The Directing Power of the Word is _inherent_ in the Word, and we cannot
alter it. _It is the Law_ OF _the Law_, and so, like any other law, it
cannot be broken, but its action can be inverted. We cannot deprive the
Word of its efficacy, but our denial of it as the Word of Expansion is
equivalent to an affirmation of it as the Word of Contraction, and so
the Law acts towards us as a Limitation. But the fault is not in the
Law, but in the way we use the Word. Now if the reader grasps this, he
will see that the less we trouble ourselves about what appear to us to
be the visible and calculable causes of things, the freer we must become
from the burden of anxiety; and as we advance step by step to a clearer
recognition of the true order of Cause and Effect, so all intermediate
causes will fade from our view. Only the two extremes of the sequence of
Cause and Effect will remain in sight. First Cause, moving as the Word,
starting a sequence, and the desired result terminating it, as the Word
taking Form in Fact. The intermediate links in the chain will be there,
but they will be seen as effects, not causes. The wider the
generalization we thus make, the less we shall need to trouble about
particulars, knowing that they will form themselves by the natural
action of the Law; and the widest generalization is therefore, to state
not what we want to _have_, but what we want to _be_. The only reason we
ever want to _have_ anything, is because we think it will help us to be
something--something more than we are now; so that the "having" is only
a link in the chain of secondary causes, and may therefore be left out
of consideration, for it will come of itself through the natural
workings of the Law, set in operation by the Word as First Cause. This
principle is set forth in the statement of the Divine Name given to
Moses (Ex. iii, 13-14). The Name is simply "I AM"--it is Being, not
having--the having follows as a natural consequence of the Being; and if
it be true that we are made in the likeness and image of God, that is to
say on the same Principle, then what is the Law of the Divine nature
must be the Law of ours also--and as we awake to this we become
"partakers of the Divine Nature" (2 Pet. i, 4).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account