NEW THEOSOPHIC REVELATIONS. FROM THE MS. JOURNAL JAMES PIERREPONT GREAVES. “TI10 soul has a preparatory process to go through in an outward dispensation before it is in an efficient state to bear the Divine Essence, or Love's powerful Incarnation.”—J. P. G. LONDON: JOHN CHAPMAN, 142, STRAND. 1847. Cj' ADDRESS. James Pierrepoxt Greaves, from whose MS. works this volume has been selected, was for many years the inti¬ mate friend and companion of Pestalozzi, the justly celebiated Educator at Yverdun, in Switzerland. In 1825, Mr. Greaves returned to England, and en¬ deavoured, as the Secretary of the British Infant School Society, to promote the improvement of humanity by means of Infant Education'. From these educational experiences, and their results in England and on the Continent, Mr. Greaves was led to a more intense examination of Max’s Natures,— lus Constitutional Relation with the Creator, and the external World ; until he became thoroughly convinced that Delusion, Poverty , Crime, Disease, and “all the ills of life," originate— and are perpetuated from gene¬ ration to generation, by man’s disobedience to the Love Law in the creative and recreative process. Mr. Greaves, therefore, took every opportunity to caution those with whom he corresponded, against these evils, directing them to the Source of all Good, urging on all men and women, the importance of becoming chaste and Holy Beings for the Creator’s purpose. The con¬ viction ever strongest in his mind was, that—“ as Being is before Knowing and Doing, I affirm that Edu¬ cation never can repair the defects of birth." In the works which have been published, and in the yet unpublished MS. volumes, which contain the record of his convictions, thoughts, ideas, and feelings with which iv he was by Love Inspired, submission to the Love Law is ever urged as the highest condition for being progress. After Mr. Greaves’s death, which took place oil the Ilth of March, 1842, at the age of sixty-five, one of his friends undertook the care and cost requisite for the circulation of his works, with the intention, that one volume annually should be printed, until the whole could be accomplished. In actualisingthis intention, two volumes of “ Letters,” embracing a variety of interesting sub¬ jects,—“ Rew Theosophic Revelations”— “ The New Nature" and “ Gems from the Moral East,” have been published. That friend to humanity has also been removed from this terrestrial sphere, and, therefore, for a season, fur¬ ther progress in the work is suspended. The ideas and language in this volume are of an ex- traordinaiy esoteric character, and, therefore, may not be easily apprehended nor appreciated by many in their exoteric States of Being. There may, however, be some in whose Natures the Spirit can respond to the senti¬ ments and Revelations expressed, and thereby lead them to a peaceful Union with the Divine Essence. July 12th, 1847. FROM THE MS. JOURNAL J. P. GREAVES. Itandwick, Gloucestershire, October Id, 1832. Tiie grandest of all grand deceptions is for man to look out, when lie ought, at all times and in all places and everywhere, to look in, at what is constitu¬ tionally indoing. The Spirit, by every new Light circle, opens a fresh height from which, the executive mind in its examination of the objective field the new luminous circle, makes a fresh point from which to view, and conditionates the beholder accordingly. With every death degree there is a corresponding Life degree, one circle of the regenerate seven-fold Life puts to death one circle of the seven-fold evil Life, and Satan, when dislodged from his stronghold in us, soon becomes weaker and weaker. He himself is insecure in us when driven from his castle into his secondary fortification; but we are never secure till he is dead in us constitutionally. 2 The less Satan holds in ns, the more the Spirit holds; and as we are to be held, and cannot hold any thing, our business is to see by whom we are held, and co-operate in accepting the right holder. We are to he held—and the constitutional ground makes all the holding difference. Satan keeps retreating, when not vitally attacked from centre to circumference. We are the delusion. Not what is it—we are consti¬ tutionally it. Satan, or the old man, must die at HIS Jerusalem; there must be some one to betray Him within. Facultative knowledge stands so connected with central knowledge, as to be universally dependant on it for rectification. Each part of knowledge may appear true in its own light; but when viewed with a more intensive and extensive light, is seen to be constitutionally false. As the seventh Light embosoms all the rest, so every other light must have its wanted measure made up of the false five-seconds, four-thirds, six-ones, or three-fourths, two-fifths, one-sixth. A new scientific fact often disturbs the whole scien¬ tific circle, as many schemes having been fashioned without it, this new stranger becomes inconvenient. The executive mind so much disregards the sug¬ gestive mind as almost to deny its existence, while all novel prompting ever comes from it. If the executive mind would ask the suggestive mind for further and clearer insight, it would afford the same, according to the Light circle in which it is operating. “ While there is every possibility that the syrnpa- tlietic system, or as it is sometimes called, tlie gan¬ glionic system of nerves ministers to certain operations of the universal economy, it has no control over the muscular frame, either in the performance of the vo¬ luntary motions, or during that influence of the mind upon the bodily frame which we call passion.”—C has. Bell. The functional or muscular mind does not partake of the action corresponding with the inceptive mind’s sentiment, sympathy, or passion, while the self misre¬ presenting spirit functionally exercises it in many of its offices. In man, when the general activity takes the passion form, it raises the shoulders at each inspiration, draws in violently the muscles of the neck and throat, moves in corresponding time the lips and nostrils, brings about a modal expression in accordance with itself, exhibiting its own lawless government. While this is going on in man’s modal part, the Universal Law, in its overruling government, is up¬ holding the whole being, and endeavouring to restore the interrupted harmony. It works in its own way, unimpaired, amidst all the apparent modal commotion. The general activity through the respiratory nerves excites the muscles into corresponding activity. By cutting the respiratory nerve between the initia¬ tive and executive mind, the executive mind becomes dead to the emotions or sympathies of the initiative. The inward cannot then modally influence the outward. The Creator taking upon himself the human form, the universal man delights to develop himself modally in the living members. In the rudest individual elements the universal man 4 develops sentiments and modes in measured keeping with his own; the individual cannot make them, they are made to be used spontaneously and universally. When man stands in due obedience to his Source, the links that bind all to one will be exhibited to him. The soul is a double essence, with double functions, partly inward and partly outward. The immaterial principle cannot envisage itself with¬ out materiality, the Spirit cannot functionate itself with¬ out spirituality; the imitable and the inimitable, the Spirit will bring into reconciliation, and then unite the whole one to Itself. The Spirit which is one will raise impressions ac¬ cording to the faculty or organ it acts in; the impres¬ sions will correspond with the faculty, not with the Spirit who raises them. It will raise music in the mu¬ sical faculty, sight in the eye, and sound in the ear. Emotions are certain affections of the Spirit in some one or more of the organs; they are modal sensibilities which the Infinite assumes, and are his creaturely ap¬ pearances. What a creature is, is the Spirit’s creaturely condi¬ tion in that created organism. Mental sensations and corporeal sensations are two modal forms of Spirit, one directly and the other indi¬ rectly produced; bodily states and mental states are two states of the Spirit. The Spirit, to bring about these two results , puts in motion an extensive agential class. The Spirit’s bodily states seem to have precedence of the Spirit’s mental states, and to accompany the latter in all their appearances. If the Spirit forms its mental states on its bodily 5 states, the great influence it has through Spiritual or¬ ganism 'on the mental states may then he accounted for. The Spirit has also its central states and central orgamism. The Spirit’s corporeal states and its central states seem to be altogether independent of the mental states, which they serve to modify. Are not the Spirit’s central states more universal, more to be depended on, and of higher origin than the after states called mental? If the Universal’s ultimate be the corporeal state, then the Spirit’s first modal state is the mental. If the Spirit’s universal sensations be within the centre, and not without , then their not coming forth into visible activity may be understood. The Spirit’s universal central feelings precede the mental emotions; they are to them as types and as schoolmasters, and serve to direct them to a higher and more enlarged end. The universal central feelings must not be con¬ founded with the external feelings connected with the outward senses. Is not man universally necessitated in truth and mo¬ dally liberated in error ? Does not the universal necessity reside in within the centre, and the modal in the corporeal mental forms ? A modal What is founded upon a universal What, a universal What upon a universal Where, A universal Where upon THE universal Where, the universal Where upon the Infinite, who is one with the self-ex¬ istent spirit. We have only a choice of evils; if we submit to them 6 for God’s sake, the evils will put on the appearance, not of homan will, but of lessons, which Divine lessons, when we have well learnt, will vanish away rapidly. / Whatever light a thing may he in for itself, it is not seen in its own light, hut in the light in which the be¬ holder’s mind is; therefore each beholding mind sees the object differently. In sleep, the exterior expression betrays the in¬ ward feeling’s connection with the Universal Spirit, as well as the outward feeling’s relationship with the world’s spirit. Man’s expression is double, positive and negative, or rather positive and oppositive, universal and modal. To see virtue as a whole, we must be its Be-ing, be its Where, be its What, be its How, be its When, be its Why, be its own unbroken character. Submission to the Divine Will, in all the forms it can possibly assume in us and before us, is the one great, grand, and glorious lesson. Submission to the Divine Will in us, on us, and before us, be the form as strange as possibly can be conceived, is the only lesson we are sent here to learn, and the more difficult the more we delay. God tries us in all the ways of his strange work, and we strangely misunderstand his meaning. The Divine Will being in every thing, we are con¬ stantly surprised at its new appearance, and often, in the strangeness of the lesson, forget the end for which it is given, that is, submission to it for God’s sake. We may be sure God will remove the strange lesson from us, as soon as we have learnt it well for bis sake. 7 Whatever strange appearance the lesson may put on, we shall he always right if we learn it as submission to God’s will. We cannot he deceived in the lesson, be its cha¬ racter what it may, if we at once begin to learn it as submission to the Divine Will. The Divine Will states itself in every form and manner, so that it may offer as lessons to learn, Lessons that have no other end in them but submission to Di¬ vine Love. Love desires to be loved, and it hides itself and offers itself to us in all its appearances really to try us and prove our constancy in submissive Love. It is not submission only that Love requires, but a loving submission and a submissive Love, in act and in essence, without and within. While good and evil are in their present conjunctive state, they make only oscillations and not circulations ; when the real conjunction is made they will circulate. The composition of a human being of different tvills presents at once the idea of instability. GOOD is the official Premier without the predomi¬ nant influence that should accompany office; it must wait help from the Spirit, as it is constantly opposed by the Minister for Foreign Affairs. The Minister for Foreign Affairs has more power, in his own place, than the President of the Council. Good has to work a work which is for a higher place, but its power in execution is limited. Good may suggest but not execute; if it did, its work would be unsuitable to the place and conditions in which it is working. A lower work is wanted, after a good model, which Good is permitted to furnish; inferior old copies are often used instead of living originals. Evil takes all its authorities from something that has passed, something so far off none of its deformities can be seen. One law will not account for all the expressions found in the human countenance; we must, therefore look for another, and this we shall be led to if we trace backward the human heart to its origin. We have seen the connection between the heart and the face, but what operates the movements has yet to be discovered. How are the sympathetic nerves that connect the heart and the countenance put and kept in motion, not simply in movement, but in movement for an end intended ? Until we ask the Spirit this question, we can have no answer, and to ask the question we must be where it is, and where we can hear its reply. If we are not near enough to hear the first reply, the direct answer, we get it so mediated as to be unlike the thing we wanted. Only by hearing where the first answer is given, can we learn the whole truth; if we be elsewhere, and hear the answer there, it is in a degree falsified. The truth has much to do with where. Pilate asked the question under the character of what, and had no answer. What is the use of living under a low Love degree, when we are fitting for a continual progress from the first to the last. We are to be Love’s living characters, and if we 9 offer ourselves to it for a higher office it will bring us into it gradually, it will fit us for it. Love uses us in a lower office to fit us for a higher, and in a higher, for a higher still; so we are always under preparatory work. The mind is the Spirit’s mental frame, and the body the Spirit’s corporeal frame. It would not feel, think, and act in a creaturely manner, if it did not make and actuate its own frames. All states and changes are but frames of the Spirit, and only as it is considered as the all in all do we rightly view our various relationships with it. The Spirit’s bodily and mental changes are as va¬ rious as there are combined figures, and we can only wait to be changed before we understand them. Evil’s grand principle is to win power, and when won, to begin generating with it, so that it may, by its own self-multiplication, multiply the same as defensive means. Evil, as soon as it can begin to breed evils from itself, seems to enlarge its means for defence. Evil desires to bestow all it can upon its children, that they may help it to defend itself when attacked by Good. When Evil has enlisted many on its side, these par¬ ties will, to keep what it has given them, defend it, the giver. The more Evil has, even in appearance, to bestow, the more friends it makes; it has gained many friends, and keeps many friends, and expects to make others, by giving the phantom nothing called Honour. The virulence in the Evil forms and the Spirit’s functional changes are so great, that the same may be 10 used as proofs of the probability of some grand crisis being at hand. The Spirit is working with great energy in Good for its own purpose, as is testified by the struggles in Evil to keep the chains fast. Evil itself would not move unless Good began to make inroads upon it. The Spirit’s nervous expression in the human countenance as universal must be distinguished from its nervous expression as modal; these two states of the Spirit may be distinguished by a mind under its guidance. The Spirit, in such a state or cause, has to cor¬ respond with it such a consequence; if it be in the three-fold light, it has for its consequence a four-fold darkness; if in the one-fold light, it has a six-fold dark consequence, as it works all its operations in sevens. i For every fresh luminous circle the Spirit takes in, I it ejects one of darkness, and thus increases celestial and diminishes terrestrial tendencies. The dark circles ejected by the Spirit become know- able, as the Spirit replaces them by luminous circles, filled with the proper intelligence. The appearances of the Spirit’s terrestrial govern¬ ment are stronger than the appearances of the Spirit’s celestial government, yet when the fully initiated ob¬ serve them, the latter are seen more clearly than the former. The nearer the observer stands to the Spirit, the further he stands from the darkness, the inward Light having its corresponding outer Light. The Spirit in its ministering instruments acts upon 11 the great whole,—section by section—whatever opi¬ nion its instruments may form of themselves, they are but outlines in motion, or hands of clocks which point not to themselves, hut to something else. What is called the popular will, is but the out- pressed or expressed will from Spirit; Spirit in all cases gives forth the expression—its agents or instru¬ ments are expressions of its states, are its out or forth pourings. There are celestial No's standing in the countenance at the same time with terrestrial Yes's, as it were side by side, and that will not commingle, each de¬ claring with distinctness the source out of which it springs, and that to which it witnesses. The Spirit sustains a great whole in two opposite halves which seem to contradict each other. Yet the end is one, being moved by one. Man is an Estate to be worked for his owner’s pe¬ culiar End, and not his own. There is no one to hear the Spirit’s first voice; the first voice is one, One that speaks, One that hears at the End. There is no one can do any first thing for the Spirit; the Spirit is One, and as One is self-forced to do all for itself at the End. There is no one to he with the Spirit; the Spirit is One, and is self-obliged to be with itself at the End. < That wherein good habits originate, is far more va¬ luable to us than all the literature in the world. As the creating Spirit is establishing the necessary mental and material relations within and around us, so is it implanting, causing, or ingenerating in us va¬ rious Divine affections or sympathies. It is raising in 12 every adapted structure emotions that point to It, affections that bear its stamp or character, and which It re-attracts into its self as their rest and end. In the rudest material or mental form, the creating Spirit is developing sentiments that have their dawn and their day-light in it, that are incessantly sustain¬ ed by it, and that call it by the endearing name of parent: these feelings are seated in, and fastened to the breast, and cannot he shaken off; they are as Christ is—one with God. The universal affections, emotions, or sympathies are seated in the bodily frame, and have their origin in the creating Spirit; they are consequences the creating Spirit has wrought in the frame-work made for this purpose; they are as the music of the musician ox his instrument; man can no more give himself these ultimations than the violin can make its own sounds. As the frame-work is, so is the sound or expres¬ sion ; the change is not in the creating Spirit, which is one in all, hut in the objective instrument. Philosophers, in examining exterior objective conse¬ quences, have forgotten to examine themselves or their states, as consequences, and in so doing are found unfit for their work; what they would do cannot he done by them, or even in them or through them, their condition being unequal to the bringing forth by the Spirit universal births. The creating Spirit works its own instruments, and then its own works; it works the means and the effect; it is the connecting relation. « Why beholdest thou the MOTE that is in thy brother’s eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye. Either how canst thou say to thy 13 brother, Brother let ME pull out the mote that is in thine eye, when thou beholdest not the beam that is in thine own eye ? Thou hypocrite! cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother’s eye.” The creating Spirit uses the bodily frame to develop certain universal incorporeal states or conditions, as it uses the sensible organs to evolve modal immaterial ideas. The creating Spirit uses the five senses for its modal immaterial results, and the bodily frame for its uni¬ versal incorporeal states, emotions, sentiments, sym¬ pathies, &c. &c. These sensations are seated in the breast, and are as real as the breast itself; are as sounds that will softly, sweetly, and quietly blend when an outward universal harmony is to be made. In the creating Spirit there is an influence which steals through the veins, fans the awakened heart, and makes those universal emotions that cannot be shaken off; an influence which is ever rising and fur¬ nishing its own spontanieties, its own varied relations. Only so far as I am a Divine conception , have I reality; that which the creating Spirit is making me to he, I am; and beyond, I am the not, the nought, the abstraction. As a child cannot be more than it is, till it is made so, neither can a man be more a Divine conception than as he is increated into one. As what a child conceives does not alter its childish¬ ness, neither does what a man conceives alter his god¬ liness. By union with that which supports us, we shall get it vitally to support our object; we cannot by union 14 amongst ourselves effect any vital object, but by union with an engendering cause, we liave it to aid us in bringing about any vital end we desire. Without a union with that supporting support, we are unable to effect any durable, or living, or prolific consequences. We may act destructively without a supporting cause, but productively, that is impossible. Without a being who is produced depends on the vital cause above it, it cannot effect any vital results. When any union whatever is made by the living con¬ sequences to effect any result, dead the result must be if a union be not first made with the vital cause. Whatever men do by union to reform themselves is a dead work; it is pulling down one dead thing, and replacing it with another dead thing; it is a death operation, and an extensive dead result is to be expected. He who is not able to support his own life, is not able to support his own living interests; he must make a union with that which supports his life, and get it to support conjunctively his living interest. Whatever unanimity there may be amongst those who are supported to follow out any interest, it must be fruitless in the issue, if they do not begin by mak¬ ing that a party to their objective end which is a party to their personal beginning. Whatever man’s intentions may be, he never can realise them alone. He is so dependant for support himself, that it is vain to seek a benefit without that which supports him, be admitted a party to the whole proceedings, without its advice in the whole measure be asked, and its counsel obeyed. • As that which supports us is able to overturn us in r-;i5 a moment, so is It able to overturn all our self-sup¬ ported interests. We must have first the clear and discriminating Light, before any subject can be viewed in a fair and dispassionate manner; when we have the end Light we then view the end use in the thing, HIM for whom we are to use all. We cannot see the END USE in any thing, unless we have the originating Light, and the originating Light being one with God, we then see the END USE of every thing is God himself. It is the highest Light that shows us the highest use in every thing, and this for the Infinite. Without the Good Light to begin with, we, as crea¬ tures, cannot see the Good use; the Good use comes with the Good Light. With the Evil Light we can only see Evil uses in things, and use them for Evil. Evil points out to us how we can usefully use things for Evil, and for Evil we must use them, when it is from Evil we get the so-called light to use them. In a new degree of Evil, we are aided to neiv uses, to use things more and more destructively for Evil. In every fresh degree of Evil, as it is let out in the world, in this degree Evil suggests fresh Evil uses, more extensive than the former, that Evil may be more rapidly propagated. Evil will continue up to its highest degree to fur¬ nish men with more and more powerful Evil uses, till it has exhausted the Evil possibilities in things. It is with God alone man can share prosperity, and if he attempt success without his partner, fail he must. God will blight every one of his partner’s results in which He is not to share, in which He is not consulted, and which do not originate in Him. What is man’s boasted unanimity? In any mea¬ sures, one single breath scatters to the winds all the seeming combination, and makes a new set of outward circumstances. It is from the creating Spirit alone that a state and its prosperity are derived, and in the same manner are the affections made to spring up spontaneously in the human breast. The grass and the soil stand in the same relation to the creating Spirit, as the emotions and the framework in which it engenders the affections. Both grass and soil are supported, and claim no ownership in themselves, but give themselves up freely to be owned. So should the affections and the man¬ hood. Let us look to the important subject before us; no, indeed, let us ask HIM who is more interested than we are, (because interested in us as well as in the sub¬ ject,) to be with us, and give us His unerring decision, that we may not toil in vain, and with every certainty of loss. We are, and are supported; now, before we stir one step, ought we not to ask, shall we be supported so as to support our measures successfully ? Why waste that which is for our support, in sup¬ porting measures which must necessarily fall ? What blessings men destroy when they employ the sympathies on false objects, on evil uses, for Enil's sake! The emotions or sentiments felt within the breast are generated by the creating Spirit in the incorporeal bodily frame work. 17 These emotions pertain not to the body as body, but to the creating Spirit, acting in the incorporeal frame work; they are often called the heart’s affec¬ tions,. but they are of the creating Spirit, connected with suitable organised internal immaterial structure. The creating Spirit exercises the incorporeal struc¬ ture, and gives rise to many sentiments and emotions which have no direct correspondence with any thing around us. These inward consequences are universal births, and stand within as archetypes for outward ex¬ pression j they ought to be represented in the outward walk and conversation, and would be so if the Evil Spirit did not come in and make confusion. The universal consequences are according to the organ struck or agitated by the creating Spirit, and not from any outward impression. When the creating Spirit strikes a certain organ, Light is engendered; another organ, sound is engen¬ dered; another organ, taste; and so forth. That which is begotten is the result or consequence, is the affection, sentiment, emotion, or sympathy. The outward application of these universal inbirtlis must not be confounded with the births themselves; these inbirtlis often are found in company with a great number of impressions bred in another way, and from an indirect and unlawful engenderer. He who makes the discordant part of us should, as soon as he has finished his work, as a faithful ser¬ vant, give it over to the creating Spirit, who will use it with his concords, and say to his servant, well done thou good and faithful servant. But no; the servant is so pleased with the work he has wrought, he will keep it and use it, and make with it his voluntary discordant music, for his own self. "While we continue to believe only in external agency, and impressions from without, we must be a very imperfect growth in the Spirit, be quite young in grace. There is a double agency, one within which is uni¬ versal, and one without which is modal, and these two must be accurately distinguished. The Universal, when it wills, regulates the modal, but the modal cannot regulate the Universal, nor its involuntary and voluntary, inexpressible and expres¬ sible states. Internal sensibilities produced by the creating Spirit, through the incorporeal frame work, are of a different kind from those which are produced on the surface of animal bodies, the external sensibilities being only one of the many endowments with which animals are fur¬ nished to correspond with the elements around them. The creating Spirit expresses itself organically in and through the child, before its servant, the mental agent, the prince of the power of the air, can express itself mentally; the mental agency is carried on out of the universal basis, but is not a universal building, it is another builder who builds it upon ground belonging to another owner. When we look at man as an exhibition, we must confess there is a double set of phenomena, a double set of expressions, and are forced to look for two Universal Laws that are at work upon him. We behold two orders of results which stand in contradic¬ tory relations, the order of ascension and the order of declension. 19 He who is there to make, is there also to rectify any thing he is making, and to account for all the chang¬ ings risible in the outward, till the end of the six days’ working. We cannot look at man without the most over¬ whelming proof of the designer’s presence, a designer manifesting results hut concealing' itself, comprehen¬ sible in its ways and means, but incomprehensible in its own existence. The creating Spirit, combining in the same function the heart and the lungs, as two parts, is multiplying Its first consequences by vibrations in all the ulterior organs. The creating Spirit is ever establishing and support¬ ing the extensive connection between the great organs and the muscular system, the creating process is not yet over, the six days are not yet ended. Man is never full born; if the Spirit remove him from one womb, it is only to put him into another, in which It accompanies him, and accompanies him till the full end of the millenium period. The friends of order must call upon order and its grand ally to come and help them; if order and its generating source do not step in, whatever is done must be undone, because it will not be a living result. A living result is that which flows from Life, is one with Life, and is that which Life does instead of our doing so much; we want more done to us first; we must be in a just state, before we can do just ac¬ tions ; just actions are what we need sulfer, and having been made just we shall then not interrupt others in suffering the same process. As soon as we feel the creating process in our own 20 soul, we shall not do any thing that will put a stop to it in others; we shall not call them from the interior creating realities to any exterior perceptions; the Di- Tine sensations will he to them living facts, facts that are the Divine engendered ulterior vibrations. Whatever living consequences we may want, they cannot he had but from the generating source; if we do not in all we do make partnership with the source, our doings must end in unproductive or dead conse¬ quences. If the speaker be one with the Creator, one in such a manner as comprehends the highest union, then the words spoken are Spirit and they are Life. The lungs are passive, the motion of the creating Spirit in them is a result which stands amongst many others as an evidence of its immediate presence; this Spirit being everywhere does not give its agency to another, but does all itself; it does not work by means, but works the means, the causes in the celestial spheres and the consequences in the terrestrial. When we see passion, when we see anger of any kind, this result is from the creating Spirit’s overcom¬ ing some impediment that has crossed its work. The stronger the passion may be, the surer we are it is but some difficulty being overcome. An outward impression interrupts THAT which is at work supporting us, and to overcome it, be it what it may, we are new stated, and stand as the exhibitions of a double influence. We say, I am vexed; now, vexation is a double re¬ sult, a double result wrought by the creating Spirit in its progressive activity to perfect its own six days work; it has met with some disturbing matter, it is 21 overcoming, and our state is its powerful or angry overcoming expression. God is angry; this means, the creating work stands for a while in a double attitude, exhibiting a double appearance; whilst the disturbing cause is being over¬ come. So was it with the reformed reformers and that which worked the great reformation in the Church; the Church, like man, dying to rise in a better form. Human frailty of any kind is a double result , it is a progressive work disturbed in its progress by some contrary influence. Every Being is in the hands of the All-perfect; whatever measure of imperfection has happened to the work, this imperfection has its origin in a disturbing source, which has alloyed the work. The Creator is creating a perfect work; in his hand, every step is perfect in its upward passage, but the moment im-perfection gets into the work, that moment we find another agent at work. Every imperfection bespeaks at once a compound influence in operation, a presence of two agencies in the being and in the result. The moment we see agitation of any kind, we there behold the work of two contending powers, two influ¬ ences. The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, is of one, Love; disquietude or uneasiness of any kind is of two, Self-Love. Without two present causes are put into counter¬ action, we cannot account for sin, or for man’s sin-state, or for any imperfection as a state of man. Use is the character of one causer, abuse of the other causer; we can account for perfection and its 22 progress by one cause, but the instant we hear that the work has suffered damage, or is in any way delayed or deteriorated, then two causes are at work at once. That which is making and that which disturbs the making, are Love and Self-Love. These two causes are made to act, co-act, and counter-act, and are put into a most mysterious union. He who is put in a fearful state, is yet upheld by a supporting Spirit. Passionate expressions are the result of two causes under one governing End. From where we are in Being, there we sensate, or are a created sensation or appetite; what we are, arises from where ice are in sensation or hunger; what we want, arises from what we are in sensation or demand. All our reason is founded upon the idea of the Creator having finished his work. Now the fact is, the six days are yet in progress, and he is creating; there¬ fore we never can for a moment, in idea, separate him from any living result that happens. Kandwick, October 22. Whatever work seems to be performed by any in¬ strument, the work must be carried home and ex¬ amined ; it being for an end, is only to be investigated by the End Light. The Creator is one, the creature is one, and more than two is destruction; parts are imperfection; what appears individual or broken is a destructive idea. When passion stands as the outward expression of the inward powers, then Evil has been forced into contact with Good, and Good causes it to explode, 23 like gunpowder when brought into contact with the fire, the fire instantly acts upon it. The Creator introduces sensible organisation into this poisoning world, and its first act or working brings about a death and a life, a killing and a living. The child, when brought into this world, out of a higher and more universal circle of existence, is partly delivered up for a season to an inferior law; it is placed in contradictory relations. In the birth there is a short interval between the change of laws, the retiring of one and the substitution of another, the death and the life. The inferior law that had been held in subordina¬ tion for a season, and performed the office of servant, has now assumed the mastery, and begins its own out¬ ward work, for an outward and subordinate end. A child has a double breathing, inward and out¬ ward ; when the outward is established, and brought forth into equilibrium with the inward, then the out¬ ward animal machinery subsides into repose. The child is not abandoned by the first law, though it is for a season given over to secondary conditions, to new wants, new appetites. Anger, as a compound expression, is at no period of life so strongly impressed upon human features as in the first moment of our visiting this world’s Light. At that instant the lower law puts into operation an association of muscles, and stamps a characteristic expression that continues for life betraying in some degree the revolu¬ tionary agency that has got hold of the whole economy. The body is that by which the Originator modifies its expressions; Divine wants put on a corporeal form in the body, and spiritual in the mind, yet at the ‘>4 source they are one. It is the one engenclerer that creates and modifies. The expressive creations are all modes of the Divine mind, effected where organised instruments are placed; appear WHERE they may, the where is Divinely controlled. Whatever form sympathies appear under, that in which they appear is SOMEWHERE, and this some¬ where has place, is Divinely regulated. That which governs place governs the respiratory muscles, affects the heart, and, by corresponding rela¬ tions, brings into expression all the passions. There are certain mental and corporeal states and conditions which are undeviating signs of simple and double laws, and all the suitable machinery. He who breathes must breathe SOMEWHERE, and what is drawn in from this somewhere, is made to co-operate in all after results. The somewhere—the where we breathe, is according to our internal or Being state. Pain is the whip that awakens the slumbering or dormant agent to arouse and cordially co-operate, wherever and in whatever the creating Spirit may, by his creating and sustaining laics, purpose to effect. Put a piano at the bottom of the sea, and let a man in a diving bell play upon it, and he would find it im¬ possible, as THE PLACE is unsuitable for the end intended. Place in this instance prevented the result. Grief, as a result, cannot engender grief; no con¬ sequences, be they what they may, can become causes, and engender from themselves. An oak tree cannot engender an oak tree; it engen¬ ders an acorn, which must be connected with the soil, and this with the air, and this again with the sun and all the higher chain of realities which gave being to the first oak. However I may grieve when another grieves, yet to feel the same, the same set of agencies must work the result in me as worked it in the grieving person. When I am near those who are in an angry state, all those agencies surround me that are there spi¬ ritually acting, and if I am in affinity or sympathy with them, they affect me and work me into the like outward or inward condition. Our being, state, or condition, has to do much more with THAT which is making than with that which is made, the made being the exterior or ultimate conse¬ quence. There is a voluntary and an involuntary expression, modal and universal; the universal has to do with us, thfe modal has only to do with a portion of us; the in¬ voluntary is the superior expression, the voluntary is the inferior. The superior intelligence is involuntary; the inferior intelligence is voluntary, it is of the carnal mind; the human countenance is the place in which the two sig¬ nificant orders are to be seen. Good and Evil shine out of the countenance, as the wheat and the tares from the same soil —there is but one field for both to stand up in. The muscular apparatus, like the human face, indi¬ cates the double purpose it is to serve, indicates its connexion with Good and its connexion with Evil, the two great laws which are working one pre-eminent result. Man stands intermediate betwixt the two great laws, each marking him for its own, each possessing a power over him, and showing this in a thousand ways, some¬ times combined, sometimes distinct. The eye-ball has one set of muscles for moving it under the direction of the will, and to direct its axis to objects. It has another class of muscles, which are involuntary in their operations, and the Universal Law uses these in an insensible manner, and thereby gives forth its own expression. The muscles which are used to perform the involun¬ tary rolling motions are held connected with the respi¬ ratory expressive nerves, through which the universal breathing is performed. When man respects the beautiful in himself, he will not be satisfied long with what is about him. While he gives himself up to be sustained by the beautiful, he will haTe enough within himself to contemplate. As man grows better, the times grow better; the state of the times is engendered by that which engen¬ ders man and his state. What a wonderful person (Parzuph, as the Jews speak) Adam was in the image and likeness of the Aleim, in the double glory of the Holy of Holies, in his first undivided nature, when he was bride and bridegroom, son and daughter of God, father and mo¬ ther, a dual one. This will be then only known, when the only begotten son Isaac shall bring us out of his tent of flesh and blood into the tent of his mother Sarah, the sister, the spouse of Abram. That which makes the violent passions, marks itself so distinctly on the countenance both of men and of animals, that we are instinctively led to notice its move¬ ments, its indications, as certain signs of character 27 it has provided for the express purpose of intimating its presence. Internal emotion is felt by the instinctive faculty, and all the eyes can do is to observe the corresponding signs, and confirm the facts. If a child did not feel instinctively its impulses, it would not act as it does; organic sensitiveness is invo¬ luntary, and must ultimately prevail over the modal theories that are at present adopted. The passions themselves are signs, signs of two laws, which will continue working, let man say what he will; the outward acts are from the same generator in lower conditions. The expressive instrument or apparatus is never out of the maker’s hands; he can find no one to use it or to keep it in order; it is place, and as place has no motion of its own, it must be moved, however hidden the mover may be. How is place to be moved ? Who can take it away, where is it to be put ? Although the muscles serve two purposes , two mas¬ ters, which may be confounded, there is no expression properly so called, unless the Universal Law moves, by appropriate expressive nerves, the proper muscles. The Universal Law has, for every emotion it en¬ genders within, an expressive co-sign without, as its natural death and life language. He who is fully qualified to read his own breast attentively, is, from the same source, qualified to read all the changes that the Universal Law is making in the human countenance, for death and for life. There is a great difference in the facts in the human breast, when they are looked at witli a full-rate light, and in an anatomical functional manner. Where am I, when I set about doing a thing, as it regards the light; what am I, as it regards my scientific knowledge; and for whom am I going to act ? WHO is my partner; who provides the ways and means that are inexhaustible ? It is the Eden nature that assumes the human nature and prepares it for celestial beatitudes, having first purged it of its impurities by the Sin-death process. How is it possible to call that science or knowledge which is founded upon what is unknown, which is a mental assent to determination that has no basis ? Instead of informing a scholar in what he expects to have immediately transfused into him, we must not fail to inform him of what is more valuable to him to know, since the former is impossible—the need of his death unto sin, the fusion of evil out of his soul. Life can marry nothing but death, and this we see throughout all nature; the same way nature works to bring forth, is the method grace pursues, a death, and then a life. We should be led from that which is plainest and most evident in us, that is our Evil, through its death to that which is brightest and most evident in itself. It is only by a real death in us to all sin hindrances, we can be brought up to the source of all, as a con¬ stitutional Teality. The soul must be passed through the Sin-death process, before it can begin to ascend to the living Source, in a constitutional manner. A good instructor conducts you incessantly in the course of the death unto sin, that he may leave you at the gate of life in a waiting condition. He who inspires us with a desire for a death unto sin, does all man can essentially do for a brother. He only who lias suffered in the daily dying sin pro¬ cess, is capable of telling others the proper progressive course they should submit to and wait for. The darkness is too hard and thick for the light, so that it cannot shine through; it must therefore un¬ dergo a dissolution or decomposition by the Sin-death process, that it may be fitted and useful for the ulti¬ mate end. All mankind are more or less convinced of sin; the first step to take with them is to use their common reason, not to convince them of the need of improve¬ ment, but of a constitutional death to sin, a death to that which renders all improvement needless. The secret charm, the new Life, cannot garment it¬ self but with those very essences which the Sin-life has, and is using in its Sin constitution. The new Life must bring the Sin-life to death, that it may raise it again as its servant. It is only by the Sin-death that we get our new Life, and while the Sin-life lives we are but walking sha¬ dows, walking amidst our own darkness, and using it as if it were light. Art itself kills that which it acts on before it can make it serve its purpose. Ho end whatever is effected but through death na¬ tural or death spiritual; it is absurd to expect pro¬ gress but through some death process. If the soul desires to be better, it must die to the worse, and connect itself in a subordinate condition 30 with that self-existing life which will bring about the resurrection and ascension. All that lives is the image of the self-standing, self- existing Life. All the present boundary marks must die; there will be a new outline to every external form springing from that continued undivided thing called the whole soul, or the everywhere. All external things everywhere are its outlines, or outward forms, or external exhibitions; we may com¬ pare forms to the hedgerows of land, which make an apparent division, but leave the land in reality one undivided whole. The soul, as a whole, must be considered indivisible, and what we call parts, only as boundary marks, and not as divisions. The everywhere is the unbroken universe, the self¬ standing Life’s image and likeness. A man labours the best part of his life to get that which he must die to before he can obtain that which he is in search of. The soul can get no essential qualification but through a Sin-death process. Why is man within thrown into such inward per¬ plexity but to make a willingness for a death unto sin, which, when suffered, leads to the gate of the life unto righteousness. There is a true dying that leads to real Life, and there is a false living that leads to death. If we live the false Life unto death, we die unto the true Life; we make more rapid progress in dying that we may live, than in living that we may not die. To have right thoughts, we must die unto sin, unto ourselves, unto external things, and by this dying pro¬ cess a way is opened so that the better may furnish us all we want and cannot furnish ourselves. We must proceed by the way of dying, that Life may open in us its living gates. Philosophy is nothing else but a death unto sin, and he who does not know how to procure a death unto sin, as well in the ways of the soul as of the body, is no philosopher, and he that waits and suffers this is a complete one. If there be a reality in a daily dying unto sin, cer¬ tainly there must be a feeling of it, and also a feeling of a life unto righteousness; both must be felt and un¬ derstood together. Dying unto sin and living unto righteousness are two realities so intimately blended, both must be felt and both understood together; and that not as a specula¬ tion of the brain, but an existing reality. A soul must die unto sin, and come into the double Life, that it may have feeling and knowing as one in one undivided manner, in its new constitution. The passions once put under the daily death pro¬ cess, are so reduced in their self-activity, they do not interrupt the new Life in its progress; they wait as sheep in the slaughter-house to suffer as all that have gone before, Joy and satisfaction as products cannot be felt and known as one but by a being who is united, through the Sin-dying process, unto Life. The soul is in its very best state when it harmonises with nature’s process, a dying to rise again, a going through DEATHS unto Life. Nature enters readily into her course of deaths that she maybe exalted again into her living circles, or new constitutions. A course of death is that which is ever before us in nature, and had we but once tasted the benefits result¬ ing from her dying course, we should be as eager for the daily dying process as we are for any rare toy we have set our hearts upon. Nothing excellent can be realised in us but through a death, a death not of the body, but of the sin in the soul, the sin that we question till we are brought into the process of having it hilled, hilled against our will. A daily dying unto sin voluntarily is what we were designed unto; but when we will not constitutionally enter in this process as a means of grace, then we are constitutionally forced to suffer under the killing power. To die unto sin has quite a different meaning to dying in our sins, or to having our sins killed by the mighty arm in our constitution. The progress of slaughtering us in our sins is painful enough, but the process of dying unto sin is a compound feeling, a great bitter, sustained by a greater sweet—an expressed no, that is contradicted by an inexpressible yes. If the seed will not die, how can it enter into its process of rising again and living its LIFE as a tree; if the human life will not die, how can it enter into its process of rising again and living its Eden Life ? If the seed tried to preserve its unfruitful existence by not dying, it would act as the soul does that will not die unto sin. Whatever blessed effect follows the soul’s dying unto sin is to be ascribed to the Divine Love meeting it and quickening it into the double Life, in which feeling and knowing are blended in one. The soul is an imperfect being, and from imperfec¬ tion it goes through death to Life, and rises in per¬ fection. That which is imperfect must die; perfection is not made by mending, but by a birth, a birth through death to Life. We'can more readily raise our conceptions from death to perfection than we can from imperfection to perfection. We are more familiar with perfection through death than we are with perfection from imperfection by im¬ provement or destructive employment. A soul’s reformation by dying successively seems to be an idea apprehendable by us, and is every way suited to such a being as we find within ourselves. The foundation of perfection must be laid in the death of sin in us, a feeling knowledge being the new and perfect consequence. That which is practical in the Sin-death would, if well followed up, soon be converted by Love into the self-evident existence. Thus learning to die has not been considered by man in a right manner as the only way and the only means we can take for being re-born, and which, by any pro¬ cess of living, is unattainable. Man has no power whatever but that which death gives him; Love reserves all its power in its own hands for a living end. Whatever power man can claim or does claim, it is of and from death, and when he uses it it ends in de¬ struction of some kind or other. 34 The power that death gives to man is like that which it has to use itself, destructive; before there can he any thing from Life, death itself must die. If the Church claim power in virtue of man, and man by virtue of death, the Church’s power, like man’s power, can only be a destructive one. If man has power, what is it, and who gave it him, and for what use or end, or how was he invested with it ? If the Church has not a quickening power, and claims power, it must be in virtue of death and not of Life; it therefore, like death itself, must die, that it may rise to newness of life. He who claims a power over death, claims a power over death’s representatives, and the Church being of this number, must submit to suffer with its parent. The Church without a quickening power represents death, and as a conventional creature must die, die when its changing masters will have it so. The Church without a quickening power, is a poli¬ tical expedient, a collective capacious bubble. No man can be properly said to possess a right, who is not in possession of himself. He who is in the pos¬ session of man, is also in the possession of what man thinks he can claim as his. He who claims man, supports him, and being in pos¬ session of him, claims all that he claims. He who claims man, absorbs the lesser claims in the greater. So long as a universal claim is made, it must, in fact, overrule all inferior claims; and he who infringes upon it, whether his intention be morally good or evil, must bear the penalty incurred. 35 What is binding does bind into its substance all that is born within its confines. It gives to its captives its own laws, and authorises them to execute the same. Whatever is born to confinement is obliged to sub¬ mit to that which confines it till it is released from the same by death being overcome of life. A child is born of God to such or such foster pa¬ rents to take care of it. There is a Life Ireatli, and there is a death breath. The Life breath is the creaturely Divine Life, the death breath is the human organic Life, moving the human forms that are made in modal activities. There is a universal right, which has its foundation in the Infinite. This universal right claims each and every individual as its own. Each individual being claimed, can have no uni¬ versal right; it is itself possessed, and cannot then possess the universal. There are wrongs, and permissive wrongs. Whatever personal, individual, or particular rights any being may claim, it must do this in virtue of wrong. All particular rights, be they what they may, have their foundation in wrong. What man is obliged to perform in wrong, that he is supplied with the means and the permission to do; he is hardened up to the point needed in wrong doing. That which he is not obliged to perform in wrong, he has no supply for, and is commanded not to do it. The commands that are enjoined on man are, not to do in wrong what he is not permitted, and to give up his whole spirit, soul, and body to the universal right that claims him. Moral rectitude is not the source or limit of personal right; personal right can only have its foundation in wrong. Man is put under no universal obligation, no solemn universal duties to perform; all that is universal is performed by the universal right, who is 'charged by the Infinite with this duty. Personal judgment is a particular act, and, like all individual acts, must have its foundation in wrong, as all that can be called personal, individual, or particular is founded on wrong. Satan, who is ruled by a universal power that is over him, can have no private judgment but what is founded on wrong ; he is called upon to submit. God in his mercy keeps man, as far as right is concerned, in his own hand, and gives him his trial in wrong. Man will suffer for doing wrong in a wrong manner; he is only trusted with a measure of wrong, and a rule of wrong given him to do it by. If man will not use wrong according to the rule of wrong given him, he must suffer in wrong for his wrong doing, or doings in wrong. A man must be in wrong, or in the region of wrong, and have it in his power before he can work in wrong, wrongly. The right and wrong of wrong are before man, and this alone he has to do with, his wisdom, his know¬ ledge, and all that is possible for him to have, are births or products of wrong. AH the reformations from this to that, are only po¬ sitive, comparative, and superlative wrongs, or appro¬ priations of wrong. 