  Produced by Al Haines. MYSTIC IMMANENCE THE INDWELLING SPIRIT BY THE VENERABLE BASIL WILBERFORCE, D.D. LONDON : ELLIOT STOCK WORKS BY ARCHDEACON WILBERFORCE SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS, 3s. net. STEPS IN SPIRITUAL GROWTH. 3s. net. THE SECRET OF THE QUIET MIND. 3s. net. THE POWER THAT WORKETH IN US. With Portrait of the Author. 3s. net. POWER WITH GOD. 3s. net. THE HOPE THAT IS IN ME. 5s. SERMONS PREACHED IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. First Series. 5s. SERMONS PREACHED IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. Second Series. 5s. SANCTIFICATION BY THE TRUTH. 5s. NEW (?) THEOLOGY. THOUGHTS ON THE UNIVERSALITY AND CONTINUITY OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE IMMANENCE OF GOD. 5s. THERE IS NO DEATH, 1s. 6d. net; bound in White Parchment, 2s. 6d. net. MYSTIC IMMANENCE. THE INDWELLING SPIRIT, 1s. 6d. net; bound in White Parchment, 2s. 6d. net. THE HOPE OF GLORY, 1s. net. LIGHT ON THE PROBLEMS OP LIFE. 2s. net. THE AWAKENING, 1s. net. ELLIOT STOCK, 7, PATERNOSTER Row, E.C. All rights reserved FOREWORD [Transcriber's Note: Foreword missing from source book] CONTENTS MYSTIC IMMANENCE Infinite Immanent Mind "Whose is this image and superscription?"—ST. MATT. xxii. 20. The question, "Whose is this image and superscription?" is suggestive, first, of the deeper meaning of a harvest festival, and that is the recognition in public worship that the material universe is the visible thought of God. What is the principle by which everything came into being? Physical science has now reduced all material things to a primary ether, universally distributed, whose innumerable particles are in absolute equilibrium.[#] The initial movement, then, which began to concentrate material substances out of the ether could not have originated with the particles themselves, and we are logically compelled to acknowledge the presence of a Creative Intelligence exercising volition. That Creative Intelligence exercising volition, that Parent Mind, has impressed His image and superscription upon all that is—upon the life and beauty of the animal world, upon the marvels of the vegetable world, the prolific fruits of the earth, the gorgeous flowers with which church and altar are decorated to-day. Whose is their image and superscription? Whom do they manifest? Whence come their life and their beauty? To understand the deeper meaning of a church decorated with fruits and flowers we must have risen to some conception of the Invisible Intelligence that is realizing itself in concrete phenomena. Everything in the physical world is what it is by reason of a spirit-organism or mind-form which relates it to the Universal Mind, and the Universal Mind is that Divine activity which St. John calls the Word, the Logos, the Originator in creative activity. "Through every grass-blade," says Carlyle, "the glory of the present God still beams." It does, and therefore a harvest festival suggests, not only the obvious duty of profound thanksgiving to a bounteous Father—that goes without saying—but also a reverent mental recognition of the intense nearness of God, that "Earth's crammed with Heaven and every common bush afire with God." [#] Cf. Troward's Edinburgh Lectures. So the first thought of to-day is that the world is ruled by Mind and not by Matter, that "there is a soul in all things, and that soul is God," that in the true philosophy of Creation every atom, every germ, has within it a principle, a life, a purpose, a degree of consciousness appropriate to its position in the scheme of things. That consciousness, that mind, differs in magnitude in its different manifestations; higher in the insect than in the vegetable, higher in the animal than in the insect, and occasionally there is evidenced in the animal a shrewdness which implies observation and close reasoning. For example, recently I was at Christchurch, in Hampshire, and was conducted by Mr. Hart over his unique museum of birds, representing the life-work of an expert and enthusiast. He told me many most interesting things, and amongst them the following: It is well known that the cuckoo makes no nest of its own, but places its eggs in the nest of one of the smaller birds. Now, in order to deceive the bird amongst whose eggs the cuckoo intends to place its own egg, the cuckoo causes the egg it is about to lay to assume the colour and markings of the eggs of the small bird who is to be the foster-mother. Mr. Hart showed me over forty cuckoos' eggs, each one coloured to imitate the natural egg of the bird whose nest the cuckoo had commandeered. This had been done with extraordinary accuracy, from the bright blue of the hedge-sparrow's egg to the dull olive of the nightingale's egg, and even the peculiar markings, like notes of music, of the yellow-hammer's egg, had been imitated. Consider the extraordinary mental power implied. The cuckoo has first to decide which nest she will lay under contribution. She has then to study the colouring of the eggs in that nest; then, with some amazing exercise of the creative power of thought, she has to cause her unlaid egg to assume that colour. She then lays it on the ground, and, carrying it in her beak, carefully places it amongst the eggs