how we put the "not" for the fact than our being unable to conceive of God except as having a “substance," as something besides Love. We lie under this necessity by the "not" that is in our intellect; or, as I should say, that constitutes intellect. Of course we must put the "not" for the fact, when only by virtue of that "not" can we think or conceive at all. : God is light what a new meaning is in this now. God is one; and yet a trinity. A trinity by the "not;' a trinity to our perception at first. The trinity is from the unity, not the union made up by the trinity. Yes, God is light, and He exists in His creatures as colours. As colours are to light, so are all creatures to one Being; various "nots; " yet all determined by one law, all love. So from all this phenomenal or physical we get at the fact by excluding the "not," by adding. Yet then the physical will not remain as such, any more than the colour, as such, in light. Take away the "not," and the physical is gone. "Not that I would be unclothed, but clothed upon." To be freed from the physical it only needs that more Being should be given us. For the existence of colour a peculiar "not" is necessary; not less light, but a "not" of that which is essential to the being of light. All the variety and relations of things are in the conception of colour. And see the good and rightness. Would we have all white light and no colour? We are in such a relation to light that we can see the "not" aright, can see how it is essential to the good. What were light without colour, without this interference, this self-sacrifice, which produces colour? Light were no longer light if there were no not-light. God would be no longer God if there were no not-God, no creature. In colour nothing is but light; it is all light: so the creatures are nothing but God. Colour is from light by interference, by itself causing itself not to be. So the creature is from God by His self-sacrifice and it is essential to the very being of God that it should be so, even as colour is essential to light. From interference of the various coloured rays come inexhaustible combinations and variety. So by self-sacrifice of creatures other creatures are. Also darkness, sometimes-sin. All creatures are imperfect, coloured, have a "not" in them, in reference to the true actual. God is not said to be sound. Sound is not one, as light is. Is not sound more a representation of the physical? It is one out of many; light, colour is many out of one. A kind of inversion is here, the same fact seen oppositely. Is not sound most parallel to the physical, light most parallel to the spiritual? Is it thus indeed that, as physical, sound is most to us? The ear is the most perfect. Are the less developed senses still more related to the spiritual? We do not see the light, as we hear sound; we only see things by it. And only that which is from the "not," only colour, do we perceive, not light itself. That is nothing to us, like darkness. When the light is not present we cannot see; but we do not perceive the light itself—" Whom no man can see," yet" in whom we live." Is there something in the conditions under which light forms colours, illustrating God and the creature? God who sees all as one, sees love alone; the evil is not in the universe, as the colour is not in the light. We are selfish, but the Fact, which we have not and are not, is Love. Looking at Christ we see that it is so; He shows us the Infinite, the One, the only Absolute. It is this, and only this. With our eyes opened by Him we can see that it is so. With that damnation taken from our hearts the shadow of death is gone from the universe. Loving, we can see that it is Love; we know it, knowing God. I cannot admit that God must be personal to the heart. To the intellect He must be; and this probably misleads us. We have not thought of Him as Love, as He is, but only as personal. The heart delights in Love too great and pure to be personal; in eternal Love, which when manifested to us in time is self-sacrifice. "Mere reason" cannot be tolerated in religion, even as it cannot in the sanctities of home. For religion is truly the home-feeling of the universe. The Church is the Home. Here comes feeble, weary, jaded humanity, to seek its rest. Here, called back from the toil and glare and coldness of the outer life, it is gathered into a family. Can mere cold reason intrude here, and not find itself on a foreign shore, not be seen hateful? A higher faculty, a better and more human insight, even the insight of a true sympathy, reign there, and give the whole tone to the place. VI. THE BIBLE. Nature interprets the Bible—The work of the Bible is to give man life -What death means-Inspiration-No need for inspiration-To have life is to be inspired-We must not be afraid of the Bible— The source of the Bible's power-We put the divine element away from the present-The difference between physical and spiritual is one of perception-Redemption cannot be partial-Religion must not appeal to the selfish emotions-The mistake of our Christianity-The supposition of a physical hell-Hell cannot be remorse -The world accounted for by God's act and man's death-Christ does not save from the punishment of sin-What God's hell is— Heaven is love-Christ's work will cease-"This is My body" shows the spiritual nature of all existence-Prayer changes, not the fact, but the phenomenon-Christianity is not a theology but a fact Our Christianity is dead-How Christianity may be surpassed. I HAVE found that the nearer I have arrived to the Bible, the nearer I have been to the truth. But also I note that it is not so much by studying the Bible directly as indirectly through Nature that I thus come into unison with it. The Bible needs interpreting by Nature, even as Nature by it. Having our minds filled with the spirit of the Bible, and looking so at Nature, we see a truth and significance in the Bible we should never otherwise have discerned. We can in fact see and understand nothing by itself; we must go beyond and away from everything in order to grasp it properly; we want a key to it; and with the Bible as with all other things. Looking at it alone, we cannot see it, we take phenomenal views, and read passages over and over again which most distinctly declare facts, without seeing them, or seeing them as just the opposite. As the Bible is the interpreter of Nature, so is Nature the interpreter of the Bible. I believe few people's minds have ever been more filled with the Bible than mine has been since I began to see the deep truth of Nature. It brought me, unconsciously, to the Bible, and has held me to it ever since. Seeing the truths of Nature, my eyes were opened to truths plainly stated, yet hidden, in the Bible, and which I believe I might have read the Bible endlessly without seeing, had not my eyes been opened by Nature. We entirely misconceive the Bible when we think it is of so much consequence to understand it aright, or wonder that it is so easy to misunderstand it; alike for essential points, as we term them, and unessential. The essential point is that it should give us eternal life, make us love God. This is its work; if it does this, it does all that is necessary-it saves us. The understanding it is a matter of development; it takes place gradually in the world's intellectual progress; man's salvation does not depend on that, but on his feeling that God sacrifices Himself for him, and giving himself thereby to God, which may be felt and done under very many different forms of thought. We have oneness with God in Christ by this mutual love. It is well to understand the Bible, and even to understand Nature, but it cannot be done at will; it is a life, and it takes time and means: but the drawing of life from the Bible is so plain that a fool cannot err therein, it is in loving. The God |