37 Randwick, October 24, 1832. The right of the universal right is man himself, when he is regenerated; and until he is so, and be¬ comes an active individual, he offends against the law wrong, and is a transgressor that has broken the Di¬ vine laws of wrong. Whenever we stir up wrong, not having the power to kill it, we only set it in fermentation, and make it breed the faster. Whenever we unnecessarily meddle with wrong, we are stung by it; it turns round, and re-acts upon him that roused it without consideration. To aim my body, soul, and spirit as an arrow at the wise physician, is all that is left for me to do, trusting that it will reach him in some way. We are in a world of Good and Evil, yet only the Evil is at our disposal, the much or the little of it we may choose, and make our probation in it. Our trial only is in the Evil, and it is for wrongs in wrong that we are chastised. If we are uncomfortable within, nothing but a death to that which makes us uncomfortable will allow Life to come in and fill up our measure of comfort. Nothing that we want that is real, can he granted us but by a way being opened through death that Life may quicken it. If we try to make ourselves comforlable out of what we have, we only add fuel to that which is making us uncomfortable, which should be removed by a Sin- death. We have only the excrements of Sin to make our¬ selves comfortable with, whenever we try to draw dead comfort from the outward. 38 Inward comfort is a living result, wrought only on some of the dispensations of death that have been quickened into Life. The dead comfort that we get from dead things only helps us to a greater heap of corruptions; we want the living comfort arising from Life itself engendered in elements that have passed through the Sin-dying death. If we were really alive, we should have living ele¬ ments to sustain us, and living pleasures within inces¬ santly growing. The growing enjoyments the Life furnishes are so prolific that they seem as if they were infinite; hut the dead enjoyments that death furnishes are no sooner over than Life is felt in painful sensibility. The living comfort within, engendered by the quick¬ ening Life in the elements in which sin has been slain is so incessant and so fragrant it is endless to describe. The slaying was done by the power of Good, but the act of the Evil one; Evil has no power of its own to act with, it uses God’s power, but only in a destruc¬ tive manner. Satan can give life to nothing, but can modify de¬ structively that which has received Life, and this only for the purpose of self-sustaining. “What Satan gives must be of death; all the expe¬ riences of Evil are dead experiences, experiences that are unfruitful. For Evil to determine what is Good, or what Good is, is not only a deception but an impossibility. Evil has the power of doing or deceiving in Evil; but Good has the power to accept or reject that which has been done or decreed in Evil. 39 Evil is under Good, as the Church is under the State; the State, after all, authoritatively imposes laws for the Church. Though Evil may declare Evil to he Good, yet Good declares Evil is Evil, and rejects what is not chemically serviceable. Much more mischief arises out of the exercise of private judgment in matters of religion than in binding it up to a few formal rules of faith. That which exercises Evil in any way, makes it only corrupt and bring forth the faster all the miseries of Evil. When Evil enters again into its proper place, there is then an entire, constitutional Charter ; Evil, as one estate, has usurped an authority which only belongs to a whole. When the voice holds invisible communion with the conscience, and acknowledges its authority and priority, then both will be sealed with the Spirit. The conscience requires the voice as an expression, while the voice requires the conscience as a directing guide, as a Spirit-guiding guide. The voice is a medium between the conscience and the outer world, and the conscience is a medium be¬ tween the voice and the Spirit. The Apostles stood in closer relation to Christ than they did to the Churches they established, and it was by his quickening power they acted as they did. The primitive model must be looked for in Christ and his Apostles, not in the Apostles and the Churches, with the doer and his instruments, not the instrument and the deed. 40 The Bishops should be separated from the State, and joined to the Spirit, and then many of the immense evils at present existing in the episcopal system would be annihilated at once. "When this disjunction is wrought, and the higher conjunction effected, we may then he sure the con¬ science will force the voice into badness, clearness, and boldness, the quickening Spirit will demand and use its power and its liberty to get and secure what it aims at. The alterations first wanted are separation from what is outwardly composed, and union within with that which is simple. When the men of the present Church die to dead forms and dead ceremonies, and all that death has fixed up, then the Spirit will quicken them into the living sensitive expressions; but so long as there is a conjunctive holding to any lifeless thraldom, there is an absolute impossibility of a newness of life. It is man’s closer and closer union with death that makes him so unwilling to die; and without decompo¬ sition, there can he no vital composition effected. It is not a reform in the offices that is wanted, but in the officers; not with the liturgy, but with the clergy themselves. They must let the Spirit recognise their validity, and take their ordination from it. Men, when they feel that the Spirit is preached, hate a great facility in respecting and esteeming the words in which it comes forth; but when the Spirit is not present, then the words are critically examined and found fault with, the unction of sweetness being with¬ drawn. Without effectual measures of decomposition are 41 taken, so as to have simple elements to use, there can be no effectual composition. If things be not thoroughly decomposed, there can¬ not possibly be any pure composition; if any reforma¬ tion be worked up without original elements, we may be sure it is only a modification of death, a reform of the dead and not of the living. Nature, in all her circles or revolutions, dissolves and begins again. If man is sincere in any of his in¬ tentions, he must submit to a strong chemical decom¬ position, that the elements may be sufficiently pliable to be re-moulded. It is decomposition only that conciliates the Spirit, and as it is the Spirit that is to be conciliated, what is done should have It only in view. While men are trying to reconcile their minor diffi¬ culties (or differences), they forget the grand difference is with them and the Spirit. Kandwick, October 26, 1832. Without a kind of de-oxidation, there can be no vital reformation; the affair that is wanted is chemical and not mechanical. We cannot have Love but by the death of Self- Love ; where Self-Love is not reduced to its primitive elements, there is no pure ground for Love to work in. Love must have its own ground to rise in, and this ground is made out of the decomposed essential Self-Love elements, the most ductile of all the primi¬ tive elements. Where Self-Love dies into its primitive condition, there Lore can breathe itself into a living and fruitful existence; but where Self-Love lives, Love itself cannot. 42 Man cannot make such a reformation as he wants; not being himself such as he ought to be, the more he deals with things, the more he raises objects to dislike and to confound himself with; every effort of his proves to him the impossibility, beyond all denial, of the fruit¬ lessness of his purposes: he alone is in the way. Evil is soluble by Good, and precipitable from its solution by it. Without primitive men there can be no primitive Church; without essential elements there can be no primitive'men; without spiritual death unto Self-Love there can be no essential or primitive elements; with¬ out the Spirit fulfils his promise, there can be no es¬ sential death; without the Spirit be called on to perform his promise, that is, to kill and make alive, there can be no spiritual or primitive men. The spiritual death and the spiritual decomposition of Self-Love must be carried into effect before there can be a second step. Without the right elements, what is the use of beginning to build ? The iron and the clay will not mingle; they are already confused compounds. Only that which can extinguish Self-Lose, or, in other words, hold all the universals in solution, and diffuse them universally throughout nature, and make them in their aeriform existence permeate every thing, can put the soul into the state it feels desirous of. No modification of episcopacy can render men inno¬ cent, no alteration in the forms of the Church can make the church-man acceptable; it is the church-man that is to be rendered innocent and acceptable by the Spirit. Man works, and goes on mending his works, and all 43 the while forgets that it is him alone as a work that must be spiritually decomposed, and renewed again out of the new earth, the primitive earth that can only be got out of dissolved Self-Love when held in solution by a strong spiritual fire. Only so far as man holds a death communion with the Spirit, can he hold a Life union with it; he must constitutionally give up Self-Love to be elemented in Good. Man’s constitution must be shifted through a spiritual dying process from the Evil basis to the Good basis in a chemical manner. This is not only a constitutional change, but a change in the basis itself, a change that can chemically be wrought only through a spiritual dying process. Man only will be progressed when he is really disposed to join the Spirit in an active chemical cru¬ sade against his own inherent residuum of evil. It is not a conjunction with the Spirit against others, but spiritually to overcome what is more or less deeply lodged within himself that must be his object. When Life shifts its basis, and chemically works from man’s south pole instead of the north, then there comes peace. If the basis of man's nature be not changed, there can be no intimate alliance with the Spirit, for every true alliance results from the sympathy of constitu¬ tional elements; so long as the constitution is on an opposite basis, real sympathy cannot exist. It cannot be expected, while man’s constitution works on the Evil basis, it can sympathise with Good for the sake of Good; but the moment the con¬ stitutional basis is changed, and some new elements are chemically introduced in it, then by degrees it has as great an antipathy to constitutional Evil as it had a constitutional love for it. What we are we are constitutionally and not notion- ally, and our evil must he constitutionally dead in sin, that we may be constitutionally renewed, and made alive unto God. Without a constitutional dying unto sin and a con¬ stitutional rising unto Good, it is not possible for the Being to he constitutionally in sympathy with the Spirit. In regeneration the Life is transferred from the con¬ stitutional Evil ground to the constitutional Good ground, for what we constitutionally are, that we really are, and what we constitutionally are not, that we are not. A Being is only that which his constitution is, let it be flesh, fish, or fowl, angel. Spirit, or man; and as soon as the Life is transferred from one constitution to another, the old constitution dies, and the new consti¬ tution lives and feeds. A created Being is a created constitution, consti¬ tuted of elements adapted by an End for an End. When insects are constitutionally changed, the Life has been transferred from one constitution to another. If you will listen to what is going on within you while I am speaking, you will discern that the Spirit is working my tcords as reality into your feelings; but if you will listen to me, and not to the Spirit within, then the Spirit renders you incapable of understanding them; it prevents your knowing what I say, as you turn your attention to what is doing by an instrument, and not to what the master himself is giving you. When I told you you might have the potatoes if you would dig them up from the soil, did you not all leave me and turn to the earth ? In the same manner, when I'speak of the Spirit, must you not turn from me to it, and its working in your own constitution must you not constitutionally find ? The Spirit brings about a crisis in man’s existence when it transfers the Life pole, when it acts on the constitutional Good basis instead of the constitutional Evil basis; this is a point, an epoch which man can¬ not effect, but must suffer it. Let the fact be operated how it may, it has trans¬ ferred the polar government. Man, whose outward constitution is built up with one set of elements, is in the inward constitution built up and worked by another, another utterly at variance with the former constitutional inclinations and known antecedents. • When the Spirit transfers its seat of government, it works its southern lam in a southern constitution, and the northern constitution is its servant, with all its northern inclinations in abeyance. It is a singular constitutional anomaly, that the Spirit should transfer its spiritual government from one pole to the other, but yet it does this with the same facility that it changes its governing laws when it transfers the Life seat from the caterpillar constitution to the but¬ terfly constitution. When the Spirit works from the constitutional Good side, it affords strong proof of its influence and its in¬ tegrity ; but when it works from the constitutional Evil side, then the appearances are mixed and dubious. Outward prosperity, or personal interest, seems to 46 infallibly re-kindle and let loose those very evil passions which have required all the misfortunes and troubles of the world to stifle and keep within bounds. Good resists Evil for an amiable constitutional ad¬ justment but Evil resists Good for a convulsive con¬ stitutional restoration. There is a solemn question to be settled between man as his own image, or man as the image and like¬ ness of God—between the constitutional Evil and the constitutional Good. The soundest means that man possibly pursues is to co-operate in a constitutional manner to kill those Evil seeds which are the principal outlet of sin, and thus, by weakening the form of the bad, afford the good the greater facilities for its transfer or governing change. So far as the throne of Evil is weakened within us, there is a greater facility for the Spirit to assume its own proper throne, the Good, and rule from it. The Spirit may be said to enthrone itself in the Good, and to rule from it, and to organise the outer Evil, and after consolidation make it subservient to its purpose in a constitutional manner. There is so little of the moral and religious elements in some of the human constitutions, that to bring them into general decency and propriety of conduct requires a miracle to be worked. No human constitution can long endure if the mass of elements be compounded of double or treble distem¬ pered ingredients. Man is at present under the influence of a treble distempered Evil constitution. He is of Evil, brings it by improvement into activity, and applies all his 47 Evil improvements for an enlarged Evil end. He seeks to make a Good out of the bad, a better out of the worse, and a best out of the worst. He claims a full right to all the advantages of Evil, and amplifies himself as much as possible with them. He makes inflations pass for inspiration, and converts his judg¬ ments, which only can have their foundation in Evil, into axioms of truth. Whatever of Good there is in man is impersonal and incommunicable, and not his own. Randwick, October 26, 1832. There is a hot and a cold of Good, as well as a hot and a cold of Evil; our present constitution is made up of the hot and cold of Evil, standing on the hot and cold of Good. Can a Frenchman be tried by the French laws for a crime against the King’s government, when that goverment is dissolved ? If five hundred men had been in prison, would they not all be released ? Can a sinner be tried by the laws of sin for a crime done in sin, when the sin government is dissolved? Are not all the sinners absolved when the government is destroyed ? All crimes in sin are done away with against the sin government, when that government itself is dissolved and its kingdom also. The great day of judgment is the dissolving the sin government and releasing the sinners who sinned under the law of sin. We are at present working in the corruption of the disorders of the order of Evil. We are not under a good government till it rules us; till it places us under its rule, we are under the law of Evil, and are ordered to obey it, to regulate ourselves by given rules. Instead of obeying the laws of Evil for the sake of the Good and its purpose, we go on and falsify the false, or errors in the bad. That which man respects or that which he derides is only one or other mode of the falsification of the false, or some greater or lesser error of errors. [In applying this principle to Louis Phillippe and his ministers, it may he said that to have neutral¬ ised the revolutionary venom by adroitly recognising the principles that gave it birth; to have peaceably erected one barrier in lieu of another, by establishing a popular monarchy on the ruins of an anti-national throne; to have curbed the passions, and rendered innoxious, at least for a time, all the efforts of the seditious and discontented throughout Europe; to have pursued with firmness and moderation a most complicated and embarrassing negociation, until further negociation became impracticable; to have maintained general peace during two years, whilst twelve hundred thousand combatants stood with lighted matches pant¬ ing for the onset; and lastly, to have overcome the scruples, jealousies, jarring interests, political ties, and family attachments of the great powers, so as to obtain their concurrence to measures hitherto deemed impos¬ sible—to have effected all this, with undiminished good understanding between the contracting parties, is a feat that must redound for ever to the honour of those statesmen and diplomatists on whose shoulders have principally rested the responsibility of this great un¬ dertaking.] •1.9 /! Man lias to work out the great problem of Evil in all its ramifications; Good he has nothing to do with, nor is he in any way entrusted with it. If we try to pull down error, we have only error to do it with; the instrument we use is like the instru- menter, only a mode in one of the circles of Evil. For every circle of Evil there is a law, a law of a circle of Evil. The law that we are at first acquainted with is the law of one side of creation; it is the side which we are born into, acting in, and must be horn out of. Our choice is a choice of Evil, like two buckets in a well, the empty one that is going down is only to bring up somewhat the same as the full one. Are the poor as bad who work out demoralised con- quences. as the rich, who work in demoralising impres¬ sions ? The rich collect demoralising impressions within themselves, and the poor expend their immorality on the world which disperses it. The poor man, by his conduct, exhausts that on the outward and visible world which the rich man collects and stores in his own bosom. The world is the storehouse of the poor man's evil; he gets it out of him as soon as he can by some noise, dancing, or drinking and singing, which the rich man calls objectionable; but the rich man makes his own bosom his evil storehouse, and conceals there, as well as he can, his crowd of illegitimate evils. That which appears is not so much calculated to demoralise the world as that which is hidden; the in¬ visible evil sinks deeper in the bosom, and holds faster, than the visible consequences. We had much better legalise the exhibition of evil 50 consequences on the world, than sanction the invisible causes in their entrance ivithin ourselves. What the poor man is not willing to keep, the rich man collects, ferments, and fires in his own breast. Man is sent into this world to expend the evil he brings into it on the world itself, not to gather new evil and store it up, that it may corrode and canker the bosom. Since we are evil, in evil, and active, the Creator has licensed a mode of expending or exhausting it, and our business in this world is to work evil legitimately, and not bring it into burning masses, where it must destroy its own results. The quantity of in-bred evil is much greater in the rich than the out-born evil that has sprung from the Truth began to set us up, and Error finished the building; thus we are of two orders of architecture, and of two architects. We are injured much more by that which we are accumulating in our little space from the evil sources, than by that which we are expending in the wide space of the world. We soon become full of evil and its in¬ convenience, and know not, after all, how to disen¬ cumber our hearts. There is a contest between splendid error and vulgar error, between the erroneous poor and the erroneous rich, between the evil children of the third generation and the evil children of the fourth generation. No modification of Evil can render it innocent, no alteration in the forms of Evil can make it acceptable; do what one will with Evil, it will still be the evil deed of an eril doer. Evil is becoming so intensely Evil, that it is difficult for it to find new soporifics or fresh ungents to heal the wounds it makes. There are thousands ill at case who are gathering refined evil, while there are hundreds of thousands less unhappy who are daily expending the low evil. The refined man is encumbered with frightful enor¬ mities, while the vulgar man is inwardly relieved from his ills by his active and expensive vulgarities. What is the use of trying to make a reformation with materials that are not rcformnblc ? While the general mind has been gianting, the Church has been dwarfing, and there is now no affec¬ tion or respect between them. There can he no new constituting the Church hut through the medium of the Spirit; the people KNOW as much of what they should do as the minister can tell them; hut how to get and keep the necessary power to kill what opposes, they are not told in an experimental manner. When man is aware that his own constitution is made of unreformable stuff, and that it must he dis¬ solved into elements, and re-built by the Spirit, he begins to see the folly of attempting Church or Slate reformations in a mechanical manner. The soul without a chemical Sin-death is not in a state to coalesce cordially with the Spirit. After the soul has begun a voluntary separation from the body and bodily enjoyments of every kind, it itself must undergo gradually a chemical decomposi¬ tion, and have its evils precipitated, that it may he in a fit state to he compositionally used by the Spirit. The suffering a gradual chemical decomposition and a sin precipitation is a painful state, and must be pa¬ tiently sustained. The soul must undergo a chemical decomposition before it can be adapted constitutionally to the Divine conditions. He who feels that the common enemy is in his own breast, ought to be cautious how he begins any matter of contention with his brother. Were not the elements of Good co-essential to us, there could have been nothing for the Divine govern¬ ment to have worked upon, or for us to have made imi¬ tations after. Wherever God has laid the first stone himself, we may he sure that he will add the second, and, in time, finish himself his own building from bis own simple elements. If sin could not be chemically reduced to primitive elements, there would be nothing to use for substan¬ tial formation. It is the grand law established in creation, that, in order that two substances may become chemically united, one of them must be in a state of fluidity. We have the first reasons and rules of Good within us, and when we try to work them out, we have only the elements of Evil to work with. We apply right rules that we find within us, which are but the results of higher laws, to all the elements of Evil that we are allowed to handle, and fail in every one of our attempts. When man sets forth to work according to the rules he finds within him, he soon discovers a resistance in himself, as well as in all around him, to keep the !)‘3 That which man tries to break will only bend or stretch; that which he tries to stretch will easily break. What Good has begun in Good, and is going on to finish with Good, we having a feeling of its laws, attempt working them in our Evil conditions. If man had not right within him, and the elements of wrong to work with, he would not have any thing wherewith to work falsely, or true to falsify. The universal basis is laid within us as a picture of that which we are to he, but when we labour after the same we fail, having only Evil conditions to work with. We forget that we are to be built up out of primi¬ tive elements, and these have to he withdrawn from their confusion by a chemical decomposition. The objects of the actings of Life are what are put at a man’s disposal; Lil'e, or its actings or activities, are not within his rule. These objects are the neces¬ saries that Life by its activities demands to sustain the outward appearances. Every being is a complex idea, and is (considered as a consequence) the result of that on which it feeds. That on which the Being feeds, or is sustained, qualifies the Being, and becomes virtually one of the grand ingredients of the consequence. A Being who feeds on earthly things in an earthly manner, will be in all its modes and appearances earthly; but a Being who feeds on heavenly things after a heavenly manner, will, in all its inclinations and efforts, exhibit heavenly tendencies. Demand or appetite does not modify actions, the Spirit by food or supply modifies Being and actions. To he wise we must not only demand wisdom, hut feed on it, feed on it, feed on it with the heart, there where it is to be found, and let a chemical Sin decom¬ position pass on all that acts or operates obstructively. God arrives at the simple elements He uses by a chemical decomposition of sin, in the same way as He finds simple elements for sustaining the body by a chemical digestion of the hard substances taken in the stomach. A chemical decomposition of sin is a digestive ope¬ ration in heterogeneous spiritual mixtures. Do not answer questions, but ash them; ask the questioner to explain himself more fully, that is, put the question out from another side, from another ground, or in a more universal light. We must not confound that which nature does with that which man does to destroy its doings, or to check its operations, as outward government is but to repress an inward government. We must search for principles where the cure is in- wrought, not for an outward remedy. It is only as man sides with the better against the worse that the worse gives way, and makes room for the feeling that will arise as a consequence of the new connexion. The more man sides with God against the enemy that binds him in chains, the faster God will work for him a death unto his sins, and the sooner renew him into a holy image. The new creature is to be made out of the reduced and purified elements of the old; it is of no use trying to mend the old, and make it pass for the new. Only that which works to a chemical decomposing of the sin elements can help forward the work of the new creation, the inner man, the Eden image. A general principle of the widest extent must be taken as a creative law, as a living experimental« priori fact, and from this inbred basis must be deduced syl- logistically every thing which is included in it. The end of the Divine government is to reduce Evil so that it will be ultimately serviceable for the highest and noblest purposes , to turn its mighty power into a ground out of which the greatest and purest happiness would spring. He who rules human nature despotically serves but the Divine End. » Kandivick, October 28, 1832. If a man is obliged, for the sake of God, to rule his nature with severity, lie who governs human nature must do that in kingdoms which man is, upon Christian principles, ordered to do individually. Mankind ought always to act in harmony with Him who produces their purest and greatest happiness , and not with him who produces their false or lesser happi¬ ness, that happiness which dies at its birth. Man cannot promote the great, the living, the pure happiness; it is a Divine living product, a result of the soul's union with God. He can only help a brother to remove the obstacles which lie in the way, and which act obstructively. The dead happiness, or the less happiness, springs from the soul’s union with the supply of this world, taken in as the objective satisfaction of its wants, be the appetite that is fed either mental or bodily. If the soul makes a demand on this world, and gets the supply from this world to satisfy this demand or appetite, its state, condition, constitution, feelings, are the consequences: it is itself the child of its oivn marriage. The soul by its appetites marries that on which it feeds, and becomes both mother and child. The soul’s breathing is a species of feeding , is draw¬ ing in that which supports and sustains a certain por¬ tion of the organization, and the Being is the mother and child, a substance and state; it is what it then is constitutionally compounded. The heart and the lungs feed, and become conse¬ quences or compound results of that which they unite with, feed on, or intermarry. Throughout the whole of the creation the solid mar¬ ries the fluid, and is thereby a pregnant consequence, a conditionated Being, or compound result. When the soul feeds on God, makes God its only supply, then it comes into the universal feeling state, it is alive all over, all its joys are lives, and are ever giving out their exterior fragrances. During the hours of sleep, the soul is feeding in the Divine pastures, and awakens up in the morning as a new conditionated being. Organization is only sustained by eating, that is, drawing in what it needs, and growing thereby into states or conditions as a compound result. Love is an appetite, and requires its proper food, and when satisfied, a double result, a united conse¬ quence is bom. The ideas that arise in the mind are the consequences of the union of the mind and its food, that on which the mind feeds generating its own results in the same way as food taken into the stomach generates its All the involuntary parts of man’s nature are making their marriages, while man, as a voluntary being, is forming quite other alliances. The Creator has established demand and supply as the necessary conditions of existence, and is present in creatures, urging them on to fulfil the same. The outward expression corresponds to the passions and that on which the passion is feeding; if the pas¬ sion be not fed, it cannot sustain its outward action or expression. When the nerves have not their proper aliment, they exhibit their uneasiness by the countenance in strong signs. In the muscles of man’s face there is a provision for a double expression, for the universal and the modal, for the superior and inferior intelligence, and thus the two laws by which the compound man is governed are made evident. Whenever there is a failure of nourishment within, either in the nerves or muscles, modal or universal, the same is seen in the countenance. Man is an instrument of one Spirit, and the expres¬ sive organ of another; an apparatus that is made for two purposes, celestial and terrestrial, and this when in order without the substantia] confusion. Some parts of man’s being are nutrimental from above, and other parts from below. It is in man alone that we can with strict propriety say that the countenance is an index of a double mind, having expression corresponding with two ruling laws. The universal end for which man is used must not be confounded with that instrumental end man has in substantiating himself, or keeping himself up. A Being is impelled to nourish, feed, sustain, or support itself, altogether independent of the use that is going to he made of it. A horse must eat and drink, and aliment itself, with¬ out any considerations of what his creator is going to do with him. There are various expressive changes in the human countenance that belong to man’s voluntary activity in upholding his existence; and there are certain involun¬ tary expressions which belong to a universal instinctive impulse that has a higher end in mans use . Man, as a universal animal, is as instinctively go¬ verned as any of the lower animals of the outward world. Man, as a universal animal, led and governed by a universal instinct, is as much used to form a higher purpose as the instinctive animals are to serve a lower, while at the same time, as far as he is a voluntary being, be is apparently under the government of reason. Man, considered as a universal animal, stands in connexion with a superior use; as a modal instrument, with an inferior purpose. All that indicates universality in man is connected with an End use; all that indicates personality, has self-subsisting/or its end. Man, like a horse, has the liberty of sustaining him¬ self, his end is only instrumental; but when a universal power actuates him, it makes him serve an End purpose. Few men are aware of what universal purpose they are made to serve, being so much occupied in the affair of their own sustaining. 59 W lien man begins to be aware of the higher use he is put to, he soon brings the business of self-sustaining into a narrow compass; he avails himself of the living comfort of the universal use, rather than of the dead enjoyment of self-eleinenting. After we have done what we are commanded in self- sustaining, we should hold ourselves in readiness for the Universal End, for the instinctive and spontaneous directions as uses, or become uses in the hand of the user, for his spiritual creation. Beings first, and then uses, uses in the hand of a universal power. There are muscles in the human countenance which should be called the expressive organs of use , that serve only as the instruments of use, and which are moved instinctively; they are often called the organs of expression, but they are the expression of use, or a Universal Law that is using us as its creature. The Universal Spirit represents itself in these or¬ gans, instruments, or apparatus, in an instinctive and spontaneous way, as use itself. A painter should paint not only what a thing is, but what it is used or fit for, the End for which the Being is designed—the war-horse, not simply the horse. If our creative powers were awakened, it would be to discover, not things, but the hidden uses latent in them, their spiritual characters. To see uses we must be in quite another light than we are when we only see things, or things as they arc used for material ends. Sound, by articulation, to sense; Love, by wisdom, to science; will, by undcrstaiidnur. to action, or Lore, 60 by wisdom, to use; affection, by thought, to words; charity, by faith, to works. Uses are spiritual forms that go forward into ulti¬ mate forms, or forms of uses. What we are doing in this loicer world is in the eyes of the Supreme Being what a number of performers on the stage is to us. We are delighted with what is represented, and they are delighted with our repre¬ sentations, which are as unreal to them as those on the stage are to us. Hope is the offspring of an unsatisfied desire, of a desire that has not yet found its proper nourishment, its wholesome food, that is in search of its full and suitable supply. So far as desires are active, they are in search of their proper nutriment, their befitting mates, and with them to engender the after consequences. Hope is an illegitimate offspring of unlawfully united parents, of dissatisfied desire. It is impossible, absolutely impossible, to render that supply popular which offers no gratification to human demand, that is, to human vanity, under any of its modifications. Vanity, as human desire, seeks that which will feed it, and render profitable or gratifying issues. Vanity, as demand, may seek its supply in false knowledge, but this food, instead of satisfying it, does but stimulate it and make it the more uneasy. What it acquires acts only as an excitement, and its issues are dissatisfactions or dissipating uneasiness. The modes of demand which Evil is at present making, are to be met with modes of supply which Evil is constantly furnishing. 61 As demand becomes vitiated, supply is vitiated to meet it. Persons of all ranks and conditions are demand, the variety and multitude of acquirements which are pre¬ sented by fashion, as essentially necessary, arc supply. Demand seeks to supply itself without labour, and dislikes those supplies which are only to be got at but by labour. Those false supplies are liked the best that may generally be obtained without any great exertion of the demanding powers. Evil demand would in many cases cease, were Evil supply made difficult or comparatively hard to be ob¬ tained. The human mind, as a demanding thing, seeks its supplies on the easiest terms, and as it is an evil- d( l g thing, it nourishes itself the faster the faster it can get the evil supplies that it requires. To facilitate supplies to such a demanding thing, is to facilitate the growth and strength of active Evil, Evil, Evil, in the form of personal demand. Let the characteristic feature be what it may, how¬ ever acute and penetrating, it is, after all, Evil in a mode of personal demand. The corruptions of the disorders of the order of Evil are but some of the infinite varieties of the form of personal demand. These again are met with by some of the infinite varieties of the form of personal supply. There is a personal bodily demand as well as a per¬ sonal bodily supply, and a personal mental demand as well as personal mental supply; both orders of de- 62 maml and botli orders of supply have their origin in Evil. As real as the demand is, so real must the supply he to satisfy it. The demand only lives in as far as it finds and uses suitable supplies, and only strengthens itself by its supplies. It is a universal law, to which there are no excep¬ tions, that in order that two substances, essences, or bodies may become chemically united, one of them must be demand and the other supply, or that one of them must be able to receive and the other retain, or that one be solid and the other fluid, a penetrator and a penetrated. That substance which at one degree of fusion will become supply, at another remains demand; it is more blessed to give than to receive, or, in other words, that which demands is always inferior to that which supplies. The Spirit which nourishes the body is superior to the body; in the same manner the proper Spirit for the soul is superior to the soul, and is able to pene¬ trate it. The purer the soul becomes, the purer the food that it must feed on, or be penetrated by. That which holds must let go when it is penetrated and held by another. If the soul, which is in nature double demand, will only feed itself on a single supply, must not it become defective on its highest side, and consequently un¬ healthy ? The lower the thing becomes, the lower are its ap¬ petites, and the more inferior are the supplies which it demands. 63 To pave the way for a spiritual chemical revolution in the soul, it seems above all things necessary to divest it of all those inferior spiritual properties which prove so repulsive on the side of the higher, and attractive on the side of tire lower, and which consequently or constitutionally deteriorate. Every government on the earth, be it under what form it may, has only to do with personal demand and personal supply, with Evil and Evil, or with Evils as supply and demand. Supply is that which is contended for all over this Evil world ; it is not so much a contest of Evil against Good as demand and demand for supply. The rich Evil man contends against the poor Evil man for supply; our demands and the thing contended for is supply, in some of its thousand forms. The war between man and man is for supply, is for that supply which he wants to satisfy bis personal de¬ mand, be it called by what name it may. The thief takes supply, the rich man keeps supply. Supply is the Evil that is called Good, and contested for. Men are inclined to plunder each other of supply. Those who govern will plunder the governed, yet they will take care that the plundering system does not become general. Man’s nature is not changed when he becomes a governor; he legalises plunder by making laws that authorise him, and that he may have enough where¬ with to satisfy himself, he sees that there shall only be a limited number of legitimate robbers. History is nothing else but the relation of a contest for supply, and as long as Evil is on the throne of 64 Good, and limited in its supply, its children will always be found fighting for supply. When the poor man does wrong, the law punishes him; when the rich man desires to do wrong, then he makes a law that will do it for Mm. The law is made to inflict wrongs, and to punish wrongs; to afflict the poor, and to punish the poor. Laws are made to legalise a few to do wrong, and to keep the many in such a state they may quietly submit to the wrong that is done them. So long as the wrong doers are not too expensive, the sustainers of icrong do not loudly complain, but when oppression is felt to he burthensome, then Evil ceases to have any comparative good in it, and must he got rid of. The modal man may be modified by circumstances; the universal character does not bend to them, it rises underneath them all, and holds its own rank and right. A restless enterprising disposition is a parent, and that supply which it seeks is its mate; its own states or conditions are the consequences. A faculty that is active is seeking, and as it is sure to find a mate of some kind, it becomes itself the easy or uneasy result of the union. A Being, in consequence of the marriage unions it has made, is a compound of sensations, and these are its changes or states. What it does is its act of eating, feeding, or marry¬ ing; but what it is constitutionally is its state or condition. When one feels such an impotency in all human things, and such a mischief in substituting them for higher, why run about to do this ? 65 When the recipient is in a bad state, why go and delude him with more error ? Why, when a man is sick in morals as well as in health, why call upon him to ask him after the latter and not the former ? Why, when a man will have nothing from you that is good, administer to him that which is bad ? Why not keep yourself from those who will take nothing but what suits their evil ? Any thing that calls the mind away from a death •unto sin, makes it deviate from that point which is the only essential one. As the magnetic needle is made by a mysterious subtle fluid to point to the north with but little devia¬ tion, so is the mind constantly called by a yet higher and more mysterious law to the death unto sin. Until the hidden cause begins to die, we can know and feel little of the more hidden that is to live. ■ Those hearts that are bent on self-improvement are made by Evil to point to the world with the same cer¬ tainty as the compass needle is made by the magnet to point to the north. The most important duty imposed on all who are on the earth, of the human species, is to discover those magnetic properties that are rather to die than to direct. How can tee find out the evil cause, who are its con¬ sequences, as well as its co-ejjicients. As soon as we cease to be co-efficient with the Evil cause, then its effects change; we are not so variable when we are willing to give it up altogether, and be¬ come co-efficient with a higher cause; this cause will discover to us then the nature and properties of Evil. In the same way as none of the mariner’s theories of the magnetic influence alter the magnet’s influence on the needle, neither do any of the attempts of human improvement alter the action of Evil on the heart. If the proper end of our Being can only be reached through moral and intellectual improvement, and this again by a deep and intricate science as an instrument, hard indeed were the lot of the generality of the human race, and precarious their change. Desire must identify itself with its food, and by so doing procure a consequent gratification as an issue. If desire did not find that wherewith to identify itself as its proper sustenance, it would feel its own empty burning nature to be a miserable existence; but so far as it can get that on which it can feed, it modifies itself into a state of sensible joyfulness, into death delights. Let Evil, under the name of desire, take what active form it may, this form must identify itself with its proper food or supply, that it may li se joyously; with¬ out the sustenance, the form would not he maintained* nor the consequent joy felt. Wherever a form of Evil cannot maintain itself with a suitable nourishment, it goes out under the inertia of a lingering death. Selfishness and I-ety are insatiable. A man in a state of imagination has made to himself so many appetites or hungry forms as to find, when he gets where they were to be fed, nothing for them, and then sinks down, as he must under emptiness, into a self-modified misery; he becomes disappointment in an image. Personified imagination is modified desire, or mental appetite, which, when it cannot feed itself with its own 67 creatures, its own nothingness, becomes personified, misery. Imaginative desire may be kept alive by descriptive imagination. As mental desire sees in any object propriety, fitness, sympathy, congruity, and utility, as sustaining qualities, emotions consequent upon the reception of those quali¬ ties are experienced, experienced by every mind to whom they become the identifying objective qualities of their desire. The desiring mind that stands in the attitude of critical taste, falsifies what it sees till it has dressed it up to the height of its palate, and then feeds on it, and extracts from it dying delights, or self-begotten, self-bred, self-born pleasures. The man that stands in the attitude of pampered appetite, seasons what he eats, till he has qualified it up to the sickliness of his taste, and then feeds on it, and extracts from it a measure of wholesome sensations. He who is universalised sees death in all that is around him, makes no associations with any thing, well knowing that too close an alliance with it will damp all his joys. Being joyfulness personified instead of desire, he finds himself intrinsically to be with what he wants. The universalised mind dissociates itself from all ex¬ ternal and oppressive influences, and clings for its nourishment to that alone which gives it Being; it doe's not depend on its own acts for any thing, but takes itself as it finds itself to be* a Divine consequence; it does not behold external nature for delight, but holds itself to be with the delightful naturer; it need not, it does not, discriminate particulars; it is cared for, and is in progress to its proper altitude. 68 The unitersalised mind is a prepared consequence; it exhibits Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, not by its own derivative operations, but as creative results, as instinc¬ tive spontaneities, as of that which is, and therefore must be. The universalised mind aspires not after any thing; it respires the vital breath, and in this is every delight; all its acts are intrinsic, and being with what it needs, the effect must be inherent blessedness. The modal mind seeks for the sublime and beautiful in nature’s works, but the universalised mind finds itself to be one with that which makes it to be sub¬ limely beautiful. The universal mind does not assume any thing, finds that it is assumed, and suffers the vital principle to possess it more and more. The modal that tries to ape the universal must fail; it has no standard within itself, and takes outward na¬ ture, with all its accidents, for the intrinsically beautiful. The modal man is wholly unconscious of the defect in his nature; he endeavours to cover the flaws by a high effort of improvement, but when an appeal is made to that which is universal within, and on which the modal is based, all the modal deceptions will be utterly removed. Every part or portion of man’s nature wants, as long as it is made up out of broken elements; but the in¬ stant it becomes universal, of the one universal element, then it seeks and finds in the infinite the all-supply, the all-nutriment. While man is made of broken elements, he is ever in a state of contradiction, full and empty, over-full and under-fed. 69 Only so far as man is universalised, is re-constructed out of the one unbroken element, can lie feed on the Infinite; it is the one element that can stand within the veil and draw from the ark itself its daily bread. The universal mind must see in the very best modal habits, let them be called by what name they may, only death in disguise, only painted spectres. The universal man calls man to his own being, to watch his affections and all the emotions consequent on satisfying them, and to the necessary deaths that must take place before the mixed nature has undergone its dying course. The modal man says study exclusively certain rules of art, and the productions in which these rules are exemplified, and they will become the only measure of excellence, affections and emotions not being to be depended on, and having only to do with another world. The modal man says you must, by activity, form a taste; the universal man says by passivity, or a dying process, your elementary nature is wrought into a na¬ tural unity, capable of a union with the Infinite, who will re-establish it as taste or beauty itself. The modal man discards all that he does not do; the universal man discards all that the modal man does. The modal man will have all before him; the uni¬ versal man all with him and in him, without disjunction. Disjunctive is the character of the modal man, con¬ junctive is the character of the universal man; they are the opposite of each other. The modal man is that which he makes himself ap¬ parently, the universal man is that which he is made really. 