XVII

<< The Conditional >>

“Whosoever shall (does) not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall (does) not enter therein.'' Mark x. 15.

During the innocent and unresisting plasticity of the human mind in its infant state the Lord plants the seeds of heaven in the soul. Later in life the strength of individuality would resist all effort of the Divine to touch and reach the soul were it not for this dispensation of the Divine Mercy.

"And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.'' John i. 14.

No purpose can be accomplished unless it have a human form. A sunset, a magnificent storm, the majestic silence of the stars, are nothing until they fall upon a background of humanity. A thought in the mind of a teacher, a plan in the brain of the reformer, a text in the heart of the preacher, is of no avail until it has been brought in touch with humanity, until it has been crystallized upon the plane of human experience. The dreams of the days of old, of how gods became men, of how animals became men, are simply shadows dwelling in the minds of the ancients, showing that they realized fully how things interior (the gods) and things exterior (the animals) must become humanized, must be human. Even so must Divine Truth become humanized, it must be rendered intelligible to humanity; and as the planning of incipient man must needs show itself in Adam, so must the accomplishment of the perfected Man show itself in Jesus Christ. The Word, that it might be, must be flesh ; yea, (and will language lend itself to the thought?) God, to be, must be man. God as God is a God for gods, but God as man is a God for men.

"And Jehovah God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed. " Genesis ii. 8.

Deep in the inmost recesses of the soul the Divine Love cultivates for itself that pure and holy spot called the “Human Internal," wherein He can dwell. It is this that gives humanity to man.

"As the stars of the heaven and as the sand upon the sea shore.” Genesis xxii. 17.

As the knowledges of spiritual things in the internal mind and as the knowledge of natural things in the external mind.

"And the people shall serve thee. " Genesis xxvii. 29.

The truths of the Church are designed to serve and help man, and not to hinder and trammel his soul with cloggings of the artificial.

"No man hath seen God at any time; the only-be-gotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath made Him manifest.” John i. 18.

To some of us the thought of the Great One comes through the vastness of all humanity ; to some of us through the giant stillness that lies under and beyond the eternal silence of the hills of humanity ; to some of us it comes in the still, small voice of the individual soul ; to some in the form of the man only as He walked the shores of Galilee ; to some in the glorified form, as He rose to the higher mountain- tops of spiritual conception ; and to some as a picture of man, seen through the distorting and refracting layers of schismatic atmosphere, or obscured by the clouds of skepticism. In whatever way He comes the conception is by its very nature a human one, and as such falls short of the sight of the Divine within. Yet, as the hurrying of clouds tells the direction of the invisible air, as the song of the invisible bird tells to the practiced ear the nature and shape and name of the unseen songster, as the foot-step tells to the trailer's eye the shape of the foot that made it, so does the negative of the human outline the position of the Divine within — a sight unseen but not unseeing.

"He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.” John i. 11.

But the esse and existere of things spiritual is life, while that of nature is death. One is vivid, alive, pliant ; the other inert, dead, heavy ; and no matter how far and how long the spiritual is allied with or conjoined with the natural the latter will never become life, but always remain dead.

''But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become sons of God, to them that believe in His name:” John i. 12.

Where natural and spiritual mind coincide and correspond the whole mind is said to be receptive of the Divine Truth, and to move along the lines of the Divine Law.

''And the Word was with God.”John i. 1.

All revelation is of the Divine Truth.

Author: A. Roeder (1900)