The Law and the Word by Thomas Troward

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But perhaps the reader will say: How can a Word take form as a Person?
Well, words which do not eventually take form as facts only evaporate
into thin air, and we cannot conceive the Divine Ideals of Man doing
this. Therefore the expression of the Perfect Word on the plane of
Humanity must take substance in the Form of Humanity. It is not the
manifestation of any limited personality with all his or her
idiosyncrasies, but the manifestation of the basic principle of Humanity
itself common to us all.

To quote Dryden's words--but in a very different sense to that intended
in "Absolom and Achitophel,"--such a one must be "Not one, but all
Mankind's epitome." The manifestation must be the Perfect Expression of
that fundamental Life which is the Root Desire in us all, and which is
therefore called "The Desire of all nations."

Here then we have reached (Haggai ii, 7) the foundation fact of Human
Personality. It is the Eternal "Will-to-live," as Schopenhauer calls it,
which works subconsciously in all creation; therefore it is the root
from which all creation springs. In the atom it becomes atomic energy,
in the plant it becomes vegetable life, in the animal it becomes animal
life, and in man it becomes personal life, and therefore, if a Perfect
Standard of the Eternal Life is to be set before us, it must be in terms
of Human Personality.

But some one will say: Why should we need such a Standard? The answer
is that since the working of the Law towards each of us is determined by
our mode of Thought, we require to be guarded against an inverted use of
the Word. "Ignorantia Legis nemini excusat" (ignorance of the Law does
not excuse you from its operation), is a scientific, as well as a
forensic maxim, for the Law of Cause and Effect can never be altered.
Our ignorance of the laws of electricity will not prevent us from being
electrocuted if we get into the circuit of some powerful voltage.

Therefore, because the Law is _Impersonal_ and knows no exceptions, and
will bring us either Life or Death according to the direction which we
give it by our Word, it is of the first importance for us to have a
Standard by which to measure the Word expressed through our own
Personality. This is why St. Paul speaks of our growing to "the measure
of the stature of the fulness of Christ," (Eph. iv, 13) and why we find
the symbol of "Measurement" so frequently employed in the Bible.

Therefore, if a great scale of measurement for our Word is to be
exhibited, it can only be by its presentation in human form.

Then if the purpose be to establish such a standard of measurement, the
scale must be expressed in units of the same denomination as that of our
own nature--you cannot divide miles by amperes--and it is because the
scale of our potential being is laid out in the same denomination as
that of the Spirit of Life itself that we can avail ourselves of the
standard of "the Word made Flesh."

When this is clearly seen it removes those intellectual difficulties
which so many feel with regard to the doctrine of the Atonement. If we
want to avail ourselves of the Bible Promises on the basis of the Bible
teaching, we cannot throw the teaching overboard. As I have said before,
if a doctrine is to be rightly interpreted, it must be interpreted as a
whole, and in one form or another the doctrine of the Atonement is the
pivot point of the whole Bible. To omit it is like trying to play
"Hamlet" with Hamlet left out, and you may put your Bible out on the
rubbish-heap. How, then, does the Atonement come in?

Here are the usual intellectual difficulties. To whom is the sacrifice
offered? To God or to the Devil? If it be to the Devil, then the Devil
is a greater power than God. If it be to God, then how can a God who
demands a sacrifice of blood be Love? And in either case how can guilt
be transferred from one person to the other?

Now as a matter of fact none of these questions arise. They are beside
the real point at issue, which is: How can we so combine the Personal
action of the Word with the Impersonal action of the Law, as to make the
Law become to us the Law of Life instead of the Law of Death (Rom. viii,
2)?

Let us recur to the principles which we have worked out. The Law flows
from the Word and not _vice versa_--it acts for good or ill according to
the Quality of the Word which calls it into action. Therefore to get the
Law of Life we must speak the Word of Life. Then, on the principle of
"Omne vivum ex vivo," the Word of Fundamental Basic Life, which is not
subject to conditions because it is antecedent to all conditions, can
only be spoken through consciousness of participating in the Eternal
Life which is the "fons et origo" of all particular being. Therefore, to
be able to speak this Word we must have a foundation of assurance that
we are in no way separated from the Eternal Life, and since this
foundation is required for all men, it must be broad enough to
accommodate all grades of perceptions.

Theologically the separation from the Eternal Life is said to be caused
by "Sin." But what do we mean by "Sin"?

