on to this law. The evil that results is not a personal
intervention of the Universal Spirit, which would imply its entering
into specific manifestation, but it is the natural outcome of the
causes that we ourselves have set in motion. But the effect to ourselves
will be precisely the same as if they were brought about by the volition
of an adverse personality, though we may not realise that in truth the
personal element is our own. And if we are at all aware of the
wonderfully complex nature of man, and the various interweavings of
principles which unite the material body at one end of the scale to the
purely spiritual Ego at the other, we shall have some faint idea of on
how vast a field these adverse influences may operate, not being
restricted to the plane of outward manifestation, but acting equally on
those inner planes which give rise to the outer and are of a more
enduring nature.

Thus the philosophic study of Spirit, so far from affording any excuse
for laxity of conduct, adds an emphatic definiteness to the Bible
exhortation to flee from the wrath of God. But, on the other hand, it
delivers us from groundless terrors, the fear lest our repentance should
not be accepted, the fear lest we should be rejected for our inability
to subscribe to some traditional dogma, the fear of utter uncertainty
regarding the future--fears which make life bitter and the prospect of
death appalling to those who are in bondage to them. The knowledge that
we are dealing with a power which is no respecter of persons, and in
which is no variableness, which is, in fact, an unalterable Law, at
once delivers us from all these terrors.

The very unchangeableness of Law makes it certain that no amount of past
opposition to it, whether from ignorance or wilfulness, will prevent it
from working in accordance with its own beneficent and life-giving
character as soon as we quit our inverted position and place ourselves
in our true relation towards it. The laws of Nature do not harbour
revenge; and once we adapt our methods to their character, they will
work for us without taking any retrospective notice of our past errors.
The law of Spirit may be more complex than that of electricity, because,
as expressed in us, it is the law of conscious individuality; but it is
none the less a purely natural law, and follows the universal rule, and
therefore we may dismiss from our minds, as a baseless figment, the fear
of any Divine power treasuring up a