70 The modal man wants every thing, the universal man IS every thing, being the Is of the Infinite. The emotions of the modal man are all dead, the emotions of the universal man are all living; they are conjunctive births, while the former are disjunctive consequences. No higher emotions can have place than what the faculty and its corresponding supply can, by con¬ founding themselves, be converted into. The modal man is a confounded being, the universal man a compounded being, an all-one compound. The emotions, as corresponding consequences, will always be determined by the desiring faculty and its desired supply. The faculty that is to be fed searches its food, and in the confounding of the supply with itself, an emotion is brought about. An object beheld may be used as supply for many faculties, and a corresponding order of emotions will arise with each faculty, but all these are dead sensibilities. There must be a congruity between the faculty and its object, so that those consequent emotions may arise which are the end of existence. The mind can work out for itself, out of some trivial circumstance, a self-tormenting supply, and by so doing bring about a whole class of painful emotions. When the mind is actively employed in breeding the matter of uneasiness, it feeds on it, and suffers thereby. As soon as the mind feeds on the product of ITS own fears, it cannot have peace; there is nothing for the mind but to give itself up to the Infinite, that He may disabuse it of its own sin elements, and fit it for a higher Life. 71 That object with which any faculty identifies itself, is that on which it feeds; its consequent states are painful or pleasurable sensations. By an ardent desire we work up and identify our¬ selves with certain fictitious materials, and feed on them mentally, till we grow sick, and then charge our sickness upon others. If the desire, instead of working up for itself the fic¬ titious materials, would but turn away from so doing, and identify itself with the Infinite, the Infinite would soon disabuse it of all its ills, and universalise it, so as to make it one with itself. One may be permitted to take what another is not permitted, but why should the one that is not per¬ mitted prevent the other ? Why does the selfish principle act to prevent another enjoying that which it could not take, if offered to it? Why is the selfish principle jealous of delights that it would not share in ? Funds should be provided only to remove the Evil obstacles, in order to promote a free intercourse be¬ tween God and his creatures. He who devotes himself to God’s service, must con¬ stantly act in overcoming all evil obstructions. Of whatever man has, God is the ultimate proprietor. He modifies man, and changes his inward and outward circumstances, whenever any evil necessity makes it requisite. Every means put at man’s disposal should be used to overcome the evil that hinders the fullest and closest union between the soul and God. Whatever God gives to man to help him to van- quish evil, God can resume the moment lie finds man misuses it. Whenever man demands more aid to put down the evil that is in him, God will grant it him; and more¬ over, when he asks for the evil spirits to be withdrawn from him, they will no longer be permitted to tempt him. The use of all means is only right when applied to vanquish the hindering evils. When funds are not used to remove the evil obstruc¬ tions, but to raise others, then they should be imme¬ diately withdrawn. An intimate inter-communion between God and the soul is intended; Evil itself and its consequences pre¬ vent this; therefore all the efforts that man is called upon to make are for the purpose of diminishing the evil combinations. God brings his own end about, when the means given have been used to stop the evil in its various active courses. When money is an obstacle itself, when it makes new difficulties, and does not tend to remove those that exist, then it must be withdrawn. If property be held on the condition of being used to remove evil, and if this removal of evil be not brought about, there arises a necessity at once either for a change in its use or a change in its user. If, after repeated experiences, the use of property tends to increase evils rather than overcome them, the necessity is evident that it must be withdrawn altogether. In all cases, and under all circumstances, the ulti¬ mate benefit is in God. Whatever is done to man, or 73 can be done for man, is to remove the difficulties that are in his way of receiving the ultimate good. Whatever man can do for man is not to bestow on him any thing, hut to disabuse him of those fettering conditions which are in his way, and stop up the chan¬ nels by which the ultimate good can reach him. Man is the property of God; God has the first and last right in him. Whatever is provided for man to use, he must apply it incessantly to the overcoming of Evil. Man has no other duty whatever on earth but to use the means put in his way to reduce Evil to its minimum. Man can only devote himself to the service of God by appropriating all talents to stopping the progress of Evil. Whatever human governments do to man, should have a reference to man as being the property of Him who has the ultimate right and ultimate rule over him. There is nothing ultimate in human government; there is nothing ultimate in the use of means; they are to be used only to withdraw difficulties. The Protestant literary or religious institutions that possess means should use these means to dam up the current of Evil, and hinder it from spreading with in¬ creased velocity. They have nothing whatever to do with Good; all their doings must incessantly tend to weaken Evil, so that Good may easily kill it. Church property and all other property is really the property of Him to whom the nation belongs; it has been left or granted, not for the private and pecuniary benefit of individuals who may be in the use of it, but T4 for the weakening the force of Evil over the whole commonwealth. If this contest and combat against Evil he not kept up, if property he not so appro¬ priated, then God will, in his mercy and goodness, step in and overturn, in a destructive manner , all mis¬ chievous instruments. Human government ought to be the voice of the ultimate proprietor, in whom all right resides; the only agency that he has given to his creature man is in Evil, is to dress and to keep it. The vineyard is Evil, and nothing is to he permitted to grow in this Evil vineyard hut what must of necessity exist, and which the proprietor himself will dispose of. When all the disadvantages have been weakened, so as to reduce greatly their collective energy, then the ultimate proprietor comes into his vineyard, and cuts down what his servants could not. When the servants of God see that property, instead of being applied to contest with Evil, becomes its ser¬ vant, then it is their bounden duty to cry unto their master in a strong manner for him to use his ultimate right and rule, and disperse it. Man has nothing whatever to do with ends, he has only to work to dispossess himself of disadvantages, and to wait for his owner's ultimate good. Man is conditionally encumbered; he is to condi¬ tionally dis-encumber himself; he is to disappropriate all that is impedimental, all that by blunder and mis¬ take has been raised upon him. Man, until he has removed the hindrances that are in his own being, is incapable of receiving from God the satisfying satisfaction, both religiously and ration¬ ally, that he is willing and is desirous of furnishing him. As long as there is any thing in our nature that is evil, it will feed on its like, and by feeding grow, and by growing strengthen itself, and at last bring forth a crop of evils. Circumstances confirm that which authorises us. We get our authority to do, not from that which is around us, but from that which is in us, and to it alone we must appeal. All authority emanates from Him who has a right and rule in us, and who makes His will and our nature to he one. Experience or circumstances confirm many of the lessons that God by our nature affirms , and when this is the case, we have a double ground for all our actions. We must not make the dead consequences the legis¬ lators of the living causes, nor confine the governing power to the grave. That which prevents Love in the heart prevents Light in the intellect; nothing but a continual over¬ coming the hindrances in ourselves can lead into a state of hope, a hope that the Good will ultimately take us and use us without any molestations. In proportion as we have more and more of those visible qualities which will ever be seen in the undying will, we shall display more and more of that diversity of state which hitherto has contracted and always dis¬ tracted the self-improved soul. Man’s duty on earth has been misunderstood; lie is to divest himself of natural sin as far as he can, and to keep at a distance from him all the artificial attractions that bring him into a new species of Evil, into a whole race of artificial consequences. The real contest that man is to keep up is against his own sin and those sin attractions that surround him. 76 Of what diminution of Evil is the human system sus¬ ceptible, while on earth, that may adapt it to the ulti¬ mate end, the generation of Good ? Can Evil in the human system be reduced, so as to render it a susceptible instrument, receptive and re¬ productive of the Divine impressions without taint? A spirit must arise within us that can separate and diffuse the cumbered and cumbering sin elements, and so free the soul as to make way for that which brings it into the harmony it requires. There can be no consolidated effort until that be re¬ moved that neutralises all the engenderings of Good, and dispossesses Good for a season of its rightful authority. Combined effort cannot be looked for, while a dis¬ uniting Spirit is at work, undoing and poisoning all the superior antecedents. There must be a fusion of all obstructions in the soul, before there can be a consolidated whole. There must be universal commotion, universal de¬ formity, universal disunion, sectarian exclusiveness of every land, so as to render men sick of their own works and ways, and thoroughly convinced within, by bitter experience, that they cannot right themselves, and then the Spirit will work its regenerating work, and by the new nature and its qualities lead mankind gradually out of their own natural and artificial evils, through a death unto sin, unto that constitutional Good which is the real and satisfactory supply for every unbrohen nature. We must hear on all sides, and from many voices, the complaint of dis-union, and a full conviction of hopelessness on the part of man himself to find out 77 his road before we see the real signs of that change, which will only he understood when it takes place. Deep, impure, and infecting Love, penetrating and pervading the soul, disuniting all its parts into actual elements, and making it spiritually and actually a great Babylon, this is the crisis, the sign, from which we may look for the beginning of the better order of things. A death unto sin in words has been much lauded in baptism, but little felt; often inculcated, but seldom exemplified; talked of, but not understood. Men, judging from their conduct, have supposed it to signify death to what they dislike—death to what they can no longer enjoy; death of this sort has had its millenium, it has done nothing but mischief during the long lapse of far more than a thousand years. Another and a more comprehensive death is now required to sin it¬ self. I cannot but hope that the day is approaching when the actual Sin power will be felt to be dissolving away. Men must quarrel as long as there is that within them that constitutionally prevents their uniting; only when there are no disagreeing elements in the human constitution will they be able to act in concert. When Divine Providence intends prosperity or per¬ manence to any thing on the earth, its elementary de¬ composition is not very far distant. There must effectual measures of decomposition of necessity take place, before there can be any honest reformation. Only that can be really reformed which is resolved into, or as near as possible into, primitive elements. Whenever the proper principles of disappropriation are discussed, then will man’s right and real and ex¬ cellent condition he seen to emanate from Good alone; hut as long as the right or the wrong appro¬ priation of means he the question before us, we are under the necessity of wandering more and more. The new principles begin by dis-appropriating, by showing what is unnecessary, of which at present we have no model; all the reformations which have taken place do not furnish a precedent, as they began by ap¬ propriating, endowing, and erecting. When the original end is not seen, must we not re¬ move all that hinders us, before we can take a right step? If the End is to determine us, we must, before we act, get at it, to know what it will have us to do, and this is by removing all the impediments. How can any new appropriations of that which is evil effect results that can only arise from another cause, when dis-approj)riation has been making way for it ? How can Divine wisdom be expected where human wisdom is growing, which pre-occupies and corrupts the soil ? The longer the principle of dis-appropriation he put off, the greater the aggregations will he found neces¬ sary to be dissolved. If reform does not extinguish the principle of dis¬ sent, how is it possible to expect any decrease of it ? If the principle be left alive and fed in another form, will it not do as it always has done, breed a family of dis¬ orders ? When the real principle of reformation is understood and acted on by the principle of dis-appropriation, there will be but few difficulties. 79 When there is nothing to contend for, the principle of strife having no food, it soon sinks into weakness, and Good extinguishes it, and replaces it with the pure element. Every one of the elements of Evil maintains its life by food; hut when there is none to he had, or to he had with difficulty, and little of it, then it is wearied out by unprofitable search, and easily gives up the contest. The great, the grand, the only principle of moral reformation is the dis-appropriation of the food of Evil in all its forms. When we are really right, then we die to all the no¬ tions of right; we let them pass from us as the dreams of an unreal state, as pictures that we valued when we had not the originals. We come into the world to be stripped, divested, and disabused of the evil we brought into it, and instead of the process of reducing that of which we have already too much, we set about every possible means to get it into active and strong operation. So far as we really die to the worse, so far the good has an opportunity to renew us; but so far as we live to the worse, the worse prevents the good from growing. Kandwick, November I, 1832. We ought not to reason from the periphery of a con¬ structed system, but from the centre of the universal- ised element. When our Being is of the universalised element, then it will be a universal fact, and from this universal ground element or fact we must speak. 80 At present we reason, from a divisional circumfer¬ ence, of that which really belongs to a universal ele¬ mentary centre. So long as we are at and on the circumference, and try to universalise, we must fail, as our own basis or centre is divisional. Let us do what we will to work the circumference into a formal fact, we are yet at the basis unsound. Only as our basis is elemented as one can we feel as one, and speak from this universal inherent fact. We may speak OF two classes of facts FROM the circumference, but we ought to speak of the universal fact FROM the FACT itself, as we are made to BE it. With regard to the universal fact, we are the pa- tiency, God himself holds the agency in his own hands, and is the real centre. The universal fact, ice are made, and do not make, human reason in this matter, is below it, cannot touch it, does not comprehend it, is really irrational when it speahs about it. Human reason has its own hemisphere, and within its boundary it must be confined, and not suffered to meddle with universal matters. Human reason, as a fight, has for its proximate pa¬ rent Satan and the broken elements. The universal patient fact, bred of the one element in its union with the Infinite is our new nature, and not any activities of the old. The one element, the universal element, is the one good standard, and so far as the soul is new natured, does it become itself THE FACT. The new nature does not feel, hut IS—I am IT—it declares itself I AM. The broken elements of our existence must he brought into an i-am-ity, and when this is done the Being declares his i-am-ness. The universal element neither asks nor gives proofs; it simply says I AM. It is only the broken elements that try to take and give demonstrative evidence, not having the fact itself to ofFer. . The facts that reason, founded on the divided elements can speak about, are dead sensibilities, they have not life in them to grow from. The universal element, as one, is a living, growing, fruitful fact, a consequence that must be, that is, that is established, that asserts its own Being as its own self- evidence. In the universal element, speculation, conjecture, doubt, are done away with, and so far as this element is established AS the soul, so far the Being speaks with open boldness. It is not by any approximation of the evil elements through theory or practice that we arrive at the one element, the whole clement, the universal one; it is through a death to them all, one after the other, that the Good re-composes the unbroken element, the sim¬ ple one. Theory or practice are both of the periphery of the constructive system, and made out of divided elements, not out of the one whole clement. The theory and the practice of the broken elements will no more make a Christian than a sack of flour will produce a crop of wheat. Nothing that we do as divided elements will issue in any WHO LIS results. We must be rrfadc elementarily whole before we can say I am sound, I am well, I am happy. To be new constituted, the old elements must die, and not reason; reason will find a reason why they must NOT DIE. The universal element is not an approximation, but a creation; it is not a concord among the wise and the good, but a righteous birth out of unrighteous ele¬ ments that have been passed through death, by the Infinite. No concord whatever of the wise and good, so called, can mate a permanent result; the divided elements must be made one, and as one brought into one-accord with Life. It is not death alone can fix the divided elements, but Life itself first bringing them into o«e.-ness, fixes this oneness with itself. Nothing on earth or in heaven can bind the circum¬ ferences ; the bond is in the centre, and this must be made out of a whole element. Will you be made WHOLE, out of a whole ele¬ ment? Christ’s garment was one— Jacob’s garment was of many colours. The highest degree of concord that can be effected in the periphery is only apparent, and tends to mis¬ lead. The standard of moral truth and good is the new constitution of the one element, re-born, out of a daily elementary dying. The experiments of the broken elements, when made, are fleeting, and always dangerous to be ap¬ pealed to as a standard. 83 When the mind reads the Bible, the recorded standard, on what does it itself stand to do this ? If the mind does not stand on ivhat is firm, how can it read with certainty what is before it? The mind before it can read with certainty, must be itself made fast, and hear first what is read to it. If the mind be not made fast, how can it read with any fixed sensa tions ? As far as the one element is re-constituted into a constitution, the sensations become fixed; but while the constitution is constituted of the divided elements, all its sensations must be fleeting. The new constitution, the one element, has nothing to do with probabilities, but only with certainties; it says to reason, thy oscillations I have done with. It is not the operations of a powerful judgment, or the fixed and definite terms of science, that can bring the divided elements of the human soul through death into a living oneness, or make the divinely assured countenance. A circle says, I am what I am, and no reasoning will make me into a square or an oval. The centre is in an unalterable position. In the circle of moral affirmation, all the parts must be affirmed collectively, and to do this we must con¬ stantly reject the oscillations of the faculty of judg¬ ment. Logical reasoning is a kind of chain, with links: if the third link be wrong, it may be changed to suit the second and fourth; or if the eighth be found unsuit¬ able, alterations may be made in it to suit another place. There is no certainty any where: while in the circle, there is certainty everywhere. 84 Man, until he becomes universalised, is not conscious of his universal identity and eternal unity of interest, essence, and power with the Infinite; he can imagine only his personal connexion limited to sensation and experiment. Man’s infinite interest connects him with the centre of the whole circle of created life, while his personal interest seems to limit him to care for half a pound of brain, or to some such insignificant self-consideration. Man’s personal interests make him himself to be the centre, to which all should be made to tend, while his universal interest, when he is universalised, shows him that he is but a circumference of which the Infinite is the centre, and to which he must tend and act, so as to give all things that direction. He who is universal as well as personal can delight in the infinite interest, and subordinate the personal, so as not to interfere by its oscillations. The more the universal re-establishes us, the more the personal subsides; and as the personal subsides, the oscillator}’ movements diminish. The personal man cannot feel beyond his own per¬ sonal organization; but the universal man made of one element, is a universal consciousness, having an im¬ mortal and spiritual identity with God, being united to him in the Eternity and Infinity. The personal man made of the divided elements cannot be universalised, but as he is in all the par¬ ticles of his existence dying daily, it is the perpetual dying of the particles that can bring them again into a higher and higher union with the Infinite. It is only through a death of the elements that they can be brought into a closer interest with the Infinite, ami taken out of the personality of existence, out of the limitation of sin. Self-love acts so contractingly that it deprives man of the benefits of the universal basis on which it runs, and then sets the mind to furnish substitutes for that which it is burying. All that which self-love sets the mind upon acquir¬ ing, it has hidden in the contracting operations of its own workings. Whatever self-love does is to convert a circum¬ ference into a centre, and every effort to effect this closes up itself more, and against the good which it is restraining. How is it possible for self-love, while it acts as above described, to do any thing but limit itself, bring itself into every kind of oscillation? The harder self-love works, the worse it makes itself, as it meets with stronger and stronger re-action at the centre, which after all cannot be removed, nor made to give way. Self-love in its progress towards what it calls per¬ fection, leaves nothing but its traces of anarchy and despotism, it blights its own works, yet always speaks of improvement. It will be necessary at all times to remember that the universal fact is not wrought of the activity of the faculties, it does not belong to the memory, or the imagination, but arises from one element, out of which the new nature is forming. The more the human faculties are disciplined into restraint, the easier it will be for the universal to pro¬ ject its sensations into intelligible and conceivable re¬ lations. 86 That which exists in the universal will make itself unmystcrious as soon as the human faculties are suffi¬ ciently amorphised, and will furnish its own arche¬ types, the ante-types of which will be found in divided nature. When the imagination works strongly, then it makes sensation facts, without paying any regard to the pro¬ totypes or things as they exist in the universal ground. By the strong working of the faculties, a province of fancy or phantasm is awakened, which, when connected with religious subjects, is very mischievous. The facts of sense are experienced; the facts of the active use of the faculties are conceived: the universal fact is Being itself—is the I am. Those who are not the conceived universalised fact, mistake the sensations they make by an intense use of the faculties for it, and it is this that makes such a confusion in the intellectual world, as well as the reli¬ gious. Again and again I say, the universal fact absolutely requires the human faculties to be subsidated, to be amorphised, to he soporated. The sounder the human faculties SLEEP, the more perceptible does the universal fact become. It is the intense activity that prevents this fact from being established, and the results of this activity are substantiated for the universal fact itself. The deep facts cannot be projected into the upper sensibility , while the human faculties are attempting to understand divine things by a self-working. It is denying the Bible altogether when the dead are made to stand in the place of the living, and to be as substitutes for them. 87 The whole Scripture is rendered mischievous when the human reason pretends to understand the whole that is recorded. As long as mere words can be sent forward and backward, there must be much confusion; it is only as we can stop the uncertainty there is in them that we can use them serviceably. The facts of the active faculties may be called lunar facts, the experiences in general solar facts; but the universal fact, a concentrated solar fact—a double cer¬ tainty. The universal fact is the essential manhood, which being identified with the Infinite, generates all as Being itself. If the personal man will day by day give himself up to the Spirit, the Spirit will digest all the elements of his existence, and change them into the essential man¬ hood, or he will reconcile the plus with the minus, and bring them into one whole. God will re-construct man anew in harmony with man’s actions, if he will consent and bring him out of sensitive evil into sensitive good on this planet the earth. Man who is not in right state himself cannot use to a right end any of his faculties; and before he efforts to do this, he must be re-constituted. Man begins to apply his powers to a purpose for which they are yet unfit, and thereby prevents the great purpose of his being, the subordination of Evil to Good. The personal man must be contracted, and the essential man expanded ; the former by stopping the human faculties in their activities, and the latter by a more intimate union with the Creator. 88 Reason has to do with self and nature; Faith has to do with man and God. Before man .and God can be am-i-ca-bly united, self and nature must pass under the death process. As the essential man is re-constructed, he has sen¬ sitive good ideas, to which the outward sensible objects analogically correspond. Dead reason treats religion with respect, as long as religion slumbers; but the moment it awakens and de¬ mands its own proper place and right to rule reason, then dead reason turns the whole into an unintelligible mystery. While dead reason handles religion, she says it is clear enough; but when it is taken out of her hands, then all becomes dark and dangerous. While the children have a rational religion, their parents are quiet enough; but when religion itself awakens the child, then all are frightened. As long as the child makes a dead profession, it is safe enough; but when it makes any living efforts, then it must be put under proper, prudent, and so¬ cial restraints, by its earthly parents. A thousand excuses are made for living in sin; but when once a child begins to desire to die unto sin, and takes any practical measures, then the parents begin some of the despotisms of Self-Love. When the child is, as regards religion, in a state of death, the parents have no doubt of the child’s safety; but should the child begin to show signs of Universal Life, then douht begins to be active. While the child is dreaming of earthly marriage, the parents are all alive; but if the child should be at¬ tempting to realise the heavenly marriage, difficulties 89 of every kind are made to such a self-righteous attempt. The whole house is put into activity if a daughter is going to make a marriage in Satan’s kingdom; hut if it be to Jesus of Nazareth, then she must he confined to her own chamber, as one infected with an outrageous disease. When a child by its conduct sets its parents a real example, which they might safely follow, then they think it high time to begin their theoretical advice to the child of the danger of true righteousness. As long as the child is in the way of unrighteous¬ ness, it may he tolerated; but should any thing like true righteousness be microscopically discovered, the whole of scripture is ransacked to show its crimi¬ nality. When no one intends to practice the precepts of scripture, then there is peace in the house; but should any one begin sincerely and really to try to do this, then the very book itself is brought forward against this act, as proving the necessity of a set of other duties not thought of before. Earthly parents seem to make a new quantity of du¬ ties for their children, when they see in them any real disposition to practically obey the Gospel. No harm seems to be thought possible when the child does not practice what it hears, but great alarm arises when theory begins to be supported by practice, and both dedicated to God. The mother wants a hundred things done for her, the moment she sees her daughter really intending to submit to God himself. The father begins his serious advice of prudent cau- 90 tion, when God has begun to give the daughter some slight inclination for Bivine wisdom. Private judgment is allowed to every one in the scriptures, except those on whom God himself acts still more privately. When God has really in constitution dedicated any one to himself, this one is to he by the world set up as one to he avoided. The particles that compose man’s individuality are indestructible. The particles that compose man’s indestructibility are transmutable into deaths or lives. Man, as a system, can transmute the particles from Good to Evil, and from Evil to Evils. Man, as a system, cannot transmute the particles from Evil to Good, or death to life. The transmutation from Evil to Good belongs to the universal system, or Love itself. If man will not suffer himself to be used to transmute, but will transmute himself, he transmutes from Good to Evil, and from Evil to Evils. ( That which man transmutes, he is incessantly emit¬ ting into the world, and such as lie has made it by his transmutations, it goes forth. The world then is filled with the human transmuta¬ tions every moment. If the particles man transmutes and emits into the world, are strong enough to be combined in the atmosphere, then the atmosphere is filled with noxious substances, unwholesome particles. If these substances are again inhaled by him who is predisposed for them, they, with his befitted constitu¬ tion, engender disease. 91 Man’s constitution, inbreathing the combined nox¬ ious substances lie has emitted into the world, through transmutations, becomes the sensible exhibi¬ tion of the state of the atmospherical world. So long as man himself will take himself into his own hands, to mend in any way himself, he must trans¬ mute the indestructible particles of his individuality into Evil substances, and after having transmuted them, he must emit them into the surrounding ex¬ panse; and these said particles, in this transmuted state, must co-assist in working the consequences which we see in the world. The outward visible and the inward world are just such as man, by his transmuting activity, assists in bringing about. Man by necessity inhales, and by necessity exhales; if he act himself he transmutes prejudicially, but if he suffer himself to be used, then a universal transmuta¬ tion goes on, and the emissions are beneficial. It is only by Love’s universal transmutations that the particles are beneficially transmuted. The individual transmutation promotes dead sub¬ stances, bui the universal transmutations re-establish lining germs, or seeds. The state or condition of the re-agent depends on the co-agent’s identity of interest with the Infinite. So much so, that even the atmosphere’s state and condition depends on the human being’s state and relationship with God. If the human being is in close alliance with God, God will, having vivified him, vivify all that comes into contact with him, that is, all that surrounds man. If we arc not united to God, we are proportionally 92 dead, and our measure of death we pass on tilings that come into us, and then give them out again full of our infection, which must affect and infect those who re¬ ceive them from us. The sympathy we give to each other, when we have not the unmixed essential love of God in our hearts, is a poisoned sympathy, and, as such, acts poi- sonously on all those who receive it from us; it is to them a noxious, hurtful, harmful, baneful, mischievous, destructive, pernicious, unwholesome element. If man is not divinely united with God, that cannot be vivified which he takes in; but when there is the Divine union, then there is a vivification of the re¬ agents in all their transmutations. Man’s great business is to keep as close as pos¬ sible to life, and as far from any undue proportions of death as he can, so that he be kept in a state to vivify all that he touches, or all that touches Mm. If we come into a greater relationship with death than we need, then we cannot, as our alliance with God is weakened, vivify the re-agents that are about us, and as the inverse consequence happens, they deaden us, instead of being vivified. The little child being in a state of life, and only connected with a small measure of death particles, vivifies or quickens all it comes in contact with, and animation is preserved; but as soon as it gets into a greater alliance with death, and less with Life, it be¬ comes deadened thereby. The child becomes less animated and less animating the more it has to do with the world, and the more ani¬ mated and animating the closer it is drawn in union with God’s Love. 93 It is union with the world, the dead world, that deadens us, and it is union with God, the living God, that enlivens us, and causes us to act enlivenly; the faculties are but the instruments of either end— instru¬ ments of Life, or instruments of death; they are and must be as we are, servants of the End we serve. None of the faculties can be other than we are: they, by us, serve the End, we serve death or Life. We must begin by teaching man how to die to the worse, previously to instructing him how to wait for the better, or how the better animates him and that which re-acts in him. The faculty of imagination, by itself, can only work a death work; it takes hold of an idea that is living, transmutes it into marble, and then acts on it as a sculptor executes all his operations by the capacity of the dead matter under his power. The sculptor makes the matter support the work; now Love acts quite the reverse of this—it causes the work to support the matter. When in Divine union with man, Love quickens all the substances, and incessantly convolves the same from one body to all, and from all into one, uniting every living particle in one common interest, essence, and power, in time and in eternity, that is, within and without. Man’s energies immensely strengthen as he is more and more united to God, God revivifying all the re¬ agents that he calls to his service. When man’s Being is really nourished by revivifying particles, then he feels sensibly divinised throughout. He is alive in every particle. No living results, no living sensations, no living sen- !)4 timents can arise but as consequences of the soul's conjunctive and contactive inter-communion with God. There can be no living conceptions but such as God impregnates the soul with, and according to the soul’s state or condition are the inseminations. If that which God has quickened into life will live at home with God, God will quicken all the substances in which it lives, or acts, or uses. But if that which God has quickened into life will not live at home with God, then it cannot be fed on the living bread, the living wine, and all that which is re¬ animated. Man, by Divine union with God, becomes, by de¬ grees, a frame of organised pleasurable sensibility; but if he will live away from God, he soon receives an insensible constitution, a constitution insensible to plea¬ sure, but quite awake to pain and disease. Man with God is alive to happiness, and more and more away from God, he is awake to misery, and is awakened by misery. Whatever is done in means, or in the midst, belongs to the end that began the work. If the work be begun from the minus side, the world, the end will be for the minus side, the world, and a dead work; but whatever is begun from the plus side, from God, then the end will be for the plus side, for God, and a living work. There cannot be a living work that has its origin from the minus side. We must, by the right use of man’s thinking powers, teach him what he must let alone, and why he must let it alone. The very best use man can make of his powers is to keep things off him that press too near him, and have a desire to force themselves on him. What a perversion in offering to the man whom God is drawing to himself by death, the comforts of unsanc¬ tified words or human breaths. We often go to the beds of the dying with our dead sensibilities, and try, if possible, to quench the rising Life in the new-becoming creature. The process of Divine generation (passing beyond living experiment on to the energies of rational and intelligible conception) confirms to man his state in Good or in Evil, by analogies, affinities, and relations. Man is the laboratory in which the highest chemical work is performed, in which the highest living trans¬ mutations are made, and which are followed by the greatest measure of consequences. If we measure out for ourselves a large portion of this world’s goods in this life, God will settle the ac¬ count fairly with us in the next. All accounts are settled in the next life , and what¬ ever balance there is coming to us we are to have. He who has had much here, will not have much to receive there; but he who has much to receive there, is one of those poor creatures who has received little here. He who has not expended much here, has his trea¬ sures laid up there; but he who has been very expen¬ sive here, has little to receive there. God portions his children all alike, but the way and the where they spend it makes all the difference to themselves. A phis and a minus make up the account, as 700 and 300 compose 1000. He who is deprived of earthly 9G goods, and can only have 100, has 900 plus to receive in heaven; but he who has received 900 on earth, has only 100 to receive in future. The universal orderer re¬ gulates all this without any trouble, as each Being’s state is its own account. He who is in such a state as he cannot outbreathe or emit the seminal living particles that his soul conceives into the open atmosphere, is made to suffer their con¬ stant bodily growth in his own skin. Man’s very thoughts may be nothing but corrupt germs, which take lodgment in his flesh, and grow from it, as a suitable soil. Sian’s own state may be so bad, and his transmuta¬ tions such, that he cannot get them out into the general atmosphere, and is forced to be their corrupt soil, in which they bodily come forth. If you find your old nature does not give way so as to let the new nature arise in strength, by the mild process of discarding all that is unnecessary, then you must give yourself up more and more to the purifying Fire, that it may consume in its own manner the Evil in you. There are some constitutions so strong that they will not give way to the Good without a shattering consti¬ tutional process. I would recommend every one to marry who feels a constitutional necessity to do so; those who can con¬ stitutionally give themselves up to God in the single state, are less encumbered with hindering obstacles in their Divine walk. There are a great many progresses in man’s re¬ integration : he thinks he sees truth when he first be¬ gins to see one of his own errors, and every one of ,97 these he must see out of him before lie can begin to be fitted to see truth. The discarding of error is the first process; when this is done, then there is the purifying, which is again an operation of no small moment. To see truth, or to see by it, can only be when the whole Sin-death is suffered; to see by some of its sha¬ dows is a great blessing. Human agency cannot be made to co-operate in the execution of Universal Good, unless the human agent himself be first put into a proper state, so as not to injure the work he is (when qualified) called upon to do. As the human agent is himself the grand difficulty, so must we point out what he must not do to prevent any increase of obstructions. It is not the transmutation of life to death that is wanted, but a connexion with that universal power which transmutes death to life. The whole system of sensitive life must suffer the consequences of the human agency in its personal modes, as every individual emits into the great circum¬ ference the transmutations he has been bringing to pass. The smell arising from the Spice Island, at the dis¬ tance of some hundred miles, is a fact which will show the transmutation and circulation of elementary par¬ ticles in a living state, Man only can provide a good transmutation for his own identic atoms while in his own agency, by a most intimate union with the Infinite; and so far as this union is perfect, will the elementary particles be vivi¬ fied and circulated into the whole sphere of living things. Whatever transmutations are made in man, and given 98 forth to the atmosphere, man is under the necessity of taking in again to his own injury, if prejudicial. The grand business is the re-establishing man him¬ self ix his place; and secondly, when he is there, naturing him to exercise Ms faculties and act there in right order. Man in vain essays to do any thing rightly while he himself is not in his right place, the place he must stand in before he has the light with which he can see to act. It is only when man is in his proper place, or near¬ ness to God, that God can vivify in him all his doings, and re-animate those very elements which he has been, by the exercise of his faculties, destroying. Man cannot get the evils of his present life removed from him, till he stands in such a position of relation¬ ship to the Infinite as that his' direct rays may act upon the focus of his Being, the fountain of his evil life— his self-will. As soon as man's position is changed with relation to God, God will remove the evils of his sensitive life, and vivify the elementary particles, so as to re-construct a new organic system, and exemplify new energies. Every hindrance must be got out of the way that keeps man out of his proper place, and stops him from becoming an agent in the perfectability of Universal Good. When man draws near to God, God will elfect the highest possible degree of concord in the elements of his constitutional existence, and make his own Being to be the only living standard of Truth and of Good. Man, when he reaches a proper nearness to God, will not have to depend on any thing he does himself, but on what God makes him to he, by the living trans¬ mutation of Ms doings. What man transmutes into death, by his own doings, God, if man stands in a proper order of nearness to him, re-transmutates into living particles, animating substances, and sustains man by the same. Here is a double transmutation to death and to life. If man be not a Universal Being, what is the use of universal analogy to him ? The universal analogy has no prototype, if man be not re-constructed a Universal Being. Only as man in his constitution approximates his Creator, can he become the recipient of the Divine wisdom. Man attempts to work a large work on himself, who is only a little basis; he cannot support a great build¬ ing, his own constitution being so unstable. Man only can, as his constitution is enlarged at the basis, do enlarged and concentrating acts; any acts of his, he they what they may, do not alter his primitive essence. When man himself works, he works the Evil intel¬ lect, and makes destructive and destroying blights. When God himself works, he works the Good es¬ sence, and makes productive and producing germs, living seeds, vital sources. When man, in constitution, is re-instated in the true Christ, he is a seed-producing branch, more and more fruitful continually. Man’s illness is nothing else but a collection of his own humours; what he has made, and has not been able to disperse in the atmosphere, have combined, and 100 at length turned into active disease within his own bosom. Man could have no illness, if he did not collect his own humours, and ferment them into active disorders within himself. The head of man that does not receive Bivine trans¬ mutations, is only like a cesspool full of corruption; that which the intellect takes in and does transmute, is brought down to death, and the same must undergo a second transmutation, and he carried up to Love. Since man’s Being is sustained by inbreathed sub¬ stances, if these be not vital or vitalised, they depress the energies; only as far as man is deprived of vital air, air that is deprived of life, does he feel languid. When any part of man’s Being is paralysed, he feels at once a great iceight, an overpowering load. Let man only work his intellect in darkness, or amidst the darkness of divided things, and he will soon find the consequences in lowness of spirit. Lowness of spirit arises from mans constitution being so far deprived of the power of living transmu¬ tations as not to overcome the noxious particles. If man’s Being he not re-constituted of the vital particles, it is impossible for him to fulfil the injunc¬ tions that are laid upon him —that is, to be holy, to be whole. Man must incessantly call upon God to do that to him, and do that for him, which, when he attempts himself, is injurious to him. Union with God is the sum and substance of all re¬ ligion, and they who desire this must be sincere and earnest in submitting to be prepared for it. 101 Man must put his faith in God, as a first act, before God can re-put bis faith in man, God first gives man a general, indistinct, undirected faith, and man may use this faith as he will. God having given man this general, indistinct, un¬ directed faith in his nature, says to man, put your na¬ tural faith in me, without any conditions whatever. GOD’S LOYE in the heart breeds God’s light in the intellect, and he who has the former in a breeding state, must, of necessity, feel some of the latter. You must get your heart more out of the hands of the creature before you can offer it to God; as long as it is so deeply pledged, God will have nothing to do with it; it is at the pawnbroker’s shop, and we must redeem it, at any cost, before we can offer it to Him. As long as the human heart seeks human sympathy for its comfort, that heart is in the hands of the crea¬ ture, and must suffer much before it is got out. While the human heart will not exclude every thing for God, God will hide himself, and leave the creature in great internal misery. When the human heart seeks for comfort in human sympathy, then it excludes God. The human heart must begin by excluding the crea¬ ture, creature comforts, or human sympathy, as a wanted comfort, before God will begin to appear. We may be in a state to sympathise with a fellow- creature, if the sympathy we have to give comes from God, and the party receiving it does not rely on it. The great food of self-love is human sympathy. What light the human faculties can get, while self- love is active in the human heart, is soon smothered, and dryness comes again into them. 102 The faculties may be comforted awhile by conversa¬ tion, but as soon as the self-love in the heart can call in the Light, it does it, and leaves the Being in a worse state than it was before. As long as the human heart will feed on the corrupt¬ ing food of human sympathy, it cannot be a vessel fit for the reception of Divine Love. Divine Love refuses to enter that heart that is ever feeding on human sympathy, and that is in a state of mourning without it. To clean the heart, the whole set or orders of hu¬ man sympathy must be destroyed. The more ill we are, the greater reason there is for excluding human sympathy altogether, and depending on God alone. Illness, instead of being a reason for human sym¬ pathy, and the right to use it, is the strongest reason against it. If God were present in any of his Divine degrees, we could not be ill; when we are ill, and feed on human sympathy, he then is present in a low human degree as a destroyer. If we have a sickly frame by constitution, instead of this frame being any claim on human sympathy for sympathies, it is in reality the reverse, as no one but God alone can change the essences and restore it. When we feed the sick with human sympathies, we do hut increase the sich-cause, and leave the patient in a worse state than we found him. It is not Life we want at first, but a death of self- lore, a death to that which destroys all the Light in the faculties. It is vain that we. who declare we arc in a state of 103 darkness, and feel it also, do give judgments as if we are in the Light. Those who feel that they are in darkness, should doubt their own judgments more than they do those of others. Without paying a great price, we cannot get rid of human sympathy and its foul taints; it must be put under a process of death before we are in a state to he purified, and then to have the Divine Love. A death to self-love and its human sympathy is the first step, the second is purification, the third is the gift of Divine Lo ve in some of the Divine degrees, and the fourth is the engendering the Divine Light in the facuitie Instead of praying for Light, we must most ardently pray for the death of self-love, and the witlulrawment from us of human sympathy, self-love's food. We cannot be knit together in one bond of Love until self-love and human sympathy in some degree be destroyed in us, and we are firmly united to our Head. When self-love and human sympathy begin to die in the soul, so far the soul is purified, and after this purifi¬ cation, so far united to the Divine Love. It is not dogmas and opinions that separate us. these are but the effects of the separation that self-love, sustained by human sympathy, has wrought. Self-love makes its own food, which is human sym¬ pathy, and feeds another with it, expecting to be fed in return with the self-same food, made by self-love. There is no remedy for the evils of self-love. Self- love must die, and it will begin to die when it is not fed, or allowed to make noxious food to feed any one. We must, as much as possible, prevent demand for 104 human sympathy, and those who are inclined to make it will leave off if they can find no takers. Man will grow gradually worse and worse, as long as we do not attack FIRST the self-love in the heart, and submit it to the death process by every manner of abstinence. We must dis-embed self-love of its seat in the heart, and to do this we must bring every manner of sickness upon it. To dilute self-love as fast as we can, is the first and foremost duty of every Christian. Before there can be a sentiment of pure Love, there must be a mother-place for Love, that is, for the pure Love to be received in, and in which it may engender the sentiment proposed. Without a mother-ground, pure Love can no more generate Love fruits than the sun can generate its productions without the mother- earth. As long as the human heart is generating with self- love, it cannot become a mother-ground for pure Love, to unite with and generate its blessednesses. Whatever work you begin in God’s name, be assured that He will finish it, if you will, after you have done all you can, leave it to him in full sincerity. As the Spirit is more noble than the human nature, the human nature is more noble than the human per¬ son or individual. As Spirit is more noble than flesh, so is the spiritual union with the Son of God a purer union than a fleshly union with him; but before we can have either, we must die unto self-love and human sympathy. The resurrection Life can only be that Life which rises after self-love is destroyed; while the self- 105 love Life is living and feeding itself, the resurrection Life is in the bonds and in the bondage of death, that is, in what are called the jaws of death. The jaws of death is the bond or bondage in which the resurrection Life is retained by the self-love Life, as long as it can feed itself on human sympathy. The resurrection Life supposes a death, a death to a Life that kept it from living, and that strives to live in its place, seat, or room, that generates in its stead, and that produces all the mischief in the world. Man’s plain duty is a daily dying into God, a dying of his self-love Life, which works delusions of every form, and is a substitute for the Holy Ghost. The more the intellectual faculties are cleared, and self-love left alive in the humanh eart, the easier it is to form an angel of Light, a deceptive delusion in Light. He who stands in the form of truth in the under¬ standing, and a figure of self-love in the heart, is in a violent state of inner disturbance. Love is a generating essence, or rather Spirit-created Love exists in reciprocity; action and re-action are necessary ingredients in it. In a dying organization the elements are linked to¬ gether in disorder, so that there can be no healthy feeling any where; a pure mother-ground must be made out of it, that Love may act healthfully. If he for whom you do any thing is satisfied, never mind whether he on whom you do it is satisfied or not. You cannot serve two masters. It is he who has caused me to work the thing that I must consider, not any consequences that may happen to him on whom I have worked it. The death of self-love is necessary for Love’s mani- 106 fetation; less than the death of the Evil cause will not remove the impediments that oppose Love in the visi¬ ble sphere. Whatever judgment we have must be founded on self-love, (that is, ourselves,) or on God; there are hut two grounds —that which is self-existent, or that which exists derivatively. If we sit in a room in which two parties are contest¬ ing, and take no part whatever in the contest, we yet breathe the atmosphere which they have infected, and come away inseminated with misery modes of some kind or other. Death to that which divides is necessary to mental unity, and mental unity is necessary to unity of pur¬ pose ; so long as the hindrances are in the way, we cannot make a step towards unity. That which makes things as they ought not to be, must first be removed, before we can begin to make things as they ought to be. The great that, the disturber, is the first object that must be overcome, ere we can begin any set of measures for the inward peace. Our vocation is best fulfilled when we stop pro¬ vocation, which only brings into greater activity the self-life, which must as fast and as surely as possible be overcome. As soon as THAT which makes all the misery in us be overcome in us, we shall need none of the good¬ making plans to be executed. Good then works us up into what it itself intends. All the grand schemes should only be to destroy the bad, yet unfortunately they are so used as to promote its stronger growth. 107 The only life we seem to lead is that of doing as we lilte best, and praying unto God afterwards to forgive us our sins. We keep feeding the Sin cause that is in our bosom, and then keep praying to GOD to forgive the sins that ■it engenders. That which it is the business of every one to do for himself individually— die unto sin, overcome selfishness or individualism— is transferred to societies, and is there overlooked entirely. To effect any purpose that is wanted, we must over¬ come that which stands in the way of the efficient cause whose purpose it is. Love will effect its own puvpose, if we do but sub¬ mit for it to take SELF-LOVE out of the way, which has been working against it from the beginning. We must assist one another to remove the remaining hindrances in the human heart, by being constantly watchful against self-love; the intellect being only an instrument of the Being, does not repair the wrongs the heart has suffered in its nature by self-love. Ever since the self-love will has been accepted, and human sympathy taken for its food, Christ’s body has become more and more rent. As fast as the fetters of the Sin-life burst, the liber¬ ties of the free Life are felt; nothing can bind a free Spirit, whose sin chains in the heart are broken by pure Love. The soul-destroying Spirit is in the heart, and as long as it can keep its children at work by the intellect to sustain it, it will let them become as outwardly good as they can. The early Christian Church flourished because 108 selfishness began to die in it; but as soon as selfishness revived, and daily doctrines were substituted for a daily death, then strife began, which has been continued to this day. When a religious professor acts more than he feels, he dissimulates, he misleads, though he does not intend to deceive. Let not any one doubt the Spirit which he sees abroad in the earth has found no access into his heart, and has not diffused itself into the essence of his Being. The Spirit’s first voice in the heart is death unto sin, and its second voice is to the same effect, and its third and last is for the same purpose. AH is sure when the Sin-death is effected; a life of holiness is as certain as that God is. In whatever state man may lay his work down, be it more or less perfect or imperfect, God there takes it up, goes on with it, and finishes it. If man will view every thing in the End Light, he will see it rightly; but if he will keep viewing things only in the light of the means, he sees all things in disorder. View the whole in the End Light, then every thing is seen in God; but if the mind has but the mean light to see with, then all is seen as in man’s hand That which is unfinished is always in a defective state; the End light only shows the End work, the end of the work, and the real workman. When man is in a proper state, all his senses are resolved into feeling; he docs not hear the sound, he feels it. To be happy, man mu ist be dispossessed himself of 109 all those elements in his constitution that hind him to the earth and its individualities; they must suffer the death of the cross. As long as we do not seek the petrifying influences rather than the exciting, we shall fail in killing those inner enemies that disturb our peace, self-love’s family. The true way of applying the proper remedy is to ascertain at first the extent of the ills; unless we get acquainted with the real nature of the cause, we can¬ not be sure that our remedy will reach it. Man, by every effort of intellect that he makes to improve himself, throws more active elements of disso¬ lution into his nature than he had before. He cannot stir in Evil, but that he moves it to his own harm. Turn self-love hack upon itself, and you immediately make the party your enemy; nothing so wounds self- love as to turn it round on itself, its own likeness. Self-love being forced upon itself, is placed in a very wounding predicament; it feels deeply the act, and does not forgive. All sorts of evils are excited in any breast, when the self-love in that breast is forced back upon itself. There cannot be a more painful predicament for self- love than to have its own foul breath circumflected upon itself. He who dares turn round the self-love of his friend on his friend, will have afterwards a BITTER enemy. So much of temper as there is in any one of our acts, so much of delusion has got into us and injures us. Self-love is a constitutional disease, spread over our constitution—a deadly evil, a subtle poison; nothing but Divine Love can kill it, and killed it must be, ere DIVINE LOVE can fulfil its promises. 