Last Words."We live, if ye stand fast in the Lord."—1 THESS. iii. 8.The last Sunday of a year suggests a moral balancing of accounts. I will not burden you with retrospect; what is the good? Nor will I waste your time with anticipations—always a futile speculation. The only thing that matters is the present. How do we stand—now, to-day? That is important both to pupil and to pupil-teacher. There is something intensely pathetic, something that arouses an echo in my own heart, in the way Paul interweaves the "we" and the "ye" in that sentence. This great prototype, "We live if ye stand fast," of all subsequent ministrants to souls recognizes the close interdependence of spiritual welfare between himself and those he had been commissioned to teach. The truth of human solidarity, and the responsibility of each soul to minister to its neighbour, reaches its climax in such a relationship as that existing between Paul and the Church in Thessalonica. He had laboured to kindle the dormant capacities of their souls, while training his own. His life had not been easy. Festus said he was mad. The magistrates at Philippi scourged and imprisoned him. Demas forsook him, and his colleague Peter withstood him. Moreover, he had constant weakness of health, his thorn in the flesh tormented him, but the one only thing he cared for was that souls awakened under his ministry should not fall back. He speaks as if his very life hung upon their continued perseverance in the truth he had taught. "We live," he says—"we live, if ye stand fast in the Lord." It is as if he had said, "Ye are the very travail of my soul; life will not be worth living to me; it will be darkened by shadow, if ye, the souls whom I have influenced, fall away when I am no longer with you." More than that he felt that he would be measured by the result of his work. I imagine that all ministers must feel the same, and, without presumption, may in the same way suggest to their people, as one additional motive for striving for the grace of perseverance, the motive of contributing to the life-joy of the human instrument through whom they have gained some light. The thought obtrudes itself aggressively at one of these way-marks, these sign-posts in the passage of time, which remind one of the uncertainty as to the continuance of existing conditions. Not that "uncertainty" matters in the least. I dislike the word "uncertainty"; the one certainty is that all is well, as God is All and God is Love; when you know that, you don't talk about "uncertainty":"All unknown the future lies—Let it rest.God who veils it from our eyes—Knows best.Ask not what shall be to-morrow—Be content,Take the cup of joy or sorrow—God has sent."Of course, every pupil-teacher in God's school knows that he, personally, is nothing—nothing but a voice crying in the Wilderness. Nevertheless, he has one desire in the fulfilment of which his happiness here, and perhaps in the other dimension, is closely concerned; it is that his fellow-pupils should "stand fast in the Lord." "In the Lord," mark you—"in the Lord." Not in fidelity to some ethical standard—not in the shibboleths of some acceptable so-called school of thought, not in the excluding externalisms of some particular denomination—those are all incidents which have their place—but "in the Lord." To define exhaustively the meaning of "in the Lord" would be to recapitulate the whole curriculum; but to be "in the Lord" is a spiritual acquisition attained by systematic thinking into God, and "standing fast in the Lord" is using the will to compel the conscious mind to hold the thought till it becomes a normal attitude. To be "in the Lord" is to have discovered your true relation as an individual to the Infinite Originating Spirit. It is to have recognized that God is known only by the mind, and that mental force is "that you have the likest God within your soul"; and with the aid of that mental force to have thought yourself out of objective Deism into the truth of the universally diffused Creative Mind, Immanent, Transcendent, and Paternal. It is to have realized what Wordsworth calls the Sense Sublime of—"Something far more deeply interfused,A Motion and a Spirit that impelsAll thinking things, all objects of all thought,And rolls through all things."This "sense sublime," which is spiritual consciousness, is a sense which, once awakened, Materialism can never stamp out, though it is very possible to be unfaithful to it. It is a thrilling consciousness of penetrating Divine Mind everywhere. This "sense sublime" is an hereditary instinct in our nature which makes "feeling after God" automatic. This "sense sublime," added to the natural demand for a conception of God under some conditions of personality, has been the foundation of all religions. It was the foundation of the higher Deism of the Jewish theology, which possessed beautiful characteristics in spite of its anthropomorphism. Isaiah was full of the "sense sublime," and he bids us create "thought-forms" and think of Infinite Spirit as men would think of their mothers—"As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you." "Use your imagination," he would say, "to conceive that the tenderness of a mother feebly represents the watchful love, the protecting care, of Jehovah towards the human race; for a human mother may forget her child, 'Yet will I not forget thee,' saith the Lord."Beautiful and consoling as is Isaiah's conception of God as Universal Mother, it is still Deistic, it still leaves the Infinite Intelligence as a Person, which He is not. It does not answer the philosophic problem of how mentally to specialize the Infinite Mind while at the same time preserving mentally the conception of its universality. The Gospel of the "Word made Flesh," the revelation of the Incarnation, solves that problem.In the Christian revelation the words "Absolute," "Infinite Mind," and the rest, are relieved of impersonality and vagueness. We see that earth's teeming millions are not created, designed, or fashioned, or even generated in the physical sense. They are to God what words are to thoughts—expressions, utterances of the Infinite Mind of God. Each human being is an individual vehicle or life-centre in which the Infinite Mind expresses, manifests itself. Each human life is the