from the platform of this supreme knowledge alone
that an idea so comprehensive in its adaptation to every class of mind
could have been evolved. It is the translation of the relations arising
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