he more we endeavour to foster its growth by seeking
to grasp with our understanding the reason of these things and to
realise our knowledge in practice, the more rapidly we shall find our
lives increase in livingness--a joy to ourselves, a brightness to our
homes, and a blessing expanding to all around in ever-widening circles.

Enough has now been said to show the identity of principle between the
teaching of the Bible and that of the New Thought. Treated in detail,
the subject would extend to many volumes explanatory of the Old and New
Testaments, and if that great work were ever carried out I have no
hesitation in saying that the agreement would be found to extend to the
minutest particulars. But the hints contained in the foregoing papers
will, I hope, suffice to show that there is nothing antagonistic between
the two systems, or, rather, to show that they are one--the statement of
the One Truth which always has been and always will be. And if what I
have now endeavoured to put before my readers should lead any of them to
follow up the subject more fully for themselves, I can promise them an
inexhaustible store of wonder, delight, and strength in the study of the
Old Book in the light of the New Thought.

1902.

XX

JACHIN AND BOAZ

"And he reared up the pillars before the temple, one on the right hand,
and the other on the left; and called the name of that on the right hand
Jachin, and the name of that on the left Boaz." (II Chron. iii, 17.)

Very likely some of us have wondered what was the meaning of these two
mysterious pillars set up by Solomon in front of his temple, and why
they were called by these strange names; and then we have dropped the
subject as one of those inexplicable things handed down in the Bible
from old time which, we suppose, can have no practical interest for us
at the present day. Nevertheless, these strange names are not without a
purpose. They contain the key to the entire Bible and to the whole order
of Nature, and as emblems of the two great principles that are the
pillars of the universe, they fitly stood at the threshold of that
temple which was designed to symbolise all the mysteries of Being.

In all the languages of the Semitic stock the letters J and Y are
interchangeable, as we see in the modern Arabic "Yakub" for "Jacob" and
the old Hebrew "Yaveh" for "Jehovah." This gives us the form "Yachin,"
which at once reveals the enigma. The word Yak signifies "one"; and t