Wisdom Vault — onlinknow.co.za

hocus-pocus business, it is not a thing which has been arranged this way and might just as well have been arranged in some other; it is not so because some arbitrary Authority has commanded it, and the Authority might just as well have commanded it some other way.

No, it is so because the more you examine it, the more you will find that it is absolutely scientific; it is based upon the natural constitution of the human mind. And it is therefore that "Christ," as set forth in the Bible--whether in the Old Testament symbology, or in the New Testament personality--"is the fulfilling of the law," in the sense of specialising in the highest degree that which is common to all humanity.

As we realise this more and more, and specialise it more and more, so we shall rise to higher and higher intercourse and more and more consciousness of reciprocal identity, reciprocal life with the Universal Power, which will raise us above any possibility of being touched by any sort of malicious suggestion.

If anybody should be, then, so ill-willed towards us and so lamentably ignorant of spiritual truth himself as to seek to exercise the power of malicious suggestion against us, I pity the person who tries to do it. He will get nothing out of it, because he is firing peas out of a pea-shooter against an iron-clad war vessel.

That is what it amounts to; but for himself it amounts to something more. It is a true saying that "Curses return home to roost." I think if we study these things, and consider that there is a reason for them, we need not be in the least alarmed about negative suggestion, or malicious magnetism, of being brought under the power of other minds, of being got over in some way, of being done out of our property, of being injured in our health, or being hurt in our circumstances, and so on.

Of course if you lay yourself open to that kind of thing, you will get it. "Knock, and it shall be opened unto you." That is why the Scripture says, "He that breaketh through a hedge, a serpent shall bite him." That is the serpent that some of us know something about, that is our old enemy Nahash.

Some of you, at any rate, are sufficiently trained in the inner sciences to know the serpent Nahash. Break down the hedge, that is to say, the conscious control of your own mind, and above all the hedge of the Divine love and wisdom with which God himself will surround you in the personality of His Son, break down this hedge and of course Nahash comes in.

But if you keep your hedge--and remember the old Hebrew tradition always spoke of the Divine Law as "the hedge"--if you keep your hedge unbroken, nothing can come in except by the door. Christ said, "I am the door, by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved."

I have spoken of the two great mysteries, the mystery of godliness and the mystery of iniquity, the mystery of Christ and the mystery of anti-Christ. Now, it is not necessary, mind you, that you should understand these mysteries in full in order to get into your right position.

If it were necessary that we should fully understand these mysteries, either to get away from the one or to get into the other, I think all of us would have an uncommonly bad chance. I certainly should. I can touch only the fringe of these things, but we can realise the principle of the affirmative and the principle of the negative which underlies them both; one is the mystery of light, the other is the mystery of darkness.