reproduction in an individuality of qualities which the Infinite Creative Mind perceives within itself and desires to realize. Now, if the sum-total of these universally diffused qualities of the Infinite Mind could be specialized in one absolutely perfect individual life-centre, we should be able to recognize the personalness of the Infinite Mind and estimate the qualities and principles of the Originating Spirit. And in Jesus we have this unique specimen, this concentration in one individual life-centre, and we know what God is because in Jesus dwelt "all the fulness of the God-head bodily." More than this. The Universal, specialized in Jesus, enables us to understand how God is immanent in us; for the Lord Jesus declared that our relationship to the Infinite Mind was essentially and potentially of the same nature as His, that we too have "the Father in us." He emphatically declares: "I go to My Father and to your Father." Thus is Jesus the Mediator, or Uniting Medium, between God and man. Thus does "God in Christ reconcile the world to Himself," for in the perfectly God-inhabited man is revealed the transcendent truth that God and man, in inherent eternal unity, are one. When we think into this self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ, when we recognize what it implies—namely, that the personality of Infinite Spirit is manifested in the objective Christ, and that the mystic Christ is in all, and that every human being is a potential Jesus—we have realized what it is to be "in the Lord." If only we could stand fast in this truth! If we restless, capricious human beings could but exercise our wills, our power of self-compulsion, in holding our conscious minds fast to this thought, it would reconstitute the whole of our character and being, because it would readjust our mental relations with the material environment and sense-impressions in which we live.It alters the whole outlook on life to know you personally are an idea in the mind of God, and that you have the power within you to identify yourself with God's purpose. Your entire theology is expanded; for to begin to know God as He is in Himself is to become a convinced Universalist and a denier of the essentiality of evil, though you hate evil as you never hated it before. So to be "in the Lord" is not to be staggered by the existence of evil. The imperfection that seems to mar the perfection of the economy of the world is recognized as a necessary condition for the production of the highest good, one of its objects being to make you hate it. The proposition which I constantly reiterate is clear, logical, conclusive. God is All, All is God; God is the onlyousia(substance) in the universe. This negation of good which we hate, this contrast, either is or is not part of universal order. If it is part of universal order, then, in spite of all seeming paradox, it is of the "all things that work together for good." If it is not part of His universal order, then the philosophy of Infinity is shattered, and we are confronted with another creative originator in the universe, in everlasting antagonism to the good God—a paralyzing Dualism, which is only another name for Atheism. God is All, God is Love, God is Omnipotent, and God is Immanent. Therefore it is certain that a hidden purpose of benevolence and love, incomparably higher than would be accomplished by the abolition of what we call evil, must have actuated the Infinite Mind when He "thought-created" phenomena. Clearly it is an impossibility, even to Omnipotence, to make moral beings, in whom He could realize His highest quality of love, without giving them a measure of volition, which volition had to pass the test of the complex education and temptations of earth-life, with all that it entails; and His purpose is so high and glorious that its ultimate consummation will justify and vindicate all the apparently inexplicable means He adopts in bringing it about.Once more—though I fear I cause that string to vibrate too often, but out of the heart the mouth speaketh—to "stand fast in the Lord" is to be unspeakably uplifted and supported when crushed under the sorrow of bereavement. "Standing fast in the Lord"—you know that every separate individual human being is a product of the Divine Mind, imaging forth an image of Itself on the plane of the material. Consequently, each Individual and the Originating Spirit are essentially inseverable. Therefore human souls strongly linked by love are inseverable, and, though visibly separated, are merged in one another, and spirit with spirit does meet. "The Communion of Saints" is to you who are "standing in the Lord" not a theological dogma, but a fact of being. You do not believe, you know, that the casting off of the body, the passing out of sight of the temporary corporeal enslavement, causes no separation between you and those who are living now in a world of duller life, where the limitations of the physical do not exist. We may be unconscious of the intensity and reality of this communion, because our spiritual self, our real man, is still in the educative isolation of the flesh; but the beloved departed know that the only real home of the spirit is the Universal, and that there is no limitation of time or space where they are, and that as thought-transference on the physical plane is acknowledged as a scientific fact, nothing can hinder the transmission of mind-impulse on the spiritual plane, especially when we remember that there is a force greater, according to St. Paul, than Faith, and greater than Hope, and that is Love. If Faith can penetrate into the spirit-world, cannot Love? God is Love, and "Love never faileth."If you are "standing fast in the Lord" the vibration of your love penetrates into God's hidden world. The method is the mental process of thinking yourself into conscious realization of the Presence of Universal Spirit, and then, with that thought sustained, thinking strongly of the loved one you want in the spirit world. They catch the impulse of your telepathic, God-inspired, love-thought, and respond to your spirit, and sometimes you will be definitely conscious of the response through the percipient mind. Another test of standing fast in the Lord is the increase of your usefulness in the world. The service for others, of