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CHAPTER XII

 

“Which Things Are an Allegory”

 

            ALL SACRED mysteries of the Christian and any other fellow Bible have one common aim – to demonstrate to man how he can so quicken, enhance, and unfold the soul within him that she may eventually become a perfect image of the Universal Soul, reconstituted in the likeness of God. And so such stories as those of the Creation, Fall, Exile, Deluge, Exodus, Captivity, in the Old Testament, and the Incarnation,

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Passion, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, and Coming of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, are all allegories of and imply stages in that supreme work, with its many levels of spiritual growth and attainment, which reaches from “Adam” to “Christ.” And each and all of them must be enacted and achieved, not only by the typical Man Regenerate of any particular epoch, but also by and within every man on all planes of his being who would become a Son of God and be at one with his Divine Parent.

 

            Two of these momentous acts in the divine drama of the Soul, one of a preliminary the other of a consummatory nature, the Exodus and the Crucifixion, may be taken as illustration, since they apply not only to the soul individual under the bondage of matter, but also to the soul collective, or true Church of Christ, under the bondage of Ecclesiasticism.

 

            In the exodus of Israel from the land of Egypt is figured the definite turning of the soul from the things of sense and the rule of the body towards her distant divine heritage. Quitting of her own will “Eden,” she allows the bodily nature to become her taskmaster and oppressor in the realm of materiality signified by Egypt, until her state as an independent entity is deplorable and precarious in the extreme. Yet even at the darkest hour she – like the satiated prodigal (1) – comes to a knowledge of her true

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self and hearkens to the prophetical voice of intuition within her prompting her towards the one way of self-deliverance. Only by the repeated disciplining and subjugation, or “plaguing,” of that body to whose mastery she has so enslaved herself can she ultimately win freedom from its thraldom. And when at length, in “the night” of the earthly nature’s passivity, she goes forth from the riven body, she “spoils the Egyptians,” by taking for her future sustenance the dearly-won store and treasure of experience and suffering acquired during her residence in the body. Led by the spirit of understanding she passes through the bitter sea of cleansing in which the last pursuing forces of her former evil associations are engulfed, and, still far from regenerate, but with her face set towards the promised land of her true home, the soul moves across that purgatorial wilderness of trials and temptations – not less real because astral in nature – beyond which lie the heights of spiritual freedom and divine realisation. Thus may the dead body of history be brought to life as a vital truth to be met and lived in the experience of every man.

 

“Arise, O Soul, and Fly”

 

            And so it is also with the embodiment of the doctrine of Pantheism, as already defined, which is symbolised in the drama of the Crucifixion. The cross on which Divine Being hangs and suffers is the Tree of Life in the centre of the garden of Creation. Therefore the representative Man of God, in undergoing crucifixion, typifies the universal crucifixion of God in the world, a process indispensable to the purification and subsequent redemption of both man and world. And the crucifixion is not of one Representative Man only, but of every Representative Man in every age; and not these alone in kind, but every man in his degree must bear the burden and die the death of the cross to gain the crown

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of life eternal. For within his own nature each man must set up his cross and offer up thereon the sacrifice of his earthly to his spiritual self, the bodily to the divine will, as also of himself for others. Without such an interior oblation there can be no remission of sin. The world will see to it that the crucifixion is enacted in the outer sphere, for it always ignorantly crucifies the Christ, whether as an Individual or an Ideal. But the sacrifice is only complete when man, reconstituting himself in his divine condition by the elimination of every selfish tendency and earthly desire, renounces utterly his will for God’s Will and so manifests the Christ life to others as to draw their aspirations and direct their efforts towards the attainment of that estate.

 

“Work Out Your Own Salvation”

 

            “For such of us as know and live the inner life are saved, not by any Cross on Calvary eighteen hundred years ago, not by any physical blood-shedding, not by any vicarious passion of tears and scourge and spear, but by the Christ-Jesus, the God with us, the Immanuel of the heart, born, working mighty works, and offering oblation in our own lives, in our own persons, redeeming us from the world, and making us sons of God and heirs of everlasting life.” (1)

 

NOTES

 

(34:1) In its cosmic significance the parable of the Prodigal Son exhibits the putting forth to interest of God’s Spirit and Substance, even to the veiling of that spiritual Life in densest materiality and grossest form. But this is done in order that it may freely will and work its way back again to the “Father’s House,” perfected through suffering and experience. The “elder brother” incident suggests that Spirit which does not descend into generation and gain the mastery over matter has the divine attributes and powers latent or potential rather than active and realised in it.

(36:1) The Perfect Way, Lect. IV, par. 32.

 

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