110 Self-love must pay the price of its adulteries with the creature; it must suffer the death of the cross. Nothing can arrest self-love but Divine Love, and this only by the death of the cross; the soul being causally infected, it, by a generative power, affects the whole circle of consequences. Self-love has made the soul an evil mother-ground, and all the productions of such parentage are of degenerative evil. Some countenances flash fire if they can get a bit of sympathy, and without this exciting flame are dead, stupid, and expressionless. A person who lives on sympathy shows it in a mo¬ ment in the countenance, when that sympathy is with¬ drawn ; the inflation being put out, there is nothing to support the nerves, and all is seen in strong lines; roundness is gone, and tightness is at work. He who lives in the Love of the End, or the End Love, sees that the moment men lay down their work, God takes it up, goes on with it, and finishes it to his purpose. What man can spoil is only in the order of conse¬ quences ; what he cannot touch, and is above him, is in the order of causes. Men are allowed, in a certain measure, to do what they will with their own consequences, that is, with the sinful part of themselves. Man may torment himself as to his sinful conse¬ quences, or rather torment his consequent self, without penetrating at all the sanctuary of his existence. The consequent self is not the real man; it is but the shadow which is put forward, while the essential or rather the sentient man is kept underneath it, PREPARING for his Divine distinction. Ill Whatever does start up in the outward, however it limy appear, it is in this world of consequences rather excrements of this world’s causes than means to an end. The End being spiritual, the means are spiritual, and what is not spiritual is cast off, and pushed down in this world of consequences, as foulness to he cor¬ rupted, and purified, and taken up again into the world of causes and ends. The much or little that is doing here, in this world of consequences, is only a game that men are playing at, until they are wanted on the stage of causes; it is a something done, as it were, between the acts, and has nothing whatever to do with the play. The players assemble in the green-room below, and wait till they are wanted, and amuse themselves as they will, without any interruption to what is going on in another place, on the stage above. When the actors are wanted above, they are called, and obliged to leave their games below, let them be doing what they may. The GAME below is their own affair; the play, or duty above is not their own, it is marked out for them, and that they must do. There is much more dissatisfaction in this world than there used to be; men cannot make themselves so happy in it as they were wont to do. Unhappiness is a product, not of Evil, but of Good; Good is more active, and is tormenting the Evil The game which the players used to play and amuse themselves with between the acts is more broke in upon. 112 The causal world is more active, and it draws up faster than it used to do the stones that it has been mating for its building. They build faster in the causal world than at former periods, the stones must be more rapidly prepared, and this inward rapidity within urges on an apparent ac¬ tivity in the consequent world in the outward. Men are handled more actively by the powers above than they were formerly, and this causal activity within man, sets him into a commotion, so that he goes on faster with his game, he it what it may. The causal man is not the consequent man. I and my Father are one; this the CHILD says as he speaks of his Father who is one with I. It is only as the causal man withdraws from the consequent man, and makes one with the One Spirit, can it feel this three-foldness of existence—(Spirit, Soul, Carnal mind. The carnal mind may then say I and my Father are one, or that the Soul and Spirit are One. When the carnal jiind is taken away from the self-love government, and reconstructed by the Divine government, then it becomes in a state for union with it. To WHOM is the Bible addressed ? Is it addressed to the consequent man, or to the causal man ? If it be to to the causal man, all its conditions have yet to be fulfilled, as the causal man does not live in' this sphere, but in his own sphere with his own Light. If all that is said be said to the causal man, then it must have a meaning which only the causal man can give to it, and which the consequent man cannot un¬ derstand. 113 It is only the causal man that can use the End Light; the consequent man makes the darkness, is the darkness, and being it, cannot see itself. Only so far as the causal man is alive, is grown and growing, can it see its dark consequent partner, and is ashamed of it; the consequent man cannot see the causal man, nor any thing that the causal man can see in his own proper spiritual Light. The consequent man making the darkness, that is, the menial darkness, can only see the objects that are in the natural Light, and not any thing that is spiritual, or has spiritual Light belonging to it. The spiritual Light is that which the causal man uses, but the Spirit uses its own spirit in the causal man, when it operates any End works. The Spirit makes the causal man its instrument, as the causal man makes the consequent man; but when the consequent manhood refuses to become instrument, and acts for itself, it then shuts up the causal door, and is really spiritually blind, blind to every Light that is higher than itself. Take what you can of what is written here, and leave the rest, but do not doubt or dispute about what you will not take; leave it as you found it, and consider that it may be for you another day, when your appetite is better prepared. If you find fault with the food when you have no appetite, you prejudice yourself against it so as to unfit yourself to taste it when you have. That which is good for one person may NOT be so to another, and that which is good for one hour of the day may not be so at another; every thing has its sea¬ son, and we have our seasons for taking it. 114 Spiritual things are to be treated on the principle of supply and demand, as well as natural things. Those are fortunate who are in a state to have some one to rule them, and that will rule them, and make their proud spirit bend; when the proud spirit is bent to man, it will then, with much greater facility, turn to God. THAT which humbles us, really puts us in the best possible position to receive the Good; we cannot re¬ ceive the Good hut in a humble frame of mind, and that which does this for us, however painful it may he, should he welcomed. The people sin artificially through ignorance, that is, the particular or artificial sins; people are be¬ gotten and bred and born in sin, it is true, but the ar¬ tificial sins that they acquire are through ignorance. We must not confound natural sin with the artificial sins that we ignorantly acquire. Were mankind better instructed with regard to their spiritual and natural constitution, so much ignorance could not be put forth as Light as is done at this day. There are muscles in the human face to which no other use can he assigned than to serve as the organ of a universal power, which has its own universal lan¬ guage or expression, and which any one that is used to it can read; it is a language that may be read in the changes of the countenance, by any one that is causally lighted. That which makes the inward emotions has made itself also a means by which it will make these emotions outwardly apparent to others; it has made a systematic provision for its expression, and shows a remarkable difference between man’s own expression and that which He (the universal instructor) exhibits. 115 There is an outward evidence of an inward foot, of a universal organist, who is ever with his instrument, and using it in some mode or other. The outward man is the bellows-blower, filling the organ or inner man with wind, so that the organist has wherewith to make an outward expressive music. As there is an employer that finds mind or man something on which to act, so there must be an impas- sioner who stimulates man, and puts him into a state of passion, which is exhibited in opposition, resistance, and defence; it is not that on which he acts that im¬ passions him, but an invisible power that has the time government over him. ERROR is the death of the soul; it is appointed unto men once to die, that is, the soul must die the death of sin, and this Sin-death every soul is necessi¬ tated to die. Error is the soul’s death and the soul’s grave. A Spirit, either here or elsewhere, must learn to be¬ lieve in Christ, without any reserve, and give up itself to be led and guided by him. It is only that which we receive into the heart either destroys or divinises us. All precepts that are not received into the Life itself, and made fruitful there, do but remain in the bad soil, and bring forth cor¬ ruptions. Before any thing good can grow in the human soul, there must be an immense strong power in the heart to break down the self-love and self-love bonds. I intend land issues, but not land actions; it is not the action that I look at, but the issue that God will work when the action has opened the way or removed any obstructions. 116 To do kind actions often prevents good issues; it makes more obstructions than there were before; it turns the creature from God to the creature. We must withdraw ourselves away from the crea¬ ture, and give ourselves exclusively to God; without we do withdraw ourselves from the creature, we cannot give ourselves exclusively to God. It is of no use to begin giving ourselves to God while we have not taken ourselves away from the creature, while we are in the hands of the creatures, that is, while in our hearts we desire their sympathy. All my work is as much as possible to sever the creature from the creature, that it may be in a state to offer itself to God; it is a work of dissolution and un¬ easiness. To be really in God’s hands we are unhurtable but not insensible; we are made to feel Satan’s dart most keenly, but the wounds are soon healed. Those who are re-allied to God feel the most pain when they are wounded; but Love soon heals the strole, they feel all over. The religionists are all disputing about the way the ground should be cultivated by them, all of them be¬ lieving that the doctrinal ground is right, while the real mystic declares the grouxd to be false altogether; the ground is vicious, to which new natures must be added to change it. While the disputes are about the WAY of cultivat¬ ing, the badness of the grouxd is lost sight of; but as soon as the ground is examined into, and found to be bad, then all the disputes about the way of culti¬ vating are lost sight of altogether. 117 See first that the ground is new grounded, and then a .proper cultivation according to the new ground. It would soon end all disputes if the ground were first inquired into. I do not mean the professional ground, but the constitutional ground, the ground of the human soul. All the soul’s arguments, while sick, are but sick arguments. Now the soul itself is false as to itself, and falser as to its acts; it, as ground, earth, soil elements or constitution, must be changed, and changed by a death process. All instruction is only to prepare us for a daily dying unto sin, a daily dying unto self-love, a daily dying unto own knowledge, a daily dying unto own will, a dying unto all the essences of the spiritual constitution; this by resisting all that feeds them. We must insist upon all the arguments being useless that do not insist upon a real constitutional death change, and this each individual must be daily passed through —a death of the soul's essences. The lusts and the affections of the Old Adam must be_daily killed in the soul and the body. That Christianity which we receive with the divided nature must be by that nature that receives it perverted and rendered meaningless. The nature that receives it adulterates it, and re¬ duces it down to its diluted state. It is only the double nature, urim and thummim bridegroom and bride, father and mother, brother and sister in one, can receive the Spirit or apprehend Christianity. Speaking of that which one does not understand, of which one lias had no real experience, and which one has 118 not yet constitutionally become, one falls into imbe¬ cility, or deviates into caricature. Apply this to Christianity. It is by celestial energies the terrestrial limbs are supported; muscular action is a result of celestial energies. He who stirs up what is within us, at least if we do not like him, is useful to us, as he is made instrumental in bringing into activity what was very dormant before. What must I leave undone that I may get peace ? What means must I leave unused that I may not intro¬ duce Evil into my constitution ? All theory should arise from the deepest internal evidence, and then experimental practice will follow. That which makes this original internal evidence is a celestial agency. Without this righteous experi¬ mental teaching, or mental state, we cannot see what are the mental phenomena. The mind, with regard to its state, and that with which it is connected, must be regarded before the phenomena of the mind, or righteous and unrighteous phenomena. The mind is, according to its state, connected with an internal originator, and all phenomena arise from this union. We do little until we find out to what degree the mind is antecedently united. Whatever the mental relations may be, it is neces¬ sary first to behold mind in connection with an antecedent that works the righteous or unrighteous relations. The mind, as mother-ground, should be viewed in connexion with a powerful agenting Spirit, before we 119 consider the solitary, social, and political relations of this marriage. There must be something with which to make misery, and which can he exhibited when made; disgust, with¬ out proper elements, cannot be made. Without some measure of righteous experience, we cannot know what unrighteousness is; so far as the new kingdom advances in us it discards the old, and then we Imow it. Cease to look at me as your tormentor, but as the unfortunate object who must be made to receive the tormenting stuff. It is not the land on which the dung is cast that has made the dung, but it is the receptive of it. I dung that land, I dislike that man; the dung has been made in another place of other elements; in the same way dislike is made and cast upon some body or thing, as dung is cast upon the land. Is the character of your uneasiness changed, is your uneasiness more bearable than it was, is it not quite of another order ? In what does it differ, as to kind, degree, and duration ? We have none of us, as yet, appeared in our own characters. Our own character is shut up, and is noble; that which appears is ignoble, is a mere repre¬ sentation. There is the same law for me as for you, for the teacher as the scholar, and only so far as this is at¬ tended to by the teacher is he fit to teach. If I stir up something that can be converted into misery, ought I to be charged with making the ele¬ ments of that misery ? 120 If what I say be true, you will thank me for point¬ ing it out; if it be false, you will not care for it. We had better not look at others as the cause of our misery, but at ourselves. When we look into our¬ selves, we shall find it within. It is only out of that which I can hold to misery be made; if I let the world alone, or as much as is possible, then I introduce as little misery-making sub¬ stance into me as possible. What I do not come into contact with cannot be converted in me into misery, but that which I do mix up in my being may be converted into some form or other of misery. Adam’s adulterous heart and revolted will brought upon himself that Sin-Jtesh which must be burnt up by fire. Those who have begun schemes of co-operation to bring about good results, did not see that all human results must be re-transformed into corruptions. All the satisfactions that human nature makes for it¬ self must be transformed into misery; they are the proper misery-making elements. There are no elements so suitable for misery-making as own or self-made satisfactions. Those who make for themselves these human satis¬ factions have to suffer the deep death of converting the same into miseries. Adam’s deep sleep brought upon him the very deep death of his divided properties. If that which makes union cannot get into its power that which makes division, disunion will always be one of the features of the world; but as soon as the dis¬ uniting force is brought into connection with the uniting power, then all will be harmony. 121 As Christians we are commanded to act from the Love nature, and not for self-gratification; but when shall we be Christians t What is there not to leave undone to become a Christian? We must leave unused as many outward means as possible. The avoidance of that which we do not want, is a great help to us in overcoming the evil nature. We must turn our eye inward if we intend to avoid Sin. Every looking for Sin out of ourselves is a useless search; it is with the oum Sin we should contend against. What must man let alone so that he may be new constituted in nature? He must forsake what cherishes the Sin root in his Being, be it what it may. All that is not fed in his Being dies and falls away. When a speaker speaks from the SPIRIT it lias no exhausting effect on him; the Spirit keeps up the living supply which refreshes the speaker as he speaks it forth. When the Spirit uses the organs of a person, then it is the Spirit speaking, and the individual may not know what is meant. We ought to apply all the knowledge we have to resist those very means which the world is pressing upon us in its strength to develop Evil in us. The move means we leave unused, the more mischief¬ making elements do we avoid. We want all possible help to keep us from touching, tasting, and handling mischief-making elements. God will bring us unto a right state, if we will, lease unused all that feeds Sin in our bosoms. 122 To direct a man to God is to stop him in his worldly career; he will then see what means it will he useful for him to part with first, and how to continue the stripping system without and within. He who is constitutionally a Christian, can practically work Christian works; hut those who only call them¬ selves so, deceive themselves with the name. We have no right to make our constitution a place for doing that which Christianity forbids us, that is, clinging to the creature for creaturely sympathies. What our old constitution may delight in is no ground for our taking or giving it. Whatever the weakness of our old constitution may he, it is surely rather a reason for going to God for all it needs to destroy its vices. As the old Adamic constitution progressively dies to its lusts, appetites, desires, affections, the new con¬ stitution progressively rises with its new inclina¬ tions. The old constitution has seven false lives, or lights, or degrees, and these must he overcome hy the seven new lights, but only one by one. One circle of the regenerate seven-fold life puts to death one circle of the seven-fold false life. A weak constitution arises from a wrong mixture of the sin elements, the seven false Lights or Spirits of this world. The inner kingdom must be generating in a secret gradual process as a seed of mustard, and a holy leaven leavening the whole mass. The sabbatical year must proceed in the resurrection of the seven Lights, the Spiritual Eve of the first sanctuary, which must be awakened from the deep sleep 123 in the grave of flesh by Christ’s voice, his Divine touch, his Almighty breath. These lights must be lighted up one after another, as the priest in the type dressed and lighted the seven lamps of the golden candlestick in regular succes¬ sion. Thus the first creation rose day after day, thus must the new creation in Christ be raised up. We have all come short of the glory of God—that is, the first glory of the double Cherubim, the double garments mentioned in the 31st Proverbs, 21st verse, in which Adam stood a Son of God, in the likeness and image of Al-eim. These wonderful powers of Adam’s nature on the Glory, must be re-kindled in us by the soul’s High Priest, who bears the Urim and Tliumin, the gar¬ ments of six double-worked thread and the precious stones, doubled over against each other. It is by the free gift of these heavenly powers that every one can fight against Cain, the first-born flesh, the Adam of sin, and slay his vile spirit, driving out all the false life, and subduing the WHORISH HEART; the will revolted from its first Love, by lusting after that part of outward nature wherein was Good and Evil. In these supernatural principles the circumcision made without hands is carried on continually, whereby Jesus Christ, our merciful High Priest, executes the wondrous work and miraculous powers of his inward priesthood and kingdom, within this our earthly tabernacle. The strongest desire, affection, or lust, is yet to be broken down, and that is human sympathy; and while 121 this lasts it lets in anger, pride, revenge, and all un- charitableness. There is an immense difference between generalisa¬ tion and universalisation. To generalise is to follow out the modal life, as far as it will extend, for the general good; hut that which universalises us, doubles us, con¬ nects the soul with God on one side and universal nature on the other, hinds the soul in a double bond, within to God, and without to the whole universe; throughout all eternity, the soul must be univer- salised by the Universal Spirit; it cannot universalise itself. Very few persons indeed die a natural death; most of the individuals of the present age die martyrs to Sin; every effort that is made is more or less to satisfy Sin. Man’s natural life on the earth would he consi¬ derably lengthened if he would do as much to crucify Sin as he does to satisfy Sin. Sin has wrought such refined works that it hides itself in them and escapes. Sin has so mingled itself up with our religion that we can no longer trace it. Sin itself has become so subtle that itself chastises rulgar error. "While the world seems to he improving, it is becom¬ ing every month in a more dangerous state, by the refinements that Sin is working to cover itself. The very way in which religion itself is handled is a refined Sin-channel. All the points in religion are non-essential, if the first point be overlooked, that is, a death unto Sin. Whatever the act may be, if it be done with the Sin 125 Spirit in the heart, it is a sinful act; the act cannot change the nature of the spirit that did it. Every act, let it appear as it may, or be named in the softest words, must take the nature of the Spirit that generates it. Churches, chapels, ministers, and means are all in vain, if man does not call on God to crucify the Sin spirit in his soul. Man can call upon God to help him in his sins, without any intention whatever to call upon God to crucify the Sin in his heart; and then the longer we live the more wedded we become to Sin itself; we only change some Sins that we may hug Sin the closer. Sin assists us to put away some SINS that we may the more abundantly bring forth others of a more refined quality. When the hearer believes all the minister says, then he prays to the Spirit to crucify Sin in him, and the Spirit really begins the work. The more refined Sin becomes, the less will the sinner believe that he is in Sin at all. When Sin in the refined sinner is really attacked in the heart, then there is misery indeed; the four ele¬ ments of hell are stirred up with all their wvathfulness. So long as forgiveness of Sins is preached, SIN will help to fill the churches; but where a death unto SIN is declared the first step, then violence indeed arises. Sin is never disturbed by hearing sermons on the crucifixion of Christ on the cross, or the atonement; but as soon as a death unto Sin is named, then all the spiritual powers are in arms to put down the preacher. 126 The young are being prepared to lead a Sin-life, the middle-aged are leading this life, and the old peo¬ ple are so wedded to Sin that they have made it into a second nature. There are not five in five hundred who have an open ear for any thing that will stop this Sin current. Each individual finds that which he permits himself to do to he lawful, but that which his neighbour does is sinful. Sin finds the strongest castles of defence in constitu¬ tional complaints, as none think of looking for Sin in them, and these are made the excuses for numerous sinful indulgences. Sin is too much for the soul; if the soul does not pray to God to destroy Sin itself, it will keep on delu¬ ding the soul more and more. When we fly away from Sins, it is only to some other nest that Sin has made, and where she can, for a season at least, engender and hatch her young. We have just enough faith in God to ask him to relieve us of the miseries we cannot hear, hut not enough to give up the Sin in the soul to he crucified. We have no faith in ceasing to do, leaving undone, avoiding, foregoing, abstaining, forbearing, fasting, or flying from Evil. Satan’s image in the soul must he first effaced, before we can think of the Divine image being im¬ pressed in it. If we speak of Divine impressions before we declare the necessity of a Sin defacing, we mislead the indivi¬ dual and do it an injury. L nless man carries his generalisation of a death of 127 Sin unto a Sin-death in himself, he can neither be good or do any vital service to his species. We may admit the doctrine of a death unto Sin, but we must also suffer the Sin-death in the soul, which is the real end of the doctrine. Without a death unto Sin in the soul, the universal connection does not awaken with all its force. The soul is a eo-agentress or a co-actress with Satan or with Christ, and as such, has an immense influence greatly beyond the limit of its personal exist¬ ence, and only as it feels itself to be so co-associated can it conceive itself to be immortal. Sin, in connection with the moral human structure, operates noxiously on the surrounding element, and affects the rising good in man as the blight affects vegetation. We must be divorced from Sin before we can be united to the Saviour. Jesus Christ cannot be our righteousness until he has been our Sin destroyer. Sin has a local agency in every individual during the period of the human organisation, and by it an influence on what surrounds the Being. Sin, though it cannot be driven out of the human organisation, may be driven from its ruling seat. The death of Sin in the soul annihilates all the babbling errors of human religions, as it takes away the foundation on which all opinions are built. The Universal Life comes out of the dying process through which Sin in the soul is made to pass. The soul is not allowed to have any durable interest in the things of this life; but its true life is, when passed through a daily dying process, made to be the essential new ground of the heavenly kingdom. 128 The Sin-death being once began in the soul, the Infinite commences the establishment of the Universal relations in the most orderly manner. Natural death falls upon the body, but a death unto Sin comprehends the souFs life throughout the dura¬ tion of its present organic system. The natural death is only in the Sin consequences, but a Sin-death is in the Sin cause. Mental diseases are inodes or sins of Sin. If Sin were not in the soul there would be no disease of mind or body. The adultery of the heart is much more deceptive than the adultery of the body, and it is that subtle Sin which must he put to death. A death unto Sin touches all the secret and subtle ramifications of self-love, and through all the hidden meanderings of the false Spirit, the false Spirit itself. What sustains the Being while it is passing through a death unto Sin ? Why do we keep our earthly spiritual life in such an undying condition ? Why do we try to raise this false life to the same degree of vividness as the New Life tries to bring us ? During the working of the New Life the conceptive imaginatory life is almost inevitably mixed with it. The quantity and quality' of the New Life must, in every person, be greater than that of the conceptive imaginating life, or the false opinion of self in the heart. Where can we find a set of rules for the practical subjugation of Sin, or for the overcoming the imagina¬ tive false life in the heart. 129 The conceptive false life, or the imaginative sinful life, is supposed to be real, when it is only a magic illusion, yet perpetually going forward in the heart. The habits and opinions of the imaginative sinful life are important and delusive, when they assume the place of the real regenerate life. I want to hear nothing but that which stimulates me more and more to forsake all and follow Christ, in his contest against the devil, the world, and the flesh. That which calls me to individual selfishness, what¬ ever it may be, stops me in my course to the better. The little narrow selfishness of one or two indivi¬ duals crosses my path, and often diverts me from a universal measure. The time consumed in trying to conciliate a selfish individual, imalit be much more profitably spent in fighting against our own Sins. To fight against the selfishness of individuals is the proper way to act, and leave it to God to conciliate them to us. It is God alone that can make peace with us and for us with individuals; we must make war against selfishness in our heart and in others. He who has Universal principles must use them to work against selfishness, and not stay his hand in the work of personal conciliation. Peace is not made by the general who fights, but by the King himself. When the Spirit itself makes us friends, we shall be one; but until this is the case, we had better be two, and at war against the evils. An open war is a much better state than a false delusive peace. Those who are in a fair measure of union with Christ, are too much engaged with the common enemy to disturb one another, or to know what each other intend to do. The Duke of Wellington sent those officers home who wanted personal conciliation—only those who came to fight the enemy, he retained. My positive instructions are, to make war against your Etils, till the Spirit brings us into peace. There is an animal natural Life— Man and Woman; an imaginative false Life— Gentleman and Lady; a real generate Life— God and Man. God’s instruction to us is, to eschew Evil; Satan’s instructions are, to go about with all the imaginative plans we can conceive of doing good, well knowing we shall fail in them all. As soon as we lose sight of God's instruction to overcome Evil, Satan begins his imaginative false life of self-improvement, with some impracticable scheme. A complete desolation of the false Spirit in the human heart must he made before the soul Spirit can come in, and make pacification as a seven-fold power. There must he immense internal strife in the heart before the false opinion of Self is driven out of it, and only as far and as fast as this is done can purifi¬ cation begin. The heart, with the Satanic false Spirit in it, is a raging and tumultuous sea, and the great calm cannot be brought about while this seven-fold power is un¬ subdued. The people that delight in war must be scattered, which is only saying, the false Spirit that rules them must be driven out of the heart seven times. 131 There might be a thousand living oracles on the earth teaching; but as long as the fake opinion of self is in the heart, the scholar has no ears to hear of a death unto Sin. It is not enough to overcome the heart’s wrath and its rebel humours, but the false spirit that engen¬ ders them must die—must die in the heart; its seven¬ fold death must be our first consideration. The Spirit would, if properly obeyed, represent the angelic world outwardly; but by the false will in the heart, it is made to act in a reverse manner, and to represent or realise the outward world inwardly in a seven-fold manner, substituting for piety, wisdom, ma¬ jesty, and glory, pride, wrath, covetousness, anger. Evil ever acts contractively; and before any perfect thing can be built up, we must make war against THAT which mattes imperfection—vie must make war with sin, and ask God to take the false Spirit out of the heart. The cause of all human error and misery, and their consequences, is the sin-begetting and sin-begotten birth of the human species, superadded to nature. Sin makes up one-third part of the human constitu¬ tion, and engenders its own essences. Love must circulate its energies to appease or to atone the misery-ocean of the Sin-life, and after transmuting the sin-particles, to re-combine them into individual existences. Self is the Sin power which tries to overrule the physical power, and make it a serviceable instrument. Satan is the prince of this world— and whatever is in it, or is done in it, partakes of his leaven; he only is doing right who is attacking him, as the Evil focus. 132 While Satan makes most of the marriages in this world, his kingdom will never want subjects to work his work. It is not marriage that is wrong, but the end, or the consequence of the end, that is wrong; we do not marry in obedience to a law of nature, or a law of God, but in obedience to a laio of sin. THAT for which we do an act is the essential End, and works the essential consequences; it is the End that essentially characterises the act. An act must he done from an end, and for an end, and be natured by the End. An act comes from an end, and goes on to a conse¬ quential end. It is Christ, by his Divine blood, that can and will kill Satan's blood in the Soul; after which the Holy Spirit will regenerate us unto righteousness. When the Holy End does not govern in the self-will marriages, it only stands by as a witness. When the false End governs, it corrupts the blood and the flesh, corrupts the natural animal condition of the parties, and corrupts the consequences. Christ must drive sin out of the heart, and enter it, before be can be related to us in our mortal flesh and mortal blood condition. Sin is a self end that has got into nature, and diverts it from obeying the Divine End; the Christ of God. When six is overcome in the heart, then we shall be sons of the risen man, and governed by the same heavenly sustaining Spirit that governs and sustains him. God will always come in and preserve the work (PAINT IT), if it be done for him; but if it he not 133 clone for him, instead of painting it, lie sets it on fire and burns it down. God has an heavenly oil and heavenly colour, with which lie paints and preserves every work that is done for him. (He transubstantiates the work.) What you take of me that is good for you, God will re-take of .you, rectify it, and correct it into part of your own eternal existence —that is, double and im¬ mortalise it. We must give up the fallen nature’s seven-fold false Life to God, that he may retain it, and double it, by adding to it the seven-fold Divine Light. lie who is dead unto sin, cannot be at variance with any one, but many will be at variance with him, as all he does and says wounds them. He who is dead unto sin in a high degree, will soon feel it his duty to live in harmony with all persons, though they will not live in harmony with him, as his conduct afflicts them. He who is dying unto sin, soon feels it sin to live with any seeds of selfishness growing in his bosom, such as jealousy, envy, anger, and such like. He who is really beginning to die unto sin, must not remain long out of humour with any one; if he does, be will soon have a crop of sins growing up in his own bosom. He who is in the way to die unto sin, must be told, that his own temper must be narrowly watched, and not suffered to stand in an attitude of dislike towards any¬ one for long together. He who is determined, by God’s help, to die unto sin, must have an eye upon his own rather than upon a neigh¬ bour’s faults; his own temper, rather than his friends. 134 He who is really willing to die unto sin, must not be angry' with a friend’s faults, but very sorry for his own. He who is really willing to die unto sin, must be in earnest against himself. Sin takes a good deal of killing; we may chop it in a thousand pieces, but every part of it is alive; it springs up rapidly, and can grow with the smallest quantity of nourishment. He who is really willing to die unto Sin, must not want all the comforts he can get, or all the human sympathy he can digest. To die unto sin in the heart, head, and hands, is really a hard work; but this Sin-death must be suffered before we can be alive in God. A death unto the Sin-life is an indispensable mean of the indispensable End—the righteous Life. There must be a bursting of the chain that binds the righteous germ, before the righteous Life can spring up into active operation; and this rending is the death of sin. The righteous Life is the living germ in the unright¬ eous seed of the false Life; and only as this false Life is made to undergo a spiritual death, can the righteous Life begin to garment itself. The unrighteous Life binds and holds in a strait the righteous germ, the Christ of God; and this Christ of God is held in the chain of hardness, while the Sin-life is strongly working. The righteous Life is chained in within the Sin-life, and is doing all it can to stop the Sin-life in its own activities; it lives in disharmony with it, and makes all the internal war we feel within. 135. The righteous Life is the radical basis of the created being, and is the source from which the false Life steals all its strength. If the false Life did not get power from the true Life, it could not live. As long as the false Life can keep possession of the true Life, it can carry on its false measures; but the moment the true Life begins to contend for the mastery, the false Life is weakened. The true Life is in a kind of prison in the false Life, and maybe said tobedead. Does not your constitution instantaneously shut it¬ self up against those who will make it no return ? And this in a most painful manner. Does not your nature immediately close itself against those who will not make it a suitable satisfaction, so as to be perceptible to those about you? Are not a number of doors closed that were open before, when the constitution finds its demanded supplies withheld, and the same with great difficulty opened again ? The Christian religion consists in denying all, for a closer and more intensive union with Christ in Spirit; for the sake of this full-intensity of union, all its revelations are to be believed, and its doctrines of abandoning preached and practiced. The more intense the union with Christ and the soul, the more certain are the productions, and the more fruitful; it is oneness, or union, that brings about abundant consequences. It is only by closeness of union that incessant fruit¬ fulness is effected, and all that intervenes to prevent 136 the most perfect and most intimate union, must be removed by a death unto sin. In proportion as sin is destroyed in the soul, there is an approximation to a union with Christ in a more intimate manner. The more the means of self-restraint are multiplied the better, and no licences for self-satisfaction should be granted. Nothing but union can answer to the wants and satisfy the wishes of the soul; and to arrive at this, a Sin-death to sin is absolutely necessary. The sacred ministry is only for the sake of the sacred union, which is interrupted by the impediments of sin. It is sin and its consequences that prevent the full and efficient union, and not Arianism, Socianism, or any other doctrinalisms that can be named. The union of the soul with Christ is for the sake of the ultimate holy consequences—Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith—seven lights or degrees. The works of the flesh are adultery', fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like. The fruits of the Spirit, when sin is dead in the soul, and the soul united to Christ in one or more of his seven degrees, are those gracious habits or acts which flow from this heavenly marriage as naturally as the leaves, flowers, and fruits from the tree. It is the Holy Spirit that produces the Divine results, when Christ and the soul are in Divine union; but this union cannot increase in its degrees until siii in the soul decreases in its degrees. Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more, death hath no more dominion over him; that is, the Universal gem in the soul, having overcome sin in the soul branch, unites itself to the soul branch, and engenders with it holy fruits as blessed con¬ sequences. The way of Life is to die unto the sin temper in the soul; the way of death is to live according to the soul’s own pleasure. Joy in God arises only from a union with God, in the degree joy. Only so far as the soul seeks God for the sake of God, and not for the sake of joy, does it make a pro¬ gress in the Divine mind. Just as the comet’s atmosphere, when it approaches the earth, envelopes the earth in a dense mist, so does one unhappy soul becloud another when in company. The tree of Life is to love God for the sake of God: the tree of Good and Evil is to love the con¬ sequences for the sake of the delights they afford us. We mistake religious systems for religion, which is nothing else but the re-union of the soul with God. The soul being in a dead-like state, is the grave of the Christ of God, the Divine idea, or Divine liheness. The Christ of God, the Divine idea, or Universal germ, which is imprisoned in the dead-like soul, must overcome its prison house, and transubstantiate it into a Divine habitation, and this it will do by the Holy Spirit. The overcoming its prison house, is by stopping the soul in its operations, and conquering its consequential tendencies. The soul, after an immense contest with Evil against Good, is under the necessity at last of submitting to that which it is invited to yield to at first. It is the Holy Spirit that quickens the essential germ in the soul to overcome the soul’s Evil, and then identify it with the Universal nature. If the Soul will passively submit, the Holy Spirit will after overcoming its sin corruptions, bring it and the Universal constitution into the harmony of a perfectu- able progress, and will cause it in all its parts to co¬ operate with the Divine End. So far as the soul gives itself up to become an in¬ tellectual system it approximates dis-harmony, and is exposed to a conditional and contingent circle of spi¬ ritual miseries. The soul, by every effort it makes for self-improve¬ ment, exposes itself to have all its doings dissolved at the cost of much mental suffering. The Divine germ is greatly relieved in its Universal operations, when the soul is restricted in every manner in its Evil exertions. Sin is so dilated, and the Sinner so ignoble, that it is hardly possible to convert any one to Christian strength; there is no stamina left that will retain the first degree of Christian heat. The soul should constantly seek to lessen the inter¬ val between itself and the Christ of God, the Divine germ that is slumbering within it. As far as the Christ of God, the Divine substance, advances, the soul begins to feel its own nothingness, its shallowness and sliadowyness. 139 Evil, in order to become extensively knowing, has become intensively weak; it lessens its mighty energy as it branches itself into multiplicity. We ought, with Christianity as an instrument, to affirm the capital and essential ends, the re-union, in progressive degrees, with the essential Christ of God. The more lucid the atmosphere out of which we think, the more bright and transparent are the thoughts, the consequences have more of perpetuity in them. Energy of character must spring out of that pre¬ energy by which the character is sustained. Every external motion that a Being exhibits comes out of some pre-motion within the soul. We give up the vantage ground when we transfer the End intended, from Being to knowing. As soon as we quit the ground of Being, we get on to the hazy ground of knowing, and in time nothing is left but in¬ sensible intelligence. The end to be re-gained is Being, and all controversy is useless when this end is lost sight of. The very core and seat of the delusion which enve¬ lopes the intellectualist, is the habit of escaping from the real ground, the essential Being, into the meta¬ physical abstract theology of words. Theology, with its abstractions, does but inflame Self-love, or the Evil essential ground in the heart; it nourishes the false opinion of Self incessantly. What has essential Being, or the new constitution, to do with theoretical arguments, or with questions of controversy, debateable only with the air ? The Universal inward sense or conscience is the 140 product of essential Being, which has its intimate con¬ nexion with ihe self-existent Being. The personal Being is only kept in its purity by the essential Being, which is in a peaceful and beneficial living intercourse with the self-existent Being. Sin has in a certain measure interrupted the peace¬ ful and beneficial intercourse with the soul and the es¬ sential Christ of God. The soul’s individual interest is one with its Uni¬ versal interest, which is one with the essential interest, which is one with the self-existent Being. Personal piety or personal virtue has its ground in the pre-essential piety and in the pre-essential virtue, which springs direct from the Infinite. The personal man sets at defiance the Universal interest, the Universal feeling, and the Universal re¬ cords, and nicknames his individual inclination the toice of conscience; he settles the affairs of God by the measure of his own modality, in the hot blood of momentary passion. Only as the personal projects out of the Universal Being, are his issues capable of being preserved. The Universal interest, the Universal wish, the Uni¬ versal feeling, is that out of which the modal man should project all his theories and practices. Only so far as the personal will take all its determi¬ nations from the pre-monitory Universal, can it over¬ come the multiplied and multipliable evils that are about it. While the personal will not project from the pre- established Universal within, all its reasonings are without basis and its actions without end. 141 The moment the personal man takes a step without the pre-established Universal ground or harmony, it is at sea, tossed about by the waves. In, through, and by which modal faculty has your Universal conscience spoken, and why are so many of the faculties so obtuse as not to hear it ? Why does conscience not get hold of our feelings as it does of the understanding faculties ? The Universal Law, as a Universal essential nature, should be so in-natured in the whole of our personal Being, that is, in each distinct faculty, as to give an equable sensibility to the whole framework; it and the Being must be distinctly one. Every modal faculty of the personal man must be turned into Universality , and thereby made of one nature throughout; it is not sufficient to receive Uni¬ versality as a colour, but it must be given and received and incorporated as a nature. Until Universality and personality be natively blended, there will be the clashing of two natures, two laws, two ends. Universality must take personality in our persons, and identify the one with the other. Education is not the result of that which is given, but of that which is talcen. A child after it is born is a result, not of that which is offered to it, but of that or those elements or means which it takes hold of and uses for some definite or indefinite purpose. The object of man is circulating effects, of the means the child takes hold of which are called instruc¬ tion, education, and such like the purpose is yet in¬ distinct. Who set you on your course ? 14-2 When the mind is in the inferior Light, or the erroneous Light, how is this Light to be changed ly talking to it? It is the new Light that engenders in the mind the new argument, not the new argument the new Light. It is the Light that makes the argument, and also con¬ firms it. It is not against individual Evils we should take our measures, but against that Evil principle, as a false Life, which makes us mischievous agents to carry into effect destructive measures; not against any system, but against that, which after having made human con¬ stitutions, uses them for its own pernicious End. The Soul has a connection within with the vicious generating life, which threatens to eat out its very vi¬ tals, and it demands all possible care and vigilance to put an end to the same. The mal-administration of man’s personal nature befriends Evil as a generating cause, and excites it to greater Evil measures. What would man be if it were not for the conserva¬ tive Universality, which as an under current sits strongly athwart the human mind, and gives a great degree of steadiness to the general movements. What would man be without this conservative oil, which, as a holy balsam, stops the mind short of the goal of its extravagance, of that goal to which often it would otherwise run. The Soul is outwardly surrounded with illusions to which it ought never to yield, but by being inferiority misled, it falls an easy victim. Until the inward illusion in the Soul is inwardly de¬ stroyed by the Universal conservative current, it can- 143 not but become a victim to the temptations that are offered to it. The soul being inwardly beguiled, cannot deliver itself from its enthralments, but must supplicate the assistance that can and that will, when cordially soli¬ cited, overcome them. Christ through the Soul, strives to get a full con¬ nection with the outward world, but as long as the Soul as any connection with the Evil Author, this End is opposed. Christ as the Universal good Spirit, cannot without the agency of the Soul, in a subordinate capacity, rule the outward world for the Ultimate End. How can the highest bring his own end about, whilst we his instrumental agents are constantly interrupting it, by using a quantity of forbidden means. It is the Universal conservative good that enobles the Soul, when the Soul will cease its connection with unreal means, with means that impede the working End in its noblest works. While the Soul will use inferior means, it only hin¬ ders the work that the highest is performing with the highest means. Blame yourself for all the inward troubles that arise, and not the outward creature or circumstances; for if you had no troublesome element within, there would be nothing to stir up. Only as there is within to stir up, do we feel inward uneasiness. We must war the good warfare within and without, and only as we are sincere can we expect the aid that makes conquest sure, or that consubstantiates the soul. As certain as practice has its origin in some theory, 144 theory also has its origin in some cupidity the outer man is made up of. The personal or modal man, cannot as an individual, stifle the workings of the Universal conscience, or con¬ servative law, which as an under current, is always en¬ deavouring to restrain man and direct him aright, or consubstantiate him. We ought, so far as we are personally concerned, to reduce the Evil within to the minimum, that the Good as the instrument of the highest might be the maximum. Man as a personal individual, errs, and must err, and so far as the universal essential nature consubstan- tiates him, can he have a right feeling. If we do not assail the Evil within, the good cannot so easily gain its ruling position. If Good be as fifty-one, and Evil as forty-nine, the government of the individual is in the hands of the Good. The inward struggles continue, but the ulti¬ mate victory is certain. The supernatural, is a Universal coersive power Spirit, which forces the individual man against his na¬ tural will, into a living sensible condition within the Soul. It is a spiritual fact of which reason cannot take or give any account. Men with the reasoning faculty, believe as much of the Bible as they can reduce within the compass of . reason and no more; that which reason cannot reach, it considers as belonging to times past, and need not be enquired into. As soon as the Soul desires the right End, God will enable it to disabuse itself of the wrong means, by giving to it supernatural gifts for this purpose. 