of the little foster-mother. What an intense, ever-present reality is the Infinite Mind! What a glorious thought it is that the Eternal Purpose is everywhere! When the heart grows faint and the hands weary, how sustaining it is to know that there is no chance, no mere machinery—everywhere purpose, intelligence, evolution, love! Now, obviously the operation of the Originating Mind in all that is differs in quality of self-realization in proportion to the receptive capacity of the matter in which it is immanent. It is not sufficient for us intellectually to affirm the immanence of God in a blade of grass, but it is for us to carry the thought higher, and not to rest until we have realized that Divine immanence is in a far more intense degree in ourselves. Man is the crown of Creation, and when our Lord took that coin in His hand and asked the question, "Whose is this image and superscription?" He was stimulating thinkers to consider man's unique place in the cosmic order, and man's true relation to the Universal Originating Spirit; and when a man has really found that, he is well on his way to the region of understanding and realization. These Pharisees were no obscurantists. Some of them were Essenes, some Therapeuts, some Mystics; and when the Lord asked "Whose is this image?" their minds would automatically have reverted to the profound declaration of human origins in the Book of Genesis: "So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him." They would have realized that the question was a suggestion for a thought-excursion. It was. It was a hint at the transcendent truth of the elemental inseverability of God and man. It was an appeal to a Divine fact in man; it was a reiteration of His dogma, "The kingdom of Heaven is within you"; it was a reaffirmation of the truth that nothing can ever really change the central current of man's purpose, and regenerate man's nature, but the clear recognition of his dignity, his responsibility, his potentiality, as a vehicle for the manifestation of God. If they had brought to Jesus some utterly degraded specimen of the human race, as they brought Him that silver didrachma, and asked Him the question, "'Whose is the image and superscription' on this man?" (and they virtually did this when they brought Him the woman taken in adultery) there could have been but one reply—"In the image of God created He him"; and that which God has once impressed with His image, though that image may be defaced and overlaid, is His for ever, and the impress can never be obliterated. You remember Tennyson's words:
"Stamped with the image of the King." The thought touches human life at many points, theological, personal, practical. The theological lesson from the human coin stamped with the Divine image is one of the utmost importance as a stimulus to spiritual growth. It is the transcendent twin-truth of the Eternal humanity in God, and the Eternal Divinity in man; that inasmuch as all that is must have pre-existed, as a first principle, in the mind of the Infinite Originator, and as the highest of all that is, so far as we at present know, is man, the archetypal original of man must be in the hidden nature of the Infinite Mind; and therefore man, however buried and stifled for educative purposes in the corruptible body, is in his inmost ego indestructible, and inseverably linked to the Father of Spirits. God needs man as a vehicle for Self-Manifestation. "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth His handiwork"; but only man—mental, moral, volitional man—can declare the nature of God and manifest the qualities of God. As God's power is revealed in the wheeling planet, God's nature is revealed in the thinking man. Man is therefore the special sphere of the self-manifestation of the Originating Mind. We humans are personal spirits who have proceeded from God into matter, and "the image and superscription" of the Creative Sovereign Power, whence we came, remains for ever indelibly impressed upon our inmost ego, and must work in us, and will work in us, until at last it unites our conscious mind fully with God. Inasmuch as humanity is the chosen vehicle of the self-expression of the moral qualities of the Originating Spirit, humanity will, through much initial imperfection and through many changes, evolve upwards and onwards, until at last it shall be complete in Him, and the preordained purpose of the Originating Spirit be completely fulfilled. He who believes this must be, theologically, a universalist. There follows the personal lesson. The moral evolution of humanity is not automatic, it is not generic, it is not impersonal. It is individual, in accord with the personal equation of each one. Though it is a necessary philosophic truth that our true ego, our imperishable centre, is in the universal, and not in the imprisonment of what we now call personality, still we shall never lose our individuality, we shall always know that "I am I and no one else." "With God," said De Tocqueville, "each one counts for one," and each one must work out his own salvation. You and I will not drift onwards in a vague, impersonal stream called "the race." Each one of us is a responsible life-centre in which God has expressed Himself, and we have to