The lowest things are often seen to signify the things most high. A parable, _paraballo_, is that which "throws before" us such concrete imagery as best serves to foreshadow and to fit the mind to understand a certain abstract principle. As we become disciples, "learners" of the Truth, we find it speaks to us only through such emblems as enable us to reason from the things we do already know to those concerning which we wish to be informed. The words of Jesus went forth full-freighted with vitality. They were truly spirit and life, because charged with a virtue that can only come from a soul in submission to the law by his lips enunciated. Hence we see why, in the mystical language with which the Gospel of St. John begins, he is called the Logos, Reason or Word of God, from God and one with God, because he reveals the divine thought concerning man, inherently perfect from the first, but requiring time and space for its outworking. That human individuality may be maintained, man is uplifted only over the fulcrum of his own will. This volitional power is the ray in us of that Creative Energy whose name Jehovah signifies, _I will be what I will to be_. Thus, then, oneness with God is not sameness with God, nor the absorption of human personality in the Infinite Being. It is simply a state to be reached in our progressive creation where we will come to a knowledge of the laws of life, and will consciously co-operate with those divine decrees governing the origin, nature, and destiny of the soul. To illustrate the possibility of such achievement and exemplify the way of its attainment, was the mission of the Christ. But it has been so much easier to idolatrously worship his person than to embody his principles, that ceremonials and doctrines have been substituted for the life he lived. This is a sufficient reason for the manifestly unsaved condition that the so-called Christian world still exhibits in all manner of bigotry and disease, social unrest and iniquity.