We can only judge of what a thing _is_ by what it _does_; and so, if
"Sin" is that which prevents the inflowing of the Eternal Life, which we
know is the root of our individual being, then it must be the
transgression of the inherent Law of our own Being. The truth is that we
live simultaneously in two worlds, the visible and the invisible, just
as trees draw their life from the earth beneath and from the air and
light above, and the transgression consists in limiting ourselves only
to the lower world, and thereby cutting ourselves off from the essential
part of our own life, that which _really lives_.

We do not realize the true function of the three lower principles of our
nature, viz.: Vital Spirit, etheric body, and outward form; the function
of which is to give concentration to the current of spiritual life
flowing from the Eternal Spirit, and thus enable the undifferentiated
Life to differentiate itself into Individual Consciousness, which will
be able to specialize the action of the Law into higher manifestations
than it can produce without the co-operation of Personality.

On the analogy of Ohm's Law our error is making our "_R_" so rigid that
it ceases to be a conductor, and so no current is delivered and no work
done. This is the true nature of sin, and it is this opposition of our
_R_ to E.M.F. or Eternal Motive Force that has to be removed. We have to
realize the true function of our R, as the channel through which the
E.M.F. is enabled to carry on its work. When we awake to the fact that
our true place in the Order of the Universe is to be fellow-workers with
God in carrying on the work of Creation, then we see that hitherto we
have entirely missed the purpose of our calling, and have misused the
Divine image in which we were created; and therefore we want an
assurance that our past errors will not stand in the way of our future
advance into continually fuller participation in the Divine Creative
Work, which, in virtue of our true nature should be our rightful
inheritance.

That our future destiny is to actually take an individual part, however
small, in guiding the great work of Evolution, may not be evident to us
in the earlier stages of our awakening; but what is clear as a matter
of feeling, but not yet intellectually, is, that in some way or other we
have been cutting ourselves off from the Great Source of Light, and that
what we therefore want, is to be re-united to it. What is wanted, then,
is something which will give us a firm ground of assurance that we _are_
re-united to it, and that that something must be of such a nature as
never to lose anything of its efficiency at any stage of our
progress--it must cover the whole ground.

Now, if we think deeply upon this question, we shall gradually come to
see that this expansive quality is to be found in the doctrine of the
Atonement. It meets all the needs of our spiritual nature in a way that
no other theory does, and responds to every stage of our progress. There
is only one thing that will prevent it working, and that is, saying that
we have no need of it. That is why St. John said, that if we say we have
no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us (1 John i, 8).
But the more we come into the light of Truth, and realize that sin is
everything that is not in accordance with the Law of our own essential
being as related to the Eternal Life, the more we shall see, not only
that we have transgressed the Law in the past, but also that even now
we are very far from completely fulfiling it; and the more light we get
the more clearly we shall see this to be the case. Therefore, whatever
may be the stage of our mental development, the assurance which we all
need for the basis of our new life is that of the removal of sin--the
sins of the past, and the daily errors of the present. We may form
various theories, each to our own satisfaction, as to _how_ this takes
place. For instance we may argue that, since "the Word" is the
undifferentiated potential of Humanity, every human soul is included in
the Self-offering of Christ, and that in Him we ourselves suffered on
the Cross. Or we may say that our confession that such an offering is
needed amounts to our participation in it. Or we may say with St. Paul
that, as in Adam all are sinners, so in Christ all are made free from
sin (1 Cor. xv, 22). That is, taking Adam and Christ as the
representatives of two orders of men. Or we may fall back on the
statement "Sacrifice and burnt offerings Thou wouldst not" (Ps. xl, 6),
and on Jesus' own explanation of his death, that He offered himself in
testimony to the Truth--that is, that the Eternal Life will no more
exercise a retrospective vengeance upon us for our past misunderstanding
of It, than would electricity or any other force. We may explain the
_modus operandi_ of the great offering in any of these ways, for the
Scripture presents it in all of them--but the great thing is to accept
it; for by the nature of our mental constitution, such an acceptance,
whether with or without an intellectual explanation, affords the
assurance which we stand in need of; and building upon the Foundation we
can safely rear the edifice of our future development.

Also it affords us a continual safeguard in all the further stages of
our evolution. As our psychic consciousness increases, we become more
and more responsive to psychic stimulus whether that stimulus proceed
from a good or evil influence; and therefore the recognition of our
Redemption in Christ surrounds us with a protecting barrier, through
which no evil spirit or malign influence can pass; so that, resting upon
this Truth, we need never be in fear of any such invasion, but shall at
all times be clothed with the whole armour of God (Eph. vi, 11).

