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LESSON VIII

 

WHAT IS THE PERFECT WAY AND HOW MAY WE WALK IN IT?

 

“Be ye perfect even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”

 

            THESE words have been spoken of again and again, as implying that which is impossible. How can man be perfect even as the Eternal One is perfect? Can man be omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent? Can man be infinitely wise and loving, pure and just and good? Can man be on a level with the great Eternal Being who is the life and the soul of all the universe and its myriad forms of existence? “Can man by searching find out God,” and can he discover absolutely the very existence of the divine Being?

 

            This is a question that scientists, philosophers and theologians have endeavored again and again to answer, but have in many instances utterly failed to comprehend.

 

            If there is difficulty in finding God, in describing him, in making known to the world his attributes, what must be the difficulty of complying with the injunction “be ye as perfect as the Eternal?” For surely if we are to be as perfect as the Eternal we must know everything about the Eternal and shape our lives voluntarily in obedience to our knowledge.

 

            If, however, there remaineth no longer any mystery

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for us in the divine nature which our spirit has not solved, if there are no impediments in our search for God which are not thoroughly removed by the discoveries of intuition, can we not deem it possible for us in some sense to obey the commandment, “Be ye perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect.”

 

            With all reverence we make the assertion that even God cannot be more perfect than his nature allows him to be, and, therefore, if the nature of God is an all perfect nature and God lives in perfect harmony with. the requirements of that all perfect nature, if the divine thought, the divine word, the action are all in perfect union with the divine ideal, in union with the divine sentiment; then the nature of God is infinitely perfect, but it has infinite capacities, infinite powers, infinite possibilities. And however glorious our conception of the Eternal One may be, however majestic the idea in our minds, of the Eternal Majesty of the Infinite, our intuition tells us it is impossible for God to be more perfect than his nature allows him to be, and if he is infinitely perfect his nature permits of infinite perfection.

 

            Why did an Apostle say it is impossible for God to lie, but because God is infinite truth, and a nature that is infinitely true cannot be finitely false, for infinity includes all there is, and outside the pale of infinity there can be nothing. Therefore to conceive of an infinitely true God is to conceive of a God who cannot lie and who cannot wish to lie, as the infinite will being perfectly true to truth can .have no emotion in the dirt-lion of falsehood. We only say that God lives in perfect harmony with his own law, with his own nature, in all particulars perfectly good.

 

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                The beloved Disciple John said, “God is love,” using the noun; he did not only say God is loving or God is infinitely lovable, but God is love itself; love is the supreme power. If that declaration is true then it is impossible for God to be unkind, it is equally impossible for God to wish to he unkind. And so with all the divine attributes, justice, mercy, tenderness, etc.; perfection, the infinitude of these attributes precludes the possibility of a desire in the infinite mind to act out of harmony with the divine conditions. Therefore the unlimited must have limitations in a certain sense and the limitations of the unlimited are infinite limitations. The limitations imposed by infinite goodness render impossible a single iota of unkindness: the limitation of infinite truth renders impossible the smallest departure from the strictest line of integrity; the limitation of infinite justice percludes the possibility of a thought deviating by a hair’s breadth from perfect equity; the limitation of infinite love shuts out forever the possibility of a single dispensation of Providence – no matter how dark and mysterious –proceeding from an emotion which is not purely benevolent.

 

            When we can hold in mind the idea of an all – perfect Being, when we can rise above all the conflicting creeds which like fogs surround us on earth, when all the perplexities and in harmonies born of our ignorance and imperfection are overcome and we see with the eye of enlightened mind – yea, with the sight of the soul itself, which is far beyond man’s merely intellectual power, the vision of eternal goodness, the sight of that eternal goodness will prove an absolute panacea for all the ills to which imperfect mind is heir. Knowledge of the

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Supreme Good is the eternal and infinite antidote to all sorrow, repining, discontent, misery and dissatisfaction henceforth forever. But there are many persons who maintain there are no evidences that an Eternal Being lives, and there are others who maintain that even though God exists, God is not all-powerful. John Stuart Mill fell into the miserable error of supposing that the divine power and its operations were limited, because when he looked about him in the world he thought he saw equal evidences of divine goodness and of its opposite; he thought the divine goodness ha l a circumference somewhere and that beyond the territory occupied by benevolence there was a dark waste occupied by evil, ignorance and hate.