become moral beings, and a moral being is not machine-made—he must be grown; he is the product of evolution, and for the purpose of evolution he must emerge triumphant from resistance, as every flower, every grape, every grain of corn in this church has emerged triumphant. In other words, he must be exposed to what, with our present imperfect knowledge, we call evil. It is just here that the analogy of the coin comes in. Man is a composite being—he possesses an inferior animal nature, a lower region of appetite, perception, imagination, and tendency; in other words, to carry on the analogy used by our Lord, there is a reverse side to every human coin. Don't overpress the analogy, but note that to every current coin there is a reverse side, and when you are looking at that side you cannot see the King's image. Generally on the reverse side there is some device representing a myth, or tradition, or national characteristic. For example, on the reverse side of this denarius, or silver didrachma, that they brought to our Lord, was a representation of Mercury with the Caduceus. Hold in your hand an English sovereign. Think of our Lord's analogy. Let the mind wander back into the distant past, and consider the ages during which that sovereign has been in the making: the precipitation of the chemical constituents of gold in prehistoric times, when the planet was emerging from the fiery womb that bore it; the forcing of the metal into the cells of the quartz under the incalculable pressure of the contracting, cooling world; the ages upon ages of concealment in the depths of the earth; the discovery of the metal, and all that was implied; the toil of the miners, the smelting, the refining, the alloying; and, at last, the stamping with the image and superscription of the reigning sovereign. And once stamped in the Mint it is an essential item in the economy of a great empire. It is legal tender—no man may refuse it in payment; at his peril does any man clip it or take from its weight. The image and superscription of the reigning sovereign gives it its dignity, its sphere of usefulness, even its name. Now turn it over; you can no longer see the image of the King. What is this on the reverse side? Another device, an heraldic design, symbolical of the traditions and myths of the nation; a transition from the real to the illusory, a representation of St. George fighting the dragon. "Whose is this image and superscription?" Whose handiwork is this? Examine closely the reverse side of a sovereign. Close to the date you will see some minute capital letters. They are the initials of the talented chief engraver to the Mint in the reign of George III., the designer of both sides of the coin which Ruskin said was the most beautiful coin in Europe, the English sovereign. Who is the engraver who has stamped the reverse of every human coin with the mythical designs of our human imagination, the pleasing illusions of our natural self-life, the device of our outer and common humanity, the conditions of our flesh-and-blood existence? Do you really believe that this was done by some powerful enemy of the Most High? The mythical, demonized objectification of what we call evil is greatly in the way of clear thought. St. Paul is careful to point out, in Romans viii., that there is only one Originator, and He can never be taken by surprise. Paul says man was "made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by God." The same omnipotent hand that stamped the King's image stamped also the reverse of the coin. The device on the reverse side of the human coin is the device of human heredity, the qualities of temperament, the race-memories which belong to the region of animal life-power. We have had "fathers of our flesh," the Apostle reminds us. They have transmitted to us, by human generations, tendencies appertaining to corporeal life. There is nothing to deprecate in these tendencies in themselves; they are all within the majestic lines of nature. Obviously, if we concentrate all our attention on the reverse side of the coin, if we persist in imagining that our animal nature is our real self, we forget that the King's image is on the other side. We can only see one side at a time, and while we gaze at the reverse side, and the other side is hidden, doubt, depression, pessimism, sense of separateness from God, are the inevitable result. What is the moral of the analogy? It is this: Do not always harp upon the worst side of yourself. We are bound to become what we see ourselves ideally to be. The higher your ideal of yourself, the more rapid your spiritual growth; see yourself ideally as Divine, and you will become it. Remember, you cannot see both sides of the coin of yourself at once. When you are discouraged by the prominence of the animal nature; when you are prone to give way to appetite or temper, or despondency, or self-detestation, instantly force yourself to turn over, as it were, the coin of yourself; "reckon yourself," as Paul says, "alive to God"; forcibly detach your attention from the reverse side; think intensely into the other side. Say, "I am spirit, I am the Lord's; His image is stamped on me, His life is in me. His eternal purpose is my perfection, my true ego is His Divine Life; I