lead the mind to contemplate the subject as represented
by that predicate; in other words, it limits our conception for the time
being to that particular aspect of the subject. Hence every predicate,
however extensive, implies some limitation of the subject. But the ideal
subject, the absolutely free self, is, by the very hypothesis, without
limitation; and, therefore, no predicate can be attached to it. It
stands as a declaration of its own Being without any statement of what
that Being consists in, and therefore it says of itself, not "I am this
or that," but simply I am. No predicate can be added, because the only
commensurate predicate would be the enumeration of Infinity. Therefore,
both logically and grammatically, the only possible statement of a fully
liberated being is made in the words I am.

I need hardly remind my readers of the frequency with which Jesus
employed these emphatic words. In many cases the translators have added
the word "He," but they have been careful, by putting it in italics, to
show that it is not in the original. As grammarians and theologians they
thought something more was wanted to complete the sense, and they
supplied it accordingly; but if we would get at the very words as the
Master himself spoke them, we must strike out this interpolation. And as
soon as we have done so there flashes into light the identity of his
statement with that made to Moses at the burning bush, where the full
significance of the words is so obvious that the translators were
compelled to leave the place of the predicate in that seeming emptiness
which comes from filling all things.

Seen thus, a marvellous light shines forth from the instruction of the
Great Teacher: for in whatever sense we may regard him as a Great
Exception to the weak and limited aspect of humanity with which we are
only too familiar, we must all agree that his mission was not to render
mankind hopeless by declaring the path of advance barred against them,
but "to give light to them that sit in darkness," and liberty to them
that are bound, by proclaiming the unlimited possibilities that are in
man waiting only to be called forth by knowledge of the Truth. And if we
suppose any personal reference in his words, it can, therefore, be only
as the Great Example of what man has it in him to become, and not as the
example of something which man can never hope to be; an Exception,
truly, to mankind as we see them now, but the Exception that prov