f illimitable creative
power, and that it is free to range where it will, and is by no means
bound down to accept as inevitable the consequences which, if unchecked
by renovated thought, would flow from our past actions.

In its own independent creative power the mind has found the way out of
the fatal circle in which its previous ignorance of the highest law had
imprisoned it. The Unity of the Spirit is found to result in perfect
Liberty; the old sequence of Karma has been cut off, and a new and
higher order has been introduced. In the old order the line of thought
received its quality from the quality of the actions, and since they
always fell short of perfection, the development of a higher
thought-power from this root was impossible. This is the order in which
everything is seen from _without_. It is an inverted order. But in the
true order everything is seen from _within_.

It is the thought which determines the quality of the action, and not
_vice versa_, and since thought is free, it is at liberty to direct
itself to the highest principles, which thus spontaneously reproduce
themselves in the outward acts, so that both thoughts and actions are
brought into harmony with the great eternal laws and become one in
purpose with the Universal Mind. The man realises that he is no longer
bound by the consequences of his former deeds, done in the time of his
ignorance, in fact, that he never was bound by them except so far as he
himself gave them this power by false conceptions of the truth; and thus
recognising himself for what he really is--the expression of the
Infinite Spirit in individual personality--he finds that he is free,
that he is a "partaker of Divine nature," not losing his identity, but
becoming more and more fully himself with an ever-expanding perfection,
following out a line of evolution whose possibilities are inexhaustible.

But there is not in all men this knowledge. For the most part they still
look upon God as an individual Being external to themselves, and what
the more instructed man sees to be unity of mind and identity of nature
appear to the less advanced to be an external reconciliation between
opposing personalities. Hence the whole range of conceptions which may
be described as the Messianic Idea. This idea is not, as some seem to
suppose, a misconception of the truth of Being. On the contrary, when
rightly understood it will be found to imply the very widest grasp of
that truth; and it is