaven. It is in this subtle way that men
are beginning to think about creation, about nature and man ;
every organic form is individual, it is separation and limitation ;
and yet by the law of development there is found in it all that is
involved in the mystic word, heaven. There is a vision as of
waters inimitable, which neither space nor time can comprehend,
and at the heart of all is heaven. Creation, and also the new crea
tion is as waters, and at the heart of these also is heaven ; that
firmamented germ came down from heaven ; it is in heaven, and
it is surrounded by the Heaven of heavens. This is a mystic
vision truly, and yet it is only thus that men can express the
thoughts they have been led to conceive as to creation, develop
ment, nature and man.
The help that men receive from the study of nature, and by
gaining the knowledge of order and law, is like this : they enter
into a great spiritual palace, a temple of God, upon the threshold
the glory is revealed, and then men fall prostrate in adoration.
They are permitted to enter this sacred place, Heaven ; through
the stained glass windows they perceive the glory of God in this
temple of nature ; they discern the way to the inner sanctuary
and to the Holiest Place ; and, at the same time the discovery
is made that in their own bodies there is the epitome of all that
has been seen in the heavenly Temple. Thus the study of nature
leads to the study of man ; and the understanding of the one
leads to the knowledge of the other. Because men did not know
nature and its order in the past, they remained ignorant of the.

56 LIFE, ORGANISM AND DEVELOPMENT.
glory involved in their own bodies ; when men are fully enUghtened
as to nature, then they will understand themselves and that
marvellous correspondence that exists between them. It is here
that the law of development has brought about such wonderful
revelations ; it is the parable of dia-magnetism and para-magnet
ism ; so long as men were dia-magnetic to nature the light of
truth could not be seen ; now that the change has come they
are becoming para-magnetic to truth, and the long long vista
of creation is being thrown open to their vision. It is not in
nature only that this has taken place ; it has occurred in man
also ; and it is by the science of biology that men have seen this
great vision of past ages. Here it may be necessary to suggest
that those who do not understand the conceptions and arguments
of scientific thinkers should reserve their judgment upon what
science asserts until, by study they know the facts ; and, it is for
scientists, and the unlearned alike, to be careful not to overstrain
any theory that may be suggested as the means of harmonising
all the facts. The light that is shining through the long vistas
of the physical world will illuminate that realm, and also reflect
Hght upon other realms ; but it is well to try to limit what is
lower in order to the order it reveals, and thus, with due care,
advance to the more complex problems that arise as seen in
the light of the law of development.
The vision of science as seen in the study of nature has
been in a measure outlined ; it will now be necessary to
sketch, in the briefest manner, what may be conceived as
the greatest, far-reaching vision of biology in relation to
the bodily form of man. Life, all life, begins in the single
cell structure ; this is conceived as in protoplasmic matter,
enclosed in a fine membrane, and within the cell there is a nucleus
in which there is Hfe. If this protoplasm and nucleus is chem-
cally analysed it is found to consist of a few of the simpler chemical
elements, such as hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, phos
phorus, etc., and this would be conceived as the inorganic residue
of the non-living. This cell life absorbs through the membrane
matter that is inorganic ; it is changed into protoplasm ; it becomes
living and there is increase of cells ; the cells divide and sub
divide, and thus what is seen is the persistent becoming of the
living, and of the living producing the living. It is life that
reigns in the simplest forms of life ; the cycle is that of living
and multiplying, and this is conceived to be the order of life in

LIFE, ORGANISM AND DEVELOPMENT. 57
the cell. In the process of development there arises new forms,
with differences in their structures ever getting more complex
in their order ; thus there arises a realm of botanical forms, a
world of zoological and animal forms, and all these are arranged,
classified and divided into families, classes and varieties. These
may be arranged historically, laterally, and in regard to their
organic form and use ; thus historically life is one development ;
it is divided into many branches, which become types of living
order, that do not pass beyond a certain stage of development.
Out of cell tissue there arises blood, muscle, nerves, bone, secreting
and excreting glands, skin and hair. It is quite true that agnostic
thinkers maintain that in this development there is not to be
•found any special Divine intervention to cause what would
originate new species of creatures with new forms ; there is, it is.
conceived, in the living and around the living, in the environment,
secondary causes which are supposed to be efficient for all the
changes that have taken place in past millenniums. It can be
seen that disputing about this matter is fruitless ; on the one
hand scientists can only trace the line of effects ; they are not
consistent in protesting so strongly against Divine intervention,
seeing that they are compelled to confess that they do not know
what Hfe is, as a principle, what powers it possesses, or the. secret
means by which Hfe works to produce heredity and to cause
variations in form. The fierce struggle upon this very complex
problem during the past fifty years has arisen through prejudice,
ignorance and misrepresentation ; there has been intense pre
judice against agnostic theories, sufficient to pervert the judg
ments of wise men ; and, seeing that they were not familiar with
the advances of science, it is not so very strange that the
struggle has been bitter and prolonged. On the other hand,
it ought to be understood that although a few of the wisest teach
ers in the school of science did not become partisans in the fight,
they did, as a rule, commit themselves to the inductive method
of thought and the theory of evolution, and they did not consider
carefully the arguments from the standpoint of philosophy
and of deductive verification. Life conceived as Cause, or even
Force as the First Cause, as being unknowable to inductive
science, was sufficient to suggest that agnostic philosophic as
sertions as to special knowledge not possessed was out of place p
it was not wrong to declare that the order of creation evolving
from the Seed was as they had found it to be ; but to seem to

58 LIFE, ORGANISM AND DEVELOPMENT.
assert that they knew the seed and all it contained ; or, that it
was unknowable and not worthy of consideration, was not thought
ful or wise. With this protest as against the agnostic spirit
found in some scientists, there is no difficulty found in following
the theory of development, and, as a rule, of agreeing to all
it makes known. If it is admitted that ihe Cause is potent and
pregnant within all that is derived from it, then there is no neces
sity for discussion and strife ; the terms heredity, variation,
struggle for existence, natural selection, the survival of the fittest,
etc., etc., are all seen to be secondary names, considered as fitting
symbols of thought to convey true conceptions as to the order
of development as seen inductively from the standpoint of science.
It is the science of embryology, as related to man, that is of
special interest as bearing upon development, as a theory, linking
man in his physical form with all the lower living creatures. Here
the beginning is the germ cell in the womb ; the development
appears to follow the order of nature ; type after type seems
to follow in quick succession ; and thus it is suggested that the
line of heredity may be traced; and, what took millenniums of
years in nature is shortened into a brief nine months in the man-
child in the womb. The thought here seems to take this shape ;
there existed an ideal form of man as a germ seed ; it was con
ceived and developed in due order ; the fruition of that seed has
been made manifest ; the seed has borne seed, and the ideal
and the babe are the corresponding seeds of life. The cycle
of life has completed its order of development ; thus what men
have to look for in the Kingdom of God is not a repetition of the
life of the physical organic, it is an order of a higher nature ; and
it is an order built upon, and also within the physical. It has
to be continually remembered in this study that this realm of
thought, though it has been developed from, or through, the
physical, is not physical or material, it is intellectual, scientific,
ideal, and the correspondence is with a pre-existing ideal rather
than with the ever-changing forms. It may seem strange to
make the assertion that betwixt the arch-type ideal, and the ideal
of philosophy and science, there is no permanence ; the permanent
is Life, order and law ; and all the changes, phenomena, the vicis
situdes in the history of life, even including what are conceived
as fixed types, are in reality development forms. It must be
difficult for those who have not outgrown experience and empiri
cism to apprehend what all this means ; but if principles are not

LIFE, ORGANISM AND DEVELOPMENT. 59
cognizable by the intellect as to their being, and there is no per
manent resting place for reasoned scientific thought short of
order and law, then the result must be as stated. Of all revolu
tions in the world surely none more strange than this, that
Being is a problem for faith not for reason ; that order is only
the harmonious result of scientific reasoning ; and that law is
the verified conclusions reached deductively from that which
is of faith and intuitive. The embryologist has given to man a
wonderful vision ; it may well be conceived as one of the greatest
seen by science ; but marvellous as it is in both macrocosm and
microcosm, this conception as to ideals transcends and trans
figures the physical, because it becomes spiritual by leading men
back to God, as Life Cause, and it keeps them, as humble, faithful,
obedient suppUants at His footstool, because there is no true
good beyond that of order and law, and law as thus conceived
is the Will of God.
FoUowing this order of thought in the light of the science of
anatomy it will be found that this science also testifies to the law
of development ; to the cellular theory of all organisms, and
thus backward from organic forms to cell life of varied forms ;
and by biology back to the one germ-cell in which the Hfe of the
child begins. The simplest form of life is the protoplasmic
cell with the living nucleus. The story of development is that
of differences, of complexity, of heterogeneity ; thus cells seem
to change their form and nature ; they produce muscle tissue,
serous and mucous membranes, secretory and excretory glands,
blood, nerves, bone, skin and hair. From the unity in the germ-
cell there arises all these diversities of form ; the blood is the
medium of interchange and nutrition, thus though there are
many organs there is only one body ; and this is true of any and
every organised body at any stage of development. In this way
it may be said that anatomy is in harmony with embryology and
biology ; comparative anatomy begins with organic structures,
and in a sense it is both analytic and synthetic, inductive and
deductive ; it takes to pieces all organised bodies, thus dividing
them into their constituent parts ; and it also compares all kinds
of organs from the cell to man, and in the reverse order it places
in order all types of life from the highest to the lowest. It may
be that morphology, the science of forms, has specially to deal
with this subject, but it may here be considered that morphology
is"a branch of the greater science of anatomy.

60 LIFE, ORGANISM AND DEVELOPMENT.
The suggestions made thus far are that biology as a science
has to do with life as a whole, but specially as found in nature
and traced by the law of development ; embryology is limited
to the individual creature in its embryonic state ; whilst anatomy
may be conceived as studying the organic forms produced by
life, in their tissues, forms, typical relations, and as related to
their development ; and in the latter, in all the diversities of
forms that arise out of the unity of life. With the science of
physiology the problems that arise are different ; there is no ques
tion as to the origin of the organs, or their physical relations as
to form, it is that of function, how the organs are nourished
and in what way they work, or co-operate, for the commonweal
of the body. The function of muscle is that of motion by con
tractile tissues ; of serous and mucous membranes, secretion of
serum and mucous ; of secretory glands such as the liver, the
secretion of gall to aid digestion ; of excretory organs the removal
of what is waste, as urea by the kidneys ; the blood is the current
of life for nutrition ; the bones give form and stability ; the
nerves supply nerve power for motion, volition and thought ;
and the skin and hair protect the organs and temper nerve sen
sations. In a very limited sense, the physiological functions of
a single cell are similar to those of the most complex organised
bodies ; there is absorption of food, assimilation, chemical changes,
nutrition, and the purging out of what is waste. In the highest
organised bodies there is a similar simplicity in these processes ;
but there is great complexity in the organs and in their different
functions. Thus food is received in the mouth, it is masticated
and saturated with saliva. When swallowed it enters the stom
ach and is there mixed with the gastric juice from the lining of
the stomach. Digestion takes place, and as the mass is reduced
to a fine pulp it is allowed to pass the pylorus valve in the stomach
and enters the first bowel or duodenum. Here the bile, from
liver and gall bladder, is poured out upon the mass digesting,
and there are further chemical changes ; the food passes down
into the long bowel and there it is further assimilated to what
will nourish the body ; this assimilated food is absorbed by
lacteal glands, carried away into the veins, to the heart and the
lungs ; the blood is aerated by oxygen and purified, and through
the arterial blood vessels it is carried out to every part of the
body for its nourishment. Where the arteries terminate the
veins begin, and the blood that has been used, and rendered

LIFE, ORGANISM AND DEVELOPMENT. 6]
impure, returns to the heart and to the lungs to be purified and
re-charged with what will nourish the body. This is the briefest
sketch of what is meant by physiology, as dealing with the bodily
organs, their functions and their work ; the organs are in a true
sense united as a commonweal ; and it is in the unity and the
harmony of their operations that health is found. It is a wonder
ful thought to contemplate that all the organs of the human body
develop out of one cell ; that all the structures are cellular ; and
thus the whole body is an aggregation of living cells differentiated
for the definite functions they have to carry out.
It is worthy of special notice that the whole order of develop
ment in nature is from the simple to the complex ; from the one
principle to the many relations of that principle in its mani
festations as in one realm ; then there is the adding of a new
principle, simple in its origin, and the renewed development
of this principle from the simple to the complex, the result being
a double complex unity and diversity in that duplex world in
which the two principles seem inextricably commingled. This
is the truth in the physical world where Force and Life unite and
blend together ; it is the same with Spirit and Mind, or Soul,
in the psychical world, and the same order is followed in the
intellectual and moral world. The point to be specially noticed
is that if this order is observed there is a wonderful simplicity
in the order of development in nature ; but if this is not under
stood the complexity becomes mazelike and there is no apparent
solution to the order of development in nature. If this concep
tion is followed, then the order can be traced with ease, every
new principle is a new realm of thought ; two principles form a
new world ; the physical is objective, the psychical is subjective ;
and the moral becomes universal and ideal as order and law.
These follow each other in their order of succession ; they are
supplementary and complementary ; and they are one order
of development from six apparently new beginnings. The sim-
pUcity of the order of development fits in with the compre
hensiveness of the realm, the world, and the universe ; each
realm is an addition, and to be recognised as such ; each world is
a unity with its own conjoint order and laws ; and the universal
is scientific and moral as regnant over what is psychical and
physical. It is with this synthetic conception in view that the
peculiar order of the nervous system in man requires to be studied,
because the nervous system is not general but special ; and the

62 LIFE, ORGANISM AND DEVELOPMENT,
order is that of adding system to system as the complexity of
the work of the body is increased. Here also the advance is
from the simple to the complex, from the nerve-cell with its in
going and outgoing nerve-fibres to the masses of nerve-centres
and nerves as found in the spine and brain.
The order of development takes this form : there are masses
of nerve-centres and nerves scattered throughout the body named
the ganglionic system ; that is to say they exist as separate
nerve-centres, and it is found that in the higher orders of creatures
they are allied with the arterial blood-vessels, thus wherever an
artery is found that carries nutritious blood throughout the body
there also is a ganglionic nerve fibre as the power used to propel
the blood on its outward course from the heart to the extremities.
The second system is the spinal nerves enclosed in the spinal
column, with ingoing and out-going nerves, and it is found that
these nerves are attached to the muscles of the body to bring about
a rhythmic motion of the muscles. What is specially interesting
about these two systems of nerves is that they are used for the
purpose of the nutrition and health of the body ; conjointly they
are the organic division of the nerves continually in operation,
not within the range of man's consciousness, but as nourishing
and regulating the functions of the organs of the body. They
work in automatic fashion, the nerve action on muscles being the
cause of stimulation to ganglionic nerves, these nerves acting
upon the arterial blood ; the blood being again the nourisher
of nerve centres, and the source from whence nerve force is
generated. As a merely physical organism the body is nourished,
sustained, and regulated by these two systems of nerves, as
correlated with muscular tissues and arterial circulation ; but
there must also be included in these organic operations all that is
involved in digestion and the chemical changes that take place in
the body.
Added to the organic nerves that keep the body in health there
follows in due order the nerves of sensation ; they are plentiful
throughout the body and especially upon the skin, thus when they
are touched they bring about sensation in the brain toward which
they carry impulses. The intuitive conception is that sensation
arouses the spirit to consciousness, to enquiry, and thus there
follows an out-going motion or volition by the nerves of special
sense to see, hear, taste, smell, touch and perceive by feelings of
sensation of heat, cold, and in other ways, what is brought from

LIFE, ORGANISM AND DEVELOPMENT. 63
the external world mediately by the senses into the region of
conscious images, ideas, or thoughts. It will be observed that
these two divisions of nerves fall in with what is psychical. On the
physical side of this complex world there are the organs of sensa
tion implying an awakened power that responds to sensation, the
special senses with their images, sounds, etc., etc., and, on the
other, the spirit that is sensitive, knowing, seeing, hearing, and
ideas, thoughts, etc., etc., which fit in with what is physical. The
conception here is not that there is a continuation and a trans
mutation of the physical, but that these nerves, nerve-centres,
and brain nerve tissues, are complementary and in harmony.
The nerves and nerve centres are on the physical side governed
by physical laws; the perception of sensation, images, ideas,
thoughts, etc., are on the psychical side ; and this is the new world
within man of which he knows so little, except that he knows he
knows, and that out of this knowledge there arises the soul
with all its organic life of unity and complex diversity. It is
hardly necessary to point out that this world is one in which men
find, that up to a certain stage, the lower creatures are the sharers
of the same psychical nature ; and it is by this differentiation into
principles and realms, that the line of demarcation can be found
where mankind transcends the psychical and becomes intellectual
and moral.
The third and fourth divisions of nerves, as thus explained, do
not exclude a limited amount of volitional action, for indeed this
is implied in sensation, perception, observation, and movements
of the body. The fifth division of nerves is not limited, in the
same sense, it extends to bodily motions consciously and design
edly carried out ; to such thoughts as are correlated and complex,
thus to all reasoning from visible signs, thoughts that are related,
symbols, words, and abstract signs. The sixth system, it can be
conceived, unites with the fifth to form that higher division con
ceived as the universal ; only it is not to be supposed that the nerve
organisms of cerebellum and cerebrum should have any likeness
to the universal as it is related and conditioned by the
intellect and moral nature. It may seem strange that the
nervous divisions of the body should be found to synchronise
with the physical, psychical and moral portions of man's
being, but this is what might fairly be expected, because the
whole order of development is built upon these lines, and
thus whilst every new cycle adds to and fills up the past, it

64 LIFE, ORGANISM AND DEVELOPMENT.
also proves to be prophetic as to the future ; and, as in this in
stance, conveying in the nervous organisation the visible, physical
organic forms of the spiritual, yet to be known and understood in
the light of order and law. The position that is reached here is
that, in the nervous system of man there is revealed in physical
form, as sign and symbol, the highest conceptions reached in
physics ; the grosser or lower forces are analogous with the less
developed organs of the body, thus the force of gravitation and
the whole body may be linked together ; heat as motion, with the
internal state of the body and cohesion with living organs ; the
chemical affinities as forces with digestion, assimilation, and
nutrition ; light and crystallised forms with the spirit, the special
senses and the mind ; and electricity and magnetism with the
whole nervous system and spiritual operations. It is not that
the same law operates in physical and spiritual but they follow
the same order and rhythm of movement, and thus they synchron
ise and are found to be in harmony. The conception of light, the
prism and the prismatic spectra is one analogous order, with which
scientific men are becoming familiar ; but the best known, and
what expresses the conception most clearly, is that of successive
octave sounds in music, Just as the musician, sensitive to every
sound, cannot endure what is noise or discord ; so in the order of
nature and in the being of man, the true, good, righteous, moral
man feels that the true ideal is unity and harmony, and when unity
is lost, discord, disorder and disease made manifest in any form,
then there has arisen what is not good, true, or right, and men
cannot be expected to live pleasantly in such a world, and breathe
freely such an atmosphere, It is well known that this sort of
negative feeling has existed throughout all past ages amongst
good, true, wise, thoughtful men, and the history of philosophy
and religion is that of the efforts of men to try to understand what
was wrong, and by what means things could be put right, and
harmony restored to suffering, sorrowing, mankind. The notice
able difference betwixt the past and present is to be found here.
The limitation of the intellectual power of man has been discerned ;
this is accepted as a truth not to be disputed by those who know
the facts, and that it is utterly useless to try to break down that
barrier against which the intellect will labour in vain. It is not
that the doorway leading to heaven is shut, or that the ladder of
light has been removed, thus precluding communication betwixt
earth and heaven, it is simply because the way is not open to

LIFE, ORGANISM AND DEVELOPMENT. 65
self-asserting, self-conceited, intellectual power, but it is, and has
always been, open to the humble, the meek, the weary, the sad, the
suffering, to those who love and are loved. This is the special
message of science and of philosophy at the present time ; they
are utterly wearied of former methods of enquiry, and of dogmatic
self-assertion ; thus they say, that the way upon which the light
shines is that of scientific order, that this order is divine law, that
law is the will of God, and to know this Divine order, discoverable
by science, and to live in harmony and conformity with Divine
law, this is true wisdom, and this is Divine strength and health.

CHAPTER IV.

HEALTH AND DISEASE.

If this very brief explanation has been followed and under
stood, it will be seen that the following results have been out
lined in the suggestions made as to principles and science. There
is a realm of nature sub-conscious, physical, objective, and it
is specially studied, because through it men obtain the knowledge
they possess of forms, motions, growth and development. This
is like the primer where men find their alphabet ; the class book
for students with advanced lessons, where they find all kinds
of signs, symbols, parables and allegories ; it is a series of scientific
hand books by which they are educated into true order and law ;
and, when they think that they are beginning to know what
nature is then they are astonished to find that they have been
following what is transcendental, and capable of being trans
figured. Nature has changed, or they have changed, for the
discovery is made that nature is not what it appears to be, stable
and unchanging, it is phenomena, phantasmagoria and the ever
changing. There is an abiding Principle that is unchanging,
immutable ; but this is not nature ; it is not thought upon as
supernature ; it is the indefinable ; like space it includes all phen
omena, and like eternity it endows all time. In other words
within, beyond and around nature there is the spiritual ; men
bow before this, and the Name is God. Men cannot settle down
to think of God as the Unknowable ; intuitively they know that
all the knowledge they possess is of, and from, God, through
nature as to forms and signs ; thus nature and God are not equi
valents, or co-equals ; nature is derived, dependent, mediative ;
God is Spirit, underived, independent and immediate. Men as
they develop upward from nature find that there is differentia
tion and separation; thus nature, phenomena, and the things
that change are left behind, and the issue is not man and nature

HEALTH AND DISEASE. 67
but God, man, and the laws of God ; the man has become spiritual
and thus he sees all things in God.
Out of nature, in a sense, there arises man ; but no sooner has
man arrived upon the scene than a new order begins, for there is
in man as psychical and subjective, what is not found in the
objective and the sub-conscious. The man before attaining to
consciousness has been so endowed by nature, without any effort
of his own, that he finds himself as if awakening out of a sleep ;
his body is an exquisite living machine ; he possesses that body
consciously ; he finds natural avenues to the external world by
the special senses ; and, somehow, he cannot tell how, these special
senses, the spirit in its activities, and the mind, or memory, in its
receptiveness, are in complete harmony. If the physical har
mony of phenomena in physical nature is very wonderful, then
surely far more wonderful and complex this inner psychical
world which awakens to nature, and to itself as conscious and
personal. In the initial stages of development this psychical
world is in a sense simple, it is that of experience, of conscious
experiences of many kinds as they are correlated with nature
and the soul. Where did this psychical life, conceived as con
scious experience begin ? In the womb, at birth, or in infancy ?
It is here that another of the mysteries of development calls for
attention, and so far as can be seen the exact stage cannot be
defined whea this seed of the new world is sown. The analogies
in nature and grace teach this truth that it was, as related to
time, long before the manifestation that the seed was sown ;
that it is in the third and fourth stages that the seed takes to itself
form and order ; and it is in the higher stages that there is
consciousness. This however is a very complex question, and
it does not require to be discussed. The point here is that the
spiritual within the natural becomes conscious of personal ex
periences, and this is the centre of the psychical world as con
trasted with the natural. If the objective world of physical
nature is clearly set in contra-distinction to the inward sub
jective world that is psychical, then it will be seen that the realm
of experience can be in a sense, and, in a measure, Hmited ; it is
the correlations of these two worlds, or what is of the senses
and sensuous. It is quite true that in man this world of experi
ence may include the visible signs and symbols used in education,
and in religion ; the conception being that man sees the objective
world of natural things and signs ; and he lives in the psychical
e 2

68 HEALTH AND DISEASE.
world that is in correspondence with the natural ; and, the
testimony of experience is that these two worlds agree and are
in harmony.
It would be in keeping with the law of development, and of
Revelation, if these two worlds in man were named Earth and
Heaven, and if it was conceived that all that arises out of these
worlds are the " generations of the Heavens and earth " as
symbolised in the Book of Genesis. In fact the symboHsm
may be carried back to the days of creation, and it will be found
that it is in the second day that Heaven is revealed as separate
from the chaos of waters. The second stage in creation, the
generations of Heaven and earth ; the world of nature physical,
and of man psychical, are spiritually the same Divine ideals.
It is conceived that there is development from the realm of
experience with its simple harmonies, to an empiric realm where
according to the testimony of experience and of philosophy
there has not been any harmony found. The meaning here is
not that empiricism has been a failure ; it is that men have been
reasoning upon what they knew from experience by their intel
lectual powers ; the pathway of life, from Adam the earthly,
to the present time, has been strewn with philosophies and dog
matic religions ; and, empirically they are unable to agree, and,
what is even more strange, they have not discovered why they
disagree, or what means should be used to converge their modes
of thought to one point, so that what is as a spectrum of glowing
colours will be changed into the pure light of Divine truth. It
must be taken for granted that thinkers throughout the past
ages could not, and would not be limited by experience and its
harmonies ; to them this was the child-like stage of thought,
and thus they would seek after a higher wisdom, and live in a
realm where only the enlightened would be permitted to enter.
They left the enclosed garden of experience too soon ; they would
not wait to learn the true way of development ; and thus they
have wandered in the endless maze of words and signs, with the
inability to find the Kingdom of God as spiritual law. When the
simple truth is known it is easy to see how, amidst the many
systems of thought, the tendencies have ever been to naturalism
or spiritualism, to realism or idealism, to what is objective and
what is subjective ; these are the generations of the Earth and of
Heaven ; they are the experiences of men as illuminated by the
intellect ; they have desired to be wise, to be like gods, and to

HEALTH AND DISEASE. 69
know good and evil, and they have been neither wise nor good ;
the result has been divergence and darkness, not convergence
and light. It was a fatal day for mankind when the personal
assertion was made to seek for knowledge of good and evil in the
field of experience ; it has caused many generations of bitter
experiences painful and sinful ; and there was no way found
back to the garden of innocence. Heaven had enclosed the
garden of peace in its bosom ; and the would-be wise men must
search diligently everywhere with the vague hope that beyond
the next sea, or over the next range of mountains, they would
find what their souls desired. What a strange infatuation has
this vain search after wisdom been ; men may now see that a
doom has rested upon empiricism, and all it represents, from the
beginning. It is awfully absurd, pitiful to think upon, that the
child-man should have been beguiled, or beguiled himself, by
thinking that through things beautiful to the eyes, pleasant to
the taste, and mere earthly wisdom, or knowledge, there could
possibly be spiritual development to God-likeness. The choice
was fatal because it was empiric ; it was man centred and man
developed ; thus it has been chaos and not cosmos, earth and not
Heaven, all down the ages. The parable, or allegory that very
fitly illustrates this truth is that of the Pilgrim and his experiences,
during the long night in the Valley of the Shadow of Death ; it has
been darkness all the way ; men have had to pass by the very
doorstep of hell ; they have heard the wailing cries of the lost ;
they have almost given up hope that the dawn of the new day
would ever come ; and now when they look back upon ditches,
and traps, and think upon the awful darkness, it is a very miracle
of grace that they have been preserved through such experiences.
Empiricism has developed out of experience ; it is something like
the Roman god Janus ; it has ever had two faces, one looking
backward to the past and the earthly ; the other forward to the
spiritual and the heavenly ; the past is hopeless, it is strife and
war ; thus men look to the future, to the sunrise, and for a reign
of love and peace.
There is a realm of nature that is unconscious ; a realm of
experience that awakens to consciousness ; a realm of empiricism
that would correlate and explain by wise thoughts and words
the harmony of experience and nature, so that they may be united
and harmonious as seen by that vision of human wisdom known
as philosophy and religion. The effort has not been successful,

70 HEALTH AND DISEASE.
thus it must be confessed that empiricism has failed, and disorder,
disease, evil, sin, suffering and death are regnant upon the earth.
These names, with the facts they represent, have been the subjects
studied by wise men ; and it may fairly be conceded to be true
that the greater part of their discussions and their studies have
been for the purpose of explaining the causes of such evils and
how they might be removed from this earth. Man went astray
not knowing where he was going, after being warned to keep in
the way of law ; and all down the centuries men have been rising
up, seeking to find the way of truth and righteousness, telling
one another that they had found it, and that the lights they
possessed would infallibly lead men to the City and Kingdom of
God. Men have expressed their thoughts in many ways, but
whether it has been myth or parable, allegory or philosophy,
ritual or religion, at the root the story has been the same, the one
theme has been the Deliverer and those delivered ; the way to the
City and the Kingdom of God here, or hereafter. Within nature,
experience and empiricism, there has been revealed another
world ; for want of a more definite name it has been called the
Kingdom of Grace that leads to the Kingdom of God ; and it
deserves special attention, because it is like the other realms of
God, in principle, in order of development, and in law. The
strange thing about this Kingdom is that it has been among men
from the beginning of their erring ways ; and that it has consist
ently and persistently maintained that it has existed for the very
purpose of restoring and guiding men in the right way. It is
just as strange, or more so, that erring men would not believe
those who conveyed to them such information ; they would have
it that the earthly, the beautiful, the pleasant, and. the wisdom
of the wise, were quite sufficient, superior in every way, to what
could be sent from Heaven ; and thus, the still stranger result
took place that the earthly despised, hated, rejected, and put to
death those who were heavenly ; and this story is really the true
history of mankind in past centuries. It is related in the sacred
record that Heavenly Truth became Incarnate, as the Lord of
Righteousness and of Grace ; and, wise men were so ignorant ;
religious men so irreligious and bigoted ; and ambitious, covetous
rulers so perverted from righteousness, that they actually con
demned to the cruel death of the Cross, this unique Man, their
Lord and King. This is conceived to be the high flood tide of
evil ; this deed of sin and shame is written in the annals of history

HEALTH AND DISEASE. 71
and engraven in the living hearts of men and women. This
shameful deed divides the world ; the earthly, and the worldly
wise see in it only a possible incident in history, but His friends
see in it the revelation of Divine Grace, Heaven thrown open,
and the Love of God Incarnate put to shame. They say that
the deed was diabolical, and that there is no theory possible,
that can really explain all that has taken place, except this one
that Jesus Christ is in very truth the Son of God and the Saviour
o£ the World. The generations of the Earth were revealed,
made manifest, and the end was Caiaphas and Pilate ; the genera
tions of the Heavens were made manifest and the issue was Grace,
Love, Christ, Calvary, the Grave, the Resurrection, Ascension,
and the Right Hand of Power in glory. But the strange thing
which men did not understand being that all this was carried out
in perfect order under the law of development. There was a
natural, a psychical, an intellectual and moral progression in
history ; this Tree of Life produced the Seed heavenly ; and the
Christian religion and the Christian realm, are the development
of that Seed by the Spirit. It is the method of Christ's words,
and His Kingdom in Spiritual power, that has taught men these
things ; they find themselves out of harmony with all empiricists
and their conceptions ; and thus they are awakening to the fact
that the Kingdom of God is also the Kingdom of Christ, and that
by His Grace men can enter therein and be saved.
Here the conception of being saved takes a new form ; it tran
scends experience, and it waives empiricism aside, whether it
comes in earthly form as philosophy, natural wisdom, or as
decked in the regal robes of theology and dogma. The spectrum
is good in its place, but it is a revelation of divergence not, of con
vergence ; it speaks of refraction, not of straight lines. As
with the solar spectrum so with empiricism ; it is a record
of divergences from truth and righteousness ; thus what
men require is that they find the straight way of life and
that they may be guided by the Spirit of Truth. The
world of experience is not an isolated realm cut off from
heavenly Hght and influences, as some men would suggest ;
indeed the doorway of intuition, of spiritual being, opens into it ;
it is through that door that heavenly light comes ; and it is upon
the ladder of light, surrounded by the darkness, that the heavenly
messengers come and go on their messages of mercy and love.
It would appear that this kingdom of grace is like the other

72 HEALTH AND DISEASE.
realms of Divine truth in this respect ; it can be conceived of as
beginning with a first principle or ultimate of thought ; it reveals
related ultimates ; and. it is a realm subject to scientific order
and law. It is therefore important to discover what this king
dom means and what is its function or use in the kingdom of
God. Upon this point there ought not to be any dubiety, because
the revelation is made very plain that the object of the King,
and of His kingdom of grace, is to seek for and to save the lost.
This lost state is not the unconscious physical world ; it is the
spirit and the spiritual, the psychical and the moral, that have
gone astray. This being the case the revelation is not to the
natural and the physical, it is to the psychic and the moral,
and thus from beginning to end it is to be conceived that
the realm is psychical, that is to men with experience, to those in
thraldom to empiricism, and to raise the fallen to the region
of the spiritual, where the Divine and the human may con
verse about the spiritual and the heavenly. As suggested, the
key to the heavenly is not to be found in empiricism ; rather it
is in the world of experience, of spirit and of will. Thus it gets the
name of faith, because it trusts the Word of God, and by that
trust the soul obtains a new series of experiences, which are not
obtainable by empiricism through logical reasoning. If men
would know the order of this kingdom of grace, then they must
begin where God is waiting to begin with them ; in the words of
Scripture, they have to be born again, get a new heart, and a
right spirit, and from this beginning, by regeneration and renewal,
the advance is made in knowledge and in experiences of this
Divine kingdom.
There are many satisfactory reasons given why the develop
ment of grace has been so slow, and why those who are being
developed do not understand the order of the Kingdom in which
they live. This reason is very important ; the children of light
are living in the realm of darkness ; they are not consciously,
and intelligently, carrying on the great struggle betwixt good
and evil ; it is Christ the Saviour that undertakes this great
work for men ; and it is the Holy Spirit that carries on His work
of grace in them. The problem here is not one of mere empiri
cism and human reasoning ; it is the indisputable fact that as in
all the )ther realms in the kingdom of God, the seed is of God
and the order and law are His in the fullest sense. It would be
just as reasonable to suppose that by the physical laws of force

HEALTH AND DISEASE. 73
and life man could produce his physical body, as to suppose that
he could regenerate or renew his spiritual being ; this, however,
does not shut out the conception that at a certain stage of develop
ment, and when there is the consciousness of God and His will,
man becomes a co-worker with God, and with less or more know
ledge of the Divine will lives in harmony with the Divine law
and order. This it will be seen is a very different thing from a
man saving and renewing himself ; what he does is similar to that
which can be seen in a child ; it lives physically by physical laws
over which it has no control ; psychically the child lives it knows
not how ; and in this matter all men are as little children, and their
safety and strength lie in the observance of order and obedience
to law. It took a dispensation of grace to rescue men from
the domination of the natural, the earthly ; it took another dis
pensation to deliver them from worldly power and fleshly
psychical lusts ; again, another dispensation of grace, allied with
special suffering and special training, was required to provide a
suitable protoplasmic cell for the Divine seed of spiritual life ;
and it was only then that the conflict became personal, and
truly conscious, when the Deliverer, mighty to save, conquered
the enemy by a power that he despised and did not understand.
It was not in the physical, the psychical, and the empirical that
the spiritual foundations of the kingdom were laid ; it was in the
seed that lives and cannot die ; and the spiritual in Christianity
is the development of that seed in mankind under the Divine
guidance of the Spirit. This was another new beginning ; the
development has been going on for nineteen centuries, and it is
only now that men are becoming conscious of all that these things
mean. If the line of thought followed is understood, then it will not be
so difficult to understand why the kingdom of grace is rooted
in experience and faith, and not in the realm of empiricism ; it is
in this realm that the great conflict is carried on ; it is that of war
and of battle, and thus the horsemen and footmen know not
how the struggle goes. This is not a soldiers' campaign ; it is one
of spiritual powers, and only the Captain of Salvation is really
cognisant of the whole war and of the whole field of contest,
as the struggle has been developed. The issues begin to be known ;
there is a lull in the fierce struggle, and the report has gone abroad
that the King, Faithful and True, will ere long appear upon the
scene riding upon His favourite white horse, named Peace. It

74 HEALTH AND DISEASE.
is more easy to express these thoughts in parable and allegory
than in scientific language : the reason being that the science of
the kingdom of grace is not as yet transfigured into suitable
words ; and thus symbol and metaphor are called into use to
pave the way for the higher order that must soon come. The
point reached may be expressed in this form': men perceive that
the Divine order of creation, and of the re-creation of man, is
by principles as explained : that linked with each principle, and
arising out of it, there is the realm of scientific order and law ;
that these principles, though conceived as individual, unite two
by two to form worlds, the physical, psychical, and moral ; that
at this stage there is a break, a fall, and then there is revealed
two more principles for the regeneration of man, these being
conceived as grace and suffering, or sacrifice ; and it is by these,
as a definite world of science, that the redemption of mankind
is being attained. It is not considered that when the whole
order of development is known, and all the sciences are correlated,
that there will be any break in the Divine order ; the monistic
theory will be made manifest from a new standpoint ; it will be
seen that the true monistic order is spiritual, and that only
through the spiritual can the interpretation come. In the past
there has been much discussion upon the problem of special
intervention of the Divine into the order of Nature ; the question
for the future is not the Divine intervention, in any sense, all
this being met by the Divine immanence. Rather it will be the
intervention of evil, of sin, and in what way these have been
made manifest in creation. It is disorder, disease, pain,
suffering, and sorrow, that have to be studied as intruders
into the Divine universe, and how these are to be eliminated out
of what is true, good, and right, of what is law and order, as the
good and gracious will of God.
The position that is here reached is one full of interest, and it
takes men back to the realm of conscious experience. To a large
extent it sets aside all philosophies and religious systems of
thought, simply recognising that they exist, and that they have
played their part in history. They are all known to be the re
fracted rays of Divine truth ; but in the forms they are cast they
are useless for the upbuilding of the Temple and City of God. That
this will be a very humbling confession to make on the part of
earthly wisdom must be accepted ; but, so far as can be seen,
this is the truth and it has to be recognised. This new

HEALTH AND DISEASE. 75
movement does not begin with Darwin, Newton, or Copernicus, it
must be traced back to Christ ; and the intervening centuries
will reveal the development of His Kingdom of Grace by analogy
as physically and naturally in the Roman Empire ; as psychically
in the Christian empires of West and East ; as intellectually and
morally in Renaissance and Reformation, and the later move
ments, Evangelical and Missionary, bring men into the atmos
phere of the realm of Grace by the Spirit in a special sense, as
preparing the way for the coming of the King in the glory of grace,,
truth, and righteousness, and in the majesty of science as Divine
Order -and Law. . This is where men are being consciously
awakened to the true message of science as the servant of the
King ; this is a unique Elijah and John Baptist ; and the
utterances of science are truly in the line of succession of these
prophets. The utterances of science are Divine ; and it cannot
be questioned that their appeals are ever to law and righteousness ;,
to the spiritual and the eternal, as in contrast with empiricism
in all its forms. Enoch, Elijah, John the Baptist, and Science,
these are the great forerunners and prophets of the four great
dispensations, and they all utter the same message of judgment
on the past, and of the near advent of a new era. It may be
assumed that the prophetic utterances of science begin with
Copernicus and the new astronomy, followed by physics as illus
trated by Newton, the motions of the heavenly bodies, and that
unique revelation of God in the solar spectrum. In succession
there has followed rapidly the chemical sciences, the sciences of
physical life, psychology, the ethical sciences, and a science-
of the realm of Grace, as this can be traced in the Sacred Scrip
tures by the Method of Christ. It is the voice of this messenger,
as forerunner and prophet, that men have been listening to during
the brief past two or three centuries. The messenger has at last
begun to conceive the full importance of his message ; it is that of
outraged law and of repentance truly, but, above all, it is that the
King is near, very near, even in the midst ; and, strange analogy,.
the servant knows not his Lord and Master. He is waiting to.
see the heavens thrown open, the descent of the Dove of Peace
upon Him, and then the Voice will say : " This is my beloved
Son, in whom I am well pleased " ; and, " Behold the Lamb of
God which taketh away the Sin of the World."
In all these past experiences of men as recorded in the Scrip
tures, there is likeness and difference ; the surroundings change..

76 HEALTH AND DISEASE.
but the messages are ever delivered to men with the same clear
note of condemnation of evil, of repentance, and of obedience
to law as the Will of God. This modern prophet, as a lover of
truth and righteousness, utters the old message in a new form ;
the old world, Israel and Judea, have vanished out of sight ;
the limited conceptions as by nations, and forms of religion, are
passing away ; and the new prophet speaks to all nations and
peoples, and the message is the same to all. What then is this
special message as revealed to men by science % It is that of
Divine order and law in all realms of thought ; it is that order
and law in the physical, psychical, moral and spiritual, worlds, are
good, true, right and gracious ; that men may know this Divine
order and obey law as the Will of God ; and that by this knowledge
and obedience men will know the good and true, and be righteous
and gracious in the sight of God. It is this conception of order
and law that transfigures men's conceptions as known in the
past ; they asked for bread and the devil gave them stones to
eat ; and having beguiled them he mocked them by asking them
to turn stones into bread. He would have been greatly pleased
to have seen this miracle carried out by his subtle suggestion ;
the miracle is not in changing bread into stones, or stones into
bread, it is in men living upon the Word of God, the true Bread
that came down from heaven, who brought heaven to earth, in
His Heart, and gave Himself as living Bread for the sustenance
of men that they might live and not die. Order and law, as thus
¦conceived by science, are of immense spiritual significance ; the
sciences stand shoulder to shoulder as a phalanx that cannot be
broken ; and they mean to close the square and eliminate from
their midst, disorder, disease, and all that tends to degrade men.
In this figure of thought, science as foursquare, there is in
troduced the conception that man as physical, psychical and
moral, was not perfect, as spiritual ; one side of the square was
left open and thus the exposure to the wiles of the devil. It
was the completion of this square that was left for man ; and it
was only by this work that he could become impregnable against
the assaults of evil. This is the mystery of manhood ; and it
is here that the mystery of the Divine and human meet. The
conception takes this form ; physically man is endowed by the
Almighty Power, and this power is possessed as the bulwark
against brute force ; psychically man is endowed with wisdom
and this power is set against what is cunning and subtle ; intel-

HEALTH AND DISEASE. 7T
lectually and morally man is made true and good, so that he
might be true and righteous, and thus on three sides he had satis
factory defences against the enemy. Why was man left unen
dowed and defenceless upon the fourth side, the spiritual ?
Why was he not created fully endowed with Divine wisdom ?
Is it not just here that men fail to sec how foolish and unreason
able they are in their conceptions and in their arguments 1 It
is this fourth side that is the inheritance of manhood that is to
be won by man ; it is where the Divine and human are differen
tiated ; it is where man has to prove his manhood, to work out his
own destiny ; and the way this is to be done is by conformity to
order, and by obedience to law. If, some men argue, God is
Almighty in Power, Allwise, and All Good, then surely He could
have made man in His Own Image, in God likeness. To all this
science repHes that the reasoning is true and right ; and more,
that all this is exactly what science proves that God did for man,
by order and law. What foolish men are not willing to see is
that man, a s creature, in the image of God, lacked what is specially
his own, what he had to acquire, and what he had to place in order
in his being ; he had to acquire science and divine wisdom,
and these form the fourth side of the square in the being of man.
Here then the problem of good and evil.theDivineand the human,
is brought into the form of a square ; and what these wise ones
are required to explain is how man could become divine without
this personal teaching, education and discipline ; apart from
the trial of faith, the testing of power, wisdom, and goodness ,-
in fact, the proving by faith, and by science, those very things
that science is now revealing to men. Upon this point theolo
gians and sentimentalists may differ in their conceptions ; but it.
may fairly be claimed for science, that it will assert that there is,
no other way, that science can discover, how this Divine end can
be obtained. In this matter science has not a word to say against
necessity in the order of the physical, or in the lower stages of
the psychical ; but in the intellectual and moral, in science and
Divine wisdom, man is a factor to be taken into account, and the
fact of spiritual free-will cannot be set aside. In a figure this
is the position of man ; therefore it is conceivable that the
natural development of man in harmony with order and law,
was by man, as co-worker with God, in the light of truth -and
righteousness, carrying out this work of the fourth side of the
square, and, if successful, then the question of trial, and of

78 HEALTH AND DISEASE.
pregnability would have been settled for ever. There is no doubt
this is the vulnerable point in the development of man ; it is here
that the soul, the fortress, the city, is left in the hands of man,
and the trust involves faithfulness, discretion, honour and perfect
loyalty in the one thus entrusted, with what is not his own, but a
palace and a city of the King. It is an idle dream, and foolish
for men to talk as if they were in no sense responsible for evil
or sin ; and that all the blame must be put upon God because
He did not make them differently. Men are not mere auto
matons, and they know this fact ; surely then it is full time
that such men should look at facts honestly and truly. They
have tried to shield themselves behind the bulwarks of ignorance
snd of naturalistic science ; they should understand that true
.science has no sympathy with such conceptions ; they are a
disgrace to mankind, the product of disorder and lawlessness ;
this is spiritual disease, and the end of this way is death.
But, it may be conceived, that men of experience, and those
•who love to be guided by empiricism, will say, all these assertions
as to science may prove to be incorrect, or even false ; what proof
can be given that these things are so ; and why should men be
led to believe that a day of judgment is at hand, when the sky
is cloudless and the sun is shining brightly in the heavens ?
The signs given are not physical, or psychical, they are not of
experience or empiricism, and thus it follows that those, who seek
for signs should be in a position to understand the signs given to
them. What science has to say about these matters is that
in all this there is no dubiety ; the way of discovery has been by
order and law ; the order has been discovered and the laws have
been verified, therefore it is not for the ignorant to judge this
work until they fully understand all that science means. To
scientific men it is order and harmony, not feelings and opinions ;
the books are open, they are found to agree ; and, so far as science
is concerned, there the matter stands.
There is an interesting point that arises here when this con
ception of development is brought forward into the realm of the
spiritual, and it takes this form ; assuming it to be true that
order and law are continuous, and that the development is through
the physical, psychical, moral, and spiritual as conceived by
science and wisdom, then is it to be conceived that evil and sin,
would not have found an entrance into the square, the soul, or the
city of God ; and that Grace and Sacrifice would not have been the

HEALTH AND DISEASE. 79
burden of history ? These are the alternatives ; the assumption is
that by order and law the issue would be science and wisdom ; but
with the incoming of selfishness, disorder, and la wlessness, then the
break would come, a special intervention in Grace would take
place, and that only after conflict, the manifestation of an order of
Grace and Sacrifice, would the development in the true order
be resumed, the issue being what might have been attained
by a shorter way, to the Divine thoughts of God as now understood
by science and wisdom. This intervention of God in Grace,
it will be observed, comes for a purpose and a definite end ; it
is in fact to combat and overthrow the powers of evil ; to nullify
and effectually reverse what was wrong ; to restore order where
disorder reigned ; to bring healing and ease where there had come
disease and pain ; and to overthrow death by the Life spiritual,
thus bringing light, Hfe and immortality to men in place of ignor
ance, death, and mortality. The two kingdoms, of evil and of
grace, are familiar thoughts with men, and there are very few who
deny that these two realms have an actual existence ; it may not
however be quite so clear that the one is disorder, lawlessness,
disease, death, negations and perversions, whilst the other is a
positive realm in which order is found and law reigns. Would
men be prepared to say that the hideous way that leads to anarchy
and nihilism is a miracle ? That disease in its manifold forms
is a miracle ? Or that lunacy and death are in any sense miracu
lous ? These, and many other deadly results flow from selfish
ness, self-indulgence, and self-assertion. Are they then to be
considered as parts of the Works of God ; or, are they the fatal
consequences of that dishonourable carelessness, self-seeking
and treachery which brought about the destruction of the three
sides of the square with which man was at first endowed ? Men
do not speak about such conditions as miracles, they give them
suitable names, and thus, as a rule, men know what they arc
talking about when they discuss such subjects. On the other
hand, the realm of Grace, introduced into this world to overthrow
such works, is often spoken of as miraculous ; thus it is conceived
to be by miracle that Jesus healed the sick, opened the eyes of
the bHnd, restored the power of hearing, or of speech, and raised
the dead. If such evils as these, which He remedied, came through
sin, then were not these the very signs men required to teach
the'm that the One possessing such powers came to them as with
special credentials to prove His claim to be the Saviour of men

80 HEALTH AND DISEASE.
from evil ? The point to be observed here is not that of Christ
as a miracle worker ; it is that the works are signs, to those who
can understand them ; that this new realm is Divine, working as by
order and law, with this express end in view, the overthrow of
the evil powers, and the destruction of what had become a per
version of goodness, truth and righteousness. John the Baptist
was not a healer, a miracle worker ; this power he did not possess ;
his mission was that of a witness, a forerunner and prophet,
to teach truth and to call men to repentance and a righteous
life. Even thus men may think of science ; it is a truth-seeker,
a testifier to the way of order and law. It is the Christ that
possesses all power, and wisdom ; and He will bring about that
restoration of all things which will end in the Manifestation of
the Kingdom of- God upon the earth.
The remarks that have been made all tend in this direction
to prove that health is normal and natural, it is order and law,
a Divine ideal, and a standard of thought, which men set up for
their study and guidance. It is not the physical only that in
its harmony of order constitutes health ; the psychical and the
moral are also implicated, and the truth may well be found to
lie in this direction, that the psychical and the moral are of chief
importance in the true definition of health. Let it be assumed
that the physical body is organically sound, and the functions
of the organs all that could be desired ; this would amount to physi
cal health. So far as can be seen, organs might change and be
come disorganised, but this would not have any taint of moral
evil, and no sin could be attributed to what is merely physical.
When it is asked whether evil and sin can be applied to the
psychical world, then the answer is not so easily given, the psy
chical is a very wide field, by development rising to what is con
ceived as the soul of man, to consciousness, conscience, intuition,
experience, empiricism, and even the highway to science and
Divine wisdom. When limiting the psychical to the lower crea
tures, men do not impute to them evil or sin ; they form a part
of nature ; they have their places in the order of development ;
and it may well be supposed that men do not know enough
about the psychical world to give an answer to such a complex
problem as that of good and evil, pleasure and pain, and to the
meaning that is to be applied to the differences found betwixt the
lion and the lamb, and many other creatures so widely diverse
in their forms, passions, desires, emotions and affections. It

HEALTH AND DISEASE. 81
is when the soul of man developes to be enlightened by intellectual
truth and moral law that abstract questions arise ; then these
are not psychic only, they become subjects of experience and of
empiric thought, of good and evil, of right and wrong. The
health of the physical is one realm as unconscious and non-moral
in itself ; the health of the psychical may become conscious, it
may develop to the moral, and then health means, to the moral
man, conformity to order, and obedience to moral law. The
physical is known to be order and law ; the psychical also is
order and law, developing to consciousness ; and when the moral
stage is reached, man being endowed with power to know truth,
and to do right, or wrong, then it is the man within that is set
over the temple and soul to order the life in harmony with the
Divine will, the laws of God. In these three worlds the order
and law take different forms ; in the physical, order and law are
unconscious, thus necessity reigns and there is neither good nor
evil. In the psychical the order and law are derived from the
unconscious through the senses ; it is from the unconscious that
forms, images, ideals, and thoughts are derived, and conscious
ness is awakened to what is order and law as experience. In
the moral realm the unconscious and the semi-conscious come
into the light of truth, of order and law, and thus man is prepared
for manhood and its duties, and all these ought to be carried
out in the light of knowledge, and in obedience to Divine law.
What man sees, in the light of experience and empiricism, as he
looks out upon Nature, is a chaos ; what he sees when he looks
within is a chaos of a similar kind ; the mirror of Nature is in
correspondence with the image in the man, and apparently there
is no discoverable order and law. The three sides of the square
have been broken down ; the Goths and Vandals of barbarism
have destroyed the old civilisation, and thus man and Nature
are upon the same low level ; the Divine image is lost and man
and Nature seem to be ruins. The analogy of Greece, Rome and
Judea, the old world, is an illustration of this truth ; they were
as the three sides of a civilised developed order of manhood ;
the wild nature of the East, the Goth and the Vandal, broke iii
upon what seemed strong, wise, and good ; the floods came,
the square with three living sides, the city, and kingdom, were
reduced to ruins. The flood of judgments came, and when
consciousness returned to the men of the new age, Judea was in
ruins, despised and trodden under foot of men ; the wisdom of
F

82 HEALTH AND DISEASE.
Greece was dead and buried ; and only the shadow of the power
of Rome remained, and that had become the inheritance of the
despised savages from the East and West. This is the testimony
of history to the same series of truths ; and it may prove a
profitable study for grave historians thus to consider history
from the standpoint of the three sides of a square ; a city unpro
tected on one side ; and a kingdom open to the attacks from
without, when that mystic power, the Shielding Hand of God, is
withdrawn and the enemy is permitted to attack and destroy,
even what has been thought to be the Jerusalem and the Mount
Zion of the heavenly King. But, indeed, this line of thought
seems to run out in many directions ; for example, if Greece
is taken with her ideals of the beautiful, the true and the good,
this is seen to be the repetition of the three sides of the square
in the sensuous forms of nature, in truth as seeking after order,
and in goodness as the expression of what is moral ; the fourth
side of the square is an ideal barely conceived by the mass of
Greeks ; they were too sensuous for this, and yet it may be dis
cerned as being sought after as an ideal in Socrates, Plato, in the
mysteries, and in religion. What was the result ; the good and
the true were overthrown by naturalism, and thus Greek arts,
philosophy, ethics, and religion were laid in the dust ; the Greeks
did not seek to build up that fourth side of the square, and the
result was disaster. If the same thought is applied to Rome,
and to the Roman ideals of legal power, order in the family and
State, and to law, as the three sides of the square for this people,
the result is the same. This Roman ideal, though dashed to
pieces, still fascinates men ; they would still build like Rome
and by the same means conquer the world. The vision was
destroyed, and what men see is mere imitation work, recrudes
cence. Nemesis came, power destroyed power ; new forms and
order replaced what was Roman ; and the ethics or morals of
Rome were trodden under foot by the barbarians who were truly
more righteous in their moral life. The Romans failed to see that
a fourth side was required for their defence, and thus to them
also came the day of judgment and of destruction. If this test
is applied to the Jewish nation, the terms used by them may differ,
but the facts are the same for the beautiful, and power, there is
substituted a false ideal of the invulnerable in the name Jehovah.
the Almighty; in revealed truth by prophets ; and in a righteous
ness in some sense attained by ceremonial and moral law. The

HEALTH AND DISEASE. 83
ideals are not to be despised ; what is to be condemned is that
they did not live up to their ideals any more than the Greeks
and Romans ; they had actually been weaving up in the drama
of their own history a conception of that ideal fourth side of the
square ; they possessed a city of God and a nation wherein
dwelt righteousness ; but the failure was most disastrous, and
the fall of the visible Zion, and the nation of the Jews scattered
abroad on the face of the earth, is the answer of history to the
problem as to how the Jews failed to build up that fourth side
of the square, which was to them a brighter and truer vision
than to any other nation upon the face of the earth. But can
it be said that the ideal of the square is applicable to Christian
nations ? Is it possible that here also another cycle has run its
course, and the day for judging, or of judgment, has come upon
the Christian kingdom, and what it represents ? What is the
ideal in the Christian realm, and what are the three sides of the
square with which Christians have been endowed ? At the
foundation there lies Christ, and the Sermon on the Mount, re
vealing the impregnable and the indestructible power of Divine
Grace ; the order of the Kingdom is to be found in the Bible as
the truth of God for the guidance of men, and personal examples
are given, in Christ, and in His followers ; it must follow that
the laws of the Kingdom verify the order ; and the laws are just
what the lives of Christians ought to express in their walk and
conversation in the duties of life. As for the ideal found in the
Bible men are free to judge what it reveals ; it is the Church
and theology that claim to give expression to the order as dis
cerned by theologians ; and it is society and the State that
give outward expression to the life. The three sides of th e square
with which Christians were endowed are to be found in the Bible ;
and in Christ, Paul, and the Apostolic Church, as specially re
vealed in the Acts and Epistles, there is represented the ideal
in free, unfettered, spiritual religion. What then is the result
as proved by history ? The anti-Christ in earthly popes, princes
and prelates ; the perverted order of truth in Church and theo-
ldgy ; and, secularism, ambition and imitation of the Empire of
Rome in the State. The spiritual is fair and beautiful ; but,
the perverted, the earthly development, has been not only corrupt
and vicious, it has been judged and condemned. The natural
has once more re-asserted its right to destroy what is false, vicious,
and unrighteous, and thus what men might have seen for the past
f2

84 HEALTH AND DISEASE.
fifty years or more, had they possessed the spiritual vision, was
the doom upon the work of men ; the overthrow of their great
thoughts ; their mighty empires which they have built ; and
naturalism, potent and regnant, where the Christ should reign
in His Kingdom of Peace, Truth, Righteousness and Grace. It
was given to Christians to inherit this three sides of the square,
this city of God, and this kingdom of righteousness ; they have
utterly failed to conceive what is the great truth involved in the
fourth side of the square ; and those named mystics, who have
had a glimpse of the vision, have been despised as dreamers,
impractical visionaries, who did not understand, and could not
prize that Kingdom of God as possessed by men. The vision is a
strange one ; it is worthy of careful study, for men now look not
upon a spiritual city of God, but upon ruins. If Christian men
had the spiritual sense they would see in vision the triumphant
Titus, their temple in ruins, the city walls broken down and the
children of God led away into captivity. Strange analogy, the
poor Jew so despised that he was not worth money in the market
place ; and now poor Christianity, laden with its fetters, is seen
to be in captivity to the flesh and the devil, unable to lift its
head among men, a scorn and a by-word to agnostic infidels. It
is this vision and reality of the fourth side of the square that men
require to study and understand ; without this there is no hope
for mankind, no true development and no safety. They have
had many visions of the glorious kingdom of man, but the ever
recurring end has been another fall, and slavery to Egypt, to
the Philistines, to Chaldea, to Rome ; and it is because this latest
doom of j udgment has come, under intellectual and spiritual f ormr ,
that they seem to fail to see and understand how grievous the
punishment has been ; and how much greater the sins that have
brought upon Christians such an overthrow of the spiritual, and
a victory of the intellectual and natural. It may not be out of
place to suggest here that such results throughout history mean
degradation to those who, in this way, fall from the vantaged
position they were privileged to occupy ; this is the record of
history, and as men well know there has not been any revival of
Egypt, of Nineveh and Babylon, of Greece and Rome. True, the
Jews survive, but not as a nation, they are scattered among the
nations, and they carry with them, wherever they go, the brand
of suffering and of sorrow. If their judgment brings degradation
and defencelessness, what, it may be asked, will be the doom

HEALTH AND DISEASE. 85
of Christian nations if there is no repentance, and no return to
the God of Grace and Mercy 1 Here again it would seem comes
in the analogy of the residue of those who cherish the God-given
endowments represented by the three sides of the square ; it is
through them that salvation will come ; and by them Christ will
come in His glory to establish His Kingdom of truth and righteous
ness, and from that new starting point men will begin to build
the fourth side of the square in science and in Divine wisdom.
If these conceptions are understood, then it is not difficult to
see -that the questions of health and disease, order and disorder.
are far from being simple ; if the line of thought is the physical
one, then the one side of the square is found vulnerable at every
point, there is no abiding defence ; the great mass of nature can
attack life at every point and the end may be that the organic
will be swallowed up by the inorganic. Even though life is
higher than force in its order, it is found enveloped in, and en
vironed around by, the inorganic ; this blind power, unconscious
of its operations, may become the enemy of life and bring about
the destruction of organic forms. It is here that Darwin dis
cerned " that residue of the Spirit " which he named " the
survival of the fittest; " and each surviving type in the develop
ment of the realm of physical life is an illustration of this spiritual
truth revealed in the Bible. It is the fitness to survive that is
the reason of survival ; and this means that vigour in order
and law, conformity to the living and the developing, is continually
bestowed upon what is fittest to live. When the psychical line
is added to the physical, it is clear that the problem of the living
is very much increased ; there is the development in a new form
of endowment, of an inward instinctive traditional and intuitive
kind, and this line is to exist within, and in harmony with, the
line physical. The root concepts or ultimates of this line are
Spirit and Mind, or Soul ; the former being like to Force and its
order, and the latter conformed to life organic. It is not easy
at the first glance to trace these likenesses, but that they do
exist is discernible ; the first and third of the series, Force and
Spirit, are engaged with order, whilst the second and fourth
become organic, and the harmonies are those of life.
The Spirit, as already suggested, is the power that knows,
that perceives by sensation and the special senses, that is active
in cognising the appetites, desires, affections, and emotions,
that is known in action as will, and that compares, relates,

86 HEALTH AND DISEASE.
correlates, and decides, or judges, as to actions. The spirit and
the spiritual, the soul, in this sense, are central in man ; they
are the pivot upon which all that is spiritual revolves ; they
take possession of the physical, and the physical becomes
the mechanical servant of the spiritual. What the spirit is cannot
be known as spirit ; it is one power derived from the One Spirit ;
it is in the manifestation of the spirit that differentiations take
place, and these may be conceived as knowing, willing, choosing,
and doing. The conjoint power, the mind, is receptive, and all
the functions of organic life as forms of thought may be applied
to this psychical organic life that exists within the body. It
may be said to receive images and ideas, assimilate and digest
them, absorb and circulate them, turn them into an organised
memory with all its associations, and thus the psychical life is
formed in the likeness of the physical. It might be conceived
that the psychical is the involved physical ; but the conception
will not satisfy the intellect, because the conditions are different,
and the realities or facts cannot be placed in the same class.
That which is involved is new ; it is a realm within the physical ;
it is that of thought-life in contra-distinction to physical life.
The science of psychology, on the physical side, has to a large
extent traced the relations of the physical with the psychical ;
but, so far, no explanation has been found that identifies thought
with physical organs, or gives satisfactory proofs that thought
is the secretion of nerve centres.
Here it is necessary to fall back upon the teaching of nature,
and if possible try to follow the order that has been made manifest
upon the earth. It is quite true that the physical life only will
not carry the order beyond the physical realm ; but it is question
able whether that realm has been fully explored, and if the types
it represents have been understood. At present it may be
sufficient to think upon a tree and its cycle of life from seed to
fruit, in the line of analogy, and to try to follow the stages in the
development of the life of the tree. There is the seed from whence
the tree is developed ; and, as a matter of fact, it may be assumed
that naturalists would admit that such a seed, in some sense,
contains within itself a record of the story of its development ;
it is no haphazard thing, it is actually the historic fulfilment
of ages, and there is within it type upon type of what has been
made manifest in nature. The conception that this seed is an
original seed, apart from all other seeds, as the Divine creation

HEALTH AND DISEASE. 87
by fiat is not acceptable to naturalists ; they have seen a more
wonderful vision of creation, and yet the child-like knowledge
gained from experience is not to be despised, and it ought not to
be considered to be contrary to science and development. It
is life that men are studying in its manifestations, and thus they
ought to study it where it is made manifest, and not in the con
ceptions of men. The long long vista of life backward is like
one great avenue, and the students may begin their studies at
either end ; from the germ to the man, or from man back to the
germ. What is necessary to remember here is that the student
is a man, a spiritual being, and it is only as such that he is capable
of walking in spirit and in truth, through this avenue, setting
the whole in order as one development from beginning to end.
Let it be assumed that the student has advanced from the germ
of life to the vine, the fig-tree, or any other kind of tree ; he turns
round to gaze upon the development that has taken place and
the many types of life that lie behind, and, knowing their history,
what would the line of his thoughts be in this study of the past ?
The order and law of development can be seen at a glance ;
and, physically, in the vine, fig, and fruit trees, the beautiful,
the true, and the good can be seen and appreciated. The fruit
tree has yielded its fruit ; the seed is embedded in the fleshy
heart of the fruit ; and that seed is not a connecting link with
the past merely, there is in it as in an embryo all the past. This
is a vision of the physical, but it is not a physical vision ; it is
purely spiritual and intellectual, for the physical is known to
be a series of developing changes, phenomena that do not abide ;
and yet they seem to have a form of abiding in the types that
arise and remain for ages. Back behind all this phenomena of
life there lies the germ-cell with its nucleus, protoplasm, and
enveloping membrane, and somehow the conception arises that
the first germ-cell had in it the apple-tree ; and the seed of the
apple had in it all the intervening types m *ne Past. The student,
being man, studies these two aspects of one great truth ; he
utterly fails to see haphazard in the development, or in the seed ;
this is one Divine work, it is spiritual and not physical, and it
is the spiritual in it that caused the formless to take form, the
inorganic to become organic, isolated and individual, and the
Spirit caused to become all types and forms of life in the physical
world. Thus at the very heart of the organic germ-seed and in
the apple-seed, the Reality that abides is Spirit and the spiritual.

88 HEALTH AND DISEASE.
In other words, the Spirit has been operative in physical nature
to produce by the order of development things, individuals, and
persons ; the Divine, it is assumed, takes this Method of mani
festing and revealing the glory of God.
The reply of the intellectual agnostic to all this may be the
statement that no Divine intervention can be found that will
satisfy human reason ; logically the history is that of effects ;
and heredity, variation, environment, and survival of the fittest,
with other naturalistic terms, or symbol words, are sufficient to
account for the law of development in nature. The result here
seems to be that the naturalistic student groping about in the
darkness of empiric reasoning, having lost the light that Science
threw upon his pathway, and finding that a god of some kind is
required at the root of what has been evolved, he names it
Nature, or the Unknowable, but it must possess all that believers
in God ascribe to be His attributes. The opinion of the evolu
tionist seems to be that there is in Nature all that will be evolved
out of Nature ; the conception of the believer in God is that, in a
way he cannot understand, God is immanent in Nature, in Man,
and in the Bible ; and, what he desires to know is whether these
Books agree, and if they harmonise and illustrate each other.
The agnostic evolutionist is the highest development of the self-
centred, self-asserting man who chooses to Hve, move and have
his being in a pre-spiritual age ; in this matter he is not abreast
of the present age ; he lingers far behind in the race of life ;
and so far as can be seen his naturalism will not explain, or be in
harmony with, the Divine Books and their contents, as found
written in man and in the Bible. The theory of the agnostic
seems to be that his one Book of Nature is sufficient and ample
for man's requirements as a natural man, and that the wisest
thing men can do is to burn up, destroy the other two Books of
Man and Revelation ; whilst the believer in God asserts that this
is empiric foolishness in its latest phase, unworthy the serious
attention of reasonable men, who see clearly that each book fits
into the three sides of the square ; and it is from these he hopes
to find that fourth side which will be his defence against all his
enemies. Having made a stage on the journey of physical life in consider
ing the germ of life, and the seed of the apple tree, it may be found
useful to proceed in thought along the avenue of life with the
student and observe further what can be seen by the law o f

HEALTH AND DISEASE. 89
development. The conception reached is that within, behind, and
around, the germ of life there is the Spirit and the spiritual ; in
fact, without spiritual discernment there is no physical world of
order and law, and there could not be, so far as man or nature
are concerned, the cognizance of a law of development. The real
mystery behind all forms is not the physical force and life ; it is
the Spirit, and the works of the Spirit ; and specially what the
Spirit has done in causing and bringing about what men see in
Creation. The vista of the avenue of life from say the fruit tree
onward, takes a new form ; there are to be seen creatures not
rooted in the earth, of the tree type, but those that are found
flying in the air, swimming in the waters, and walking upon the
earth. There is in the physical organic world two great divisions
the inanimate and the animate ; and, as a rule, the former exists
for the use of the latter in the forms of grass, herb and tree, with
seed and fruit after their kind. In the animate world there is
development from individuality to personality ; and it is the
psychical world that is specially revealed in what becomes per
sonal. The point of interest here may be expressed in this form ;
taking it for granted that the cause of the physical is Spirit and the
spiritual, and the result of that involution is the clothing of the
spirit in flesh, so that there may be physical development, would
it be fair to assume that the spiritual existed before the physical,
and that the physical is the effect produced by the spiritual 1 The
problem seems to be that of pre-existence, and the reasoning
would tend to be in opposition to the naturalistic theory of evolu
tion. Are there two problems here that require to be kept dis
tinct — the first being that of Cause, and the second that of effect,
in brief, the order of development 1 If this is the case then it is
necessary to pause and consider what these mean. If Spirit is
root Cause, and this seems to be the Tight conclusion, seeing that
all ultimates, order and law, are spiritual ; then, is it not ne
cessary to find limitations here, and not go on reasoning about
where at certain points there is conceived, as specially coming
into Nature, what did not before appear to be in Nature. It
seems to be necessary to use the figure of the square here to
separate and distinguish betwixt the universal and the natural
and personal ; the personal must be limited to the square, but
the universal is as a circle, infinite and eternal. What this
means as applied to Nature and man is not difficult to understand,
because it is thinking upon the law of development as perceived

90 HEALTH AND DISEASE.
by men where time limits are found, and new conditions and
relations seem to come into existence that were not previously
known. Thus the realms of Force and Life and the physical
world ; the realms of Spirit and Mind, and the psychical soul
world ; the realms of Intellect and a Moral State, the moral
world in which man should reign. As already explained, this is
followed by the Fall from a state of innocence, and to redeem man
there is introduced the realms of Grace and Sacrifice, and the
conflict betwixt good and evil, the end being the Vision of Science
and Divine Wisdom, as the fourth side of the square wherein man
would be safe as in a City of God. All this reasoning, analytic
and synthetic, scientific and philosophic, has to do with the
law of development ; and it is by the study of that law, that
science, order, law, related ultimates and ultimates are discerned.
The gain is very important, because it is here that the intellect,
reason, empiricism, are limited ; and, for the first time in
history they are told plainly that they are not to be permitted in
the future to dictate in an unreasonable way about matters they
cannot relate or condition. Whilst all this is true, and to be so
interpreted and understood, there arises here that strange question
of Cause as thus correlated with the law of development. Those
who understand mathematical signs and what they represent,
it may be supposed, would perceive the ideal that is here sought
after ; this is not a matter of scientific order ; not even an
article of faith ; it is a flight of the imagination ; it is an attempt
to look round the universe from a corner of the square, and per
haps to see in what sense the ultimate is like a great circle ; but
instead of vanishing away into a point, like the unknowable as
conceived by agnostics, a complete reversion of thought takes
place, and the Unknowable becomes the Illimitable throughout the
Universe and the Immanent in the Mystic Square.
The subtle line of thought indicated takes this form : the
Ultimate is also the Immanent ; there is no Beginning or End in
the Circle ; neither is there any First or Last. All is Spirit and
Spiritual, Infinite and Eternal. Here condition and relation
find no place ; that is to say the intellect of man must not enter
the sacred place, and try to put in order what has not become in
time related and conditioned. It would almost seem that to
relate ultimates, such as the principles of being, is going a little too
far, but the form of expression is necessary to see the way of de
velopment, and to draw out lines which divide and tend to place

HEALTH AND DISEASE. 91
spiritual thoughts in their order. Here the problem is not when,
or how, the principles began to be made manifest, as traceable by
the law of development ; it is that of Being, as becoming, and
the conditions under which Being becomes. Being is the Reality
that underlies all becoming. Being is that which is beyond the
intellectual apprehension of man ; all principles are conceived
to be in the Illimitable, the Immanent, the Eternal ; and the
differentiation into Power, Life, Spirit, Mind, Intellect, etc., etc.,
is the human way to try to place in order and form what has been
conceived through the manifold avenues of the sciences. Here
it is not a question of order it is that of Being ; and just as it may
be conceived legitimate to think and speak of man as one being,
even though the same eight principles are united in his body ; or,
as conceived to be operative in Nature ; so, in trying to conceive
the thought of the Eternal, and the Illimitable, the same form may
be permitted. The difference to be discerned as betwixt nature
and man, and the Eternal is found here ; they are to be conceived
asunder the law of development in space and time; but the
Eternal as First Cause is not to be thus conceived. The figure of
thought is that of the first day of creation ; all principles, nature
and man, light and darkness, Spirit movement,they are all involved
in this first Vision ; and what men are taught to see, as a spiritual
conception, is the possible and the potential Reality, Being. If this
conception can be realised as thought, then the outcome is God
and faith ; whilst it is necessary for men to think of the begin
ning, of what is to be, in the light of the law of development ; biit
this is not the conception that should be immanent in the circle of
Being, of the Spiritual and the Eternal. Is not this the conception
that underlies the Name Jehovah, I Am, the Self -existent, as the
First Cause ? It is human like for men to think of God under
attributes, and as having titles ; as being Almighty in Power, as
all skilful in Life ; as sevenfold Spiritual Wisdom ; as the Divine
Cosmos, and as Truth, Goodness, Grace and Love as Sacrifice.
God is One, He fills the whole circle, and all His powers or at
tributes fill and fulfil all the universe. If this is the right line of
thought, then what must follow is that Being and becoming are
not to be identified as one ; the order of Creation is by differentia
tion, as waters and Heaven, or Heaven and Earth ; and following
the spiritual concept of the Ideal, there is plan, purpose, order
and law. The conception is that the Divine, the Spirit of God, or
dained or set in order that which is physical ; but the meaning

92 HEALTH AND DISEASE.
from the spiritual stand-point is that of the Divine Being as be
coming, so that under physical forms the Power and the Wisdom
of God might be made manifest in the preparation of temples
of God not made with hands. It may be that men fail to under
stand, never have understood, the glory that exists in their
so called mortal bodies ; as matter of fact they possess divine and
spiritual ideals, and men have not a true conception of what
the physical body represents in the light of the law of develop
ment. The conception here is not that of a Creator creating
nature and man out of nothing, or of' something created or
made, the child-like idea ; it is that the universe is as if God-
caused ; it is alive with God, and that it is as by limitation
there is the becoming of creatures, order and law. Here this
question may arise, How or when did the spirit and the spiritual
as soul, enter the physical world ? Was it in the womb, in the
germ seed, or when the babe was born, that this event took
place ? This is the line of reasoning as seen in the light of the law
of development ; and the Eternal Truth is forgotten that the
real question here is not when the spirit began to be, for this is
what man cannot discover ; the meaning of the question is,
When did the spirit and the spiritual begin to become in man,
as this may be conceived in the light of the law of development ?
The conception that arises here is that the Divine cannot be
limited ; the limitation in the thoughts of men is as to the be
coming in order ; and, this depends upon the conditions and
the relations of what has become and is becoming. The meaning
here being that under the law of living development the being is
ever becoming in all creatures ; and the stages of the changes
are in harmony with the law of development. The living germ
that will become a man-child is not a limited physical thing ;
it is alive and pregnant with the life in God ; thus the prepara
tion of the body as the temple for the divine man as developed
in the womb. At birth the change is not conceived as a new
creation ; is is a new form of development at the point where this
could take place, under the suitable conditions that makes the
physical and the psychical co-existent in their development.
The infant and child are thought upon as physical and psychical ;
but, there is in the child what is in the type ; and thus, in due
time, there follows the manifestation of the intellectual and
moral, there is the becoming of the powers that constitute
manhood.

HEALTH AND DISEASE. 93
It would appear as if the two theories of existence and de
velopment, the natural and spiritual, arise out of, and develop
from, two different ideals ; the agnostic from that of Force, or
Power ; the believer from that of Life ; and consistently these
ideals have been cherished and sustained throughout history.
The position of the modern agnostic is that all things are the
result of power ever evolving within the region of the natural,
the temporal and the phenomenal ; whilst those who believe in
God, as First Cause, take as their ideal, life, the spiritual, the
eternal, with purpose, design, development, order and law as
regnant through the natural and the spiritual. To the agnostic
Power is as one being, to become integrated and differentiated,
and again to become disintegrated and dissolved into a unity ;
but there is not spirit, or will, there is no moral ideal, thus
power and necessity are the governors of the universe. Against
such a conception those who live by faith have ever uttered their
protest ; even from the lowest stage of development, it is asserted
that Life reigns and that mere power should be subservient.
These two conceptions may be traced through the psychical
and the moral worlds ; the spirit is self-asserting and will not be
governed in harmony with the laws of the mind, or soul ; and
in the family, society and State, men are familiar with the
despotic and arbitrary type of rule, as opposed to what is con
stitutional, organic, living, and for the commonweal. Here
again there arises the conception that Force, Spirit and Intellect
in their spheres are ever supremely interested in order ; whilst
Life, Soul, and the Moral worlds represent the conception of
law in conformity with order. Should conflict arise in these
realms or worlds, divine law not being known, then it can easily
be seen that power, self-will and intellect, or reason, will assert
.and attain to the supremacy in their several kingdoms. It is
king power, king self-will, and king intellect, that govern,
and the commonweal of the physical organic, the psychical
soul and the moral order are made subject, and lose their common
freedom and their unity for the common good. Here the per
version of true order can be easily seen ; the self-will uses all
power possessed, and all reasoning, fallacious or true, for the
exaltation and glorification of self, or the regnant king ; thus on
the structure of the physical, the psychical and the moral, rest
power, selfishness and self-assertion. This is the glory of man,
society and the State, throughout history; their ideals have

94 HEALTH AND DISEASE.
been power, selfishness, and wisdom as cunning ; and these mean
disease, disorder, -disorganisation, disruption and death. The
ideal in Life is quite different ; it is that at the root of all forms of
Life there exists, as Being, the Life Eternal ; it is Life that bestows
power and generates life physical ; and from within the living, by
the true law of development, in due time there arises all types
and all order ; the spirit and its powers ; the soul and its organic
order ; the intellect and its power to relate and correlate thoughts
in their order ; and, the moral man as governed by law in har
mony with order as discovered by the intellect.
The results of these two systems of thought are not difficult of
comprehension ; it is the first that has dominated mankind
throughout past ages ; it dominates the nations at the present
time ; and thus men have actually come to believe that the
constitution of the world is based upon their ideals. One of the
most subtle of the devil's lies that he has got men to receive as
not to be questioned, is that those who possess power are as
the gods ; they have received power from God ; they are the
true servants and princes reigning with God ; and they actually
beheve this series of lies even though it is well-known that they
have bowed down and worshipped the devil, the first assertor
of all such perverted forms of rule and government. The proof
that such lies are devil conceived could not easily be demonstrated
by experience, or by empiricism ; men were entangled in the
devil's subtle wiles ; thus it is simply absurd to suppose that
the thralls and bondmen of evil could break the yoke of such
a cunning tyrant. The second system of thought is only coming
into sight by the advancement made by science, and limitation
through principles ; thus it is seen that Life is the root ideal ;
that the way of life was lost through the devil's lies ; but the
Life that is Eternal came in a new order to restore life ; and,
through the Life in Himself to make the Life of God abundant
in humanity. At the same time, by His coming, men have been
taught that power is as light, that the spirit of man can see light,
and that, through the intellect, men perceive and conceive the
light of truth as Divine. If men have been found walking in the
darkness and not possessing the light of life, being dia-magnetic
to the truth, then it is not so very strange that they have been
found adjusting their thoughts to their present condition, in
stead of following the light that has reached them from heaven.
It is not to be conceived that men who trust in their own ex-

HEALTH AND DISEASE. 95
periences, or rely upon the maxims of empiricism, will be willing,
or prepared, to perceive, or understand, all that these thoughts
mean. They have two great powers to overcome, these being ignor
ance of scientific order and law ; and, men who possess power and
authority are not to be conceived as ready and willing to re
nounce their preconceived opinions and judgments. It is one
thing to stand in the world of experience, empiricism, and of human
reason and sensuous conceptions, in the dawn of a new day, and
to think that Divine order will be seen where all appears to be
chaos, and no highways that lead straight to the City of God ;
and something quite different to find the feet firm upon the great
highway of development in the light of science ; to be able to trace
the avenue backward, and at the end find that line which means
limitation to man, and beyond the region of the heavens un
limited that stretches away into the universe. From this stand
point there is light all down the physical avenue ; it is possessed
by Hght and upon it the light shines ; and if the glowing light
is not so bright in the correlated psychical and moral highways,
there is sufficient to show the pathway of Hght, as following the
law of development ; and, in what sense, the intellectual and
the moral realms are working toward a Divine unity, a City of
God. The position at the present time is ill-defined ; there are
men who, guided by experience and empiricism, still think that
their systems remain four-square and impregnable ; that science
is their enemy ; and that if science could have its way it would
destroy their temples, palaces and cities. To all such foolish
thoughts science can only look on with a look of pity and a shrug
of contempt, with the word of remonstrance, " Are ye still so
blind, so prejudiced, so ignorant, as not to see that the temples
are already broken down and desecrated, the palaces burnt with
fire, and the walls in ruins ? " The end has come and the judg
ments are made known ; the false ideals must give place to what
is true ; the city of man give place to the City of God ; and the
kingdoms of this earth to the Kingdom of Heaven and of God.
This is something like the spiritual position in which men find
themselves at the present time. Those who are guided by ex
perience and empiricism conceive it to be wilful disobedience to
supreme authority, to the Divine Will, for men to reject law as
conceived by priests, wise men and kings. They have been
specially endowed with grace, wisdom, and power ; they are the
interpreters of the Divine ; and thus it comes to pass that sin

96 HEALTH AND DISEASE.
comes to mean disobedience to priests, ministers, or churches, to
kings or rulers, or to those wise men who think that they are
really and truly the only interpreters of the Truth of God. It is
as superseding this ideal that Science and wisdom have done
more than register their protest ; they have actually declared
that the whole system of thought is wrong, and that it is con-
demnable and condemned. It is not what wise men think,
what kings and rulers do, or what priests assert, that is proved
to be true, right and gracious ; it is what the order of the universe,
as taught by the law of development, makes known, and how
that order is verified as divine law. On the one hand, what is
seen too often is men, for selfish, self-seeking, aggressive, cruel
ends, seeking after their own pleasure, power and glory ; on the
other, there can be discerned the true and eternal Will of God,
as that is interpreted by Science as order, and verified as the laws
of the universe. In this sense, it is grievous sin against God to
despise and reject the offer of Divine Grace and Mercy ; and, it is
wrong and sinful, to speak what is untrue, to act selfishly, to do
what is unjust, or to be unforgiving toward a neighbour man.
As a moral being, man's nature is framed and built upon moral
lines of order and law ; and, it must be, by the very constitution
of the universe, that those men who thus sin and do what is
wrong, will suffer the pains and penalties of outraged law. It
can be conceived that priests, kings, and wise men, will be ready
to assert that they find no fault with such a statement ; they
may say that such principles are what they profess, the only
difference being that as the lords of the heritage, by divine right,
they possess the authority to define what is true, right, good,
and gracious ; and, that common people have no other Court
of Appeal to which they can carry their grievances. The reply
of Science is the rejection of this self -constituted authority ; and,
priests, kings, and wise men will find that in this matter also
there has been perversion of truth ; because the Divine order
is not that the lords of the heritage decree order and law, but
that every organic man is as an organic cell in the constitution ;
therefore, the order ought to be that each man will first con
form to order and law, and, then out of that which is in the
organic state of health, there will be made manifest the Kingdom
of God, and of man. It is quite true that this is an ideal man
and kingdom ; it is the temple of God where every stone is a
living stone in the image and likeness of the Corner Stone ; and

HEALTH AND DISEASE. 97
it is because this ideal is in them that they find their place, and
the place is found for them, in the Temple of God that is spiritual
and eternal.
This is the Vision of the fourth side of the Square ; of the
restored walls of the city with the gate ever open to the East, to
the rising sun and to the light of Truth. But, if the ideal has
come, then men may well begin to enquire, when will the restored
Kingdom be manifested and the Kingdom of God appear among
men ? Here, it is necessary to be careful, and not to be too
sanguine as to the immediate realisation of the ideal. If the law
of development is still to be operative, and upon this point there
can be little doubt, then it may well be conceived, that men will
be wiser in the future than in the past ; they will remember,
that in a very true sense, this Kingdom will not come in the
dazzling light of a visible glory ; they will not cry, Lo ! it is
here ; or there ; but that it is within men ; and that the order
must be that of life and development. Of this men may rest
assured — the old ideal of faith will not be abolished ; Grace will
reign ; Truth will be triumphant, and Righteousness made
manifest. The light will shine ; men will become para-magnetic
to the light ; it will shine through them, and thus the many
problems which are still unsolved will find their solutions in the
increasing light of the day that Science has brought to men.
It might be profitable to unravel the psychic maze in which the
soul of man is found ; to follow out in scientific order the re
lations of the spirit to sensation and to the instincts and appetites
that are of the flesh. To follow the developing order of desire
as the spirit is awakened to seek for pleasure, and what is beautiful,
through the special senses. To follow the organic psychic life
in its development and the arousing of the affections and emotions
as they respond to that world of nature by which the soul is
surrounded. All this psychical development in its order will
reveal a world of acquirements ; of motion as correlated with
thought, and of thoughts as correlated in harmonious order in
the memory ; but how all these are to be classified and put in
order as science, and in what divisions, is not as yet made clear
to those who have given this subject their careful study.
In the Hght of these conceptions it may now be possible to try
to define what is embodied in the word Health ; and what, in
the future, it will mean from the stand-point of science. It is
not conceived that health is an abstract term, an ultimate toward G

98 HEALTH AND DISEASE.
which by the analytic reason the thoughts are traced in their
order ; rather it is the synthetic conception by which through
order, development and law, there is resolved out of chaos a
cosmos and perfect harmony. In the physical world the basis
is that of being, and of power and life ; this being exists ; it is
spiritual and not natural ; that is to say it is derived and made
manifest, and, when analysed there is no material abiding form ;
there are thoughts and relations of thoughts ; the spiritual has
become physical and taken upon itself form, shape, movement.
and organic structure. The physical exists as order ; it is em
bodied being, and it is incarnate thought ; thus men say it
exists, it actually reveals thoughts ; it is conditioned, related,
and correlated thoughts ; thus such a world must be spiritual
and not material. This realm exists ; if it conforms to order,
is developed, and lives in harmony with law, then this is the
conception of physical health as it should exist. Into this in
carnation, or embodiment, of power and life there comes that
which is conceived as psychical in its nature ; it is that which
feels sensations through the means of nerves ; it is linked with
the body by the appetites ; it inherits from the past instincts
of various kinds ; it possesses desires that are ministered unto by
the nerves and special senses ; it has a life that is truly organised ;
that life has its affections as if it were a home in the soul ; and
out from that soul there goes forth emotions of many kinds in
thoughts and actions. This world is within, and yet it is also
above or greater than the physical ; and it is so because it is here
that the spiritual awakens to experience and to consciousness.
The question of health here is that this spiritual world is known
to be derived, not self-caused ; the order of its development is
known ; and the means by which there is improvement is trace
able by the nerves, sensations, images, ideas and thoughts. If
these were all fully known in their order of development ; if all
the functions of this organised soul were known, and the order
conformed to, then this would be psychical health. When the
world of the intellect and the moral nature is studied ; then,
as suggested, out of the soul there arises, in due time, and under
definable conditions, this world that is, in a sense, divine ; and,
it is so because it is an endowment of power by which the creature
ceases to become merely psychical and becomes conscious indi
vidual, with power to analyse thoughts into their relations ; to
trace causes and effects ; to find out correlations, and thus to

HEALTH AND DISEASE. 99
place in order the thoughts known as a cosmos, so changing what
appeared to the psychical man as a chaos into intellectual order
as classified science. So far as men can see the development
from experience could be straight onward into science ; the
image of God is an ideal as order in the man in the state of inno
cence, and the natural development would be from the image into
the perfect spiritual likeness in truth and righteousness. The
ideal changes into the knowledge of this order, and is obedient
to spiritual law ; and this attaining, growing, developing, is to
man as the intellectual and moral functions of the moral life ; - it
is the moral Hfe from the moral birth to manhood ; it is health
all along the moral way because the functions are in harmony ¦
with intellectual order and moral law ; of love to God and love to
men. That this has not been the order of development in man
kind is only too well-known ; there was a Fall from the ideal
at some point in history, and thus men have been groping in the
dark all down the centuries. They lost the way through self-
seeking, base desire, love of the beautiful, aspiration to know, and
be, as the gods ; and, this seeking after power and glory by selfish,
sordid, lordly, usurping authority is the reign of empiricism ;
it is selfish, self-asserting men seeking after ideals of their own
and failing to understand the great truth that the way of light
is the way of faith in God ; and, that any departure from this is
as dia-magnetism, for then the light is cut off from Heaven and
the fatal refraction has taken place that changes the light into
earthly differences and distinctions. The parable that underlies
light the prism and the spectrum is not that of disease, or of dis
order ; rather, it is that underlying all differences, which seem
to exterminate the light of truth, there is true order and abiding
law. The analysis is by one to many ; but, the many may meet
again, be concentrated into the One, and through Him there will
follow the convergence of all that was divergent into the pure
light of truth.
It is in this way that science is leading men to think of nature,
man, development, order, law and health ; it is a great ideal ;
it throws light upon all the ages that are past ; it sets up a
standard by which men can see, measure, and understand, what
was formerly mysterious and inexplicable ; and, it does so by
Christ stepping into the arena of history and becoming at once
Ideal and Teacher, Saviour and King. His ideal is health, it
is Heaven ; His teaching is Truth, it is the way to Heaven ; it is

100 HEALTH AND DISEASE.
by Him that men are saved from the power of the devil, evil, all
that is vile, and all forms of ill to which men are subject, and
thus it becomes more easy to understand how it is, that, in a true
sense, He endured our pains, felt our sorrows, endured the con
sequences of sin, and was able to heal, cleanse, and bless, in
manifold ways, the sinful, suffering children of men. In Himself
the Fall was mysteriously reversed ; all the diverging rays, re
fracted from the straight path, met in Him, and the end will be
that by Him the light of truth will shine forth upon a redeemed
world. Doubtless it will take time for men to rise above experience
and empiricism to get a clear view of this long wide avenue of
Divine truth as revealed by science ; but the way is there, the
light is shining upon it, and it is difficult to see how honest way
faring men can miss, or depart from it, if they are really anxious
to walk therein. In Christ all other ways meet ; they meet in all
their degrees of convergence ; it is the mystic touch of faith, the
coming into contact with Him that means so much ; no matter
how divergent their ways have been He is greater than them all,
extends beyond them all, and in Him they all become convergent,
lose their differences and individualisms, and they will be in Him
light and truth. This is where all the empiric differences of men
in their religions, morals and knowledge will come to an end ; they
have been dreaming dreams about their individual, personal, or
national greatness and glory ; the Christ appears, they are
transfigured, and all their divisions and differences are lost ; they
are no longer isolated isms ; they are one in the glory of the re
vealed light, and that Light is Christ.
It is this marvellous unity in Christ, the Light, Life, and Love
of God, that is the Vision of Science and of the Wisdom that is
Divine. Whether men will have it or not, see and know it or not,
it is all the same, the Vision is there and it has got to be trans
lated into the thoughts of men. Some men may wish to remain
in the darkness of ignorance, and have no desire to know the
truth ; but assuredly if they make friends with science and wis
dom, this is the Light in which they will walk, the Life in which
they will live, and the Divine Love in which they will rejoice.
It may take many years to perfectly develop this spiritual vision.
among men ; but that it can fail is not to be admitted for a
moment ; this is the eternal truth as life, and it is only now that
men are awakening to perceive its glory. It is not to be conceived
that the lines of thought that meet here are easily understood ;

HEALTH AND DISEASE. 101
as suggested they sum up the conceptions of science and of
wisdom ; and it is by this way that health, in its widest sense,
is to be studied in the future. This line of thought could be
expressed in deductive order briefly, thus : — 1. Man, as spiritual,
is derived from, and is found to be in, the image of God ; it is by
this conception that man rises above, and is assumed to be the
lord over nature ; he reigns by knowledge of the order that exists,
and by the laws which he can utilise for his service. 2. It is by
the knowledge of order and law that man is led to understand
the Will of God, that is the ideal ; and it is when man's will
conforms to the Divine Will that he has apprehended the ideal.
3. This order in nature as discovered by science, is the light of
truth ; it is the Voice of the Spirit of Truth ; thus it covers all
revealed truth in physical nature, in truth, righteousness and
grace. Visible forms give place to spiritual thoughts, and thus
Light, Life and Love are the supreme spiritual symbols of thought
to be studied. 4. The Spiritual ideal, as spiritually expressed
in order and law, is embodied, or made incarnate in man ; thus
he becomes the epitome of the Divine. In other words, God the
Creator, the Father ; Christ, the Son, the Ideal, and the Spirit
of Christ, are incarnate in man. But it is never to be assumed
that man is Divine ; he may be conceived as a ray from the Divine
Light ; a germ from the Divine Life ; and a vital spark from
the Divine Love ; he is derived being, and thus ever dependent,
upon God for the light, life, and love with which he is endowed.
The conception here is that nature, in all its fulness, is a revelation
of the spiritual thoughts in God ; that man is a similar revelation
in epitome ; but not in any sense that nature and man are identi
cal with God ; or that they sum up all that God can reveal. 5.
It is by means of the intellect and reason that man comes to know
the order that exists in nature and in his own being ; and this
knowledge may become true science if there is that patience,
faith, teachableness which may fairly be expected in a child that
is dependent upon the Supreme Will. 6. Order and law are the
two realms of the moral nature of man ; they co-exist and are
mutually related ; yet the former is to be conceived as the
speculative and the analytical power, whilst the latter is the practi
cal and the synthetical, as being specially related to the Divine
Will, to manhood and to duty. This is man as conceived in the
Divine image, capable of knowing truth and of obeying the
righteous laws of God ; and, it is here that the testing and trying

102" HEALTH AND DISEASE.
of man comes in so that experience may ripen into science; or,
there may come disobedience to law, and with this the degrada
tion from the heavenly to the earthly ; from the image of God
to that of the psychical and the sensuous. 7. Because of the
fill of man through disobedience, he became degraded in his
nature ; he was lost from the realm of the Spirit and the
spiritual ; the affinity as betwixt heaven and earth was cut off ;
thus in the darkness men wandered in search of the light from
heaven ; they sought for the Divine life that had been forfeited ;
they wandered in the great desert ; the earthly returned to the
earth and to dust ; and all this may be summed up in empiricism ;
in the efforts of men to find their way back to God and heaven
by ways of their own imagining, which were not found to be
Divine truth, and not in harmony with moral law. With the
coming of Christ, the Light of Spiritual Truth dawned upon the
world ; in His Life men found a new source of life ; by His
sorrow and sacrifice there was reconciliation and peace ; and as
Saviour and High Priest, the Spiritual and the Eternal Life and
immortality were made known to men in Him. He was the
embodiment of Truth, Life and Love as Grace, as the Divine
Incarnation ; and thus His coming was the fulfilment of the hopes
of men, not in the way they expected with their carnal, earthly
conceptions, but truly and fully in harmony with Divine order
and law. 8. It is this conception of Christ as Sufferer, Sacrifice,
Sin-Bearer, that is the mystery of redemption ; not in the Chris
tian religion only, but in all religions that are not sensual and
devilish. Men Have wondered, and failed to understand this
strange development, with which they have ever been anti
pathetic ; and yet it might fairly be assumed that evil and sin
would require both suffering and sacrifice, and that without
these there could not be restoration to God and to life. Christ is
the answer to such problems, " He bare our sins ;" " with His
stripes we are healed " ; and it is by His suffering, death and
resurrection that men are saved, regenerated, and live in Christ
unto God. In the fulness of the times Christ was made manifest;
He fulfilled all righteousness as Man ; as Son of God He suffered
for and redeemed mankind ; thus as Man, with all that is in
volved in His Name, He lives and reigns in Grace in Heaven, in
the spiritual places and conditions ; the universe being subject
to Him. 9. As the result of this realm of Grace, not as in Christ's
life, death and ascension only, but as the fruition of the law of

HEALTH AND DISEASE. 103
development from the Fall onward, He sent forth His Holy
Spirit to be in men, so that by the Spirit they may be regenerate,
be taught the truth as it is in Christ, be conformed to His image in
His Spirit, and thus, in the fulness of the times this great revela
tion in Christ means the transfiguration and the transcendence of
mankind in Christ. 10. This is to be conceived as the new
spiritual creation in mankind ; it is not man in the order of
nature but in the realm of Grace. The Seed in Christ has been
sown in the earthly, it is living and being developed into His
likeness in the heavenly ; but as the natural cannot comprehend
the spiritual, therefore, the thoughts of men are empiric, they
are based upon their experiences in the past ; it is the past,
they think, that is going to be fulfilled, whilst the Spirit is en
gaged upon a new Creation with new ideals. All unknown to
men this new Creation is being formed in due order ; it is not a
chaos, for the Spirit rules in the darkness and in the light, in night
and day, in the heavens and in the earth. 11. It is into this
new Creation in Christ that men become spiritually endowed
with intellectual power to relate thoughts in their true order and
place them under spiritual conditions. This is the way of spiritual
truth, of Divine science ; and, in due time, unless another Fall
takes place, and man is beguiled by the serpent, by these earthly
forms and conditions, phenomena, the end will be the knowledge
of truth, and the true understanding of the order of the universe
as spiritual reality. 12. With the knowledge of Truth and of
order there will come also the revelation of the fact of Being
and of Law. Men will awaken as from a horrid dream in which
they have been semi-conscious ; there has been a consciousness
as of experience, underlying the dreaming, but it has been of
phenomena not reality ; that of mere empiricism in which every
man had his own dream ; but when the dreams are compared,
there will not be found in them any agreement or harmony.
Men are awakening to the real facts of the case ; the day is break
ing and there is the dawn of light ; and as the mists and the
clouds are lifted up they will see that the heavens are open,
that God is Being, and, that beside Him there is no God. Christ
is the Ideal, the Son of the Eternal ; it is the Spirit that worketh
all in all ; man is the creature, the work of the Spirit ; and it
is by the Spirit that man is endowed with power to know, to will,
to relate thoughts in their order as truth, and being awakened to
truth, as divine righteousness, Jnan discovers that the will of

104 HEALTH AND DISEASE.
God is law. When man has attained to the image of God, and
likeness to Christ, then he also will become a worker by law ;
he will have attained to manhood, and will then be fitted and
prepared by the Divine power and will, to go forth to subdue
and rule over that rich inheritance in the earth which has been
bestowed upon mankind, in, and by, Christ, the Lord and Head
of mankind.

CHAPTER V.
DISEASE, DISORDER, EVIL, AND SIN.
In an old Greek myth, or parable, the story of the monster
that was lord of the maze, and the atrocities he committed is well-
known ; it has been repeated for many generations, and doubt
less many wise men have got beyond the parable and divined
the meaning of the message it has conveyed. The foolhardy
who entered that maze relying upon their own strength and
wisdom, or their presumption and self-conceit, discovered when
too late that the monster was too clever for them ; they were
caught in his toils and the end was death. The man who entered
the maze and killed the monster first found a friend to aid him in
his enterprise ; and the thread was the helpful means by which,
after slaying the monster, he was able to return safe, having
gained the victory over the enemy of his people. This parable is
an earthly story that gives form to a great spiritual truth ; and
it is certainly true that the man who conceived the parable was
not far from the Kingdom of God. The monster, the maze, the
friend and the sacred thread, are all important spiritual truths ;
and, if the story is limited to the Greek thinker, and nation, it
teaches the wonderful endowments possessed by that race in
delineating truth, as myth, or parable, in what is spiritual. The
monster still lives as cruel, selfish and self-asserting as ever ;
men have found a true friend in Christ, the Truth ; and the
thread of destiny He has given them by which to find their way
into, and out of the maze of life may be conceived as the law of
development. The special parable is worth the reading for it
contains divine wisdom ; and it would be well for men, if they
were wise enough to study and to try to understand the natural
and the spiritual, their likenesses and their harmonies.
The monster that is the enemy of mankind has many heads, at
least seven, as conceived in the great parable in the Book

106 DISEASE, DISORDER, EVIL, AND SIN.
of Revelation ; thus men have found the beast strong and full
of subtle wisdom ; and being so richly endowed, it is not so very
wonderful that men have in their folly worshipped and served
the beast. He has been the master in all phenomena, and he
has enthroned himself in empiricism ; thus it is a marvel of grace
that any way of escape for men has been found.
This also is parable, because men know that they cannot lay
hands upon this devil that works all evil ; they are willingly
beguiled by him and believe his lies in preference to Divine
Truth ; and they follow his rules rather than walk in the way of
God's laws. His latest works have somewhat reduced his credit
as master in cunning devices ; being hard pressed to prevent
discovery his bold assertion has been that there is no devil to be
afraid of, and no God to worship and serve ; or, if men will prefer
to be more completely beguiled, then let them believe that God
and the devil are the same, and that these being unknowable,
it must follow that Nature is the true god that men ought to
worship and serve. To all such devilish lies the Christ, the
Truth, has set Himself in opposition ; He has taken what the
devil had appropriated as most his own, the intellect, and turned
that against His enemy. The devil thought that he had an
excellent sword with a very sharp edge. The Lord Christ has
taken possession of the same, and, it is seen to be a double-
edged spiritual sword capable of cutting two ways.
All this reasoning is in the line of parable and allegory ; men
require to reason in this way, so that they may rise above forms
of things and thoughts, and thus reach the realm of pure spiritual
conceptions. That this is not easy men have discovered through
all past generations ; but it has pleased God that by means of
science and the law of development, men can see more clearly
now than in any of the past ages. It is well to study the law of
development as related to nations, noting particularly th»
special messages conveyed to men in the course of history. Re
ference has been made to the Greeks, and the special knowledge
with which they were endowed ; and, before considering, very
briefly, the very complex subject of disease, disorder, evil and
sin, it may not be out of place to make one or two remarks upon
the special wisdom with which Israel was endowed ; and, the
lessons that wisdom brings to men at the present time. The
wisdom of Israel may be said to be summed up in the opening
chapters of the book of Proverbs and it is in allegory that this

DISEASE, DISORDER, EVIL, AND SIN. 107
wisdom is expressed. The allegorical is found in the ideal wis
dom ; and the realm of parable is that of the wise father giving,
counsel to his son. It is quite true that the father, as wise teacher,
is practical in the advice that he gives ; but, the teaching is very
much upon the lines that men have been following lately ; and
the analogy that exists betwixt the two lines of thought can be
easily seen. The problem of Job, that of Providence and evil,
may find its analogy in the theologians of the past ; but the pro
blem of the father and son, the wise teacher, and the youth being
trained in the way of wisdom, belongs to the present age. It.
may be that in the days of Solomon there were clever men who
did not fear the Lord ; and they may even have gone so far as
to say, there is no God, or devil ; but the wise father impresses
upon his son these all important thoughts, that without the Fear
of the Lord there is no true knowledge ; that it is the Fear of
God that is wisdom ; and, knowledge of the holy and the good,
that is understanding. The wise begin with the Fear of the Lord ;
but fools despise true knowledge ; they build without any founda
tion, and thus the results must be unsatisfactory. Wisdom is
not represented as an abstraction, it is a person with a voice cry
ing to men to keep in the right way ; to enter the palace with its
seven porches, and, in the companionship of the true, the good
and wise, to receive instruction, and gain knowledge. If these
conceptions were put into modern thought, men would say, get
instruction, seek after science as true knowledge ; but ever re
member that wisdom is the principal thing ; therefore, in all
getting and gaining of knowledge, of all kinds of science, the Fear
of the Lord is the supreme practical issue ; it is life and law ;
it transcends Greek philosophy and all forms of empiric thought ;
thus it is to be prized above rubies and diamonds. This is the
supreme good ; and, to this there is no worthy rival throughout
the universe. The other side of the picture from the allegory of
wisdom, is that of the way of folly ; the foolish and wicked com
panions who live by robbery ; the strange woman, her flattery,,
and the house in which she dwells which inclines to death, the end
of her ways being the grave and death. In opposition to the
strange woman, the wife, as ever young, beautiful and beloved,,
the fountain of true delight and pleasure, is a charming picture ;.
they represent the false and the true, the evil and the good, dis
order and order, disease and health, death and life ; the foolish
choose the former, they are fools ; the wise seek wisdom, and in

108 DISEASE, DISORDER, EVIL, AND SIN.
the Fear of the Lord, they become the inheritors and possessors
of what is divine.
It is to be observed that the wise father and teacher has a
positive message for his son, it is to get knowledge, understanding
and wisdom in the Fear of the Lord ; and his examples are taken
from the contrasts, the foolish and wise, the good and evil, the
honest men and the rogues, life and death. Modern thinkers are
being led in the same path, a stage higher ; the ideals are the same,
but the forms in which they express their conceptions are different.
Thus, for example, taking the realm of Force, to illustrate what
is meant, the conceptions take this form ; this realm is one, but
it is both matter and energy ; it is a cosmos, and it is also a chaos.
Energy may be conceived as conserved force and also as correlated
forces ; and forces are conceivable as made up of, or as mani
festing powers that oppose each other. Gravitation, as the root
force, has in it the thoughts of attraction and also of repulsion.
1. Heat has in it the conception of cold, or, plus and minus signs.
2. Cohesion has in it that which draws and adheres, or repels.
3. Chemical affinity has in it matter and motion, the analytical
relations of quantities, and preference or repulsion. 4. In chemi
cal synthesis there arises affinities that attract, repel, unite or
cause disruptions. 5. Light has for its background, darkness ;
the symbols of truth and ignorance. 6. The crystalline force,
as in the diamond crystal, may be said to be solidified light ;
it is as light crystallised ; yet as carbon, it may be black and
uncomely ; and as an atom, it is fourfold in its attractive powers,
and equally so in repelling elements with which it will not unite.
7. Electricity as a force, as discovered during this scientific age,
was a mystery, and even now it has around it a mystic halo ; it
seems to arise out of and return to matter, it becomes a force
that moves in ether and in matter, in ways that are too subtle
to explain. 8. Magnetism is the twin force with electricity,
yet it is different, it surrounds electricity as an atmosphere, and
electric motion, at right angles, as in a magnet bar, becomes
strongly magnetic. These are the twin heavenly forces ; they
were discovered and utilised when men began to be scientific and
spiritual ; and where they are to lead men, as the divine messen
gers from heaven, men do not understand. It is stated that
still another stage of discovery in the physical world has been
made ; radio-active atoms have been dissolved and analysed ;
they have been changed into rays of motion ; conceived to be

DISEASE, DISORDER, EVIL, AND SIN. 109
attractive, or magnetic, repellent and electric, and a third is
not subject to the laws of matter and motion, and this is said
to be an emanation ray. This latest analysis seems to carry
scientific thinkers into the ultimate relations of the physical
forces in the region of electricity ; and the thought suggested
is that the emanation ray represents the unity ; whilst the other
rays represent the beginning of the development of matter as
known by the study of the physical sciences.
It may be suggested here that this explanation of the physical
forces may be carried further in the way of analogy by tracing
the likeness that may exist betwixt the forces in their order as
given, and the eight principles of being as already explained.
1. In the realm of force the thoughts are those of attraction and
repulsion, and the concrete symbol is the magnet bar. With
heat there is the thought of division and diffusion the reduction
to plastic matter in the realm of force. 2. With cohesion and
matter there is likeness to the introduction of life and thus health
and disease. 3. With chemical relations as analysed, and their
quantities, there is the introduction of order ; there is the
Divine by the Spirit, the cause of all order, and there is
also through the creature, as created, want of knowledge-
of order, seeming disorder ; the divine centred and the
ego-centred. 4. With chemical synthesis the thought is
that of building up ; and here, in the light of creation, fourth
day, the vision is the universe, sun, moon and stars, heaven and
earth, ruling and dividing, light and darkness. The same vision
can be applied to man ; it is man psychic, with all his powers,
the creation being the soul within which there is light and dark
ness, the moral and intellectual powers by which man is guided
and ruled. 5. With light manifested, there is the analogy of
heaven and earth ; light and darkness, and all that these re
present in the intellectual realm. 6. The symbol is the diamond,
light as solidified in divine form ; the pure crystal or the black;
carbon ; the divine image or the earthly despised thing fit to be
burnt ; right and wrong, good and evil, and all that is implied
in the moral nature of man. In 7 and 8 the analogies are found
in the realm of grace ; in the etheric, and the heavenly ; they
are supersensuous, not cognisable by the special senses, and thus-
all that men know about them may be said to be as special spiritual
revelations ; they come through the intellect by knowledge of
truth and by strict conformity to order and obedience to law.

110 DISEASE, DISORDER, EVIL, AND SIN.
Another way of following out these analogies, as indicative
of the law of development ; and of seeing in what way
development is ever in the same rythmical order may be traced
in the types of thought expressed in the Beatitudes, or the Sermon
on the Mount. The conception being that Christ expresses the
positive thought that is the law of Grace ; whilst the opposite
state is that of the curse, and what is repellent in the gracious life.
1. The blessing is upon the poor spirit, and the inheritance is the
kingdom of heaven ; this is opposed to the proud spirit that
claims to possess the kingdom of earth. 2. The blessing upon
the mourners is comfort, they have been in the furnace of affliction,
and with the deliverance there is joy ; this is in opposition to
those who have no sorrow because of evil or sin, and they will in
the end reap the harvest of pain and disease. 3. The blessing
upon the meek is, that by comformity to the Divine Will the earth
will be inherited ; this is in opposition to the rebellious, self-
asserting spirit that is ego-centric, and that will lose what it
prizes. 4. The blessing upon those who hunger after what is
right is that they shall be filled ; this is in opposition to those
who try to satisfy their souls with what is earthly, sensuous and
devilish, for them there is no filling of what is true and good ;
they will remain unrighteous and unsatisfied. 5. The blessing
upon the merciful is that they will obtain mercy ; and mercy
means the way of life and light, reconciliation and peace with
God; this is in opposition to cruelty, the unforgiving spirit,
hatred, darkness, the -false and evil way. 6. The blessing on the
pure in heart is the vision of God ; it is to be in the light, to possess
life, to see truly the Divine order, and to walk uprightly in the
good and righteous way ; this is in opposition to the impure life,
in which there is no light of faith ; where evil, sin and the doing of
wrong is what is desired and followed. 7. This blessing is upon
the peacemaker as the child of God ; it is the blessing of the
Divine Grace, bringing peace to men ; and, in opposition to this
there is found among men the spirit of strife and hatred, envy
and covetousness, and all who follow this cursed way are the
-children of the evil one. 8. This blessing is said to be a double
one, thus, suffering and persecution for the sake of what is right,
and through that discipline inheriting the heavenly kingdom ;
followed by reviling, persecution and lying; but to be in this
¦company is to be a companion of prophets and martyrs, even
a disciple and follower of the King ; and to be so distinguished

DISEASE, DISORDER, EVIL, AND SIN. Ill
is to have great cause for rejoicing and gladness and the assurance
of a reward hereafter. In opposition to this blessing there is the
cursed state of being persecutor, reviler and liar ; no heavenly
future, no joy and gladness, and instead of reward, judgment
and justice hereafter. The vision pf Christ is that of the blessed
state of Grace, and thus it is the positive ideal way for the Christian
man ; the opposite is the negation of the blessed state, thus,
it is the earthly ; and, what is very remarkable, it does not deal
with the moral, or ethical, and, it takes no cognizance of ultimate
problems that are in their nature metaphysical. There is one
shining way of light within which His disciples are called to walk ;
there is another way dark and foreboding that can be seen and
may be experienced, but with that evil way disciples are not called
to deal ; their way is the way of the gracious life ; the goal is
Heaven and the heavenly ; what the disciples encounter by the
way is of little account ; it will not be worse than that of the
Master, or of the prophets, and their united testimony is that the
way is one of persecution, suffering and sacrifice, and. yet on the
way there is rejoicing and gladness and the end is the life eternal.
In thus trying to trace throughout nature and grace this two
fold aspect of what has been manifested in creation, it can be
seen that they have existed in the past side by side, that they
still exist, and thus light and darkness, good and evil, are the
common experiences of all nations ; and, their philosophies to
a large extent fall in with these conceptions. In the less developed
nations there are good and evil gods ; or one good God and
many demon-gods ; in Parseeism the development is to a dualism
in which the good God keeps up a constant warfare with the
power of evil ; in the Eastern religions the tendency is to philoso
phic pantheism in which God is all that exists ; and what is
visible, tangible, or subject to experience, is " Maya," something
that deceives, that is ever changing, in a word phenomena.
There is a Noumena, a Reality, and the way to reach this is by
escaping from the thraldom of the senses and the sensual, by the
way of Nirvana, and then the man who is a god, or a portion of
God, will be swallowed up by that Being, the Eternal. The
likeness betwixt the conceptions found in Buddhism and modern
thought are very remarkable ; and thus it is not strange that
men see wonderful revelations in the religions of the East and
their far-reaching metaphysical conceptions. It must be re
membered, however, that the differences that exist betwixt the

1 12 DISEASE, DISORDER, EVIL, AND SIN.
ancient systems of thought in the East, and modern thought in
the West, are very great; and, the greatness of the difference
lies in the revelations of science, the order found in the universe,
and the laws which men have discovered of that phenomena,
which to the wise Sakya Muni was only as Maya, deceptive
conditions, from which it was necessary wise men should escape.
What the Buddhist seeks to escape from is consciousness and self ;
and to return to Being, the all-unconscious ; what the Christian
seeks to understand is the conscious Being ; the relations and
conditions of consciousness ; and the relations of nature to man
and man to nature. Modern agnosticism and Buddhism may be
conceived as twin methods of thought ; yet agnosticism found
its way to naturalism by the way of physical science ; whilst
Buddhism would reach Nirvana by the way of psychical science.
In both methods of thought the All is Nature ; and, Nature is
the over-lord from whence man came, and unto which man will
return ; in both systems it is Nature that is supreme ; it is here
that spiritual religions and methods of thought cannot find rest ;
to them the spiritual is supreme, and any reasoning to the con
trary is not considered to be of any real practical value for life.
It is true that in the Bible almost every kind of religious system
of thought is more or less represented in its history ; from the
worship of sun, moon, and stars, beasts and demons, to tribal
and national gods of many kinds ; and it may be said that the
dualism of Parseeism is re-echoed from Persia ; or similar lines
of thought may be traced in the Bible in the age of the great
prophets. Whilst all this is true, and what might be expected
in such a Book, that follows the law of development, it has also
to be remembered that the supremacy of God, or Elohim, or
Jehovah, is not questioned ; He is God and there is no other
god with Him, or to be compared with Him ; and He is the true
and only First Cause of all that exists and has been made manifest.
It is even asserted, in a sense, that good and evil are effects which
arise out of His Being, or Sovereign Will. It is this peculiar
aspect of the revelation of God, as the Cause of both good and
evil, that has seemed strange to men ; and what they have
reasoned much about is how, or in what sense, God is good, and
yet from Him, as Cause, evil could come. From the agnostic
standpoint it is possible to reason that Nature is both good and
evil, and that the teaching of experience and science tends to con
firm this view ; whilst the Buddhist reasons that Nature is evil,

DISEASE, DISORDER, EVIL, AND SIN. 113
and the best thing for man to do is to escape from its thraldom
as soon as possible. The spiritual conscious attitude of thought
seems to be that the naturalistic explanation cannot be satis
factory ; the conscious spirit of man aspires after knowledge
of the spiritual and the conscious ; thus the two great factors
of thought in the realm of the spirit in man is the conscious
self-spirit, and the conscious God-spirit ; and it is the unity and
harmony of these that the spiritual man seeks after. If man
concludes that because he knows, thinks, and reasons, therefore,
he is being ; must it not follow that having gone round the
realm of knowing, thinking, and reasoning, he is at last compelled
by the very relations and conditions of his thoughts, to infer,
assume, and assert, that what the agnostic names the Unknowable
in Nature, is in reality God, Being, Spirit, and the spiritual Cause
of his own being. Nature, consciousness, and revelation may
intermediate in the reasoning and in the results ; but the issue
is that man can only rest satisfied when a unity of thought has
been found ; that is when Nature, man, and revelation are found
to be in harmony. This is the present position of modern thought;
nature and man, revelation and the ideal of science and wisdom,
are found to agree, and thus the question arises, What then is
the central point in being from whence aU thoughts may be seen
in their true relations ?
When man puts this question to himself in the light of all the
knowledge he possesses, he has no hesitation in concluding that
the spirit and mind, or soul, are central ; that they hold what is
conceived to be personality ; and that what is below and above
are powers that are useful, as bodily form, or as powers that are
endowments for the attainment of knowledge and guidance as
to order and law. If Nature is interrogated, in all its realms,
physical and spiritual, then the same result is reached in the
light of science ; Revelation is found to repeat the same story,
under new forms in the regeneration of mankind ; and thus one
harmonious ideal is formed from all that is known from these
three sources of information. The result here is faith and belief
in God ; and that in some sense, as spiritual thought, man is
able to think of God as Being, the All Efficient Cause of all that is
created. Now it is clear that this conception of God is not
reached from the physical, the psychical, or the intellectual,
not even from the theological, position ; but by the way^of
science and Divine wisdom, and only in this realm is this unity
H

114 DISEASE, DISORDER/; EVIL, AND SIN.
and harmony to be found. God is Being is the belief of man
standing in the light of this realm of truth ; ,and the proofs are
to be found in the spiritual realm only, in Revelation, in Nature,
and in maD, for they have become being, not through their own
volitions, but by God, through an Ideal, and by means of the
working of the Allwise Holy Spirit. Up to a certain stage of
development man is self-centred ; Nature is a realm apart from
man ; and Revelation is the Word from God to reveal His Will
to man ; but, at this stage of science and wisdom the three
blend into one harmonious unity ; it is God that is Being, and
man is being as derived from God. That universe in which man
was central, and the earth regnant, is changed ; it is God that is
central and universal ; and thus man must change his order of
thought, and find his true place in the universe, and in what
sense he is to conceive himself to be in the image of God.
The root thought, or the emanating ray that cannot be mag
netised or refracted by man, is the Being of God, as immanent
in the universe, in Nature, in man, and in Revelation ; the rays
that can be refracted and made subject to magnetic influence
may be named the rays that attract and repel. Here, at the
final analysis of matter, men reach these symbols ; they give
them names, and yet it is possible that the thinkers and physical
experimenters, may never conceive the thought that it is possible
they are givirg expression to that mystery of being that extends
through all Nature and man, and is found in its highest stage of
development in the Bible. Being is one ; but in the becoming of
being changes take place, and thus, in the physical realm, the re
lated ultimate becomes three rays, or lines of force, and they are
differentiated and become a part of the Divine order. This
physical vision of science is to be found in a region that transcends
the senses and thoughts psychical ; it is in the world of science
and as such spiritual ; but it has to be remembered that as this
testimony of science is in the realm of the physical, at its highest
development, it is form and order in the physical and to be used
with this reservation kept in view. These thoughts of science,
in the realm of physics, are to be used as forms, as symbols, as
parables, and as something like what actually exists in the spiritual
realm of being. If then these symbols are to be used to try to
get a hold upon what is spiritual, what would the line of thought
be as applicable to man as a spiritual being ? Is it not that -
Being becomes man and that man begins to be ; he is an emanation

DISEASE, DISORDER, EVIL, AND SIN. ]]}
of Being and thus divine ; and yet, in the very becoming
the emanation has been differentiated, and there are lines of power
that are, in a sense, electric and magnetic ; there is that which
tends to form the individual spirit and the soul ; and the soul
is like the magnetised ray of which the spirit is the electric power.
This conception after all is not so very strange ; it is the way
that men think about the electric action of light from the sun
upon the earth ; when the electricity enters the earth then the
earth becomes, and continues to be, a magnetised body. Further,
as following up this line of thought, the emanation ray may be
conceived to be a direct ray from the Fountain of Being ; and
so long as that ray was effective it would be radio-active light ;
but if a change takes effect, such as may be conceived to be
the assertion of self-will against the Divine Will, then the result
would be dia-magnetism and darkness, instead of para-magnetism
and light. These are the physical forms of thought ; they are
parabolic and they are like the spiritual ; only the spirit
is the central point of being and of thought, and thus
to be conceived as the pivot of man's being. Here arises an im
portant thought, worthy of careful consideration, and it may
be expressed in this form ; man is conceived as out of harmony
with himself and with his environment ; in the past man has
been ego-centric and empiric in his thoughts, and thus disorder
has reigned ; through ignorance, misconceptions, and misrepre
sentations the realms within man, and the world of mankind,
have been in this sad condition, and thus man has been as if
repellent to the spiritual universe. In the light of science and
divine wisdom the position is being changed ; man is now found
to be asserting that disorder in the universe is not scientific fact ;
it is a misconception of ignorant man, because science has dis
covered the main highways of scientific order that exist through
out the universe, and thus it follows that man must be wrong ;
the disorder is not in Nature, as spiritually discerned, for that
is order and law, but it is in sensuous, foolish man, who would
have made himself and his thoughts and ways the measure of
the universe. The universal order, that is spiritual and true,
has as its centre and circumference order and law, God ; the
ego-centric disorder of man is not spiritual and scientific, thus
it cannot be true ; it is found to centre round the self-assertions
of man, and it is psychical, sensuous, and empiric ; a small
province in revolt in the great realm of the universe. H A

116 DISEASE, DISORDER, EVIL, AND SIN.
These are the two lines of thought which men are now specially
called to consider. If they continue in the future to think and
act as they have done in the past, then they must be condemned
as wilfully ignorant, self-assertive, irrational, unscientific, and
opposed to Divine wisdom. If they follow science and Divine
wisdom, in the fear of the Lord, then they will think truly and
act righteously ; they will come into harmony with the universe
and its order, and this means that through the grace and love
of God in Christ, men will be restored to sanity and to health ;
they will live that transfigured life which at the present time is
only a faint hope of experience, or an empiric conception based
upon the revelation of Grace as found in the Bible. It is
evident that these great questions of sin, death, life, and im
mortality are taking new forms ; men cannot, now be limited to
the narrow realm of experience, or to the empiric world with
its many guesses, self-centred conceptions and self-asserting
knowledge, based upon ignorance of the spiritual ; they might
just as easily return to the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, and
maintain, in the face of all proof to the contrary, that the earth
is the centre of the universe, and that the relations and the motions
of the universe are to be judged from the standpoint of the earth.
This is the revolution of thought that has actually taken place
through science and divine wisdom ; it does not follow that many
men understand that this change has taken place ; and, further,
even as Copernicus knew that there were many subsidiary truths
to be discovered that would fall in with the new astronomical
order, so it must follow that there are many problems in the
spiritual world that remain unsolved ; but they will be found
to fall in with the order of the spiritual method that is revealed
in Christ.
It is the spirit and the spiritual that is central in man ; it is
the spirit and the spiritual that is central in nature as in corre
spondence with man ; it is the Spirit and the spiritual that is
central in the Bible ; the inference is that God is Spirit and
spiritual ; and only those who are spiritual in thought can thus
think about God and worship Him in spirit and in truth. It
is a departure from the usual order of the natural to think of spirit
as cause, and as antecedent to the manifestation of the physical ;
but this is spiritual order, it is as the going forth of the Spirit to
prepare the temple of nature, or the body of man ; in either case
it is the work of the Spirit preparing a habitation for God, or for

DISEASE, DISORDER, EVIL, AND SIN. 117
man. In the light of the law of development this is to throw the
vision stages backward in time ; this is the true order of develop
ment, the- becoming of the Spirit in the spiritual ; and it would
seem as if there could not be any real break in the continuity of
thought until this point was reached. It is the Spirit that corre
sponds with the spiritual in what begins to be ; and if men seek
to know the spiritual, it is the Spirit of Truth that is their Guide,
and apart from the Spirit there cannot be a true revelation of the
deep thoughts of God. It is true that, in the Divine wisdom,
men are aUowed to cast their thoughts beyond the Spirit to the
Ideal, the Christ ; and thus the parable of the prism and light
comes in useful in this way : nature and man are as the refracted
dispersed rays of the Spirit ; the Spirit is Light and Truth, as
Christ is the Light and Truth. The mystery of Being is not in
Christ ; He reveals the mystery as Ideal Light ; and the Spirit
in Light makes manifest, causes to become all that is in Being,
Light, and Truth ; in what begins to be in nature and in man.
This is the result to be reached by this line of thought ; man is
spiritual, the work of the Spirit ; and before man has any con
ception of being, body, thought, truth, righteousness, it is the
Spirit that is inworking all these into nature and into his own
being. Man is the possession of the Spirit ; it is the Spirit that
works into his being all that is order and law ; and yet, as men
well know, they attribute all this work to nature and they remain
unconscious of the operations of the Spirit.
The parable of the life physical and the law of development
in the womb, as viewed from this standpoint, is deeply interest
ing. The brief nine months represents ages of physical develop
ment ; it is like the unconscious life of the physical in the womb
of nature ; the period of preparation ; and, at the set time, the
physical is separated from the physical ; the infant lives and
breathes ; it has an existence, physical and psychical, apart
from the mother ; and yet the mother, by the deep affections
in her soul, the emotions of love, is by nature taught to love
and care for this most marvellous divine work of the Spirit.
This is the becoming of the spirit in the infant ; it pre-existed ;
but only when the conditions and relations were made manifest
did spirit and mind manifest their psychic life. It is not necessary
to think about that mysterious life in the womb, and all it repre
sents, in the light of health and disease, of good and evil ; to
these the womb-enclosed babe is unconscious ; it is, as if it were

118 Disease, disorder, evil, and sin.
a part of nature, upon mother nature it depends, and by mother
nature it is sustained. It is quite true that diseased conditions
could exist in the womb as derived from the parents ; and the
curious may be inclined to ask in such cases with the Jews,
" Who did sin, this man or his parents that he was born blind" ?
But the problems of life, disease, and sin, are not to be studied
at this stage of development ; it is not a question of the parents
or of the child, but of the gloiy of God being made manifest
in those who suffer, by the restoration to health, to the vision
of God and to spiritual life in Christ. The problem of physical
disease is not one for ignorant children ; it is much more complex
than men think ; it has not been solved by wise empiric teachers
and thinkers ; and thus it may be needful to revert to this subject
when increased light has been cast upon the pathway of life.
The conception reached Here is that man co-exists with nature,
and that his development has been by the same physical pathway ;
but there comes a time when nature and the man become separate
existences ; and the new-born babe, it is assumed, begins in un
consciousness that life that will become semi-conscious and
psychical, and, in due time, be born again into the intellectual
and moral world. It is here that psychology as a science, com
parative as dealing with nature, or special as dealing with infant
and child life, is so very important ; there is no phase of psychical
life that is unprofitable ; the tree is very large, with many
branches, but the consummation is in man, for he is in this also
the microcosm of all psychical nature. The facts to be specially
considered here are not the details of psychology as a science,
but that narrower problem of the spirit and the spiritual life : in
what way development takes place, and in what sense there
is within the soul that double spiritual state in which order and
disorder are to be found. The conception is that in the universe
of being, in nature or man, spirit is central ; it is true cause ;
and it is around the spiritual as order and law that development
takes place. The spirit is the ultimate name and thought ;
it is as the emanation ray that is divine ; the root principle in
the being of man, and as such it is not a related power ; it becomes
known by its relations and manifestations, and these may be
conceived as the power to feel sensation, will power to know
and to think or compare thoughts, ideas, or sense images. The
spirit is not alone, it is united with the mind, or soul ; and the
latter is the organic realm in which the psychical life centres.

