of divine
Beauty are shining in our eyes, we still walk away into "the barren
dessert of the world and forsake our proper habitation in the paradise of
God."[59] There is no way back from the "barren dessert," without a
complete reversal of direction, a conversion: "He that will pass {285}
from the dismal depths of sin to the heights of strength and holiness
must make his first motion a conversion, a change from a descent to an
ascent, from going outward toward the circle to go inward towards the
centre"; there must be an _awakening_ so that the soul comes to see all
things in the light of their first Principle; a Birth through the Spirit
and a newness of life through the bubbling of the eternal Spring.[60]

The mighty event of re-birth is described by Sterry very much after the
manner of Schwenckfeld. The new Seed, Christ Jesus, the divine Life
itself, comes into operation within the man, and the new-made man, raised
with Christ, is joined in Spirit with Him and lives henceforth not after
Adam but after Christ the Head of the spiritual Race.[61] The shift of
direction, the complete reversal, however, does not mean "parting with
delights," or "putting on a sad and sour conversation"--on the contrary,
it means enlargement of soul and "a gainful addition of joy," the
discovery within of another world and a new kingdom.[62]

Like all this group of thinkers to whom he is kindred, Sterry makes a
sharp contrast between the Spirit and the letter, between what happens
within the soul and what is external to it. The early stage of religion
is characterized by externals, and only after long processes of tutorship
and discipline does the soul learn how to live by the Seed of life and
Light of truth within. The early stage is legalistic, during which the
person is "hedged about" with promises and threats, "walled in" with laws
and ordinances, "living in a perpetual alarm of fears," "shut up to
rules, retirements and forms"--but it is far better to serve God from
fear and by outward rules than not to serve Him at all. The true way of
progress is to move up from fear and law to love and freedom, and from
outward rules to the discovery of a central Light of God, a Heavenly
Image, in the deeps of {286} one's own spirit--"real knowledge comes when
the Day Star rises in the heart."[63] We pass from "notions" and "words"
to an inward power and a bubbling joy. He calls the period of law and
letter a "baby-stage," "when we see trut