Now, before we consider what He meant by that saying, just brush the dust off this foundation-stone—the dust of accumulated dogmatic limitations, and theological "schemes of salvation," and all the rest. The Christian revelation is a complete and intelligible philosophy, and it secures your position. Infinite Mind, brooding Creative Motherliness, has expressed itself by materializing its thoughts in the phenomena of the universe, and body-forming its highest thought in human beings. That man is the highest expression and self-realization of the Creative Mother-mind, is the guarantee that man's consciousness mirrors the infinite Mother-mind as the dewdrops mirror the sun. It follows that if there were an absolutely perfect human being, that human being would be so God-inhabited that he would be able to say, "I and Infinite Mind are one; he that hath seen Me hath seen Infinite Mind." Now Jesus is this perfect human being. The Divine ideal was specialized, completely expressed, in His individual personality. The Divinity of Jesus means that He was the full embodiment of the qualities and principles of the Creative Motherliness, the Infinite Spirit. So in Jesus, God is no longer a vague abstraction, because I can interpret the Universal Mind through the specialization in Jesus:
"Space and time, O Lord, that show Thee
Oft in power, veiling good,
Are too vast for us to know Thee
As our trembling spirits would;
But in Jesus, yes, in Jesus, Father, Thou art understood."
But more; in Jesus I can also understand myself. Infinite Mind sent Jesus to be a complete full-orbed specimen of what I am potentially myself. The principles that He embodied, the "Logos Emphutos" that became flesh in Him, are not peculiar to Him, but universal, so that we can claim identity with Him. St. John says: "As He is, so are we in this world"; St. Paul says: "The Christ"—that is, the "Logos Emphutos"—"is in you the hope of glory"; and He Himself said: "I am in the Father, and ye in Me, and I in you."
That is why He said: "It is expedient for you that I go away." He came to teach that the "inborn Word" is universal; it is the Mother-God repeating Itself in all Souls; and if this truth were to be realized and appreciated, it was expedient that the visible Personality in which it was specialized should be removed, in order that men might mentally universalize the manifestation, and learn that this spirit of Sonship, this Divine nature, this distribution of the Creative Being, belongs to all men, as the hope of their existence, the ideal of their life, the leaven of their humanity, the assurance of their perfection.
He did not really leave us. He said that if He did not go the Comforter could not come. He is the Comforter. He identified Himself completely with the coming of the Holy Ghost; He speaks of Pentecost as His second coming; He says, "I will not leave you comfortless," "I will come unto you"; and St. Paul, in 2 Cor. iii. 17, in emphatic terms, declares, "Now the Lord"—meaning the Lord Jesus Christ—"is that Spirit."
Our Lord also said, "When He is come He will convict the world of sin." Do you know something of this? He meant that when Divine Sonship, the inborn Word that was specialized in Him, begins to stir in a man, to make itself felt, there is a new principle in him which cannot tolerate the lower nature, but torments it. Until the "Logos Emphutos" is awakened there is no real consciousness of sin. Philo taught that where the Logos had not stirred in a man there was no moral responsibility; but "when He has come," when something has taught you that you came out from the Mother-Soul, that you are an expression of God, how you hate yourself for past sin; and if from deeply ingrained habit you are sometimes now selfish, irritable, unkind, impure, the punishment comes quickly in the painful sense of disturbed harmony, and you are miserable till restored. This is "the Spirit of Jesus," "the Christ in you," the "Logos Emphutos," call it the Holy Ghost if you like, convicting you of sin.
One final thought. This very intimate relationship to the Mother-Soul unfolds the limitless capacities of our being. All the power of the Kingdom of Heaven is at our disposal if we will mentally claim it. Remember, the moral issues of life are mental. It is a fundamental law of conscious life that by metaphysical telepathy we can have immediate communion with Infinite Life. Our minds can focus the Divine Presence, and we may speak to the world's Creator as intimately as a child would prattle to its mother. Then consider what ought our moral life to be? Not obedience to a conventional category of social maxims, but an expression of the Infinite Mind, and our daily prayer should be, "May my conscious mind perceive that Thy life, Thy thoughts, Thy spirit are within me, and that Thou art seeking to realize Thyself and manifest Thy love through me."
Again, inasmuch as the whole must include its parts, and as we can mentally attract the attention of the whole, we can most assuredly attract the attention of any beloved individual personality in the spirit world by wireless thoughtography; not drawing them down into these denser elements that they have left, but lifting our spirit-self into the ethereal element where they abide, for when we are realizing God we are summoning them. That is a communion that breaks down the barrier between two worlds, and enables us to say, "With angels and archangels, and with all the company of Heaven, we laud and magnify Thy glorious name; evermore praising Thee, and saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory; glory be to Thee, O Lord most High."
Last Words.
"We live, if ye stand fast in the Lord."—1 THESS. iii. 8.