DISEASE, DISORDER, EVIL, AND SIN. 119
If the spirit were alone it would have no home, no memory,
and no consciousness ; it would be like the mirror, or the lake,
over which shadows or images pass and leave no trace behind.
This helpmeet is required in the realm of the soul to give organic
permanence to the psychic being ; but this, as mind, is also
related ultimate principle ; it is, in a sense, what Nature is as the
universe to God, the Eternal Spirit ; or what the soul is in man
as all that is his mind or his spiritual possession. This is the
conception of the kingdom or world of the spirit ; it is like two
germs to begin with, and it is by their development and correla
tions that the unconscious babe awakens to life, to grow into:
a likeness that transcends human ideals ; because, as history
proves, man cannot, and will not rest, until he has conceived
the image of God, likeness to Christ, and what this means it
is evident that at the present time man does not comprehend.
The means of this education, following the laws of psychology,
are those natural appetites which have to do with the body for
nourishment, health, and reproduction ; the desires of the spirit
and soul which are in a measure gratified by the avenues of
the special senses, such as seeing, hearing, taste, smell, etc. ; and
it is by these organs of bodily wants and the senses that man is
correlated with the small world of his own body, and mediately
with the external world. The soul is conceived by man as a
dark place within which no spiritual light shines ; it is a dia-
magnetic realm ; it is where the lusting of the flesh, of the spirit,
and the pride of life are said to reign ; it is the kingdom of self,
and as such ego-centric ; thus it is useless to take further evidence
from this source as to health and disease, order and disorder,
good and evil.
The stage reached here is peculiar ; and it would almost seem
as if the solution of the problems of disease, disorder, and evil,
were not to be found by the way of creation. What creation
speaks of is the Will of God ; the becoming of what is instinctive,
functional, order and law ; it is aU very good ; it is blessed ;
and man should be found regnant in the divine image, fruitful,
replenishing, and subduing what may be conceivable as not
consciously subject to order. To man was given lordship and
dominion over all the lower creatures and created things ; they
are his heritage, in their order, as herb and tree with seed
bearing seed ; they also live in God ; but man alone is able to
change all this bread with which he is endowed into the bread

120 DISEASE, DISORDER, EVIL, AND SIN.
of life. If man remains blessed, then to li ;m all that lives will
be means of blessing, true bread from heaven ; but if the cursed
state intervenes, then the living bread will become as stones,
without life or heavenly nourishment. This is still the problem
that man seeks to solve, that of good and evil, and how it has
come to pass that evil is regnant, and good ever struggling to
gain the supremacy. It is plain that the law of development
has something to say upon this point, but it is not easy to trace
that law and conceive its true spiritual relations. It is not
even as if man had possessed one brief interval in which he could
look round in the light of day and write down for generations
to come what he saw in the Garden of Eden, and how he conceived
his position. The man could not write ; thus the ideal of a
golden age and of a garden of innocence and safety are some
what imaginative ; they are ideal pictures, and it is by the
means of these earliest of pictures that man gropes his way
onward, ever trying to conceive what really took place in the
day dawn of the life of man upon this earth. In the past men
were satisfied with the childlike revelation of the Garden of
Eden and its stages of development ; it was conceived as true
history, and with the expulsion from Eden the incident closed.
Men do not look at the story in the same light now ; they begin
to think that it may be a revelation of the facts historically ;
and that the history is not that of a brief year in Eden. It may
become the history of man and mankind as prophetic of his
fallen state without any record of how the Fall took place ; it
finds man earthly ; he lives by the grace of God ; he is placed
in a garden of Grace ; and the history of the garden becomes
the story of every poor sinner and of mankind. This is the
marvellous wisdom that is to be found in the visions of God ;
to the child they are as stories, but to the man they become
Divine revelations ; they speak of ages, and of thousands of
years ; thus they are like Heaven, they are transcendent, and they
are not to be limited by man. It is even thus with the trees
in the centre of the garden, of Good and Evil, and of Life. Men
would eat, and they still desire to eat, of the fruit of the first tree ;
but not until the tree has yielded its fruit, as seed bearing seed,
can they return and eat of the fruit of that other tree so beneficial
and life-giving. This is the heart of the mystery of good and
evil ; it is forbidden to the inexperienced ; even from the same
tree good and evil comes ; good if man eats of the fruit of the

DISEASE, DISORDER, EVIL, AND SIN. 121
tree of life and lives in obedience to law and order; but fatal
when the hand is put forth contrary to law and order, led by the
impulse of appetite and desire, with the longing to possess what
is beautiful, what will give the wisdom of the gods, and what
will give power and glory. Man's life does not consist in what
he possesses, or in what is selfish and ego-centric ; it is in his
being, it is in what is right, true, and good ; it is Divine law
that is life, and the man lives whose being, thinking, and doing
is in conformity with the Will of God. This is the lesson of Eden
and of aU the ages ; let men eschew evil and live unto God ;
then they will be good, and the fruit of this tree will be good
only and good continually. But, the objection may be raised.
How is it possible for men to eat of that tree which is both good
and evil and yet remain ignorant of the evil knowing only the
good ? The answer is that good and evil are relative ; they
are spiritual and moral ; thus fruit is the symbol used to
teach the great truth that there are two ways of life for men.
The good is the true living way that follows order and law, of
which Christ is the type ; and the evil is the way which men
have chosen, and still choose, when moved by their selfish
motives they put forth their hands to take what they desire to
obtain, try to enjoy what they have taken, and give to others
what is not their own, so that they may be their companions
in the evil way. The difficulty is not with the facts ; men know
the two ways ; they are the way of Christ and of life ; and of
men in selfishness, sin, and death ; and men as moral responsible
beings make the choice, the results being that of the parable
of seed bearing seed.

CHAPTER VI.
THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT.
It is assumed that natural men walking in the ways of nature,
that is in the earthly, sensuous state, cannot solve the problems
of the spiritual life ; in a sense they are intellectually spiritual,
but they are said to be carnally minded and even earthly, because
they are found correlating in symbol thoughts what is earthly,
being blind and deaf to what is heavenly and Divine. To those
who conceive themselves to be the only wise people on the earth,
such thoughts as these must be very unpleasant ; they rnay
claim that their portion satisfies them ; and if they could only
get what their souls desire in their own way, they would not
envy those who believe in what is transcendental and divine.
To such a claim what answer can be given beyond the fact that
men are permitted to make their personal choice ; this is a
fundamental law of their being ; they are free, and if their choice
is good and evil, or evil only, what can other men say or do to
show them that it is within the range of possibility that they
are mistaken ? Perhaps the strongest arguments against such
self-asserting conceptions is that they are self, and nature centred,
and thus they are false ; or at least they fall short of the Divine
and the universal. It is certain that they are not influenced
by what is known as Revelation, and thus they tend to deny
and reject the chief witness of the works of God ; whilst trying
to satisfy themselves by reading the thoughts of God, as witnessed
by nature and man. The days of such ignorance are swiftly
passing away ; the witnesses of nature and man are testifying
that the truth is in Christ ; that they reflect His glory ; but,
seeing that the Spirit of Truth has come and is reproving the
world of sin, it is necessary that men be specially careful as to
their attitude toward Christ and revelation, so that they sin
not against Him by wilful unbelief. It is ever around this centre,

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 123
the spirit and things spiritual, that personality and responsibility
turns ; men must choose the pivot or the axis of their spiritual
life ; if it is self then all is wrong as to order and law ; if it is
God then order and law will be known, and the way will open up so
that there may be a return to the Tree of Life.
When nature and man, as witnesses to truth, fail to give the
solution to the difficulties men meet with in their studies and in
life, then it is reasonable and right to turn to Revelation, to the
Bible, to see if it will give any response that will in any way satisfy
their requirements. The Bible is the Word of God, in fact the
revelation of Christ ; but it is necessary to consider the exact
position of man as related to the Bible, and the platform upon
which the Bible takes its stand. To the first the answer may
fairly be given that man is related to the Bible as a sinner ; he
has in some way or other failed to act up to his duties and re
sponsibilities towards God and men ; and it is owing to that
failure that he has fallen and become sensual and earthly. He
was in the image of God, innocent, good, true, and right ; he
knew what all this means, and by self-seeking, in some form or
other, he went astray. To the second the answer would be that
the Bible comes to man as spiritual, intellectual and moral ;
it is not a history book as a record of facts that have taken place,
but rather the Word of God, in a very complex sense, upon this
very ground that man is meant to be, and to become, like Christ,
the Son of God. If, therefore, this is the Bible standard from
the very earliest time, then the revelation conveyed is not to be
studied like any other book ; it really comes to men as the Divine
Guide, and it is for men to understand and acknowledge this
fact. If men begin to quibble over this claim, instead of trying
in the right spirit to understand it, then it is clear that they
doubt their Guide, throw contempt upon the Word, judge their
Judge, and set up their own self- asserting judgments as to what
is true, good, and right. As with Jesus, and the Jews who would
not accept His word of truth but were ever crying for signs from
Heaven ; so it has been all down the ages, men would believe
all kinds of pretenders, and accept their signs as wonders, but
what has come to them with the authority of revealed wisdom,
that they have rejected and treated as of little or no value.
This is the position of the Bible among men, it is the spiritual
Word of God ; it is the voice of the Spirit calling upon mento
return to God ; and unless men can read the Bible under the

124 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT.
spell of this thought, it is difficult to see in what way they are to
meet its invitations in a reasonable manner. It is quite true,
and men are not likely to forget the fact, that those who have
been the guides of men in spiritual truth have usurped an authority
they never possessed. They have made doctrines and dogmas,
to be accepted by men and to be believed on their authority.
The self-assertion of such men has been in strong contrast with
the Word of God, or as seen in the teaching of Christ. It is very
remarkable that the Bible, as a whole, deals with men as spiritual,
intellectual and moral beings ; every soul is sacred, possessing
rights and privileges, and it is upon this basis that men are dealt
with throughout history by God. Every revelation He makes
bestows increased privileges ; and the rule is that men barter
away what is heavenly and divine for a mess of pottage, or to
get a king, not like God but like those petty tyrants who knew
how to usurp authority, how to compel men to obey their behests,
and who were not slow to enforce their authority even by legal
murder. It is assumed that man, as man, is spiritual, intellectual, and
moral ; that when developed into manhood the way was open
for him to advance from the state of innocence by the way of
experience, order, and law to science and wisdom ; also, that
he could fall from the state of innocence by disobedience ; that
this fatal choice was made, and thus he rejected the privileges
he possessed. Sin began to reign, that is self-will was opposed
to the Will of God ; the soul of man fell into disorder ; it had
become dia-magnetic and dark, and thus, because of disorder,
evil passions, ambitions, appetites, desires, perverted affections,
and emotions were let loose, and the soul of man became Cain
like in hatred and murder ; man became an earthly wreck ; and
so far as he was concerned the earthly, sensual, ancfflhe devilish
reigned in his mortal body. This is a dark picture ; it is what
ethical people will not believe ; they will have it that men some
how grow good out of their own inherent goodness ; but the
scientific process of thought fails to find in fallen man any goodness
when sin has been committed, order outraged, and law disobeyed.
But the question may be asked, What is man's inherent goodness
or his inherited evil ? Are they something that man can claim
by right as his own special property, for which he is not indebted
even to God or man ? What does man possess that he did not
receive ? Is the debt one talent or ten ? Is it the savage or

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 125
the Christian that is debtor, or are both debtors for all they
possess ? As already suggested, savage and Christian are debtors
for the principles that constitute being ; and they are responsible
for the use of those gifts and graces which express related, condi
tions ; the goodness and the evil are in the relations ; if in
harmony with the Will of God they are good ; but if selfish and
self-asserting, then they have become evil relations, and they
are the works of man and contrary to the Divine Will. The
curtain faUs upon dishonoured man ; the night closes in upon
him and he is afraid ; he would hide from God and he cannot ;
memory retains this thought about the past, it was good and
pleasant ; and he is clothed with shame at his wilful ingratitude
and folly. He is a fallen man, but he is a man still ; he does
not require to be re-created in his physical form ; what he needs
is a psychic transformation, a new heart and a right spirit. If
he could only get these then he might live again unto God ; but
his difficulty is that he cannot reverse what has taken place ;
he is utterly helpless, and in the deep pit into which he has fallen
his cry is, " Create in me a clean heart, 0 God, and renew a right
spirit within me." It matters little what language men may
use to express their thoughts about this change, this Fall, that
took place ; it may be expressed in an offensive dogma, or sug
gested in an ethical doctrine ; but what men really wish to know
is the fact and what it really means. The fact is that disobedience
to law means outlawry ; that separation from God the Fountain
of all Life means death ; and that man as the creature of God
had no power whatever to reverse the relations and conditions
into which he brought himself by sin. These are the root facta
that are found in the realm of moral law ; therefore the conclusion
is that unless there is Grace and Mercy with God man is lost,
and he is utterly unable to retrieve his position. Did man when
he sinned against God cease to be spiritual ? From the Godward
standpoint, no ; because, as already explained, God is Spirit ;
all order and law are spiritual ; what becomes perverted does
not cease to be spiritual ; it is degraded, may become unconscious
of order and law, of God ; but from the Divine position this
is not to lose spirituality ; it is to become dia-magnetic, and thus
out of harmony with the Divine Will. From the standpoint of
man the position is different, there is not only degradation, there
is want of power to respond to the divine light of truth. The
man is natural as being subject to nature instead of being the

126 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT.
moral lord over nature ; and it is by this degradation that sin
reigns even unto physical death. The passions rage and create
disorder ; and thus by man there came sin, disorder, disease,
and death. This is a fatal heritage for the sons of men ; here
also a law, not of development but of degeneration and disorder
holds sway ; this virus of sin having entered the life-blood of
humanity remains there ; and what men have been, and are still,
anxious to know, is how and by what means this fatal disease
may be cast out of the moral realm of mankind ?
The curtain of night fell upon man in his fallen unhappy condi
tion ; he is seen in vision, as if he were disorganised dust
of the earth ; and the problem to be studied is in what way it
will please God to re-create, renew, and restore man, and place
him even in a higher position than that in which he
was seen in his innocence in the Garden of Eden, or as he came
from the Creator's hands in His Own likeness ? The brief thought
is summed up in the Heavens ; it was the Heavens that enshrouded
the man as in a mist ; the meaning being that the atmosphere
of Heaven, the dews of the gracious Spirit, as the work of God,
were to man not within the range of his consciousness. The
ether, electricity, and magnetism of heaven were all there, but
man could not see, could not hear, and could not discover the
work of the Heavens as carried on for the regeneration and restora
tion of fallen man to God likeness. This is something like the
meaning that is contained in " the generations of the Heavens and
of the Earth ; " they are to be studied in the light of man's
fallen condition ; the Heavens of Grace have descended upon
the earth ; the Heavens stay with man unseen ; and the great
purpose set in the heart of the Heavens is the restoration to
Heaven of what had fallen and become earthly. In plain words,
the Heavens are Christ and His Spirit ; and this becoming of
the Heavens upon the earth is another way of telling men that
here begins the Incarnation of Christ into humanity. This is
the Seed of Grace ; this Seed is sown into the intellectual and
moral world of mankind in its ruined condition ; and the Heavens
are to develop along with the earth. It is their generations that
men are called, to study now that the Heavens are open to them ;
the ether is known to exist, and the heavenly forces are becoming
known and utilised. How strange it will seem for men to think
that amidst all the ever-changing conditions of time and history
they have actually been environed by the atmosphere of the

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 127
Heavens. The Ladder of Light at Bethel has never been taken
up into Heaven, but only at intervals has Heaven appeared as
open to men ; that is to say, a very few men have for a brief
time become para-magnetic, and the heavenly and earthly light
have coalesced in the souls of the seers in their spiritual visions.
The earth has been too much with men, thus they could not
see the heavenly vision that was with them all the time ; what
they have seen has been brother killing brother ; murderers and
martyrs ; the earthly man under the curse with his brother's
blood resting upon him ; the avenger of the murdered ever near ;
the dread of punishment, and the mark that protects fugitive
and vagabond. Men have seen the generations of the Earth
and their cities ; the wealthy and the clever, the amusing ; and
they have even become familiar with powerful bigamists who
boasted of their murderous actions. The Earth and the earthly
have never been out of sight ; men call these the natural ; they
are the transient, the ever-changing phenomena. The spiritual,
the heavenly, have been there also all the time ; the Spirit has
been at work unseen by men and as unconscious of their thoughts ;
out of the chaos there has been the building up of a heavenly
Cosmos ; when men awaken they will be astonished at the vision
surrounding them ; they will see Heaven, or, as expressed by
the seer of Patmos, they will see what has descended out of
Heaven, the new Jerusalem, the river of God, and the Tree of
Life. Strange, how very strange, they have been in the mind,
in the making, as the new creation all the time ; and it is science,
and the wisdom in Christ that is going to bring to men this im
mortal vision of truth.
It is a strange and marvellous thought that almost concurrent
with the physical scientific discoveries of ether, electricity,
magnetism, and a luminous ray of light that is not earthly,
there should come to men this other vision, of a spiritual kind,
that reveals to them the great truth that there is analogy betwixt
earth and heaven, and that it is the lower that gives form of
thought and expression to what is higher. But this is what
men ought to have been expecting, because, assuredly the in
visible world could not be born without Divine purpose and
power ; and thus the vision of the earthly has been made as
the windows betwixt earth and heaven. Men have looked
through these windows, . and, lo, a greater wonder than physics
is to be seen ; they have actually been surrounded by the Heavens

128 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. s
all their days ; the Heavens have been moulding their destinies :
in fact, the Heavens have been the realities unseen, whilst the
earthly has been passing shadows, phenomenal changing scenes,
mere subsidiary movements, and stage furnishings with all kinds
of actors. Men have been intent upon the comedies, the tragedies,
and the social phenomena of life upon the earth. They have
been priding themselves upon their wisdom in producing good
plays ; the powerful combinations they have brought upon the
stage ; the eloquence and grace of the actors, and the excitement,
extravagances and appreciation of the spectators. They have
not seen the open Heavens ; the weeping angels ; the unwearying
patient Spirit ; the Man with the crown of thorns and the heavy
Cross under which He fell, the pierced side and the nail-prints
in hands and feet. Alas, alas ! men have been awful fools thus
to play their games in the sight of the open Heavens ; they
have been at play trying to keep high holiday ; the arena has
been open for the spectators and they did not see the Heavens
and all the heavenly powers intent upon the redemption and
salvation of mankind. Poor mortals are unable to believe this ;
yet it can be seen to be true that these are the real facts, and
that the generations of the Heavens are of the highest spiritual
importance ; whilst those of earth are only as dreams of the
night that must vanish away with the dawning day.
The Heavens and their generations are the realities of life.
The Earth and its generations do not possess life ; they are in
organic, ever changing forms, and apparently physical matter
and energy. When analysed by science they are as correlated
symbolic truths ; they are as light and darkness, as order and
disorder ; but behind and beyond all that is seen and temporal
there is God, the Almighty, the Creator of the Heavens and the
Earth. The great realities are not man and his doings, but God
and His works. Poor mortal man, he might well be compared
to a moth, or to any of the lower creatures ; his works are not
creations, they are disorders and destructions ; and they are so
because they are at cross purposes with the all- wise and wonderful
works of God. These thoughts derived from the generations
of the Heavens and the Earth lead onward to the generations
of Adam and what they represent. Here also the realm of the
physical, by analogy, would teach men what they ought to look
for in the generations. The conception is that the Heavens are
brooding over the Earth. In the Heavens there is Life ; in the

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 12T»
Earth only the inorganic, reduced to a kind of protoplasm,
being prepared to receive the Life from Heaven. In the physical
world life segregates and separates ; it absorbs what is earthly,
and out of the non-living there is produced that which lives,
grows, develops, and eventually takes the form of man. Here
the physical ends and the spiritual begins. Men look round
for this product of life, and it is found in Adam, the man taken
out of the Earth. Adam lives ; the heavenly has actually taken
possession of the earthly, and it is the law of development that
explains the generations of Adam. The ideal inwoven in Adam
is complex ; the earthly has conceived the heavenly ; and it is
because the heavenly is in Adam that he lives. The firstborn
of this alliance is the unhappy Cain ; the second is Abel ; and
here begins that long parable of the rejection of the firstborn
son of man, and the succession of the Divine blessing in the
younger brother. Cain is the heir to the earthly inheritance,
which he prizes ; but being suspicious and jealous of his brother,
who was a recipient of the Divine favour, he became the first
murderer, and Abel the first martyr. Even so soon did the
war betwixt flesh and spirit, the Earth and Heavens, break
out, and apparently Cain had gained the victory and the in
heritance. His brother seemed to be dead, but in reality this
was not so. Abel had become the altar and sacrifice upon the
E arth ; he had joined the immortals in the Heavens, the first
of that great cloud of witnesses, clad in white, raised above the
arena of human affairs. Abel was no longer an earthly form,
he had become a heavenly spiritual voice, ever speaking to men.
It may be that in the ears of murderers his words seemed to be
that of blood and vengeance ; but, in reality, the great message
it brought to the living was that the way to Heaven was by
sorrow and sacrifice ; and that those who would live unto God
could only find the way heavenward by the pathway of tears
and blood. With this explanation it will not be difficult to
follow the story of the generations of Adam ; they are the genera
tions of life and of the living ; they are the creation of God in
His likeness ; they are male and female ; and they are blessed,.
seeing that in them, as Adam, the life of the Heavens is pro
pagated and developed. The story of the descendants of Adam
gives external form for the thoughts of men. They are not
physical life but life spiritual ; only it is necessary to use the
physical forms as means of education, as helps to reach upward

130 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT.
to what is heavenly. The sons of Adam are like the principles
which constitute man and nature ; they are also like the Blessings
uttered by Christ on the Mount ; and they are of historic signi
fication as predicting the law of development in history. Thus
Adam is out of the Earth, the inorganic. Seth takes the place
of Abel and represents the heavenly life. Enos is a spiritual
man and in him the Spirit works for service and worship, for
spiritual communion. Cainan possesses the inheritance, and
thus he represents the mind or soul of man. Mahalaleel repre
sents the intellect, enlightenment, knowledge. Jared is the
ruler, the judge, as the moral nature of man. The seventh,
Enoch, is the consecrated man ; in him the heavenly life is made
manifest ; he is preacher of righteousness, and the prophet that
warns men against the evils that flow from unrighteousness.
In him, in a sense, Heaven comes to the birth ; as son of Heaven,
he walks with the Heavenly Father, God ; and, in due time,
he is transfigured and returns to Heaven. He was not to be
found, for God had taken him home to the heavenly places in
Christ. The Heavens have fulfilled their generations in the
Earth ; the seed has borne seed ; and whether the Earth will
recognise it or not, this truth is regnant, the Heavens possess
the Earth ; the Earth has been redeemed and saved ; and the
proof is found in the fact that a man from Earth is found in
Heaven ; a glorified man who has found a new living way of
access to the Father and to the Heavens. True, all this is parable —
an earthly story with Heaven in its heart — but, surely that is
no reason why the parable should be rejected, rather it ought
to be fully considered in the light of the Life of Christ, who became
all that Enoch represented ; who, in very truth, came from
Heaven, was in Heaven whilst on the Earth, and returned to
the highest Heavens, there to rule and reign until the enemies
of the Heavens upon the Earth be subdued. Methusaleh, the
son of Enoch, has a long sojourn upon the Earth ; upon the
one hand he touches Adam and Seth, and knew their history ;
on the other he lives through the days of Lamech to the days
of Noah. He represents that twin spirit, the eighth, in nature,
man, and in the Blessings. In him there was embodied sorrow
and sacrifice, what the Heavens have to bear and endure from
what is earthly. With Lamech and Noah there is the vision
of a new era ; what is conceived as the Age of the Spirit ; and
thus Lamech, as prophet, speaks of a new time to come when

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 131
men will be comforted concerning their work and toil, and the
-curse that has rested upon men will be removed from the earth ;
they will be blessed because the Heavens will possess the Earth,
and in that regenerated Earth men will live in the knowledge
of truth and in obedience to righteous law. All this is the ideal ; it
is transcendental ; it is heavenly ; it is what the Heavens purpose
and design ; and it is not what the earthly can see or consciously
understand ; it is, as in the region of ether, electricity, magnetism,
and luminous light, therefore, it is not for the earthly and the
sensuous — they simply cannot see any meaning in it — and that
for the simplest of reasons they have not prepared themselves
by spiritual study, by comparing spiritual things with what is
spiritual, so that they might understand what is true and spiritual.
There is another aspect of this question, of the earthly, the
sensuous, that of experience and of empiricism ; it is the dark
side where night reigns ; it is the face of the Earth and not the
face of the Heavens ; it is fleshly appetite and base desire ; it
is the unseen Spirit striving with foolish men ; it is men be
coming giants mighty and renowned ; it is wickedness rampant
and evil triumphant ; it is men become so wicked, powerful,
great, false, and perverted from righteousness that the Heavens
cannot endure such evil upon the earth. The climax is that of
justice and judgment ; it is whether the Heavens will prevail
and reign upon the Earth, or if the earthly will conquer the
heavenly. That the earthly and the perverted can prevail
against the heavenly and the universal is not a question to be
considered for a moment ; for there is ever in the earthly that
which brings disorder, disease, and death, in its train. Herein
men may discern the wisdom of God and the mystery of God ;
that which is perverted, sinful, cannot live ; it is dead to God
and righteousness ; therefore, the return is to disorder, disease,
chaos, and death. It is not for men to try to peer behind the
thunder-cloud laden with lightning; thus far and no further,
is the word of God to the mighty ocean, or to men ; they will
act wisely not to play with the mighty flood, or the thunders
and lightnings of Sinai ; these utter their voices, and they are
able to destroy those who are disobedient in heart and have
become wilful law-breakers.
In the generations of Noah, the theme of prophecy is the
supremacy of the Spirit and the spiritual, over the earth, the flesh,
the carnal and the natural. It is the Spirit, in Noah, that gives

132 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT.
grace ; for the Heavens have produced in a man a meek spirit ;
and it is by meekness that the way is found to righteousness and
perfection in the sight of God. The great Flood, with all its
teaching, gives in outline a sketch of the mightier flood of evil
that has passed over the sons of men from the beginning. The
vision is that of the chaos of waters, and the Ark of salvation
in the midst, that cannot be wrecked ; from the wicked there has
been taken all their possessions, of which they were so proud ; and
it is to a meek spirit, saved by grace, that the earth, as a restored
inheritance, is to be given. Is this story an allegory, and is there
any true meaning in the message it brings to men ? Is it not
illustrated by the parable of the Desert Wandering from Egypt to
Moab ? Is it not stated that all the people died in the wilderness
because of their unbelief, and there entered into the Land of Pro
mise only Joshua, the faithful, and Caleb, the upright ? The
parable of the earthly joins with the spiritual, and the two divine
rays of light became the phenomena of a new age ; the luminous
ray in Moses is transfigured and translated ; the heavenly cannot
die; it survives flood and desert ; the heavens claim their own, to
the heavens they return, and there they abide the living witnesses
to truth and righteousness, to the extension and the develop
ment of the Kingdom of God upon the Earth. The special truth
taught in Noah and his generations is that no flood of destruction
can destroy what is spiritually good, what is from the heavens,
what is born anew, what is divine. The result must be the
earth cleansed, a new race to inherit the new earth, and a new
order that is psychical and not physical. This is a kind of new
creation emerging out of the old. The Ark is as the womb from
whence it came to possess a psychic life ; there is the visible sign
of blood, to signify Hfe and its sacredness, the rainbow in the
heavens to speak of the faithfulness of God's promises. These are
the tokens that speak of covenant engagements, and thus it can be
discerned that unity is spiritual, not carnal ; the life physical has
been separated from the inorganic, that is as chaos ; and now the
Spirit possesses that which lives. The analogy goes deeper; that
ark is as the soul ; it is as the heavens that surround spirit and
mind ; it contains eight souls or principles of being and life ; and
these are to go forth, as divine powers, to receive, take possession
of, and to subdue, the world to God, truth and righteousness.
This is the ideal, the God-ward aspect of this story ; it is not man
that speaks to God giving in detail his plans ; but, " God said

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 133
unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant which I have esta
blished between Me and all flesh that is upon the earth." The
great facts in this vision of salvation by the Ark are : the wickedness
of the race of mankind possessing the earth ; the evil seed has
manifested its fruit as being that of evil continually, and the
harvest time has come. The Heavens have also brought forth
fruit ; they have made a stage forward in development , and thu9
faith lives in Noah, as the work of the Spirit ; and it is because of
this faith in God that he is accounted as just and righteous. Tin
flood, the wickedness of men and their destruction, as the judg
ment of God, is the dark side of the picture ; the other is the grace
of God, Noah and his family, the ark and safety, a new earth, the
vanishing dark cloud, with the rainbow of hope, the altar and the
sacrifice, and God's covenant with Noah, his family, and with all
living creatures upon the earth. It is not for man to limit the
vision, or the covenant ; he may be the principal earthly personal
responsible, but in that covenant all the lower creatures have an
interest, and they are specially included therein as creatures of
God animated by His Spirit. This vision is the revelation in
spiritual form, from the Heavens ; it does not follow that men
understand its meaning. To do this they will require to see plan
and purpose from the other side where all is in divine order ; but
for this end science is not sufficiently advanced, and wisdom must
linger behind, waiting for the discovery of order, so that the
verification may come to men as law. There is another side to
this vision, the earthly one, and it takes this form : Noah and his
family are the survivors of that spiritual judgment, and they
become the inheritors of the new earth. Now this new realm is not
as Eden, an enclosed Garden of the Lord, prepared beforehand; it
is like unto a vineyard reclaimed by man from the waste of
waters and the barren earth. The man has become a co-worker
with God, and the partnership may be summed up in this
form : It is God that gives the land and the vines, the sun
and the rain : and, also, let it not be forgotten, the man and all
that he is. The man is the Lord's inheritance, in whom He takes
delight ; the earth and the vineyard become the man's portion
and his inheritance under that divine covenant which exists in
heaven. It is clear that in the vine and its fruit, the luscious grapes,
there is no evil ; in the man there is appetite and desire ; but, so
long as these are restrained, kept within reasonable restrictions,
the fruit of the vine would be food for nourishment, and, as wine,

134 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT.
a desirable drink to quench thirst. The point where disorder and
sin make their appearance is when the spirit in man permits-
excess ; and the spirit in the wine assumes mastery over that
spirit which ought to be master. The man becomes the drunken
deranged subject of the lower creature ; he becomes drunk and is
uncovered ; he does not perceive his own shame, and the state of
disgrace into which he has fallen. Is this lapse to be conceived as-
sin 1 Assuredly it must in man, because he has permitted that-
which should rule and govern, that with which he is specially-
endowed by God, to become the subject of that over which he has
received authority ; it may not be crime, as against the laws of :
man, but it is sin against God, because it is the perversion of order
and the disobedience of a well-known moral law. Here, then,
the earthly problem arises in a man and in mankind ; the man,
under grace, has disgraced himself ; the earthly has outraged the
heavenly, and the result is not shame only, it is provocative of
shameful acts in others ; the crown has fallen from the head of
the king, and those who are subject may, with apparent cause,
gloat over and make known his fallen state. In the realm of
the soul in nature, and in man, as arising out of it by development,
there are three well known powers, these being the intellect, the;
moral nature and grace, and these in their order are like unto Ham,
Shem and Japheth. It istheintellect that plays the part of Ham and
conveys to men the knowledge in which there is evil and shame ;
the other powers would not willingly perceive what is disgraced ;
thus they cover up the shameful conditions, and will not become
conscious observers or judges of what is sinful. The solution of
the earthly in Noah and his sons are the subject matter of history ;
the same story comes into the varied experiences of every man.
It is the spirit that becomes careless and self-indulgent ; appetites.
and desires take the mastery ; the spirit of the vine, of the lower-
creature, becomes too potent for the fallen spirit, and when the
man awakens it is to discover that he has been disgraced, and that
in his members the earthly reigns. What follows is the curse on
Ham and Canaan — the black race, and the wicked possessor of the
Land of Promise. This is another fall, and this time it is from
special spiritual grace ; the gracious will suffer, but the sinner
against grace will become debased, lose all pre-eminence of
position, and thus become a slave of servants and the servant
of his brethren. To the powers that act morally, and graciously,
there is hope for the future : blessing in the Name that is in

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 135
Shem : and in Japheth extension of grace and mercy to the ends
of the earth.
The generations of the Heavens and the Earth do not die ; they
continue to live and the generations of Adam and of Noah arise
out of them, as it were, by ordinary generations ; there is not a
visible break in the continuity of development ; there apparently
arises out of the Heavens and the Earth all that is manifested ;
thus life and spirit exist upon the earth in that new creation by
Grace which is the theme of the Bible. As suggested, the line,
of the order of development in creation is repeated in the new
creation ; it is physical nature that gives outward form of ex
pression for thought ; and it is by thinking into these forms,
and understanding them, that they can be translated into spiritual
thought. The generations of the sons of Noah from this stand
point are not difficult to follow ; at this stage men ought not to
expect much from what is outward form, what is being created
before their eyes ; it is enough to trace the line of development,
and from that to observe whether the Bible is in harmony, as
analogy, with nature and with man. The position is somewhat
strange, and, in a manner not easily explained, the seer is " in
the Spirit," he has passed beyond the range of the earthly phe
nomena in which there is no permanence ; he has got a glimpse
of the pattern of the things in the Heavens, and so the heavenly
plans are studied with their unities und harmonies. What
the Heavens reveal in the sons of Noah is the psychology of the
mind, or the soul, of the new creation ; that is to say, the outward
and visible forms found in Nature as history. These sons of
Noah, their families, nations, and lands, are the outward forms,
which when spiritually discerned become the spiritual psychology
of the regenerate race ; and they teach in what way God in His
Grace, by His Spirit, works, or carries out the great work of
redemption. The natural psychology will be found in history ;
the pyschology in man has to be studied and translated into
ideas and thoughts ; the Bible comes in as the spiritual link ;
and by the teaching of Christ, through following His method of
thought, spiritual and spiritual are compared, and the result
will be the spiritual psychology of the way of salvation by Divine
grace. If these thoughts are understood, then it will not be
necessary to enter into details as to the sons of Noah, their
families, nations, and countries possessed , all these are pre
arranged and fore-ordained ; according to the teaching of the

136 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT.
Bible they are all inheritors of countries given to them by God ;
and they possess them upon definite conditions and relations
as affected by the land promised to Abraham and to his Seed.
In the Divine ideal the central point in the earth physically and
psychologically is Palestine and Jerusalem ; not because of the
Jews or Abraham, in the first place, but on account of the Seed
of Grace, who would one day enter in and possess that land.
It is not necessary to discuss this point ; the tenth Chapter of
Genesis is history as an ideal ; it is in the line of the heavenly
revelations ; it cannot be read distinctly from the earthward
side ; it is the story of the Flood in another form ; it is the flood
that analyses all things to their ultimate principles ; this is the
synthesis ; this is life operative, and the result is the living
families of the sons of Noah, in all their generations and in all
their countries upon the face of the earth. The result ideally
is that " the whole earth was of one language and of one speech."
Here the psychological vision changes ; up to this point men
are permitted to see what the Heavens have planned and done ;
the Word of God and the Spirit of God have moved ; the waters
have disappeared, the earth is occupied, and men have their
inheritances upon the earth ; and away beyond the earthly,
is there not the Sun, Moon, and Stars to rule and govern men
in truth and righteousness ? All this is a re-echo from the fourth
day of creation, and to this may be added, " God saw that it
was good."
The way of development is like unto a journey; and the
sons of Noah and their families being upon their journey, it so
happened, this is how the story goes, that instead of travelling
toward the east, the sunrise and the light of truth, their faces
were toward the west, the sunset and the darkness of ignorance.
In their travels they reached the land of Shinar ; and it was there
that in their folly and pride, their self-will and ambition, they
formed their schemes of glory for the aggrandisement of men.
They would build a tower that would reach the Heavens ; and
then they would remain in that spirit and in that order as a
united people, and not be scattered like sheep without a shepherd
upon the face of the earth. This is the ideal that underlies the
earthly kingdom, as it is being raised from the dead graves cf
Mesopotamia, from Nineveh and Babylon ; the psychological
facts are all there ; they are being brought to the light of day ;
they are being deciphered and translated into modern languages ;

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 137
and men wonder how this revelation of the earthly is taking
place at this particular juncture in history. If men were spiritu
ally awake they would see in all this the miracle of a great resur
rection of the dead ; but being natural in their minds, what they
think they see is great discoveries as to the past, and something
that reveals the greatness and the glory of mankind in past ages.
They said, " Go to, let us build us a city ; and tower whose top
may reach unto heaven ; " the Lord said, " Go to, let us go
down, and there confound their language, that they may not
understand one another's speech." The whole problem finds
its explanation in psychology ; the pride, conceit and ambition
of men brought about this moral death and burial in the ruins
of the past ; their tower is a place of the dead ; their city is
covered by the earth ; the land of the two great rivers once so
fertile is a desert ; and the two rivers of thought, as found in
nature and man, have ceased to be the means of blessing to man
kind. Intellectual and moral unity and harmony are absolutely
necessary for the upbuilding of city and State ; without these
there is no union and communion among men ; they become
wise serpents, skilful hunters, courageous adventurers, powerful
robbers, and daring murderers, destroying each other like wild
beasts ; but it is vain to look for men who are made in the image
of God ; they are not to be found in that earthly kingdom of which
history relates so much ; the gods of men are the gods they
have made for themselves, and they are to be found in the image
of sinful, self-asserting men. This is the vision of Babel, it is
the psychological chaos in man, nature, and in man's conceptions
of the Bible and revelation ; in the darkness with their faces to
the west, they see the divergent rays of Divine truth, and a
spectrum that is more dark than coloured ; they see the earthly
side of the web that has been woven upon the loom of time ;
and this is the fruit of all their labours, confusion, and chaos
in themselves and in the nature that they study.
When the attention is turned to " the generations of Shem,"
it appears as if men enter a region of which they have little or no
true knowledge. The conception takes this form : men are left
behind in their world of confusion ; they are scattered abroad
upon the face of the earth, and no possible means is to be found
by which they may be reunited. This is the psychological posi
tion in which mankind is found ; and it is hardly necessary to
add that, by all their intellectual cleverness and all their ethical

138 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT.
systems of thought, they have entirely failed to bring about any
hope of spiritual unity and harmony amongst the nations of the-
earth. It is with this thought in view that " the generations of
Shem " may be considered ; not as earthly, but as intellectual
and heavenly. In other words, what men find in these genera
tions as names are signs ; the concrete is changed into the
abstract ; and thus only those who know the meaning of the signs
will be able to understand what they represent and what they
teach. This is the region of advanced psychology ; it has to
do with the intellect and reason ; the sensuous signs have disap
peared, and it is a question whether the student is able to under
stand the symbols of thought with which he is dealing. This
may be a sufficient explanation of the brevity with which the
generations of Shem are revealed ; they come to men only as
names, living names in the womb of time, that do not die ; in
fact, they are spiritual, being intellectual : thus it is what is in
the heavens that they reveal to men. Each man and name
brings to men a special message ; they may be historical in more
senses than one ; thus they may represent historical persons
in the first instance ; they may represent peoples descended
from these persons ; they may represent periods of time in the
order of development ; and they may also represent in a special
sense the development of the intellectual spirit among men from
the stand-point of the heavens and the heavenly. There are no
earthly conditions and relations explaining the heavenly ; the
heavens link the generations together ; men and their philo
sophies are left outside as not worthy of consideration ; or, as
if men were not truly intellectual as to order, but empirical and
the children of experience.
In " the generations of Terah " there is a new departure ;
there is the pre-supposition that the empires of Babylon and
Ninevehhave risen, and that there have been great earthly develop
ments in Mesopotamia. The peoples in the Plain of Shinar,
and in the world, have become perverted from truth and right
eousness ; the earthly kingdom has been set up upon the earth ;
thus wherever men look in history, men have become unspiritual
idol-worshippers ; they have forsaken the covenant in Noah,
and they have rejected, and even forgotten, the Name of the
true God. It was at such a time, and under such conditions
that Terah begat three sons, Abram, Nahor and Haran ; and the
heavens, by the word of the Lord, and the work of the Spirit, so

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 13ff
influenced this man, and his family, that they left Ur of the
Chaldees, the dominion of the earthly powers, and they set off
upon a pilgrimage to seek for a better country. Haran died in
Chaldea ; but his memory was kept alive in the new home at
Haran in Padan Aram ; there Nahor stayed, and came short of
the promised land ; and there Terah died. Intellectually and.
morally all this is a revelation from the heavens ; it is what men
might expect ; it is repeated in the Bible over and over again in
varied forms ; and although men may not be able to perceive
the truth; it is within the range of possibility that this same
kind of pilgrimage, in a higher stage of development, has taken
place in Christendom. This is one of the strangest of facts in
connection with the Bible, that it goes on repeating the same
story, under new forms, throughout the generations ; men seem
to be so blind to what is spiritually true that they do not see this.
truth ; they do not understand the signs ; and thus they think
that what they are seeing is something entirely new, and what
has never taken place before. This story of Terah and his sons
is the seed that comes to a visible fruition in Moses and the
desert ; for the Israelites also undertook the same journey ;
they failed because of their unbelief ; thus the fathers and the-
children did not enter into the Promised Land. Terah and Moses.
are analogous ; they could not enter in ; they were linked with
the generations of the intellectual and moral ; they failed though
they started on the pilgrimage bravely ; their utmost is that
of being the uniting links betwixt the great world lying in chaos,
and that land that is by promise and grace, into which only the
faithful and the just and true may enter. What the Heavens
reveal thus far is an ideal intellectualism in names and signs.
which men do not understand ; and a moral man, wearied with
the wickedness of the heathen, upon his pilgrimage toward a.
better country with his family ; these also are signs to be studied.
It has been assumed in this brief study of the book of Genesis,
in its opening chapters, that the generations of the heavens and
the earth are continued in subsequent generations ; there is
development, new names, and new forms, but behind and beyond
all the forms the realities have been the heavens and the earth.
In the earlier chapters there is much that is earthly, but the
earthly stage, in a sense, terminates with Babel and its confusion ;
whilst the heavens continue their development in those higher
generations conceived to be spiritual. At the end of the sixth

140 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT.
of the generations, there is to be seen the faltering steps of an
¦aged pilgrim ; he stays too long on the way to the Promised Land,
and the end for him is that he fails to enter in and enjoy the
promises of God. With the death of that pilgrim on the way
¦another stage of development comes to an end ; the human
ideals have failed ; as intellectual and moral, they could not restore
ifallen man to his inheritance ; and thus the question that arises
is in what way, and in what sense, will the heavens go on in the
way of development to bring about a fruition of the heavenly
operating in humanity for so many centuries % What men would
look for, have always looked for throughout the ages, is an earthly
kingdom, a perversion of truth and righteousness ; what the
Heavens have been seeking after is a man able to see and under
stand what is heavenly ; one able to hear the Voice no earthly
man can hear ; to see by faith what no other man living could
see ; and, at the same time, so animated by the heavenly Spirit
that he was prepared to go forth in obedience to the Divine Will
to seek for, and to find, that earthly land, and heavenly country,
promised to those who believe the Word of God. There does
not appear to be any break in historic continuity ; the develop
ment of what belongs to the Heavens goes forward, and thus
men who do not look below the surface would be ready to con
clude that Abram took up the pilgrim staff when it fell from the
hand of Terah, and he went forth upon his journey to fulfil the
long cherished hopes of his father. In one sense this is true, it
is the earthly visible link seen of men ; in another it is not all
the truth because there lay behind Abram and Terah the Spirit
of God, and the Voice of the Lord, heard by Abram in Ur, telling
him to begin the pilgrim journey and to go to the land promised,
there to become a great nation, blessed, and the means of blessing
to all the families of men upon the earth. The generations of
the Heavens culminate, in this stage of development, upon this
man ; the seed of the heavenly has at last brought forth seed,
.and what men see in the story of Abraham is a new creation in
¦Christ, or rather the outward and visible form first used by the
Lord of Grace to teach men what the Heavens had designed,
and what the Spirit had made manifest. It is not easy to express
what is so very difficult for earthly-minded people to understand,
and yet what is so simple, beautiful and true to the child of grace.
To the former it is that he is dia-magnetic to the whole story ;
to the latter it is that he is para-magnetic ; this is grace and truth

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 141
light and life ; an ideal not to be analytically destroyed by
criticism ; but as living waters to be received from the Fountain
of Grace, for blessing spiritually, heavenly and eternally. The
two spirits cannot live in the same house, or abide in the same
soul in peace ; the child of grace is a child ; the critical man has'
put away childish thoughts, and thus his unfitness to enter into
sympathy with the story of the life of the pilgrim father, Abraham..
It is not necessary to consider the details in the life of Abraham ;
the point for consideration is this ; the means by which the
Heavens has carried on the great work of the redemption of
mankind from evil earthly powers, and the law of development
by which this has taken place. It is quite true that this is the
theme of the Bible from beginning to end, thus it is not easy to-
make a sudden break in the continuity of the story ; but there
is at this point a significant break, historically and spiritually i
and it is the special significance of the break that requires atten
tion. It is plain enough that Abram breaks the link with the-
past and its history ; he turns his back upon the earthly kingdoms
and all that they represent ; he turns his face toward the future
and the Kingdom of God in truth and righteousness upon the^
earth by which all the families of mankind will be blessed. Be
hind him lies the earthly and the undeveloped, that will not
develop beyond experience and empiricism ; before him, in a sense-
that he cannot discern, the purposes of God and their fulfilment..
It is not by him, in some conceivable way, that the Kingdom
of God is to come ; but what is of greater significance, it is in
him that all families of men are to be blessed. The Heavens,
in some sense are to be incarnate in him ; and when they have
become incarnate in Abraham, then this special form of the
revelation will pass away. In symbol, the Word will have
become Flesh, and the Spirit will have made manifest the new
creation. All the past is converged into Abraham from the-
refracted Heavens, as rays, or modes of motion, and in him they
become light ; out from him they will radiate again as light and
truth, and what they will become in his descendants has to be
revealed in the centuries to come. This is something like the
revelation ; it is Divine Grace ; it is the Love and Mercy of God ;,
it is blessing upon blessing to mankind ; and yet men, for ages,
will neither see, hear, nor understand, all that is involved in
Abraham. As suggested Abraham is the fulfilment of all the past ; the

142 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT.
Heavens unite upon him, and he becomes a spiritual seed bearing
seed. The seed that is spiritual reaches the land that has a
spiritual significance by promise, and by altar and sacrifice the
land is consecrated, with the worshipper, to the service of God.
But it is to be noticed that here again begins a new develop
ment ; the possession of the earthly, and its consecration, is
only the beginning ; the children of Canaan possess the land ;
it is a place where famine may come ; and it may be necessary
to pass through the land, visit Egypt, and from thence bring
^orth treasures. It is a land wherein brethren may strive and
^separate from each other ; in fact, it is an earthly possession
about which a child of grace will not fret or strive with other men.
It is not the better country ; it is the platform from whence that
country may be seen by the eyes of faith ; and that land stretches
¦east, west, north, south, up and down, even beyond the power
of faith to see or understand. It is the land of spiritual freedom
•and abundant blessing ; of exceeding great and precious promises ;
blessed indeed are the children of grace who have received by
faith such promises, their dwelling-place is in the plain of Mamre,
in Hebron, and there they will find an altar consecrated to the
Lord of the land that is possessed. This land of promise, it can
"be seen, is very much like other lands ; within its borders there may
come those who delight in war ; it is where the cruel and the
covetous dwell, and where the prisoner requires to be rescued
from the oppressors and from slavery. This land is not free from
anxious thoughts as to the future, and the purposes of God.
¦How is it possible that these can be fulfilled when the land is
unsafe through marauding thieves ; and there is no son to be
the heir of the possession ? Is this the way that faith must
-travel to that better country ? It is even so, there are enemies in
the land, robbers on the march, the dark night, the clouds, the
thunderstorm, the divided heart and the doubtful mind ; but,
above, beyond, and around, all these, the Lord is ever present, a
shield for protection in the hour of danger, and a reward so ex
ceeding great that the child of grace cannot conceive all that He
is to those who put their trust in Him. The victory of faith
over what is earthly is magnificent ; but the child of grace cannot
utter a single word of self commendation ; he can only cling the
closer to his Guide and Defender ; it is the pilgrim way, not
home, and hard by this Hill of Difficulty there are many ravenous
lions ; and in thiswalley of the shadow of Death even the .doorway

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 1 43
of hell may be found. It is here that the child of grace
comes to have the conscious experience of what is meant by the
pilgrimage of Abraham and of his own soul ; it is to be awakened
to covenants and the responsibilities they bring ; and perhaps,
not always, it brings the sense of safety, of the divine life, and
of the assurance of victory over all enemies. The land is a strange
land, and the pilgrimage is not always pleasant ; but blessed be
the Name of the Lord God of Abraham, it is really a good land to
dwell in, none better ; and there is always this thought for en
couragement ; it is only a stage further on the journey, and there
will come into view the better country ; and that city, with its
eternal habitations, whose builder and maker is God.
It is amidst such thoughts as these that generations of pilgrims
have followed in the footsteps of faithful Abraham. The vision
of faith is very wonderful, and it is very real and true ; that is to
say it is true to spiritual experience, it is the children's Pilgrims'
Progress, in the household of faith, experienced and written many
centuries ago, and it is still as fresh and full of the spiritual life
of grace as in the days when Abraham sojourned in the promised
land. But it is not the land alone around which the children
of grace have lived and lingered with Abraham, they have also
entered into his thoughts and experiences about the son and heir
to the inheritance, and about Hagar and Ishmael, Sarah and
Isaac. Here also parable and allegory have had their fulfil
ment ; there has been development in manifold ways ; thus Hagar
and Egypt, Ishmael and the Desert, the land of promise and
Isaac, are all being interpreted into what is spiritual, and as the
fulfilment of the spiritual in Abraham. In thus contemplating
Abraham as a pilgrim seeking a better country, there is the risk
of thinking too much about the man, and too little about what he
represents. To the eye of faith the man is seen upon his journey,
thus it is natural to watch him intently, and not observe carefully
the heavens that are around and within him, and the earth upon
which he treads, keeping it under his feet, so that it may not rise
up and get the mastery over him. The man is in the midst of the
conflict betwixt heaven and earth, good and evil, and it is be
cause the heavens take him under their special care, that he is
kept in safety under the great Shield of God and guided onward
in his journey. That the man required this special protection,
help, and guidance, is plain enough ; that he was a thoughtful,
earnest, faithful, man cannot be doubted ; and thus, in a sense,

144 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT.
the story of the man is the revelation of his thoughts and ex
periences ; his self-denial and his trials ; of his deepest thoughts,
sorrows and sufferings. The life follows the law of development ;
thus this is the first great revelation of the seed of grace, and of
its fruits that appears upon the pages of history. The marvel
and the miracle in the Hfe is that the heaven of grace is in his soul ;
that it develops in the order followed ; and that such a picture
of what a man ought to be as a pilgrim is set up before men for
their study and imitation. As can be plainly seen, the life may
be divided into four parts, these being in their order as follows :
1. The Call and the Faith that was responsive to the Divine Voice.
2. The journey from Ur and the land possessed in hope. 3. The
question of the heir to the inheritance held by hope, and how
through patience of spirit this was settled by the birth of Isaac.
4. There follows the story of the great trial of faith in the offering
up of Isaac ; the revelation of the sacrifice of the heavens in
Divine Love and Mercy ; and, as might be expected, what foHows
is the blessing of peace, the rest in Machpelah, and the better
country. What the heavens teach in these four stages of life and ex
perience is that this man by faith, when he was called by God to
leave Ur, and all that Chaldea represents, by visible worldly
power, he obeyed ; he went forth from that land to find another
inheritance, and he did not know whither he was going nor the
way. This is faith, it is perfect and complete confidence in God
who called him ; and it is the trust of a child of grace in the
gracious Spirit of Grace, his Guide upon the journey. In the land
he sojourned in hope, yet to him it was as a strange country ; it
was, with the idolatrous Canaanites, famine stricken droughts,
contiguity with Egypt, strife about cattle and pasturage, raids
of robbers and war, anything but his ideal of what the promised
land ought to be. Thus the contrast, he looked away beyond
that land and saw a better country ; he looked upon the tents in
which he and his children dwelt, and to his spiritual vision there
came a sight of the city of God with its eternal foundations. But
what about the land of promise, even the earthly inheritance,
the promises of God and the heir % Is there no truth in these,
and will the heavenly and the ideal come before the earthly and
the temporal ? It is in this region that patience is so necessary ;
to faith the way to the heavenly sometimes seems very short ;
experience and science seem as if they lived next door to each

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 145
other ; and they know not the meaning that is hidden under
the symbols of Egypt, the Desert, and the earthly kingdom. Be
twixt the earthly and the heavenly there lies the reception of
Divine power ; the conception of a seed ; the delivery of a child ;
the highway of faith in God's promises ; a seed innumerable as
the stars ; pilgrims so many that no man could count them ;
and all these follow in the footsteps of their father Abraham, ever
seeking for the heavenly country. It is because these pilgrims
have had this heavenly inheritance in view, and would not turn
back to what is earthly, that God is not ashamed of them, and
they are called His people ; and for them He has prepared a city
and home with many mansions therein. It must be so ; God.
will prove Himself to be greater than His promises, it is simply
absurd to think that the Heavens are to labour in their genera
tions and that the end will be death, the grave, and the victory
of evil over good. It really has not been so all along the line of
history ; and men may rest assured that when the consummation
comes, they will not be ashamed of God, His promises, and His
Divine work of grace and mercy upon the earth. In the mean
time, and all through history, the parable of the great trial of the
faith of Abraham has been a spectacle for angels and for men.
Have they not watched with intense interest that three days
journeying from Hebron in the plain to the Mount of God ? It
is there that the mystery of sin, suffering, sacrifice, substitution,
propitiation and reconciliation are made manifest ; there Abra
ham offered up Isaac ; and there the only begotten Son was
offered up for mankind ; there the lad was set free ; and the One
caught in the thicket by wicked men, became the true eternal
Sacrifice for sin. This is a vision not to be seen in every place,
and by any man ; it is in the Mount of the Lord that men per
ceive this vision ; it is when sin takes men by the throat, and de
mands his wages, that this terrible struggle is endured ; this is
indeed the climax of the experiences of men with the earthly and
the devilish. Life is forfeited is the cry of sin in the trembling
soul ; and the response is the giving up of what is more prized
than life ; but even to the extent of giving the fruit of the body
for the sin of the soul is not enough in this struggle ; the problem
is much deeper and the enemy is utterly merciless ; in fact, man
can find no solution to the difficulty at this stage ; it is God alone in
His great Love wherewith He loved man that cuts this knot that
cannot be untied. Abraham and Isaac went to meet Death ; and

146 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF TOE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT.
the Lord of Grace intervened. Men see an altar and sacrifice ;
a Cross and a Man ; and they hear a voice that commands liberty
for those who are bound. They have tasted the bitter waters of
death, just enough to know their bitterness ; they look and see
the Divine Man, the Son of God, upon altar and Cross. They were
as dead, they are alive again ; it is figures that men see not
spiritual realities ; and yet how real and true the experiences
have been. God has been able to give them life from the dead ;
the Living One cannot die, though He may taste the waters of
death. He also has raised Himself above sin and death ; they
have been put under His feet ; they are subdued and their realm
overthrown ; it is Christ that reigns in the heavens, and He must
reign until His enemies are subdued in those who follow Him in
this great pilgrimage. There is a transformation scene on this
Mount of the Lord ; men look for Abraham, and they see the
Father ; they look for Isaac, and they see Jesus, the Saviour ;
and they look for death and find life. As Abraham looked across
the centuries from that mountain top he saw his Saviour, the
Blessed One ; the meaning of the three days' journey, the altar
ind sacrifice, were understood; he rejoiced and was glad, because
he knew that the faith he had cherished had become victorious ;
and that before the Son of the Heavens, darkness, sin and death
had been conquered. When the angel in the heavens spake the
first time, it was for deliverance ; when he spake out of heaven the
second time, it was to confirm, as by an oath, all the promises of
God to men through Abraham. The pilgrims are blessed indeed ;
they have been multiplied exceedingly ; and the whole earth will
one day be blessed, saved and redeemed through their Lord and
Redeemer. All this is a brief sketch of what may be found in the generations
of the heavens and the earth, and what arises out of them in sub
sequent generations. In the generations of Adam the seventh is
Enoch, the prophet that walked with God, and was taken home by
the new living way of life. In the order of generations it is Abra
ham that is the seventh ; and yet the generations of Abraham
are not named in Genesis ; they form a spiritual ideal ; they sum
up the past, and they are the prophetic revelation of a new age.
From the heavens and earth, by Adam, Noah, the sons of Noah
Shem and Terah, there is a cycle of development ; at the end of
the cycle, men are able to study the method of development in
the kingdom of grace ; the good and evil seeds have brought

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 147
forth their fruits ; and what is specially to be noticed is the fact
that outward visible orders and forms have come into existence,
by which men are able to see, and to consider, what these revela
tions mean. In the light of the method of Christ men are able
to perceive these things and thoughts as scientific truths which
have an objective value ; they conceive them to be in scientific
order ; they ask from whence they have been derived, and the
reply is that they have come from the generations of the heavens
and the earth. It is not necessary to point out that the outward
visible and the inward spiritual are in mutual correspondence ;
this must be so ; else there could not be the cognisance of the unity
and harmony that exists. What this amounts to is that the
heavens have generated and brought forth seed, what is conceived
to be the living seed of faith ; the living way of faith has been
followed, and it is found as consummated in a man ; the heavens
and the man are in correspondence, they are para-magnetic to
each other, and thus the light and life of the heavens is light and
life in the man. All this is just as simple, or as complex, as
science can make the subject ; the relations of the truths, and the
conditions under which they take place, have become known ;
and science does not pretend to give any other explanation. The
next step, however, is practical and important, because it deals
with the method by which one man, or many men, attain to the
like precious faith, and it is not so very mysterious after all ; for
it is by reading the Word of God in their generations, as explained,
and by walking in a childlike spirit in the footsteps of Abraham,
the father of the faithful. On the other hand, if men have no
sympathy with the generations of the heavens, and prefer, choose,
to be earthly, sensual and devilish, the examples lie before them
in Cain, Ham, Nimrod, and in the wicked, ambitious, self-asserting
spirit of the tower-builders in Babel. Just as surely as day and
night follow each other, so good seed will bring forth good fruit
after its kind, and evil seed evil fruit after its kind. Good and
evil men do bring forth in their lives that which is good and evil ;
by the fruits of their lives men are known, and this is a truth men
have known in all ages and in all countries upon the face of the
earth. The root of the seed of faith is in the heavens, in the
spiritual, in God and in men that fear God, and seek to do His will;
the root of unbelief is in the earth, in the natural, in the devil and
evil, and selfish, self-asserting men prefer to take their own ways,
and' to follow earthly, sensual, devilish men. This is the rich
k 2

148 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT;
fruitage that is found stored up in the life of Abraham ; if men
are like him and follow in his footsteps, cherishing the same
spirit, then they are his children ; they possess a like precious
faith ; and, whether they consciously realise it or not, they are
of the heavenly generations and their home is in God, in the
heavens. It is not conceived, nor asserted here, that there was
no faith upon the earth before the days of Abraham ; it is the
very contrary that is assumed to be true ; the seed of faith was
conceived in Eden, but by the law of development it took the
dispensation from Adam to Abraham to bring this great truth
into the consciousness of men, as the great fundamental truth
that lies at the root of all true religion. From that time it was
made possible for all men in the realm of grace, who knew the
story of the life of Abraham, to understand what the life of faith
meant ; but the converse is equally true ; it does not mean that
only those who have had a conscious faith equal to that of Abra
ham have been saved. This is not a matter for dogmatic asser
tion ; it is not in harmony with the law of development ; the One
able to speak with authority upon this subject had a special care
and love for the children, and His testimony is that the little
ones, the tender lambs of the flock, the innocent ones, whether
old or young, are really the first, and enjoy the best to be found
in the kingdom of grace and love. Without faith it is not
possible to please God ; there are those who think that they are
first, and that they will get the best place, because they deserve
it. They may be altogether wrong in their conceptions, and
it may so happen that those they despise, and would reject as
unworthy to enter the palace of the King, may really find an ex
alted place at the great feast in the house of God and in the
kingdom of heaven. •
The generations of the heavens and of the earth may be con
sidered to be parables, allegories, or spiritual visions ; parables
to those who see, allegories to those who think, and spiritual
visions to men who are spiritual, who are endowed with faith,
and are able to look beyond allegory and parable to the scientific
order that exists in the Kingdom of Heaven. As explained, the
result of the heavens, and their generations, is Abraham and all
that he represents ; and the generations of the earth are found
in Cain like men ; in the Flood with its destruction ; in Ham and
his irreverence and want of respect for his father ; in Nimrodi
the mighty hunter and empire builder ; and in that confusion

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 149
of Babel that fell upon all men through their self-conceit, self-
assertion and their ambition, that would reach even to the heavens.
These are the first-fruits in their spiritual results ; they indicate
clearly the order of development ; and what men are required
to do is to follow out this method of thought and apply the same
to the generations yet to come. It is to be expected that the
development will be in a similar order, but under new forms ; and
of necessity they will follow, in scientific order, as psychical, moral
and spiritual, that which has been revealed in the visible, as, in a
sense, the physical. There are several ways in which the Bible
can be studied ; there are divisions which require special study,
but as the scientific order is developed, it is seen that they fit into
each other, and that they are all required for the intelligent ap
prehension of the Kingdom of Heaven. The Bible is one whole
work, or new creation of God, and conceived to be as truly scienti
fic in order as the physical sciences known to scientific men. It
is, of course, a spiritual creation in Christ ; and thus it is Christ
alone that can teach men how this Book is set in order, and how
it ought to be studied. As Christ does not teach men now, as
He taught His disciples in Galilee long ago, it follows that He
teaches and guides them by His Spirit of Truth ; thus men ought
to realise that whether they are receiving special tuition in
scientific truth, or being guided to understand Divine truth in
the Bible, it is the Spirit of Christ that is making manifest this
greatest of all the works of God. The Bible is one Book ; it is the
revelation of the Kingdom of Grace to sinful men. The Bible
is a living spiritual work of God, and it is like creation, nature
and man. The Book of Genesis is comparable to the seed in
which there is life ; and in the ten generations there is to be
found involved, in due order, all that will be made manifest in the
Book. But it may be necessary to note here that Genesis ap
pears to fall short in this respect ; it contains ten generations,
whilst the Bible, as a whole, may be said to contain twelve
generations. The explanation is to this effect ; two generations
remain in the womb of Genesis as unborn, and they are, as signs,
in the two sons of Joseph, Manasseh and Ephraim. Joseph is the
type of Jesus, the Christ, the lowly Man and the exalted Son of
God, regnant in glory ; and the sons born in Egypt represent
the Christian Dispensation in the world, when the Kingdom
has passed away from Israel. This twelve-fold order is that of
the historical development of the kingdom; and it may be

150 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT.
traced in many forms throughout the Bible, with which Bible
students are familiar. It is only required here to mention this
twelve-fold development as in the twelve sons of Jacob ; the
twelve families in Egypt ; the twelve tribes in the Desert ; the
twelve tribes and their portions in the promised land ; the
twelve disciples of Jesus ; and the redeemed from the twelve
tribes of Israel, as revealed in vision to the seer in the island of
Patmos. It is the twelve that constitutes the Kingdom of Grace
upon the earth ; but it must not be forgotten that the King is
in the centre of the Kingdom ; He unites all into the one King
dom of God ; and without Him there would not be any kingdom
of truth, righteousness, grace, and glory.
This may be conceived as the one united historical Kingdom
of Grace ; it has apparently one onward development ; thus it
may be conceived in history as the revelation of the Kingdom
of Grace and of God. A second line of development may be
somewhat more difficult to trace ; it is Christ's special method
of revelation, and the key to it has been found in the seven
principles, in the Beatitudes, in Enoch, in the sons of Adam, in
Abraham, in the Generations, in Moses of the family of Levi the
seventh from Abraham, in Samuel in the nation of Israel, and
in Jesus Christ in the world. The seven-fold mysteries of the
Book of Revelation specially, and in other parts of the Bible are
known ; and it is well to remember that in the highest spiritual
symbolism the Lord Christ appears as the eighth, the Divine
Sacrifice and High Priest in the midst of the seven golden candle
sticks with seven stars in His right hand. He is the Glory in
the Church of the Redeemed, and should He disappear there
would not be any Church, light of truth, or Gospel ministry. It
must not be forgotten that along with the seventh there is ever,
seen, or unseen, an eighth ; the seven are always to be found,
they cannot be dispensed with, they are Divine ; the eighth is
like the lamp in that strange vision of Abraham ; the sun has
gone down, darkness reigns, there is a smoking furnace and a
burning lamp, possessing and moving through what is divided ;
or, it is like the Bush of God at Horeb that burnt with fire and
was not consumed ; or, like that fiery furnace in Babylon where
the three holy children walked freely, and there was seen in their
midst One like unto the Son of God. To alter the figure of thought
there may be seen as this eighth, Christ in the darkness, in a
garden, in an agony, and His sweat is that of blood ; or it may

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 151
be Christ in the martyr Stephen, and in all martyrs, for every
drop of blood thus shed upon the earth springs to life again ;
the blood is the Life and it is the seed ever producing new life
and new seed in the Kingdom of God and in the Church of Christ.
This conception of the Kingdom of God is quite different from
that of historical development, as one continuous history ; it
is like the generations from the heavens to Abraham, and. to
Isaac as sacrifice ; it begins again in Noah and runs on to Isaac ;
it begins again in Shem and runs on to Jacob and Joseph ; and,
again beginning in Abraham and running on to Samuel and the
Kingdom. It has been suggested, after careful consideration,
that the whole Bible is built upon this order, called the method
of Christ ; and, indeed, what appears still more strange and
wonderful is that the whole of nature, man, as well as the Bible,
are set in this rhythm of motion and of music. The vision is
very wonderful ; it almost seems as if the dark night, the clouds
and the storms were past ; as if men were being awakened to
hear the music of the spheres ; the jubilant choirs of the angel
visitors from the heavens assuring them that the day of their
redemption is come ; and that they are to prepare themselves
with their garments of salvation, and their most happy, joyful
and glad songs of praise, to meet the King of Grace and Glory,
who is upon His way to visit that land, where men once rejected
Him as their King and sent him back to Heaven, and to His
Father, with the marks of that cruel crown of thorns upon His
brow and the nail prints in His hands and feet.
In the historical order throughout the Bible — that is the twelve
fold — men see the history of the great spiritual movement in the
realm of grace, and the consummation of the whole is prefigured
in the closing chapters of the Book of Revelation. In the method
of Christ — that is seven and eight-fold — men can trace the scientific
order of development ; in other words this is how the order takes
place in ever recurring cycles, and in an ever repeating rhythm of
thought, word and action. The revelation is that of Christ ; and
in the truest sense, the Bible is Christ, and Christ is the Word of
God to sinful men for their redemption and salvation. In addition
to these, there can also be found the method by which the Spirit
works throughout the Bible ; and the student may be supposed
in this study ever to be asking the question, why all this work of
God is being carried on 1 and what the results will be throughout
history, and at the consummation of all things ? This is the

152 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE'LAW OF DEVELOPMENT.
four-fold method already referred to ; and it is only necessary
here to give a few examples of this method and its order. To
those familiar with this line of thought it can be traced in the
generations ; but it is first made manifest in the three series of
generations, from heaven and earth to Abraham; from Noah to
Isaac ; from Shem to Jacob ; and in the fourth series in Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. The result of the first series is faith
in God as seen in a man ; the second is that of hope, as resident in
the Promised Land ; the third is that of patience, as evidenced by
the work of the Spirit in the wayward Jacob changed into Israel ;
and the fourth is found in that love found in Joseph in Egypt, the
beloved son of Jacob. In Genesis Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and
Joseph become synonyms with faith, hope, patience and love ; by
the Spirit the men have been made manifest ; and they become
the ideals or types, of the Spirit's method of work, and the result
of His work in men. There is another development, upon a
national scale, in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and
Deuteronomy, with all that they represent ; and it is not difficult
to trace the special work and teaching of the Spirit, in due order,
in these four books of the Desert life. There is a new form of
development in Joshua, Judges, I. Samuel, and II. Samuel — these
being, faith in Joshua and Israel in the conquest ; hope in God
for Israel, even though the people became idolatrous and the
commonwealth was a failure; with Samuel comes the day of
grace for the nation, and the patience of God with the misguided,
self-asserting Saul as king ; and, at last the nation is seen as
victorious over all its enemies, in the shepherd-king of Israel, the
beloved David. But it may now be suggested that the books
I. II. Kings, carry the ideal into a new channel ; the vision is that
of Israel in its glory under Solomon ; the revolt of the ten tribes,
and the ministry of Elijah as prophet in Israel ; the coming of the
prophet Elisha as successor to Elijah ; the deportation of Israel
into Assyria under Shalmaneser ; the patience of God with Judah ;
the captivity under Nebuchadnezzar ; and the kindness of the
king of Babylon to Jehoiachin. At the first glance it may not be
easy to discern the work of the Spirit from Solomon to Jehoiachin
in Babylon ; but the periods stated are marked stages in the
history of Israel ; and it may well be that this portion of history,
as outward sign in the nation, is of great importance for throwing
light upon that age conceived to be spiritual. The glory of
Solomon is not to be found in the man, his palace, temple or

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 153
state ; it is faith in God that lies at the root of all these visible
glories. The glory of Solomon is to be found in his faith in God,
and in his fear of God as found in his wisdom and in his works.
When Solomon lost that faith and fear, and took to imitating
Egypt and Nineveh, then the glory was gone and only the tinsel
trappings were left. To lose the faith and fear of God is dis
astrous in a man or a nation ; the results are soon made evident
in revolt and schism, in folly and strife, war and worldliness. What
then f Is it the will of God that Judah and Israel be permitted
to run headlong to destruction, and no voice of hope from heaven
reach the perishing masses of men ? The answer to this question,
by the Voice of the Spirit, is Elijah the prophet, and all that he
represents to Israel and to mankind. The vision changes : Ahab
is dead in Israel : Jehoshaphat is dead in Judah ; there is no king
in Edom, only a deputy ; and Moab has rebelled against Israel.
The time has come for the ascension of Elijah ; the time of the
calling of Elisha to be prophet is at hand, and thus the watershed
has been reached in Israel, and it is found in that juncture of time
when Elijah departs to be with God, and Elisha comes to be
the prophet, and the teacher of prophets. This is evidently a
very critical period requiring careful study ; and in the light of
the New Testament men may revisit the Jordan, and there they
will see John the Baptist, and Jesus, the Saviour, the successor of
John. It is Elisha that is central in this third portion of the record
of the kings of Israel ; and may it not be said that the patiena
of the Spirit was made manifest in this man, and in his ministry
in Israel, in the days of the decline of the nation ? There is a
wonderful prophetic touch of thought in connection with the death
and burial of Elisha ; for it is recorded that when a dead man was
let down into his grave, and " touched the bones of Elisha," he
came to life again. But the foreigners ruled over Israel, and the
people were greatly oppressed ; what then ? " The Lord was
gracious unto them, and had compassion on them, and had respect
unto them, because of His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, and would not destroy them, neither cast He them from
His presence as yet." This is the vision of Israel and Judah and
their downfall as nations ; they fell from their state of glory ; they
became even worse than other nations ; they were carried into
captivity into the land from whence Abraham had come. Is this
the end ? Has God forgotten to be gracious, merciful, pitiful
and compassionate ? This is the tragedy of divine love ; this is

154 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT.
where Love ceases to appear to be love, so that by the sad path
way of sorrow and suffering men may be taught something of the
great love wherewith God loved His people Israel. The story
is a very strange one ; it is the visible representation of eternal
spiritual truth ; "He said : Surely they are My people, children
that will not lie ; so He was their Saviour. In all their affliction
He was afflicted, and the angel of His presence saved them ;
in His love and in His pity He redeemed them ; and He
bare them and carried them all the days of old." This is not the
end of all things ; it is an end and also a beginning ; the visible
nation and all it represents are phenomena for men to study ; tbis
is the natural and its fruits ; the earthly has returned to the earth,
and it is out of the purged, purified people of God, in their exile
and sorrow, that men will see arise the spiritual nation and
kingdom of Israel.
This brief study of the downfall of Israel, according to the flesh,
may not be unprofitable, if the reading tends to show that even in
this realm of thought the Holy Spirit is ever operative for the
salvation of mankind. Here, as it were, men have seen the death
of a man, and that by his death another man is brought to life
again ; and here also there takes place the death of the nation of
Israel ; but as yet they do not see salvation and restoration for
mankind. This vision follows in Isaiah, the prophet of faith in
God ; in Jeremiah there is hope as seen in the rod of the almond
tree, in the Branch, as the Lord our Righteousness, and in the
restoration after seventy years ; in the symbolic visions and
personal experiences of Ezekiel there is manifested patience ; and
in the beloved Daniel the mercy and love of God in the kingdom of
Messiah. Similar conceptions of faith and mercy will be found
in Hosea, of hope and purity in Joel ; of patience, restoration and
peace in Amos ; and of saviours among the nations of the earth in
Obadiah, with the coming of the Lord's kingdom of peace and love.
In the second series of the Prophets Jonah is the unwilling prophet
to carry the message of faith by which Nineveh is saved ; there is
the hope of the restoration of the nation and of the coming of
Christ in Micah ; in Nahum it is revealed that the Lord is good,
and as a stronghold to those who trust him, that He is very
patient, and though of great power, slow in His anger and
judgments to Nineveh and to the nations ; in Habakkuk the vision
is that of faith, hope, patience and of love rejoicing in the Lord,
the God of Salvation. In Zephaniah the vision is that of faith in

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 155
God and of rejoicing in His mercy ; in Haggai there is a new hope
in the temple that is to be rebuilt, and in the coming of the Desire
of all nations who will fill the temple with his glory ; in Zechariah
the visions speak of patience and of waiting for the coming of
Christ to take away sin ; and in Malachi, the Old Testament sums
up the dispensation in the expectation of Elijah's return and of
the coming of the Sun of Righteousness with healing and blessing
to mankind.
In the New Testament the same recurrence of the work of the
Spirit is to be found ; but here the Spirit has made manifest Jesus
the Saviour of the world. In Matthew's gospel the glad tidings
is of the fruition of faith by the generations in faithful Abraham ;
in Mark's gospel Christ is the hope of man and of mankind ; in
Luke's gospel the vision is that of the patient work of the Spirit
from Adam to Christ ; and in John's gospel the revelation is the
Love of God in Christ, the Light of Truth, the Life of heaven and
earth and the Grace of God to all men. The Acts of the Apostles
is a new departure in the work of the Spirit ; but it is the special
revelation of the Spirit to those who cherish the spirit of faith,
and accept the mercy of God. The Epistle to the Romans is a
message of hope to the world, to Jew, Greek and Roman, that in
Christ there is redemption and restoration to manhood. The
first Epistle to the Corinthians is the manifestation of the Gospel
of the patience of the Spirit of God in the revelation of Christ as
the Son of God, the Peacemaker, Who reconciles the world to God ;
and II. Corinthians is the gospel that reveals how suffering and
sorrow become the means of joy, gladness and rejoicing love in
those who are redeemed. The Epistle to the Galatians is the
voice of the Spirit recalling men from Judaism to faith in God by
the way of grace ; the Epistle to the Ephesians is written to those
who trust in Christ, telling them that they are sealed by the
Spirit, and that they are in possession of the great hope, the
inheritance of the saints, as an earnest of what has yet to be
revealed ; the Epistle to the Philippians speaks of Christ as
servant, as like man, as Son of God, bringing salvation to men by
His patient suffering, and His followers are encouraged to walk in
the same way, until they attain the prize of the high calling of God
that is in Christ ; and the Epistle to the Colossians sums up the
glory that is in Christ, and in those who are risen with Him to
the spiritual life of grace and love. The concluding Epistles
follow the same order of thought ; they are, however, more

156 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT.
practical as showing in what sense men had received, and under
stood, this life of faith ; the hope they were called to cherish
until the coming again of Christ ; the patient works of faith and
love in which they were to be occupied ; and the consideration
and contemplation of Christ, the Son and Heir of all things, the
High Priest, Saviour, and Mediator. The Epistle of James is one
of practical faith ; the Epistles of Peter speak of the great hope
cherished by the faithful in the time of trial ; the Epistles of John
tell men of Christ as Light, Life and Love, as the way to the
Eternal Life, in the spirit of patience ; and the Epistle of Jude is
the last practical utterance to the foUowers of Christ warning
them against evil, and encouraging them to cherish their most
holy faith, to pray in the Holy Spirit, to keep themselves in the
love of God, and to keep an outlook for the mercy of Christ, of
which the consummation will be eternal life.
In addition to the order of the Spirit, the method of Christ, and
the historical development as found in the whole Bible, it may
not be out of place to notice briefly the two-fold dispensations
usually conceived as the carnal and the spiritual. This division
is not quite the same as that of the historical development ;
rather, it is in duplicate ; and it is through the carnal that the
spiritual is understood. It must not be understood that the
carnal interprets the spiritual ; the converse is the truth ; it is the
spiritual in Christ that harmonises the carnal and the spiritual.
As explained, the book of Genesis is the womb from whence all
generations come ; but in Genesis they are conceived as seeds ;
and what the seeds contain is not known by those who live in
that realm. In the generations in Genesis there are six genera
tions, and then the revelation is Abraham ; from Abraham there
are four generations, Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob ; and,
as suggested, the two generations unborn are the sons of Joseph
in Egypt. The order of development takes this form ; the six
generations, in continuous development, are as the order of re
creation in man ; Terah is the sixth, the moral man, that comes
short of the promises of God ; thus Abraham reveals grace by the
way of faith, and here development ends. There is a new move
ment from Noah to Isaac, the ideal in this series being that the
faith of Abraham is a living seed in the realm of grace, and that
it is in the generations of Noah as in a child newly born ; and this
child is psychical, the work of the Spirit of God. This is not a
common child ; it is the child of faith and grace, the heir to the

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 157
promises of God and to the Promised Land. Thethird series, from
Shem to Jacob, pre-supposes the child in the womb of time made
manifest as faith ; the infant born as heir to faith and to the
promises of God as hope; and it is in Jacob, the father of the nation;
that manhood is attained and the discipline that comes through
patience is made fruitful. The man lives as Jacob, but in order to
bridge the gulf betwixt the carnal and the spiritual, there is a
return to Abraham as the head of the dispensation of grace by
faith, and the issue here is Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. Falling back
upon the conception of the square : in these series there are trace
able the physical, the psychical, the moral and the spiritual ;
and it is the last, the spiritual, that is of chief importance
in the development of the kingdom of grace. When the
problem of the nation of Israel is to be considered, then
it is necessary to remember that the foundations are to be
found in Genesis ; that these are not natural ; they are,
as matters of fact, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph ; they
are not Egyptian in their history ; because, as is often
repeated in the Bible, God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob, of the Promised Land and the promises ; and, in Genesis,
it is Joseph that is the special generation of Jacob in Egypt. It is
the patriarchs that are the spiritual foundations of Israel ; and
yet it is true that the nation, with this history involved in it, was
born in Egypt ; it is God's first-born nation in its infancy ; and
it is out of Egypt that he- calls and redeems His son. It is the
nation as an allegory, that is the first-born child of Abraham by
Hagar, the Egyptian ; and that child is in the generations named
Ishmael. It may not be easy to understand this allegory ; yet
Paul in the New Testament gives the spiritual explanation. It
has to be remembered that Genesis is as the womb of the nation;
therefore the allegories of Ishmael and Isaac, and of Esau and
Jacob could not in that book be represented as literal facts when
they had no existence, except in the ideal in Christ, and in the
purposes of the Spirit in revelation. The child-nation was born
in Egypt ; it was redeemed from Egypt under Moses ; as a child
it was under Moses in the desert ; in its childhood and youth it
might have passed from Sinai to the Promised Land ; but, through
unbelief this child-nation failed to enter in, and thus the books,
Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy give to men the
history of the training, the experiences, and the intellectual copies,
signs, or symbols, of things in heaven, as conceivable at that

158 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT.
stage in the history of the development of Israel. The nation of
Israel in the Land of Promise after the conquest of the land under
Joshua becomes the generations of Isaac, in a developed sense; the
generations of Isaac, in the earthly and the spiritual, in Esau and
Jacob, extend in history down to the coming of Christ ; and thus, in
Him all that is in Genesis as seed, and all that is in the nation, is
fulfilled. This allegory of the generations of Isaac are complex ; they
require careful study ; and it may be found that they fulfil them
selves in two different ways : the first being in the twin spirits that
animate the nation, as earthly, and as spiritual : that which pre
dominates in Israel as a nation is the spirit of Esau as found in
Saul ; and of Jacob as found in David and those who desired to fear
and serve God. The other interpretation is that the generations of
Esau, in the highest sense, as the grandson of Abraham and the
son of Isaac, as of spiritual descent, is to be found in that series of
books in the Bible from Chronicles to the Song of Solomon ; they
exist as a literature apart from the line of development in Israel ;
and the studyjof these books in their order, according to the method
of Christ, will amply repay the student. The generations of Jacob
in Joseph revolve round Christ ; thus historically they point
forward to the prophets, to the coming of Christ, and to the
Christian age in history : in Joseph to Egypt, and in Christ to
the proclamation of His kingdom of grace in the earth. There
follows in the history of the nation the story found in the Books
of the Kings : the apostasy and wickedness of kings and people ;
their rejection, and the end of Israel after the flesh is the captivity
in Babylon and the East.
This is a bird's-eye view of the carnal development in the
realm of grace, to the man Abraham : and from Abraham to the
nation of Israel. The analogy, or the fulfilment spiritually of
what is prefigured in Genesis as seed and in the history of Israel
as a nation, will now be briefly considered in the light of the history
in Genesis and in Israel. The spiritual arises out of the carnal ;
and it can be conceived in the same order. The womb out of
which Christ and the Christian religion arose, is Israel ; and the
Genesis of the spiritual is revealed in the two series of the books
of the prophets from Isaiah to Obadiah, and from Jonah to
Malachi. Just as in the book of Genesis there is an order of con
centration from Adam and all the nations to Abraham, and' of
expansion and unity in the one nation of Israel from Abraham
so a similar order may be discerned in the prophets. The f ounda-

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 159
tions of the spiritual Man and nation are laid in Israel after the
flesh, and this can be seen to the greatest advantage in the great
prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel ; their visions of
redemption and salvation are for the whole earth. It is in these
prophets that judgments are predicted and brought upon the
nations as to the past ; and also, there is made known to all men
in all nations the coming of Christ, as Messiah, and of His king
dom that is to succeed, and overthrow, all other kingdoms upon
the earth. The next series of the prophets are principally Jewish
and may be said to deal with restored Israel ; there is the second
temple in Haggai : the city of Jerusalem restored and the temple
finished in Zechariah ; and in Malachi the coming of Elijah, and of
the Sun of Righteousness. It is not to be forgotten that the
prophet Jonah is the first sign in this series ; he is the repre
sentative of Israel, as unfaithful td God and disobedient. This is
where Israel is rejected and where the new movement begins for
the salvation of Nineveh and the world. The assumption is that
in the Genesis of the past, and in history, the nations of the earth,
and also the nation of Israel, had rejected Christ. He is going to
come back to them again, and the way of His return is by this
incarnation in the nations that are as inorganic and dead, and in
that Israel that has life in God. The Spirit, in spiritual order, has
been at work in the nations and in Israel for this end ; only it can
be seen that the nations do not understand ; they have no con
sciousness of what is being done in them ; and Israel is only
semi-conscious, as if awakening out of that psychical state in
which the people had been living. The Spirit, in the fulness of the
times, caused to become incarnate the spiritual Seed ; thus the
birth of Christ, as recorded in the Gospels, is not in an advanced
stage of development, it is in that of the spirit and of the mind,
or soul, in the spiritual order. The nations of the earth and the
nation of Israel are, so to speak, the environment and the body
out of which He comes ; He is the Seed reproduced by the work
of the Spirit ; and it is at this stage in history, and in this part of
the spiritual cycle, that He appears among men.
It is not very easy to follow the order of development histori
cally ; the method of Christ in its recurrent order ; and the work
of the Spirit in all the developments. Yet all these have to be kept
in view in this study if the order of development is to be under
stood.'",, In one sense Jesus is seventh, and Christ is the eighth,
in historical development ; but this may require explanation

160 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT.
as compared with the former statement that in the Gospels
He is personally third and fourth in the spiritual order. In his
torical order the names in history as heads of dispensations are
as follows : 1. Adam, as representing mankind. 2. Noah, as
representing those that are saved. 3. Abraham, as representing
the faithful who by Divine grace leave what is earthly and seek
what is heavenly. 4. Moses, as representing the redeemed from
the powers of this world who seek to know the thoughts of God
from the patterns that they see in the world, and in the souL
5. Joshua, as representing those who enter into possession of what
is spiritual, true, pure and good. 6. Samuel, as representing
the spiritual Kingdom in righteousness. 7. Isaiah ; but Isaiah
means salvation of God ; thus, in a true sense, the prophets repre
sent Jesus, the Saviour ; for the theme of their thoughts and words
is Jesus Christ and His Kingdom. Thus 7, and 8, Jesus, the
Christ, as He is revealed in the Gospels. The spiritual movement
from Isaiah onward has to be considered as a new cycle of events,
thus 1, the greater prophets ; 2, the minor prophets ; 3, and 4,
the Gospels ; 5. The Acts ; 6. Epistle to the Romans ; 7. I.
Corinthians ; 8. II. Corinthians. There is also another method
of considering the cycle of the Gospels ; the prophets are left out,
then the Gospels follow in their order : 1. Matthew ; 2. Mark ;
3. Luke ; 4. John ; 5. The Acts and the Epistles in the same
order. In this order it is well to think upon each of these as a
separate Gospel, and then very important lines of thought are
opened up for consideration.
Just as in the book of Genesis the centre of attraction is Abra
ham, the man so different from all other men because of his faith
and the grace of God bestowed upon him ; so in the spiritual
Genesis the centre of attraction is Jesus Christ, the Light and Life
of the world, who brought to men from God Grace and Truth.
He is the Son of David and of Abraham by the generations in
Israel ; and all the generations from Abraham to David, and from
David to Christ are duly recorded ; they follow the law of develop
ment in ever recurring seven and fourteen generations ; and the
meaning of these generations will be a pleasant and profitable study
for spiritual genealogists. The subject that requires attention
here is not the genealogy of Christ, but His Mission and in what
way He is conceived to be the Saviour of the world from sin and
its consequences. This is dealt with by Christ in the Gospel
of Luke, in the synagogue at Nazareth, where He applies to

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 161
Himself the Messianic mission, as predicted by the prophet Isaiah, in
these words : " The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath
anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor ; He hath sent me to
heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that
are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." In this
declaration there will be found the following thoughts : Christ is
Spirit endowed, and anointed for the service of God in a perfect
spiritual manner ; " in Him dwelt the fulness of the Godhead
bodily," and men search in vain for a limitation of the Spirit's
power and wisdom in Him. His message is that of the glad tidings
of salvation to all men poor enough to receive and prize it ; to
heal hearts that have been broken through sin and suffering ; to
proclaim deliverance, or redemption, to all captives of the world,
the flesh and the devil ; to give spiritual sight to those who would
see spiritual truth ; and to give liberty and freedom of spirit to
those who had been bruised and hurt in the great conflict of good
and evil. This is the mission of Christ to the world ; and this is
the era that is acceptable to the Lord, and ought to be accepted by
men. Jesus Christ, the Man, the Son of Abraham and David ; the
Heir of all things and all promises ; the King that must reign in
righteousness and subdue all enemies, is presented to men as a
special revelation in the four Gospels. All the rays of truth from
the past converge upon Him, and He is seen to be the Light of the
world ; all life meets in Him, thus He is Life, and it is from Him
that all life is developed. It is not to be expected that types,
shadows, signs and symbols will interpret spiritual truth ; rather,
what men ought to expect is that the Light of Truth will throw
light upon what is imperfect ; and only by means of the Light can
men expect to see what these signs represent. It is not Christ
that is to be brought to Abraham, the type, and Christ the
spiritual be expected to conform to him ; it is not the four Gospels
that are to be brought to Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and
Deuteronomy, there to be judged as to their meaning by the great
journey through the Desert; these all stand afar off; they
carry messages from the King ; they are as finger-posts pointing
in a definite direction, but they do not reveal to men the King and
His City ; or the ideal, as it can be conceived in the four Gospels.
Abraham is as a Spirit-anointed message and messenger to men
by the way of faith and grace ; by his message men receive Divine

162 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT.
healing ; he is a deliverer of captives and one who opens the eyes
of the blind that they may see by faith ; and it is by the way of
faith and grace that spiritual freedom is attained. It is the same
story in Exodus, for the message by Moses is Spirit endowed ; for
healing and comfort ; for deliverance and a new vision of truth ;
for liberty to bruised slaves, and it is truly an acceptable era of the
Lord never forgotten by Israel. Leviticus, as a book, specially
deals with cleansing and healing. Numbers, as a book, teaches
men the way of deliverance, and how their eyes may be opened
to the consequences of sin and the grace and mercy of God. And
Deuteronomy is a great vision of spiritual liberty as attained by
Moses when the journey of life was near its end on the plains of
Moab. All this, and much more is to be found in Christ and in
His Gospels. He is the One that is Spirit endowed without
measure ; in Matthew He preaches, in a special sense, the Gospel
to the poor as found in the Sermon on the Mount ; in the Gospel
of Mark He is the Healer of diseases, and the Cleanser from sin ;
in Luke's Gospel He is the Deliverer of captive humanity, and the
Light of truth to give to men spiritual vision ; and in the Gospel of
John He bestows the spiritual freedom of the Kingdom of God upon
all who will accept this freedom in this era of Divine Grace and
Love. The Man Jesus has no equal ; He is unique in history,
experience, empiricism, science, and in Divine wisdom ; He is
Christ the Son of God, the Saviour of the world, and the
rightful King to reign over mankind.
It can be seen that the analogy of the nations in Genesis,
Abraham, and the nation of Israel, is like the spiritual in the
prophets and in Christ. It is, however, more than analogy and
likeness ; it is synchronism, they follow the same law of develop
ment, thus the spiritual amplifies, and more than fulfils, what
is carnal or psychological. The same law of development links
the physical, psychical, moral and spiritual together in one order
of development ; but the carnal is not the spiritual, they are re
presented by different principles, and each principle is a realm
in which there is conceived to be independent development in
harmony with all other principles. Christ, in a most unique
manner, has to be conceived as the perfect embodiment of all the
principles ; in Him they are in perfect order ; in Him they are
law ; by Him they are constituted as order and law ; and it is
through Him that lawlessness, disorder, disease, and death are
changed into the lawful, the orderly, health and life. The

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 163
conception in the New Testament is that God was in Christ for this
very purpose, by His Kingdom of Grace ; thus the inference is
that if men could only know Jesus Christ, they would know God
the Father ; because, in the only way that men can express their
conceptions, they think upon Him as the perfect Image of God.
It seems clear that this is the line upon which men are free to
study and think upon God, His works, and the Revelation of His
Grace to sinful men ; they may attempt to do so by other means
whilst ignorant of their creature limitations ; but, so far as can
be seen, all such efforts are futile, they only reveal self-centralism,
self-assertion and ignorance of science and wisdom. Having
thus seen Christ, this is not an earthly vision ; for it is to see Him
in His glory as Lord over all, as regnant in glory by His Spirit of
Grace, Truth, and Love ; and, it is this Christ that is to be wor
shipped, as the Son of God, and as the Saviour of the world.
Following the analogy in Genesis, the conception arises that the
Kingdom of Israel is manifested in Jacob, not in Abraham or
Isaac ; it is Jacob that has twelve sons, and these form the
twelve tribes of Israel. In a similar way the spiritual kingdom
does not begin in the prophets, as first and second in the order
of development, but in the Gospels as the third and fourth, and
the twelve disciples are in the kingdom, the analogues of the
twelve sons of Jacob. This analogy is carried forward in the
Exodus, and in the Acts of the Apostles ; and, when the Acts
is studied as a spiritual Exodus, in the birth of the Christian
Church and nation, the likeness, in what seems at first sight
very unlike, is easily seen. In one sense this Acts-Exodus is
like the Exodus from Egypt ; there is a redemption from Mosaism
and Pharisaism, from Judaism and Sadduceeism, and the Church
is born free at Pentecost by the coming of the Holy Spirit upon
the followers of Jesus Christ. The disciples are led forth by the
Spirit ; the faith of Christ was triumphant in Jerusalem, Judea,
Galilee, Samaria, and even as far as Antioch and Cesarea ; thus
in a measure the land of promise was the place where the promises
of God were first fulfilled. What was the result of this spiritual
Exodus ; was it the united advance of all Christians to the occu
pation of the promises of God ? Not so ; in a very brief
time there was a return to Mosaism and its forms ; to Judaism
and the temple services in Jerusalem ; to circumcision and the
keeping of the laws of Moses. The people turned back ; they
would not become spiritual Christians, and thus the Church- in
l 2

1 64 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT.
Palestine, in a great measure, failed to apprehend the true mean
ing of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ ; of His ascension
into glory ; and of the coming of the Holy Spirit to guide Chris
tians into the way of life. This is the burden of the book of Acts ;
the Jews as a people did not enter into the promises of God because
of their unbelief ; again they entered the great Desert of life ;
and, spiritually, they are still wandering and searching for the
land of promise. The order of development, as well known,
is away from Palestine to Greece, Rome, Babylon, and to the
ends of the earth ; to the nations also there came a spiritual
Exodus ; a deliverance from idolatry, from the world, the flesh
and the devil ; and the latter portion of the Acts, and the Epistles
of Paul to the Romans, and to the Corinthians, express in a limited
form this great movement. The conception here is that the
four Gospels, the Acts, and Paul's three Epistles, in an eightfold
form, convey the Gospel of Christ to mankind ; the four Gospels
reveal the person of Christ ; the Acts and the Epistles are revela
tions of Christ by the Spirit ; they are a development as, order,
law, grace and sacrifice, following the usual order in the method
of Christ. If this order is carefully studied there will come a
preparation for what follows, for the problem of the kingdom
changes here ; the work of Christ, and the work of the Spirit in
revealing truth is, in a sense, ended ; and what has to be con
sidered is that new cycle of thought that has to do with man, how
he understands, and in what way he uses, this kingdom of salva
tion by grace that is now entrusted to him with all its wealth of
spiritual freedom. If this order is applied in the light of the
Epistle to the Galatians, then the revelation is that the Gentiles
soon after their redemption, and their knowledge and experiences
of the Gospel, they also turned back to Judaism and its forms ;
they did not enter in and possess the land and life spiritual ; thus,
the result for the Christian Church has been the spiritual Desert,
and there Christians dwell till this day.
To illustrate what is here meant by the spiritual nation as
compared with the carnal, it will be necessary to refer very briefly
to the order found in Genesis, and in the nation of Israel, as
analogy, or as the order of development, as the carnal out of
which the spiritual arises. Thus in Genesis there are four series of
cycles, and all these centre in Abraham ; he is the light that
lightens that book ; it is his life of faith that makes it live, and
by it there is revealed to men the grace and love of God. Another

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 165
four are found in the books of Moses that explain the redemption
from Egypt and the forty years, or dispensation, of the Desert.
The third series of four is the books of Joshua and the Common
wealth in Judges, and the books of Samuel and the Kings. In
these there are four that reveal the faith in Abraham and the
promises given to him ; four that reveal the work of the Spirit
in Egypt and the Desert ; and four that tell of the use that Israel
made of the nation, the land, and the kingdom given by God in
promises to Abraham. The spiritual analogy, in series of six,
runs thus : 1. In the two series of prophets and in the four Gos
pels, Jesus Christ is made manifest. 2. In the four Gospels,
Acts, and Epistles to the Romans the new land of Gospel promise
is made known. 3. In the Gospels of Luke and John, Acts,
Romans, and I. II. Corinthians, the work of the Spirit as specially
revealing the Truth in Christ is made known to men in the Son
of God, the Heir of all the promises made to Abraham ; 4. In
the Acts to the Epistle to the Ephesians there is to be found the
very heart, mind, and soul of the Christian religion in its spiritual
significance ; the series begin with the revelation of the Spirit
and the end is Christ glorified, regnant, and triumphant. 5. In
I. Corinthians to Colossians the series, it will be observed, are of
peculiar interest ; they are all to the Greeks, and it can hardly
be questioned that the subject dealt with is the Divine Wisdom
of Christ as compared with the foolish philosophies of that wise
people. The contrast is worthy of the most careful attention,
and the result is very definite that true wisdom can only be found
in the fear of God and in the faith of Christ ; and without these all
human wisdom is folly. 6. In Galatians to II. Thessalonians, the
Epistles are also to the Greeks, but it is worthy of attention that
they embrace in the series, the lapse of the Galatians from faith,
and the fall into Judaism ; the glory of Christ as revealed in a
world dead to God ; that companionship in the Gospel that is
spiritual life ; the supremacy of Christ, the First-born in the
Image of God ; life, death, and the resurrection, and the mystery
of evil in the wicked one yet to be revealed and his destruction
by the Spirit. Just as in the fifth series, the intellectual as wis
dom is considered, so in this sixth series the problems are specially
moral as dealing with the great mysteries of sin, salvation, the
great struggle betwixt good and evil, the overthrow of evil and
the resurrection from the dead. 7. In Philippians to II. Timothy,
it can be seen that the golden thread that runs through these

166 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT.
Epistles is that of Christ in His followers and their communion
and fellowship with Himself and with each other in the Gospel.
8. In I. Thessalonians to the letter to Philemon the companion
ship with Christ is that of the way of suffering and sacrifice, and it
is hardly necessary to point out in what a beautiful ideal form this
is summed up in the letter of Paul to Philemon about the poor
runaway slave redeemed by the Gospel in Rome, made the willing
helper of Paul, and the messenger of grace to his former master.
9. In I. Timothy to the Epistle of James, the ideal is that of the
Spirit as conveying spiritual truth to men in, or through, their
spiritual experiences. The spiritual mirror is held up before men ;
they see the carnal and they pass on forgetful ; they see the
spiritual, and then what the Spirit teaches is made useful for the
spiritual life. 10. In Epistle to Titus to II. Peter, the spiritual
becomes incarnate in man ; the man becomes spiritual ; and the
Epistles of Peter reveal the thought of the new life, the new in
heritance, and the, '' new Heavens and a new earth, wherein
dwelleth righteousness." 11. In Epistle to Hebrews to II. John,
there will be found those highest spiritual intellectual conceptions
of men about Christ as Mediator and High Priest over the House
of God ; the meaning of the Mosaic dispensation of ritual and
law ; the blood-sprinkled way of faith ; and those ideal concepts
in which Christ is conceived as Light, Life, and Love. The con
summation is love in the truth, the knowledge of truth, and, for
the truth's sake walking in truth through the grace, mercy, and
peace that comes from the Father and the Son in truth and. love.
12. In I. Peter to Jude, there is the summation, and moral con
summation of the spiritual Christian religion as the testimony of
the disciples and friends of Christ. In them the kingdom of Grace
is summed up ; they have seen all that they have testified to men ;
their thoughts have been occupied with this Kingdom of God
for many years ; and thus what men will find in their thoughts,
is the ripened grain gathered into the garner, so that it might be
preserved for the food of men during the years of famine yet to
come upon the earth. What, then, they see is a beginning, not
an end ; the kingdom in its fulness has yet to come ; in them the
spiritual seed has been involved, and it has taken root in the
earth. What men have to see, read, study and try to understand,
is the law of development in the method of Christ ; then they
will understand the spiritual seed, the field of the world, the
summer, and the harvest, the day of the great judgment and that

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 167
resurrection to a new life that must take place. 13. The Book
of Revelation. This is the King in His Kingdom as revealed to
John in the Island of Patmos. This is how men are able to think
upon Him in Symbol, as in glory, in His Church, in the midst of
His servants, in the highest heavens upon the throne of glory,
as the Revealer of all truth, as the Ordainer of all events, as the
Destroyer of evil, and the Judge of living and dead. He has said
" Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
Amen." Here it is necessary to pause and try to conceive what these
revelations mean. Here, suddenly, the long vista of the Bible is
opened up to view ; and it is by the method of Christ and the law
of development that this result has come about. It must be
confessed, frankly and fully, that in all this reasoning there is no
room for human wisdom ; the way is the way of divine science
and the fruits of that way is Divine Wisdom. Objections in
numerable may be raised against the method of Christ and its
application to the Bible, but to all of them the reply is very
simple, the method is found in the Bible ; when it is applied to
the Bible it is found to work ; the Bible responds to the method ;
in the light of the method of Christ the Bible becomes a definite
kingdom with a scientific order ; and that order, as verified, is
seen to be the law, or the Will of God. There is unity of thought,
order in development, and harmony in law ; and, if these things
are so, seen to be so by those who are competent to understand
this subject, then strife is at an end, the Bible has proved itself
to be the work of Divine Wisdom. Those who see, know, and
understand these things will not be moved from their position ;
thus it is for those who do not see, know, and understand, who do
not believe, to give to the world what satisfies' them and what
will satisfy mankind. Those who have faith in God, who fear His
Name, and seek to do His Will, do not require to be excited, or
to make haste ; the stars in their courses in the Heavens are on
their side and fighting their battles ; God is on their side, and thus
it follows that they are invincible. This is not a matter of boast
ing ; it is the statement of a definite position ; the City of God
is four-square ; it is impregnable ; men within that fortress are
in perfect safety ; the fourth line, or wall, has been made mani
fest ; thus the spiritual reigns and the eternal purposes of God
will in due time become known to men in their order.

