Bible Review V15: October 1916 - March 1918 - Iapsop.com

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502 BIBLE REVIEW Dec.-Jan.
It matters not how far back we may introspect the history
of man, we find that every nation had an external
religious cult, and a hidden, esoteric doctrine in the possession
of a few initiates who guarded it with jealous
care from profanation; knowing full well that to disclose
the secrets of the ever-ascending currents of creative
life to the ignorant was to subject themselves not only to
ridicule and persecution, but even to physical death.
To reveal to the profane the meaning of the symbols
or the secrets of the inner cult was punished by death; it
was also meted out to the uninitiated who by accident or
by wilfulness gained entrance into the mysteries hidden
from mortal eyes. (Matt. xxii. 11, 13.) No man can be
initiated into the mysteries of life hidden from mortal
eye, unless he acquires a single eye to the attainment of
truth, and ceases to give his attention to the attractions
of the sensuous world. "Behold I cast out devils, and I
do cures to-day and to-morrow, and the third day I shall
be perfected."
All men yearn after God; namely, perfection, which
can be reached only by following the Lord upon the path
of life; then man will reach what He did-unity with
God. "I and my Father are One." The soul is purified
or separated from evils, which once were its conscious
being, by the knowledge and proper use of truth, suffering,
prayer, expiation, and death to all mundane attachments.
Blessed is he who having seen the common
concerns in the world, knows both the end of life and its
divine origin as being from God.
"I form the light, and
create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the
Lord do all these things." (Isa. xlv. 7.)
The soul of man descends, so to speak, from a world
of ideas into a world of desire and will to perform or to
create the image, thence to the sphere of creation, and
from it to the realm of phenomena or sexual action,
in