Here you stand face to face with the laws of infinite [30] Spirit, and behold for the first time the irresistible con- flict between the flesh and Spirit. You stand before the [Page 17.] awful detonations of Sinai. You hear and record the [1] thunderings of the spiritual law of Life, as opposed to the material law of death; the spiritual law of Love, as opposed to the material sense of love; the law of om- nipotent harmony and good, as opposed to any supposi- [5] titious law of sin, sickness, or death. And, before the flames have died away on this mount of revelation, like the patriarch of old, you take off your shoes—lay aside your material appendages, human opinions and doc- trines, give up your more material religion with its rites [10] and ceremonies, put off your _materia medica_ and hygiene as worse than useless—to sit at the feet of Jesus. Then, you meekly bow before the Christ, the spiritual idea that our great Master gave of the power of God to heal and to save. Then it is that you behold for the first [15] time the divine Principle that redeems man from under the curse of materialism,—sin, disease, and death. This spiritual birth opens to the enraptured understand- ing a much higher and holier conception of the supremacy of Spirit, and of man as His likeness, whereby man reflects [20] the divine power to heal the sick. A material or human birth is the appearing of a mor- tal, not the immortal man. This birth is more or less prolonged and painful, according to the timely or un- timely circumstances, the normal or abnormal material [25] conditions attending it. With the spiritual birth, man’s primitive, sinless, spiritual existence dawns on human thought,—through the travail of mortal mind, hope deferred, the perishing pleasure and accumulating pains of sense,—by which [30] one loses himself as matter, and gains a truer sense of Spirit and spiritual man. [Page 18.] The purification or baptismals that come from Spirit, [1] develop, step by step, the original likeness of perfect man, and efface the mark of the beast. “Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth;” therefore rejoice in tribulation, and wel- [5] come these spiritual signs of the new birth under the law and gospel of Christ, Truth.