168 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT.
It may be helpful at this stage of enquiry to point out what
seems to be the order of revelation throughout the Bible ; and
to suggest in what sense the whole Bible is to be conceived as one
Genesis under one law of development. The book of Genesis
has in it, as already pointed out, the beginnings of the carnal, or
the visible Israel; but there were also unborn germs of life in that
book in Joseph and his two sons, born in Egypt, which in due
time would be developed, be born, and become the spiritual in
the Christian dispensation. In a sense there is a fulfilment in
Christ, and in the Christian era ; but, so far as the Bible is con
cerned, the peculiarity is that from Isaiah to the Book of Revela
tion, the whole revelation is that of a Genesis ; and it is as gener-
tions that the Prophets, Gospels, and Epistles, require to be
studied. The method of study is one that a student of history
would never think of applying ; to him history appears to be
continuous and consecutive ; and this is true, it is an aspect
already accepted and explained. The unique method of the Bible
is the one revealed in, and by, Christ ; it is that eightfold system
which requires special study, and which is not always seen to be
in operation. For example, the six generations from the Heavens
and Earth to Terah give the outline of the order ; but developing
out of these the student finds the seventh and eighth, as if not
recognised to be generations, lying across the pathway ; they are
as the Heavens and Earth in a new order ; and they indicate
what is to be found in all succeeding series ; though they are not
seen they exist, and they are to be reckoned with in all sub
sequent generations. The conception is that men being carnal
and not spiritual, they see six generations, up to the moral ; but
the unseen motive powers that carry all the generations forward
in their courses, are Grace and Sacrifice, they are the Heavens
and the heavenly, and these things carnal men do not see or under
stand. There is a definite analogy here to be taken from the
physical world ; men have now discovered that the forces of
chief importance in the universe are electricity and magnetism,
and yet because these were not cognisable by the bodily senses
they remained almost undiscovered until the dawn of the age of
science upon the earth. This analogy may be carried further ;
just as electricity and magnetism are to become the means of
intellectual physical scientific power in the future consciously,
as they have been unconsciously in the past, so it is Grace and Sac
rifice that have been the unconscious means of blessing to men all

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 169
through past ages ; and in the future this realm of thought is to
be brought into the world of consciousness as the means by which
science and wisdom, as Divine, are to be understood. What this
means is plain ; betwixt the moral world of man and grace there
has existed the chaos and confusion of sin, disease, disorder,
and death ; because these conditions existed, man and mankind
have been dia-magnetic to what is heavenly ; and it is grace and
sacrifice that will bring about the para-magnetic state of the soul
of man to the universe of truth as it exists, and not as it appears
to man under the fallen conditions of phenomena. This is the
first great truth to grasp in connection with the Bible as a whole ;
the phenomena throughout the Bible are the things physical,
psychical and moral ; they are what men can experience by their
senses, that are earthly ; but the real powers operative behind
all phenomena, using them, and bringing about a cosmos where
chaos reigned, are the Heavens, the Grace of God in Christ, and
the Life of Sacrifice. This being so it is not difficult to see that
the thoughts of the carnal man, and all naturalistic systems of
thought, must fail to grasp the situation as it really exists. They
are simply groping their way in the darkness ; heaven is all
around them ; it permeates every atom of their being, but they
are blind to the heavenly ; by the mercy of God, the spiritual
electric and magnetic forces of heaven, bless and benefit them ;
they remain unhurt, and yet these powers how terrible they may
become can be illustrated by the thunder-cloud and the lightning.
Truly it is of the mercy of God that men are not consumed ; the
great wonder is not that sin, suffering, disease and death have
been found regnant upon the earth ; it is that grace has been
changing these into means of blessing ; and that grace has been
like the dew and the rain falling upon the good and evil, upon
the righteous and the wicked. This is the miracle of all miracles
that grace and mercy from the Heavens should rest upon men
in this way ; and that men should be incapable of understanding
what the God of all grace has been doing on their behalf. Men
have been found boasting of their wisdom, power and glory all
down the ages ; had they but known what could be seen on the
other side, the heavenly, they would have seen that their wisdom
was folly ; the use they made of their power base and outrage
ous ; and that they were glorying in their own shameful and
disgraceful state and condition. This is one of the visions from
the fair realm of Divine grace ; and it may be that carnal men

170 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT.
will fail to see it even though they live in the age of science; that
is of seeking after Divine wisdom.
By faith men can see and hear God by the way of grace. They
can follow Abraham, and the way of faith ; they can hear the
Voice and the Call of God ; they can go forth seeking the heavenly,
and they know not whither they are going. By faith Noah
found this way ; he entered the Ark of Salvation, and the end of
that series is the man in the land of promise, as a place to sojourn
in, and where a resting place may be found for the body. By
faith Shem entered the great world to be taught the meaning of
intellectual signs and symbols, and the end of that series is Egypt
and the nation. By faith Abraham lifted his eyes above the land,
Egypt, the heir to the inheritance, sacrifice, and. resignation to the
will of God, he looked for God's city with the eternal foundations,
and the end of that series was the vision of redemption from what
was earthly, the experiences of the Desert, Mount Sinai and the
patterns of the things heavenly. By faith Moses was saved from
the death doom under which he lay when born ; he could not
endure to be called a man of this world with all its power and
glory ; his choice was the way of sorrow and suffering with God's
people, for he discerned that by this way men would find true
riches. Such a man was fit to be a leader of men ; thus to him
was given the treasures of Egypt, the vision of God, the great
redemption, the law, the symbols of heavenly things, the right
to command and to rule over men ; such a vision of the Desert
of Life, the pre-vision of Moab and Pisgah, and of grace to speak
and sing of the power, wisdom, grace, mercy, and love of God
as no other man has possessed. This man, Moses, was a Spirit-
endowed man ; he was a man, he became a spirit ; he has been
with all men in all their Desert experiences upon this earth ;
and to express such a thought in such a form is to say that Moses
represents the Spirit of God in all that Egypt and the Desert
reveal to men. By faith Joshua overthrew Jericho, con
quered Canaan, divided the land to the tribes of Israel. By
faith Samuel became prophet, priest, and ruler in Israel; the
visible representative of the true Heir of the land. By faith David
became king over Israel, rescued the land from the enemies of
God ; and to him was the promise given that of his seed the King
should come that would reign in righteousness over the whole
earth. By faith Solomon built the Temple of God in Jerusalem
and reigned in peace over the united kingdom of Israel. Because

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 171
of want of faith and because he was a fool, Rehoboam brought
about schism in Israel ; thus the visible glory, unity, and power of
Israel was lost in the dark night of the idolatrous perversion and
downfall of Israel ; and the end was Nineveh, Babylon and
captivity, an outcast Israel rejected by God as unworthy and
unfit to carry out His purpose of Grace and mercy for the world.
Men look round them and they say the end of Israel is come,
the visible kingdom has perished ; therefore the purpose of God
has failed and the redemption of mankind, through Israel, is a
vain dream never to be realised. The judgment is premature
and it is based upon ignorance of the true purposes of God and
the law of development ; what men have to learn is that the
phenomena of history, as seen by them, was never meant to be
anything more than the seen and. the temporal ; a vision of the
development of a nation something like what is God's ideal ; but
the carnal is not the spiritual ; and thus men require to wait
until they are spiritual so that they may be able to understand
something of the far-reaching thoughts and purposes of God.
What men did not see was this all important truth that Israel,
in going into captivity was being led into the realm of Grace, of
suffering and sacrifice ; this was the unseen kingdom of God that
they had to enter and pass through in their ignorance. The
visible Israel must be dissolved, brought into a protoplasmic
state, so that in this condition the spiritual seed might find a soil
in which that which is spiritual might grow, develop, and be the
means of blessing to mankind.
The Bible is the Word of God ; it contains the visions of God
revealed to men ; and what men require is to see the visions of
God in their spiritual order as they are given to men in the
Word. In a true sense Christ is the Word of God ; and it
is His method of revelation that men should study. That
the Bible is a very complex work cannot be doubted ; thus
the more need men have for the Guide when they seek to find
their way through its mazes. At certain points these mazes seem
to be inextricable ; men land themselves where they can find no
track upon which the light from the past shines ; it is as Egyptian
darkness ; it is Babylonian tyranny and misery ; it is as sin,
disorder, disease, death and the grave. The world, the flesh and
the devil have proved themselves to be too strong for men ; when
all went well with them they thought that they would never fall ;
their fortress was strong on three sides, on the fourth side God was

172 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAV/ OF DEVELOPMENT.
their defence, and thus they would never be moved. They were
the special favourites of God, thus their ruin and destruction
would mean the downfall of God's cause upon the earth, and the
success of evil over good and of lies over truth. It is just here
that God sees equally through darkness and light ; and that His
power and wisdom penetrates through all obstructions. His
realm is not visible phenomena only ; it is the invisible, the ether,
the luminous ray of light, what is electric and magnetic, and here
men fail, they cannot follow, or understand His conceptions in
this region of thought. The realm of grace and sacrifice is not to
be found in the schools of wise men, or in the palaces of kings ; it
has its home where the cloud overshadows nature and the sun
cannot be seen. Grace is Divine, the glory of Heaven, but it is
also very lowly, for where there is sin and suffering, pain and
disease, there Grace comes and would dwell, if the inhabitant
of the lowly cottage or the palace would only give a kindly
welcome to this visitor from heaven. There are many ways in
which this graciousness of Grace, and this magnetic sympathy
with suffering and sacrifice may be observed, but perhaps nowhere
else upon such a large scale can it be seen as in the captivity of
Israel in Babylon, Nineveh and by the river Chebar. It is by the
rivers of Babylon that the captives weep when they remember
Zion ; their harps are hung upon the willows, and when they are
asked to sing a song of Zion, then they feel most bitterly their
unhappy state. How can they sing what is so sacred to them
under such conditions ; forget, no, they never can forget Zion ;
it has been the joy of their hearts ; and it is only in the thought
of Jerusalem, the temple, and God, that true joy can be found upon
the earth. This is where the seed of Grace finds the protoplasm
that will minister to the life of grace ; this is a strange land where
the seed of Grace finds roothold , but it was so with Terah and
Abraham for the visible nation of Israel ; and it is the same story
in Babylon, and everywhere in this world. The service of the
Captivity is not that of justice and judgment only ; it is specially
the seed-bed for the realm of grace, and this is the way by which
the redeemed and the restored find their way at last to the realm
of glory.
To continue the story of the development of the kingdom of
Grace in that stage named the spiritual, which rises above that of
the carnal in Israel, it may not be out of place to continue to
think upon the law of development as that of grace, by faith ; and

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 173
as the special work of the Spirit in the kingdom of heaven. It has
been suggested that in all stages of development, in the varied
series, there is always a renewal of the past ; a falling back to make
a new beginning ; it is so with the recurrent series in each dis
pensation, and it is so also in the change from the carnal to the
spiritual nations. If this is remembered then the apparent out
ward and visible order in the prophets and the Gospels will be
understood ; there is not a repetition of what took place in the
past, but there is a representation similar in its order ; what was
in the past is shortened ; the lesson is taught in another form ;
and then the advance is made into what is higher and more
spiritual. The conception runs thus : 1. By faith Isaiah, and
the prophets of the same order, foresaw and saw the downfall of
Israel as a nation and the captivity of Israel and Judah in Babylon;
but they also saw the restoration from the captivity, the new
temple of God of a spiritual kind, the new Israel, and, through
Israel, blessing to all the nations of the earth. With these visions
they foresaw judgments upon all nations because of their sins ;
but the end would be the fulfilment of the promises made by God
to Abraham. By faith Jonah perceived that God would be
merciful to Nineveh, and all the nations that Nineveh represented,
the Gentiles ; but he was an unwilling messenger who would
rather have seen the destruction of the nations than have seen
them saved by the Grace and mercy of God. By faith Micah saw
the punishment that would fall upon Samaria and Jerusalem ; but
beyond there lay the Restoration and Christ's kingdom of peace
and righteousness. Nahum saw the downfall of Nineveh.
Habakkuk saw the coming of the Chaldeans and the days of great
trouble ; and other prophets saw that after a time there would be
Restoration, the temple rebuilt, and a renewed Jewish State.
But all these things do not bring to the Israel of God what is ex
pected ; another Elijah was required before the great and terrible
day that was looming upon the horizon ; and thus amidst the
darkness that reigned what men required was the Sun of Righteous
ness to bring to them light and life from heaven. There is faith
in the utterances of all these prophets ; they see and know the
past, they foresee and predict a great future for the Israel of
God, but in what way the Messianic kingdom will come it is not
given to them to see and understand. 2. By faith Mary con
ceived and she bare a child ; His name was Jesus the Saviour.
the Son of Abraham and of David. By faith He was taken into

174 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT.
Egypt and was brought to Galilee. He was led by the Spirit into
the Desert and was there tempted of the devil. He would not
choose the pathway of evil in any form ; He became one with men
in all their sufferings and sorrows. He was the Grace of God
Incarnate, the Saviour from sin, the Conqueror of sin, disease, and
death ; the Resurrection from the dead and the Eternal Life ;
thus by the Holy Spirit His power and His kingdom became the
hope of mankind throughout the Roman world. 3. By faith
Christ as seen in the Gospel of Luke, entered the Roman world as
the Son of Adam and of God ; it was by the way of faith that
the Spirit revealed Christ as Lord at Pentecost ; and through faith
Paul saw the glory of Christ as the Heir of all things. 4. By
faith the disciples of Christ received the Spirit at Pentecost, and
they became the apostles of His kingdom to all the nations of the
earth. 5. By faith Paul conceived Christ to be the Wisdom and
the Power of God by Grace ; and it is this wisdom that proves the
philosophies of Greece to be empiric folly. 6. By faith Paul
saw the evil results that would follow from the perversion of faith
in the Galatians, and their turning back to Judaism ; he also per
ceived the immense importance to mankind of the life, death and
resurrection of Christ and what these mean to humanity, as the
means possessed for the overthrow of evil, the subjection, the con
quest over, and the destruction of the wicked one. 7. By faith
Paul perceived the immense importance of that spiritual fellow
ship in Grace and self-sacrifice revealed in Christ, and what it
means to all His followers in the sorrowful way. 8. By faith he
also linked with the way of Grace that conception of self-sacrifice
which is equivalent to a community of the spirit, in which master
and slave, apostle and sinner, all find themselves in the same
brotherhood. Here all men are indeed equal ; they all need the
same Saviour and the same salvation ; they are all equally help
less, and thus the eyes of all the brethren turn to the One and
only Brother " able to save to the uttermost all who come to God
by Him." 9. By faith all the brethren, as animated by the one
Spirit, seek to do the will of God as revealed by Christ. All are
the children of the same heavenly Father ; redeemed by the same
Saviour ; sanctified by the same Spirit ; and thus in the Father's
House all are equal and riches and poverty, high birth and low
birth, have no meaning ; all are God's children by adoption in
Christ and all share in His grace, mercy and love. 10. By faith
men may receive, and conceive, these important truths ; this is

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their divine inheritance ; even that spiritual ideal that is said
to be incorruptible, undefiled and eternal. 11. By faith, through
all these revelations by the Word, and special teaching by the
Holy Spirit, men are led to look away from one another, their
many systems of thought, and the religions that exist in the world;
and they consider Christ, the Divine Apostle of Grace ; the Sacri
fice for sin ; the High Priest over the House of God ; the Mediator
of the New Covenant ; and the Light, Life, Love and Truth of
God. They look upon Him ; the One they have despised and
pierced to the heart in ways innumerable ; and it is with broken
and contrite hearts, ashamed of themselves, as they may well be,
that the cry bursts from every heart, " My Lord and My God."
12. By faith men survey the past, present, and the future ; and
they are confounded to think of their folly, ignorance, selfishness,
and wickedness ; and it is felt to be all the more serious, the more
aggravating, because they have had such a good opinion of them
selves, and had utterly failed, in any comprehensive sense, to
appreciate and to understand, the Lord of Grace and Glory, the
Son of God, the Source of all light and truth, the Life of life and
the Love of God that died to redeem men. 13. By faith men may
look beyond signs and symbols, and see the Lord Christ in His
Glory as King of Grace, the First and the Last, the Faithful and
the True. He will come again in His spiritual glory ; and if men
would meet Him, not as Judge, but as Lord and Saviour, then
the only way to do so is by this way of faith by grace, for this is
the living way to the Father as revealed to men in the Bible by
Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour of the world.
By the method of Christ, according to the law of development,
these are some of the conceptions that arise out of the study of the
Bible from the standpoint of the carnal and the spiritual ; and
of the two nations, or kingdoms, an Israel after the Flesh, and
an Israel after the Spirit. There is another line of thought
that requires to be followed up, because it is now clear that the
Revelation that is spiritual is not the consummation of the work
of the Spirit ; it is a Genesis of a spiritual kind, an ideal that has
to be carried out in history, even as the history of the Israel after
the Flesh was developed. The conception of Christians, as a rule,
has been that the Bible is the revealed Word of God for the salva
tion of mankind ; as a Revelation it is complete in itself ; men
are not to add to, or take away from the contents of the Bible
because to do so is to risk the loss of the blessings contained in the

176 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT.
Word, and it is to draw down upon the head of the thoughtless
sceptic, innovator, or irreverent person, the curses that are found
in the Book. Such a conception, as an ideal, is right and true ;
and it is becoming daily more and more clear to those who try
to think reverently, in the fear and love of God, that men, even
the wisest, are unable to alter or amend the Bible ; it is altogether
above and beyond them ; thus they will show their wisdom by
limiting their studies in the right spirit, in trying to understand
it. There is, however, this thought that arises here, which men
are not debarred from studying, and upon which they can form
opinions ; it is that the history of Christendom is in a true and
real sense a further revelation of the work of the Spirit, and that
the works of men are commingled with the development of the
kingdom of Grace, and of the Spirit, during the past centuries.
In fact the generations of the Heavens and Earth are, and have
ever been, in the midst ; and men have failed to see the heavenly
because they have been so intensely occupied with the earthly.
Men are indebted to physical science for the analogy that has been
found in the realm of electricity and magnetism ; apart from this
parable of nature, it is difficult to see in what way they could have
represented to their own minds what is embodied in the genera
tions of the Heavens. It is to be hoped that God-fearing men
will now perceive how inadequate the conceptions of men in the
past have been as to the work of the Spirit ; the truth is being
made plain that the Spirit of God in Grace is ever at work on the
right hand and on the left, behind and before, above and below,
within and without, and neither earthly men, nor saints of God,
have been able to discover the method of His operations. Men
may have proved themselves to be clever enough in what is
earthly ; but as to the spiritual world they have been as blind
men ; they have been about as ignorant of the generations of the
Heavens, and the working of the Spirit, as men were of electricity
and magnetism 200 years ago. It is reasonable to think that the
Spirit of Truth, as the Spirit of Christ, has been at work in Christen
dom in a special manner ; and it may be profitable to try, by com
paring Israel, the Bible, and the leading events in the Christian
era in what way there is analogy and development. The object
in view here is rot so much the spiritual, the generations of the
Heavens, it is rather the spiritual generations in the Earth as
they can be discerned by following the method of Christ.
As this line of study continually leads to the re-consideration

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 177
of the generations in Genesis, it may be assumed that these are
now understood as to their order of development historically, as
following the method of Christ, and as revealing the work of the
Spirit ; thus in the briefest way possible it will be sufficient to
glance at the historical development in the light of the ideal in
the Prophets and New Testament. 1. The revelation of creation
stands apart as an ideal of the creative work of God ; it is, in a
spiritual sense, historical, and the revelation is in harmony with
the method of Christ. It is upon the ideals found in creation that
the new creation in Christ is built up ; thus what the physical
sciences are for psychology and spiritual thought, that the crea
tion is for the re-creation in the Bible. The generations of the
Heavens and the Earth, and of Adam, form, as it were, the em
bodying physical series. Here the leading conceptions are that
the heavens survive in Enoch and Noah ; by faith Enoch is
translated and does not taste death ; whilst Noah and his family
are saved ; they are the heirs of the new earth. There is judg
ment upon the wicked, the earthly, and they are destroyed by the
Flood. 2. The generations of Noah, and of his sons, form the
psychical series ; they possess the earth, that which is physical ;
they live in it and it is their inheritance. The judgment upon
this series is the Babel-like confusion of thought, word, and
action, as found paramount in Ham ; but there is hope and
blessing in the name in Shem, and extension of blessing in Japheth.
3. The generations of Shem and Terah are intellectual and moral.
The judgment upon the peoples they represent is that they lapse
into idolatry in worship ; they become subject to cruel despots
that delight in war ; and their wisdom, as taught by their sages,
is only earthly wisdom, and to the heavens it is as folly. The
Spirit has been very patient with these wicked nations ; they are
left to work out their own ideals ; and with faith in God, hope
for the future, and patient waiting upon God for guidance, Terah
and his family are led to Haran on the way to the land of promise.
4. It is in Abraham that all these generations meet ; he is the
revelation of the Divine Love and Mercy to men. To him there
is given gracious promises, the land, and an heir to possess the
inheritance ; and it is through that son, as the seed, that promises
are given which mean blessings, that cannot be described, to all
men in all nations. Here, as it were, the heavens were thrown
open to men ; the Dove descended upon Abraham, thus to all
generations Abraham is specially conceived to be the father of
M

178 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF. THE LAW OF" DEVELOPMENT.
the faithful ; but there is also in him the hope for the future ;
the patience to wait for the seed, and the love that is inexpressible.
Abraham is a unique man amongst men ; all the past is fulfilled
in him, and he is the new man for the new age in Israel. Here
also the mercy and the judgment of God is to be seen ; but with
the land, the heir, the family and nation, men find that the visible
is not that which abides ; here also sin reigns ; the family is
divided ; the beloved son is cast out ; there is famine in the land,
and Israel is deported into Egypt. Abraham and Sarah, Isaac
and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah, even as dead, possess the
promised inheritance ; the past is their portion in the land
of the living ; but the future is with Joseph and his sons in the
land of Egypt. 5. The first born son and seed of Abraham, with
all that he represents, is not an earthly Egyptian ; he is an Ish
mael, one whom God hears and delivers in his trouble. Ishmael
is as Moses and Israel ; the mother is an Egyptian, but the father
is Abraham and faith. The children of Israel were redeemed
from Egypt by the faith of Moses ; they received the law at
Sinai ; they worshipped the golden calf as idolaters ; they would
not enter in and possess the inheritance promised to Abraham ;
thus the judgment upon idolaters and rebels, was the forty years
wandering until all were dead who escaped from Egyptian thral
dom except Joshua and Caleb ; the representatives of faith and
of truth in Israel. 6. To Israel Joshua was captain, ruler and
judge ; under his guidance the enemies of God were put to flight,
the land conquered, possessed and divided amongst the people.
The hope of Israel was possessed in that good land which became
the inheritance of the sons of Jacob. But the nation and the
Commonwealth failed to study and to obey the laws of God ; the
people became idolaters, earthly, sensual and lawless ; they were
subdued and made the servants of their enemies, and thus it came
to pass that they became unspiritual, earthly, and the bondmen
of the lordly Philistines. They were men with a great past and
a valuable inheritance, and the judgment upon them, because of
their sins was subjection to the earthly, to the senses, and to the
sensuous. The inheritance they possessed from their fathers
was for men ; they became degraded, they were like psychical
animals, and their past training unfitted them to struggle with
the wild beasts of earth. The Commonwealth began with a
bright living hope, it ended with that hope almost extinct ; it
was like the flickering light with all the oil of grace expended ;

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 179
one more blow from the doughty Philistines and the name of Israel
would have been extinct among the nations. Where can men
look for help at such a time, to judge or priest, to Samson or Eli ?
No, the Spirit of the Lord has left them, and He has taken up His
abode in the spirit of the gentle Hannah ; and it is in her heart
that there remains the faith of Abraham and the hope of Joshua
7. It is Samuel, the child of Hannah, that is really the typical
man at the head of the Kingdom of Israel. It would appear as
if this son of grace, of patience and sorrow, had not been prized
at his true value in Israel ; and that Christians have not under
stood him, and all that he represents in the development of the
Kingdom of Grace. He is a type of Christ truly ; but he is a
prophetic type in a special sense of Christ in the realm of grace,
here first conceived as a kingdom. He is a rejected king in a
rejected kingdom ; a sign for men to study and to try to under
stand as the light is thrown upon his mother, himself and the
Kingdom of Israel. Enoch, Abraham, Samuel, are all mystical
seventh men ; the first among men ; the second among the series
of the generations of men ; and the third in the nation, when it
is dying as a Commonwealth, and is to be raised to the status of
the Kingdom of Grace. It is not easy to carry the ideal in Christ
so far back as Samuel, but the facts of the case require this ex
planation ; the Israel within Israel, by faith and grace, begins
here in the nation ; and, as can be seen, the seed is cradled in
sorrow and trial, sin and suffering. If men would understand
the true spiritual Kingdom of Christ, then they will require to
abolish former conceptions as to the Kingdom of David and the
glory of Solomon ; they are phenomena, mere visible sensuous
images of truth ; from the time of Samuel forward the Kingdom
of Grace is cradled in sorrow and suffering ; and it is where these
abound that it is to be truly found, regnant as grace and as sacri
fice. The people rejected Samuel, or the Lord Christ, in him ;
they preferred Saul and what was earthly. There was a develop
ment of the ideal in David, the sufferer, persecuted by Saul ; but
the kingdom, the temple and the glory of Solomon are mirage ;
they are the inversion of a true Kingdom of Grace in the heart of
Israel that men did not see. The mirage passes away and tha end
of the visible nation is the captivity and Babylon. This is where
the child-seed, as found in Hannah and Samuel, in Ramah, comes
to be born ; and the birth pangs endured for this child lasted for
seventy years. All the days of the nation of visible Israel, as a
m 2

180 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT.
kingdom, is as the period of conception and life in the womb ;
the time of the labour-pangs is the captivity, and when the child
was born, then the life of sorrow and trial, of subjection and
struggle began anew in Palestine. Here a truer conception is
obtained of this nation that is truly the seventh and eighth in
human history ; the seed only begins to live, in spiritual order,
in the days of Samuel ; it is in the womb for centuries ; it is born
in Babylon and the East ; it attains to manhood in Christ ; and
the Man having been made manifest to the true Israel of God
and accepted as King, then He ascended into glory as the King
of Grace, to reign over that Kingdom of Grace which has been
in Christendom for the past two thousand years. This is the
bird's-eye view of the Kingdom of Grace ; it is the heavenly vision ;
it is what men have been unable to see or understand ; the scale
of the movement, and of the development, has been inconceivable
in the past ; and what is still more wonderful, it seems to be im
possible to conceive how many centuries will pass before this
kingdom is triumphant and regnant. 8. It must not be for
gotten that co-existent with this Kingdom of Grace, there is
that living companion and help-meet of Grace, conceived as
Sacrifice ; they walk together in the pathway of sorrow ; and in
all the afflictions of men they are afflicted. It can be seen that this
conception is far too great for the soul to grasp, thus it is well to
concentrate the thoughts upon Jesus Christ, because in Him all
past, present and future, are summed up. It has to be remem
bered that the visible Israel that rejected the Lord in Samuel
found a day of judgment in Babylon ; and that other restored
Israel, that ought to have been wiser after the baptism of blood
and sorrow, shame and suffering in the East, rejected Christ the
Messiah and were scattered abroad upon the face of the earth.
This is one of the greatest of the visions of the Kingdom of God ;
in a sense, it is traceable to the generations of the Heavens and
the Earth ; it is living in Abraham, it is as faith in Moses, it is as
hope in Joshua, it is as patience in Samuel and all his spiritual
descendants ; and at last the heavens are thrown open, the Son
of Divine Love appears, the Dove of peace rests upon Him ; and
it is from Him that the Spirit is sent forth to reveal the truth to
mankind. 9. With the Ascension of Christ into glory and the
coming of the Spirit at Pentecost it is seen that a change has
taken place in the method of administration in the Kingdom of
Grace. The age is now spiritual ; the method of the operations

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 181
of the Spirit are spiritual ; the special work of the Spirit is to re
veal Christ to men as the Saviour of the world from sin ; aDd, for
this purpose the Old Testament, the Gospels, the Acts, Romans,
and I. and II. Corinthians are specially used by the apostles and
the servants of Christ. Here it may be necessary to note that the
Jewish priests, and many others, failed to enter into the rich
possession of Gospel grace provided by the Spirit of Christ ; they
turned back to Judaism and its forms, and thus lost that birth
right and blessing which they coveted in earthly form. 10. Those
who followed Christ, and His servants, guided by the Spirit, found
themselves in the possession of the spiritual Kingdom of Grace ;
and this is the ideal as taught by the Spirit that men find in the
Epistles from Galatians to Jude and in the book of Revelation.
The Spirit reveals, makes Christ manifest as the Grace and Truth
of God for the salvation of sinful men, and this is inwrought into
the souls of men in the letters of the apostles as guided by the
Holy Spirit. This is the region of spiritual psychology ; this is
the method taken by the Spirit to engender faith and the fear of
God in the hearts of men in Christendom ; and to involve in them,
as a living hope, all that has been revealed to men by Christ,
through the Spirit. Is there also a judgment here resting upon
Christians ? Have those who, like the Galatians, turned to
Judaism, to ritual and forms, fallen short in not entering the
spiritual Kingdom of Grace ? The question may be much wider
and put in many forms, as to schism, worldliness and all forms of
departure from the teaching of Christ and the guidance of the
Spirit ? Indeed, the question seems to take this form. Where
are the Christians to be found who have not turned back, or gone
astray from the right path ? It would almost seem that the judg
ment must be that all have gone astray, even from the womb, and
that there is none righteous, gracious, Christ-like, no, not one.
By following this method of studying the Bible the great
generations of the past fall into their order ; the law of develop
ment can be traced; and if there are slight divergencies of thought
they are only of a kind that seem to enlarge and extend the range
of the power, grace and influence of Christ in the Word by dis
covering that all the rays radiate from Him, that they converge
toward Him, and that from Him all the divergencies in the New
Testament proceed. In the heart of the visible, carnal realm,
Abraham, as the type of Christ, is the light of that dispensation;
and it is in the heart of the spiritual that Christ appears as Saviour

182 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT.
and Son of God for the redemption of the world. It will be
observed that the first series of four ends with Abraham, and that
each of these series respond to the work of the Spirit ; the second
series of four ends with Christ, and again the ideal of the Spirit
is manifested ; and in the third series, that of the Spirit, and of
spiritual, development, Nos. 9 and 10 make manifest the Spirit's
work as ideal ; and the new creation in man as an ideal work of
the Spirit, and here the Scriptures end. There is further de-
velopmert but it is in the realm where men are co-workers with, or
against, the Spirit, in attaining to intellectual knowledge, or to
the Hfe that is moral, good and Christlike. This development,
equivalent to 11 and 12, may be to a greater or less extent
revealed in prophetic form ; by this is meant that the experiences
of Christians in the New Testament are like, they are analogous
to what Christians will experience during the Christian age. This
likeness is very often so parallel in thought that it is not strange
that men should suppose that what they have been studying
is a prophetic ideal of the future. It ought, however, to be
recognised that creation is prophetic of the new creation ; that
the physical world is prophetic of the psychical ; the psychical of
the mental and moral ; and the moral of the spiritual. The
meaning, however, seems to be that they are all spiritual in the
Spirit, and as men become spiritual they will the more clearly
perceive that spiritual unity and harmony that extends through
all realms of thought. The want of harmony is not in the
Spirit and the spiritual ; it is in ignorant, self-conceited,
self-asserting men who think that they are wise and
good, when, as matter of fact, they are very foolish, evil,
and quite unable to understand the works of the Spirit. If
men will carefully consider what is involved in Nos. 11 and 12
they will see that this also is two living generations of great
importance ; they were not conceived to be born in the book of
Genesis ; they are spiritual, as intellectual and moral. A little
consideration will show that here men are again put upon their
trial ; if not in the Garden of Eden, or in the promised land, then
in a wider field of thought, at least that of the Jewish, Greek and
Roman worlds ; and it is here that they are required to remain
to become spiritual Divinely wise, and to trample under their feet
the mighty power of Rome. This is the ideal ; the man in Christ,
by the Spirit, is called to follow Christ by His method of life ; if
he will do so then the result will be spiritual experience, scientific

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 183
knowledge, and the wisdom-that is Divine ; but if there is failure
by turning back to Judaism ; by turning aside to eat of the tree
of knowledge of good and evil ; or by using what is worldly to gain
earthly power ; then the result must be empiricism, the Desert,
and the wandering in search of that promised land which is
heavenly. It is not necessary to prove that Christians turned
back to Judaism ; that they actually delighted in Greek wisdom ;
and that they hungered and thirsted after the fleshpots and
the power of Rome. All these things are engraven in history,
and it can hardly be questioned that Judaism in ritual, Greek
wisdom as the philosophy of the schools, and the State with its
power and precedence, are supreme in the Church of Christ, as the
Kingdom of Grace, even to this day. If this is the empiric history
of Christendom, as proved by the results attained, then it is
unnecessary to show that the Church has gone out of the true
way ; that it has not reached the land of promise ; and what may
seem even more strange, the followers of Christ in the churches
may not even know their true position, seeing that their magnetic
compasses are all dia-magnetic to the Divine ideal. This con
ception of Christians wandering in a spiritual Desert of intellectual
ritualism, philosophical follies, and earthly covetousness and
greed, must be a very unpleasant one to good people ; and yet
what else can the truth be, if this is really the position of the
Church of Christ in the world, seeing it is more like Babel than
Zion, and in a state of confusion, schism, jealousy, strife, ill-will
and all uncharitableness. It is surely better to look the facts
straight in the face and realise their true meaning, than to con
tinue to dwell in the midst of false conceptions. If it is true that
Christians are in an empirical Desert then let them like men
think in a straightforward way and act as Christians ought to
act, by seeking the Divine guidance of the Spirit of Truth ; and
by trying to follow Christ, the Lord and Master, the Saviour
and King.
As has been suggested, the generations 11 and 12 are in
tellectual and moral, and that they are so within the realm that is
spiritual. This means that men are at this stage of development
placed in the position of being endowed with intellectual power to
study, and put in order, all the knowledge they possess ; and as
that knowledge is placed in scientific order it becomes necessary
to verify that order as law, as the will of God, and to obey His
Will as, and when, it is known. It is clear that Christians in the

181 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT.
first century had a very large field of thought within which they
could roam with perfect freedom ; it would appear that, apart from
physical science, men had almost as large a field of knowledge to
live in, and put in order, as men have at the present time. The
religious men of the Christian centuries have formed their religious
thoughts very widely upon the Jewish type ; their liberal Univer
sity education has been largely that of the Greek schools ; and
their laws, politics and governments have been imitations of
imperial Rome. It follows, therefore, that in religion, educa
tion, law and government, Christians have fallen into subjection,
and into the bondage of what preceded the Christian Kingdom of
Grace ; in plain words, they have become spiritual idolaters and
have served their enemies in what, as order, following the law of
development, was of a lower type. This is the story of the Judges
over again ; and of the perversion of the Kingdom of Grace.
Christians have fallen from the high ideal they possessed in Christ
and in the Epistles ; in these they ought to have found the forms
of thought and order of life upon which they ought to have built
up their souls. 1. Christ is the Ideal form for the Christian's
thoughts as ideals. 2. The spiritual life, as taught by the Spirit
in the Epistles, is the spiritual organic life. 3. The ideal being
known then that ideal should have been followed ; but the history
of the early Church is that of a spiritual gnosticism, from Greece,
Rome, Egypt, Persia, and even from the far East ; all these met
Christianity in Athens, Rome, Alexandria, Babylon, and other
places, and the result was the perversion of the spirit of Christi
anity and such changes in its method of thought as were
dia-magnetic to the Christian ideal. 4. The type toward which
Christian thought became formed was that of Rome in its life
and structure ; psychical Christianity was really conquered
by Roman ideals as these were found in Rome about the days
of Constantine ; when, as Christians then thought, and many
still think, that the Christian religion had conquered the Roman
Empire and the Roman power. 5. This period is represented
by the intellectual activities of Christians in the days subsequent
to the Romanising of the Church ; and the creeds and the
Arian controversy indicate the spiritual desert into which the
Church had wandered. 6. The rise of the Papal power in Rome
marks the departure from the spiritual to the carnal ; a man
was exalted as if he were Divine ; the Church became an earthly
realm of Roman power ; and what men then desired was worldly

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 185
power and authority, to reign as princes over provinces, to become
great, wealthy and powerful, the very antithesis of the Christian
spirit and religion. 7. There came a time when the common
people were shocked by the glaring inconsistencies of the Church
as compared with the Scriptures ; they could not honour worldly,
covetous, ambitious, licentious, cruel men ; and they could not
agree with theologies and creeds that were intellectual symbols
devoid of the Christian spirit ; thus men sought for the light of
truth from the Word of God and the result was the Reformation
in Europe ; and division in the Church. This meant the rejection
of the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, with its Papal
power, authority, and earthly greatness, and the rise of Pro
testantism and Puritanism. 8. This brought about persecution
in Church and State ; thus what men saw, in place of the Christian
religion, was strife, hatred, war, murder, competition to receive
and possess power ; and such a spirit of intolerance that men
could plainly see that their rulers had become more like devils that
delighted in evil doing, than like Christ and what Christians ought
to be. It must follow that when persecutors reigned there were
the persecuted who suffered ; and it is not necessary to prove that
the persecuted were the blessed ones, the servants and companions
of Christ, whilst the persecutors were the men under the curse of
heaven ; ignorant, perverted men, who proved themselves
to be the enemies of Christ and of His true followers in the sorrow
ful way. 9. There came a time when the Spirit of God awakened
men to the Evangel that the Church possessed as the means of
blessing for men, and nations ; for people at home and for those
in the darkness of heathen lands ; and that Evangel was sent
forth by the Spirit of Christ, as the means of arousing men to
their lost state and to the grace, mercy and love that is in Christ.
10. These changes brought about a new condition of the
Churches in Christendom ; and the psychical, intellectual, em
pirical forms into which the new spiritual creation was cast
may be conceived by the study of those modern theologies and
creeds with which men are familiar. 11. There has been a great
intellectual revival in Christendom, and many attempts have
been made, secular and sacred, natural and spiritual, to put the
conceptions of men into scientific order. 12. There has also been
an ethical revival in which the glory of the natural man has been
applauded to the skies ; but it would appear that all these
empiric movements have been futile ; the ethical man perfect in

186 THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT.
his moral nature has not appeared ; the wise philosophers have
not found the way of Divine wisdom ; the men of experience
have not found their spiritual promised land ; men of spiritual
discernment have not discovered the works of the Spirit. They
went astray from Christ ; they have turned every one to his own
way ; and, in a true sense, upon the Lord and upon His Spirit,
there has been laid the iniquities of us all. 13. What men require
is to have done with all these foolish evil ways ; the Shepherd
and Bishop of Souls, the Saviour and Mediator, has once more
risen up to carry on His great work of salvation ; He has opened
the heavenly gates and sent forth His messengers to tell men
of His coming. Let men arise and go forth to meet their Savioui,
Lord, and King ; truly He is worthy of the world's devotion ;
He has redeemed men to God by His Own life and death ; He has
made His followers spiritual kings and priests ; and they will
reign with Him upon the earth. " Blessing and honour and
glory and power be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne and
unto the Lamb for ever and ever."

CHAPTER VII.
PARABLES OF GENERATIONS OF THE HEAVENS AND EARTH.
It is becoming more and more clear that the Bible, as a book
for study, is very complex ; that the method of Christ opens up
many new avenues of thought ; and that the student of the Word
requires the special guidance of the Spirit in every avenue that
is opened up so that he may not stray from the way of life. The
way is seen to be a strange way ; it is straight as history ; it is
recurrent in its method of development ; and it is spiritual and
invisible ; thus the difficulty in finding the way through what is
physical, psychical, intellectual and moral, and in getting the
spiritual to fall into alignment with all these other realms
of thought. As already suggested the Bible is a spiritual creation
of God revealing His Grace to men ; but men are not spiritual,
they are earthly, and thus the teaching they require is what will
suit the child, the youth, the man and the Christian. The phy
sical and the visible is what is suitable for the child ; thus the child
lives in the world of phenomena and for him all things may be sum
med up in the parables that exist in the heavens and the earth.
These are the realities for the child, the heavens above with the sun
and the day ; the moon and stars by night ; and the earth below
with all its wonders. This may well be conceived to be the
region of parable ; and these are the things that are like the
thoughts that are spiritual. The child is endowed with the
blessed gift of imagination ; it gives image forms to what it sees ;.
and by these images, ideas, thoughts, the child becomes psychical.
There is in the child that which is relatively greater than the
physical heavens and earth ; to the child they are objects to be
used as lessons ; it is the spirit, the soul, that is greater, because
it can perceive, conceive, relate, measure and condition all that
is objective in nature. The generations of the heavens and the
earth are the all embracing parable of parables for the child ;

188 PARABLES OF GENERATIONS OF HEAVENS AND EARTH.
they tell him how man was made, cared for, placed in safety
in a garden, warned against evil doing, was tempted, sinned,
fell from his happy state, became unhappy, had sorrow and
suffering, received a promise as of a seed of faith and hope, and
with this in his heart he set forth to kill the serpent and dragon,
and to reach at last a better country, where sin, pain, disorder,
disease and death would not be found. This is the groundwork
for all myths and stories ; the children have seen the visions of the
heavens and the earth ; they have told their stories through
many generations ; and now men grown old and wise with ex
perience, smile and tell the children that the stories are full of
interest, but they are only vain imaginings which they as wise
men have ceased to believe. The earth has been too much with
them ; their sight is failing ; they cannot see the open heavens
and the wonderful ladder with the angels upon it ; they have
become dull of hearing, and some men begin to fear that they are
so deaf that they would not hear the trumpet of the archangel
¦or the Voice of God. The loss of function of these senses are
serious losses ; the earth is closing in upon them ; the avenues
heavenward are being closed by what is earthly ; and if they
do not awaken to their condition, the result will be that the dust
of earth will return to the dust, and the beautiful parables of
the heavens and the earth will not have proved means of blessing
to them.
It is such a thought as this that underlies the Bible revelation
to men ; the little child is taken by the hand, he is led forth, and
there is seen by him the heavens and the earth ; he asks his
guide what these things mean ? and he is told that they are
parables, and generations of parables, and that, if he is good,
attentive, obedient, and willing to learn, then some day he will
be led to understand what they mean. The children have asked
the meaning in many ways in past ages ; and somehow they
have always come back to the first parable, thinking that possibly
here, where the story begins, men may find a clue to reveal to
them what it all means. The story is being transfigured ; there
is a change in its appearance ; what appeared to be dead is seen
to be alive, and the translation of the parable takes this form.
The generations of the heavens and the earth are like the two
first leaves that appear above ground when a seed has been quick
ened to life and has made its appearance so that men can observe
the phenomena ;'it is a new living creation from what seemed to

PARABLES OF GENERATIONS OF HEAVENS AND EARTH. 189"
be dead ; and the children must not be impatient to know all
about the seed and its history until it has grown up, produced
its fruits, and these fruits and their seeds have become known.
Now these generations, although seen as in one vision, are not to>
be limited to a short space of time ; they are what they are re
presented to be, generations ; what they represent in a few word.
pictures is reaUy history, and it is out of these, from within these,
as in the order of living trees, that all history will proceed. The^
heavens and the earth are there ; but the child can see no man
to till the ground, to subdue and to rule over what appeared to
be a chaotic desert where no rain from heaven had fallen. The
child watches intently the changes that take place ; there comes.
from somewhere mist and water, and the Lord God out of that.
dust of earth forms a man, breathes into the form life and soul,.
and thus what was dust of earth became man with a living soul,.
in the likeness of his Maker. The man was placed in the garden
of Eden where all was pleasant and beautiful ; this was given to
him for his inheritance, his garden, and he was to be the gardener
to keep it in order. Of course the garden was not the man's
personal possession and he had not made it into a garden by
his own efforts ; he was put there ; it was given to him upon
well known conditions, and the sign of his subjection to the Lord
God was obedience to the Will of the Lord of the heritage, and the:
special condition was that a certain tree and its fruits were re
served by, and for, the Lord of the garden. The garden was a
lonely place without a companion for this earth born man ; and.
thus out of the man when he was asleep and unconscious, the
Lord gave him a wife ; she was called woman, and they were very
happy together in the garden in their state of innocence. But
the woman listened to the voice of a wily serpent ; she did not
keep her heart closed against evil influences ; she was filled with
desire to be wise ; covetous to get what she thought was good.
and pleasant ; and forgetting the fear of the Lord and His law,
she sinned. She beguiled her husband and he sinned ; and then.
they discovered that they had not acted wisely, and that what
they had eaten was not good food for children such as they were
in their innocence. This is sin, because man being intellectual'.
and moral, he knew what was true and right, and thus he had
no excuse to offer for his disobedience and his folly. For the
gratification of his senses, for a mess of pottage, he sold his birth
right, and thus he forfeited all his privileges, being unworthy-

190 PARABLES OF GENERATIONS OF HEAVENS AND EARTH.
to live in that garden and to have fellowship with angels. There
followed judgment upon evil and upon evil doers. There is
the promise of the seed that will bruise the serpent's head, but
who will himself be bruised in the heel in the conflict ; and, along
with this seed there is the story of the pathway of sorrow and
pain, of conception, travail in sorrow, and of subjection. The
curse rests upon the earth, and for man the way is that of labour
and sorrow ; and even the bread that is eaten will not satisfy
the desires of the earthly man. The vision has gone round in
its cycle ; the man's body was dust, it will return to the dust ;
the parable is what the child can see, but what the heavens and
the earth mean he does not understand.
The generations of the heavens are heavenly and the genera
tions of the earth are earthly ; and it is what arises out of these
generations that is conceivable as history. It is important to
grasp these thoughts ; it is also necessary to pray for the spiritual
vision so that the heavens may not vanish from sight and be
closed ; because, much more depends upon what men can see
of the heavenly than what they see of the earthly. If they car
retain the heavenly vision it is well, then all things wiU be seen
in their true relations ; but if only the earthly is seen then truth
will be lost ; the vision will be ego-centric and dia-magnetic, mere
experience and empiricism, and not scientific and divinely wise.
The blessings are heavenly in the generations of the heavens ;
the curses are earthly in the generations of the earth ; and, it
may be well to glance at these briefly as they are revealed in this
parable. The blessings from the heavens are many, but the
first is the most wonderful ; it is that the Lord God should con
descend to come down to earth, look upon such a chaos, regen
erate what is dead as dust, give it life, put within it spirit
and soul ; His Own spirit and soul, and thus make, or remake,
man in His Own image. What does man possess that is
not the gifts of the heavens ? All that he is, and all that
he has, is the Lord's ; and yet the Lord gives to man that
which the lower creatures do not possess ; He gives spiritual
personality as conscious fact ; and it is the powers of the
intellect and the moral nature by which man is in, and attains
to, God likeness. In this there is involved Love, Grace and Mercy,
for this child of earth is earthly, and has to be redeemed from
the powers of the earth by that Seed from the heavens, who
will destroy evil and be the Saviour and Helper of men in their

PARABLES OF GENERATIONS OF HEAVENS AND EARTH. 191
sorrow ; their Teacher and Guide in the long journey through
the Desert that leads to the Land of Promise and to the City of
God. The curses that come through the earth and the earthly
are trial and temptation, desire and ambition, disobedience
and sin, sorrow and shame, pain and travail, labour and fear,
disorder of thought, disease of body, and physical death. The
fruits of the earthly are strife and hatred, passion and murder,
fear and dread, a conscience that cannot find rest and peace,
the vagabond life, the far country, the dread of punishment,
and the voice crying for vengeance that cannot be stilled. It
does not end with one man, it permeates communities of men,
and the end is boastful murderers and licentious monsters, who
glory in their shame. These are the generations of the earth ;
men have seen them ; they know them only too well ; they have
survived through all the generations of the past, they still live
and are regnant upon the earth.
The generations of the heavens and the earth do not die ;
being endowed with spiritual life they continue to live ; through
aU subsequent generations they live in their own order ; and it is
in, and through, the heavens and the earth that all generations
possess life. The generations of Adam may be found in a book,
or in many books ; but they have the same origin, they came
from God, in His likeness, as male and female, and He named them
Adam when they were created. The parable here is not that of
a separate creation ; it is that of generations of life ; it is that of
development in generations, and each generation is a sign, a type,
an ideal, that requires to be studied in its organic relations as
a new life, in place of a sacrifice that was a martyred life ; as a
life that becomes psychic ; as a life possessing life ; as a life that
can see glory and beauty in life ; as a life that can rule over,
govern and subdue life ; then there is that divine gracious life
that comes from the heavens, is heavenly, is in communion
with the heavenly powers, and returns to the heavens by the
heavenly way of life and light. It is upon this man Enoch,
the consecrated one, that the heavenly benediction rests ; the
man had the heavens within him, and the earth around him ;
the heavenly and spiritual burst the veil of the earthly and
carnal ; he was transfigured or translated ; the earthly figure
and form could not contain the heavenly, thus the earthly be
came heavenly and Enoch was in glory. It does seem strange
that the earthly generations should go on in their development

192 PARABLES OF GENERATIONS OF HEAVENS AND EARTH.
as if this man had never lived ; but they did do as if under the
shadow of a great loss, feeling the pangs and pains of sorrow
and trouble. Still, men perceived that a new spirit was found
among them in the earth ; they felt as if they had reaped the
fruits of the curse that rested upon the earth ; and they sighed
for rest and comfort. That is the story of what the heavens did
for men ; but the earth was not without fruits, for the heavenly
men saw how beautiful the earthly women were ; they lusted
after them and took them to be their wives, as many as they
pleased ; their children were as giants in the earth ; they became
renowned and mighty ; they were wicked and evil in their
thoughts ; and thus they forfeited their right to live upon the
face of God's earth. But there was the seed of grace in Noah,
and it was through his faith, by the grace of the heavens, that he
was preserved with his family.
The parable of the generations of Noah is summed up, on the
side of the heavens, by the salvation of Noah and his family ;
whilst that of the earth tells how the flood raged and wicked men
were lost. He was more than saved for he became the recipient
of a heavenly covenant of grace and life ; and, since his days,
when men see the rainbow in the heavens, they say, " it is the
sign of the truth and faithfulness of God, and of His mercy, kind
ness and love in saving those that were in danger of destruction."
The earth bestowed upon men the vine and the wine ; the cluster
that gladdens the soul, and that fiery spirit that brings drunken
ness, nakedness, shame and disgrace. The heavens give the
dew and the rain and fruitful seasons ; the earth perverts what
is good and makes poisonous what is blessed ; and this parable
is one with which men are very familiar ; the sin is not in the
earth, the vine, or the wine, it is in the spirit of self-gratification,
and the indulgence in what takes away from man that fine moral
balance of thought, word and action, that is so important for
the children of grace that walk in the narrow pathway of the
life of faith.
The parable of the generations of the sons of Noah, as related
to the heavens, is to be found in the children given to them ;
and the lands they received to be their inheritances ; in these
they were abundantly blessed, and had they only possessed con
tented hearts it would have been weU for mankind. The curses
that came through the earth are suggested in Nimrod, the cun
ning hunter, the tyrant and empire builder ; in the restlessness

PARABLES OF GENERATION? OF HEAVENS AND EARTH. 193
and wandering spirit found in men ; in their ambitions, concep
tions, their wicked devices and their rebellion against the heavens.
They might have gone forth to make the earth a cosmical home
where all men would dwell in peace ; they turned the earth into a
chaos of disorder where confusion has reigned ; thus, in a
sense, it may be a blessing in disguise, that men have many
languages and are scattered abroad, for if this were not so, it
is within the range of probability that they would not have been
subject to restraint ; they would have excelled in evil doing,
with the result that they would have brought about in some
form their own destruction.
The parables of the generations of Shem and Terah are those
of names and signs ; they are above the common empiric psychic
life ; they live ; they seek after a better life ; they are not satis
fied with the earth and things earthly, they never have been,
and thus they are led away from amongst the nations of the
earth to seek for, and haply to find, the Name above every name ;
and that land to which there is the promise of blessing.
The parable of the life of Abraham is not that of generations ;
he is another Enoch as a man consecrated to God and called by
God for special service. The Heavens were open to Abraham ;
he heard the Divine Voice ; he conversed with the angels ; he
received a land as an inheritance in promise ; he had two sons,
flocks and herds, wealth and substance ; he was powerful to
save, faithful and obedient to the Will of God, and thus he was
richly endowed with Heaven's blessings. On the other hand.
it is necessary to remember that the earth was all around Abra
ham from infancy to old age ; he walked in the midst of it as if
he had a charmed life ; as if the heavens were watching all his
movements, taking such care of him as if he were a heavenly
favourite, a divine child, that required special guidance and
attention in his journey from Ur to Bethel, Bethel to Egypt,
Egypt to Hebron ; and in the day of battle covering his head
and giving him victory over his enemies. The voice of God
saved him from idolatry; the hand of God protected him in
Egypt ; the blessings of God satisfied his heart, and thus he
willingly left his ancient home ; the wealth, power and greatness
of Egypt did not tempt him to remain in that land ; the rich
pastures in the Valley of Sodom did not make him covetous ;
and he had no desire to mix with, or become a portion of, the
Canaanite nation that possessed the land wherein he appeared N

194 PARABLES OF GENERATIONS OF HEAVENS AND EARTH.
to be a stranger. The man was different from other men ; he
had ever a far-away look in his eyes as if the earth did not limit
his vision ; he saw a better country ; he sought for a heavenly city ;
he was on the outlook for angels ; he was listening for the voices
from heaven, and thus upon the earth he saw the open heavens ;
and he was more in the heavens than on the earth. He was a
paradox of a man, heavenly yet on the earth ; he is not a parable
only, he is an allegory, he is an earthly story with a heavenly
meaning ; and he is like the heavenly Man in thus lifting up the
earthly into the heavenly.
The parable of Ishmael is that of a man and a nation with its
twelve princes. He has for his mother an Egyptian woman,
but his father is Abraham, the father of the faithful and the
friend of God. He is one of the mystic elder brothers who claim
the inheritance and the earthly blessing ; but his portion is the
Desert, before, or ne; r, Egypt, on the way toward Assj'ria. Ish
mael may be a wild, untameable kind of man. but the blood ol
Abraham courses in bis veins, and thus his career is worthy
of careful study. The parable of Isaac is that of the younger
brother, the heir to the inheritance and blessing. His genera
tions are the twin sons, Esau and Jacob , and here again the
elder and younger brothers are mystical in their life in the womb ;
in their life as lads in the same family ; as related to birthright
and blessing ; as related to their careers as men ; and the lands
they possessed and the future of their families. These genera
tions as conceived in the womb of time are great spiritual ideals ;
and thus they are like prophetic sketches of the generations
that are to come. The generations of Esau are specially related
to Edom ; that is to say Esau is one of the strangest parables
in the Bible that men are called to study. He is the earthly,
as Adam, Esau and Edom ; and the more Esau is studied the more
wonderful does the parable appear to be. In the Heavens and
Earth, he is as that red dust that formed the earthly man. As
Adam he is the earthly yet heavenly endowed ; as Esau he is the
elder son of Isaac and the heir to the inheritance and promises :
the hunter ; the man that loves his father, that desires to possess
the birthright, and yet sells it for a mess of pottage ; who desires
to gain the blessing and yet is unable to obtain it because of
something that happened when he despised what he ought to
have cherished ; and, somehow, all this is like a riddle ; he was
in it all, and all this was what happened before he was born.

PARABLES OF GENERATIONS OF HEAVENS AND EARTH. 195
Esau is Edom, he becomes the head of that earthly nation ; the
age long enemy of Israel ; a nation and kingdom ; the father of
many dukes, princes and kings ; and the lord over Seir and Edom
with all their cities. There may be a spiritual Esau with a nobler
record ; it ought to be remembered that in the generations, in their
numerical order, Esau is the ninth, and the ninth is of great
significance in the spiritual realm, because this is as the Spirit
in the unformed spiritual, in the chaotic dust ; this is as the
void where no order can be found ; but with the coming of the
Spirit there is a change, for the Spirit is able to make Edom,
or Esau live, and what that life may become as spiritually re
deemed who can tell. The mystic vision of this son of Isaac,
as Spirit endowed, is one for careful study ; it is one of the great
parables in the Kingdom of God. The parable of the genera
tions of Jacob is that of Joseph and his brethren ; of the promised
land and Egypt. If the earthly surrounds the generations of
Esau, and sometimes it almost appears as if his generations
were earthly, profane and without the fear of God, the reverse
is the case with Joseph ; he is an ideal to be studied as the opposite
of Esau. He is another of those men who receives the blessings
of the Heavens ; even as a youth they were open to him, when
he had visions of the most extraordinary kind, He is the child
of destiny, born to be the greatest in the field of labour, and in
the state ; and yet to his brethren all his visions seem to end
in slavery and rejection, in the state of bondage in Egypt. The
peculiarity of the Heavens, and the blessings they bestow come
out in this way : the favourites of the Heavens take heaven
with them wherever they go ; to Joseph the promised land was as
the vestibule of heaven, and from thmce he could see through
the windows of heaven by the visions that came to him. In
Egypt in the prison house, when men had dreams they did not
understand, then he was in telepathic communication with
heaven, and the Lord that gave the dreams, which meant the
destinies of good and uvil men, gave to Joseph direct the inter
pretation of the dreams, which in due time were fulfilled. Again
when the King of Egypt had dreams, and his wise men failed
to interpret them, it was Joseph that became the interpreter
of the dreams that speak of plenty, and of famine, and of the
future. Because Joseph was thus divinely endowed by the
Jtioavons, he was exalted to be ruler over Egypt, and thus he
became the minister of the destinies of men and nations. Even
n 2

196 PARABLES OF GENERATIONS OF HEAVENS AND EARTH.
the Egyptians recognised this great truth, and confessed that for
the great work of saving the people and the land of Egypt, in
the time of famine that was to come, no one more suitable could
be found than the man in whom the Spirit of God was found in
such wisdom, as a revealer of visions. This must ever be the
state of matters in this world when the power and wisdom of
man fails ; this truth is engraven in history in manifold foims ;
it is to the Heavens and God that men have appealed when all
their own wisdom, power, and their gods have failed them ;
and it is God alone, by the Heavens, that is able to save men
and to guide them in the right way, and in what they ought to
do. What can the earth do for men as illustrated by the parable
of the generations of Jacob ? It can make men suspicious,
jealous, unkind, cruel, unfeeling ; it can assist them in false pre
tences and telling lies ; and it can bring sorrow and trouble upon
the heads that are grey. What can the earth do without the
blessed influences of the heavens ? The reply is the parched
earth, absence of dew and rain, famine-stricken flocks, and perish
ing men, women and children. God help men when they despise
the heavens ; they are preparing for themselves a terrible day
of judgment ; and the result will surely be destruction, or peni
tence by the way of pain and sorrow, confession of sin and the
desire for reconciliation and peace. These generations that are
the children and grand-children of Abraham are full of spiritual
teaching as to the first-born the heirs of the earthly ; and the
second born who come to possess the inheritance and tfie heavenly
blessing ; they are Adam and Christ as explained by Paul ; and
they are parables and allegories that require much study. The
ideal in the heavens and the earth put them in their true relative
positions, for after all the earthly is not really the First-born.
He is the Heavenly One, who for a purpose, and a time condes
cended to take the second place, so that through the earthly
He might redeem the fallen to the heavenly state.
It is in this sense that the nation of Israel in Egypt and the
Desert fulfil the generations of Ishmael ; and the Commonwealth
under Joshua and the Judges the generations of Isaac ; but Isaac
survives in Israel in possession of the land, and the heavenly
blessings ; and, the twin sons, Esau and Jacob are born in the
kingdom. The visible and the earthly is as Esau ; the more
spiritual that desires heavenly blessings is as Jacob. The con
summation of Esau, in spiritual form, is that conception of history

PARABLES OF GENERATIONS OF HEAVENS AND EARTH. 197
and providence as found in the books, Chronicles to Song ,of Solo
mon ; the consummation of Jacob is the Captivity, the Restora
tion, the coming of Jesus Christ, that true Joseph in , whom al!
the blessings of the Heavens are added together ; the Fulfiller
of all the typical men of past ages. The heavens and the earth
are revealed in the generations in Genesis, but it is in germinal
form ; it is as in Spirit and Soul, or under physical and psychical
conditions. With the book of Exodus, there is a new departure ;
there is development of an important kind, and this development
is analogous with the change in man from the psychical to the
intellectual and moral condition. It is not necessary to enter
into the complex psychological problem that is presented here for
study ; it may be summed up in man as intellectual order as
knowledge, and as moral conformity to duty. In the State, as
civil order and as sociology ; as law, justice, political relations
and as government ; and in the Bible as the birth of a nation ;
and the order in which the nation is formed ; j as the patterns of
heavenly ideals ; and as the supremacy of law and government
in the knowledge and fear of God. It is here that development.
into manhood begins, for the simple reason that whilst it is true
that the man considers what is visible, tangible, and sensuous.
and compares ideas and thoughts that are stored up in the memory,
the chief object in view at this stage is to correlate all that is
physical and psychical and place them in their intellectual order
as a cosmos within the soul. This may be expressed as a new
birth ; the living birth to conscious manhood ; to knowledge as
knowledge ; to supremacy over the lower creatures ; to lordship,
society, law, duty, responsibility and the thought of God. It is
the Heavens that give to men these great endowments. Men
are awakened to their state and condition under what is earthly-
tyranny. In the psychical state men are under the heel of nature ;
they are slaves and bondmen ; but, there is that in them that
cannot accept the despotic conception that they are only fit to
live, eat, make bricks, till the land, kill, or be killed by the order
of any arbitrary power. Men do not see or understand how this
change takes place ; what they do know is that electrical re
pulsions and magnetic attractions are in operation ; the spiritual
is asserting its rights against the carnal, and it is the Heavens
that are the agents in this change. It is too late in the day for
men to assert that despotisms, cruel or kind, are the fit govern
ments under which men ought to live ; these may be suitable for

198 PARABLES OF GENERATIONS OF HEAVENS AND EARTH.
animals, but they are not what men require , and if men are found
so degraded as to prefer such forms of government, it is useless
to reason with them ; they are like cattle not Hke men, and they
are not fit to possess their promised heritage, or govern themselves
as men. The Heavens, in the book of Exodus,' emphasises this
thought ; the slaves seem to take it for granted that this is the
state of degraded men. That they are not able to help themselves ;
that they fear the lash of the taskmaster ; and that they will
reject the deliverer when he comes to redeem them from the power
of the despot. Liberty is not the state of men as they are found
under the -generations of the earth ; they require to be redeemed,
and it is the Heavens that protect and prepare the deliverer
for his mission. It is the Heavens that reveal to the shepherd
of Israel the living Bush that is aglow with the glory of God ; and
make the Covenant Name of God known. It is the Heavens that
give new life to degraded slaves, and break their fetters so that
they may go free ; that restrain the powers of the Earth and
destroy them. It is the Heavens that baptise the new born, give
water from the rock and food from heaven. It is the Heavens
that give law to be light so that those who were slaves may
become the freemen of God. It is the Heavens that cleanse
from sin ; that supply the pattern of the things in the heavens
by signs and symbols ; that give order in worship and service,
and thus out of a chaos of bond slaves they produce an organised
nation. What are the gifts the earth bestows upon those who
are under its sway ? Bondage, labour, misery, sorrow, pain,
fear, discontent, complainings, lustings, idol worship, cowardice,
rebellion, disease and death. The earth would shut up every
window that opens heavenward ; shut out faith, hope, patience
and love from the fellowship of men ; and, for wages in such a
service, whatever promises may be given, when the pay day comes,
it is death and the grave in the Desert.
The Heavens lead men by ways they do not know through
the great Desert of life ; but the end in view is to bring them in
safety to the promised land and the heavenly country. Now it
is clear that in all these things men come in as factors ; they have a
position and a choice in their own journeyings, but they are called
upon to consider whether they will be wise and side with the
Heavens ; or foolish evil-doers and side with the earth. As
were the men in the Desert, so were their condition ; if earthly,
the Desert surrounded them and was in them, so that they .were

PARABLES OF GENERATIONS OF HEAVENS AND EARTH. 19'>
earthly and carnal ; if heavenly then they went into the Taber
nacle, heard the Voice of God, was instructed in His laws, and
they were being prepared for the land of promise. The Heaven*
opened up the way through the Jordan, destroyed the walls of
Jericho, gave the victory over the Canaanites and bestowed upon
the tribes of Israel and the nation, the promised land as their
heritage. The earth changed the people of Israel from being
the spiritual worshippers of God into idolaters ; they turned aside
from the way of true knowledge and of conformity to the Divine
. laws they had received, and thus they became the subjects of
other nations and the bondmen of the Philistines ; they lost that
unity and harmony of thought that is so important in a Common
wealth ; they became disunited, degraded, and lawless ; thus in
their disintegration they lost the semblance of a nation and were
ready to perish from off the face of the land that the Heavens
had given to them. This Commonwealth ought to have been
prosperous, happy and content, it became weak and helpless ;
the children of Israel remained children ; and they lost that man
hood of faith, wisdom, and courage, which animated the men who
received their inheritance under Joshua.
The Heavens failed to make the children of Israel men as a
Commonwealth ; thus they began to work for regeneration in
the soul of a woman. They endowed Hannah with grace and
faith ; a courageous heart and a self-denying spirit ; and through
her they gave to Israel the seer Samuel, the one asked from God
and given back to Him to be his servant for ever. The seer
heard the Voice of God ; he knew the thoughts of God as if the
heavens were open to him ; he was prophet, judge and ruler in
Israel by Divine grace ; and as the servant of God he sought
the good of the nation. The Heavens, though rejected by Israel,
abundantly blessed the people under David and Solomon and thus
a visible nation of God was set up before men for their study.
Here also the earth seemed to outwit the heavens in the over
throw of the gracious Kingdom that God would have given to
men. In rejecting Samuel, the ruler and judge, they rejected
God, their Saviour and King; they preferred an earthly minded
man, a king who would imitate other kings of the earth, and
they called him to be their first king over Israel. This is the
Esau-like king, the first-born, the heir by the earthly rule ; the
self-willed, self-seeking king, who proved himself to be fickle.
nerce, suspicious, jealous, and utterly unfit to be the ruler over

200 PARABLES OF GENERATIONS OF HEAVENS AND EARTH.
Israel. David has more of the likeness to Jacob ; but, as can
be seen, his policy is that of earthly kings ; he loved war and
conquest ; he was a type, but the type was not heavenly, al
though for generations men have conceived it to be so ; this is
a perverted type arising out of the rejected ideal type found in
Samuel. Solomon in all his glory is also a type that is perverted ;
the Heavens permitted the type to teach men ; but the ideal
could not be seen by the onlookers. In Rehoboam and his de
scendants in Judah and Israel it is the Esau type that reigns ;
the earth is once more powerful to frustrate the works of the
Heavens ; the degrading way is that of despotism, war, idolatry,
covetousness, rebellion, earthly perversion, and the end is Nineveh
and Babylon, disorder, disgrace, and the disintegration of Israel
amongst the nations of the East.
The history of the different ways in which men have rejected
the grace, mercy and love of God would require much study ;
it would almost seem as if they had been constantly doing so
from the Fall in Eden to the present time ; and it must follow
that each successive rejection has been increasingly serious,
because those who have done so have possessed ever increasing
tight, and thus ought to have realised more clearly what their
offence meant. It is, however, in Moses, that is in the intellectual
realm, that knowledge and responsibility become conscious.
Israel rejected him as their deliverer, and thus for forty years,
a generation, they continued to be the bondmen of Pharaoh.
They rejected their King at Sinai in their idolatry in the matter
of the golden calf ; and they were rejected by Him. They would
not go in and possess the land of promise ; they rejected Samuel ;
they rejected Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour ; and,
at the last they rejected the Spirit, and the spiritual, and would
not accept that great salvation promised to the fathers. The
Heavens made manifest and used all these means for the sal
vation of Israel after the flesh ; the earth and the earthly, the
carnal and the sensuous overpowered them ; they were not spiri
tual even though they had enjoyed so many privileges ; and
failing to become spiritual, there could not be any other result,
because it is only the spiritual, the gracious, and the self-sacrificing
that can really conquer in this warfare. The tide turns with the
Captivity ; it is then that men find themselves helpless in the
awful struggle ; there is no power visible, tangible, psychical,
intellectual or moral ; not even grace and mercy, priests and

PARABLES OF GENERATIONS OF HEAVENS AND EARTH. 201
ritual, temple and sacrifice, that can redeem them from the evil
powers by which they are enthralled. The Heavens did not
cease to watch over men in their captivity, trouble and sorrow ;
here the Divine life of mercy found the necessary conditions
for restoration and regeneration ; thus there came in due time
the proclamation of Cyrus, the return of the remnant, the new
order in Israel, the temple, and the State, the prophets and mar
tyrs, and all the discipline of life that ought to have impressed
men with the thought that redemption is not by Church or State,
but by the highway of repentance, suffering, sorrow for sin, and
that pitiful, gracious Spirit who enters into living sympathy
with those who suffer. As plain matter of fact, the Scriptures
testify that the only Man who understood these thoughts was
Jesus, the Christ. His intimate disciples, and all his followers
were unable to get beyond the conception that the Kingdom of
Grace and of Heaven was to be like the kingdom of David, and
to be animated by the same spirit. The Heavens sent forth
Jesus, the Saviour, the personal embodiment of grace and truth,
of self-sacrifice and sympathy with those who suffer ; the Holy
Spirit bestowed special knowledge of truth upon the followers, of
Christ, and thus the Christian spiritual era dawned upon the
world. In the light of these thoughts it is not necessary to con
sider the efforts put forth by the generations of the earth to
retain that supremacy over men that had been in operation
through so many generations. The fact seems to be that the
earthly has entirely failed to understand the heavenly ; the
standards of the earth are earthly, carnal, sensual, devilish :
it is the perverted natural that reigns ; and thus to the earthly
the apparent folly of salvation through grace and faith, by the
way of sacrifice, sorrow and suffering As conceived by Paul,
to the Jew it is a stumbling block that he cannot get over ; to the
Greek it is as foolishness ; to the Roman sentimental weakness ;
but to the Christian it is the wisdom and the power of God for
salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ to all who follow Him.
What have the Heavens done for those who are named Chris
tians ? Do they not possess the Bible ? Have they not the
Gospels with the story of the life of Christ in a fourfold form ?
Have they not the special teaching of the Spirit of Truth and of
Christ, in the Epistles ? Have they not had special advantages
in being able to compare natural with spiritual, and spiritual
with spiritual ? Do they not possess intellectual power, moral

202 PARABLES OF GENERATIONS OF HEAVENS AND EARTH.
feeling, gracious instincts ; and do they not know that tho symbol
of their religion is the Cross, self-sacrifice, suffering and sorrow ?
They know all these things ; and they can reason upon them with
angelic wisdom and fervour. It is not want of knowledge that
is the matter ; it seems to be want of spiritual discernment, want
of practical understanding, ' an unwillingness and unfitness to
comprehend what the Christian religion really means. In other
words Christians are not really Christians ; they are theologians,
moralists, seekers after truth and wisdom, and they seek after
an objective kingdom ; they are like the Jews in this matter,
they long for a kingdom like that of Israel ; and it seems im
possible for them to receive the conception that the nation and
Kingdom of Israel, as an ideal, was rejected by God more than-
3,000 years ago. It is useless to try to deny the fact, the Chris
tian Church is not the heavenly ideal of the Kingdom of Grace
and sacrifice ; the Christian State is not the moral kingdom of
God ; and men know that this is true. What is the matter with
men that they cannot see truly, think rightly, and act justly
and graciously 1 It is all summed up in the thought that they
are in subjection to the earth and the earthly; they seek after
the visible and the natural, they are carnal and covetous, jealous
and suspicious, envious and ambitious, proud and full of un-
charitableness. In fact, to put the matter plainly, men may
search in vain for Christ-like men ; and some people have actually
gone so far as to say that the very last place to look for them is
in the Christian Church or in a Christian State. Whether such a
statement is true, or is not true, is not the subject of the present
inquiry ; it is this, What have the generations of the Heavens
done for men in the past ? What are they doing for men now ?
And what are men trying to think, say and do, to get into har
mony with the Heavens ; in other words with God, the Father,
with Christ, the Saviour, and with the Holy Spirit the Sanctifier.
Men have been saved by grace, they have been redeemed by the
power of God ; and they have been restored to Divine privileges.
Christ is Lord and Saviour ; and the Spirit is revealing the Truth
in Christ in spiritual order. Why then should men remain
the thralls of the devil, and prefer the bondage of Egypt and of
Babylon, to the liberty, the freedom, and the spiritual inheri
tance prepared for the redeemed sons of God 1

CHAPTER VIII.
THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
The Kingdom of Heaven is like a biography, like history, and
like the Bible. It is also like a seed ; like the seed produced by
a seed ; and like the harvest field, ready to be gathered in for
the sustenance of the life of men. It is only what is endowed
with life that lives, grows, and follows a definite law of develop
ment. The heavens are in the seed ; and thus the absorbing
study is to discover what will be the fruit that will be produced
and ripen upon this " Tree of Life." This study is not some
thing new ; it has occupied the thoughts of men in all past ages :
and the fact will not be questioned that those men who have given
this subject their attention, have been the men who tried to keep
abreast of the ages in which they lived. The study of history
amply proves that those who have sought after wisdom have had
greatly diversified opinions; but, upon the whole, it may be
assumed that independent thinkers have tried to think truly.
It may be that the results of their labours, considering their en
vironment, have been what men would expect ; if they did their
best this must be placed to their credit ; they were as the torch-
bearers of truth in the darkness ; and men ought not to expect
too much from those who had no definite clue to guide them
through, and out of, the great labyrinth in which they found
themselves. The methods by which wise men have studied the
great problems of life have been, as a rule, threefold ; the intel
lectual masters have been convinced that evil is a question of
ignorance ; thus if men were wise and knew the truth they would
be delivered from their enemies ; moral teachers have laid greater
stress upon duty, behaviour, right actions, conformity to moral
law, with the assurance that this would abolish pain and bestow
pleasure and happiness upon men ; whilst religious teachers and
theologians have specially advocated faith in God, belief in creeds,

204 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
and submission to priests, as more important than knowledge
and a moral life. It has to be recognised that these ideals fit in
with the nature of man, and thus the predominance of certain
ideals have oftentimes tended to cause strife and misunderstanding.
Men require all the knowledge they can attain of what is good
and true ; they ought to live the righteous life ; and it is their
privilege to seek after God and Salvation ; thus there was really
no cause for jealousy or strife ; there was room for all if they
honestly sought after what is good, true, right and gracious.
It may also be assumed as true that all wise, good, religious
men have been seeking the same ends ; these being by the re
ligious life that sin might be put away ; by the knowledge of law
and duty so that lawlessness, crime, and evil-doing might be
abolished ; by enlightenment, so that ignorance and disorder
might cease ; and all have been humane in trying to understand
how pain and disease might be alleviated and cured. In the
thoughts of the Bible the heavens have in all past ages had
witnesses seeking the well-being of humanity ; and where men
have been wilfully ignorant, cruel, lawless and merciless, they
have testified to the reign of evil, and that earthly spirit that
has been enmity to God. It is necessary to recognise to the full
the blessed works of the heavens ; and it is not needful to take
away the honour bestowed upon those who have been on the side
of the heavens ; in the law of development it is clearly recognised
that at certain stages men become co-workers with the heavens ;
thus a heathen man in the advanced stage of his realm of life
may be a long way in advance of a Jew in the low stage of his
rehgion ; and the first Jew, the father of the faithful, was a man
at whose feet Christians might sit and receive blessing. What
men require to observe is that former conceptions as to the heathen;
and texts which seem to state that only in the Name of Christ
is salvation to be found, may not mean what men say they do ;
the Name of Christ covers all that Christ is, and all that Christ
has- done ; and certainly the Bible, in the light of the law of
development, is not to be narrowed down to the conception of
any class, sect, or religion. It is not to be inferred that this
means that any religion is as good as the Christian religion ; or
that not to profess religion at all is as good as seeking to follow
the Christian religion ; it is simply stating what men know to
be fact, that the little child in years, or in religious experience.
may be nearer the heart of Christ than priests and theologians

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDEERD. 205
who have not the shadow of a doubt that they are the elect,
chosen, favourite, servants of God. It is also to state that men
have not attained to finality in their religious knowledge ; the
wisest theologians are empirical thinkers ; and it is an open
question whether the child of experience, young or old, is, or is
not, in a better position to be born again and to enter the King
dom of Heaven.
It is being born again, the spiritual birth, and the consciousness
that ought to follow birth that is of supreme importance. It
is the heavens and the heavenly that is of account, and not the
earth and the earthly. The child is born, lives, sees the open
heavens, hears the Voice of God and is in communion with the
Spirit ; the pope, prelate or presbyter, may only see things visible
and tangible, a Church, a State and a kingdom upon the earth ;
they see mere phenomena ; they are lost in the maze of earthly
things ; they get encrusted with the earth, so that there is no
heavenly vision ; poor men, they are as in the earthly womb ;
they need to be delivered, to become the children of the heavens ;
and, without this birth, they may be devoid of spiritual life.-
This being born again is not a question of one rehgion ; it is that
of all reHgions ; thus men require not so much a change of re
ligious forms, but the change in heart and spirit ; and if this end
is attained, then the form of religion may not be of so much
importance. If this practical problem is considered in the light of the method
of Christ, and the questions that harmonise with that method,
then it is likely that interesting truths may become known that
would be of value. For example, it may be assumed that wise
men of all classes have exercised themselves in asking, Whence
creation, nature, man, good, evil, sin, order, disorder, health,
disease, joy, sorrow, pleasure, pain, life and death ? Is it not
correct that upon such questions there is no unanimity of opinion ;
and that the most diversified ideas exist upon such subjects ?
At the same time, is it not true that men have cherished the faith
that disease will be remedied, that disorder, evil and sin will be
overcome ; and that men will reach a higher state ? ,? When
have such conceptions been formed ; and how have wise men
expressed their hopes ? Such ideas are to be found all through
history ; they have been expressed in myths, stories, parables,
allegories and in religions; the hope has' been that there will
come an ideal Deliverer to rescue men from evil powers ; andy

206 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
this hope is inwoven into the best thoughts of men. Why is it
that such conceptions have arisen and have survived races of
men ? They are in the spirit and thus spiritual in men ; as de
sires and aspirations they are immortal and irresistible ; the
heavens are in them ; they will not die, they have hope in their
heart and patience in their life ; thus men will seek after the
spiritual, if the heavens can find a suitable environment in which
to live. What is this life immortal that is spiritual ? The wise
mystic says it is God's Spirit ; or that it is the word and creation
of the Spirit. Wise men say it is the Spirit seeking a temple, a
home to dwell in. It is a man seeking for his twin soul ; his
help-meet ; his living mate as in marriage ; and to the Christian
it is Christ in the soul. Men cannot tell what the soul is ; they
only know that in themselves it is not what it ought to be as the
home of peace, joy and love. How is it, wise men have asked,
that there is disorder and darkness in the soul, and yet there are
such heavenly aspirations after what is true, right, good and
gracious ? It is here that men look for a cosmos and find a chaos ;
they cherish ideals and their ideals will not fit into what they
experience and know. How is it that life is like a pilgrimage
and not like a home ; and sometimes more like hell than heaven ?
How can men escape from their environment, from the earthly ?
Some say by the way of ascetism and the renunciation of the
world ; others by knowledge, wisdom, enlightenment ; others
by a moral life in harmony with ethics ; others by self sacrifice.
There are those who jeer and mock at the very idea of men being
so silly as to cherish such ideas ; and some have said that it is
useless to discuss such problems ; they are not to be solved by
the Heavens spiritually, but by the Earth naturally ; thus it is
best to float with the current wherever it may go, and ask no
questions about the unseen, the heavenly and the eternal. But.
as men have found all such advice is useless, the Heavens will
not let men sink in the mire or drift with the current ; there is
that restless inquiring spirit in man that will ask, Who is the
heavenly One"? Who are the Heavens that they thus influence
men ? Who will men be like if they seek to be like the ideal ?
Who is it that is good, true, right and gracious ? Whereunto
do all these questionings lead men ? Even to Jesus, the Christ,
the Son of God, the Deliverer from sin ; the Healer of disease ;
the Restorer of order ; the Life from the dead ; the Way, the
Truth and the Life ; the High Priest over God's House, and the

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 207
one Mediator bringing peace and reconciliation. But do wise
theologians all agree about the unique glory of Christ as Saviour,
and His Divine supremacy over all men ? Men are guided to
Christ, but by what way ; and whither will the way lead them
if they are His followers ? It is the way of sorrow, suffering and
sacrifice ; it is His Own consecrated way ; it is not the way that
earthly people know, understand, or love to walk in. To the
earthly it is a foolish way ; it seems a dark and dismal way ; and
yet the heavenly followers of Christ say it is the Divine way of
faith, hope, patience and love. It is here that there is trans
formation and transfiguration ; the earthly becomes heavenly ;
the dark and absorbent becomes radiant, white and glorious.
Of course the earthly do not see such visions ; these things take
place upon the high mountain of God ; and what the heavenly
see is Christ in His glory in Grace ; they do not fully understand
the vision ; and yet they know that Christ is the beloved Son of
the Highest, and that it is their life to hear His Voice. Men
think upon the transfiguration as the pre- vision of glory ; it is a
glory they do not understand ; but Mosea and Elias knew what
it meant, it was about the decease and the suffering at Jerusalem ;
it was what had taken place upon John the Baptist, and what
would be the Lord's experience. To the Lord of Grace this is
as glory ; to poor suffering men it is the dark valley with the
great shadow of death over it. He knew and understood these
matters, they do not, and this is the great difference betwixt
the Master and His disciples. It is the Heavens, by the Spirit,
that reveal these truths to men ; they are in Him that is true ;
they conform to His likeness in truth ; and they follow in His
footsteps as guided by His Spirit.
The conception arrived at, as related to wise men and
their wisdom, is that their efforts have resulted in failure ; there
is no appearance of unity and harmony ; and so far as can be
seen men may go on for ages with their empiric schemes and never
draw any nearer to each other. 'The solution is chaotic, it will
not take any cosmical form, the reason being that men, societies,
states, churches and nations, are mutually repellent to each
other ; and they are repellent and dia-magnetic to the Heavens,
to truth, righteousness and Divine Grace. The children of men
have had a long time to solve the riddle ; they have done their
utmost ; those who think they have got the solution are opposed
by those who know that they have not, and, it may fairly be said

208 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
that men are coming to think that the wisest thing to do is to
" give up " and humbly ask the Master to give to them the in
terpretation. Pain and disease are everywhere, disorder con
tinues, sin reigns, and death and the grave only seem to survive.
This is the earthly vision ; the Heavens look on, they seem to ask,
When will men seek Divine wisdom ? When will they lift up
their eyes to the hills of God and ask for Divine aid ? When will
they realise that the Heavens are their true friends ; and, that
trusting in the wisdom of the serpent and the powers that are
earthly is folly ? It may be said that men are awakening, some
have been awakened, to the insufficiency of empiric philosophies ;
thus they have recognised the importance of spiritual conscious
ness, of personal experience, of inductive, intellectual reasoning,
and of deductive verification of order as law ; they are conscious
of truth ; that the truth can be found ; that truth is, as science,
a question of the relations of thoughts ; and, it is science that
has appeared as an angel of light to guide men in the right way.
It may be assumed that if this messenger of light and truth
is the servant of the Heavens, then the message will be heavenly ;
and the voice of the messenger should be heard and the message
considered by those who are able to understand what the message
means. It will not do for lewd, foolish, vicious men to lay their
hands upon this messenger ; if they do, they may rest assured
that the doom of the men of Sodom will rest upon them ; the
angel will strike them with blindness, and it will be in vain that
they will seek for any door by which the light of truth will reach
their blind, dark souls. This angel carries to men a message of
mercy and salvation ; and his work is rescue and judgment.
This is not a common heavenly messenger ; therefore, it is for
men to remember that they might as well think of playing with
the lightning as with this servant of God ; they will do so at
their peril ; for this messenger is that mighty angel that stood
at the gateway of Eden when. poor mortals left their home to
wander in the Desert ; and, that sword with its double edge is
still unsheathed to destroy those who seek to eat the fruit of the
" Tree of Life " unless they do so by the right way. The agnostic,
the scoffer and the unbeliever may say that these are mere symbols
and allegories for children, not facts for wise thoughtful men ;
they will do well, however, to be specially careful, for these alle
gories may reveal truth ; it is at all times a serious thing to be
found opposing truth ; because, as men have discovered, truth

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 209
will prevail, and those who are opposed to it will be put to shame.
Indeed, it would almost appear as if these foolish men were
already being punished for their folly ; they fancied that they
were in the possession of this angel's sword, and that they could
wield it with angelic power ; it is turning an edge against them
that they had not foreseen ; they claimed that this angel was
their friend and companion, and that all other men would be
found to be liars and impostors. It is dangerous to claim Truth
as a friend if there is not loyalty in the heart to the Spirit of Truth :
it is enough for men to be servants of the Truth ; but if they
claim that they alone possess Truth, and that all who differ from
them are false and perverted from the truth, then no matter
who they may be, infallible theologians, or equally infallible
unbelievers ; the result is likely to be that they will come to be
lieve their own lies, and the Spirit of Truth will depart from them.
It would almost seem as if this self-asserting spirit is really an
earthly one ; it is ego-centred, it is man glorifying ; and thus
it must become Heaven repellent and dia-magnetic to what is
heavenly truth. When the angel of truth leads men away from
the earthly to God and the heavenly, then there is hope that the
Heavens will be gracious, and that light will arise in the darkness ;
but, it is fatal to turn the face toward the darkness, and to de
clare that because darkness reigns, and Death and the Grave
ends all, therefore, there is no God of Truth that men can trust.
It is fatal for men who seem to say they are infallible to do this
if they do not possess divine pre-vision ; because, men do make
such stupid blunders when they follow their empiric rules, that
they are bound to be found out eventually ; the stars, and all the
sciences of God are against them, therefore, the higher they have
been permitted to climb the more sudden and terrible their fall
is likely to be.
If men will companion with the angels sent from the Heavens,
and specially cultivate the friendship of science, it will astonish
them to find how sweetly reasonable these messengers are ; how
loyal and true to duty they have been ; and what perfect trust
men may place upon their word. The fear of the Lord is ever
before their faces, and thus in all emergencies they turn their
eyes heavenward for Divine guidance. With this particular angel
it has been a critical time ; he has had a great work on hand ;
the men servants he has used have been so ignorant, and often
so perverse, that the work has gone on slowly ; time after time
0

210 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
they have been sent back to their first lesson book there to study
over and over again the thoughts of God. Time after time they
have left that first lesson behind them thinking that they knew
all it contained ; and yet at every critical stage of inquiry the
angel sends his disciples back again telling them to try again,
to go deeper into the thoughts of God, and not to be so ready
to believe that the fountain of Life had run dry, and that the
Truth of God could only be found in earthly parables. This is
the voice of science once more, go back to the creation story ;
read it again more carefully ; try to find out what it has got to
say to the open ear, and the thirsting heart ; turn the face to the
Heavens, and it may be that they will be opened once more to
tell men something new about the creation of the universe.
This may appear to wise men who know to be very foolish ;
and it might be easier to join the pedant and say it is not wise
thus to turn back to stories given to children ; it is better to go
on to perfection, to stretch out toward manhood, and even to
suppose that angels who could give such advice may not be worthy
of the deference given to them. This conception is very like
that of the story of the Fall in Eden ; for what the angels whis
pered to men was that they were not to be in a hurry to leave
school ; that they were not pressed for time to learn their lessons ;
that they should rehearse them over and over again ; and when
any difficulty arose to patiently wait for guidance, and never
upon any account to take any short cut to become prematurely
wise and. like the gods. It seems to be just so here, men have
not mastered the first lesson that is to be found in the Bible,
thus they require to return to it to see if they can find new thoughts
about God and His works. The story freely paraphrased runs
thus : In the beginning of time, and as related to the thoughts
of men, God alone had existence. It was God that created,
caused to come into existence, the heaven and also that other
lower space of being, the earth. The heaven, it is to be assumed,
is ever in heavenly order ; but the earth was a formless chaos,
deep and dark. Upon this chaos the Spirit of God moved ; God
banished the darkness and the light from heaven shone in upon
the earth ; this light was good, it- was heavenly. There was
division of light and darkness ; the light is the day and the dark
ness is the night. Thus far the literal words and thoughts ;
what about the meaning that underlies the words ? God is the
self-existent One ; He is Being ; and apart from Him there is

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN- AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 21 1
no becoming and there is no being. It pleased God to cause
to become, to begin to be, heaven and also earth. These
are not names only, they are ideals ; they are God's First-born
and the shadow that accompanies that First-born. But not a
mere shadow, because the earth also is being ; it is subsequent
to, and yet co-existent with, heaven. It is the physical student
who illustrates this revelation by his conceptions of how matter
began to be ; it was not matter at all ; it was electric and magnetic
rays or lines of force, and with these there came a luminous ray,
that is not electric nor magnetic ; for it is that penetrating straight
ray or line that passes freely through the densest matter. The
electric is as the heavenly, it is in the heavens ; the magnetic
becomes manifest in the earth, and the luminous passes onward,
it cannot be deflected from the straight path in which it moves.
The physical is the parable ; the heaven and the earth are
spiritual ; the heaven is in the heavenly places, the earth is a
vision that is to become ; it is to take form and become a cosmos,
but not yet, to the seer it is as the deep unfathomable darkness.
This First-born is Christ, Divine Wisdom ; all that is to become
is in Him ; but here the vision ends, men cannot see the relations
or conditions of earth, not because they do not exist, but because
they are unmanifested. " The Spirit of God moved " upon this
that was unrevealed. The connection is betwixt the heaven
and the Spirit ; it is motion, the Divine Volition and Will, and
the result is Light. This Light is good ; it is Truth ; it is the
Spirit revealing Christ. What follows is truth and possible
error, light and. darkness, and these conditions and relations
are like Day and Night. Here the question may be put, as it
has been asked by men, Can God reveal Himself, His thoughts,
words, works, Spirit, and the effects of the Spirit's works ? Let
men turn aside for a moment and ask the physical scientist if
he thinks he knows what energy or matter is, seeing that he has
analysed atom and electron, to the three lines of force that he has
conceived as the resultants ? His answer will surely be that
he is unable to conceive how he can know anything of the being
that underlies, what he conceives to be the relations of that being ;
he simply believes the fact, and he says that intellectually, by
the reason, he knows that these relations exist. Can men by
searching find out, know by the reason, what the Being of God
is ? No ; the result is the same ; this realm of thought is not
for the intellect, it is for belief and faith. Can men place in
o 2

212 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
their co-relations Heaven, Earth, the Spirit, Light, Darkness,
Day and Night ? Yes, all these are spiritual concepts ; they tell
in what way God has been pleased to reveal his power and wisdom
to men ; but what is even more wonderful, the revelation is made
in such a way that men do not understand it intellectually ; it
is as darkness and night to them ; the earth is from God ; it is
co-related with heaven ; and the darkness and night are co-
related with light and day. What God is pleased to reveal in
this form is not a subject for discussion ; these are, so to speak,
statements of fact for belief or faith. If further light is thrown
upon the facts then the reason may be used, but in this revelation
God utters facts ; and it is not for men to question, doubt, or
deny them ; if they do then they run the risk of calling God a
liar ; in their ignorance, in the darkness of the night in which they
live, they speak and they do not understand what their words
mean. Betwixt this first revelation of creation and the second there
is set up, as it were, the barrier of the night ; or rather, the con
ception may be as in the margin, evening was and morning was,
first day. It is not day, it is night throughout, but in the night
there is light ; the luminous light that is in the Divine can see
these works of God. The second day, or division, is an expansion
of the thought, " God created the heaven " ; the vision is waters,
a firmament, and that firmament is named, heaven. It is a
vision of separation of that which is above ; and, as to time, it
is before the earth. As to space, there is definition ; the separ
ated is heaven ; it may be place or person ; it is a sign of hope,
as the first day is that of faith.
From the waters there is a separated heaven ; under the heaven
the waters are gathered and there is the division into earth
and seas and this separation is good. The attention is fixed
upon the earth because it is here that development is seen to
commence, and that development is conceived upon the fines
of seed producing seed ; as fruit with its seed in itself, and all
after their kind. In reading the story the child thinks upon
the fiat of God, His Will, and the apparent iminediateresults ;
what the man sees is an ideal of the thoughts, purposes, designs
of the Spirit, as a spiritual revelation. The heaven is above
the earth, but by the movement of the Spirit the earthly chaos
is supplanted by the cosmos of the heavens, and this as an order
in the earth is in harmony with the ideal in heaven.

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 213
With the fourth division of thought, and of time, the vision
is not limited to separation and earthly order, or development,
it is that of heaven, the universe, the Sun, Moon and Stars ;
ruHng and dividing, day and night, light and darkness. All this
is an extension of the latter portion of the first day ; it is Hke
the soul of nature and of man ; it is the work of the Spirit in
creation and in the soul of man ; the scale here is that of heaven,
of the universe ; it is Nature as an objective for man to study,
and although night and darkness, as symbols, are carried forward
in the revelation, they are not conceived as evil, they are good.
With the fifth division there is the creation of the birds that fly
in the open heaven and of the fish in the waters and seas ; and they
all receive the Divine blessing that they may be fruitful and
multiply after their kind. This is as the great intellectual vision
that seems to soar in the heavens and go down into the depths ;
and it is Hke that of the third day, it is conceivable as order, and
as subject to the law of development. As this revelation is that
of spiritual power, therefore there is blessing, fruitfulness and
increase. With the sixth division it is the earth that brings forth all
kinds of creatures that Hve after their kind, and this also is good.
But the great work of this day is the creation of man in the image
of God, as male and female, with dominion over all creatures ;
and with the blessing of God resting upon them. They also are
to be fruitful, to multiply their kind, to replenish the earth,
to subdue it to order and law, with the right of lordship and
dominion over all the lower creatures. The earth is their in
heritance ; they are good, and all that they possess is good ; the
heavens and the earth are made manifest ; therefore God is
said to rest from His creative works ; and man should find his
rest in God. This is the Sabbath sign, it is that of rest, and
those who find and enjoy that rest are blessed and sanctified.
It is in the midst of such thoughts that the followers of science
and of Divine wisdom look round and consider the mighty works
of God. This is an ideal presented to them ; they do not come
to it to learn about the physical sciences ; they come to find out
that they came from God ; and this being so, it is surely con
ceivable that they can return by the same way to God. The way
of spiritual development is the way from God, in the highest
heavens, to the earth ; therefore the way back again is to be
found by retracing the steps of development, and by trying

214 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
to comprehend, in the faith and fear of God, what God has
revealed, made manifest, or done. It must not be forgotten
that God and the heavens were in man as created ; for he was
in the image of God with lordship and dominion over the earth.
The distance betwixt the highest heavens and man may be con
ceived to be great ; but the heavens and man were para-magnetic,
they enjoyed mutual light, and even electric spiritual communi
cation, and thus the spiritual way was open, it was Hght and
day, not darkness and night. By what way was the return
to God to be made ? By conscious experience and by scientific
knowledge ; by obedience to moral law in the light of truth and
righteousness ; and by gaining the knowledge that men of science
have sought after for centuries. The way of the law of develop
ment in the earth is seen to extend over many millenniums ;
the way of development in the child is made brief, and yet the
child carries within itself the epitome of the long long develop
ment of the ages. The child is awakened to the psychic Hfe ;
the man to the intellectual and moral life ; and it is from that
stage the man consciously ought to set forth to seek for, and to
find, God. The way Hes through the earthly ; by the way of the
lower creatures ; and by intellectual attainments of knowledge
the result being, if man would keep in the right way, the vision
of the creation of the heavens and the earth, and all that is re
presented in symbol by the fourth day of creation. It seems clear
that with the vision of creation the spiritual man could not rest
satisfied with visible things. There is in creation, in things
visible, the voice of the Spirit of God : the Spirit expresses the
thoughts of God in the things that are seen, and in" the correlative
thoughts in the soul ; thus there is not any spiritual difficulty
in going backward from the works of the Spirit to the thoughts
of the Spirit ; and to conceive the thought that the Spirit of God
is the Spirit of Christ, the Ideal in the heavens ; and that the
Ideal is the Image of God and the First-born in Creation. This
is a conception of how man could have returned to God, in the
state of innocence, by manhood to Christ ; and what he would
have found upon the way would have been that Creation, Nature,
was in harmony with his own being ; and that the Ideal, Christ,
is the One of Whom he is the image. Whether men are able to
perceive the trend events have taken or not, this is the vision of
the future ; this is the way in which science is guiding men ;
and the method of Christ is the means by which this unity and

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 215
harmony will be made manifest. What men have seen in the
past in history is earthly men who lost their innocence and went
astray ; they opened their ears to the subtle serpent and they were
beguiled ; they have wandered in the great desert of empiricism,
seeking for the knowledge of both good and evil, ambitious to be
like the gods ; and falHng from the heavenly to the earthly they
have sinned against God ; they have rejected Christ, and they
have despised the Spirit. They have been dia-magnetic to the
heavens, ego-centric and earthly, and thus history is full of the
records of the darkness and of the night that have fallen upon the
sons of men.
Thus it can be discerned that the Creation story is a great
revelation from God ; this is made in harmony with those fines
of thought which men have discovered to be the nature of things,
and how men are eventually compelled to train their thoughts
if they would think truly upon the Unes of experience and of
science. As so clearly explained by agnostic philosophy, there
is the ultimate, conceived as the unknowable, and there are
related ultimates which are conceivable as first principles. This
Unknowable is Being, God ; and it is God that reveals the related
ultimates in the first day of creation as heaven and earth, Spirit
movement, Light, then there follows that strange break in the
revelation in which there is division, schism, difference ; the
Light may become either Hght or darkness, and the results will
be day or night. In other words, God is the ultimate of all
thoughts, existing before all beginnings, and the First Cause
producing all effects ; but men are utterly unable to conceive
what God is as Being. He is the One that is incomparable for
the simple reason that man cannot find in his soul, in Nature,
or in revelation any concept that can be compared with Him.
This simple concept seems to be difficult of apprehension by
many ; it is that of final analysis, the end of all reasoning ; all
ends in One, all is One, and as there is One only there cannot
be comparison. Further, as the real behind all phenomena
cannot be known by the intellect of man, so it must follow
that the Reality in the One is inscrutable. Comparisons can
be made with things, or thoughts that are known, related or
correlated ; but with the Almighty, the Eternal, the All-wise,
there is no comparison that is conceivable. The import
ance of this thought is very great; it is not only an
ultimate of thought, it is the greatestj of all limitations ;

216 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
it is a boundary that no created being can break through ;
it is the Light inconceivable, and it is the darkness inscrutable :
and if these words have any meaning to men, they
will think twice before they are so foolish as to try to enter
into what they represent. The related ultimates as concepts
are different ; they are conceivable as principles, or as seeds
of thought, transcendent facts, but there is not about them
that sacredness which, it is felt, surrounds God. The days in
creation arise out of these seeds ; thus the second day reveals
heaven with the earth in that dark chaotic condition that
cannot be seen or expressed ; it belongs to heaven, yet it is not
heaven ; and what it will become is left unrevealed. The third
day is that of Spirit motion with all that is thought of as the
attributes of the Spirit ; and the fourth is the manifested creation
as Light, with Sun, Moon and Stars in their order, for rule, and
with governing power. This is the order of Creation, God, Christ
the First-born and the Archtype of all being, the Spirit of Truth
as revealing Christ, and the work of the Spirit as Light and Truth
in creation. The ideal is Divine, it is that of the Heavens and
heavenly, and thus except in the chaos of earth, not made mani
fest, the aspect of thought is above the earth and spiritual. The
fifth day synchronises with light and darkness, or truth and
error ; the parable of the open heavens in which there is room
for the highest flights of the imagination, and the deep waters
and seas where darkness reigns ; the intellect of man is able to
move in all related conditions, and these, according to their rela
tions, are true or false, light or dark. The sixth day is signified
by day and night, thus carrying forward the symbols of Sun
and Moon, as rulers of day and night, and as the rulers and as
the dividers of what is light and dark. There is implied in these
symbols this very important conception, that the unity and har
mony of heaven and earth terminates with creation ; and when
man with intellect and a moral nature appears upon the scene,
then this must be recognised ; because, this being, in the image of
God, is actually a god, in the human sense, as possessing spiritual.
will power, as knowing intellectual relations and conditions,
which the lower creatures do not; and as possessing power
to use that knowledge as a conscious individual person.
What this god-man even as a creature of God may be per
mitted to do is not revealed ; the symbols of light and darkness,
day and night, convey the knowledge of the facts ; and, so far

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 217
as the story of Creation carries revelation this interpretation
is m harmony with the known facts.
It is here that the great cleavage comes in that separates ag
nostics and unbelievers from those who cherish faith in God
and fear His Name. The former confess themselves to be the
products, the followers, and the disciples of Nature ; they express
their thoughts as if nature was a mechanism ; as if the iron laws
of the machinery of nature were inflexible and unchangeable ;,
and seeing they are involved in the evolving machinery, it must
foUow that they are under the law of necessity, that freedom of
the will is not admissible in the constitution of man, and that spiri
tual Hberty is a figment of the imagination that has no real ex
istence. They do admit that order and laws exist, but these
are as tyrants men are compelled to serve ; and the wisest thing,
as it appears for them to do, is to take all possible care that the
chains they wear do not gall the flesh and nerves. If they must
comply with the will of the tyrants they serve, willingly or un
willingly, they decide to take as much as they can of the pleasure
and happiness that are to be found ; and to avoid pain, disease,
disorder, and all that is unpleasant and that tends to sorrow
and suffering. It is to be hoped that this representation of the
ideas of agnostics is a fair one ; it is their open confession that
they do not believe in God ; that they consider all religions and
religious behefs to be superstitious folly ; that Nature is as god,
but not in any personal sense ; and thus freedom, liberty, con
science, duty, moral law, sin, redemption from evil by Christ,
the work of the Spirit, a spiritual world in the Heavens and God,
are all myths, stories invented by selfish, wicked men for selfish
ends, thus incredible and not worthy their consideration. Whilst
recognising to the full that agnostic unbelievers have found
satisfactory reasons which seem to satisfy themselves in their
present mood of thought, and, that they honestly express the
thoughts they cherish, it is not out of place to suggest that there
is room for them to doubt the conclusions at which they have
arrived ; that they might do well to reconsider very carefully all
their arguments; and that they give very special attention to-
psychology, to consciousness, experience, the will, scientific
order, in no Umited physical sense, and, what is really embodied
in the conception of law. If they find that the Unknowable,
the Power, the Being, that underfies Nature, is really immanent
in Nature ; then surely to build upon a foundation that they

218 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
reject is not wise, consistent, or reasonable. If they continue
to maintain that they are only machines moved by necessity,
possessing no freedom of will and no spiritual Hberty, no sense
of duty and responsibiUty then practically they contradict them
selves, and reasoning with them is out of the question. They
will not see or try to understand the parables of Nature ; they
reject and deny the testimony of their own consciousness, and
they reject revelation, or any means of gaining knowledge that
is not in harmony with their own thoughts.
The revelation of creation leads the thoughts of men step by
step in the direction that has been suggested ; and it has to be
recognised that the story is heavenly not earthly, spiritual and
not natural. It is an ideal creation of the Spirit to the spirits
of men, and they are required to consider what it means and how
it can be understood. The vision being ended, and rest found in
God, there is as it were, a pause for consideration and then stillness
is broken by the revelation of the generations of the heavens
and the earth. The meaning of this is that there is the f alHng back
in thought to the creation vision of the second day, to the First
born, the Arch-type of the heavens and the type of the earth
as correlated with the heavens. It ought to be remembered
here that the phraseology used places the Creation story and
the whole Bible within the spiritual realm of truth ; because,
as men well know, words, types, signs and symbols are all spiri
tual ; they are the intellectual spiritual products of men that
are spiritual ; they are above nature, or the savage that is degraded
and seems to be almost sunk into, or emerging from, the state
¦of nature : even barbarous peoples, those men who use words
and signs to express their thoughts, do so as spiritual beings.
The symbol words, Heavens and Earth, must therefore be under
stood to be spiritual signs ; they express the thought that relations
•exist betwixt them, that, in some way, they are correlated ; thus
the generations of the Heavens and the Earth are the develop
ment, the expansion, of the conception in the second day of
creation. Further it is important to remember that as these
irevelations are spiritual in their nature, they are addressed to,
and to be considered by, men who are intellectual and spiritual.
These stories are not myths made up by wise men to amuse chil
dren, they convey grave messages of life and duty ; and unless
they are so studied it is not possible that the students can under'
stand them. It is to be assumed that the conceptions embodied

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 219
in heaven and earth in the Creation have been considered, pondered
upon in the soul, and that there is preparedness to enter upon the
consideration of the generations of the same names ; it is not dead
symbols that are being studied but living realities, and it is the
Hving that arises out of the living that is important. Students
must conceive themselves to be developed to the intellectual
and moral stage of being able to see, know, and understand,
truth and error, good and evil, or light and darkness, day and
night ; and the- generations before them are an object lesson
in that realm in which they Hve. They possess the key to these
problems by their studies in the creation story, and thus they
hegin to apply it to these generations. The Heavens are living :
the earth is a dusty desert and no man can be seen upon it.
The Heavens create the body of man out of the dust ; into
the human form they breathe and man becomes a Hving soul.
2. The living man is placed by the Heavens in a living garden.
¦3. In that Hving garden there is spiritual order as law for spiritual
guidance. 4. In that safe place man was as safe as he could be ;
there was the Hght of truth and the Hfe of love in this garden,
and they are true help-meets. 5. The danger for man does not
He in the Hght and the day, but in the darkness and night ; in
subjection to cunning, lusting, desire and ambition, or what is
the earthly. To prefer these is disorder, lawlessness, sin, and when
law is disobeyed the heavenly is made subject to the earthly.
6. Man sinned ; the earthly gained the supremacy ; with his will
he sinned wilHngly after due warning ; this is man's sinful state
and what is known as the Fall of Man. 7. The Heavens seem
shrouded with heavy clouds of judgment ; they break in mercy
upon poor sinners, and the Seed is promised that will destroy
evil. 8. There must come a new conception in time ; and thus
only by sorrow and suffering, can salvation from sin be found.
The generations of the earth are known ; they are Cain and
murder ; the offspring of Cain and those who come to boast of
their evil deeds. This is the objective lesson ; the heavens and
the earth Hve, and their generations will exist side by side in
mortal conflict upon the earth. Add to this the generations of
Adam, and the results are the heavens as indwelfing in men
for their regeneration ; they Hve and their special generations
are Enoch and Noah ; whilst those of the Earth are the chaos
that is earthly. Just as in the first day of creation there is God,
heaven and earth, Spirit movement, Light, light and

220 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED
darkness, day and night, so here there is found God,
the heavens and the earthly man ; the Spirit and the garden in
order with its trees and fruits ; light, life and love ; temptation,
misrepresentation, subtle questionings, or light and darkness :
the day of mercy and judgment and the night of the future.
As the third day in creation reveals seas, the earth, grass and
fruit trees after their kind, so the generations of Noah are the
spiritual thoughts about the Ark, salvation, the seas as a flood,
the new earth, and a new race to take possession. The Heavens
work for salvation ; the Earth for evil, wickedness, destruction ;
the Heavens survive, the earth is judged and punished, and thus
a new spiritual era dawns upon the earth. This is conceived as
a great Spirit movement ; it is always the Spiritual Hfe that
survives in every new order made manifest. The fourth day
in creation is Light ; the works of the Spirit of God are the sun,
moon and stars, as dividing, ruHng and governing ; all these find
their counter parts in the sons of Noah and in the division of the
earth amongst the sons of men with all the powers they possess
for ruling and governing. The heavens and the earth are in
them ; and the end of the earthly is chaos and confusion, night
and darkness. Shem and Terah in a similar manner synchronise
with light and darkness, day and night ; and with Abraham
there comes the seventh, the day of rest, when the heavens
find a resting place in a man. This line of thought has been
carried out in the generations in the nation of Israel; in
the spiritual generations in the coming of Christ, and in the
Christian age ; what is required is not further explanation as to
the harmonies that exist in the first day of creation ; in the days
of creation ; in the generations in their series ; in the generations
carnal and spiritual ; but what men are to understand as to the
meaning of light and darkness, day and night ; and, in what sense
sin, disorder, disease and death are to be conceived as the genera
tions of the earth.
God created the heaven and the earth ; the first is conceived
as a cosmos, as in order and subject to law ; the second is as a
vision of chaos, and yet it co- exists with heaven ; and it is the
bringing of the chaotic earth into a cosmos that is the subse
quent revelations in the stages of creation. The history of the
earth in the Bible is that of its progress from chaos to cosmos
in the regeneration or re-creation of mankind ; and thus the
ideals that underfie the two are the same. The history of creation.

