The Hidden Power And Other Papers upon Mental Science. Thomas Troward

order everything is seen from _within_.

      It is the thought which determines the quality of the action, and not

      _vice versa_, and since thought is free, it is at liberty to direct

      itself to the highest principles, which thus spontaneously reproduce

      themselves in the outward acts, so that both thoughts and actions are

      brought into harmony with the great eternal laws and become one in

      purpose with the Universal Mind. The man realises that he is no longer

      bound by the consequences of his former deeds, done in the time of his

      ignorance, in fact, that he never was bound by them except so far as he

      himself gave them this power by false conceptions of the truth; and thus

      recognising himself for what he really is--the expression of the

      Infinite Spirit in individual personality--he finds that he is free,

      that he is a "partaker of Divine nature," not losing his identity, but

      becoming more and more fully himself with an ever-expanding perfection,

      following out a line of evolution whose possibilities are inexhaustible.

      But there is not in all men this knowledge. For the most part they still

      look upon God as an individual Being external to themselves, and what

      the more instructed man sees to be unity of mind and identity of nature

      appear to the less advanced to be an external reconciliation between

      opposing personalities. Hence the whole range of conceptions which may

      be described as the Messianic Idea. This idea is not, as some seem to

      suppose, a misconception of the truth of Being. On the contrary, when

      rightly understood it will be found to imply the very widest grasp of

      that truth; and it is from the platform of this supreme knowledge alone

      that an idea so comprehensive in its adaptation to every class of mind

      could have been evolved. It is the translation of the relations arising

      from the deepest laws of Being into terms which can be realised even by

      the most unlearned; a translation arranged with such consummate skill

      that, as the mind grows in spirituality, every stage of advance is met

      by a corresponding unfolding of the Divine meaning; while yet even the

      crudest apprehension of the idea implied is sufficient to afford the

      required basis for an entire renovation of the man's thoughts concerning

      himself, giving him a standing ground from which to think of himself as

      no longer bound by the law of retribution for past offences, but as free

      to follow out the new law of Liberty as a child of God.

      The man's conception of the _modus operandi_ of this emancipation may

      take the form of the grossest anthropomorphism or the most childish

      notions as to the satisfaction of the Divine justice by vicarious

      substitution, but the working result will be the same. He has got what

      satisfies him as a ground for thinking of himself in a perfectly new

      light; and since the states of our subjective consciousness constitute

      the realities of our life, to afford him a convincing ground for

      _thinking_ himself free, is to make him free.

      With increasing light he may find that his first explanation of the

      _modus operandi_ was inadequate; but when he reaches this stage, further

      investigation will show him that the great truth of his liberty rests

      upon a firmer foundation than the conventional interpretation of

      traditional dogmas, and that it has its roots in the great law of

      Nature, which are never doubtful, and which can never be overturned. And

      it is precisely because their whole action has its root in the

      unchangeable laws of Mind that there exists a perpetual necessity for

      presenting to men something which they can lay hold of as a sufficient

      ground for that change of mental attitude, by which alone they can be

      rescued from the fatal circle which is figured under the symbol of the

      Old Serpent.

      The hope and adumbration of such a new principle has formed the

      substance of all religions in all ages, however misapprehended by the

      ignorant worshippers; and, whatever our individual opinions may be as to

      the historical facts of Christianity, we shall find that the great

      figure of liberated and perfected humanity which forms its centre

      fulfils this desire of all nations in that it sets forth their great

      ideal of Divine power intervening to rescue man by becoming one with

      him. This is the conception presented to us, whether we apprehend it in

      the most literally material sense, or as the ideal presentation of the

      deepest philosophic study of mental laws, or in whatever variety of ways

      we may combine these two extremes. The ultimate idea impressed upon the

      mind must always be the same: it is that there is a Divine warrant for

      knowing ourselves to be the children of God and "partakers of the Divine

      nature"; and when we thus realise that there is solid ground for

      _believing_ ourselves free, by force of this very belief we _become_

      free.

      The proper outcome of the study of the laws of spirit which constitute

      the inner side of things is not the gratification of a mere idle

      curiosity, nor the acquisition of abnormal powers, but the attainment of

      our spiritual liberty, without which no further progress is possible.

      When we have reached this goal the old things have passed away and all

      things have become new. The mystical seven days of the old creation have

      been fulfilled, and the first day of the new week dawns upon us with its

      resurrection to a new life, expressing on the highest plane that great

      doctrine of the "octave" which the science of the ancient temples traced

      through Nature, and which the science of the present day endorses,

      though ignorant of its supreme significance.

      When we have thus been made free by recognising our oneness with

      Infinite Being, we have reached the termination of the old series of

      sequences and have gained the starting-point of the new. The old

      limitations are found never to have had any existence save in our own

      misapprehension of the truth, and one by one they fall off as we advance

      into