one who is standing fast in the Lord, will manifest itself mainly in three spheres: the sphere of action, of example, of intercession. First you will have a new enthusiasm and desire to work in the sphere of definite remedial activity on this temporal, this material plane. You know that there is nothing but God, therefore you recognize that the material plane is one of God's spheres of love and sacrifice. Being "in the Lord" does not imply a life of indolent contemplation. It implies "coming to the help of the Lord against the mighty," like that consecrated sister of humanity, Sister Dora. You remember, I have often repeated it, how, after a laborious day in her hospital, her rest was constantly broken by the sound of the bell placed at the head of her bed to be rung whenever any sufferer wanted her, and on that bell was engraved the motto, "The Master is come and calleth for thee." I often try to remind myself of that. As every member of the race is God-inhabited, every claim made upon us—though of course we must consider each claim with due discretion—is the Master's voice saying, "Remember, I in them, and thou in Me, that they may be perfect in us."Then, again, standing fast in the Lord gives you a new power of expressing, manifesting, the Immanent God by your life, your example. The highest duty in life is manifesting God. You will find that the words in my prayer, "May my highest aim this day be to manifest God and to make others happy," become your normal attitude. It will be as natural to you now to give a gentle answer to a deliberate provocation as formerly it was natural to give an irritable reply. You will take your own line on principles of moral rectitude, heedless of the strife of tongues, but with perfect respect for the expressed opinions of others who wholly differ from you. Then it is hardly necessary to point out that "Standing fast in the Lord" is to be a power in intercession. God has taught us that there is no sphere in which the soul, that really recognizes its relation to Infinite Spirit, can more effectually help and bless others. I cannot define these "thoughtographs" of mental causation on the spiritual plane, but it is impossible to measure the cumulative force of united intercession.Intercession does not mean that you have importuned an objective Omnipotent Being to do a kindness to one of His subjects, though in human language we seem thus to express it. It is, that having found your true relation as an individual to the Universal Originating Spirit, and your sympathy and pity being drawn to some case of need, you specialize, by the power of your thought, the All-surrounding Infinite Love, and focus it, direct it, to the particular case of need, and Infinite Love thinks, wills, and expresses Himself through you. When Paul said, "Brethren, pray for us," he knew that loving, sympathizing, healing thoughts, projected like wireless-telegraphy vibrations from united God-inhabited hearts, were the life of God in man reaching forth to quicken, stimulate, and support a brother man. I have been upheld in physical and mental weakness by a stream of kindly sympathy, radiating Divine creative energy. I once before expressed my gratitude in the words of an American divine:"Beneath the shelter which your prayers have reared,Quiet and blest,The storm which struck me down no longer feared,Secure I rest."That is what this wireless spiritual telegraphy does—it frees the mind from fear. To free the mind from fear is to strike at the root of many a physical and mental trouble.I have been withheld recently from taking an active part in this Divine work, but I have a sheaf of letters of thanksgiving. I give extracts from two:You prayed for a young girl who was about to face an examination for a post and who was tormented with nervous headache. The letter says: "It was a positive miracle; there was not a headache after that night, and the examination was passed most successfully."Again, you prayed two Sundays in succession for a youth in the North of England. The letter says: "He was dying; the doctors had given him up, and he himself had no thought of recovery. He is well and a new man; people are expressing the greatest astonishment, declaring that no one understands it. They do not know the explanation." These cases are not that an Objective external God did something kind because we asked Him, but that the Immanent Universal Mind used our sympathy, and our yearning to help, in bringing about that which He also desired, but for the fulfilment of which He needed the focussed love and desire of the individual life-centres in which He is Immanent. That is one way of "coming to the help of the Lord against the Mighty."Now these recapitulations imperfectly express my meaning when I ask you to "Stand fast in the Lord." The end of a year is a time when a register of results is justifiable, and an occasion for a fresh start is recognized. I ask you to make a resolution that you will be spiritually self-supporting, and independent of external aid, and that, whether the pupil-teacher to whom you have become accustomed is in the flesh or out of it, you will "Stand fast in the Lord," for his sake as well as your own. "We live, if ye stand fast." It is so, it must be so, for the test of a teacher is the perseverance of the taught. To fall away from a great principle because the temporary enunciator of that principle is removed, is to condemn that enunciator as a failure, and perhaps to send him to his account without his golden sheaves."Ah, who shall then the Master meetAnd bring but withered leaves?Ah, who shall at the Saviour's feet,Before the awful judgment seat,Lay down for golden sheavesNothing but leaves, nothing but leaves?"In the words of Shakespeare I say, "Hereafter in a better world than this I shall desire more love and knowledge of you"; meanwhile remember, "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you," all the power you can possibly need is at your disposal, you need no helper to give it you, it is yours now."O be strong, then, and brave, pure, patient, and true;The work that is yours let no other hand do.For the strength for all need is faithfully givenFrom the fountain within you—the Kingdom of Heaven."Printed for Elliot Stock, Publisher,7, Paternoster Row, London, E.C.,by Billing and Sons, Ltd., Guildford* * * * * * * *By THE VEN. ARCHDEACON WILBERFORCESTEPS IN SPIRITUAL GROWTHSteps in Spiritual Growth—The Apple of God's Eye—The Seed is the Logos—God Sleeps in the Stone—The Armour of God—Christ in you, the Hope of Glory—The Water and the Blood—Praise—Noli me Tangere—Things of Good Report—The Master-Truth of Christianity—The Wedding Garment—The Moral Sense, and the Religious Instinct.POWER WITH GODA Suggested Morning Prayer—Power with God—The Father's Demand—Judgment by the Christ Within—The Word made Flesh—The Armour of Light in the Strife of Tongues—The Meaning of a Coronation—Manifesting God—The Holy Spirit—The Holy Trinity—Cosmic Consciousness—Festival of St. Luke: The Layman's Saints' Day—Abba Father—Affirmations.SERMONS PREACHED IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. First Series.Three Inspired Propositions—God's Riddle—Does God Suffer?