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 221
as a spiritual ideal, is given in epitome in the first chapter of
Genesis ; it is a summation of all the past put into a germ in
which there is Hfe spiritual. It is what man requires to know
about God and His works ; thus it sums up the past in a few lines
of thought, and it is the fitting introduction to the new book of
the new creation. This kind of epitome is traceable throughout
the Scriptures, it is the summing up of a past era, in a few thoughts,
as the connecting Hnk betwixt the past, present, and future.
All history in this sense is one great development ; but the time
is so long and the field of thought is so wide, that it is necessary
to make these breaks which, in a sense, are new beginnings. The
generations of the heavens and the earth are a continuation
of history and of development ; they blend in their constitution,
experience and prophecy ; they are Hving spiritual ideals, and
thus there is not any visible or real critical means of separating
what is thus united together. The sciences that deal with the
physical, psychical and moral kingdoms of thought are not called
info operation in the Bible ; they are left for men to study when
they are able to undertake this work ; and it may be assumed
that the science of the Bible will also be studied in the same way
when men have been prepared by the Spirit to understand this
work of God. The heavens being above, as order and law, it
would follow that from the heavenly side the sciences are all
known and understood as the Divine Will of God ; and what is
required for the earth is that men should be brought to know
the heavenly, or science, and thus attain to Divine wisdom. Look
ing at the subject from this stand-point it can be seen that scien
tific knowledge is of great importance ; and it is so because this
revelation is not of the patterns of things in the heavens but of
the true relations and conditions that exist in heaven. When
there is not a true knowledge of the method of science as the
means of inquiring into what is true, right and good, it must
follow that experience and empiricism will make many mistakes,
simply because the reasoning is empiric and earthly, and ego
centric and Umited. The man who possesses a Httle knowledge
of physical science is far from being infalHble ; there Hes before
him the psychical and moral sciences ; and, above these, the
strange science of the Kingdom of Grace, that to the earthly
uninstructed mind may appear to be foofishness. In the same
way mental and moral students and theologians, who study
the Bible from the stand-point of empiricism, may fail to

222 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
recognise the greatness of the revelation that has dawned upon
men in the physical sciences. All true scholars and wise students
will see the necessity of patiently working for scientific results
in all the divisions of knowledge ; and it can only be when the
sciences converge together that the darkness will pass away and
by science there will flash forth the glorious light of truth that
is heavenly. It is to be observed, as a fact, that scientific thinkers
do think and act upon this principle ; they are firmly convinced
that order exists throughout nature, and that the knowledge of
that order will constitute law. It ought not to be difficult for a
physical scientist to grant to mental and moral students that the
results of their labours will be order and law throughout the
psychical and moral worlds ; and that it is even possible that the
Bible may possess an order and laws which as yet men do not
comprehend. It has been conceived that order is heaven's first
law ; and this is to say that if men only knew things in the
heavenly way, then they would be convinced that wherever
disorder, disease and demoralisation exist, there the earthly
reigns and the heavenly is not known.
If these thoughts are apphed to the three great books that
God has given to men it may be that further light will be thrown
upon this problem of disease, disorder, sin and evil. If the book
of Nature is taken, and, in the Hght of science, inquiry is made
as to the problem of evil, is it not becoming more and more plain
that evil, disorder, and disease, are being driven backward into
the daTkness, and that wherever the Hght of science comes no
room is found for these intruders into the cosmos of the heavens ?
If the province of the physical creation is taken as an example,
it is seen that the sciences are all set down in their due order,
and thus the conception that evil, as embodied in matter, or in
energy, in physical elements and atoms, or in forces, is not ad
missible under any form. The relations and the conditions
of what is physical are largely known, and the testimony of science
is that these conform to order and are subject to law. It is the
same with physical Hfe ; it is order, law, development, and if
disease is found to exist, it is not in scientific order, it is some
thing that has intruded into the realm of life ; it perverts healthy
functions, and destroys what is organised ; it works for degrada
tion and disintegration ; thus whatever the disease may be it
is not in harmony with the heavens, order and law ; the earth
has become regnant and if the disease continues then the dust will

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 2231
return to dust. If the realm of the spirit in nature is considered..
apart from all theories that are empiric, and by trying to follow
experience and science, then it is difficult to see in what way-
evil comes into what can fairly be conceived to be the relations-
of the spirit in the psychic world ; here also there is from the-
scientific side the order of development by gaining knowledge
through the organs of the special senses ; there is perception of
images, translation into thoughts, the thoughts as they are re
lated and correlated and the conscious spirit as the knowing;
comparing agent. The psychical mind, or the soul of nature,,
has a collective existence apart from the individual man ; all
that has been conceived by nature is in that soul, and it is from.
that soul that scientific men read the history and mystery of
development as in an open book. The conviction is growing:
stronger that all this, if seen from the heavenly stand-point,,
would appear different to men ; thus the question can be raised.
whether this darkness that is in nature is really that of a chaos.
undeveloped and unconscious, or if it is that man being chaotic-
in his own soul, he is unable to see the heavenly light and truth.
that is in the soul of Nature ? It may be assumed that to the-
heavens, and to science, the macrocosm of nature, if men but knew
the truth, and if they could see, perceive, and conceive, the works-
of the Spirit, this realm is that of Hght, and that all the powers.
therein rule in truth and righteousness. It is not advisable to.
continue the study of this book in the higher moral and spiritual.
sciences ; what has to be recognised is that these sciences are-
assumed to exist ; that although to men they appear as chaotic
and earthly ; the conviction is that they will be found to be.
heavenly, all in their due order, and all subject to Divine law.
If the book of Man is opened and studied, as correlated with
Nature, it is plain that the same conceptions will arise as to the
order that exists in the physical world ; evil, sin, disease and
disorder, are not physical, as seen and interpreted by science,.
and, as viewed from the stand point of the heavens; it is when
the earth and the earthly gain the supremacy that these inter
vene ; and it is given to men to enquire why this should be so ?
Let men inquire honestly whether by experience, or by the way-
of empiricism, there is any chance whatever of their being able
to solve this problem ? So far as can be seen the answer must be
that there is no appearance, in any direction, that they could
attain to the end desired. It is here that science, as an angeL

224 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
of light, is going to be of inestimable value ; it is not a torch
that this angel holds in his hand ; he comes with a face radiant
like the sun, and wherever he shines in power and glory the
darkness is dispelled, the night is gone and the day has come.
To be able to make such an assertion as this even whilst the spirit
of man is dia-magnetic to the heavens, and the soul is still an
in the chaos of darkness and the shadow of the earth hovering
over it is very extraordinary. This is another form of faith than
that possessed by Abraham, it is a scientific faith that sees the
unseen ; that perceives the fulfillment of the promises, and that
actually takes possession of that heavenly country which Abra
ham saw afar off. Scientific men have actually been eating the
luscious grapes and fruits of the goodly land, and they did not
know it ; for wherever scientific truth is known by men, they
are eating the bread of the heavens, and drinking the waters
that came from the Stricken Rock. As with the book of Nature
so with man, and the book that he finds written in his own body
and soul, the fact seems to be proven that by the way of experience
and empiricism the Heavens cannot be discerned ; this can only
be attained by the Hght that comes from science, because science
gives the explanation of the Divine order that is in the heavens,
and, that order, when spiritually recognised, is Law and the
Will of God.
Seeing that Nature and naturahsm, man and empiricism, fail
to reveal to men the higher sciences that are spiritual and heavenly,
it is necessary for them to turn to the third book, the Divine
revelation of Grace, by faith, as found in the Bible, and by the
method of Christ, try to discern in what way the heavens have,
even whilst apparently losing in every conflict, been actuaUy
conquering all along the Hne and all through history. The
pecuharity of this struggle is that it has not been where men
supposed it to be, and, that the victories achieved by Grace
have not been in the region of the visible, the natural, and the
earthly. The heavens have had one ideal all down the ages ;
men have been prepossessed by a lower different ideal ; and, by
means of the lower, the higher purposes of the heavens have
been attained. This is a paradox, and yet it is actually what
has taken place as students of the Bible will easily discover. The
ideal of the Heavens in the realm of Grace is laid in the seed,
in a conception in sorrow, and in experiences of suffering and
death ; the ideal of the earth has been the visible kingdom and

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 225
power and the earthly birthright ; and Christians are actually
found in all the churches who seek for the visible, the natural,
and the earthly, in preference to the life of faith, the pilgrimage
in hope, the struggle in patience, and the life that in sorrow
and sacrifice is filled with the love that is Divine. Under the
veil of experience and empiricism what is earthly and as a womb,
the heavens have generated the heavenly seed. The visible and
the earthly have, as a rule, been rejected by God as soon as mani
fested ; and these have claimed the rights of the firstborn as
heirs to the inheritance, being ignorant that such a rejection had
taken place. So many examples of this have been given that
it is not necessary to enter into details ; the heavens have pre
vailed, not by great empires, favoured kingdoms, or self-glorify
ing churches, but by the despised, the rejected among men and
the gracious, meek, and patient remnants ; thus the wonder
to men is that the heavens have prevailed, and that the earth,
whilst apparently prevailing, has really failed and been fighting
a lost battle. The Kingdom of the Heavens and of Grace is not
Hke empires, kingdoms, and great visible churches ; it is like
the permeating leaven that has been leavening humanity ; or
like the Httle living seed of the mustard tree that grows and
spreads out its branches until it gives shelter and lodging for thc-
homeless. What is the earthly Hke ? Even Hke the silly sheep
that went astray upon the mountains and could not discover the
way back again ; Hke the lost piece of money with the stamp of
the Heavens upon its face, that had lost the consciousness of being
lost ; or Hke the two brothers alike in their selfishness and self-
seeking ; but, it is the younger brother, the prodigal, that finds
his way back to his father's home and heart.
What then is the testimony of the Bible, this third book, which
men are privileged to study, about the problem of evil, sin, dis
order, disease and death ? It is that man is the creature of God,
subject to order and law, and capable of being taught and edu
cated, in the way of truth and righteousness. The creation story
does not express the conception that man is a fallen creature ;
but it does suggest the truth by the symbols of light and dark
ness, day and night, that man may possibly fall from the light of
truth into the darkness of sin ; and, from the day of the moral
Hfe into the night of sin and shame. Further, there is conveyed
the thought that the lower creation is not in perfect harmony
with Divine order and law, because the man receives authority

226 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
to subdue what is disorderly, and to have dominion over what
is not law-abiding, and conscious of the Heavens. It is only the
man in the image of God that is thus conscious ; thus sin, as
transgression of law, or disobedience to God's will cannot be
applied to the lower creatures. This aspect of the question,
however, is not to be forgotten that in physical nature the out
ward forms to be used for study are given to men ; and, that
in these there can be traced the law of development. This
is observable in the correlated forces of nature, in the realm of
chemistry, analytic and synthetic, and in spectrum analysis.
The ideal is also found throughout the realm of physical life
where many stages of development are traced culminating in
man. In psychology also the lower creatures are endowed with
sensation, perception, reception of images, ideas and thoughts ;
and there is in them that mind which is receptive of the con-
cepted relations of sensation, images and thoughts, necessary
for their existence. Up to this stage of being, of development,
the lower creatures, and man, are conceived to be in the same
likeness ; they are of nature and natural ; in other words there
is no spiritual consciousness of the Spirit, or of the words of the
Spirit ; the consciousness is that of the earthly ; and there is
want of power to rise to the heavens and the heavenly. It has
been conceived that God, the First Cause, exists as Being ; Christ,
the Heaven, the Archetype and Ideal, is the First-born, the
Emanation from God, and linked with Him, but unmanifested,
is the earth as chaos, dark and deep. The Spirit moves, reveal
ing Christ ; and thus the Spirit in wisdom is Designer and Purposer.
The Spirit works and the physical and psychical creation becomes
manifested in harmony with the Archetype Ideal in Christ. This
creation is conceived as Nature ; it is nature as subject to spiritual
order and law ; but as unconscious of Cause, Ideal, of Spirit,
thought, and of order of work. Nature is conceived as God-
caused, as conformed to Type, as an involved spiritual conception
by the Spirit Architect ; and thus the work of the Spirit is the
temple of the universe and the temple of the soul in man. Here
the higher development takes place ; the man unconscious of
God becomes God-endowed with intellect and a moral nature.
For what purpose ? Even that the man may become conscious
of God in truth and righteousness. The psychical involves the
physical as spiritual forms in the soul ; the man as knowing and
moral has this lesson to learn, in what way from the natural,

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 227
aided by the Spirit, by the intellect and the moral nature, the
thoughts and work of the Spirit, the Ideal in Christ as the Image
of God, is to become known. This is equivalent to saying that the
intellect and the moral nature of man is as the Breath of God ;
the man inspires, drinks in, the works and thoughts of the Spirit ;
and the man finds himself to be in the likeness of Christ, the
Image of God. The Bible revelation is that man is thus en
dowed ; that he sinned by disobedience ; that the will of the self,
or ego, was opposed to the Will of God ; and it is this fall that Hes
at the root of all the evils man has brought upon himself and
upon mankind. To revert to the symbofism of the first day of
creation, in man Hght was embodied, incarnated, even Divine
truth as the work of the Spirit ; this Hght was the very Hfe of
the man, it was his being ; but when the day of trial came he
preferred darkness to light, and thus his deeds have been evil.
This is the explanation of the terms light and darkness, day and
night ; when the creature will is opposed to God's will, and there
is disobedience, this is Hke dia-magnetism in the physical world ;
and the man so fooHsh has chosen the path of darkness, and the
long weary night of the Desert. The conception in the Bible
is that this struggle betwixt Hght and darkness has been going
on since the Fall of man, because it was then that Christ inter
vened as Saviour-Seed ; the Ideal Heaven Type was revealed
as the heavens to save that chaos of earth so deep and dark ;
and, as can be understood, this is not so very strange seeing
that man was bone of His bone, flesh of His flesh, spirit of His
Spirit, and being of His Being. When men find themselves
standing and contemplating this marvellous truth and the law of
developm mt, the great wonder is not order and law ; it is that
the Divine Son, the Ideal of all good, should Hnk His fate with
creatures so utterly unworthy, who had been found guilty of
despising their birthright and of disobeying the Divine Will
Perhaps it is one of the marks of the mercy, the patience ani
the grace of God, that the true facts of the Fall are preserved
in symbol form ; what men see in history is the ever-recurring
varied forms of the same facts ; and what honest men, with
spiritual experience, will confess is that in their own fives the same
things have happened over and over again. In a sense it is true
that the race of mankind has been biologically and historically
involved in the Fall of the first parents of the race ; but men do
well to remember, that since entering upon manhood they too
p 2

228 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
have fallen wilfully, and repeatedly, and thus they are personally
involved in this problem of sin and evil. On the other hand
the truth is equally clear that no sooner was the entail of sin
brought in, as man's inheritance, than the heavens came to the
rescue to reveal the new way of life in the promised seed that
would crush the head of evil. It is taken for granted that men
have been at a disadvantage in this their heritage of evil ; and
they do not forget the fact ; but how Httle have they prized and
understood, as they ought to have done, that other heritage of
grace, mercy and peace revealed in Christ. Men have been too
ready to think that the privileges they had received were as
debts due to them ; whilst outcast prodigals who had left the
Father's Home had no rights and no claims. Men have heard
of Jews and Christians who could talk ghbly enough about their
inheritance of covenanted mercies, and of the special privileges
they enjoy ; whilst asserting that poor prodigals have no rights
and are not favoured by God. Foolish, self-conceited creatures,
how Httle do they understand the yearning longing heart of the
Father. He sees them when they are afar off ; it is His grace
and love that draws them homeward before nightfall ; and it
is over such that the Father is compassionate, and the angels
of God break forth into songs of gladness and rejoicing. The
Bible requires to be studied anew in the light of the law of develop
ment ; and specially in the light of the method of Christ and
the work of the Spirit. In the past men have seen it as children,
by the light of experience ; or by the cold empirical dogmas of
theology ; now it is to become a Hving Word speaking to fivmg
men, and in the generations in their onward development theyr
will learn what the love of God means ; and, what the heavens
have done for mankind. In a sense what is here suggested is
not new ; what men had never discovered and experienced ;
it is only trying to look at this subject of Christ's great work in
the Hght of His method of thought, in a way that the Spirit of
Truth deems suitable for this age. The Spirit of Christ summed
up the same problem nearly 2,000 years ago in these thoughts :
" Now the works of the flesh (the earth) are manifest which are
these : Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry,
witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions,
heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings and such
like." Whilst " the fruit of the Spirit (the heavens) is love, joy,
peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness,

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 229
temperance ; against such there is no law." The story con
tained in the Bible is the record of the earth and its generations
and earthly works ; and against these the laws of God and man,
of heathen, Jew and Christian, have been uttered with no uncer
tain sound. The Hght from the heavens has been made clear
enough to condemn such deeds ; and also to teach men that the
fruits from the Tree of Life, in the heavens, have proved them
selves to be what men require ; against which there is no law
of God or of man. These fruits grow upon the Tree of Christ's
Cross of Sacrifice ; it is there that the passions and lusts are cruci
fied, and such fruits are found in those who live and walk in th?
Spirit of God.
It is not an easy matter to close in and grapple hand to hand
with this power that is of the earth, that has lorded it over poor
mortals so mercilessly in past ages. Men have personified the
evil power and named it the devil, Satan, and many similar
names, and it may be assumed that this was necessary, and may
be necessary still, for the purpose of education. It may be that
there are principahties and powers of evil, as conceived by Milton,
but it would not seem as if the thoughts of men were turning
in that direction with the expectation that science would give
them assistance in such a quest. If the thoughts of men were
¦converging upon the discovery of a spiritual Satan, it may be
suggested for consideration that their faces would be turned in
the wrong direction. The work of science is not directly to dis
cover the devil and evil ; these are known, and so well known
as not to be worthy of special study ; what science seeks to find
is truth, goodness, righteousness, grace and salvation ; and it is
about such subjects that the devil has befooled men in the most
marvellous manner ; he has made men beheve the darkness
and put their trust in Hes ; he has changed the goodness of God
into what is vile ; he has made what is right and just to be wrong;
unjust and cruel ; he has mocked and jeered men who had faith
in grace and salvation ; and, thus he is the source of vileness,
of all that is evil, the devil indeed, with whom men are not called
to have any further deaHngs. Whether these truths are symbol
or literal fact is not, so far as science is concerned, of importance,
because this devil mars science, cannot bear science, and is turned
out of every place where the light of science is regnant. It is
what is true, good, right, gracious and beautiful, that belongs to
science, simply because in these science finds, is ever finding,

230 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
the foot-prints of the Lord the King ; and wherever science finds
what is not scientific, cannot be placed in order and conceived
as law, there science perceives the dirty stains of the devil's-
footprints ; but cannot find this devil that makes the marks.
This may seem strange to earthly men who would declare that
the devil's footprints proved the devil's existence ; and, pro
bably they might reason that here the keen sight of science
failed. This point is not worth discussing ; the reply of science
would be that, no matter how vile the marks made by the devil ;
this lord of darkness, night and Hes, dare not meet the King's cham
pion, and to his face say that the Lord is not the King of Grace
and Truth. The utter foUy of man at the first was to parley
with one who could pretend that the knowledge of evil is desir
able ; because, as matter of fact, it is not so, never has been, and
never will be. What is meant may be expressed in this form :
for example, the devil insinuates that evil is a property of matter
and men beHeved that He ; now science proves that the physical
world is not matter ; because, in a spiritual sense, it is Divine
order and law, as the Will of God. The devil led men to believe
that he could take possession of the bodies of men, women and
children, and make them his organs to do his wiH. Science tells
the devil that he is a Har and deceiver, and that what is wrong
is disease, perverted unhealthy functions ; and that if the body
and its functions were in the enjoyment of health, what God has
ordained as physical Hfe, order and law, there would not be any
disease. The devil may boast that all evil spirits are under
his control, in his service, and thus every man that is selfish,
cruel, covetous, proud, impure is his special creation ; but again
science says this also is a He, because there is no spirit that is not
derived from the Spirit of God, thus it is not for the devil or man
to boast if they have changed what ought to be holy, and obe
dient to the Will of God, into what is evil and rebelUous. The
devil may claim that the soul of every man is a dark place ; that.
his realm is that of darkness ; therefore, where aU is dark there
he is lord, but to this science can reply that the devil has no
conception what the Spirit of God has done and can do in such
dark places ; and, that if it were his Lord's Will to send the pure
light of science into such souls, what would be seen would not be
a chaotic mass of rubbish, the devil's handiwork, but a house of
God, almost finished, and ready to be proclaimed as a temple of
God. The devil might well assert that wherever the inteUect

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 231
or reason of man has had the supremacy upon the earth there he
has reigned in his subtle, devilish cunning ; but science would
declare that this also is false, because many wise, good, true msn
have not sought to glorify the devil, or self, but to find out the
true thoughts of God ; and, that the time will soon come when no
man will be so foolish as to beheve the devil's lies when the Spirit
of Truth will reveal scientific truth, in its order, and thus make
the souls of men temples of truth. The devil will assert that all
the kingdoms of the earth are his, to be given to those who bow
down before him ; and, that in the soul of every man is where
he reigns ; but here also science denies the claims and asserted
rights of the devil, by declaring that he has been dethroned,
and will be cast out of all kingdoms and realms of power by the
Lord Christ. It has been said that the devil claims to reign
in all churches, and that popes, prelates, priests, and all ecclesias
tics are his obedient servants ; to such a claim the reply of science
is that the devil may know those who serve him ; but, as to being
regnant in the realm of Grace and of Sacrifice, the conception
is awfully absurd, because here the devil has been foiled and
made a fool of through all the ages, for the simple reason that he
has been incapable of understanding what this kingdom means ;
how the Heavens have carried on the great work of salvation
in those favoured by God ; and what form the consummation
of this kingdom will take. It is not necessary to proceed further
in this study of the devils claims, or the selfish, egoistic, earthly
thoughts, words and actions of men ; what science boldly asserts
is that no devil, or man, has created evil, but that they Have per
verted and changed what is good into evil ; what is truth into
error and Hes ; what is right and just into what is wrong and
unjust ; what is gracious, merciful and peaceful, into what is
selfish, merciless, hateful and murderous. Evil, the devil, is a
monster in the darkness to the scared imagination ; to science
it is only a vanishing ghost that will not stay to be questioned ;
if he flies thus from the face of the angel servant of Truth, then
men may be assured that when the King comes in His Glory
not even the shadow of a shade of the devil will be seen.
To advance another step in this enquiry, it is necessary to
remember that the realm of Nature cannot help men in the study
of this subject ; it is unable to give any answerthat men can accept
as satisfactory. Nature in the hands of science gives satisfactory
answers, in its own sphere ; but in the matter of sin and salvation

232 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
and the unity and harmony of all things, it is not wise or right
to expect answers from this source. Further, the same may
be said of man, as apart from Revelation ; for up to moral man
hood, or what constitutes man, no answer has been found by
wise philosophers, or ethical teachers. It is the Bible that
reveals sin, convicts men of guilt before God, points out the way
of salvation and patiently rehearses over and over again, in many
forms, what men require to be taught upon this subject. As
already pointed out, in symbol words, there is found in the first
day of creation, the Hving germs of thought out of which the
whole Bible is developed. These germs Hve and produce their
generations ; the generations live and are reproduced in the
nation of Israel ; the kingdom of Israel passes away and then
the generations of Christ are seen to have been developed through
David, the king, and Abraham, the father of the faithful. From
Jesus Christ there is the long look backward upon all that the
Spirit of God has done in the world ; He fulfils in Himself all the
past ; and He is the beginning of the new age in which truth
and righteousness will be revealed and made manifest before
men. In the book of Genesis there is the revelation of God,
the Father ; in the generations in Abraham, as type, there is found
the Fatherhood of God ; and in Isaac there is a typical revelation
of the Son of the Father in Grace and Truth. This is the ideal :
in the Heavens men find faith ; in Noah hope of salvation ; in
Shem patient waiting ; in Abraham, love ; and the end is the
dark womb of Egypt within which the First-born Child is devel
oped into a nation. In the story of Israel there is the birth of
faith in the redemption from Egypt and the life in the Desert ;
there is hope in the possession of the promised land ; there is
patience in the development of the Kingdom ; and love is found
in the Captivity, the Restoration, and in the birth of Christ at
Bethlehem. This is the Son of the Father ; the revelation of the
Divine love to men in the lowly Jesus of Nazareth, the Man of
Sorrows, the Saviour of Men by the way of the Cross, suffering
and death. The age of Israel has gone past ; the Son has come
and fulfilled all things ; therefore, the reign of the Spirit begins
and what this means is that the Spirit is going to incarnate Christ
in Humanity as Grace and Truth ; and, for this end the Spirit
has worked among the Gentile nations for 2,000 years to bring
about this threefold revelation to men of the gracious thoughts,
ideals, designs and purposes of God. This is the epitome of

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 233
history as revealed in the Bible. Men say that history is the
record of the development of civilisation ; but the Bible says
that history is the revelation of God's Kingdom of Grace for the
redemption of men from evil ; and if men were to take out of
history this sacrificial blood-stained golden thread of Divine
Love, they would reduce the whole to chaos again ; because tho
Bible makes known the redeemed Cosmos that God is about to
reveal to men. The chief events in history for the redemption
of mankind are to be found in symbol in Abraham and Isaac
on the mountain of sacrifice ; in Jesus Christ on the Cross on
Calvary ; and in the spiritual rejection of the Bible, as the Word
¦of God to men, by the Spirit. It is in these three events that the
powers of evil seem to be regnant ; but it is where evil fails com
pletely to apprehend the Divine purposes of grace and mercy ;
it is where judgments fall upon evil doers ; where the Hght of truth
converges into a unity, and out of which there arises the glorious
Hght that cannot be quenched, the life that is eternal, and the
love that is stronger than death and hell.
For the clearer understanding of this subject men require
to study carefully the four Gospels in Christ, as revealed by His
Hfe, death, resurrection and ascension into power and glory in
the spiritual world ; and the four Gospels about Christ as witnessed
by the Spirit of Truth. These eight Gospels are the central
revelations of the Heavens ; in them the Heavens are thrown open
to men ; they see Christ as the Way to Heaven ; and the angels of
God as His servants doing his will in carrying to men the heavenly
messages of Grace. He came, in His humility, when the world
was in the deep darkness of night ; when the Jew had perverted
religion ; when the Greek had defamed wisdom ; and the Roman
power ruled over men with a rod of iron. 1. Then as seen in the
Oospels in their order, in Matthew, the long promised Seed, Heir
and King came to His Kingdom. 2. The Man came as seen in
the Gospel of Mark, to be the Saviour, Healer and Redeemer
of men from the powers of evil. 3. The Spirit-endowed Son of
God came, as in Luke's Gospel, to set up His throne and dominion,
ihe kingdom that would destroy Judaism, Greek wisdom, and
Roman power, and be the means of blessing to the whole earth.
4. But this Heir, King, Son of Man, Son of God, King of Kings,
came as seen in the Gospel of John, with a righteous claim, for He
was the Light of Heaven, the Truth of God, the Life of men
and the Love of God as Divine Sacrifice. 5. Having thus proved

234 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
Himself to be the Light of Truth, it was as the Light of Truth,
in the Acts, that Christ was revealed to the nations sitting in
darkness by the Spirit, from Pentecost onward throughout the
Roman Empire. 6. It was to Rome, the Roman Empire, that
the Spirit sent the Gospel as Light and Life ; as the Divine order
of thought and as the law from heaven. 7. To Corinth and the
Corinthians was given that great revelation of Christ as the
Eternal Son of God in His Grace, Majesty and Glory. 8. And, yet
again, to this people was given that deeper revelation of Divine
Truth by which men may see that the Kingdom of Christ upon
the Earth is that of trial and temptation, sorrow and suffering ;
and, that out of all these men are defivered, raised to a new Divine
life in Christ, and through grace enabled to rejoice as victors
over all enemies. It is not so very wonderful that earthly people
cannot understand Christ ; they would measure Him by their
earthly standards ; and when they are unable to find any earthly
measure by which He can be measured, then they say He is an
ideal, a myth, a creation of the imagination ; forgetting that the
Ideal must be found to create an ideal man, and this Ideal is to be
found only in the New Testament, where Christ fulfils, and explains,
all the past ; and becomes the Light of Life for the ages to come.
There is this aspect also in which this matter may be con
sidered, as in the Hght of experience. There is a realm that is
spiritually unconscious ; one that is semi-conscious ; and where
spiritual consciousness is aroused to consider the truths revealed
in the Bible. These, it is hardly necessary to point out, are
analogous with the physical, psychical, and moral in nature and
man ; with the dispensations of grace in Genesis, in Israel and
in the Christian age ; in the latter, not as science, but as having
become conscious that the spiritual world exists, and that men
are permitted and invited to study its relations and conditions.
This problem is not one of development only, it is also one of
time's conditions, and of man's environment ; because, as matter
of fact, men will find at present upon the face of the earth, nations
that have no spiritual consciousness of God ; others that are
in the psychical semi-conscious stage like that of Israel in the
Desert studying the patterns of things in the heavens ; and
those who have left these elements of religion behind them and
are seeking after what is heavenly and spiritual. Indeed, it is
not necessary to search for these truths among the nations ; they
are to be found in every community and in every family. This

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 235
is one of the unique effects of following the method of Christ ;
it opens the eyes to see not only that the Bible is a Hving book,
the Word of God ; it shows the stages of development, and the
conditions under which men are living ; and how they are to
be classed as related to their spiritual development in the realm
of Grace. If, for example, this conception as to the state of
unconsciousness, semi-consciousness, and consciousness is applied
to nature, man and the Bible, the analogies wiU be found to exist ;
and it is the Bible only that carries men into conscious spiritual
Hfe with the prospect of attaining what they are seeking after.
Physical nature can carry men so far ; but limiting nature to
the lower creatures with the psychical powers they possess, they
are unconscious of God or the Hfe spiritual. Men when raised
a stage or two above the lower creatures become semi-conscious
of a spiritual world, in which they have their portion ; they have
instincts, intuitions, aspirations and desires the lower creatures
do not possess ; thus the ideals of truth, goodness, right and
wrong, just and unjust, faith, grace, mercy, forgiveness and
similar thoughts, enter their souls and are pondered upon in a
child-Hke way, and conceived to be important and worth seeking
after. Still this stage of spiritual Hfe is largely objective in char
acter, it is what seeks after unity and harmony betwixt the out
ward environment and the inward thoughts, with the hope and
expectation that if these could be brought to agree, then the
heaven sought after would be found in the family, the State,
and in the Church with its forms of refigion. It is the Bible
that carries men beyond this carnal stage ; and it is Christ, in
particular, that awakens the souls of men to what is truly spiritual
-in rehgion. When He tells men that God is Spirit, and that trues
worship is inward and spiritual, not local and by forms, then such
a conception is Hke a spiritual seed of truth, and. it- must Hve and
seek after this ideal of conscious worship by the spirit in the soul.
In Hke manner in the matter of God's will and the will of man y
it is the ideal that is inspired, but the power to perform is very
difficult ; to renounce self-will is not easy, and to conform truly
to the revealed Will of God is not possible. To the unconscious
there is no conception of light and darkness ; to the semi-conscious
Hght and darkness, day and night, have become perceptible ;
but to the conscious they are great truths that seem irreconcil
able ; and from this stage of the spiritual life it is not easy to
beUeve that they can be explained or understood

236 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
If from this position the attempt is made to try to get clearer
¦conceptions about the mystery of evil ; with all its consequences,
it may be that light will be cast upon the pathway. It has
already been assumed that evil and sin are not conscious fact
in the physical world ; but on the contrary science has made
good the assertion that in this sphere of thought the spiritual
may be said to reign, seeing that the Divine order has been, to a
large extent, discovered ; that this is good and not evil ; and that
this order is conceived to be the Will of God as law. In the
jrealm of the semi-conscious, the psychical, there may be said
to be at present a kind of twiHght in the spiritual world ; it is
neither light nor dark ; thus the soul of nature, of man, and of
the Old Testament, are in analogous conditions ; there being,
however, in the Bible, this marked distinction that here and there
light has become radiant, and individuals have actually been
awakened to the consciousness of the spiritual life. This can be
-explained by the law of development and the method of Christ,
as seen in Enoch, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Samuel,
Daniel, Isaiah and the Psalmists ; they received special spiritual
gifts and graces from the Lord, the King ; and thus, they reflected
upon mankind the glory that they perceived in Him. It is in
Jesus Christ that man, or mankind, becomes spiritually conscious ;
that is to say, in a unique sense, He is the Man that is conscious
of God as Father, of the heavens, and what they mean ; of the
earth and its story of sin and shame ; of the Spirit as the Spirit
of God and of Truth ; of the work of the Spirit as Truth and
Righteousness, Divine Light ; and of that mysterious light and
darkness, day and night, which other men did not understand.
To the Lord Christ these subjects were as an open book which
He could read perfectly ; but which, it must be confessed, no
other man has been able to read. Before His departure He told
His disciples that His personal presence hindered their spiritual
development ; thus it was expedient for Him to go away so that
His Spirit might come to teach them those spiritual truths they
were at that time unable to apprehend. These truths are specially,
conviction of sin ; the revelation of a perfect righteousness in
the spiritual heavens in Christ ; and that judgment has been
passed upon the powers of evil. Sin is want of conformity to, or
transgression of, God's laws ; it is conceived, and may be ex
plained as actions that are base and evil ; but Christ sums all
sin up in this one thought, that it is not believing in Him. This

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 237
was the sin of the first man when he turned from the Ideal and
took his own way ; this is the sin of every man ; it is rejecting
the Will of God revealed by Christ ; and it is the separation of
the spirit from the spiritual to the natural, from the heavenly to
the earthly. Belief in Christ is vital ; not in the mere Name,
Christ, but in that ideal that is in Christ, as obedience to the-
Will of God from the heart in the spirit of love and self-sacrifice-
This is the Christ life ; this is the life where sin is not found ; and
the Man that so Hved is Righteous and He is in heaven. The
Spirit of Truth came to reveal these truths to men ; that Christ-
is sinless and righteous ; He is the Example the Spirit holds-
up before men to convince them that they are sinners ; that they
need Him to be Saviour ; that as the Righteous High Priest and
Mediator they can trust Him ; and that as Righteous Judge He
has judged and condemned what is earthly and evil. These are:
some of the important spiritual truths the Spirit came to teach
men ; to make them spiritually conscious of them ; and if this.
end is attained, of necessity there must follow peace with God,
through forgiveness ; the Hfe of faith in Christ, in the widest
sense ; the righteousness that is in the heavens and the know
ledge that sin has been judged and condemned ; that it has no
right to reign in the redeemed soul ; therefore, the new Hfe is,
spiritual freedom from all enthrallments that are earthly ; Hberty
to follow in the footsteps of Christ ; the vision of the heavens,.
with persecution, sorrow and suffering ; and the blessed hope of
reaching the inheritance that cannot be corrupted, or defiled,
that is eternal in the heavens. This is something like the Bible
conception of the Hfe that becomes conscious in Christ ; He is,
the Ideal ; in studying, following, imitating, Christ, men become
Hke Him ; and, as they attain to His Image they discover that
they are also, in a sense they do not quite understand, being
created anew by the Spirit into the Hkeness of God.
But some men may say that with such thoughts as these
they are quite famifiar ; they do not differ from the conceptions.
of Christian men and women, and thus they do not require
special study. This may be so, and the conceptions
and the conscious experiences of Christians ought not to be de
spised ; to them they are as light in the dark pathway home
ward ; they are true experiences ; thus whilst others, who are
earthly minded, walk at their peril in the dark night, they have
seen the Light from Heaven and to them this light gives the

238 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
security and safety that comes to those who travel in this pilgrim
journey. The advantages, however, in thus trying to study Christ
is not Hmited to the Bible realm of thought : He is the Light of
Israel truly ; but He is the Light that gives light to the Gentiles ;
and, also, if men could understand His thoughts the Light of the
¦whole world. If scientific thinkers will turn their faces Christ-
ward, and ask for His Hght and guidance, they may rest assured
(that in His Hght they will see more truly many things which are
as yet dark to them. Indeed, the want of the world is not earthly
twisdom, wealth and power ; it is to see Christ, to know His gracious
•will ; and to follow in His footsteps. In this singular quest after
what is Hght and dark, day and night, men specially require
His help ; because it is sin that makes men spiritually dia-mag
netic and then the Hght in them is as the darkness and they do
not see or understand His thoughts. If then Christ is taken as
the Light to lead men in this quest against darkness, it must be
reafised that it is the spiritual Hght that is required to separate
these twin spirits that have been finked by strong bonds through
many centuries. In Himself this was done effectually ; the dark
ness and the night were not permitted to enter His soul ; they
were kept outside ; and thus knowing as he did the good, true,
righteous and gracious Will of His Father, the evil, false, wicked,
and self-seeking spirit found no avenue for entrance into His Soul.
The work of science has so far cleared the way that the physical
.and the unconscious do not require to be considered ; and it may
be an open question to what extent the semi-conscious can be
involved in this problem. The question is really raised when
men become conscious of order and law ; it is when they become
.intellectual and moral that the problem of Hght and darkness,
truth and error, good and evil, cross their pathway. In the
.Hght of science and divine wisdom men may reason thus : God
is Light, the Light Ineffable, and in Him there is no spiritual
darkness ; Christ is the Image of God, the Heavenly, the Ideal,
yet He is correlated with the earth so that by Him the dark
deep chaos may become a cosmos of Hght ; the Spirit is spiritual
power, movement, design, purpose, to reveal Christ the Image of
God in Hght ; and, the work of the Spirit is creation, the created
hght, that is to the Spirit Divine Light. Men call this creation
.Nature ; it is what is subject to Divine order and law ; and to
science it has been given to say of the visible creation that, in
the Spirit, it is Hght, as order and law. Thus far revelation,

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 239
science and experience may be said on the whole to agree ; thus
the result reached is that Nature is not evil but good, reveaHng
as it does the power, wisdom and goodness of God. In thus
thinking upon creation there arises the conception that God is
immanent in all His Works bythe Spirit ; that to attribute evil
to God, or evil as the work of God, or evil as the correlative with
God, must be ruled as out of place ; such thoughts are not in har
mony with the thoughts of Christ, thus they are not to be befieved,
considered, or discussed in any form. The stage where Hght
and darkness come in is the fifth ; it is where the intellectual
power of man is used ; and yet it must be at once assumed that
the intellect, as power for reasoning and relating thoughts, is not
in itself an evil and sinful power. It is good, it is blessed, and
it is spiritual ; thus it is not what the intellect is, but what it may
have the power to do that is the question here. It is a strange
conception that the spirit of the creature that is not endowed
with intellectual power is not considered as capable of committing
sin ; but when this endowment is bestowed then the creature
becomes man, with power to know truth and error ; that is to
know God as revealed under these abstract signs ; and, further,
that along with the intefieet there is the endowment of a moral
nature to know law ; and with this power there is judgment
as to good and evil, right and wrong. These powers in themselves
are good, they are conceived as spiritual emanations from God ;
and man possessing these powers is like God. The man, in this
sense, is conceived as arising out of related ultimate principles ;
only, in reafity, he is not to be conceived as divided, but as one
being, and as like God. The man is developed into God fike-
ness, and if all his powers are blended into a united being,
then he is spirit and spiritual and not earthly and carnal.
Men try to trace the order of development, and this is done in
full cognisance of the fact that Being as God, or being, as man,
the dependent creature of God, cannot be known by the intellect
of man. It follows that the whole order of study is that of faith
in Being, and of knowledge of the relations of being in nature,
man, and in the Bible. This is the result ; the intellect relates
and correlates and conditions all thoughts ; if these are placed in
their true relations this is truth ; if the relations are not un
derstood, ot related erroneously, then this is error ; the truth is
as the Hght, and error is as the darkness ; and these, though thus
linked together, cannot be found to agree. Truth will unite and

240 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
harmonise with truth until the cosmos of truth is known ; error
will not agree with truth, or with what is erroneous ; and thus
error means disorder and disintegration, it is chaos and confusion.
It can be seen that for the analysis of the being of man it is
important to recognise those related ultimate principles that
constitute his being ; but, for synthesis, to apprehend the spiri
tual unity in man, then the related ultimates are permitted to
fall into the background, and it is from the unity in God that the
unity in man is discerned and studied. It would appear as if
scientific knowledge in its fulness could not be attained by man
until this line of analysis has been followed ; he may seem to be
operating upon eight distinct realms of thought, that seem to
exist as separate existences, but the result is constant convergence
in each realm until related ultimates are reached : and these
when they converge in the light of the method of Christ reveal
God in Christ as the Image and the Ideal of God. It is here that
the distinction betwixt the intellect and the moral nature of mam
is made manifest ; because, as explained, the intellect is the power
in man, by the spirit, to discern order, to analyse all relations
of thoughts, and thus, out of an apparent chaos, to bring about
order so that the Hght of Truth in the heavens will be brought
into harmony with the light of truth in the earth. The earth
has become transparent to the heavens ; this is as spiritual
para-magnetism, therefore it is light. The physical student
who has given special study to the science of optics, Hght in its
manifold relations, is the man who ought to understand this
matter ; this parable has been his delightful study, and here
emerges what the parable means in the spiritual world. Here,
however, it may be well to utter a word of warning, just as the
operations of light are limited to a definite method of a physical
force in its correlations, so the intellect of man is also Hmited
to order, in the Hght of truth ; thus it will not do to conceive
the thought that the intellect will solve all problems and all
relations. It is only necessary to point out that light, as a mode
of motion, is conceived to be atomic and possibly within the range
of the chemical elements; whilst electricity is etheric, it transcends
in its modes of motion that motion conceived as light ; and in
this region the latest discoveries seem to point in this direction
that electricity and magnetism govern motions of light, and that
there is in the heart of these powers an emanation ray that can
pass through iron as easily as Hght passes through glass. It is:

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 241
not suggested that physical scientists operate upon nature with a
power that is different from the intellect ; the parable is that men
ought to be careful when they attempt Hmitations ; because
there may be powers above the intellect that they do not under
stand ; and, it may so happen that in the Heavens, the heavenly
places of thought, men may be permitted by the Spirit to reach
back in their thoughts to electricity, magnetism, and to eman
ation, in other words, to the Spirit, Christ, and God.
The conception reached is that just as crystals in a certain
position are dia-magnetic and that the Hght will not pass through
them, so man if spiritually dia-magnetic to divine truth then
there is no Hght in his soul ; it is in the state of darkness ; but,
as when the crystal is turned to the right angle the Hght passes
freely through the crystal and it becomes para-magnetic, so when
man is spiritually para-magnetic, in harmony with the thoughts
and wiU of God, then the Hght of truth is his portion, and there
is Hght in his soul. This simply means that as the crystal in its
relations is changed to the Hght so it is light or dark ; and, as man
is changed in his relations to Christ, so the Hght of Christ is re
fracted or rejected, and there is darkness ; or, it is received,
passes into the soul according to spiritual order, and the result
is the Hght of truth. From this parable of physical nature, there
arises at this point a new phase of psychological study, and it
takes this form : man is not in his fallen state para-magnetic ;
he is dia-magnetic to divine Hght and truth ; nay, more, all
nature is dia-magnetic, as known by man in its relations ; that
is to say, from his point of view, nature, what is earthly, is subject
to the earthly and not to the heavenly. This must be how nature
will appear to him so long as the earthly reigns in man and nature.
The spirit of man is here conceived as dwelling in a Hmited earthly
sphere of life ; and the dia-magnetic spirit and its dia-magnetic
environment in the body and nature are in their correlations
similar. The spirit does not dweU in light but in a dark prison
house, and what Hght reaches the soul is refracted and becomes
darkened. This is true of man in his present state ; and, it is
the truth as to all the lower creatures ; they are earthly, and
they have not been provided with what would enable them to
enter into relations with the Heavens. With man it is different ;
there was given to him this spiritual medium that could come
betwixt the spirit and the Sun of Righteousness, and this power,
or endowment, is named the intellect. If the inteUect of man
Q

242 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
is para-magnetic to the Hght of truth from Christ, then there is
light in the soul ; but if the intellect is dia-magnetic then the
darkness reigns and the man is earthly. The intellect, therefore,
is the medium of relating and correlating thoughts, and it will
depend upon the angle of refraction whether the result will be
darkness or light. Nature and man are like prisms ; the Hght
falls upon them, there is refraction and the solar spectrum ;
nature is as the reflection of that spectrum, but nature being
unconscious is unable to use this revelation of the work of the
Spirit. With man it is different, in so far as he is like the psychi
cal he is Hke nature ; his soul is the refracted order, as of the
spectrum, and thus it is like the solar spectrum ; it is colours
and darkness. In reafity, as viewed from the spiritual stand-point
of science, it is not so ; it may be as truly an invisible order as
light of truth in spiritual thought, as the spectrum is of rays of
light in the physical realm.' Within man God establishes the
intellectual and moral world and this world is in harmony with
the psychical ; thus there arises the thought of the intellect as
Hke a prism, the refracted thoughts in the soul are re-refracted
through the intellect in their order, and when this is done, then
the soul will be full of light, as scientific truth ; and the Sun of
Righteousness in the Heavens, and the sun that is righteous
in the Earth, will be in harmony, and para-magnetic to each
other. The order conceived takes this form ; the light of truth
shines upon man as psychic, and by the spirit there is involved
in the soul, through the special senses, all those refracted rays
which form the soul ; a spiritual spectrum that can be used as
memory to bring back and reconsider what has been. To meet
this the intellect intervenes ; it is receptive of all that is possessed
by the mind, thus it re-refracts all that is in the mind, con
verges all to a focus, and this becomes a centre of light as the
moral life within the soul. The difficulty in following out the
analogy Hes in this that the physical analogy is that of physical
motion only ; whilst the internal conditions are those of the
spirit and of the intellect, as analogous with motion ; and also that
of the soul and the moral nature, as analogous with Hfe. It is
the double order that is full of interest as indicating by physical
analogy in what way the Hght of truth by sense images is changed
into the Hght of truth as the moral Hfe in the soul. This con
ception is in harmony with the fifth and sixth Blessings uttered
by Christ, upon the merciful and the pure of heart ; because

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 243
it can be seen that if men follow the fines of thought that are
true, right and good, they will obtain the mercies, the kindness of
God ; and the Hght of truth being radiant and pure, the reward
is the vision of God in the soul. It is along these fines that men
have to feel their way in this enquiry after sin and its conse
quences ; the result, when man became selfish, self-asserting,
earthly and dia-magnetic, was that the spiritual re-refraction
did not take place in due order ; the destructive hand of man
intervened ; he saw, coveted, and grasped, what he thought
was beautiful, desirous, and would make him wise and great Hke
the gods ; the movement was fatal ; the divine handiwork will
not bear such rough handUng ; the beautiful bow in the soul
seemed to fall in pieces ; man could not understand the wreck he
had produced, and when he tried to put it together again, it was
all in vain, the magnetism was gone, the light was lost, and the
soul was a chaos. It was not a chaos only, the angle of the axis
upon which it ought to have revolved as para-magnetic to the
Heavens was changed ; it became dia-magnetic and this is why
man is out of harmony with the Heavens, not a cosmos in him
self, and repellent, or in confusion, as to what is earthly. This
is the meaning of the Fall as conceived in the Hght of physics by
analogy ; thus it indicates the value of the physical sciences ;
the analogies that run through nature, man and the spiritual
world ; and, how far back men may go in the law of development
to find similar ideas and thoughts existent in nature.
There can be seen, by this analogy, the great importance of
the truth that the Kingdom of God is within man ; the psychical
is there in its order, a true psychic world ; the moral world is
added that would raise man to manhood in the likeness of God ;
but the man will not be patient, wait, watch, and learn, in what
way God works by order and law. Truly man may now see
something of how exquisite the details of the works of God are,
and how fooHsh it is to intervene, to put in unskilful hands, to
try to change or to hasten the works of the Spirit. Man could
not become scientific and wise in a few days in his state of
innocence any more than man could become scientific and wise
now in a brief time ; the problem is one of development, and
under the most favourable circumstances it can be seen that
the education could not be that of cram, but of intelfigehce and
intellectual work, to transpose and translate into order all that
was stored up in the soul in psychic order. In the moral world,
Q 2

244 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
however, there is a difference from that of the psychic world ;
the latter is almost automatic in its operations ; the former is that
of intellectual acquirements ; thus it is conceived that from
within the soul the automatic work of the Spirit co-operates
with the conscious' spirit and intellect of man, and these working
conjointly and in harmony the result is scientific truth. That
this is so scientific men may judge from their own experiences ;
because their labours have been of this kind from the days of
Copernicus to the present time ; it is from the stores in the
psychic mind that thoughts have been taken and placed in their
intellectual order, and it is well known that pre-conceived em
piric theories have done much to hinder the advance of science.
It is a question worth asking, whether, as matter of fact, men
who have been pre-eminent as scientific discoverers, have in
their labours required to analyse the theories of men to their
primary experiences, before they were able to begin to build
again upon the scientific _ foundations of truth. Is not this a
common complaint with all careful scientific thinkers that they
lose more time and labour in getting rid of other men's empiric
theories, and what they have been taught, than in placing in
order what they have mastered from the realm of experience ?
This Hne of thought may be extended far and wide. What are
all the empiric conceptions of philosophies, theologies, creeds,
and the teachings of wise men, but earthly tabernacles that
require to be dissolved and removed before the Temple of God
in •scientific order can be set up upon the earth ? The earthly
wise men believe, and declare, that their tabernacles are temples
of God, too sacred to be touched by the hands of such men as
Copernicus or Darwin ; they are so ignorant of Divine truth as
not to know that it is only by the work of such men that their
tabernacles must be destroyed, so that in place of many taber
nacles one great Temple may be built upon the earth to reveal to
men the wisdom and the glory of God. Every man is meant to
be such a microcosm temple ; and all the sciences will combine,
in all their width and breadth, height and depth, to raise", this
Macrocosm Temple to the honour and praise of the wisdomTand
glory of God.
It is the intellect of man that is the servant used to attain such
an end ; and it is the moral, good, righteous man, that is called
to possess this temple, in his own soul, and there to walk in Hght,
clad in the purest robes of white. But let men be careful as to

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 245
their order of thought here, because, as can easily be discerned, it
is not innocent children that are seeking to build this temple
for the glory of God ; it is the redeemed of the Lord, sinners
saved by Grace, who having passed through their tribulations,
can now see the land that is spiritual and the Temple that is
Eternal in the heavens. In the natural, men could rise to be
spiritual by studying the natural and comparing spiritual with
spiritual ; now there Hes between them and the natural, the
Fall, the grace and mercy of God, the empiric wise conceptions
of men ; and it is Christ and His Spirit who are in the heavens,
that bring the heavens into the earth, and raise men up from
the earthly to the heavenly. The special truths taught by the
way are humbHng but very salutary ; they enforce the concep
tion that man is faUen from his natural and true position of
innocent child-man in the Hkeness of God ; but there follows
this serious truth also that the falls in the realm of Grace in his
tory have been many. Man did not create himself at the first ;
and he has not re-created himself in the realm of Grace ; but,
if experience, history and the Bible are to be accepted as wit
nesses, then every man has done his utmost to mar and hinder
this great work of God for the Salvation of Mankind. It is not
necessary to extend this explanation of the sinfulness of men ;
what is now required is that men should recognise the truth ;
consider carefully their position as to what God has done and
is doing for them ; and thus, in some measure, come to under
stand the great goodness, grace, mercy and love of God. It
is time for men to be done with their clever, wise, criticisms of
God and His works, as they have been doing in the past ; to
renounce all such fooHsh conceptions ; and to become humble
enough to sit at Christ's feet and there learn to be meek and
lowly of heart, so that they may find rest for their souls. This
is the wisdom that is Divine, to learn patiently how to bear His
gracious yoke, that is not heavy ; for surely this is better than
to try to build towers that will reach the heavens ; or, Atlas
like, to try to bear the burden of the earth with all its cares,
when not able to bear the daily worries and trials of life that
rest so heavily upon men.
The trend of thought followed seems to explain the law of
development by which man, as the creature of God, is raised above
nature ; is endowed with a moral nature in the image of God ;
and is thus prepared to receive that tuition, by the way of

246 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
experience and science, that would render this image a true Hke
ness. Sin cannot be conceived as a creature of God ; as a some
thing that He has created to act contrary to His Own Will. It is
man in God's image that can by selfishness, and self-seeking, by
subtle reasoning, by unbelief and disobedience, pervert and change
what is good into evil, and what is sacred into what is earthly
and vile. It is the man that chooses subtlety of thought in
stead of wisdom, power to rule instead of faithful service ; and
thus man becomes a devil in the sense that spiritually he is
opposed in his nature to the revealed Will of God. This is fallen,
sinful man, deserving justice and punishment for sin ; but God
in His Grace, by Christ, through the Spirit, comes forth from
the heavens to redeem and restore man to His favour. That
this work of redemption revealed by God, made effectual by
Christ, and carried out by the Spirit is a great truth it is useless
to deny ; the facts are made manifest to mankind, and they
cannot be set aside by all the cunning devices of the devil, by
unbeHeving agnosticism, or the unbeHef and earthliness of men.
The Kingdom of Grace for the salvation of mankind is no longer
merely an experience of men ; or an empiric theory for men to
reason about ; it claims the first place, not merely for what it
is, and what it does for men, but because by it the light of scientific
truth will banish the darkness from among men ; and by it the
day that is truth and righteousness will aboHsh that empiric
night in which men have lived. This is a great claim for what
men call the Gospel ; but, it is good news indeed for all men in
all nations. It is not a new Gospel, although it may fairly be
conceived to be a fuUer development than that possessed by
Jew or Christian. When men have entered upon this rich
spiritual inheritance that is so near to them, at their very hand
that it may be seized by them, they will rejoice with the Psalmist,
who was unable to keep stemmed back within his soul that burst
of joy, gratitude and thanks as expressed in the Psalm that
begins thus : " Bless the Lord, 0 My Soul : and all that is
within me bless His Holy Name. Bless the Lord 0 My Soul, and
forget not all his benefits : Who forgiveth all thine iniquities :
who healeth all thy diseases ; who redeemeth thy Hfe from destruc
tion ; who crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender
mercies ; who satisfieth thy mouth with good things ; so that
thy youth is renewed like the eagles." It may be 3,000 years
ago since that Psalm was written, yet it is as fresh as if it were

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 247
written yesterday ; and it is so just because it is the heart-felt
expression of a true man, who felt his great debt of gratitude to
God for this Gospel of Salvation. In the light of science men
may not express their thoughts in the same words ; but they
would certainly speak of the marvellous Grace of God, so Ughtly
prized, and despised by men ; of the goodness and kindness of
God toward sinful men who had sinned against Him in so many
ways ; of the truth and wisdom of God rejected, because it did
not bring to men empiric theories Hke those of wise men ; of the
deep undying love of God that could keep the soul and preserve
it in the darkness; of the patient Spirit of God with the wayward
disordered spirit that could find no light of truth from heaven
and no spiritual purpose or design of the Spirit in nature and the
soul ; of the healing and saving power of Christ in the bodies of
men when surrounded by disease, pain and suffering ; and, of
the gentleness, .kindness, patience and the love of God in saving
men from evil powers that would destroy their lives. If men
seriously and honestly ask themselves what the mission of the
Gospel to men is ; or the special teaching of the Bible from the
beginning to the end, the reply would be that the Heavens,
Christ and the Spirit, came down from Heaven to earth to seek for
and to save the lost ; to change sinners into saints in the image
and Hkeness of Christ ; to preserve the saved in the day of danger;
to gather in the outcasts who had become wanderers upon the
earth ; to inscribe upon the hearts of men, and the world, the
sacred Name of Christ ; to care for the wanderers and encourage
them in the way of Hfe ; to guide pilgrims on their way to the
better country ; to teach them from the symbol signs of earth
so that they might become spiritual and understand heavenly
thoughts ; to give them an inheritance Hke that spiritual inherit
ance prepared for them in heaven ; to wean them from their
earthly possessions and treasures, so that they might find treasures
in the heavens ; and to reveal to them the Kingdom of God,
the glorious blessed inheritance of the children of God. It is
not necessary to narrate the teaching of the Bible upon the sub
ject of the way that earthly men have behaved toward this
Gospel of Grace and mercy, this also is traceable in the Scriptures
with great fulness ; and, if men study the Bible with these
thoughts before them they will see that it is to the Heavens they
are indebted for all good ; and to the Earth for all their misery
and unhappiness. The Heavens are upon the side of truth,

248 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
goodness, righteousness, forgiveness, grace, mercy and peace ; and
all the relations of all the thoughts, words and actions of the
Heavens are heavenly ; whilst the relations of the Earth and
the earthly are to error, evil, wrong-doing, cruelty, hatred, un-
kindness, war, murder, disease and death. To search the Bible
for texts to prove empiric dogmas and creeds is one use men can
make of it ; there are many others that could be named ; but
what men are now called to do is to study it by the method, and
in the Spirit of Christ, and see if this will give them the Hving
Word from God, the Gospel of Salvation from sin.
There is another aspect of this truth that requires considera
tion, not so much because it is a practical one, but because men
theorise about it ; express their thoughts very freely, it may be
fooHshly, and do not really consider and weigh in the balance of
the reason, and of justice, the conceptions they utter and
put in circulation among men. This subject is that of evil as
found in unconscious nature ; and the results of the reasonings
of men as arising out of their opinions. It would appear as if
there were men so unreasonable that they cannot be reasoned
with ; somehow they seem to get so far lost to what is true,
right and good ; what is gracious and kindly ; what is con
siderate and fair, that they have no respect for God or man.
Such men are not worthy of respectful consideration ; they out
law themselves ; and by the thoughts they express and their
manner of expression they make themselves unfit to be the com
panions of those who are earnest seekers after truth. With re
ference to this very difficult subject, it must be freely granted
that what men name evil exists in nature, just as pain and disease
is to be found in the human body. In nature the evil may be
altogether unconscious ; and, in the lower creatures, and in the
body of man it may arise into semi-consciousness or even to
consciousness by means of the nerves of sensation. That this
subject is not forgotten, or omitted from the Bible is well known ;
but, it is difficult to see in what way the subject could have been
dealt with in a scientific form, in the days when the Bible was
written. In the Epistle to the Romans — the Gospel that con
siders great problems in the light of law — the writer conceives
himself to be the sufferer from conflicting laws ; he wills to do
good, but evil is present with him ; he deUghts in God's laws,
moral and gracious, and yet he finds himself a captive to the law
of sin that is at work in his body. This is a wretched condition

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 249
to be in, thus the cry goes up for deliverance ; the DeHverer
comes and sets the soul free, then there is gladness and thanks
to God for Salvation. What follows ? This truth that Christ
and the Spirit, the Heavens, are indwelfing in the man, and by
the teaching of the Spirit, he is awakened to the fact that God is
his Father, he is a son of God, and an heir to the inheritance in
glory. What is the connecting Hnk ? It is that of communion
in suffering ; and what the man or the creature suffers, is as
nothing when compared with the glory to be revealed by this
pathway. The lower creatures, or nature, is represented as
expectantly waiting for a great event, and this is the manifesta
tion of men as sons of God. The lower creation was created,
as subject to what is vain and changeable, to the realm of pheno
mena ; but these relations, or conditions are not that of God's
will or law, as conceived by science and wisdom ; they were
made, or created, as subject, with the hope that they also would
obtain deliverance and join in that glorious Hberty that will be
the portion of the sons of God. It is not assumed in the Bible
that the earth is the happiest of all happy places, where all crea
tures and men enjoy all kinds of pleasures ; it is conceived as a
creation that is in the pangs of child-birth, praying, waiting and
hoping for redemption ; and, what is still more strange, the
Spirit of God is praying, and groaning with groans that cannot
find utterance, and giving help to the weak that do not know
or understand what all this means. Men do not know the mean
ing but the Spirit does ; the WiU of God is in it all ; and, it is all
working for good to those who fear and love God, the subjects
of that great purpose of Divine Grace, which is the design and
the work of the Spirit. How can this purpose be expressed in
words that men can understand ? Men sinned ; Christ died ;
Christ Hves, Christ is the heavenly intercessor. It is Christ's
love that is magnetic and makes men para-magnetic ; what then
will separate the Saviour from the saved ? Not persecution,
tribulation, distress, peril, or sword ; kilfing cannot do so ; in
fact, there is no power throughout the universe that can separ
ate the sons of God from that " love of God, which is in Christ
Jesus our Lord."
It is evident that this subject requires to be studied from other
sides than that of man, his experiences and opinions. It is not
reasonable that a few men should place themselves above all
others, raise their voices so loud that all men may hear their

250 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
opinions ; and in the spirit of self-glorifying prove, to their own
satisfaction at least, that all who differ from them must be rogues
and fools ; and that there cannot be a God in heaven else He
would have made a different kind of world where all creatures
would be content and happy, and eat and drink with full satis
faction and pleasure. This arrogant, foofish spirit is not dead ;
but if science prospers, then, assuredly, it may be taken for granted
that such men will not receive any encouragement from sober,
thoughtful men of science ; or from men who have respect for
truth and righteousness. Upon this subject the naturalistic
ideas of men are of no value ; it is too deep for them ; it is also
high as the heavens, thus the heavens only can teach men, it
may not be all the truth, but what they are able to perceive,
receive and conceive. If this subject is studied in the light of
the law of development ; in the way that scientific men would
try to place the subject before their minds ; and in the light of
the method of Christ, then it may be seen that the time has not
come to form a conclusive opinion, or to give a theory that will
harmonise nature, man, the Bible and science. This apparent
subjection of the creature to evil in nature, man, and the Bible
cannot be questioned ; the three witnesses are agreed upon this
point ; and, strange to say, it is science that is beginning to state
that their evidence is only that of experience or of empiricism,
and, therefore, not to be accepted as final ; that, in fact, the
evidence is not scientific, and that it is possible explanations
of a different kind may be forthcoming in due time. It is not
necessary to extend this argument in any other way than that
within which science and wisdom are actively engaged ; there
are definite principles or realms of thought and the relations and
conditions of these powers are becoming known ; they are con
ceived as order and law, and as the Will of God ; and the asser
tion may be made that the creatures thus subject are not so in
true order and law. This may seem a strange assertion for
science and wisdom to make ; however, they are convinced that
they are upon the right track ; to admit any reasoning to the
contrary as final seems to be unwise. If the method of Christ
is applied to this subject, it may fairly be conceded that the Chris
tian religion rests upon the conception that the creature is sub
ject to evil ; not willingly, but with the hope that in due time what
is wrong will be put right ; where error is believed truth will be
received and become regnant ; and that what is under a curse

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 251
will be changed in its order, become blessed, and the means of
blessing. They know Httle about the Christian religion who do
not know these things ; the Beatitudes uttered by Christ are
without meaning if this is not what they mean ; and, if the
generations of the heavens and the earth do not tell very plainly
the same story, what is the story they have come to tell to men ?
Christ, at the very heart of the Bible and mankind ; in His Hfe
and death ; in His resurrection and glory, teaches the same
truths. The creature is subject to what is vain, fleeting, and will
soon pass away ; and man is also in the same unhappy state.
The conception is in this direction ; let mankind suffer the birth
pangs and Hve ; or become an untimely dead thing in the womb
of time and never emerge into the world of Hfe to see the light
and the day. Another position from which men may with benefit
study this subject is that of development as found in the evident
purpose, design and general tendency of nature, man and the
Bible. The heavens have not brought forth their generations
by accident, and it is not chance that reigns in the universe,
in man, in providence and in the work of the redemption of the
world. The chronicles of time cannot be considered as purpose
less, and it is not unreasonable to accept the thought that God
has revealed His Will to men ; that Christ has in very truth come
into the world's history ; and that the Spirit of God has been
carrying on this great work that makes manifest before men
the power, wisdom, goodness and grace of God. Wise men of this
world may try to doubt and deny that there is any design in
creation, seeing that there are, what they think, blood-stains and
cruel deeds that deserve to be condemned in nature, and in the
history of mankind ; even the Bible to such men is hardly credible
seeing it contains stories that, in their opinion, ought not to be
there. The suggestion of science at the present time to such men
would be that they ought not to be quite so ready to bring all
things to a consummation before their throne of judgment ; but
to study the whole matter more thoroughly ; to consider what
the results have been in the past ; and that the ablest scientific
thinkers are quite unable to conclude that a creation so condi
tioned, adjusted, related and correlated, is not only purposeful,
it is living design, and it is on the way toward a consummation,
so perfect and glorious that they cannot conceive it to be the
result of combinations of chance. What they think they can see
in nature, as in astronomy, is a machine so wonderful in its

252 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
complexity, so regular in its order, and so perfect in law, that it is
not possible to conceive the universe to be uncaused, unplanned
and ungoverned. The designs, order and laws, are all there ;
men have discovered that they exist ; they have become pro
phetic in their own thoughts through the knowledge they possess ;
they are being led onward to think that unity and harmony must
soon become known ; and then the Ideal and their discoveries
must in the nature of things be found to agree. It seems to be
utterly useless for men to fight against the argument from de
sign ; in doing so they are over-riding their own spiritual instincts,
and the purposes they have in view in their studies ; because,
if ever men were biassed by any theory as to design they are so
in all their researches into the order and laws of the universe.
What they run the risk of doing is, that which for a moment
they would not tolerate if they conceived it to be possible ; they
tend to Hghtly esteem the Lord of Truth, and do not recognise
His claims ; and they are grieving the Spirit of Truth in even
seeming to question the fact that He is the Designer of all designs ;
the Architect of all plans ; the Worker in all the works of God :
and the Power and Wisdom of God for their consummation. It
is not a thought to be easily accepted that there is wisdom in
that policy which some men would follow of excluding from their
councils, God, Christ, the Spirit of God, and the realm of spiritual
truth ; this platform is far too narrow for any man to stand upon ;
this poHcy must be conceived to be earthly ; and thus the results
must be earthly and can never prove satisfactory. If the pro
blems of science could be fimited to the realm of the natural and
the physical the matter would not be so serious ; but, as scientific
men know, this cannot be ; science is extending in every direc
tion and order and law will be discovered to be spiritual. If
then scientific men, and their thoughts, are converging in every
direction to a centre of unity, from whence as from a centre of
Hght all the lines of truth have been radiating, who are they
to meet there ? It cannot be the spirit of darkness, because the
Hght of truth will be his destruction ; it must be the Spirit of
Truth, and in that Spirit all the Truth that is in the Ideal, Christ,
the Son of God. At present the conception of evil from this
stand-point may be put in this form : the creation, and the new
creation in Christ, as viewed by science, are as a great complex
machine ; there must be perfect order and law ; but in the putting
of the machine together, at a certain stage, an ignorant mind

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 253
and an unskilled hand was permitted to interfere with the
machinery, the result being a mal- adjustment of parts, and the
consequences, not a break-down, but jarring and friction, and the
conviction that there is something wrong somewhere ; but there
is no earthly mechanic found so skilful as to explain the cause
of the jarring and put matters right. The analogy must fail in
many ways, but if it illustrates the tendency of the thoughts of
men in dealing with this subject, then the parable can be set
aside and the heavenly meaning held with a firm grasp.
There is another stand point from which this matter of evil,
suffering and sorrow may be studied with profit to the student,
and, perhaps, it may be found to be useful. It is evident that
by means of the law of development men are being awakened
out of the darkness which has surrounded them in the past ; and
of the night in which they have been asleep, semi-conscious, or
even totally ignorant of the marvellous, magnificent, great and
glorious works of God. The angel of science has touched them
with his wand ; they open their eyes, and, behold, they are as
in a new creation ; the old empiric visions are gone ; and what
they see is very glorious because it is as if the New Jerusalem had
descended from the heavens ; and, in the Spirit, they are per
mitted to look upon this glorious vision. The first thought and
utterance of those who are thus awakened is that they have
entered a new universe ; and that this new experience must be a
vision only, and not an abiding reafity. The reply of the angel
is that this is not so ; that in truth this fair creation had ever
been around them ; but being dia-magnetic in spirit, earthly,
carnal, bfind and deaf to the spiritual and the heavenly, they
had not perceived even the glory of that world in which they Hved,
moved and had their being. This is a paradox and yet it is true ;
men do Hve in these two worlds ; they are conscious of the earthly,
the temporal, the sensuous ; and they are unconscious of the Spirit
and His works in the spiritual world in which there is regenera
tion and renewal into the Hkeness of Christ. In the sensuous
world and its environment there is that mystery of pain, disease,
disorder, and death ; in the spiritual world these are not known,
they are foreign to it, and thus they are conceived to be outside
the realm of science. How is this, and can any explanation be
given by which these two different worlds can be reconcileable ?
Who is it that is going to bring about this reconcifiation ? Is
it poor, sinful, short-sighted men subject to the earthly ; or, is.

254 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
it the Lord of the heavens that is to do so ? Not poor earthly
mortals who can only see the sensuous, but the Lord of Grace
and of Glory, who has been familiar with this subject all through
the ages. To get light upon this subject it is necessary to return
in spirit to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus on the day of
the Resurrection ; to join them on their way, and to listen to
their conversation with the Stranger. They tell Him of their
blighted hopes ; and how Jesus, the prophet of Nazareth, who
they hoped would redeem Israel from the Roman yoke, had been
put to death by His fellow-countrymen, the rulers of the nation.
They had heard rumours of His re-appearance as living, but they
could not accept the story as true. Then did Christ chide them
for their unbelief and their ignorance ; because they ought to
have known from their study of the Scriptures, and the special
teaching they had received, that Christ would pass through
suffering before entering into His glory ; and then He expounded
to them what the Bible revealed concerning Himself. Again in
the evening of the same day He appeared in the midst of the
disciples in Jerusalem and explained the necessity of the suffer
ing, death and resurrection, so that through the disciples the
Gospel might be preached to all nations and the way of salvation
made known to men through repentance and the forgiveness of
sins. Again, Paul took up the same theme in the Jewish syna
gogue at Thessalonica, teaching the Jews the necessity of the
sufferings of Christ and His Resurrection ; and, the apostle Peter
in his letter reveals this thought that it was the Spirit of Christ
in the prophets which led them to testify to "the sufferings of
Christ and the glory that should follow." These are examples
of the teaching of Christ, of the apostles, and of the testimony
of the prophets, and they all agree in this that the way of suffering
is the way of salvation. It is not a question of purpose and
design only ; it is one of personal experience by Christ ; and it
is the unanimous testimony of all true Christians, that follow
Christ in His Spirit, that this is the way to the heavens and to
glory. It is important, therefore, for the true interpretation of
the Scriptures that this great truth should never be forgotten;
and it is equally necessary to remember that the conceptions of
the disciples as to a visible redemption from Rome, the Earth and
its powers, was not the ideal in the kingdom of grace. From
the day of Abel to the day of Christ, and onward through the
spiritual kingdom of Christ in Christendom, the same supreme

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 255
law of suffering through persecution is regnant ; it is what dis
ciples ought to expect ; and if they are found reigning in earthly
things it is time for them to consider whether they are true dis
ciples, or renegades, from the faith ; and, it may even be perse
cutors of those who are true disciples. The truth, therefore, that
is found of chief importance in the Bible is this, that the heavens
are subject to the earth, even as Christ humbled Himself, became
subject and permitted the earth and the earthly powers to put
him to death ; and all His followers, prophets, apostles, martyrs,
saints and disciples, are all following Him in the same way of
suffering and of sorrow. The disciples are not above their Master,
nor the servants greater than their Lord ; as a matter of scientific
order this is so ; and the law is that, in a sense revealed by Christ,
the heavens and the heavenly are subject to the earth and the
earthly. It is here that the testimony of science becomes valu
able ; it will not listen to, neither will it accept, the sophistries
of the devil, the flesh, or what is sensuous ; these are the relations
and the conditions of the realm of grace by which there is re
demption, and it is for men to make their Hfe consistent with
these relations if they would be Christians in deed and in truth.
It is quite true that this aspect of Bible truth may not seem to
have any connection with evil in the unconscious physical or
psychical worlds ; but, it is well to remember that the Bible
and science are far-reaching in their conceptions, and thus the
question will arise, and it is worth studying, What if there is an
analogous unconscious spiritual realm where the same facts exist,
and where there is spiritual unconsciousness, or semi-conscious
ness ? Indeed, though this conception may not be recognised in
this particular form ; it is really a truth recognised by science,
and by the Bible ; the work of the heavens for the regeneration
of the earth is through all the stages of Hfe unconscious, semi
conscious, and conscious. The teaching of the Bible is that the
generations of the heavens are fulfilled by Christ ; in Him they
are summed up and become Man ; and the new departure by the
Spirit of Christ and of Truth is not a new kingdom, it is the bring
ing in of the same realm into mankind so that men and nations
may be redeemed by the same method of Hfe ; the chief difference
being that the Man has become regnant in Grace and thus able
to convey, by His Spirit in spiritual power, the grace and truth
that was in Himself as man upon the earth.
There is another and still wider means by which men can try

256 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
to see into the heart of this subject. It has been assumed that
the Spirit of God reveals an ideal design or purpose of grace in
the world for the salvation of men from the powers of evil ; and
that this work has been actually carried on in men even whilst
they have been in a state of subjection to evil powers in the earth
and in their souls. It has been further conceived that Christ,
the Ideal, actually as Man made manifest in Himself this design
and purpose of the Spirit. He was Spirit endowed without limit
for this great work ; and having accompfished the work of grace
in the Kingdom of Grace, the Spirit became the Power of God
to make that work spiritually effectual in mankind. The aspect
from whence the problem may now be considered is that of the
Divine purpose in Love. With all reverence, and in the fear of
God, it would seem as if men were permitted to inquire what the
Heart of God has to say upon this subject. If, for example, the
principles of being are considered, they rise from Power, Life,
Spirit, Mind, Intellect, Morals and Grace to Sacrifice, the re
nunciation of self, and this is Love. Greater love than this is not
conceivable that a man give his life to save a friend's life ; but
God commendeth His Love to men in this form, that He gives
His Life and His Love for those who are rebel enemies, and who
actually pierced His Heart of Love when they pierced the Heart
of Christ upon the Cross. The order of involution in man from
the Heart of God runs thus : Love, the Love that gives all, is in
Christ as sacrifice ; it is grace in becoming subject to what is in a
state of darkness, night and rebelfion ; it is goodness in bestowing
blessings upon creatures so unworthy ; it is wisdom to those
who would make this gift the means of subtle cunning and evil
doing ; it is the light of knowledge, as a store in the soul, to those
who would change that light into the darkness of ignorance and
evil deeds ; it is a spirit to see, know and understand, what would
become rebellious, arrogant and sinful ; it is life to form a body
as a temple within which all these powers might dwell ; and
power, force of body and mind, to carry on those works which
would be for the glory of the man, the creature of God. All these
thoughts are involved in the thought of creation ; all these gifts
are God's gifts, not of goodness only, but of grace and of sacrificing
Love. Is it possible to apprehend in any real sense all that this
means ? This thought has to be kept in view that there was the
possibihty of man perverting all these gifts and turning them
against the Giver. Here it is necessary to try to grasp, the

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 257
thought and to keep it constantly in view that the Bible is not
a speculative book ; it is not a book to tell men about the physical
sciences of the creation, of the angels in glory, what the future
reward will be for the good, or what the punishment will be for
the wicked. There maybe hints upon these subjects in parables,
and in other ways, but the theme of the Bible throughout is con
sistently developed in historic organic order, and the story of
creation and the generations of the heavens and the earth have
all to do with man, his Fall, and the means by which mankind
is being redeemed from the powers of evil. This involution, that
has been assumed, is verified by the order of development ; man
is conceived as arising out of Force, Life, Spirit, Mind, Intellect
and a Moral nature ; it is here that the stage of temptation and
trial comes in ; if there is a Fall, God is gracious and merciful ;
and, in Christ there is reconciliation and peace with God. It
must not be forgotten that in all this, in creation, and in the new
creation in Christ, development is in accordance with law ; and
it is in this conception that science is unable to admit the thought
that evil and sin, disorder and disease, death and the grave, are
in harmony with law as the will of God. There is the conception
that in creation the development is to manhood, and man is formed
in the image of God with power to gain knowledge up to the
scientific order that is in the universe ; and to verify this order
as the Will of God or Divine Law. The thought here is that man,
in a sense, becomes the companion of God ; he is good, true,
righteous, with liberty and freedom in harmony with law ; but
he is still a subject even if there is only one law laid upon him
with the obedience that arises out of love. It has to be observed
that in a strange way the relationship that is in the realm of grace
is changed ; the conception being that, out of gracious com
passion and mercy, God condescends to become subject, not
merely to His Own laws, which are good and righteous ; but
to permit men to do as they will ; to take their own way ; and
thus, in the fulness of time even to lay their hands upon His
Beloved Son of Love, and by crucifixion to put Him to death.
In plain words this is the story that men find as a revelation in
the Bible ; and sacrifices of animals, and even of men, among the
heathen, become the symbols of this Grace that gives the Son of
Love for the salvation of the world. Whatever men may think
or say about this subject this is what lies at the heart of Grace ;
it is God as becoming subject to men in His Son, and in His
R

258 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
Spirit ; and' it is this becoming, willing so to act, that is the
mystery of the Gospel. Greater sacrifice than this could not be
conceived ; it is what men have not conceived or truly beheved
all through the ages ; it is a conception almost unknown in Chris
tendom in this special form ; and it is conceivable that it will
take time, a long time, before it can be understood by the masses
of men. The conception that Christ is the Divine Sacrifice
for sin is generally accepted as the central truth of the Gospel ;
but the thought of God's being willing, as a law of His being,
to take the subject position, and to permit men to act as they have
done, does not seem to be so clearly understood ; and, further,
that all believers in God and followers of Christ are practically
to follow the same order and law is a conception of Christianity
that requires careful consideration.
It is necessary to pause here and reflect upon this conception
of God as subject to his own laws, or will, in the realm of Grace,
and try to see in what sense this is to be understood ; and what.
limitations are found to exist in connection with this revelation.
The order of thought is that God, as Being, exists ; and that in a
real and true sense there is no existence or being apart from God.
What Being is men have been led to conclude is the mysterv
that cannot be fathomed : it is in symbol, the Eternal Ineffable
Light, or the Darkness that cannot be entered upon. It pleased
God to reveal Himself, and the first revelation is Heaven, Christ,
the Firstborn, the Archetype of all that has been made manifest.
It is the Spirit that reveals what is in Christ as Spiritual ideal ;
and it is by the Spirit that creation is conceived as order in Light.
All this is pure idealism ; it is a revelation not to be seen by men ;
it is metaphysics in the truest sense ; thoughts to be beheved!
to be received as expressing great truths, but not such truths
as men can reason upon by experience and by induction. These
are the truths, the facts ; they underlie the being of man ; he is
awakened to consciousness, he begins to see.think, reflect, compare
thoughts, correlate thoughts, and thus he enters upon' his heri
tage of knowledge. Experience in the natural order would
ripen into science ; and the meaning of this is that he would realise
that heritage which, it is assumed, man is beginning to enter
upon ; and, as correlated with the knowledge of order by the
intellect the living co-partner is the moral power that conceives
order in the light of law, and law as the Will of God. Subjection
here is not bondage in any sense, it is conformity to, and harmony

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 259
with, the Divine Will. The link that binds the man to God is "that
of conscious love for all that is beautiful, good, true and right.
Such a subjection as this is reasonable in the creature as indivi
dual ; it is the manifestation in man of that Archetype ideal
that is in Christ ; it is the fulfilment of the ideal that is in Him,
In the Creation vision the heaven has attached to it the chaotic
earth; it is the heaven that has to change that chaos into a cosmos ;
to bring out of disorder, order, and out of what was anarchic, law.
The conclusion here is that heaven is order and law ; that by
heaven order and law are to be manifested in the earth ; and,
the same order and law in heaven is to be order and law in the
earth. The heaven, however, is cause and the earth is effect ;
yet as to being they are one in God. Is it the truth then that
heaven and earth are both subject to law 1 Yes, but the
heaven a swill and cause ; the earth as that which has been
willed and is effect : the heaven is divine ; the earth is divine ;
and as divine in order and law, it is subject to heaven and to
God. The earth, or man, as moral or law, becomes lord over
order ; that is to say, man, in the image of Christ, could utilise
the known order even as men of science make electricity, mag
netism, Hght and heat their servants to do their will. To be
subject, therefore, in this sense is not merely conformity to law ;
it means also the power of using order in harmony with the Divine
Will. Christ is conceived as subject, in this sense, as Man ; that
other subjection to evil is not of the same nature ; it is the allow
ing or permitting the earth and the earthly to go to the very
extreme of its perverted, disordered, diseased, distracted folly
and madness ; and to actually go so far as to crucify upon the
earth. Life, Truth, Law, and Divine Love. Never for a moment
is there any abdication of the Divine Government ; this awful
v.ickedness is permitted in Grace, as a lesson to the universe
of the outrageous folly and madness of sin. The order of creation
und of law is not suspended ; but, for a little time, a very little
time in the eternal ages, Grace and Sacrifice are called into being,
and it is this new order and law that are made the means of over
throwing evil and crushing the head of the serpent, by a means
that the earth despises as weakness, foolishness, rebellion against
earthly order, and a religion that is full of superstitions and un
reasonable conceptions. The earth and its order is dia-mag
netic to the heaven and its order ; thus it is in the darkness and
in the night, whilst heaven is in the Hght and in the day. It

260 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
would be a grave mistake to suppose that moral law and Divine
order could be in any sense suspended in their operations ; this
is not so, it is men that are perverted from truth, and turned
against the Divine law of goodness and love, and the results of
this perversion have been repeatedly made manifest upon the
earth. It is well to remember here that the method of Christ,
in the way of development, is that of recurring cycles and of new
beginnings, and these run their course as living realms of thought
producing their heavenly fruits ; or the works of evil that bring
justice, judgment and punishment. This is said to be, when judg
ments overtake men, the strange works of God ; but in reality 1 hey
are the consequences of rebellion and revolt against law ; they are
sinful works, and thus the effects are what men find recorded
in the Bible and in the histories of nations. The conception is noi
that there is an order and law that works for destruction ; but
that the evil effects of sin tend to anarchy, distraction, disorder,
disease and death, and the strange thing is that these should
be found intermingled with the works of God. For example, if
the generations of Adam are considered their works end in de
struction by the Flood ; those of Noah and his sons in confusion ;
those of Shem and Terah in the complete revolt of Babylon and
Nineveh and gross idolatry. In the story of Abraham to Moses
there is recorded the overthrow of Sodom as a judgment from
God and the punishments by the plagues and the destruction of
Pharaoh and his army in the sea. The Desert story is that of
a redeemed people who would not obey God and in their hearts
turned back to Egypt, and the end is death and the graves in the
wilderness. The story of Joshua and Judges is that of those
who inherited the land but did not prize the promises of God
and the Blessing, and the end is bondage under the Philistines.
The story of Samuel and the Kingdom is that of grace rejected ;
the deliberate choice made of the earth and the earthly, and the
end is the captivity in Babylon under the heel of the despotic
tyrant. Another day of grace is given to Israel ; there is a
Restoration, the hope of the Messiah as coming, and His King
dom of Righteousness ; but when He appears Israel knows him,
not; again He is rejected; this time the King is put to shame and
crucified, and the end is the scattering of the Jews upon the
face of the earth. If these judgments are considered in the light
of the method of Christ it will be seen that there is no haphazard
with them ; they are all in the line of development, and the teaching

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 261
they convey to men will show that they will do well to pause
and considsr what these things mean ; bacause, assuredly, whether
it is in the light, or in the darkness, this truth cannot be ques
tioned, it is God that reigns, and the results are grace, mercy,
and peace ; or justice, judgment, condemnation and punish
ment. The order of thought runs thus : 1, Adam, evil and
destruction. 2, Noah and his sons, drunkenness, pride, power,
and vain-glory, confusion. 3, Shem — Terah, Nineveh and Babsl
and all that they represent in spiritual perversion and gross idol
atry ; spiritual death and the grave ; and men are now reading
and studying God's judgments on all such nations. 4, Abraham —
Moses, Sodom and Egypt ; here men may read God's judgments
upon men and nations who follow in the footsteps of such men or
powers ; if men will go to Sodom let them remember that the
doorway of hell is very near, and there may not be any rescuing
angels about to rescue from the pit when the fires of hell break
loose and the Dead Sea covers in oblivion what was so shameful
to men and detested by God. Egypt is with men still ; it is the
earthly as opposed to the heavenly, but the final judgment will
fall upon that power which enslaves and persecutes the people
of God. 5, The Desert and the judgment because of unbelief ;
what does it mean ? Is it not the history of mankind and of all
their intellectual labours ; it is the place of wandering ; it is where
men cannot find a home, or a place of rest and peace ; it is to be
ever seeking for God and Truth and never finding ; and thus
century after century men have lived and died because of their
unbelief and disobedience ; they would not enter in when they
could ; they could not enter when they would ; and this has been
the judgment resting upon ssekers after truth and of a promised
land with all its blessings. 6, Joshua — -Judges ; here the judg
ment is upon what is moral ; man and manhood ; nations, their
laws and their forgetfulness of God, duty, truth, goodness, kind
ness and righteousness ; the end, where these are neglected and
other gods and objects sought after, is anarchy, earthliness,
sensuousness and sensuality. 7, Samuel to the Captivity ; here
the judgment is that upon men and nations who, Esau like, sell
their birthright and despise the blessing ; they lose what they did
not prize ; and they find what they did not expect, that is, when
God's sword of judgment is drawn against those who despise
what is good and blessed, the result is the loss of privileges and
blessings, degradation in the earth, and subjection to worldly

232 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
powers. 8, Restoration to Fall of Jerusalem. This is - the
judgment upon the Jews ; they had not only received a Kingdom
Of Grace ; those restored to their land and privileges had received
the special training that comes through persecution, sorrow,
trial and oppression. They willed to despise the heavenly ;
they earnestly sought after the earthly ; they were so infatuated
as to seek safety from destruction from the hand of mighty Rome,
thus they committed the crime of crimes, the sin that is the
darkest on the pages of histor3r ; they were punished, to this day
they are wanderers upon the earth, and, in a sense, the Cain mark
is upon them and they have been treated wherever they have
gone as if they were the murderers of their Brother, Jesus the
Christ. These are terrible lessons to read from the great Book
of Fate ; and men ought to remember that these are Hving lessons
set before them for their careful study. It is not advisable
to open the book that deals with history in Christendom, and
to inquire in what manner the judgments of God have fallen upon
men;, cities, nations, empires and churches. This also is a day of
justice and judgment. God grant that these lessons from the
past may not come too late ; for assuredly by all the signs that are
to be seen around the horizon, the nations of the earth seem
of set purpose to be setting their faces toward the darkness and
night ; this may be the brief hour given for repentance and for
turning to God, for mercy and forgiveness ; and if it is allowed
to drift past, and men and nations will cherish the earthly and
reject the spiritual and the heavenly, then it is to be feared that
the day of justice, judgment, and condemnation will come. If
the judgments have been so terrible upon the Jews who rejected
the Man, then what will it be upon those who have rejected
the Spirit of Christ and that Word which is the message of mercy,
compassion and love from God to sinful men ?
This brief sketch of the judgments of God upon men and nations
as seen in the light of the method of Christ, and in the Hne of
development found in the Bible, requires the careful study of
thoughtful men. It is not one to De lightly passed over ; it
ought not to be discussed as if it were mere guess-work ; with
the evidence supplied it seems hardly possible to be able to doubt
that the method of Christ is revealing Christ, the gracious Will
of God, and also His position as Saviour, Lord and Judge. It
is- remarkable that so many beginnings are found in the Bible ;
that there is orderly development, that the purposes of the

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 263
Heavens are revealed ; and that men have acted as they have done,
not knowing that the record was being kept, the judgments
recorded, and the punishments carried out. It may be suggested
for consideration that although the same clear line of develop
ment cannot be traced in the nations of the East, there are indi
cations in the Bible that thoughtful men will find the same truths
taught as related to their histories, and the justice of God and
judgments that have fallen upon them. The judgment of God by
the Flood ; by the confusion at Babel ; by the spiritual apostasy
into idolatry, are all applicable to the heathen nations that have
turned away from God, truth and righteousness. They als>
have been corrupt of heart and have trusted to their own power,
wisdom and greatness, to keep themselves safe against God's
j udgments ; and in a real and true sense, they have been as wander
ers in the desert of life, and they have not found that better coun
try which their souls have desired. The special thought, how
ever, worthy of consideration is that the judgments fall upon
such nations not at the natural end of their development, but at
the fourth stage, when they ought to have been preparing them
selves for a higher spiritual life. It may be that Hght will be
thrown upon this subject by the study of Joseph in Egypt :
Daniel in Babylon, and Christ among the Jews. Joseph is the
fourth from Abraham ; Daniel is the fourth from Isaiah, and
these take a special position in the Bible as interpreters of dream i
and as rulers and judges. It is not too great a stretch of the
imagination to read the double dream of Pharaoh as a revelation
for that time ; and as a revelation and judgment as to the future ;
because, as is well known, Egypt passed through periods of great
prosperity; and these have been followed by times of adversity;
the full ripeears of harvest have been eaten up by the thin shrunken
ears, and apparently there is no present prospect of national
prosperity for the land of Egypt. It is Daniel, however, in his
interpretation of dreams ; in his position as a ruler and statesman;
and in the visions that he sees that specially lead to the concep
tion that prophets of God are not limited to Israel ; and that the
judgments they utter upon nations are not to be despised or ex
plained away. To Daniel it was given to see the judgments of God
upon Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome ; and to bear testimony
as to the coming of the Kingdom of Messiah that would destroy
»11 other powers and succeed to universal dominion. In the
case of Christ, the spiritual power of interpretation and of

264 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
foreseeing; of seeing truly and spiritually, and of predicting judg
ments upon the Jews and upon the world are also well known ;
thus Joseph and Daniel may be conceived to be types of Christ
in Egypt and Babylon in the earth, and as the servants and
judges of God among heathen nations.
The remarks that have been made upon this question of sin,
disorder, disease and death, may not lead men much further
toward the light of truth which they desire to attain ; this how
ever, has to be realised that the subject is not one that can be
disposed of easily ; and that those who treat it lightly, or from
one stand point, that of unbelief, have not begun to give the
matter that grave and conscientious study it requires. The
position of science ought to be that of the growing conviction
that order and law as the Will of God are ever good, true, right
and gracious ; they are light not darkness, and day, not night.
It is to be granted that evil, in a sense, is found in the lower
creation ; it is to be found in man in the low stage of develop
ment where there is no consciousness, or semi-consciousness ;
and it is found in the Bible in the analogous stages of develop
ment. Men expect that these facts will be explained in some
way, and thus they are unwilling to conclude that no light can at
present be thrown upon this subject by science. The real difficulty
may be that men are unfit to study this subject; they are unable
to conceive the depths into which it enters ; they are impatient
to get a solution that they can understand ; and they are apt to
forget that the Fall with all its consequences, is found to move
round this problem as the centre of all their inquiries. It is
plain that children, or those in that stage of development, are
unable to deal with this problem ; if they will put out their hands,
take and eat what they cannot digest, they will suffer ; if they do
so when warned against an act so foolish and fatal, then the
results cannot be open eyes to see truth, open ears to hear the
voice of God, or the reception of divine wisdom and power. AH
this is plain enough ; these are matters of human experience,
and men may as well expect grapes to grow upon thistles as ex
pect that out of disobedience and self-seeking, men are going to
find pleasure and happiness. In this matter as in many others,
the experiences of men are not false and wrong, but true and
right ; science does not contradict experience, it simply look*
at the subject from other points of view, and there is agreement
with what experience has found to be true.

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 265
As has been suggested Good and Evil are conceived to be the
relations as to what is true and false, right and wrong. But
the question may be asked, is not God, the Good ? He is ; and
He is also the Almighty Power, Life, Spirit, Wisdom, Truth,
Righteousness and Grace, only these are related ultimates attri
buted to the Ultimate Being God the Good. The Good might be
conceived as the Moral character of God in the sense that all His
attributes are good ; the order in which they are made manifest
is good ; and the laws, as conceived by man, by the order in
science is good. The tendency of science and divine wisdom is
to confirm such a conception because men have been led to think
of the Divine Being as Good ; and of all law, as scientific order,
as good and as the revealed Will of God. To be able to get hold
of these two conceptions, and to see clearly what they mean
is to get upon a Rock of Truth that cannot be moved ; true it is
built upon faith in the Invisible, but it actually goes on to declare
the righteousness of God, that is His Moral Being. On the other
hand let the study be man and his thoughts and actions ; the
conclusion from the standpoint of science and Divine Wisdom,
is that man is not good, not like God, not true and gracious. God
is Being ; man is as derived being from God, meant to be in the
likeness of God, capable of reflecting His glory ; and instead the
history of mankind is that of evil, evil continually, full of de
ception and falseness, of wrong-doing and unrighteousness ;
men ought to have been gracious, merciful, and kind, they have
been ungracious, merciless and full of unkindness. The uniting
links betwixt God and men have been faith and love ; men have
snapt these asunder ; and, because of this sunderance men have
become God repellent and full of repellent influences against one
another. These truths, with which men are famifiar, are termed
relations ; that is how God is related to men ; how men are related
to God and to each other ; and it is the wrong relations, the per
versions and unrighteousness that are so remarkable in men.
The assumption here is that God is Being, good, true, righteous,
gracious and forgiving ; man is derived being from God, there
fore, he ought to be like God in his nature. If men were only
Hke the lower creatures then the question of evil could not be
raised ; it is because they are endowed with intellectual power and
a moral nature, in other words have free-will to think and com
pare thoughts reasonably, freedom to deliberate and choose what
they conceive to be true, and liberty to act according to

266 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
conscience, that they are men . Here then is the crux of the question;
if men were not thus endowed they would not know evil or sin ;
it is therefore the Godlike in them that protests against sin ;
and if they will not listen to that voice they have become wilfing
to forfeit the spiritual inheritance and blessing, so that they may-
retain freedom to degrade themselves to the level of the subtle
serpent. God says that to be so endowed constitutes manhood
and God-likeness ; men who deny free-will, freedom and liberty,
declare that they have revolted against such a conception ; and
thus unwittingly their prayer to God is that they may be deprived
of manhood, and be degraded to the level of the beast. Science
and wisdom openly declare that such men cannot have it both
ways ; if they side with science and wisdom they must stand
upon God's side ; if not they are ignorant and foolish, they degrade
themselves and are not worthy to be called men.
This position is one that agnostics and sceptics have not con
sidered to the full extent that they ought ; they have evidently
been caught by a swelling wave of earthly naturalism ; they have
too readily assumed that science was upon their side, and that
they alone were the true interpreters of science. This, however,
is not the true position, the problem is a much wider one than
they suppose ; and thus their naturalistic conceptions have
failed them in the day of Christ, when the light of His method of
thought is cast upon their philosophies. The matter to be settled
now is not whether men will permit Christ's Name to be men
tioned as the Lord of Truth, and try to shut Him out of their
colleges, associations, societies, and universities ; but, whether
they are to be branded as men who do not know, revere, or love,
Truth ; men who are self-asserting, self-conceited and self-willed,
who, when the Truth is revealed to them, turn aside, and will
to choose not to hear, receive, obey, and love the Truth. This is
where evil and sin may be found ; men made in the likeness of
God, endowed with power to know what is true, and to do what
is right may turn the light of truth into darkness, and the day
of God into night. It will not do for men to say, we have al
ready considered and decided what our position is as related
to this matter ; we will not accept any mystical, or metaphysical
interpretation of nature that may be brought to us ; we are deter
mined not to re-open this question, therefore, be it false or true,
heavenly or earthly, we will have nothing to do with it. For
the sake of argument it is thus assumed that men who love

THE PROBLEMS OP SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 267
scientific truth and would die for it, could choose to take up this
position, simply because they are agnostics and sceptics ; then if
they will try to conceive it to be possible that they are wrong
what would their position be in the light of scientific truth and
divine wisdom ? The position seems to take this shape ; these
men, as scientific thinkers and teachers, have been specially
favoured ; they have entered into a great heritage wherein the
light of truth is shining as it never shone before in all past ages ;
they have been received into the ante-chamber of the Eternal
King, and He has been pleased to bestow upon them His gracious
favour in permitting them to find and follow the great highways
of truth that lead to the Divine Presence. There cannot be any
question as to the intellectual power to discern truth, and so to
correlate thoughts as to see where they lead ; this light is light
from Heaven ; and it is impossible for men who understand
what science truly means to make any mistake here. Scientific
truth is spiritual truth, therefore, the men who see scientific
order and law do see, even if they do not perceive, the thoughts
of God. Let it be assumed that men, thus privileged, brought
so very near to God, with their feet upon the threshold of the
promised blessed inheritance, choose to cherish the spirit of un
belief, and in their hearts turn back to the sensuous, the natural
and the earthly, why this would be the worst example that one
could conceive of that perversity of spirit that has been in mankind
all down the ages. Men are familiar with the story of Israel
in the Desert ; they have heard how Jews and Galatians turned
back into Judaism ; they may even think of Christendom as per
verted and rebellious, and as still wandering in a spiritual desert
where no resting place is to be found ; but to think of men who
have actually conversed with the angels of God about the goodly
land ; who have enjoyed the first-fruits of the heavenly country,
as turning back in their hearts, is what is scarcely conceivable ; the
soul revolts against the thought ; it cries for light not darkness ;
and to permit the soul to be subjected to darkness after such
light is not endurable. Yet this seems to be the true meaning of
evil and sin ; it is to be found in the form of man and endowed
with manhood ; and in this exalted, privileged position to choose
what pleases self instead of what pleases God ; to assert the will
of self against the will of God ; this is self-idolatry, it is to worship
and glorify self instead of worshipping, serving, and glorifying
God ; it is .ego-centricism and earth centralisation, as compared

268 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
with God as central and the universe as centre and circumference
of the Divine Will of God as law. Could a worse form of sin and
evil be conceived than this ? It is not here a question of parable
and of false conceptions about a Visible Church upon the earth ;
the thought is that men had been actually engaged in clearing
out the foundations and preparing the living stones that were
to be used for the building of the Eternal House of God that is
Heavenly ; and it never occurred to them that they were engaged
in building the Palace and Temple of God upon the earth. They
were engaged in what is good, the revealing of the thoughts of
God ; they were discovering the Ideal that is in the Son of God ;
they were studying how that Ideal was made manifest in
the thoughts of the Spirit ; and they were walking in the foot
steps of the Spirit in discovering the spiritual order that lies
behind all phenomena and verifying the same to be the Will of
God as law. This would be conceivable as evil incarnate for
such men to deny, or doubt the Being of God ; to reject the Ideal
that is in Christ ; to question whether there is a Spirit of God
and spiritual design and purpose ; and to declare that God cannot
reveal Himself, or be found in His creation in Nature and in Man.
This would be to choose the darkness as preferable to light ;
to seek after false reasoning as better than scientific truth ; and
to assert that man is wiser, more just, and more truly altruistic
than the God of Grace, Mercy, Compassion, and Self-Sacrificing
Love. It is such thoughts as these that are found to be involved
in the problem of evil and of sin ; the further men advance into this
maze the less they like its appearance ; and, in a sense, the more
complex it becomes. There is an attitude of the question which
seems not to be explicable by men in their present condition ;
and it is difficult to see in what way light can be thrown upon it
so that science might reconcile what has taken place in the order
of development. The attitude of science toward order is not
difficult of apprehension ; the realms are defined and their order
is studied, tbe laws are conceived, and thus the unity and har
mony of creation can be followed. It is not so when the attempt
is made to think upon nature and man as perverted, as chaos,
and as not subject to the Divine order as discerned by the law
of development ; and there is found in them what men have con
ceived as evil. This matter has already been referred to in the state
of the lower creation as existing in past millenniums, and as stiU

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 269
found to exist upon the earth ; and it may well he asked whether
it is wise for men to break their pinions against the bars of this
cage out of which they have not received permission to pass.
Men have formed an ideal of what the creation ought to be in its
order ; they descend into the lower parts of the earth in nature,
in man, and in the Bible ; in these they find what is not in har
mony with their conceptions ; the too common judgment is that
in some way God has caused this evil to come ; and that it would
be more God-like if it were abofished. It cannot be said that men
have been reticent, modest, reverent, or sufficiently careful,
in expressing their thoughts upon such a difficult subject ; they
have been too ready to jump to conclusions, and they have too
often expressed their views as if they knew all about such matters.
What men find is that nature, man and the Bible may be said
to be surrounded by the same environment ; the good is there,
as discerned by science, but the evil is also there, seen and felt
by experience. Is science a trustworthy guide here ; or must
the verdict of experience be taken against science because the
evidence is not in harmony with the facts ? — Are men prepared
to go back to the Ptolemaic astronomy, or to the testimony of
the senses, as against the scientific conceptions of astronomers
of the present day as to the movements in the heavens ? Not
so ; they see in what way experience judges by appearances ;
and the Ptolemaic astronomers empirically ; and they would not
for a moment think of turning back from science to experience.
There is the old conception of a six-day creation by fiat, and the
new conception of creation by development in ways never con
ceived by men in pre-scientific days. Are men prepared to go
back to the old symbol theory, because there are still difficulties
that cannot be explained ? That is not the way of science, it
advances, takes possession, conquers and subdues all opponents
in the way ; and if an unusual difficult problem arises, then it
is permitted to stand apart until the Hght increases, and there
is sufficient light found to face the problem anew. Surely this
is in harmony with divine wisdom, and it is how men have ever
been taught by the Spirit of God ; what is not explicable in this
series of development, this cycle of thought, or this century of
time, may be made known when the greater Light appears ;
and even if there are a few subjects too great for men to study
and understand that is no reason why they should not try to
understand what is waiting to be studied. One thought comes

270 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
to the surface at this stage in this form : men are by the very
nature of their being, and their environment, limited in their
conceptions ; they are in a world that is a fallen moral world ;
therefore, in the nature of things, they think as men do think
under such conditions ; and they cannot think in the same order,
at the present time as it is possible unfallen angels are supposed
to do. As nature is found to be by man, so man is trained to
think ; it is not a question of the dia-magnetism of man only.
for the earth and the earthly are conceived by him as in the
same order. Whilst this is true it can also be conceived that
the dia-magnetism is beginning to pass away because science has
asserted faith in God, as the Author of order and law ; hope
that the ideal exists because men are discerning that this must
be so ; patience to pursue and to wait, because the plan,
purpose, and design of creation and the new creation is being
sketched out before their eyes ; and what they see is that at
the root of all, and as the fruit of all, it is the love of God that its
being made manifest before men.
Men look upon nature and they see what they think is ab
normal in the fact that creatures seem to be cruel and destroy
each other ; they see in themselves a great conflict betwixt what
is of the flesh, sensuous and physical as compared with what
is altruistic and spiritual ; they look upon society and the nations
and the story is the same : pride and power, hatred and cruelty,
seem to prevail ; it is the covetous and greedy that gather wealth,
and the powerful study how to retain power ; thus the weak fail
by the way and the poor have to struggle to get daily bread
that they may live. It can hardly be questioned that upon the
surface, in the Old Testament, the same conditions exist ; men are
as in the. midst of a maelstrom of evil, and, do what they may,
they seem unable to get out of it ; they are drawn into the fierce
eddying current, and they go down, for the end is death and
the grave ; and to the vision of sense, there is no resurrection
from the dead, and no eternal life. Under such conditions it
is very difficult for men to live the life of faith, to see God, the
Invisible, and with a great hope in the heart, patience in the
spirit, and love in the soul, to go forward, turning neither to the
right hand nor to the left, but keeping the heart responsive
to the heavenly magnetism. This is the wonder of the ages
that such men have been found upon the earth ; they have lived
within the realm of the natural ; but they have not been earthly

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 271
and subject to the earth, and the evidence produced by men
fully confirms the testimony of the Bible. What men have
reafised is that upon the earth they have had a choice as betwixt
two lives that they could possibly live ; the lower being the natural,
sensuous and earthly ; the higher being spiritual and heavenly ;
the earthly men seek what is of the earth and what will contribute
to pleasure, profit and power ; whilst the heavenly men cherish
a higher ideal and are represented as seeking a better country,
and as alive unto God by- faith. The men of the earth prize
what the earth can give ; the men of the Heavens cannot satisfy
themselves with what is earthly and they are conscious of this
great truth ; thus they seek after an ideal even though they may
not be able to explain clearly what that ideal is, or in what way
they are to find it. There are many ways in which these con
ceptions may be illustrated, but, perhaps, the simplest and the
plainest, what men cannot misunderstand, is that of self-seeking
and of self-will, as opposed to seeking after truth, what is right,
and what is conceived to be the Will of God. These are the op
posite poles toward which the spirits of men move ; either they
are God repellent and earth attracted, or they are divinely
magnetised with the inward desire to aspire after the higher life
and God-likeness. The difficulty for men is to get a true and
right conception of God, because much will depend in the aspiring
life upon the Ideal that is cherished in the soul. For example, a
practical man, guided by experience, may cherish the conception
that God is the Creator ; that He is good, true, righteous, merci
ful ; and the highest that the man knows is that this light that
shines upon his pathway is meant to lead him on the way to God.
Many men have conceived the thought that to seek truth and
to follow the pathway where truth leads is the way to seek for and
to find God ; and those who are intellectual seek God by this path
way. Others thit;k they have a higher ideal, they are ethical and
good, moral, thus to them the highest ideal is the moral life, what is
true, right and altruistic, because this is the known Will of God
as men can read the same in history, and in the lives of men
and in the soul. Those who feel more acutely the evil of sin and
fail to see how truth or righteousness can save men, seek to find
a way toward God by sacrifice, and this is the true idea that
underlies religions built upon sacrifice ; a Saviour and Mediator
is required, and by this way there is reconciliation and peace
with God. There is a still higher ideal ; it is that of a spiritual

272 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
religion that rises above what is sensuous ; then the man comes
to God by Christ, through the Spirit ; there is a spiritual world
in which the spirit of man can live ; and it is in this realm that
there is spiritual and eternal life. This conception can be en
larged in many ways, the object here, however, is not to show
the many ways in which the higher life can be lived ; but to
indicate that God, the Father, has many ways of calling His
children home to Himself ; and that men ought to be careful
when they think upon such matters not to set themselves up as
judges in the great Kingdom of God. Doubtless, such views as
these will be rejected as not Christian, and as giving a latitude
and longitude for faith that is not conceivable by orthodox people
belonging to any religion ; but the point here is not what religious
people think but what would God have men understand upon
this subject ? What men find in the Bible is that there is one
way back to God, that is by faith, by listening to the Voice of God
and obeying His Will ; it is that every son of Adam, child of Noah,
descendant of Shem, child of faithful Abraham, or follower of Christ,
when they hear, respond, turn round, seek God,obey His Voice, and
take the straightest and nearest known possible way home. It
is not that the son of Adam and of Abraham, and all the rest,
are to set out on a journey to seek and find a visible Christian
church, as the one doorway, and from that point begin the heavenly
life, because there is only one visible road in which men may
tread, and only one gateway to enter the heavenly temple. What
God teaches in the Bible is that His mercy, His promises, gifts,
blessings, and covenants, are never cancelled by Him ; they are
all Yea and Amen in Christ, and whatever the latest development
may be, all His children are equally welcome to enter with bold
ness into His Society and join His friends in His house, there
to enjoy what He has provided for their welfare. This was an
aspect of truth that the Jews could not understand ; thus they
said that the only way to God was by Judaism ; and it is to be
feared that many Christians have not laid to heart that parable,
for they seem to assert that the way of Salvation is only by the
door of the visible Christian Church. Just as Romans and Greeks,
barbarians, bond and free, were able to become Christians, with
out first becoming Jews, so the individuals of every nation and
people upon the face of the earth are free, by the free Gift from
heaven, to accept the Message of Salvation in Christ, and they
will become freemen in His House of many mansions on the earth

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 273
and in the Heavens. It is a mistake of the gravest kind for
men to suppose that God gives to them an inheritance, a spiritual
endowment, and channels of grace, by which He Hmits His
gracious influences, as subject to their wise or their foofish
administration of what is entrusted to them. This is not so ;
it is the Holy Spirit that, through all the ages, in all forms of
churches, has been the Regenerator ; and, as matter of fact,
as amply proved by the Bible, the servants left in charge of God's
House, for administrative purposes, have been unfaithful ser
vants, who have not known, nor obeyed, their Lord's Will. This
it would seem is one of the sternest of lessons that the servants
of Christ have to learn ; their danger has ever been that of per
mitting the earth spirit to enter in and take possession of the
House of God ; and it is to be feared that the servants of the
Lord, in the Christian Church, have been Hke their brethren
in Judaism, and in other religions.
This subject may be studied from another standpoint, and
the attempt can be made to try to conceive how this appears
when looked at from the spiritual attitude of the Kingdom of
God and of the Heavens. Men can know by studying the Bible
what has been the Hne of development in the earth ; it is because
this pathway of God is open to them, and the Hght shining upon
it, that they can reverse their order of thought, and put in syn
thesised order what they have already analysed and put in order.
If the pilgrim has in his pilgrimage, in the night and day, kept
in view the hills of God and the land toward which he has been
journeying, and having reached that point where his pathway
can be surveyed by spiritual vision, may he not sit down and
rest and in imagination think upon and reason about, all he has
seen on the way ? The pilgrimage of Hfe, in the heavenly and
spiritual sense, leads to God ; and it is the conceptions gained in
the way that is the material out of which the pilgrim will try
to think about the Kingdom and House of God, and what they
mean. At any stage in the journey, this kind of looking back
as a means of instruction is valuable ; and it is very different from
turning back in heart and retracing the steps toward the earthly.
When the hills of God are reached, then it is well to survey the
past and thus try to discover what God means by experience,
education, special guidance, and by particular messages received
at intervals during the journey. This is where Abraham stood
after the sacrifice of Isaac, the beloved son; this is where

274 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
the Lord of angels and of men communed with Moses and Elias
about the sacrifice upon Calvary ; and as He talked with them
He was trarsfigured and the hidden glory in His Person was
made manifest. In plain words, when this stage of thought
is reached, and the fundamental conception of God is studied,
what men see is rot the Hght of truth, righteousness, or grace;
it is the Altar of Sacrifice ; and the offering upon that Altar is
the Heart of God. Is this possible % Is there any other inter
pretation of the facts of Revelation in the Bible that will explain
what it contains ? Is there any other solution that will break
the heart of man, make him ashamed of his evil ways and will
so magnetise his spirit that he will cling to the feet of God in Christ,
as if only there, and when held by the power of God, is salvation
possible 1 It is this self-sacrificing love, as the very Heart of
God, that is the greatest of all revelations ; the beloved disciple
caught the shadow of the thought when he wrote the memorable
words, " God so loved the World, that He gave His only begotten
Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should rot perish, but have
everlasting life." The sacrifice, as HviDg thought, lay behind
Christ in the Heart of God ; it is Christ as the Word that em
bodies the thought ; and as the Ideal, it is the Heart of His Heart.
It is no less the Heart of God when the Spirit of God reveals the
Ideal, the purpose and the Design found in the way of salvation ;
and it does not cease to be the Heart of God when the Spirit in
volves God as All in all in the new creation. It is here that the
Love of the Father is made manifest, and if men were not blind
they would see it written in letters of blood, and of heavenly
golden love throughout the new creation in Christ in its develop
ment. Assuming it to be a great truth that there are holy angels
in the Heavens who never sinned, what must they think of this
Httle world, but that in a special sense it is now radiant with the
glory of God as the place where He was sacrificed for His dis
obedient, rebelfious children ? Astronomers have placed upon
this earth, in symbol, the Cross ; the angels would say that the
whole cosmos of earth is an altar because it embodies this con
ception of God that He is love, as Sacrifice, for the sins of His
children. How strange it is that the children have not under
stood this mystery, and that they should require so much teaching
before they are able to receive this Divine truth ; but surely
this also is what might have been expected, because, all through
the ages they have been in this matter opposed to God, in their

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 275
self-conceit and self-seeking, and thus only by signs, symbols,
figures and Divine teaching have they been able to rise to the
conception that this may possibly be the true explanation of
what God is for His creation ; His creatures ; and His sinful
children. If then this truth is laid upon the Altar of Sacrifice in
God, where is there any argument which men can use reasonably
to show that God in any true sense willeth that evil should exist ;
that sin, disorder, disease and death are in harmony with His
will as order and law ? It is necessary to repeat here that it is
useless for men to enter this realm of thought by the way of
experience, or of empiricism ; the light of science must precede
the enquirer into these truths as revealing order and law ; and
the method of Christ must be followed even to the footstool
of God and to the Throne of Grace ; and, when the eyes are raised
to that Throne, to the Heart of it, there will be seen One like
" a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes,
which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth."
This conception of God, as Divine Sacrifice in Love, requires
eareful study ; it is a thought to be pondered upon in the heart,
and not to be put into the rigid form of dogma or doctrine as
a truth discovered by the intellectual power of man. It is a light
that may reflect light, in this sense, that the observers may well
be conceived as saying, " If God in His Being, at the very Heart
of Being, is like this, then what about sinful creatures redeemed
and regenerated by such a Love ? " Are they like Him, or are
they Hke His Image as revealed in Christ His Beloved Son ?
Upon this mountain top Abraham heard the vo:ce of God and
these were the words uttered : " By Myself have I sworn, saith
the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not
withheld thy son, thine only son ; that in blessing I will bless
thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the
heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore ; and thy
seed shall possess the gate of his enemies ; and in thy seed shall
all the nations of the earth be blessed ; because thou hast obeyed
My voice." This is the fruit of Sacrifice, it is living faith, a
great hope, a patient enduring struggle and the end blessing in
love ; it is Grace, abundant blessing, mercy and peace, to men
and to mankind. It is quite true that all these blessings come
through Christ, the Grace of God ; but, in Abraham they are
promises given to faith ; in the Mount of the Lord these things are
to be seen ; and in His Grace, the Lord will see and provide all
s 2

276 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
the gracious blessings that His children need. These visions upon
the Mount of God are special in this sense, that they are Divine ;
they are mystic visions of great truths that have to do with
God and with His purpose of Salvation for mankind. Here men
ought to veil their faces ; they are in a region where Father and
Son are Co-workers with the Spirit for the redemption of the
world ; and neither in Sacrifice, nor in Grace have they a position
that they can claim ; because they cannot be, in the same sense,
Sacrifice and Grace, as Divine and Heavenly, for the redemption
of fallen humanity. Men conceive God as Law-giver; Moral
Governor and Judge ; as Good, Holy and Righteous, and in all
this they judge truly. But this conception of God, as will be seen,
is different from that which is embodied in sacrifice ; as the Good
He is Love, and to be loved by those who are blessed by His
goodness ; but, failing love in response to love and goodness,
and instead of love, hatred and rebelHon against the wiU and
laws of God, then, surely men can see that the thought of God
as lawgiver, Governor and Judge, is not one that men can meet
with light hearts and joyous feet. What God is as Judge toward
those who harden their hearts and will not repent of their sins
has been explained in the light of the Bible and of development
and thus further remarks upon this point are not necessary.
It is worthy of notice that when Christ came as Man, and Saviour,
this aspect of Truth was not manifested in His Hfe ; He studiously
avoided taking any action that was moral, governmental, judi
cial ; for the time this form of authority was put aside ; He was
one with His brethren as subject to moral law ; and it was by
those who were the administrators of law and justice that He
was unjustly, and contrary to law, condemned and put to death.
As life, moral and spiritual, Christ was the revelation of God as
Truth ; He was the Light shining in the darkness, and the dark
ness, being dia-magnetic to light even the Hght of Divine Truth,
did not understand ; and the judge that condemned the Man
petulantly asked the question, " What is Truth 1 " Christ's
mission to earth was that of a Witness of Truth ; all men who
have loved the truth have heard His voice ; for the simple reason
that all truth is His Word uttered in the souls of men. There
is a spirit of truth and a spirit of error ; they are opposed to each
other ; and it is impossible that they can be reconciled. It is
at this stage that Christ as Truth enters humanity ; not in the
state as ruler, or upon the bench as judge, but as Truth for the

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 277
very definite purpose that men may become lovers of truth so
that may become righteous. The root of evil in men Hes here ;
the devil of self, as estranged from God by sin, is from the very
beginning both murderer and liar ; being perverted, men lie in
thought, word and deed ; and they do not hear the word of God,
because they do not know or love God truly. This is the funda
mental fact as to truth and error ; and this is one of Christ's
great works among men, as they will understand when they come
to know His method of truth. He cuts the tree down to the very
root ; He convicts all men as sinners ; and He challenges all men
to bring against Him any charge of sin. This must be so ; and
the time has come to face this problem ; nay, it is already settled
by science, His servant, a true judge and divider, and the judgment
is that Christ is Truth, in a sense, and, to a Divine extent, far
exceeding the conceptions of men. This thought follows, that
Christ as Truth is also the revelation of what Truth has suffered
at the hands of men ; the Jews would have stoned Him, and
the Roman judge condemned Him to the cross of Shame, Suffer
ing and Sacrifice. Here again men are required to think truly ;
to place their thoughts as they are truly related and correlated ;
the Truth of God is revealed in and by Christ ; and it is impossible
for men to reach the truth unless they become the disciples of
Christ. It is truth that nourishes the souls of men ; this is the
heavenly food ; thus it is utterly useless to cry for earthly flesh
and to devour it greedily ; it is what comes from Heaven that is
true bread for salvation and nourishment in what is spiritual.
What is the Desert and the quail flesh but the life that is earthly ;
if men would live in truth, then the food they require must be
Divine, what has been sent from Heaven and revealed in Christ,
the Bread of Life.
These are examples of that perverse miserable condition in
which men are found : it is science, and the Voice of Christ that is
awakening them to consciousness ; they are convicted of sin against
Truth ; they have outraged moral law, justice and judgment
in the earth ; they have despised Grace and the Lord of Grace ;
and by these things it has been made manifest that God has
suffered, as a true and wilUng sacrifice at the hands of wicked
men. All these things have taken place in the realms of truth
and moral order, in the Kingdom of Grace and of Divine Sacrifice,
and the evil-doers have been men, created in the image of God,
endowed with manhood and thus able to attain to divine

278 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
knowledge. In all these things God is the Sufferer and Sacrifice
on account of sin, and these are the worlds in which men live
and have their being. The next thought in order is that God
had prepared for man a temple, a body, in which he might dwell ;
and for Himself that great temple of nature which reveals His
wisdom and power. In the first, the man was to dwell, not
alone, but as in a temple where the light of the glory of God
might be conceived and made manifest ; and in that temple
the man would have been privileged to converse with God and
thus come to know the glory, goodness and love of God. This
is something like the creation ideal ; and God gave to man His
blessing, gave him the heritage of the earth as his portion ; and
entrusted him with all these precious gifts that he might rule oyer,
and govern them, subdue what was wrong, and thus be the vice
gerent of God in the earth. The Fall means the overthrow,
the destruction of this ideal ; the mind, heart, or soul of man
became a dark place where the face of God could not be seen ;
where order could not be traced, and where law could not be
found. When the light of science is thrown in upon the soul,
at the present time, by psychologists, mental and physiological,
they are found to agree that this realm is the darkest within which
seekers after truth are found to labour ; their work is Hke that of
excavation ; and thus all kinds of opinions have been expressed
upon this subject. That the soul was meant to be a place of
light, life, order and law, wiU not be questioned by those who
are capable of entering into this very complex problem ; they
will confess that it is not what men think it ought to be ; that it
possesses marveUous, mystic, inherited, and attained' powers,
and that there is the strangest blending of light and darkness,
of good and evil within its spiritual capacity. The Lord, who
searches and knows the heart and soul and knows all about its
constitution, has explained that it is the centre seat of evil ; that
it is full of lusts and evil desires, and what issues from it is evil
thoughts, hatred, murder and every form of wickedness; it is
where the devil is said to have his seat of authority ; and those
who are his willing subjects serve him by disowning and dishon
ouring God. The forms of thought into which these conceptions
are cast may be named parable or allegory ; but they express the
facts as men have seen and felt them, and thus they are to be
taken as giving the truest psychical explanation that is within the
range of the thoughts of men. In this realm the spirit reigns,

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 279
or may be supposed to do so ; but it is with the greatest difficulty
that men can trace the connections that exist betwixt the spirit
and the soul. By the light of science a little Hght has been
thrown upon the operations of the spirit as in seeing and perceiving
by the special senses ; the order can be traced, the relations may
be in a measure defined, but when that which is done in the
light is transmitted into the realm of darkness, then the relations
seem to be lost. The soul is as a dark cave, and thus it is by
what comes out of their hearts that men discover the state of
their souls. The remedy for this has been made known ; it is
the cleansed, enhghtened, renewed heart and soul ; and the
renewal of a spirit that can see truly, thoroughly and purely.
This is what men have long prayed for ; it is the desire of good,
true, gracious men and women ; and yet, in a sense, they remain
in this unhappy condition in which there is constant conflict
and warfare. In the days when men were as little children
and conceived that the way of creation was by divine fiat, it was
pardonable for them to think that this great change, which is
the new creation in Christ, could be carried out in a similar way ;
but now the thought must begin to dawn upon them that this
is not the method of Christ at any time ; it is by the law of devel
opment that all such changes take place ; and this renewal of
spirit and soul may prove to be upon the same lines. The ques
tion may now be asked in what sense all this may be conceived
to be evil, as opposed to the Will of God, and as taking away
from God the glory that is due to Him by every man 1 The
reply must be that this is where the rejection of God is found ;
it is where He is despised and His Name degraded ; it is where
self, or the devil, takes the place of God ; and what ought to be
as Heaven radiant with Divine glory is changed it may be into
a hell where there is contention, strife, hatred, lusting and all
that is evil. In a true and real sense God may be said to become
a continuous sacrifice ; for it is really the Being of God, as being
in man, that is thus made subject to evil where God ought to
reign in love, life, and Hght. This is the psychical vision of
truth so far as it can be discerned by science and wisdom at the
present time ; and men may expect that as the light increases
they will find that the revelation of grace and mercy in
Christ will not make these thoughts less grievous in the
sight of God, or more favourable for men ; but that
the heinousness of the sin wiH be greater, and the utter

280 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
folly of choosing to believe the serpent's lies will have to
be acknowledged.
With reference to the physical world conceived as the temple
of God revealing His wisdom, power and glory, in visible order
and law, the conception is generally admitted that where there
is no consciousness there cannot be any sin. The visible temple
of God, nature in a limited sense, gives to men those forms, ideals,
relations and conditions which in them are translated into images,
ideas and thoughts. Nature is sign and symbol, parable and
allegory, myth and history ; and it is from these as phenomena,
what is ever changing, that men take What becomes psychical
and spiritual. It is not questioned that in the physical realm
there is the appearance of evil, but here science has been more
successful than in the psychical world, and the conviction has been
reached, it may be by many roads, that in ultimate and related
ultimates of thought, evil is not to be found ; that the relations
and conditions, as scientific order, are shut out from the problem
of evil ; and that as law, all that is known is good, true and right
eous. It is not suggested that men of science have solved all
problems as related to matter and energy, Hfe and function ;
but they have travelled over the great highways ; they have
ascended even as to the peak of Pisgah, and the goodly land
has been seen from Dan to Beersheba, and from the great Sea to
the Desert. This is a very large subject to consider, and it may
be one upon which there may be much discussion ; indeed it may
be taken for granted that many scientists have their prejudices,
and, in a sense, they have prejudged the whole question, having
accepted a naturalistic theory, and shut out from consideration
what is spiritual, and of chief importance. It is not necessary
to study the works of many able scientific thinkers until the
fact is discovered that they are convinced that the works of nature
will interpret nature ; and that it is not necessary to receive any
spiritual guidance to find the solutions of the problems they are
studying. That this is a mistaken conception some wise scientists
have strongly asserted ; and as a matter of fact the further they
advance, the more they reafise that the natural cannot explain
the natural ; and that they must bring in the spiritual to explain
their thoughts. The meaning is that the study of any subject,
as a work of science, is in fact a translation of the natural into the
spiritual ; the study may begin with things that can be seen
and handled, but the process of inductive analyses and develop-

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 281
ment must be to change what is sensuous into sign and symbol ;
into words that are signs, and into relations and correlations
which have spiritual significance as signs. It may be said that
unconsciously scientists, with the aid of their philosophic friends,
have been impelled to follow the method of Christ ; they have
seen that the end of all relations is related ultimates and the
Ultimate ; they have been led to believe that there is an ideal
at the very heart of all that is made manifest in nature ; that
nature is organic in its order, conceivable only under conceptions
that imply purpose and design ; and that nature is the product
of purpose and design. All these conceptions, as interpreted
in the language of the spiritual, mean that scientists cannot
help themselves ; their language must express what they think ;
and what they really think, it may be unconsciously, is that God,
Christ, the Spirit and nature are revelations which they find in
the book of nature. It is not stated that scientists have such a
faith ; but simply that this is a consistent spiritual interpretation
of their thoughts and of their language. It is only too well
known that such an interpretation is not in harmony with their
reasoning ; it is for them to consider whether they are, or are not,
blinding themselves to what is true ; and whether unconsciously
they are being compelled to be witnesses for the truth, that they
seem to reject, and have determined not to consider. The true
position which they may accept is to be found in this direction :
the book of nature as the work of the Spirit of God, lies open
before them ; it is in nature objectively ; but, the great truth is
that it is in their own souls subjectively. They study this book
with all its symbols, as conceived crudely, or as reasoned and
related in cosmic order, in their own souls ; they cannot doubt
the greatness of the work they are studying, for it is ever greater
and more wonderful as they discover its secrets. Object as they
may to any theory of purpose or design, there can be no doubt
that at the root of their thoughts, in all their works, they find them
selves tracing purposes and designs ; and these are expressible
and expressed in scientific order. All this reasoning is spiritual ;
it is not limited by the senses ; it transcends the sensuous and
becomes spiritually and scientifically predictive, in other words
it reaches out toward an ideal not perceivable by the senses. It
is not necessary to enter into details to prove what is here sug
gested ; all that is required for the student to recognise this Hne
of truth is to study the writings of eminent scientific thinkers

282 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
who carefully explain what they have seen and what they think,
and it will be seen that though they do not recognise the ultimate
or conceive an ideal, or think about the Spirit of Truth as con
ceiving or manifesting order and law ; yet all the time they are
really doing their utmost to express such conceptions under
similar naturalistic forms. The Spirit is symbolised in thought
as energy, purpose, design, form, quantities, qualities, relations
and conditions ; and the work of the Spirit is symbolised in the
book of nature. Scientists open this book and read therein,
and the results are found to be in the thinkers what is conceived
to be in and by the Spirit. It is surely plain enough that the
scientists have not created anything new ; they have been reading
the open book of the Spirit, and grace and wisdom have been given
to them to understand and translate the book into spiritual
order. The Spirit of Truth is the Spirit that reveals, expounds,
explains Christ ; thus the book is all about Christ, the Ideal, and
students of the book who have blinded themselves by deliberate
choice, have sinned against the Light that was dawning upon them,
and the sin, or evil, was not in the Light, in the Spirit, or in the
book, but in their perverted souls, and in the unspiritual limita
tions with which they surrounded the book. Here again there
arises the question of suffering, of grace, and of sacrifice ; the
high priests and priests of nature entered the temple of God ;
they were clad in robes of white, thus signifying that they were
interpreters and worshippers of Divine Truth ; they stumbled
and fell upon the threshold of the temple, even as their brethren
in other temples had done ; they became idolators, worshippers
of the creature, nature ; and they would not worship in the spirit
and in truth, God, the Creator of nature ; the Father of their
spirits, their Redeemer, Saviour and Regenerator. It must
be observed that this has not taken place under the original
natural conditions ; nor under Mosaism in the Desert; nor under
the development found in Greece ; but under Christianity, after
all these examples had become part of the education of men,
and they were being actually developed into an intellectual
order that is spiritual and in the Spirit. Nature, as the temple
of the living God, is not conscious of God, of sin, or of evil. Nature
is like a mirror, it gives form, life and being to the thoughts of God ;
the light shines upon nature, and God is revealed to men. There
comes upon the scene man, made in the image of God, endowed
with intellectual power to see, think and know the truth as it

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 28$
is in nature ; by a fatal choice he decides that he cannot, and
will not, see God in nature ; and when he looks upon
the mirror, behold ! the image to be worshipped is an Unknow
able, Nature, a Thing that cannot be described, and this is:
the defiberate choice of some wise scientists, and grave philo
sophers. " The world by wisdom knew not God." " The natural
man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God : for they are
foolishness unto him : neither can he know them, because they
are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things,
yet He himself is judged of no man. For who hath known
the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him ? But we
have the mind of Christ."
With such thoughts as these in view it is plain that it is becom
ing in men not to be rash in forming an opinion about the subject
of evil ; and they ought to weigh their words very carefully before
they give expression to their thoughts. This matter is very
complex ; science does throw a little Hght into the darkness ;.
and what is seen is good not evil ; it is order and law not disorder
and lawlessness. It is to be expected that what is to man evil,
dark, chaotic, will be repeUent to science, dia-magnetic to light,
and thus what men cannot understand. This is the old, old mys
tery of the tree of good and evil ; the good in its relations is meant
for men, the evil is not ; thus it may weU remain a secret never to>
be discovered. The point here reached seems to take shape in
this form ; as the Good, as Being, is beyond the comprehension
of men, so also is evil ; the Good, by its Heavenly fruits, becomes
known by the experiences of men ; and evil by its works, as what
is of earth, also becomes known ; but as men can now see these
are the relations and the correlations of being as derived from
Being, and it is within that range of relations that the intellect
of man is Hmited in its operations. The window into Heaven
that science has opened up, reveals what is good as order and law j
and the suggested thought is that men ought to seek after good
with aU the powers they possess, and leave behind them the
darkness, lawlessness, disorder, disease and death. It can be
seen that the order of creation is that of development ; the related
ultimates follow each other in due order ; they are correlated as
twin powers, the assumption being that the first-born is msant
to be subject to the second, the co-partner ; thus force ought to be
subject to life as organic in the physical world ; the spirit to mind
or soul life in the psychicaljworld ; the intellectual to the moral

284 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
life in the moral world ; and grace to the life of sacrifice in the
spiritual world. What is found to take place is that the first
born claims the heritage and kingdom and reigns ; to this rule
of procedure men become subject, and thus the Fall from the
ideal of manhood. It is only when grace and sacrifice are re
vealed, made manifest, that the true order is made efficient ;
it is Grace that serves, and it is Sacrifice that reigns. It follows,
as a matter of order, that when the first-born is permitted to reign
there is perversion of true order ; force overthrows organic Hfe,
and there is disease and death ; the sensuous desires of the spirit
are in revolt against the order in the soul ; the psychical becomes
subservient to the physical, there is disorder and disease; and
the end is death. When man appears upon the scene then this
condition of things or these relations may be put right, because
the man is endowed with power to know what is good, to discover
true relations, to perceive order, and thus the rule and reign
ought to be in harmony with moral law. The man did not wait
for the necessary development ; the intellect perceived what
was beautiful, what would give knowledge, and what would
make man god-like in power. The choice was made, there was
a Fall from the ideal ; the moral became subject to the intel
lectual, and the end was rebelHon, degradation, lusting, sub
jection to power, and thus the issue was immorality, disorder,
disease and death. The conception is that God in Christ fulfils
all righteousness ; that as Grace Incarnate He conformed to the
supreme order of Sacrifice, and it is thus that the curse is re
moved ; man is redeemed ; the earth shares in the change ; sin
is judged and condemned ; earthly disorder becomes subject to
heavenly order ; disease has been brought face to face with Life
and Health ; and the power of death that brings the form of
man to dust, is crushed in its stronghold, the grave. This ex
plains more fully the question of the first-born and his claim?
throughout the Bible ; it is in this light that men will understand
the parables of Adam and Christ, Cain and Abel, Ishmael and
Isaac, Esau and Jacob, Edom and Israel, and Law and Grace.
They are all in Adam and Christ, the heavens and the earth ;
they are incarnate in living men, as in Cain and Abel ; they are
spiritual realities as in Ishmael and Isaac ; they are the mystery
of life as in Esau and Jacob ; they are intellectual realities as in
Edom and Israel, and in Law and Grace the moral conflict can
be traced in the claims of law, as in Mosaism, Judaism, and in

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 285
the Roman world against the gospel of Grace in Christ, the Lord
of Grace, the Sacrifice for the sins of the world. In all this there
is nothing that can be conceived as out of harmony with the
ideals of ethical and moral teachers. What they claim is the
heritage of the first-born ; they maintain that life should be
lived in conformity with moral law ; with what is good, true,
right, and what is altruistic as moral love ; they maintain that
the ideal is happiness and pleasure, in opposition to misery and
pain ; and they are quite right, for this is man's moral inheritance,
and it is what he ought to possess. What is not reasonable in
ethical teaching is that aU the facts are not fully considered ;
the FaU from the moral state is a terrible fact ; the consequences
of sin have been disastrous ; the ethical barrier to be used to turn
aside, to destroy, to neutrafise, to make ineffective this terrible
current of evil is as a broken reed put in to stem the current,
a thing that is without strength, utterly helpless, that is being
carried downward in the fierce current of rampant sin, disorder,
disease and death. There is really no vital difference betwixt
the moralist and the Christian here ; the Christian has not one
word to say against the highest ethical ideal ; he simply states
the fact that the morafist who conceives that salvation is by
ethics is trying to Hve in a fool's paradise ; the conditions do not
exist ; and the relations as he conceives them are not consistent
with all the facts. The ethical teacher may choose to cHng to
his moral ideal world, but it is not in existence upon this earth ;
and it is not going to come through the will, the power, the wis
dom or the goodness of men. The man lost his birthright by
despising it ; he has never understood what is involved in the
blessing ; and he never can be restored by this way not even
though he tries to find it with tears of regret and sorrow. It is
not the Adam-man that is regnant in manhood, and he never can
be ; it is the Brother born for adversity, the Christ-Man, that
inherits birthright and blessing, and he comes to the inheritance
and the blessing by the way of Grace, through Sacrifice and in
no other way. If ethical students go very carefully into this
problem from this standpoint it may be that they will find the
Divine Light guiding them by the way ; but they may rest assured
of this, that before they can enter the Kingdom of God close at
their hand, they require to be born again so that they may con
sciously Hve in God's Elingdom of Grace and Sacrifice. It is not
to be conceived, in any sense, that any judgment is given here

286 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
as to the spiritual position of ethical teachers and ethical people
in the sight of God ; that is another matter altogether, to be
reasoned upon from a different position ; this is an intellectual
inquiry as to order, law and development ; and, as already pointed
out, and so strongly emphasised by the Lord, the King of Grace,
there are those who think that they occupy the first position who
may be the very last ; and those who exalt themselves will be
cast down and counted as altogether unworthy. It was not a
priest, or a Pharisee, that Christ praised to the very heavens
for their faith ; it was a Roman soldier, and a poor Canaanite
mother, and these were thought upon by the rulers in Israel
as outcasts from God's commonwealth.
This supremacy of sacrifice as a principle is one that requires
special study ; here it takes a unique position ; and what must
seem strange, it is found to be the spiritual axis upon which
the universe turns. The deepest in God, in His very Heart,
is sacrifice ; it is the same in Christ as Man and Saviour ; it is the
same in the Spirit of God ; and if men could understand the fact,
it is the same in nature as the work of the Spirit. By inference
the same requires to be asserted of men ; and they will not reach
manhood, likeness to God, the Father, until this ideal becomes
reahsed fact. This aspect of the Divine Ideal requires to be
considered in this order : it is sacrifice that is the Hfe, the Heart
of Grace ; it is quite true that in Christ they are blended together
in a Divine union, and not to be separated ; but with men it is
different, they require to analyse the subjects they are studying,
so that by the way of synthesis in putting them together again
they may perceive their unity and harmony. In Christ, the
conception is that Grace and Sacrifice are in harmony ; the giving
of Himself to the World as Example, and as DeHverer, fits in
with giving Himself up into the hands of wicked men that they
may put Him to death as Sacrifice for the sins of the world. With
men this is not found to be a realm of unity and harmony ; it
may be discerned that in them grace may come into conflict
with sacrifice ; that grace may try to overrule sacrifice ; and thus
in men grace may even become sin. It can be conceived that
sin against sacrifice may be done in two ways. As in a man
giving bountifuHy, abundantly, graciously, what is not his own ;
in this he may appear to be a son of grace, but in reafity he is
not because there is no personal compensating sacrifice, thus the
want of unity and harmony. Again, a man may claim to be a

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 287
son of grace, that is a follower of Christ, but he is covetous, am
bitious, a lover of pleasure or of power ; and there is no sacrifice
in his life, what then ? He is a sinner against the regnant Lord
that reigns in sacrifice, and in both examples they have divorced
grace from sacrifice. If men could see this truly, then it may
be that these are the grievous sins in the Christian Church ;
there are those who give abundantly but there is no sacrifice
in their giving ; there are those who grasp what they can greedily,
selfishly, and there is no spirit of sacrifice ; thus the grace is vain,
it is perverted, and it is set in opposition to the spirit of sacrifice.
If the same line of thought is applied to the moral world, to the
State, Society, the family, to man, where moral relations ought
to govern their actions, then it will be seen that in this realm
also it is sacrifice that ought to reign in harmony with moral law.
The State and Society are required to punish evil-doers, but
this is not done without sacrifice, because it is at the expense
of the State that the punishment is inflicted ; the man suffers
and the State bears the sacrifice ; one member of society suffers
and all are sharers in the sacrifice. A member of a family sins
and suffers ; but it is the father's or the mother's heart that is
sacrificed, and all the members of the family are involved in the
sorrow that, falls upon them. A man sins and suffers and the
heavens are the sacrifice. Why ? Because the earth has over
come the heavens. Christ, the Moral Man, lived in harmony
with moral law and sacrifice, but the regnant power in Him
was sacrifice. Apply the same thought to the intellectual critic
who glories in his power and his mercilessness ; he has no pity nor
compassion, he rejoices in his power to crucify, to cause suffering,
to sacrifice a poor fellow sinner ; let him beware ; the cross, the
suffering, and the sacrifice may enter his own door and claim him
as victim ; the persecuted man may be blessed by the darts of
persecution ; but the persecutor may kindle a flame of hell in his
own soul that he cannot extinguish. If intellectual power, in
manifold ways, is not subordinate to the law of sacrifice, then
it will go hard with those who thus sin, no matter what position
they occupy in Church, State or Society ; they are wielding a
sword that requires skilful handfing, and if they sin against the
sovereign law of sacrifice, forgetting to be kind, to be merciful,
they need not wonder should the day come when they will find no
kindness and no mercy. It is the law of sacrifice that reigns over
the mind and soul when it is being cleansed, changed, and being

288 THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED.
filled with light. It is the law of sacrifice that will check and put
to shame egoism, selfishness and all that is subject to self. The
two are deadly enemies ; self must Mil sacrifice, or sacrifice will
assuredly destroy selfishness. When the life organic is crushed
under the heel of physical power and it has apparently destroyed
what was beautiful and good ; the law of sacrifice is there also,
in a sense, because what is destroyed becomes an altar of sacrifice ;
the ashes of the sacrifice spring to life again and what appeared
to be dead lives and receives life more abundantly : and this is the
meaning of the saying that the blood of the martyrs is the seed
of the Church. As a matter of physical power, of exertion of brain
or body, or throughout the realm of the inorganic the same law
of sacrifice may be found to be regnant ; all expenditure of power
is paying a price for the work done ; it is the sacrifice required ;
but if men would possess power without sacrifice, then they
must become bankrupt, because power is not self-contained,
or self retained ; there is conservation of energy and correlation
of forces, there are quantities and quafities, attraction and re
pulsion, and all these are parables to be studied in this great
problem of the supremacy of sacrifice, as the highest principle
or law, revealed to men.
Such thoughts as these are spiritual suggestions to lead men
to think more truly and fuUy about what appears to be of great
importance. Christians know that this conception of sacrifice
and. of self-sacrifice, is being studied and recognised by men ;
and they may be said to feel, if they cannot explain fully why
this should be so. The Ideal from whence their thoughts have
been derived is Christ ; and it is important to reafise this
uniqueness in Christ's character as Man and Saviour of men, in thus
living and dying in conformity with such an ideal. What appears
to be most remarkable in this Hne of thought is that sacrifice
is the supreme ideal ; that all principles and powers require to
be subject to, and co-ordinate with, sacrifice ; that the unity
and the harmony is not found in the substitution of sacrifice
for any other power, but in their co-ordination and in their united
harmonious operations. To take an illustration from the phy
sical world it is magnetism that is the great power that rules
in the heavens, it may not be directly, but in harmony with elec
tricity and other forces ; thus the earth is a magnet in harmony
with magnetism in the Sun, and it is by magnetism that its axis
is determined. The analogy is that sacrifice is as spiritual

THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SACRIFICE CONSIDERED. 289
magnetism; the spiritual world is regulated by its action, and all
other spiritual powers are subject, and co-ordinated with spiritual
magnetism. Is this the conception embodied in the words of
Christ ? " Now is the judgment of this world : now shall the
prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the
earth will draw all men unto Me." Christ on the Cross is Sacri
fice ; Christ in the heavens as regnant, is still Sacrifice ; and the
Sacrifice is such that aU men are drawn to, and attracted by Him,
made subservient to His will and thus brought into harmony
with the heavens. If men would live the gracious life it is to be
done under the Shadow of the Cross of Sacrifice ; if they would
regenerate the State, Society and family life, then it must be in
harmony with Sacrifice ; if they would find truth, science, wisdom,
then self, as seeker after truth, must be subject to Christ and to
Sacrifice ; if the heart is to be renewed, the spirit regenerate,
then this is the work of the Spirit as sacrifice ; if the life is to be
worthy to be named life, in things that are visible and earthly
in their form, then they are to be consecrated and made sacred
hy the spirit of sacrifice. It is not that sacrifice is to be the
dominant power directing all actions ; if this were the interpre
tation then this would mean subordination and not co-ordination ;
the individual powers do not lose their individuahty ; the work
they are engaged in is not subject to one ideal ; each power oper
ates freely in harmony with order and law, but the soul is so
magnetised spiritually that it acts under the influence of the
spirit of sacrifice. Divine charity seems to be the same ideal
as sacrifice ; it is the bond of perfection ; and when this harmony
is found then the grace of God will rule the soul and there will be
gratitude and thanks rendered unto God for all His mercies and
blessings.

