WE live in the midst of God and yet we do not know Him. Mysteries press in upon us on every hand and yet we fail to understand. A worm goes to sleep and wakes up a butterfly; an egg is warmed for three weeks in a drawer and a chicken breaks forth from its marble cell; a bullet cuts its way through shrieking flesh and internal agents restore every organ, cell for cell and nerve for nerve. A nut, an egg or a grain of ^/ sand hides within it the secret of life. To explain one of them is to explain everything. Yet how often it is looked upon either as a miracle or a fraud when a man turns the inspired eye of faith to an inner power and is lifted from the very bed of death itself, or in dire financial straits calls upon God and finds supply, or in peril by sea or land discovers a guardian angel who points out for him a star and a way. How rash we are in these days of mystery, when science has discovered that the ' more we know the less we know, to declare that with God any thing is impossible! And perhaps we are still more rash when we dare to pass critical judgment on the use of any power, whether we call that power God or mind or consciousness or truth. No power used to lighten the burdens of life or to inspire the soul to renewed faith and effort can be anything but good. Some day all men shall know this is true and that the first and greatest of all sayings is this, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God, the Lord is one and beside me there is none other." Then force, energy and life shall be found to come from a common source and whosoever shall lift the burden of another's woe and pain through the use of the forces at his command shall do the will of my Father who is in heaven.n5537 ¶1
What, then, is the wonder that lies back of a nut, an eggf or a grain of sand, a healed wound, the cure of a cancer, the demonstration of success, and the glory of an uplifted faith? We can at least get closer to the Causal Mystery even though our investigations show us more of what we do not know than what we know. And, even though ab^Shed by what he discovers, man may still feel that "haply he knows somewhat more than he knows ;" and even in the nut, the eggf and the grain of sand he may find a common factor which relates them to each other and perhaps to himself.n5537 ¶2
There is no beauty in a nut. It is simple and homely; and it would appear that a botanist could make a much finer one than nature provides. But he cannot ! He can stir up the chemicals that compose it, and mould them into the shape of a nut —n5537 ¶3
but he cannot make it grow. There is something in the nut which he cannot imitate; there is something in it back of which he cannot go with his analysis. We call it the life-principle. *n5537 ¶4
Where in an egg shall we find the secret of the chicken? Not one drop of blood, nor so much as the daintiest shadow of down would we surprise within the shell ; and were we to break through the frail door, we should render it but an open tomb, for even as we search its -shapeless form we find that the imprisoned splendor has escaped, carrying its secret with it. Where was that which might have been the tiny chick ; what was "it," where is it, what is it now ? And were we to have allowed it to grow into a body and then dissected flesh and bone, we should never have taken unawares the sleeping yet wakeful mystery. Life cannot be dissected.n5537 ¶5
The chemist dissolves the grain of sand and declares that he has solved the problem of the mineral kingdom and discovered its law by calling it "chemical affinity." But what is chemical affinity? *It is the name of a force. The chemist does not know what the force is; he knows only that it is. He has learned something about it, but like the botanist and the biologist, he has not learned it. The discovery of the supreme fact of its nature or law, however, has done much for us in solving the riddle, for it has betrayed intelligent activity. Indeed, something within minerals opens them to the influence of mind; and vibrations sent out at the will of the operator can magnetize them. What is that principle within, which is thus acted upon by mind and which acts with the intelligence of mind? It is something of which again we may say, "It is, and we know how it is ; but we do not know what it is." Yet because it betrays intelligence and because intelligence is a characteristic of mind, we may give to it a new name — life.n5537 ¶6
The greatest of scientists to-day are telling us that we live in a universe alive with intelligence; and the advanced investigator does not hesitate to declare that all nature is alive. But if we declare that our riddle is answered by the word life, what have we ? We have this — that we have reduced the universe to one; and we have found that it is related to us in some way. But what is "life"?n5537 ¶7
It is a curious thing that we should thus live in a living universe; and yet not be able to tell what life is. It is one of Nature's paradoxes.n5537 ¶8
For life we know, and knowing, do not know, Yet know we whence we come, and whither go:n5537 ¶9
For life is all, and plays the master role, It is its own true witness to its fact:n5537 ¶10
Illusive, subtle substance of the soul That ever gives of self, and yet remains intact.n5537 ¶11
All that we can say is that life is; and the absence of it is what men call death. But wre can go on studying how it acts and the law by which it is governed or by which it governs, in order that by our knowledge we may control our body and affairs.n5537 ¶12
Life is Absolute or All.n5537 ¶13
Probably the most important discovery of the new science of life is that it is universally present. We no longer think of life as being found only in some entity, here in a lily, there in a dog; but we find it everywhere, here in the stone and there in the star. There are plenty of evidences of life manifesting itself in inarticulate nature ; of Life of which when we find It, we can but acknowledge the presence ; we cannot say what it is. We can only say,n5537 ¶14
The great seer, Moses, perceived the presence of this life in the flaming bush. In himself and in nature, he discovered something more than form and beauty: he found "that Something" in nature that replied to a something in himself; and communing with It, he asked, "What is your name?" He could not define this Presence ; but it seemed to say, "I AM THAT I AM." "I AM" denotes life or existence; and "THAT I AM" shows that it cannot be defined in terms. But that which cannot be defined in terms must be the Absolute. Life, then, is Absolute. It is All. "The All" is found, therefore, not merely in nature and in man, but as nature and as man, and yet more than nature and man. All that we perceive is one and inseparable with it, for all is life. This Life is what we calln5537 ¶15
Spirit is, therefore, Life, Mind, Intelligence, All. So anything or anyone, or all can say, "I am." "I am" comes from the verb "to be" and denotes "being." Being, therefore, indicates that which is, apart from time or space. It is "that which was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be." Nor is it something outside of us. It is rather something within us which makes us what we are. It is Spirit or First Cause in us; it is that "subtle substance of the soul" coming forth into expression and manifesting as things. The body accordingly is spirit. We see it as body from the outside or objective point of view. But if we view it from within, it is spirit or being. So all things are one in essence, for all are being ; and being is all or absolute.n5537 ¶16
Yet being takes "soul-form" or thought-form, so that within the lily is the eternal idea of lily which always gives birth to a lily from a lily bulb ; and a rose always gives birth to a rose. Each form of life gives birth after its own kind. This is interestingly illustrated in the example of a tree. At one time, the botanist supposed that sap is drawn through the trunk and branches of a tree entirely by capillary action, that is, mechanical force. Yet it is now known that a tree will die from a shock even while its pores are unimpaired, showing that more than mechanical action is needed to explain it. In other words, there must be an organized intelligence within the tree which governs and sustains its life. When a shock or injury occurs, this intelligence withdraws, leaving the shell which it had built for itself to disintegrate into elemental substance again.1n5537 ¶17
We have here, then, sufficient evidence to show that each "living thing" in nature has a soul. We will not hesitate to say that the soul exists as the "being" of the tree, the life-principle, the thoughtform, spirit acting as the idea of tree within, and taking on its body as a tree. The soul of the tree, the soul of a lily, the soul of a bird, the soul of a man, is that within which makes each thing appear in its chosen form. The soul is the individualization of spirit and shares the nature of the All-Soul. It is the life-principle and is what we call being. When we speak of it as One or the Whole, we call it Absolute or Eternal Being. It is eternal in essence, never changes from age to age. It Is.n5537 ¶18
1 The elemental substance must in the _ nature of the case be simply disorganized thought-energy which is produced by Creative Mind as ready-made material upon which the soul-principle may draw.n5537 ¶19