am a personal spirit, thought-begotten by the Father-Spirit in His own image and likeness, made subject to the vanity of human birth, that through the bondage of corruption I may attain to the conscious liberty of the glory of Sonship. This body is not I, not the real I." The thought, when persisted in, becomes creative; it restores the equilibrium; it helps the at-one-ment of the two sides of the coin, the human and the Divine, making, as the Apostle says, "of the twain one new man." The same rule applies as to our judgments of others. Remember, we cannot see both sides of the human coin at once, and therefore our judgments are literally one-sided. This they are in both directions. The people we admire are not deserving of all the worship we give them; the people we dislike are not as black as we paint them. Some people live with only the reverse side visible, but always there is the other side of the coin. I have never honestly tried mentally to turn over a human coin of this description without finding the King's image often defaced and covered with accretions, but always there. If asked of the most degraded, "Whose is this image?" I should not hesitate in my reply: "The qualities, potentialities, of Spirit are here though hidden." The conclusion is, Never despair of anyone, and never despise thy brother man; always believe the best of other people; be sure that the name of the Eternal Father is impressed on their true ego. That Divine name is ineradicable. In the end it will save the worst, though, it may be, "yet so as by fire." The practical lesson scarcely needs enforcement. "Whose is this image and superscription?" asks the Head of humanity of the human items that make up the race. A recognition of the fact that the real ego in every man is Divine would be the golden key which would unlock the most puzzling of the social problems of the age. The prominent evils which degrade humanity would pass away before it, and in private life love would reign instead of harsh criticism. If the answer were clearly and intelligently given to the question, "Whose is this image and superscription?" and it were recognized that humanity is God-souled, and that the Originating Spirit is the self-evolving image in all, it would not only mitigate our personal judgments of others, but it would break down the prejudices which now divide us. The regenerating transforming mission of love would knit souls together, there would be no "Eastern question," for, in God, there are no Greeks, Turks, Bulgarians, Russians, Austrians, there are only men. The universality of the Divine impress, the certainty that every individual life-centre is a manifestation of God, should convince us that "one is our Father and all we are brethren." To know that humanity is God's child, though it has a side weighted with crime, brutality, and degradation, should stimulate us, first, always to see the best side in people we dislike, and, secondly, to associate ourselves with all ameliorating work for humanity in a vast Empire city like London. The human coins are sometimes for a while lost, and it is our duty to find them. Our Lord once drew a vivid picture of a search for a lost coin. He implied that it was the Church's fault (for the woman in that parable is the Church) that the coin was lost. He suggested that we should light a candle and stir up the dust from the unswept floor of our distorted social conditions, and actively, eagerly search for His God-stamped human coins till we found them. To keep others and to make others happy is the road to personal happiness, that is implied in the conclusion of that allegory of the lost coin. The successful searcher is represented as calling upon friends and neighbours to rejoice with her, for she has found the coin which was lost. To manifest love and help to make others happy is the highest credential for the future life beyond, for "Heaven is not Heaven to one alone. Save thou one soul, and thou mayest save thine own." Spirit, Soul, Body. "A man's heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his steps."—PROV. xvi. 9. A profound philosophy underlies that inspired maxim. Man is a threefold being, composed of spirit, soul, and body, and this proverb indicates the true relation which should exist between these three functioning centres in each individual man. Soul is the region of the intellect, where a man does his conscious thinking. Soul "deviseth man's way" and plans details. Spirit, the innermost being, the immortal ego, Infinite Mind differentiated into an individual life-centre, when not grieved, controls soul, and of this control soul is sometimes conscious, but more often not conscious. Body, the external part of man's being, the association of organs whereby the spirit comes into contact with the physical universe, ought to obey soul, controlled by spirit, and then all is well. That is the ideal relation between the three functioning centres in individual man. Spirit is the seat of our God-consciousness. Soul is the seat of our self-consciousness. Body is the seat of our sense-consciousness. In the spirit God dwells; in the soul self dwells; in the body sense dwells. The at-one-ment is the realized equipoise of these functioning factors in the complex