CHAPTER IX.
THE ORDER OF DEVELOPMENT IN HISTORY.
In following the footsteps of science, and heavenly wisdom
as Tevealed by the method of Christ, it is discovered that science
means divine truth, heavenly order ; that science leads men direct
to Christ, the Truth, and the glory of science ; it is at His feet
men discern that truth leads to life, and order to law ; and it is
Christ that explains in what way they unite and harmonise. This
is manhood ; this is the goal of the aspirations of men ; it is what
they have desired to find for many centuries ; it has been sur
rounding them on every hand ; they have been trampling it
under their feet, tossing it to and fro upon the earth, and they
could not discern the glory of God in what they saw ? Why ?
Because of sin ; the fatal fall from truth and righteousness, and
the consequent inability to know truth from error and right
from wrong. The heavens intervened for redemption, salvation
and restoration ; in Grace God gave graciously His Son to be
Saviour, Grace incarnate, and the way that the Son has had
to travel has been that of suffering and sorrow ; it is embodied
in one word, Sacrifice ; and it is by sacrifice that there is salva
tion and restoration to God. There is no cancelling of any of
the works, order, or laws of God ; they abide and they are Hght,
Hfe, law and love ; men look upon God in His Grace, and they
are amazed ; they see God, as Sacrifice, and with lowly adoration
they bow before Him; and they magnify and praise His New
Name, that is above every Name. This is something Hke the
vision that men have seen through science and divine wisdom ;
they can hardly beheve that such thoughts can be true ; and yet
it must be so, there is no real cause why such truths should be
doubted, for aU this is so Hke God, as revealed to men in His Son,
the Lord Christ.
The conception that has been reached is that this great work

THE ORDER OF DEVELOPMENT IN HISTORY. 291
of God has been carried on under the symbols of the heavens
and the earth and their generations ; the generations meaning
that order of development that can be traced in the Bible. The
heavens, when translated into the language of men, mean Grace
and Sacrifice, Christ and the Spirit ; these are the revelation of and
from God, and their mission is the redemption, the salvation of
men, and their restoration to the favour of God. This mission is the
re-creation of man into the image of God, and into the likeness
of Christ, as revealed to men in truth by the Spirit of Truth.
The earth is man as fallen and sinful ; and of necessity, as he is
the head of creation, all that is subject to man is included in this
name. The symbol thought is that man is as the dust of the
earth, without life ; thus unless the Spirit of God breathes into
him a soul, he is dead, and there is no means by which Hfe may
be restored. This is the work of the heavens ; it is grace that
gives the new Hfe of grace ; and the way of redemption and re
storation is the way of suffering and sorrow, and of sin and sacrifice,
side by side. The symbols and the parables change and take
innumerable forms, but throughout the whole story of the genera
tions the heavens pursue one definite purpose ; there is no
faltering, no turning aside to right or left ; the heavens know the
Divine purpose ; they follow the Divine plan ; and though unseen
and their actions not traceable by sinful men, they are irresist
ible, and the whole process is carried forward by the Divine power
and wisdom. Men must remember that the revelation in the
Bible is that of re-creation by the law of development ; it is in
the light of that law that the work has to be studied ; and it is
Christ alone that gives the key for the successful study of this
great work of God. What men, in the method of Christ, search
for, and find, is that out of the midst of the chaos produced by
sin there is what may be- called a carnal development, under
natural forms, which are in their nature psychical, until the Man
Christ appears upon the earth in the fulness of the times ; and,
after His Ascension into glory then the outward forms are trans
figured and they become the spiritual means for the creation
of the spiritual world. As explained, all this means new genera
tions and generations of generations in series, that are ever
recurring under new forms ; and it is by the study of these,
in the light of the method of Christ, that the genera
tions of the heavens are discerned, and the fruits of the
heavenly Hfe are made known. It is with the heavens
t 2

292 THE ORDER OF DEVELOPMENT ¦ IN HISTORY.
and their works in the earth as it has been with ether, electricity
and magnetism ; men have been living, moving and influenced
by these unseen powers for centuries, and' yet they remained
ignorant of what was of supreme influence for their well-being.
On the other hand the earth and its works have been made
manifest ; these have ever been before the eyes of men ; they
have written in history their great and evil deeds ; they have
tried to build their towers that they might scale the heavens ;
they have set up great and powerful empires and crushed men
under their feet as if they were valueless ; they have glorified them
selves in many ways, but they have not discovered the secret
of the heavens ; and they have not been able, neither have they
sought, to make men more wise, happy, content, and prosperous
so that they might live together in peace and love in harmony
with the laws of God. It is not a misrepresentation to state
that so far as visible things are concerned, in what is earthly and
subject to the earth, the vision of Isaiah the prophet remains
true, men have not served their Creator ; they have not known
their Father ; they will not seek to know the Will of God ; and
they will not consider His ways. They are sinful, iniquitous
evil-doers, corrupters ; and they have revolted more and more.
" The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the
sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it ;
but wounds and bruises and putrifying sores : they have not been
closed, neither bound up, neither molfified with ointment."
The mission of the heavens to earth is to reveal the Kingdom
of God ; not in any fimited sense, as by portions, in the patriarchs,
in Israel, or in Christianity ; but as from the beginning to the
end, in what is related to man, his creation, Fall, regeneration
and restoration in Christ. This is history as revealed in the
generations and what they represent ; it is the method of Christ
as traced in ever recurring order in what is carnal and spiritual ;
it is the work, the involved and developed operations of the
Spirit as found in the Word of God ; and it is the fullest spiritual
conceptions conceived by men as science and divine wisdom.
Indeed, it is conceivable that the Kingdom of God deals with
the mystery of evil, sin, the conflict betwixt good and evil during
time, justice and judgment, the punishment of the wicked, the
overthrow of the powers of evil, and the vision of the new heavens
and earth. It is necessary for men to limit their thoughts to
what the Bible contains ; and it is not wise for them to try to

THE ORDER OF DEVELOPMENT IN HISTORY. 293
theorise about the state of unfallen angels in glory, to declare
what is meant by the resurrection to glory ; or to describe the
glories of heaven, or the horrors of hell. It does not appear as
if any of these subjects were revealed in the Bible, in the same
sense, as is the Kingdom of God ; there are suggestions, parables
and references to these things, but they are not matters of ex
perience, or of scientific order. It is right to believe in the angels
and their bhssful state ; and scientific moral analogies are not
without value in supporting that faith ; it is to be accepted as
a truth not to be questioned that Christ rose from the dead,
is alive, and reigns in the heavens ; and of course what follows
from this is the behef in man's resurrection in the Hkeness of
Christ ; but in what way, or at what time, is not within the range
of the present experiences of men. It is not suggested that men
should keep silent about such subjects ; the meaning is that they
ought not to talk about them fooUshly, as if they were quite
famiHar with aU the details, and be ready to condemn others who
may not conceive such thoughts as they do. Faith and Hope
•will find Divine food in such contemplation ; but it is for Patience
to wait and see that consummation which is Divine Love. In the
Hght of these thoughts it may be profitable to apply the usual
questions, in their order, as found in the method of Christ, and
see what the results will be as related to the Kingdom of God
as revealed in His Grace "and Sacrifice.
Whence this Kingdom ? " In the beginning God." Thus
far back and no further can men go in their thoughts. God
was All. God is the Source and the First Cause of All ; and
the vision is, at the Consummation, that God is All in all.
When did this Kingdom come ? It has been coming from
the beginning of time as distinct from Eternity ; it will be coming
until the end of time as related to this order of events ; thus
word symbols change their form. Time is Christ, the First
born, the Lord in time, and He is its Beginning and End. This
is the spiritual Ideal revealed in the Scriptures in varied ways ; it
is the conception of Divine wisdom, as wise men have expressed
their thoughts ; He is the Arch-Type of aU types ; and all types
in their scientific order are in His image.
Why was this Kingdom of God revealed in the Bible ? It is
the Spirit of God that reveals Christ as Ideal, and Christ as Man
f.nd Saviour. At this stage of development the conception is
that of the Spirit as Architect, Designer, Thinker, Power,

294 THE ORDER OF DEVELOPMENT IN HISTORY.
Energiser, Mover, Wisdom and Revealer, because, it can be seen, as
in fitting order, that an Ideal, a Type, a Seed, without any history,
explanation or development has no meaning. The Thought
in God is Word in Christ, an Ideal Word ; it is the Spirit that ex
plains what the Word means ; He reveals the hidden secrets in
volved in the Word, in the creation; and in the new creation,
the symbols used are what is living, develops, follows a definite
order, and is reproductive in seeds that bear seeds in accordance
with their kind.
What is this Kingdom of God ? It is the great work of the
Spirit of God ; it is the Ideal Word in Christ taking form and
shape, not in any haphazard way but in spiritual order ; as what
men conceive to be scientific truth. It is the purpose of the
Heavens as being involved, and developed, in due order ; it is
the carrying out of the Architect's plans, the Designer's designs,
the Thinker's thoughts, and giving effect to all these by energy,
motion, power and wisdom, until they are made manifest and
revealed to be the very Work of the Spirit of God. There is also to
be found in this spiritual realm of thought, the Earth and the Seas,
what is earthly and what is ever restless and requires to be limited ;
and it is the Spirit of God that takes the Ideal in Christ and trans
forms the chaos of earth into the image of Christ. This is the order
of the Thoughts, the Ideals that are Divine ; they are revealed in
the Bible to men ; but not to natural or carnal men ; because
they are spiritual, and they are spiritually discerned, in the
light of Divine Grace and Sacrifice.
How has this Kingdom of God been revealed to men ? This
question introduces man into the arena ; the ideal How is known
to God ; the real How is the work of the Spirit, the problem is
one for man to solve. The ideal is found by science as an ideal
cosmos ; the real is in man as found by applying his intellectual
powers to find out How the Spirit of God works in Creation and
in the New Creation in Christ. The order, as in Nature, is left
for men to discover, by science, that is not the theme of the Bible ;
this, however, men will find that these realms synchronise ancl
harmonise ; and it is the spiritual by the method of Christ that
is of chief importance when the more subtle problems of Creation
require to be considered. The order in Nature, however, is of
great use in the study of how the Kingdom of God is reached ;
because it is Nature, as interpreted by science, that gives the
necessary tuition in forms, in order, in development, in related

THE ORDER OF DEVELOPMENT IN HISTORY. 295
ultimates, in the Hmitation of the power of the intellect, and
thus prepares the student to perceive and understand the har
monies that exist throughout the universe of God. The Bible,
as a spiritual work of the Spirit, transcends Nature and Man ;
it may be said that the Bible assumes that when they are truly
interpreted and understood then they will be in harmony with
the Word, upon a lower plane of being ; and that when the light
of science is cast upon them, they will respond to, and corres
pond with, the Bible. In brief, the How ? or order in the Bible
is that of Creation, the Generations as found in Genesis as pro
phetic of history ; the method of Christ as traced in the many
recurring series of generations ; and the Work of the Spirit in
regeneration, salvation, redemption, and restoration. As already
suggested all these developments are to be conceived as related
to the realm of Grace and to Sacrifice, and the issue will be the
Kingdom of God in the New Heavens and Earth where sin, dis
order, and disease will not be found, and where death will be
swallowed up in the life that is eternal. In this question, How ?
there ought not to be omitted the generations of the Heavens
in conflict with the Earth and sin. It is conceived that for a
wise, Divine purpose, sin is permitted to make manifest its male
volent effects upon the earth ; but these are limited by the Divine
Will and purpose ; they are checked in their destructive demoral
ising work of disorder ; and when the time comes then what seems
to be stronger than the hills and wiser than God, begins to decay,
or is suddenly broken to pieces, or overwhelmed as by a flood.
Men say that this is how God rules in Providence ; evil comes in
like a flood carrying everything before it ; the unseen finger of God
is put down ; the flood is arrested ; the atoms become mutually
repeUent ; the sword of justice has been drawn, judgment has
been pronounced and the punishment has to be endured. But
men have said and they may say still, that such judgments are
not consistent with mercy, with kindness, Grace and Sacrifice.
Here men ought to be careful in what form they express their
thoughts, and they ought to try to conceive, if possible, whether
there is not another side to this problem. What if this is sacrifice
under a new form \ The supposed malevolent powers have
proved themselves to be cruel and wicked ; they have, without
natural feefing, been causing immense suffering, sorrow, anguish,
trouble ; they have been crucifying and sacrificing their fellow-
creatureSj and in them the Spirit of Christ and of God have been

296 THE ORDER OF DEVELOPMENT IN HISTORY.
sacrificed. Is it not in this sense that the martyred souls " under
the altar " of God, in the Revelation, when the fifth seal is opened,
are heard " Saying, How long, 0 Lord, holy and true, dost thou
not avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth ? " Sacri
fice in God is patient above all the thoughts of men ; it is God that
is being sacrificed by men and they do not know it; therefore,
the thought is a terrible one, when men will not repent and turn
from their evil ways and listen to the Voice of God in Mercy,
then the hour comes when the sword of justice turns slowly
round, and God permits wicked men to sacrifice each other.
When evil is utterly evil, it becomes self-destructive, disorder
and anarchy become rampant, and the plague, disease and death
close the scene. The sands of the desert cover men, their cities
and their works ; they are remembered because of their evil
deeds ; thus they speak to men, warning them against wicked
ness and telfing them that God reigns in the Sacrifice of Divine
Love truly, but also in His judgments upon those who sin with a
high hand and will not fisten to the voice of mercy, pity, and
compassion. Who is it that is revealed in the Kingdom of God ? It is
Christ that is Seed and Word ; He is Man and Saviour, Son of
God and Lord over all ; the Sufferer and the Sacrifice for the
sins of the world ; the DeHverer from evil, the Healer of disease,
the Conqueror over sin and death ; the Faithful and True Witness
of God, the King over all kings and the Judge of judges.
Whereunto does this Kingdom of God tend % To the revela
tion of Christ, as the Grace of God to men ; as the Saviour of the
world from sin ; as the One in whom the Spirit of God dwelt
without limitation ; and through Him, by the Spirit, as the Sacri
fice acceptable to God, and as the Mediator with God, and High
Priest over the House of God.
Whether will the Kingdom of God lead men ? To Christ and
His Cross of Sacrifice ; to the Resurrection and the Ascension
into glory ; to the proclamation of the Gospel in all lands as the
work of the Spirit ; to the brotherhood of mankind in Christ -
to the heavenly Zion and the new Jerusalem ; to the new Heavens
and Earth, and to the Eternal Kingdom of Hfe wherein Christ
is Lord and King.
These questions follow the order of the method of Christ ; they
may be found useful as suggesting thoughts in harmony with His
Kingdom of Grace, and thus it is not out of place to use them.

THE ORDER OF DEVELOPMENT IN HISTORY. 297
It will be observed that they are used up to the eighth stage
which falls in with the revelation of Christ as Sacrifice for sin.
From five to eight, or from How ? to Whether ? the order of
study it will be observed, is changed ; it is the world of the real, of
man, and of Christ, that are specially studied. The conception that
arises being that sin takes place, in the fifth or intellectual stage ;
that here Hght and darkness are made manifest ; and, it is into.
this spiritual darkness that Christ enters, as Divine Truth, to
restore to men the Hght of life they had lost. As sixth He is Man
moral and spiritual ; all that men ought to be in the image of God,
the perfect Example men ought to follow if they would conform
in their thoughts, words and actions to the Will of God. As
seventh He is the Son of God the Saviour of the world, the Healer
of disease, the Conqueror of evil and of death. As eighth He is.
the Divine Sacrifice upon the Cross of suffering ; and, it is through
His sacrifice that there is salvation for men and this Gospel is
proclaimed to the ends of the earth. A third series may be
followed, beginning with the ninth ; and this is the order of
development, in the spiritual realm, the work of the Spirit as
reveahng Christ at Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles. The-
tenth is the new spiritual creation in men by the Spirit of Christ
analogous with the fourth in the carnal series. The eleventh
brings in the thought of the operations of the intellect of men in
the spiritual realm, enquiring as to the How ? of the spiritual.
Kingdom of Christ, as analogous with the fifth in the natural.
series. The twelfth carries forward the conception of the work
of the Spirit in harmony with the spiritual enlightenment of men
I o the stage of moral manhood in Christ, and thus the third series-
is a revelation of the work of the Spirit in the New Creation, in the
souls of men restoring them to the likeness of Christ in Truth
and Righteousness by the ministration of the Holy Spirit.
It may be interesting to notice that in the order of history, these
questions find answers thus : Whence ? From God as in Genesis-
i. 1 — 3. When ? This question speciaUy covers the book of
Genesis, of Enoch and translation. "Why ? This is spiritual as
pointing to Noah and salvation. What ? Abraham and the-
revelation in him to mankind through Isaac. How ? Moses-
and the redemption from Egypt ; the Desert, the Law of the ten
words, the patterns of things seen in the Mount and all the "ex
periences in the wilderness for the symbolic forty years. Who 1
Joshua, the land and the Commonwealth. Whereunto ? Samuel!

298 THE ORDER OF DEVELOPMENT IN HISTORY.
the Kingdom, the Captivity, the Restoration and Jesus Christ.
Whether ? The Man, the Son of God, the Saviour and Sacrifice for
Sin. The spiritual series would follow in due order in the Bible ;
and if carried forward into history then the new spiritual era
"begins and the series, as traced by the method of Christ, is again
Tepeated in new forms in Christendom. What men see and study
in these recurring series is history, in this sense, it is a revela
tion from God, not understood by men, of the conflict betwixt
the Heavens and the Earth, of good and evil. Good is not evil
and is not consistent with it ; evil is perverted good in the dark
ness and in the night as antagonistic to good ; it is evil in self as
-selfishness, self-seeking and self-assertion ; it is self, ever seeking
its own purposes, pleasures, power and glory, as opposed to the
Will of God in goodness, mercy, love and sacrifice ; thus it is
unreasonable ; it is darkness, night, and chaos ; but, the Hght
that brings blessing to men is from God, the Good, through all
the ages. It is remarkable that the culmination of the carnal is
as the midnight darkness upon the earth. The conception of
'God, as Father, Love, Sacrifice, was almost dead in the earth.
The highest type of religion was Judaism ; and the New Testa
ment reveals, in the most lurid light, in the ministry and death
¦of Christ the condition of that religion. Rome was at its highest
stage of earthly power under the emperors, and at its lowest state
of morals in Nero. As for Greek wisdom and philosophy it had
run its course ; and, those babblers were past" serious thought,
who wanted only to hear tittle-tattle on Mars Hill at Athens ;
they were the degraded successors of a great race of thinkers who
have left their names on the records of the world. This was the
¦culmination of the world's greatest, wisest, and most religious
jpeoples ; and, the records of history prove to men plainly that this
was the great crisis, in the carnal sphere, in the history of man-
hind. In the Jews religion was perverted to superstition, cruelty,
and murder ; in the Greeks wisdom to folly ; and, in the Romans
to the antithesis of moral law and order, even to the deification of
the most wicked of men upon the face of the earth. This was
the results of the works of the Earth ; the Generation of the
Heavens came to men in Jesus Christ ; and if men will reflect
.upon the condition of the world at that time, it will not be diffi
cult to see that the opposing powers of good and evil were then at
their climax. It was not so very strange that men of this world
could not see any glory in Christ at that special period ; perverted

THE ORDER OF DEVELOPMENT IN HISTORY. 299
good as evil reigned supreme ; and thus the Good, as Grace and
Sacrifice, could not be recognised by the masses of men. From
that dark hour in the world's history to the present time will be
a great study for the future for spiritual historians. If men only
find in it what they could find abundantly in history before the
coming of Christ, then their study will be fruitless ; the problem
is altogether different ; it is not that of empires and kingdoms
in their rise and fall ; not of great warriors and statesmen ; and
not of great theologians, popes, prelates and presbyters. The
history of the world before Christ is the outward and visible rise
of the kingdoms of Earth, and all their glories ; the Generation of
the Heavens is the unseen involution of the seed of Grace and
Sacrifice into mankind, and the birth of the same in Christ at
Bethlehem. Again in the world's history the Seed was sown in
spiritual power ; and, it is the spiritual development of that Seed
of Grace that is the true history in Christendom. What men
see, in what is named profane history, is mere phenomena, the
ever changing ; what is to be found behind the phenomena is the
Living Christ, in spiritual power, by the Spirit, bringing about all
changes so that the carnal, sensual, sensuous, earthly, may be
changed, transformed and transfigured into the heavenly. What
may be asserted, therefore, of all the profane history of Christen
dom is that it is the continuation of the same struggle that was
carried on in the earth before Christ came in the flesh ; and, as a
rule, the history of the past two thousand years, as visibly seen
by men, is that of evil regnant ; and of Grace and Sacrifice as
inward, spiritual, and in the state of subjection to what is earthly.
It is not what is upon the surface that is abiding and permanent ;
it is the work of the Spirit of God as determining events and con-
trolfing them in the teeth of the opposition of what is earthly.
Men look upon the Roman Empire and it seems to possess the
¦earth ; yet the Gospel of Christ, and the sign of the Cross brings to
nought the power of pagan Rome. In the wisdom of Greece, and
the East, men considered that they possessed systems of thought
that would last for ever. It was the despised Gospel, with the
conception that through suffering and sacrifice, men could be
saved, made truly wise and blessed, that overturned the wisdom of
this world. The darkness that reigned in heathendom, in the Baal
and nature worship of evil powers, was put to flight by the light
that shone through the Gospel of Christ. The spiritual perver
sion was changed and men sought to find God and tried to do His

300 THE ORDER OF DEVELOPMENT IN HISTORY.
Will upon the earth. The Hfe and the living forms in Christen
dom took new forms ; a visible church became a great ideal ;
and to that church there was given spiritual and temporal power.
The spiritual power of the Gospel was successful, but not so much
where men thought the success lay ; not in Church and State,
popes and emperors, but in humble, lowly, meek, patient, suffer
ing souls ; those unknown to the world, of whom the world was
not worthy. The Church and Empire became the great apostasy
from Christ, the Man of Sin, and the cause of sin in men. The
Church received Christ in His Gospel, by His Spirit, and, when
the six generations had developed in Christendom to manhood,
then men were found demoralised, they had fallen from man
hood in Christ, to whom the true development would tend, and
they were found in the likeness of fallen, perverted, despotic
pagan manhood, and had become powers for evil and not for
good. Is this so very strange ? By no means, it is the recurring
event in history ; men prided themselves in their wisdom and
power ; they were beguiled by the serpent of evil to their own
destruction ; and, this was permitted so that men might see, and
understand, that what is named spiritual, in any stage beneath
that of Christ and Sacrifice, cannot contend with, and dethrone,
in what is visible and sensual, intellectual and moral, the mighty
powers of evil. Indeed, in this instance the Fall was in the realm
of Grace, and in the House of Grace, the Church of Christ ; thus
proving afresh, what was taught in sign in the kingdom of Israel,
that salvation and restoration to the favour of God is through
suffering and sacrifice, and by no other way. It is in this way
that history is ever being repeated in new forms ; thus what men
have seen and have boasted about in Christendom, in Church
and State, in their ignorance, only proves that they have been
glorying in their own shame, their ignorance of the Will of God,
of the Spirit of Christ, and their own subjection to the powers
of evil. These were well named the dark ages ; the devil reigned
in the spiritual darkness in the night time ; and men knew not
in the darkness and could not understand their true spiritual
condition. Of course men should understand that this apostasy
from truth and righteousness, grace and suffering, is not to be
applied to individual Christians ; and it is not to be the means
of branding any one in any class of society ; the truth being that
the devil carried out his works on a scale of unexampled greatness
and glory ; the patient Spirit of Christ permitted all this, and at

THE ORDER OF DEVELOPMENT IN HISTORY. 301
the same time kept gracious souls in a state of grace. They were,
in the language of Scripture, " the remnant according to the elec
tion of grace," and the Church and the State were the servants of
the powers of evil, whilst boasting, and declaring, that they were
the -vicegerents of Christ upon the earth. The change came, or
began to be made manifest, at the end of the 1,000 years ; then
there took place the Crusades for the recovery of Jerusalem and
Palestine from the Saracens ; the new life began to be felt through
out Christendom ; and the new spirit began to move in the
Waldensians, the Lollards and the followers of Huss in Bohemia.
What the state of Christendom was at this period in Papacy and
Empire is well known ; the soul of Christian Europe was enswathed
in the darkness ; it was night everywhere, and only here and there
the faint gfimmering Hght of the Evangel was seen ready to be
extinguished by the powers on earth that would not permit free
dom of thought or Hberty of action. If men would know, and
understand, the principles upon which the kingdoms of evil, and
of darkness, have reigned upon this earth, and would still reign
if they could, let them study that portion of the history of
Christendom that reveals Papacy and Empire, at their worst,
before the dawn of Renaissance and Reformation in Europe.
The Reformation is the movement by which light and darkness
struggle in the twilight ; and, for development, men require to
study history in the lands of the Reformation, where men were set
free to worship God in spirit and truth and permitted to think
and act in harmony with their consciences as instructed by the
Word of God. Again men find in the age following the Reforma
tion, the dreary deadly influence of what is meant by fallen man
hood ; even to this day good men seem to shudder when they
talk about the time when spiritual reHgion appeared to be dead ;
when servants of Christ were degraded moralists and deists ;
when Adam reigned and Christ was despised. The frosty winter
gave place to a new spring in the Revivafism of the Wesleys, and
the EvangeHcal fervour that began to move men in many churches ;
there was new life at home and abroad ; and the Gospel was once
more set free to carry to all nations in the earth the glad tidings
of great joy. This was Christ as coming to His people in His
Grace once more ; there has been response to the mighty work
of the Spirit ; and men wondering wait to see what new
message of Grace and Truth the Lord of Mercy, the Saviour from
sin,. the Sacrifice for the sins of the world, is going to send to His

302 THE ORDER OF DEVELOPMENT IN HISTORY.
people. It ought not to be forgotten that the Agnostic movement
has been permitted for gracious far-reaching purposes ; this was
the devil's last trick that he could play upon his devoted followers ;
he would enlighten their minds by opening their eyes through
the study of nature as a mechanism ; he would limit their vision
so that they would not see God, or recognise His works ; thus
nature became the Agnostic's god, and they became the high-priests
of nature and the deceived servants of the devil. Men are be
ginning to see that this Agnostic challenge is even more serious
than they thought it to be ; by its far-reaching doctrine of evolution
it thought to dispose of God ; critics and natural-minded men of
all classes took up the devil's new device with ardour ; this new
theory at last would explain all things, and men would rejoice
and be glad in their deliverance from all forms of superstition
and all lands of religion. For a brief moment in the ages of time
the devil was permitted to glory in the thought that he had out
witted the Spirit of God, and that he had given the fatal blow
to the Word of God and spiritual religion ; but the glorying was
vain ; Christ has arisen ; the devil's lies are cast out, and he wiH
be discredited in the face of the world. This is the truth, Christ
lives ; His Word is God's Word to men ; and, men will know
this to be true when they seek for the guidance of the gracious,
patient Spirit of Truth, and seek to know and understand Christ
by His own method by which He reveals Himself to men.

CHAPTER X.
REVIEW — THOUGHTS UPON PHYSICAL AND PSYCHICAL NATURE..
In briefly glancing over the subjects considered, the feeling
must be that of wonder at the manifold wisdom of God as revealed
by science ; and, of adoration and praise, because in His mercy
God has so graciously made manifest His pity and self-sacrificing
love for His earthly children. Truly men ought to give earnest.
attention to the message they have received, as if direct from the
Heavens ; and, great care should be taken that what they have
heard may not be forgotten. If in the days of the apostles the.
Word of Salvation was very wonderful and not to be neglected,
then what can men think, or say, if Christ, by His Spirit of Truth,
according to His own method, has been actually proving and
confirming what is revealed in the Bible ? The days for visible
signs, wonders and miracles may be past ; but truly a greater
miracle has taken place in these days, through the work of the
Spirit in harmony with God's will. The psalmist, the apostle
and the scientist, may well be described as raising their voices in
unison and saying, " What is man that Thou art mindful of him ?
Or the son of man, that Thou visitest him ? Thou madest him
a Httle lower than the angels ; Thou crownedst him with glory
and honour, and didst set him over the works of Thy hands ;
Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that
He put all in subjection under him, He left nothing that is not
put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him.
But we see Jesus, who was made a Httle lower than the angels for
the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour ; that He
by the grace of God should taste death for every man. For it
became Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things,
in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their
salvation perfect through sufferings. For both He that sanctifieth
and they who are sanctified are aU of one : for which cause He is

304 THOUGHTS UPON PHYSICAL AND PSYCHICAL NATURE.
not ashamed to call them brethren." He is worthy of all praise ;
and His Name is above every name known among men ; but, His
brethren may well be ashamed of themselves ; they had a great
Brother born for their adversity, and for their salvation ; and,
the story in the Bible, and the history of the race of men, are the
recorded facts which they have been called to study.
Assuredly, it must be confessed that there is no room for boast
ing with men, at any stage of development ; as children of ex
perience, empiric thinkers, or as sons of science, they have failed
to reach the stature of manhood. In the fit simile of Newton,
they have been as children upon the sea shore gathering a few
shells, as samples of the Divine works, but the ocean depths still
remain unexplored. A little light has flashed in upon the dark
ness, revealing a portion of the pathway heavenward ; but how
dark and ignorant the masses of men remain ; they have not even
got into the straight path of the ray of light from heaven ; and
thus their vision is transverse, not straight ; they are not in the
hght, and the light is not in them, thus what they see is pheno
menal and what is ever changing. It is to be conceived that the
physical and psychical scientists claim more than their due ;
they tend greatly to magnify and glorify their works and one
another ; this is not good ; they have still much to do in their
own territory ; and away beyond there are many other regions
of thought yet to be set in order. Science has had its baptism of
faith ; it has reached the pleasant exhilarating uplands where
hope resides ; with the future patience will find a great work to
do ; and, if men of science will look in the right direction, from the
mountain tops upon which they stand, it is possible that with
the spiritual telescope they may discern the shining hills in the
better land. They are in the way, and the best wishes of those
who sympathise with them in their labours, is that they may not
lose faith and turn back in spirit. They are in a true sense the
advance guard on the great march ; with their great love for
truth, the sunshine of truth leads them onward toward the realm
of truth ; but, there is room for grave concern ; loyalty and
ardour in the service of abstract, intellectual truth will not be
enough in the day of battle ; more is required, it is to change the
abstraction into the Person, and thus to realise that Christ
is the Truth of God, the Life Divine, and the Way to the
father. It is the Fall, repeated falls in history, and the risk of future

THOUGHTS UPON PHYSICAL AND PSYCHICAL NATURE. 305
falls, that is the great shadow that ever hovers over men in their
earthly journey. If men could only be brought to comprehend
what sin truly means, in the individual, the family, society, the
State and the Church, there would be a better out-look ; but it
is to be feared that the earthly relations of thought shut out from
view, to a large extent, what is heavenly. This is one of the
periods where the earth appears to have gained a great victory
over the heavens ; but all such successes are temporary, mere
phenomena to be studied ; they are permitted for wise, far-reach
ing ends, and thus men require to possess their souls in patience,
and keep their eyes turned heavenward so that they may be ready
to enter intelhgently into the new development that must arise
in the great conflict betwixt good and evil. There is a decided
change in the relations of these powers ; in the fields of experience
and empiricism, commonsense and philosophy, religion and
theology, the powers of evil, with the intellect as their servant,
have asserted their supremacy ; in the future science commands
the service of the intellect in the interests of Truth, and it is Christ
by His Method of Revelation, that is to be conceived as Divine
Wisdom in the realms of Righteousness and Grace.
What science has taught and wisdom has verified is one aspect
of Truth ; as men can see it is the Divine Ideal ; it is what men
see is in the heavens and ought to be in the earth ; but how
these truths are to be made efficient and practical is another
matter, and it is only the Spirit of Truth and Righteousness that
is able to guide men in this important quest. It is one thing for
science to teach men how there has been development ; what the
order really is, and how men have discovered order and law ;
but to apply such truths to abnormal conditions seems very
difficult. It is one thing to stand on Pisgah and look upon the
promised land possessed by the enemies of God, and something
quite different to enter in, take possession and overthrow the
powers of evil. These symbols, as applied to Canaan, and the
Church, are very famihar to those who love to study the Bible ;
but it is not quite so easy to see how they can be applied to pre
sent conditions ; to the fair realm of eternal scientific truth and
righteousness. It is a true spiritual instinct by which men in the
past have been led to compare the visible and temporal with
what is spiritual ; and spiritual with spiritual ; and, in fact, this
is, in another form, what is expressed under the forms of physical
and psychical and psychical and spiritual. In physical form
U

306 THOUGHTS UPON PHYSICAL AND PSYCHICAL NATURE.
the picture is as Abraham from Ur to Haran, and Haran to
Bethel ; in psychical order it is Egypt, the Desert, and the Con
quest ; in the moral it is the captivity in Babylon and the Re
storation ; and in Spiritual revelation it is Christ, the disciples,
the Spirit, Pentecost, Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the Roman
Empire. Men may now see the consummation of all these as the
Kingdom of God, very near to them, even in their midst ; and
the thoughts of men turn to Science as the great revealer of Truth,
and to Christ as Divine wisdom. The Bible is the Creation,
the Macrocosm, of this revelation in the order of development ;
men are now studying the Bible with this conception before them,
bringing with them all that is valuable in experience, empiric
wisdom and theology ; and what seems to be required is that men
should be awakened to these truths, so that in themselves thev
may find a spiritual psychology in harmony with all the past.
It is important to see clearly all that is meant by this develop
ment ; it is the well-known order as physical and psychical, to
be followed by a reconstructed, intellectual and moral being,
seeking after Truth and Wisdom. To put the matter in another
form ; it is like the symbolic square already referred to ; and it
is this fourth side of the square that has to be made strong against
all the wiles and the powers of evil.
If, for example, this matter were to be conceived in the form
of a philosophy ; then such terms as these could be used with
advantage : 1, The Ultimate Reafity. 2, Eternal forms or
matter. 3, Persistent energy. 4, The conservation and cor
relations of the physical forces. It will be seen that these symbol
words express the same concepts as : 1, God, the Almighty.
2, Christ, the Ideal. 3, The Spirit as Divine Power causing
motion. 4, The work of the Spirit in Creation in all Wisdom.
There is the Universal without limitation as Thought ; the Ideal
as a psychical Word ; the Spirit as purpose, design and wisdom ;'
followed by living creatures as the embodiment of the Spirit in
individuals. These express the same symbols in three forms •
and it is possible that a man will one day be able to say " I am
consciously the image and Hkeness of these ideals because there
is in me as real being thought : form as ideal ; spirit in wisdom ¦
and the creature and creation of God. Such a conception how
ever, it must be observed, is not that of a child in experience
of an empiricist, of a seeker after truth ; it is that of the seer
who has seen in the Spirit the Divine ideals, it- may be afar off

THOUGHTS UPON PHYSICAL AND PSYCHICAL NATURE. 307
but still as truly as the other symbol forms have been to others
in their varied realms of thought.
It is not necessary to prove that, these four realms of thought
have actual existence ; in their Very nature they are metaphysical ;
they may be said to be revelations to faith ; jret it is difficult
to see how agnostics can get past them ; and it may even be
asserted that if they are honest thinkers they will find themselves
compelled to accept these as beliefs, in some form or other.
They cannot get on without them ; in fact, they underlie all their
reasoning, and do what they will their thoughts must be ex
pressed as accepting these facts as embodied in Nature. When
the physical inorganic realm is reasoned upon in scientific order,
then the symbols, Unknowable Reality, Ideal Form or eternal
matter, and energy as persistent, are allowed to drop out of
sight ; and the thoughts are centred upon the physical forces
under the symbols of conservation of energy and of correlations
of the forces. This is a realm where man, as intellectual, can
utiUse the power with which he is endowed ; but those who reason
about these matters, do not seem to grasp the conception that
what they are really dealing with, in all their reasoning, is that
store of knowledge existing in the mind, or soul, as derived from
objective nature. In other words, nature is a kind of soul to a
spiritual being ; and his own soul is more or less in correspondence
with nature ; thus what the intellectual man tries to do by the
reason is to discover the true relations as they exist in these two
worlds. True, the mind, or soul-contents of the man have been
acquired ; but acquired from, and through, nature, as the work
of the Spirit ; and it is not easy for a man to prove that by his own
power and wisdom he has stored his soul with these thoughts
seeing that he is ignorant as to the means of acquirement and
the mechanism of reception, conception and stored relations
and correlations. It is admitted that a man may acquire, or
neglect to acquire, knowledge ; but, can it be said, that he has to
receive all the credit for his acquirements, seeing that the vital
part of all the work is that of the Spirit as correlated with the
spirit and mind of man. What men are beginning to see is that
this complex problem is not to be solved off-hand ; and it is not
to be taken for granted that men know all about it, when they
really do not. The fact seems to be that the intellect operates
upon the inner world of the soul, as in correspondence with Nature,
and it is upon thoughts and symbol, signs that this work is done
u 2

308 THOUGHTS UPON PHYSICAL AND PSYCHICAL NATURE.
and not upon physical things. Thus in dealing with conserva
tion of energy and the correlations of forces ; there is in the term
conservation the shadow of reality, the fact believed ; and then
the advance is made to the correlated forces in their order as
conceived by science.
If then conservation as a symbol word is synonymous with
Reality, then it is the noumena ; and the forces are phenomena,
related conditions that change their form in the most wonderful
way. These may be conceived in their relations as by a law of
development ; or as if they were the segments of a circle ; but
the condition of thought at present takes the form that there is,
as it were, a broken link in the chain circle, and thus the perfect
scientific knowledge has not been attained. It is not easy to
know where to begin reasoning when the relations are in the form
of a circle ; break the chain and enter at electricity and magnetism
and the atmosphere seems too etheric for mortals ; begin with
matter upon the earthly side, and then it is gross and materiafistic ;
thus, in the long run, science tramples matter under foot, declar
ing that there is no such thing as matter ; and, that it is only
children who are governed by their senses and what is sensuous,
that think so. The intellectual symbols used in the physical
realm in their order may be expressed thus : heat and cohesion ;
chemical analysis and synthesis ; light and crystal forms ; and
electricity and magnetism : these, in their order, are related in
twin pairs ; and, in their correlations they form the one realm
of physics. It is not advisable to enter into details here as to
this order of the relations of the forces ; they express the twin
powers in their relations, as heat that causes the dissolution of
what is solid or liquid ; and cohesion as that which causes matter
to cohere or stick together. Chemical analysis as that which
takes all forms of matter to pieces, reducing them to elementary
forms and atoms, these being known and named by their quan
titative relations ; and chemical synthesis by which elements are
3aid to have affinities for each other, and unite chemically in
definite proportions to form the thousands of substances that
exist throughout the physical realm. Light is conceived as a
force and as motion ; and, linked with light, there is that which
forms crystals ; it is in this division that spectrum analysis comes
in ; and here the most wonderful conceptions arise as to the unity
and harmony in the physical realm, in lines of force, colours upon
the spectrum, and rates of motion. Above these there is

THOUGHTS UPON PHYSICAL AND PSYCHICAL NATURE. 309
electricity and magnetism ; but as these have been referred to in a
special way, in connection with the theory of the formation of
matter, further explanations are not necessary. What may be
suggested here for consideration is that the forces when placed
thus fall into the order of development ; heat and cohesion
being physical forces as specially dealing with matter ; chemical
analysis and synthesis as dealing not with matter but with its
related conditions as symbols of thought, as so fully expressed
by the sigtis in the science of chemistry ; light and crystals as in
the' realm of inteUectual and moral truths as order and law ;
and electricity and magnetism, these are the universal forces
that inter-penetrate and permeate ether and matter, and these
are the heavenly- forces, which men are discovering, are really
dominant in the physical realm of ether and matter.
It will be observed that in all these problems of thought the
tendency is from the unity to the dual forms ; and men have no
choice in this matter, they are compelled to think of, and explain
thoughts and things as they find them. Thus if men take the
root force in nature, gravitation, it is made manifest in the dual
forms of the centripetal and the centrifugal forces ; the magnet
bar is in its atomic structure said to be attracting and repelling ;
light is radiant and absorbent ; chemical elements have affinities
leading them to unite together or repulsive influences by which
they keep separated ; thus heat will break up what is solid, and
minus heat, or cold, tends to cohesion and solidification ; and as
pointed out there is the conservation of all energy and the cor
relations of all the forces. If these symbols are translated into
the psychical world, then there is the Almighty Will as keeping
the universe in hand, limitation as to distance, and a creature
thing that would move away from the centre to its own destruc
tion ; the magnetised atom is Hke the same thought in the indivi
dual soul, it is that of a spiritual unity with apparent opposing
tendencies ; in the soul there is the Hght of truth and darkness,
or ignorance ; in all the conceptions of a man, the mind is stored
with thoughts in their relations and as capable of thousands of
transformations ; it is heat, warmth, feeling, the heart, that keeps
man from deadness ; and without heart, feeling, affection, love,
he is a petrified thing unfit to live in God's universe. This analogy
may be carried into the moral world, and the conception arises
that man is a god, or in the image of God. He also is a gravitating
power, in his own proportion, thus intellectually he keeps at

310 THOUGHTS UPON PHYSICAL AND PSYCHICAL NATURE.
arm's length from him all that can be related in thought ; they
are in obj ective forms ; whilst at the same time by his moral nature
all that he possesses is limited with, and cannot be separated from,
his being. Every atom of his being, and his every thought, is both
attracting and repelling ; this is their very nature. He is absorb
ent and dark of soul as related to the Heavens ; but he may be
come radiant and glorious when surcharged with the divine truth.
He is not a being apart from other beings and from the Supreme
Being ; but the same in kind, in elemental forms, and in all pro
portions for similar ends. He is matter and he is sbu'l, he is
like fervent heating power, and the greatest calamity that could
befall the man would be to permit matter to petrify his soul,
so that he might become what is symbolised as a materiafist.
It follows that the Kingdom of God, and of Grace, exist for the
very purpose of changing man from the sinful, perverted con
dition to that of harmony with the Will of God ; and it may be
surmised that so long as man is, as he is, ignorant, selfish, and
self-asserting, the appearances would be those of duality and not
of unity. In a sense that men have not considered in the past,
Christ is becoming the Reconciler of all things ; He is breaking
down every wall and partition that separates heavenly and earthly,
and it will only be when men become heavenly that theyjwill
perceive that all antinomies are reconciled in, and by, Christ.
The line of thought indicated here may be sufficient to show
that physical forms are not only to-be studied for what they 'are
in themselves, this would be naturalism ; but also with the special
object in view of being able to rise above the natural to what is
spiritual truth. These forms are important in their own place,
just as letters in the alphabet, and symbols in chemistry, and
physics are useful ; but these are in their nature intellectual,
and without intellectual power in man they have no meaning.
The teaching here is that the spiritual must interpret the natural,
and until natural and spiritual agree, are reconciled, men^will
look in vain for that unity and harmony which they desire. '^ The
realm of physics has its own story to teU, to the initiated, in its
own particular way ; but the forms extend to the realm of Life
and the living, and thus it may be useful to try to conceive the
leading symbols that are found in this realm of thought. The
sciences of biology, embryology, anatomy and physiology, seem
to lead the thoughts to the famifiar conceptions of an ultimate,
and correlations ; and also to a real and an ideal, to plan and

THOUGHTS UPON PHYSICAL AND PSYCHICAL NATURE. 311
purpose, and the end for which these exist. Thus biology is the
germ seed, as thought, and the tree with its fruits ; embryology,
the ideal as it is embodied in any one seed,* and to what it will
develop ; anatomy, the spiritual conception reveaHhg the ideal
in all its forms ; and physiology as of all these forms in all their
correlations, and co-ordinations as they exist, forming a body
fitted and prepared for service in health and strength. The
total of physical Hfe is the macrocosm of this realm in nature ;
and the body of man is the perfect microcosm as in correspond
ence with the macrocosm. With all that is involved in these
sciences it may be said that scientists and thoughtful students,
are famifiar, therefore mere details as to what constitutes health
in, for example, the human body, is not necessary here. : The
results of science point clearly in this direction, that health sums
up the ideal order in the body as the perfect work of law regnant
in every organ, and as co-operating in perfect harmony for the
common good. The body is considered as a very complex organ
ised structure ; the adjustments are most admirable ; and when
all the organs fulfil their functions and all contribute their quota
for the common good, then this is health, and in this condition
of the body there is no cognisance of pain or uneasiness. As
matter of fact people ignorant of the law of development have
no conception of the.marveUous wisdom incarnate in their physical
bodies ; and the wonder is not, that there is so much pain and
suffering ; but that this is reduced to the minimum ; and that
there is in the body itself that which is ever favouring the removal
of pain and of healing disease. It is a question worthy of con
sideration whether learned, scientific thinkers have got more
than a gfimpse of this vision that will open up before them when
they are able to trace the processes of nature in the light of the
method of Christ. The law of development is ever from the
unit to the diverse, from the simple to the complex ; thus from one
energy to the physical forces conceived as eightfold ; the chemical
elements in their relations as suggested, begin in one electron,
and three Hnes of force ; in one atom of hydrogen equal to 800
electrons, and thus proportions in every element as to electrons,
and to hydrogen, until, as in lead or silver, the proportion would
be about 200,000 electrons ; and all this not in any haphazard
combinations, but conceived as actual manufactured productions
of the most complex kind, in their famifies, with their affinities
and related conditions. Add to this vision of chemistry, light,

312 THOUGHTS UPON PHYSICAL AND PSYCHICAL NATURE.
and spectrum analysis, and then what is chemical is transposed
into thousands of fines of force all having their own rates of
motion and angles of refraction. If this is carried upward into
the realm of the special senses, then it is found that portions
of the spectrum, as motions, will synchronise with heat, or tem
perature ; others with vision, Hght and colours ; others with
hearing in all the ranges of the octaves of sound ; others with
smell and taste ; and away beyond all these there are known re
gions of the spectrum, as in actinic action for photography, and
luminous rays which men do not as yet understand. That there
is harmony betwixt the universe and the spectrum is plainly
seen through spectrum analysis ; that man is a possible
epitome of the spectrum is an assertion that can hardly be ques
tioned ; and yet all these revelations and correlations are to be
conceived as forms of thought ; as only the alphabet of that
spiritual tuition upon which he is entering. The root conception
in all this is that God is in it all by His Spirit ; that Christ is the
Ideal of all this ; that the Spirit is the Wisdom of God by Whom
all plans, purposes and designs are revealed ; and that the out
come of the whole is the created universe as the work of the
Spirit. To put this matter as conceivable by the method of
Christ : it is that all these thousands upon thousands of cycles
of ever changing phenomena are all in an eightfold order, like
musical notes, or physical forces, or principles of being, or Blessings
on the Mount ; they are perfect order and law ; and if men only
knew Christ He would be conceived as greater than all these,
because they only give expression to what He has made manifest.
Indeed, men would now be justified in assuming this to be the
truth, that the Man Jesus Christ was the perfect Epitome of this
ideal ; and that it was in Him bodily. It is not to be supposed
that any man can understand all that is here suggested ; it is a
vision of glory that only Science could reveal ; but the revelation
is that of Truth, by the Spirit of Truth ; and it is Christ that is
Divine Wisdom as manifested Law, in harmony with the Will
of God. In conjunction with these revelations, that may be said
to be objective in their nature, there must follow what has been
conceived as the special work of the Spirit ; faith in God as the
First Cause of all that begins to be ; hope in Christ as the Ideal,
the Word, in Whom all things consist and subsist ; patient observ
ing, studying and conceiving, of the wise conceptions and opera
tions of the Spirit ; and the spiritual discernment that by all these

THOUGHTS UPON PHYSICAL AND PSYCHICAL. NATURE. 313
things the mercy, -truth, and self-sacrificing Love of God will be
more fully revealed to men.
Health has its roots in all these thoughts as bearing upon
the physical body ; it is by physical order and law that the phy
sical elements that constitute the body are produced ; it is by
Hfe that these are changed into living tissues ; the sciences of life
make known biological and embryological development, differ
entiations in anatomical relations and physiological conditions,
as these co-operate, and are co-ordinated for the common good
of the physical body. Disease and" pain introduce new factors
because with these there arises the thought that there is some
thing wrong, danger, and uneasiness ; there has been brought into
the realm of conscious thought, inherited weakness, pre-natal
disorder, change of structure, or perverted functions of organs.
Something has gone wrong with the perfect automatic machinery
and the symptoms of pain and uneasiness are the warnings the
possessor of the body receives that it is necessary to be thoughtful
and careful as to food and raiment, air and water, rest and ex
ercise. It is not necessary to enter into details as to the causes
of disease ; under the head of perverted functions may be men
tioned insufficient mastication, imperfect digestion, unhealthy
assimilation, chemical perversions, as in secretions and excretions,
impure and deficient arterial circulation of blood, want of aeration
and purification of blood in the lungs, and lack of nerve power ;
and, through such conditions the manifold forms of disease, that
receive so many names, from their symptoms, the organs affected,
or the compUcations and consequences. In all these ways dis
ease may be studied as related to the bodily organs and their
functions ; and, it is when there is a departure from what is normal
and right, what science conceives to be order and law, that there
is pain and uneasiness in the body. In addition to forms of dis
ease brought on by perverted functions, and, it may be, inherited
organic disease, there has been brought into special notice during
past years those many forms of disease caused by microbes,
bacteria, or Hving organisms which find their way into the body.
There are a great many of these organisms, some being harmless,
it may be useful ; whilst others are dangerous, poisonous and
deadly. All fevers come from this source, also smallpox, diphtheria
tuberculosis or consumption, cholera, and it may also be cancer,
and other forms of disease. It has to be remembered that for
every kind of fever there is said to be a specific germ, each after

314 THOUGHTS UPON PHYSICAL AND PSYCHICAL NATURE.
its kind ; some not difficult to destroy, others deadly in their
intense poisonous effects ; some capable of neutralisation as by
anti-toxins, others more subtle in their forms which, up to the
present time, have baffled the skill of the wisest and most careful
experimenters. It is recognised, as a general rule, that those who
are weak, have a low vitality and poor reactive power, are liable
to some of these diseases, whilst others, as plague, typhoid fever,
etc., strike down robust and weak alike,- and the virulence of such
fevers and diseases make the contest terrible, and too often fatal
for those who suffer. This subject is one that is receiving the
most careful study by men of science ; it is a very strange realm
of life, and thoughtful men watch with the keenest interest this
campaign against the most desperate physical enemies of man
kind. This subject has developed into a literature, as deafing
with preventative and healing medicine ; and it ought to be re
cognised that those who are engaged in this most difficult work,
deserve the grateful, thankful recognition of mankind. The
few thoughts to be suggested here, as bearing upon this subject,
tend in this direction : these microbes are very minute organisms ;
they may be conceived as being among Hving forms, of the lowest
kind in their stage of development ; they do not seem to rise
above this stage of being ; they seem to possess intense vitafity,
multiply very rapidly, and run the cycle of their lives in their
due order. As already stated, some of the living microbes are
not hurtful, but others are terribly destructive ; and if these
were to be classified they might be termed Ferments, BacilK
and Bacteria. The Ferments are well known, it is by them that the
process of fermentation is carried on, as in the production of beer
and alcohol ; they pervert or change that which is sweet, and good
for food, and make from it what many consider to be poisonous,
and not of any real value as nourishment for man or beast. The
Bacilli are those deadly microbes found in fevers ; they live upon,
and within, what is living, and it would almost seem as if their
mission was that of producing poisonous destruction wherever
they find a place in which to live and multiply. It is explained
that this type of Hfe is that which lives where there is no air or
oxygen ; and, the most efficient-means of destroying the virulence
of these Bacilli is to expose them to the air and oxygen, and then
their deadly operations may be hindered or stopped. The ex
planation as to consumption is that these Bacilli, of the tubercu
losis kind, find a place in which to Hve in the cellular tissues of

THOUGHTS UPON PHYSICAL AND PSYCHICAL NATURE. 315
the lungs, when they are devitalised by impure air, or other con
ditions ; thus they destroy the tissues and cause organic wasting
in the lungs. The end of this contest betwixt these parasitic
Bacilli and Hving organism where they succeed, is that of dis
organisation and death. There is another series of forms "of
microbes which pass under the name of Bacteria , these are not
conceived to belong to the same deadly family ; the thoughts
associated with them are that of the disorganisation and destruc
tion of what has ceased to live ; thus they are the humble Scaven
gers in the realm of life, and they bring back to the inorganic con
dition, in its elemental forms, that which was endowed with
organic life.
In thus sketching life, as found in the human body, conceived
as order, law and health, there is the ideal of what the living body
ought to be in the history of development in form and function ;
and, in glancing over the varied means by which there is pain,
disease, disintegration and death, there is considered to be a de
parture from the standard of health, and the end of that way is
death and the grave. What is specially revealed by science is,
that normal life in its manifestations means health and strength,
enjoyment and pleasure ; but, what men learn from experience
and experiments, is that in some way or other, the basest forms
of life destroy the noblest ; and, the end is, that what was dust
returns to the dust again ; and, what was full of Hfe is trampled
in death under the heel of matter and force. Experience and
empiricism may fold their hands in impotence and declare that
these are the facts, and that men are unable to get away from
them ; but science enters a protest against such a judgment, and
is quite unable to accept such a verdict as the final words in this
conflict. Experience and empiricism may state that, in their
opinion, there is not any question of conflict, because all that
takes place is known ; ' men do not know of any exceptions from
personal experiences, and thus it is waste of time to discuss such
problems. Intuition and science are against experience and
empiricism in this matter ; the former has faith and hope ; the
latter with patience studies what intuition suggests ; what order
and law teach ; and, turns an attentive ear to Revelation to find
out, if possible, if any message can reach the ear and the heart of
man from that quarter. It seems to be a mistake for experience
and empiricism, in their agnostic forms, to give up hope so soon ;
this attitude is not hopeful and scientific ; this comes from fainting

316 THOUGHTS UPON PHYSICAL AND TSYCHICAL NATURE.
hearts, and unbelieving spirits that will not look beyond what is
sensuous, or what the intellect can touch and handle in the natural
realm of thought. Granting that experience and agnostic em
piricism may appear to have the best of the argument from their
own stand-point, it may fairly be asked, in the light of science
and its remarkable discoveries, whether they are acting wisely iii
assuming such limitations as they do, seeing that they are really
so very ignorant, and so much in the dark, as to the perfect region
of science, and as to what is meant by the abnormal and unhealthy
conditions of organs ?
The position, as men are able to see it at present, is conflicting ;
experience and agnostic empiricism are inclined to take their
opinions from what is naturaHstic and earthly ; whilst Intuition,
Science, and Revelation, turn their faces toward the heavens
and conceive that good reasons can be given why the discussion
should not be prejudged and foreclosed. There may come further
Hght upon these problems, and thus it is not wise, considering
the great interests that are at stake, to come to any premature
definite conclusion. It is true that Intuition is buoyed up by
faith ; but faith is justifying her premonitions, and, in fact, has
ever done so to the faithful ; thus it is not unreasonable to wait
and see what the result will be. To many it may appear that
science is laying hold of facts that cannot be shaken by agnosti
cism ; there is coming into view a great cleavage betwixt what is
order and law ; and what is disordered and lawless ; and science
will not rest satisfied until the roots of these problems are reached.
As to Revelation, it is to be granted that in this realm the problem
is settled as fact ; there is no doubt whatever that the Lord
Christ will take away all pain, heal all kinds of disease, restore the
cosmos to order and law, and destroy sin and put an end to death.
The dubiety is not about the matter of fact with belie.Vers in Christ;
it is the means, of the great change, how it is to be done, and in
what way Christ will come and reign over men and overthrow
His enemies. It is premature to form a definite opinion about
these matters ; but men may assume that it will not be as in
former dispensations, or ages ; therefore, those who are waiting
and watching for the great event will do well not to be dogmatic
as to the manner of the coming. In the light of the past, the
followers of Christ will do well to hold their theories with a very
loose hand ; because if they do not they may be apt to repeat
the sad experiences of the Jews, and even be led to reject Him,

THOUGHTS UPON PHYSICAL AND PSYCHICAL NATURE. 317
because He may come from another Nazareth, and not as they ex
pected ; it may be even without visible observation. It is far
from safe to prejudge such problems ; in past ages the true Revela
tions have always been to the spirits of men in spiritual truth :
and it would be strange if this, the latest and highest spiritual
coming in the order of development, should be on a lower plat
form, as an outward physical demonstration.
The conviction of science would tend to the thought that order
and law, the perfect spiritual cosmos, is what men are about to
have revealed to them ; not indeed off hand, as by Divine fiat,
but upon the principles understood by scientific men during past
years. To many religious people such a thought as this will cer
tainly be antipathetic ; they are looking for Him to descend in
glory, it may be, upon the Mount of OHvet ; but what if His fore
runner is already in the midst, and the sword of the spirit He
wields is that of scientific truth ; a double-edged sword that
cleaves asunder health and disease, order and disorder, good and
evil, sacrifice and sin. This witness calls men to awake to truth
and righteousness ; and men may rest assured that the Faithful
One will not be far away when the voice of the servant is heard
throughout the land. The point to be specially noticed here
as Telated to health and disease is this : science on the one hand
cuts to the root of all thoughts, and tells men that health means
order and law ; and turning the other edge of the sword in the
face of the enemy it declares that pain and disease in every form
is contrary to order and law, to science ; and thus they are not
to be thought upon, or identified as the same ; the one is the Will
of God in beneficent operation ; the other is under the curse, and.
must be conceived to be the enemy of God in the physical realm.
That this is how those who suffer from pain and disease intuitively
think upon this subject requires no proof ; it is empiricism and
agnosticism that raise doubts, being ego-centric ; and thus the
passage from intuition and faith to science is so much easier than
from naturaUstic experience and empiricism. But inquirers
may ask, Is it then to be conceived that there is no science of
pathology, and that pain, disease and suffering are perversions
of truth and righteousness, of science ? About biology, embry
ology, anatomy and physiology, as representing the sciences of
life, there is no question ; but, as to pathology, the question may
be raised with advantage as to this being a science. Here it is
necessary to be careful that the term science is not used in an

318 THOUGHTS UPON PHYSICAL AND PSYCHICAL NATURE.
ambiguous sense ; if used as signifying the order of what is true
and right, as order and law, then pathology is not a science ; but
if science can be used legitimately as to the correctness of all re
lated knowledge, then it may be true to say that there is a kind of
order in disorder and disease ; and that even lawlessness may be
conceived as following an order of law. This seems to be one of
those subtle questions in which it may be conceived the devil
would delight ; it is to give a good name to what is bad ; and,
upon the strength of the good name, pass the debased coinage as
good standard coin in the realm of thought. True science here
would mean true thought in harmony with order and law ; pseudo-
science is that which has no standard, and makes pretences as to
knowledge beyond what can be justified by the facts. If the
naturalistic theories of agnostics could assimilate pain, disease,
disorder, sin, and evil, into the order of their sciences, something
might be said in favour of pathology as a science ; but it does not
appear as if they did so ; and it does appear as if they thought
upon similar lines with common people upon this subject ; thus
what is painful and evil is not accepted as science, it is something
to be got rid of, and to be expelled, if possible, from the body,
human and politic. In this matter experience and agnostic
empiricism agree that what cannot be cured must be endured ;
but intuition and science go much further, they hope, expect, and
look forward to the abolition of pain, the curing of disease and the
overthrow of evil.
In conjunction with pathology, there is conceived to be, some
say, a science of medicine or therapeutics, whilst others think
that the appropriate name is the empiric art of heafing. What
is of special interest is that the training required for the medical
profession, as to education, is scientific as related to the sciences
of Hfe ; but as to the diagnosis of disease and means for healing,
they do not claim scientific knowledge, but only what is empiric.
Perhaps this distinction marks as clearly as possible what medical
men think and know about these matters ; about the sciences
of Hfe they have not the shadow of a doubt ; but as to their
diagnosis of disease, and the remedies they use to cure disease,
there is no unanimity ; they follow empiric rules, and it is difficult
to see how they could do anything else. It may be assumed that
with medical men, when they diagnose the condition of their
patients, the first thought is that of the disease or disorder, and the
cause or causes of the abnormal conditions ; the second thought,

THOUGHTS UPON PHYSICAL AND PSYCHICAL NATURE. 319
the probabifity of compfications and their tendencies ; and the
third, what remedy could be used as the means of reHeving pain
and to cure the disease ; but, at the same time, consciously; or
unconsciously, there would be the reversion in thought to the
standard of health ; to the power in the body that works for heal
ing ; and in what way the medicines to be prescribed would act
so as to assist nature, and thus restore the body to its normal
condition. The purpose is to restore health and strength by the
means that the doctor knows how to use empirically ; what has
been useful in similar cases under similar conditions. It may
be assumed that medical men are quite famiHar with such thoughts
as these ; it has to be recognised that patients do not expect from
their doctors perfect science ; what they do get is valuable pro
fessional skill that they hope will prove beneficial ; and under
present conditions what more can the doctor do, or the patient
expect ? If pathology and therapeutics could be changed from
the empiric stage to that of pure science, then it may be suggested
that the result would be what neither doctors nor patients would
expect ; in other words there would not be any patients, and
thus doctors would not be required. The result here is the com
mon one as experienced by suffering humanity ; disease has no
standard, it is disorder ; there are no infallible healers of disease,
and no infallible systems of treating disease; wise healers of disease,
as a rule, agree upon this point that it is not their remedies that
heal, but the healing power incarnate in the body. Thus healers
of disease are reaUy and truly the servants of the Divine Healer,
waiting to be His co-workers ; and if they arrogate to them
selves any higher authority, or mission, they are making a serious
mistake, and they are so far unfitting themselves for the noble,
self-denying, and self-sacrificing work in which they are engaged.
In thus briefly tracing the leading conceptions as related to
the physical world, the special thought kept in view has been the
teaching of science as to order and law ; what constitutes health ;
and what is meant by heaHng disease. There has also been this
ideal present, that in all these words, forms of thoughts and sym
bols, the physical realm is the objective world of signs by which
there is education ; and these signs become spiritual ideals as
they are transposed into images, thoughts and correlated thoughts.
The physical form is as objective sign ; the psychical correspon
dence is Hke the sign as image ; the intellectual are as relations
of thoughts and correlated conditions in which there is found

320 THOUGHTS UPON PHYSICAL AND PSYCHICAL NATURE.
order, polarisation, and the crystalline purity of truth and life.
This cosmos within is shattered to pieces ; the prismatic order
is turned into chaos ; it is darkness and night, thus men wander
they know not whither, seeing they are depolarised, demagnetised
and in a state of disorder. This is not disease of body merely, it
is the result- of sin, of that mental and soul perversity that is as
darkness, and of inability to find God, truth and righteousness.
In Grace, there is the way of redemption from evil, salvation from
sin, restoration to order, and healing of disease ; but not in a
day, by fiat, or by magic, only by the law of development even as
indicated by all the works of God. These thoughts may be ex
pressed in this form as showing the unity and harmony that exist
throughout the universe. 1. In God, the ReaHty and Unity of
Being. 2. In Christ, the Ideal and the Image. 3. In the Spirit,
spiritual ideals as ideas or thoughts in all wisdom. 4. In the
Creation, the manifestation of the Will of God, as spiritual ;
natural, as Nature ; and not scientific as order and law. When this
line of thought is appUed to Nature then the results are similar. 1 .
The Objective is both true and real. 2. The Ideal embodied in
Nature is as symbol image. 3. All that is involved in plan, pur
pose and design in Nature is spiritual thought. 4. Nature as
manifested in creation is meant ultimately to be conceived by
man as science. Apply this to man and the thoughts run thus :
1. The personal reality and unity in a man. 2. This is not man's
creation or work, he is an ideal and an image. 3. His constitu
tion is spiritual ; plan, purpose and design being at the root of
all that he is as man. 4. Man has become being as body and
soul ; the creation of God in all power and wisdom ; and he is
so made, and endowed, as to be able to learn all that these things
mean. Carry the line of thought into the fallen state, then : 1.
Unity is lost. 2. The ideal, the image, is broken, lost and marred.
3. Men are bewildered- in the darkness without Divine wisdom,
and their highest attainments are experience and empiricism.
4. The end of all these is the darkness, disease, disorder, death
and the grave. By grace there is salvation through the Spirit,
thus : 1. Unity of the Spirit in Christ. 2. The ideal is in His
Image. 3. In all spiritual grace and wisdom. 4. As the new
creation in Christ by the Spirit. There would follow in due order,
the reconstitution of man in intellectual, moral and spiritual order.
as he is able to translate Christ into his own soul, and to be trans
figured into His likeness.

THOUGHTS UPON PHYSICAL AND PSYCHICAL NATURE. 321
The physical is the objective ; it is form ; the psychical is sub
jective, it becomes ideal, image, and thought ; the external is as
form and Hkeness ; the internal is as correspondence, in harmony
with the form. If these conceptions are taken up from the side
of Nature, then Nature is conceived as pre-existing cause, and the
soul as subsequent effect ; but if from the stand-point of man,
as spiritual, then the pre-existing cause is the spirit of man and
the co-ordinated effects are observance of forms and correspon
dence. Does Nature pre-exist before man, or do they co-exist
together in God 1 As correlated, they co-exist in God ; but, as
related to man, he exists before consciousness of existence, and
the correlations of Nature, and of Soul, are subsequent effects in
time. The spirit first, then the senses and forms ; the perception
of forms and their correspondence ; the pre-existing unity, har
mony and fitness in all things, and after that man perceives, re
ceives and conceives, what is made manifest in creation. It is
the becoming of the person that is here traced ; the spirit of the
man is placed in the garden of the soul as environed by Nature ;
thus so far as man is concerned, the problem is not how he was
taken into that garden, or whether he grew up in it ; he awakened
to find himself in it, and thus his duty was to keep the garden en
trusted to his care. This is like the position of man ; thus the
spirit of man finds that there is a special analogy betwixt what is
inorganic in nature and what is not organised as living thought
in his own soul. The spirit of man is poised, balanced, mag
netised, or polarised, between two worlds ; within the soul there
is, as it were, the conservation of energy ; without there are all the
correlations of the forces ; within is the noumena ; and without
all phenomena. By heat there is expansion and change in form ;
by cohesion there is reception, adhesion and coherence in order. By
analysis of forms of thought what reveals quantitative relations ;
by synthesis how combinations of thoughts take place, what their
qualities are found to be, and their preferences or affinities. This
training leads onward to abstract conceptions and correlations
of thought ; in these men find the light of truth ; and if the soul
is pure as the crystal and perfect in order, then the light of truth
will pass freely through the soul and there will be light ; but if
the Hght is refracted and the soul impure, earthly, clinging co
hesively to the earth, then the result will be darkness, dia-mag
netism and chaos. This condition may be changed by the Divine
power, as of electricity, because then there takes place a new
X

322 THOUGHTS UPON PHYSICAL AND PSYCHICAL NATURE.
heavenly polarisation and a magnetic environment ; there is re-
constitution and re-creation, and what was earthly is changed
into Hkeness to the heavenly. The conception is that the heavenly
is as unity and the earthly as diversity ; thus God as Being is
Unity and the creation is diversity ; Nature is a unity and a great
diversity ; man is a unity and also a complex diversity ; and the
Revelation of Grace is a unity and also, as found in the Bible,
very diverse in its forms. God, Nature, Man and Revelation
follow as by the law of development ; but so far as man is con
cerned, his fall into sin and darkness, means estrangement from
God ; thus man is demagnetised and dia-magnetic to truth, and
he finds himself to be out of harmony with Nature and with God.
It s here that there arises those strange symbols of the action of
magnetism as positive attracting what is negative ; the Hke re
pelling the like and being drawn to the unlike. It is the mag
netism in God as love, the heavenly, that draws the unfike in man
the earthly ; and it is the earthly in man that repels the like in
men that are earthly, so that they are kept in the state of opposi
tion to each other. The Hght of heaven radiates from Christ
upon men who are absorbent ; they absorb what is heavenly and
the issue is that they become like Christ and radiate forth His
glory. ,
It is conceived that the connection betwixt the physical and the
psychical may be expressed in terms of correspondence, and a few
suggestions Have been made to indicate the likeness that exists
in the inorganic realm of Force and of Spirit. It may now be
possible to indicate that a like correspondence will be found be
twixt the realms of physical, and psychical Hfe ; as found in ideal
conceptions and by the law of development. As with physical
life the beginning is in the germ-cell ; so in psychical Hfe the con
ception is that it has a similar starting point ; they are alike in
this that they are first principles of being. As with biology in the
physical following an ideal law of development, so with the
psychical realm ; it cannot with reason, be conceived that in
either realms the development is that of chance, or of any other
name that could be given to the processes ; but behind all pheno
mena there is the ideal, and thus no matter how diverse the path
ways by which the ideal is made manifest, there is the triumphant
onward process, in the face of all kinds of opposition to bring
about eventually the form of man physically, and the soul of
man psychically. The survival of the fittest to survive is not a

THOUGHTS UPON PHYSICAL AND PSYCHICAL NATURE. 323
something that has been inherited in the creature only ; the fit
ness lies in being fit to be used by the Spirit of Life to receive hew
differentiated powers ; and, if this fitness is not found, that type
remains as a fixed type, or it may even fall back into what may be
classed as a lower state. As the whole order of physical life may,
in theory, be traceable from a primordial germ of life historically
onward to man, so the psychical Hfe, that inhabits physical organs,
is conceivable as similar in order from the first manifestations of
Hfe psychical in the lower organisms up to man. As it is in the
physical world with anatomical forms and differences of structure
and. organs, so it is assumed to be psychically ; these forms or
divisions may take the natural divisions of the special senses as
perceptive, the mental powers in their divisions as receptive and
conceptive ; and the organs of volition through the brain as
active. It may be remarked as bearing upon this point, that this
is not a hypothesis without any foundation in experimental
fact ; because, it is now well known by those who study the brain
organism, with its functions, that they have actually found such
correspondencies do exist in the physical organs as have been
suggested. The point to be conceived here is that in physical,
and psychical, there are correlations, co-ordinations, and corre
spondencies ; and it is by means of, or through, the physical,
that the psychical is perceived, and there are acquirements. Ag
nostic thinkers may wish to believe that there is no distinction
betwixt these two realms ; it is difficult to see how physical proof
can be given that they are wrong ; but, those who think dif
ferently, and befieve in spiritual cause and order, may claim that
the whole range of enquiry isln the spiritual world of thought, and
thus to render the honour of supremacy to the lower, the physical,
seems to be a perversion of true thinking. The day will surely
come when an anatomy of the mind, or soul, will be possible ;
but, it may fairly be expected, that the ideal will not be sub
jection to the physical ; there will be correspondencies and corre
lations, and the form or order in the psychical will be like the
physical ; in fact, unless men were able to follow in scientific
thought and order what is perceived in the physical they would
not possess that clue which is going to prove experiences faulty
and empirical theories useless. The germ embodies the principle
of Hfe ; the embryo as fully developed an ideal ; but it is anatomy
that leads men to the vestibule of science so that difference, like
ness, order and law, may be studied. As with physiology in the
x 2

324 THOUGHTS UPON PHYSICAL AND PSYCHICAL NATURE.
physical realm, so also in the psychical, function, as indicating
health of the mind, is very important. The healthy soul in the
healthy body is a double physiological conception ; and this
means harmonious functions, perfect order and law, or the Will
of God as regnant in body and soul.
The Ideal exists, that is to say it is, in a sense, made manifest in
and by, nature. It is conceived that nature cannot understand
its own mechanism, it is, in a sense, objective ; and thus it is
man as lord over nature that is led onward to interpret nature
and all her ways. Thus nature is an ideal germ, a Hving ideal,
a manifestation to thought, and a machine in action ; or, it is
life, germ, embryo, anatomical relations and physiological body
as healthy organism. It is man as intellectually endowed that
studies nature ; and, if the man and the machinery were perfect,
then the man would get to understand the machine and its healthy
operations ; the organs in all their differences and their unity ;
all that is involved in the embryo as ideal ; and the belief in the
ultimate concept Hfe. This is not what men have found in their
studies ; they have not been, through their experiences and em
piric theories, able to get at the right standpoint for study ; and,
thus what has really taken place in the advance of science has been
like that of an advance from the standpoints of pathology and
therapeutics. Scientific students have not begun their studies
at the right point ; they have had to combat pre-existing con
ceptions and false theories ; they have been led, as it were, through
the devious paths of empiric medicine as the way of healing and
restoration to health ; thus the way of advance has been doubly
difficult, because of the perversions of the past, and of the way
of true knowledge, that requires to be travelled to obtain scientific
knowledge. These facts require to be recognised ; and that
other conception, so prevalent, be put down, as to the wonder
ful knowledge and wisdom of men, their cleverness and perfect
assurance that they are in the right way ; have always been in it ;
that they have only to reach that peak, or get round that head
land, and then all will be clear, and the mysteries of the universe
will be known. This is not so, experience and empiricism have
failed ; men do not find that health reigns in body or in mind,
and thus the real standpoint with the masses of men is Hke that
of pathology and therapeutics and not of health. As with
pathology in the physical so in the psychical, what men find too
often are thoughts equivalent to diseased,' disordered, conditions;

THOUGHTS UPON PHYSICAL AND PSYCHICAL NATURE. 325
and it is largely the symbol phraseology in the physical that is
used to express the conditions of the psychical. It is not necessary
to enter into details on this point ; men are familiar with the ex
pressions used to describe what is conceived to be a departure
from psychical health and sanity ; thus greed, covetousness, and
selfishness, are analogous with the desire, hunger, thirst, that is for
self-indulgence ; a jaundiced eye, a bifious spirit, a vicious taste,
a poisonous influence, passion, and inflamed desire, a languid and
nerveless will for vofition, perversions of what is true, inversion
of what is right, the Hfe of the parasite, of the anarchist, the fire
that destroys, the fever that burns and the cancer that eats out
the Hfe. These and many more similies are used to represent
what is psychical, as compared with what is physical, thus the
terms representation, or correspondence, may be used to indicate
the relationship that exists betwixt body and mind. It is not
necessary to explain the ways the art of healing and medicine are
appHed to the diseased mind ; literature is full of such expres
sions ; Shakespeare, in his dramas, has many examples ; and all
students of the Bible know that in many ways sickness, disease,
sores, leprosy, etc., etc., with means of healing disease, are referred
to, as if the Word of God, as a Hterary work, had a special interest
in this subject.

CHAPTER XI.
MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH.
It has been assumed that there is a fourfold development of
thought in creation before man enters upon his inheritance and
becomes conscious of his superiority over the lower creatures.
These have been expressed in varied forms, but they all tend in
this direction to prove that the lower creatures do not rise to the
knowledge of intellectual, abstract, related thoughts ; thus they
do not consider complex causes and effects. There is a definite
stage of thought attained by man, to understand and know what
is intellectual and abstract ; it is in this region that man rises
above all the lower creatures ; and it is by his intellectual and
moral supremacy, that the man rises to God-Hkeness. The sym
bol trees in the Garden of Eden give expression to these concep
tions ; it is not good for the child-man to attempt to eat, that is
to spiritually try to understand, what are contradictions in terms
such as good and evil ; it does not follow of necessity that they do
contradict each other ; but the child is unable to comprehend the
order of thought, and thus it is wiser to wait and be instructed
in truth, in what is good, than to prematurely put forth the hand
and act ignorantly and selfishly. It is the Tree of Life that con
veys Hfe ; and thus the true wisdom is to eat of that fruit and
live, instead of prematurely eating, or trying to eat, what is not
suitable for a child. These are the symbol conceptions that teach
men in what way there was the Fall from what is true and right.
In some way or other there was disobedience and sin ; thus
manhood was forfeited, in the Hght of the Life of God and good.
The carnal, the flesh, desire, gained the supremacy ; man fell
from innocence to disobedience ; he did not conform to, and
obey, the law he knew ; thus the Fall and the forfeiture of the
image of, or Hkeness to, God. It is this truth that is such a stum
bling block in the eyes of many wise men ; it seems to them

MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH. 327
absurd, after so many centuries of experience, after attaining
to so much knowledge, to have to go back in thought, and ex
perience, to the Garden of Eden, to the child-Hke stage of being,
and to begin anew to live in the true knowledge of order, and to
obedience of the laws of righteousness. Can men find any other
explanation that will fit into all the facts of the case ; explain
man's state spiritually ; and indicate in what way man is to be
restored to the Divine favour ? It almost seems as if men for
sixty centuries had been travelfing in the wrong way ; they have
come suddenly upon a new highway ; they cannot understand
what it means because they had assured themselves that without
doubt they were on the King's Highway, and, indeed, had almost
reached the Palace of the King. This is not a pleasant thought.
What can men make of it ? Can it be possible that this is another
version of the Desert story ? Can it be that they have not escaped
from the Desert and that they are still, in spiritual figure, in the
land beyond the Jordan ? Is it possible that even as Israel after
the flesh could not enter the Promised Land because of unbelief,
that in like manner it has happened that Israel after the spirit
has had a similar experience ? Can it be that the spiritual Israel
has been treading in the footpaths of Israel after the flesh, and
ignorant of the fact, whilst priding themselves in the thought that
they were enjoying the privileges of Israel after the spirit ? These
are serious questions ; and they do not look specially favourable
for the Israel named Christian ; yet it must be confessed the
analogy is very striking ; and it is to be feared that the modern
Israel is not really much more spiritual than the Israel after the
flesh in the Wilderness. There is more in this than appears upon
the surface ; these symbofic forty days in the Mount, and forty
years in the Desert contain a spiritual secret not yet divulged to
men. Have men retraced their steps with Elijah to the Mount
of God that they might solve this problem ? It is certain they
have not been consciously with Christ in the Desert, for the forty
days of the temptation, that they might be led to understand,
withstand, and put to flight the tempter ; because the devil has
been regnant in Church and State, and men have had no conception
that they were being hoodwinked by the tempter. They have not
followed the Master and Lord in their day of temptation ; and it
is to be feared that the devil's stones have been accepted as good
bread ; that men have worshipped the devil that they might
possess power ; and, that they have acted presumptuously in

328 MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH.
tempting God through the suggestions of the evil one. This vision
of truth is not a pleasant one ; it is very remarkable that these
stories should speak to men as if they were actually Hving ; and,
as if they were becoming radiant with Hght from heaven.
The position now reached is a strange one ; and when men
trace the order of development by the physical and psychical to
the intellectual and moral, then in some way or other, they find
that they cannot advance, they land themselves in an intellectual
chaos and a moral ruin ; there is a hope that a way will be found
through the darkness, by the light of science, and by morals or
ethics ; but it is useless ; this is not the way to God for sinful men,
and if they are wise they will study this matter very thoroughly,
to see whether this is so or not ? So far as can be seen the way by
nature to the Tree of Life is closed ; and the angel's sword that
turns in every direction effectually prevents men taking this way
for their salvation. The Book of Creation is closed ; the Book
of the new Creation is opened ; and, whether men wish it or not,
befieve it or not, they are not in the line of the creation by natural
development ; they are actually in the order of the development
of the Creation in Christ. Men have supposed that there was no
break in the chain of development from creation to Adam, and
from Adam to his descendants; and, in a physical sense this is true ;
but, somehow, the impression grows stronger that the Fall of
Adam is a real break in psychical continuity ; and from that
time the intellectual and the moral are in chaos and ruins, per
verted and dia-magnetic. Yet it is necessary to be careful here,
as related to the deep principles of being ; because it is not to
be conceived that the Spirit turned away from man by rejecting
him ; or that Christ ceased to be the Fountain Ideal of his life ;
the change is found in the relations of the spirit of man ; and,
it is man that exists under the new realm of Grace. There is not
a break in the law of development of man as created by God, in
Christ through the Spirit to creation ; the break and the Fall is
in man ; and this becomes the occasion of the further develop
ment of God of that realm known as Grace and Sacrifice. It is
not that man has to find his way back to God through nature
and the natural creation by the Spirit, this he could not have
done ; it is that Christ comes from Heaven in Grace ; brings
Heaven with Him ; and in that new creation in Christ, all men
and nations are called to co-operate with Christ in the great work
of salvation. It is plain that this aspect of the problem of

MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH. 329
redemption is more complex than the theory that assumes that man
is born natural, and continues a natural man, until he is converted
to God consciously ; the conception here is that he is born into a
realm of Grace, breathes its atmosphere, and may eat the bread
from Heaven and drink the water of life from the Stricken Rock
all through the journey of Hfe. It is quite true, in contradis
tinction to the natural that is in creation in Adam, that there is
also a natural and carnal order of development in Christ ; but
this is under Grace, and it ought not to be identified with that
other natural where the possibihty exists that the creature may
follow the law of development without any break in the history of
the creature. It may be that systems of theology embody this
conception ; but it does not seem to be generally accepted as a
distinctive thought, as bearing upon man's position in the sight
of God and in the heart of Christ. This may tend to explain
that unique sympathy and love Christ manifested toward little
children ; to Him they were not the children of the devil, or of
wrath ; they were His children, by Grace, in the Kingdom of
His mercy and breathing the atmosphere of His love. It does
not, by any means, follow that this distinction is to be used as a
plea for excusing men when they sin ; it simply explains what
man's state is under Grace ; and there is no change whatever
in the conception that the realm of Grace is that of spiritual
development, under the most favourable conditions, by which
man can be consciously restored to the favour of God ; and, at
the same time carry on the dread conflict against the powers of
evil until the final victory in Grace by sacrifice is won.
If this line of thought is accepted as an introduction to the
study of the Bible, then it is possible that the Book will be better
understood as that great work, or Kingdom of Grace, that has
been revealed to mankind as the means of redemption and salva
tion. It is folly for men limited by natural and carnal conceptions
to think that they know what the Book means and to condemn it,
because it does not fit in with their conceptions ; it lives in a far
higher sphere from beginning to end, and thus if they have any
modesty left, they will stop making comparisons which are utterly
out of place ; and., not until they aspire to, and live in, its atmos
phere, should they give even an opinion as to the mission of the
Bible. As for naturafistic critics, if they are wise, they will think
over their theories many times before they give public expression
to them ; they are like children playing with fire, not knowing

330 MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH.
its power ; they may be wise and far-seeing men ; but there is
that wisdom in the Bible that will confound all their conceptions
and theories. Indeed, they speak in the Babel tongues of con
fusion, and it is difficult to see how their ideas and words can be
in scientific order, and do good. To all such men Christ has re
vealed His Grace toward them and His Sacrifice for them ; He
gives to them the Kingdom of Grace in which to Hve ; and the
atmosphere of love in which to move and have their being ; thus
it does appear to be very ungracious, and ungrateful, to treat as
they do their Lord, King and Saviour. It may not be that the
classes of men referred to are sinners above all other classes of
men ; indeed, it may fairly be conceived that their sin is that of
ignorance, and not of willing or wilful persecution. The real
question to be studied at present is not who are the greatest
sinners ; but, where can the saints be found, who know and under
stand the Book of Grace, as God's Will for the salvation of men ?
As already suggested the ways of studying the Bible are mani
fold ; and the longer it is studied the more wonderful it becomes
in its unity, complexity, order, and development, as a revelation of
Grace and Truth for the salvation of mankind. On the other
hand it just as fully illustrates that terrible world of evil that is
within and around men ; and if the conceptions that have been
formed are true, then, it is only now that men will be truly
awakened to their folly, sinfulness and wickedness in God's sight.
Men seem to have had a special endowment for misrepresenting
God and His Grace in Christ ; and, strange to say, though their
judgments of others have often been harsh and unjust, they
have, in the most marvellous manner, failed to understand and
judge themselves. It may be that those who excuse and think
more highly of themselves than they ought to think, deserve the
greater blame ; and those who have been at the School of Christ
and have been taught by His Spirit and would condemn them
selves may be justified ; but, so far as manlcind is concerned, the
words of Psalmist and Apostle remain true, " There is none
righteous ; no, not one." The Bible teaches this truth, as if it
were a fundamental fact from the beginning to the end ; and if
men study aright the history of Christendom, and of the world
to the present day, the same facts can be seen to be true. Thus
if the whole of history is that of the heavens and the earth and
their conflicts, men are still in that history and in its order of
development. If history is studied in the light of divisions that

MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH. 331
can be traced then these might be summed up in this order.
First Division : 1. Adam to the Flood. 2. Noah to the Con
fusion of Babel. 3. Shem to the apostacy of the nations in
Nineveh and Babylon. 4. Abraham to the bondage in Egypt.
Second Division : 1. Moses, the great redemption from Egypt :
and the story of the Desert. 2. Joshua, the Land conquered, and
possessed, and the fall of the nation under the Judges. 3. Samuel
the seer and all that is involved in his rejection. 4. David the
king, the kingdom, the apostasy and captivity. Third Divi
sion : 1. Book of Chronicles to Song of Solomon, as a spiritual
Genesis, with its failure to reach spiritual ideals. 2. Isaiah to
Obadiah, concerning Edom, the world. 3. Jonah to Malachi and
the perverted state of Israel. 4. The Baptist and Jesus Christ
and their histories. The Fourth Division : 1. Christ, as the
Saviour and Lord over all creatures in Glory. 2. The Spirit of
God as revealed in the Acts of the Apostles. 3. The Apostle Paul
as the servant of the Spirit and of Christ. 4. The disciple, and
Apostle John as summing up all spiritual truth in Gospels, Epistles
and in the Book of Revelation. In all these, it will be observed
that God begins a new work of Grace, or differentiations of that
work, and each division or dispensation ends in the apparent
success of evil and the frustration of the work of Grace among
men. The first division is that of the overflowing flood of evil in
the earth ; the confusion of the thoughts and words of men ;
the apostasy from God and Grace ; and the subjection of the
people of God to the tyranny of the great world power, Egypt.
In the second division, the psychical, there is redemption, but
it is to death in the Desert ; to the conquest of the Land, and
subjection to the PhiHstines ; to the visible Kingdom of Grace,
the rejection of the King, and the end, the death of Saul on Gilboa,
and the King, as David, over the victorious kingdom, the end
being the divided Idngdom, schism, strife, Nineveh and Babylon.
The third division returns to mankind in the Chronicles, by the
way of Israel, and the end is the Captivity in the East ; to Isaiah
and the far-reaching visions of the prophets as to the realm of
Grace among men, as represented by Edom ; to Jonah and the
mission to Nineveh and the failure of the mission of Israel as a
nation ; to the Baptist and Christ as closing the Jewish dispensa
tion, and the doom that fell upon the Jews. The fourth division
begins and foreshadows the dispensation of Grace in Christ ; thus
Christ, as High Priest and Sacrifice for sin ; the Spirit as revealing

332 MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH.
Christ and the falHng back into Judaism, of Jews and Galatians ;
the mission of Paul as the servant of the Spirit to the Churches,
and the long subjection, and imprisonment at Rome ; and the
spiritual conceptions of Christ and His Kingdom of Grace, of
Heaven in the earth, as found in the writings of John, the end in
his case being banishment to Patmos, so that through the failures
of the past the seer might be able to look beyond all the failures
in all the dispensations of Grace ; and see at last the descent of
the new heavens and earth, and the coming glory that shall
never end.
It may be useful to point out that the New Testament may be
conceived as a spiritual Genesis ; it is a true revelation as history,
but it is much more ; it is the germ-seed out of which Christianity
has arisen ; and Christendom is the earthly fruition of that seed
that has taken nearly two thousand years to develop in the
atmosphere and environment of the earth. This seems to be
something like what is meant by the spirit of prophecy ; it is the
heavens as pregnant in the earth ; and the forms, the prophetic
utterances, used are such as can be conceived at the time as seed
thoughts of truth ; the development being different in outward
appearance ; but with such an affinity, likeness, analogy, that
they are seen to be related in this way to each other. This seems
to be why the Gospels, Epistles and the Book of Revelation are
so complex, in their structure ; they are as it were being enveloped
rather than developed ; they are as the Mind of the Spirit and the
Heart of Christ. This thought may be expressed in this form
also : the Book of Genesis is the Genesis of the whole Bible, just
as the generations of the heavens and the earth are of all history ;
but there follows in due order a new Genesis, as in the womb in
Egypt, the first-born being the psychical child in the nation of
Israel ; a Genesis in Chronicles to Malachi, the intellectual and
moral ; and in the New Testament the Genesis of Christianity,
as it may be discerned by the study of the history of Christendom
and the issue of the great spiritual conflict that has been carried
on for two thousand years. Thus if men care to study the Bible,
as the spiritual work of God in Grace, it will be found to fall into
the same divisions as men find in their own nature ; and it is a
Book that ought to be studied upon these lines, and not as men
would study any other book.
It has been suggested that the New Testament is as the seed
of the spiritual realm of Grace ; but this means much more to the

MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH. 333
student than a casual seed that is picked up by the way side and
planted so that the gardener may watch the progress of its develop
ment. The student of the seed, tries to think upon its past and
how it has been developed from that unit germ-seed, the seed of
all seeds, and of all thoughts. In other words the seed in the
Gospels is not something altogether new ; it has a history that
can be traced back to David and Abraham, to Adam and God.
All these thoughts are briefly summed up in the four divisions,
the physical and psychical, the moral and spiritual ; and every
seed of God is so constituted that it tends to develop into these
forms. This is not a new conception; it is only expressing, in a
new way, what is to be found in all the ever revolving cycles of
thought found in the method of Christ ; it is the Beatitudes in
their unity and diversity, and of two Blessings to one realm ; and
it is the principles of being as they are found in Nature and in
Man. This also is the story in Christendom ; the Seed of Grace
was sown in the great physical world of the Roman Empire ; it
took psychical form in the Church of Rome, and there followed
psychical, intellectual divisions over confessions and creeds, thus
the divided heart, or kingdom, in East and West ; the Crusades,
Renaissance and Reformation are movements for truth and purity
of reHgion ; and" subsequently the Spirit of Grace is found in
spiritual power in the Evangel and that strange spirit of agnosti
cism and hatred to spiritual religion that has been prevalent among
men in these later days. Here also the same conceptions arise
as to new cycles with new Hfe ; conflict with the world and spiritual
failure ; and all this is found in the Christian reHgion becoming
the subject of the Roman State or Empire ; in the confusion
and Babel of creeds and churches ; in the subjection of reHgion
to theology and State-craft ; and in the successes of Theism,
Naturafism, Criticism and Agnosticism, as at the present time.
What men have seen is the success of the earthly, the natural
and the agnostic spirit in the world ; of the worldly and the
material ; the mere forms and symbols of things as in ritual and
sacerdotalism ; the criticism of intellectual thinkers and of
ethical professors and teachers ; and the misrepresentation of
the Gospel of Grace in many forms as found in Christian Churches.
What men seek for, and do not find with the same clearness of
vision, and willing subjection to its conditions, is that heavenly
ideal that is summed up in sacrifice, in self-denying love, pity,
mercy, and patient suffering, and forgiveness in the Spirit of

334 MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH.
Christ. The rule has been that this has not been fashionable in
Christian refigious bodies, in those who have been the professed
followers of Christ ; it has been something external that they
have coveted, as property, wealth, position, honour, preferment,
symbols, creeds, forms, intellectual power, oratory, anything
rather than what is the heart and life of the Christian religion,
self-sacrifice in the Spirit of Christ. This is the aspect of the ques
tion from the earthly side ; thus it is necessary to add that all
through the centuries the heavenly has also been manifested ;
but, as this form of religion, that finds its home in the hearts and
consciences of men, has not courted the publicity and favour of
the world, it is not a matter of wonder that the world knows
Httle, and has seemed to care less, for what is the innermost spirit
of the Christian religion.
This may be conceived to be a sketch of what has taken place
throughout history ; it is not the usual way of looking at history,
or religion ; in fact, the spirit prevalent is to represent history
as a great success ; and now that the torch of science is avail
able for the future, there is no end of great things that clever men
are going to do. So far as the Christian reHgion is concerned,
it is the Church of Laodicea that may be taken #as the model for
all the churches ; they are neither cold nor hot ; they are very
worldly in their aims and aspirations ; very full of conceit as to
their riches of all kinds ; and they have little or no conception
of their true spiritual position, their wretchedness and misery,
poverty, blindness and nakedness in Christ's sight. The counsel
that is given to all such by the King is that they turn away from
what is impure alloy ; to buy the pure gold of truth and thus be
rich indeed ; that they fling away all self-righteousness and
receive the spotless robe of Christ's righteousness, so that they
may be clothed ; and that the Divine anointing of the Spirit
may be sought for and applied so that there may be abifity to see,
and know, what is good, true, right, and gracious. The King
is very near, even knocking at the door ; therefore, men ought
to listen intently for His Voice, and be ready to receive and enter
into fellowship with Him. It is only in this way that, by Grace,
men will be able to overcome their terrible enemies who have
subdued them so often in the past ; it is only by Grace, in the
spirit of sacrifice, that they can overcome evil ; and to be regnant
over evil is to be raised to the throne and to the glory of Christ.
The vision of the past requires patient careful study ; it is not

MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH. 335
what historians have conceived it to be ; it has not been a world
without God and without hope ; in fact although historians have
only rarely recognised God in history He has been in it all the
time by His Spirit ; and what the Spirit has accomplished will,
in due time, be made manifest before all men. This, however,
is not the earthly side, it is the heavenly ; thus it is for those who
are spiritually minded to study all that is being revealed by the
method of Christ, and they will be the better prepared for the
new day of Grace that is dawning upon the world. Men are now
privileged to study disease, disorder, sin, and all forms of evil,
by a new method. It may be that the day for the overthrow of
evil is drawing near, therefore, men require to take this matter
seriously, and if possible to conceive truly, and judge rightly, as
to the past and the present.
It is not necessary here to enter into details as to the present
outlook upon the world ; this is a book that is open to all men ;
and they must consider the problems of Hfe as they can truly and
honestly do so and judge according to the light they possess; It
may be profitable to glance briefly, as in the light of the method
of Christ, at Man, the Family, Society, the State and the Church,
and try to estimate their present position, in the light of history ;
and to suggest wherein they differ from what may be conceived
as the true right and normal state.
As related to Man it is to be feared that he is very unlike God,
from Whence he came. He has been rebeUious and wayward,
perverse in spirit, darkened in mind, ignorant of truth, prejudiced,
unjust, wicked, ambitious, covetous, thus he is sinful, full of dis
order, given over to the works of evil, and his body is subject to
pain, disease and death. As related to Family Life ; it is not
conceived that families, as a rule, are the family of God ; His
children in all that is in harmony with His will ; parents and
children are not Christlike, and too often they are unwise and un
spiritual. The home is not always where love reigns, but rather
where strife, hatred and ill-wiU may be found ; these feelings
may lead to positive aversion ; disorder may reign, thus passion,
evil desire, disobedience and want of natural affection may be
seen where love ought to be found. The end may be strife, ill-
will, separation, and divorce, and thus the very ideal of the home
and family in love be lost. As related to Society ; is it too much
to represent this as perverted from what is true, right and good ;
that the record of history is not a favourable one ; that the story

336 man, the family, society, state and church.
is one of loss of kinship and affinity ; and that there has been re
pellent forces at work which have kept society disintegrated and
disunited. Men and women have coveted the first place, been
ambitious to rule, and reign, so that they migh1: be raised above
their companions. They have set themselves up as leaders and
guides, and in doing so caused distractions and antipathies. What
has followed may be summed up in strife, hatred, the formation
of parties and cliques, prejudices, and thus the evil spirit of dis
order has reigned. Tfie issue is that kindly gracious feelings
being lost, the consequences are socialism, nihilism and all the
isms that promise great things in the way of bringing down those
who have exalted themselves, and the raising up of those who are
trodden down. As related to the State when such conditions
exist in men, families, and societies, what hope can there be that
the nation and its rulers will be different ? That there is an ideal
State, a Kingdom of God in righteousness, ought not to be doubted;
the difficulty is its realisation, and how it can be discovered, and
set up upon the earth. History is full of instruction upon this
very important subject ; and if men read carefully the great works
of historians, it may be found that their thoughts, prejudices and
preferences, all work around the State, and governments, and
how these are to make men happy and contented. From the
first great despot, Nimrod, downward through all despotisms,
aristocracies, bureaucracies, monarchies, limited monarchies, re-
pubfics, democracies, and all other methods of government, the
story is ever the same, unjust rulers, corrupt legislators, and un
just judges and magistrates. That they have all been so inten
tionally and of set purpose is not conceived to be true ; but even
the best of them have found their positions what they could not
improve. Their enemies were too strong for them ; their environ
ment what they could not change ; and thus they were compelled
to drift with the current in which they found themselves, even
though they could not approve of what they had to do, and would
have condemned their rivals if they had done similar things. The
art of government is chaos, and men have not understood its first
principles. If the present condition of States is a fair, even the
best, example, of what men can do in this direction, then it is evi
dent that the art is utterly useless for blessing to mankind, and
it can only be conceived, as a Httle better than possible socialism,
or nihilism. It is said that States are built upon ideals, and that
rulers conform to the will of the gods, or of God ; and they have

MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH. 337
symbols, visible and written, wliich attest this truth ; but of what
use can these be when the actions of those who possess authority
and power are seen to be in direct antagonism to those moral
principles which men know are true and right ? What is the use
of rulers professing that they are seeking the good of the common
weal when at the same time it can be seen that much of their
legislation and government is specially in favour of preferred and
favoured classes ? How is it possible for nations to live at peace
with each other when the rulers are covetous, ambitious and over
bearing toward weaker peoples ; when to work out their vicious
projects they raise great armies, tax the people beyond what they
are able to bear, and thus keep up a constant ferment of distrust,
disquietude and uncertainty that is poisonous to the welfare of
the people ? What is the good of causing, continuing and in
creasing strife and ill-will betwixt Conformists and Nonconfor
mists, and favouring the one at the expense of the other ? Why
should one, or many, classes be Specially favoured by the State,
even whilst they are fattening upon what is not for the good of
the common weal ? Why should one body named a .parliament,
as led and governed by a few men, who are utterly unable to over
take legislation and administration for the people, concentrate all
power in their own hands, and in that of officials, at enormous
waste and expense to the people, when they could, through parish,
district, county and national councils, do the same work so
much better and in harmony with the will of the people ? What
is it that has gone so far astray here ? Is it that ambitious, covet
ous, selfish, conceited men who govern think that they only can
do this work efficiently ? Is it that there are no wise, thoughtful,
capable, experienced men in parishes, districts, counties and
nations ? Is it that the classes despise the masses, and wish to
retain power over them for ever 1 In all these things there seems
to be something wrong. Or, is it that the whole system of things
is wrong, just because it is built upon self and selfishness, wealth
and power, position and condition, and not in the fear and love
of God, and in mutual love among men ? Do men know what is
true and right, wise and good, as related to the State ? Or is it
that they do not care if only they can hold their positions, gain
their ends, and make the State the means by which they will reap
a large harvest of wealth, power, honour and renown ? This is
a subject that requires to be studied in the light of history, as
compared with the method of Christ ; and, it is surely time that

338 MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH.
men were beginning to learn what law and government really
mean. Perhaps, the discovery might be made that laws as formed
by selfish men are not true and righteous laws at all ; they are
means of oppression, whips to scourge the innocent, what will
protect the wealthy and powerful, and keep those who are down,
trodden in the mire, so that they may not attain to manhood
with all its rights and privileges. The State, it is assumed, is
meant to be the divine ideal of mutual co-operation for the com
mon weal ; but it is very difficult to trace such an ideal in ancient,
¦ or modern, States or Empires. What men may ask, and expect
to find an answer, is, whether there is a Divine ideal, as order and
law, as the will of God ; and, if there is, then, Why has it not
been realised ? What hinders the realisation of the ideal ? And,
whether they are always to remain the playthings of crafty
statesmen, when their inheritance awaits them, and all that they
require to do is to enter in and take possession ?
As related to the Church, is it- permissible for modern thinkers
to approach this institution and ask a few questions as to its
history and achievements ? Whence this organisation that is
conceived to be the means for the redemption and salvation of men,
for the uplifting of those who are fallen, and the strengthening of
those who are in the right way ? The reply must be that it is
from God, by Christ, through the Spirit ; but is it quite as easy
to prove that it has through all past ages been endowed by the
Spirit, found to be Hving in the Hkeness of Christ, and obeying
the will of His Father ? During time it has been subject to the
law of development, and the heavens are its ideal ; but it has
been environed around by the earth and the earthly; thus it is
to be feared the body, the merely physical, has been earthly,
whilst the psychical, the carnal, has been that of antagonism be
twixt the heavenly and earthly. What men have been that also
the Church has been, the creature of the senses and the sensuous,
and also of the heavenly as in conflict with the earthly. Why
should the Church take this form, follow this order of develop
ment ? Why, indeed ? Can men suggest any other method of
creation, or development, that would be consistent with the
Divine will, as men are now coming to understand in what way
God has been pleased to reveal Himself in all His works ? It is
the order of nature and also of grace ; and if men reason other
wise they are doing so from limited experiences, or empiric theories
that are of no scientific value. The Church has been, and still is,

MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH. 339
the spiritual fellowship of those who fear and love God ; thus
wherever such men have been found, from the days of Abel, Seth,
Enos, Enoch and Noah, Terah, Abraham, and his children, to the
present time, under all kinds of names, those who have had the
faith, fear, and love of God in their hearts, may freely be accepted
as belonging to the Church of Christ. This is not a theory of limi
tation, and of suggesting who has not belonged to the Church ;
it is the recognition of the fellowship as a something visible and
spiritual, where there is a divine recognised kinship in the hidden
Hfe that is in Christ through all history. This is the conception
of a unity in Christ and of an underlying spiritual harmony ; and
this is what men are called to recognise as the fundamental truth
of what the Church is as seen by the Lord Christ the head of the
Church. There may not be so much difficulty in men agreeing
as to what the Church really is ; the visible forms, spiritual ideals
and thoughts, unity and diversity, may all be reconcileable ; but
it would seem the trouble begins when men begin to discuss How
the Church is to be organised ? How members of it are to be
recognised ? How men will be admitted into, or cast out of it ?
How it will be ruled and governed ? How priests and people as
classes can be united or separated ? How, and in what sense,
priests as a class are set over the Church ; and in what sense they
possess Divine authority to possess and control the Church as
their patrimony ? The law of development in the Bible seems to
follow this order. The Lord of the Church, at first as High Priest,
offered a Sacrifice, and clothed the worshippers with what covered
the Sacrifice. Man, any man, Adam, Cain, or Abel offered sacri
fice ; and they were accepted, or rejected, as regards the spirit
in wliich they offered sacrifice or worship. Sacrifice became a
family institution with Noah, a tribal or society ordinance with
Abraham, a national symbofism Hke what is heavenly in Israel ;
and, in Christ, all visible sacrifices pass away for ever, because
all that these things meant were fulfilled in Him. From Christ
throughout the Christian dispensation there are no priests after
the order of what is carnal and sensuous ; the spiritual reigns,
and every Christian is thus conceived to be a privileged priest
and king in the spiritual Church of Christ, where all are the children
of God by faith in Christ. Is it at this stage of development in
every dispensation of grace that troubles begin among men in
the Church ? In other words, the intellectual inquiry How ? is
the cause of trouble, and of sin, in the Church, and of self-assertion
y2

340 MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH.
by men ? Is it that some men, fathers, priests and rulers, have
been carnal, sensuous, worldly, ambitious, covetous, proud,
vicious and arrogant 1 Have they, instead of accepting their
positions as ministers of the Divine grace, and of the gifts of the
Spirit, in all lowliness of heart, and humility of spirit, ever sought
to possess lordship over their brethren, and a spiritual domina
tion that is contrary to the realm of grace and sacrifice ? Have
they been hirelings for what they could gain, or true shepherds
of the flock ready to give their own lives for their brethren ?
These questions ought not to be answered upon any narrow
theory of church order or government ; it is not the outward
and the sensuous that will give a true reply ; it is of no use to
refer to patriarch or priest, Moses or Aaron ; it is the Lord Christ
alone that teaches men what these things really mean, and they
are the blessed ones who are able from the heart to say that they
have tried to walk in His footsteps, and to do His will as guided
by His Spirit. It is not for Christians to sit down in judgment
upon their brethren, who bear different names ; it is to the Lord
of the Church and House of God that they are responsible ; and
surely if His patience and kindness, His pity and love, are so
wonderful, then His followers might try to imitate Him and walk
in His footsteps. It is too true, and the facts should not be lightly
passed by, that the Church of Christ, the house of God, is not in a
happy normal state. In the home of peace men ask where peace
is to be found ? The outward and visible signs seem to be those
of strife, hatred, ill-will, suspicion, jealousy, pretences to special
privileges, assumptions of great vested powers, gloryings and
boastings ; but when these are tested by the method of Christ,
as expressed in the Law of the Blessings, it is seen that all these
gloryings are vain ; they only tend to prove that the boasters are
still carnal, foolish, and ignorant of what constitutes the Church
of Christ, the house of the living God, in its true, righteous,
gracious and self-sacrificing spirit, as the ideal in the heavens,
and what every Christian man and church, or bodies of Christians.
ought to be in the earth. It is not what men think and say about
themselves that is to be accepted as proof of their Divine mission •
it is by their lives, their works and their fruits, that they will be
judged. It is amidst such thoughts as these that men are found groping
their way toward the light ; they wish to think the best they can
of themselves and their friends ; they would even seek to be

MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH. 341
charitable in their thoughts towards those who differ from them ;
but they cannot give up the cherished conceptions that are hoary
with age, and conceive it to be possible that their methods have
not been in harmony with the will of God. If the priests and kings
of Israel persecuted and killed the prophets sent to them by God ;
if the chief priests and rulers of the Jews put Christ to death ; then
it may be well for those who hold similar positions, in State and
Church, to try to conceive the thought to be possible, that in
some way or other it may be proved true, that the guilt that Hes
upon this generation exceeds that of Jews or Gentiles. If the
apostasy is that of the rejection of the Spirit and the spiritual in
favour of nature and the carnal in its manifold forms, then it
really seems as if this had been done by this generation. The
question here is not that of judgment or of justice ; it is that of
grace and mercy ; it is that of a possible fresh revelation of the
Divine goodwill, and of a fresh call to study, and to try to
understand the thoughts of God, so that they may be known and
His will obeyed throughout the earth. The position is changed,
in a sense, and, in another sense it is a development of what has
been going on throughout the ages. It is changed for men, be
cause they will require to change their point of view ; experience
and empiricism will be left behind, and it is the light of science
and Divine wisdom that, in the future, must lead men in the path
of peace. Whether men wish it or not, they will be compeUed to
order their thoughts under new forms, relations and conditions ;
as rational beings they have no choice left ; they must think God's
thoughts in God's ways, or remain in the darkness of wilful re
jection of truth, righteousness and grace. To put the matter in
this form is equivalent to saying that men are about to be wakened
to manhood ; they will have to study things as they really exist,
and have been made manifest in time. There may be men who
will cling to their geo-centric thoughts and their self-centred ideals ;
but the future is with those who fear God, accept Christ, are in
fluenced by the Spirit, and by this way of Truth seek to know
and understand the Will of God as revealed by the method of
Christ. Accepting these fundamental thoughts as to cause,
ideal, purpose, wisdom, as reveaUng God, men will proceed from
this position to reafise their inheritance of truth and righteous
ness. But this beginning, as at the intellectual stage, is not to be
conceived as the inteUectual in nature, as revealed in creation ;
it is the new beginning, where Christ, in a special sense, comes into