From whatever point of view we regard it, we therefore find in the One
Offering once made for the sin of the whole world, a standpoint such as
is provided by no other teaching, whether religious or philosophical;
and we shall see on examination that it is not an arbitrary decree for
which we can give no account, but that it is based on the psychological
constitution of man--a provision so perfectly adapted to our
requirements at every stage of our evolution, that we can only attribute
it to the Divine Wisdom acting through One, who by Perfect Love, thus
willingly offered himself, in order to provide the Foundation of
complete assurance for all who recognize their need of it.

On this basis, then, of reunion with the Eternal Source of Life, all the
Promises of the Bible are found to be according to Law--that is,
according to the inherent Law of our Being; so that, in the laying of
this Foundation, we find the supreme manifestation of the interaction
between the Law and the Word, which, when its significance is
apprehended, opens out vistas of limitless possibilities to the
individual and to the race.

But the race, as a whole, is yet very far from apprehending this, and
for the most part has no perception of spiritual causation. Where some
dim perception of spiritual causation is beginning to emerge, it is very
frequently inverted, because people only apprehend it as giving them an
additional power of exercising compulsion over their fellow-men, and
thus depriving them of that individuality which it is the one purpose of
Evolution to develop. This is because people do not look beyond the
three lower principles of life, those principles which animals have in
common with man; and consequently the higher principle of mind, which
distinguishes man, is brought down to the lower level, so that the man
is distinguished from the beast only by the possession of intellectual
faculties, which by their perversion make him not merely a beast, but a
devil of a beast. Therefore the recognition of psychic powers, when not
safeguarded by the higher principles of Truth, plunges man even deeper
into darkness than does a simple materialism; and so the two go hand in
hand on the downward path. There is abundant evidence that this is
increasingly the case at the present day; and therefore it is that the
Bible Promises culminate in the Promise of the return of Him who offered
himself in order to lay the foundation of Peace. As I have said before,
we must either take the Bible as a whole, or reject it entirely. We
cannot pick and choose what pleases us, and refuse what does not. No
legal document could be treated in this way; and in like manner the
Bible is one great whole, or else it is just--"skittles."

Therefore, if that Divine "Word" was manifested to save the world from
destruction, by opening the way for the _individual_ through recognition
of his true relation to God, then it is only a reasonable carrying out
of the same thought that, when the bulk of mankind fail to realize the
beneficent use of these powers, and persist in using them invertedly,
the same Being should again appear to save the race from utter
self-destruction, but not by the same method, for that would be
impossible.

The individual method is that of individual self-recognition in the
light of Truth; but that cannot be _forced_ upon any one. The headlong
downward career of the race as a whole cannot therefore be stopped _vi
et armis_, and this can only be done by first letting it have a bitter
experience of what intellect, depraved to the service of the Beast in
Man, leads to, and then forcibly restraining those who persist in this
madness. Therefore a Second Coming of the Divine Man is a logical
sequence to the first, and equally logical, this Second Coming must be
as One who will rule the nations with irresistible power; so that men,
reflecting upon the evils of the past, and enquiring into their cause,
may be led to see that cause in the inverted action of the Law of their
own being, and may therefore learn so to renew their thoughts in
accordance with the Divine Thought as to bring them into the glorious
liberty of the Sons of God.

This, then, is the Promise we have to look forward to at the present
day, and though it might not be wise to speculate as to the precise time
and manner of its fulfilment, there can be no doubt as to the nature of
the general principles involved; and I trust the reader has at least
learned from this book that principles unfold themselves with unfailing
accuracy, though it depends on our Word, or mental attitude, in what way
their unfoldment will affect us personally.

For such reasons as these, it appears to me, that the current objections
to the doctrine of Atonement are entirely beside the mark. They miss the
whole point of the thing. Punishment for Sin? Of course there is
punishment for sin so long as it is persisted in. It is the natural
working of the Law of Cause and Effect. Forgiveness of sin? Of course
there is forgiveness of sin as soon as, through knowledge, we make a
right use of the Law of our own Being. It could not be otherwise. It is
the natural working of the Law of Cause and Effect.