 

            We find when we look at the matter closely that almost all the religions of the world have started out with the assertion, or assumption, that there is one God and there is none beside him, and that he is all-perfect; yet they have soon divided the throne of the universe between’ this perfectly good God and inferior earthly deities. Without saving anything to hurt the feelings of those who differ from us and are not ready to accept the statement of pure theism, that goodness is supreme in the universe and that there is no supreme being but the eternal God, we wish to point out to you how very naturally mistakes have been made and yet how intolerable and unwarrantable they are because they are flagrant errors, direct results of human ignorance and weakness.

 

            Our first positive affirmation is this: The mind of man cannot think beyond possibilities; there can be no fancy, no imagination which transcends the possibilities

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of the universe; for our imaginations are images thrown upon our minds, reflections of objects upon the retina of the mind’s eye, impressions conveyed to the interior brain, from which impressions are never wholly removed and upon which impressions cannot be made unless there is something really in existence adequate to produce such impressions. So, when people say to us this that or the other is all imagination, that a person is cured by imagination or terrified and made ill by imagination, that one is saved by imagination and another ruined by , imagination, we answer: it may be so, but imagination is a very important factor in our constitution, and a very important and influential element in human experience, because imaginations are always reflected images of realities; and when we are in a condition of mental harmony and health, when our inward eyes are open and we see things more as they really are, when we have learned to make the distinction which Longfellow made: “Things are not what they seem,” seeing things from the standpoint of spiritual reality and no longer from the point of view of imperfect finite appearance, we shall all declare goodness supreme in the universe, and God, signifying the infinitely good, to be all in all.

 

            No one can deny that in the world’s thought as expressed in the noblest literature there is found an idea of infinite truth, infinite love, infinite wisdom, infinite benevolence, and no matter how hard and terrible the path of life may be for many, no matter how great the suffering, how bitter the misery, or how sorrowful the bereavement many have undergone, yet in the midst of the most terrible torture which men have

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ever experienced on earth, faith, genuine loving confidence in the eternal God, has not been shaken. Irritable and shallow people complain because of their petty worries and annoyances there can be no infinite goodness in the universe, for if God were infinitely good, if eternal goodness reigned, they would never be sick, never suffer, their business affairs would go smoothly, their friends would not be removed in the very heyday of their youth and prosperity, their children would not be snatched away while yet infants at the breast, but, oh, remember when you hear such wailing notes or are inclined thus to complain yourselves, that men, women and children have gone to the stake and been burned, have been tortured upon the rack, devoured by wild beasts, been stoned to death, and yet in the midst of the most terrible and excruciating tortures have been able to say as the ideal man said in his latest moments, “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.” Such words have not been uttered only by one whorl all Christendom has deified and acknowledged as God the Son as well as a son of God, but the first Christian martyr, Stephen, in the midst of the tortures of stoning, saw heaven open, and his beloved Master waiting to receive him. In the dark days of the persecution both of Catholics and Protestants in Europe only a few centuries ago, and indeed throughout the history of the Christian church, many noble men and women from the rack and the flame have seen angels ready to welcome them to a higher life; they have not complained, they have not felt the sufferings they underwent irreconcilable with the infinite goodness of the Eternal.

 

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                Now if men and women have actually gone through sufferings far more painful than yours, if many have absolutely experienced tortures in comparison with which your miseries are trivial indeed, and in spite of such excessive burdens have riot lost their faith in God, then the trials you undergo are surely no evidences that there is no infinite Being of goodness, since those who have undergone far heavier trials have found that the divine light could shine through the densest clouds, that the infinite goodness could be made manifest even in the cruellest chambers of torture.