145 The moment the Soul ceases to desire the right End, it begins to make use of wrong means to supply itself with the deficiency it lacks, and the more it does this, the more insensible it becomes within to the Uni¬ versal sensations. If the gift of the Spirit were now to be restored, the first effort would be the disuse of all the false means the soul at present employs, and which prevent it from seeing the End. He who is spiritually gifted, so as to see the End, does not set up anything, but rather begins to advise a pulling down of the false means which have been substituted for the End. As the Spirit subsides, the End is not seen, and means are multiplied; but as the gifts increase the End is seen, and the means subside —that sin may die. When the End is once seen, every kind of means used as substitutes, must he immediately put aside, so that sin in the soul may be no longer propagated. As soon as Gifts cease, by which the soul feels the End, it substitutes something in the place of them , and thereby increases the growth of Evil, The first Evil which grows out of the subsidence of the Gifts, is substitution. The sense of the sin-killing power is very appalling to the soul, and is seldom desired with sincerity. Sin is the revolutionary parent with which the soul has made a fatal alliance, and with which it more and more involves itself in illusive delusions. The intellectual man, with all his instrumental know¬ ledge, does not use it to search for the End, but only to get more and more opinions, or illusive abstractions. Whatever a man attains by any one of his efforts, 146 this he ought to apply to the overcoming the Evil in his own bosom. When he acts to get instruments, these instruments he should apply to Teduce the Evil in his own bosom to a minimum. The power to use rightly all the gifts of God is the inestimable gift, the last great gift; and until we have this we make a mischievous use of all our faculties, and all the objects they come in contact with. Man, with his oicn false life, tries to refine it by the faculties of abstraction and imagination, and after hav¬ ing deceived himself with his illusive acquirements, goes forth, and without any intention of doing so, de¬ ceives others. So long as the individual mans own life is false, that which he does to refine it, may strip it of its vulgarity or coarseness, but never can kill its selfish¬ ness. Whatever illusive advantages the sinful life may ac¬ quire for itself, it can no more keep them for itself, than it can give to itself immortality. The vain glorious self-love-life does all it can by culture and secular embellishment, to give to its ap¬ pearances exterior greatness, and exterior nobility, and to cover all its doings with a new and extraordi¬ nary splendour. The Human Being, as individual, personal, and sel¬ fish, can have no native excellencies; whatever may appear can only be the involuntary movements of the Universal Life, which is claiming its prerogative and developing in full symmetry its own instrument. Which does self-love value most, its own native per¬ sonal appearance, or its acquired mental improve- 147 ments, its bodily form and features, or its intellectual attainments ? The more perfect a man endeavours to make himself, the more he must he brought to see that the very Life itself that he is living with, is the sin-generating cause of all his imperfection and ignorance. Man never would if he were not deceived, strive to get at that through his own efforts, which can only be given to him embosomed in the new Life, when the self love life has been passed through its proper spi¬ ritual death. The human Life, as individual, can have no superi¬ ority or inferiority really in it; it must undergo a spiri¬ tual death, called a death unto sin, and be quickened as one with the Universal Life. All the duty which God has given man to do in this world, is to die unto sin, and only so far as he does this, is he receptive of the Universal Life. It is only as the new life arises over the death of the false life, do men estimate the nothingness of their own cumbrous load. For one hour’s growth of the' Universal Life, the substance, the Christ of God, men are made willing to part with their fifty years’ of letter-learned wis¬ dom. The mind cannot work a universal operation with a modal light, it must fail in all its doings, when it has not the pre-sustaining capital, or the antecedent pre¬ rogative energy. That which the mind needs before it sets to work, is an original predominant capital, which is superior to the work attempted. The mind had better attempt no Universal efforts, without it has to accompany it the inward authority or unseen administrator. While the individual is professing with his mental faculties that he is in search of truth, a Universal self¬ feeling sense is declaring that it requires the indivi¬ dual to deny his own Life. Man, the subject of the fall, is himself unconscious of the fact, or very imperfectly sensible of it, and by acting to rescue himself from the degradation he has sustained, aggravates the consequences. Man with his own personal life, and own selfish ac¬ tivities, is himself unapprised that he stands in the way of the real light which he needs, and engenders a false mental light with which he operates. The personal individual, or selfish life that pertains to man, must be given up to a spiritual death, that the Universal Life may resume its Universal empire. Man’s illustrious destiny can only he operated in him, in proportion as by a spiritual death he puts off his ignoble tendencies. WTien man begins to feel that his own sin life is the cause of his misery, and that every struggle to advance it retards his ultimate destiny, he ought to throw him¬ self into the arms of another, who has offered him the immortal life on the conditions of dying, of dying to all that this world offers. While man himself is attending to the phenomena of mind, God is attending to the phenomena man, that is, to the false Life itself, which is the radical Evil. When man’s false Life is his love, his moral basis, he can have no more moral disposition than his own self love life engenders. Man, when he estimates his own superiority , over• looks the whole circle of Universal tendencies or births, that his Life is made constantly to engender within, which he dare not acknowledge to any one, and which he tries to hide from himself. Whatever we see good, great, or noble in the world, comes into it in spite of the opposition that is made to suppress it in its rising, Wherever there is an approximation to the proper standard, and true symmetry of human nature, it is begotten, bred and born, in an element that defies the Evil power to hinder it, it is of the Universal energy which wills it to be so. It is the Universal Light that opens its own way, step by step, through all the seven circles of darkness, through the seven deaths of sin, and establishes itself as a sevenfold power in the spiritual world of the human heart. Death must be brought upon death itself, by the Universal Life, that the Universal Life may reign uni¬ versally. When the soul feeds more and more really upon the Universal Life, it will in right earnest abstain, it will reduce abstinence to a habit. It is the seven fold luminous power that collects all the doings of man into one point, and reduces man himself, as well as his works, into a subordinate in¬ strument. However important man’s seperate works may ap¬ pear, it is man himself, as a self-active agent, that must he spiritually reduced, and by a death to his own individuality, re-animated as an instrument of the pre- established harmony. How can the mind be raised up to a level higher 150 than its present state, if it does not die to all those qualities which are attractable by the Universal Sin Magnet ? The less there is in man that belongs to Satan's kingdom, the less Satan has to hold, him by. Distinguish between what dead works we do without, and what killing work is done within us that we cannot resist, to kill the Life. We cannot possibly judge the cause from the consequences, because we hare only the inferior Light to do it with, but we may judge the conse¬ quences by the cause, having the superior Light assist¬ ing us. All man’s outward works are dead works, but all the works that are done within man, are man-killing works, as they are to kill the self love life of man. As the self love life in man must undergo the inward death, it matters not on what class we place the results of his labours. All the self improvements that the self love life makes, must die as the life dies on which they are founded. It is as unreasonable as it is unscriptural to claim the Spirit’s presence in the Soul for the production of fruits of holiness, and to hinder his work of power which is the putting of sin to death. The Spirit must be present to kill sin, before it can work the works of holiness, and our duty is to consent that he performs this inward death work. The outward death is the death of the body, the in¬ ward is the death of sin. Self love operates with two powers, the understand¬ ing, and the will or energies, and often fastens upon a 151 thread of the subject, the whole of which it cannot em¬ brace. If the great enemy of souls can divert our minds with old things and new things, and the comparison between them, he will assuredly triumph in turning us from the great achievement which Christ is working in the soul, which is death unto sin, a second death. Christ is endeavouring to effect the second death before the first, and this, while the soul is in the body, and the body on the earth. Why does man acknowledge the death unto sin as a doctrine, and deny it practically as a fact in the soul ? Why does man promise at the baptism of the infant a death unto sin, and practically in his acts bring the child up for the world ? He who exercises his gifts the best, exercises them against himself, against the corruptions of his own na¬ ture, and in so far as he does this, he has found out the more excellent way. So long as the self love life is led to expect anything but its oivn death, it is becoming more and more in¬ volved in intricacies, the death that Satan transferred upon the Divine Life in the Soul, must be re-trans¬ ferred by the Divine Life upon the false life. There is no quantity of argument w’hatever, that will kill the self love life, or any set of opinions give the Divine Life. He who preaches the best, has only to tell what union with God in Christ has made him to be, and not doctrines and opinions about the possibility of it. The union of the Soul with God in Christ, makes that comprehensible ivhich was incomprehensible be¬ fore in the faculties. 152 Man’s sin constitution is too strait to receive the Light , or too loose to retain it, so that it must by a death unto sin be burst assunder. The more the Spirit in you arraigns the practices of men, the Evil spirit will become watchful. "When efforts are made to carry home to the bosom the conviction of error, the internal dormant Evil is awakened in all its angry forms. It is erroneous to begin to teach truth while the con¬ victions of sin have not been powerfully awakened, and some personal efforts made to overcome the en¬ gendering cause. If sin and its errors be not removed, where is the ground that is receptive of the Christian truth ? The grand business of Christianity is to overcome the affections and tastes of Evil. While science furnishes food for the mind, the world furnishes evil inducements for the heart, so that the Evil inclinations, and Evil desires take deeper root. Wrath is excited when the Evil in man’s nature is stirred up, and those who are instruments for this task must rely for peace on the Spirit within, as they can hope for no justice from the angered subject. While the Spirit employs man to convince others of error, he convinces the instrument itself within of the truth. The instrument is to endeavour to press home the conviction of sin to the sinner , and the necessity of its death, and to wait to receive from the Spirit a fore¬ taste of the righteous Life within his own soul. A death unto sin is effected by the word, and a life unto righteousness by the Spirit. 153 The Spirit that moves, guides, and governs me, will answer for itself. I cannot answer for it; it is not my business to meddle with its affairs. I can neither con¬ demn or justify what it does by me; all that belongs to me as instrument, is to be as neuter as possible, and let the whole act be impersonal. We must allow the voice of God in his own temple, and stop all prohibition to it. What have we to do with the person in whom we believe the Spirit of God is speaking ? We have only to attend to the voice, and not to the instrument. If the Spirit acts supernaturally, to do away with the obstructions in man, shall man put new difficulties in the Spirit’s way? The death unto sin is the burning disease, which precedes the chariot wheels of Jesus; it is the pesti¬ lence that walketh in darkness, by which the Lord, the Preserver, can alone deliver himself. The Lord himself is fettered in man, and to relieve himself he attacks the heart, leaving the understand¬ ing and the conscience in their usual exercise. The man who has begun to wage war against sin must not relax in his efforts; if he give over the con¬ test he will be worse than he was before he began. The essential characteristic of the original church, is a death unto sin; but as soon as this idea is lost sight of, the whole end of the Church is lost. Jesus Christ left on the earth the necessary powers for the subjugation of sin, if man consents to use them against the Evil in himself. Evil must be rebuked as evil; if this is not done how is sin to be put to death ? He that will perform God’s will must depend upon 15* the Holy Spirit for power to rebuke evil, to reveal hidden iniquity, to abase human pride, to direct to a death unto sin. This outward lower and inferior world was consti¬ tuted for the purpose of putting an end unto Evil. Evil had got into a higher creation, and to overcome it a lower was made in which the Evil was chained, so that it might, by progressive gradations, be overcome. Where the Spirit is not, there is not the light to see the End, or the power to overcome the obstacles that are in the way. Without the End Spirit, that gives the desire, the knowledge, and the energy, how can a death unto sin, the end work, be effected ? It is the Spirit that makes men feel the bondage of Egypt, and that aids them (if they will) to put it to death. A church that is without the End Light, is without End power, and without the End Love, and how is it possible to perform God’s will in this uncommis¬ sioned condition ? The End work cannot be accom¬ plished unless we can get at it to do it, and without the Spirit elevates the workman above his work, the task is impossible. The Spirit’s gifts to men are to elevate them above their work, to give them a desire to perform it, a knowledge of it, and a strength in it. Man must be raised by the Spirit, so that he be in a position to begin, continue, and accomplish his task, which is no other in this world than to yield to a death unto sin. He in whom the Spirit is, must witness against the sin in kings, princes, priests, and people, even though 155 they be all banded together against the Lord, and against his anointed. So long as the End Light, that is, the word, the Logos, does not shine within man, men do not begin to feel sin as sin, hut only as sickness, or uneasiness; but as soon as this anterior Light stirs, then sin is felt as sin, and not as sickness, not as disease. We are not in an End icorld, therefore all mean acts are preparatory for the End world; we are only in a conditional world, in mediating means. Light . faculties . co-exercise... object . ...Man.Woman.con-joint act., consequence. God demands again and again a death unto sin, it is a death to death, a death to the cause, that is sin itself; as fast as the regenerate life arises in us, we must use it to crucify the sin cause itself in the root, the cupi¬ dity itself. We are called upon to execute the commission all our life long, that is, the giving up the sin in ourselves to death. AFTER the act of the death of sin, as an inward fact, grace in Christ by the Spirit operates regeneration, resurrection, and eternal life unto all men. How does Christ in me die the death of the cross, that death of which his outward death on the outward cross was a type ? Things that we cannot take, by reason of our own state, we ought to pass, till a season that we have an appetite for them , and can then use them rightly for the only End we have to work for, which is a death unto We are offered eternal life, upon the conditions of using the aid given us to crucify the temporal life. 156 For the better, we are told, we must sacrifice the worse; for a higher Life we must use all our efforts to kill the lower. We cannot live two lives, or serve two masters; therefore man must suffer the sin life to die, that is, co-operate with Christ in his eternal Death End. Man must do all he can to open and keep open the way, that Christ himself may continue to pursue his own end. It is Christ alone with the Spirit that can continue to pursue the Christian End; man himself is to act only as pioneer, to remove the obstructions in his way. Christ and the Spirit call upon man to co-operate in breaking down the barrier that the self-love basis ge¬ nerates in himself. The human system, if worked by itself without wait¬ ing for the Divine co-operation, which is its fundamen¬ tal basis, must produce the aggravations and the dis¬ orders of the order of Evil. A child is born in the actual order of Evil, and if it be conducted within this order till the period of the order of Good arrives, the potential good secures its own ul¬ timate end with certainty; but if the actual order of Evil be transgressed, and the child be carried into the disorders and consequent aggravations of the order of Evil, then the progress of the potential order of Good is interrupted, but yet the End is absolutely brought about in trouble. From the earliest period of human existence since the fall, the potential good has claimed the right to rule, and requires the parents to hold the child within the actual order of Evil, till it could establish an im¬ mortal organisation wherein to effect the end. 157 If the parents will not hold the Evil within the limits of the actual order of Evil, till the good period arrives, but bring upon the child their own disorders and aggravations, then the potential Good has to effect its ultimate ivorlt amidst ruins. The actual order of Evil is established for the sake of the potential order of Good, and every act of the parent should be restraining, rather than exciting. Potential Good requires time to construct an orga¬ nisation. by which it may rule over the order of Evil. The moment the parents do an act for the child, without the consent of the order of Good, disorder within begins, and its aggravations follow without in multipliable varieties. The intentional act is done, registered in heaven, and accepted, before the devotional act on the earth begins; like as the lightning is over long before we hear the thunder. The right to elect the parent to whom the child shall be born, lays in the celestial order of which Christ is the head, and the foster parent on the earth should obey the restraining instructions given to it by the real parent, whose presence for a season is impos¬ sible, the spiritual temple not being prepared. What is the use of killing the dying child, and letting the undying father and mother live, or in other words, what is the use of attacking the errors and leaving self love and Satan to engender a thousand others ? God in his providence will build up his church much faster, if we do all we possibly can to prevent new ob¬ structions, and remove old ones. If we will but walk within the limits of the order of 15S Evil, God will soon overcome the evil barrier, and be¬ gin in his providence to build up the second temple, the order of Good. If the order of Evil be transgressed, the first temple wifi be thrown down, and the second temple, the order of Good, raised at a more painful cost, amidst dis¬ orders and aggravations. Man invotes an aid which, when he obtains, he ap¬ plies to the multiplying rather than the diminishing any one of his Evils, evils that grow on the basis of other evils. A few efforts from within, and the last traces of the inquietudes of sin, inseparable from the fall, will be effaced. When this is done, Good will awaken from its deep sleep, and give stability to the Soul. As soon as the soul, by the right use of granted aid, overcomes the progress or march of sin, an invitation is made to the Good to continue its own operations. The reign of Evil in the soul is very short when it is seriously attacked. The soul gets an entire confidence in the Good, the moment it co-operates voluntarily in the war against Evil. Education acting only on a part of man, and not upon the whole being, does that very thing which it assures us it is trying to prevent. Only that can serve a man which is able to act upon his whole nature, and does not cease till the cause is overcome. One of the most important unions of the present age, in regard to its future consequences, is the inti¬ mate alliance between the intellect and education; by this alliance, the soul, whether it knows it or not, be- 159 comes divided into two great parties; on the one side theory and words, and on the other, self love and practice. By keeping the being of the child within the circle of the order of Evil, according to God’s law in the order of Evil, time is gained for the Good to make that inward essential organisation, by which it will entirely overcome the Evil, and ultimately rule the whole being. Protestant Christianity is a thing made, and it is the Spirit which inspires men with the power to make it. It is not the worship that inspires the worshippers with the spirit to worship, but the Spirit itself. He who suffers from without, suffers in his body for the act done; but lie who suffers in his soul, suffers from the Spirit that impelled it. It is not our principles that we ought to avow, but our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, with or by our principles; the principles are but the signs we use to declare the master we serve. He who can keep his ill temper when he is sick, is not ill enough for sickness to do him any great good. He who is really ill, is ill enough to lose his ill-tem¬ per ; then we may expect the illness will issue in some enduring moral good. That illness that cannot attack and uproot the ill- temper, is not an essential sickness, as every essential sickness acts upon the temper and overcomes it. The child is born in the order of actual Evil, and is required to be restrained within the limits of that order, that the increating power, the potential Good, may frame for itself new order, or new organisation, by and through which it can potentially rule the actual Evil, 160 and its order or constitution; the outer Life in actual Evil is but for the sake of a deeper life in the poten¬ tial Good; it is but to represent in the best estate, that deeper thing that is hidden in it which is a majesty, a power, a glory, not its own. There is the Divine union, a natural religion, and a systematical religion. There is a potential Good, an actual limited Evil, an aggravating disorder. There is God in Christ, the ordained child, the parents. Di¬ vine organization, human limited organization, dis¬ organization. The free and permeative Life and energy of God, actual Evil brought within limits, disruption of the limits of Evil. The legitimate governing powers, the resisting organic Evil, the ille¬ gitimate Evil activities. There is a controlling Good system, a resisting Evil system, Evil itself. Legiti¬ mate Good, legitimate Evil, lawlessness. The Chris¬ tian church, the world, the national church and state. The soul’s relationship with God in a child re¬ mains to be evolved, and the measured or circum¬ scribed connection with evil kept down at its minimum. As the evil spiritual constitution becomes evolved, it is necessary that the latent potential good, or idea, or power, should he evolved also. If all the attractions be on the side of Evil, the order or limited evil boundary in the child is broken up, and evil consequences are rapidly multiplied. When the disorders of aggravations surround a child, the equipoise of the latent good, or potential order, or spiritual idea is overcome; the scale is turned in favour of an evil course. This fundamental idea or ultimate criterior is ever 161 with the limited evil system endeavouring to stamp on all its acts its image. The outward constitution of the child is but made as an instrument representative of this inward plastic Spirit, the latent potential good. All that is doing in this world is ultimated by the ultimate aim, the fundamental idea, the potential good. There is a something within the child hidden in it, that seeks to realize itself in and by the child, and should be regarded as the Infinite’s true and arche¬ typal idea. As soon as this idea in the child rules, it forms a constant involuntary reference, a governing principle, an actuating law, though quite unknown to the child, or never defined in the terms of a distinct proposition. The child as an actual power, as a limited evil sys¬ tem, depends upon the healthful working of a latent potential power, principle, idea, or plastic Spirit within it. This existing reality resides within the child, and intends to represent itself as it were under a mask. There is in the child a paramount authority, a rational voice, which the child must attend to, and which all those about the child should assist it to hear; it is a reserved power or real conscience that never delegates its authority; this umpire-mind or boundless power acts within the limits of re-organized Evil. He who advocates the practice of doctrines that the Apostles preached, in the present state of society, has a fair chance of being considered as unsound in his mind, and a dangerous person. All the disorders and aggravations of the order of Evil, as man can make them, he can stop them or assist in overcoming them; but so far as Evil extends in the 162 order of Evil, and is bound up in the human con¬ stitution, as man did not institutionally make this, he cannot constitutionally overcome it. So far as man can build up, he can pull down; but wherein he is not permitted to build, he is not per¬ mitted to pull down. With natural constitutional Evil, within the order of Evil, God alone can deal, as it is out of the reach of extrinsic aid to undermine. Nature, when in alliance with that which is super¬ natural, becomes pregnant with Universal principles, with Universal sentiments, which witness to the im¬ portant concerns that are carrying on in the higher regions. Christianity is altogether supernatural, and it must be left to make its own way by its own divine energies and resources on natural beings, not artificially spoiled. Only so far as man gets back to nature can the su¬ pernatural have any influence on him; every step man wanders from nature into art and artificialness, he puts himself cut of the capacity of feeling those supe¬ rior influences he has so much need of, and which sur¬ round him every moment. Man, by wandering from nature into art, becomes disorganised, and as such cannot receive those super¬ natural changes which the supernatural makes in the natural, when it is in a suitable natural condition. The supernatural does not icork upon art, but upon the natural, and only so far as men keep themselves in the natural sphere, can the supernatural affect them as they desire. The more we do in the natural, the more we tend to 163 take the natural out of nature into art, and away from the supernatural. Every act that art uses to mend the natural, only draws nature further from its full and perfect depend- ance on the supernatural. Every artful improvement made by art in nature, only robs nature of a more Universal exaltation that would be made in it by the supernatural. The men that are supernaturally cultivated are not without art, but the men who are artificially cultivated are without super-naturality. The natural friends of the supernatural must, as much as possible, divorce themselves from the indi¬ vidualizing and severing activities of art. Art cuts man into sections or segments, and thus renders him incapable of receiving the Universal su¬ pernatural influence universally. Wherever art comes in and works upon nature, it withdraws nature from the supernatural to herself, and by so doing deteriorates nature. A child as long as it is a child, and under the su¬ pernatural, it is interesting; but as soon as it is drawn by art from the supernatural, the natural even becomes artificial. Art compels the natural child to take hold of the supernatural, and use it for some individual purpose, some severing object, with a worldly motive. Art declares that without any supernatural means, it intends to bring up the natural child religiously. Christianity is altogether a supernatural result, wrought by the supernatural on the natural. The most superficial observer of what is passing within him must be convinced that his heart is often 164 pregnant with something which is important for him to to have evolved, and to become more under its influence that he may be constitutionally benefited by the same. The human constitution, so long as it is under the deteriorating influence of art, must stand deprived of those supernatural influences which it vainly cries for, and tries by substitutes to imitate. The first revolution that must be effected is to with¬ draw nature from art; and the second is to turn it towards the supernatural, that it may again become pregnant with supernatural consequences. It is the supernatural that surrounds the natural with a comparatively pure and elastic atmosphere, and helps it to breathe freely and vigorously. We must disenthral the natural from the artificial before we can hope that the supernatural kingdom, the Kingdom of Jesus Christ in Spirit, can operate on and by the natural the supernatural results it aims at as its ultimate purpose. Those who have not lost what we have lost, that is, nature, do, so far as they keep to nature, keep within the possibility of being supernaturally influ¬ enced, and supernaturally directed. So long as our institutions withdraw men from na¬ ture, they render nature inceptive of the supernatural benefits that are offered to it. We have an immense deal to do to get back to the natural state in which man’s celestial side can appre¬ hend Divine impressions, and acknowledge the Divine guidance. Outward impressions, as Universal, are nothing else but celestial vibrations in the celestial side of man; uudulations of the one clement. 165 Our institutions unfit men for nature, and nature for the supernatural mind. The artificial so distorts the natural mind that the natural mind is irreceptive of the impressions of the supernatural mind, or Universal intelligent intellect. It is a matter of daily experience, that the more men are restrained within the natural limits, the more there is for the supernatural to act on; and, supernaturally influenced, the supernatural instinct seems to be ineffi¬ cient, when it is the natural co-efficient that is non- conditionated. The child, while a child, is more conscienciously susceptible before ART has got bold of it than after it; and just in proportion as art advances does nature become irreceptive of supernatural impregnations and supernatural results. That which a child could not do till ART had got hold of it, becomes easy to it in proportion as nature is withdrawn from the supernatural. It is the supernatural that awakens in the natural an attention to its claims, as the regenerating efficient; and that shows every individual how impossible it is to effect supernatural results, without suitable natural co-efficients. If the natural co-efficient depends on non-natural agency, and avoids the supernatural essential efficiency, how can it expect to become pregnant with glorious, gracious, or universal results ? God has ordained that the supernatural should free the natural from all those disadvantages that only can be removed by a redoubled intimacy or union be¬ tween them. So long as the natural mind clings to art and its consequences, it becomes inefficient and unanswerable for the supernatural mind and its high purposes. In England there is no such thing as a public na¬ tural mind, the natural mind has been so institutionally or artificially corrupted; and as long as there is no public natural mind, there can be no great public su¬ pernatural consequences. Wherever there is a great public natural mind, there we may expect great public supernatural con¬ sequences. The artificial customs superinduced on nature, or the natural mind, withdraw the natural mind out of the direction of the supernatural mind, and its impregnat¬ ing influences, and render it an inefficient instrument for carrying forward the celestial ultimate ends. Wherever there is much earthly government, there the supernatural mind has been much lost sight of. Wherever the public natural mind is withdrawn by institutions from the supernatural mind, there the in¬ stitutions to suppress evil must be continually aug¬ menting. Institutions are no more fit to call men to nature than publicans are to preach sobriety. As men do not go into a public house to hear a sermon on sobriety, neither do they go into institutions to he trained up naturally. A child’s practical training is its culture, not its theoretical instructions, which affect only the intellec¬ tual portion of its being. Institutions, intellectual training, and institutional ends, are a burthen on nature, of which it ought to be immediately relieved, and of which it must be re¬ lieved before the supernatural mind can have a co- 167 efficient instrument in the natural mind for its ultimate Universal aim. Nature, or the natural mind, being withdrawn from the government of the supernatural mind, is rendered so far unavailable for the representation, manifestation, or expression of the fundamental Universal idea. The natural mind cannot mix itself up with the toils and intricacies of art and the artificial Life, without hindering its own useableness to the supernatural mind, and preventing those ultimate essential consequences which the supernatural mind w’ould establish. The natural mind, only so far as it is disenthralled from artificial disabilities, can it yield itself at the ser¬ vice of the supernatural mind for the highest purpose. The highest duty that the natural mind has to per¬ form, is to hold itself at the entire service of the su¬ pernatural mind, to bring about the most universal consequences. The natural mind which lives by the Universal mind, should also live with it, and not take up a po¬ sition in opposition to it. If the natural mind will take up an artificial po¬ sition, the supernatural mind does not, in its universal activity, impregnate it with divine conceptions, and cause it to become a growing good. The proper position for the natural mind is wait¬ ing on the supernatural mind, and being by it livingly fruitful. As long as the natural mind embroils itself with arti¬ ficial affairs, it is out of the way; it has lost its position and promotion. As soon as the natural mind changes its service by entering into art and its ends, its promotion for the 16S time ceases; it loses its supernatural rank, and all the supernatural benefits resulting from supernatural service. The wife who lives by her husband ought also to live with him. Virtue and happiness are supernatural productions, and no more to be attained without a supernatural alliance than sweetness in the vegetable nature is to be looked for without a close connection of the Earth and the Sun. No moral disorders in the mind can be overcome without a much deeper intercommunicative interest than at present exists between the natural mind and supernatural mind. All disturbing intercourse with the outward world must be avoided when the mind is really in earnest to recover its intimacy and intercourse with the superna¬ tural mind. The cure for moral disorders is not to be found in any thing outward, but in an intrinsic mental inter¬ course between the individual mind and the super¬ natural mind. We must call on the mind to suffer itself to be guided by the supernatural, rather than by man’s na¬ tural policy, however plausible it may appear in its outward garb. Intellectual abstractions or imaginations are but pictures, and leave the beholder cold, who continues to contemplate them. Supernatural results cannot take place without a supernatural alliance, and the more intimate this becomes, the more enduring are the consequences. The mind can have no spiritual prosperity but as it 169 is closer and closer in re-alliance with the super¬ natural. The more a tree takes hold of Life by its roots, the more fruitful it becomes m its branches. The infusion of a new energy into the natural mind arises from a growing connection with the supernatural mind. The lifeless condition of the natural mind can only be overcome by a perpetual and substantial inter- commumcative intercourse with the supernatural mind. The only cure for a lifeless condition is in a faithful contactive connection with Life itself which will first destroy the impediments, and bring about delightful • issues. The natural mind sinks down fast into the ex¬ pressions of things, if it be not led inward to the ideas of thought. So far as the mind operates on the expressions of things from the outward memory, it overclouds the ideas of thought from the inward memory. Man is to be realised as the expression of an idea of the one idea of God; and only so far as he gives himself up inwardly, can lie be Universally evolved. Man is so busy with what he is saying or doing, or intending, that he entirely incapacitates himself for in¬ wardly becoming or feeling what is said or done, or intended towards him. The baptism of John, which is a death unto sin, prepares the way of the Lord; prepares the way for the second Advent, or circle of Divine operations within; the great day of the Lord, when he, as Light, begins to rise in the soul from his tomb of death. 170 As we live to sin we die to God ; and as we die to sin we live to God, We are punished in the consequences , according to the intentions. How much more pain than pleasure do we generally cause in the circle we act in! Man has seven stages of existence here or elsewhere; and in the eighth he will he perfected. All Scripture is a prophecy of what passes in every soul, and is not to be looked upon as a history of what has been. If we take Scripture only as a history of what has been, we are in an outward light; but if we see it as a prophecy of what passes, or is passing in every soul, we look at it with the End Light. That they may be one as we are one ; this is the End of all the Divine teaching. I in them, and thou in me, a three fold oneness of Father, Son, and Spirit. Christ uniting God with Man. Do not let a single doubt he in your breast; dis¬ miss the subjects you do not understand, or are not prepared to hear. Man desires good, and mistakingly thinks he can do good, and does not find out his error till he lias made many essays. The existence of Satan is acknowledged; yet, in fact, it is considered a nonentity. As man cannot make himself good, he must he aware he cannot intrinsically do another good. Satan perpetuates his power by mimicking the ways of God, more than by open sin, by setting men on good works with his own spirit as builder. 171 There is a struggle for the mastery over the human race between Christ and Satan. Christ unites the soul to God. Satan unites the soul to the world. We know man has a will, although he has no power. Thousands are amused with the idea of going to heaven at the death of the body, by those who flatter by telling this fallacious tale; but you can never see Christ as he is till you are made like him. Our love is cold if it be not projected into faith; and our faith dark when not submissive to the Power it trusts in. The popular idea of going to heaven at the death of the body, takes the mind from a proper contemplation of the glorious change. It certainly will be at death, but it must be the death of sin, not destruction of the body. The baptism of John is with fire, for a death unto sin; the baptism of the Holy Spirit is with flaming fire, for a life unto righteousness. Every man feels in his own bosom the deplorable departure from the righteous moral nature, and hardly finds it possible to renew association with it. Happiness is indeed hut a shadow, and escapes us as long as we do not fall back upon the substance which makes it. We must pray that God will more and more over¬ come the sin in us, and prepare us for the develop¬ ment of the good relations; without the sin relations be killed we can but engender sorrow, and learn it as a lesson. As long as sin, or the hell-fire, remains within us, it 172 bums up every thing we hear that is good; it will put every thing out till It is put out. If we co-operate not in the putting out this sin-fire, it will go on and burn up every thing that might avail for our peace. The better relations will not he felt in a more just, lively, and beneficial manner, as long as the sin-fire hums up from the bottom of our being. Good-will, love, charity, and Universal interest, can¬ not be the state of man or the community as long as the sin-fire has so much destructive potency in the soul; it makes an empty waste—an irresistible greedi¬ ness till it is put out. Our miserable selfishness is all caused by the sin- fire life; we cannot satisfy it, do what we will; and the more we try, the more it burns us up. Man may make what appeals he will to experience and observation; nothing but a death to the sin-fire life in his own soul can put him in a capacity for the Good to commence its work. We speak of a selfish, anti-social principle, as narrow¬ ing the mind, but the ill or Evil is deeper than this; it is the sin-fire life itself, the life that burns up natures, and destroys empires to satisfy its hungry gratifica¬ tions. Until Satan, Pharoah, or the sin-fire life be de¬ stroyed, it will not let the soul go; civil discord, and destructive passions are only consequences of the soul’s conjunction with this life. As long as Evil means and measures are in the way, the Divine End, the Universal architect, cannot get on with his good worh. We must look to Good itself: without it, whatever is done to make the had letter, must of necessity make it worse; it is the progressive degree. Bad, by motion, becomes worse; and by commotion worst. That which makes men unhappy must be moved out of the way and overcome before there can be a ground in them for that which makes them happy. Our Lord’s commandment to each individual is, to Watch and Pray. I believe that in a simple obe¬ dience to this command, man would find himself gradually furnished for every good work; gradually brought into safe self-knowledge; gradually made acquainted with the doctrine of Christ, and the suffi¬ ciency of the teaching of the Holy Spirit; gradually be enabled to distinguish between what God commu¬ nicates, and what man adds; and gradually disposed to be without knowledge but as God is pleased to bestow it. December 1st, 1S34. Artificial signs, without possessing the relations of likeness, throw the mind at a distance from nature, render complicated the operations of the mind, and are discordant with the Universal interest, the strongest disposition in the nature of youth and of men. . Artificial languages consist in signs which have no natural relation with the thing signified; and unless the mind be previously cultivated and strengthened by a real contact with the things signified, or, in other words, conversant with objects and their uses, its pow¬ ers and faculties, particularly judgment, must evidently be weakened. All the means of self-preservation and self-rearing 174 depend, in tlie first instance, upon a due exercise of in¬ stinct, and intuitive power on originals, and not on re¬ presentations, or artificial signs. All outward nature is but a type of tbe supernatural, and every step we go from terrestrial objects into the artificial is deteriorating the faculties. If the immutable relations be not attended to, and the mind is carried outward and downward into con¬ ventional signs, the Evil in the heart goes on in¬ creasing. The business of the rational powers and faculties of man, is to suffer the incommunicable relation to direct and apply the essential realities to the due cultivation of the constituent parts of man; to form an epitome of the universe, and a kind of commonwealth. We love pleasing objects for the sake of ourselves, but we should love ourselves sincerely for the sake of God: this is the true self-love. Love ourselves for the sake of another, that is pure, perfect, holy. All perfection and all happiness flow from being one with the eternal, immutable, and Universal law. The imagination should be controlled by the calm and tranquillising emotions of the moral sense. When the influences or effluences of the Holy Spirit have got into the heart, then and there the con¬ flict begins between Good and Evil. Man holds a double relationship with God, one in grace, and the other in nature; and the last must al¬ ways be in conformity and correspondence with the first. The natural relation must be fulfilled for the sake of the supernatural; and both as one for the sake of God in Christ. It is by the relation of grace that he is one with us; and by the relation of nature we are one with him. So far as we constitutionally cut off man from his maker, so far man’s being becomes unsubstantial; he only is, just as we can see him, in close alliance with his Creator. The central fact is man himself, his constitutional reality, his existence in a oneness with the self-ex¬ istent. The man who is in the state A acts after that state; likewise be who is in the state B acts as he is, or ac¬ cording to his state; but B cannot elevate himself to the state A by acting as A does; he must wait to be elevated by the same power that elevated A. The Christian only understands when the Holy Spirit, by its direct contactive influence, has brought it into the state described, as a spiritual existing fact. As the Christian speaker speaks from his state, so the Christian hearer must be put in a like state by the Spirit before he is enabled to furnish the meaning to the words. The moral emotions , as calm, tranquil feelings, arise in the soul from a more direct and sensible intercourse with the Supreme Being; they are the results of the hidden Life; they are spiritual facts of existence. What a nothingness does the soul become, as it goes on gathering and compounding results, be it devotional sentiment, or physical knowledges!—the Creator alone is the vital substance, and only as he establishes him¬ self in the soul, is there a permanent reality or spiri¬ tual fact. Without the supernatural fact be first wrought in the soul, as a fact of spiritual existence, the words of 176 the Bible stand only as signs, that are insignificant; as signs that represent no spiritual reality; as signs or names, the being of which is not yet born. The spiritual reality must be wrought in the soul as a fact of existence before the soul can give to the bible-words a real confirmation. In so far as the spiritual facts are spiritually sub-' stantiated in the soul, the soul can give an assent to the words that correspond with the same. The new spiritual facts in the soul arise from the Christ-nature transubstantiating the soul’s nature. Where the Christ-nature acts in the soul’s nature, there the transubstantiating process begins, the new facts of spiritual existence are constantly engendered. The bible-words are representative of supernatural facts, or transubstantiations wrought in the soul’s es¬ sence by the Christ-nature, quickened by the Holy Ghost. God is the self-existing fact, governing the soul by his co-essential will, transubstantiating it from birth to birth, or from being to being. The soul should be more attentive to the inward substantiating events than to any outward things that are happening around it; as the supernatural is estab¬ lished, the imaginative powers gradually subside, and enthusiasm in species subsides. How can self, which is Evil, remedy Evil with Evils, having nothing else to meddle with ? The Christ-nature is a moral substance, and by this moral substance man is conjoined with the celestial spheres. Christ’s moral substance is a hidden treasury, out of which all the good man’s human-nature qualities arise. 177 It is the extraordinary fund at the bottom of the soul, the rich store-house that sends forth help, comfort, and deliverance. The soul, when busy in trifles, renders itself inca¬ pable of the expansive moralisation that it must un¬ dergo. It is the moral essence) the Christ-nature, that allows all objects, great and small, to be distinctly perceived, and perceived in their essential virtues. When the Christ-nature has fully essentiated the soul, the soul is its truth, or the truth of the Good. There is a substantial and immovable substratum, or original, after which the mind draws all its like¬ nesses ; and in obedience to which, it conforms all the important purposes of its practical life; it is on this basis, and this alone, the wise man finds his wisdom, and after which he uses it. Man, as to his being, is to become the expression of a Universal moral substance, either specifically or in¬ dividually. So far as we are apart from God we are misrepre- sentatives of his inward moral promptings. It is the righteous moral nature that furnishes all those-interior admonitions, interior dictates, or interior warnings, after which man shapes his outward words and actions; this righteous moral nature is always in¬ wardly writing, as with a pen of iron, its imperishable lessons. If the righteous moral nature were not incessantly impulsing the soul, the soul would have no inbred maxims, or eternal dispensations, after which to model its outward and individual acts. Tlie righteous moral nature mysteriously assumes 178 our nature, and makes blessed doubleness, which is the ultimate and perfected condition of human nature. As far as the righteous moral nature generates ori¬ ginal essences in the soul, it gives to it those heavenly tendencies, which, when followed out, issue in enduring peace. All the virtuous motives that we find in the soul spring immediately from that righteous moral nature which suggests the facts of the supernatural world for our imitation. It must he affirmed that the righteous moral nature is always in exercise in the soul, though the soul may not distinctly perceive this Universal agency within it, doubling it. It is the righteous moral nature that actually holds in union the great intelligent community, and is its in¬ terminable connection, its marriage union, its secret upholder. The image of the invisible God is Jesus Christ, DOUBLE, Universal, and individual; Divine and celestial in and within; the Life and the Vine; eternal and co-eternal. The Christ-nature was the Lamb-nature, slain from the beginning, and slain again in the flesh of his out¬ ward birth. The Christ-mediating nature, or the golden spiritual element, is nothing but the moral hidden world, the holy heavenly kingdom. All that is done ought to be done for the one great End, be it in institutions, or churches, or schools, or in society, to bind together in a closer union the Divine and essential Christ-nature with man’s terres¬ trial nature. 