mechanism of the individual man. The body, with its senses, subject to the soul with its conscious mind. The soul, with its conscious mind, subject to the spirit which is Divine. And when a man knows this inter-relation, and gives spirit the pre-eminence, he does not sin. Disharmony, or, as we call it, sin, when it is mental, is the assertion of self, seeking its life and its happiness through human intelligence only. Sin, when it is bodily, is the assertion of animal appetite, seeking its life and its happiness through the senses only. Harmony lies in the soul-self, of which the conscious mind is the functioning power, seeking its life and its happiness in obedience to spirit, thinking itself into conscious oneness with spirit, the inmost shrine of our complex nature. Then, as Soul will be no longer functioning from the plane of material conditions, Body obeys Soul, and thus, though a man's conscious mind "deviseth his way," Spirit "directeth his steps." There is a restful universalism in this analysis, because spirit is the true man. Spirit is "the kingdom of heaven within." Spirit is "the Father within you." The one ever-lasting impossibility to man is to sever himself from immanent spirit. A man's soul may have so wrongly "devised his way" as to be derelict; the nightmare of life may have been so heavy that a man has not recognized that the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven within him are committed to him. He may not yet have awakened to the truth that God's intensity dwells within him; he may even plunge into animalism; he may pass out of this life still in his dream, but, though he knows it not, whatever his mind may devise, the Lord, Immanent Spirit, will still "direct his steps" to the ultimate issue. Into whatever educative school a human being may pass. Spirit goes with him. "If I go down into Hades, Thou art there; if I take the wings of the morning and fly to the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall Thy right hand lead me." And where Spirit is, there is Love—tireless, patient, remedial, effective, and "at last, far off, at last," every wandering derelict human being will "arise and go to its Father." I know that you cannot make another person see what you see yourself, but I long to encourage all to believe it, to test it, to live it, to proclaim it. Some think I err by ceaselessly reiterating the same truth. I cannot help it; it is the ideal I am striving to attain myself. I must give it to others. As Whittier said:
I desire to encourage all to aim at conscious identification with Spirit, and to bear witness by the peace it brings into their lives.
The Collect, Epistle, and Gospel for the eighth Sunday after Trinity help the attainment of this mental attitude. The Epistle touches upon a question of importance to those who are learning the glorious truth of the Immanence of God. Do not let concentration upon your oneness with Infinite Spirit Immanent hinder your consciousness of Infinite Spirit Transcendent—that is, external to you. The Lord Jesus, knowing that the human mind can only cognize in terms of human experience, gave us the name "Father" to help us mentally to personify Infinite Spirit Transcendent—that is, external to us. The Lord Jesus was intensely conscious of the Immanence of God, He called it "the Father in Him," but He also prayed definitely to the Father outside Him. St. Paul suggests that when we pray to undifferentiated Spirit, who is God outside us, we should use the familar [Transcriber's note: familiar?] affectionate title "Abba." The Lord Jesus is only recorded to have used this title once, at the moment of His deepest agony, and it is in suffering, physical or mental, that you most want it. It is a declaration of your estimate of God, and therefore important, because the ability of Divine Love to help and soothe you is conditioned by your appreciation of Him and your mental attitude of receptivity towards Himself. So in those times of deepest darkness, when He seems most absent, it is well to address Him by the tenderest name, and say, Abba, Father. "Abba, Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me." Let us consider the Collect. How it redeems our Liturgy from its leaven of Augustinianism! How it silences the obscurantists who accuse believers in universal restitution of going beyond the Church's teaching! Is this collect an authoritative formula of the Church, or is it not? "O God, whose never-failing Providence ordereth all things both in Heaven and on earth." In other words, a man's conscious mind may wrongly "devise his way," but "the Lord will direct his steps." Saturate your mind with that thought. Speak to the universal Spirit outside you and individualize Him. Say, "Abba, Father, whose never-failing providence ordereth all things both in Heaven and on earth, though my heart may be 'devising my way' wrongly and tortuously, I know Thou wilt 'direct my steps' into Thy purpose." In that attitude of mind you know that God will be in whatever happens to you. This gives you a great freedom in worshipping Infinite Spirit. You feel yourself emancipated from all traditional conceptions, and you feel in yourself the aspiration of Faber when he wrote:
It is well to face the principle underlying these words of the collect: Abba, Father, "ordereth all things both in Heaven and on earth." Then, as His will is man's sanctification, the logical conclusion is an absolute ultimate universalism. The absurdity of the paradox that man by wrongly "devising his way" can ultimately defeat the predestined purpose of Infinite Originating Mind is self-evident. Sophocles and Plato taught that omnipotent purpose governed the apparently accidental phenomena of life, and the writer of the book of Proverbs says plainly: "A man's heart may devise his way," but "the Lord will direct his steps." That is the inspired statement of the problem. Milton thought the problem insoluble, and describes the fallen angels exercising their minds on "fixed fate, free will, fore-knowledge absolute," and being "in wandering mazes lost," I really think it only needs common sense. Infinite Mind expresses Himself in individual human life-centres that He may realize His own qualities and have millions of separate entities to love and, after education, to love Him. Is it conceivable that He would so overdo His creative work as to produce beings with a superior will to Himself capable of resisting Him through the endless ages, and putting His purpose to complete confusion? Is it not obvious that He would only give them enough will to train them? The will of man, such as it is, has its clearly-defined sphere. It is with his will he "deviseth his way," and that "devising his way" is the test of his life; but he can no more escape the ultimate purpose of Abba, Father, than a material substance on this planet can escape the law of gravitation. Obviously we have volition, we have the power to "devise our way." This must be so for two reasons. First, Originating Spirit desires to realize His highest qualities in man. Therefore, man must have liberty to withhold his co-operation or he would be only an automaton. Mechanical moral qualities would not be moral any more than your watch is moral. To receive and to distribute the nature of the Divine mind, not mechanism, but mental acquiescence is necessary. "The heavens declare the glory of God," but they do it mechanically, not morally. The solar system is a perfect work of mechanical creation, but the planet cannot leave its appointed orbit. Man can. If man obeyed God, only as a planet revolves in its orbit, he would "declare the glory of God," but he would not be a man; that is, he would not be a mental centre in which the Originating Mind could realize Itself. Then, again, without being free to disobey, we could never become moral beings. The antagonistic pressure of non-moral inclinations challenges our highest self, and as we make, within our limited sphere, correct choice between alternatives presented, we are built up Godward or the reverse. But inasmuch as Infinite Spirit and His vehicles are elementally inseverable, and "Abba, Father, ordereth all things," though wrong choice, and the selection of lower standards, will occasion pain and unrest, and delay the evolution of the Eternal purpose, and grieve the Spirit within us. Creative Spirit is Omnipotent, to defeat Him is impossible. He will ultimately, in ways of His own, "direct man's steps" without turning him into an automaton. When once you perceive that man in his inmost nature is the product of the Divine Mind, imaging forth an image of Itself, you are certain that no negation can finally frustrate the evolution of the Divine principle which is the inmost centre in us all. It must ultimately blend with the ocean of uncreated life whence it came, and whither from all Eternity it is predestined to return, for Infinite Mind has declared of His human children, "Ye shall be perfect." Of course, we must ourselves "open out the way." In that obligation lies the function of our Will and our responsibility for using the Keys of our own Kingdom of Heaven within. As Browning expresses it so grandly in "Paracelsus":
Those who use the Keys of their Kingdom of Heaven know, and "open out the way." And for those who don't know, though they blunder terribly and suffer in the blundering, the Immanent Spirit "directs their steps." Do you say this implies fatalism, submission to impersonal destiny destructive of independence and self-reliance? The Gospel negatives the suggestion, and demonstrates that this "ordering all things" is not the despotic overrule of an irresistible law, but the immanent influence of an omnipotent Providence ceaselessly suggesting to the Soul of man. The Lord Jesus said: "I can do nothing of Myself, the Father in Me doeth the works." Was that fatalism? No, the Lord Jesus was consciously working out the thoughts, the ideas of the Immanent Spirit, and the Epistle says; "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God; and if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ." "Joint-heirs with Christ," that is, that the same spirit that was in perfection in the Christ is germinally in us, and though we may not yet be conscious of it, we are co-partners in the same splendid inheritance. Again, the prevalence of evil is to some a stumbling-block. They say God is all, and all is God, and God is Love, resistless, resourceful, perfect. He "ordereth all things both in Heaven and