SERMON BY THE REV. CHAUNCEY GILES.

(From The New Jerusalem Messenger.)

"And he said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground; and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come."-Mark iv. 26-29.

ONE of the greatest obstacles to the reception of truth is, that its specific relations and application to man are not seen. Truth itself, or what men call truth, seems isolated,-a mere phrase of words, deriving its authority chiefly from the skill or wisdom of the person who utters it. That is regarded as true which a man can confirm or skilfully make appear to be true. It is not seen that truth is above and beyond, and independent and prior to, all utterance of it. The expression of a truth does not make it true, nor does its imperfect expression make it false. If a proposition is true at all, it is so because it is a principle of the Divine order, and has its origin in the Divine nature, and not because one man or ten thousand men assent to it. Our assent or denial does not make anything true or false. And this is as true of spiritual as of natural things. Mathematical truth, or the principles of mechanical philosophy, did not derive their origin, or gain one feather's weight in authority, from the men who discovered or demonstrated them. All the truths of Geometry are geometrical forms and their relations to each other. Men see and acknowledge this in relation to natural things. But they are very slow to acknowledge it in relation to spiritual things. For this reason, preaching loses half its power. Men do not go behind the speaker, and look at the truth itself; but they look to him for its origin and authority. But truth never ought to be [Enl. Series.-No. 65, vol. vi.]

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confounded with the instrument of communicating it; for truth itself ought to be looked at in its clear and naked majesty. Thus, if it comes like a keen, shining sword-blade, cleaving through some mask of hypocrisy, or illusion of the sensual man, revealing to us our own spiritual deformity, we should not try to evade its force by confounding it with the man who uttered it. Nor should we find fault with the instrument, any more than we should with the surgeon for cutting off some useless limb, or probing some deadly imposthume. Truth ought to come to every man in its own personality, clear, shining, severe in its beauty, but terrible to all evil as the purity of an angel. It should not be disguised in the personality of the speaker. Then we should not find fault with him, though every word he uttered was like a sharp arrow in the heart of some dear but destructive falsity or evil. Then men would not go to church to see a skilful exhibition of phrase-making,—a kind of intellectual legerdemain, or to hear the self-derived intelligence of the speaker, dressed up in modish airs, or exhibited in the parti-coloured lights of fine phrases. But they would go with an earnest purpose, and sit with bared hearts, and pray that the sword of truth might cleave through to the very marrow of every evil love and false doctrine.

But men will never do this until they see that religious truth is not a mere empiricism, but has its ground and sanction in the Divine nature, and by transcription in human nature. No man can give its proper weight to any proposition until he can see that truth is its own authority, as virtue is its own reward.

“Man is a mere organ of life;" that is, man is an organized form, in his spiritual as well as his material body. If he is, he must be subject to all the laws of organization. To one of these laws I invite your attention, and that is the law of Growth. It is universally true of all organized forms, that they pass through certain stages, and attain their maturity by a process of growth. This process commences at a point, and is carried on from and through that. Whatever becomes a part of the organized body, is added through the agency of the parts which previously existed. Every plant and every animal is that way. There are no exceptions. But it is not so easy to see it in relation to the mind as it is in material things, because the action of the mind is above the observation of the senses. Yet if we will take the universal truth as a torch, that the Lord works after the same pattern in all degrees of creation, it will light our way through many a dark labyrinth, and reveal to us many of the hitherto hidden mysteries of creative wisdom.

Let us first look at this truth as a general law of creation, or, which is the same thing, as the universal order of the Divine Creation. All growth proceeds through certain well defined and distinct stages or steps. The first step is always the foundation and preparation for those which succeed. In every plant we first find the stem, branches, and leaves, next the blossom, and finally the fruit. There could be no blossoms without stem and leaves, and no fruit without blossoms. Each stage is preparatory to the next, and advances to a greater or less degree of perfection, through a longer or shorter period. In some plants the first step occupies but a few days; in others, as the Century plant, it requires a hundred years. There is the same principle in the growth of animals. During this first period only one-half of the organism is brought into use. The lungs, and the state of consciousness dependent upon these, do not act until after birth. During the first stage of life, they are forming, preparatory to the second. After birth it is a well

known fact, that the human form undergoes marked changes, introducing new stages of development in man. In the language of our text, there is "first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear."

