There lies a something at the back of the correspondences of the
spiritual organism--just as there lies a something at the back of the
natural correspondence. To say that Life is a correspondence is only to
express the partial truth. There is something behind. Life manifests
itself in correspondences. But what determines them? The organism
exhibits a variety of correspondences. What organizes them? As in the
natural, so in the spiritual, there is a Principle of Life. We cannot
get rid of that term. However clumsy, however provisional, however much
a mere cloak for ignorance, Science as yet is unable to dispense with
the idea of a Principle of Life. We must work with the word till we get
a better. Now that which determines the correspondence of the spiritual
organism is a Principle of Spiritual Life. It is a new and Divine
Possession. He that hath the Son hath Life; conversely, he that hath
Life hath the Son. And this indicates at once the quality and the
quantity of the correspondence which is to bridge the grave. He that
hath Life hath _the Son_. He possesses the Spirit of the Son. That
Spirit is, so to speak, organized within him by the Son. It is the
manifestation of the new nature--of which more anon. The fact to note at
present is that this is not an organic correspondence, but a spiritual
correspondence. It comes not from generation, but from regeneration. The
relation between the spiritual man and his Environment is, in
theological language, a filial relation. With the new Spirit, the filial
correspondence, he knows the Father and this is Life Eternal. This is
not only the real relation, but the only possible relation: "Neither
knoweth any man the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son
will reveal Him." And this on purely natural grounds. It takes the
Divine to know the Divine--but in no more mysterious sense than it takes
the human to understand the human. The analogy, indeed, for the whole
field here has been finely expressed already by Paul: "What man," he
asks, "knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in
him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.
Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which
is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of
God." [1]
[1] 1 Cor. ii. 11, 12.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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