"The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable." When we call this righteous judge into action, we may find our standards of right and wrong undergoing rapid changes, but if we hold steadily to the Lord as our supreme guide, we shall be led into all righteousness.
Many persons doubt that there is an infinite law of justice working in all things; let them now take heart and know that this law has not worked in their affairs previously because they have not "called" it into activity in the creative center of the soul. When we call our inner forces into action, the universal law begins its great work in us, and all the laws both great and small fall into line and work for us. We do not make the law; the law is, and it was established for our benefit before the world was formed. Jesus did not make the law of health when He healed the multitudes; He simply called it into expression by getting it recognized by those who had disregarded its existence. Back of the judge is the law out of which he reads. This fact is recognized even by those who are intrusted with the carrying out of man-made laws. Blackstone says that the judgment, though pronounced and awarded by the judges, is not their determination or sentence, but the determination and sentence of the law. So we who are carrying forward the fulfillment of the law as inaugurated by Jesus should be wise in recognizing that the law in all its fullness already exists right here, waiting for us to identify ourselves with it and thus allow it to fulfill its righteousness in us and in all the world.
"I am the vine, ye are the branches." In this symbol Jesus illustrated a law universal to organisms. The vine-building law holds good in man's body. The center of identity is in the head and its activities are distributed through the nerves and the nerve fluids to the various parts of the body. The Twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ represent the twelve primal subcenters in man's organism. A study of man's mind and body reveals this law.
Even physiologists, who regard the body as a mere physical organism, find certain aggregations of cells which they have concluded are for no other purpose than for the distribution of intelligence. To one who studies man as mind, these aggregations of cells are regarded as the avenues through which certain fundamental ideas are manifested. We name these ideas the twelve powers of man, identified in man's consciousness as the Twelve Apostles of Jesus, having twelve houses, villages, cities, or centers in the body through which they act.
Wisdom includes judgment, discrimination, intuition, and all the departments of mind that come under the head of knowing. The house or throne of this wise judge is at the nerve center called the solar plexus. The natural man refers to it as the pit of the stomach. The presiding intelligence at this center knows what is going on, especially in the domain of consciousness pertaining to the body and its needs. Chemistry is its specialty; it also knows all that pertains to the sensations of soul and body. In its highest phase it makes union with the white light of Spirit functioning in the top brain. At the solar plexus also takes place the union between love and wisdom. The apostle who has charge of this center is called James. Volumes might be written describing the activities by which this power builds and preserves man's body. Every bit of food that we take into our stomachs must be intelligently and chemically treated at this center before it can be distributed to the many members waiting for this center's wise judgment to supply them with material to build bone, muscle, nerve, eye, ear, hair, nails--in fact every part of the organism. When we study the body and its manifold functions we see how much depends on the intelligence and ability of James, who functions through the solar plexus.
When man begins to follow Jesus in the regeneration he finds that he must co-operate with the work of his disciples or faculties. Heretofore they have been under the natural law; they have been fishers in the natural world. Through his recognition of his relation as the Son of God, man co-operates in the original creative law. He calls his faculties out of their materiality into their spirituality. This process is symbolized by Jesus' calling His apostles.
To call a disciple is mentally to recognize that power; it is to identify oneself with the intelligence working at a center--for example, judgment, at the solar plexus. To make this identification, one must realize one's unity with God through Christ, Christ being the Son-of-God idea always existing in man's higher consciousness. This recognition of one's sonship and unity with God is fundamental in all true growth. Christ is the door into the kingdom of God. Jesus once spoke of the kingdom as a sheepfold. If man tries to get into this kingdom except through the door of the Christ, he is a thief and a robber. We can call our twelve powers into spiritual activity only through Christ. If we try to effect this end by any other means, we shall have an abnormal, chaotic, and unlawful soul unfoldment.
Having identified oneself with God through Christ, one should center one's attention at the pit of the stomach and affirm:
The wisdom of the Christ Mind here active is through my recognition of Christ identified and unified with God. Wisdom, judgment, discrimination, purity, and power are here now expressing themselves in the beauty of holiness. The justice, righteousness, and peace of the Christ Mind now harmonize, wisely direct, and surely establish the kingdom of God in His temple, my body. There are no more warring, contentious thoughts in me, for the peace of God is here established, and the lion and the lamb (courage and innocence), sit on the throne of dominion with wisdom and love
Chapter V
Regenerating Love
WE CANNOT get a right understanding of the relation that the manifest bears to the unmanifest, until we set clearly before ourselves the character of original Being. So long as we think of God in terms of personality, just so long shall we fail to understand the relation existing between man and God.
Then let us dismiss the thought that God is a man, or even a man exalted far above human characteristics. So long as the concept of a man-God exists in consciousness, there will be lack of room for the true concept, which is that God is First Cause, the Principle from which flow all manifestations. To understand the complex conditions under which the human family exists, we must analyze Being and its creative processes.
Inherent in the Mind of Being are twelve fundamental ideas, which in action appear as primal creative forces. It is possible for man to ally himself with and to use these original forces, and thereby co-operate with the creative law, but in order to do this he must detach himself from the forces and enter into the consciousness of the idea lying back of them.
In Scripture the primal ideas in the Mind of Being are called the "sons of God." That the masculine "son" is intended to include both masculine and feminine is borne out by the context, and, in fact, the whole history of the race. Being itself must be masculine and feminine, in order to make man in its image and likeness, "male and female."
Analyzing these divine ideas, or sons of God, we find that they manifest characteristics that we readily identify as masculine or feminine. For example, life is a son of God, while love is a daughter of God. Intelligence is a son of God, and imagination is a daughter of God. The evidence that sex exists in the vegetable and animal worlds is so clear that it is never questioned, but we have not so clearly discerned that ideas are also male and female. The union of the masculine and feminine forces in man is most potent in the affectional nature, and that these forces should endure and never be separated by external causes was laid down as a law by Jesus. He said, as recorded in Mark 10:6-9
From the beginning of the creation, Male and female made he them. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shallbecome one flesh; so that they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.
We should clearly understand that each of the various ideas, or sons and daughters of God, has identity and in creation is striving with divine might to bring forth its inherent attributes. It is to these ideas, or sons
