ns in the affairs of the external life, he
then adds: "The more illuminated the Magistrate's conscience and judgment
is, as to natural justice and right, by the knowledge of God and
communications of Light from Christ, the better qualified he is to
execute his office."[28]

The central idea of his religious thought--though it never completely
penetrated the fringes of his mind--was the reality of the living Word of
God, the self-revealing character of God, who is an immediate, inward
Teacher, who is His own evidence and demonstration, and who has, Vane
testifies, "experimentally obtained a large entrance and reception in my
heart as a seed there sown."[29] This living Word is not to be confused
with the Scriptures, which are an outward testimony to the inner Word--an
external way to the "unveiled and naked beauty of the Word itself," who
is Spirit and Life.[30] In the long process of self-revelation through
the living Word a temporal universe has been created by emanations in
time, a universe double in its nature, first a deeper, invisible universe
of light, of angels and exalted spirits, then a visible and material and
"animalish" world, a shadow of the invisible world.[31] At the top of
the order, man was created, uniting both the visible and the invisible
worlds in one being. Man thus in himself is in miniature a double world,
a world of light and spirit and a world of shadow. Two seeds, as Boehme
had already taught, are always working in man, and his native free-will
determines the course of his destiny. In his first test, man fell,
though "the tree of life," which was a visible type of Christ, was before
his eyes in Paradise, but this event was only the beginning of the long
human drama, and the real history of the race is the story of the stages
and dispensations of the living Word of God, educating, regenerating, and
spiritualizing man, and bringing him to the height of his spiritual
possibilities.

{277}

In the first stage of this divine pedagogy, man has the Word of God
within himself "as a lampe or light in his mind, manifesting itself to
inward senses, assisted by the ministry of angels." This is the period
of "conditional covenant," under which man's spiritual life depends on
"obedience to the inward operations of this Word," and those that obey
are made "Children of the Light," and attain a forward-looking
apprehension of the coming Son.[32]

The second degree of glory--"a more excellent and nea