—The Father is greater than All—The Holy Trinity—The Holy Spirit—The Unpardonable Sin—Septuagesima—Back to Origins—Quinquagesima—The Impulse Behind Origins—Resurrection—Ascension—Paradise—Hades—The Communion of Saints—Propitiation—Diversity and Toleration—Unbinding the Word—No Wastefulness with God.THE HOPE THAT IS IN ME.God the Healer—For Ever with the Lord—Reincarnation—A New Year's Motto—Epiphany—Social Evolution—Heavenly Citizenship—Mental Limitation of God—Cure for Mental Limitation—The Open Cancer of England's Life—The Amethyst—Mental Concentration—Thinking into God—Welcome to the German Pastors in Westminster Abbey at Ascensiontide—Creation, and the Book of Genesis—Life in Him—Glorify God in your Body—Theosophy—Counsels to Cadets—God's Bairns.THE SECRET OF THE QUIET MINDAdvent—"Mysteries": A Christmas Thought—Church Parade—Dives or Lazarus, Which?—Individual Responsibility for Corporate Wrong Doing—"If Thou Hadst Known"—Animal Sunday—The Secret of the Quiet Mind—The Power of a Symbol—Mercy—What is Christianity?THE POWER THAT WORKETH IN USFirst Principles—Repentance—Repentance from Dead Works—Faith Towards God—The Laying-on of Hands—From what Centre do we Think?—The Blessed Sacrament—The Unjust Steward—The Earthquake in Sicily—A Suggestion for Lent—The Leverage Power in Man—The Departure of Loved Ones.SANCTIFICATION BY THE TRUTHGod's Truth—Limiting the Holy One-The Awakening—Motherhood in God—The Origin of Man—Wheat and Tares—Ought the Clergy to Criticise the Bible?—The Obligation of the Sabbath—Nelson and Trafalgar—The Bishop of London's Fund—Joint Heirs with Christ—Virtue—Knowledge—Self-Control—Patience—Godliness—Brotherly Kindness—Our Father, which art in Heaven—Hallowed be Thy Name—Thy Kingdom Come—Thy Will be Done—Give us this Day our Daily Bread—Forgive us our Trespasses—Lead us not into Temptation—Thine is the Kingdom.NEW (?) THEOLOGYNew (?) Theology—Soul-Hunger—The Pre-Natal Promise—Where to Find the Lord—The Storm—Praying for the Departed—The Doctrine of the Holy Unity—Hades—Truth—Shallowness—Assurance—Demonology—Our Mother in Heaven—The Visible Church—The Limits of Forgiveness—St. Simon and St. Jude—The Atonement—Auto-Suggestion—O.H.M.S.—Phariseeism—Advent: S.P.G.—Advent: Incarnation—Advent: The Bible—Advent: The Woman Clothed with the Sun.COMMENDED BYDR. WALPOLE, BISHOP OF EDINBURGH."All who have at any time been laid aside by sickness will have felt the need of just such a book as this which Mr. Trevelyan has compiled. Trouble brings us face to face with realities, and it is then that we need strong, hopeful words that will shew us how we ought to meet it. These will be found in the admirable selections that are bound up under the attractive title Apples of Gold."—GEORGE BISHOP OF EDINBURGHA book of the greatest possible help—and will give more strengthening thought than many such manuals are apt to giveApples of GoldA COMMONPLACE BOOK of selected Readings, intended to suggest thoughts, lay foundations, and build up character.COMPILED AND ARRANGED BY THE REV.W. B. TREVELYAN, M.A.WARDEN OF LIDDON HOUSE216 pages. Handsome Cloth Binding. 2s. 6d. net.Presentation Editions, printed on thin paper. Limp Leather, full gilt back, gilt top, silk register. 4s. 6d. net. Calf or Turkey Morocco, red under gilt edges, gilt roll, silk register, boxed. 7s. 6d. net.Library of Historic Theology.EDITED BY THE REV. WM. C. PIERCY, M.A.Each Volume, Demy 8vo., Cloth, Red Burnished Top, 5s. net.The following Volumes are now ready:THE PRESENT RELATIONS OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION.By the REV. PROFESSOR T. G. BONNEY, D.Sc.ARCHEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.By PROFESSOR EDOUARD NAVILLE, D.C.L., LL.D.MYSTICISM IN CHRISTIANITY.By the REV. W. K. FLEMING, M.A., B.D.THE RULE OF LIFE AND LOVE.By the REV. R. L. OTTLEY, D.D.THE RULE OF FAITH AND HOPE.By the REV. R. L. OTTLEY, D.D.MARRIAGE IN CHURCH AND STATE.By the REV. T. A. LACEY, M.A.CHRISTIANITY AND OTHER FAITHS.By the REV. W. ST. CLAIR TISDALL, D.D.THE BUILDING UP OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.By the REV. CANON R. B. GIRDLESTONE, M.A.THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN. Vol. I. and II.By the REV. ALFRED PLUMMER, D.D.CHARACTER AND RELIGION.By the REV. THE HON. EDWARD LYTTELTON, M.A.THE CREEDS: Their History, Nature and Use.By the REV. HAROLD SMITH, M.A.MISSIONARY METHODS, ST. PAUL'S OR OURS?By the REV. ROLAND ALLEN, M.A.THE CHRISTOLOGY OF ST. PAUL (Hulsean Prize Essay).By the REV. S. NOWELL ROSTRON, M.A.RELIGION IN AN AGE OF DOUBT.By the REV. CHARLES J. SHEBBEARE, M.A.Further important announcements wilt be made in due course;full particulars may from obtained from the Publisher.* * * * * * * *THE PURPLE SERIESBooks of Devotion and Meditation.Cloth, 1s. 6d. net each.PRAYER AND COMMUNION. By the Right Rev. the BISHOP OF EDINBURGH. Also bound in White Parchment, 2s. 6d. net.THERE IS NO DEATH. By the Ven. BASIL WILBERFORCE, D.D. Also bound in White Parchment, 2s. 6d. net.MYSTIC IMMANENCE. By the Ven. BASIL WILBERFORCE, D.D. Also bound in White Parchment, 2s. 6d. net.THEM WHICH SLEEP IN JESUS. By the Rev. G. T. SHETTLE, L.A.CEDAR AND PALM. By the Rev. W. EWING, M.A.THE PROBLEMS AND PRACTICE OF PRAYER. By the Rev. S. C. LOWRY, M.A.THE WAITING-PLACE OF SOULS. By the Rev. C. E. WESTON, M.A.*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOKMYSTIC IMMANENCE***
Last Words.
