Text: One Lord, one faith, one baptism.—Ephesiansiv. 5.
Every step of progress is a step more spiritual. The great element ofreform is not born of human wisdom; it draws not its life from humanorganizations; rather is it the crumbling away of material elementsfrom reason, the translation of law back to its originallanguage,—Mind, and the final unity between man and God. Thefootsteps of thought, as they pass from the sensual side of existenceto the reality and Soul of all things, are slow, portending a longnight to the traveller; but the guardians of the gloom are the angelsof His presence, that impart grandeur to the intellectual wrestlingand collisions with old-time faiths, as we drift into more spirituallatitudes. The beatings of our heart can be heard; but the ceaselessthrobbings and throes of thought are unheard, as it changes frommaterial to spiritual standpoints. Even the pangs of death disappear,accordingly as the understanding that we are spiritual beings herereappears, and we learn our capabilities for good, which insures[2]man's continuance and is the true glory of immortality.
The improved theory and practice of religion and of medicine aremainly due to the people's improved views of the Supreme Being. As thefinite sense of Deity, based on material conceptions of spiritualbeing, yields its grosser elements, we shall learn what God is, andwhat God does. The Hebrew term that gives another letter to the wordGod and makes it good, unites Science and Christianity, whereby welearn that God, good, is universal, and the divine Principle,—Life,Truth, Love; and this Principle is learned through goodness, and ofMind instead of matter, of Soul instead of the senses, and byrevelation supporting reason. It is the false conceptions of Spirit,based on the evidences gained from the material senses, that make aChristian only in theory, shockingly material in practice, and formits Deity out of the worst human qualities, else of wood or stone.
Such a theory has overturned empires in demoniacal contests overreligion. Proportionately as the people's belief of God, in every age,has been dematerialized and unfinited has their Deity become good; nolonger a personal tyrant or a molten image, but the divine Life,Truth, and Love,—Life without beginning or ending, Truth without alapse or error, and Love universal, infinite, eternal. This moreperfect idea, held constantly before the people's mind, must have abenign and elevating influence upon the character of nations as wellas individua