The Life Everlasting | Page 6

know it now, at this very time and in this very world, is a blessing so rich in its as yet unused powers and possibilities, that it may be truly said of the greater majority of human beings that scarce one of them has ever begun to learn HOW to live.
Shakespeare, the greatest human exponent of human nature at its best and worst,--the profound Thinker and Artist who dealt boldly with the facts of good and evil as they truly are,--and did not hesitate to contrast them forcibly, without any of the deceptive 'half-tones' of vice and virtue which are the chief stock-in-trade of such modern authors as we may call 'degenerates,'--makes his Hamlet exclaim:--
"What a piece of work is man!--how noble in reason!--how infinite in faculty!--in form and moving how express and admirable!--in action how like an angel!--in apprehension how like a god!"
Let us consider two of these designations in particular: 'How infinite in faculty!'--and 'In apprehension how like a god!' The sentences are prophetic, like so many of Shakespeare's utterances. They foretell the true condition of the Soul of Man when it shall have discovered its capabilities. 'Infinite in faculty'--that is to say--Able to do all it shall WILL to do. There is no end to this power,--no hindrance in either earth or heaven to its resolute working--no stint to the life-supplies on which it may draw unceasingly. And--'in apprehension how like a god!' Here the word 'apprehension' is used in the sense of attaining knowledge,--to learn, or to 'apprehend' wisdom. It means, of course, that if the Soul's capability of 'apprehending' or learning the true meaning and use of every fact and circumstance which environs its existence, were properly perceived and applied, then the 'Image of God' in which the Creator made humanity, would become the veritable likeness of the Divine.
But, as this powerful and infinite faculty of apprehension is seldom if ever rightly understood, and as Man generally concentrates his whole effort upon ministering to his purely material needs, utterly ignoring and wilfully refusing to realise those larger claims which are purely spiritual, he presents the appearance of a maimed and imperfect object,--a creature who, having strong limbs, declines to use the same, or who, possessing incalculable wealth, crazily considers himself a pauper. Jesus Christ, whom we may look upon as a human Incarnation of Divine Thought, an outcome and expression of the 'Word' or Law of God, came to teach us our true position in the scale of the great Creative and Progressive Purpose,--but in the days of His coming men would not listen,--nor will they listen even now. They say with their mouths, but they do not believe with their hearts, that He rose from the dead,--and they cannot understand that, as a matter of fact, He never died. seeing that death for Him (as for all who have mastered the inward constitution and commingling of the elements) was impossible. His real LIFE was not injured or affected by the agony on the Cross, or by His three days' entombment; the one was a torture to His physical frame, which to the limited perception of those who watched Him 'die,' as they thought, appeared like a dissolution of the whole Man,--the other was the mere rest and silence necessary for what is called the 'miracle' of the Resurrection, but which was simply the natural rising of the same Body, the atoms of which were re-invested and made immortal by the imperishable Spirit which owned and held them in being. The whole life and so-called 'death' of Christ was and is a great symbolic lesson to mankind of the infinite power of THAT within us which we call SOUL,--but which we may perhaps in these scientific days term an eternal radio-activity,--capable of exhaustless energy and of readjustment to varying conditions. Life is all Life. There is no such thing as Death in its composition,-- and the intelligent comprehension of its endless ways and methods of change and expression, is the Secret of the Universe.
It appears to be generally accepted that we are not to know this Secret,--that it is too vast and deep for our limited capacities,-- and that even if we did know it, it would be of no use to us, as we are bound hard and fast by certain natural and elemental laws over which we have no control. Old truisms are re-stated and violently asserted--namely, that our business is merely to be born, to live, breed and arrange things as well as we can for those who come after us, and then to die, and there an end,--a stupid round of existence not one whit higher than that of the silkworm. Is it for such a monotonous, commonplace way of life and purpose as this, that humanity has been endowed with