in thought and
will, precipitate themselves into outer circumstance and action.
To live in this perfect sympathy of companionship with the forces and
the powers of the unseen world is to dwell amid perpetual reinforcement
of energy, solace, and sustaining aid, and with faith vitalized by
spiritual perception.
All scientific problems are ethical, and even spiritual, problems. They
are discoveries in the divine laws. "Can man by searching find out God?"
Apparently he approaches constantly to this possibility, and finds that
"--through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns."
Every succeeding century brings humanity to a somewhat clearer
perception of the nature of the Divine Creation. However slowly, yet
none the less surely, does the comprehension of man and his place in the
universe and his oneness with the Divine life increase with every
century. Jonathan Edwards taught that while Nature might reflect the
Divine image, man could not, as he was in a "fallen" state, until he was
regenerated. Putting aside the mere dogma involved in the "fall" of man,
the other matter--that of regeneration, of redemption--is undeniable,
even though we may interpret this process in a different manner from
that of the great eighteenth-century theologian. The redemption, the
regeneration of man, lies in faith. In that is the _substance_ through
which and by means of which man comes into conscious communion with God.
It is by the intense activity possible to this mental attitude that he
conquers the problems of the universe, that he advances in knowledge,
and advances in the increasing capacity to receive the Divine messages
and to follow the Divine leadings.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: A New Force.]
Of late years a new force has been discovered in the line of
ethico-spiritual aid in the higher order of hypnotism, as discovered and
practiced by Doctor Quackenbos, who may, indeed, without exaggeration,
be called the discoverer of this higher phase of applied suggestion. "I
have been brought," he says, "into closest touch with the human soul.
First objectively; subsequently in the realm of subliminal life, where,
practically liberated in the hypnotic slumber from its entanglement with
a perishable body, it has been open to approach by the objective mind in
which it elected to confide, dynamically absorptive of creative
stimulation by
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