Now it is to the forming of such ideals that the Bible, from first to last is trying to lead us.  From first to last it is working upon one uniform principle, that the Thought is the Word, that the Word sets in motion the Law, and that when the Law is set in motion it acts with mathematical precision.  The Bible is a handbook of instruction for the use of our Creative Power of Thought, and this is the sequence which it follows—­one definite method, so fundamental in its nature, that it applies equally to the making of a packing-case or the making of a solar system.

Now we have formed a generalized conception, based on this universal method, of the sort of consciousness we are likely to have when we pass out of the physical body.  Then our thought naturally passes on to the question what will happen after this?

It is here that some theory of the reconstitution of the physical body appears to me to hold a most important place in the order of our evolution.  Let us try to trace it out on the general lines of the Creative Power of Thought indicated above, the keynote to which is that the Law is specialized by the Word, and cannot of itself bring out the infinite possibilities contained in it without such specializing, just as in all scientific development of ordinary life.  The clue to the whole question is, that our place in the Universal Order is to develop the infinite resources of the Original Life and Substance into actual facts.  “Nature unaided fails.”  The Personal Factor must co-operate with the Impersonal, alike for setting up an electric bell, or for the furtherance of cosmic evolution; and the reason it is so is, because it could not possibly be otherwise.

If now we start by recognizing this as our necessary place in the Progressive Order of the Universe, I think it will help us to form a reasonable theory as to the reconstruction of the body.  First of all, why have we any physical body at all?  As a matter of fact we have one, and no amount of transcendental philosophizing will alter the fact, and so we may conclude that there is some reason for it.  We have seen the truth of the maxim “Omne vivum ex vivo,” and therefore that all particular forms of life are differentiations of the one Basic Life.  This means a localizing of the Life-Principle in individual centres.  The formation of a centre implies condensation; for where there is no condensation the Energy, whether electricity or Life, is simply dispersed and achieving no purpose.  Therefore distinctness from the undifferentiated Original Life is a necessity of the case.  Consequently the higher the degree of Consciousness of Individuality, the greater must be the Consciousness of Distinctness of Personality.

We say of a “wobbly” sort of person:  “That fellow is no use, you can’t depend on him.”  We say of a person whose ideas, intentions, and methods are subject to continual variations under all sorts of outside influences, whether of opinions or circumstances, that he has “no backbone,” meaning that he is in want of individuality.  He has no real thought of his own, and so has no Word of Power by which to co-operate with the Law; therefore, to the extent to which this is the case with any of us, we are of no use in furthering the unfoldment of Evolution, whether in ourselves or anywhere else.