“Why then should you be astonished that God is present in both worlds at the same time? Is He not omnipresent? ubiquitous? Unlimited by time or space, does He not manifest Himself to his creatures in all times and in all places? Can He not, if He will, appear simultaneously to all created intelligences in all the natural and spiritual spheres He has created? “This Jesus, the Messiah, is everywhere. If you ascend into the heaven next above us, on fitting occasions you would see Him there in a more glorified form. If you mount still higher, you will only be coming nearer to Him, and behold Him in still more transcendent glory. Sometimes He appears to the angels as a Divine Man standing in the sun of the spiritual world. It was this truth, transmitted by tradition to the ancient people of Asia, which gave rise (as they fell into naturalism) to the worship of the natural sun and the adoration of fire.” At these words I seemed to see my good and generous uncle Beltrezzor bowing his head reverently to the great luminary, from which the celestial face of Jesus looked down, smiling benediction upon the childlike old man. “What you tell me,” said I, “of Christ, is so strange that at first sight it appears incomprehensible. I perceive, indeed, that if Jesus be the supreme God of the universe, He may be seen simultaneously from every stand-point in the spiritual world, in every sphere, in every society, and by every individual soul, and everywhere take on a form accommodated to the spiritual states of those who behold Him. The difficulty in my mind lies in identifying the man Jesus whom I knew in Bethany, with this sublime resemblance of Him that I see in the world of spirits; and in comprehending that they are one person leading a simultaneous life in two spheres; and, finally, that this one person is the Supreme God. “My difficulty is increased when I remember that Jesus in his earth-life is accustomed to call himself the Son of God. Although he said plainly that he and the Father were one, yet he sometimes speaks of the Father as greater than himself: of praying to the Father for his disciples; and of ascending to the Father on the consummation of his work.” “He has certainly left the impression upon his hearers that there are two persons in the Godhead; one higher, superior, interior; the other, a man among men; and that between these two there is some mystical union incomprehensible to the human mind.” “Most of his disciples accept this idea blindly, as a holy mystery. Persons of philosophic culture, who have studied Jesus as a phenomenon, regard him as a Son of God, or rather an emanation from God, in the same sense that Brahma, Osiris, Zoroaster, Moses, and Plato, are sons of God, or manifestations of divine truth. The mystical union between Father and Son is supposed to be an incorporation of the soul of man, by a life of obedience and goodness, with the essential Divine nature from which as a parent it was derived.