The Doré Lectures: Being Sunday addresses at the Doré Gallery, London, given in connection with the Higher Thought CentreTroward, T. (Thomas)
Religion
The Doré Lectures: Being Sunday addresses at the Doré Gallery, London, given in connection with the Higher Thought Centre
Troward, T. (Thomas)
New Thought
Now if we keep steadily in mind that, though the purpose, or Law
of Tendency, or the Originating Spirit must always be universal
in its nature, it must necessarily be individual in its
operation, we shall see that this universal purpose can only be
accomplished through the instrumentality of specific means. This
results from the fundamental proposition that the Universal can
only work on the plane of the Particular by becoming the
individual and particular; and when we grasp the conception that
the merely generic operation of the Creative Law has now brought
the human race as far as it can, that is to say it has completely
evolved the merely natural GENUS home, it follows that if any
further development is to take place it can only be by the
co-operation of the individual himself. Now it is the spread of
this individual co-operation that the forward movement of the
Spirit is leading us to, and it is the gradual extension of this
universal principle that is alluded to in the prophecy of Daniel
regarding the Stone cut out without hands that spreads until it
fills the whole earth (Daniel ii. 34 and 44). According to the
interpretation given by Daniel, this Stone is the emblem of a
spiritual Kingdom, and the identity of the Stone and the Shepherd
indicates that the Kingdom of the Stone must be also the Kingdom
of the Shepherd; and the Master, who identified himself with both
the Stone and the Shepherd, emphatically declared that this
Kingdom was, in its essence, an interior Kingdom--"the Kingdom of
Heaven is within you." We must look for its foundation therefore,
in a spiritual principle or mental law inherent in the
constitution of all men but waiting to be brought into fuller
development by more accurate compliance with its essential
requirements; which is precisely the method by which science has
evoked powers from the laws of nature which were undreamt of in
former ages; and in like manner the recognition of our true
relation to the Universal Spirit, which is the source of all
individual being, must lead to an advance both for the race and
for the individual such as we can at present scarcely form the
faintest idea of, but which we dimly apprehend through the
intuition and speak of as the New Order. The approach of this New
Order is everywhere making itself vaguely felt; it is, as the
French say, in the air, and the very vagueness and mystery
attending it is causing a feeling of unrest as to what form it
may assume. But to the student of Spiritual Law this should not
be the case. He knows that the Form is always the expression of
the Spirit, and therefore, since he is in touch with the forward
movement of the Spirit, he knows that he himself will always be
harmoniously included in any form of development which the Great
Forward Movement may take. This is the practical and personal
benefit arising from the realization of the Principle which is
symbolized under the two-fold metaphor of the Shepherd and the
Stone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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