 

            When we contrast our load with that of others, when instead of always ,looking at those who are favored and fortunate, who live in palaces, who have gorgeous apparel and beautiful carriages, if instead of always envying the great we descend into the hovels of the poor and take our station by the bedside of the sufferer who is tortured by the most excruciating pains; in such wretched places we behold oftentimes intense joy and peace, perfect confidence in God, perfect trust in the eternal wisdom, while very, very often the comfortably housed, the well fed and well clothed, the moderately prosperous, are those who, because they do not have everything they desire declare there can be no infinitly good Being superintending and controlling, for if there were they would have all their ambitions gratified, all their prayers answered, all their doubts removed.

 

            Through the entire experience of the world, and in the history of the universe throughout all its wide domain we learn that the perfect way is not the way of sudden achievement, or instantaneous fruition. We

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learn in all departments of nature, that seeds must be deposited in the ground, grow in darkness and then burst forth, first into stalk and blade, then into tender ear and then at last comes the full corn in the ear. We learn that worlds are born gradually, and that they work their way slowly up from chaos and an age of fire mist, until at length they shine as radiant spheres rolling in splendor, as worlds of golden light and glory upon which life manifests itself in perfect freedom and entrancing beauty.

 

            The history of man teaches that man has gradually advanced from the savage bushman, who is little superior in appearance to a monkey, to a man who can control the most powerful forces of external nature so that the very elements obey him, that by mechanical devices he can command rain to fall from heaven, even employing the lightnings of Jove to convey knowledge, as he hurls the very current of life itself (electricity) through space, making it fulfill his commands and dc-liver his messages in all parts of the world.

 

            The gods of antiquity were only men in perspective; the powers ascribed by cultured polytheists to the deities of Greece and Rome, were only powers which man himself possesses, and which he will at length perfectly embody and fully unfold and utilize; the gods of ancient days were from a spiritualistic point of view, merely human spirits who had ascended already to the higher realms, and doubtless, as ancient literature reveals, had once been monarchs, rulers, prophets and mighty personages on earth; the powers of gods in human form were the actual possibilities of man, and when the multitude shall have reached the high level of attainment

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of those who have already passed on to the true higher life, the most marvelous powers will be in every one’s possession to use as he will, but only for good, as great power is not in the keeping of the basely disposed, they being unequal to its generation as well as to its employment.

 

            The perfect way of man’s development is the way of evolution, and evolution is the external manifestation of involution. Were you able to see into the spiritual realm and watch the processes of what you vaguely call creation, were you able as scientists to transfer your gaze to the spiritual realm and study involution, then you would learn first of the descent of spirit, and afterwards of the ascent of matter; then you would perceive that from the starting point of cause in spirit, thoughts and ideas flow outward until they produce cellular tissues, protoplasm or germ cells upon earth, spirit manifesting itself ever more and more until the perfect man stands before you. You would then know that spiritual power is needed to create protoplasm, and that other actions of the same spiritual power are necessary to develop protoplasm into the forms of perfect manhood and womanhood; you would know that Lamark in France, Darwin and Spencer in England, and all the grand minds that are endeavoring to trace the ascent of life, are merely beginning with the outermost effect of life and trying to trace it back to the realm of causation, as many finding the estuary of a river endeavor to trace the current back to its primal source. You can find the mouth of the Nile without any difficulty; anybody could have discovered its mouth, for where it empties itself into the sea it is conspicuous in

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the eyes of all beholders, but African explorers had to proceed with laborious researches year after year and perhaps century after century, to find the source of the Nile. When physical scientists speak of the source of life, of the beginning of life, they only speak of the most external manifestations of life, of the point where life discharges itself in view of all beholders, in earthly form.