179 That quiescent under-action to which we apply the term righteous moral emotion, is from the celestial parent stock, on which the human individual mind has been re-engrafted by the Divine regenerating act. Where the human mind spontaneously shows the hues of heaven, or emits a Divine fragrance, the righteous moral nature must be considered the fruitful parent of the same. When the soul’s tropical elements are stimulated by the fervent sun, then the deep azure emotions spontaneously arise. When the celestial strings are added to the human mechanism, then it is that the Holy Spirit begins to give, in outward consequences, proofs of Divine wis¬ dom and benevolence. It is only when the celestial strings are worked on within the human mechanism that the Holy Spirit begins to institute an order of Life of a higher charac¬ ter than the common instincts. As long as the celestial strings are not affixed to the human mechanism, the being cannot be determined to the better course. Simple and affectionate piety are celestial results wrought by the Holy Spirit on a being in whom the heaven-born strings have been constitutionally estab¬ lished. A heavenly rectitude cannot be maintained unless there be superadded to the human mechanism strings cords, or nerves, that the Holy Spirit can immediately act in. Man is at all times and under all circumstances much more allied to, and bound up with the invisible, than the visible. However man may try it, he cannot divorce himself from the invisible elements, though they are conciliated to him; he is at all times their ultimate expression, their last effect. As far as the inner man is constituted and made ac¬ tive, its results correspond with an invisible all-pervad¬ ing power that is in co-alliance with it, and become its eternal engendering source. The organic result, he it what it may, can never be understood unless the organ and the organist are clearly set forward as the primitive parties. It is the Universal organist that can reconcile all the tones of the human organ, and make them correspond with the ultimate purpose. Man, as an organic construction, can only be con¬ stitutionally elevated by a Universal power that has at its command the superior ingredients. Man himself has no more to do with his constitu¬ tional elevation than he bad to do with his consti¬ tutional creation. Whoever admits into his bosom the artificial fire of an imaginative piety, factitious sensibility, or enthusiastic sympathy, does what he can to smother or suppress the moral emotions of a celestial origin; the new feel¬ ings or emanations of the inner man. The real social feelings are killed by the often in¬ dulgence of the factitious sensibilities. No cloak of selfishness is in fact more impenetrable than that which usually envelopes a pampered sympa¬ thetic imagination. The fictitious happiness which a gratified sympathy affords creeps as a lethargy through the human sys¬ tem, and renders it continually less and less susceptible 181 of those tranquil moral emotions which are the out- breathings of the inner man. There is a venom lurking in factitious sensibilities, which, when selfclove is wounded, takes fire and comes forth in bitter personalities. Under ordinary circumstances a fictitious sympa¬ thetic piety must pass for something real; hut when the foundation is touched, the self-love on which it is built is wounded; the whole religious building begins to fall to pieces. A worldly man maintains his worldy character with more of integrity than an artificial religionist. The moral universe, as well as the Universal being, must have God as its only foundation; and what constitutional morality there is in man arises from his legitimate relation with the Universal being. Virtue, as an essential reality, is a constitutive ele¬ ment of man’s moral nature, and when active, presses itself forward with all the intensity of a palpable fact. When the heavenly powers are active enough in man, they, by a spiritual alchemy, convert the air into liquid food, and nourish the soul with the same. When the celestial and supercelestial faculties are wrought into activity, then they exhibit human nature under a new direction. When the human constitution’s celestial mechanism is wrought out into sufficient consistency, we begin to behold indications of Truth’s immediate presence. When the breath of the never-ending Life returns to the soul, then the Evil cause, the parent generator, who generates all the Evils, is spoiled of his govern¬ ment, and driven from his throne. The religious emotions belong properly to the inner man; but when the outer man assumes them, they are perilous counterfeits. When the outer man becomes a religious enthusiast, then all that is real in the inner man becomes en¬ dangered. Man, as a creature, is bound to the Creator by the immovable conditions of existence, and is always re¬ strained by the Divine presence. The moral volition stands embarrassed, being fettered by the external bodily movements, and not being attentive to the central impulsive power. If the central impulsive power has not at its disposal the whole moral constitution, the voluntary as well as the involuntary, it cannot exhibit itself in external movements in man’s voluntary portion, as the all- pervading quickening Spirit. Only the inward central power can, from within, form an effectual barrier against the originating Evil in man’s voluntary portion. Man, as a moral agent, has no restraining power but what arises from his voluntary relationship with the central impulsive vigour. Man is voluntarily connected with the Evil which originates Evil; and he is involuntarily connected with that Good spirit which originates Good. The voluntary portion of man’s nature is ready to stand still for want of a proper union with that Good Spirit which rules the involuntary part of the moral constitution. Reading, Oct. 1st. Man’s moral constitution stands divided in two por¬ tions, voluntary and involuntary; one portion connected 183 with a power that originates Evil, and another portion with that whicli originates Good. The Good Spirit is the acknowledged generator of the involuntary portion of man’s moral nature, and the inviter who invites man to surrender the voluntary portion. The Good Spirit that holds man up by the involun¬ tary portion of his moral constitution, will divorce the voluntary portion from its connection with the Evil one. Man devises various expedients to correct the com¬ plicated Evils which arise from his own voluntary con¬ nection with Evil, and fails in every effort. So long as man does, by the voluntary portion of his moral constitution, maintain his connection with Evil, he must exhibit external embarrassment, and oppressed consequences. The increase of the activity of the voluntary portion of man’s moral constitution daily consumes the re¬ sources of the involuntary portion, and thus absorbs the virtuous central power. Evil, in conjunction with the voluntary portion of man’s moral constitution, tries to subvert the involun¬ tary portion which is under the direct government of the Good. A tide of voluntary corruptions has set in upon the voluntary portion of man’s moral constitution with a strong and rapid flow, which bids fair, in its inundating course, to destroy the involuntary portion, by subvert¬ ing its connection with the central impulsive power that rules it. Outward Evils of every sort afford but too painful an indication of the great extent of man’s voluntary 184 connection with Evil itself, and of the limited extent of his involuntary relationship with the Good. The voluntary spirit , which has ever warred against the involuntary spirit, has in this age of pretended illu¬ mination advanced with a holder step, and sought by the most daring expedients to substitute, in the place of the inward dictates, the unhallowed artifices of its own dart and impious policy. There is no part in the moral constitution that is so rotten in itself as that which respects the human will, or the voluntary part. The involuntary part in man is clean, the voluntary part is unclean; and it is this unclean part that must he given up to be cleansed. All the miserj r and mischief in the human constitu¬ tion arise from the unspiritual union of the voluntary with the voluntary cause. Self-love, or Satan, as a preponderating spiritual cause, influences the voluntary part in the moral consti¬ tution, and transforms the natural virtues into vices. Only so far as the voluntary part is united with the Evil one , can the Evil one do evil deeds by us. Self-love, or Satan in the soul, or voluntary part in man’s moral constitution, is the criminal husband to whom the will has allied itself, and by whom all the evil propensities are inseminated. The very principles on which the Evil one conducts the voluntary portion in man’s moral constitution, in¬ troduces a spiritual confusion in the highest degree prejudicial to the involuntary parts under the govern¬ ment of the all-pervading Spirit. The Universal virtue is always remonstrating, in the involuntary portion in the moral constitution, against 185 the Evil one, who is stimulating the voluntary part into selfish acts, for the selfish End. The moral constitution is not wholly under the government of the Evil one, is not wholly corrupted. While all sense of moral obligation is obliterated in the voluntary part of man’s moral constitution, it is not in the involuntary part; he is often forced to feel those spiritual sensations in the involuntary part which'he cannot stop by all the power of the voluntary part. While voluntary probity is lost, involuntary virtue is within, acting as a salutary check, and as a sanitary influence. Beading, Oct. 2nd, 1833. Voluntary pleasure, when and wherever sought, is always accompanied with slow but certain involun¬ tary pain. The involuntary cause, though it does not at first appear to have any discernible operation in the volun¬ tary part of the soul’s moral constitution, at length produces those inward Universal results which prove its existence, and the extensive influence of its power¬ ful essence. Whatever aspect human affairs may put on, the Universal involuntary cause is always at work within, undermining them, that they may assume a more Universal character. It is always the wisest policy, and the best interest of the voluntary portion of man’s moral constitution, to preserve inviolably its connection with the Universal involuntary cause which is working in a hidden manner all the spiritual elements that are to he manifested, hereafter. In order to preserve the moral constitution in its ori- ginal purity, it is necessary for the voluntary part to he reduced to its primitive principles, and put under the government of the Universal involuntary cause. Liberty, founded on necessity, is only the voluntary grounded on the involuntary. Man’s free-will is that portion of his moral nature which is the source of his personal immorality, and is under the Divine equity. Man’s moral mechanism is that portion of his moral constitution which is under the Divine Sovereignty, and which Sovereignty, Good, is the source of his per¬ sonal morality. Whenever the impersonal wisdom and the imper¬ sonal virtue command the personal wisdom and the personal virtue, the Universal and invisible rule the modal and visible. When we look at the extent of the self-willing spirit that prevails in man, there is great reason to apprehend that education has been awfully instrumen¬ tal in promoting its growth; and thus withdrawing so much more of man’s involuntary part from under God’s Sovereignty, rule, and law. He who, by self-will-working, extends his spiritual nature towards the world and worldly objects, with¬ draws from the Sovereignty of God a greater measure of the spiritual elements, and ultimately comes under the equity of God for a larger share of condemnation. So much of man’s being as man, by an active self- will, takes from under God’s Sovereignty, he places under God's equity, and is himself liable to all the consequences of such self-will-working operations. Man wants happiness, and he can only get it by giving up his Life to be re-associated with love. 187 If man will not give his Life up unto Love, he can¬ not have happiness, hut only the love of Life. Christ is the creating centre in the creation. He being one with the Father is the Father’s central will; the will that centralizes all lives in its own Infinite Life as Bridegroom. This central will is not an exterior influence , but the Life that sustains the created Life, the sustainer in all generative unions. The creature’s Life is a life only so far as this cen¬ tral Life lives in it. Life sustains Life, and by Life the form of Life. The form of life must be distinguished from Life; and Life from the Infinite central Love that sustains all unions. No influence can give Life, or the united lives or marriages, in which qualities are generated. Heaven is only an extrinsic Good influence; not the uniting love-centre. Hell is only an extrinsic Bad influence; not the uniting centre. Hell would convert heaven into a hell, if it could become powerful enough. Influence is as supply; Life is a demand. Demand is not supply; nor the central uniting Love that unites and generates essentially. It is the centre as Love that marries the heaven, the light, the sky, and generates the consequences. While the centre does not marry directly to the hells, the darknesses, the earths, it does indirectly; it always marries as Alpha or as Omega. Satan and man, as man and wife, are ruled either directly or indirectly. 188 Just where the centre lets the heaven go, this heaven becomes a hell, or a disjunction. Visions, presentiments, and apparitions, are not the central Life, and therefore should not be sought, he the beings Angels or Archangels; if given, they are to direct the receiver to the central Life. The centre is the centre-God, in' the Universal unions, before the centre can be the centre in each particular union. If the centre did not unite the upper and the under universally, it could not unite the man and the woman individually. If the centre did not unite the heavens to the hells, it would not unite light to the darkness, or the’sky to the earth. It is the centre that marries indefinite to indefinite, and then finite to finite. When the centre unites the heavens and the hells, the light and the darkness, and the sky and the earth, then it will unite man and woman into the same harmony. We do all we can to make Evil (the vortex) appear as Good (the centre); and then as we are to love good, we love the Good we have made out of the Evil, and the Evil consequences. We cannot Love the Evil till we have made it ap¬ pear as Good; and only when it does appear as Good, do we consent to love it. We must falsify the false till we make it ap¬ pear as true, and unevil the Evil till it appears as Good. Love Good we must, and this by the soul’s central union with the centre. 189 Our love for Good, be it real or apparent, is a proof of the soul’s central union with the centre. We must not mistake the central union with the centre for a lower or circumferential union. Man and woman live between somewhat that is natural, that is supernatural, and that is spiritual, and belong to the One that is Divine. Man and woman did not make themselves, or marry themselves to Satan. Man and woman are put under acting conditions, which they ought to fulfil for Him who made them. Angels and Archangels may guard heaven’s best gifts,—hut Christ alone guards the centre. Till Evil be driven out of us, in its deepest ground, it is of no use asking for gifts only to misuse them. As we are, while evil is within, in an evil state, the gifts we acquire we misuse, and go on to misuse them. When Evil is in the soul, all that'the soul does has self as an End. Self being Satan, and Satan being ruler, and the soul being united to Satan, it is impossible for the soul to he benefited but by Evil being overcome. That which does not terminate in the Universal centre, terminates in sin. Philosophy is nothing but the love of truth for the truth’s sake; and truth for the invisible centre’s sake. All education that is given, which is not given to the centre for the sake of the centre, must fall in sin, and be changed into sinfulness. Security cannot be in any breast till the centre generates it; and this the centre cannot do while Evil and the soul are in close union. The centre must find the soul willing to have a se- 190 paration from sin; and when it does so, it works the disjunction. If man will act for the sake of the centre, the centre will act for the sake of man; and then the sin will be overcome. The good results to be expected are from man and the centre, working in harmony to overcome Sin. Sin must remain until man will work with the central government. The centre will help that man who will work for it, and will find it materials for further work. He who carries his work to the centre will find fresh materials ready for him to go on with his work. He who will work for himself must find his own ma¬ terials, and keep his own work to himself, and dispose of it as he can. He who does work for a master has only to carry it home, and it is taken from him without more trouble; he has not to find a customer or sale for it. Sin converts the means of happiness into means of misery; and that man may not have his means con¬ verted into misery, he must get sin cast out of his soul. While sin is in man’s soul, you may give him the knowledge by which he can know the laws; but you will not get him to obey them. Sin desires knowledge that it may know the laws, and how to evade them. Without sin be destroyed the centre gives all its holy unction in vain. To have knowledge is what sin desires, that it may disobey the laws. Inclination to sin does not include inclination to obey. 191 Error is the death of Spirit of the soul. The soul that sinneth it shall die; that is, its spirit. Just in the measure man works for the centre, the centre will develope in him his Infinite interest; and as he works for the world, the world will develope in him his Universal interest; but if he works for his own self-interest, the dark centre will develope his personal misery. The centre will, in its own way, render Good and Truth as sensitive as heat and cold; and man’s happiness will be as experimental as his pain or pleasure. The centre will bring forth a sensitive Good, and a sensitive Truth, in which moral experience will he no longer doubtful. That which is neither tree nor branch is reduced to its primitive element, and made to support both. We are sure to have what is good for us if we wait patiently; and if we are deprived of it, it is but to fit us for something better from Love. He who lie.sa sight of the End, and of the means that the End is working, can afford patience till Love has brought all about. He who has a confidence in the centre-Love, does not seek to hasten the progress of any living thing. Love will bring about, in its own way, not the love of Life, but the love of Love by Life. The love of Life is selfish; but the love of Love is Godlike; it loves to give, while the former loves to have. That man who has only a love of Life is miserable; but he who has a love of Love is truly blessed; it is more blessed to give Love than to receive Life. 192 He who will give up his Life shall receive for it Love, and the love of Love. Love is the greatest stimulus, as it stimulates to pro¬ duce, and to love the things produced. Life may stimulate to labour, to get the means to support Life; but it only then gets, as its result, the love of Life. Without Love there would he no production; and without Life and Light there would be nothing for love to unite with; and without Love unites with life and love, there will be no Love or light of love. Love with life and light generates the love of Love. When life is identified with Love, then love alone separates it from all objects of desire, and produces by it the happiness it needs. * There is a love of Light which is called liberty. There is a Love of Life, and a love of Love. There could be no product if love did not unite with life and light; and so far as life and light unite with love, love generates uses. Love only can produce a result when life (faith) and light (water) are toilling ,■ life and light are neces¬ sary that love may, through action and reaction, pro¬ duce a result. Materials and labour, labour acting in materials, change them into an object of labour; love, acting by beings, generates objects of love. Materials are quality and quantity combined. Love, by all its acts, generates love objects in their right order, nature, and season. It is Love alone that can generate the greatest quan¬ tity of human happiness; happiness in producing, and happiness in the product. 193 Life and light would be nothing without love. Land and water would be nothing without the sun. Water would not retain its existence if it did not unite with the earth. The earth would not retain'its existence unless it united with the water. The sun marries the earth and the water together, and both to itself. There is an omnipotent love in the Divine nature, as well as an omnipotent activity (Life), which love and which activity created individuals apply to their use according as they are organized to do so. Besides this love and life, there is an omniscient light. The nearer we are to the first class, the nearer we are to the first elements, and to the first cause or mas¬ ter ; and only as we advance in simplicity and harmony do we rise in the Love school. Simplicity and harmony are the surest marks of our progress. All that we eat must be digested into its most Uni¬ versal element, to become the most useful to the bodily life. All that we know of particulars must be digested into that which is most Universal, so as to become the one element of the moral life. Every particular knowledge, like every morsel of food, can be digested into its most Universal element; and only as particular knowledge is so digested, is the mind, as the Universal (tripartite) sensorium, an in¬ telligent man. We must digest the particulars into a derivative Universal, which will correspond with the Universal itself, or that which originates. 194 We must conform the particular action of thought to the derivative Universal, and this to the Universal itself. We must conform each part with the made-whole, and the made-whole with the whole-maker. As the animal spirit sustains the whole body, and, by the whole, each particular part, the Divine Spirit sustains the whole soul, and by it each particular fa¬ culty and function, so the Unity is present and ope¬ rating in the Universal sensorium, and by it presides in every created individual. We must digest the great circle of particular knowledges, and universalize it into a focus or centre of intellectual power, into a Universal senso¬ rium, and by it, effect Universal good for man and for nature. The great purpose of education is to universalize (trinithe) the mental faculties through the digesting of particular facts, relations, and analogies, and to give the mind so universalized (trinitized) a direction to¬ wards the creating centre, the central Love, which is finishing its own triad work. Human reason, limited by particular sensations, is incapable to conceive any relation beyond personal self, but as soon as its basis is changed to Universal (tripar¬ tite ) sense, then it becomes an instrument very easily agented towards Universal usefulness. Man destroys his mind who acts from the limitation of particular sensation. Man must universalize his identity so as to find his essence (Lore), his power (Light), and his instinct (Life) to be a trinity with the Unity; and only as he does this, does he feel the purpose that Unity 195 is agenting to effect,—the greatest good with the least possible quantity of evil, Unless man will (trinitize) universalize Ms sensibi¬ lity , reason will have no Universal ground to act from; and so far as this Universal (tripartite) sensibility is not established, man can have no proper use of his understanding. It is not life that can produce the Universal (tripar¬ tite) sense, but it is Love. Man gets a proper use of his understanding when he acts from the Universal (tripartite) sense; that is, from Love, and not from Life. Life and immortality have been brought to light; but Love is behind yet, is yet to come; and only when Love comes shall we apprehend the real Saviour. Love is the Messiah the Jews are waiting for; and when their own Messiah comes as Love, they will receive him. While human reason is confined to the side of the animal instinct, it acts from a narrower basis than its own, and, for this reason, works destructively; but as as soon as it changes its ground, and works from Universality or Universal sensation, then it becomes an instrument mighty in its operations to overcome the inroad that darkness (Evil) has made upon good (Light.) The great difficulty in putting human reason into activity towards the centre, and causing it to conceive any relation beyond personal and particular sensation, is found in the very low state oi its sensible basis, of its animal limitation; and until this be removed, its agency is confined, and its operation is destructive to itself. 196 So long as man will not enter into a Universal rela¬ tionship with Him who made him, he must be facti¬ tiously disciplined by education, instruction, and in¬ stitutions, to preserve social order; but as soon as he begins to universalize himself for the sake of the centre, the centre carries on the progressive perfection. Human reason, while it takes its law from animal sensation, instead of Universal sensation, is in an in¬ verted position, and not able to effect any extensive usefulness. Human reason, as soon as it changes side, and goes from the animal to the human, that is, from the parti¬ cular sense to the Universal-Good sense, it will operate more extensively and usefully. As soon as human reason is put on the Universal basis, the triple centre is strong enough to control the passions; and as soon as the triune centre be estab¬ lished, there is an inward harmony. Love, Light, and Life, must act as a triple one before the human nature is brought into a perfect state. The first basis is life, or motion; the second is light, life, and love; and the third is love, light, and life; the perfection is Love, Light, Life. The conjunction of light with life is an inferior one; but the union of light witli love is superior— o-o 2 3-5, the octave 8. The three Universal must be brought into harmony with the three essentials, or the invisible with the visible Trinity. If life and light be not carried forward to love, the Universal sensitive Good cannot be attained. Man must be ruled until he can rule himself upon the ground of Universal Good. 197 Man lias been rather taught what to think than how to think; and as soon as he begins to learn how to think, he will soon discover of which Universal he must think. The difference between life, light, and love is im¬ mense; in life we individualize; in light we generalize; in love we universalize. To generalize means only to extend our conception from our own individuality in society, as far as the interest of social life goes; but to universalize is to extend our interest over time into eternity, to the great whole, and to re-unite it with its Triune Creator. Life is selfish, light is social, love is Universal,—the love of God, the love of our neighbour, the love of self. We act from life; we do our duty from light; and we desire to do our duty from love. Light furnishes love the means that it may, by life, execute its Universal purpose,—the bringing about the greatest degree of happiness with the least degree of misery to every created existence. Man is married to the world, and the world is married to man; man can no more get from the world than the world can get from man; if man will not mend the world, the world will mar man Man is superior to the world with which he is united. Before we can measure any standard of moral truth or good, we must reach the centre of all elements, and the circumference of all constructive systems. Virtue, for want of a proper basis to receive it, is far more dangerous than vice, as was exhibited in the mis¬ taken views on liberty in the French revolution. While man cannot from love generate the pure light 198 that is necessary to rule him, he will in vain attempt to get this by education, instruction, or discipline. Every properly constructed creature has a love within it, to generate its own proper light, from which and by which, it can generate power to execute its own proposes. If any thing pure were given to man while he is in a state of impurity, be would be instantly consumed. So inflammable is impurity, that purity would set it on fire at once, and the instrument be consumed. He only can universalize his ideas who is in the state to have the light of love. Without the removal of Evil, man is not in a state to have the Love light; and without the Love light, he cannot universalize his ideas so as to become an agent in diffusing sensitive good to all the inferior creatures. Until the heart be purified from its passions, the mind can have no relish for spiritual truths. When man has lost his hold of Unity, he makes unions, and establishes public opinion; and from this made-centre he governs his inferiors. The proprietors of property make unions, to pre¬ serve order and secure themselves. The various classes of men make unions, and let their own laws stand in the place of the Unity. He who has generalizing powers in his understand¬ ing can multiply the ideas of things into the Universal relations of Unity; but he who has not this threefold light cannot rise beyond the social circle, or double basis. There is a threefold love, a threefold light, and a threefold life. Individual, social, Universal,—a 199 triad Trinity. Life, and light, of love ,—Universal, or the love of God. Love, and life, of light,—Social, or the love of learning. Light, and love, of life,—In¬ dividual, or the love of life. Only that life and light, which have their origin in love, are Universal. Only that love and life, which have their origin in light, are social. Only that light and love, which have their origin in life, are selfish, For life, light, and love, as a Trinity in Unity , we substitute institution, education, and instruction. We wish this tripartite medium to restore to the hu¬ man being the constitutive perfection he has lost by a sinful birth of self-will. Before we begin to set any thing in order, we must remove that thing, or being, which puts it into dis¬ order. The moment we find disorder, we must turn our attention, not so much to the wrong, as to him who made it. We must get the disorderer out of the way before we attempt to make any order in the heart, in the bead, or the hands. What is the use of giving extensive powers to a being, who, by the misdirection of his desires, will use tliem all to gratify self? I It is pure love alone that can gratify all the desires; and only as the desires are pure, will pure love give itself to the desires. Impurity must be taken out of the desires before pure love will give itself to them as the supply required. ' 200 Pure love will not give itself to impure desire; and as long as impurity remains in the desires, the desires will try to satisfy themselves with impurities. Pure love only will give itself as a satisfaction when impurity is removed from the heart. The more miserable a man is, and the more this misery is of his own making, the more he hates it, and the sooner he will desire for that love which alone can make him happy. Love will produce a conscientious sentiment, a be¬ loved reality. Self-love will furnish an adopted judgment, a ver¬ dict, or unit}', that may suit its own convenience. God’s creating laws turned the whole creation from God into diverse insensibility; God’s governing laws re¬ verse this creating law, and turn all the created things towards God again, to make them divinely sensible. A mother puts a child from her at first by life, and then she does all she can to draw the child towards her again by love. Love multiplies every desire into its fullness, or satis¬ faction ; it gives it that which it needs, which the things of loze cannot do. The desire of love is higher than the things of love; when desire turns from love to the things of love, it soon becomes dissatisfied with the satisfactions it has gathered from the things of love, and turns from dis¬ satisfaction to love again. When the loze of pezson is mistaken for the love of pzinciple, the love of principle dies away; but when the love of principle is turned to the love of God, then the love of God reanimates the same into full satis¬ faction and joyous delight. 201 The world’s proper standard is love, pure love. Self-love’s highest false standard is learning. Self- love’s second false standard is property. No proper conclusion can be drawn by the mental faculties on the subject of utility or duty, or Universal usefulness, unless it has its root in love, in the one Love element. Love alone can multiply the mind’s powers in such a way as to make them Universally fruitful; and where the mind has not its luminous root in love, there it must fail in its moral activities. Love is incessantly transmuting all the created ele¬ ments from the agency of a central will into the pa- tiency of a Universal system or circumference, and uniting mind with matter, in one identity of interest, power, and essence, in time and in eternity. All truth and all good are but selfish agents until love gets hold of them, and multiplies them into Universal sensibilities. The Love which transmutes the elements makes every one circulate in its own system; it makes the element of life circulate in bodies; and the element of light circulate in minds; and the element of love cir¬ culate in the regenerate will; and so harmonizes every atom in the whole created system. Love draws all wills, and to one centre brings; Men changed to spirits, and insects changed to kings. Love equalizes hot and cold in the bodily or physi¬ cal system; and, in the same way, it equalizes light and darkness in the moral system; and also Good and Evil in the heavenly world; and multiplies into an equality all that was unequal in every individual, in every nation, and in every species of sensitive existence 2d Love, that is, the three three-fold love, in its Univer¬ sal predicament, suits the partial predicament of every will, or part, and supports the inconveniences of that will, or that part, be it what it may. Truth can demonstrate man’s immortality to he in love, and not in self-love’s personality, or modal form. Love expands the soul’s interest into all time, space, and power; while self-love contracts its existence to brute instinct, and to the interest of a single point, or the sensation of half a pound of brain, which the mind uses during the animal life. Just as far as the soul approaches the central three¬ fold love, does it extend its faculties into outward operative usefulness; and when the soul inwardly ceases to seek the centre, the centre ceases to furnish it circumferential means. There are no means necessary to reach the centre; and all the means that are necessary to reach the cir¬ cumference, the centre three-fold love furnishes. Love takes care that the soul never shall escape the consequences of its own agency, but learn from them the Good and the Evil which it has been working, and so become fitted to execute the Divine pur¬ poses. Wherever Love shall, through its tripartite medium, exercise its lull power, and discover to the soul its unitive and universal relation with it, it will be impos¬ sible for self-love any longer to shut it up within the sensation of a few pounds of brain, and all the ideas consequent on it working the same brain. While self-love shuts up the soul in the working of half a pound of brain, and all the consequences of this brain-working, Lore itself changes the soul’s basis to itself, and expends its operations in spontaniety all over the universe. While self-love works the brain into limited sensi¬ bilities, Love works the will into unlimited benevolence. Self-love’s highest instrument is the head, while Love’s instrument is the will, divested of self-love. It is only Love that can provide the moral power a security against the physical power, or become Light security against Life; and so long as Love is not established, the brethren can dwell together in Unity. Love will liberate human reason, and coerce the passions, and form its own institutions on the earth, and multiply practice by theory, so as to effectuate sensitive good to all the creation. Love must triumph in its dispensation, whatever may be or have been the convulsions and revolutions in the dispensations of Light and Life. Life cannot reach immortality, and Light an infinity, without Love comes forth in its own dispensation. While Love presides over Light and its operations, it shall not be possible for Life to arrest or extinguish any ultimate aims; but until Light has its proper sup¬ port, the passions would hinder its good counsels. We act from Love, because we have nothing else from which to act. We act for Love, because there is no one else to act for. We carry all to Love, because there is no one else to carry our doings to. Education, instruction, and institution must do what they can, in the absence of Love as the quickening Spirit, to bring forth the human affections, that they 204 may, by them, expand the ideas into usefulness or utilities. "While Love, as the quickening Spirit, is absent, all those who are willing to operate as well as they can, must develope the affections of the will, and on these affections found the ideas and the energies. Life can he bribed to give up self-love only by Love; and whenever Love will show itself in its own real character, Life will relinquish all connection with self-love. Love is the indemnifying Spirit that makes every thing good, and puts want to flight. While the human constitution has self-love in it as a ruler, it is nothing else hut a dead parchment of life¬ less impracticable rule; hut as soon as Love resumes its own place, it quickens every thing from the centre to the circumference. Love, by the Universal affection or will, generates Universal ideas, and through these again, in a lower and outer sphere, Universal activities, operations, or usefulnesses (utilities). An artist, by a mirror, can reflect an idea of himself, and, from this reflected likeness, make an image or outward representation. Love (artist), Universal Will (glass or mirror), Universal Understanding (idea or likeness), Universal Energies (copy of the idea). A Unity in Trinity, and a comprehensible Trinity in Unity. Love is the Unity, which acts by an incomprehen¬ sible Trinify', and this Trinity, by a comprehensible Trinify’, to form a visible Unity. Love is the quickening re-unitive principle, which quickens and re-unites all uniteables.' 205 Love is the Holy Oil which softens every hard thing and restores to it its generative virtues. The affections are the matrix of thought and sense, and are themselves wedded to Love or self-love. The affections, when quickened hy the loving Spirit, will multiply the ideas into useful activities, and effect Love’s ultimate purpose—a family of Love. In the absence of Love as the real mover, we, from self-love, substitute a public opinion, and act from it. As long as self-love cannot make a stable public, it cannot make a firm public opinion. As long as self-love makes the public and public opinion, it will make all the works for self-love. Man’s human affections are nearly annihilated by the rabble government of self-love, and his intellectual energies are reduced to the embryo condition of mere animal life. Love alone can work the affections, thoughts, and energies into undivided unanimity, which Light and Life cannot do. Self-love can mislead Light and Life while Love, as the quickening Spirit, has not established its hea¬ venly organisms, by which it can rule. When Love has established and eternized its own recipient vessels, it will take to itself the world and govern it; these vessels being of the highest order of elements, and of the greatest purity, are the last formed. Love only can rule hy its heavenly organisms, and these it must first form out of heavenly elements. Self-love does all it can to hinder Love from collect¬ ing heavenly elements, so that it- may form heavenly organisms, by which it can act. Human agency cannot be elevated higher than its 206 developed organisation; if a being is not heavenly organized, it cannot be led to do any heavenly acts; and only so far as it is organized can Love rule it and by it. Love rules by its own organisation, made out of its own essential essences. Light rules by its own organisation, made out of its own proper ethers. Life rules by its own organisation, made out of its own proper elements. Love cannot rule in any organisation that is not equal to it, or that cannot sustain its extensive energy. The organisation on which the Universal affections depend must be different to the organisation on which the Universal ideas depend, and these again different to the organisation on which the senses depend; the sensitive organs are made out of one elementary genus; the intelligent organs out of another generic class; and the Universal affections out of another; and as the End cannot effect its ultimate purpose without these three most distinct and most different orders of ingredients, essences, or elements, it must not be hin¬ dered from collecting them for its building in their own proper spheres. A being who is horn with a disproportion of the organisation can, by a right direction towards the right End, have a great change wrought in it by the End, so that the End may re-establish the proportional organic harmony, and then, by this new-modelled organisation, effect its ultimate purpose. The structure on which the senses, the thoughts, and the affections depend is capable of extensive 207 changes, and the whole being in its tendencies made to ascend. There are three discreet degrees of organic suscep¬ tibility, and many degrees in each degree. The senses may be refined, and the moral organisa¬ tion not yet developed. The moral organisation may be highly developed, yet all the refinement of these two discreet degrees do not touch the organisation which is necessary for the third degree, or innermost structure ; the Universal organisation is as different in Und to the moral organi¬ sation as the moral is to the sensible. Capabilities must be distinguished from suscep¬ tibilities; and only as we do this shall we become able to measure the aggregate amount of human hap¬ piness. He who has the faculties for the Love of God highly developed will have a greater amount of heavenly happiness than he who has not the same development; and he who has his moral faculties highly susceptible will have more enjoyment than one who is only in the sensible order. From the senses the same amount of enjoyment cannot he extracted as from the moral affections, or from the moral affections as from the Divine affections. The hind, class, and degree of happiness depend on structure; and structure or organisation on an inward End, who applies the means, be they found within or without, in external circumstances. Human structure, in each particular degree, is ca¬ pable of being modified, altered, or new moulded by the great Master builder while it is under external circumstances, such as education, instruction, and institution; and so far as the organism is changed is the being capable of a higher happiness. We must, while in outer circumstances, furnish the Master builder with higher and better materials, that he, by them, can make higher capacities, and more intensive susceptibilities. So far as we neglect to furnish the Master builder with materials, so far is the structure from perfection. Man can only furnish the materials which the Master builder is to use, and out of which the master builder will form a structure that is more and more perfect. The grand master builder is executing the great creative intention,—the producing the highest degree of Universal happiness by the least possible organic means. The whole aim of the Master builder is to educe good or happiness from well-modified organisation. When the master builder has modified the organi¬ sation properly, he then produces by it the corres¬ ponding happiness. The master builder operates with a certain propor¬ tion of organisation, and by it produces the results he requires. In the present low crisis of the moral world, property forms the necessary basis of all civil unions, and in proportion to its contraction, the pyramid of society diminishes its base. Wherever Light is diffused without any real love, the intellect must be subjected to the senses, or to the animal will, and its more or less refined desires; there is no possibility for it to be otherwise. That which is between two must rest on the one or the other for its support. 209 The intellect, let it appear as it may, must serve the master that supports it. It must inevitably be swallowed up in the catastrophe of the senses, umess Love comes to its aid, and gives it a new basis. It is only Love that can alter the intellectual tempe¬ rament, and give to the mind the generalizing power that it may see the way it must conduct the executive organs to the ultimate purpose intended by Love. It is easy to prove that too great a quantity of any particular science, when not digested by Love into Universal usefulness, is by self-love converted into the means of insanity, stupidity, and folly. It is Love alone that can use science in such a way as it shall contribute to promote good to the whole created family. Human structure, within and without as to the soul, Spirit, and body, may undergo graduated exaltations; and on the changes within, the outward may be grounded. The master builder, when he acts from the centre, makes a whole change; but wdien he acts from either of the focuses, he only modifies the externals. Happiness is not a thing that is multipliable, though the persons are who circulate it amongst them. Happiness cannot be taken from one and given to another; it is a living sensibility that cannot be measured by the more or the less. The happiness derived from the Universal faculties, and their adequate means, is to be preferred to the happiness derived from the moral faculties with moral means; and much more so than the happiness derived from the senses with sensible means. * 2 E 210 An individual may enjoy a purer happiness with a sound organisation, and less means, than one who has more means, and a less perfect organisation. Happiness, as a result, depends more upon organi¬ sation than upon means: means are used more to keep up the organisation than the happiness. Music, as a result, depends more upon the instru¬ ment than the case which preserves it; the case which preserves it is used for the instrument, and not for the music. He who has the purest organisation will require the least means of happiness, as he will have the least organisation to sustain. He who has a perfect organisation will not need any means of happiness whatever; he will have no organi¬ sation that can be injured or decay. It is only the preservative Love that will harmonize the moral affections, and perfect the senses, and unite itself by its own faculties with the whole circle of man’s existence. It is only when Love, by its own proper faculties, begins to work from the centre, that it brings order into the moral world, and then by it into the physical world. Until Love has its own capacities to act with, it cannot give forth its own direct consequences in moral good and physical good. Love, by its own celestial organs, can effect good or happiness in all sensitive life; and just as far as Love ceases to act, so far every thing is in a state of want, and acts to supply the same. Where Love is, by its own organisation, there the want ceases, and the being has unlooked-for happiness. 211 Life has its own faculties; light its own faculties; and Love its own faculties: each in its own discreet degree. Love, by its Universal or perfectable good faculty, harmonizes moral good with practical good, and so establishes its own family on the earth. By founding organisation on the basis of Love, Love can by it so modify its operation as to subject the or¬ ganisation of the moral world, and also the organisa¬ tion of the physical world, and work its consequences in three-times-three. Education must be divided into three systems,— unlettered, lettered, and hieroglyphic; the first for the animal spirits, the second for the living soul, the third for the quickening spirit: the first belongs to this world, the second to the world of spirits, the third to God alone; the first belongs to Life, the second to Light, the third to Love; the first is visible, the second in¬ visible, the third sympathetic. In the first process we should teach how to Blink on what is visible, and this without signs or letters, and how to apply the same in act. In the second process we should, by signs, because the things are invisible, teach wiiat to think, and what to do as duty. In the third process we should, by hieroglyphics, because the being is not comprehensible, teach whom we should love. By words or letters we should only make the invi¬ sible visible, and not by misuse of them make the visible invisible. For the things that are visible, letters or signs are not necessary to teach now to think and how to use them; but for the spiritual things of the spiritual world letters are useful, as, from them, we (you) may learn what to think; and from hieroglyphic we (you) may he reminded of our (your) unlettered relationship with love. Life has not fallen into as much disorder as light. Light has expanded, instead of keeping itself con¬ centrated with love, that love, from its own centre, might be the only expansive force. In the first process of education no lettered know¬ ledge whatever should he given; the hands must have useful aptitudes given to them—the head should have reflective habits—the heart should have harmonious feelings—and all these from the visible objects of the visible creation for the use of Life, on the earth, hut in obedience to the higher processes. In the second process, which belongs to the living soul , books or signs may be introduced, which stand as substitutes for the invisible beings of the invisible world, and from these books we might learn in what relationship we stand with them, and how they are related to us, and in what way our relationship might he brought down into use. The third process belongs to the quickening Spirit, in which words are of no avail; symbols express more at once, and assert the expansive energy of Love. Life is a contracting principle; light is a concen¬ trating, universalizing principle; and Love is the only expansive quickening principle. Love requires two contractives, light and life,—an inward and an outward contractive; and only so far as these are contractives, and are one with Love, can Love perform its animating expansiveness. 213 If Love had not tivo contractives ov opposites, it could not perform any of its expansive functions, or individual organisations. Christ came on the earth as Light, but in union with his Father, whom he designated as Love, as expansive Love. Now the earth is a contractive, and is the instru¬ ment of life. There is no unanimity except by Love ; Love, by the consent and concord of an outward and ail inward, makes unanimity; that is, a double Universality, by which it can act its own expansiveness. Without Love there is no life ; and the life is of such a quality as its love is. We live our own life from the love of life, or love of light, and from the love of light there are infinite loves; but from the essential love there is but one life, and one light, and one love. Man, as he is at present developed within, is not luminously conscious of his identity with Love, or of its animating expansive operation within him. Man, not being fully re-united to Love, and too strongly bound up with life, can only imagine his own personal interest in limited sensation and experience, and not in the Universal consciousness. Each individual is only conscious of love in his own consciousness; but love must be love in every con¬ sciousness. Love, by two Universal patiencies, life and light, becomes modified love in every individual exist- Those who have neither acquired life nor acquired light, and are unbound in a greater degree than the learned or the rich, Universal Love can act in the most freely. It is hy good that Universal Love acts; and only so far as a man has had Evil overcome in him, can he from good call upon Love to aid him. Love will work nothing that is no idea, relation, or analogy; that is not supportable by the elements on which it works; the ingredients must be able to sus¬ tain the feature or lineament as the marble is the form that for the moment is given to it. Love will not do any thing without the elements are prepared for the work, and that, when the work is done, they will retain it. Education must, in the same way, conduct the mind to love, and, from the ground of love, work it amongst all the realities it can properly reach. It is Love that must effect unanimity with the good, the wise, and the powerful; and only as all resistance is overcome can it do this. Before Love can act, all that is fixed and defined must be removed, that it may not work within any boundary, but make its own beautiful manifestations. It is Love alone that can, by its expansive activity, bring sensation into all the affections, thoughts, and energies; and only so far as the whole existence be given up to love for love’s own End, will it make the satisfaction that the nature seeks for. Letters or learning, when not for the sake of God, disturbs man’s moral nature from its proper basis, and transfers it to the government of the animal instinct. When intellectual light is used for a physical end, it overturns the order of the mind’s working, and brings Evil in the human constitution. 215 The End or purpose of the intellectual power is to conform the affection of the will to the most just, and most general, and most Universal Love relation. If Love enjoys the happiness of every one of its creatures, it will prepare the elements out of which the creatures are made, that it may receive the happiness that it originally proposed. Love must feel, in every mode, not only its own in¬ finite happiness, hut the happiness of every finite mode which it has itself prepared. As the Creator delights himself with his creatures, he must delight himself with the happiness of the creatures, and the more happiness he prepares for them, the more happiness he has to delight himself with. Call on the God who loves you, and who will put out your desires, rather than on the God you love to satisfy your desires. The God that loves the soul will put out its evils; but the God the sinful soul loves will try to satisfy them. He who has enough Divine Love can easily over¬ come the love of sin. Fire may be worked destructively or productively; the element that can be made to destroy can, in other hands, be made to produce abundantly. Man, under Love , is willing to be a Universal in¬ strument, and, under self-love, a selfish instrument. From Love the universe sprung. Love is sustaining the universe; and, whatever may be the appearances, love originates every volition, intellection, and motion in the interior or exterior spiritual faculties. 216 Paternal love it is that educates the child; and from love the child returns gratitude. Love ties each to itself, and in the outward state mats self-love into cords, and by these self-love cords, Love binds society together. The love of family, the love of country, the love of society are all the creaturely modes of the creating lore. The universe is sustained by love; and that part of it which runs away from the creating lore is bound together with the self-love cords which it furnishes. A country is nothing else hut many families bound together by love. If the families do not will from love, they cannot think or act from love; only so far as a creature wills from love does it think and act from the same kind of love, as well as degree of that particular kind. We ought to be afraid of all such establishments as weaken the Universal faculties under the pretence of improving man. Only so far as we consider ourselves agents of Universal Lore can we have a love that is equal to all demands upon us. As far as we are agents of the Universal bank will the bank supply us with notes to meet all the demands that are made upon us, in its name and by its authority, but not with the gold itself. As far as we are agents of Universal Love will love itself, the infinite bank, supply us with love-tokens to answer all the requirements that are presented to us, in its own name and by its indirect authority; but it reserves to itself the right of paying in lore. It is only at the bank that we can exchange bank 217 notes for gold; and it is only at the central bank, the creating source, that we can exchange love-tokens for Love. It is only love-tokens that man can circulate, and these will, at any time when carried to the love-creating hank, he exchanged for quickening Love. All the subtle speculations and scientific refinements of light, when based on sense, are by sense used to spoil the understanding and corrupt the heart. As soon as the higher falls down into the lower, the lower corrupts it, and this is exemplified by all kinds of studies which are not upon the central basis and for it; but, upon the ground of sense and for it, are use¬ less and dangerous. As it is love alone that creates every thing, all wills that are not rooted and grounded in the centre, but are worked in inferior elements, are, by the inferior elements amidst which they work, rendered inefficient. Man, while his nature is radicated in self-love, is formed more for exertion than introversion-, labour is less dangerous for him than study. As soon as he begins to use his second order of faculties, the faculties of light, and these for an outward end, he works de¬ structively. Nothing ought to be neglected to awaken in chil¬ dren the third order of faculties, the sympathies, by which Universal Love works to overturn sin, and to re-instate the other parts of man’s nature. Love cannot, till it lias established its Universal sym¬ pathies, overcome sin in the soul, and re-instate the se¬ condary and ternary organs on their ammatinn- basis. Man’s strength is not his pre-causative will, but is that ever-animating love that is within it. 218 Man’s strength of mind is not his mind, hut is that animating love that is within his pre-causative will. Man’s strength of body is not in his body, hut in that animating love that is within his pre-causative will. It is not the animating love that varies, hut man, as instrument, by reason of his instrumental condition, within and without. Man, as instrument, is not in a good instrumental condition, and, so far as this is the case, the animating musician finds no correct correspondence in the inte¬ rior and exterior results. Man should use the Hebrew signs as instruments, and by them express ideas in words, which words may be represented in complex signs, but not as the He¬ brew instruments. The Hebrew signs are rather musical instruments, by which very much may be made, but not words with fixed meaning. The flute is an instrument by which the player may play a tune; but the flute never can be the tune, or player, or music book. The Hebrew signs are flutes or instruments by which the spiritual reader may express his own living ideas ; but his own living ideas and the expression of them can never be the signs. By an instrument I may make a hundred tunes, but a limited icord I cannot make into an unlimited repre¬ sentative. Limited words are not unlimited elementary instru¬ ments by which can be reproduced or multiplied the expressions of ideas. 219 Words are but as ground corn, of which the repro¬ ductive or organic form is destroyed. The more creative ideas I have within me, the more music I have it in my power to make by the Hebrew instruments; I can play on them just what I am in¬ wardly desired to outwardly express. The Hebrew signs (as flutes) are the diversifying instruments by which the soul can express her inborn varied feelings; English words are the fixed represen¬ tative signs (not of the Hebrew instruments), but of the innate living feelings. Stroud, Juno 12,1834. Love, by its own element, which it circulates in the human constitution, equalizes the convenience or incon¬ venience of every organic function; and this harmon¬ izing, the mind is, by its Universal conceptive organs, made conscious of; not so if the mind works from the Life, or sense ground, which limits the feeling to the personal organic modes. Love expands man’s faculties into a Universal rela¬ tionship with all; and Life, when assisted by Light, contracts them into something personal and selfish. The personal mode is every thing to a mind that is grounded in Life; but the Universal is too little to a mind that is grounded in Love. Man, while his mind works from the Life ground, has not enough power in his will to work up his ideas into a Universality; nor to work out his mental con¬ clusions into open results ; he goes from little to less, less to least the more he does; the ground on which he works, confusing him every step he makes on it. Opposite powers are always of the same kind, and fromUnity send to union; there is an essential difference 220 between opposite and contrary; sweet and sour are opposites ; sweet and bitter are contraries. Hot and cold ar e opposites, and not contraries; they want and suppose each other. Masculine and feminine are opposites; they want and suppose each other. Light and darkness are opposites, and not contraries; they mutually want and suppose each other. He who, from Lore, has no power to control multiplicity, and reflect it into Unity, does hy his divi¬ sional activity, destroy that finest moral constitution which would represent the Divine attributes on the earth. Only so far as man is one with love, is he the perfect- able agent with which love can work its ultimate pur¬ pose in time. Lore, through perfectable human agency, promised salvation to the world. It is Lore that can reconcile Light and Life, and unite them with itself for its ultimate purpose. When sympathy, and the conceptions arising from it, do not pass the boundaries of sensation, the agent who acts for human improvement does not make much pro¬ gress against evil, or in favour of Love. He or she who educates human beings should have a sympathy, as well as conceptions, which can pass the boundaries of sensation, that they may reach the faculties, by which the Universal evil results are worked out, and the Love purposes worked in. A sympathy and ideas which cannot reach beyond the boundaries of sensation are hut feeble instruments with which the evil in the human being is to be at¬ tacked, and the love assisted. 