342 MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH.
salvation relations with men : where their psychical and intel
lectual protoplasm, as in a chaos, is to be made useful for the
new creation in Himself. It is to be feared that, unless men grasp
this thought and understand what it means, they will not be able
to discern clearly betwixt the two states of nature already referred
to that must be kept separate in their order. To put this matter
in another way, the fundamental conceptions of God, Christ, the
Spirit, and creation, as the work of the Spirit, remain as the four
square foundation upon which men are to build. Into this they
cannot bring anything they please ; they can only study what has
been revealed, and from, and through, these, they can build
what will become a house in spiritual order of thought, in which
they may dwell as men. The meaning of the Fall is that man
began to build and failed ; his construction fell to pieces ; he was
surrounded by ruins, and he could not, by any possible means,
within his range of being, restore that which he had destroyed.
It was into this ruin, chaos, that Christ came, even in Eden ; and
it was then and there that he began to renew, recreate, what had
fallen down ; thus, as can easily be seen, it is Christ that reconstructs
the natural in the order of development, and that natural is con
summated in the spiritual Jesus, the Saviour of mankind. It is
quite true that men did not understand or believe this great truth,
in this form, throughout history ; in all the failures of men, their
real failure lay in this, that they had no eye that could see, ear that
could hear, or heart that could understand, the fact that Christ
was in the heavens, in their midst, ever building His new creation ;
and that men were in the earth, ever building towers and temples
by which they hoped they would reach heaven. The absurdity
of the whole of the operations of men can now be clearly seen ;
what they built was ever what was perverted and rejected ; and
yet they were permitted to do what they did in form and symbol,
so that they might be educating themselves into the ideals that
were actually being spiritually carried out by the Spirit of Christ.
This Hne of thought can be carried forward from Christ to the
present time ; it is something Hke the past, but the ideal has ever
been Christ, throughout the Christian era, and the work as carried
on by the Spirit ; and all the time men were carrying out their
old foolish schemes of building what was only framework, and was
never meant to be the body of Christ, the work of the Spirit, and
the glory of the heavens. If men come to understand this Hne
of thought, as revealed by the law of development, then they will

MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH. 343
see that their ideal is Christ, that the Spirit is the great worker,
and that none of their works can be of any use unless they are
begun upon the great spiritual foundation, realised in Christ upon
the earth, carried out in history among men, and in the hearts of
men, by the Spirit as the new creation in Christ. In another way
of expressing this truth, Christ has done for men what men were
unable to do for themselves. He came, took the place of men,
and restored them to Divine privileges. He sent His Spirit to
dwell in them and to renew them, so that at the spiritual stage,
the eleventh in order of development, they might once more take
up their destiny and become co-workers with the Spirit in realising
in themselves spiritual manhood. What this vision of truth
really means is that as positive fact, in Christ, this is the true posi
tion ; men are risen with Christ ; they are in the heavenly places,
and their Hfe is hid with Christ in God. The true value of this
Hne of thought is not of a speculative kind ; it is in the realm of
science ; and although men may be incfined to think of it as only
a scientific faith, it is really much more because the Hving order
has been followed ; Christ has developed from the spiritual seed
in Genesis ; and that spiritual seed being again sown in the earth,
as scientific truth, the same results must follow in their due order.
This is a great vision of truth, of scientific truth as order ; it is
worth cherishing and studying, because what men see at the end
of it is that blessed state in wliich there is no pain, disease, death,
sorrow, disorder or sin. The beloved seer in Patmos saw the vision
as symbol coming down out of the heavens ; here men take up
the telescope of science and they say, it is fact, and it is coming ;
but as the law of development is not likely to be abolished, there
fore, when it comes with power, let men receive it into their hearts
and minds, and, flinging away all empiric conceptions, let them
with aU earnestness work out their own salvation, knowing that
it is God that worketh in them " to will and to do of His good
pleasure." It is in the direction indicated that men should turn their eyes
for the coming kingdom of God ; it is for every man to do this,
so that he may reach upward to manhood ; and he must never
forget that this means spiritual manhood in Christ, in the image
of God. The temple and palace of the King will be built ; but
<e-very stone must be a Hving stone, like the Foundation Stone ;
tthus it is this fundamental thought that must be remembered —
that it is not the family, the tribe, or society, the state or the

344 MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH.
church, that constitute these buildings ; the individual has te'
become like the ideal, and without this family, society, state or
church, must fail. They are not, at the present time, built upon
this ideal ; therefore, they are faulty, disorderly, sinful, and they
are not fit for the kingdom of God. It is not suggested here that
these are to be destroyed as useless : what is meant being that
men ought to re-consider their positions in the Hght of the changes-
that are taking place, and, from Christ, and this conception of
man in the likeness of Christ, begin to reconstruct their organisa
tions upon the same ideal. The Family Hfe is blessed ; it exists
as a means for blessed ends ; it is Hke the household of faith,
because its atmosphere is that of love ; and, faiUng faith and
love in the family circle, what like a home would it be for the Httle
children born, trained, and educated within this sacred enclosure-
It is love that makes the home ; and it is sacrifice that consecrates
the hearth. This is the most beautiful ideal of what a church reaUy
means ; the parents are the visible symbols of this Divine truth ;.
and behind them stands Christ, and His blessed patient Spirit
inworking, in parents and in children, what they require for their
salvation and their sanctification. It might have been this thought
that so moved Christ at the marriage feast in Cana. What He
was then called to do was to pour out His soul in love and self-
sacrifice, that men and women might drink of the sweetness of
Divine love. That was the responsible call to become the Head
of every family circle, and to sanctify every home by His Divine
love. This is why in symbol thought the Church is conceived
to be the bride of Christ ; it is His love that constitutes the family
bond ; and, the nearer the Church comes to the family ideal, the
nearer it will come to the true ideal of what a Church ought to'
be. After the ideal of man in the likeness of Christ, surely none-
more precious than this, that the home is blessed and sanctified
for Divine ends ; because Christ is its Head, the Divine lover of
husband, wife and children ; their true helper and supporter in
all the trials of life. If men and women could only drink in this
Divine love, this wine of Hfe, that the Lord of the home is ready
to supply — surely, they would find in love and home, in their
children and all their interests, such a river of life and pleasure,
that they would never think of going into the world to find happi
ness. If men and women will only consider with the necessary
care what the family means in the Hght of Christ's thoughts, then
surely it wiU appear very different from the conceptions of earthly

MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH. 345-
people ; and instead of the home and marriage being desecrated
and degraded, as the tendency is at present, they will be elevated
to a glorious ideal and consecrated as the blessed state, where the-
Lord, in a special manner, bestows upon His loved ones the very
choicest of His earthly gifts. Why should men and women be so
fooHsh as eschew and turn away from love, with all its possibifities
of blessing ? It is Christ's love that consecrates and makes
blessed every form of love ; it is from Him, and returns to Him ;
and even if that love is in the day of trial clouded over with the
spirit of self-sacrifice, as this is the highest form of love, it may be
conceived as bringing about in due time the greatest and the most
precious blessings. The thought here is not, by any means, that
men and women are to choose for themselves the ways in which
they will manifest their love ; it goes no further than this, that
every wise man and woman will seek to walk in the path of love,
by the Hght of love, with the Lord of Love ever at their side ;;
. and then no matter what trials and sorrows come in this Hfe, it
must be well, because Divine Love has permitted that which, for
a time, may be painful, but, if rightly used, will be for the glory.
of God, and for still greater revelations of His love.
When the thoughts are turned from the Family to Society, it
will follow that the conceptions as related to Man and the Family
will be carried forward into this new sphere of thought. The
meaning here is simply this, that the Man is the Unit germ of
thought ; that there is development into the Family ; and that
out of the Family there arises the tribe, or society of famifies. Fur
ther, the reasoning ought to be in harmony with the nature of
man, and of all organic life ; the increase is not that of addition
of organs merely, as independent factors, it is that of adding:
organ to organ with increasing differentiation ; and of aU the
organs as one body co-operating for the good of the Commonweal..
Even as one germ cell of Hfe may be said to have the functions of"
the most complex organisms, so the man is the ideal, and it is from.
this ideal that all differences arise in harmony with the constitu
tion of the body. Thus the basis of the natural, as suggested,.
is the fourfold ideal that is metaphysical ; into this realm man is-
created ; intellectually he seeks to discover the ideal order in
Nature ; and if this is done in harmony with moral law, then
he would develop into the ideal that is in Christ, as Archetype ;
but failing this, by a fall from the ideal, the result, as already
explained, is the intervention of Christ to redeem and save that

346 MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH.
which is His heritage. Thus in either case the Ideal is Christ ;
but that ideal in man can only be reached by the knowledge of the
ideal and by the forms that are found in Nature. Man is the
epitome of all nature ; but this is expressing in another way that
man is the image of Christ ; when he returns to Christ through
nature, by the Spirit ; then, lo ! when the man is able to conceive
the thought, he has become spiritual, and he sees Christ face to
face " in the Spirit." It is this organic living union that must be
followed in this study ; and the first stage is the . discovery that
the home is like the heavens ; the man is the head, the woman
is the helpmeet, the children are the fruits of love, and the whole
Family have thus become an epitome of that metaphysical ideal
that underfies the heavens and the heavenly. The analogy
exists ; it ought not to be carried further than Hkeness ; still
the indication is that in all such matters if men only knew the
truth they would perceive the perfect unity and harmony
that exists throughout the universe of thought. Out of the
family there arises families finked by kinship, and they are one
tribe or society. There is no change in fundamental or related
conditions ; there is increasing complexity in harmony with the
laws of life ; but the organic unity remains, thus the society is
a family of farriUes, and all should co-operate for the Common
weal. The change in method of thought is from that of physical
function to that of psychical order and law. The society is one,
and the Father over all is God. The Ideal for all is in Christ the
Lord ; the purpose, plan, design in the Ideal is the order of thought
in the Spirit ; and the Society is the creation, the expression, the
manifestation by the Spirit of all that is in Christ. The Society,
therefore, just as with man individually, learns the Will of God
through the fathers and mothers ; they exist in the spirit of love
¦and unity as one community ; and it is to their mutual interest
that all the members conform to the law of love, because this is
the bond by which they are united, as one family, or as a Society.
It follows, of necessity, that in such a Society there is no room
for despotic rulers or sacerdotal priests ; because, rulers, kings,
governors and judges, and priests to intercede, indicate a fallen
community where there are evil doers that will not observe order,
or obey laws, that are rules of guidance for the inexperienced,
who require to be punished for their evil deeds, or reconciled to
the community to which they belong. The object in view here
is not to follow the analogies of imperfect functions of organs, of

MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH. 347
bacteria, bacilfi and ferments, which destroy the physical organs
of Hfe ; but rather to show in what sense natural development
could take place in society without these analogical conditions
which men find operative in physical life. If that fine of thought
is to be followed, then there must be the retracing of the steps to
Revelation and to Christ, so that through His intervention there
may be redemption and salvation.
Here the conception will arise that if this is the true meaning of
Society ; as man, the family, famines of families, the tribe and the
Commonwealth, then, where is the necessity for the State, with
all it represents as Democracies, Republics, Monarchies, Pluto
cracies, Aristocracies, and Despotisms, with rulers, as Presidents,
Kings, or Emperors ? Where, indeed ? In these very condi
tions men find ample proof of their fallen state ; and of their
continuous efforts throughout history to free themselves from theii
perverted conditions by creating means by wliich they will be
the more completely overruled and trodden underfoot by those
whom they have chosen to be their rulers. The ideal is the Com
monwealth under Joshua in Palestine, where there was the mini
mum of government and the maximum of Hberty and freedom ;
and yet, even there the experiment was a failure, because of the
conditions of the people, their relations with the Canaanites in
their midst ; and the nations that were around them. That was
the ideal state, so far as Israel was concerned, but the result was
disorder, lawlessness, and anarchy, and the issue subjection to
surrounding nations. When they could have wrought out their
salvation under better conditions, then the people of Israel would
not accept conditions of Grace, and relations with the Heavens ;
they preferred to be Hke other nations and peoples and to have
their own king to tyrannise over them. If this is the true mean
ing of a Commonwealth as compared with a kingdom or an em
pire, then it will be seen that the ideal is the Commonwealth for
the common good ; but this has never been successful, not because
of the ideal being faulty, but because men would not be satisfied
with an ideal ; were unfit to understand it, and would not live up
to the ideal they possessed. In this matter the remonstrance
of Samuel with the leaders of Israel is very valuable as evidence ;
even though men were warned beforehand what the results would
be of their foolish choice, they persisted as if they were spoilt
children ; they got their king and court, their aristocracy and
their army ; and with them war and taxes in blood and money

348 MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH.
and subjection to governors and emperors. It is not the Society,
or the State as Commonwealth that is wrong ; it is the departure
from the Divine Ideal that must be condemned ; and, so far as
can be seen, if men are foolish enough to continue to play the game
of king-craft and state-craft, of politicians and politics, they
simply decide, as did Israel of old, to be like other nations and
peoples, as they have existed throughout history ; and this must
mean the continuation of present conditions betwixt nations, in
hatred, suspicion, envy, jealousy, war, and murder, for no practi
cal good, but rather that men may Hve more like demons than
men ; have the privilege of being killed for their tyrants, and
be compelled to pay taxes for the support of that which they con
sider unnecessary, and which they condemn as unreasonable. All
this may seem, at first sight, as out of place, as narrow, biassed,
unjust, and unthankful toward those who devote themselves to
the service of the State ; the question, however, is not that of
the interest of rulers, it is that of the Commonwealth, and what
is here conceived as true scientific order and divine wisdom.
Instead of powerful empires, great kingdoms with mighty states
men, great generals, and all that bestows glory upon what is
earthly, it is really time for men to consider the commonweal
of all nations and peoples, as separated from such ideals, and
to attempt to find out what the Divine Ideal really is, and how
the people can co-operate for their mutual welfare in the spirit
of kinship and of that love that worketh no evil. If it is really
so that men have passed through six thousand years of terrible
experiences in these matters, and are still fascinated with false
ideals, will not give them up, and will have kings and tyrants to
reign over them, then it would almost seem that their schoofing
has been in vain ; they prefer the Desert and death to the Promised
Land, their inheritance ; and, in plain language, they will not
have the good God to reign over them ; they will not conform
to His will as order ; and they will not accept moral law as con
ceived to be light, Hfe, truth, and love. Perhaps, this matter has
not been seen from this stand-point in past times, but this is
truly the message of science to men, and they will do well to
give the subject their careful consideration. If it is true that
God is the divine Father over all men ; that Christ is the Ideal
Brother for all men ; that the Spirit is the Revealer of Christ and
the Sanctifier of all the brethren, then it is absurd for men or
states to treat each other as enemies, to hate, vilify, and condemn

MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH. 349
one another ; they are brethren, therefore they ought to recog
nise this truth ; and the all important practical matter is how
all men may Hve together in love and kindness, seeking the good
of the Commonweal and the glory of God. Just as a man has
many organs and only one body, so society and states are similar
organisations. It is absurd to suppose that they can hate and
destroy each other and not bring hurt and evil to the common
good ; in other words, if men choose to follow in the footsteps of
the past, then let them understand what their choice really means ;
in the language of physical life, they prefer pain, disease,
disorder, bacilfi, ferments, and bacteria, to a healthy, natural,
divinely-ordered Hfe in harmony with moral law. Further, men
ought to consider that it is not reasonable they should continue
to live as they have been doing, for their ideals have been earthly
and have been under the curse. Christ seems to be uttering a word
of remonstrance and of warning, as if He were telling men to re-~
consider the whole position; and that they should try to under
stand how much He has at stake in these misunderstandings,
what He has suffered, is still suffering, and must continue to
suffer if men will go on in their foolish wicked ways. The con
ception raised is usually that men bring suffering upon them
selves and upon one another ; they do not remember that Christ
is All in all, and thus there is no suffering or sorrow from which
He is free through the ubiquitous indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
He lives for the good of all, in all that is good ; and where there
is pain, disease, disorder, suffering, sorrow, and sin He is brought
into the heart of all these conditions as Saviour from, and Sacrifice
for, sin. It is now that men are being awakened to this unique
position of Christ ; He is at the very heart and centre of things
and thoughts ; and individual men and women are only as unit
ceUs in the great organisation that is His body. In the past men
could follow this thought as a spiritual unity and diversity in the
Church ; but now science suggests wider areas of thought, and
thus even the physical and the psychical must be included in
the universality and diversity of His Being. It may be difficult
to perceive all that is involved in such thoughts as these ; but men
may rest assured of this, that what they are now privileged to
study is only as the day-break, the first rays of the rising sun of
truth that must be developed more and more until the perfect
day. What the Bible means by Messiah's Kingdom, State and
Society is being foreshadowed ; and it is becoming more and more

350 MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH.
plain that the earthly kingdoms and empires can have no part
or lot in this universal kingdom of truth and righteousness.
They could not live in it ; the very Word of Christ and the Breath
of the Spirit would destroy them ; and the amazing thing is that
they have been permitted to exist so long upon the earth. Why
such conditions have been permitted upon the earth may be par
tially conceived ; and what men may be expected to learn from
their bitter experiences is the utter folly and the futility of the
creature will, setting itself up in selfish opposition to the WiU of
God, the Creator. This is a very great subject to think upon ;
and the first lesson men may learn from it is that within the uni
verse of God there is no permanent room for opposing wills, for
different states of order, and for laws that are opposed to the
Divine Will. Perversion has been permitted for a time and for
ends which men do not at present understand ; but, in reaHty,
what has taken place has not, for an instant, had the least effect
upon the stability of the Throne of God. Foohsh mortals have
dashed themselves in the darkness of their ignorance against the
Eternal Rock of Righteousness ; the sea has engulfed them,
and they have been lost. They would build a tower that would
reach Heaven, and they became irrational and contradictory in
the things of the Spirit. They would not enter into their inheri
tance, and again they would do so, in the spirit of perversity, and
they perished in the Desert. They would not worship Jehovah,
love and serve Him ; and they became the slaves of their enemies.
They would not accept the Christ and His Kingdom of Grace and
Sacrifice, and they were cast out of their earthly inheritance.
Men would not try to understand the spiritual kingdom of Christ
and accept its blessings ; therefore God gave them over to their
enemies on every side, to babbling gnosticism, creeds, and to
Egyptian worldly bondage ; to tho dreary Desert of the Dark Ages ;
to bondage to kings, popes, and priests ; and to the contempt of
wise agnostic and materialistic scoffers. It is such thoughts as
these that present themselves to true thinkers, to those who study
science, and to those who love divine wisdom. Men have acted
foolishly all through the ages, simply because they have begun,
and continued, a method of life that Has been unreasonable. The
highest reason, that is, Science, condemns, cannot but condemn,
the works of men of the earth ; for the simple reason that they
have thought and acted unreasonably, seeing that they have not
been in harmony with Divine Order and Moral Law. Here the

MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH. 351
experiences, the empirical theories, the fanciful conceits of men
are of no value, only so far as they are found to be in harmony
with Divine Ideals. It would appear as if men were once more
brought to the parting of the ways ; if they side with what is of
the earth and earthly, then judgment and justice will surely
follow, and overtake them, even as men can see has occurred in
past ages. If they side with the heavens, with science and divine
wisdom, then to them the Kingdom of God will appear ; and,
in due time, they will be delivered from the power of their enemies ;
the inheritance promised to Abraham will become their portion,
not the small visible State of Palestine merely, but all the spiritual
gifts and graces foreshadowed in the Bible as the Blessings, through
the Seed, to all the nations of the earth, as the redeemed of the
Lord, His inheritance and His Kingdom.
This subject has been considered from many aspects of thought,
and the fines of unity and harmony have been expressed in many
forms. It may be sufficient here to point out that, as matter of
experience, as well as in the scientific order of development, all
lines of thought meet in the Bible and are there turned into the
pure light of Divine Truth ; or, beginning with the Bible, as Light,
the divergence is, as in the solar spectrum, and that spectrum
can be re-refracted back into light again, and thus the whole order
of the universe, spiritual, moral, psychical, and physical, reveal
to men the Will of God as order and law. Men may use these
symbols with advantage seeing that it is through them that they
express their thoughts ; but, they must not rest in symbols, else
they will inevitably fail to reach the spiritual, where unity and
harmony is to be found. In other words, what men are specially
called to consider is the Method of Christ, and the Work of the
Spirit ; and these can only be found in intelligible scientific order
in Nature, Man, and in the Bible. This means that in the Bible,
specially as a Revelation of Grace to sinful men, there can be
traced in due order, by the law of development, the process of
the regeneration, renewal, and restoration of man and mankind
to the Divine image and Hkeness. It is quite true that the heavens
have been, and are, in the state of eclipse ; and that the earth,
its history, and its works, have ever been in the forefront ; but.
Christ reveals the heavens and exposes the earth ; the heavens
are in Himself, and in Him they are Word and Deed ; the earth
turns against, and with malignant power seeks to destroy, Him,
and all His blessed works of mercy and love. It is the blessed

352 MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH.
work of the Spirit to reveal these things, in spiritual truth, to
spiritual men ; but, to understand them men must try to stand
at Christ's side upon the Mount, and permit the Blessings to per
meate their souls until they flash forth in radiant Hght, as the
heavens and earth in responsive action ; then from that light,
all truth will be discerned, because this is as the heavens ab
sorbed into the earth until radiant with the glory that is in Christ.
But some men may be inclined to say, this exaltation of Christ is
more than men can be expected to perceive, receive, conceive, or
understand ; it is to clothe Him with Divine power, wisdom,
honour and glory ; and, it is to take the Man, Jesus Christ, and
give to Him all the attributes of God. This is not the way to look
at Christ ; this is to come to Him not merely doubting, which is
not sinful ; but, with the agnostic superior attitude of spirit that
would judge Christ from the stand-point of sneering Sadcluceeism.
If men could only begin their education, their thinking, from the
stand-point of scientific truth their difficulties would quickly be
dispelled ; but they have the fatal legacy of pre-conceived opinions,
empiric thoughts, and the prejudgments of other men, that are
so subtle, and thus they make them unfit to understand what is
true and right. In the realm of Grace and Sacrifice Christ is reg
nant ; there is no one to be compared with Him in all the pages
of history ; and, the suggestion made here is that all history is
within the realm of Grace and all men throughout history are
correlated with Him as Lord and Saviour. If men say we are not
prepared to deal with the claims of Christ in the realm of Grace,
but would question His position as Ethical Teacher, or as wise
Instructor in Truth and Righteousness, then the question would
arise as to the standard of judgment ; and, it is notorious that
ethical teachers and philosophers are merely empiric thinkers ;
they cannot agree among themselves ; thus it is impossible that
they can be judges capable of giving a true and righteous judg
ment. It is not conceived that Christ has given to men an ethical
system of thought, or a philosophy of nature ; He goes much
deeper, even into the problems of being, by teaching men true
moral relations as based upon love to God and man ; and, it is
His method of truth, in its ever recurring order, that throws light
upon problems of thought which men had given up as unsolvable.
He is the Man who understands what men are ; and thus in the
light of His method of Truth they find light all the way ; and, the
light is ever before them, opening up the way to higher truths.

MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH. 353
It is vain to try to compare any one with Christ, as His equal ;
the incongruity is at once felt, and the longer and more thorough
the study of Christ, the greater the glory that radiates from His
Person. The problem for men is not how they are to estimate and judge
Christ, as if in their wisdom they were competent to do so ; the
fact is becoming more and more plain that though He is in all
things, and, the Epitome of all things as Jesus Christ, He is really
above and beyond them as the Ideal in that spiritual realm which
men know exists, which they must befieve in, but which they
cannot correlate in intellectual knowledge. This Ideal Christ
has to be recognised as Ideal ; and, what men require to do, it
would seem, is not to go on speculating about what they do not
understand ; but, to turn their attention to the Christ that
became real Man, and by this means try to reach from the Real
to the Ideal. Surely this is what science is teaching men every
day ; and it is the burden, or the glory, of the inductive order of
thought. As from the nature that men find around them, by the
inductive order, they proceed step by step until they find them
selves trying to form an ideal of nature, so with Christ, His Word
and works, they require to be studied in the same order so that
in the end they may reach the Ideal Christ. Further, if scientific
men had remained enthralled by dogmas and philosophies of
empiricism, as propounded by wise men in the past, then how
could they have achieved the results they have attained up to the
present time ? The problem of Christ, it can be seen, is not one
of beHef only ; it is that of knowledge in the realm of experience
first, and without this empiric theories are useless. The next
stage is that of inductive study ; and it is here that science as
order becomes possible ; and the more perfect and thorough the
inductive knowledge, the nearer men will come to the Ideal, that
is in the heavens. To this line of study men cannot, with reason,
raise any objection ; if they do so then they reveal their own
ignorance, and the palpable fact that, so far as they are concerned,
their intellectual atmosphere is that of the tenth century and not
of the twentieth. If a man is found so ignorant, and presump
tuous, as to judge Christ, without any experimental knowledge of
a spiritual kind, then he simply condemns himself, as ignorant,
and lacking in the fundamental knowledge required to begin the
work of study ; and should he proceed, from extraneous sources
of knowledge, to confirm the judgments already formed, he may

354 MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH.
be anything conceivably fooHsh, but he is not, and cannot be,
a scientific student of Christ, His Mission,or His method of thought.
Further, if such a man attempts to confirm his judgments upon
the theories, philosophies, creeds, confessions, or the lives of
Christian men, and the deeds of Christian nations and peoples,
then by doing so he is only making his folly the more manifest,
because his arguments are not relevant as to the real problem
being studied ; and what he is doing is proving that men, nations
and churches have failed to think 'and act in harmony with the
ideal they possess in the Bible. That there has been too much
of this assumed knowledge and false reasoning cannot be denied ;
in fact, it is this kind of thinking that keeps Society, State and
Church, in a state of ferment ; and this perverted Hfe, as men
know by analogy from the physical world, brings about what may
become in Hfe, intoxicating and poisonous.
What men require to study in Christ, in all that He represents,
must be based upon personal knowledge and experience of Christ,
as Man and Saviour, and as Friend and Brother born for adver
sity ; in fact as DeHverer from the powers of evil ; and until
this knowledge is personally and practically reafised the necessary
fitness to study Christ, in a scientific manner, is not possessed.
When this knowledge has been attained then the advance ought
not to be upon the lines of Church history, of Creeds and Confes
sions, of State or Church, of individual Christians or of a number
of Christians. It is the Master that invites the student to join
His fellowship, as a disciple ; therefore, the student ought, in all
humility, to accept the position for which he is suitable, and not
begin by criticising, and, it may be, even condemning the lessons
of the Master. If this is recognised in education, as in schools,
colleges and universities, and anything different would be con
sidered presumptuous and fooHsh, wayward and childish, then
surely here also the same rule ought to hold good as related to
the study of Christ and His Gospel of Grace. This does not mean
that wise and learned men, in this realm, without Christian ex
perience, are to be considered as better fitted to expound the
thoughts of Christ than a humble unlearned man ; it simply states
the fact that a humble Christian man, with experience of the love
of Christ in his soul, and discipleship with Christ in spiritual
thought, is incomparably superior to the theorist, because he deals
with the facts of Hfe and not with the empiric opinions of men.
If these remarks tend to show that modern agnostic criticisms

MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH 355
and the attacks made upon Christianity are entirely out of place
as deaUng with the problem of Christ, His Word, Work and
spiritual Church, then they may enable students to understand
where they ought to begin, and in what spirit they should follow
their studies, until they have attained to manhood in Christ and
His Gospel. Above all things, at the present time, it is necessary
for true thinkers to separate the two conceptions that seem to
have got intertwined together, and have got to be conceived as
one, that Christ, and His Church are identical. In a sense they
are correlated and one ; but they are also to be kept separate and
distinct, and to be studied as different problems. If, then, the
student, in the right spirit, studies Christ, this is to be done as
He is specially revealed in the New Testament ; and an honest,
true effort should be made to place all the thoughts that are
known about Christ in their true relations ; all this will not be,
to begin with, scientific order, but it is preparation, because it is
trying to conceive the order as it has been revealed. When the
order is conceived, and the Real Christ known, then it may not
be so very difficult to take the subjective ideal, with all that this
means, and try to conceive that other Ideal, the spiritual, that
was in Christ in the heavens, when He brought the heavens into
the earth. This is something like how men ought to study
Christ ; and if they find the Ideal and the Real to agree, then
the Light that is in the Ideal can be turned upon the Church, and
what it has been as ideal and real may be studied with valuable
results. It would be waste of time to try to prove that the real
in the Church has in any way conformed to the Real in Christ ;
the comparison is such that men see at a glance they cannot be
brought to agree. The Church, visible and organised, has been
what Christ was not ; Christ was what the Church has never
sought to be; and this diversity is as marked to-day as it has been
through past centuries. It is not meant that the Church has not
possessed an ideal ; it has had many ; it is not suggested that the
true ideal has not existed in the Church, as its spiritual power ;
but simply the plain fact, that the Church, as a whole, or the many
branches of the Church, have been earthly institutions, too much
influenced by the earth, in fact subject to the earth, and not to
the heavens. That such a conception as this will be acceptable
to men who glory in the Church, and do not fully study Christ, is
not likely ; they have such a high opinion of the Church, and of
themselves as possessing it, and administering its affairs, that it
z 2

356 MAN, THE FAMILY SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH.
will take an earthquake to arouse them to look facts straight in
the face ; and, to conceive it to be possible that they may be
wrong, that their forefathers have been wrong, and that what
they have been praising as the glory of the whole earth is, so far
as it is earthly, self-glorying, and self-asserting, an apostatised
thing out of harmony with the will of Christ. It is not pleasant
to express these thoughts in this form ; it is very disagreeable to
think that they are more or less, true ; what is stated is not in the
form of judgment, but simply to indicate how these matters
appear when they are studied in the light of the life of Christ, as
found in the New Testament, in the light of the method of Christ,
and, in the light of history, secular and sacred.
Into the question of what constitutes the Church of Christ ;
whether it can exist without a visible body and organisation ;
or whether it is spiritual only, it is not necessary to enter at the
present time. Whether the Church, as an organisation, must be
visible is one question that might be answered in various forms ;
but whether the Church is spiritual, meant to be like Christ, and
moved and animated by His Spirit, can only receive one answer ;
it is a spiritual power with spiritual organs for spiritual functions ;
and, it is this spiritual body, or being, that is the Church of Christ,
in a special sense, from the Day of Pentecost until now. This is
not to be accepted as suggesting the thought that in the days
before Christ visible organisations were of importance as compared
with the spiritual ; indeed the Bible proves the contrary, because
it was the men of Church and Temple that put Christ to death ;
and, it was the depraved sons of Eli that were ministers of God
as priests, when the spiritual life of Israel was at its lowest ebb.
The record of the heroes of faith in the Epistle to the Hebrews is
conclusive on this point ; it is faith in God, as spiritual power
that is all important, and outward visible things are of little value.
As already suggested the Fall of man is intellectual and moral,
thus spiritual ; it is into this realm that the Heavens come as
spiritual ; and the history in the Bible, even in its physical sym
bols, rise in every new cycle, or generation, to what is spiritual.
Whence this spiritual realm of Grace 1 From the God of Grace,
by Christ the Seed of Grace, through the movements of the Divine
Spirit of Grace. When was this Kingdom of Grace made manifest ?
This is the record that is found in the Bible ; men are still within
its wide embrace ; and, it is beginning to dawn upon them that
it is a far more wonderful Revelation than they had conceived it

MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH. 357
to be, even when, as they thought they could survey, the whole
realm of thought from Eden to Patmos. In a very true and real
sense, when the ever changing, what is phenomena, is put aside,
and men can, in the Spirit, gaze into the depths of the Heavens as
they are being revealed, then they see not a Messianic Kingdom
only that will become visible upon the Earth, they see away back
into the Beginning and the First, onward to the End and the Last,
and all this is Christ's Spiritual Kingdom of Grace, of which it is
stated, there is no end. Why was this Kingdom revealed to men ?
For the one supreme purpose of telling men that God is gracious
and merciful, patient and long-suffering, pitiful, compassionate
and self-sacrificing ; that His Will is not that men perish in the
darkness of death, but that they turn back to Him and His Love,
as expressed so fully in His Son, Christ, the Lord of Truth, Life,
Love and Sacrifice. What is this Kingdom of Grace ? It is Christ
in all His fulness ; but specially as symbolised in the midst of His
disciples on the night of the Last Supper. It is the Lord over all
washing the feet of His sinful disciples, whose thoughts are.intent
upon the problem of personal greatness and ambitious projects.
It is the broken bread and the outpoured wine, the bruised body
and the broken heart. It is the agony in the Garden and all that
is involved in the words uttered upon the Cross of Sacrifice. It
is that most touching of all signs when, after His Resurrection from
the dead, He showed His disciples the wound prints in hands and
feet, and the pierced side. But, it is also Christ, as assended intj
glory, sending upon men His Holy Spirit, that they might be en
dowed with spiritual power, and thus besoms co-workers with
Him in the great work of salvation. How has this Kingdom oE
Grace been revealed, made manifest ; and what is its order ?
This is the theme of the Bible from beginning to end, in many
forms, in generations, by a law of development ; and, it is not
out of place to suggest, that at the present tim.3, it is the Bible,
as scientific order, that is the wonderful revelation to be made to
men. It may well be conceived as possible that men will stumble
over, and be inclined to reject, such a conception ; but, upon
mature consideration, it is difficult, to see why this should be so ;
because, if the Bible is the Work of God, as Christians believe it
is, then, would there be anything more wonderful in finding the
Word of God to be a cosmos of order, than in finding Nature and
Man to be so ? It is not what men would expect from their ex
periences ; but, it is equally certain that three hundred years ago

358 MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH.
men had no true and real conception of Nature as a scientific
cosmos. What the Kingdom of Grace is, must, in the future, be
the subject of careful study ; this is not a question of the natural
as opposed to the spiritual ; because it is one that only spiritual
men can rightly study in spiritual scientific order. It is not
suggested here that thoughtful, earnest lovers of truth should
not begin their studies until they can assure themselves that they
are Christ's disciples ; but simply that in this realm of thought
strife and contention would be very much out of place ; and,
that rivalry and wrangling would unfit men to comprehend the
revelations of the Spirit of Christ. Here above all places, in the
realm of truth, men require the docile obedient spirit ; here Love
and Grace reign ; and, thus it is to love, obey, and understand
the Will of God, as did Christ, that is of chief importance. Who
is it that is at the very heart, centre and circumference of this
Kingdom of Grace ; and, for Whom has it been made manifest ?
To these questions the answers must be that God in Christ, and
in Christ alone, in the natural, or the spiritual, is All in all ; He
is the Ideal and the Real of all that exists ; and apart from Him
as Ideal Being, men have no existence. The conception of the
Greek poet is now in a most marvellous manner confirmed to be
true for all times and aU ages ; in Hirn men live, move and have
their being, and it is the Being of God that is being in men. This
surely is sufficient reason why men may listen with attentive ears
to this revelation of Grace ; for it became Him to do what He has
done, for His creatures, children and brethren. He is not a God
afar off and inaccessible; but, as revealed to men, He is as the
nerve-power in their bodies, as Hfe in their hearts, as bone of their
bones, spirit of their spirits, thought of their thoughts, and their
life of grace made perfect through suffering. All this is true, and
it is equally true that to every soul He gives personality, so that
there may be development into the ideal, the image of God and
likeness to Christ. Whereunto, and whither, does this Kingdom
of Grace tend in the future ? Can men remain of doubtful mind
as to the ultimate issue of this Kingdom of Grace ? It is not
necessary to formulate any theory as to the future ; as to the
coming, or the development of the Kingdom of Grace in power
and glory ; as to the final conflict with evil ; as to the Resurrection
Hfe, the spiritual body, or the state of glory. It is surely a great
step forward to be able to see that Nature, Man and the Bible are in
unity and harmony ; it is not a small matter to be able to believe

MAN, THE FAMILY, SOCIETY, STATE AND CHURCH. 359
in God in this manner ; it is a great thought to receive and cherish,
that Christ is not only all that the Bible reveals Him to be ; He
is also all that the Spirit of Truth has made manifest in the order
of scientific truth. What must follow, as indicated by this study,
is, that in due time pain and disease will pass away ; disorder
in famifies and societies will be changed to order ; crime and sin
will disappear; and, Death and the Grave being destroyed,
the Kingdom of God will come, in glory, in truth and righteous
ness ; men will be conformed to the image of Christ, and being
spiritual, they wiU see Him face to face ; and He " shall lead
them unto Hving fountains of waters ; and God shall wipe away
all tears from their eyes."

CHAPTER Xll.
THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED.
It is unity and harmony of thought that men seek after ; this
is as the one River of Living Water that men desire to find ; and
all the time it is in themselves ; it is in their ideal Eden ere it
parts into the four heads of the rivers Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel and
Euphrates. The River of Life is God ; Heaven and Earth are
in Christ ; the Spirit is as Divine motion ; and as manifested
Light ; and these are the ultimate thoughts of men as they are
able to conceive what is Divine. As viewed from the human
stand-point, these mystic rivers speak of the one river of Hfe that
flows through the land, where the pure gold of truth is to be found ;
it compasseth the whole land of Cush, of fallen, darkened, man
kind ; it branches off and flows away into the lands where men
require much patience to endure their sufferings, even where the
prophet Daniel had his visions of God ; and it is that great river
unto which all the promises of God flow, even to mankind, with
all its manifold experiences. This is the vision of Eden and of
history ; and specially of history, from Eden ; because this is
from whence men came, where they began to be conscious of God,
and to think of their own beginning. What men can now per
ceive is that amidst all the diversities of phenomena they are being
led back in their thoughts to unity and harmony ; that it is utterly
useless for them to try to take up their home in the ever-changing ;
they must return to Eden, to their home in God. In other words
men find that there is unity and harmony in Revelation ; it is
the Bible that reveals God ; it is the Light of God's Truth ; and
yet men know that from beginning to end the Word is enshrouded
as in the chaos ; and the Light of Life is Incarnate in the darkness
of Earth. When men turn to Nature to find the light of truth,
of unity and harmony, then it is impressed upon them by science,
that all the operations andj processes of Nature are phenomena -

the Unities and harmonies considered. 361
yet, behind all changes there is the noumena, and it is the Real
only that can explain the ever-changing. When men study Man in
the light of all the sciences and Divine wisdom, then they discover
that what they know about man is relations and conditions ; yet
there is in man that which gives unity to his being ; and, accord
ing to science and wisdom, the results ought to be harmony. It is
man, as scientific, and as clothed with Divine wisdom, that follows
this threefold line of study, and the results are that these all agree
in their unity and harmony ; and in man there is a new creation,
a real cosmos, that is in harmony with the pre-existent ideal in
God and Christ.
I. To carry this conception of unity and harmony a stage
further ; the thoughts conceived may be expressed in this way :
The unity of all unities is in God ; it is God that is Unity ; and
in Him all is harmony in Divine wisdom.
II. As so often pointed out there is unity and harmony in all
dualities ; and the longer and the more carefully men study
principles of being, and order of development, the more clearly
is this seen to be the fact. Thus God and Christ ; the Spirit and
Creation. The principles of Force and Life, Spirit and Mind,
Intellect and a Moral nature, and Grace and Sacrifice. This may
be expressed as Thought in God, and Word in Christ ; as Power in
God and Life in Christ ; as Wisdom in the Spirit and the Work of
the Spirit in Creation ; as intellectual thought in order, and life
moral, in man ; as Grace and Truth in Christ and Sacrifice as the
new Life ; as the Spirit revealing Christ in thought, and as the
Work of the Spirit in the new creation in man ; and as spiritual
scientific thought in man in harmony with the spiritual life in
Christ. Examples of this unity in duality are very many ; they
run through nature and grace, and the highest practical form of
this concept is to be found in the union of man and woman ; in
the marriage bond of unity, the harmony in the family life and the
blessings that flow from this union of hearts and wills.
III. With the conception of a unity there is no place for reason
ing ; this is the Reality to be believed and there the matter ends.
With the thought of duality it may be said that hope takes the
side of faith ; thus every second principle embodies life ; where
there is life there is hope existent ; thus, even as the ideal, duality
means diversity, a beginning to be, the preparation for revelation.
With the thought of the Trinity in unity there is motion and
emotion ; what existed in the dual form begins to be conceived,

362 THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED.
to be involved, to be put in order in plan, purpose and design.
Thus the Trinity in Unity in God, as a revelation is true ; it is
a great truth as conceived in the Kingdom of God ; it is what men
can believe ; but what they ought not to wrangle about as if they
could understand what it means ; thus the order, as in a series
of threes in this form is — 1. God. 2. Christ, the Ideal. 3. The
Spirit in all Wisdom ; and these Three are conceivable as God.
These statements are not mere deductions from the Bible ; they
are revelations of truth from God ; but in this revelation, so far
as the Bible is concerned, there is no explanation as to God's Being,
and there is no encouragement given to men to try to define God,
or to wrangle about what they cannot understand. The second
series is — 4. Creation by the Spirit. 5. Man as intellectual. 6.
Man as moral ; and these are the counterparts of the first series
of three ; thus God is conceived as in Creation ; man is an ideal ;
in truth he seeks to know all related truths ; and man in Divine
wisdom is subject to order and moral law in the spiritual Hkeness
of the Spirit of God. The third series is — 7. Christ the spiritual
source of spiritual Hfe. 8. Christ is the Ideal Sacrifice for sin,
and for the salvation of mankind. 9. Christ as victorious over
the powers of evil and of death ; and these are all represented
in His Grace, Sacrifice and Ascension into Glory. The fourth
series may be compared with the second thus — 10. The Spirit
and the new creation in Christ. 11. Man spiritual and intellectual
seeking to know the spiritual order in truth. 12. Man moral, as
like God and Christ spiritually. Thus 7 to 9 reveal Christ in all
His fulness as the new creation in the light of the old ; and 10
to 12 the great work of the Spirit in men for their education and
growth in grace and knowledge.
IV. There is a unity in God, in Christ, and in the Spirit ; and
this Trinity in Unity is conceivable as in perfect harmony. Is
there also a unity in creation as the Work of the Spirit in love ?
In other words, if men could see right through the chaos of the
creature would they be able to see, in the light of science and
Divine wisdom, that cosmos which really exists ? This matter
has already received attention, thus it is only necessary to point
out in what way the series of four fall into order. First series 
1. God. 2. Christ. 3. The Spirit. 4. Creation as the Work of the
Spirit. Second series — 5. Intellectual man as capable of knowing
the order of truth in creation. 6. Moral man as subject to Divine
order and moral law. The Fall intervenes with "its disastrous

THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED. 363
results. Into creation, as the New Creation, there is the
Revelation of Christ as 5 and 6, that is as the perfect Man in truth
and righteousness, the substitute for man, as Adam. 7. The
Redeemer from sin. 8. The Sacrifice for sin, accepted in the
heavens, as proved by His Resurrection and Ascension into glory.
The third series — 9. The Spirit of Christ. 10. The Spirit in men
as the new creation in Christ. 11. The spiritual regeneration in
men in intellectual order by the Spirit in truth. 12. The renewal
to the spiritual Hkeness of CHrist by the Spirit. This is the four
fold unity and harmony in creation as in Nature ; in the constitu
tion of man ; and it is the Revelation of the Love of God as Divine
Love ; but the creature has not been developed to know and
understand the creation, or the Creator, thus it is necessary to
wait for the fuller revelation of redemption, to discern the unity
and harmony that is in creation.
V. It has been in the intellectual realm of thought that through
out the ages men have specially failed to find unity and harmony.
Philosophers and arithmeticians have been unable to place this
number in such a way as to deduce from it unity and Harmony ;
it has been an intellectual puzzle, and it seems to remain so to the
present time. Can there be a unity and harmony in this number
or, in what the number represents as the intellect of man ?
Is it that the number is out of harmony with its environment ;
or that the intellect, by its self-assertion, in pursuit of knowledge
of good and evil, has failed to find the way of truth by which there
is unity and harmony % These are the questions that seem to lie
at the root of this strange number. There is in it, 2, the ideal, and
3, the spirit ; and thus it may be conceived that the spirit of man
seeks after the ideal to try to find it. Apart from Nos. 2 and 3,
the intellect represents 1, God, and 4, Creation ; but these, as
equivalents, are not to be used for intellectual knowledge. Man,
as intellectual, has looked out upon nature, and the puzzle for the
inteUect has alway-s been in what way" it could put in order
all knowledge, that of good and also of evil. It will be seen that
this attitude of the intellect is self-assertive, it is self-centred ;
and it is to be feared that this is the intellectual position through
all past ages. The latest exhibition of intellectualism, as ex
pressed in agnosticism, is not an exception to this rule ; in fact
it may be said to be the most complete representation of this
truth, because, on the one hand, agnosticism claims to be in
sympathy with true science ; and true science being the Hght of

364 THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED.
truth, it follows that agnosticism is, in a unique sense, as Hght
and darkness. If these symbols are understood they express
what is so concise in the first day of creation as light and darkness ;
it is the Hght of scientific truth that may be discerned, and the
darkness inscrutable that is in the Unknowable, and all that this"
term represents. The intellect of man as self-centred and as
self-assertive, is doomed to failure ; it is the power for order not
for life ; it can only discern the half, it may be less than the half
of what is true, right and good, thus it follows that the intellect
requires to be born again into the spiritual realm of truth ; and
what is of supreme importance, before it can work for unity and
harmony, it must be able to consider all thoughts from the true
stand-point, that is of God and unity, as revealed by the law of
development and method of Christ. As matter of fact this is to
say to intellectual men, whose glory is in their intellect, what
Christ said to Nicodemus, "Ye must be born again" (or from
above), and, " except a man be born again, he cannot see the
Kingdom of God." It may not be very easy to understand this
strange statement ; thus it will be well to give the matter a little
careful consideration in the light of scientific truth.
It is well known that scientific men glory in what they conceive
to be the inductive method of thought ; and their glorying is not
in vain, for by it they have done good work, and they have become
the leaders of men in profitable fields of thought. There is no
fault to be found with the method of thought ; but if it is doomed
to failure because it deals with scientific order only, thus leaving
half of the universe in darkness, then is it not plain that unity and
harmony is not to be found by man intellectually ? This is the
position of all agnostic thinkers ; it is being asserted by them
selves that the paralysed hand of death is upon them, and that
they do not see any way of escape out of the darkness by which
they are surrounded. Is it the matter of fact that agnostic
scientists have been making a mistake in the past ; and that they
have begun to build upon the wrong foundations ? This would be
serious if it could be proved to be true ; and there is at least the
shadow of a doubt that they do not quite understand their own
position. The question raised here is not of the inductive order
of science, which is assumed to be true and right ; it is what under
lies science, that out of which possible science has been developed.
Science may claim that it begins with electricity and ether, fire-
mist and elements of matter and that the order of evolution is

THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED. 365
onward to the ethical man as perfect in the knowledge of the order
that is in the universe ; but, as already suggested, this will not
lead to unity and harmony of thought, only to light and darkness
and what these "represent. This order of thought is naturalistic,
and those who follow it seem to have given up the hope that
they can by any means reach different results. The suggestion
to be made here is that scientists are making a mistake, it may not
be as related to nature, but as related to the law of development
in themselves ; and for them, as true thinkers, this may be even
of greater importance than the law of evolution in nature. It is
one thing for them to study the becoming of nature ; but it is not the
same as to study the becoming of what is spiritual in themselves.
Nature is one book with its unity and harmonies ; the soul of
man is another book, and it also has its unity and its harmonies.
The book of nature is practically transfigured, it has now become
a spiritual book for spiritual men ; the book of man's soul is
always spiritual ; in fact it is rooted in the spiritual and thus it
will not be subject to the natural. The grievous mistake of
agnostic scientists seems to begin here ; science, as imperfect, sets
up a naturalistic standard from the agnostic intellectual stand
point, and in doing so it overrides the spiritual in the soul, as
attained by the law of development. In other words it was not
science, or the intellect, that began to build the home in the soul ;
it was faith, in the spirit, by the senses and things sensuous, by
intuitions and attainments, that laid the foundations within the
veil of the mind. There was in the soul, even at this first stage
of being, a reality or noumena ; and that spirit Hved faith, even
though it did not understand what faith meant. In other words
man is a spiritual being at the very root of his nature ; and it is
permissible for him to believe that whatever God is as Being that
also is man in his being ; and it would seem that the whole
tendency of modern thought is to confirm this conception. This
is the ultimate thought as to man's being ; there follows, in due
order, development, the sensuous signs, images, thoughts, ideas,
words, and all these are as phenomena, as experience, and as hope
for the future. Faith buds forth into hope in the soul and the
result is patient inquiry, empiric theories and conceptions, it
may be even philosophies and theologies, reasoned processes of
thought about experience and knowledge. Further, if a man
could know and understand the structure of his own soul, it may
fairly be assumed to be true that he would not find it to be in

366 THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED.
a state of chaos but an ordered cosmos ; indeed it is here
that spiritual mystery finds its home ; it is in the soul where love
should reign, and thus if man knew the secret of spiritual polarisa
tion he would find the soul a true cosmos, as a great work of the
Spirit. This is that fourth stage of development conceived to be
the work of the Spirit of God in creation ; it is where there is in
man an automatism, not a conscious cognizance of that work on
the part of the creature. This truth has been explained in several
ways as following the law of development, in God, in nature, in
man, and in revelation, and in thus thinking about the intellect
of man and science the same truth holds good ; it is at this stage
that science becomes observant and cognizant, of the realm of
truth at its disposal, as an inheritance from the past. Science,
the intellect of man did not create this precious inheritance ;
the heir has come of age, and the problem he has to solve is the
use he can make of this heritage ; how he will relate its contents
in scientific order ; and in what way this internal soul inheritance
may be correlated with the external world, and with Revelation ;
because, as can be seen, these have been intertwined in the past
in what constitutes the mind, or soul. If then this is the true law
of development in man, it must follow that agnostic science has
entirely failed to recognise the true relation of science to nature,
or to the soul of man ; there has been the vague assumption that,
in sonie sense or other, science has done something very wonderful ;
if it has not created nature, or the soul, it has in some way re
created them, and the glory of this work is to be attributed to
science. The position when definitely studied takes a different
appearance ; it is that science has not had any part in the work
of nature, or of the formation of the soul as it is organised ; these
are the work of the Spirit, and what man has done in the past
to reveal the glory of the human intellect may be traced in
empiric philosophies, and theologies, in which unity and harmony
of thought are not to be found. But agnostic scientists may be
incfined to say that this argument does not apply to them because
they have renounced empiricism and hold to the inductive method
of study ; and that it is by this means that they have made their
great discoveries. Even here it may fairly be assumed that the
agnostic scientist fails to understand the true position ; and it
may be claimed for the fathers and masters in science that they
would not for a moment lay claim to the glory that agnostic
scientists would thrust upon them. Would Copernicus, Galileo,

THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED. 367
Newton, Faraday, and many others, take up such a position ?
Assuredly not ; their testimony would be that their lines of
thought were at the first wrong, incorrect ; that they were led
to doubt what other men conceived to be infallibly true ; that
new rays of light dawned upon their souls as they considered the
wonderful works of God ; and that by following these lines they
were led by the Spirit of Truth to find out true lines of thought..
It pleased God, by His Spirit, to bestow the light of truth upon.
such men ; they followed the Hght that dawned upon them,
and the result is, in one sense, very wonderful, because what men
find is that they are thinking the thoughts of God as they ought
to think them ; whilst those who are guided by experience and.
empiricism, cannot say so, because they are still groping in the
darkness, trying to find those truths which lead to unity and.
harmony in the universe.
If this line of thought is carefully studied, it will be seen that
agnostic science and empiric reasoning, require to begin their
operations at the spiritual stand-point, in harmony with the law
of development ; this is not where reason begins to relate, con
dition, and set in order, but far back in the history of revelation,
of man and of nature ; and this is very close to the footstool of
God ; where being and becoming are beginning to be discerned .
In fact, the thoughts of the apostle that without Faith it is
impossible to find, know, or please God, are true ; faith is the
atmosphere in which the souls of men live ; without faith men
cannot live ; thus the strange phenomena that men have observed,
of men living, moving and having their being in God ; whilst at
the same time they were asserting that they were living separated
from God, and that to them He is the Unknowable. The whole:
line of thought is chaotic ; it is not in harmony with reason, and
it is contrary to true science. It is time for men to understand
that their self-centred and self-asserting conceptions are of no,
value ; they are not creators of creation, they can only become
interpreters of order and law. Their misconceptions do not alter-
facts ; their blindness does not cause darkness ; they are in a,
false position, and the sooner they understand this the better
for themselves and for their scholars. The latest conceptions by
the intellect do not fall into an agnostic order of thought ;
they tend to declare that to science all is spiritual, because what.
is known and related in thought is order and law ; and order and
law are Hke the sun rays as they diverge from the cloud ; they-

368 THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED.
come from Christ the Sun of Truth ; they are like Hght and the
spectrum, and behind every line of force, or ray of light, there is
God the Source of all Being. It is God in Christ that is centre and
circumference ; and men are as magnetised rays of light specially
endowed with reason and wisdom that they may think, know
understand, and obey the Will, the Laws of God. Strip the ag
nostic, or any other man, naked to the bare spirit, and what is he
The work of the Spirit, in the image of Christ. But, intellectually,
is he not a god ? What kind of god is this whose history for at
least 6,000 years is that of perverse imaginings and wicked deeds
and it is only at this stage of development that he is being
awakened to scientific truth and Divine wisdom ? Perhaps it is time
to stop this analysis of man and of his intellectual glorying ; in
fact, if the analysis goes much deeper, it may tend to destruction
rather than to edification and blessing. This is like the horrible
pit and the miry clay ; what men need here is to find Christ as their
Rock ; to see the way of truth, and to have their way made
plain and their goings established in the truth.
It may be assumed that there is a possible unity and harmony
in this fifth realm of thought, only it is not where agnostic thinkers
supposed they had found it ; but away back in the very heart of
God where all unity is to be found. It is Christ once more that
has been set at nought of earthly builders ; they rejected Him
as Foundation, and, ere a generation has passed away He is seen
to be the Chief Corner Stone. Without Him builders build in
vain ; without Him they cannot build at all ; therefore, how
careful ought men to be in this matter of building ; they cannot
lay foundations and they cannot raise universal temples ; thus
if men can only find the Ideal and reconstruct themselves, by
the aid of the Spirit, in His likeness, this seems to be the work to
which they are called at the present time. Intellectual unity is
in God ; in man it is as light and darkness, a duality, truth and
error. The way to unity is by faith in God, even as by the faith
of a very little child ; unity and harmony can be traced by the
way of faith, hope, patience and love, and all these graces are
the gifts of the Spirit in all the experiences of life. In due time,
the man is called to co-operate with the Spirit so that scientific
knowledge and Divine wisdom may be attained ; and it is this
vision of truth that is dawning upon men, ready to burst upon them
with Divine glory, as soon as they are able to perceive, receive
and conceive,the true thoughts of God in their unity and harmony.

THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED. 369
VI. It can be seen that this problem of unity and harmony is
most difficult to study in the fifth,the intellectual realm of thought ;
this is found to be so for several reasons, and perhaps the most
serious of all is to be found in this, that it is the power that is
reason, critic, and judge, that is being judged ; he is being called
upon to analyse his own being and works, his assumptions, pre
sumptions and Hmitations. The Lord and Master, Christ, has
called this unfaithful servant to account for his stewardship and
service ; and it is seen that he has not been faithful to the trust
he received ; he has not placed, and kept, the house in order,
and thus during the period of his regnancy the record is one of
wrong-doing, of strife, hatred, war, anarchy and demoralisation.
His duties were to attend to the order of the house, and to keep
all the servants in their places ; but, instead of doing this there
has been revolt against Divine order, moral law has been trodden
under foot ; and thus where the Divine Will ought to have been
recognised the wiU of the usurper has been supreme and God
has been dishonoured. The heir of this house is man in the image
of God ; but the heir has been Hke a slave in the home and the
lordly intellect has been supreme. What the servant was entrusted
with was all kinds of phenomena, the ever changing things, to place
them in their order ; what the heir, the man was called to do was
to learn the Will of God as law, in love, and to conform to that
law in aU things, The servant has brought about ignorance, and
anarchy ; and thus the man as heir was found unfit to overthrow
the evil servant and unable to understand the Divine message
of salvation as from age to age it was being revealed to men. It
is not unusual to find clever men reasoning cleverly ; and even
declaring how much better the work of salvation could have been
carried forward if their conceptions had been in operation. They
seem to assume that at any time in history, any man could have
been divinely taught — and through him all men — the way of
salvation as fully revealed to men by Christ ; and, that men
would have received the Divine Message and obeyed it. Why
not the revelation of Christ at the very beginning, and thus pre
vention of all the evil in history ? Why not a full revelation in
Enoch, Abraham, Moses, David, or Isaiah ? The answer to such
conceptions is the study of the law of development ; the great
problem of good and evil ; the unfitness of men to receive new
truths ; and their rejection of truths revealed to them. If the
Bible is studied in the light of the law of development it will be
A A

370 THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED.
found that each new departure is more than the people could, or
would, receive ; the type is beyond them, and thus the ever-re
curring falls of the people of God to be found in history. The
Christian Dispensation is the fullest example of this truth ; the
Christ has been ever before men, and yet after nearly twenty
centuries they are only beginning to realise that they have not
comprehended Christ, and do not do so at the present day. It
matters not how men try to study this problem of the success of
evil over good, they always find a devil of some kind at the heart
of it ; and that devil is far too clever for selfish, self-asserting,
self-glorying men ; they are his tools beguiled and blind ; and,
in the dark world in which they live, they follow him as if he were
an angel of light. The sad thing is that men do partly know what
is true, right and good, and yet for foolish, or base, reasons, they
turn from the good to find evil ; they leave God and the Father's
Home to find their companions among thieves and murderers ;
they look for pleasure and find pain ; for a palace to dwell in, and
the end is the swine trough. Men may try to find somewhere a
vision of mankind as growing good, and as improving their con
dition ; but, apart from the grace and mercy of God, there is
really no hope, there never has been, and never will be. It is
utterly useless to cherish such visions of the night ; so long as the
devil, self, agnosticism, rationalism, or any other form of earth
power, reigns supreme, and men bow down to such powers, they
are doomed to failure ; they cannot do anything else but fail,
because at the very heart of all their thoughts and purposes there
is spiritual dia-magnetism, disease, disorder, disorganisation and
death. This is the reason why in past ages there has not been any unity
or harmony in mankind ; the race has been divided and distracted
their thoughts and words have been confounded ; they would build
monuments that would reach the heavens, and their failure has
been complete. What then can men do to recover themselves
from this hateful, miserable condition, so that they may think
truly and build righteously ? There is only one answer possible,;
they must return from their diverse ways ; they must confess that
they have been prodigals and evil-doers ; they must be prepared
to seek the Father's Home and to do the Father's will. They
have to return to that point from whence in their folly they
wandered away ; there they will find Christ waiting to be gracious
and merciful, willing to pardon and bless ; and, all the blessings

THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED. 371
of the Heavens are in Him, for all men, of all nations, to the utter
most ends of the earth. There never can be unity and harmony
among men, as fallen, apart from Christ ; thus in a true sense,
Christ is the Way to unity ; He is the Truth of all harmony ; and,
He is the Life of all that lives in God. What men are called to
reaHse is this humbfing truth, that they are not men, and never
can be men, moral, true, righteous and good, of themselves ; the
thing is impossible, it is not in them ; they are degraded and below
the Divine standard ; and, just as water will not rise above its
own level, no more can men rise above what they are, unless they
receive that Divine Power of Grace that possesses the dynamic
of the Heavens. It is time to have done with all humanistic
ideals ; they are false and proved to be so ; they are the wiles of
the devil to catch silly souls ; they are foolishness, and science
and Divine wisdom declare them to be so. The devil, by selfish
men, suggests all kinds of means by which they may make them
selves wise, great and powerful ; but all this means jealousy, sus
picion, hatred, war, murder, disease, disorder, death and disinte
gration. On the other hand, Christ, the Man, the Source of unity
and harmony, has told men plainly that all these work for evil,
and that what is required is oneness with Himself in the Spirit,
so that in, by, ancLthrough, Him, they may return to God in Grace
and Truth, in kinship and love, and by this means attain to the
Hkeness of God, to manhood, to the image of Christ, and to moral
unity and harmony.
VII. As pointed out, in various ways, this evil spirit of disunity
and want of harmony is traceable to the fallen state of mankind ;
intellectually he has been living in a world of darkness, and mor
ally his condition has been that of night, and all that these terms
represent. To expect that men walking in the darkness, in
the night, would truly understand their position is not to be ex
pected ; but what may reasonably be looked for is, that men
enlightened by the Divine Light of Truth will not deliberately
choose to walk in the darkness and call it light, and to call night
day. This seems to be the crisis that has come to men through
science ; it is as God's Light to reveal truth ; and, men have to
study the subjects that are advancing to meet them for all that
they are worth. If they do so worthily 'it will be to them even
what Mahanaim was to Jacob ; the angels of God will be their
companions ; the hosts of Heaven, and of the wanderers, will join
in sweet fellowship, and such a return under such conditions will
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372 THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED.
be the means of blessing for mankind. It is necessary to realise
this truth that the welcoming angels are not enemies, but dear
friends ; true men have been separated from the angels through
their own folly, but it is the Lord's friends that are coming and
they are coming for peace, so that there may be unity and har
mony in the House of God. It is not necessary here to dwell upon
the lack of unity and harmony in mankind, as traced by the law
of development ; the Fall may be from nature, as at the first ;
it may be at any stage of development in history as carnal, or as
spiritual ; the fact is ever the same, it is that man wilful and per
verse has fallen ; has lost the spirit of unity and harmony ; has
become a spiritual chaos, and thus the return to God, and to unity,
can only come through Christ, the Man, and the Son of God. This
means the Revelation of the realm of Grace ; it is the story that
is found in the Bible ; it is the ministry of peace and reconcilia
tion ; it is the breaking down of all divisions and differences ; it
is Truth, Light, Life, and Love, from Heaven, in the Heavens
upon the Earth ; thus Christ is the Source of this new Unity in
the Spirit ; and this is why it is so important for men to keep the
unity of the spirit in the bonds of peace and love, because what
is contrary in spirit works for disunion, schism and strife. Christ
is this spiritual bond of union by His Spirit ; there is no other
centre of union and communion ; and, if men will maintain that
any other spiritual source of union exists, by this very fact they
become veritable schismatics ; they dishonour their Lord and
Saviour ; they set up human intellectual ideals to be worshipped
and become perverted spiritual idolaters. In this spiritual realm
of grace, this new development, what seems actually to take place
is this : What God is conceived to be as Ultimate, and Reality,
in the natural and in the carnal, that Christ becomes in the realm
of Grace that is spiritual ; He becomes Ultimate and Real, as
Grace ; thus all that can be conceived as Grace, Blessing, Love,
every good, is in Christ, and from Him ; and, it is useless for men
to attempt to go beyond Christ, as Ultimate, in His Own realm
of Grace. The Ideal in the natural becomes the Real in the spirit
ual ; God is in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself ; and,
the onward order of development, as found in the Bible is that of
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This thought requires very careful
consideration ; not for wrangfing discussion ; it arises out of the
law of development ; there is analogy and likeness ; the carnal
is like the natural and the order is similar ; but when the spiritual

THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED. 373
is reached, then it seems to be necessary that men should be
aroused to the fact ; thus from henceforth men are to be more
careful as to their thoughts and words, and piercing through all
forms, they are to apprehend what is spiritual, as separate from
the natural and the carnal. This is the attitude of Paul when he
declared that although he had known Christ after the flesh, for
the future such a form of knowledge would be out of place ; it is
the Christ in the Spirit that is the Reafity of all true knowledge,
and the Christ of form and of flesh, as phenomena, have passed
away from the vision of spiritual thinkers. This is not an easy
lesson to learn ; yet, there it is ; in the spiritual realm of Grace,
in which men Hve, Christ is represented as taking the place of
God in Grace ; in the Old Testament He is to be conceived as pre
paring the way by the law of development for the coming of the
spiritual ; when the time is fully come for the spiritual to be made
manifest, then the Revelation is Jesus Christ, the Son ; and,
when Christ has ascended into glory then it is the Spirit of Christ
that reveals Christ by those men who had been prepared for the
great spiritual mission of Grace to, and in, mankind. What men
are called to consider here is not the spiritual mystery in Christ,
this they cannot reason about ; this is the new spiritual Divine
Unity ; but, this they may consider, Is such a Revelation, con
sistent with nature ; with man's being ; and, is the Bible, as a
whole, in harmony with this fundamental order of thought that is
now being recognised by Divine wisdom and science ? If this Hne
of thought is true, then what men will find here is a deeper realm
of spiritual truth than any they have yet contemplated ; their
ideals may require to be changed ; the natural, the carnal, and
the spiritual, will require to be careful studied, each in its own
order; it is the spiritual that will reconcile a'i things, and all
thoughts, thus bringing peace to men, and unity and harmony,
union and communion, in the Spirit, to the universe of God.
VIII. This process of reasoning, according to the method of
Christ, in the search after unity and harmony of thought, has
led step by step to the conception of Christ as the Ideal in creation,
the Life of all that fives ; but in the New Creation there is a new
Revelation, and the Ideal has become, for salvation, the Real, the
Ultimate, in the Kingdom of Grace. The proofs of these two
conceptions as Ideal, and as Real, are not to be found in the
reasonings of men by metaphysical assumptions of knowledge ;
the truths are revealed to them, they are credible and worthy of

374 THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED.
belief ; it is at their peril men reject them ; and if they are so
foolish as to doubt or deny them, then they choose the darkness
instead of the light, the night instead of the day, and having done
so, it passes comprehension by what means they are to find their
way back to God, truth and righteousness. This then is the root
idea in philosophy and Divine wisdom ; there is an Ultimate at
the root of all that becomes ; what the Ultimate is cannot be
defined by the intellect of man ; it is true, fact, reality, it cannot
be doubted, and it must be believed to have existence. In this
confession of faith agnostic and Christian believer are agreed ;
they are at one, they are reconciled, and here peace reigns ;
in the strangest way possible they may be said to meet in the
very heart of the heavens ; they are looking into each others
faces ; they are beginning to wonder what they have been fighting
about : why there has been so much ill-feeling, and what prevents
their shaking hands and becoming heart-felt, steadfast friends ?
Is there, really anything serious that stands in the way of the
frankest and fullest reconciliation ? If they are reconciled where
there is unity, then how is it possible for them to cherish the
spirit of strife where there is harmony in diversity % Just as it
is necessary to find spiritual thinkers who can understand what
is meant by spiritual unity ; so it is required that scientists of
every realm should become spiritual thinkers that they may
come to recognise the spiritual harmonies that exist throughout
all the diversities of what is natural, carnal and spiritual. Is it
asking too much to bespeak a truce of God amongst all men who
love truth for the Truth's sake, so that there may be the worthy
consideration of this subject. It does not seem to be an impossible
vision to suppose that the way of harmony may be found ; and,
it is not asking too much from those who profess to love truth,
that they be patient, and even kindly and. pitiful toward each
other, so that in the Spirit of Christ, the Lord of Truth, and the
Master of all who obey the truth, they may prove themselves to
be His true disciples. As the root idea in philosophy is beUef in
ultimate unity, so it may be said that the highest conceptions of
science are universal harmony. It is not merely the knowledge
of order as law in certain defined realms of thought, but that this
harmony will be found to extend throughout the whole universe,
following a similar order in the physical, psychical, moral and
spiritual realms. It has been suggested that the method of
Christ reveals this harmonious order ; and if this is found to be

THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED. 375
correct, then it will not be possible for men to say that what they
know is not consistent with what they believe ; they will be led
much further, even to conceive the thought, not only that there
has been revelation as to ultimates, and to relations, but
that the latter is also a true revelation of what is the
heart, mind, and Will of God as perceived by men. This is
a conception of what Christ is to men as Ultimate wisdom, and
as Scientific Truth ; and it is necessary for men to be patient in
their studies in this spiritual realm so that they may find them
selves in the true way to find the Truth, and the Life Eternal.
The special thought to be studied in this eighth stage is Christ,
the Reafit)r, the spiritual Power of God, as Life ; the analogy
being that what Christ is conceived to be as Ideal Life in the
natural realm, here He is made manifest as Spiritual Life in the
spiritual world. In the natural, the conception is the chaos of
matter as protoplasm ready to be transfigured into Hving organ
isms ; in the spiritual the thought is that of a spiritual
chaos, and the Life in the Light of Truth and Love has
appeared upon the earth among men. To put this subject
in plain terms, man has fallen ; he is a hopeless ruin ; and
it is out of that wreckage that Christ has to renew and re
construct the Kingdom of God. Physical Hfe gives forms to
the thoughts, and it is legitimate to impart into the order
of Grace and Sacrifice the conceptions of environment, heredity,
the struggle for existence, the survival of the fittest, and other
concepts; and it will be found that in the spiritual, what
is like, or similar, exists ; there is the earthly environment that
is opposed to the heavenly, the heredity of the Adam ideal, the
struggle for existence, the contest betwixt good and evil, the
heavens and the earth, and the survival of what is spiritual
because it is the fittest to carry out the Will of God by the Spirit.
If then physical forms of thought are applied to the spiritual
Hfe in Christ, what the thinker may be able to discern under
these forms is really what is conceived to be true in the spiritual
terms of suffering and sacrifice. The Hfe in the physical realm is
like the Hfe in the spiritual ; and the Hfe in the spiritual is similar
to life in the physical. The order of thought here is not greatly
changed, there is a more perfect analogy, but the root fact is
still the same, humanity was dead to God ; Christ became the
new Source of Life to mankind ; the new creation is the result of
His Life given to be the Life of the world ; and, of necessity,

376 THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED.
the Seed of Life died to give life, and to give it more abundantly,
so that the dead might live and become by heredity the life of His
Life. This is the deep meaning of the thought of Christ when
He said, " Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die,
it abideth alone ; but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit."
That Seed is Christ, the ideal spiritual life ; it is as Jesus
Christ that He is the fulfilment of all the past ; He is the Spiritual
Seed of spiritual life and not until after His resurrection and
Ascension into glory was the spiritual fully incarnated into
the mass of humanity. It is a little difficult to keep clearly in
view this thought that Genesis is as the germ of life in a seed ;
that Israel and its history is as the carnal or psychical ; that
Jesus Christ is the Seed produced in the earth, and that as Man,
and Son of God, His life requires special study as the embodiment
and incarnation of the Heavens. The stages V. and VI. are con
ceived to be the earthly seed-bed of the realm of grace and its
environment ; VII. and VIII., Grace and Sacrifice, are the Man,
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, in the Spirit ; thus as the lowest in
the realm of the spiritual, the spiritual is seen as enshrouded in
the form of His physical Body. This is the usual order followed
by the law of development, and every recurring cycle of thought
has to be studied with this thought kept in view. From what
has been stated, if the law of development and the method of
Christ is applied to the Bible, it will be seen that this becomes a
somewhat complex subject to trace all unities and harmonies ;
that is to say there is a unity in Christ as Grace, the Reality
of the new spiritual creation ; but this lands the thinker in a pre
existing order of thought, the carnal that begins with the Lord
God in Eden ; and, again in the natural as it is traced back to
the beginning, to God, the Creator. The unity and harmony of
the creation series is a germ seed, and not meant to be any more ;
it is an ideal which men are to fill up, fulfil, and change into the
real by science and divine wisdom. The unity and harmony of
Genesis and Israel are fulfilled in Christ, as Seed and visible order ;
and He is the Spiritual Epitome of all that they represent. Christ
is the Unity of the realm of grace and of all suffering and sacrifice
as Real and Ideal ; and the Spirit and the Spiritual dispensation
will be the fulfilment of all that is in Christ as Seed. Here the
great problem of suffering, evil, and sacrifice, is much extended ;
it is in Creation, the natural ; it is in the carnal, in psychical forms
and thoughts ; it is in Christ as Man and Son of God in Epitome ;

THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED. 377
and, it is in Christianity in all spiritual truth. All this is true
as to these divisions ; but as spiritual truth, they may be said to
be concentrated in Christ ; and thus it is only in, and by Him
that men can be taught in what way fallen humanity has been
restored from the fallen state, by Grace through Sacrifice ; and
all this has to be studied, in due order, as science, with its har
monious relations, with the unity as Grace in Christ.
IX. and X. The thoughts that arise here seem to take this
form : Man by the intellectual and moral powers he possessed
could have developed, in due time into the scientific knowledge
of the thoughts of God and the order of the universe ; and,
concurrently with the attainment of knowledge, he would have
been endowed with divine wisdom, and could have acted
righteously in the fear and love of God. There was a Fall from
this state, thus the man became spiritually demagnetised, lost
that unity and harmony that exists in the Heavens ; and this
has been and is still, his state and condition spiritually in God's
sight ; that is, truly and according to the constitution of
the universe. What the Adam type of man as moralist has been
seeking after through all the ages has been his former inheritance
in knowledge and in moral order ; what he would not understand
was that the kingdom was taken from him and given to Christ
for its regeneration and renewal ; and, as the elder brother and
heir to the earthly inheritance, he has persisted in his claim
to reign and rule upon the earth. Into this realm Christ came
with the new spiritual order of Grace to restore unity and harmony;
but, as can be seen, every step of the way has been that of deadly
struggle ; the fallen man would grip with all his powers the
carnal and the earthly ; and it has been the dread of losing the
regnancy over the visible, the carnal and the worldly, that has
stirred up the spirit of enmity in the earth so that unity and
harmony were not possible. The Divine Wisdom is found in this
Revelation ; that in the teeth of the opposition of the world
power, the flesh and its lusts, the devil and his wiles, Christ, by
His Spirit has actually been building up a spiritual realm from
the Fall in Eden to this day ; and it was where men conceived
there was no power, wisdom or glory, that Christ was building for
eternity, His great and glorious Kingdom of God, in Grace, Truth
and Righteousness. What he permitted men to do was to
prepare through suffering, sorrow and sacrifice, the material
suitable for His husbandry or His Hving Temple ; then when

378 THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED.
disintegrated from the world, and all its perverse organisations,
there was the silent, all-powerful magnetism of the Heavens at
work, and the result was the new life in the spiritual order. True,
men have thought that they have been in their earthly organisa
tions the helpers of Christ in the great work ; but, whilst the
Temple of God has been building, in the silence of the Heavens,
by the Divine Power and Wisdom, they have been busy, wonder
fully busy, with the scaffolding tha t d'd- Httle more than hide from
the eyes of men the glorious Palace uf God in the Heavens. Men
require to read and study the Bible from this standpoint ; the
Kingdom of God is not what men have conceived it to be ; the
foundation stone is laid in suffering and in sacrifice, and in murder
of brother by brother ; it is Abel not Cain, Christ not Adam, that
men have to study ; and until Christ is known, by His Spirit,
men have failed, totally failed, to understand all that is involved
in Him and has been developed throughout history.
This leads onward to the conception of the concentration of all
history as in, or as correlated with, Christ. Take Christ out of
history and it collapses, there is nothing in it but disease, disorder,
disintegration and death. Because Christ lives, history fives ; He
is the very Life at the root of history ; thus where He has been
least known there has been little history ; but where His Spirit
has been operative there history has been progressive, and there
also, the world, the flesh and the devil have done their utmost to
keep Christ unseen, or so to pervert His thoughts that they might
be made subservient for worldly, fleshly, and deviUsh purposes.
Herein surely, men may perceive the abundant grace, mercy, love,
and wisdom of God in all gentleness and patience. Men have in
their folly and madness been ever seeking for the best places where
there was no pain, suffering, sorrow, or sacrifice, where they might
reign in power and glory ; and, they could not see the Master,
so patiently, gently moving from disciple to disciple, washing their
feet, trying to move their hearts to sympathy and love, so that
they might understand that the way of love, peace, unity and
harmony could never come to men through ambition, self-seeking,
jealousy, strife, or vain-glory. If men were but spiritually minded
they would at once see the glory of the unity and harmony that
is in Christ as Ideal, and as Life ; they would perceive His glory
as the real revelation of God to sinful men for their salvation ;
they would understand that the Man, Jesus Christ, is entirely
unique in His Person. There is not one like Him ; and although

THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED. 379
men with the keenest interest follow the footsteps of the Master,
as Teacher, as Healer of disease, as Restorer of Order, as Resurrec
tion from the dead, it is the agony in Gethsemane, the brutal arrest
the infamous trial, the crown of thorns, the heavy cross, the
solemn words, and the awful silences upon the cross, that cannot
be translated into human language. It is here that men are
taught to feel their oneness with Christ in suffering and sacrifice ;
that wicked men ought to suffer in this way is not unreasonable ;
this is what is due to them for their deeds ; but that He should
thus suffer at the hands of wicked men is outrageous. This is the
contrast of the heavens and the earth ; it is the heavens that suffer
and are sacrificed, and the earth in its madness is found putting to
a shameful death the One who is the Life and glory of the universe.
It is useless to theorise about this awful tragedy and to try to
construe doctrines and dogmas to explain the facts ; it seems
almost inhuman that men should in cold blood wrangle with each
other about symbol thoughts, when before their very eyes, the
Christ is being led forth to the cursed death of the Cross by His
and their own brethren, and they are in the procession seeing all
that is being done. This is how the Spirit of Christ reveals Christ
at all times to the individual soul ; the language of experience is
not a dogma ; it breaks out of the heart in its anguish, and the
cry is " He loved me, and gave Himself up to death for me." It
is in His death, self-renunciation, that a man finds life ; and
from that experience there follows spiritual unity in life ; it is
Christ that lives in the man ; he has been redeemed from the
power of the world, saved from fleshly lusts that war within the
soul, and defivered from the snares of the devil ; and when tempted
to forget these experiences, and there is the risk of turning away
from Christ, is there not present the post-resurrection vision of
the Risen Christ with the pierced side and the nail-prints in hands
and feet ? In the Spirit all these things are ideals ; that is to,
say it is the Christ that is Life and Truth ; it is the Christ that
Hved and died ; and that the Christ ever lives, can only be under
stood by men that are being saved. He is the Objective Reality ;
the Spirit translates the Reality into the Ideal, as the Divine
Sacrifice for sin, for salvation ; the spirit perceives, receives,
conceives all that is in the ideal, in plan, purpose, and design ;
all these thoughts are translated by words, and forms into the
soul of man, and this becomes the new creation in Christ. The
conception here is that what the Spirit involves in the soul is not

380 THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED.
a partial or incomplete Christ ; this is truly the most marvellous
spiritual biological truth conceivable by man ; it is the Christ,
as the hope of glory ; it is the babe ready to be born, and in this
babe there is all the mystery of all the ages, in a perfect unity,
and in harmony with all the wonderful works of God. Had not
science given to men a pre-vision of this truth in biology, they
would never have conceived such a thought as this ; possibly they
would not have dared to use it to illustrate the spiritual Hfe in
Christ ; but when the biological vision of truth, has been seen,
and transfigured, it is instinctively felt that this is not merely
the explanation as to the Hfe in Christ, biology has become the
hand that points direct to Christ, for He is its Source and Cause as
Life, and apart from Him men would never have had a science of
biology, or found any way by which they might discover the
mysteries of the development of Hfe. There are wonderful visions
of truth in physical Hfe as revealed by the way of science and evolu
tion ; they reveal the glory of God to spiritual men who can trace
the work of the Spirit in this realm ; but, it is the spiritual revela
tion of Hfe in Christ as made manifest in spiritual development,
that is marvellous beyond measure. It is this vision of truth that
men seek after in heaven and earth, and, returning with humbled
hearts and lowly minds from their anxious quest and long pilgrim
age in the desert, they are astonished to find that what they have
been searching for is not to be found by them in the heavens, or
in the earth, but in their own souls, in a spiritual unity that is
divine, and in spiritual sciences that are found to be in perfect
harmony with the Will of God.
XI. — XII. The Hne of thought that has been followed here
becomes specially interesting when the thoughts are turned back
upon that darkness and night, out of which men are being de
livered. They have been wandering in the Desert guided by the
Light from heaven ; and yet they have not seen their Guide,
neither have they understood His mission to sinful men. They
have been studying signs and symbols ; trying to spirituafise their
experiences, and all the time the Spirit of Truth has been reveal
ing truth to men as they have been able to receive those truths
that are spiritual and divine. The Rock and the Water, the
Bread and the Raiment, have ever been in the midst ; and men
knew not that the heavens were in, and around, them ; and, that
it was their dia-magnetic spiritual bfindness that prevented them
from seeing things as they really exist. The atmosphere in which

THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED. 38i
they have lived is that of Ditine Grace ; their life has been that
of Divine suffering and sacrifice ; they have been sustained by
the Water of Life from the Stricken Rock, and it is now time for
men to begin to read the records, in their own souls, and thus join
with Mose&, the servant of God, in rehearsing all the wonderful
works of God for the salvation of His people. As the Redemption
from Egypt and the Desert life give psychical form to what is
carnal, so there is an analogous spiritual realm of thought for
Spiritual students ; and they do well to study such analogies,
because, it is through these that they come to understand what
the Bible truly reveals. In this realm of thought the assumption
is now made that there is fitness to consider spiritual unity and
harmony ; the position is somewhat strange ; it is not objective
signs and symbols that are studied ; neither is it groping in the
darkness of the soul after empiric theories ; such things He in the
shadows of the past ; there is positive light of truth as order and
law ; and thus the attempt has to be made to try to sketch the.
outlines of what can be seen from the vantage ground that has
been reached. In past stages of development the unities and har
monies have been pointed out, thus the way that hasbeen travelled
can be traced ; but here the spiritual intellect, and moral nature
of man, as rising to spiritual manhood, has to be recognised, thus
the greatness of the vision can be perceived. In natural manhood
the vision is that of ruin ; in Christ, as Grace and Sacrifice, the
new creation, as power and life, is revealed ; in the Spirit and the
Works of the Spirit the soul is involved ; and, here in scientific
study and wisdom, as the means of development into manhood,
there is preparation for the survey of what is Divine wisdom. The
spiritual seed has been conceived in the womb ; the child has been
born ; there has been training and schooling ; and now, what can
men see, and what can they comprehend, and understand, as to
the meaning of all these things ?
What men desire to see is the vision of the unity and harmony
that exists throughout the universe of God ; and, to be able to
say that God is the Source and First Cause of all being and becom
ing ; that Christ is the Ideal and Archetype of all that has been
manifested, its very Life ; that the Spirit of God is the Spirit of
Christ in all Wisdom ; and, that the Creation, as the Work of the
Spirit is the real manifestation of all that is in Christ as Ideal.
These are spiritual conceptions which, in their nature, are meta
physical ; yet they underlie all that men can know, and, what

382 THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED.
they do know, by experience, is the sensuous relations of what is
believed. To know true thoughts, in their true relations, is to
know scientific truth ; and this form of truth is the Divine order
in the universe. About the Fall of man as a fact, little is known
through history ; but what men may assert to be true knowledge
is that man, in his impatience, through desire, ambition and per
versity in wishing to know both good and evil, did not wait to be
divinely taught the way of life, but with a self-asserting, selfish
spirit, did what was known to be wrong before he had sufficient
moral experience to fully understand the grave consequences of
thus despising the will of God, and of doing what was pleasant
and desirous for self. Through this action the primal laws of the
fear and love of God were broken ; and from that time man be
came spiritually dia-magnetic to God and good, and to the universe
of the Hfe that is blessed. It is out of this condition, as related
to man, that the present order of revelation or of development,
is made manifest ; and, the Bible is that Revelation of Truth
from God to man with these special objects in view, regeneration
in Christ by the Spirit, the redemption of men from evil powers,
salvation from sin, the resurrection from the death that followed
sin, and the restoration to God through Grace and Sacrifice to the
Hfe eternal in glory that is in Christ. Men call this the Eternal
Purpose of God in Christ ; what they do know is that the Bible
is God's Word to men for their salvation, thus it is of the highest
importance that they should seek to know and understand what
that Word really means.
This Revelation in the light of science and Divine wisdom may
be studied in various ways ; as by dispensations ; by the method
of Christ ; by the work of the Spirit ; or as the Kingdom of God ;
and all these methods will be found profitable by the student who
is a seeker after truth, and who desires to know the unity and har
mony of the Kingdom of God. As dispensations of Grace, it is
reasonable and right to begin with the unique revelation that is
given of Creation. As matter of historic order this may precede
the Fall ; but, it is a revelation to fallen men ; as studied by the
method of Christ it is the living germ of history, and, it is the key
to Genesis, to the Bible and to universal thought. The story of
Creation is not that of physical science as understood by men ;
it is a spiritual creation of God, and it is to be rightly interpreted
by men when they become spiritual, and are prepared to under
stand the thoughts of God in their Divine order. As the Creation

THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED. 383
story is germ and key for all revelation, so Genesis, as a book,
is germ and key for all history ; but specially for the history that is
contained in the Bible. It is the Heavens and the Earth and their
conflicts that is the theme of the Book ; and that history is divided
into generations which require careful study in the light of the
Creation story and of history. From Abraham to Christ is the
Dispensation that follows that of Adam and Noah ; and Christ
fulfils all the past in these, and brings in what is known as the
Spiritual Dispensation. There is the conception of another Dis
pensation ; it is conceived under the form of the millennial glory ;
the meaning being that Christ will reign in Truth, Righteousness
and Peace ; and that men will know, love and serve Him as their
Saviour, Lord and King. The unity in Creation is God, and the
harmony the Work of the Spirit. The unity in Genesis finds its
centre in Abraham the father of the faithful ; in him the past find s
its unity and harmony, and from him there radiates forth the
Hght of truth, with all its diverse harmonies in the Commonwealth
and nation of Israel. It is in Abraham that the fourth series of
generations find their centre as in the image of the Divine Father ;
it is in Christ that the eighth series reveals the Son of the Father
in Grace and Truth ; and, it is from the ninth to the twelfth series
that the Spirit reveals Christ in men for their full and perfect salva
tion in Him. It is necessary to remember in this study that there
are not only involutions of divine thought, there are also new
beginnings at definite stages ; and, that the new order, or dispen
sation, always finds its root hold in the pre-existing series. Thus
the Heavens and the Earth are linked with the creation story ;
the life of Abraham and Israel are linked with Ur of the Chaldees ;
Moses and the Exodus with Abraham ; Christ with the Kingdom
of Israel, Isaiah, the captivity and the Restoration ; and, the
Spirit with the four Gospels that contain the story of the Life of
Christ. The Bible Revelation as a whole is a great Ideal Word
of God, and it may be said to cover all history ; only it may be
conceived that Christ fulfilled the Ideal as found in Genesis and
in Israel, and constituted them to be true and real in Himself.
The Ideal in Christ is found in the Gospels, Epistles, and the Book
of Revelation ; and this ideal is fulfilled, made real in, and by, the
Spirit in the history of Christendom ; but, the fulfilment is not
in men, or Churches, it is in the Spirit, in spiritual scientific con
ceptions, and in divine wisdom. In thus elevating science as the
companion of divine wisdom it is not to be understood that the

384 THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED.
physical sciences are specially referred to as the means of guiding
men to divine wisdom and to that unity and harmony in the uni
verse as conceived to exist. If this subject is carefully considered
what men will discern is that the physical sciences are the least,
and the lowest, among their brethren ; they represent the two
first stages in the order of development ; they are not lords in the
divine heritage ; and they do not possess any special authority,
to speak for other sciences or to rule over them. What they have
done, as the servants of Truth, has been of great value ; they have
given to men visible, and intellectual signs and symbols, scientific
forms of thought in the transfigured physical world of thought.
The Lord and Master has been pleased to use them in this honour
able service ; but where some of them seem to have made a mis
take has been in arrogating the honour and the glory of their
service to men, forgetting that only as taught by Christ, and the
Spirit of Truth, have they been able to discover scientific truth.
The spiritual position of the physical sciences is not the highest ;
it is Hke spiritual childhood ; it is that of letters, signs and forms ;
the children are at school, intent upon their visible, physical, ob
jective lessons ; and there lies before them the psychical realm
that is subjective ; the intellectual world that is all inclusive as to
order in related thoughts ; the great moral world of obfigation,
duty and love ; the awful chaos of sin, disease, disorder, disinte
gration and death ; the heavenly Kingdom of Grace ; the strange
world of suffering and sacrifice ; the Divine illumination of the
Spirit in Wisdom ; the incarnation of the Spiritual creation in
Christ ; the spiritual scientific order of the universe as traced by
the method of Christ ; and, when all these have been attained,
then, but not till then, will there be spiritual manhood, likeness
to Christ, and the image of God. What men are called upon to
remember is not their great attainments in science, literature,
art, theology, or philosophy ; but, that they have been caHed to
return to the home of their childhood ; to the simple lessons of
experience ; to shut out from view the dark episode of the Desert
Hfe with all its empiric theorising, and, as children, to begin anew
to study the Word and the Works of God from the right stand
point that is, of faith in God, and under the wise and careful ;
tuition of the angel spirit of science, who, as a master of truth
in Israel, is able to guide all docile, earnest, thoughtful students in
the right way to attain true knowledge. From henceforth it^will
be well for men if they are satisfied with the knowledge of good ;

THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED. 385
that is of scientific truth as the will of God, as His laws revealed to
men ; as for evil, disease, disorder, and death, they are as bogs
and miry places, where men can find no solid foundation on which
to rest their feet ; chaos, where there is no order ; darkness, where
there is no pure light of truth, and the charnel house of the grave
where corruption has reigned supreme. All these are negations of
good ; perversions of truth out of which the Life of God has ebbed
away ; they are as Maya, and Nehushtan, under the curse, there
fore let them be accursed, and cast out into the outer darkness
seeing that they have set themselves up in the spirit of rebellion, of
insanity, against God, the Good, the Gracious Giver of all blessings.
A word may be uttered in connection with this important sub -
ject as to the unity and harmony of the universe in God, as re
vealed to men in the Bible, and in the Word of His Grace, to sinful
men who love truth ; who would be students of the truth as it is
found in Christ, as revealed by His Spirit. It is plain enough
that a great revolution in thought has taken place ; the thinkers
in the world of agnostic philosophy, and of the physical sciences,
have been the means of bringing about a great change, even a
far greater change than they conceived possible ; they would have
given to men limitations of thought as in the Unknowable, and
First Principles ; in conservation and correlation, and in evolu
tion, which could not be admitted by spiritual men. They would
have killed the spiritual, taken away from men the atmosphere of
freedom and liberty of thought, and reduced them to a mechanical
bondage of dead nature that would have been intolerable. How
freemen, who loved the truth, could have favoured such an
hypothesis passes comprehension ; their heads paralysed their
hearts ; they lost the light of Life ; and, if they had been per
mitted to follow their own thoughts, they would have petrified
themselves and been lost in a materialistic mechanism. It would
appear as if this Hne of thought is going out of fashion ; men do
not find that the hypothesis is workable ; there is something wrong
with the machinery, and thus the spiritual is found necessary ; in
fact, it is the spiritual not the material and the mechanical that
men require. What is required by men is that they turn away
from a vague, indefinable Unknowable, and a mechanical law of
evolution, and accept as fact, that cannot be doubted by intelligent
creatures, that God is Being, the First Cause of all being. This
truth may be accepted, or it may be rejected ; but it is not sc
much an intellectual question as one of spiritual attitude ; and,
BB

386 THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED.
assuredly it is far more difficult to be an intelligent agnostic than
to be a befiever in God. An agnostic thinker seems to be a kind
of anachronism ; he is like a poised magnet that has been de
magnetised by earthly influences ; thus he has lost the universal
affinities and has settled down to a kind of self-centred polarity
that is personal and natural. The more this kind of creature is
studied the less true, good and noble he appears to be ; and, it
is not possible to perceive in what way, from such a position, this
child of nature is going to develop into true manhood. If the
position is a false one to begin with, how is it possible that out of
what is wrong there is to arise what is true and right, what will
give to men unity and harmony for all their thoughts ? The
student of truth and righteousness must try to place himself in a
true position to see what has been revealed to men in Nature,
Man, and the Bible ; and, this true position, it would appear, is
the Bible, as studied by the method of Christ, and from this stand
point to try to unify and harmonise true knowledge. Is it correct
to say that the study of mankind by man for this end in the past
has been a failure, as proved by all kinds of philosophic systems of
thought, in which there is neither unity nor harmony ? Is it also
to be conceived that a natural agnostic philosophy, aided by the
physical sciences of Nature, has been a similar failure ; and, that
the two systems of thought cannot unite and fall into a harmonious
order of thought ? If this is true then what men require to do
is to fall back upon the Bible as the Revelation of truth from God,
and, from this spiritual stand-point study the Word of God in
the light of the method of Christ, as guided by His Spirit of truth.
What this means has been pointed out in varied ways ; it may be
useful to try to express these thoughts in a different form, with the
hope that this may be helpful to those who are interested in such
subjects. The- form that may be used is that of the kaleidoscope, which,
as it is turned, ever gives to the observer new and varied com
binations of that which is observed. The man is in the light, the
instrument is permeated with light, there is light beyond the
instrument, and thus there is unity in the light and harmony in the
motions of the instrument. The Bible may be compared to the
kaleidoscope with its contents ; the light of truth is in the
heavens, in the Word, and in the man who is studying the motions
that take place, and thus the unity in light and the harmony in the
vision. The Bible is like such an instrument in this sense, that

THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED. 387
the observer when using it takes care to place himself in that
attitude which will be in harmony with the light ; that is to say,
he will not turn it toward a dead wall, or toward the darkness
but toward the lines of light, so that the light, the instrument and
the eye may be in true alignment. In spiritual order this means
the attitude of the spirit of man toward the Spirit of Truth, so
that there may be the necessary harmony of conditions. What
the man wishes to see is what changes take place, and the turning
of the instrument may be compared to the law of development.
It is assumed to be true that in historic development there are
twelve divisions, or great series of changes, and each of these
require to be studied, in due order, as portions of the one order
of progression. The vision of creation gives form to the whole,
and by it the successive changes are observed. It is assumed
that there are cycles within cycles, series within series, and thus
the student requires to be careful in his observations. It is only
necessary to give a few illustrations of what is meant by this line
of study, and when the student becomes familiar with the instru
ment of observation there ought not to be any difficulty in using it
in any realm of thought.
The first conception is that the man behind the instrument is
intelfigent, inquiring, reverent, and scientific as to order, and
truly desirous to know what is true and right ; and there must
be a definite method of inquiry, so that the soul will receive the
messages that are transmitted through the instrument. It is
not for a moment to be supposed that the spiritual responses in
all men are to be identical ; the mechanism of communication
may be similar, but there must be liberty of interpretation accord
ing to spiritual law. This distinction may be found in electric
telegraphy ; to one man there is visible motion, and the click-
click of the instrument, whilst to the experienced telegraphist the
sounds are translated into thoughts by the sounds made, even
though the eyes may not see the instrument. Much more depends
upon the man behind the instrument than upon the instrument
and the light ; the man has to be prepared, and fit for his work ;
if he is not, then how can there come spiritual revelations to a
dark, ignorant soul that is limited by the senses and the sensuous ?
The position as yet is not one of perfect adaptation ; it is that
of inquiry, thus the necessity of the active mind in dealing with
the many problems that arise in the course of study. A useful
form of questions may be found in the following order : Whence ?
b b2

o»8 THEUNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED.
When ? Why ? What ? How ? Who, or for whom ? Whereunto ? and
Whether ? If these are applied to the Blessings uttered by Christ
upon the Mount, and the kaleidoscope, as it were, turned with
each question, then the responses to the different operators may
vary greatly, but there will be a unity and harmony throughout
the series. Whence the blessing of the poor in spirit ? This
presupposes a changed condition of the soul, and of the new
birth into the Kingdom of Grace. When do men mourn ? It
is when they have been convicted of sin, and there is the desire
for pardon, peace and comfort. Why are the meek of heart
blessed ? It is because they have discovered and entered con
sciously into their spiritual inheritance. What is that good
that is soul-satisfying ? It is truth and righteousness, because,
these mean conformity to the order, law and will of God. How
is the regnant spirit that is in the gospel, that of mercy, to be seen,
in the man that is the disciple of Christ ? By mercy and kindness
toward men ; seeing that mercy, forgiveness, is the blessing every
man needs from God. Who is to be taken and set up as an
example for holy Hving, such as becomes man ? The Man pure of
heart who possesses the Vision of God, the Lord Christ. Where
unto should the life be conformed ? To that of Christ the Peace
maker, the Son of God. Whither will such a life lead men in this
world in such a spirit ? Those who walk in this way may expect
persecution, reviling, it may be even death, but all such are blessed,
they are the children of the Heavens, and theirs is the Kingdom
of God. If the instrument is applied intelHgently to the story
of creation the responses take this form. Whence the Creation
in all its fulness ? From God ; and it is manifested to men
in symbol thoughts thus ; the Heavens, the earth, Spirit motion,
light ; there is an apparent break or division, and there emerges
out of Hght, the light and darkness, and day and night ; and
these symbols are the Divine ultimates from whence have come
all related thoughts. When or under what forms, as ideals, has
creation been manifested ? In the Heavens, and in the earth as
a chaos of waters. Why has this ideal creation been revealed ?
So that men may be able to perceive the earth as a chaos, followed
by plan, purpose, design and order. What is this creation of God
in symbol ? It is light in God as the work of the Spirit ; it is
lights for day and night, sun, moon, and stars and all that these
represent as the creation of God by the Spirit. How is it given
to man to understand the work of creation ? As the open heavens

THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED. 389
as light, and as the soaring birds ; and as the creatures living and
moving in the depths and in the darkness ; but all, after their
order and kind, as by development according to the Will of God.
Who is the glory of this creation, and for whom has all this creation
in order been produced ? For that man who is the image of God
in righteousness, unto whom God gave the inheritance and
dominion. Whereunto did creation tend 1 To rest in God and
to the fulfilment of the purposes of God ; to rest in the Heavens
of the Divine Love ; or to the Revelation of the Sabbath of God
in Christ, the abiding rest of all who seek and find God.
With the generations of the heavens and the earth the same
series of questions may be asked in their order, and it will be found
that the spiritual responses will follow, only care must be taken
against any narrow Hmitation of the vision, because what is so
remarkable in the first day of creation is repeated here, and the
conviction will tend to grow stronger and stronger that these
generations, in the most marvellous manner form the germ seeds
of the new creation in Christ in a way that cannot be defined ;
they may not be prophecy, but they have in them the spirit
of prophecy, thus as symbols they are of the highest value in
illustrating, or in indicating, upon what fines history will proceed,
as specially related to the heavens and the earth and the great
conflict of good and evil. Following the order of the generations
in the light of the Beatitudes and the story of creation, the line
of thought and of inquiry would take this form : Whence the
heavens and the earth ? They are from God, as representing the
thoughts of God, as bearing upon man's fall, his fallen condition,
and the struggle of the ages in the realm of Grace. When have such
events been manifested or recorded % They are to be found in the
Book of the generations of Adam. Why was a spiritual revelation
necessary for men ? That they might be taught the great truth
of the way of salvation from evil, as illustrated by the story of the
Flood, and the saving, by the Ark, of Noah and his family. What
is the history of this Work of Salvation as the Work of the Spirit %
It is to be traced in the family of Noah ; their distribution in the
earth ; and the prophetic utterances of Noah as related to his
three sons and their descendants. How is the work of the Spirit
to be understood, as related to the age of Shem and his generations
in the earth 1 There is no scientific order given that men can
understand ; the time for scientific thought had not come ;
all they could perceive and receive was the hidden ideal in a. Name

390 THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED.
that was incarnate with blessing ; and symbol names that were
preserved for students of genealogy in later days. Who was the
man that was not satisfied with earthly things, as represented by
Nineveh and Babylon 1 It was the venerable Terah, a man who
longed to be a man indeed, who with his family left Ur of the
Chaldees and set forth on a long journey to seek a better country.
Whereunto did this journey and pilgrimage tend % To the mani
festation of Abraham, the father of the faithful and the friend of
God ; that father in God who so discerned the Thoughts and Will
of God, that he was able to offer his beloved son as a sacrifice on
Mount Moriah. By faith he saw the Christ through that long, long
avenue of three days' sacrifice ; he rejoiced, and he was made glad in
heart because through the vision of truth he was assured that God
would provide, in due time, an all-sufficient Saviour and Sacrifice,
who would be the Redeemer of the world from evil. Abraham it
will be observed is the glory of the Book of Genesis ; he fulfils
all the past and becomes the founder of a new dispensation and
order of things in the earth ; he reveals the Father and foresees
the Son of God ; and thus in Him, and in His Seed there is found
blessings for the whole world. It is not necessary here to indicate
in what way by the dropping of two generations and the adding
of two, a threefold series can be traced ending in Abraham, Isaac,
Jacob and Joseph ; all this has been fully explained, and the new
dispensation from Abraham to Christ is introduced, to be in Hke
manner studied by the method of Christ. When this series is
questioned and the kaleidoscope used to perceive the develop
ment, then the student may begin his studies thus : Whence
Abraham and all that he represents in history % His lineage is
known backward through Terah, Shem, Noah and Adam to God,
thus he came from God ; in a special manner he is a type of God,
the Father ; his life was that of faith in God ; his spirit returned
to God; and his body rests, as a pledge, in the cave at Machpelah for
the fulfilment of the great promises of God yet to be made manifest.
When did Isaac come to his inheritance of blessing as the blessed
promised son, as the son mocked by his brother, as the sacrifice
on Mount Moriah, as the inheritor of the promises of God ? In
due time, in the fulness of the times, in the right spirit at all times,
an ideal son in an ideal promised land. Why are" the twin sons of
Isaac such a wonderful psychical study ? They are so because in,
and by them the Spirit of God sets forth in living men, brothers,
wtnttrepresents. the-earth and the earthly ; and what desires and

THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED. 391
aspires after the heavens and the heavenly. This is a very com
plex kaleidoscopic vision, and the student who would seek t>
comprehend its heights and depths, will discover that this vision
is more Hke a tree than a picture ; its roots are deep in God and
Christ ; in the kingdom of man and in the Kingdom of Grace ;
it is Edom and Israel, the earth and the heavens. It is Adam,
Esau, Edom, Herod the Edomite, and earthly power and glory
on the one hand ; and on the other all that the heavens inspire
with what is heavenly, raising it above the earth so that at the
end it may become Israel a Prince of God endowed with power
from the heavens. What is Joseph, the beloved son ; and what
does his story teach men 1 Men are familiar with that wonderful
analogy that exists betwixt the son of Israel, and Jesus Christ the
Son of God. This vision also is worthy of careful study, because
it may well be conceived that if the story of the type is so full
of interest, then the One who is the fulfilment of the type, must
excel in wisdom, power and glory. These four patriarchs of the
House of Israel are as seeds in the realm of the generations in
Genesis ; a new day breaks upon Israel and mankind in the
Redemption from Egypt, and thus for the first time in history
there is given to men an outward, visible and psychical revelation,
or representation, of what the great work of God means for the
redemption and deUverance of mankind from the powers of this
world. Thus the question, How, as the plan, purpose and
design of the scheme of redemption becomes very complex ; it
is given in detailed order in the four books of Moses, in Exodus
to Deuteronomy, and these at the same time give a full exposition
of the order of the work of the Spirit in Faith, Hope, Patience and
Xove. Who is the Leader and Commander of the people of God
to overthrow the powers of evil, and to whom the right is given
to divide the inheritance upon this earth \ He is named Joshua,
Saviour. Whereunto does the commonwealth and nation tend
in the order of development ? To the judges and anarchy ; to
Samuel and God's Kingdom, to Saul and David, and all that they
represent, to Solomon in all his glory and to temple, palace, and
an organised state that seemed to be heavenly in design, but
was in spirit carnal and earthly. Whither did Israel after the
flesh end, and whither the Israel after the spirit ? The former to
the captivity in Nineveh, Babylon and Persia ; to dispersion
among the nations of the East, among their kinsmen according
to the flesh ; and, to the Restoration, by the Residue of those

392 THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED.
who feared the name of God, as the preparation, the new departure,
from Chaldea to seek a better country, a heavenly inheritance as
consummated in, and revealed to men by Christ at His coming.
Another series of the great work of the Spirit begins in Christ, as
all developments must begin. With the question Whence ? The
thoughts turn back to the Restoration, the Captivity, the Kingdom
and Commonwealth of Israel, the Desert, Egypt, the Patriarchs,
Shem, Noah, Adam and God, and thus no matter how many stages
may intervene in history, there is one descent by development
from God to Christ, through all the ages ; but this special spiritual
beginning is to be found in Isaiah and his companion prophets,
when the Israel after the flesh was in disorder and being dis
integrated in the earth. When did this new spiritual age take its
ideal foim ? This may be traced in the eight minor prophets
and their conceptions of the coming Kingdom and the King.
Why was Christ made manifest as a man to men for their salvation?
In Him the Spirit of God with the Divine Ideals was without
bound or measure. He is the Incarnation of the Spirit, for wisdom
and healing, for salvation from sin, and these thoughts may be
specially traced in the Gospels according to Matthew and Mark.
What was Christ revealed to be for men in that unique life that
He lived in Palestine ? He is seen to be the Saviour of the world
in the Gospel of Luke ; and in the Gospel of John, He is all that is
ideal made real, as Light and Life, Grace, Truth and Love ;
as the High Priest of Mankind and the One and only Sacrifice for
the sin of the world. How did these truths become known to
men ? By the coming of the Holy Spirit with spiritual power ;
by the conversion of men, by repentance unto life and by
tfie preaching of the Gospel to the ends of the earth. Who were
the recipients of these gifts of the Spirit ? All men who would
receive the Divine message of forgiveness and peace ; they were
changed from being debased idolaters into the likeness of Christ
their Lord, and thus the new creation in Christ was made manifest,
and men became known as those who feared God and sought to
do His Will upon the earth. Whereunto did this spiritual
Kingdom of Grace spread as revealed to men in the Bible ?
Throughout the Roman empire, to all lands wherever men could
carry the glad tidings of salvation. Whither will it extend ?
Even to the whole world, to all nations and peoples, so that in
Christ and in His Kingdom of Grace and Peace, there may come to
men the new heavens and the new earth, and that unity and har-

THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED. 393
mony which can only be found in Grace, Truth and Righteousness,
as the method of Christ, the order of the Spirit in regeneration,
and the Will of God as salvation.
It is under such forms as these that men perceive the work of
creation, and of the new creation in Christ for salvation ; they
are able to stand in the light of the Heavens ; and as polarised
to the Divine ideals, they may become para-magnetic to divine
influences, and in this light of heaven, with the heavenly Hght in
their souls, they may become spiritual in their minds, according
to the method of Christ, and thus perceive the spiritual order that
is to be found in the Bible. This however, is not all that men
may expect in the future ; this method of Christ, with the
questions that may be used in their due order, it may fairly be
expected, will be found useful in all sciences ; indeed, it may
even be suggested that unless there is such a response it will be.
difficult to prove the scientific order in harmony with divine
wisdom in such realms of thought. It is not to be understood
that such a method of study is infallible for ignorant people ;
because the meaning of the kaleidoscope is that the observer is
in the region of the light of truth ; that the light of truth is in
harmony with his thoughts, and that the medium that is observed!
is in harmonious vibration with the light and with the eye ; with
the thoughts of God, the conceptions of men, and the order in
nature. In what sense and with what effects, the same instrument
could be used to make observations upon the realm of evil and sin
may be of interest ; the experiment may be tried by students,
and they would discover in what direction their thoughts would
tend. Whence the power of evil and the result known as sin ?
It comes from the soul of man through sensuous temptation,
desires, and lusts of the flesh, perversion of the spirit, aspiration
after knowledge in a disorderly manner, lust after authority and
power ; that is, to know both good and evil and to reign over and!
subdue other men to subjection, bondage and slavery. When
did this power of evil and of sin as related to man begin ? This is-
what is named the fallen state ; it is the ideal of all sinful men ;:
they think they would be satisfied if they were wise and like the;
gods in power ; but the conception is heathenish ; it is not
natural, true, good or right, and being contrary to the real nature
of man, it simply meant that the likeness he would prefer is that of
the devil as seen in the symbol of the serpent. Why should men
choose such an ideal as this, seeing that it is antagonistic to his

,394 THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED.
higher spiritual nature ? The conception is that man was, and is,
in the state of inexperience and ignorance, of tuition and oi
subjection ; that the development being simple in form, with only
•sufficient knowledge to know a little of order and law, right and
wrong, the man being left to reason, conscience and judgment,
the result was the fall, by self-preference, selfishness and self-
assertion ; and this means spiritual dia-magnetism, because it
makes self and self-will central in the man's being instead of
Divine spiritual order and law. What was the result of this
temptation, lusting, desire and Fall of man ? It was that of
degradation from type. The ideal type of manhood is love cf
truth and righteousness, of justice, kindness and peace ; instead of
this the man loved, received and believed a lie ; he did what was
wrong ; his conscience and sense of justice were perverted ; and in
departing from the fear of God, there was the loss of spiritual
kinship and of love. How has evil and sin manifested their
powers over men during history \ The works of the Flesh are
summed up by the Apostle Paul in vices and crimes that are
disgraceful ; that is to say they sunder the souls of men from the
gracious way of life ; they produce disorder in the soul, dis
integration in all good thoughts, disease in the body, and death ;
thus it is seen that it is not the highest that rules and governs
man, but what ought to be subject and kept in restraint ; it is the
serpent animal that reigns with his wily tongue, and not the just,
righteous, moral man ; it is the power of intellect that commands,
and the moral Hfe, like a slave is whipped into servile obedience.
Who is this that has so fallen from his high estate ? Not the
creature in the form of the serpent but the man like Christ in the
image of God ; but, what this man is in being, in order, as divinely
Hashioned, men are unable to perceive. It is science that is work
ing toward an ideal of what man ought to be ; and it will not be
until the real and the ideal are compared that men will be able
to form an opinion of man in the likeness of God. True the
Christ ideal is available to a limited extent if men were able to
.see its glory ; but at the present time it is beyond them, they
cannot become para-magnetic to it ; they are unable to discern
it clearly in the Word ; in fact, not being pure of heart men do
not see the face of God ; and, as yet, Christ is more a heavenly
ideal than a spiritual reality. These are the consequences of sin
in those who wish to walk in the way of Grace ; and if this is
:so with them, what must it be with those who seek after evil

THE UNITIES AND HARMONIES CONSIDERED. 395
evil as preferent to good ; and who, in all things, consider self
as first, as the all important person in the universe. Whereunto
would this realm of evil tend if not opposed and kept within limita
tions by the power, justice and Grace of God ? With these in opera
tion in history and with these as increasing powers in the earth,
men have only to look around them to see the evil results that flow
from despotic power, immense wealth, inordinate covetousness,
vicious lusts and passions, jealousy, strife, and hatred ; they
set class against class, nation against nation ; they tread under
foot the weak, the needy and the poor ; even law may be made
the means of lawlessness ; evil-doers may escape the punishment
that is their due and be adorned with honours ; whilst those who
fear God and seek to obey His laws may be put to shame and
punished. Men have only a few lurid examples in history of
what evil and sin would do if left without restraint ; but, if
permitted to reign supreme, to gain the upper hand, then hell upon
earth is the only expression that could be used to suggest what
the reign of evil would be. Whither would the powers of evil
carry men ? Who can tell, the symbolism is the outer darkness,
the fire that is unquenchable, and the ever gnawing worm of
remorse. The pictures get darker and darker; the atmosphere
is that of darkness ; the kaleidoscope is darkness ; the soul
is darkness ; and yet, somewhere there is the prince and the fiend
of darkness ; and men are at the mercy of the merciless, because
they have sinned against mercy and truth, love and grace. Men
have sought to know evil as well as good, their wishes have been
partly granted to them, but surely they can now see that to seek
to know evil, is to seek after a knowledge that is utterly without
value, because it is lawlessness, disorder, disease, darkness, and
the realm of death ; and men must be insane indeed when they
seek such things in preference to law, order, health, truth, light
and love by the Spirit of Truth.

CHAPTER XIII.
THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS.
Passing from these illustrations of unity and harmony in the
Kingdom of God, and in what way the student may utilise this
spiritual kaleidoscope in following the method of Christ, it may
be found profitable, in as brief a manner as possible, to consider
what is involved in that very comprehensive word, a seed. In
the physical realm of life the word has a definite meaning ; but
the range within which it can be used is very wide. The single
cell in which there is life may be conceived as a seed even though
the development does not extend further than growth, increase of
cells, and division of cells. It is the seed in grass and tree, fowl
and fish, beast and man, that is of importance in the study of the
law of development, because nearly all forms of Hfe begin
with the seed, and what men study is the history of the life of the
seed from germination until there is the reproduction of each
seed after its kind. As taught by the science of embryology this
is one of the most wonderful studies, in the individual seed, and
its reproduction after its kind ; and in that still more marvellous
vision by which it is conceived that from one germ seed of Hfe, it
is possible that all forms of organic life, have been derived. The
life is in the seed ; in the seed life is embodied, and the study of
the development of this mysterious power must surely be one of
the most fascinating for the natural scientist. It appears simple
in the single cell ; it ever tends to become more diverse and
complex ; it is not mere mechanism but highly organised Hfe ,"
it is not mere physical action and reaction of forces, but a har
monised united creation known to be one organic body. It is
in this sense that a seed is so valuable as a symbol concept ; and
those who use the word, and understand what it means, have in
the word, what the seed contains in the germ, as an ideal ; what
will be the result in germination, and all that will follow in develop-

THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS. 397
ment, in flower, and fruit, of seed after its kind. A seed may be
said to be a revealed symbol of thought, a word, it becomes a
Hving thing under definite conditions ; and what was germinal in
the seed becomes tree, flower and fruit ; there is a whole cycle of
thoughts embodied in the seed, as made manifest by death, life,
development, flower and fruit, to abundant seeds, with the same
cycle of thoughts embodied in each seed. This may seem very
commonplace seeing that men are so familiar with the order
of development ; but if they only knew what the physical and
biological sciences can teach as to this order of development,
from, say electricity as a force, to the man-child in the womb, they
would fail to express their thoughts as to the Divine power, wisdom
and goodness in such a revelation of the wonderful works of the
Spirit of God in Nature. It ought to be clearly recognised here,
that every scientist and thinker, in thus following the law of
development in physical nature is truly walking in the footsteps
of the Divine Spirit, learning the Divine intellectual symbols and
their spiritual meaning ; translating the thoughts of God into
Divine ideal words ; into spiritual plans and designs ; and, in the
most marvellous manner, building up a spiritual cosmos as a
creation in the soul. What the spiritual man perceives, receives,
and conceives, in a seed and its history, is not anything physical ;
it is a real vision of truth that is in harmony with an ideal that
exists in the seed. This Hne of thought can be applied to man,
to Nature and to the Bible ; it is the seed-thought that reigns
through all three realms of thought ; and herein they are as
individuals united and harmonious ; and they are in harmony
with each other.
If what has been suggested is understood, then this result
will follow ; the agnostic theory of evolution will be seen to be
a small portion ofthe realm of truth which is man's inheritance;
it deals specially with the fifth and sixth sections ; it is not a
correct conception of these ; and, what may seem very strange,
the work of discovery is not within that world of thought which
men of science suppose it to be. It is not difficult to perceive
that agnostic limitations shut out from view sections 1 to 4 ;
that is to say, under the concept, the Unknowable, the Divine,
as Thought, Word, Wisdom in Design, and Creation as the Work
of the Spirit are shut out from consideration ; they call these
metaphysical ideas and will have nothing to do with them.
Viewed from the standpoint of principles these concepts are

398 THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS.
Force or Power, Life, Spirit and Mind, correlated ultimates ;
they are facts that cannot be put aside, any more than a seed
of a plant or tree, animal or man. The limited conceptions of the
evolution theory do not require explanation ; it is surely enough
to state that being naturalistic and mechanical in order, the
theory stands condemned as unable to formulate a science and
philosophy that could unite and harmonise the thoughts of men
in all realms of truth. If men of science were to express their
thoughts as to the world within which their labours are made
manifest, it may fairly be expected that they would say that it is
in the natural world ; but if the Hne of thought followed here is
in harmony with all the facts, this is not so, the discoveries of
science do not belong to the far off world of the natural, as
related to man's creation ; nor to the carnal, in the development
of history ; but to the spiritual world and to an advanced stage
of that realm of thought. This, it will be observed, is a new de
parture in thought, in this sense, that it is applying the conception
of the Seed to history. Scientific students, in a sense, think -
upon themselves as inquirers into truth as if they were still in the
Garden of Eden ; and as if no Fall had taken place ; it is the
natural intellect and moral power that they seek to utilise to gain
scientific knowledge ; whilst, as matter of fact, they are in the
advanced stages of the spiritual realm of truth, and they do not
seem to have the faintest conception that this can be true. The
question here is not what men think, or how they conceive their
work as scientists ; it is that of historic fact, and of that develop
ment in history by which they are placed in a position to carry
out their scientific work. They assume it to be true that they
are operating in the fifth and sixth sections, that are in the natural
creation; and they deny, forget, or do not understand, that
behind them lies Genesis and Abraham ; Egypt, Moses, Israel
and Judaism ; Christ and the Gospels ; the Spirit and Pentecost ;
the Epistles and the history of Christendom. Scientific thinkers
omit sections 1 to 4, as metaphysical, thus not related with,
or conditioned by science ; but they also omit from their studies,
or they have not developed in their thoughts, to those sections
which are of chief spiritual importance, 7 to 12. In
other words it is 7 and 8 that reveal Christ as Saviour and
Sacrifice ; 9 and 10 the Spirit of Truth as revealing Christ as
Truth and the New Creation in Him ; and, where they are at
work, but blindly, is in the lowest stages of the spiritual, the

THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS. 399
intellectual in the physical sciences, which give the spiritual
forms to those higher realms of thought that require to be con
ceived in their spiritual order. This is a subject that requires care
ful consideration in the light of the law of development ; the seed
that came from God as Thought and Word, as Real and Ideal,
has passed through all these stages ; yet men who thought they
knew so much were found groping in the darkness ; they thought
they were in the third heavens of wisdom and they were still carnal,
and even the specially gifted and divinely enlightened men of
science were only beginning to learn to spell words, and add
sentence to sentence, of the great book of Nature that reveals the
spiritual wisdom that is embodied in creation.
The Kingdom of God in creation is like unto a seed ; and thus.
it is useful to follow the analogy of the development of a seed
in dealing with this complex problem. It is in this light that the
story of creation may be studied with profit, so long as it is remem
bered that the conceptions are spiritual symbols and to be inter -
• preted as such ; the issue, or the result, of the revelation, ever being
summed up in this thought that the germ-seed, by the Divine
power, develops in due spiritual order, for this design, aim and
end, that the seed may reproduce its kind. If this thought is
kept in view then it is not difficult to follow the order in creation ;,
it is from God, the Reality, in the beginning, by Christ the Ideal,
through the Spirit's Wisdom and Work as Divine Truth ; the end
in the creation is man in the image of God, as the fruition of the
Divine Seed ; and the man thus created is conceived to be like
God in truth, goodness, righteousness and love ; and an intellectual
and moral being like the Divine Being even as the reproduced
seed is Hke the original. It is hardly necessary to add that this,
is an ideal ; but it is the ideal of science and Divine wisdom,
it follows the method of Christ, is in harmony with the thoughts.
and works of the Spirit, thus it is worthy of consideration.
The Kingdom of God in the new creation in Christ is in the
same way Hke unto a seed, and there is a peculiar fitness in the
thought that this is the symbol that is introduced soon after the
Fall to teach men in what direction they should look for salvation
from sin. It is the Seed of the woman that is to bruise the serpent's
head and thus destroy the power of sin ; but in the struggle that
must take place, the heel or the lower earthly powers in man are
to be bruised. The conceptions that underlie the book of Genesis
are new generations of seeds ; and it is in the Seed of Abraham.

