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

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 clearer light. We find that the Life-Spirit we seek is _in

ourselves_; and, having this for our centre, our relation to all else

becomes part of a wondrous living Order in which every part works in

sympathy with the whole, and the whole in sympathy with every part, a

harmony wide as infinitude, and in which there are no limitations save

those imposed by the Law of Love.

I have endeavoured in this short series of articles to sketch briefly

the principal points of relation between Spirit in ourselves and in our

surroundings. This subject has employed the intelligence of mankind from

grey antiquity to the present day, and no one thinker can ever hope to

grasp it in all its amplitude. But there are certain broad principles

which we must all grasp, however we may specialise our studies in

detail, and these I have sought to indicate, with what degree of success

the reader must form his own opinion. Let him, however, lay firm hold of

this one fundamental truth, and the evolution of further truth from it

is only a question of time--that there is only One Spirit, however many

the modes of its manifestations, and that "the Unity of the Spirit is

the Bond of Peace."

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