221 Those who would attack the Evil in a being, so as to help in its removal, should have a sympathy , as well as ideas, that can reach the depth required. The educator of the scholar can never sufficiently operate to awaken the highest faculties, which are to carry forward Love’s intentions, unless his conceptions and sympathy can pass beyond the boundaries of sen¬ sation into the very chamber of evil. Without a Loving sympathy be generated in the child’s breast, there is no gravitating influence drawing it to the centre. When man has a feeling sense of something that is Universal, we may be assured that his outward con¬ duct arises from the intellectual conceptions which this Universal sense has engendered within him. When the feeling of something Universal exists in man, in a remarkable degree, this man is, from the con¬ ceptions it engenders, led to promote the good of others, as far as he practically can. The something Universal in man raises his feeling interest in the progressive ratio of parent, friend, neigh¬ bour, nation, species, and all sensitive life to itself. When the Universal-Good feeling exists in man, the enlarged good that he does arises from the new con¬ ceptions this expansive sympathy has engendered. The practical good thaf'a man does arises from the ratio of his Universal conceptions with his Universal feelings. Instinct, however, inverts the calculation, and makes the mere animal men value more their personal sen¬ sations, under half a pound of brain, than their Univer¬ sal sensations under the full development of their Universal faculties. Man is developed from the point of a single sense, through all the senses, up to Universal sensibility; and just as he gives himself up to progressive development are his sensibilities expanded to the Unity itself. Man, from a single sensible growth, and by progres¬ sion, returns through Universal sensibility to Unity. A man’s growth towards Universality is stopped, as long as his will works towards personality; hut as soon as he turns his will from personality to Universality, his growth begins again. When the will works towards the world, it works towards an atmosphere that cannot sustain its personal interest; but when it works towards the Universe, or rather towards love, then Love, the one atmosphere, sustains its Universal interest. The new interior instruction, which should he pri¬ vately as well as publicly pursued, must separate the personal affections of sense or self-love, from the Universal Love affection; which Universal affection is called charity, that the will may have light to see the course it must take, as well as the way it must leave; that it may reach the Love that will sustain its interest towards the whole creation. Love efforts to sustain the will into interest towards the whole creation, that it may make it an agent in Universal usefulness. Love sustains the will in its Universal efforts, and leaves the will to sustain itself in its personal efforts. Extremes of all kinds are Satan's work ; the centre, the middle, the one line, is love’s work. Let the work he in Light or in Life, it matters not; Satan rules it: that work only which is done in Love, in pure Love, in the Love itself, will stand. No works will stand but such as are worked by Love from the will’s centre, let it be in what degree it may, be it in any of the degrees Life or degrees Light. The Revelation by Light was established among mankind as a necessary key to the Universal mystery, and as a means to discipline the senses; and never as an instrument which self-love should get hold of, and turn to its own personal purpose. The Bible is a history of the mystery of Universal Love, so far as this mystery, history, or Bible is known; it is Love itself that generates the sensibilities in which the knowledge is founded. Love is the sun that is fixed as a centre to the universe, and only so far as Love by the universe acts on every part, is the part or particular acted on, made Universally sensible. Where Light acts, there is only a reflected sensibility; and where Life acts, there is only a limited personal sensibility. Love can travel where Light cannot. Whatever may be Light’s motions, Love’s move¬ ments are three times as rapid. Love can bring death to Life; but Light cannot bring Life to Love. Human reason, when bound to sense, is quite unequal to the task of lighting man forward to do his Univer¬ sal work in the universe. Love’s labours will outlive Light’s or Life’s works, because both work without a fixed fc l itio Love will not acknowledge any works that Light or Life engenders; only its own works will it acknow- 224 It is Love alone that can marry the opposites, and hold them in marriage, and make them fruitful. Love can conjoin hot and cold in marriage, and make them fruitful; but it cannot conjoin contraries: it can unite hot and cold, but it cannot bind together hot and truth, or good and cold. Hot desires cold for its consort as good desires truth; and, as such, Love or Unity can effect a union and make them fruitful. Death requires Life for its consort; but as soon as Life leaves Death and seeks Light, it dies itself, and darkens Light. Love’s proper bride is Love or will; and Light’s proper bride is darkness; and Life’s bride is death. Love or will, or self-love—Light and Darkness— Life and Death. The superior marries itself to the inferior, but not the inferior to the superior. Love makes a universe or a Universal nature, or a common reservoir, by which it sustains every indivi¬ dual, and makes it happy; to this common reservoir each may apply when it is disposed to make another happy; but not when it requires the aid for its own personal interest. Man may apply to the common ocean when he needs water or aid for a Universal purpose; but when he in¬ tends to apply the same to an individual purpose, he turns himself off from getting it. When charity and brotherly love prevail, the com¬ munity has the common reservoir to go to for supply, with which to make each other abundantly happy. The common reservoir is for the common interest; and as soon as man turns to Love, Love will give him 225 a general order on the same for all that he can use for brotherly purposes. The common reservoir is full of common goods, and each man may have an order on it for all that he can generally apply to his neighbours, if lie will ask Love for the same. Nothing is delivered out from this common reservoir without an order from Love; and as soon as a man will apply any thing himself which was given out for his neighbours, he will find that it will not agree with him. Out of all the means which the will provides, Love makes instructive sensations and instructive concep¬ tions. Whatever knowledge man seems to obtain, this must be handed over to Love to convert into Universal sensibility and Universal conception. Let man get what things he will, Love takes them from him, and uses them for his own Universal purpose. Unless the will be cultivated and strengthened by Love, the knowledge which the mind acquires by its connection with sensible things or artificial signs, does but weaken its faculties, particularly its judgment. Artificial signs used in language have no natural relation with the mind, or with the things signified. As the things signified by these signs have a ten¬ dency to injure the mind, unless the will is strengthened by Love, how much more must these things work in the same way? Man is a related being, related to Love by its will; to Light, by its understanding; to Life, by its energies; and again by its heart to the will; by its lungs to the understanding; and by its viscera to the energies. Man comes into disorder the moment the will seeks any thing else hut Love, and remains in disorder till Lore is My reinstated in the will. Man’s noblest relation is by Ms will with Love; and his secondary relation is with Light by his under¬ standing ; and his ternary relation is with Life by his energies ; the instrument of his will is his heart; the instrument of his understanding is his lungs and the instrument of the energies are all the viscera. Love is making man, and will go on through all eter¬ nity using the work that it is making. Man is secondarily related to his brother man, and to all beings of his class; and thirdly, with the irrational animals, and the physical kingdoms of the outer world. The will ought to have a free intercourse with Love, and a full outer-course with mankind in all good offices. Life can never make a proper conjunction with Light; Life must keep its death-world, and correspond with Light. Light never can make a Ml and perfect conjunction with the will; but it must be united with darkness, and correspond with the will. The will never can make a full or primary conjunc¬ tion with the Light, but must he fully and intimately conjoined to Love. All the duties of the man, that is, of the will, have, like the will itself, its origin in Love. Should we learn our duties if there were not some making learners and making duties 1 Just as far as the will is rooted and grounded in Love, does it furnish a ground on which the understanding can stand. The will can have no other basis hut Love; and so far as Love draws it from the world and purifies it, does it fix it in itself, that it may become a basis to the un¬ derstanding. The will, when grounded in Love, teaches the under¬ standing in an instructive way to do good in the pro¬ gressive ratio of self, parent, friend, neighbour, nation, species, and all sensitive life,—because the interest of the understanding in the world follows the ratio of the interest of the will in Love. When the will is grounded in sense, life inverts this calculation, and makes personality of more value than Universality. The will has the agenting power, while rooted and grounded in Love, to augment the good and diminish the evil of the whole circle of created existence; there¬ fore out of Love alone its intimate interest arises. June 12|]i, 1S43. Love, by the will, discovers to the understanding the whole of error, and enables it to put aside the whole of evil, and to become the high Universal agent in the earthly planetary system. The worship of the will can be in nothing but in diminishing the evil and augmenting the good, in the great self or Universal nature. The understanding, for want of the Universalizing light, has mistaken spiritual error for celestial truth; and the will, for want of the infinite love, spiritual evil for celestial good; and the energies, for want of the infinite life, have substituted the things of Life. The great purpose of education is to direct man’s will to a safe and solid basis, that, it being advanced in good, may go on to perfect both his theory and his practice, and to bring both with accelerated movement into the central progression. 228 It is the sacred lain of sympathy, which Love by the will generates, that stands as the Ml representative of Love ; it is Lore that is giving all worth to the human character, all harmony in the moral world, and all gravitation in the physical world; and those who are regardless of this Love, can have no character of intel¬ lectual Light, and no usefulness of practical Life. It is Love, by wisdom, that conducts man celestially, spiritually, and naturally, and just as far as man, most fully in all his powers, that is, in his will understanding and energies, as well as his heart, his head, and hands, gives himself to be guided, does Love by wisdom lead him. Self-love contracts in its working process the expan¬ sive operations of Love by wisdom, and uses property and opinions as its instruments. Man is related inwardly to his Maker, who sustains his Love; and outwardly to the eternal ethereal ocean, that sustains his form. Laws and institutions should direct man incessantly to that Love and wisdom, which will conduct him, through Universality in will, to Universality in act. It is Love by wisdom that universalizes man’s affec¬ tions, and, by consequence, his ideas and his practices. He who is the agent of a mode is, at the same time, the patient of a mass; that, which he, as agent, casts into the Universal ocean, is returned upon him as recipient, the next moment he is made to suffer, if he will not avoid making the means whereby he suffers. The evil which man, as a mode, lets into the world- ocean, is, by the waves, waved back upon him ; he suf¬ fers from the oceaH he has so stormly agitated, and must suffer until it be calmed. 229 Man’s patient-interest is Universal, his agent-interest is personal; the ocean he personally helps to agitate agitates him again with its Universal force; as lie receives that which others have made as well as his own, so others receive what he has made as well as what they also have made. As the modes are made out of the ethereal ocean, so it becomes the modes not to let Evil in by them into this ocean, that they may not suffer the re-agency of ilieir own evil exhalations. Man, so far as liis organisation is concerned, is as a point to a circle, a mode to a universe, an agenting mode that is retributed by the re-agenting mass, through the incessant transmuting law, which transmutes the superfluous parts into the great whole, and supplies the preserved parts with the transmutations. So long as man will, through his personal will, let evil into the ocean, the evil ocean will, by its waves, dash against him, and make him feel his share in the Univer¬ sal movement which he himself has helped to make. The transmutation of the superfluous parts into the , eternal ocean, and the transmutation of the eternal ocean into the supply of the preserved parts or beings, prove man’s modal interest with the universe, and his Univer¬ sal interest with Love. Man’s desire to be fed proves his union with that which will feed him; and his desire to be loved proves his union with Love, that Love which loves him past all understanding. What man does not want is, by a transmuting power, cast in the Universal ocean; and by the same power the transmuted elements are made into that which he does want. The ocean being open to man, he gathers'his supply according to his wants, and helps to carry on the trans¬ mutation of the superfluous parts which he does not want, and exhales them into the Universal ocean. Man, as the instrument of self-love, helps to transmute good into Evil. Man, as the instrument of Love by wisdom, helps to transmute Evil into good. It is by a vorticular movement that man’s personal interest is kept up with the universe, and the Universal interest is kept up with man. Man has an inward and outward interest with Love and with the universe, or with the Universal things of Love’, and it is Love, by wisdom, that can love him, and give him an eternal interest with the things of Love. Love and wisdom will make in this lower world Universal natures, as far as the materials go with which they have to make them. When the Universal ocean is full of better ingre¬ dients, such elements can be used to make Univer¬ sal beings, in this lower sphere, then Love by wisdom will use the same; but as long as these pure Universal elements are not abundant in this world, the beings that Love, by wisdom makes, will be only as the elements are out of which they are made. Love and wisdom work everywhere by the materials they find, and Beings are made according to the pos¬ sibility of the materials. Love and wisdom work every thing by number, weight, and measure; and the better the materials the more durable the works. Love by wisdom innately makes enduring things out of 231 enduring elements, and transient things out of transient elements. All outward help should only be to lead man to THAT within him from which he is in nature too far distanced, which will innately expand his affections, universalize his ideas, utilize his labours, and use him incessantly to remove the evil that has, as a poisoning leaven, got into the Universal ocean. If man be helped to anything but to go to the real help within him, he is helped to become more helpless than he at present is; and helped to a further separa¬ tion from that Love from which, in nature, notin space, he is already too far distanced. Man worships God according as his own nature is furnished with notions; and the furnisher may he judged of by the natural furniture that is within the human house. Man finds within him certain notions, and from these furnished notions he worships God. Nearness to, or distance from God in nature, not in space, will account for the different views which indivi¬ duals find within, and from which they outwardly act. As far as ntan’s nature is Godlike, he worships God truly; and as far as man’s nature is distant from God’s nature, he worships God falsely. Man has no other standard than nearness to, or distance from God in nature (not in space) to act from. If man’s nature be a nature far distant from God's nature, he will have a distant God; hut if man’s nature he a nature near to the Divine nature, he will have a near God; he will have as close a God to him as his nature is close to the Divine nature. The nearness of man's nature to, or farness from the Divine nature, deserves peculiar consideration: as, out of the right apprehending of this, we shall be able to account for the different views of different individuals at various periods. Some men worship God, and take from their senses the ground on which they stand and from which they worship; others find a ground in their intellect; and others again in their affections. The Christian covenant was made for the whole man¬ hood, for the Universal natures in man, as well as the intermediate and inferior faculties. It is not by notions our nature is rectified, but by nearness of nature to the Divine; the Divine nature rectifies our nature and its notions. True Christianity is exhibited in every step which is made, in likening the human nature to the Divine nature. A man’s moral and religious conduct will be accord¬ ing to the nearness of his nature to the Divine nature, in innate degrees. Man may profess what he will, it is only in a heavenly human nature that the Divine nature,'as a Holy of Holies, can be established, in which sacred nature the one Spirit can dwell. Man is brought up to manhood by human degrees; and the divinity is in-wrought in him by Divine degrees; these natures are conjoined by Love after innate degrees. If the covenant of Light had been faultless, then should no place have been found for the second; the covenant of Love. In following the history of mankind we observe that, 233 in proportion as nations bring their moral and intellec¬ tual powers nearer to the Divine nature, the Divine nature diminishes in number the atrocious actions, re¬ fines the manners and the pleasures, softens legislation, purifies religion from superstition, and, by the fine arts , addresses the emotions of the soul to Love itself. By observing also the differences of the different societary classes, and the inhabitants of different pro¬ vinces, we are confirmed that the cause is in the Divine and human disjunction. As the human nature approaches the Divine nature, the Divine nature, as a ripening sun, qualifies it with its own qualities, and overcomes the self-qualities of the human nature. As the natural sun casts out the earthly qualities in the fruit, and puts in its own, so will the Divine nature do the same to the human nature when the human di tance i diminished, (in nature, not in space). The human nature is so degraded at present as to be at a vast distance; and the human distance must be diminished that the human nature may receive and retain the Divine rays. When human nature, as nature, is far distanced from the Divine nature, the Divine nature acts in it only as it is: divisional distance is caused by the dissimilarity of the human to the Divine nature. The little success that arises from education, we may say, arises from misdirecting the human nature to the means, and not by the means to the end. If we direct a living thing to dead means, the means cannot give it more life; but if, by dead means, we direct a living being to that which can give it more innate capacity, we do it a useful service. The Spirit requires us to carry every thing we have within to wisdom, who will use, or to improve our nature, and by so doing, bring us nearer to the Divine nature. When all the broken links between the human nature and the Divine nature are filled up, and the human nature is innately joined in again to the Divine, then there is a re-established harmony. As long as the links between the human nature and the Divine nature are not filled up, man has not the innate nature with which to apprehend Divine things. The Divine nature will re-unite itself to the human nature in an innate manner, if the human nature will call on the Divine nature after the given conditions. Man, in his present low organic state, is conscious only with the faculties he has, and these from the ground from which they work; and it is his duty to give himself up to his Maher to have higher natures, that he may, by organic construction, be brought nearer the Divine nature. The Divine Love cannot act universally within man till it has made the Universal nature with which to work, and from which it can work the Divine conse¬ quences. The Divine Love, by wisdom, works on such natures as it finds at the degree or order at which it works them; and if strange consequences appear, it is because strange faculties have been presented for it to work by in the degree where the work is done. If the sun acts upon a dead animal by the side of a Tose-tree, while it gives fragrance to the rose, it corrupts the lifeless substance. 235 Man’s faculties are innately elevated, and by an or¬ ganic structure in bis own nature fitted for a union with the Divine nature. When the organic state is such that the full union with the Divine and human nature may be effected, Love does this act; but, until this organic elevation, there is but external communications through the in¬ ferior organs. Man is to be more and more purely organized till the Spirit can bring about the conjunctive union with the Divine nature. While man with inferior faculties efforts to reach that which he can only receive by superior natures, he mistakes the shadows or dark substances for the Divine substances, and injures himself. If man will but consider himself as a being, in pro¬ gress and exchanging inferior natures for superior, he will cease from making so many vain efforts. '' Man cannot, without giving himself up incessantly, receive Love's high organisation, and promulgate to his fellow-man what Love is doing in the universe. Man has faculties gradually given to him which cor¬ respond to the root, to the body, to the bark, to the branch, to the twig, to the bud, to the blossom, and to the fruit; and (1... 2. ..3. ..4.. .5. ..6. ..7. ..8) he from fa¬ culty to faculty is passed through the seasons of a moral year. While man is only, in the state of branch, he cannot feel that which he will do when he is in the state of bud; and as soon as the faculties are given to him which cor¬ respond to blossom, he will make higher manifestations; and higher still, when the faculties are engendered which correspond to fruit. m The agency that corresponds to fruit cannot he till the facultybe engendered, which will exhibit this created degree. The Universal agency can only he expected from the Universal nature; and he who hinders the formation of this nature, may in vain look for the fruitful agency. It is Love alone that conducts the organic changes on to the Universal fruitful agency; and this by the octave or harmonic year. Man’s internal evidence or experience depends upon the fullness and Universality of his triad natures; and only so far as his triad natures are bred within, can his agency extend without. Man is more intent upon what he is doing before he has any proper faculties to act with, than upon what Love is doing within him to give him Universal faculties, with which he may work Universally. We ought rather to teach how God is acting in chang¬ ing man’s faculties, than what man is thinking in chang¬ ing his modes. We try to get with a lower faculty, and much doubt¬ ful activity, that which a higher faculty would at once give us in spontaneity' and with certainty. The discipline of education should be to get higher and higher faculties, rather than to give habits and propensities to those inferior faculties which are first active. Man is not mended by mending the lower faculties which are first active, but in seeking after those higher faculties which are of a higher and purer origin. We cause a child great internal suffering when we set him with his inferior mental faculties, given for other purposes, to search after objects which belong 237 to the higher mental faculties not yet inborn within him. It is not by multiplications, the produce of our lower mental faculties that we improve, but by the simplicity of our higher faculties as they approach the Unity. All the accumulations of an inferior mental faculty will not be equal to one step in constitutional growth. We ought to be more solicitous in getting the power with which we can know more, than in over-using the faculties that we have already got. We do not look within for fresh faculties, but with¬ out for improvement, from the use or over-use of the faculties we already have. It is by looking within for new faculties that we draw nearer and nearer to the Divine nature; but in the over-use or abuse of those that we have, we widen the human distance. The improvement and improved happiness of man¬ kind do not depend upon the use of the faculties man at present has, but upon God, who is giving forth new faculties for new uses. We do not, in nature, approach nearer the Divine nature by an over-use of the faculties we have, but by a gift of new faculties of a more Universal extent. While man is over busy in exercising his old facul¬ ties, he forgets that it is by new faculties, the gift of God, that his nature re-approaches the Divine nature. Man approaches the world with his old faculties, and more labour; and he re-approaches the Divine nature with new faculties, and less labour. It is a greater discovery to discover new faculties within, which relate man nearer to God, than to dis- 238 cover new exercises of old faculties, which relate man to the world. Man does not make inward progress by what he does outwardly, but by the new inward gifts that Love is constantly giving him inwardly, wherewith he may act afresh. Love is constantly changing man’s outward faculties for inward faculties; and, by this inward re-creating process, drawing man’s nature into union with his own nature. The faster Love changes the outward for the inward, the sooner the two natures are brought into union. All creating power is in the hands of Love; and whatever may be the convulsions and revolutions in the outer faculties, the inner faculties must triumph, and re-union be effected between the human and the Divine nature. Mliile one man with his old faculties is trying to learn only what is the nature of the centre of things, Love gives another man radical faculties which unite him to the same, and by which he comes into intuitive sensation at once. Whatever man desires to know would be reached, if he asked Love to give him the radical faculty that is equal to the object required. If man desires an object, he must at once ask Love to give him a faculty equal to attain the object desired. There is a Christian principle, and there are Christian faculties by which this principle produces Christian results. There is an anti-Christian principle, and there are anti-Christian faculties by which the anti-Christian principle produces anti-Christian results. The generatingprinciplemusthave faculties by which it can generate results. If amanhas newviews, he must apply to the generat¬ ing principles for the new faculties, by which they can he realized. Man must apply to the End for new means, or facul¬ ties, to represent higher results. Man cannot, with inferior mental faculties, work superior mental results; the higher mental results he desires, the higher mental faculties he must seek with which to produce them. Man tries with his anti-social faculties, worked hy the anti-social principle, to produce those results which are only produced hy the Christian principle with Christian faculties. The Christian principle, hy the Christian faculties, is a productive fountain; hut the anti-Christian prin¬ ciple with the anti-Christian faculties, is a destructive workman. A principle cannot work without faculties, nor rightly without corresponding faculties. Man has failed in trying to work social plans with his anti-social faculties, or right with his wrong faculties. If a good plan he formed, man must seek for the good faculties within him to realize the same; and only so far as these new faculties are horn in him, and worked hy the new principle, can he realize outwardly his new views. Every outward realisation of good depends upon the right faculties being within, and worked hy the right principle. The good principle governs hy the good faculties; and the good faculties must he inborn within man 240 before the good principle can exhibit without its good government within. The good principle cannot govern by the not good faculties; and the not good faculties must be lopped off before the good faculties can be established, by which the good principle works within and without its good results. To suppose that the mutual relations with and dependencies of mankind on their heavenly Father, man on man, and nation on nation, will not be felt in a more just, lively, and beneficial manner, when the superior faculties by which good-will, love, charity, and mutual interest are inborn within man, and fully exercised, than when only the inferior faculties work by the selfish principle, is, I conceive, a gratuitous supposition, unsupported by inward and outward facts, and indirect contradiction to the spirit and letter of the pages of the book of Dime Revelations. Let us look without at man’s acts, and thereby see what faculties he is composed of, and what principle works these faculties; and then we may be sure that no great outward good can be expected from him, till the new faculties that are worked by the new principle are made to preponderate. Man must be born again, that is only saying, the new faculties must be inborn within, before the. new principle can outwardly exhibit the new results. The selfish and anti-social principle which has, dur¬ ing ages past, gradually established its unnatural and numerous faculties in man’s nature, has reduced the superior faculties to a most deplorable condition, and prevented the good principle from manifesting its presence. m The consequences of the inferior mental faculties are felt by every man at this moment, and the civilized man in particular is threatened with wretchedness and misery from over working them. The civilized man has for centuries past been play¬ ing a game of misery with his inferior mental faculties, and he has yet to learn that it is only the right End that furnishes the right means with right objects. Nations have been playing the same game with the same faculties, and the happiness of individuals, as well as empires, has been placed on the inferior faculties, worked by the selfish principle, in contra-distinction to the superior faculties worked by the good principle. Divine revelation, in every page of Holy Writ, warns the sons of men of the dangers of yielding to the anti¬ social faculties, and the principle that governs them; also invites them to seek for the faculties, and the principle that produce brotherly kindness: love and charity have been abused to justify all the results which the anti-social principle brings about by the same fa¬ culties, such as the love of power, love of wealth, and love of sensual gratifications. The civilized man is a ruin, a work of the anti-social principle by the inferior faculties, disarrange any one of the links or faculties of the human chain, and dis¬ ease must be more or less the inevitable conse¬ quence. To maintain happiness and health in the human constitution as an organic structure, it is necessary that each link in the chain be kept in its proper place, and that the whole chain be wrought; if any of the superior links be wanting, the inferior links can¬ not, by any manner of working, supply their places, 242 nor is it possible to use inferior links in superior places, or to do superior work with inferior names. Each link is fitted for its work and its place, and the moment a whole result is sought for by a chain that is yet imperfect, both as to the number of links and to the adaptation of places, sickness and sorrow must prevail. Civilized nations suffer the same fate as civilized man: the most civilized nations in the world, instead oflookingforthe higher faculties or links in the chain, which promote and cherish the Divine duties and virtues that belong to the good principle, have been, and now are, by the inferior mental faculties under the anti-social principle, disgraced by passions and by crimes. The civilized empires of Europe, at this moment, are threatened with civilized discord from the artificial principle by the inferior mental faculties. To administer to a diseased organization or nature, recourse must be had to those higher faculties, by which the higher powers or good principle can work out the disproportions, and arrange the links so as to produce a whole chain, be it natural, or be it indivi¬ dual. Discord and war, the legitimate offspring of the anti¬ social principle by the inferior mental faculties, have too long prevailed, and this while the individuals or nations have had civil and religious institutions, intel¬ lectual knowledges, and all the working facilities which wealth will furnish. Our prisons have been crowded with living beings, and the world filled with widows and orphans from the inferior mental faculties, worked by the selfish prin- 243 ciple, under all the aids that education, instruction, and institution could furnish. The rivers of almost every nation of Europe have been dyed with human blood; and the civilized world, the image of the selfish principle by the inferior fa¬ culties, stands on the precipice of destruction, which unbound spirits cannot contemplate without a measure of grief. The social virtue, like a flower blushing unseen, and wasting its sweetness in the desert air, is not perceived by the inferior faculties under the anti-social principle: when man has the faculties with which he can know it and appreciate it, the same faculties will bring him into an intimate intimacy with the originating source, which engenders all excellence and all happiness. As soon as we are willing to seek a high elevation by higher faculties, and this till in the new nature the Divine union is wrought, it becomes us then to cease to employ any means, either directly or indirectly, which will excite the inferior faculties into an abusive working, and to evil consequences. The moment we have new wants we must seek the new faculties, which will supply these wants, and not suffer the old faculties that want to become in turn, the faculties that supply the want. As man cannot with his inferior natures, under the government of the selfish principle, worship God in Spirit and in Truth, and as he is called upon to do so, he must seek for the higher natures from the maker of them, and in which alone the Divine union is directly wrought. No one can doubt that the happy effects, such as good offices, kindness, and charity, as are constant 244 in some breasts, arise not from the inferior faculties when worked or over-worked by the selfish principle, but are fruits of the new faculties brought into fruit¬ fulness by the new principle. To suppose that an individual rendered happy by the new faculties, who is in the constant practice of moral duties, can be turned from God and from reli¬ gion, is an unreasonable and absurd notion arising from a false view of the faculties, by which the good prin¬ ciple takes man off from the selfish principle. Man is, as he is faculted, a being of relations, and this (as he is facultied) deserves again and again to be repeated; when blessed with the highest faculties, his noblest relation is with God; by his secondary fa¬ culties, when in order and governed by the highest, mediated with the highest faculties, he is related to his fellow creatures; and by the third order of faculties, when governed by the same governor, he is related to the irrational and physical kingdom; in short, man can only make distinction as he is inwardly faculted to do so, and not by any outward activity of inferior faculties. Is a form of morality made by the inferior faculties, and well put together as good as a moral faculty, fixed in man’s nature. Man will not need a form of morality as soon as he has his proper moral faculty. * Man will not need any made dresses as soon as he has his proper body. Man will not need to learn any thing as soon as he has his proper learned faculty. Is a fixed form of religion made by the inferior fa¬ culties, and brought into man’s habits as good as a religious faculty fixed into man’s existence. 245 Is a substitute appearance made by the inferior faculties, and applied to man’s wants as good as the reality itself, which needs not the substituted form. He who lias within his being the religious faculty will not need any fixed religious form , let the fixed form be as beautiful as it may. He who has within his religious faculty , the Spirit will not need any fixed religious letter, be the fixed letter as true as it may. The Spirit, by the religiousfaculty , will generate its own unbound expression, and not work within any fixed outline. Can a vessel full of holes at the bottom receive water in it and remain full, and can an inferior faculty receive pure light in it and retain the same ? Should not the container be fitted to hold its con¬ tents, and be equal to endure them, Love alone can make it so. Inferior faculties worked towards generalization give only a calculable enjoyment; but Love, by its cen¬ tral faculty, reproduces all the glowings of Divine Love. Man will have all results worked for him as soon as Love has faculties by which it can work centrally. The lower faculties only can work in the forms of the central Love,--and Love can only work centrally from his own centre faculty. Does not the workman want tools of various quali¬ ties for his work ? Does not the Spirit require the highest faculty for the highest work ? Will not the Spirit prepare and preserve the highest instrument with which it works its highest central work?. 246 Can a tree exist for a good purpose if it refuse to let new branches grow ? Can a man exist for the highest purpose if he will not seek constantly for his new faculties, by which the Spirit can make him highly fruitful? As what is hidden in our nature becomes predomi¬ nant when the same comes into contact with the ele¬ ments without us, so the Divine nature becomes pre¬ dominant when it comes into contact with its own pro¬ per faculties in us. If we had no saline faculties within us, salt would not become sensible when we contact with the out¬ ward substance. If God had no Divine faculties within us to act upon, He would not become sensible when He comes into contact with us. God becomes inwardly sensible as He finds suitable faculties to act on, and by which to make sensations as results. Doing, and the result of doing, must be based on faculty, and faculty on the maker. The extent of doing, and the extensive result of doing, must be based on extensive faculty, and exten¬ sive faculty on nearness of nature, with the Divine nature. Happiness is of duty, duty is of faculty, and faculty is of God. Man when faculted with the central faculty is a law, by which the Divine architect rules inferior beings; he is an established faculty, by which happiness, as a re¬ sult, is wrought, and in whose breast are all the Divine effusions; he is order, he is harmony, he is strength, he is health, he is all that Love can make him to be by intimate union; he is to be an exhibition rather than to make one, a work rather than a workman. A man must be more faculted to know more; he does not become more faculted by blowing, but knows more by being more faculted to know better. A man’s knowing does not add to his being, but by being more faculted he may add more to Ms knowing, or knowledge. While man does not desire to be higher faculted that he may be better, and from being better, know better, he limits himself and is the parent of his inward misery. While the inferior faculties are so self-active, man is not able to see that by his low working he is de¬ priving himself of new faculties that would serve him better and diminish his work, and at the same time elevate his nature, so that it might reach the point at which it can be fully united to the Divine. If instead of being satisfied to be what we are, and to do what we can with our lower faculties, we asked to be more that we might do better, we should have the higher faculties added to our nature that would bring with them more certainty and more endurance. Man could reach what he requires faster if he would seek rather for new faculties, than with his old faculties for more learning. That which is within a child is placed there that new faculties might be made out of it; but if he . expends the same and labours with the faculties he has already got, he stops his own progress, he wastes the means by which the Universal active principle would, by new faculties, expand his cir¬ cumference. 248 The higher the faculty the more inclination and the more polarity it exhibits. There is a magnetic virtue in every animated being, and if this virtue or fluid can be excited, it produces phenomena without any other means. That which can excite this fluid and set the organ in motion must he of a higher nature than the fluid itself. The fluid operates in and by organisation, and the phenomena are called determinations or results. There are faculties in man that want, and there are faculties in man that accumulate, concentrate, and transport, that is, faculties that supply. The higher faculties are faculties that supply, the lower faculties are faculties that want. When God feels with man, then all is in order, and man rejoices in conscious blessedness. Man, with his inferior faculties, cannot appreciate the quality of the faculties that are yet to be inborn within him, the mal-government has deprived him of all feeling thereof. The inferior faculties try to become, by a laborious activity, what the superior faculties are instinctively. In the superior inborn faculties is the instinct which the inferior faculties labour to imitate. Man will have the Universal instinct as soon as the nature is bred, in which it can abide, and from which it can act. Love, by liberty, the highest faculty in the soul, (that is free wilt) produces true liberty in act. Love makes the will into free will, and then by free will engenders all the eminent consequences. Until Love has got the will into freeness, it cannot act by it; but as soon as it has established tlie free will, it can cause the free will to become pre-eminently fruitful. Order, comfort, happiness are results of Love by free will. Unity, consistency, harmony, as well as innocency, are from the same parents, and depend not on anything outward. The most extraordinary phenomena arise when Love, as a psychical influence, interweaves itself in the highest and noblest of the faculties. All outward government should be founded on a hidden influence, penetrating the morally related man, and causing him to express his degree of affinity with Love. All that is anti-social, and stops the circulation of this hidden influence in any of the human relations, should be removed, so that man may be faculted to be¬ come divinely related in the highest degree. The hidden influence, by its own faculties, both in the young and the old, presents order and harmony practically complete; it does not require any system, but only its own pre-established organs, by which it may act without any counteraction. Whatever man does, he should always have in mind the idea that there is a hidden influence that is at work upon him, trying to re-establish certain high and eternal faculties within his being; and by which faculties, as they are re-established, this influence will act by, and produce outward consequences. So far as man forgets this bidden influence, and follows bis own purposes, this influence begins a strange work and disturbs all man’s doings. 250 On strange ingredients this hidden influence works strangely; but on faculties that it prepares and makes fruitful, it acts wonderfully. Every man’s words are as different in quality from his neighbours, as his hand-writing is different in form. Man’s words are out of the hidden elements that surround him, and such as the faculty is from which he speaks, such is the element gathered in and spoken out. If man speaks from a superior faculty, the quality of his words are superior, and so on, till, from his highest faculty, he reaches the highest invisible quality. He who teaches ought to exercise his art in its whole extent, use the visible means and invisible in¬ fluences, so as to effect the whole circle of the child, and also its very centre, that it may, from its basis, work the wanted results. If a child be not influenced to the whole extent of his nature by the invisible influences and visible means, the outward results will be limited. The results will be according to the visible and in¬ visible means used. However good visible means may be, invisible must be better, as they reach deeper and produce more ex¬ pansive consequences. A child may be ten times more affected by an invisible desire of the teacher, than he can be from a number of the master’s best phrases. Hidden wishes will work results as well as open words, and produce deeper consequences. Man is what he is from antecedents, and not from consequents. 251 As wisdom’s faculties grow, man is wise, and acts wisely. Wisdom’s first faculty is that with which man knows error and avoids it; the second faculty that wisdom gives, and from which man acts, is that with which he knows truth and obeys it. Only so far as the faculty be antecedently given, can the consequent act by man he done. Out of what man finds himself to be, lie acts, and like a tree, he does not benefit from his own fruit. As the tree’s fruit is from antecedents, and not from itself, or for itself, so are a man’s acts, not from or for himself, but from antecedents. Out of that which is done in man, man is; and from these antecedents man acts. Man cannot act wisely until he be wise, and this from wisdom’s own faculties growing within. As one combined movement results from a thousand antecedents, so are mental act results from antecedent faculties in-growing within man. As every garden brings forth fruit, not for itself, but for its owner, so every mind should bring forth fruit, not for itself, but for God, its real and only owner. As man cultivates and crops his garden for his own use, so God crops and cultivates his garden for his own use. As man’s garden will not grow without man cultivates it, so God’s garden man’s mind will not grow without God cultivates and crops it. As man pulls up the weeds out of his own garden to prevent them multiplying, so God roots up the evils in man’s mind to hinder their increase. The guide below, to the good guide above. 252 The physical guide, to the spiritual guide within. Our branches are roots towards God’s branches. The roots are branches towards God, and the branches, roots. What we call roots, God calls branches, and wliat we call branches, God calls roots on which he grafts immortal branches. What God does in a creatively manner in heaven, is based upon man, and what man does on earth after a Divine, is based upon God. Man has God for a base to act after a Divine manner on the earth, and God has man for a base to act after a creatively manner in heaven. God cannot act in a creatively manner in heaven without man, and man cannot act in a Divine manner on earth without God. God requires man for his creatively acts above ; man wants God for his Divine acts below. The more God uses man for his creatively purposes above, the more power man has to act divinely below. Man can only act divinely below, as far as he gives himself up to God, for God to act creatively above. The Spirit with which we inwardly converse rules our spirit; and our outward actions are but a manifestation of what the inward ruling Spirit has made our spirit. While person talks with person, Spirit enters into converse with Spirit; if the same Spirit actuates both persons by the same faculties, the persons will agree; but, if by different faculties, the persons will differ, though the Spirit is one. The Evil Spirit modifies the man as he finds him 253 facultecl ; and as evil men are facultecl differently, so does the Spirit modify them differently. Evil men differ, not as to the Spirit that moves them, but according as they are antecedently facetted. The differences arise from the faculties, and not from the Spirit; as the differences arise from the different wind instrument, and not from the breath. It is the different faculties that are set into operation by the same Spirit that gives rise to outward differences. Two beings differently faculted are differently moved, and differ without, though they agree in Spirit. We are often offended at a man’s modes, though we are not offended with the Evil Spirit which is moving him. So far as we are one with the Spirit, we shall have done with modes. The very faculties which are inborn within the soul, which are given for humility and self-resignation, are rendered inefficient by the stormy violence of the inferior faculties. Man can have no greater pleasure than in the use of his new faculties, those which wisdom causes to grow, and causes man to employ. It is not what man does that makes him happy, but the faculty he, from within, employs to do the act. The faculty with which we know is greater than the knowledge we gain by it on the outside. He is a deep and choice work, who rightly divides antecedents from consequents, that which is before him, and that which he is before. There is only one better birth in the soul than the birth of wisdom’s first faculty, the faculty with which 254 the soul knows the true; by wisdom’s first faculty the soul discovered the false. Love’s highest faculty, when inborn in the soul, is that with which the soul lives love itself; the second faculty is used in loving its neighbour. A Christian who from his own antecedent ground acts christianly, is indeed a deified being . "When the human faculties are united to the Divine, the result is a God-man; when the human faculties are united to the animal, the reverse result is a dog-man, (a brute man.) Man, when he reverses himself constantly, becomes a demon. When man is willing to he deceived, the Lord causes Satan to deceive him in such a manner, as shall work a sickening of evil. I will cause my physician to give you such a dose of sickening, as shall make you sick with sickness. I will cause Satan to give you such a dose of decep¬ tion, as shall work yGu into a willingness to he good. Hath thy soul received the faculties that are the springs of the simple philosophy, or hath she walked with the dark faculties into the deep human systems ? The proud Spirit maketh the dark faculties to swell like a boiling pot, and the High Spirit maketh the luminous faculties like a pot of ointment. And the knowledge of his soul shall he like a mature knowledge, generated and sustained by the new facul¬ ties that bring forth their fruit at all seasons. The heavenly influences are upon the pre-causative faculties; the spiritual influences are upon the inferior faculties; and the Lord himself is within both faculties and influences, 29th Psalm, 3rd verse. For with thee the inferior faculties have the fountain of Life; in thy Light shall tlie superior faculties generate luminous consequences. Psalm 46th, lOtli verse, Love speaks, Be still and know that I rule here; Light speaks, I will he exalted in the Light world; Life says that I will he exalted in the earth. The affections are filled with good desires, the intellects are stored with knowledges, and the energies shout with joy; they all sing, 65th Psalm, 10th verse. We set about getting a knowledge of good and evil with wrong faculties, and the more we effort with the inferiorfaculties, the less we know; our duty is, first to get the proper means or faculties before we act, and when we have got them, apply the same to their proper objects. It is impossible with good and evil faculties to get a knowledge of good or evil, and only when we have the unselfish causative faculties engendered by Love, which are higher than spiritual good or spiritual evil faculties, shall we attain our object. We must first be provided with the unselfish causa¬ tive faculties before we can know the spiritual good and the spiritual evil, and also the natural good and the natural evil. With our selfish good faculties we act, and with our selfish true faculties we try to come at this, which we only can reach when we are provided with the unselfish causative faculties, and unselfish true faculties, or the pre-causative faculties, that will generate the informa¬ tion required. It is in vain for us to effort with our old faculties, to get at that knowledge they cannot attain, and 256 which, by seeking after, they confound themselves the more. "While most are seeking with inferior faculties for more knowledge of good and evil, spiritual and natural, our duty is to ask for those pre-causative faculties that will make us to be better, than the thing we seek only to know. We, striving with inferior faculties for knowledge that we might be better, should strive, after being better faculted, that we might know better. We are so lowly faculted, that we, by our low efforts after knowledge to make ourselves better, come out worse and worse. * The higher faculted we are within, the more our outer doings will be for others and not for our¬ selves. When we have got the unselfish good faculties, we can go about doing good; but, as we are, we go about with the images of good, and make them, by our vain talk, stand in the place of the inhorn good faculty. Prayer is one word, our state, made manifest by our outward expression. Prayer is impression and expression joined together in one, it is a marriage union, that which makes needy, and that which is made needy. The active roots cause the receptive branches to bring forth fruit. The Spirit, by the sounding string, causes the pas¬ sive string and air to vibrate. The Spirit, by the pre-causative faculties, causes the receptive faculties and the circulating sap to produce external results. The j ne-eausative faculties are roots, the receptive 257 or causative are branches, and only as the former, are established can the latter become properly fruitful. When the pre-causative faculties are put into activity, the phenomena of the causative or co-operative faculties will he quite changed. So far as the pre-causative faculties are initiated into activity, they incite the post-causative or representative faculties to external results. So far as the roots are initiated into activity, they incite the branches to external results. Life or Light or Love can initiate, by their own pre¬ causative faculties, the re-productive faculties into fruitfulness. He who can magnetize another, does it from the pre¬ causative ground, and not from any of the re-productive faculties. Many persons have cured diseases from the pre¬ causative faculties, who could not, by the causative faculties, give any reason for the same. It is necessary that the pre-causative faculties he opened before the virtue, which is within the Spirit, can pass through them into the causative faculties, and manifest its Universal results. He who is radically faculted, and branchially active, can use the hidden virtue in his Spirit, and effect results by it. He who, with the pre-causative faculties, has much to do with antecedents, will, with the post¬ causative faculties, have less and less to do with consequents. He who, by the pre-causative faculties, is inwardly satisfied, will not, with the post-causative, trouble him¬ self with means. 