"This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith
the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will
I write them; and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more"
(Heb. x, 16); and similarly in Jer. xxxi, 32, from which the writer of
the Epistles to the Hebrews quotes this. "Now the Lord is the Spirit" (2
Cor. iii, 17, R.V.), i.e., the Originating Spirit of life, and therefore
"my laws" means the inherent Law of the Originating Principle of Being,
so that here we have a plain statement that the realization of the True
Law of our Being _ipso facto_ results in the cancelling of all our past
errors. When once we see the principle of it the whole sequence becomes
perfectly plain.

There is nothing arbitrary in all this. It results naturally from a New
mode of Thought producing a New order of Consciousness; and it is
written that "if any man be in Christ he is a new creature" or, as it
says in the margin, "a new creation" (2 Cor. v, 17), and on the
principle that "every Creation carries its own mathematics with it,"
every such man has passed from the Law of Death into the Law of Life.
The full fruition may not yet be visible--we must allow for the Law of
Growth--but the Principle is in him and has become the central,
generating point of his consciousness, and is therefore bound, sooner or
later, to develop into perfect manifestation by the Law of its own
nature. If the Principle be accepted it will work all the same, whether
we accept it by simple trust in the written Word, or whether we analyze
the grounds of our trust; just as an electric bell will ring when you
press the button, whether you are an electrical engineer or not. But
there will be this difference, that if you _are_ an electrical engineer
you will see the principle implied in the ringing of the bell, and you
will find in it the promise of infinite possibilities which it is open
to you to develope; and in like manner, the more clearly you see the
relation which necessarily exists between yourself and the
All-Originating Living Spirit, the more clear it will become to you,
that this relation opens up an endless vista of boundless potentialities
which can never be exhausted. This is the true nature of the Bible
Promises; they were not made by some external Deity about whose ideas we
can never have any certainty, but by the Indwelling God, who is at once
the Life, the Law, and the Substance of all things, and therefore they
are Promises according to Law, containing in themselves the principle of
their own fulfilment.

But, as I trust the reader is now convinced, the Law can fulfil the
Promise which is latent in it only by the co-operation of the Word; that
is, the Personal Factor which provides the necessary conditions for the
Law to work under; and therefore, if the Promise is to be fulfilled, we
must meet the All-originating Life, the "Premium mobile," not only on
the Plane of Law, but on the Plane of Personality also. This becomes
evident if we consider that this Originating Life must be _entirely
undifferentiated_ in Itself; for otherwise it could not be the origin of
all differentiated modes of Life and Energy. As long as we find
differentiation, on however wide a scale, we have not arrived at First
Cause. There will still be something further back, out of which the
differentiations have proceeded; and it is this "Something" which is at
the back of "Everything" that we are in search of. Therefore the
Originating Spirit must be _absolutely undifferentiated_, and
consequently the Personal Factor in ourselves must be the
differentiation into individuality of a Quality eternally subsisting in
the All-Originating Undifferentiated Spirit.

Then, since our individual differentiation of this Quality must depend
on the mode of our recognition of it, it follows that a Standard of
Measurement is needed, and the Standard is presented to us in the form
of the Personality around whom the whole Bible centres, and who, as the
Standard of the Divine Infinitude differentiating Himself into units of
individual personality, can only be described as at once The Son of God
and The Son of Man. If we see that the Eternal Life, by reason of its
non-differentiation in itself, must needs become to each of us _exactly
what we take it to be_, then it follows that in order to realize it on
our own plane of Personality we must see it _through the medium of
Personality_, and it is therefore not a theological figment, but the
Supreme Psychological Truth that no man can come to "the Father"--that
is, to the Parent Spirit--except through the Son (John xiv, 6).

When we see the reason at the back of it, the Bible becomes a New Book
to us, and we learn that the interpretation of it is not to be found in
learned commentaries, but in ourselves. Then we find that it is indeed
The Book of Promises, not vague and uncertain, but logical and
scientific, teaching us how to combine the instrumentality of the Law
with the freedom of the Word; so that through the Perfect Word,
manifested as the Perfect Man, we reach the Perfect Law, and find that
THE PERFECT LAW IS THE LAW OF LIBERTY.

THE END

FOOTNOTES:

[1] For various reasons I am not giving the actual names of places and
persons in this story.

[2] "Out of Egypt" by Miss Crouse. Gorham Press, Boston, U.S.A.

[3] R.W. Allen.

[4] See Chapters on "Body, Soul, and Spirit" in my "Edinburgh Lectures
on Mental Science."

[5] See "Edinburgh Lectures."

[6] "New Knowledge."

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