 

            But where is the source of life? The source of life, its starting point is away up in the eternal hills, where from clouds of angels the stream of existence upon earth takes its rise, and flowing gradually through a thousand forms, at length manifests the fullness and glory of its true form in perfect manhood and womanhood. You cannot go back far enough when you simply studying geology, anthropology or astronomy. You can only discover effects, and then at last you are confronted with the greatest of all problems, but where did life come from and what is life? Anti when you are told by spiritual scientists among whom must be numbered all truly eminent theologians and inspired spiritual teachers, manifested life is an efflux from eternal life, no one can say it is not so. Material science knows not whether spiritual definitions are correct or not. Neither Spencer, Tyndall, Darwin nor any other great physicist or sociologist dares to deny the affirmation that life is an influx from Deity, all they say is, we do not know whether it is or not. Colonel Ingersoll cannot logically go farther than that, and does not attempt to say more than that he does not know of the origin of life. All life originates in spirit, in divine thought, in divine idea, and when great and noble scientists,

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men who have labored year after year until they have exhausted the fire and ardor of their physical frames in the pursuit of knowledge and the solution of the most difficult problems presenting themselves to man’s understanding, shall be conversed with in the realms of the great beyond, when you shall prepare such conditions of mind that you can enter into true communion with the great and glorious army who have ascended to the higher life, then there will be disclosures from the spiritual state of being explaining every difficulty, solving every problem and destroying the Sphinx of mystery, by revealing the meaning of all that was expressed in mysterious symbols, in the glorious architecture and art of the East in olden times.

 

            When men and women come together without prejudice, ready to disarm themselves of all foregone conclusions, when they are ready to hear all theologies explained in the revolutionary light of a new revelation, when they are ready to study science intuitively as Jesus urged the Jews to read their records spiritually; when they are ready to accept spiritual interpretations of what science is now revealing, even though. such interpretation widely differs from the accepted interpretations of universities as the command of Jesus differed from the letter of Mosaic law, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” they will then be able to see as the best Hebrew scholars and the most eminent and liberal Christians see to-day, that there is no discord whatever between the essence of the Mosaic law and the essence of the Gospel of Jesus, that there is no conflict whatever between spiritual and physical science when both are understood. Evolution and involution,

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will be alike plain when men have listened to the noble teachers who speak from the spiritual spheres and give the result of their knowledge in the immortal world; these can reveal how every impulse works outward from spiritual cause to physical effect; all the difference between true theology and genuine material science is, that true theology begins with Theos–God, and true geology with Geos–earth. Working from Geos to Theos you can trace the evolution of all earth’s various forms; working from Theos to Geos you trace involution as the cause of all manifestations of intelligence.

 

            And thus, if life proceeding from God to the atom employs the involutionary pathway, and returning from the atom to the Deity employs the evolutionary pathway, then there is no conflict between theology and geology, no conflict between the science of heaven and the science of earth. One science tells you how the life proceeding from Deity pulsates in atoms, and the other how the pulsation of atomic life can be traced to the Eternal Mind; both ways are perfect. The way of travel to the circumference is a perfect way, and the way of travel back from the circumference to the center is a perfect way; and when these two perfect ways have been resolved into the one all-perfect way, then the outward and the return journey of spirit to matter and matter to spirit will be understood as the great truth of the ages, which all religions and all science have endeavored to explain but have not as yet fully interpreted in any instance.

 

            There are a few persons on earth who have found the perfect way; a few who have discovered the true

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relation between spirit and matter, between cause and effect, between form and its origin in spirit. While these wonderful persons do not necessarily belong to any Brotherhood or Sisterhood, or to any secret organization, while their home is not necessarily in India, still the records of astonishingly wonderful works which you hear of as being performed by Mahatmas, Adepts and others, who have devoted their lives to spiritual development, have all been founded upon the fact that when man becomes superior to material inclinations and has put under his feet all pride, prejudice and vain ambition, he becomes as one of the gods, no longer blinded by the dust of matter in his mental eyes. We therefore recommend to you a spiritual study of theosophy as a means of theosophical development, which signifies an enfoldment in the knowledge of divine wisdom. We would not advise you to make long pilgrimages to celebrated shrines in this or any other country, or to clothe yourself in haircloth, or to walk with bare feet over jagged rocks; we do not tell you that you must leave your family and friends, and hide yourself in some retired place in the Himalayan Mountains; we do not tell you that your own country and your own daily duties are not sufficient for your highest development.