"We live, if ye stand fast in the Lord."—1 THESS. iii. 8.
The last Sunday of a year suggests a moral balancing of accounts. I will not burden you with retrospect; what is the good? Nor will I waste your time with anticipations—always a futile speculation. The only thing that matters is the present. How do we stand—now, to-day? That is important both to pupil and to pupil-teacher. There is something intensely pathetic, something that arouses an echo in my own heart, in the way Paul interweaves the "we" and the "ye" in that sentence. This great prototype, "We live if ye stand fast," of all subsequent ministrants to souls recognizes the close interdependence of spiritual welfare between himself and those he had been commissioned to teach. The truth of human solidarity, and the responsibility of each soul to minister to its neighbour, reaches its climax in such a relationship as that existing between Paul and the Church in Thessalonica. He had laboured to kindle the dormant capacities of their souls, while training his own. His life had not been easy. Festus said he was mad. The magistrates at Philippi scourged and imprisoned him. Demas forsook him, and his colleague Peter withstood him. Moreover, he had constant weakness of health, his thorn in the flesh tormented him, but the one only thing he cared for was that souls awakened under his ministry should not fall back. He speaks as if his very life hung upon their continued perseverance in the truth he had taught. "We live," he says—"we live, if ye stand fast in the Lord." It is as if he had said, "Ye are the very travail of my soul; life will not be worth living to me; it will be darkened by shadow, if ye, the souls whom I have influenced, fall away when I am no longer with you." More than that he felt that he would be measured by the result of his work. I imagine that all ministers must feel the same, and, without presumption, may in the same way suggest to their people, as one additional motive for striving for the grace of perseverance, the motive of contributing to the life-joy of the human instrument through whom they have gained some light. The thought obtrudes itself aggressively at one of these way-marks, these sign-posts in the passage of time, which remind one of the uncertainty as to the continuance of existing conditions. Not that "uncertainty" matters in the least. I dislike the word "uncertainty"; the one certainty is that all is well, as God is All and God is Love; when you know that, you don't talk about "uncertainty":
"All unknown the future lies—Let it rest.God who veils it from our eyes—Knows best.Ask not what shall be to-morrow—Be content,Take the cup of joy or sorrow—God has sent."
"All unknown the future lies—Let it rest.God who veils it from our eyes—Knows best.Ask not what shall be to-morrow—Be content,Take the cup of joy or sorrow—God has sent."
"All unknown the future lies—Let it rest.
God who veils it from our eyes—Knows best.
Ask not what shall be to-morrow—Be content,
Take the cup of joy or sorrow—God has sent."
Of course, every pupil-teacher in God's school knows that he, personally, is nothing—nothing but a voice crying in the Wilderness. Nevertheless, he has one desire in the fulfilment of which his happiness here, and perhaps in the other dimension, is closely concerned; it is that his fellow-pupils should "stand fast in the Lord." "In the Lord," mark you—"in the Lord." Not in fidelity to some ethical standard—not in the shibboleths of some acceptable so-called school of thought, not in the excluding externalisms of some particular denomination—those are all incidents which have their place—but "in the Lord." To define exhaustively the meaning of "in the Lord" would be to recapitulate the whole curriculum; but to be "in the Lord" is a spiritual acquisition attained by systematic thinking into God, and "standing fast in the Lord" is using the will to compel the conscious mind to hold the thought till it becomes a normal attitude. To be "in the Lord" is to have discovered your true relation as an individual to the Infinite Originating Spirit. It is to have recognized that God is known only by the mind, and that mental force is "that you have the likest God within your soul"; and with the aid of that mental force to have thought yourself out of objective Deism into the truth of the universally diffused Creative Mind, Immanent, Transcendent, and Paternal. It is to have realized what Wordsworth calls the Sense Sublime of—
"Something far more deeply interfused,A Motion and a Spirit that impelsAll thinking things, all objects of all thought,And rolls through all things."
"Something far more deeply interfused,A Motion and a Spirit that impelsAll thinking things, all objects of all thought,And rolls through all things."
"Something far more deeply interfused,
A Motion and a Spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things."