400 THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS.
that all the nations of the earth are to be blessed. It is not
necessary to go over in detail the order of development in Genesis
and in Israel ; these have already been explained in their order,
following the method of Christ, but here students should try
to follow the conception of the seeds, and in what way in each
dispensation of grace, the seed is reproduced, and*the seed after
its kind made manifest. It is the seeds of the heavens and the
earth that give outward form to the Word of God ; in Adam,
the earthly, the living Enocli, the seventh is found ; and following
Terah, the sixth in the generations, there is revealed Abraham,
the friend of God, the father of the faithful. This is the end of the
first series of generations ; a man like God has been produced
in the new creation, and if men would seek to know the thoughts
of God then let them study this new seed and all that the man
represents. The second series in Genesis, dropping two, and
beginning with Noah, ends with Isaac, the son, and the land
as inherited in hope. The third series begins with Shem and
ends with Jacob and the nation in Egypt. The fourth series
is the spiritual,indicating the line of new development in Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob and Joseph in Egypt ; and here the generations in
Genesis end, the seed has been involved with Divine ideals, and
what appears to be the end is a Hving seed of God enswathed by
what is earthly. The ignorant would say the seed is dead, petrified
into an earthly form, doomed to death, and utterly unable to break
through that crust which keeps as in a prison the vital power of
God. The Book of Genesis, it will be observed, as thus viewed,
is a very complex study ; it actually prefigures history ; thus
as Joseph went to Egypt so is the coming of Christ ; and, even
as Joseph became ruler over Egypt, so is the Glory of Christ as
Ruler in the Heavens. To understand aU this, the series, in their
order, require special study following the method of Christ, and
the whole book becomes a predictive prefigurement, in spiritual
form, of the involution in a seed, or in seeds within a seed, of
what will take place in history.
It has been suggested that the book of Genesis, in this sense
is an involved seed of history ; that is of the history of the new
creation in Christ ; it is a revelation of the thoughts of God,
from God, as Word ; it is the thoughts of the Spirit as Divine
Wisdom in purpose and design ; and, it is the Work of the Spirit
of God as the seed of the new creation. The next stage of study of
this unique spiritual seed begins with the germ thoughts as

THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS. 401
embodied in Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph in Genesis, all that
is involved in them must be carried forward, in fact they are the
power of faith, the life of hope, the example of spiritual patience,
and the life of suffering, sacrificing love. This is the mystery of
Israel in Egypt ; this is how the spiritual child was conceived in
the womb of the earth ; this is the meaning of the spiritual power,
life, spirit and mind of God ; the analogy is the babe in the womb
and how it may be born ; and, it is the same Spirit that involved
the seed that must bring a safe delivery, and a living child. It has
specially to be remembered here that this line of thought is equally
applicable to the nature of man, the meaning being that there is
the involution in the soul of man, or ought to be, of all that is
represented by the patriarchs of the house of Israel. Genesis is
the seed of the new creation, and it is also the soul, or mind of
that creation. Nature is, in a sense, the soul of God by the Work
of the Spirit ; and the soul or mind, or memory, of man is the
same seed at the same stage of development. If this is understood
then there ought not to be any difficulty in getting at the true
meaning of Egypt, Moses, the Exodus, and the story of the Desert ;
this is the fifth section of the new creation in Christ ; it is the
carnal, intellectual operations in Israel, Nature and in the soul of
man ; it is the breaking up of that unity found in the seed, so that
by intellectual inquiry there may be dissolved what is Egyptian,
earthly,mere experience ; not so much a reformation as the regener
ation into the likeness of God and into the image of Christ. What
then was the result of the deHverance, of the redemption of this
seed, of this child from Egypt ; of this psychical creature from
the physical ; of this attempt to put in true divine scientific order
what was involved in the seed 1 All this is well known, and
abundantly illustrated in the story of the Exodus and the Desert
Hfe of Israel ; it is the revelation of the carnal as opposed to the
spiritual ; of the earth as contrary to the heavens ; it is lusting,
complaining and rebelHng ; it is the worship of the golden calf,
the turning back in spirit to go to Egypt, and the decision not to
enter in and possess the promises of God. Thus the fifth section
once more reveals to men the fallen and rebellious spirit that
is at enmity with the Heavens ; the people, through their unbehef
could not enter in and take possession of the promised land ; in
the Desert they wandered, there they died and were buried, and
all this is the true explanation, the commentary, upon the
intellectualism of this world. But, the question may be asked,
CC

402 THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS.
is it right to conceive the thought that the story of Israel in the
Desert, the giving of the Law from Sinai, the institution of priests,
worship, sacrifices, etc., etc., are all worthless ? By no means ;
these were what men were able to receive at that special stage of
development ; they were a carnal people, in a carnal world, under
carnal conditions ; thus what they received was what was expe-
pedient for their education, so that through special training they
might grow in grace, and through visible symbols be taught to
understand what is spiritual, true, right, good and gracious.
The law was their schoolmaster to teach, guide, lead them to
Christ ; but this was not the true spiritual way of salvation ;
it was Desert, and could not be anything else, seeing that it
lacked the Divine moral life, the true Bread of God and the Water
of life. If men will have it to be so, this is the ideal of the in
tellectual empiric seed that they have cherished for centuries in
Church and State ; in societies and schools of thought ; the Epitome
of Israel in the Desert is that of nations and peoples, kingdoms
and empires ; they have conceived the thought that they were
Christian and developed far beyond Judaism ; and lo ! they
are still in the great Desert of life ; and, it is through their
unbelief that they cannot enter their inheritance and find rest.
This conception of the seed as carnal in its intellectual opera-
tions, as having failed to attain to what was promised, as deaHng
with signs and symbols, as mere patterns of what is Divine and
not truly spiritual, is not a new thought; it is a commonplace
in the New Testament, and thus it is not necessary to consider
this subject further. It is an order in which there is the shadow
of the moral law in the ten words, as oider of thought ; but,
morally in Israel, in the Desert, there is Httle sense of moral
obligation among the people, and there is no unity of spirit in the
moral and good life. The sixth stage of development has to be
conceived as a new departure, and if men wish to find the
analogue in Genesis, it is to be seen in Terah and his family as
they take their pilgrim journey from Ur of the Chaldees and set
out to seek a better country than that dominated by the brutal
despots of Nineveh and Babylon. The moral germ seed is the twin
power that is Hnked with the intellectual, and this ought to be re
membered in the study of Joshua as the servant and the successor
of Moses in Israel. Moses represents intellectual order for the study
and the manifestation of law ; Joshua represents moral law as
if it were written or engraven in his own soul ; he is the man with

THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS. 403
the pure heart and the resolute will, who, as captain over Israel,
leads them from the Desert across the Jordan into the promised
land, and there, as guided by the Divine Commander, he over
throws the enemies of God and divides the land to the people,
the tribes of Israel. The figures used as to the Jordan, Jericho,
and the conflicts with the Canaanites are all useful in their order ;
and, as will be observed, the order here is very different from that
of Egypt, Moses, Sinai, and the Desert. The moral conflict
succeeds the intellectual struggle, thus the land, the home and
the inheritance, are not thoughts about order, but about the
life in the family, the tribe, and the Commonwealth. What the
seed represents Here in its development is of very great importance ;
but, unfortunately, what the history of the Commonwealth of
Israel, and of all nations, present for study is what men, families,
tribes and nations should not be or do ; and what they have to
suffer because they do not study the law of God, store it up in
their hearts, and do not conform to the Will of God in their lives.
The intellectual legislation that was gained in the Desert was
lost in the land ; they were neither intellectual nor moral, even
according to the symbols and patterns of things in the heavens ;
and thus the historyof the judges in Israel is that of moral anarchy,
idolatry, and the departure from the ideals that had been inherited.
They became the bondmen, and servants of their enemies, the
nations by which they were surrounded, and thus the vine from
Egypt was destroyed, the Seed of God that should have been true,
righteous and good, was found trampled underfoot throughout
the land, and men looked in vain for a Commonwealth of God
that could in any way be compared to the ideal, or that could be
made the means of salvation for other nations. This is the moral
development of Israel as a people ; this is how they failed in their
high mission ; thus Israel, Hke Adam, failed and fell, and like
Terah they sought for the better country and they came short ;
the carnal was too strong for them, they remained carnal, were
subdued by their enemies, and did not reach the spiritual which
lay before them in the land of the promises.
As with Enoch in the race of Adam ; with Abraham in the
generations ; so here in the carnal nation of Israel, the Fall is
followed by the Seed of Grace, that in a special manner works
for the salvation of mankind. In Israel it takes a new form ;
man has failed as man, and the Spirit of Christ moves in a woman
to long for, and ardently desire, a man child, one that would
cc2

404 THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS.
become deliverer, saviour, and judge over Israel, so that the
shame and disgrace that had fallen upon the people of God might
be taken away. It is in this fight that the story of Hannah and
Samuel requires to be studied ; there is really a new beginning
here of a special kind, and what was faintly symbolised in Enoch
and Abraham is about to be represented before the eyes of men in
large outlines in Israel. In the moral commonwealth there
ought to be equality, liberty and freedom, because all men are
equal, before the law ; all ought to possess liberty to do what is
right, and all ought to be free to think and express their thoughts
as God's free men ; but when the commonwealth is degraded into
an empire, oligarchy, aristocracy, plutocracy, or even a democracy,
then the ideal is lost ; the seed of moral social and political life
cannot live under such conditions ; the results must be anarchy or
despotism, or the changes may be those forms of rule and govern
ment which please the wisest, the most powerful, the wealthiest,
or the most vicious. What men ought to have discerned long
ago is that a commonwealth of men, no matter what name it
receives, unless it is governed by true, righteous laws, in the fear
of God, is bound to fail ; there is not vitality in the seed to keep
it alive ; thus the powers of evil, selfishness and sin, are bound
to get the upper hand, and the people, seeing that they did not
prize the possession God had given them, will inevitably get
trodden underfoot, and they will have to suffer because they have
sinned. The idea of a commonwealth of men, as a moral state,
is the true ideal of Government of men by men ; but the ideal in
the Kingdom of God where Grace is said to reign, is different,
and it is necessary here to consider briefly what is the meaning
that underlies this conception. The conception is that men
have proved themselves to be unable to rule and govern them
selves righteously ; they are like Israel in the days of the judges,
thus they need help from the Heavens, and without Divine aid
they are on the way to be destroyed by their enemies. A woman
cries to God for help, and in his Grace, He gives the man that is
fit to be prophet, priest and judge, thus in a special manner He
answers prayer. The one given is a Samuel, or a Jesus Christ ;
the former is a type, one like Christ in Grace, and their mission is
similar, it is to teach truth as prophets, to intercede and offer
sacrifices as priests, and to govern the people in harmony with
Divine law as the Will of God. In Samuel, the man as the seer
transcends other men ; he is nearer to God than they are • in

THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS. 40E
fact he is ideally above them, thus fit to be their ruler. It is some
what remarkable that neither Samuel, nor Christ, ever made
claim to kingship, as men think of kingship upon the earth ;
they were the servants of the people for teaching, intercession and
for righteous living ; and beyond this as servants of God, in the
realm of Grace, they made no claims upon the service of men. The
fatal step was taken by the people ; they rejected Grace as in
type in Samuel, and in reality in Christ ; and they would have a
king, like Saul, or Hke the kings of the nations ; or, as the Jews did,
when they rejected Christ and said that Caesar was their king.
The lesson here is. one that requires special study ; the right of
Christ to reign in Grace, and in Glory, cannot be questioned ;
but He has never claimed to be a king like other kings, in fact,
He repudiated the thought, His ideal ever being that of service
and ' sacrifice, and not of lordship over His brethren. What
follows from this conception of the kingship of men % Surely that
it is all sham, pretence, unreal, unrighteous, earthly and out of
harmony with the Kingdom of Grace and also of God ; because in
that of Grace the Master is as servant and sacrifice ; and in that of
Glory, it is spiritual truth and righteousness that is exalted and not
the symbofisms that surround kings and states. This is the lesson
that comes to men from the Kingdom of Israel ; what they see is not
the Divine Ideal but the perverted conceptions of men ; and what
spiritual men require to do is to take the gilt of this bauble-god and
learn that they have through aU the ages been idolators, worship
ing false ideals instead of God, the good true,righteous and gracious.
If men in a commonwealth are not true, righteous, God-fearing
men, they may rest assured that the blessings they enjoy will be
taken from them, and the end will be subjection, bondage and
anarchy ; and if they are worshippers of power and pride, wealth
and gilding, of mere shams and self assertion, no matter how
beautiful, glorious, wise and powerful, then instead of Grace,
service and self-sacrifice, the end must be the equivalents of
Babylon and captivity, the destruction of temple and city, and
that scattering abroad, without home, land or temple, that has
been the fate of the Jews for centuries. It is a very serious
thought to consider that in all these matters men seem to have
perverted truth, righteousness and grace ; that with the Bible
in their hands they have been dia-magnetic to truth and opposed
to righteousness. They would have it that God was on their side ;
that they were the servants of God, and all the time they were

406 THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS.
heading straight for anarchy and destruction by the way of self-
assertion, self-seeking, self-glorying, rebellion, idolatry, jealousy,
strife, hatred and war. The seed has brought forth fruit after its
kind again and again in history, and yet men have been so blinded
by the powers of evil that they have been unable to see, read, and
understand what God has written so plainly upon the pages of
history. It is not necessary to follow the history of the carnal
seed in Israel further at the present time ; men have before them
in the pages of the Bible this story that extends from Abraham
to Egypt ; from Egypt to the Desert, the Commonwealth, the
Kingdom and the Captivity, and it is plain that in such a psychical
order perfect salvation could not be found. What men might
have discerned was that Mosaism could not save from sin ; that
the possession of a land and special privileges were of no value
for thoughtless evil-doers ; and that even the symbols of Grace
in priests, sacrifices and a temple, could not help men who would
not fear God, try to find truth, or walk in the ways of righteousness.
The truth is that true religion is to love God and man in the
spirit of mercy and of self-sacrifice ; and, failing this, religion in
State or Church is mere sham, the work of the devil and of men ;
not reHgion at all but idolatrous worship of what is earthly,
sensuous and devilish.
This study of the history of the seed in the Bible is deeply
interesting, it is also painful and pathetic. The marvel and
miracle of Grace is that the seed should survive such experiences :
as men can now see every fall means degradation, it may be
said death and disintegration to be followed by a resurrection ;
the seed dies in the natural, physical, psychical and carnal realms,
but in every case it is that it may not abide alone but be the
blessed means of bringing forth abundant spiritual fruit. Here it
is necessary to consider, as briefly as possible, what is the next
series or cycle of Divine development ; whereabout search must
be made to find the soil in which the seed will take root, and out
of which it will be developed. In the nation of Israel it was
found necessary to begin with Abraham ; here it would seem
as if the new beginning was in Moses, Egypt and the Desert ;
and that the development of the seed requires to be traced in its
history or revelation from Moses to Christ. This seed is that
which may be said to begin with the intellectual and the moral
order of thought, thus it ought to be specially interesting as a
realm within which men may be conceived as being brought into

THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS. 407
relations with what is good, true and right as a special revelation
from the heavens. In the book of Genesis the generations that
predict, in prophetic form, this period of time are summed up in
Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob ; therefore, they may be
studied with profit as throwing light upon this portion of history.
Ishmael is the type of Egypt and the Desert ; Isaac of the nation
and the land possessed ; Esau of the worldly, earthly, elder
brother that reigns in earthly things ; and Jacob of that complex
spirit that is found in State and Church which desires to -possess
the earthly inheritance and also seeks to get the Divine Blessing.
A few thoughts on the line of development of this seed will be suf
ficient to indicate its history and the results as they can be traced
in the Bible. This special seed is found in Egypt, but the Egypt
here is that in which Moses was trained in all the wisdom of the
Egyptians, and not that psychical state which is as a birth to
conscious Hfe. This seed begins to live, not in faith as in Abraham,
although all this is involved in the ideal, but in manhood, in
intellectual power, and in the study of intellectual order in the
nation of Egypt, in the world, and in that revelation of Divine
truth order and law, as embodied in Mosaism as a system of
thought. It is the ideal in Mosaism that is the starting point ;
in other words, it is assumed that what Moses bestows upon
Israel as lawgiver and judge has in it what no other nation
possessed so fully ; it has a written ideal of the nation in its order
and law as related to God, and all that Israel owed to God,
because of that great redemption from the land of Egypt. The
tie that binds Israel to God is that of love and gratitude, and
this thought is often expressed by Moses as the fundamental
truth lying at the root of the national Hfe. The legislation for
Israel is in intellectual order ; there is in it freedom, liberty,
equafity, and the spirit of kindness and mercy ; it is a great light
in a dark world, and perhaps if men knew better the state of the
nations of the earth at that particular period in history, they
might be better able to appreciate what is embodied in the four
hooks of Moses. This germ seed lives by faith in God, thus if
men reject faith and deny God when studying Mosaism, it will not
be strange if they do not understand the books and what they
teach as the fundamental facts in the realm of intellectual truth.
'The next point to be noticed is that truth becomes a possession,
a divine inheritance as in Joshua and the land ; it is not order
merely, it is life and law, health and blessing ; it is the means by

408 THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS.
which men rise above their enemies and subdue them, they are
buoyant and hopeful, and this is the realm of thought in which
they live. It is true that life may become perverted intellectuaUy
and morally and the results may be very grievous ; but it must
never be forgotten that God is Saviour, that He hears prayer/'and
that He gives to those who call upon Him in truth the blessings
they desire. This is where men perceive that Grace reigns ; and
that God, through the Man like Samuel, reveals to men the way
of Grace and Truth, of righteousness and justice. The Sad
part in the story of Israel is that the people did not understand
these divine truths, they had other ideals, thus they preferred an
earthly king and kingdom to the King and the Kingdom of Grace ;
and they chose a Saul-like man to be their king instead of Samuel
and God. The story of the kingdom is that of perverted truth
and righteousness, of apostasy and idolatry, thus there follows
the downfall of the nation, and the captivity and bondage in the
East. This is a glimpse at the intellectual and moral ideals in
Israel and the results ; and it is what arises out of these that
becomes the subject of study in the development of this seed of
spiritual, intellectual Grace, when it seems to be cast away and
lost in the captivity in the East. There is here, as in aU the
processes of development in the Kingdom of God, a division ;
tbe dead to God are left to die in their captivity, but the seed,
the remnant that are afive unto God, are restored and brought
back to their inheritance in Israel. To understand this develop
ment it is necessary to study the two series of the books of the
prophets ; and it is in their thoughts, practical and prophetical,
that men will trace the great intellectual and moral conceptions
in Grace, that underfie the Kingdom of Messiah, that is to super
sede all other kingdoms, and become the Kingdom of God in
Truth and Righteousness. The issue of all this revelation of a.
divine seed in truth and righteousness is that what is mere husk,
what surrounds the vital part of the seed, falls into the earth and
dies ; but the very conditions of the captivity are such that they
quicken the vital part, there is renewed Hfe, another resurrection
from death, a restoration to the Divine favour, another cycle-
of spiritual events, and the result is Christ, the Truth of God
the Man in the likeness of God, the Deliverer from disease, sin
and death, the Saviour of the world and the Resurrection Life..
This is the outcome from that seed found in Egypt, enswathed
in worldliness, and held in the iron hand of a despotic earthly-

THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS. 409"
ruler ; it was defivered and redeemed, it was trained, guided and
protected ; it was transplanted into a new soil and became a
great tree ; again, it was doomed to death because of apostasy
to truth, unfaithfulness to duty, and perversity to the highest
ideals of the Divine Grace ; but, the germ lived, there was new
movements of life, and when men look for the new ideal they
find Christ, the Son of God, the Man, the Saviour of the world,
the Sacrifice for the sin of the race of mankind.
It is worthy of notice that the history of the seed, in its onward
development takes this particular order, of a triple movement,
as from Egypt to the days of EH in Israel ; from Samuel to the
Captivity, and again from the Captivity to the coming of Christ
and the f aU of Judaism. The first wave rises in Egypt swells up'
and carries Israel into the promised land ; the second wave
begins to rise and men see the Kingdom in its glory and in its
shame ; the third wave rises in the East, repeating the story of
Abraham, and the issue is Christ and the Kingdom of Heaven-
Here again, as matter for inquiry, there arises the question
as to the point of origin of the Seed of Grace in the history of time ;
not when Grace began to become, but when, in the order and by
the law oi development, it began to take definite form, to reveal
and develop what had pre-existence as the Divine Seed of Grace.
The conception is that the ideal is found in Israel in Samuel ;
the type is there, and it is from Israel at its lowest, under the
heel of the Philistines, when the lamp of life is flickering, ready
to die, that the seed of Grace is vitalised in the soul of Hannah,
and thus, in a typical sense, the seed of the woman begins to b&
the power to crush the serpent's head. What is expected from
this seed is the revelation of the realm of Grace and Sacrifice, as
spiritual and gracious ; the intellectual and moral are left behind,
and in a true sense, here begins, if only as type and symbol, the
incarnation of Grace and Sacrifice, as fully revealed in Jesus Christ,
the Son of God. This power in the gracious Hfe is found in
Samuel ; as seer, he is the spiritual man ; as prophet he reveals
and speaks what is true ; as ruler and judge he stands for righteous
ness ; and as Levite-Priest he is the one that offers sacrifice to,
God, and brings about reconciliation and peace. Saul is the
people's choice, the firstborn king, earthly and after the flesh ;.
therefore his reign of forty years, a cycle of time, is not to be
considered, as in the living realm of Grace ; it is David that is
representative as life, as the gracious life, environed by the things

410 THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS.
physical and earthly, and it is in the light of this thought that
the complex character of David may be studied with advantage.
Solomon in all his glory and the nation of Israel are mere pheno
mena ; they do not. abide, and as subjects for study they are
examples as warnings ; they are beacons in the night to attract
the earthly and the sensuous, and also to teach the spiritual
what they ought to avoid if they would escape shipwreck in the
voyage of life. It is in Isaiah, and the first, series of prophets,
that the spiritual ideals, thoughts, plans, purposes and designs
of God flash forth upon Israel and the world ; only it is necessary
to remember that what these prophets see is not fulfilment ;
their visions and experiences are what they see in the Spirit,
of the Kingdom of God, and of Messiah, as spiritual movements.
In the series of the minor prophets, Jonah to Malachi, there is the
Work, and the Mind, of the Spirit in Israel ; and the key to the
problem is Jonah, the prophet of Israel, who knows so well the
mercy and grace of God to Israel ; and yet, only under the strongest
spiritual compulsion is he influenced, as if against his will, to
¦carry the message of judgment, and of mercy to Nineveh, and the
world. The other prophets lead men by the way of the Restora
tion to Jesus, the Christ ; and it is in Him that there is found
that unity which is the fulfilment of all the past in history,
and specially in Israel as to Truth, Righteousness, Mercy and
¦Grace. As in the book of Genesis, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and
Joseph are carried forward into the nation of Israel in its redemp
tion from Egypt, so in this new spiritual order in Christ, there is
concentration, a new form of redemption, a salvation from disease,
sin and death, and the four gospels find their analogues in the
four books of Moses. This is not a question of likeness only ;
it is that of plan, purpose, and design, thus Matthew's Gospel is
the spiritual Exodus ; the Gospel of Mark is the spiritual Leviticus ;
the Gospel of Luke is the spiritual Numbers ; and the Gospel
•of John is the spiritual Deuteronomy. What Moses is to Israel
in the Desert in psychical form that Christ is to the Christian
spiritual Israel ; the Prophet Hke Moses is Christ ; the Lord God
had raised Him up at the due time ; and it is His teaching that
is spiritual truth for legislation ; by His power he is Redeemer,
Healer and Saviour ; His Kingdom of Grace will extend beyond
Rome to the uttermost parts of the earth ; and it is His revelation
of that Kingdom as full of love and self-sacrifice, that is the glory
of the Bible and of God. The Gospels, it will be observed, requir

THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS. 411
to be divided to express these conceptions ; in the two first
Gospels there is revealed Jesus the Saviour as the Truth of God ;
in the third and fourth there is moral manhood, as the Son of God,
the King and Master, and the Divine concepts of Light, Life and
Love in the Kingdom of Grace. But as men know, from the
study of the Gospels, the Manhood of Christ veiled His glory :
men did not know Him ; His disciples did not understand the
Revelation that was before their eyes ; they looked for an
earthly king and kingdom, and not until after the Resurrection
from the dead and the Ascension into glory, did it dawn upon their
minds that, in Christ, God had in a wonderful manner been in the
midst of men, going in and out among them ; and they were so
blind that they had not discerned who He was, or the special
message He had brought from the Heavens to men. It was
at Pentecost when the Spirit came upon men that Christ was
revealed as Lord, King and Saviour. The followers of Christ
were taught by the Spirit, as the Spirit of Grace and Truth, in a
special manner ; and what the Spirit revealed of Christ, and what
men through the Spirit suffered for Christ, is written in the book
of the Acts of the Spirit, by the apostles. This is the cycle, or
series of revelations that reveals the seed as Grace, and as Jesus
Christ ; and as men ought to expect, these things are not revealed
by flesh and blood, by carnal revelations, but by the Holy Spirit
sent down from the Heavens upon men, as the Spirit of Christ,
so that through, and in the Spirit, they might spiritually perceive,
receive and conceive this amazing truth, that " God was in Christ
reconciHng the world unto Himself." It follows as the vital part of
this Seed, of which the history has been traced, that throughout
the series Sacrifice had been co-existent, and co-ordinated, with
Grace. The Seed is quickened in Hannah, and in men, in the
days in which she lived ; it takes form in the persecutions that
David endured at the hand of Saul ; it is spiritual motion, and
commotion, in Israel in the sufferings before the Captivity and
during that period ; it is this thought that throws a flash of light
upon the writings of Isaiah ; it is embodied in the minor prophets
as their heart and mind ; it is the theme of the Gospels, and that
the truth became known and was fully recognised by the apostles
and the followers of Christ can easily be traced throughout the
book of the Acts. This book closes as if this were its keynote.
for the Apostle Paul is seen as a prisoner in Rome ; the chains are
upon his arms ; he is persecuted by his own nation, and the charge

412 THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS.
against him is that he has been preaching Christ to men as " the
Hope of Israel " and of mankind.
It does not seem necessary to enter into details as to the next
series of thoughts that deal with the seed as the word and the work
of the Spirit. The series may be conceived as beginning with the
prophets ; in the greater prophets with Divine spiritual power ;
in the minor prophets in spiritual life ; in Jesus Christ as filled
with the Spirit, and endowed in soul and mind with all spiritual
knowledge ; the keynote in the prophets is that of suffering and
sacrifice ; and Christ became the Sufferer and the Sacrifice for sin.
This is the glory of Christ ; and it is this aspect of His mission
that is emphasised by Christ after His Resurrection ; and by the
. Spirit after the Ascension of Christ into Glory. In the Acts it is
specially revealed to men, by the Spirit, that through the sufferings
and sacrifice of Christ, there is mercy, forgiveness and reconcifia-
tion with God. It is by Christ that there is given to men a new
spiritual manhood ; men receive this truth in their hearts by
faith ; they study Christ as revealed by the Spirit, and thus
through the gracious influences of the Spirit there is renewal in
the spirit, the new life that is in Christ, and in Hkeness to Him.
It is in this way that the Bible as a Seed passes through all these
varied changes, and the objective, as the Word of God, is that
the Seed of the woman bruises the serpent's head, overcomes the
powers of evil, sin, disease and disorder, and the latest vision is
that of the Revelation of the City of God, the spiritual Jerusalem ;
the River of Life that washes away all sin ; the Tree of Life that
is the Divine Bread of Truth and Righteousness ; and the leaves
of that Tree will bring peace and healing to men and nations.
This is the end of the Word as Ideal, as prophetic Truth, but here
it may be suggested for consideration that students may pursue
their studies at least two stages further. As in Genesis there are
ten generations, and two are conceived as in the womb of time
in the sons of Joseph in Egypt, so here also, following the method
of Christ, a new beginning as with a new seed may be made in
Christ, and followed out in due order until men are found pos
sessing the earth in His likeness ; and, again, another beginning
may be made with the Advent of the Spirit at Pentecost in spiritual
power, revealing Christ to men, and the consummation of this
series will be the spiritual life in scientific divine wisdom, of which
a glimpse has been revealed lo men by the fruits of science and
the method of Christ. These are suggestions only as taken from

THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS. 413
the order that exists in the Bible ; they are not speculative
thoughts, but practical truths, worthy of the attention of students,
because they point forward to great realities, that is to the perfect
realisation in the earth of what is ideal in the Bible. Such
thoughts are not to be conceived as prophetic in their character ;
because it is now made plain enough in this study of the Seed
that what is sown in weakness, suffering and sacrifice, will
assuredly be developed, grow and reproduce its seed after its kind.
To doubt the full reafisation of the work of Christ, and of the
Spirit, would be folly, because it is in these realms of truth that
the head of the serpent will be bruised and his power destroyed.
Further, let men study this thought, as arising out of the history
and the mystery of the Seed ; if it has so often fallen into thi
ground, died, quickened, and risen to new life, in the process of
developmjnt, how can men suppose that the power, wisdom,
mercy, life, grace, and love of God will fail in the future, when,
so to speak, the battle has been won and the evil powers have
been vanquished ?
To prevent misunderstanding it may be as well to express a
word of warning as bearing upon these thoughts which have to
do with an ideal seed and with the various seeds with their
development as so briefly traced. Those who are familiar with
the method of Christ, the Beatitudes, the eight Principles, and
with related ultimates as arising out of one ultimate, will have no
difficulty, they are all the same concepts, and the harmony that
exists in the diversity can be easily seen. This is the line of thought
that science and divine wisdom point out to men for their careful
consideration ; it is not a question whether power precedes life,
or spirit the mind, or intellect the moral nature, or grace sacrifice ;
it is that these co-exist in their dual forms, and that so far as men
know, by the law of development, this is the order in which they
are manifested. What men have to realise specially is this, that
it is time for them to give up speculating as to the nature of the
Reafity of the Seed ; this is beyond them, and it is important to
recognise this fact. There is an ideal presented to men in this
thought that a seed exists ; that it is endowed with power and life ;
and that the first manifestation is physical in form. Out of the
physical and also into the physical life, there is developed the
psychical life of spirit and mind, and these seem to develop
from or arise out of the central unit seed. There is further
development out of the seed psychical ; there arises the

414 THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS.
intellectual and moral, and these new powers reveal man as
moral in the image of God. There follows the conception of the
Fall of man, chaos and ruin, and then as traced in the Bible, men
discover in what way, by a similar order of development, carnal
and spiritual, there is regeneration, renewal, and restoration
to the likeness of God in Grace, but all these movements, changes
and processes of development are all by the Power of God, by the
life of Christ, through the Wisdom and the Work of the Spirit.
It is true that man is brought into this problem of the mystery
of the seed, but it is specially as marring the works of God ; and
until this day, he remains ignorant of the seed as Reality, and the
law of development. His guesses of an empirical kind have been
many, but he has only caught a glimpse of the truth, and not until
science and divine wisdom have become his heritage, will he see
clearly what all these things mean. It is reasonable to assume
that although men are compelled to confess that the Ultimate
Reality is not cognisable by them, as Being, yet they may fairly
claim that the Divine Revelation has taught them what may be
attributed to God as His thoughts. The seeds of Power, Life,
Spirit, Mind, Intellect, Morals, Grace and Sacrifice, are all trace
able in their order of development ; these are conceivable in their
order, and as law ; and men do not seem to have a choice, if they
know what these things mean, they are impelled to confess that
all these revelations, or manifestations, express to men the Will
of God ; that is His thoughts as made known by the Spirit of
Truth. It is not advisable to make dogmatic assertions in connec
tion with this subject ; what men know, and ought to remember,
is that they are limited by Divine wisdom on the one hand, and
by science on the other ; the voice of wisdom says, " Fear the Name
of God and bow before Him, as the creature ought to do," and
the voice of science is equally peremptory ; it is, '' Seek to know
and obey law, as the Will of God, for to do what is contrary is
folly, and it is unworthy of men made in the image of God."
Above all things men ought to be careful how they express their
conceptions in trying to define their thoughts of God ; it is
surely plain enough that men cannot limit God, and they are
unable to comprehend what He can do, or what realms of thought
may still remain undiscovered in the universe.
There is a subject, of a more practical kind, already suggested,
in connection with the seed, which deserves careful consideration.
It is practical in this sense that men seem to have no true

THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS. 415
knowledge of their own condition ; they do not understand their
present position as indicated by the law of development ; they
are in Babel and not in Zion, and thus everywhere confusion
reigns and no one can point out clearly in what way a change
for the better is to be brought about in society, the State, or the
Church. It is well known that society, that is the social body
of the people, rich and poor, wise and ignorant, classes and masses,
are in a state of antagonism to each other ; they blame each other
for the evils that exist, and they seem to think were they per
mitted to show their wisdom, use their power, and thus rule,
govern and influence society all would be well. In the State men
see despots rufing over down-trodden subjects ; oligarchies or
plutocracies, that keep the people in subjection so that they may
retain power and gain wealth ; Hmited monarchies and republics
where parties contend with each other to gain and keep power,
that they may be kind to their friends, and through them control,
as they say, the State for the common good. The despot is against
his people, the aristocracy against the democracy, conservatives
against Hberals, radicals, trades unionists and socialists, thus
there exists parties and their names, all more or less seeking their
own interests, and none of them, it is to be feared, honestly and
truly seeking the good of the Commonweal. In the Church,
or the Churches, the same confusion, self-seeking, self-assertion
and condemnation of others is found to exist ; brother excom
municates brother, and considers that schismatics are accursed ;
and they do not for a moment stop to consider that by Christ,
the Master, strife, jealousy, pride, hatred, and all forms of the
uncharitable spirit, are condemned as the works of the devil
and of the kingdom of darkness. With Society, the State, or the
Church, as separate organisations, it may not be so very difficult
to trace cause and effect ; and it may be to arrive at the conclusion
that all parties are blameable just because they permit the party,
and the selfish spirit, to gain the upper hand ; but the problem
becomes very complex when the State is found cursing the
Church ; and the Church in its fury is found praying that fire may
come down from heaven and destroy rulers and parties in the
State. What can wise men do where strife abounds and where
all have grievances that their opponents will not rectify ; and
how is it possible for men under such conditions to understand
each other, to see eye to eye, to seek each others welfare and that
of the common good ? The question here is not as to the little

416 THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS.
wisdom by which men are governed ; rather it seems to be of
the unutterable folly that is seen in nations competing with each
other as to who will spend the most money on the munitions
of war ; who will provide the greatest number of men to murder
each other ; who will the more heavily tax their people and cripple
their industries ; who will the most thoroughly crush out of the
people true patriotism, the love of freedom, fiberty and truth,
and make them the bond slaves of their masters and rulers 1
Who can understand the Church with its wealth, its cupidity and
avarice, love of power, hatred of nonconformity and self-asserting
denominationalism ? Who can comprehend the nonconformist?
with their antagonism to the Church ; their intense aversion
to conservatism ; their blending of reHgion with pofitics ; and
their apparent inconsistency in believing in a spiritual religion,
and at the same time moving heaven and earth that they may
attain to political power, so that through the State they might
bring about the millennium when all men will have plenty, Hve in
happy homes, become the citizens of the Kingdom of God, and
the fervent worshippers in nonconformist churches and chapels ?
Nonconformists maintain that they do well to be angry, that they
must protest against every form of evil, and it is not easy to see
how, or in what way, they may be wrong in acting as they do ;
they have no doubts about this matier, if they do not protest,
and resist, then they would be acting wrongly, contrary to their
consciences, and thus, in the sight of God, false to their profession
of the Christian religion, and failing in their duty to Christ.
That the opposing classes of men, in their antagonisms, speak
honestly and truly, as they think, must be taken for granted ;
it may be supposed that they have all got consciences, and that
they desire to keep them clean. The problem for solution, how
ever, is not that of contradicting lies and exposing hypocrisies,
it is to try to find out why such divergencies of thought exist ;
and whether any means can be found whereby men may be led
to see that it is the right thing to condemn all these works of the
devil, to turn from them with repentant hearts, and, like Christians,
to follow Christ in the pathway of reconciliation, peace, grace,
and self-sacrifice. Why do such divergencies of thought exist
amongst Christian men, who, as a rule, profess to be the disciples
and followers of Christ ? Is it a matter of ignorance, as well as
misunderstanding ? Do they understand their true position in
the Kingdom of God, as it may be defined and understood in the

THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS. 417
light of the method of Christ, and the law of development ? It
is to be feared that it is here that the trouble arises ; they all
think that they are wise men possessing great knowledge and
experience ; thus it cannot be pleasant to perceive and conceive
the thought that at the best they are like spoilt children, who are
guided by empiric rules, and that they require to return to school,
that they may be taught the fundamental principles of all tru?
scientific knowledge. What is meant in this suggestion is not that
wise thoughtful men, as related to earthly things, or as dealing
with spiritual truths, are wilfully ignorant ; or that they have not
used their opportunities to gain the knowledge within their reach ;
it is the suggestion, thrown out for consideration, that it is within
the range of possibility that their methods of thought have been
imperfect and unreliable, and that in a special, a unique manner,
science and Divine wisdom, by the method of Christ, are inviting
them to reconsider their position in the Hght of what is now
known. To fall back upon the symbol of the seed, and the
thoughts that have arisen in this study ; it can be seen that the
conceptions of order and law, as conceived by science, must more
and more become the standards of thought for all true thinkers
in the future. The days of opinions, theories, dogmas, and
empirical philosophies, are past, men are beginning to see clearly
what kind of evidence is of true value ; they will seek for and find
standards for their thoughts that cannot be questioned when
they are understood. They will demand unity and harmony
in their systems of thought ; and this requires to be fully recognised
by men who love truth, and who desire to teach other men the
way of truth as a living way, in the spirit of love. It would seem
that this conception of the seed may be found practical and useful
in this direction, because it is by following the law of development
and understanding the order that it will be possible to apply
law as standard, thus law will test the thoughts, and make known
the stage of development the thinker has reached.
If, for example, it is desired to apply the law of development
according to the seed, to the agnostic philosophy, what requires
to be done is to consider the leading conceptions embodied in
the theory of evolution with which it is united. These may be
summed up in the Unknowable Ultimate, related ultimates,
force, energy, matter, life, and living organisms, heredity, vari
ability, environment, survival of the fittest, nerve force, thought,
ideas, correlated conceptions, reason, truth, ethics and altruism ;
DD

418 THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS.
and all these as one naturalistic mechanical kind of evolution
without any recognition of God, an inherent Ideal, a Spirit of
wisdom with plan, purpose and design ; and, instead of creation
being the work of the Spirit, conceived to be, in some vague
inexplainable sense, the evolution of Nature, or of chance, or of
anything that men may conceive, but not of God or of any
Divine, Personal, Conscious, All-wise Power. To such a theory
the Seed utters an emphatic protest ; it is not admissible as
science and divine wisdom, it is a system of thought that breaks
down at several stages ; it has no reasonable foundation upon
which a philosophy, that would unite and harmonise all knowledge
could possibly be built, and it is subversive of the highest spiritual
conceptions cherished by men. It is without God, faith, hope
or love, thus it is simply impossible that spiritual men could
subject themselves to such an idol of nature. There is that
which is more divine in their own souls ; therefore the system of
thought is rejected and condemned by all men who fear and
love God, and who have been taught through sad experiences that
they need help from what is above them ; because assuredly
what is beneath cannot deliver and save, and give to them those
assurances of forgiveness and peace and the moral and spiritual
blessings they know they require.
If the agnostic ethical teacher and his teachings are studied,
it is probable that there would be found approval of the evolution
theory in its lower stages of the physical, and the psychical, but
when the realm of ethics is reached, then somehow the natural
and nature are not conceived to be satisfactory ; the man is
greater than the machine, he ought to dominate and rule over
nature by order and law, and thus man by the powers inherent
in his nature ought to become lord over nature. Somehow it
becomes a reasonable belief that Man and Nature are in some
way or other moving forward to a great future, and the glory
will be due to Man. If instead of the agnostic ethical teacher, the
deist, theist, or moral philosopher is taken as an example of
another mode of thought, then, it may be said that the change is
decidedly for the better, the First Cause is recognised ; the Spirit
of God as a Divine Energy may be conceived as probable, divine
truth and moral law to be reasonable ; but God is far away, the
creature cannot hear the Voice of God, thus man must be taught
by nature, do the best he can to improve himself and others, and
in due time there will come upon the earth the kingdom of truth

THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS. 419
and righteousness, a moral world that will reflect throughout the
universe the glory of the Divine Creator. These may be taken
as examples of lines of thought which concentrate upon Nature
and Man ; and it is hardly necessary to add they do not reverence
or recognise the Bible as the Word of God, a special divine Re
velation of Grace, Truth, Righteousness and Sacrifice. What
then is the result here, as to a standard of truth and the applica
tion of a law of development as the results of science and divine
wisdom ? All that can be said is that these theorists will not
subject themselves to the standard ; they think they are wise and
will not believe that they are ignorant ; they choose to walk in the
darkness of nature and naturalism, and will not permit the Light
of Life to enter their souls ; they will maintain that nature and
man are sufficient ; that mysteries are detestable, and must be
abolished ; and it must never be forgotten that they are the
lights, the only lights in a dark world, given up to superstition,
priest-craft, and all that is unworthy the consideration of such
men as they know themselves to be. Friendly discussion here
cannot do any good, if, when they know the truth, they reject it ;
then no more can be done ; they have given a premature judgment
and they are judged, they have condemned themselves ; they
are typical as natural men ; they fix the type of their develop
ment, and it is not necessary for men to wrangle with and judge
them in these matters.
It is now necessary to consider very briefly examples of those
who believe that the Bible is the word of God, that it is a standard
of truth and righteousness, and that it conveys to men a message
of grace, mercy, and peace, of forgiveness of sin, and of recon-
ciHation through the Messiah, the Christ, by Sacrifice. Here the
position, it can be perceived, is changed. Those who believe confess
and act as if they really believed such facts, do assume and assert
it may be in many forms, that mankind has fallen through sin,
and thus neither nature, nor man by his own works, can save men
from the consequences of sin. It is not necessary to place any
narrow theological limits to these thoughts ; they may be personal
experiences, or reasoned empiric processes of thought ; they
may take physical, psychical, intellectual or spiritual forms
that may even appear to be contradictory, but if they are intelligent
as childlike thoughts, it is highly probable that they will be
nearer the truth than when expressed in creeds and dogmas of
the faith. If, for example, the humanitarian, the philosophical and
d d 2

420 THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS.
the literary basis of belief is examined, as taught in schools and
universities, do not the lines of education follow that of the
wisdom of Greece, as in natural and moral philosophies ; and is
not the order of this teaching strongly naturalistic, and empirical
following the usual order of conceiving man as body, soul and
spirit, and as at his best a moral being in the likeness of God ? Is
there not a divorce of the intellectual from the spiritual ; and
is it not conceivable that the intellectual dominates over and tries
to control the spiritual ? Is not this the serious charge that is
brought against creeds, dogmas and theologies, that they are
intellectual and empiric, that they are the work of the reasoning
head and not of the intuitive warm living heart and soul ? Yet
men know that the heart of true religion is love and sacrifice,
whilst the religions of form and dogma ever lead to wrangling,
strife and hatred, and even to persecution and murder. It does
not seem necessary to give examples of these things, or to illustrate
what is here meant, by reference to history or to the Bible.
Men are familiar with these facts, thus Scribes and Pharisees,
learned critics and theologians have become the synonyms of
clever, self-asserting, self-conceited, intellectual wranglers. The
woes of Christ seem to rest upon such men, they declare that
they possess the key that opens the gates of Paradise and the
Kingdom of God ; they have been standing wrangling with each
other all through the ages ; they would not enter in themselves
and they have done their utmost to prevent the children from
doing so. This is very hard upon these intellectual giants, said
to be the glory of temple, synagogue and church ; of course they
have ever had a good opinion of themselves and are well able to
defend their own cause, so it may now be more useful to consider
in what way the Bible has become the Living Seed as the Divine
standard to test and try the conceptions of men conceived to be
so great, wise and far-seeing.
Here it is necessary to turn back in thought to the history of
the Seed as specially revealed to men in the Book of Genesis,
and particularly to that conception which deals with the con
ceivable thought that God is able, and has actually, by His
Spirit, revealed to men His thoughts in creation, and in the new
creation in Christ. From such a conception agnostic naturalists
and ethical teachers turn away, it is beyond them ; it is super
natural, and thus they will not listen to, or receive it. What
it would appear they are willing to receive is only what they can

THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS. 421
prove ; they are the judges, they have the standards in them
selves- and there the matter ends. Thus nature fails, in the
naturafistic order, to interpret the seed that is in Nature ; and
man fails to explain the same seed, and its order as found in man :
the seeds and their fruits do not agree ; they are not in unity and
harmony, thus men turn from them to the Bible, to Christ and
His Spirit of Truth, to find in the Word of God, what they cannot
find elsewhere. As already explained Genesis is the seed of all
that is developed in Israel and in Christendom ; it is conceived to
be a spiritual involved seed ; and it is this involution of the
thoughts of God that requires special consideration. To involve, as
in a seed, what will be developed out of it in subsequent history, as
thought, as ideal, as spiritual plan, purpose and design ; as realised
fact in history as a creation of God, What does all this really
mean ? Is it not that God by this very means, is revealing,
manifesting, making known to men, His thoughts in His Own
Way, by His Spirit ? If men will try to lift their thoughts from
the state of childhood to the stage of science and Divine wisdom,
then let them ask themselves if this is not God's method of reveal
ing His thoughts ? And, further, let them try to think upon
any other way in which God has revealed His thoughts to men
all through the ages ? " Known unto God are all His works from
the beginning ; " this is a great truth, but the converse is also
true, God has revealed to men, by men, and in men by His Spirit,
His works from the beginning. If this great thought is applied to
creation, to Nature, and to man, it can be seen that this is true,
in a sense, that men have never grasped in their highest con
ceptions ; because, in the process of the production of the seed,
God is thought upon as causing men, and events, to speak, move
and act in a spiritual order under the guidance of the Spirit. The
seed of creation is a spiritual seed involved in Nature and Man ;
and what is involved in that seed cannot be known by man until
he becomes spiritual ; and, by the way of science and Divine
wisdom realises as spiritual truth what has been the fruit of the
seed as well as what was involved in it. Is not this the true
meaning of the results of the physical sciences as discovered by
scientists ? They have been reading the history of the physical
seed in its order of development ; and when they have spiritually
discerned the order then they will understand the relation of the
seed to the thought, ideal, plan, purpose and design involved in
the seed. The vision of embryology is that man is the epitome

422 THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS.
of Nature ; he is the consummation and the glory of the seed ; and
he becomes a spiritual seed, so that in due time he may bring forth
spiritual fruit in the Hkeness of God, the Involver of the Seed.
Apply this standard to agnostic thinkers as scientists, and to
ethical teachers, and the result is that they are convicted of the
blindness of wilful ignorance, they are in the darkness of physical
nature ; they have closed their ears so that they might not hear
the Voice of God ; they have shut their eyes determined that they
will not see the light of truth ; they will maintain that God is
unknowable and not to be found in Nature ; and that it is not true
that men have sinned against God and require special Divine
help so that they may be restored to God-Hkeness. To put this
matter straight, and to the point, agnostics are wilfully blind
and they do not wish to see, hear, or find God ; and ethical
teachers, no matter how beautifully they may express their
conceptions, maintain that they are the best judges of man,
and what man is, and will become ; thus to His face seeing they
confess, belief in God and moral law, they call God a liar. Of
course they could not think of doing so in plain words that men
could understand ; but here the veil that covers words is torn off
the face, and it is useless to deny the fact, the face to be seen is
the devil's, and with a grin and a sneer he is saying, " Ye shall not
surely die, for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then
your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods knowing good
and evil." ' I
Leaving the merely natural and ethical realm of thought
behind, it is necessary to consider what is involved in the ten
generations found in Genesis, and in what sense men are to under
stand them as involved revelations of the Grace and Mercy of
God to fallen men. In the symbol vision of the heavens and earth,
man is conceived as the dust of the earth, as dead to God, truth
and righteousness, and, the only way in which man can be
regenerated, made to live, renewed, and restored to the Divine
likeness, is by God breathing into him His Spirit. The Fall means
this : it is as death and disintegration ; and the new creation in
Christ means that the heavens descend into the earth, so that
the earth may live again, as ingerminated with the Divine Seed.
The physical forms and symbol thoughts illustrate this truth ;
but it must be remembered that what is involved in the seed is
Spiritual ; thus forms and symbols cannot be truly interpreted
in their spiritual order until man becomes spiritual, and is able to

THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS. 423
realise, at least in outline, the seed, the development, the order
and the fruit with its seed after its kind. This is the new birth
of the Divine Seed of Grace ; it has come down from Heaven ;
it has brought Heaven with it, and wherever it is found, that is
Heaven. It does not mean that the Kingdom of Grace is regnant
in glory ; but it certainly means that Grace and Sacrifice are
being manifested as regnant in the earth ; that this new form
of life is going to live in the face of all that is natural, carnal,
earthly and devilish ; and that the fruits of the seed of the heavens
will follow in their due order, in harmony with what is involved
in the seed, and according to the law of development. If men
study carefully the generations of the heavens and the earth,
as a- spiritual seed, taking care to follow the method of Christ,
they may be assured that they will find much food for profitable
spiritual reflection ; and they will be brought to conceive the
thought that as an epitome of history it is one of the most re
markable revelations of Divine truth possessed by men. It
is God's thoughts revealed and involved in a marvellous concise
manner ; and when men spiritually realise and understand all
that history means then they will perceive clearly the unity and
the harmony that exists betwixt the seed and developed order,
and that spiritual reality that is harmonious with the ideal. As in
the first generations the thoughts of God are involved in the seed,
so in the second, the generations of Adam, the earthly, the Divine
thoughts take an ideal form in the seventh from Adam, in Enoch.
the consecrated one. He is seed and symbol of Messiah, Christ,
the anointed, and it is Christ, in all the generations of men, that
walks with God ; and is not found among men, because He went
back to God after His mission to the earth for the salvation of
men. In the third generations, that of Noah and the Flood, there
is a change of view, and what is seen is the vision of salvation
from rampant evil powers ; and it is the Ark, the Flood, the waters
covering the earth, the saved and the lost, that speak so forcibly
of the intention in the ideal, the plan, purpose and design of the
Spirit and Kingdom of Grace. In the fourth generations, the
sons of Noah, there is conceivable the involution of the history of
the new creation in the earth as related to mankind. Thus it may
be perceived the same series of conceptions arise, as related to
the new creation in Christ, as in the vision of the natural creation ;
there being the thoughts of God, the ideal in Christ, the wisdom
of the purpose and design of the Spirit for spiritual salvation ;

424 THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS.
and the extent of that, work throughout the earth by the rule
and dominion of the sons of Noah. The fifth generations of
Shem have to do with the Name, and names ; with little informa
tion as to what is meant by them ; in other words the intellectual
stage is not explicable in a seed, and the time has not come to
reveal the order of development that is involved in names. The
sixth generations of Terah is that of a living picture ; it is the
patriarch leaving Ur of the Chaldees, beginning the journey on
the way to a better country, and the end is Padan-Aram and
the city of Nahor. The seventh is not revealed as generations ;
it is the summation of the generations ; thus what Enoch is in the
race of Adam that Abraham is in the generations ; in him the seed
of grace is involved in a special sense ; he sums up the past,
and he is the involved seed of a new dispensation of Grace. This
involution of the seed of grace follows the method of Christ ;
but there can also be traced through the recurring series, as
already pointed out, the special works, or graces of the Spirit,
thus : Series 1, Heavens and Earth end in Abraham, and faith.
Series 2. Noah to Isaac, ends in hope. Series 3. Shem to Jacob,
ends in patience. Series 4. Sums up the former three, and the end
is Joseph the beloved son, and Israel in Egypt. Here it may be
concluded the involution in the seed in Genesis is ended ; men
ask, Where now is the Kingdom of God, and of Grace to be found
upon the earth ? The Spirit points to the earthly power of Egypt ;
it exists there enswathed with what is worldly, and yet there is in
this seed all that has lived, moved and had spiritual being in the
past ; it appears as if dead to God, and men, and yet there is in
the seed spiritual life, and in the conditions that minister to the
new spiritual life, in suffering and sacrifice, the earthly and the
natural will die, and the spiritual and the eternal will spring to
life and begin to manifest in a new form the Kingdom of Grace
and of God.
The object in view here is not to enter into details as to the
order ofthe kingdom and the law of development, but to trace the
involution in the Seed in Genesis ; then to point out the develop
ment that arises out of the seed in the history of Israel, and from
these men can apply the law of development as a standard of
thought, to their actions as they can be spiritually discerned
at the present time. As already pointed out the Exodus from
Egypt under Moses falls into the well known fifth series as
synchromsing with Shem in the series of the heavens and' the

THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS. 425
earth, and with Ishmael in the series that begin with Noah ; in
both these generations the records are names ; they are not
manifested in scientific order ; it is in the book of Exodus that
this seed of life begins to live, springs up out of the earth, and
is manifested before the eyes of mankind as the great visible
revelation to men of a great intellectual order that is like, or
is the pattern of, the things that are in the heavens. Genesis
contains the generations of the seed as they are involved in
mankind in their spiritual order ; in Exodus men find the begin
ning of the development from the spiritual seed, not in spiritual
Order, but in outward visible movements, signs and symbols
of thought. It is not to be conceived that Moses is to be set in
the forefront as spiritual when the spiritual tries to test the
intellectual and the carnal; rather this is how the development
is to be conceived in this new departure. The thoughts in Mosaism
are the thoughts of God ; the conception in Joshua, the Conquest,
the Land and the Commonwealth, is a Divine ideal in Christ ; the
revelation of grace in Samuel and David, the kingdom of Israel
in its history, is the plan, purpose and design in the Spirit ;
and the downfall of the kingdom and the captivity make known to
men the great truth that when men fall from law and grace,
truth and righteousness, and become castaways in the earth,
then the Spirit works the mighty work of resurrection to the new
life and restoration. And again men may trace the Thoughts of
God ; the Ideal in Christ, the Messiah ; the plans, purposes and
designs of the Spirit, and the consummated Work of the Spirit
in the birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension into glory of
Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour of the world. In the Exodus-
Deuteronomy books men will find the development of the genera
tions of Ishmael ; in Joshua, the Commonwealth, and the nation
in the land the generations of Isaac, in the visible kingdom with
its earthly perverted conceptions the generations of Esau ; and
in that more spiritual Israel that aspires after the knowledge of
God and obedience to His Will, as birthright and blessing, the
generations of Isaac, as revealing Jacob ; and the generations of
Jacob are finally summed up in the Beloved Son of God, the Truth
Revealer, and the Saviour of the world. The New Testament
carries men further ; the unmanifested seeds in Ephraim and
Manasseh, as found in Genesis, spring to life in the spiritual realm
of Christianity ; and in this way the seeds that are not numbered
in Genesis, are made manifest in spiritual power in Christendom.

426 THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS.
Having sketched very briefly the involution of the seeds in their
generations, the development of the tree in its visible, carnal,
psychical order ; the conceptions of men as divinely inspired in
their intellectual and moral order ; the perfect revelation of Grace
and Sacrifice in the Man, the Son of God ; and the spiritual ex
planation by the Spirit of Truth as to the Grace and Truth in
Christ ; it is now possible to explain the order of development,
and thus set up the standard by which men may test themselves
personally, the society in which they live, the state of which they
are members, and the Church of Christ in which they ought to
have a special individual interest. As can be easily understood,
the fundamental conceptions that underlie every order of thought
is that of God and creation, and of man and his conscious relation
ship intellectually and morally to the Creator, First Cause, Law
giver and Moral Governor of the Universe. This is what men as
a rule, no matter how diverse their thoughts, agree upon ; if there
is the breaking away from this consensus of opinion, it is when
men get lost in the mazes of their speculations, but the supreme
thought is that God is over all, and that it is by the moral law in
the souls of men that they recognise their responsibilities and
duties. The relations of agnostic thinkers, and ethical teachers
to this fundamental order of thought have been considered ; thus
it will be sufficient to indicate by three series, the seed, the tree,
and the fruit ; or the physical, psychical, moral and spiritual
standards which men will find for their guidance and judgment
in the Word of God.
It may be necessary to point out that the series to be considered,
are not given in full scientific order as following the method of
Christ ; they are shortened so that the line of thought may be
traced briefly, andthose who wish to enter into the wider details
may do so without difficulty; 1. The great conceptions to be
found in the generations of the heavens and earth, and of Adam,
are the facts of the new creation, temptation, sin, the fall from
the life in God, estrangement, judgment, punishment, the hope
in the Seed promised, and the great world of Desert to b3 subdued
by man outside the ideal Eden. The complement to all this is
summed up in Enoch, the one man in the families of Adam who
is like God and who walks with God. These are conceptions that
are common to mankind, they may be expressed in many forms,
but all agree, in this that sin and evil abound in the earth, that
they have got the upper hand, and that the great want for mankind

THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS. 427
is the Deliverer from evil, the Saviour from sin. Let it be assumed
that the story of Eden and the Fall may not be a literal historic
truth, but an Ideal. Would this in any way invalidate the
spiritual revelation, as a seed of truth, given to men so that it
might be with them throughout history and in all nations ?
What men are beginning to understand is that the Thoughts of
God must be received in the very widest sense that men are able
to interpret them ; they do not require to reject the thoughts that
the first man sinned by lusting and desire, but they do require
to conceive the thought that this seed is the historic record of all
nations and of all men, and that each man who understands the
seed and its generations discovers that, in the sight of God, he is
that sinful man that Adam is represented to be. The rule in the
Kingdom of Grace, as well as in creation, is that the first of every
series embodies, in a prophetic sense, all that is in the series ;
it is the seed of the whole, thus it is well to remember that this
first of generations is the atmosphere of the heavens, surrounding
and becoming involved in the earth. The Power of the Heavens
is in this conflict betwixt good and evil, and of Grace and Sacrifice
with sin, and the man Enoch is the embryologic type of the
redeemed man, or of the man that redeems, according to the
promise of God. The result here is that men are taught in this
first lesson of the Kingdom of Grace that all men are brethren ;
that all are under the same condemnation because of sin ; that
only through the incarnation of the Heavens in the earth is
reconciliation and peace possible ; and that only thus can men
be saved, walk with God, and be with God. 2. The standards of
thought in the generations of Noah, and of his sons, are of a
psychical kind, that is to say the Thoughts of God, and the Ideal
in Christ having been revealed, the Spirit of God makes known a
plan, purpose and design by which evil will be destroyed, truth,
goodness and grace saved ; and the visible symbolism is the Ark,
the flood, the destruction of evil men and tfie salvation of Noah
and his family. The issue of this event is the possession of the
earth by a race of saved men according to their families, tribes,
nations and countries. It is not for men to narrow down this
vision of truth, according to their opinions ; those who are saved
by Divine Grace are known to God ; therefore let men be careful
in their judgments about men and nations ; it is God alone that
knows the souls of men ; thus in the Bible, the attitude of any
man as standing in self- glorying pride and saying to a fellow-

428 THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS.
sinner, " Stand aside, for I am holier than thou," is specially
offensive and severely condemned. 3. This may be conceived
to be the standards of thought in the generations of Shem and
Terah ; what they teach men is that as to spiritual truths of an
intellectual nature they are very ignorant ; when their con
ceptions are examined they have little to boast about for all they
know may be summed up in the Name, and in many names,
or words, but what these really represent in divine order, men do
not consider, and it is well known that even wise men get be
wildered and lost in their wrangling and discussing about words.
As for the moral life, in the realm of Grace the best symbol of
thought is the venerable Terah who has destroyed his false gods ;
turned his back upon what is earthly, and set forth with his family
of loved ones to seek a better country. Men have only been too
ready to suppose that salvation is found in words and names ;
and they may not have given sufficient credence and value to
the quiet, persistent efforts of men who do not talk and use big
words, but have renounced home, friends and wealth, that they
might find the way that leads to the promised land of truth
and the city of God where righteousness dwells. This is not
perfection ; but it speaks of the longing of a soul that desires to
be perfect, and truly such a man though he may never consciously
upon this earth set firm foot upon the promises of God, he is a
pilgrim indeed, a seeker after truth, righteousness and grace. The
seed of Grace is there without doubt, as amply proved by the fact,
that suffering and sacrifice had proved tHe seed bed for the
germination of the seed that had been made manifest in the life
of self-renunciation. 4. The standard in Abraham is unique ;
it is the realisation of the ideal. Men have at all times admired
and wondered at the story that is told of the father of the faithful,
the friend of God . In him grace becomes triumphant, his ear is
open to the voice of God ; his soul is receptive of the divine
message ; his will is obedient to the Divine Will ; and thus,
somehow, he is very like Christ in spirit as he moves upon his
pilgrim journey from Chaldea to Palestine and from place to
place, as guided by the Spirit of God. The men who followed
the pilgrim way before Abraham absorbed faith as the food of
their lives from the heavens ; but from Abraham it became
Tadiant in the glorious light of life ; thus the heaven in Abra
ham was as in electric response to the Heavens. The vision is a
mystic one ; a realised ideal ; thus, even to this day men do not

THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS. 429
comprehend all that is embodied in the life of Abraham ; in Abraham
as the seed of Israel ; and in what way all the nations of the earth
are to reach the blessed state through Abraham, and that marvel
lous self-renunciation which gave up the beloved son as a sacrifice.
True, these thoughts are like seeds, but the seeds are the thoughts
of God ; they are thoughts that are possessed by life, ideals ; they
are spiritual conceptions, plans, purposes and designs that live
in the Spirit ; and the wonder above all wonders is that the man
Abraham lived, moved, and had his being in these thoughts of
God, as if the Spirit of God and his spirit Hved in unison and
harmony. This is the miracle of Grace made manifest before men,
and they do not see, or understand the meaning ; yet, as many
wise men might be inclined to say, he was only a spiritual child.
God help foolish, wise men ; this seems to be where the real
difference comes in ; they despise the child that is in the Kingdom
of Grace and radiant with glory ; whilst they are wrangfing
outside the door talking foolishly about those who are in ; those
who are worthy to be let in, and will have a good place ; and those
who are unworthy to enter and will not be permitted to do so,
since they have assumed that they have received authority
to keep the keys, and open or shut the gates as they please for their
friends, or against their enemies.
In the first series the standards of thoughts are as seeds ;
they may not be very practical, but if they tend to lead men to
think upon fundamental conceptions they will be helpful as leading
up to what men may think is of greater importance. 1. The
second series may be conceived as extending from Abraham
to Christ thus there are the involved seeds of Abraham, Isaac,.
Jacob, and Joseph in Egypt ; and the tree, the psychical, symbol
and sign, the carnal, the work of redemption, these are revealed
in this series. Mosaism as revealed in the four books, Exodus to
Deuteronomy, following up the same line of thought, may be said
to be the revelation of the meaning of names in Shem, and of a
nation in Ishmael, the explanation of the thoughts of God,
according to the pattern of things in the heavens as seen by Moses ;.
as conceivable and conceived by men journeying in the great
Desert of life, and as trying to reach the meaning of the thoughts,
of God, at this particular stage of development. Here men will
find all the symbols of Egypt, the bondage, the doom of death,
miracles, the Passover, the Redemption, the sea, the pillar cloud,
the rock, manna, Sinai and the law, the forty days in the Mount.

430 THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS.
of God, the golden calf, the rejection of Israel, the tabernacle
and its forms, tho priests and their raiment, sacrifices, purifying,
atonement, reconciliation, journeyings, rebellings, complainings,
jealousy, strife, wanderingB for forty years, and the rehearsing
by Moses in the ears of Israel of all that God had done for the
people since they left Egypt. These thoughts of God are not
spiritual ; they are not meant to be so ; they are signs and
symbols, words to be studied, thoughts to be cherished and
pondered over ; the means by which spiritual minded men might
translate and transcribe the visible and words into Divine truth.
These symbols are not standards to be observed by spiritual
men ; tfiey are objective symbols to be used for education, for
encouragement, and for warning ; thus such thoughts in the Bible
are like the earthly phenomena of experience, they cannot be put
in spiritual scientific order ; they are only psychical experiences
and men may use them as a means toward an end, only the mis
take will be a serious one if they make them an end, and use them
as if through them the blessings of the Kingdom of Grace were to
be obtained. Is it not here that Judaism has failed in not
understanding what Mosaism meant ? Is it not here that ritualism
and sacerdotalism in a Christian Church is out of place ? There
are thoughts in Mosaism that are valuable and instructive, worthy
of careful study ; and there are also incidents set up to warn men
against the carnal, selfish, self-seeking, ambitious conditions of
life, which men are taught to avoid. 2. The thoughts of God in
Mosaism are to be studied and used, as Joshua studied them in
the tabernacle, and whilst serving under Moses, so that in the soul
of the student there may be formed a true and righteous ideal
of what the thoughts of God mean. They are light for guidance,
law for the regulation of thoughts, words and actions, the means
of purifying the soul and keeping it pure, and it is by that light of
truth, with that sword of law, of righteousness and justice, that
the fear of death is to be overcome, the defiant wall of scepticism
cast down, and the enemies of the soul, society, and the state
overthrown. If Joshua with the standards of Mosaism in his soul
proved himself to be so valiant a soldier for truth and righteous
ness, then what ought those men to be who have listened to the
teaching of Christ, have received His truth and laws into their
hearts, and have become His servants to follow Him and to do
His Will in the greater and more difficult warfare that is spiritual ?
But let men remember that after Joshua, and the victorious

THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS. 431
commonwealth, there came the wretched, depraved, sensual,
idolatrous nation that lost the light of truth and law ; and thus
lost their freedom and liberty, for they could not prosper when
they preferred darkness to light, and anarchy to law. If men
do not fear God, love His law and seek to obey His Will, then
they ought not to be astonished if they lose what is most precious,
and find themselves in bondage, under the heel of those who possess
greater earthly powers and cunning. 3. Mosaism reveals the
thoughts of God ; the books of Joshua and Judges set forth an
ideal and its failure because it is psychical, sign and symbol,
carnal and earthly. The spiritual that is in the ideal seems to
fade away, or it gets encrusted in the earthly, and thus the man
has to be sought for from Heaven because in Israel there is no
spiritual power that can raise the nation from its fallen dis
organised condition. The standards that are set before Israel
by the Spirit of God are embodied in Samuel, Saul, David and
Solomon, as related to the Kingdom ; and it is for men to study
these with great care so that they may discern for their own
guidance what this portion of Scripture means. The thought
in Samuel is the Divine conception that God alone is King,
Lawgiver, Teacher, Prophet and Judge in Israel, and that to
reject Him is a fatal policy, it is unreasonable, and altogether
unworthy of those who possess such a history, have been redeemed
from the bondage of Egypt, preserved in the wilderness and
endowed with a glorious heritage in that land that should have
been the joy of the earth. True the spiritual thoughts lie behind
Samuel and what men know of history ; but was it too much to
expect that a nation that had passed through such experiences
might have been expected to have had some kind of conception
of the truth that God is Lord, King and Redeemer of His people 1
The Saul type and standard of a king requires no deep study ;
he has been with men in all generations of the past, he is with men
still ; and the wise words of Samuel to Israel in showing them
the kind of king they had chosen is still applicable to earthly
nations. The David type and standard is a more complex study ;
he is not the Divine thought, or Ideal, but he is as the spiritual
realm revealing plan, purpose and design, conflict and warfare,
good and evil, grace and suffering ; and the end is the Kingdom,
the victory over enemies, and a visible Kingdom upon earth like
in some ways, to that other Kingdom over which David's Son and
Lord will reign in peace. The kingdom of David as victorious, and

432 THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS.
of Solomon in his glory, is the type and standard for a mirage of the
desert ; it is an inversion of the heavenly, and thus whilst men
are gazing upon it and wondering at this perfection of what is
earthly and beautiful, it is crumbling away before their eyes ;
and as the darkness falls upon the vision, men see the earth and
the earthly, Israel and Judah, falling into ruins, and the end is
the great desert places of the earth and the captivity. 4. Is this
the end of the thought of God, the ideals in Christ and the wisdom
that is in the Spirit ? By no means, these are all means to an end,
and thus there follows great prophetic thoughts in the prophets
Isaiah to Obadiah ; the Restoration and an ideal in Jonah to
Malachi ; and the consummation of Israelin Jesus Christ, the Sonof
God, the King of Israel. This is the meaning of the genealogies of
Israel as recorded in " the book of the generation of Jesus Christ,
the Son of David, the Son of Abraham," in the Gospel of Matthew ;
they all lead to Him, and He is the reason Why they have been
made manifest in the earth. It is for men to study carefully this
history of Israel ; it was not lived, and written, without purpose
or design ; the end of it all is Jesus Christ ; and in Him the true
and gracious thoughts of God are revealed to men by His
Spirit. The third series which men require to study have to be studied
in the light of the thoughts involved in the seed, and in that tree,
nation or kingdom, known to men as Israel. 1 . The thoughts of
God are to be fulfilled to the ends of the earth according to the
Divine, Eternal, wise purposes, and this is the testimony of the
great prophets in their writings. 2. The Ideal will be revealed
to Israel and the world in Jesus Christ ; and this is the theme
of the minor prophets from Jonah to Malachi and from Malachi
to the coming of John the Baptist, who testified that the Messiah
the Saviour had come. 3. The Gospels are the revelation of
the Ideal by the Spirit ; and men require to study the Gospels
if they would know the spiritual ideals that are involved in,
and revealed through, Christ the Saviour of the World. 4. The
Acts of the Spirit by the Apostles, carry this revelation of the
Thoughts of God into humanity ; and in the Epistles men will
find this truth illustrated in various ways by the reception of
the Gospel ; by its illuminating power in the souls of men ; and
by that new Christian form of religion, which became, the con
scious inheritance of believers in, and followers of, Christ,
throughout the world.

THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS. 433
There may be said to be a fourth series worthy of careful
study, and these in their order may be expressed thus : — 1. Christ
and the Gospels ; or the thoughts of God as they are revealed to
men in His Life, Words, Works, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension
into Glory. 2. The Spirit as the Spirit of Truth revealing
the Ideal that is in Christ. 3. The Spiritual wisdom in plan,
purpose and design of the thoughts of the Spirit in the Bible
and in Christendom. 4. Men must be prepared to receive
the thought that the consummation of the Work of the Spirit
is the Spiritual ; and this thought, as expressible in human lan
guage, is the discoveries of science in spiritual order, and the
Divine wisdom as discerned by the study of the Word of God,
by the method of Christ, by the work of the Spirit in Faith,
Hope, Patience, and Love ; and by the law of develop
ment. In the Hght of these thoughts it may be found useful once
more to compare the very brief record of the Creation Story
with the long history of the new Creation in Christ, to see if
there is Hkeness, or simifitude, or prophetic thought, such as
spiritual men may be able to trace as having spiritual analogy.
As men know, the form into which the Creation Story is cast
is that of a creation of the universe and man, in six days, or
periods of time, and each day's work of creation ends with the
formula, " The morning and the evening were the first day," or,
as in the margin, " The evening was, and the morning was."
The analogy of the days of the Creation may be found in what
men conceive to be the historic order of development as divisible
into a thousand years and of divisions into three series of two
thousands each. Thus in the Creation Story there are, in the
first day, the deep Thoughts of God, that involve all history,
in forms of thought and spiritual ideals ; and in the second
day the dividing of the waters and the revelation of Heaven.
In the New Creation there may be found the generations of the
heavens and earth, and of Adam to Noah, about a thousand
years, and in this period there is involved what is like the first
day in Creation. The second thousand covers the period from
Noah to Abraham ; a period in the New Creation comparable.
to the separation of waters and divisions in the firmament of
Creation, and it is then that there is revealed to men Abraham,
the man that as an ideal speaks to men of Heaven. In the.
Creation Story the record of the third and fourth days is that
EE

434 THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS.
of earth and seas, and the products of the earth in grass, herb,
and fruit after their kind, and the creation of lights in the
heaven, sun, moon, and stars to divide and to rule over day
and night. In the third thousand there is the conception of the
one promised land wherein truth and righteousness will be
found in their order, and all other countries are as in a state of
flux, they are as seas where there is no permanence of form ;
in a state of disorder and confusion without law or order. In
Mosaism alone is seed and order, to be found, and these are brought
into the promised land where the Spirit of God is preparing the
way for the light of truth, law, and order, and the consummation
of all these in Christ as truth, law, life, the standard of all true
thoughts and the measure of all time in the universe. The
fifth and sixth days in the Creation Story tell of the creation
of fowls in the air, and of fishes in the depths of the waters ;
the creation of animals and of man in the image of God. The
fifth thousand, from Christ to the Crusades, is specially of interest
as having to do with Greek wisdom, and all the varied forms
of wisdom that came from the East into the Roman Empire ;
as well as that life in the depths in all kinds of perversions of
truth that held sway throughout Christendom. The sixth
thousand has to be considered in the light of what the nations
of Europe conceived to be their ideals ; and thus it is not so
very strange that they symbolised the different nations as lions,
bears, leopards, and other creatures ; at the end of the day,
however, the vision is that of Man in the image of God ; and,
it is noticeable that the longing desire that permeates the nations
to-day is that they might leave all these periods behind them ;
and at last be found to be men, like God, going forth in the
Spirit of Christ for the subjection of evil, and for dominion in
truth and righteousness over all that ought to be subject to the
rule of man. These are the analogies that exist between the
Creation Story and the New Creation history ; there is Hkeness
in the order ; the Creation Story is as key and ideal, and thus
there arises the conception that creation is as a seed for the
New Creation, or, at least, the seed of the new drops into the
seed bed of the old, and thus the development in an order
that is similar, that is Divine, and cannot be anything else,
seeing that it is in a system of thought that man is able to con
ceive as true, reasonable, moral, gracious, and spiritual. That
man has come from God by this long long pathway of

THE SEED AND THE DIVINE STANDARDS. 435
development is very wonderful ; he stumbles into, as he thinks,
this way of Hfe and light ; but, it is to discover that, unknown to
himself, the heavenly angel has been with him all the time ;
and that it is only in the light that shines in the true way that
he can see the angel, and perceive the mercy and the goodness
of God in thus bringing the wanderer back to the right way,
and to the vision of God as revealed to men in Christ, the Truth,
the Way, and the Life of God for men.

E K 2

CHAPTER XIV.
THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND, MAN.
It can be seen that by following the method of Christ, the
work of the Spirit, and the law of development, the Bible becomes
a new and a different kind of book from what it has appeared to be
to experience, or to wise theologians in the past. The angel of
science has thrown new light upon its pages, and the wisdom that-
is Divine points out that this light is as radiant light from that
which is alive ; that it quickens responses in nature and man ;
and thus they are all found to be in unison of thought and full of
spiritual harmonies. Perhaps one of the most remarkable lines
of thought brought to notice is that of the recurring interventions
of the Spirit of God to renew Hght and life in the earth when,
to all appearance, death and disintegration had set in, and the
hope of renewed life had almost become extinct in the earth.
It may be true that these thoughts do not throw a clear light
upon the questions of the Incarnation and the Resurrection,
as men think of these as dogmas of the faith ; but they certainly
tend to show that the incarnation of Jesus Christ, as Man, and as
the Saviour of the world, is not out of harmony with the revela
tion of God to sinful men for their redemption and salvation. The
Bible is not a haphazard accumulation of books, that has some
how been brought together by men ; it is a book that is built
upon scientific order, and the work is consistent throughout its
ever advancing history, in the face of aU opposition to the purpose
that is'revealed in its earliest pages. Men may doubt, and deny,
the revelation of the resurrection of Christ from the dead ; and
it may be taken for granted that agnostics are consistent in their
attitude to this question. Naturalistic thinkers, even though they
are ministers of the Gospel of Christ, by their arguments, simply
prove that their stage of development is intellectually to the
natural, and not to the spiritual. If they are professed naturalistic

THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN. 437
teachers, then they are to be pitied, because they love to reside
in a region so dark and so hopeless ; but if they are believers in
Christ, His followers, disciples, and teachers of the way of life in
truth, then they are worthy of blame because of their inconsistency,
it may even be said their ignorance and their apostasy from a great
truth, the greatest truth in the Bible, that permeates the whole
structure of the revealed Word of God, as embodied in this thought
that the Saviour is able to save men from the power of sin, to
crush the serpent's head, and thus, through grace and the way of
sacrifice, convey to men the life that is spiritual and eternal. To
deny the fact of Christ's resurrection, or of the varied forms of
resurrection that have taken place in history, is one thing ; this
the child of God and follower of Christ ought not to do. On the
other hand, it ought to be recognised that this faith is not to be
proved by any naturalistic argument ; and surely it is lawful and
right for any disciple of Christ to say, " I do befieve this truth,
even though I cannot explain or understand all that is involved
in it." It may even be permissible for the disciple of Christ to
take up a stronger position in connection with this question ;
he may assert, as a great truth, that death, of which men speak
so much, and of which they know so little, is a problem of physical
phenomena, a sign and symbol, whilst the true death is not
physical, but spiritual, the separation of the soul from God and
from the Spirit of Hfe. It may even be assumed, as a form of
truth, that the article of death to Christ was not the pangs of
death. These are found in suffering and sacrifice ; and, as the Bible
so fully proves, this is where the carnal and the physical are
dissolved, and where the Hfe of God is vitalised with the renewed
life of grace. It is at this very point where the seed of corn
dies physically ; but it is also where the spiritual — and all life is
spiritual — enters upon a new order, that it may bring forth
abundant fruit. It is not necessary that a Christian disciple
should dogmatise as to the method, or the way, of the resurrection
from the dead, of many, or of the one. The stage of experience,
and of science, in this matter has not been reached by men ;
thus they are not called upon to form any theory as to the order
of the resurrection, and how it wiH take place. The agnostic
may sneer at the Christian who cherishes this faith, and is con
fident that it will be realised in due time ; it is the agnostic, how
ever, that is to be pitied and blamed, because in his ignorance and
self-assertion, he is indulging in a game of bluff, and uttering

438 THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN.
thoughts and words about which he does not understand the
meaning. Men who have had spiritual experience of the great
truths in the Bible do not turn away from Christ, because men
who think themselves wise and clever, claim that they possess
great scientific knowledge ; they know more than the agnostic ;
they have experiences the naturalistic thinker never enjoyed ;
and thus their reply to the witty sneer, or the wise assertion,
is that they know Him in whom they trust, and they can afford
to wait patiently for the fuller revelation that is sure to come.
The problems of the Incarnation and the Resurrection, it can
be seen, are vital ; that is to say, they lie at the very root of the
new creation in Christ, thus men may say that every death of a
seed, and a resurrection to new life, is a new incarnation, or a
persistent continuation of the spirit of life to carry forward the
Divine purpose of the salvation of men from sin, and to bring
nearer and nearer the spiritual living kingdom of God in truth
and righteousness. There is an aspect of this thought that will
repay careful study in the light Of the method of Christ and of
Divine wisdom ; it is one often used in the Bible — that of travail,
suffering and sacrifice ; but here it is examples with which men
are not familiar, and yet they underlie the deepest and truest
conceptions they have derived, from the Bible. It is necessary
to remember, before expressing these thoughts, that three con
ceptions as to scientific order continually arise and meet the
student, these being the law of development, the seed, and
embryology ; and that the highest realm of thought known to
men is the life of sacrifice as correlated with grace. To reverse
the order, it may be put in this form — the highest revelation of
God known to men is self-sacrificing love, and that this has been
revealed as a seed, an embryo, and in a man ; and that this revela
tion follows the law of development. It is also well to try to forget
the conception of creation as by fiat, quite suitable for a child,
and to try to grasp the very important thought, that God cannot
be separated from the seed, as thought, and that all subsequent
conceptions up to creation as the work of the Spirit, is a continuous
revelation of the thoughts of God, the Ideal, the wisdom of the
Spirit, and the works of the Spirit of God. It is not easy thus
to think of God as immanent in creation, and it is even more
difficult to sustain the thought that the process is one even
though it extends over millions of years. It is clear, to begin with,
that it is only an intellectual and moral being that could attain

THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN. 439
to such thoughts; it is as person possessing knowledge, and a
moral nature, that the personality of God is spiritually discerned
by man, believed to be true, and thus man, the thinker, nature,
and God, are correlated and in the order of thought there is unison
and harmony. What then is the highest concept that man has
reached of the revelation of God as found in creation ? It may
be summed up in this thought that God is spiritually conceived
as in travail ; and the fruit of that travail is found in the seed,
womb, embryo, and in the manifested Hving creation in man.
The conception is that of sustained labour, and not until man is
created in the image of God is there rest from that labour. Here
the conception, the symbol-forms of thought, the way by which
men think such thoughts, comes to an end ; and perhaps the only
real difference between the conception of the child, and of the
spiritual man, is found in this, that the man thinks in the order
of development as revealed by science and Divine wisdom, whilst
the child listens to a story and pictures the process as taking place
in six days.
The next thought is that man did not continue in the state of
innocence ; he was impatient and sought for knowledge by the
way of disobedience ; and thus the Fall from the moral state,
and the inabifity to attain to true knowledge and divine wisdom.
Man is thought of as a spiritual ruin, a creature of the earth ; and
the theme of the Bible is his regeneration, renewal, and restora
tion, by the way of grace and sacrifice, to the Divine image. The
first portion of Genesis, from Adam to Abraham, is conceived as
one form of the revelation of grace ; it is the seed ; it is involved
thoughts. Thus it is conceived as the travail of the Father ; and
it is Abraham, and the three days' journey to Mount Moriah,
the son, the sacrifice, and all that these things represent, that is
the consummation of this sore travail, and living representation of
God, as Father, as seen in the father Abraham and the son and
seed Isaac. This end is also a beginning. Here again the seed
begins to live and the travail can be followed in detail, and in
order, and something of the working of the Divine method of
development may be traced. For about 250 years there is the
travail of the involution of the seed in the patriarchs before the
conception in Egypt ; and the period of gestation in the womb is
about 250 years ; thus the child-nation born at the Exodus was
toeing prepared for its mission during this long period. It ought
not to be forgotten, however, in the light of embryology and

440 THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN.
development that even 500 years only brings to the birth that
which had been under the law of development for many centuries
before that time. What is required here is not exact chronological
details ; it is the becoming famiUar with the fines of thought
introduced by science, so that what has been in the past unknown
may be in a measure reafised as useful in the better understanding
of the Word and the Works of God. The child-nation is repre
sented as under tuition in the desert for forty years — that is four
series of ten, or ten series of four ; then there follows the posses
sion of the inheritance, the commonwealth, the kingdom, the
captivity, the restoration, and, at the end of this period of travail,
the Advent of Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father. This end is
also a new beginning in the kingdom of God. The Son has Hved,
finished the Work His Father gave Him to do, overcome His great
enemy, risen triumphant over death and the grave, ascended into
glory ; and it is from this travail of God in creation, of the Father
and of the Son, that the Spirit is sent forth with Divine power and
wisdom to begin the great travail of the Spirit, because men
were prepared to conceive this thought in the world. Falling
back upon the Divine order of development, the Father had tra
vailed in the seed in Genesis for 2,000 years ; the Son had been in
travail in Israel for 2,000 years ; and the Spirit has been in travail
in the world for 2,000 years, as the Spirit of Truth, teaching and
guiding men, and revealing to them ideals of truth or the ideal
in Christ. All this is conceived and expressed in this particular
way as tending to illustrate, in forms of thought, with which
men are more or less famifiar, the travail of God in the redemption
of men, the important matter being that the fundamental con->
ception of God, the Father, Son, and Spirit, is that of love as
sacrifice, and that all things are subject to Christ in this realm,
to bring about the salvation of mankind and the restoration of
the race to the favour of God.
But it may now be suggested that this order of thought has led
up to a conception which men ought to consider, and it may be
expressed briefly in this form. God has been conceived as in
travail, and the consummation is the creation ; the Father has
been conceived as in travail, and the result is seed thoughts of
grace, and Abraham ; the Son of the Father has travailed, in
body and soul, in Israel, and the result is Jesus Christ ; the
Spirit of Grace and Truth has been in travail, revealing Christ
in conflict with evil, as traceable by the law of development, and

THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN. 441
the issue appears to be science and Divine wisdom as revealed by
the method of Christ. What then, it may be asked, are men to
learn from these truths, as they have been repeated so often,
and in so many forms, in this study of the Bible ? Surely this,
and nothing else, that the time has at last come for the beginning
of the manifestation of the work of the Spirit in mankind, so that
the travail of Father, Son, and Spirit, may be made effectual in
the souls of men everywhere in harmony with the teachings of
science and Divine wisdom. If this thought is understood,
then it is for men to study what this really means ; and so far as
analogy can point the way, it is that now men must begin this
their sore work of travail ; now they are to conceive the thoughts
of the Father, hear His voice and obey His will ; they are to take
upon themselves the image of the ideal, Christ, and be His fol
lowers in deed and in truth, in the sorrowful way ; they are to
spirituaUy conceive the wisdom of the Spirit as revealing Christ
the ideal ; and they are to become Christ-like men in this world,
and enter into the state of travail for the salvation of mankind.
But men may say, when did, or when will, this new order begin ?
This is a subject to be studied in the light of development, and
one that men may study with good results ; but the practical
point is this, that men are being consciously awakened to this truth ,
thus it would follow that the development has been already ad
vanced to a definite stage by the Spirit, and men are now called
to rally to that reasonable service, which is obedience to the
Father's will, conformity to the life of Christ, and spiritual ser
vice in the spirit of grace and of self-sacrifice. Men may say
all this is visionary ; it is only a germ-thought, or an embryo,
or a man, a seed in the ground that will die, and men will see it
die, decay, be disorganised and perish. The husk may die and
the earthly forms may perish, but men may rest assured that the
Divine Seed will Hve, bring forth abundant fruit, overthrow the
powers of evil in the world, and the issue will be the millennium
of peace, and the manifestation of the kingdom of grace and of
Divine self-sacrificing love in the earth. The heavens and the
earth in their forms, by which men have Hved and been educated,
may pass away, but the Truth, the Word of God, Life, Christ,
aU that these names represent, cannot die ; they will abide for
ever; thev are in the fife eternal, the [one'j Living and True
God. Here it is necessary to pause and try to conceive what these

442 THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN.
things mean. In this conception of the Divine Travail it would ap
pear as if an end was reached ; and that suddenly the travail of men
in experience, empiricism, science and divine wisdom had reached
a critical stage. There is the feeling that in some sense or other
a change has actually taken place ; there has been a new birth ;
and a revelation of God in Christ that requires special study.
It is as if men had been groping about in the darkness in all
past ages, seeking after God ; the veil of nature and of flesh has
been around them, and thus, although God has been ever present
as spiritual atmosphere, He has not been perceived by men in
their carnal condition. Now that veil is being rent from top
to bottom, the carnal and even symbol signs are being taken
to pieces, and thus in their nakedness men are compelled to ask
themselves what they really mean when they think about
the Reality, about conditions arising out of the Reality, and
about relations of thought, order, and law. It is to be feared
that these symbol words have not been fully understood. What
they seem to represent is this : men have found themselves
as on the brink of a precipice ; they seem to have had the earth
beneath their feet firmandsure ; but another step means the yawn
ing gulf and the awful darkness, thus the necessity for thoughts as
ultimates and related ultimates, even if they seem to be the
flimsiest of veils to prevent men from falling into the depths
of darkness and death. It is Httle wonder that agnostic thinkers
shrank back when this vision of truth was revealed to them ;
better, far better, the Unknowable than the yawning gulf.
The thought that men really did possess a real and true good
in the nature that was being studied, was held as a reserve of
hope in the heart, and thus the relations of scientific order
became their Hmited realm of labour and of deHght. In a true
and real sense Christians have not in the same way realised
the grave position in which they have been placed ; the light
of truth has passed through the veil to them and they have had
visions of God ; and through -these, by faith, they have not
greatly feared the gulf that seemed so dark, neither have they
understood that what they conceived to be as solid as the earth
was actually beingdissipated under their feet, had become unstable
and was ready to vanish away. This is spiritual truth under
the form of earthly symbols ; but surely to men of understanding
there ought not to be difficulty in passing from the signs to the
things signified. Stripped of all symbolism, except that of

THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN. 443
names, which still remain signs, the facts reafised are God as
Reality ; He is Being and He is in all being ; related ultimates
become signs that are to be believed ; and from these signs
onward through creation and the new creation in Christ to man,
as the veil of flesh and of intellect is being rent asunder, there
is seen a blood-stained pathway radiant with Hght where God
has revealed His Grace and Mercy, and also that realm of dia-
magnetic darkness in which men have lived, moved, and had
their being. The veil being rent, men see the vision of God.
it is that of the Divine Travail ; and men are consciously aroused
to the great truth, that to be like God they require to be spiritual
in their being ; and the way back to God is by that way of
sorrow He has travelled to redeem them from evil.
It is not to be supposed that such conceptions as these can
be understood by carnal men or by little children ; this is not
where men with mere practical experiences can breathe freely,
and, needless to say, the empirical theologian will not find him-,
self at home in such an atmosphere. What men have to realise
is that they have really emerged into a new world of thought ;
old things are quickly passing away ; the past will not fit in
with the present ; with what is new, and more true, than past
conceptions. It is not easy to express what this aspect of thought
means ; if expresed in intellectual symbols they are too abstruse
to be grasped ; and if this is done by allegories or parables then
the risk is that these are not spiritually understood. To think
of God as in Divine Travail is allegory ; and yet having come
face to face with this great truth in what other form is it possible
to convey what is meant ? Men have been suddenly stripped
naked and analysed, body, soul and spirit ; they have made
Nature and Man objective studies, with this result, that they
seem to have vanished out of the realm of the senses, and all
that is left behind men conceive to be relations of thought with
an undefinable Unknowable in the background. From the
agnostic standpoint this is the result, and thoughtful men are
reafising these conceptions. From the religious standpoint
of Christ, His followers look for His coming again, and they will
not accept such a consummation as a true interpretation of all
the facts. Christian men believe that God is the Reality behind
all veils ; that He is First Cause and Creator, not in the childlike
conception of the sons of men, but in a true and real sense, which
they do not pretend to understand. Here they agree, in a sense,

444 THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN.
with agnostics as to the Being that is Unknowable ; but they
set their faces toward the light and not toward the darkness ;
they live and believe, and thus by faith they may be said to
take hold of the Hand of God and are subject to the guidance
of His Spirit. It is quite true that they have had to suffer,
as it were, a death in the destruction of their cherished concep
tions ; their tabernacles fall to pieces and vanish out of sight ;
but in the midst of the transformation scene, their hearts are
filled with joy when they look forth and perceive that there
has come down from Heaven the Home that is eternal in the
Heavens. The losses sustained are not worthy to be compared
with the glory that is being revealed ; they Have no cause for
regret, and this is their sorrow and their shame that they have
so utterly failed to apprehend what God had revealed to them
in His Word of Truth.
It may fairly be assumed that in using the following terms
agnostics and Christian thinkers come very near to each other ;
they are at work on parallel lines ; and, if they will try to under
stand, and not study to confute each other, they may be able
to see that there is really no cause for estrangement. It is not
unfair to state that the agnostic believes in the Unknowable
Power ; in an Ideal that Hes behind all that science can discover ;
in conditions which exist in nature, and in man, which have
a pre-existence to experience, empiricism, and science ; and the
manifestation in Nature and in Man of what in the very nature
of things is the spiritual ideal inwoven in creation. To such
conceptions the Christian thinker will agree if he is freely per
mitted to translate these names into God, the Almighty ; Christ
the Ideal, the Life ; the Spirit and the Spiritual in plan, purpose,
and design ; and that Nature and Man physically and psycho
logically are the works of the Spirit of God. It is at the fifth
stage that the real difficulty arises ; with the preceding four
the agnostic may elect to say that he believes that this agree
ment exists, or that he remains agnostic and will not commit
himself to any form of belief. If the agnostic chooses to stand by
this position, then it is plain that the Christian thinker can
have no more to say to the agnostic, because he has pre-judged
the whole question by declaring that his belief is in darkness,
not in Hght, and that he will not admit that Hght exists. What
then is the result at this fifth stage of development 1 What
is here assumed is that agnostic and Christian thinker enter

THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN. 445
the same arena of thought, on one side named physical and
psychical, on the other side experience and empiricism, with
all that they represent. All this is pre-scientific, and what
both men now seek to understand is in what way they can place
in scientific rational order the contents of mind and soul, as
psychical thought. It must be clearly understood that both
thinkers strictly limit themselves to the inductive order of
thought, thus what they do is to break into the realm of experi
ence at some point, and from that stage they begin to build a
spiritual cosmos out of that chaos which exists in their own
souls. What they find there, as conceived in a certain order
by experience and empiricism, is found valuable as building
material ; but as reafised by scientific experience from the
days of Copernicus to the present time, they have actually
to demoHsh what had been built and to rebuild upon principles
not known to empiricism. The results here to both classes of
thinkers are quite harmonious ; they have proved their methods
of thought, and the physical sciences are the foundations of the
spiritual world well and permanently laid. This, it must be
remembered, is the Spiritual World and not the material and
the tangible ; this is now clearly understood by careful thinkers,
and thus it is not necessary to prove this position. The differ
ence to be discerned betwixt the thinkers is found here ; the
agnostic has in the physical world traced sequent effects and
antecedent causes all round the circle, and he finds himself
shut up as within an iron cage out of which, by the power of
logic, he cannot escape. He has in effect said, " Reason, be
thou my god, enlighten me and I will worship thee ; " and
when the man seeks a way of escape, then he reluctantly dis
covers that his god has become a devil who laughs at him for
his folly, and then tells him plainly that he is himself in the
same miserable condition. That this is the literal truth is now
being clearly recognised by thinkers ; and if there are men
who think otherwise, they have not found out the limitations
of their prison-house and the mercilessness of the god reason,
or the devil logic. Now the devil is not a fool, and it is not to be
supposed that he will allow his victims to escape if he can by
any means keep them prisoners ; thus his schemes to amuse
and instruct them have been many ; and his master work has been
for deviUsh ingenuity, that of supreme audacity and effrontery,
in causing men to turn from God, Christ, the Spirit of Truthj

446 THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN.
and the Bible, to worship Nature and Man, the creatures of
God ; and creatures which men ought to place in their order
in the state of subjection. The position of the agnostic is not
one that a freeman can look upon with favour ; his conceptions
tend in this direction, that the man is making a fool of himself ;
he is trying to deny fundamental truths that exist in his own
soul, in conscious knowledge ; he is cherishing a naturaUstic,
mechanical, pessimistic order of thought that cramps his spiritual
powers ; and, there he stands before the world a prisoner in
fetters which he alternately fondles as ornaments, or detests
as a sign of bondage. So far as the whole realm of intellectual
scientific enquiry is concerned, the Christian thinker is at one
with the agnostic scientist ; what he has to say about such
things is that to him, as a freeman in Christ, there is no such
things as cages and barriers ; that he is not in any way required
to admit that the devil has any authority within this world
of thought ; and, that what he is doing when studying what
is scientifically true is learning to read the thoughts of God in
their order, as manifested in creation ; as conditioned by the
Spirit of Truth ; as conceived as a Divine Ideal ; and as reveafing
the Thoughts of God, the All- Wise Creator. The poor agnostic
as he struggles to build up a creation of his own, flounders on
from bad to worse ; and the only logical issue of all his reasoning
is that he exists in a universe of phenomena ; that he is in him
self mere phenomena ever changing ; thus even the game of
seeking after knowledge is valueless when there is no abiding
reality perceptible, and any hope of a life hereafter is conceived
to be inconceivable. It is very difficult to sympathise with
men who take up such an attitude of thought ; the fact of the
matter is that they have not developed with the age in which
they live ; they have taken as their forms of thought what is
material, chemical, and physical ; they live in the pre-Darwin age,
and thus they have not studied with necessary care the more
important lessons which arise out of the realm of life by the law
of development.
The suggestion here is that agnostic evolutionists are a type
in which there is no spiritual life ; if without life, how could they
grow and develop, become differentiated and advance toward
manhood ? The intellectual stage is the critical one in two
senses ; in the first, it is so critical analytically that it destroys
any spiritual life it may possess ; and, in the second, being thus

THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN. 447
reduced to relations, forms, and order, there is no living power
left in the mechanism for further spiritual development. Per
haps what is meant here may be more easily conceived under
the form of allegory ; and the spirit of John Bunyan will forgive
the liberty taken, in thinking upon the lines laid down in the
story of His famous pilgrim. The free change in the allegory
will be excused because of the altered conditions of modern
thought, because it; is here necessary to deal with earlier problems
of life as men now consider them. The allegory takes this form :
it has to be conceived that three men, the Christian, the Agnostic,
and the Empiricist meet together in that stage of the journey
wliich lies betwixt the Interpreter's House and the foot of the
Hill Difficulty. Christian has a conscious experience of the
City of Destruction, the Gulf of Despond, the Wicket Gate, and
the Lord who received him there, and all the pictures, signs, and
teaching received from the Interpreter. The other two have
tumbled into the way of life ; they say they are in it, and being
in it they assume that Christian has no advantage over them ;
being in the way, and just as far on in the journey, what differ
ence could there be as to the future and the results in the journey
of life ? Christian told them his experiences, hoping that they
might be led to reflect upon their true position in God's sight ;
and, it may'be assumed, in the form of allegory, that they also
told him of their knowledge and their experiences ; how they
were born into the world of life ; how they had progressed
in their journey from infancy ; and how they also had been in
an interpreter's house, and had seen many things therein
which had been helpful to them on the journey of life. They
had tumbled into the way, certainly, but they could not see
in what way the Christian life differed from the carnal life of
their experiences. The three men in this story pursued their
journey, conversing freely together about these matters, which
to the Christian were spiritual, but which to the other two were
carnal ; the one was thinking upon, and reasoning about, the
living way and the better country ; the two were in a lower
stage of development, psychical, reaching upward to what is
intellectual. When near the Hill Difficulty they came, as if
suddenly, in sight of the Cross, the Man, and the Grave ; and
it is how these men responded to this vision and the ways they
chose for their future journeying that is of chief importance in
this story. Upon Christian the vision acted Hke a charm ; he

448 THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN.
was ready to receive it ; his burden lay heavy upon him ; and
thus as if by the hands of angels the burden was taken off his
back, it fell upon the ground ; and, as if attracted by Divine
magnetism, it rolled over and over, entered the grave, and it
¦was gone for ever. The effect was para-magnetic and Divine,
the sorrowful heavy-laden man was set free ; joy and gladness
filled his heart, and the rhythm of song burst from his Hps in
these words : " Blest Cross, blest Sepulchre, blest rather be
the Man that here was put to death for me." To the two car
nally-minded men the vision meant only a poor miserable male
factor ; or, it might be an innocent man put to a shameful
death by just or cruel men ; and it was not for them to enquire
into the causes of the man's death ; to question the justice of
the judges, or to interfere in any way with the customs of the
land through which they were travelling. The Altar and Cross,
the Man and Sacrifice, the Grave and what it reveals, it will
be observed, are the spiritual tests applied to these men ; and
it is in accordance with their spiritual state that the results follow
as to their journey. To Christian it is the vision of angels, a
draught from the Fountain of Life, the Roll in the bosom, the
brave heart and advance up the Hill Difficulty. To the Agnostic
the road chosen was away to the left of the hill, to the mountains,
darkness, stumbling and death. To the Empiricist the choice
was round the right of the Hill into the woods, scrubs, mazes,
and desert places ; to the place of wandering, strife, vain-glory,
and death. It is not necessary to follow these three men further
at the present time, they have served their purpose by illus
trating the distinction betwixt the Carnal and the Spiritual ;
and the paramount importance of conceiving the difference
betwixt the natural birth and the Spiritual change, which leads
to Christ, forgiveness of sin, the assurance of hope and that
life, which is life indeed, because it is in the Divine order of de
velopment where the man type is lost and the Christ type is
inborn in the soul as the means of spiritual development in
the future.
The allegory or analogy thus traced requires study, and if
the true significance of the intellectual realm is discerned by
this means, it may prove helpful in assisting students in their
study of what is a very complex problem. The teaching is not
difficult to follow and it may be expressed literally in this form :
ihe Christian, by Divine Grace, is seen to be on a plane of thought

THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN. 449
above agnostic or empiricist thinkers, thus his onward progress
is in harmony with the law of development and conformity
to the Christ type of being. It is not that he has attained to
Christ likeness, but he is pressing onward to reach perfection,
and when science and Divine wisdom have fully enlightened
the man in the knowledge of the method of Christ, then there
will come to pass that saying, " Death is swallowed up in Vic
tory." From the Cross to the Crown is a long pilgrimage,
but it is very important to be in the right way, in the right
spirit, and that the growth in grace be in harmony with the
Christ type, and not in the sweltering chaos of the Adam type.
It is this difference that is so important ; and what will hinder
development to the spiritual type whether it be visible signs,
intellectual forms and symbols, ritual and law, authority and
ceremonies, it has to be remembered that all such things are
carnal, - therefore, they restrict liberty and freedom, and they
do not permit development in harmony with the Christ type.
This line of thought may be conceived to be specially favourable
for personal study, and for the study of man, as individual
man ; that is to say, by this means a man may honestly sit in
judgment upon himself and deliberately conceive a true judg
ment upon his own spiritual position. It may not appear to
be charitable to conclude that the agnostic and the empiricist
drop out of the struggle of Hfe and the survival of the fittest ; they
have made their choice, taken their own ways, thus the men
as types, do not appear again in the pathway of development
and in the spiritual pilgrimage. It is the fittest that survive
and the fittest are those who are being developed consciously,
or unconsciously, to the type of Christ as Grace and Sacrifice.
If this line of argument has been followed, then it can be
seen that what is conceived as moral results will follow from
the relations of the individual soul to Christ ; if the thoughts
are spiritually true the moral Hfe will tend to be good and right
in God's sight ; if Christ has been rejected, not in any narrow
sense, then the story is that of spiritual darkness and the Desert,
and there is no power to enter in and possess the Divine In
heritance. Looking at this subject from a wider standpoint,
say that of mankind, then this analogy or allegory, would be
suitable for making these initiatory stages of Divine wisdom
more simple or easy of comprehension. It has to be assumed
that the intellectual struggle is over ; that the moral has gained
FF

450 THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN.
supremacy ; that order has been recognised, and that law has:
been conceived to be the Will of God. There is the desire to-
conceive what is truly meant by the method of Christ as seen
from the standpoint of science, and it is supposed that science-
and Divine wisdom are too abstract for simple Christians who-
are unable to follow the complex order of thought followed..
Could this be done by art so that true pictures could be con
veyed to the mind as to what those abstract problems represent ?
The allegory would take this form ; the representation is that
of a drama, the stage, and the onlookers in the theatre. What
people see when they enter ' the theatre is the great building
filled with people in their places, in the light patiently waiting
for the drama. In this theatre at this stage there are two worlds,
the Visible, in which all the people live, move, and have their
being ; and that Unseen world which they are waiting to perceive.
The thinker is required to study this great assembly, to think
upon the past of old and young, rich and poor, wise and foolish,
and to try and conceive from what varied standpoints those
present are prepared to perceive and conceive the play they
have come to see. 1. The first movement is that of rolling up
the gaudy screen with its many advertisements ; the hush of
expectation, the fading light, and the great drop screen that
makes the darkness visible, but which does not reveal anything
of that other world behind the screen. 2. There is a brief pause
and upon the screen there appears a word, or a few words, that
give expression to those who understand the signs, the name
of the play. 3. It has been conceived that behind the visible
screen, and the name, there has been much thought, planning,
and designing, so that what is to be represented may be brought
forward in a suitable manner to meet the requirements, and
the approval, of those present ; they are to be the judges of the
play, and thus it is very important that they may be worthily
prepared, and fit to give a right judgment. They ought to be
in Harmony of thought with the author of the play so that they
may not misjudge his work ; and, it is granted that the actors
are to be sympathetically received and encouraged so that
they may do their best. 4. The screen is gradually raised up,
the new world is made manifest to all beholders ; and all is
ready for the representation of the drama of life that is to occupy
the attention of the beholders. It is not necessary to proceed
further in relation to the play; the parable can be easily

THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN. 451
understood ; this is the drama that includes and explains all dramas ;
and it takes men backward in thought to those very abstract
problems which some people do not seem able to apprehend.
To carnal people this world is as a theatre ; it is a world with
its own light of experience and of truth ; that other unseen
world is different, it is what the people in the carnal world are
able to perceive in it ; thus the drama represented is a test for
the onlookers quite as much as the play is for the actors. It
is not from an unprepared standpoint that preparation is made
to begin the play ; the darkness is a preparation for thought ;
the vanishing advertising screen removes the vanities of this
world ; the dark screen impenetrable speaks of God and the
Eternal ; the Name, the Ideal, that conceives and expresses
the whole play ; the planning, designing, and preparation, the
Divine thoughts of the Spirit ; and the uplifted screen and the
new world the manifestation of the work of the Spirit in Creation,
and in the new Creation in Christ. Art, it will be seen, expresses
more easily what Divine wisdom tries to express in symbol
words ; but not all onlookers in the theatre of Hfe wish to see,
or care to think upon, what art means. What men see is what
they are able spiritually to perceive ; thus the fault of want of
appreciation may too often be, not in the drama and the actors,
but in the individuals who do not understand what they see.
This parable of the theatre and the drama will repay the careful
study of those who are familiar with the subject ; it may be
appfied to the life of man, nations, or mankind ; it maybe used by
a competent student to the great drama in the Bible ; it may
be a suitable test to apply to all mythologies and dramas known
to men ; and, it is a thought worthy of consideration whether
this is, or is not, the true source of all dramatic Hterature as
it seeks to study and to represent the great conflict of good
and evil, truth and error, righteousness and wickedness, grace
and self-assertion, sacrifice and persecution, as revealed in
history and experienced by the sons of men.
The suggestions made as to dramatic art are meant to illustrate
this thought, that the facts denied, or held in abeyance, by agnostics
find a fitting position in the realm of art ; it is not to be assumed
that those who place the drama on the stage have such spiritual
conceptions, but they find them to be suitable signs to use in their
representations. It has been assumed that the history of man
kind is like one great drama of the great struggle betwixt good
ff2

452 THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN.
and evil ; but it would be equally true to conceive the thought
that a great dramatist could produce many dramas from the
Bible ; and that a series of such works of art could be made very
powerful as a means of instruction in truth and righteousness.
This is a wide theme to enter upon ; thus it must be limited to the
suggestion that each of the generations in Genesis is a theme
worthy of careful study : that a series of great works could be
produced to represent Israel from the Call of Abraham to the
Captivity in Babylon : another series from the Restoration to
the Book of the Revelation ; and a still greater series in the events
found in the history of Christendom. These are conceivable as
historic dramas and as tragedies following the order of develop
ment ; and it is quite possible that the dramatist would, for the
masses of men, prove a more efficient teacher than the historian,
the philosopher or the theologian. The great poets have uttered
their conceptions as bearing upon this subject ; but it does not
seem to be such a suitable field for the poetic genius as for the
dramatist. It may be conceived that a series of paintings, foUow-
ing the order of generations and of development, would be of great
value ; only it has to be remembered that the pictures would be
pictures only to the many who looked upon them, and only the
few — those who knew and understood the order of the pictures in
the gallery — would be able to enter into the spirit of the work,
because of their fitness to interpret the conceptions of the artist.
The drama, the poem, and the picture are all useful in their place ;
but it must be conceded that they are carnal representations ;
to carnal men they would remain as carnal, and only the spiritual
minded would strain their vision to get a gHmpse of the spiritual
that lay behind word and action, poem and picture. This is the
usual stage reached in all methods of teaching ; more depends
upon the man who sees and hears than upon things seen and
heard ; to the natural man ali things are natural ; to the carnal
man all things are carnal ; to the intellectual man signs, symbols,
words, conditions and relations ; and to the spiritual man the
thoughts are spiritual, heavenly and eternal.
This suggestion as to the realm of art may not be out of place
if there is not too much stress laid upon the value of art as a means
of spiritual instruction ; the utmost claimed for art here is that
it may be valuable, even as a means of grace ; and that true art
will be found to express its thoughts in harmony with the Bible,
nature, man and the method of Christ, and thus a possible witness

THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN. 453
to the Divine order, to law and righteousness. The meaning here
may be traced in this direction : in the study of experience, em
piricism, science and Divine wisdom, from the beginning in God
to the end in the conception of the Divine travail ; the method
of thought carried out, has been largely that of enquiry, of dis
covery, and of searching after God, and all that God means. In
the physical universe His footsteps are traced in their order, but
God is not to be found ; in the realm of life His wisdom is dis
cerned, but physical forms do not reveal God ; in the soul of man,
where darkness reigns, He cannot be seen ; in the intellectual
relations of science no instrument can discover Him ; in law a
Voice might be heard, it the listener could interpret the signs
and words ; and even the altar and cross, suffering and sacrifice,
may be misinterpreted and conceived to be incomprehensible.
Men cannot, by their methods of search, find God as visible and
tangible object ; He is Spirit ; and it is truth, by the Spirit of
Truth, in the way of Hfe and truth, that guides through physical
and psychical, intellectual and moral, grace and sacrifice, to con
ceive the spiritual and the true, and thus to find God, the Father,
in that vision of the Heavens revealed as Divine travail for the
salvation of sinful men. It may well be conceived that when
men have thus, as they think, strenuously followed this order of
thought for many days, that it might be found helpful, for the pur
pose of relieving the strain, to look round upon drama, poem, and
picture, and thus in more homely form contemplate for a brief
moment the works of God under such forms. But this is to fall
back upon a lower order of thought ; it is to try to be a child
again ; and to permit the carnal veil to enshroud the soul. There
is still something wanted ; there is a beckoning hand that invites
to further study ; the Master calls to other, and different, studies,
even to some of His words as they were uttered to His disciples
on that evening of companionship, of supper, of sorrow and be
trayal. It is a wonderful quest to search for God and to find Him
in the Divine travail of redemption ; but there are some questions
that only Christ can answer, and perhaps the place to ponder upon
them is in the upper room ; and there to listen to questions and
answers, as Master and disciples converse together about His going
away, the reason why, and His coming again, so that they might
be with Himself in the heavenly mansions. It was expedient
that He should go away, so that through His absence they might
be prepared to receive the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth. To

454 THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN.
Thomas all this about going, preparing and returning were words
without meaning ; he was not prepared to receive them ; his pre
conceptions shut them out ; thus the frank confession of want of
knowledge as to the whither, or the way. The Master's reply
is the strange one that He is Himself the Way ; and the Whither
is to the Father ; that He is not only the Way, but also the Truth
revealing the Way, and the Life that animates all those who walk
in the Divine Way of life ; and, what is noticeable, He is the Way
to the Father, and there is no other way. How are carnal dis
ciples to understand these wonderful words ? There is no carnal
explanation to be found ; they are spiritual concepts of the
highest importance ; thus if men knew their meaning they would
know the Father and see Him. Christ links men with God ; in
Him is all the Truth of God ; and His life is the Life of God ; in
other words He is the Ideal, and by Him God is revealed. This
concept is one that the intellectual enquirer cannot understand.
How can Jesus be the Father seeing that He is going to the Father ?
Is it not reasonable to ask to see the Father and thus to get a clear
definition of what seems to be unintelligible ? Is life visible ?
Is truth tangible ? Can the way to heaven be traced upon a
map ? Can the Father, as Spirit, be seen with the eyes in bodily
form ? This matter is not one of physical body, or of intellectual
subtlety : it is one of belief ; of spiritual union and communion ;
of an indwelling Father, of spirit likeness, and of spirit power,
as perceived by living actions. But this mystic union is not
limited to Father and Son ; it extends to all believers, to all who
are endowed with the same Spirit of Truth, who Hve in the Divine
Life of Love in harmony with the Divine Will. This is the ideal ;
it is the Heavens even upon the earth ; it is Christ in the soul with
the strange shadow over the soul that prevents His reafised
presence in the consciousness of the disciples. Will He not be
there when He is sought for ? How will this conscious absence,
causing a sense of bereavement and of sorrow, be relieved ? But
why should this absence be realised and felt ? He will be there,
even though not found ; it will be this sense of absence that will
cause sorrow ; therefore, it is necessary to inquire into the con
ditions in the soul bringing about this felt sorrow and bereave
ment. It ought to be remembered that all the disciples listening
to Jesus on that night firmly believed in the near advent of the
visible Messianic kingdom of Israel ; and, it was this belief that
prevented their recognition of the real and true meaning of the

THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN. 455
words uttered by Christ. His assumption is that they do know
the way He is going ; He seems almost astonished at Philip's
lack of spiritual intuition and intellectual apprehension of truth,
as not to have grasped the thought that it is spirit that unites,
causing oneness ; whilst words and forms ever cause differences,
dissensions and difficulties. What Christ seems to suggest to His
disciples is that they are not so ignorant as they appear to be ;
semi-consciously they have been for years living upon His thoughts,
but they have not realised as yet their true meaning ; but the
time is very near when what has been inspired by them will be
called into active life, and this conversation is the preparation
for that change. Christ foresees and tries to prepare His disciples
for what He knows is very near ; they do not see, neither do they
understand that their cherished hopes are to be dashed to pieces ;
and, that what is Hke death, destruction and disintegration has
actuaUy come upon them. So far as the visible kingdom is
concerned, the storm is ready to burst that will bring it to ruin
and scatter it abroad to the four winds of heaven ; but there is
also, as it were, a woman in sore travail at that hour and a child
ready to be born ; and when the child is born there will be joy in
heaven and earth, and the travail pangs will be forgotten in the
renewed hope of a true Kingdom of God and of a spiritual Israel.
What then are the conditions necessary for survival under the
¦crushing blow so near ; sustenance in the pains of travail ; and
preparation for the coming of the Spirit of Truth ? It is all
summed up in gracious self-sacrificing love, in the holding fast of
Truth, and in being led to understand that this is the way to the
IFather and to Life. If the phenomena of the visible and the
'carnal pass away, be reduced to mere protoplasm ; this truth
they must be prepared to hold, that the Life lives, that they live
in Him ; and that it is life that is Eternal, not forms and symbols.
All this is understood in the realm of order and law in this way :
His one great commandment is gracious Love ; the disciples know
this ; if they love and obey Him, then they will prove that they
live in love ; thus to love is to be loved by the Father and the
.'Son ; and it is in this atmosphere and spirit that Christ loves
and manifests Himself to those who love. The Father is Love,
and the Son is in, and expresses, that Love ; those who love are
in Hving union and communion with Christ, and He is in them
as their Life of Love. What is the meaning of these thoughts «
The plain meaning is that the Lord of the physical life has taken