 

            Mere asceticism has frequently developed self righteousness and vaunted superiority in ascetics, while the higher matters of the law, justice, and above all, charity, have been neglected. In all exalted teachings that have ever been given to mankind, fasting and prayer have been put forward as necessary steps toward the perfect life; perversion has occurred when the

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true idea of prayer and fasting has been lost sight of, and men have obeyed the letter, but neglected the spirit. A person may be no nearer the kingdom of Heaven because he eats no meat on Friday, and keeps all the vigils and ember days; butt if you subsist upon short rations day by day because your means do not allow you to have all you would like, or far better, because you feed some poor hungry sufferer at your gate; if you do not eat your meat because you prefer to give it to one who needs it more than yourself, if you go about in tattered garments because you have given your clothing to keep the cold from the naked body of sore one who lacked, then your charitable devotion to the necessities of others, or rather the spirit which causes you to make outward sacrifices, must elevate your soul; you walk then surely in the true way, and you have prayed to eternal goodness by cultivating divine goodness within your own breast; having risen superior to self love, and having cultivated the love of neighbor, you have demonstrated the reality of the love of God in your soul.

 

            Whenever we act from a divine impulse, whenever we work to save and help our brethren, we render the accepted offering which is acknowledged as the only sacrifice that God requires, by the most inspired teachers of every age. It was the saying of a grand old Hebrew prophet, “What doth God require of thee but to deal justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with him?” Walking with God is walking lovingly and honestly with one’s fellow beings. Now if any one has supposed that rigorous initiations, strange and weird incantations, magical circles and awful rites and ceremonies

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initiate persons into the perfect way, they have surely been deceived by blind leaders of the blind many who have struggled for perfection on the road of magic have found, to their bitter cost, that the blind led by the blind both fall into the ditch. A great deal of so-called theosophy and a great many theosophists have failed because they were actuated by pride, selfishness, worldly ambition, by the desire to do something greater than anybody else, and not being actuated by pure benevolence, but rather by love of the mysterious. In their determination to exalt themselves there has been fulfilled in their experience no other promise than this: “He that exalteth himself shall be abased.”

 

            But when we go beneath the letter and touch the spirit, when we discover the deep and glorious inner meaning which lies in all the wisdom of the East; when reading wisdom alike from the Sanscrit, Hebrew and the Greek, we find that Jesus and Buddha, all the lights of the Orient and the Occident, agree in pointing out a perfect way, and we ask, what is that perfect way? Turning to the ideal life of Jesus and to the ideal life of Buddha, the Light of Asia, we read in the history of both that the great renunciation, the glorious self abnegations, that characterized those great teachers, led them to forget all earthly honor, that they might win for humanity a crown imperishable. When they had lost sight of self and had become nothing in their own eyes, having made God and humanity everything, then they found what no penance, nor rituals, nor ceremonials could teach; they found the perfect way, they became pure in heart, and therefore they saw God.

 

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            You are told in the story of Buddha, as it is magnificently related in verse by Ed win Arnold, that the truth came to him only after he had given up all association with his royal family and the splendors of an Eastern court, when lie no longer adhered to the externals of the Brahmin faith and practices, when he no longer considered it incumbent upon him to obey the ritual requirements of the East, when he overthrew caste and put down every form of tyranny and carnality, when he acknowledged all men as equals, when lie was kind to every beast of the field, when he was moved by love of others and sought no self-gratification; then whilst he was meditating under the holy tree a divine revelation came to him, and he found Nirvana, not in the loss of his identity, not in the absorption of his soul into the essence of Brahm, but in the perfect union of his will with the divine will, as a drop in the ocean flows harmoniously with all other drops and yet retains its individuality intact forever; though never losing its identity, there is no conflict, no struggle between itself and any other.