This "sense sublime," which is spiritual consciousness, is a sense which, once awakened, Materialism can never stamp out, though it is very possible to be unfaithful to it. It is a thrilling consciousness of penetrating Divine Mind everywhere. This "sense sublime" is an hereditary instinct in our nature which makes "feeling after God" automatic. This "sense sublime," added to the natural demand for a conception of God under some conditions of personality, has been the foundation of all religions. It was the foundation of the higher Deism of the Jewish theology, which possessed beautiful characteristics in spite of its anthropomorphism. Isaiah was full of the "sense sublime," and he bids us create "thought-forms" and think of Infinite Spirit as men would think of their mothers—"As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you." "Use your imagination," he would say, "to conceive that the tenderness of a mother feebly represents the watchful love, the protecting care, of Jehovah towards the human race; for a human mother may forget her child, 'Yet will I not forget thee,' saith the Lord."
Beautiful and consoling as is Isaiah's conception of God as Universal Mother, it is still Deistic, it still leaves the Infinite Intelligence as a Person, which He is not. It does not answer the philosophic problem of how mentally to specialize the Infinite Mind while at the same time preserving mentally the conception of its universality. The Gospel of the "Word made Flesh," the revelation of the Incarnation, solves that problem.
In the Christian revelation the words "Absolute," "Infinite Mind," and the rest, are relieved of impersonality and vagueness. We see that earth's teeming millions are not created, designed, or fashioned, or even generated in the physical sense. They are to God what words are to thoughts—expressions, utterances of the Infinite Mind of God. Each human being is an individual vehicle or life-centre in which the Infinite Mind expresses, manifests itself. Each human life is the reproduction in an individuality of qualities which the Infinite Creative Mind perceives within itself and desires to realize. Now, if the sum-total of these universally diffused qualities of the Infinite Mind could be specialized in one absolutely perfect individual life-centre, we should be able to recognize the personalness of the Infinite Mind and estimate the qualities and principles of the Originating Spirit. And in Jesus we have this unique specimen, this concentration in one individual life-centre, and we know what God is because in Jesus dwelt "all the fulness of the God-head bodily." More than this. The Universal, specialized in Jesus, enables us to understand how God is immanent in us; for the Lord Jesus declared that our relationship to the Infinite Mind was essentially and potentially of the same nature as His, that we too have "the Father in us." He emphatically declares: "I go to My Father and to your Father." Thus is Jesus the Mediator, or Uniting Medium, between God and man. Thus does "God in Christ reconcile the world to Himself," for in the perfectly God-inhabited man is revealed the transcendent truth that God and man, in inherent eternal unity, are one. When we think into this self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ, when we recognize what it implies—namely, that the personality of Infinite Spirit is manifested in the objective Christ, and that the mystic Christ is in all, and that every human being is a potential Jesus—we have realized what it is to be "in the Lord." If only we could stand fast in this truth! If we restless, capricious human beings could but exercise our wills, our power of self-compulsion, in holding our conscious minds fast to this thought, it would reconstitute the whole of our character and being, because it would readjust our mental relations with the material environment and sense-impressions in which we live.
It alters the whole outlook on life to know you personally are an idea in the mind of God, and that you have the power within you to identify yourself with God's purpose. Your entire theology is expanded; for to begin to know God as He is in Himself is to become a convinced Universalist and a denier of the essentiality of evil, though you hate evil as you never hated it before. So to be "in the Lord" is not to be staggered by the existence of evil. The imperfection that seems to mar the perfection of the economy of the world is recognized as a necessary condition for the production of the highest good, one of its objects being to make you hate it. The proposition which I constantly reiterate is clear, logical, conclusive. God is All, All is God; God is the onlyousia(substance) in the universe. This negation of good which we hate, this contrast, either is or is not part of universal order. If it is part of universal order, then, in spite of all seeming paradox, it is of the "all things that work together for good." If it is not part of His universal order, then the philosophy of Infinity is shattered, and we are confronted with another creative originator in the universe, in everlasting antagonism to the good God—a paralyzing Dualism, which is only another name for Atheism. God is All, God is Love, God is Omnipotent, and God is Immanent. Therefore it is certain that a hidden purpose of benevolence and love, incomparably higher than would be accomplished by the abolition of what we call evil, must have actuated the Infinite Mind when He "thought-created" phenomena. Clearly it is an impossibility, even to Omnipotence, to make moral beings, in whom He could realize His highest quality of love, without giving them a measure of volition, which volition had to pass the test of the complex education and temptations of earth-life, with all that it entails; and His purpose is so high and glorious that its ultimate consummation will justify and vindicate all the apparently inexplicable means He adopts in bringing it about.
Once more—though I fear I cause that string to vibrate too often, but out of the heart the mouth speaketh—to "stand fast in the Lord" is to be unspeakably uplifted and supported when crushed under the sorrow of bereavement. "Standing fast in the Lord"—you know that every separate individual human being is a product of the Divine Mind, imaging forth an image of Itself on the plane of the material. Consequently, each Individual and the Originating Spirit are essentially inseverable. Therefore human souls strongly linked by love are inseverable, and, though visibly separated, are merged in one another, and spirit with spirit does meet. "The Communion of Saints" is to you who are "standing in the Lord" not a theological dogma, but a fact of being. You do not believe, you know, that the casting off of the body, the passing out of sight of the temporary corporeal enslavement, causes no separation between you and those who are living now in a world of duller life, where the limitations of the physical do not exist. We may be unconscious of the intensity and reality of this communion, because our spiritual self, our real man, is still in the educative isolation of the flesh; but the beloved departed know that the only real home of the spirit is the Universal, and that there is no limitation of time or space where they are, and that as thought-transference on the physical plane is acknowledged as a scientific fact, nothing can hinder the transmission of mind-impulse on the spiritual plane, especially when we remember that there is a force greater, according to St. Paul, than Faith, and greater than Hope, and that is Love. If Faith can penetrate into the spirit-world, cannot Love? God is Love, and "Love never faileth."
