The Law and the Word eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 158 pages of information about The Law and the Word.

The Law and the Word eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 158 pages of information about The Law and the Word.
of evolution will be attained, it is impossible even to hazard a guess; but that the individual attainment of such a Resurrection is not dependent on any particular date in the world’s history, is clearly the teaching of Scripture.  When Martha said to Jesus that she knew her brother would rise again “at the last day,” he ignored the question of “the last day,” and said “I am the Resurrection and the Life” (St. John xi, 25); and similarly St. Paul puts it forward as a thing to be attained (Ph. iii, 15).  It is not a resurrection of the dead but from among the dead that St. Paul is aiming at—­not an “anastasis ton nekron,” but an “anastasis ek ton nekron.”

Doubtless there are other passages of Scripture which speak of a general resurrection, which to some will be a resurrection to condemnation (St. John v, 29), a resurrection to shame and everlasting contempt (Dan. xii, 2).  This is a subject upon which I will not attempt to enter—­I have a great many things to learn, and this is one of them; but if the Bible statements regarding resurrection are to be taken as a whole, these passages cannot be passed over without notice.  On the other hand the Bible statements regarding individual resurrection are there also, and the general principle on which they are based becomes clear when we see the fundamental relation between the Law and the Word.  Only we must remember that the Word that can thus set in motion the Law of Life, and make it triumph over the Law of Death, cannot be spoken by the limited personality which only knows itself as John Smith or Mary Jones.  We must attain a larger personality than that, before we can speak the Word.  And this larger personality is not just John Smith or Mary Jones magnified; that is the mistake we are all so apt to fall into.  Mere magnification will not do it.  A square will continue to be a square however large you make it; it will never become a circle.  But on the other hand, there is such a thing as stating the area of a circle in the form of a square; and when we learn to regard our square as not existing on its own account, but as an expression of the circle in another form, our attention will be directed to the circle first, as the generating figure, and then to the square as a particular mode of expressing the same area.  If we look at it in this way we shall never mistake the square for the circle, but we shall see that as the circle grows, the corresponding square will grow with it.  It is this dependence of the square on the circle that makes all the difference, and makes it a living, growing square.  For the true circle represents Infinitude.  It is not bounded by a limiting circumference as in the merely symbolic geometrical figure, but is rather represented by the impulse which generates an ever widening circle of electro-magnetic waves; and when we realize this, our square becomes a living thing.  The “Word” that we speak with this recognition is no longer ours, but His who sent us—­the expression, on the plane of individuality, of the Thought that sent us into existence and so it is the “Word of Life.”  This is the true Resurrection of the Individual.

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The Law and the Word from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.