 

            If any ask, what becomes of the individual human soul? Shall I always retain my identity? We tell yon that only when you cease to think of self will you find your highest self; when you are no longer concerned about your own identity you will have found your highest identity; then will you find the divine image within you, and shine forever in resplendent glory and know yourselves to be children of the Most High.

 

            Over and over again we are told we may become children of God. We are all children of God now, but when we become children of God in a special sense,

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we come to know ourselves as such; when we are introduced into the knowledge of divine truth it is because our spiritual eyes open, and when our inward eyes open all the universe is seen by us as it was never seen before; when our spiritual ears are unstopped and our lips are unclosed, we hear and speak from the soul as we never heard or spoke before.

 

            We are all possessors of divine life, but we are like men and women who are heirs to some wonderful inheritance and know not of it; we possess by right jewels and treasures beyond all price, but we have not yet found then. When you discover your spiritual possessions, when you are thoroughly revealed to yourself and know what you really are, when you have found your deepest nature that is within you, you will discover that you are each as a drop in the ocean of God’s infinitude; you will then be filled with eternal joy, and will not think any more either about forgetting self or preserving identity.

 

            But your identity is what nothing can destroy; sense of your identity is the only consciousness that can never leave you; it is the only thing that seemingly takes care of itself under all circumstances and cannot’ be lost; identity is inseparable from your real being which relates you forever to the infinite identity of the Eternal. To attain to perfect oneness with Deity you must all attain to perfect oneness, i. e. harmony with each other; you must all become co – workers, loving one another with pure hearts fervently, and not preferring yourself or your own interests to those of a neighbor; you must bow down no more to the competitive idol, but acknowledge co-operation or divine comunism;

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enlightened minds will no longer hill into the errors of those communists who though setting out with grand and holy purpose, have spoiled their plan or seen it ruined by selfishness. Strive to enter into the spirit of those great reformers who are actuated alone by divine benevolence and you will discern the pattern of universal equity.

 

            When Robert Owen and Robert Dale Owen, two of the noblest men America has produced, endeavored to e establish communistic settlements, it was their highest ambition to do good and elevate society; they were willing to undergo privation and the loss of earthly possessions that they might help others; we cannot but admire these noble and glorious men; both of them were fully conversant before they passed into the spiritual world, of the reality of immortal life; both were spiritualists in the true sense of the word, and endeavored to enter into profitable relations with spiritual life by the cultivation of spirituality, knowing that spirituality was cultivated by benevolent disposition and action. They trod in the perfect way as far as they could find it, but then why were their endeavors comparatively unsuccessful? Why was so much of their toil seemingly fruitless? Why were their splendid communities castles in the air more than anything else? Surely because the men and women who undertook to walk with them were not so magnanimous as they who led the way. When magnanimity and nothing else shall guide persons to form combinations solely for the good of the race, then we shall see an ideal community; but the preaching of communism as right living, with all the eloquence and argument that can

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possibly be brought forward in its defense, will fall to nothingness until the spirit that imbues the workers in the enterprise as well as the founders, is a spirit of pure philanthropy.

 

            We can see no perfect way of doing anything when we are imperfect in our thought and desire. There can be nothing perfect on the outside until there is a perfect state within; no perfect government, no perfect law, no perfect order, no perfect body until there is perfect thought within. There must be perfect thought first, as all works are embodiments of thought. External forms fall short of thought but never transcend it.

