Though I have repeatedly spoken on the words of the Epistle for the fourth Sunday after Easter, I simply cannot pass them by now. They illuminate conspicuously the thesis that we were "thought-forms" in the womb of Infinite Mind before we were "body-forms" in this terrestrial school, and they affirm the closeness of our intimacy with Infinite Mind and the obviousness of our life's duty. Grant the axiom that the power of Infinite Mind to realize in us, and express through us, and externalize love in the circumstances of our life, is strictly conditioned by our appreciation of what Infinite Mind is in Itself, then the more familiar, the more reverently tender, our estimate of Originating Spirit, the more will It be able to manifest in our lives.
St. James in the words I have quoted has suggested to us a conception of Infinite Creative Mind so exalted, so metaphysical, and yet so personal, that, if by spiritual consciousness we can grasp it, we possess the highest possible estimate of the All-Conscious Life-Principle whence we came. St. James says: "He brought us forth with the Word," "He willed us forth from Himself by the Logos." In the Greek there is, of course, no personal pronoun, and, indeed, it is a paradox to put the masculine personal pronoun before this Greek word, apekúêsen, a word used, and only used, for the birth of a child from its mother; it has no other meaning. Imagine the motherly tenderness of this metaphor. Can it be used by accident? Does it not suggest the words: "Can a woman forget her sucking child that she should not have compassion upon the son of her womb?" Can Infinite Mind forget the individual life-centre which has come forth from its creative thought-womb? You say this is emotion, this is sentiment. Quite so; that is exactly what is needed; our relations to Originating Mind are too formal, too cold, too perfunctory, too theological.
The Mother-Soul, apekúêsen, "brought us forth," "bore us," body-formed us, that by separation we might come to know our Parentage as we could never have known it if we had remained in the womb of Creative Mind, just as between human child and mother there can be no conscious cognizing intercourse till they are separated.
I pray that I may realize how profoundly this inspired metaphor of St. James reaches into the deep things of God. It proves that the irrevocability of Divine Immanence in man is not the product of human speculation, but an authoritative revelation. As the child in the womb receives the nature of the mother, and is born into the world bearing that nature, part of the mother, a repetition of the mother, so have we come into this world with a Divine nature within us, which is our real self, our eternal humanity. It is true for us, when it is not yet true to us, that we are the offspring of the Infinite Parent-Spirit by a process more intimate than anything implied by the word "creation."
What a glorious confidence ought to be inspired by this assurance! How it ought to alter our outlook upon life! The nature and perfections of God, as Omnipotent Love and Wisdom, are germinally within us, and are gradually advancing mankind, by an agency ultimately irresistible, to a more and ever more perfect condition. Based on this proposition of St. James, final restitution stands upon an impregnable foundation; the terrifying problem of evil, while it remains as an urgent motive for action, loses its power to perplex. As an Infinite Motherliness is the sole producing agent of all that is, and as all that is must have been in the thought-womb of Infinite Motherliness before coming into existence, the whole mystery of the dark side of life must be within the purpose of the eternal order, and there can be no independent rival to the Author of the Universe. Again, this amazing revelation of the Creative Motherliness should help us in realizing the oneness of humanity. It should stimulate us to generous strivings for better social conditions and more brotherly relations between man and man. It ought to make impossible the international jealousies which provoke taunts and defiances between European nations which ultimately issue in the misery and wickedness of war. Above all, it should impress upon us the dignity, the priceless dignity, of every individual human life, as drawn directly from the Originating Spirit.
I desire to apply this thought. I will take myself. I ask, "What am I?" Now, don't imagine that you honour God by calling yourself a poor worm and a miserable sinner, whatever you may justly feel; it is gravely discourteous to the Supreme Source of your being. Say: "I am a human life, a personal spirit, body-formed into terrestrial birth. I recognize that I have a double consciousness, that two distinct planes of thought and initiative compose my life: the one is the natural or the animal man, the product of evolution through the operation of the Cosmic Mind; the other is the spiritual man, the essential inner nature, equipped with all the potentialities and the qualities of the Infinite Creative Mother-Soul. In the recognition of this duality lies the wisdom of life; in the reconciliation of these two planes of consciousness lies the battle of life; and in the supremacy of the higher plane of consciousness lies the victory of life. I recognize my limitations, and I regretfully acknowledge my many defeats."
