The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental ScienceTroward, T. (Thomas)
Religion
The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science
Troward, T. (Thomas)
New Thought
It is an enduring truth, which can never be altered, that every infraction
of the Law of Nature must carry its punitive consequences with it. We can
never get beyond the range of cause and effect. There is no escaping from
the law of punishment, except by knowledge. If we know a law of Nature and
work with it, we shall find it our unfailing friend, ever ready to serve
us, and never rebuking us for past failures; but if we ignorantly or
wilfully transgress it, it is our implacable enemy, until we again become
obedient to it; and therefore the only redemption from perpetual pain and
servitude is by a self-expansion which can grasp infinitude itself. How is
this to be accomplished? By our progress to that kind and degree of
intelligence by which we realize the inherent _personalness_ of the divine
all-pervading Life, which is at once the Law and the Substance of all that
is. Well said the Jewish rabbis of old, "The Law is a Person." When we once
realize that the universal Life and the universal Law are one with the
universal Personalness, then we have established the pillar Boaz as the
needed complement to Jachin; and when we find the common point in which
these two unite, we have raised the Royal Arch through which we may
triumphantly enter the Temple. We must dissociate the Universal
Personalness from every conception of individuality. The universal can
never be the individual: that would be a contradiction in terms. But
because the universal personalness is the root of all individual
personalities, it finds its highest expression in response to those who
realize its personal nature. And it is this recognition that solves the
seemingly insoluble paradox. The only way to attain that knowledge of the
Infinite Law which will change the Via Dolorosa into the Path of Joy is to
embody in ourselves a _principle_ of knowledge commensurate with the
infinitude of that which is to be known; and this is accomplished by
realizing that, infinite as the law itself, is a universal Intelligence in
the midst of which we float as in a living ocean. Intelligence without
individual personality, but which, in producing us, concentrates itself
into the personal individualities which we are. What should be the relation
of such an intelligence towards us? Not one of favouritism: not any more
than the Law can it respect one person above another, for itself is the
root and support for each alike. Not one of refusal to our advances; for
without individuality it can have no personal object of its own to conflict
with ours; and since it is itself the origin of all individual
intelligence, it cannot be shut off by inability to understand. By the very
terms of its being, therefore, this infinite, underlying, all-producing
Mind must be ready immediately to respond to all who realize their true
relation to it. As the very principle of Life itself it must be infinitely
susceptible to feeling, and consequently it will reproduce with absolute
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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