If you are "standing fast in the Lord" the vibration of your love penetrates into God's hidden world. The method is the mental process of thinking yourself into conscious realization of the Presence of Universal Spirit, and then, with that thought sustained, thinking strongly of the loved one you want in the spirit world. They catch the impulse of your telepathic, God-inspired, love-thought, and respond to your spirit, and sometimes you will be definitely conscious of the response through the percipient mind. Another test of standing fast in the Lord is the increase of your usefulness in the world. The service for others, of one who is standing fast in the Lord, will manifest itself mainly in three spheres: the sphere of action, of example, of intercession. First you will have a new enthusiasm and desire to work in the sphere of definite remedial activity on this temporal, this material plane. You know that there is nothing but God, therefore you recognize that the material plane is one of God's spheres of love and sacrifice. Being "in the Lord" does not imply a life of indolent contemplation. It implies "coming to the help of the Lord against the mighty," like that consecrated sister of humanity, Sister Dora. You remember, I have often repeated it, how, after a laborious day in her hospital, her rest was constantly broken by the sound of the bell placed at the head of her bed to be rung whenever any sufferer wanted her, and on that bell was engraved the motto, "The Master is come and calleth for thee." I often try to remind myself of that. As every member of the race is God-inhabited, every claim made upon us—though of course we must consider each claim with due discretion—is the Master's voice saying, "Remember, I in them, and thou in Me, that they may be perfect in us."
Then, again, standing fast in the Lord gives you a new power of expressing, manifesting, the Immanent God by your life, your example. The highest duty in life is manifesting God. You will find that the words in my prayer, "May my highest aim this day be to manifest God and to make others happy," become your normal attitude. It will be as natural to you now to give a gentle answer to a deliberate provocation as formerly it was natural to give an irritable reply. You will take your own line on principles of moral rectitude, heedless of the strife of tongues, but with perfect respect for the expressed opinions of others who wholly differ from you. Then it is hardly necessary to point out that "Standing fast in the Lord" is to be a power in intercession. God has taught us that there is no sphere in which the soul, that really recognizes its relation to Infinite Spirit, can more effectually help and bless others. I cannot define these "thoughtographs" of mental causation on the spiritual plane, but it is impossible to measure the cumulative force of united intercession.
Intercession does not mean that you have importuned an objective Omnipotent Being to do a kindness to one of His subjects, though in human language we seem thus to express it. It is, that having found your true relation as an individual to the Universal Originating Spirit, and your sympathy and pity being drawn to some case of need, you specialize, by the power of your thought, the All-surrounding Infinite Love, and focus it, direct it, to the particular case of need, and Infinite Love thinks, wills, and expresses Himself through you. When Paul said, "Brethren, pray for us," he knew that loving, sympathizing, healing thoughts, projected like wireless-telegraphy vibrations from united God-inhabited hearts, were the life of God in man reaching forth to quicken, stimulate, and support a brother man. I have been upheld in physical and mental weakness by a stream of kindly sympathy, radiating Divine creative energy. I once before expressed my gratitude in the words of an American divine:
"Beneath the shelter which your prayers have reared,Quiet and blest,The storm which struck me down no longer feared,Secure I rest."
"Beneath the shelter which your prayers have reared,Quiet and blest,The storm which struck me down no longer feared,Secure I rest."
"Beneath the shelter which your prayers have reared,
Quiet and blest,
Quiet and blest,
The storm which struck me down no longer feared,
Secure I rest."
Secure I rest."
That is what this wireless spiritual telegraphy does—it frees the mind from fear. To free the mind from fear is to strike at the root of many a physical and mental trouble.
I have been withheld recently from taking an active part in this Divine work, but I have a sheaf of letters of thanksgiving. I give extracts from two:
You prayed for a young girl who was about to face an examination for a post and who was tormented with nervous headache. The letter says: "It was a positive miracle; there was not a headache after that night, and the examination was passed most successfully."
Again, you prayed two Sundays in succession for a youth in the North of England. The letter says: "He was dying; the doctors had given him up, and he himself had no thought of recovery. He is well and a new man; people are expressing the greatest astonishment, declaring that no one understands it. They do not know the explanation." These cases are not that an Objective external God did something kind because we asked Him, but that the Immanent Universal Mind used our sympathy, and our yearning to help, in bringing about that which He also desired, but for the fulfilment of which He needed the focussed love and desire of the individual life-centres in which He is Immanent. That is one way of "coming to the help of the Lord against the Mighty."
Now these recapitulations imperfectly express my meaning when I ask you to "Stand fast in the Lord." The end of a year is a time when a register of results is justifiable, and an occasion for a fresh start is recognized. I ask you to make a resolution that you will be spiritually self-supporting, and independent of external aid, and that, whether the pupil-teacher to whom you have become accustomed is in the flesh or out of it, you will "Stand fast in the Lord," for his sake as well as your own. "We live, if ye stand fast." It is so, it must be so, for the test of a teacher is the perseverance of the taught. To fall away from a great principle because the temporary enunciator of that principle is removed, is to condemn that enunciator as a failure, and perhaps to send him to his account without his golden sheaves.