2 L 258 The ordinary phenomena are from the post-causa¬ tive faculties, the extraordinary phenomenas are from the pre-causative. Precocity arises from the pre-causative faculties, which have a connection with pure spiritual influxes. Every mature outward conception arises from a pre¬ conception within by the pre-causative faculties. The outward faculties meditate, the pre-causative or inwardfaculties pre-meditate. The man whose pre-cursive faculties are not awakened cannot have much inward spiritual experi¬ ence; the excursive faculties should be incited into activity by the pre-cursive, as the branches are by the roots. Every post-contract should depend on a pre-contract, or every outward marriage in body upon an inward marriage in Spirit. Man is only man by his pre-causative faculties, and not by his post-causative, however much these latter may be developed into activity. The radical Will, when developed, will incite into activity; the branches will, and maintain it in its corresponding operations. The radical Spirit puts the radical will into activity, and also moves the branchial Spirit that sets the branches into a corresponding activity. The seasons of the year are made rather by the branchial Spirit than the radical. The radical Spirit absorbs the branchial Spirit, and brings about a whole result when the radical faculties and the branchial faculties are coincident and grounded in Love. We, bv the artificial activities of the branchial facul- 259 ties, exclude the radical faculties of much intercourse with spiritual substances, which the Creator's have appointed for good for them, that the radical faculties may grow and flourish, and be developed into permanent existence. Education, as it is at present given, invades man’s most sacred rights, it does nothing for his essential faculties; the faculties on which his inward freedom and Divine destiny depend are overlooked, and it over exercises his branchial faculties by giving to them an earthly destination. Education ought to have respect to the Divine destination and the pre-causative faculties, by which the Spirit effects the same. Education, as at present given, renders man unable to become conscious of the existence of the pre-causa¬ tive faculties, on which his Divine destination de¬ pends. Man should be put into possession of his pre¬ causative faculties, as well as he is of his causative faculties. While education acts as it does, there is a chasm in man’s nature which cannot, while on earth, be filled up, and in which the misery making materials are constantly being cast and consumed in better anguish. Man never can live his high destiny below, till the pre-causative faculties are developed, by which he will live eternally above. Man can, with his pre-causative faculties, LIVE through his earthly conditions the Divine Life below, when these earthly conditions coincide with the Divine destination. Let the Divine Life have but its own pre-causatke 260 faculties , and it will exhibit its own phenomena on the earth. It is by pre-ordered organisation that the three-fold Life, which is grounded in Love, lives. In looting at the soul, only on its branchial side, and not at its pre-causative faculties, we, by education, mutilate it and commit a species of eternal deaths. The powers of the world to come are the pre-causa¬ tive faculties in which the Spirit acts, and by which it makes known spiritual things. The Spirit searcheth all faculties, yea, the deep faculties in which pre-causative faculties it works its wonders. Without these pre-causative faculties the Spirit would not operate any outward acts that correspond with the inward. It is by the pre-causative faculties that all inventions are brought to a mental origin. By the outer church the inward church has fallen, and it is only when the incubus is removed that the invisible church, the pre-causative faculties can come into their initiative activity. The elements of the pre-causative faculties, and the manner of their construction, have ever been, even from the origin of the world, altogether a hidden secret within the soul; and only so far as the Spirit re-constructs these phenomenal roots, can it make the outward faculties subservient. Notwithstanding all the oppressions and degrada¬ tions which these free faculties have undergone, yet they occasionally are awakened, and work by their outward instruments extraordinary results. 261 Belief ceases when the act and fact are realized. Man cannot be free until his free faculties are inborn within in his soul, and when they are no outward faculty will bind him. There is a consciousness of inherent hostility between the outward faculties and the inward radical faculties, and so far as the outward faculties act. I do my duty not that I may get any thing, but that I may keep what I have got already. How cogent is the reason that men should ask for the inbirth of the pre-causative faculties ; and the purification of the causative mercy belongs to the roots and forgiveness of sins to the branches. The inferior faculties taught from the pit, and’un- restrained by the superior or pre-causative faculties, want nothing but power to render them indeed terrible and ruthless. Will not man when his radical faculties are developed, bring forth, by means of his branchial faculties, in the same manner as the trees without external labour. Would not the roots, acting on the branches, produce all that is required, and would not the atmosphere be all the nourishment the man would require ? Does not the tree nourish itself more perfectly than the animal ? When the radical faculties, sufficiently intensive, have been developed by the creative energy, then all difficul¬ ties are surmounted, and knowledge is applied to its purpose. It is with the knowing faculties that knowledge is given, and it is only to be used for its purpose. With the strong faculties strength is given, and it is only to be applied to uses. What man now does with his tools, the roots of his being will do by his branchial.faculties. It is the supplying Spirit that moves man to demand, and that answers itself in what it gets. If the supplying Spirit did not move the savage to act, he never would move from his position. That which makes man inwardly happy, stimulates him to make a happiness of outward things, for a season, with his lower faculties. Hahit produces nothing, it is itself sustained, and must submit to tint pre-cursive cause which moves the inferior faculties in that way. God could not give us liberty without giving us free spiritual faculties, and free spiritual faculties are those that do not want, that have in them their own supply. God’s seven Spirits are his seven attributes, which comprehend all virtues as perfections. A carpenter cannot make a tree whose roots will grow in the earth, and whose branches will become fruitful in the air. A tree takes from the giver by its roots, and gives to the taker by its branches. A tree, by its branches and its roots, reconcile a taker and a giver. A tree is some middle thing that has a double agency to take from a giver, and to give to a taker. A tree is some double agented tiling, agented to take by one order of faculties, and agented to give by another of faculties. A tree is a double active thing, working downwards and upwards, downwards to take from a giver, and upwards to give to a taker. 263 A tree has a double nature, a nature that will grow in the dark, and a nature that will grow in the light. A tree is a double natured thing that lives in a light world and a dark world. A tree, by its double nature, meditates and reconciles giver and taker. A taker by the branches—a giver by the roots. God, by the earth as a middle thing having two tendencies, reconciles the animals to himself. God. Earth’s tendencies .Animals. A man has double energies—human and holy; human by which he reconciles the physical to the Divine. Man’s human humanity is in his branches, and his holy humanity is in his roots; and when these two humanities are reconciled, they, as one, reconcile the outward to the centre, or the physical to the Divine. Love....Light, Life, Light...x...Physical. Love rules Love—Light rules Light—Life rules Life. Government is some middle thing with two ten¬ dencies—the agent of Divine good and the suppressor of evil, or nature; it should, by its double power, remove evil and reconcile natural good with Divine good. The first efforts should lie to reconcile the outward humanity‘with the inward humanity, the same spiritual humanity, with the spiritual humanity. Until there be a reconciliation with the humanities, there can be none with the primitive and the ultimate, the central and the circumference. The personal humanity should make a political humanity, m such a way as would represent the manner in which the Holy humanity rules the fallen hu¬ manity. The Holy humanity being united to the divinity, 264 must first reconcile the fallen humanity, and then the physical body, so that there may be a trinity in the unity. The Spirit, by the invisible and visible mental church, reconciles natural good to itself, after having got the evil out of it. The Spirit, by the invisible church, has to get evil out of the visible, before it can make the church an instrument to get evil out of the physical nature, or out of the people. The Spirit, by the invisible church, is alone working to bring the visible church below to he its instrument. The Spirit requires a double instrument, spiritual and semi-spiritual, that it may act upon, and rule phy¬ sical nature and overcome Evil. Until the Spirit has a double instrument with tw r o tendencies, spiritual and semi-spiritual, it cannot act against Evil, or order natural good. A house, and the land on which it stands, relates the owner to the tenant. The stone building called a church upon the earth— 1. The instrument of the mental visible church is the body of man. 2. The mental visible church is the instrument of the invisible church, to which the English Bible cor¬ responds. 3. The invisible spiritual church is the instrument of the Holy Spirit; to the invisible spiritual church, .the Hebrew Bible corresponds. The invisible Spirit, by this trinity, appears in the stone building before the people upon the earth. The Spirit requires the invisible and visible mind at 265 liberty, that it may, through use, bring itself forth in A spoon is some middle double thing that relates the antecedent with the consequent, as a substance to the . antecedent, and as a form to the consequent. Butter is some middle double thing that is related to the maker, and relates the maker to the the user, as substance and form. Man, as a trinity, is some middle double thing, related to the Spirit, and again to the Spirit’s ultimate purpose. Money, or property, is some middle thing which is related to the owner, and relates him as wanter with his supplies. An apple is some middle double thing, related to the heaven and the earth; to the heaven by its quality, and the earth by its quantity; to the Spirit for its life, and the universe for its existence; to man as spiritual sub¬ stance and natural substance; to man as demand and as supply. The end, by intelligences or mental means, must be conjoined with physical use or uses. The end, by the Universal and modal intelligence, must be conjoined with the body of man and man's food, or universe. A country must enter into an antecedent and conse¬ quent agreement with the Creator. That which is in the middle must serve that which is below it, for the sake of that which is above it; it must always have an antecedent and a consequent out of itself, and this without any exception. Government, as an intelligent power, should subject person and property to intelligent usefulness. Education and instruction should, to aid the govern- 2 m ment, advise for men to be ruled to submit property to intelligent usefulness, as the Life submits the blood, that it may carry on its uses. The will Spirit, by the pre-perceptive and executive ideas, relates practical usefulness unto itself. Man must do all be can to the instruments to recom¬ mend the instrumenter, that he, by them, may prepare his own results. Man should be always re-mended by education of his relationship with an antecedent and a consequent. That education which does not relate man to an antecedent and a consequent is very inefficient. A house, by use, relates the tenant to itself, and by rent to the owner. There is a great difference between investigating the law, by which the Creator acts, and being yourself the law, in a modified expression, not an abridgement of the whole, but a micTOscom. Only so far as the whole is realized, and from it you act, can you speak with any certainty. The soul is not awake till the body dies, and only as the body dies daily, does the soul begin to feel that it is only, while on the earth, dreaming. We may think what we will, this life is a real dream, and only a dream of the soul. The soul cannot awake while it is embodied, and all that it does, it does in its dream. It is an actual dream, and beyond this the soul can¬ not get while on earth; but it is much that the soul comes to discover, that it is only, while embodied, really dreaming. Are sins done when the soul, in its dreaming state, is not conscious of sinful acts? 267 So far as the soul is attentive to the Spirit, will the Spirit help it to understand its operations in things. The branchial will infers the radical will and Spirit, and refers to outward practice. The will, or the radical and branchial affections, connect the visible world with the Love Spirit. There is a Universal middle pre-causative agent, which transforms the external objects of our senses into internal ideas, which excercises all the inferior and superior intellectual faculties. What develops all the sympathetic or affectional relations and correspondencies that are within the system, and enables the organized man to execute below Universal usefulness, the sole purpose of the in* comprehensible Love. There is a Universal middle pre-causative agent that transmutes elementary atoms into forms, and corresponds these forms with higher forms, and these again to the highest; in the same manner it transmutes natural light into ideas, and corresponds these ideas with general ideas formed of spiritual truth, and general ideas with Universal ideas formed of celestial truth; and it converts heat into animal affections, and corresponds these animal affections with social affections formed of spiritual heat, and these again with Universal affections formed of celestial good. There is a Universal and pre-causative middle agent that forms elementary atoms into forms, and corre¬ sponds these forms with spiritual forms, and these again with celestial forms—as bodies—as souls—as spirits. This phenomenist in the same way corresponds out¬ ward activity, derived from ethereal causality with inward activity, derived from spiritual causality; and this latter again with celestial energy or inmost energy, derived from essential Spirit. The Universal and pre-causative middle agent keeps the means in their places, and by them connects the realized purpose; with the primitive intention the ultimate with the primitive. The Universal and pre-causative middle agent keeps man on one side connected with Life and its results, on the other side connected with Light and its results, and in the middle, between both, connects man with himself, and through himself to Loce. What man is made to take in and give out to the physical world, is arranged by the pre-causative middle agent. What man is made to take in and give out to the spiritual world, is also regulated by the same agent; and what man is made to take in from the centre, the centre regulates centrally. The Universal pre-causative agent causes man to return to the physical world what to him is superflu¬ ous, and to take what he wants, and in this way keeps up a circulative relationship with man and the physical world. Animal Life is limited to animal oganisation; it is a suspended Life, or a Life that is limited within phy¬ sical limitation. Intellectual, or human Life, is a higher Life founded on Light, limited to organisation, and is more extensive in its results; but yet subordinate, and serves a yet higher Life. Super-human Life is the highest Life, founded on Love and manifested by organisations. Sympathy is to the intellectual Life what instinct is to the animal Life, and both sympathy and instinct have their foundation in the central sympathy, which is a threefold Life founded in Love. The dead works of art are to the senses of the moving Life what the thoughtless words of the intel¬ lect are to the faculties of the thinking Life, and what forced politeness is to the sympathy of the quickening Life, a deadening of external and internal sensibility. Sensible selfishness and intellectual chattering thoughtlessness—are the two great features of the pre¬ sent civilized world, (toordyness). Animal greedyness and intellectual wordyness are to the two great features of the present civilized world, against which the religious world do not and cannot head; it is only the centre Life that can, by giving man a new set of radical faculties, overcome both. The Spirit, by the centre, shineth in the central faculties, and through these central faculties regulates within the upper and under parts of the human organi¬ sation to its own purposes. Love can convert pain into pleasure, but not into Love; Love remains Love, let it convert what it may in something better. Love retains its own essential nature, let it do what it may in converting an inferior into a superior. The phenomenist, by phenomenal causes, produces phenomena. The artist, by mediating causes, produces modified effects, in obedience to a master who employs him. The master employs the artist to work in his vine¬ yard, and help him to finish his divisional labours. Animal existence only is Life with limited and single organisation for one purpose. 270 Human existence only is Light and Life, with a double organisation and sensation, and for a double purpose. Super-human existence is Love, Light, and Life, with a treble sensation and organisation, and for a treble purpose. Animal organisation is for one purpose, and is seen in self-sensation and preservation, and does not rise to the second sensation; human organisation is for a double purpose, is for self and for society, and does not rise to the third sensation. Super-human organisation is for a treble purpose— for self, for society, and for God, an undivided trinity, and a lull threefold sensation. Life can carry on its own single purpose without the aid of the second Light, much better than Light can carry on its double purpose without the aid of the single Life. The children of Light fail in their double purpose, because they do not, by the aid of the single Life, re¬ duces all principles to practice. As a.doublepurposek to he affected, so far as Light refuses to join with Life, it fails. Life can, and does operate as single operations by its own Light, without the aid of the second Light and the second organisation; but the second organisation, which is from the second Light, cannot work and go forward without the outward organisation of the single purpose Life. The Scripture says, the children of the generation are wiser than the children of Light, the children of the double purpose. Savage Life, with its single purpose, is far better 271 than intellectual Life with its double purpose sus¬ pended. So far as intellectual Life, with its double purpose, does not become practical, it is a suspended Life, and must retrograde intellectual energy into mental stupor, or confined to the somnolency of silly conversation. It is the practical Life that gives to the intellectual Life its double feeling or sensation, and where there is no practice there is a lifeless intelligence. So far as Light and thought will do without Life and practice, they fail and bring about a mental in¬ sensibility. Happiness of the second class is only to be had as far as the intellectual Life unites with the sensible Life, and reduces all to practice. Where doctrine prevails over practice, man lives a suspended Life, deprived of feeling, and in the same proportion, as he brightens his Light and suspends it without practice, he becomes imbecile and void of practical sympathy. The more Light and thought there is, the more there should be of Life and practice, to bring about a state of active mental sensibility. What is called killing time and producing a state of mental insensibility, is done by not re-uniting Light with Life, or thought with industry, or doctrine with practice. All substitutes for happiness must fail, and will fail just at the height at which they are attempted, and be punished in the very faculties that originate the dis¬ obedience. It is the presence of thought and the absence of practice that causes pain, and a pain that must continue 272 until a third Life comes in with its threefold potency and refuses harmony. That which Light breeds, Life should bring forth; and so far as Love is wanting, there will he internal disquiet. No form by itself can he immortal; and so far as the form is imm ortal, it is so by the presence of the three¬ fold Life. It is Love alone that can effectually help the intel¬ lectual Life to fulfil its double purpose, and it is Love also that aids Life in its single purpose. There are signs, and there are things signified by those signs; but what am I the better for knowing either; I must have, as my own, and use it as my own, the thing signified, otherwise it is of no use to me. That which sustains me as a being is nearer to me than any results whatever of my own doing; and if this sustainer will not take my own doing, and convert it into my being, of what use are my consequent doings. That which sustains me relates me first to himself, and if I fail in keeping up this relationship, will he not fail to keep up my other and outward relationship towards me? If I do not keep up my first relationship with the threefold Life, will the threefold Life sustain me in my twofold relationship with Light, or on my one-fold relationship with my executive Life ? Intellectual Light without Love cannot discipline man’s faculties, and procure for him those results which Love purposes. Intellectual Light rising up above Life, and not giving itself to Love, becomes an impotent power, and cannot discipline its instruments in the manner it m ought, and so becomes inefficient either to do or to assist. It is Love alone, with its three-fold power, that can bring the intellectual perceptions and physical sensa¬ tions into harmonious agreement, and uses both, for its own Universal purpose, without difficulty, and, as it were, instinctively. The instrument is then in the hands of the instru- mentor, who works it as he finds it, with all its apti¬ tudes. Love must make theory bend to practice, and prac¬ tice accomplish what theory suggests, in obedience to the commands of Love. Our present state arises from intellectual impotency; the intellect cannot procure for man what he wants, it only casts him into the airy sea, and floats him about in windy words. When the intellect submits to Love in its threefold oneness, then it will, by its omnipotency, bring order into the senses, and use the practical Life and its instru¬ ments in a Universal manner. The sole purpose of Love is to identify itself in interest, in essence, and in power, with its whole crea¬ tion in a creaturely manner. Love will augment the good and diminish the evil over all sensitive existence, in the ratio of Light and Life’s union, and communion, with it for this purpose. If I let Love go, will Love not cause others to let me go ? If I keep to Love, will not Love cause others to keep to me ? Love getting man out of trouble by theory and practice, may be r resembled to man’s getting a ship 2n 274 out of harbour with two anchors—one is down, while the other is up. As soon as the soul will cease to be a Lover, and become a beloved, it will stand in a proper predica¬ ment ; and until it does this, it will find itself in a false position, and under suffering consequences. Until education and instruction call upon Love to produce a capacity in men for good sense, and aid them in all their operations, they will only go on con¬ founding the Evil and the Good. It is j;ove alone that can make experiments in all human results, and convert them into Universal expe¬ rience —the only test of Love. Love only deals with ends—the result of means, and on these ends it experiments and establishes the Universal experience—the ultimate sensation. Man may make experiments on many objects, and gain from so doing much experience, and it is on this experience that Love experiments, and makes the ultimate experience. The essential intellect is stopped at the career of the personal intellect; so that it cannot help the per¬ sonal intellect to generalize its sensations. Personal reason is so low at present in energy, for want of the aid of the essential reason, that it cannot generalize its sensations into any form, corresponding to any Universal relations and analogies. As long as the personal intellect remains unsided by the essential intellects, it cannot work for the one idea, the idea that the interest of the least particular is only found in the interest of the whole. The senses collect, the personal intellect compares and sorts, and the essential intellect combines the 21o collected into one whole sense, for the sake of the one Love. Only so far as the personal mind works from leisure, from security, from rest, will it become one with the rule or standard within the essential mind. The senses must collect for the personal intellect, and the personal intellect compare for the essential intellect, that wisdom may have made for it a Univer¬ sal instrument, with which to work. The animal affections must gather for the human affections, and the human affections for the super-hu¬ man affections, that Love may have formed a Universal instrument to work with. The little wheels give themselves up to the shaft, and the shaft to the great wheels, and the great wheels to the water, that the first and last may meet in the ultimate purpose. Sensation, conception, pre-conception—the Uni¬ versal pre-conceives; the general conceives; the per¬ sonal sensates the whole body: then the arm, or part; then the particular part or joint of the arm of the body. The body is the Universal, the arm the general, and the joint the particular. The sensible world is a world of particulars, the human world is a world of generals, and the super-hu¬ man world is a world of Universals. As far as the human mind arrests the spiritual mind, at the very barrier it cannot. Love elevates man’s sensations into reasons, and reasons into laws, and, by laws, or Universals, re-unites itself to them. We are compared to what we do, the reality our sayings and doings are but representations; we do not 2 re bring forth any principles or essences, but only the representations. Words are but representations of sensations; ideas and affections of particulars, generals and Universals ; and so far as we use them properly, they answer the question the end proposed. Subsistence is perpetual existence, and conservation is perpetual creation. The food cannot he so related to a sustained or a conserved being, as that self-existing Being is that sub- The being that creates must be perpetually with the created thing to subsist it, and must be nearer to its living essence than the food is to its form. There is a Universal middle being that is one with Love and with the universe, that has a double Univer¬ sal tendency within and without, that is upheld and upholds, and with whom each created thing is in some degree and in some nature united. Every substance is a middle thing that is related to a threefold when and a threefold where. A substance stands between a maker and a user. The universe stands between the Creator as creator, and the Creator as user for his own purpose. Man has, by external education, more knowledge, then internal energy, or external science, then internal sympathy, or created consistency. Why do we attend so much to the outward man, and so little to the inner man, that is the only consistent part of us ? Why do we pretend, with the outward man, or external organisation, to know that which only can be known by the inner organisation called the inner man ? 277 It is only the Universal that gives consistency, that hinds into one the generals, which have been gathered from the particulars. The representative part of man is often built up while the inner man, the consistency, is yet unformed. The outward is only to represent a Universal inward, a constituency that is consistent, that consists Univer¬ sally. The present system of lettered education tends to make men learned and chattering, without developing the Universal faculties, which are to combine the men¬ tal with the physical, and enable man to calculate the blessings of the immortal Life, and compare them with the inconveniences and conveniences of the temporal Life in all its orders, ranks, and priviliges. If in man is not developed the soul’s immortal senses, the soul can have no sensible idea of the im¬ mortal Life, any more than an animal can of the intel¬ lectual Life, without the intellectual pre-adapted organisation. As the animal cannot have, without pre-adapted organisation, a sensible idea of the intellectual Life in time, neither can man have, without a pre-adapted and developed Divine organisation, a sensible idea of the immortal Life in eternity. As all Life gives itself to be sensibly felt and found by a pre-adapted sensible organisation when developed, man must see that his immortal senses be sensibly developed before he can feel and find, in a sensible manner, his immortal Life. Man’s immortal sensibility must be felt by immortal sensible organs, as his mortal sensibility is felt and found by his mortal sensible organs. The mind may be so busy with the sensations of the immortal senses , that it keeps the sensations of the mortal senses waiting at their very entrance, and alto¬ gether unattended to. As we idealize external objects or sensations from the external world, so we might, if the immortal senses were developed, idealize in the same mind the immortal sensations of the immortal world. As the outward sensations depend on the outer senses and outward things, so do the immortal sensa¬ tions depend upon the immortal senses and immortal things. Without outward senses we have no outward sensa¬ tion, and without immortal senses we have no immortal sensation, and without sensations there is nothing for Love to idealize in the mind. Ideas in the mind are formed by Love from mortal sensations from mortal things, and from immortal sensations from immortal things. As there is a double ideality, so there must be a double sensibility, and Love is the former of the whole. The immortal senses are maintained in a state of greater vividness than the mortal, and while the intel¬ lect is made attentive to them, there is a subsidation in all the outward senses. Only so far as the Divine senses are developed can the threefold Life make its operations immortally sensible, and only as they are made immortally sensible, can the mind idealize them. The extent of the immortal sensations depend upon the extent of the development of the immortal senses, and no farther than the immortal senses are developed m can we have immortal sensations and consequent ideas founded on those sensations. When the intellect is self-active it can make imagin¬ ary forms, and confound these imaginary forms with the forms made from the immortal senses, or with the forms made from the mortal senses. Education has too much to do with these unreal ideas, children of the self-active intellect; and empty words, are their sorry representatives. One of the phenomena of insanity is when the intel¬ lect cannot be got to attend to the immortal sensations of the Divine senses, and is altogether absorbed in the mortal sensations of the mortal senses. A book is to the intellect what the intellect is to the immortal senses and to the mortal senses. A book holds the signs of ideas, and the intellect holds the ideas of sensations. The roots of the mind will universalize the Univer¬ sality, while the branches will generalize the indivi¬ dualities. The immortal senses furnish Universality, and the mortal senses the particularities. The mind having two tendencies must have two grounds in which it can act.'' The mind’s inward ground, and its outward ground, must not be confounded; only so far as it works inwards and downwards does it find a base that is larger than itself, and works upwards and outwards, it limits itself with the senses. The mind having an inward and outward activity should be led to work inwardly, that it may get a com¬ prehensive ground on which it may work outwardly. The immortal senses furnish it the means for its Universal activity, and the personal senses for its out¬ ward activity. The immortal senses furnish the rules that have no exceptions, and the mind in its own government over the mortal senses, should find the rules in its Universal faculties. The mind should set up the end previous to the thought, and the thought previous to the action. The mind instead of acting upon inward immortal realities, and outward mortal realities, is led to act in a very active maimer upon sounds and signs, and by so doing brings itself into a very deplorable state. Every mental activity should he based upon immor¬ tality and mortality, upon inward sensations and outward sensations, upon Universal and individual senses. What the immortal senses do not take hold of, the mind cannot universalize, and what the mortal senses do not take hold of, the mind cannot generalize. The same mind which individualizes every atom, does, by its inward and immortal faculties, universalize the laws and bring them into Unity. On one side the mind reduces things to atoms, and on the other side unites the universals with Unity. The mind on one side identifies itself in interest, in essence, and in power with every atom, and on the side with the Universal good, which is one with Unity. The mind, as a middle agent with interior and exte¬ rior activity, should, through the outward mortal senses, seek natural good and truth, though the inward im¬ mortal senses seek Universal good and truth, and regulate the first by the last. When man’s mind is in a double activity, radically and branchially, it reduces complex things to atoms 281 and elevates universalities into Unity, it composes with its immortal faculties, and decomposes with its mortal faculties. Love, by man’s Universal faculties, makes man a zealous agent, through whom he carries out his Univer¬ sal purpose. Man will be content to give up the good that he can derive from atoms when he is one with Unity, by whom he is sustained after a Godly manner. Only so far as man is, by his Universal immortal faculties, elevated to Unity, will he give up his compara¬ tive interest in collective atoms, collective systems, and collective worlds. The nearer man is, by his immortal faculties, to Unity, the less he needs of derivatives from the outward world. The Universal interest in the Unity, by the Univer¬ sal faculties, diminishes the personal interest, by the personal faculties in the world, to an atom .or to a zero. The Universal faculties are not dependent on the personal faculties, as the Unity is not dependent on the Universal faculties. There is a threefold Love that acts in the Universal circle, a twofold Light that acts in the middle circle, and a one-fold Life that acts in the personal circle. Life is selfish, Light is social, Love is Universal. Life has its single evidence in a living experience, Light its twofold evidence in a knowing experience, and Love its threefold evidence in a loving experience. Life and Light must make peace with Love, as day¬ light and night-light must make peace with heat. As the sun is necessary to the daylight and night- 20 light which comes from it, so Love is necessary to the Life and the Light which comes from itv- . As the daylight and night-light can bring forth nothing without, heat that is naturally good, neither can Life or Light bring forthany thing that is spiritually good without Love. As long as we have not the Universal ideas arising from the Universal or immortal senses, wo cannot ex¬ plain the Bible. ... . , The Bible is written under Universal ideas, and it is impossible, with consequent ideas, to explain the signs jn a significant manner. . If we had the Universal ideas, we should find that the signs would be exactly suited to them, but as we have only the personal, or modal ideas, we cannot set them with the words, or the words with them. There is a solar Light, a lunar Light, and a stellar Light; and also a sun, a moon, and stars—a Love, a Light, and a Life.. , If man, by his highest faculties, will draw near to the centre, it will give him Universal knowledge; and if he watches all the consequences, he will be able to find a correspondence between the inward and the outward. A man must befit to act before he acts, and not act that he may he fit. As the record of a man’s mind did not contribute to make the mind, neither can it contribute to make the reader’s mind. That which will mind the mind must be of the same nature as the mind, and as the record of the mind is not of the same nature as the mind, it never can be used as materials with which the mind should be mended. ■ Man must, from the centre , be made fit to do before he can go out on either side* and act on the circum¬ ferences in a proper nianner. : A man-must feel the outer and inner centre before he can make' any right'movements with his intellect towards the north or the south. c West and East, ' 1 North and South. J North; ...West...East. . South. The benevolent reformers of the present day have never comprehended, within conceptive abstractions, the necessity there is to unite the double intellectual activities with the double central activities, before any work will have an enduring character. • We are commanded to Love with heart and soul, mind and strength, that is, with four orders of faculties. What should the state of that human agent be to preserve practical order in the moral world, and advance, by fixed degrees, the mental power to a central submission, or dependence, upon the Divine Will? The mental re-establishment requires the organic sensible system for its aid, and if any reform be un¬ modified and sudden, the mind’s progress is stopped. The awful crisis of intellectual existence is fast ap¬ proaching, as mentioned in Scripture history—that man fell in eating of the tree of knowledge, and neglecting the tree of Life, or sensibility. The lower class, as well as the higher, are all taught to spell, to read, and to com¬ bine words; but none are taught how to conduct the understanding, or modify the relations of inward Light with the relations of outward Light, on the double basis of sensation or mortal and immortal sensibility. 284 The intellect must be dethroned, and sympathy, as sense or sensibility, become a throne on which Love can place its proper representative, We must double the intellectual Light, that the mind may, from the ground of the Universal sense, reason things, and not words, and so advance man towards practical usefulness. As long as lettered imbecility is taken for Light, and external experience for Universal sense, the mind must reason words, and not things, and so stupify the practical energies. The Universal sun directs human agency, by a double light, to Universal usefulness and to Universal harmony. The mind cannot, without the double light, reduce the principles to practice, or reconcile the ways of man with the ways of God; but as soon as the double light is possessed, the mind elevates the Universal above the personal, and brings the eccentric action of time to the con-centric action of eternity. As soon as man has, by the twofold light, learn't his interest with God and with nature, in eternity and in time, the realizing the same, in philosophical, moral, and religious practice, must he his constant aim. By the single light we cannot get practice to move with theory; hut, by the double light, we cannot get theory to move without practice. When good promulgates truth by a double light, then the mind has a sufficient energy to render theory and practice inseparable. Good can no more establish justice on the earth without the double light, than Life can establish bodies on the earth without the male and female. 285 Bodies stand in the same relation to Life, through . the male and female, as justice stands to good through the double light. Social order and progressive perfection owe their origin to good through the reconciliation and re-union of the spiritual Light with the Light Spirit. Spiritual Light with the Light Spirit, when united by good, are equal to expose error wherever it appears, and dislodge it from its hiding place. Good can unite the Light Spirit and the spiritual Light wherever it finds them, and, by this doubleness, effect its most Universal purpose, after removing its antagonist, the dark Spirit. The good working Spirit will concentrate the eccentric Light, and use it for its ultimate purpose, after it has removed from the world the contrarying darkness. Man’s will makes his understanding hostile to his Universal interest, and, by so acting, places time before eternity. It is only the double light that can guide the human will to the Divine Will, which Will will use it for its ultimate purpose. Only as the human will is guided by the double light to the Divine Will, can the Divine Will re-centre the human will, and effect by it the Universal use¬ fulness. Education ought rather to be used to discipline man’s inclinations, and show him his dependence on God, than to exercise his faculties, and leave him to depend on himself. The more double light man has, the sooner he sees that he is in the hands of another, whose whole 286 business it is to sustain him, and to direct him to his ultimate purpose. Man cannot see his real dependence on the centre, till he has the central double light which enables him to do so. So long as man has only the single light, he only sees his interest to he in the world; but the moment he has the double light, he beholds his interest to be in the Unity, and that upon it alone he is dependent, and should most willingly depend. Man, by his form, is related to the materials, out of which he was made, and, by his Spirit, to the self- existent being that sustains it. The form must submit to the Spirit, as the Spirit does to the self-existing Spirit. Man should, by study and reflection, discipline him¬ self into obedience with those laws which disturb him in the exact measure in which he disobeys them, and which satisfy him in the ratio that he fulfils them. The nearer man approaches the centre, the more he finds himself protected, and the less necessity there is for a self-sustaining activity. Man’s own self-activity ceases in the exact measure that the Divine activity increases within his soul. As soon as the Unify' properly possesses the human will, the self-activity ceases altogether. While there is any self-activity whatever, the central activity is not yet restored by the threefold Life. The activity coming from the selfish Life knows nothing of the activity derived from the central Love, which threefold Life expands its influence throughout the universe. As long as we have not the real thing we contend 287 out of our no-thing for nothing, he who has the real sensation, and out of it can speak, will not contend,™ words, for that which words cannot give. , . Words are substituted ,for realities, and he only who has the realities, is content to let the words stand for what they are worth. , :We ought, by limiting inversely, to reduce our mixed dispositions to simple inclinations,, and our sim¬ ple inclinations to a simple dependence on the Unity; and this from a complete and perfect union with our infinite and eternal original. ,Man begins in his own self-government to think, and multiply his simple perceptions into complex concep¬ tions, and then to. establish laws to hind the . different orders of individuals, and , thus he forms a complete body of social union or first state of civilisation. The men that depend wholly on active Life know nothing of the concentrated activity of the Universal Life, which obliges men to recede gradually from the circumference to the centre, till the Unity becomes as vividly sensible as the universality. Man, by his false intellectual activity, has no leisure to concentrate all the energies of the mind upon that centre out of which the soul is fed, and which is continually sustaining its threefold Life, but goes on to breed hopes and fears that disturb his inward existence. . , By the working of the spiritual Light, man is con¬ joined with nature, and, by the working of the Light Spirit, he is united to Unity, and, by a submission of the first to the last, he is brought into harmony. When active eojzception can muItiplyy?erception into the full evidence of things, then will submission sim- plify dependence into the full experience of union with Unity. Man must, by introversion, go as far onwards to the Unity as he has gone outward, by sensation, into the universe. Man, as a middle agent, must stand between the Unity and the universe; by going out he conies into relationship with the latter, and by going in he comes into relationship with the former. When our voluntary activity is directed to the same end, as directs the involuntary activity, we may he sure of a double result—inward happiness, and out¬ ward contentment; hut as long as we direct the volun¬ tary activity in a direct opposite line to the involuntary, we may he sure of a double discord. It is Love that connects the producing causes with the produced effect: the parents are the producing causes, the child is the produced effect; the roots and branches are the producing cause, the fruit is the produced effect. While we are quietly examining the works that have been already wrought in the earth, the Creator avails himself of the stillness, to go on with his work within, from the luminous essences. The Creator will raise an internal foundation for every out-building that we raise for him. Just as far as we learn, for the sake of the Creator, will the Creator make a foundation for that knowledge to stand on. The knowledge in us cannot stand, unless the Creator makes a proper foundation for it. It is in vain raising outward buildings, if the Creator does not raise inward foundations for them. 289 When we ask not for foundations, we labour in vain in building. That which divorces, always marries that female which is divorced, and this will he found in the whole creation of elements. All that we do to a human being, must tend to bring him under the direct operation of the good Spirit; and so far as we do not do this, we are sure to fail. What we tell a human being, is only to bring him under the direct action of the good Spirit, and not as a matter of his own concerning the good Spirit. Mankind are not yet faculted to think inversely, or to lop off what is superfluous, and to check want in its rising ground, all of which must be done be- 'fore the enemy that inhabits the soul will quit his dwelling. As man is not faculted with a constitutional rule, he does what he can to learn one, and to follow it out as his inclinations may seem to coincide with it. Man is sure to fail when he tries to set up a form without, instead of a principle within; a saying and a doing, instead of a substance and a life, and also to reap a harvest of sorrow. When man has a false Spirit within him of a nature contrary to the good Spirit, he is sure, as long as the Spirit remains in him, to act contrary to the Divine Will, or Love. When man is in a state of anger, his countenance puts on a purple, or dark red colour. Satanic blood is a purple, or dark red, and while this dark blood is in man, he is in evil. The true Spirit is of a gold colour, and gold, in its power and use, superfices it. 2 r 290 What use will the Great Master make of my know¬ ledge ? How will my knowledge be turned into Light, and my doing into Life, and my loving into Love ? If I am not used by the great user, how shall I be changed into Love? Are not my sensations changed into ideas, and my ideas into more general ideas, and these again into Universal ideas? If Unity be not doing this as a creating process, how is my being elevated towards him ? Love acts to produce concord, or Unity, that is, an indissoluble Unity. Light acts dispersively, and can only he collected into opinions and majorities, for some self-love pur¬ pose. Love is an ample power that can produce a Unity, or oneness; Light, being a diffusive power, can be collected and concentred, when required, either by Love, or self-love. Love holds Light concentred, and uses it when in union with Life, to represent itself ideally and personally. A concord of Light, or opinion, is not a concord of Lote; when Love works, the concord of opinion is easily dispersed. Self-love, by a collective Light, may make a con¬ cord of opinion; but when Love comes, it dissolves the made union, and produces a Unity of its own. He the majorities what they may, that self-love, by Light, or opinion, has, for some own purpose, assembled, Love will, by any one of its central acts, disperse in a moment. 291 If Love be not the concentrating power, the combined work has no foundation whatever on which to stand. Self-love has only self to stand on, and all self-love’s works are dissolved as soon as Love overcomes self. Every act that is not done by Love, either in mind or body, must fall when self falls. As soon as man’s mind is changed, his estimations of the things of the mind follow the mind’s changes. When Love does not acknowledge man, he does not acknowledge man’s thoughts and words. It is Love alone that can use all the faculties of a human being at once; but self-love can only use the faculties occasionally and successively. Self-love cannot get at the whole man at once, and from the centre make a central movement, but only from points occasionally fixed. Self-love can only make a here and there movement, just as he finds a faculty in which to get, and from which to act. Self-love, when ejected from one faculty, visits an¬ other in another form, and acts in the new faculty, and under the new form, till ejected. Self-love tries all the faculties, and abides, in some longer than others, as his form is not so objectionable. In some of the highest faculties, self-love can put on his highest forms, and, under these forms, make a long visit. Self-love makes an own centre in any faculty in which it can get, and blinds that faculty by turning it from the true centre to its own divisional light, in which all forms are but delusive appearances. Love can make a Universal agent, Light can make 292 a social agent, and Life can make an agent; it is Light that can qualify Life, and Love that can qualify Light. Love is the only centre, and without this centre, we have only cycles without point or basis to poize them. Every partial basis must he false, as false as the Ptolemaic cycles, because they wanted the Copernican centre—the heat, or Love, which fills all beings from its own centre centrally. Love is the fixed centre, from which Light diffuses Universal good to all feeling Life throughout the Universal organic system, and while it endures. There is no usefulness without Light, and Light has only Love as a fixed centre, from which to work diffusively. Moral truth, or moral good, may in vain look for an outward standard; when they will look for a centre that is immoveable, Love will make his appearance. As long as man will seek any basis, but unselfish Lore, he must find himself in some circle with self-love, and misery his offspring. He who is in intellectual Light and its derivatives, is in multiplicity and distraction; but he who is in Love, always gravitates towards the Universal centre. We cannot find any other centre that all draw to, but Love; and as soon as self-love’s cycles are over¬ turned, Love’s centre appears. It is not knowledge that is wanted by man, but Love to fix all. Love will do what knowledge cannot—open the heart. Light will do what life cannot, that is, disperse every’ thing. Life will do what light cannot, that is, contract every thing. While life contracts, and light expands, Love brings about a central movement. Love can bring light and life into order, but light and life cannot bring Love into order. Love will have nothing to do with the notions of light or with the doings of life. Love will do his own work upon his own agents, and acknowledge only the works that are alone of Him. The great mass of human beings have to do with life, the civilized part of mankind with light, and but few with the unselfish love. So long as education goes on as it does, without Love for its centre, light will be without a true guide, and life without a good object. Life substitutes habit for the central Love, and Light substitutes opinion. Love will have nothing to do with light’s calculations or life’s consummations, but only with its own perfect harmony. It is Love alone that can bring forth the double birth—light and life—while light and life together can only bring forth the single birth, that is, death. It is Love alone that can help light and life to immortalize their offspring. While man stands the representative of light and life, he doubts of immortality; but as soon as lie be¬ comes related to Love, his doubts vanish. Love will have no laws. Love is a law into itself, and that which is not of Love is lawless. Political justice has Life for its standard, or strength only. m Moral justice has Light for its standard, or opinions only. Love will have nothing to do with limitations, or definitions. Love is Love, it is all in all. J. P. GREAVES. Stroud, Gloucestershire, June 25th, 1834. THE END. FEINTED BY V. TORRAS & Co., IS, SAVAGE GARDENS, TOWER HILL, LONDON.