This growth is not a continuous development. The fruit does not come from the seed by a continuous and regular unfolding, like the ascent of an inclined plane, but it proceeds by well-marked stages, the first step forming the basis and preparation for the second, and so on. The second is formed by the first. It cannot be said to have any existence until the first is formed, though there must be something in the seed or germ, quietly working its way through the various stages of advancement, until, when all the necessary steps are taken, it appears, stands forth, and now really begins to exist. There must be in the seed all the possibilities of the tree, with its leaves, buds, blossoms, and fruit, but they are only possibilities; they cannot be said to exist, stand forth, until they are formed, and it is well known that a thousand chances may intervene to prevent these possibilities, latent in the seed, from becoming ultimated in a substantial form. Now it is certainly logical, rational, according to all observation, so far as it extends, and according to all the laws of analogy, that the soul or spirit should proceed in the same manner. If it is an organized form it must, for that is implied in the very nature of organization. It is also, as I have said, according to all our observation and experience.

An infant cannot properly be said to have any mind, meaning by mind that higher form which distinguishes man from the animal, any more than the plant, when it first springs from the ground, can be

said to have flowers and fruit. The spiritual form is not yet organized, or so organized that it can be said to exist, or stand forth. There are all the possibilities of the highest angel. But they are not yet brought out into ultimates, and they can only be brought out by successive and orderly growth. In the philosophy of the New Church, these steps are very clearly discriminated, and their relations to each other pointed out. The first stage is called the natural, the second the spiritual, and the third the celestial; and these three constitute the trinity in man. The first stage, the natural, man has in common with animals, with this difference, that this degree of the mind is elevated much above that in animals, through the influence of the higher forms of the mind that lie as germs within it. This form is the highest in the animal, but the lowest in man, and is modified by all the forms or germs of forms that lie within it. The lower forms are developed first in time, but still it is through influx from the higher. In a plant we have always the stem before the leaves; but if there was no living germ in the plant, there would be no stem. In all organization there is a formative or plastic force within, that moulds the outward to its own form, in anticipation, as it were, of its own wants. It builds a house that it may dwell in it, and find protection, support, and a home, to grow up into adult life and become fully formed. The plane of the mind called the natural is the basis on which the higher planes rest as on a foundation, or the soil in which they are planted, or the instruments which the higher forms use, with which to build themselves up. And in using these expressions I do not speak figuratively, but I mean to assert that this is the actual process by which the soul becomes organized, just as the plant, viewed as an individual, forms a stem, leaves, and flowers, as instruments of perfecting itself in seed again. The transition from the natural to the spiritual is called the rational, and it is through this plane of the mind that the spiritual becomes formed.

The appropriate sphere of the natural mind is the observation of facts, and the perception of the relations of natural and material things. It collects the material which the rational man arranges and constructs into forms and systems, for its own use, or for the use of the spiritual man. All its ends relate to this world. All its desires, hopes, fears, and affections are for the wealth, the emoluments, the honours, and the good things of this life. In a word, it cares for itself alone. The plane of the mind is first developed in childhood. The knowledge appropriate to it is called Scientifics, and in the Word is represented by Egypt; and it was for this reason that all the men who

represent the process of regeneration, from Abram to the Lord, went down into Egypt. No man can learn the principles of a science until he knows the facts on which it is based; so a higher plane of the mind can never be formed until a foundation is laid for it in a lower. The soul could not be created and become substantially formed without a material envelope, as the grains of wheat and corn could not be formed unless they were surrounded by a firm and solid envelope, to hold the materials while they were in a fluent state, until they became fixed in an organized form. It is from the same necessity, and exactly according to these analogies, that the soul is built up. The infant has all the possibilities of the highest angel. All angels were once infants. From above or within form after form comes forth and becomes organized, or may become organized. For as it is with the plant or the egg, all its possibilities may remain undeveloped. The egg will not become organized into the living animal, nor the seed into the living plant, unless they are placed in positions adapted to excite their inward forms into action. So the rational, the spiritual, and the celestial planes of the mind may remain undeveloped to eternity; and they will unless they are called into action, and formed at a proper time, and according to the immutable order impressed upon them. If the blade is not formed in its season and order there will be no ear; if there is no ear there will be no corn, or it may stop with the blade or the ear. Like the barren fig-tree, it may bear leaves only. Every one knows that if a child is born without eyes or hands, they can never be supplied. There is no process by which they can be made to grow, because the period of formation is passed. So if these various planes of the mind are not opened in their proper order they never can be.

This truth, which the Lord teaches us in all His works and in His Word, is one of inconceivable solemnity and importance. There is not a child even who now hears my voice who is not the possessor of сараbilities only less than infinite, and yet these higher planes of the mind must be opened, and at least the outlines of an organization must be formed here, or they never will be. If you fail to do the necessary work in this life you fail for eternity. If you do not plant in the spring you cannot reap in the autumn. If you do not begin a spiritual life here you never can begin it, and thus you cut yourself off for ever from conjunction with the Lord in all the higher forms of your mind, and you lose all the indescribable blessedness of their activities. Let us, then, consider for a few moments how we may attain to the highest possibilities of our nature.

The whole creation, with unanimous voice, answers the question, and