"Ah, who shall then the Master meetAnd bring but withered leaves?Ah, who shall at the Saviour's feet,Before the awful judgment seat,Lay down for golden sheavesNothing but leaves, nothing but leaves?"
"Ah, who shall then the Master meetAnd bring but withered leaves?Ah, who shall at the Saviour's feet,Before the awful judgment seat,Lay down for golden sheavesNothing but leaves, nothing but leaves?"
"Ah, who shall then the Master meet
And bring but withered leaves?
Ah, who shall at the Saviour's feet,
Before the awful judgment seat,
Lay down for golden sheaves
Nothing but leaves, nothing but leaves?"
In the words of Shakespeare I say, "Hereafter in a better world than this I shall desire more love and knowledge of you"; meanwhile remember, "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you," all the power you can possibly need is at your disposal, you need no helper to give it you, it is yours now.
"O be strong, then, and brave, pure, patient, and true;The work that is yours let no other hand do.For the strength for all need is faithfully givenFrom the fountain within you—the Kingdom of Heaven."
"O be strong, then, and brave, pure, patient, and true;The work that is yours let no other hand do.For the strength for all need is faithfully givenFrom the fountain within you—the Kingdom of Heaven."
"O be strong, then, and brave, pure, patient, and true;
The work that is yours let no other hand do.
For the strength for all need is faithfully given
From the fountain within you—the Kingdom of Heaven."
Printed for Elliot Stock, Publisher,7, Paternoster Row, London, E.C.,by Billing and Sons, Ltd., Guildford
* * * * * * * *
By THE VEN. ARCHDEACON WILBERFORCE
STEPS IN SPIRITUAL GROWTH
Steps in Spiritual Growth—The Apple of God's Eye—The Seed is the Logos—God Sleeps in the Stone—The Armour of God—Christ in you, the Hope of Glory—The Water and the Blood—Praise—Noli me Tangere—Things of Good Report—The Master-Truth of Christianity—The Wedding Garment—The Moral Sense, and the Religious Instinct.
POWER WITH GOD
A Suggested Morning Prayer—Power with God—The Father's Demand—Judgment by the Christ Within—The Word made Flesh—The Armour of Light in the Strife of Tongues—The Meaning of a Coronation—Manifesting God—The Holy Spirit—The Holy Trinity—Cosmic Consciousness—Festival of St. Luke: The Layman's Saints' Day—Abba Father—Affirmations.
SERMONS PREACHED IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. First Series.
Three Inspired Propositions—God's Riddle—Does God Suffer?—The Father is greater than All—The Holy Trinity—The Holy Spirit—The Unpardonable Sin—Septuagesima—Back to Origins—Quinquagesima—The Impulse Behind Origins—Resurrection—Ascension—Paradise—Hades—The Communion of Saints—Propitiation—Diversity and Toleration—Unbinding the Word—No Wastefulness with God.
THE HOPE THAT IS IN ME.
God the Healer—For Ever with the Lord—Reincarnation—A New Year's Motto—Epiphany—Social Evolution—Heavenly Citizenship—Mental Limitation of God—Cure for Mental Limitation—The Open Cancer of England's Life—The Amethyst—Mental Concentration—Thinking into God—Welcome to the German Pastors in Westminster Abbey at Ascensiontide—Creation, and the Book of Genesis—Life in Him—Glorify God in your Body—Theosophy—Counsels to Cadets—God's Bairns.
THE SECRET OF THE QUIET MIND
Advent—"Mysteries": A Christmas Thought—Church Parade—Dives or Lazarus, Which?—Individual Responsibility for Corporate Wrong Doing—"If Thou Hadst Known"—Animal Sunday—The Secret of the Quiet Mind—The Power of a Symbol—Mercy—What is Christianity?
THE POWER THAT WORKETH IN US
First Principles—Repentance—Repentance from Dead Works—Faith Towards God—The Laying-on of Hands—From what Centre do we Think?—The Blessed Sacrament—The Unjust Steward—The Earthquake in Sicily—A Suggestion for Lent—The Leverage Power in Man—The Departure of Loved Ones.
SANCTIFICATION BY THE TRUTH
God's Truth—Limiting the Holy One-The Awakening—Motherhood in God—The Origin of Man—Wheat and Tares—Ought the Clergy to Criticise the Bible?—The Obligation of the Sabbath—Nelson and Trafalgar—The Bishop of London's Fund—Joint Heirs with Christ—Virtue—Knowledge—Self-Control—Patience—Godliness—Brotherly Kindness—Our Father, which art in Heaven—Hallowed be Thy Name—Thy Kingdom Come—Thy Will be Done—Give us this Day our Daily Bread—Forgive us our Trespasses—Lead us not into Temptation—Thine is the Kingdom.
NEW (?) THEOLOGY
New (?) Theology—Soul-Hunger—The Pre-Natal Promise—Where to Find the Lord—The Storm—Praying for the Departed—The Doctrine of the Holy Unity—Hades—Truth—Shallowness—Assurance—Demonology—Our Mother in Heaven—The Visible Church—The Limits of Forgiveness—St. Simon and St. Jude—The Atonement—Auto-Suggestion—O.H.M.S.—Phariseeism—Advent: S.P.G.—Advent: Incarnation—Advent: The Bible—Advent: The Woman Clothed with the Sun.
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Apples of Gold
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