456 THE* DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN.
the physical order to express by analogy the highest spiritual
truths;" He has done what all men do'when they translate the
physical into the psychica 1, or the moral, and the analogy is beauti
ful and true. This is the very highest revelation of Divine Wisdom,
and all the cumbrous nomenclature of the unknowable, ultimates
and related ultimates, are assumed to be matters of belief, about
which men are not called upon to trouble themselves. But this
is said to be mysticism ; it is not practical ; manifestation means
manifestation, it is something to see, touch, realise by the senses,
and thus how can the manifestation be given to the Christian and
not to the Jew, to the spiritual and not to the carnal ? Is there
really any difficulty here except that which practical worldly
minded men raise up because of their own dia-magnetic condi
tion ; their unfitness to understand ; and, their assumed limita
tions of knowledge of which they are the judges ? Their standards
are intellectual, moral and dogmatic, as summed up by the carnal
practical reason, and what they maintain is that this is the highest
order attainable by man ; therefore, by this standard all men
must be measured and judged. The Master says this is not so ;
this may be the pre-conceived conception of Jew, moralist, or
ethical teacher ; but, His realm of thought transcends such con
ceptions ; thus what they omit from their standards of thought
in their mechanical order is placed right in the heart of His method
of thought, and it is gracious, self-sacrificing Love that is the Life
of God and of men. When men love Christ and obey His words
in His Spirit, then the conditions of the realm of Love are con
formed to ; thus they know that Father and Son love them ;
that they are come to them ; and that They abide in them. Those
who do not fulfil the conditions of the life of love cannot compre
hend these things ; they live in a different world, therefore they
are as incapable of giving an opinion upon this subject as the
man of sensuous experience is of giving a true explanation of the
' sciences of astronomy, chemistry, or biology. This then is the
result of this brief companionship with Jesus and His disciples
in spirit ; and the lessons received are, that experience, intellectual!
subtle power, and moral or religious forms of thought do not
understand, comprehend, His teaching and method of thought.
His thoughts are not to be conceived as His only in any Hmited
sense ; they are equally the Father's expressed in His words.
This is where He has to limit His thoughts by the avenue of words
as signs and by personal presence ; but it is not the highest stage

THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN. 457
to be reached ; in fact it is only the beginning, and it is the Holy
Spirit that has to continue this work through the memory, and
special teaching, until Christ is revealed and made manifest in
aU His Divine wisdom and spiritual glory. Is this all that can
come to men from the Person and the Voice of Christ 1 The
symbols of thought change, the blessing of peace is given, and fear
is banished. He is going, but if men loved Him, and knew what
His going meant for them, then they would rejoice and be glad.
They are unable to understand or follow Him any further ; the
shadow is upon the wall, the door, and the pathway ; the Captain
of Salvation must place upon His own head the helmet of salva
tion, on His breast the shield of faith, with the sword of the Spirit
He must defend Himself, and with the weapon of all-prayer He
must go forth to meet the great enemy of God and men. All this
was clearly seen by Christ ; His conversation was the means by
which He conveyed to them the knowledge of what was very
near ; the struggle to the death was at hand ; and the strange
thing which the disciples did not then understand was that His
great victory was to be an apparent defeat, whilst the seeming
victory of the enemy would be a crushing disaster. Why did
He go forth alone into this conflict ? For this purpose — that the
world might be able to see, and know, the true meaning of Divine
love, and how the Divine Son went forth with a perfect will
to obey His Father. Here let men pause and think what these
things mean ; the end has come ; the pillar cloud has begun to
move ; the past is past ; the new era begins here ; therefore, let
men arise and consider whither that pillar of light and darkness
will lead them.
It is not necessary to linger with the company of disciples to
hear the parable of the vine, to listen to the closing comforting
words, or to permit the sanctifying prayer to fall Hke the dew from.
heaven upon the soul ; these are not themes to be discussed in
market place and newspaper ; they belong to the sanctuary, and
to that inner circle of friends who are found worthy to receive
this teaching. The position reached here worthy the attention
of all men, is that here, for the first time in history, the revela
tion is made to men of the unique explanation of what is truly
the religion of Christ. Around Him as His disciples there are
men of experience, intellectual men, moral and religious thinkers
and there is one silent observer and thinker who is receiving and
assimilating in his own soul all that is being said. What evidently

458 THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN.
appeared to him as strange was that all former conceptions upon
Teligious questions were being translated into the symbolism of
love, of love as sacrifice, and of love as the very life and being
•of God and men. What may strike men of the twentieth century
as strange is that this seed of thought has lived through past ages,
and when men attempt to express their highest conceptions, they
are in harmony with this representation of a conversation betwixt
'Christ and His disciples. There is not merely unity of thought ;
there is a strange weird likeness as to historic conditions, and
thus Judaism and Christianity may be seen to be in analogous
positions. Judaism was tottering to its fall, and within a brief
time the doom would fall upon Jerusalem and upon the Jews.
The body, political and religious, was dead to truth and righteous
ness ; and what was once nourishment for spiritual life had be
come degraded and disorganised. What appeared to possess life
and vigour was dead to God and righteousness ; thus the Life
in Christ was centralised in His disciples, and it was to become
their privilege to set up the new Christian religion in the earth.
After many centuries a similar crisis has come upon Christendom ;
and if the Master and the disciples were to meet and talk freely
together, it is conceivable that the conversation would be upon
¦similar lines ; the disciples would still put questions about ex
periences, about intellectual difficulties, and about the differences
"betwixt Christians that say Christ manifests Himself to them
by His Spirit, and other Christians who never enjoyed such re
velations. The problem of this day is not theological dogma,
or the authority of scribe and priest ; it is whether there is any
life left in religion ; whether there is a Christ that lives and is
able to save ; or if the whole concern is sham and pretence, dead
and worthless, fit for rejection, death and burial. The strange
thing is that few indeed seem to have any conception as to what
the religion of Christ truly means ; they have been taught that
God is love, that Christ is love as sacrifice, that his disciples
should follow in His steps ; and when men look round the horizon
of the world, it is to find that Christians are wrangling about State
and Church, education and creeds, slums and houses, capital and
labour, and similar problems of a social kind that are to be the
means of salvation for mankind. It is not to be conceived that
such problems ought not to be studied, and that social and political
^problems should be neglected. What is suggested here is that
¦Christians, as they now think and act, would lose nothing by

THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN. 459
becoming Jews ; they need to be born again into the Divine realm
of love ; and until this takes place, they are not truly Christians,
in the sense that they live in that fair realm of love, as sacrifice,
in which there is union and communion in the Spirit of Christ in
love. It is not to be assumed that in the company of disciples
there are none that are given to ponder over these things in their
hearts ; what is meant is that their voices are rarely heard ; and,
possibly, should they begin to speak they would not be heard in
the tumult around them ; and it is certain that their words be
unacceptable, misunderstood and misrepresented. This is 'a
grave state of matters ; far more serious than men suppose ; it
actually pre-supposes that the Christian dispensation has been a
complete failure. It is hardly conceivable that so precious a seed
of love had been planted in the earth so long ago, and men have
remained so ignorant of its true history and order of development.
Is it really science that is calling men to the true and earnest study
of this subject ; and has Christ come back again to teach men,
by His own method of thought, in what sense He is life as love,
truth and wisdom, and the only way to the Father in the
Heavens ?
Christ come back again, and not to be seen by the eyes of men ;
no clouds, trumpets, and legions of angels ; no returning saints
in glory, and no saints in raptures to receive Him upon the earth ?
The conception is an outrage upon Christian thought ; this is
heresy indeed, and even the suggestion of such thoughts seems
contrary to Scripture. Is this really so 1 Can human inter
preters be perfectly sure that only thus will Christ return ? Is
it beyond the range of possibility that the psychical forms of
thought may be superseded ; and that the parables and allegories
of the Scriptures are not meant to be literally understood ? If
the Jewish disciples happened to be so far wrong in their miscon
ceptions of the Messianic Kingdom, is it not possible that Christian
disciples may err in a similar manner, if they take the imagery of
the New Testament and declare that thus, and thus only, He will
return to reign upon the earth ? It would appear as if Christians
are being specially invited to consider this matter, and science,
the law of development, and the method of Christ, may have
something to say upon this subject ? Science would suggest
special care in the study of the order of that world known as grace
and sacrifice ; the law of development would enquire what ex
amples can be found of the literal fulfilment of prophetic thought,

460 THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN.
and point to the fact that every new stage of development is not
what men have expected, but rather what they did not look for,
and what they were not prepared to accept as the fulfilment of the
Divine promises. The method of Christ would tend to support
such a conception ; thus it suggests spiritual realisation of truth
and not spectacular phenomena. The meaning here, if it can be
expressed, is that men find themselves in the strange position of
depreciating phenomena, what is ever changing, and what does
not possess reality and stability. They have been led to think
upon things, bodies, signs and symbols as suitable for children ;
thus they fairly claim that what they require is reality, principles,
related ultimates, and that out of these there will arise the Divine
manifestation in power and wisdom, and that such an order will
be scientific, to be conceived as law, and as such a true revelation
of the will of God. Christ seems to be saying to His disciples
this is the true way to the Father ; this is truth ; and to walk
in this way is life, the fife eternal. This is how the Father can
be seen ; and by this means the Spirit of Christ and of Truth makes
manifest the Father to disciples. What has to be remembered
here is that the conversation in the upper room brought to an end
the communion in visible psychical fellowship ; there intervenes
the dark night, the garden of Gethsemane, the agony and the
sweat as of blood, the arrest, the trial, the cross, the grave and the
resurrection. When the communion is renewed it is under new
conditions ; it is to disciples and not to the world ; it is in a spiritual
form of a special kind that cannot be explained ; and, it is as, and
when, He is pleased to appear during the period of forty days.
Of course during past centuries Christians have laid much stress
upon these appearances as proofs of the Resurrection ; but it may
become conceivable that these incidents are more than passing
visits, they are signs to be studied, and much may depend on
understanding what these signs mean.
The Hne of thought introduced here runs thus : 1, conditions
of experience as illustrated by Thomas ; 2, relations of thought
intellectually as seen in Philip ; 3, empiric conditions as conceived
by Judas ; and, 4, the true relations of the realm of Grace and
Sacrifice as revealed by Christ. Thomas could not see nor under
stand ; PhiHp could not make the thoughts of theory and fact
agree ; Judas could not discern the difference betwixt carnal and
spiritual ; and, it is Christ that tells men that they fail to com
prehend what they are reasoning about, because they have not

THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN. 461
considered what is meant by the Kingdom of God, its conditions,
atmosphere, order, laws and issues. Christ does not blame His
disciples because of their ignorance ; He knows that they are
like children ; it is that ingrained, persistent, wilful, carnafising
of truth that is so tiresome ; and it is the difficulty of getting
them to receive and conceive spiritual truth that is so trying.
Where will men find such a patient, loving, sympathetic Teacher
as Christ ? It is simply astounding to think that these disciples
had been for years under Divine tuition, and at the end of their
course they had not grasped the first principles of their Master's
method of thought. Turn the light of truth upon the Christian
Church, and the same conditions are seen to exist ; it is Thomas
and PhiHp, and Judas, that are thinking and asking questions ;
others listen and try to think what it is all about ; but they have
failed to see into the Master's heart and to comprehend His
thoughts and words. There ought to be a means of getting out
of this position, but it is plain that these men being so carnal in
their methods of thought, it is useless to expect that they will be
able to give help to men who think they can see a brighter, clearer
light of truth ; and hope, by sitting at the Master's feet, to get a
clearer insight into His method of thought. If men will follow
Thomas then let them understand their position ; they are carnal
children who have not got beyond visible signs, and they do not
understand that words are symbols of spiritual thought. If men
will follow PhiHp, then let them drink deeply of the Greek spirit
and method of thought, and read the issue in the history of that
nation. If men follow Judas, then let them become Jews, ritual
ists, and let them study what has befallen that nation because
they did not seek to apprehend the truth that true reHgion is
spiritual and not carnal ; it is elective and selective, working by
the affinities of conditions of the spirit and soul, and not through
a visible State, Church, and privileged people.
Thus men are taught that when they go wrong it is necessary
to go back to the beginning again, to first principles, to conditions,
order and law ; and through their experiences in the past it may
fairly be expected that they will be more careful to keep in the
right way, to apprehend the truth in its relations, and to live in
harmony with the conditions. Men Hke Thomas, PhiHp, and
Judas, are types of men, and of the law of development ; thus
the carnal world, the intellectual realm, the moral or ethical
kingdom ; and all these fail even though they have had the

462 THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN.
privilege of sitting as disciples at the feet of the Master, the King of
Grace and the Lord of Sacrifice. They, as men, or as dispensa
tions, were being trained in the School of Grace ; but they knew
not their Master and Lord ; and when He came to them as the
lowly Jesus, they thought that He was only a Teacher, likely to
become a King, the King of the Jews, and that through the
Messianic Kingdom they would attain to power and influence.
This is where Christ meets His disciples and tries to teach them
truth so that their false conceptions may be dissipated ; and the
great Truth revealed is that God the Father is Grace and Love
as Sacrifice, and that He is the Son of the Father in Whom these
principles, realities, or related ultimates are conserved, as in a
Seed, for abundant blessings to mankind. What is the result
here ? Even the story already repeated in so many forms, that
men are now taught that the Way of Life is Love ; that the rela
tions of that Way is Truth ; and that the conditions upon which
the blessings of Life and Love will reach men, be in them, is that
they live in the Spirit of Love and of Truth. All these thoughts
are as elementary ideas in the scientific world of thought ; and
just as men of science would laugh to scorn fooHsh men who
would not conform to physical conditions, order, and law, in their
studies ; so it is in this realm also, if men would be Christians in
deed, followers of Christ, then their world is Love, Grace and
Sacrifice ; and, it is only by observing true conditions, order and
law in this realm that there can be a scientific realisation of what
the Kingdom of Grace truly means. Surely this is plain enough
even for a Thomas if he will only try to think what conditions,
law, and order mean ; if in the natural and carnal realms he finds
this to be so, then how can he object to, or fail to understand that
the same order or law of development will hold good in the King
dom of Grace ? This matter is very simple ; it is Hke all other
realms of thought ; beheve in the reaHty, and the principle ;
understand the conditions, that is the spiritual order that exists ;
conform to the order lovingly, willingly, in thought, word and
deed ; try to make this order the spiritual law of life in the spirit
of gracious self-sacrifice ; and if Christian men and women do these
things, then they will understand what Christ means by His
teaching, what He is in Himself, and what they will become when
they attain to His likeness.
It is not an easy matter to leave the companionship of the
disciples and the^Master ; to go forth into the dark night, to

THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN. 463
witness as in passing phenomena the events in the Garden of
Gethsemane, the trial, the crucifixion, the grave, the resurrection,
and then the incidents of the appearing, disappearing, and re
appearing of Christ to His disciples during the period of forty
days. What are the stories in the Bible ? Phenomena. What
is the meaning of phenomena here ? It is that the onlooker is
observing a panorama of events and he calls it a history, a record,
or a revelation ; but, although he may be able to follow the story
intelligently, it is objective to him ; thus the reality behind all
changes, the principles out of which they arise, the conditions upon
which there is development, the order and the laws that govern
the changes, are not known to the onlooker. He has to learn to
believe in the Reality, the First Cause ; he has to conceive the
thought that there is an Ideal ; that all phenomena are condi
tioned spiritually ; that order and law exist, and when all these
thoughts are realised, then there may be said to be a beginning
to understand what is meant by phenomena, and what the rela
tions of phenomena are to reality, order and law. This applies
to physical, psychical, moral and spiritual worlds, and thus there
ought not to be any difficulty in understanding the meaning of
phenomena. To the spiritual man there is Reality, the Ideal,
Spiritual conditions, Spirit work or manifestations, science as
order, law as moral obligation ; sin as disorder and moral degrada
tion ; and Grace and Sacrifice as the means by which there is
redemption from sin. Phenomena is the ever- changing chaotic
world that no one can comprehend ; it is where all Thomas-like
men live, move, and have their being ; but those who would be
come Christ-like, wish to get beyond the changing forms to what
is Real, True, Right, Good and Gracious. Those who know what
they mean when they confess themselves to be pilgrims in the
world of phenomena, seeking a better country, need not trouble
themselves as to what the world may think about them ; they
do not understand each other ; and the worldling has a long way
to travel ere he will understand what these things mean. It is
important, however, to observe that all true thinkers in the realm
of science are upon the same plane of thought ; and by Divine
Grace and Wisdom they will discover that they are the servants
and disciples of the same Master, if they love the Truth/walk in
the way of Love and conform to the Divine conditions. What
are the resurrection appearances of Christ to His disciples, and
under what category of thought are they to be placed 1 Are

464 THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN.
they spiritual phenomena ? Are they signs for students to study ?
Are they explicable in a general sense ; or, only in the Hmited
sense that they are revelations to disciples and not to worldly-
minded men ? If the testimony of the disciple John is received,
they are to be considered as signs, to be studied spiritually, so
that what they signify may be realised, and thus a pathway found
from the phenomena to the reaUty.
If students of the Bible accept this aspect of studying the Word
of God, then the first thing to do is to cast the thoughts backward
into the region of the Old Testament, and try to ascertain whether
this symbolism of periods of forty days, or forty years, have any
•significance as bearing upon history. If they have, do they point
to Christ in any way ; or, to the purpose of salvation that con
centrates into His personal life upon the earth ? It is not pro
posed to study this subject, but simply to point out that such a
symbolism exists ; and thus indicate the direction in which this
matter may be carefully considered with possible good results.
In the generations of Noah, that is in the story of the flood, there
are two periods of forty days referred to ; these are the forty
¦days and nights when the flood is rising and covering the earth ;
and again after the 150 days when the flood is subsiding before
the dove is sent forth. In the book of Exodus there are the two
periods of forty days, during which Moses is in the Mount with
God, with all the teaching that surrounds these events. There
is the story of the spying out of the Land for forty days, with the
result that as they turned back, through unbelief, they were
•doomed to wander in the Desert for forty years. The Kings of
Israel, Saul, David and Solomon, reigned forty years each. Then
there is that significant story about Elijah, after the events at
•Carmel, in the Desert, ready to die, fed by the angel with
heavenly bread, and in the strength of that food travelling to
Horeb in forty days. The symbolism of the cave, the storm,
¦ earthquake, the fire, and the still small voice, require special
study ; and, it has to be remembered that this means the end of
the ministry of Elijah and the Call of Elisha to be his successor.
There is another strange sign of forty days in the prophet Ezekiel.
-representing the siege and downfall of Jerusalem. In the Gospels
there is found at the opening of the ministry of Christ the forty
days of temptation in the Desert, and at the end, the Resurrection
and the appearances to disciples for forty days before the Ascen-
.sion. Omitting any reference to the Kings of Israel, the symbols

THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN. 465
referred to set forth the great flood of evil that covered the earth
and in what way that flood subsided. In what way the chosen
people of God redeemed from Egypt fell into base idolatry, by
which all the Commandments of God were broken ; and, how
God revealed to Moses the symbols of things in the heavens.
The unbehef of Israel as to the promises of God with the well-
known results, the forty years' wandering, with the fulfilment of
the promises under Joshua. In what way Israel became apos
tate and became worshippers of Baal and other gods, and the
result of this in judgment and mercy in the Captivity and the
Restoration. The teaching of the symbols is that of persistent
sin and ever-recurring falls from grace ; with ever-renewed efforts,
on God's part, to carry on the Divine purpose, to the manifesta
tion of Christ the Son of God. It is in Christ that the flood of
evil is stemmed, the broken law restored, the land possessed, and
the true Kingdom of God established in the earth ; and, it is this
meaning that has to be inspired into the temptation in the Desert
where Christ foils the tempter and proves Himself to be a true,
good, righteous Man in the Image of God.
The Man has been manifested, and the Son of God goes forth
to His Divine ministry as recorded in the Gospels. It is as the
gracious Son of God He works His mighty works, as signs for men
to study ; but as recorded in the Word, His beneficent work was
as a challenge to the powers of evil, and in their ignorance the Jews
caused to be put to death by crucifixion their Saviour and their
King. Evil, apparently, as viewed psychically, gained the victory,
but in reality Grace reigned and Sacrifice was triumphant. This
is what the resurrection means ; the Life in Him could not die ;
the Truth in Him could not be perverted into error and darkness ;
and the Love that filled His soul could not be quenched by all
the waters of hatred and evil. The Lord of Life lives ; in a true
and real sense, it may even be said that He never died, could not
die ; but, in phenomena and sign, He truly died, gave Himself
up to death so that through His death men might receive eternal
life. This paradox of life and death must of necessity be a stran ge
problem to study ; thus it ought to be remembered that this is the
realm of phenomena and sign ; and, as the means of redemption
from these, it is not f or men to try to think, or suppose that they
understand the Divine thoughts, the Divine Reality or Ideal.
What men find in the story is phenomena, and what science tries
to do is to find the true conditions, order, and law, as the facts
GG

466 THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN.
have to do with their relations to the Saviour and Lord. That
the Saviour after the resurrection was different from what He was
as Man need not be questioned ; all agnostic questionings upon
this subject are valueless. Further, as to the appearances of Christ
agnostics rule themselves out of court ; they do not love, believe,
or follow Christ, as disciples, thus the signs were not meant for
them ; and it is not to be supposed that natural, carnal men upon
the plane, the stage in which they live, are able to see the signs
in the true light in which they are revealed. The lines of thought
found in the Old Testament in the series of forty days' signs have
been suggested ; it may now be useful to glance briefly at the
signs, in the appearances of Christ, and it may be that an analogy,
or likeness, may be found in these events. It is assumed that the
appearances may be recorded in this order : 1. To Mary Magda
lene in the garden. 2. To Simon Peter, place not recorded.
3. To the two disciples on the way to Emmaus. 4. To the dis
ciples in the room the same night. 5. To the disciples and
Thomas. 6. To James, place not recorded. 7. At the lake to the
seven disciples whilst fishing. 8. To the 500 brethren. 9. At
the Ascension. 10. To Saul, or Paul, on the way to Damascus as
the persecutor of Christ and His brethren. These are the signs,
the appearances recorded, and it may be useful to enquire whether
the thoughts signified can be traced through the signs. 1. The
first appearance is to the one that loved much because of the love,
grace, and mercy bestowed upon her by her Saviour. Her soul
was swallowed up in the sorrow of love ; therefore, neither death
nor life could separate her soul from the Life of Love she found
in Christ. 2. The appearance to Peter is of that kind with which
it is not meet to intermeddle ; the man who had denied his Lord
and Saviour, whose heart was broken with shame and grief, re
quired the Healer and Comforter ; and it may be fairly assumed
that the interview was of that kind which was suitable for Peter.
The man had forfeited grace, love and Hfe ; grace was bestowed
upon him, there was restoration to love and life ; thus the man
who sinned greatly was also forgiven and restored to his place
among the brethren. 3. The two disappointed, desponding,
dispirited friends thought that they had lost their King and
His Kingdom ; they were teachable disciples ; thus they found
through the symbolism of the breaking of bread that they had
entered into a heavenly inheritance and a spiritual kingdom.
4- To the disciples there came the benediction of peace, joy and

THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN. 467
gladness, communion and fellowship, and a higher revelation of
the meaning of the Scriptures as specially bearing upon the ques
tions of sacrifice, sorrow, death and life. 5. To Thomas, the
revelation is of the ever-present, all-knowing, all-wise Saviour, who
is far too loving and wise to deal with men as they express their
thoughts in their desponding moods. He knows men far better
than they know themselves, and His remedy for despondency and
doubt is to reveal His own Life and Love ; their thoughts and His
•thoughts ; the nail prints and the side, and surely these are
enough for any disciple, to turn doubt into faith and hopelessness
into fervent worship. 6. He appeared to James, but for what
purpose is not revealed ; possibly his difficulties were in connection
with Judaism as related to the Kingdom of Christ. 7. The story
of the appearance at the Lake in the early morning ; the wearied
unsuccessful toilers ; the right throwing of the net, the many
fishes caught, the discernment of John, the ardour of Peter, the
burning fire, the food prepared, the early breakfast, the restora
tion of Peter, are they not all signs to be studied, pondered upon
in the heart, to keep faith, hope, patience, and love active, and to
prevent despair ? It is hard to toil day and night with apparently
no blessing and no success ; cheer up, sad heart, He is not far
away ; the dawn of the day of peace and love will surely come ;
and it will be joy indeed to say, or to hear a voice saying, "It is
the Lord." 8. He appeared to 500 upon the mountain ; they
have seen Him heard His Voice, and they have been taught what
is meant by His life, death, and resurrection from the dead.
9. Men saw Him ascend into glory ; in glory in the Heavens ; and
His attitude has ever been the uplifted hands and the bestowing
of blessings upon those who look up to, and wait for, His coming
again with power in great glory. 10. He appeared to Saul the
persecutor, and the man who was the enemy of the cross of Christ
became the messenger of salvation, the apostle of Christ, to the
Roman world.
These appearances after the resurrection are said to be signs,
thus suggesting to the student that it is needful to try to get
beyond the signs to what they signify. They are meant for disci
ples of all kinds ; thus all disciples are free to think upon the signs
and what they mean. It has been suggested that in the Old
Testament there is order in the revelation of the series of forty
days ; it is conceived that the appearances of Christ follow the
same 'order ; it is in the method of Christ they are presented for
gg 2

'468 THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURF. AND MAN.
consideration, and it may be found profitable for students to begin
their studies in the way suggested. There are reasons for suppos
ing that these revelations, in their order, will be found to fall in
with the spiritual development of the human soul ; they are Hke
what Christian people rehearse as their experiences ; and in a true
sense they are to each individual soul in the experiences reaHsed
the spiritual re-appearing of the Lord to them at those stages in
life where His presence and power are required, perceived and
conceived. But, the carnal man may reply, How can such things
occur ? Is there not a contradiction here in supposing on the
one hand that it is the Spirit of Christ that is the Divine influence
and not Christ in Person ; and yet it is assumed that at special
stages under particular conditions, the Lord of Love and Life can,
and does, reveal Himself consciously to His disciples. What is
Truth, or under what sign may it be conceived ? It is a form,
a unity of being aglow with light ; it is light radiant like light from
the sun ; and it is the effulgent light that is the Spirit of Truth.
Yet behind the signs and words what men perceive is that they
are thinking about God, under revealed conditions, necessary
for instruction ; but the Lord of Truth and radiant light is greater
than all thoughts by which concepts would limit His glory. Again
it is well to suggest to carnal thinkers, and to agnostics, that
they should be very careful when they express their thoughts
upon such subjects ; the revelations are not to them ; they are not
under the necessary conditions upon which they can be con
sciously experienced and understood ; thus not until they truly
and spiritually fulfil the required conditions can they be in a posi
tion to discuss such questions. It may be further suggested that
the appearances of Christ may be traced in the special movements
in history during the Christian era ; in other words, they may be
conceived as personal, and also prophetic ; as limited to forty days,
and also extending to the dispensation ; they are as the seeds
lying at the root of the tree, and during the period of development,
stage by stage, the Lord reappears in spiritual power in the midst
of His disciples. It does not seem necessary to enter into details
on this subject ; what students require to remember is that their
own personal experiences are not the measure of the varied ex
periences of many disciples ; and that all experiences are personal
and historical. Thus the sum of the whole is to be found in history
as fulfilling that which was involved in the seeds, or seed. The
conclusion reached here is that the time has not arrived to form a

THE DIVINE TRAVAIL IN NATURE AND MAN. 469
definite conception upon this very complicated subject. In the
past men have been as children, living content in the world of
phenomena ; they have been suddenly awakened, in a somewhat
rude fashion, to their childlike conceptions. Thus it must take them
a little time to realise their true position spiritually. To throw
aside signs, symbols, words, parables, and allegories, as useless,
at such a time would be absurd ; they are the very means by
which men have been educated., thus they are still required, and
will be long used as the necessary means of development, of growth
in knowledge, and in grace, truth, and love. There is the appear
ance of the likeness of a Man upon the shore at this hour of dawn
ing. When the light is brighter His Form will be seen and His
Voice will be heard. It will be well, if, when that hour comes, men
are prepared to give Him glad welcome, and to discover that
' somehow in the night of toil they have been changed into His
image and likeness.

CHAPTER XV.
incarnation, inspiration and resurrection.
In thus trying to get beyond phenomena and what is ever
changing, it would appear as if men could really find thoughts,
realities, which they conceive do not change. God is Reality";
Christ is the Ideal and in Him are all ideals ; the Spirit conditions,
that is ordains all that is conceivable under purpose and design,
seven-fold Divine Wisdom ; and the Spirit causes to be mani
fested, to become, to be developed, all that men think of as crea
tion, phenomena, the ever changing ; but, at the same time, there
is the belief that behind all these, as changing forms, as con
ditioned, as ideal, the reality is God. When men study pheno
mena in the right way, and in the right spirit, to find truth, then
they discover order, that is, order subject to definable conditions.
This is known as the spiritual realm of thought,becausethe material
and the phenomenal seem to pass away and what survives is set
forth in signs, symbols, and words which only spiritual beings can
place in order and comprehend. Becoming spiritual, they enter the
realm of spirit ; and it is there that they may consciously awaken
to the presence of the Spirit of Truth, and be able to conceive
that the order discovered as law, is, in other words, the Will of
God. It is not necessary here to refer to the Fall of man and the
way of redemption. These do not change the realities that are
known. It is by Christ that men have been led to such concep
tions, and thus they are aU from, and they all return to, Him.
In the light that radiates from Christ, it may now be found pro
fitable to consider very briefly certain subjects upon which the
thoughts of learned men are occupied, and upon which they do
not seem to be able to find any means of agreement. The sub
jects referred to are specially Incarnation, Inspiration and
Resurrection. This discussion, it would appear, is not limited
to carnal men and agnostics, as against Christian believers. The

INCARNATION, INSPIRATION, AND RESURRECTION. 471
struggle has extended, and is raging amongst Christian disciples ;
and thus the strange phenomena of believers appearing to join
hands with unbelievers, and of permitting the carnal and the
agnostic spirit to bring about strife in the Christian Church. How
is it, men may ask, that the disciples of Christ place themselves in
this false position ? Is it reasonable and right that they should
be so very willing to side with the carnal and reject the spiritual ?
That they should be so ready to believe what agnostics teach
them about science, when it is possible for them to perceive,
receive, and conceive the true thoughts of science for themselves ?
Is it wise to permit their eyes to be dazzled by the fierce glare of
agnosticism, when they might turn aside and study the pure Hght
of truth that radiates from Heaven ? Can it be that the discussion
is about words and the meanings people find in them ; and that
if such subjects were considered from the right standpoint, then
the discussion would end, because it would be seen that the
differences have arisen through ignorance and misunderstanding ?
Christian disciples are not, as believers, specially qualified to deal
with such problems in the light of science and Divine wisdom ;
they receive information from certain sources which seem to
prove conclusively that what they believed was not true ; they
are the followers of Truth, therefore they must receive and obey
the truth, even if they have to throw over beliefs that they have
cherished for many years. It may be suggested here that this
supreme claim of loyalty to truth is not one to be admitted
without careful scrutiny ; it is just in this realm that the devil,
as an angel of Hght, has gained his greatest victories ; and surely
it is not wise for Christian disciples to permit themselves to be
beguiled by that subtle serpent in such problems where he may be
able to gain the advantage. Christian disciples will do well to
remember that their loyalty is not to abstract intellectual truth,
but to their Lord and Master as King of Grace and Lord of Sacri
fice ; it is to this supreme realm of truth they promise fealty, and
the truths of science, in any other realm of thought should
coincide with what is to them supreme. It is one thing for the
agnostic to say that he as a physical scientist, as a carnal thinker,
is unable to accept such beliefs ; it is something altogether
different for disciples of Christ to take the side of the enemy,
to reject faith and fundamental truths entrusted to their
custody, to be cherished and defended until the Lord and Master
is pleased to reveal in what sense and under what conditions,

472 INCARNATION, INSPIRATION, AND RESURRECTION.
these beliefs are to be explained, or expressed, under changed
forms. What men are suffering from at the present time is a
state of panic on account of the unstability of phenomena. The
tottering walls of their cumbrous edifices of an empiric kind are
being overthrown ; they do not know where to find safety ; they
are being told that science alone can give them shelter ; and
thus the attempt to cling to a pseudo-science that is in the midst
of the same phenomenal wreckage. Surely this attitude of
thought cannot be right or true ; under such conditions it is not
men or science that can save, but the Lord of heaven, earth and
sea ; therefore, at such a critical hour it is not for Christian
disciples to be over-anxious as to what men think or say ; but to
keep their eyes fixed on their Lord and Saviour, to be loyal in
heart to Him, and then wait patiently and observe carefully in
what way it will please Him to carry forward His purpose of bles
sing for mankind out of this Maelstrom of confusion. It is as
sumed that the problems named are vital and fundamental ; if
no Incarnation, no Christ and no Salvation ; if no Inspiration, then
no Word of God upon which men can rely ; and if no Resurrection,
then let men eat, drink, and be merry in this life ; because it is
doubtful if a God exists ; if no God then no authority, duty or
responsibility ; the god to be worshipped is prudent care, so that
the fire will not burn, or the waters drown, the policeman arrest,
or the judge condemn. If such thoughts as these are the best
that agnostics and carnal men have to offer the Christian disciples
to lead them to apostasy, surely they would be fools indeed to
cast loose the Hand of Christ and deliberately choose the darkness,
ruin and shipwreck as preferable to the true, right, good, gracious,
life, with suffering, and the hope of the life eternal.
The question that arises here is not whether these vital ques
tions are intellectually true or not ; or, if put in plainer words,
whether Christ is Lord and Saviour or a false pretender ; the
Bible the Word of God, or a book containing myths and stories ;
it is to try to conceive the possibihty that men can be educated
by Christ spiritually, so that they may be able to see through
phenomena, and come a little nearer to the Master as men in his
own spirit. It is not to question the truth of the Incarnation
and Inspiration, but to ask the Master, if by His method of
thought, at this time, any fresh light can be thrown upon such
subjects. It may be suggested for consideration that the three
questions named, although they are for the moment being

INCARNATION, INSPIRATION, AND RESURRECTION, 473
specially considered, do not stand apart ; there are others as in a
series that may be joined with them, and the brief consideration
of this series in their order may prove helpful. 1. Incarnation.
2. Inspiration. 3. Designation. 4. Manifestation. 5. Illumina
tion. 6. Condemnation and Resurrection. 7. Salvation. 8.
Sanctification. 9. Restoration. 10. Spiritualisation. 11. Trans
formation. 12. Perfection. It will be observed that all these
imply that there is the state of change ; they are becoming,
developing, they are not ultimate principles or related ultimate
thoughts ; the problems contained in them indicate a process ;
and the first, Incarnation, contains within itself all subsequent
processes, the end being Perfection. In a general sense, the
train of thought runs thus : the Divine becomes Incarnate in
the earth or the earthly ; the earthly lives and breathes what
is in the heavens ; what is in the heavens, and heavenly, may
be conceived as conditioned as to plan and design, and. what
has in it plan and design will develop, be manifested, grow, and
take visible form and order. When man appears upon the
scene as manifested, then it is found that he is capable of illum
ination ; but he also runs the risk of believing what is untrue and
of disobeying law, thus the danger of falfing from innocence
into sin, shame and darkness ; and to a spiritual being this
means death, or separation in spirit from God. Such a fall
involves in it the thought of death, thus development abruptly
ends, and the conceptions are that sin and death reign, and
that a new Hfe is required to bring about the resurrection from
the dead. This new life is in its nature spiritual, so that it may
possess power to save and elevate the carnal ; but along with
the power to save, there is sacrifice, consecration, and sanctifi
cation. It is by the way of gracious suffering that there is
restoration to the favour of God spiritually ; the spiritual life
is made manifest as a new creation in Christ ; and it is through,
and in, Christ, by the Spirit, that there is a life being trans
formed from the carnal to the spiritual ; and, by the way of
development, of growth in grace, the end will be perfection in
the image of Christ, the Son of God.
It will be observed that by looking at the subject from this
standpoint there is a change of view. The question of the In
carnation is not Hmited to the New Testament, to Mary and Jesus.
It is the one problem contained in the whole Bible that has to
be studied, and all other problems, by the law of development,

474 INCARNATION, INSPIRATION, AND RESURRECTION.
arise out of it. If this is understood, then what disciples re
quire to do is to change their position from Bethlehem to the
heavens as related to the earth, and in this larger problem try
to discover the truth in its scientific order of development. This
may be compared to another Copernican revolution of thought.
The question here is not do the heavens revolve around Bethle
hem, Mary, and Jesus ; but are they correlated with the heavens
in their own orbit 1 Is it the heavens that reign, or, is the
earthly supreme within the realm of Incarnation 1 As the
sign words have definite significations, it is important to keep
this in view in this brief study. If these signs are appUed ro
the story of creation, will there be response and harmony of
thought? 1. "In the beginning God created the heaven and
the earth " ; this is Incarnation, or the Divine immanence.
2. There was change, separation, and the result, Heaven ; that is
to say, the Incarnate became Life, and inspired, breathed the
life of God. 3. Seas and earth, grass, trees, fruit and seeds after
their kind ; or Spirit design in heavenly Divine Wisdom. 4.
The revelation of sun, moon and stars, times and seasons, days
and nights ; or, the manifestation of the work of the Spirit in the
visible creation. 5. Into this visible creation there came the
birds that fly in the light of the heavens and fish that swim in the
deep dark waters ; in other words illumination in the light of
heaven, or darkness in the abyssmal depths. 6. The living crea
tures arise out of the earth in their order, and man was created
in the image of God ; but this may be as much a picture of the
fallen state and of resurrection from the earth as it is of the crea
tion of man in the natural order of development. This series is
conceived as the natural creation ; here the process ends and God
is said to rest from the work of creation.
It is in the series of generations that there is extension beyond
the sixth stage and these can now be considered in the same way.
1. The generations of the Heavens and of the Earth, man, the
garden, the trees, the serpent, temptation, sin, shame, and the
Seed promised. In these generations there may be said to be a
twofold incarnation, the natural and the spiritual ; in the first
the man is God inspired ; in the second the Seed with Life be
comes Incarnate. 2. Generations of Adam. In these the seventh
man, Enoch, inspires, breathes the breath of God and he lives
with God. 3. Generations of Noah. In these the problem is
good and evil, and salvation ; and these are expressed in the

INCARNATION, INSPIRATION, AND RESURRECTION. 475
design of the Ark, the creatures saved, their numbers, the time
of the flood, and other symbols that will repay careful study.
4. Generations of Noah's Sons. Here the story is how the earth
was possessed by the Sons of Noah ; or the manifestation of the
work of the Spirit of God, in giving to famiHes and nations their
portions in the earth. 5. Generations of Shem. In these there
is Httle illumination ; the leading conception is the Name and
names ; it is darkness, not Hght ; it is the womb of time, and of
words as names, and this is what may be expected in the Book
of Genesis. 6. Generations of Terah. Here the story is that of
the apostate nations of the East, dead to God and given up to
idolatry ; and as arising out of this grave there is seen Terah
and his family living unto God and seeking a better country.
7. Abraham, the man not numbered among the generations ;
yet he embodies all the past in himself ; the land and the promises,
the seed and the heir, are all with him. He is saved
and he brings salvation, and through his son, seed
and heir, all nations shall be saved and receive the
heavenly blessings. 8. Sanctification and consecration, suffer
ing and sacrifice, these are all revealed to men in the three
days' journey of Abraham and Isaac and all that took
place upon the mountain top in symbol. It is not necessary to
go over succeeding series, Noah to Isaac, and Shem to Jacob,
to indicate in what way the Spirit works out similar conceptions
as Faith, Hope, Patience and Love. It is sufficient to state that
Faith means Incarnation ; Hope Inspiration ; Patience Desig
nation in spiritual plan and purpose as guided by the Spirit ;
and Love, Manifestation, that is the Spirit involving in a man or
men this attribute of God as revealed to men in his Son the Lord
and Saviour of Men. This line of thought can be carried further
in the nation of Israel as suggested by the method of Christ ;
thus : 1. Abraham, Faith, Incarnation. 2. Isaac, Hope, In
spiration. 3. Jacob, Patience, Designation, special guidance,
the family, the nation, the kingdom. 4. Joseph, Love, Mani
festation, that is Divine Love in the Earth for its salvation. 5.
Moses, mercy, redemption from darkness, death, tyranny, and
the illumination that comes through law as light, through the
forms of things in the heavens, so that the spiritual may be con
ceived. The Fall from redeeming Love, unbelief, the rejection,
the Desert and Death. 6. Joshua, the pure of heart, the living
that survives death, as sign, and in symbol, possesses the land

476 INCARNATION, INSPIRATION, AND RESURRECTION.
and the promises of God ; but, like Terah, he also falls short of the
spiritual. 7. Samuel, the seer, the bringer of salvation to Israel
and the Kingdom. 8. The downfall of Israel, suffering, sorrow,
repentance, sacrifice, sanctification. 9. Ezra and Restoration ;
the new spirit for the spiritual Kingdom. It will be sufficient
from the historical standpoint to suggest the spiritual develop
ment thus : 1. The great prophets and the great spiritual In
carnation in history. 2. The minor prophets and their Inspired
conceptions as to the future and the coming of the Saviour-King.
3. The spiritual purpose and designs in the Gospels of Matthew
and Mark. 4. The Manifestation of the Son of God to the earth
and to spiritual disciples in the Gospels of Luke and John. 5.
The Illumination of the disciples by the Spirit at Pentecost and
the great spiritual redemption of the world. 6. Condemnation
and Resurrection into the spiritual life in the Roman world.
7. Salvation by the Son of God in that Divine Wisdom that sur
passes all the philosophies of Greece. 8. The sanctification and
consecration that follows from suffering and sacrifice. 9. The
lapse into Judaism in the Galatian Church, and the way of restora
tion. 10. The spiritual conceptions embodied in the Epistles.
11. The Epistles that describe in what way men conceive the way
of spiritual life and are transformed into the divine likeness.
12. The end of all Revelation is Christ and the redeemed, and the
vision of the new Heavens and Earth wherein righteousness
dwells. It will prove an interesting study to carry this Hne of thought
forward into the Christian age and kingdom, and to observe in
what way history will respond to these conceptions, as the law
of development. In the meantime it will be found more
suitable to apply the same line of thought to Christ as revealed
in the Gospels ; keeping in view the thought that all previous
Incarnations and Inspirations meet in Him as Jesus Christ ; and,
yet, in a true and real sense, He was in all the Incarnations
and Inspirations in Genesis and Israel, and all the Incarnations
and Inspirations of the Christian era. 1. In a sense not appfic-
able to any man He is the Incarnate Son of God. 2. He Inspires,
has within Himself the Divine Life, as Ideal Word. 3. The
Spirit was in Him in the perfection of the fulness of Divine
Wisdom. 4. He was the Love of God manifest in the Flesh.
5. He was Light and Truth, and in Him there was no darkness,
no sin. 6. He was revealed to men as Life, and as the Resurrection

INCARNATION, INSPIRATION, AND RESURRECTION. 477
to the life spiritual. 7. His Name is Salvation, the Saviour,
the King of Grace. 8. He sanctified Himself, and He was the
consecrated Sacrifice for the sins of the world. 9. It is His Spirit
that is given to bring about the restoration and reconciliation of
men to God. 10. It is Christ that is the spiritual life in the
soul of every one that is redeemed. 11. It is by His Spirit
of Truth, in the Light of His Word, that men receive spiritual
illumination and are being transformed into His likeness. 12.
And it is Christ that is the Head, the uniting Power, of all that
will become perfect in Him.
It is by this avenue of thought that the disciples of Christ are
invited to draw near to the supreme, uniting, revelation in the
mystery of the Incarnation. The disciple says, " I will turn aside
here and observe this wonder, a Bush ever burning and not con
sumed ; an Incarnation ever being manifested and operative,
and yet dying not " ; and as he draws near there is a Voice heard
saying, " Draw not nigh hither : put off thy shoes from off thy
feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." Be
hind this word, this voice, this fire, is God, the Father, the Cove
nant God of Grace to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all that they
represent. Let the face be veiled and the head bent low in rever
ence, for it is unseemly to stand up with brazen face in the presence
of God. It must be just so ; How can men suppose it could be
otherwise ? Is it reasonable to suppose that there is no limita
tion to the creature ? Can he eat the fruit of disobedience and
not suffer pain, sorrow and death ? Can he pass through the
fire and not be consumed ? Why will fooHsh men cherish the
conception that they have no limitations, and are not subject to
Divine conditions ? Is it so that they would be the rivals of God,
usurp His authority, take His Throne, banish the realm of light
and bring in the powers of darkness ; reduce the universe to
chaos, and reign in hell in the midst of ruins ? Men do not mean
these things, but they are so perverse in thought, so blind to what
is true, right, good and gracious, that they do not see the issues
toward which their conceptions run headlong. Thus far ; and
no further, is the Voice of God to men. " Serve the Lord with
fear, and rejoice with trembfing. Kiss the Son, lest He be angry,
and ye perish from the way when His wrath is kindled but a little.
Blessed are aU they that put their trust in Him."
Thus far ; no further. There is limitation and men ought to
try to understand where the barrier is placed so that they may

478 INCARNATION, INSPIRATION, AND RESURRECTION.
not trespass and be punished. It is much to be permitted to write
the Name and to say, this represents God, the Creator, First
Cause, Ordainer, Lawgiver, Righteous Judge, Fountain of Mercy,
Grace and Divine Love. It is not permissible to attempt to re
move the veil that enshrouds the Name, so that the Reality, the
Essence, may be disclosed to view ; this cannot be done, therefore,
what men do, they utter their own foolish conceptions, and thus
conceive God as like themselves. On the other hand disciples are
not sent empty away ; they are not told that behind the veil there
is an empty shrine ; and, it is not even whispered that God is
unknowable. The process of teaching by the law of development,
begins here either in darkness or light ; if the spirit of man is
agnostic, seH-centred, it is darkness ; if beHeving and teachable,
then there is light, inspiration, Heaven, the possible Ideal, a
spiritual Emanation, a Word Incarnate in the Invisible. God has
revealed Himself in Light ; the disciples think upon the vision ;
it is intangible, but to them it is as a Seed of Life, yet they cannot
observe the Life that is in the Seed. They have' inspired light
and life, and this is a great lesson to learn in this first visit to the
school of Christ. The Name is sacred ; Light, Life and Word,
are symbols ; they are looked upon, in spiritual vision, and it is
observed that there is in them power, growth, development, pur
pose, design, condition, even the seed that reproduces seed. This
also is an important lesson for disciples ; they require to conceive,
as well as perceive it, because if they do not they will lose a very
important link in the law of development. What was involved
in Light, Life, and Word, in purpose, design and condition, by
the Divine power, is made manifest in the Light of sun, moon and
stars ; it is a great universe that the disciples see, and in their
wonder they praise and glorify God because there has dawned
upon His creatures this realisation of the Divine power and wis
dom. Disciples are gifted with powers that are divine ; they can
think the thoughts of God as revealed in Nature ; they can study
conditions, designs, purposes, arrangements of the most complex
kind in their order ; and if they are successful in their efforts,
they will know the spiritual thoughts of God in their spiritual
order, be able to conform to them as law, and thus they also will
be as gods, wise and powerful, able to subdue nature to their ser
vice and to rule over the province of Earth granted to them.
This is conceivable as the natural order of development ; it is
where man is found under the Divine protection, as in a garden ;

INCARNATION, INSPIRATION, AND RESURRECTION. 479
and thus the question is whether he will conform to order and
obey law, or eat forbidden fruit, and try to walk through the fire
unscathed ; live in the spirit of truth, justice and love, or trans
gress in spirit, disobey, and find that the fruit is death ? This is
what men mean when they speak about the state of innocence
and the condition of the Fall ; to follow truth, justice, love, is to
remain in the Hght, in the blessed state ; to follow the lying ser
pent, to believe Hes, to do what is contrary to law, unjust, unloving
selfish, this is to fall, to sin, to bring about disorder, disease and
death. Men sinned and fell from the state of innocence ; that
state wherein the finger of God, by the Spirit, had written all His
laws ; and the result was as symbolised by Moses when he descended
from the Mount of God ; the law and all it represented was
shattered into fragments that could not be restored again. Men
might bring the hewn stones of earth to God in the mountain
that the laws might be re-written upon them ; but they could not
undo the past, and blot out the horrible vision of apostasy in the
worship of the calf of gold, the eating, drinking, and gambling,
which they had set before themselves as the ideal life. It is the
same story at Eden or Horeb, at Jerusalem or London, what men
have to face is that they have despised and lost the Ideal ; that
they would not believe in God's purposes, designs and conditions
of Hfe ; that they would believe and put their trust in mere pheno
mena ; that they would not patiently study order ; that they
would not conform to law ; in fact they would not be men in the
image of God, their preference being pleasure, wisdom and power,
even though they knew that this way, the self-centred way, led
direct to ruin and death.
Is not this what Christian disciples mean when they think upon
the condition of mankind ? They have got into this false posi
tion and cannot by any powers they possess restore themselves
to the favour of God, to peace, life and health ; therefore, it is
the great necessity at Eden and Horeb, at Jerusalem and London,
to turn to God, where he has come in His Grace and Mercy, His
Truth and Love, and as disciples try to understand in what way
the Gracious God is pleased to reveal to men the way by which
redemption and salvation are made possible. As can be seen
it is the question of the Incarnation that lies at the root of In
spiration and Revelation. It is not a question of goodness or
justice; it is not truth and error; it is can, and will, God be
gracious and merciful to sinful men ; and if he can and will, then

480 INCARNATION, INSPIRATION, AND RESURRECTION.
in what way, and by what means, will he be pleased to reveal,
condition, make manifest to men His Truth, Righteousness, Grace
and Love as Sacrifice ? Is the Bible an Incarnation of God ?
That is to say has God been pleased to cause it to be revealed to
men as the Inspiration of His Thoughts, Words, Purposes of
Grace, Manifestations of Mercy, Light of Spiritual Truth, Con
ception of Righteousness, Sin, Justice, Judgment, Purity, Good
ness, Kinship in Love ? Has He in a special manner been pleased
to identify Himself in Grace with mankind ; and in that special
Revelation, has he in the highest sense, as by a life and death of
Sacrifice, entered into conflict with evil and destroyed the demon
powers that were opposed to His Will ? Will the result of this
great Work of God be for the salvation of mankind ; and is this
the line of developed thought to be found in the Word of God ?
To change the aspect of thought, can it be conceived that what
is revealed in the Bible has been incarnated into mankind ?
Have men inspired the thoughts of God ; perceived His Designs ;
and seen the manifestations of His Wisdom and Grace 1 Have
they been illuminated by the Divine Ideals, the conceptions like
what is heavenly ? Have they been led to understand the Mercy
and Providence of God in the earth, His Truth and Righteousness,
Justice and Judgments ; and in the midst of the varied experiences,
of life, have they observed that, in the most wonderful manner
when men have been lost, degraded, disintegrated, lifeless, He
has intervened and there has been, time after time, renewal,
revival, resurrection from the dead 1 Have they a record of the
Life, Works, Death, Resurrection and Ascension to the Heavens
of the Ideal Perfect Man and Son of God ; and is it by Him, and
in His Spirit, that men are being renewed, revived and raised from
an earthly dead life to the true life that is heavenly ? Is not
this what the Christian Church claims to be, to teach and to
become ; and apart from all imperfections of thought, word and
deed, which all Christians deplore and condemn, is not this some
thing like what all Christians agree that the Bible is to them as
the Revelation from God for their salvation % If this Hne of
thought is applied to the individual Christian, would there follow
the same order of thought in so far as he could trace the develop
ment of his own natural, carnal, and spiritual life ? Analyse
the being of man to its ultimates, and the conception is that he
is an incarnation that he cannot define. He inspires thoughts from
nature and from the word of God ; he perceives purposes and

INCARNATION, INSPIRATION, AND RESURRECTION. 481
designs, beauty and wisdom, everywhere ; what he is in his body
and becomes in his soul is the manifestation of the incarnate ;
all his intellectual studies tend to illumination if they are in har
mony with divine order ; his conceptions are of truth, righteous
ness, justice, judgment, good, evil, life, death, and of resurrec
tion to a new life ; and, the gracious life that is linked with suffer
ing, sorrow and sacrifice, with all spiritual hopes for the future,
arethey not all finked with that Incarnation which is God, in His
Creation, in His Word, in His Son and in man ?
From the standpoint of individualism, self-centred empiri
cism, self asserting doubt and agnosticism, the Incarnation of
Christ, as the Saviour, the Captain of Salvation, the Sacrifice for
sin and the Conqueror of sin, disease, death and the grave, is
inexplicable. Men try to measure this great event, and the Christ,
by standards they set up, thus it is little wonder they get lost,
that in their words they contradict one another, and find them
selves in a region of thought they do not comprehend. To escape
from this false position it is necessary for them to try to reach
the universal standpoint of science and divine wisdom ; faifing
this they are doomed to go on wandering in the great desert of
Hfe ; and, it is because they will not believe the Word and the
Promises of God that they are thus doomed. From the stand
point of the method of Christ it can now be seen that Incarnation
is the problem for the advanced stage of development ; it is not
to be studied from the Earth and the earthly ; it is from the
heavenly places it has to be considered, and only heavenly spiritual
men are invited to give such a subject their consideration. If
carnal and agnostic thinkers do so it is at their peril ; they are
dia-magnetic to the subject ; thus in the nature of things they
walk in the darkness ; they do not possess faith as the light of
life ; and they are not in thought, and by education prepared to
consider what is so far beyond them. Incarnation is as a concept
the ultimate of human thought and of development as it can be
traced backward ; and as the ultimate it is not explicable ; it is
the one ; or, as the life in the seed ; and it is time for men to try
to understand the fact that they are thus limited ; and that against
this barrier all their intellectual efforts are doomed to failure.
As Jew and Christian in expressing the Name, Jehovah, try to
interpret the same into " I Am," or the " Self-Existing," so here
that which Incarnation embodies is Power, Life, and all other
principles of being, as abstract concepts that are. not explicable
HH

482 INCARNATION, INSPIRATION, AND RESURRECTION.
in human thoughts and words ; it is the fact beUeved, and there
it would seem the matter must rest. When the concept, the
Incarnation and the process or law of development from the
Incarnation, is considered, then it can be understood that the
appearance of the problem changes ; then man is seeking to
discover the image of God in the Word, Christ, Nature and Man ;
he has begun to perceive the method of Christ and thus the terms
Inspiration, Designation, Manifestation, Illumination, Sin and
Degradation and Salvation have meaning ; they are as Pillars of
Truth that point the way into the Temple of God ; they are steps
by which there is ascent to the Holy Place ; and, before the Holiest
Place, there is prostration and worship ; the results are so glorious,
so divine in wisdom, that is felt, understood, and spiritually
known, that no other explanation is possible than that given long
ago, " God was in Christ reconcifing the world unto Himself." . .
" In Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily."
It is not necessary to dwell upon the other terms here used to
express the ultimate and the law of development. The relations
of Inspiration to Incarnation is as that of Word to Thought, or
body to life, in the seed ; the growing body to its environment ;
the breathing, unconscious body to the soul. It is not anything
natural, tangible, visible, it is spiritual, ideal, arch-type as Christ
is conceived to be the Image of God. Just as men have failed
to define incarnation so they are unable to agree upon any theory
of inspiration, and it is difficult to see in what way they could
have been able to do so. The conception in theology of Christ
as the Arch-type of all things and the Image of God is a great
truth as an objective dogma, but here the thought is that Christ
is as the first spiritual link in the chain of development ; it is God
that is being inspired, breathed into Nature, the Word, Christ
and Mankind ; the Life Divine has begun the great Travail in the
natural, the carnal, and the spiritual, in creation and in the new
creation in Christ. It is Christ that inspires, and is inspired,
throughout the process of development ; and it is Christ, the
Perfect, in His Glory, that is conceived to be the end of Inspiration
in redeemed mankind in the image and Hkeness of God. The
Incarnation by means of development reveals God in Christ.
Inspiration takes up the problem at a new stage and the result
is the Inspired Word, the Inspired Christ, and men inspired by
His Holy Spirit. Designation, in other words the Spirit in
spiritual plan and purpose, in creation and in Grace, is linked

INCARNATION, INSPIRATION, AND RESURRECTION. 483
with the Ideal in Christ ; thus in the language of the New Testa
ment the Spirit, as Divine Wisdom, proceeds from God and from
Father and Son. In this realm of thought men are not called
upon to express their crude ideas about such conceptions ; it is
not assumed that they can at this stage of thought know by the
power of reason what is revealed ; these are the forms they are
permitted to use intuitively, befievingly, as the necessary cor
responding spiritual ideas seen and experienced in the Bible,
nature and man ; and, as men know, the argument from design
in nature is one that has received the careful study of great think
ers. What may prove to be important here is that as Incarnation
and Inspiration may be traced by the law of development, so also
Designation ought to be studied in the same order. To put this
matter in different symbols the development is that of the Spirit
in creation, in the carnal, in the Bible and history, in Christ,
in the great work of the Spirit at Pentecost, and in mankind ;
it is also the development of the spirit in a man ; only in the man
the relations are not studied intelligently until there is spiritual
consciousness and enquiry into the law of development by science
and Divine wisdom. From the stage of Designation by the
Spirit there is Manifestation as the Work of the Spirit ; and here
also the same order is followed by the law of development in
creation, in nature as perceived by experience, by the sciences,
in the Bible, and in the soul of man. The soul of nature, the
soul of the Bible and the soul of man, are terms commonly used
in Hterature ; they are great facts of experience expressing very
extensive fields of thought ; in fact they are summed up in psy
chology as a scientific expression, thus pointing out that mani
festation will rise to scientific order when the psychological
order of the Bible, nature and man are known. As can now be
seen the line of thought has consciously fallen into the old order
of development so often traversed under the forms of Force,
Life, Spirit and Mind or Soul.
The special object in view here is not to fall back into a road
so often traversed, but to view the subjects under consideration
from the standpoint of the Incarnation as a universal truth.
This pathway has not been departed from, and thus the remaining
symbol words may be considered in the light of this junction
where so many roads meet ; where nature may be said to be left
behind, and where man emerges to begin his career of enquiry,
of seeking after truth and righteousness. The term used here
H H 2

484 INCARNATION, INSPIRATION, AND RESURRECTION.
is Illumination as equivalent to the Intellect, as dealing with
abstract concepts ; and the operations of this power in man
has already received consideration. The conception here is
that man enters a dark world where only a little true light has
dawned upon his soul ; the child has been awakened to the con
sciousness that the universe in which he lives is apparently a
chaos ; and yet there is the intuitive feeling, the belief, that a
cosmical order exists if knowledge could be gained of the relations
and the conditions of the universe. In the words of Scripture,
" the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was
pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise,
she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto
her husband with her ; and he did eat. And the eyes of them
both were opened and they knew that they were naked." These
are the historical symbols used to illustrate this subject ; they
teach that illumination is desirable and not forbidden ; but, it
may be sought for in the wrong way and in the wrong spirit ;
with the result that the light will reveal what was not expected
and bring about conditions not desired nor desirable. What men
are beginning to discern is the true way of Illumination by science
and Divine wisdom ; they think that they have now fairly entered
upon the pathway to the light of Truth, and in due time they will
be able to understand the Divine parable. It is sufficient to
realise that the wrong way was taken, and thus the darkness
and ignorance for many centuries ; the dreary deserts of em
piricism ; the rejection of faith and reality, and that extraordinary
confidence and belief in phenomena and the ever-changing, that
exists even to this day amongst the masses of men. Had the
right way been taken and cherished there would have followed
the conception of order and the light of truth ; law would have
become radiant in light ; men would have seen that the universe
is the Temple of God ; that man, every man, is a shrine in that
Temple and that Christ is the Image of God and the glory of the
universe. Instead of this vision there came the Fall, chaos,
disorder, disease, disintegration, death and the grave ; a great
curtain fell upon the soul, and men are found outside Eden
with a hope in their hearts, but in a desert place, tilling the ground
so that they may live in pain, sorrow, and suffering.
When thinking upon the next stage of thought as Condemna
tion and Resurrection, it ought to be remembered that these sym
bol words are not all inclusive ; others are required, but these will

INCARNATION, INSPIRATION, AND RESURRECTION. 485
tend to express the conceptions of men as they circle around fallen
man, and the difficult question of the Resurrection. It depends
upon the attitude of enquiry whether the Resurrection ought to
be studied here or brought in after the eighth stage, that of sancti
fication and sacrifice ; but as the problem is one of development
it may be referred to here whilst still conceiving the thought that
it may be dealt with at a later stage. The conception here is
that man sinned against the Hght he possessed, and that the re
sult was moral death, or spiritual separation in the Divine life
from God the Creator and the Lawgiver, whose supreme law
was that of love as moral goodness. This state is that of Condem
nation ; it is being under the curse of sin ; it is to be doomed
because it is the condition that is contrary to the good and holy
Will of God. As related to man, it may be here stated that the
realm of Hfe within which there is the great struggle of good and
evil, is the soul and the moral world ; it is the moral world that is
destroyed by sin, and thus it is within that realm that the work
of redemption must begin. It is into this realm that Christ, by
His Spirit, comes and works unconsciously to the man ; and, it
is here that the Seed of the new spiritual Hfe finds the place within
which it may germinate and begin to develop. . This is where
spiritual Incarnation takes place ; that indefinable Spirit that is
Life Eternal. It has to be assumed here as Eternal Truth that
the Salvation and Sanctification, by Sacrifice, in Christ, are Real,
that they are involved in the Incarnate Seed ; that they are in
Inspiration, Designation, Manifestation and Divine Illumination.
Condemnation and Resurrection describe a realm of thought, the
moral world, but it is into this world that Grace and Sanctification,
Sacrifice enter, and they are the means by which there is renewal,
regeneration and restoration to the moral image of Christ. The
Hne of thought is that men are found in this sad condition, brought
about by their own choice and their own actions ; but, unknown
to them as to ultimates and order, there existed in God, Grace, as
favour and mercy ; and Love, as Sacrifice as the means of salva
tion from sin. The usual line of argument would be applied to
Grace and Salvation, to Sacrifice and Consecration ; they are ulti
mates, their order can be studied and the Divine laws of this world
of Grace understood. Indeed this is conceived to be the theme
of the Bible ; it is the Revelation of the Incarnation, Inspiration,
Designation, Manifestation, Illumination, the Conflict and the
Restoration of man to God by these Divine Powers. The great

486 INCARNATION, INSPIRATION, AND RESURRECTION.
difficulty in following the scientific order of thought is found here ;
the Heavenly Powers are at work in the darkness, amidst the
ruins of the moral world, in a Kingdom subject to the devil, or
evil powers ; thus the whole of the procedure, the campaign, the
struggle, betwixt evil and Grace, self and Sacrifice, seems to
be inextricably mixed up together. The chaos and the darkness
are felt everywhere ; thus to the carnal man the Bible is carnal,
the mere reflection of the thoughts and actions of men ; but to the
spiritual man there is in it light and life, grace, forgiveness, re
storation and Divine love. To the carnal man all things are
carnal ; to the spiritual mind there is in the Bible the carnal and
the spiritual ; and thus the great problem to be worked out by
the law of development is that of restoration to the favour of God
by Christ, the Gracious, through Consecration and Sacrifice, so
that there may come at last the Resurrection from the dead, the
spiritual life eternal, and that perfection which is to be found in
Christ. These are the thoughts involved in the great question of the
Resurrection from the dead ; it is quite true that it is concentrated
in Christ ; but it is Christ as the Objective study and Example,
as Man, at a definite stage in the order of development ; there
fore, what men are now called to study is the history of Resurrec
tion from the Divine stand-point of the Heavens, and not of the
earthly, as usually conceived by learned men. The masses of
Christian people believe this truth as they believe in the Incarna
tion and the Inspiration of the Scriptures ; they are in the docile,
child-like stage of experience, therefore, they have no difficulties,
the facts require the explanations, and the explanations cover
the facts, so it is all the same to them whether the Heavens re
volve round the Man Christ ; or Christ and the redeemed earth
have their orbit in harmony with all the movements of the Heavens.
To the scientific thinker the positions are very different ; thus
the questions that must arise are whether the phenomena, or order,
in the Heavens and earth fall in with, and are harmonised by, this
method of thought. It can be seen that Resurrection from the
dead is now a far-reaching conception ; it is the objective in In
carnation ; it is the Ideal in Inspiration ; the Divine Wisdom in
Designation ; the purpose involved in Manifestation ; and if
men would receive all this by Illumination, there would follow
salvation, consecration, and all the blessings that are in Christ
the Son of God. Resurrection in this sense has to be studied as

INCARNATION, INSPIRATION, AND RESURRECTION. 487
an ideal ; it becomes an ultimate principle, in fact it is the new
moral life that is in Christ ; in Bible language, it is the " new heart
and right Spirit ; " and it takes the place in the soul as the unity
of life, of the new creation in Christ that will develop into His
Hkeness. Resurrection is not only that which follows the Resur
rection of Christ from the grave of Joseph ; it is the concomitant
of the Incarnation and Inspiration ; and it is a realm in which
the order of development requires to be studied. This is the
meaning of the symbols in nature of the conservation and dissi
pation of energy ; of the seed dying and springing to Hfe again ;
of the caterpillar as a worm and as a beautiful winged Psyche, as
a butterfly. Resurrection is involved in nature in physical forms
and thoughts, and thus they are available for use in the spiritual
world when men understand, and can use them in harmony with
the law of development. It is in the Bible that the problem of
spiritual Resurrection requires special study, and it may be pro
fitable to try to conceive in what way this subject is revealed
therein. A few suggestions will be thrown out following the law
of development ; and if the line of thought is understood it will
not be difficult to trace what is here suggested. 1. There is the
Incarnation in the seed promised in Eden. The struggle betwixt
good and evil is seen in Abel and Cain ; the seed in Abel ripens to
sacrifice, as embodied Word ; and Seth is the new Hving seed in
the place of Abel. 2. Adam, Seth onward to Enoch, and he is the
symbol of Resurrection in the line of Adam, as at home with God.
3. Noah and the Flood ; it is death that reigns, but there is
Resurrection to life by the Ark in Noah and his family. 4. The
nations are dead to God, truth, righteousness, and the true wor
ship of God ; and, behold the Resurrection to Hfe is found in Terah
and Abraham. 5. This Hfe in Abraham is traced onward to the
death-like condition of the nation in Egypt under the Pharaohs ;
and, the Resurrection from the dead is in Moses and the Exodus.
6. This Israel redeemed from Egypt died in the Desert, and there
entered into the Promised Land, as the survivors, Caleb and
Joshua, Faith, Truth and Righteousness for salvation. This also
is a true Resurrection from the dead ; and it is here that the
symbolism, as carnal, is so wonderfully significant of the indwelling
Spirit of Christ in the soul as attaining to conscious possession of
the promises of God. 7. There follows the death of the Common
wealth under the Judges and the Resurrection in the Kingdom of
Israel under Samuel, when the spark of life was almost extinct.

488 INCARNATION, INSPIRATION, AND RESURRECTION.
8. The death o* Israel and Judah, and all that is represented by
the Captivity sums up the series of panoramic historical Resur
rections, and the last is that of the Restoration under Ezra and
Nehemiah. If this order is followed, it will be seen that there is de
velopment revealing what is meant by Resurrection ; it is incarnate
in the Seed and in Seth ; it is inspiration in Enoch ; it is designed and
explained in the Ark, Noah and the Flood ; it is made manifest
in Terah and Abraham ; the Exodus throws light and illumina
tion upon the subject ; in Caleb and Joshua, the land and the
conquest, there is reafisation ; in Samuel there is special inter
vention and a gracious salvation ; and the Restoration means the
Resurrection to the new order as spiritual ; and, to the fulfilment
of all these in the Resurrection of Christ from the dead.
In sketching, by these incidents in the Bible, the development
of the meaning of the word Resurrection it can be seen that the
line of thought runs parallel with the conception that at every
stage of development the powers of evil seem to have the ad
vantage over what is good and gracious ; but at one stage, that
of sacrifice, evil fails, because, as men would reason, it is incon
ceivable that pain, suffering, sorrow and self-sacrifice, could be
endured as the Will of God, and as in any sense in harmony
with His purposes for the well-being, the advancement and develop
ment of mankind. As men can see by the study of the Bible,
it is not a new truth, because it is the highest stage in the ex
perience of Abraham ; and it is, in intellectual form, the theme of
the book of Job. It is not necessary to enter into details
upon this point, it is fully conceived and explained in the New
Testament, thus the strange thing is that whilst men have known
and believed, they have, in practice, denied and sought to avoid
such an application of 'this great truth. The Resurrection to the
life of the Restoration becomes spiritually conscious in Christ as
Man. It is seen as an Incarnation of thought in the great pro
phets ; it is an Inspiration in the minor prophets ; it is revealed as
in spiritual Designation and purpose and Manifestation in Jesus ;
as Truth He makes this subject luminous to thoughtful men ;
as dealing with sick and sinful men and women, He is their Saviour
and Friend ; but with those who sin against grace and truth
He is as the Judge that condemns. He is Grace and Sacrifice ;
in all these He is perfect in all things, and thus He fulfils all the
past that has arisen out of Incarnation, bringing it in Epitome
up to the stage of Resurrection and of Glory ; thus as may be

INCARNATION, INSPIRATION, AND RESURRECTION. 489
seen, according to the constitution of the universe, He could not
be holden by death in the grave ; He had redeemed His brethren
from under the curse of broken law by conforming to, and fully
obeying, the Will of God the Father as Man and as Son of God.
If the law of development is understood, then that expression
as to the coming of Christ " in the fulness of time " is under
stood ; it was only then that His great salvation work could be
accomplished in spiritual power, and in harmony with the pur
poses of God and the law of development.
It will prove an interesting study to follow out this line of
thought as it can be discerned in the New Testament, and in the
. history of Christendom ; it is only necessary at the present time
to suggest in what way the development can be traced. The
Ascension of Christ is the link betwixt the visible manifestation
of Christ as Saviour and the new dispensation of the Spirit. The
Incarnation in the Spirit may be conceived as taking place during
the forty days after the Resurrection ; the Inspiration is the
coming of the Spirit at Pentecost ; the Designation the thoughts
of the Spirit as expressed by the Apostles and by Stephen ; the
Manifestation by the dispersion through persecution and the
formation of churches throughout Palestine. With the call
of Paul to the apostleship, there is the breaking away from Judea
and Judaism and the Illumination of the Truth in Christ by the
Spirit to the Roman world. The Epistle to the Romans sums up
the problem of man and mankind in the sight of God ; and in the
Epistles to the Corinthians, Grace and Sacrifice, Salvation and
Consecration are explained to the Roman world by the way of
Grace. The Epistle to the Galatians reveals the lapse into
Judaism and the way of Restoration to spiritual religion ; the
Pauline Epistles, such as to the Ephesians and Colossians, the
Spirituafisation of religion ; the Epistle to Hebrews and the pas
toral Epistles, what is conceived as spiritual transformation ;
and the Catholic Epistles as leading to the Book of Revelation, to
Christ, Perfection, and the new heavens and earth. With the
development in the Christian dispensation the conception would
run in this direction : Incarnation as the Gospel of Christ in the
Roman Empire ; Inspiration as received by men and women
through the preaching of the gospel. Designation is expressed
in spiritual thoughts by those who, moved by the Spirit of Truth,
tried to conceive what form and order the Church should take in
the world. Manifestation as discernible in the Church with

490 INCARNATION, INSPIRATION, AND RESURRECTION.
its organic visibiHty. Illumination with this may be linked
the learned fathers of the Church in such men as Origen, Augus
tine, and those known as great theologians. There followed a
long period of spiritual eclipse and darkness known as the dark
ages ; and it is here that the Church as a body was apostate
to truth and righteousness, to grace and sacrifice ; the ideal was
the Roman Empire, power and greatness ; the state of condem
nation and of estrangement from righteousness. From the year
1,000 A.D. onward there came to men the light of salvation, and
thus in Europe there was made manifest the period of persecution,
consecration and sanctification. The Reformation period speaks
of Restoration to spiritual ideals ; and to the spiritualisation of
the thoughts of men as compared with the dark ages. There
has followed transformation, great intellectual changes, sceptical
and ethical demonstrations, evangelistic movements and an
agnostic wave of thought that is ebbing away ; and what men are
being prepared to look for in the future is the great revelation
of Science and Divine wisdom, as these will be able to express
the Perfection and the glorv of Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour
of the World.
This it would appear is the line of thought men are required to
take if they would have done with empiric reasoning, confusion
of thought and wrangling about words and their meanings. It
must be realised and understood that men are limited creatures,
and that it is necessary they should recognise and respect their
limitations. The day for high-handed authority and arrogant
assumption of knowledge is past ; thus it will be well, if following
the order of science, men recognise the value of devout, humble,
patient study. The time has come when masters will confess
that they see how ignorant they are, and how far short
they come of the knowledge that is divine ; even masters
in physical science will confess that they have only begun
the steep ascent that leads to perfect spiritual wisdom ;
that in their own special fields of labour they have much
to learn, and that there lies before them regions of
thought, which in the days of their blindness they had not con
ceived to exist. As for the masses of men they are still in the
realm of experience and empiricism, of phenomena and the ever-
changing ; the veil into the heavenly places in Christ is to be
rent asunder from top to bottom ; and it is the vision that Christ
will reveal by His own method of thought and by His Spirit

INCARNATION, INSPIRATION AND RESURRECTION. 491
of Truth that men should be preparing themselves to receive.
As to the Resurrection and the fulfilment of the Promises of God,
the line of thought would be in this direction : that in some sense,
not definable as to manner, or time, there is a Resurrection as from
the dead imminent, and something like what was revealed in
Christ at His Resurrection will be the portion of those who love,
understand and obey Him. It is not conceivable at present in
what way this Resurrection will take place ; and it is not to be
thought advisable that men should express their thoughts dog
matically upon such a subject. As indicated by the Apostle
Paul, as taught by the Spirit, there may be conceived to be two
forms of this Resurrection ; the first being the conscious rising
to the spiritual life in Christ which is personal ; and the second
being that great Resurrection that may follow the law of develop
ment and cover the period of a thousand years. The attitude
of thought from the stand-point of Heaven, of science, and of
the method of Christ ought to be that of humble teachableness ;
men have not passed by this way heretofore ; symbols, words,
and realms of thought are being transfigured in the midst ; at
the present time men in their semi-conscious condition speak
of raising tabernacles to Moses, Elias, and many great reformers ;
but the Divine Voice is heard saying : " This is My beloved Son,
hear Him."

CHAPTER XVI.
PROBLEM OF PHENOMENA AND REALITY.
It will be recognised that the line of thought followed has this
peculiarity in it, the order is that of development, and yet,
even if studied from the heavenly standpoint of the method of
Christ, it seems to leave something undefined as well as that which
is conceived to be in its nature not definable. It is not easy to
express this something ; to seize this phenomenal, ever-changing
subtle fact, and to be able to say to it, " Let this mocking end ;
be resolved into fact, as reality ; or, if mere shadow and phantasm
then begone, and leave men at peace so that they may pursue
their studies without the haunting doubt that there may come
betwixt themselves and others that which as through an uprising
earthly mist will bring about darkness and confusion." To the
Christian believer the difficulty will not be found in the Incarna
tion, all that this means and all that will arise out of it ; faith
takes hold upon the Incarnate One, the Reality, the All in all :
and thus the process of thought by the law of development, intro
duces no new problem that can shake faith, cast hope down,
restrain and weaken patience, or destroy in the soul that love
of God so fully revealed to men in Christ. It is not the Reality,
the Ideal, the thoughts of the Spirit, or the works of the Spirit
in creation that suggest difficulty ; these are revealed truths
found to be in perfect harmony with Nature, Man and the Bible ;
thus they do not seem to require further study as truths worthy
of acceptance by Christian thinkers. The subject that requires
brief attention is to be found in that vague region of thought
that is psychical, and is being studied intellectually ; is said to
be phenomenal and ever-changing ; and yet science claims to
reign over this region, as well as over those realms where order
and law reign supreme. The difficulty is one that may be
removed by careful definition ; but, in the meantime, the risks are

PROBLEM OF PHENOMENA AND REALITY. 493
grave that misunderstandings will arise in that very place where
men require to be specially careful so that they do not beguile
themselves with words by not considering their meaning ; and
also lead others astray by what may be said to be false interpreta
tions. If the difficulty is considered in the light of the law of
development it may be that what is here suggested will be more
easily understood, and the cause of the confusion may be more
easily removed. The order of the development of Creation is
assumed, and the conception is that man, in his state of innocence,
is in the image of God ; not as perfect in development, but in the
order of his being. What man requires is training or education ;
and natural phenomena by nature, the soul, the intellect and the
moral nature, are the means under the guidance of the Spirit of
God to create within himself that which would be his own work
in harmony with the working, indwelling Spirit, not as yet
consciously recognised by man. The man let go his hold on the
hand of God ; he saw, desired, and aspired after the earthly ;
he disobeyed law, the law of his moral nature, and thus he fell
from his state of innocence. He lost sight of Reality, Ideality
and the Divine purpose ; the spiritual became subject to the
natural and the intellectual ; thus the earth, the atmosphere,
and the heavens became in him as phenomena, the ever-changing,
and the ideal of order and law was lost. This ideal is summed
up in the conformity of the life to law ; and as so often expressed
as the ruling thought in the life of Christ, this is knowing and
doing the Will of God. This is man's fallen lost estate, subjection
to phenomena, wandering in the desert ; in the natural realm
it is the former, in the carnal it is the latter, only both are sign
words to be studied so that what they mean may be understood.
The history in the Bible is that of phenomena and Desert, and it
has to be remembered that the Bible as the Word of God, has to
be studied in the light of this truth. There is one and only one
exception to this condition of mankind in the Bible, as revealed
in Christ; as expressible in modern thought, He was the, law-
abiding Man that lived a scientific moral, gracious life, and all
around Him were subject to phenomena ; it was within them,
it was in their atmosphere of thought, and it ruled the world.
It follows that since His day, in a spiritual era, men have,
during the centuries, been subject to phenomena. If other
words are used to express the same thoughts, and objective
phenomena are named experience and empiricism, it will be seen

494 PROBLEM OF PHENOMENA AND REALITY.
that the philosophical expression gives place to words used by the
common people as they understand these matters by their ex
periences, and by their reasoned conceptions and theories. The
point here is that the experiences of life, as gained by means of
the physical senses, by practical knowledge, by theologies, or by
philosophies, are all subject to the same realm of the phenomenal,
and they are not to be conceived as science. This requires to be
made very plain, and unless men are specially careful here, the
fear is that they will continue to wander in the desert of words,
and never be able to enter the promised land of science. It is
necessary here to utter a word of caution to the sons of science
who may also err and stray from the right path unwittingly ;
it is one thing to enter upon and to tread the pathway that leads
to science, but it is quite different to reach the goal of science
and to lay at the feet of Divine Truth that which has been most
carefully gathered by the way. It may be easy for practical wise
men to say that they have attained to wisdom ; for the theologian
to say that the queen of the sciences has accomplished the Divine
work of uttering the infallible divine word ; or for the philosopher
to say that the science of the sciences is now made manifest in
truth, and the unity and the harmony of the universe is known.
It is necessary for all these classes of men to lay this thought to
heart, that in some way or other they may have been deceiving
themselves in the past ; they have been in the way, or out of the
way, going across it, or wandering away from science with their
backs turned towards Divine Truth. Before they act so
foolishly as to crown themselves, or one another, with crowns
of victory, it is advisable that they should clearly understand
that they have absorbed the Divine light of truth to the state of
over-charge, so that it may become radiant and be in active
respondence and correspondence with the Divine thoughts.
These thoughts extend far and wide ; and it may be conceived
that they will be the cause of offence to those who think differently ;
they are not meant offensively, or meant to be critical, but simply
if possible to try to get to understand and explain the great
difference that exists betwixt phenomena, or empiricism, and
scientific truth. It may be that the simplest method of explain
ing what is here suggested is to take a few illustrations from the
realm of the physical sciences, and by this means the subject may
be made more plain. In all the studies of astrologers in the East,
in Egypt, and other parts, the realm was that of enquiry, of trying

PROBLEM OF PHENOMENA AND REALITY. 495
to understand the motions of the heavenly bodies ; but, as
astronomers explain, although these wise men knew much it was
not until Copernicus was taught, by the Spirit of Truth, that the
sun is central, and not the earth, did the reign of science begin
in the realm of astronomy. This conception caused a great re
volution of thought ; apart from the mathematical sciences,
this was the dawn of true science upon the earth ; and it was so
because men were taught that what is ego-centric, and earth-
centred, cannot be harmonised with Divine order and law. The
work of Newton in the discovery of the law of gravitation is
another example of the same truth, as related to the motions of
the heavenly bodies. The conservation of energy and the correla
tions of the physical forces ; the laws of chemistry and the analysis
and synthesis of matter as chemical elements ; and the solar
spectrum and spectrum analysis, are also illustrations of what
is meant in the physical realm. It is hardly necessary to point
out that the line of thought so carefully studied, and explained
by Dr. Darwin, in connection with the development of physical
life is a remarkable example of what is meant by science because,
as is well known,this revelation of truth has tended to revolutionise
the thoughts of men in all kingdoms of thought ; and thus
through the doorways of the physical world, men have seen the
heavens opened up before their eyes ; and some might even be
inclined to say that the earth and its phenomena are passing
away and what men look for is the heavens, or at the very least
a transfigured earth.
With these illustrations kept in view the step may now be taken
to find a cleavage betwixt phenomena and science ; that which is
doubtful, and cause of disputation, and that which is settled in
the heavens. In every case where science becomes regnant it
is discovered that there is Divine order and heavenly law ; the
seer turns his back upon men and their theories ; upon himself
and his own ideas ; upon ever-changing phenomena ; and he is
able to declare that this is truth ; the law of development ; the
thoughts of God ; it is by such discoveries, or revelations, that
false conceptions are overthrown ; and the Temple of God is made
manifest in Divine Wisdom. It does not follow that in the physical
realm of truth men rise to spiritual worship, but this they do
recognise : they have abolished within their special region of study
the reign of the devil, disorder and phenomena ; their faces shine
though they may not know it ; and the sciences illuminated have

496 PROBLEM OF PHENOMENA AND REALITY.
become radiant with the glory of light and law. The point reached
here is that when men are searchers after truth, they may or they
may not, be in the right way ; their faces may be to the light or
toward the darkness, but it is only when the phenomena of the
physical, the psychical, the intellectual and moral, the gracious and
self-sacrificing, are known, understood, related and correlated, as
order and law, that the realm of science is reached, and law, or
the Will of God is regnant in that realm of thought. It is a
strange thought to meet in this narrow pathway where light and
darkness are found side by side, that it is here that there .comes
forth to meet men the Angel that is Infallible ; but it will be ob
served that he shuns, as if by Divine instinct, that side shadowed
over with human wisdom, theology, philosophy or pseudo-science ;
to him they are all fallible, errant and sinful, thus he can only
walk where order and law are known and observed ; and he must
condemn all those who use his name as their authority for the
promulgation of their own opinions. It is not necessary to enter
into further details upon this complex subject ; the object in view
will be attained if men perceive that there is a line of demarca
tion betwixt phenomena and science, and that it is specially
necessary and urgent for all truth-seekers in the pathway of the
physical and psychical sciences, in religion and philosophy, to
reconsider their positions and judge whether their studies are
those of phenomena and empiricism, or of true science as making
known to men the thoughts, the ideals, the designs, the mani
festations, the order and the laws that are Divine.
This leads up to another thought of importance, as dealing
with phenomena, or what is within the range of doubtful ex
periences and of empiricism, as compared with order and laws
as reality. In connection with this subject it is becoming more
easy to discern why there is want of agreement as to what is
phenomena and what is real, and it will be found that the differ
ences take these forms : to children of experience what is sensuous
and tangible is real, and what is super-sensuous is as phenomena ;
to the scientific agnostic, who is really an empiricist, the super-
sensuous and the spiritual are as phenomena, and as unknowable,
whilst things of experience, order and law seem to be realities ;
to the philosopher and theologian it is the sensuous that is pheno
mena, whilst empiric systems of thought, the Unknowable, the
Absolute or God, are the Reality. It is the problem of pheno
mena that is so puzzling and the great difficulty with all thinkers

PROBLEM OF PHENOMENA AND REALITY. 497
is by what means they will get rid of phenomena and be able to
apprehend what is true and real ; what will abide and will not
change and vanish away. What is the Real and the True as
compared with the transient, and what is false or illusion ? The
man of experience is of opinion that the sensuous is real and true,
and that there is in what seems ever-changing that which abides ;
the agnostic philosopher says that truth, order and law abide,
and that the Reality that underlies all phenomena is the Un
knowable ; the Christian thinker conceives the thought that the
Reality is God, not as unknowable but as revealed and made
manifest in His Word and works. It is assumed by all thinkers
that the Real exists, but how their thoughts are to be brought into
harmony is not so easily discovered. The man of experience, as
empiricist says, it is in me as Man ; the agnostic thinker says it
is in Nature ; the theologian says, it is in the Bible and in God ;
and Christ says, it is in Man, in Nature, in the Bible, and in Him
self, as the Revealer of God. All this seems puzzling and thus the
better way is to take the problem to Christ, and ask His Spirit of
Truth for the necessary guidance.
As can be easily seen, each class resolves what is ultimate and
related ultimate into different names, or words, and until common
terms are agreed upon, how are they to understand each other ?
For example, the philosopher speaks of space, time, energy, and
matter as the great ultimates of thought ; the theologian thinks
upon the Real as God, the Ideal as Christ, the Spirit as Wisdom,
and creation as the work of God ; and the mystic conceives his
ultimates as Thought, Word, Design and Manifestation, and,
it can be seen that the words in each system of thought are equiva
lents ; they are all using different signs to represent the same
thoughts. If, then, these abstract conceptions are summed up as
Thought, Word, Spiritual Purpose and Manifestation, it might
be possible to advance in this study. The Real is conceived as
Thought in undefinable space ; the Ideal as W ord embodied in time ;
the Spirit as wisdom in purpose and design ; and the work of the
Spirit as manifestation and creation. This may be conceived
as the utterance of Nature ; it is as the physical and psychical ;
*nd to such a definition there may be agreement. Here man
comes upon the scene and claims to be heard, and what he wishes
to understand is in what sense the objective in Nature is going
to harmonise with the subjective in himself. The response of
the great mother, Nature, is to this effect that the new-born child
II

498 PROBLEM OF PHENOMENA AND REALITY.
is the fruit of her womb ; because the babe is Thought, Word,
Spirit in Wisdom, and the manifestation of the Real, the Ideal,
the Spirit and Creation ; it is the incarnation in space, the form
in time, the embodied spirit in design, and the manifestation of
the wisdom that is divine. In other words the helpless babe
laid upon the lap of a mother, or of nature, is the consummation
of the divine incarnation ; the ideal inspiration ; the spiritual
designation and manifestation ; and what this babe has come
into this world for, prepared and ready, is that it may receive
divine illumination and realise the divine image in itself. This
is where man begins his life ; it is the history of every man ; and
thus in a true and real sense every mother looking upon her new
born babe may become a Hannah, or a Mary, and magnify and
adore the Divine Wisdom, goodness, and love in making her the
mother of a divine son of God, an incarnation of all that is real
in space, ideal in time, spiritual in wisdom and marvellous in
bodily form. The babe lives ; it is the epitome of nature and it
is the microcosm of heaven ; men speak about miracles as some
thing which they are unable to believe as possible ; and here in
every home, at the bosom of every earthly mother, there clings
in utter helplessness, the miracle of miracles, an incarnate child
of God made manifest in flesh. Men may well be supposed to
shrink back in amazement at such thoughts. How can they be
true % or, if there is possible truth in such conceptions, then how
is it that during past ages men and women have failed to see the
halo of glory that shines around the head of every new-born baby ?
This is where fathers and mothers have failed to perceive what
was in the atmosphere of love in their homes ; the divine was
degraded to the earthly ; the earthly was dia-magnetic to the
heavenly, and thus the light, the life, the love of heaven could not
penetrate the fogs of earth and cause the heaven in the home to
be radiant and responsive to the heavens and aU that they mean
for mankind. What the child required was divine illumination ;
the light that would reveal order and become law ; but the
poor child had entered a dark world, and there phenomena and the
darkness were regnant. This is the old story that turns up
continually whenever the problems of light and truth, darkness
and error, are considered. Something has gone wrong somewhere ;
the environment of the child is not what it ought to be, a garden
and flowers, shady trees and ripe fruits, the flowing river and the
pleasant companions. The child is outside the garden, doomed

PROBLEM OF PHENOMENA AND REALITY. 499
to work the untilled land, to feel the thorns ; and thus, sweat
of brow, pain of body, sorrow in every conception, phenomena
and change, and apparently the end death and the grave. Yet
there is the instinctive feeling that within the garden, away
beyond these terrible swords and closed gate, true knowledge was
possible ; the tree of life could have been reached ; the way of
light and of life, of wisdom and of goodness, might have been
followed, and the issue would have been divine science and wisdom,
the light of glory and the life eternal. If men follow the method
of Christ and the law of development then they are sure to come
across this desert that lies under the curse ; as matter of fact
they have to pass through it ; many seem to get lost in it ; they
co ne to believe that it is their home ; they will not believe that
tho Son of the Father came out to seek for and save them ;
and that His Spirit is the Guide that leads men to the better land.
What is important to notice here is that this is the land of night
and darkness, of error, lying, and phenomena, thus the residents
of this desert place believe that night is day, darkness light, error
truth, lying the way of rectitude, that phenomena are real and
true visions, and that those who do not agree with them are fools
who are seeking after that which never did exist.
In the language of the Bible this is the fallen estate, or realm
in which the children of men live ; they have almost if not alto
gether forgotten their divine origin ; they have become degraded
to an inferior type of being ; thus they are not known as the sons
of God, but as children of the Earth ; and it is the earth and the
earthly they have cherished as their birthright. But this is not
the Divine Thought, Ideal, Purpose, or Manifestation ; thus it
is not the Divine Will that the children of the heavens should sink
into the miry depths of sin, and be lost ; rather, the Ideal and
Purpose extends through and beyond this perversion ; and all
that is required for the redemption of man, for his salvation, pre
existed before that sad fall which turned man into the wrong path
that led away from the garden of light into the desert of darkness.
It is usual to think of Christ as coming to men, in the seventh
and eighth stages of development, in Grace as Sacrifice ; but
here the comingmay be ante-dated in time and place ; He actually
came as Light into the darkness and the darkness did not com
prehend what His coming meant ; He came also bringing life
to the dead ; and as men can see, these were divine gifts that
men urgently required so that they might see their sad lo?t
Ii2

500 PROBLEM OF PHENOMENA AND REALITY.
condition, receive divine life, and thus begin anew the life of God.
It is not necessary to enter into detail here ; this Son of God is
the Incarnate Ideal, inspired with God and having in Himself
the Spirit of Wisdom and the fulness of Grace and Love ; thus
He reversed that Fall that had taken place in Eden ; He graciously
revealed to men Light and Life, Grace and Sacrifice, and thus in
Himself there was the reversal of evil, the revelation of truth,
the bestowal of Grace, the suffering and sacrifice for sin, and the
victory over death and the grave. If men could catch the music
of the heavenly ideal presented to them here, it is that of another
Incarnation of the Divine in Thought, Word, Spirit, and Manifesta
tion ; the Man Christ thinks the thoughts of God ; is the incarnate
inspired divine Word of God ; reveals the purpose and Will of God
to men, and in His life and death makes these manifest in the
Light and Love of God. This line of thought requires to be
carried forward by the law of development into the realm of the
Spirit; and what men find in the Acts of the Apostles and the
Epistles, is that the Spirit came in a special sense at Pentecost
from Father and Son, from the Real and the Ideal, out of space
and time, and actually, by means of Jesus Christ, as the Spirit of
Truth, revealed to men the Thoughts of God as Incarnate and
Inspired, and it was the Spirit that conveyed to men in plan,
purpose and design the thoughts that were involved in the old
Testament and in Christ. Here men require to pause and
remember this truth, that the Spirit did more than reveal the
truth in Christ ; there was also the manifestation of the new
creation in Christ, in the Word, and in those who followed Christ.
This is not the consummation of all things heavenly ; it is the
thoughts of the Father revealed in the Incarnate Son ; it is
the Incarnate Son fully inspired by the Spirit of God ; it is the
Spirit revealing all that was in Christ for redemption and salvation,
for reconciliation, peace and blessing to mankind. What the
Spirit leaves with men in the New Testament and the Church is
a Seed, and a babe ; not the spiritual babe, but a spiritual Seed
in the babe, that would one day be made manifest as the new
creation in Christ. This is a form of truth that men are not
prepared to receive ; they say that the Church is this babe grown
into manhood ; the Spirit seems to suggest that the Seed has
been in the womb of time, and of Christendom, for about 2,000
years ; that the birth-pangs are being felt ; and the real question
is not about the Church, but are the birth-pangs really over,

PROBLEM OF PHENOMENA AND REALITY. 501
and is the Christ of the Spirit born into the earth ? This is indeed
a problem worthy of careful consideration. Is this 2,000 years the
" little while " referred to by Christ on the eve of His departure %
Has the period been that of weeping and lamenting among the
faithful, and of rejoicing in the world ? Has the woman been in
travail in sorrow and pain ; and is the hour come for the safe
delivery of the child ; the forgetting of the anguish of the past
and the joy and the rejoicing that the Man in Christ is born ?
If this is so then let men be full of hope and expectation, for at
any moment the wise men may be heard inquiring, Where is the
Child to be born ? The shepherds of the flock of God may see
the open heavens and the angels, and they will be saying, one
to another, " Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this
thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known
unto us."
This is the strange vision that has arisen out of this quest in
search of reality, with the hope of discovering and dispelling
phenomena ; reality is within men and around them on every
side ; that is to say, they are spiritual and do not know it ; and
they wiU beheve that the phenomenal is real, true and abiding.
God is All and in all ; men live, move and have their being in
God ; and apart from God there is no being, no reality. God
is Spirit ; that is to say Spirit as Thought, the Unseen, even as
the spirit in man is unseen. They that worship God truly must
do so in spirit without any visible form, because true communion
is spiritual in spirit ; and to come short of this ideal is to remain
carnal and earthly. What science and Divine wisdom teaches h
that the Divine, God, can as Spiritual Thought become Incarnate ;
that the Incarnate can become the Inspired ; that the Inspired
can conceive the Purpose of God in all its designs ; and that
Purpose can be expressed as designation and manifestation. This
creation is nature, man, the Word, the Bible ; it may be com
pared to a newly born babe that embodies in itself all the thoughts
and revealed wisdom of God ; and it is that babe that has to be
illuminated with the spiritual light of truth and righteousness, so
that it may not only be the image of God, but become like God in
what is known as being or character. Through sin, the mark
was missed, the road was lost, and the light of day was changed
into night ; there came into the realm of man's being error instead
of truth, wickedness instead of righteousness, selfishness instead
of rectitude, and justice and hatred instead of love. What thii

502 PROBLEM OF PHENOMENA AND REALITY.
means is that the lost children wandering in the darkness got
into the habit of calling thoughts and things by wrong names ;
they called darkness light, evil good, and thus confused spiritual
order ; and when divine order was lost then the light of law
vanished away, and men knew not where they were, or whither
they were going. There was not a new creation, what took place
was like spiritual dia-magnetism. It was a change in magnetic
relations of spiritual thought ; the earthly eclipsed the heavenly ;
the fog thickened and became condensed matter, and thus men
were found wandering in a land anti-spiritual and dia-magnetic
to the Heavens. The result here is the fact that all men who
rest in the natural, the sensuous, the empiric, the agnostic, the
anti-spiritual, in any form, are convicted of being ignorant as to
heavenly truth ; they are perverted in their thoughts as to
righteousness, and they are trying to live in a false world, wherein
unity and harmony cannot be found. If they would wish to study
by analogy what the true position of all such thinkers is, in truth,
then they require to visit a chemist and receive instruction as to
the meaning of a chemical solution, where all the atoms seem to
be mutually repellant ; they will not become magnetic and
crystallize ; and not until the necessary conditions are fulfilled
will they change their polarity and. becoming mutually attractive,
take the crystallized form. They may be compared to the
citizens of London in a December fog ; the atmosphere is impure
and chaotic ; there is no sun, moon, or star visible ; the light
is as darkness ; wise men know not where they are going, and
the ignorant wander they know not whither, because all that
they can discern is that here and there they perceive a gas, or
electric, light, that makes the fog more visible and palpable. To
carry the analogy a stage further, these men in their helpless con
dition are still declaring that they are going to build a great
tower that will reach the heavens, and thus bring about a true
and abiding unity and harmony among men of all nations. The
position is awfully absurd ; wise men are found asserting that
two-twelfths of life and being are equal to the whole ; that what
they know, or wish to know, by the agnostic way, is all that is
worth knowing ; and they have become so audacious as to declare
that men who have wider conceptions of life are superstitious
fools who require to be converted to agnosticism, so that they may
become like themselves lights in a dark world. It is waste of
time to listen to such men ; there are many great discoveries they

PROBLEM OF PHENOMENA AND REALITY. 503
require to make, such as that they are living in a realm of per
verted intellectualism ; they are in the darkness and not in the
light ; that they are lost and need to be saved ; that they know
not from whence they came, nor whither they are going ; that
they are spiritually blind and require that their eyes should be
opened, and that their fractional conceptions of life are incom
patible with reason, science or wisdom. These are serious thoughts
and they are meant to be so ; if these men sav that they alone
possess the light of the true life, and will assert that other men
are in the darkness ; that their visions of life are mere illusions,
then it seems necessary to raise a word of protest, and tell them
that it is full time that they give full consideration to their own
. position, lest the day prove that they are wrong in their thoughts,
that their light may be as darkness and their life that which may
lead to the second death.
This is something like the vision of truth that is dawning upon
men ; they have to think more truly, reason more righteously,
study more carefully what order and law mean ; they require
to get to the right side of science and wisdom, and at least try
to conceive and understand what men really mean when they
talk of God, Incarnation, Inspiration Divine Purpose, and Spiritual
Manifestations. When theyrealise thatsin is perversionof law ; that
the sinful state is that of a spiritual desert ; that it means chaos,
pain, disease and death spiritual ; then, it may well be imagined
that they also will be glad to clutch the strong Hand that will
save them from the raging waters ; and that they will rejoice
when they are pulled out of the mire and set upon the Rock of
Ages. There is no truth like the blessed truth that Jesus is the
Saviour of the world, the Fountain of cleansing from sin, and
Salvation ; that as Christ He consecrated Himself even to suffering
sacrifice and death, so that He might be known by men as the
High Priest, Intercessor, and Mediator with God for men. True,
all these words are symbols which spiritual men must study with
care so that they may understand them. Men do require to get
away from false conceptions as to what such signs mean, and this
can be done by the study of the Bible in the light of the method
of Christ, by studying the birth, life and death of Christ, and by
being taught the true meaning of these things by the Spirit of
Truth. It is useless for men to say that such truths are in heaven
and far above, or in the depths and beyond the reach of men.
What the Spirit of Truth is teaching men is that they are incarnate,

504 PROBLEM OF PHENOMENA AND REALITY.
or may become so, in every soul ; that men may inspire them even
as they breathe the fresh air ; that the purposes and designs
in Christ are revealed ; and that the new creation in Christ is a
manifested realisation not to be questioned.
Such thoughts as these, men may think, are laden with theology,
or over-burdened with philosophy ; there is an apparent strain to
reach up to them ; they are very complex and thus not easily
understood. Men may be conceived as peering through prison
bars on the outlook for the rays of the rising sun, and as wondering
what like the sun will appear when it rises beyond the hills and
sheds down upon the earth the blessings of heaven. There is
another aspect of this story with which this book may fitly close ;
and it is a word for the little children in Christ, whether their
years on earth be few or many. The children are not likely to
understand the great vision of truth that has dawned upon men
through the law of development ; naturally they think in simple
forms of thought, and thus the great revelation in biology, and in
life physical, will be beyond them. This story, however, is one
that has been full of interest to children through past ages ;
and if it is told them upon the lines of the Christmas stories found
in the Bible, they may be able to perceive how very wonderful
these stories must be. It is Christmas time once more, and to
children this means the coming of Santa Claus, gifts, love,
re-union, sunshine, joy and gladness, in the happy home. In
London the demon of fog has blotted out sun, moon, and stars ;
there does not seem to be any heaven left ; thus heaven is sought
for in the home with father and mother, brothers and sisters and
friends. In the West End there is wealth and prosperity, and the
earth appears to blefs thos3 who have been successful ; in the
East End there is poverty and hunger ; men, women and children
are ready to perish , and thus for them the Christmas season threat
ens to be miserable indeed. The angel of love and of kindness
descends upon the great city ; the West sends gifts of wealth to
the East and there is joy and gladness. Away in the country there
is no crisp frost or fairy falling snow, the demon fog reigns every
where, and because he reigns supreme there are stories of ship
wreck and train-wreck, and thus over the whole land there isa
gloom as if a death-pall rested upon it. Away out in the great
world, and specially in the Far East there is the sad sad story of
men opposing each other in deadly warfare, and it is amidst
scenes of carnage, brutal force, and murder, that the children of

PROBLEM OF PHENOMENA AND REALITY. 505
God prepare to keep Christmas. The poor old earth seems to
weep in her sorrow, because her children are so evil and
unhappy ; thus she seems to be in a fit mood to join in the cry
of some of her degenerate sons, and to be ready to declare that
the Bible Christmas stories are only suitable for children, and
that they do not fit in with the facts of experience. As men
know, the earth has for many centuries cherished a grudge
against the heavens ; she never could believe in fairy stories,
and perhaps it was for this very reason that she was in such a bad
temper at the Christmas season of 1 904. The King of the Heavens
did not pay much attention to the groanings and complainings
of mother earth ; it was the children He was interested in ; and
thus He sent His servant down from the Heavens to earth to
encourage them in the dark days, by giving them a fresh inter
pretation of the Christmas stories. Who the angel was sent
to and how he told the story is not of importance ; what is of
great importance is that the King loved and remembered His
children on the earth, and that he was so kind as to send them
a special message, with His love, to all who would listen. The
message was to this effect, that the children were to read the
stories over and over again ; that they were to try very much
to understand what the stories truly mean, and when reading
the stories to ask special guidance and help, so that they might
glow with light, be quickened into life, and thus speak with the
children, as if the King were present and His Own Voice heard.
The angel said that it was necessary the children should separate
the stories in the gospel of Matthew from those in the Gospel of
Luke, and try to think upon them as if they had been told to
different people, at different times, and thus, though so near each
other in the New Testament, and joined together in the birth of
Christ, as really belonging to ages that were different in their
methods of thought, aspirations and surroundings.
The angel when explaining the meaning of the stories was
specially careful to state that the children should not trouble
themselves by trying to understand what was meant by the
opening story about Joseph, Mary, and the babe Jesus, the
Saviour, whose mission to earth was to " save His people from
their sins " but to try to grasp with both hands the great truth,
that in a very wonderful sense this baby is verily " God with us."
And just as Joseph " thought on these things," and was obedient
to the heavenly vision, so all God's children may follow his

506 PROBLEM OF PHENOMENA AND REALITY.
example, resting assured that in due time the necessary explana
tion will be given. It is not so very strange that when children
think upon the story there appears to be something mysterious
about it, that cannot be explained ; every child that thinks upon
the past out of which he came, finds the same mystery in his own
life ; it is a great vision of faith to believe that every little child
comes from the heart of God ; and that if it will listen to the angel
voices and not get lost upon the way, the road home leads straight
to God and to the home of all God's children in heaven. When
the Baby was born the world was awakened to the fact that a
great event had taken place ; the king of the country, the wicked
Herod, was told that three wise men had come to Jerusalem
after a very long journey, and that they were enquiring about
the birth of the King of the Jews. They had seen in the East that
His star had risen, and so they were come to lay at His feet their
offerings, their worship and their love. They were astonished
that no one knew anything about this Child ; that king, scribes,
priests and common people were so earthly, so much taken up
with their own affairs that they had no conception of what the
Heavens were doing on their behalf. The one thought that moved
the king was that he ought to take steps to prevent this Child
from growing up so that He might not claim the throne ; and as
for priests and scribes, they were so busy in various ways, in their
own interests, and in that of their parties, that the utmost they
could do was to tell the king and the wise men where the Child
would be born ; but they had not the slightest inclination to go
even so far as Bethlehem to give their King a welcome. The
strangest part of this story is not the cunning and hatred of the
king, the callousness of scribes and priests, and the indifference
of the people, it was that three strangers had seen what they did
not see, had perceived what they did not perceive, and had
undertaken such a long journey because they had seen a rising
star. These men were known as astrologers, the students of the
stars in the heavens ; and if it has to be confessed that they were
not scientific observers, they were devout, God-fearing men, who
were searchers after truth, the wisdom that is divine, and thus
to them there was given the revelation they could understand
about the things that are in the heavens, that earthly minded
men do not value or understand. There is something mysterious
about these wise men ; they are not common mortals ; they
are like what in myths are styled demi-gods ; that is to say thev

PROBLEM OF PHENOMENA AND REALITY. 507
live and breathe, think and act, they fulfil a mission and fall
asleep ; they waken up again wondering whether their work is
done ; or if the King has awakened them to go out again to carry
His work forward another stage in history. These wise men by
all the marks that surround them belong to the land of Chaldea ;
they have the Abraham mark upon their foreheads ; they are
under a Divine Call, and thus when the hour of Destiny comes
they move, they must try to discover the birth place of the Child
that is born to be the King of the Jews and of all the earth. It
is this mysterious inward spiritual impulse that has to be recog-
cognised to understand the three wise men and their mission, and
the story of Abraham leaving Ur of the Chaldees to seek a better
country. Thoughtful children, from this suggestion, will under
stand how in the story of the wise men it is necessary in thought
to go away back so far in the world's history to find out whence
these wise men came from when they went to Jerusalem. But it
is necessary to try to conceive the thought that these demi-god
men lived during the days of Abraham, and that they visited him
when he was living on the plains of Mamre, and conversed with
him about the Star, the Child and the King. They thought,
and Abraham thought, the one they meant was Isaac ; they were
satisfied that the promises of God were fulfilled ; they went into
the cave of Machpelah, fell asleep, and their sleep lasted for
nearly 2,000 years. Children know that one of the gifts of God
is immortal youth ; He gives to these favoured ones the Water
of life ; thus they change not ; they may sleep and become
unconscious, but when they awaken, they remember the past
and their mission. It was in the days of Herod that the wise
men were awakened by the King of Heaven to go forth upon
their mission once more ; upon the way they heard of all that
had taken place during the long interval ; and they were specially
interested in the story told by one Balaam, the son of Beor, a
fellow country man, who had seen visions of God, and specially
this one that " there shall come a star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre
Shall rise out of Israel." " Out of Jacob shall come he that
shall have dominion." With the story of the visit to Jerusalem,
and Bethlehem children are familiar ; what they wish to know
is where the wise men went after they saw the Child and to what
country the Spirit of God guided them, so that they would not
return to Herod. This again is where the story becomes very
interesting ; they were supposed to have gone to the sea coast *

508 PROBLEM OF PHENOMENA AND REALITY.
they found a ship that took them to Europe by Asia Minor and
Rome ; they wandered through Italy, over the Alps to Switzer
land, sailed down the Rhine until they came to Cologne, and it
was there that they were told that they must hold that country
for their King, the Lord of the Star and Sceptre. They were
wearied with their journeyings, they lay down and fell asleep ;
and is it not recorded in the annals of Cologne that they have
rested there for nearly 2,000 years ? This is how God trains His
children, boys and girls, men and women, angels and demi-gods ;
they depart to go to their own country, but it is always by "another
way," and they have never fully understood the way by which
God has been leading them. The strangest part of this story
is yet to come ; the story has gone abroad that these wise men
have been awakened once more ; they are not in Cologne ; even
newspaper interviewers cannot discover them ; it is said that
men have seen them in Wales ; they are expected in London ;
but what the wise men are anxious about is the Star, the Child,
the Sceptre and the Kingdom. They know that the Child is born
that is going to reign over the world in Peace, Truth, and
Righteousness ; they wish to bring this news to mankind ; it
may be that they arrived in London during the days of fog at
Christmas ; that they found shelter and kindly welcome, but
it has been suggested that there is no visible Star or Child, no
manger and no mother, thus they are saying to every child they
meet, " Have you seen the Star or found the Child ? " If not, then
go home, search diligently in the lowly humble heart, and it may
be that there the Baby will be found., the Star will be radiant,
and the King will be regnant.
This is something like the story of the coming of the wise men
from the East, the Star and the Child ; in a sense it extends
beyond the one told in the Gospel, but this also is required to
teach the children how very wonderful is the Divine purpose of
Salvation, and under how many forms of thought, and dis
pensations, or ages, God carries on with unwearied patience His
work of Salvation. As the line of thought has been suggested
in the story of the wise men it is not necessary to give such full
explanations in the story found in the Gospel of Luke. As can
be seen, the setting in which the story is found is much wider
than Chaldea and Judea, it is found within the great empire of
Rome ; and the way back to God is by a different route. The
story is for all the spiritual children of God in all nations ; and it

PROBLEM OF PHENOMENA AND REALITY. 5091
is in the light of this thought that the story requires to be studied.
True the story has a starting point from Judea and Jerusalem :
and Herod, Zacharias, Elizabeth and Mary, are the signs that
children are called upon to study. It is in the little world of
Judea, in the Temple at Jerusalem, in the home and heart of
Mary, with the angel visits, the thoughts of God, the divine
inspiration, and hymns, music, and singing, that the story begins ;
and surely all this is what children would expect, if they were to
try to picture for themselves in what way God would be pleased
to reveal Himself to His children who were waiting, wearily
waiting for His coming. It came to pass in those days of waiting
that the great world power, as centred in Rome, under the
emperor Csesar Augustus, gave to the children of God the sign of
its earthly domination, by the command that there should be
a census made of all peoples subj ect to Rome, and that all should
become subject to Roman taxation ; and it was so pre-arranged
by the heavens that the decree of the emperor as to earthly
supremacy, and the coming of Jesus should coincide and be-
entered upon the same earthly record. As already suggested,
this story in Luke is not to be studied by children in the same way
as the story about the wise men ; that story deals with Whence I
and When ? this with Why 1 and What ? the former is Hke
a parable, an earthly story with a heavenly meaning ; this is.
more Hke a psychical allegory, and thus it is higher in order with
more wonderful spiritual teaching. As parents and teachers.
know by experience, there is a stage of development in the history
of children when the questions, Why ? and What 1 are ever upon
their Hps ; and thus it is not to be supposed that this Christmas
story would be an exception to this rule. How are the Httle ones.
to learn their lessons if they are not permitted to question their
teachers ? and how are teachers to know the thoughts of their
pupils if they do not entice them into the way of truth, where the
light shines so softly, and where the Hfe is so buoyant and joyous ?.
Why did the emperor send forth that decree throughout the
earth ? It was to let men, women, and children understand that.
they must obey their master. Why did Joseph and Mary go to-
Bethlehem ? It was that they might be numbered and taxed with
their own people. Why was Jesus born just at this very time,
go that he might be numbered as a member in the empire of the.
world become subject to it, and yet become the Seed of a world
wide dominion 1 Why was he born in a stable, laid in a manger,

510 PROBLEM OF PHENOMENA AND REALITY.
amidst such companions, and not in Rome in the Palace, or in
Jerusalem in the Temple 1 This is where His Hfe on earth begins,
and this is in harmony with the first blessing ; although so poor,
He was very rich, and this was the way He took to reach His
inheritance, the Kingdom of Heaven. All these things may seem
to be commonplace to children who do not know any better',
but to the angels in Heaven it was the most wonderful thing
in the universe ; and they were so overjoyed by what had been
Tevealed to them that they could not keep the story a secret
among themselves ; they asked permission to carry the glad
tidings to their friends the shepherds. This was why the angels
came from heaven at the Christmas time, and what they told the
shepherds has been the wonderful story repeated from age to age
as the greatest of all wonders. Even children can understand
that a proud wicked emperor, an ambitious priest, a clever scribe,
or a covetous earthly man, could not see angels ; they Hve in a
dark world where they are guided by their bodily senses ; thus
such men could not see the face, or hear the voice of an angel.
Even the wise men of Chaldea could not see what the shepherds
saw, for them there was no open heavens, only a Star and a Child ;
but looking away beyond Star and Child they could see the King
and His Kingdom, and this was very wonderful in men who
Hved within the realm of astrology. Children will do well to
remember this lesson ; not that men can cause stars to rise, or
the heavens to open their doors and windows, but that certain
definite conditions are required within the hearts of children that
they may be able to see stars and angels. It is to the meek and
the humble, the thoughtful and the obedient, that angels come ;
and the shepherds in the fields of Bethlehem were the men prepared
by God for the wonderful event that took place on earth 2,000
years ago. If a child could be supposed to be so fooHsh as to say
that he did not believe an angel could appear and speak to him,
this would be a proof, not that the angel could not come from
heaven but that the poor child was so earthly and perverse that
he was unfit to look upon an angel, or listen to his voice. The
difficulty is not with the heavens and the angels, it is with tho
foolish children who Hve in such a dark world with such a thick
veil betwixt themselves and heaven that the angels cannot come
near to them and God's glory shine around them. But children
who fear and love God are not always prepared for angels' visits
they require to he under the influence of the heavens to be calm

PROBLEM OF PHENOMENA AND REALITY. 511
and peaceful, quiet, and worshipful, and even then it may
weU be supposed that they would be afraid. The Christmas angel
comes to banish fear ; to utter glad news full of joy for everybody ;
because the message from the Heavens is that the Saviour, Christ
the Lord is born ; and the sign of His power and glory, is that He
is born and to be found lying in a manger. This is the strange
story that the angels have been teaching men, women and children
every Christmas season since that time, that it is the lowly
and humble that are to be exalted and made truly good and great ;
and those who are proud, self-seeking and exalt themselves will
be cast down. This is where the Heavens outwit the earth
and gain heavenly victories ; because the earthly ones never
can apprehend the truth, that it is by this very way of lowliness
and sacrifice, that there is salvation and lordship. One angel
can carry the message of salvation, and reveal to men the signs
to prove how the way of Hfe and blessing may be found ; but
when it comes to be a question of praise and thanksgiving, then
the air is filled with a heavenly host, saying, " Glory to God
in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men." This
is the revelation of God's purpose of Salvation ; it has been made
manifest to men ; the children know why God has given to them
the Happy Christmas season ; and it is in Christ, the Babe in the
manger that they can discern the glory of God, the way of peace,
and in what way good-will can be made manifest over the whole
earth. The angels have gone back into Heaven ; the shepherds
do not watch over their flocks at Bethlehem in the silent night ;
the Saviour Christ the Lord became a Man, and cruel wicked men
put him to death upon the cross ; He was laid in the grave and
some men say that they do not believe that He came out of that
grave, was seen by His disciples, and returned to the Heavens.
They say the story is one for children ; but as for them, they
know better, because they have never seen angels, heard of any
one that has been raised to Hfe again, or come back to tell men
what they have seen in that better land where they dwell in the
land of Hght among the holy angels. Poor children ! how foolish
and sinful they must be to cherish such thoughts ; they make
themselves and others unhappy ; they do not give glory to God ;
they do not cherish the spirit of peace ; they cause strife and
trouble instead of good-will among men ; and thus they do not
understand their true position. Is it true that because such men
speak so loudly, and assert their thoughts so persistently, that

512 PROBLEM OF PHENOMENA AND REALITY.
they are right and God wrong ? They cannot see beyond the;r
senses, or their false reasonings, or the day in which they live ;
and God lives throughout all the ages. Christ the Lord saves
through all dispensations of grace ; and the Spirit of Truth is
ever revealing the truth in Christ as men are able to receive it.
The time has come to turn away from all such conceptions ;
from the fogs and the darkness of unbelief ; and the self-assertions
of self-glorifying men ; it is far better to be on the outlook for the
wise men that came from the East ; to enquire if there are any
shepherds who have heard glad tidings from angels, to Hsten
intently if there are any voices of praise and thanksgiving any
where throughout the earth. Let the children be on the outlook
for the things that are to come to pass in these days ; it is befieved
that the wise men have not only seen the Star and the Christ ;
the story has gone abroad that the day is near when there will be
as many Christs in the world as there are dew-drops on the grass
in the dawn of morning, and that when the Sun is risen in His
glory, they will all become stars radiating and reflecting His glory.
Let all the shepherds and all the children return to Bethlehem
praying for the open vision and a sight of the glory of the heavens.
Let the Marys ponder these thoughts in their hearts ; and let
every mother, who receives a baby from the Heavens, remember
that every such little one is a star and a child of glory, a Christ-
child, a wonder and a miracle that surpasses aU the wisdom of
wise men. Let all men everywhere turn their eyes heavenward,
and let them join the " multitude of the heavenly host praising
God, and saying, Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth peace,
good-will toward men."