fulfils this desire of all nations in that it sets forth their great
ideal of Divine power intervening to rescue man by becoming one with
him. This is the conception presented to us, whether we apprehend it in
the most literally material sense, or as the ideal presentation of the
deepest philosophic study of mental laws, or in whatever variety of ways
we may combine these two extremes. The ultimate idea impressed upon the
mind must always be the same: it is that there is a Divine warrant for
knowing ourselves to be the children of God and "partakers of the Divine
nature"; and when we thus realise that there is solid ground for
_believing_ ourselves free, by force of this very belief we _become_
free.

The proper outcome of the study of the laws of spirit which constitute
the inner side of things is not the gratification of a mere idle
curiosity, nor the acquisition of abnormal powers, but the attainment of
our spiritual liberty, without which no further progress is possible.
When we have reached this goal the old things have passed away and all
things have become new. The mystical seven days of the old creation have
been fulfilled, and the first day of the new week dawns upon us with its
resurrection to a new life, expressing on the highest plane that great
doctrine of the "octave" which the science of the ancient temples traced
through Nature, and which the science of the present day endorses,
though ignorant of its supreme significance.

When we have thus been made free by recognising our oneness with
Infinite Being, we have reached the termination of the old series of
sequences and have gained the starting-point of the new. The old
limitations are found never to have had any existence save in our own
misapprehension of the truth, and one by one they fall off as we advance
into clearer light. We find that the Life-Spirit we seek is _in
ourselves_; and, having this for our centre, our relation to all else
becomes part of a wondrous living Order in which every part works in
sympathy with the whole, and the whole in sympathy with every part, a
harmony wide as infinitude, and in which there are no limitations save
those imposed by the Law of Love.

I have endeavoured in this short series of articles to sketch briefly
the principal points of relation between Spirit in ourselves and in our
surroundings. This subject has employed the intelligence of mankind from
grey antiquity to the present day, and no one thinker can e