on earth," why, then, this discord between the heart that "deviseth the way" and the Lord who "directeth the steps"? why all this misunderstanding? Have we not learnt the answer? It is an interesting study in human psychology to note how thoughtful men will stumble over the answer. I am always repeating the axiom: Even God cannot make anything except by means of the process through which it becomes what it is. He is making moral beings. He can only make moral beings by means of the process through which a moral being becomes what he is, and that is, by having the opportunity of being non-moral. Therefore Infinite Spirit, who can never make a mistake, is responsible for the conditions under which what we call evil becomes possible, because by those conditions alone can men become moral beings, and these conditions underlie the three functioning centres in the complex mechanism of human beings. That is the inner meaning of that metaphor about gathering grapes from thorns and figs from thistles in the Gospel. The thorn and the thistle, the grape and the fig, do not signify separate types of men. If so, the force of the metaphor would fail, and Necessitarian Calvinism would be established. The thorn and the thistle are obeying God's own law of heredity and affinity by producing only thorns and thistles; they would violate the law of their being if they produced grapes and figs. It is an allegory of our separate selves, of that complex nature which differentiates us from the immanence of God as subconscious mind in the vegetable and the animal. Each man is the soil in which the "soul-man" and the "body-man" produce thorn and thistle, and the "spirit-man" produces grape and fig. The opposing functioning centres in the same individual strive for the mastery, and from this very striving emerges the perfected life of the Child of God, and that is where the possibility of what we call evil comes in. Our own limited minds teach us that God's thought-forms, imaged forth from the womb of Infinite Mind, could never attain Self-consciousness unless associated with matter in some definite form. That association with matter involved body with its "thorn and thistle" tendencies, which tendencies are the training-ground of the individual, and this training will be complete when the "spirit-man," through the "soul-man," controls the "body-man," and he can say with Paul: "I keep under my body and bring it into subjection." As vehicles of spirit we have the capacity of living by a definite effort and purpose the higher life, the fruit-bearing life, and, as we live it, we weaken and starve the thorn-bearing life. "We are debtors," says the Apostle, we, who have received the Keys of our own Kingdom of Heaven within—"we are debtors not to live after the flesh." No one needs the pulpit to tell them what is the life "not after the flesh." Every purposeful encouragement of the Divine nature within, every clinging to principle in time of temptation, every masterful conquest over bodily desires by forcing the mind away from sense impressions into recollection of the Divinity within, every quenching of anger by a kind and gentle word, ministers to the fruit-bearing life and withers the thorn. In one word, the higher life is the continuous conscious blending of the human mind with the Infinite Mind. Remember conscious mind is part of the "soul-man," and our ability to gain dominion over the physical body develops as we use our will to blend our thought-power with the Infinite Mind, for the "spirit-man" influences the "body-man," through the channel of the "soul-man," which is the seat of mind. Begin it by suffering the indwelling Spirit to realize itself as love. The Master taught us that to manifest love is to live not as an isolated unit but in terms of the larger life of humanity. When He was asked, "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" He replied with the parable of the Good Samaritan. Manifest love to theological and political opponents, and unlovable people generally, and the thorn and thistle within you will have a poor chance of life. When you express love you are functioning from Spirit. Then "soul-man" and "body-man" must obey. "Soul-man" must help for will is part of "soul-man." Watch yourself. Keep the tongue from evil and the lips that they speak no guile. Never allow yourself to repeat that which will prejudice your hearer against another. Don't repeat a scandal. It causes an evil thought-atmosphere to prevail; it thwarts the God within; it grieves the Spirit more fatally than breaches of the moral law. This, then, is the message of to-day. Use your will to keep your mental faculties in conscious realization of your true relation to Infinite Mind, as one of His vehicles, and you will not grieve the Spirit. Know that God is the Spirit within you, and never forget that He is also Abba, Father, outside you. Abba, Father, longs for us far more than we long for Him. Around us always are the everlasting arms. He knows our imperfections and weaknesses of character far better than we know those of our own children, and our Lord said: "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give good gifts to them that ask Him?" |
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