Upon what does victory depend? It depends upon our use of our will-power in constraining our mental faculty to rise above the mere sense-impressions of our lower consciousness, and intensify upon the eternal fact of our oneness with the Infinite Life from which we have come forth as a child comes from its mother's womb. St. James puts it perfectly clearly. He does not perplex us with theological casuistry or schemes of salvation; he just bids us use our Divine heredity. He says Infinite Mind has given birth to you by the Logos, the Word. Creative Motherliness has "brought you forth (apekúêsen) by the Logos," wherefore "receive with meekness the 'Logos Emphutos,' the 'inborn Word,' 'the hereditary Divine nature,' which is able to save your souls." "With meekness"—that is, with receptivity. Mentally practise Divine self-realization, become conscious that the Logos, which is the mystic Christ, the image and nature of the Mother-God, is within you, "inborn." Be receptive to its promptings, acknowledge it, recognize it, realize it, appeal to it; put away purposely what St. James calls "all superfluity of naughtiness"—an expression which each must interpret for himself. Strengthen it by inhibiting wrong thoughts, by secret communion with it, and it will rapidly evolve, and as it grows it will externalize in the conditions of your life, it will become more and more a power in the affairs of your daily duty, it will build up your character, it will bring you into right relations with your fellow-men, and make you kind to others. As it awakens the nature of the Infinite Mother-Soul within you it will teach you what is God's ideal of humanity—namely, that God's true son is not one perfect man, though one perfect Man alone realized the ideal, but the whole multitudinous race of men, of which race God is the Father, the Mother, the Soul, the Glory, and the Eternity.
Now, how do I know this? How can I be certain of this? How do I know that the "Logos Emphutos," the inherited nature from the prolific Mother-Spirit, is within me and "able to save my soul"? I might have arrived at the knowledge by induction, as did Charles Kingsley when he said that logic required him to believe that there must have been, or will be, an Incarnation. I arrive at it by Revelation; the central figure of the Christian Revelation proves to me incontestably the fact.
This "Logos Emphutos," this inborn Word, this hereditary witness of the close and tender relationship between ourselves and Creative Motherliness, this "urge" of the Creative Mother-Soul, is a universal principle. It is not easy to define it; but what existence is to being, what the spoken word is to thought, what the lightning-flash is to electricity, that the Logos is to the Creative Mother-Soul—its expression, its activity, its self-utterance. The Logos is the quality of Originating Mind that forms, upholds, sustains all that is. "Without the Logos was not anything made that was made"; "in the Logos all things consist." "By the Logos," says St. Paul, "the heavens were made." The Logos is the one life in all, the cosmic mind in all—in the mineral, the crystal, the lower order of animal life, and above all, in its highest function, it is the dominating power in the soul of man, and in the angels and archangels of the higher spheres of light and life.
It has always been so. The early Aryans, 1700 B.C., knew it; but generations of wrong thinking have darkened human minds to their Divine origin as possessors of the "Logos Emphutos." Infinite Mind, therefore, "in the fulness of time," specialized the "Logos Emphutos," for purposes of recognition and observation, in one perfect life-centre. We call this "The" Incarnation, as if the Lord Jesus alone were the Incarnate Son. If so, He would profit us little. He could in no sense be our model and our brother. Incarnation is a universal Principle, of which universal Principle the Lord Jesus is the specialization in absolute perfection. "The Logos," says St. John, "was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory full of grace and truth." That is, the universal principle of the Divinity of humanity, as the outbirth of the Mother God, was manifested in Jesus of Nazareth in such full-orbed completeness that the qualities and perfections of the Parent God were displayed in Him, and the full result upon human character of this Divine Immanence, the realization of which had before been vague and without outline, was shown forth in Him, that men might know what power was in them, and what the indwelling Spirit of God was making of them. This embodiment of the Logos, called Jesus, did not stay long in the limitations of the flesh, but long enough to manifest the splendid Divine potentiality of a man in whom the Logos rules. The human beings that He came to illuminate killed His body. Plato long ago prophesied that if a perfect man appeared the world would crucify Him, and Plato was right. And the Gospel records His farewell. He says: "It is expedient for you that I go away."