 

            The thought must be perfect before the external can be. Consider a seed; can you put an imperfect seed into the ground and make it produce a perfect plant? No; no sunshine or rain, no process of irrigation, no enriching of soil can possibly make an imperfect seed bear a perfect plant. Perfection must inhere in the seed, and if this be the case then if all climatic influences are favorable and it receives the necessary cultivation adapted to it, it can unfold into a perfect plant. So in our own minds there must be a perfect seed, a perfect thought. “Be ye perfect;” it is within the reach of every one of you. Your thought must be a perfect seed before it is a perfect acorn, a perfect acorn before it is a perfect sapling and a perfect sapling before it is a perfect oak. So when generation is spiritually accomplished there is first a perfect babe, then a perfect child, a perfect youth, a perfect young man, a perfect man of mature years, but a babe as a babe may be just as perfect in nature and freedom from taint as the perfect man.

 

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            So all along the perfect way, in the pathway of constant progress there is growth, expansion, unfoldment, ever a further manifestation. But in the perfect way there are no worms to eat the seed, no diseases to destroy the beauty and symmetry of youth; no errors introduced to mar the plan, no wild oats sown with the vain expectation that there will never come a reaping time for anything but golden grain. In the perfect life there must be perfect attention paid to every detail of growth.

 

            What do you call perfect? That is only perfect which is perfect in every detail, but that is perfect which during all the stages of its development is perfect as far as it extends. You may be painting a perfect picture – but what do you require for a perfect painting? First, a perfect sheet of blank canvas; then you begin to cover it, doing the first day very rudimentary work indeed, just a little marking upon the canvas, but it is perfect as far as it goes, and you go on month after month until your picture is at length a master piece in some school of art.

 

            Now that is a sample of what our life should be; that is the idea we should put before our children; do not expect old heads on young shoulders; do not expect a child to know as much as a man; do not expect by a single leap or bound to mount up to celestial heights, but always move in the right direction; never turn back, go straight ahead; be sure you are right and then keep straight forward. That is the rule of perfection. Do the best you can each day. Let the child recite one portion of the multiplication table perfectly, and then go on and learn the next portion, and so on

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until he has the whole complete. Learn everything thoroughly as you go.

 

            This is the meaning of “Be ye perfect;” perfect according to your power, according to your knowledge, according to your ability: be perfect in your resolves, perfect in intention, will, desire, motive. Never say anything unless you feel it is right to say it; never do anything unless you feel it is right to do it; never allow yourself to indulge a thought unless you feel that thought is a rightful and holy one.

 

            “Be ye perfect even as your Father who is in heaven is perfect,” because you have the possibilities of perfection, because you are in the image and likeness of the all-perfect One, because perfection is the only one thing to be tolerated in all stages of advancement.

 

            Perfection never means transcending the order or law of growth; it does not mean ignoring the slow and steady processes of involution and evolution. Let the involuted thought and the evoluted action be alike per-feet, the one the cause, the other the effect. Then the command, “Be ye perfect even as the eternal is perfect,” will not be understood by you in any impossible sense, but as within the limits of the possible action of every one of you.

 

            Our application of the subject, therefore, is this Have only one master, and that master your highest conviction of right. Acknowledge only one God and one revelation from God, and that revelation the divine voice in your own soul. When you give your children moral or religious education, when you call them together in a Lyceum and teach them so that all may understand, never say a statement is true because it is in

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the Bible; never say a thing is right because you tell them so; some time they may find you are mistaken and they will grow up to distrust your authority and to doubt your position being a warrantable one. But say to every child, never do anything that will cause you to forfeit your self respect; always listen for the still small voice of the Holy Spirit within you; always listen to the divine command echoing between the cherubim of your moral and intellectual nature; always look for the Shekinah within; always remember that the highest oracle is within; that the voice of the Eternal sounds within your innermost being; do whatever you do because you feel it to be right.

 

            But supposing you are mistaken, what will the result of honest mistake be? Mistakes will teach you wisdom. Never be discouraged and never look upon your work as evil, because that work is not immediately perfect in all the fullness of completion.

 

            In the perfect life if one lives in harmony with highest intention, conforming himself as far as he may to his loftiest ideal, he is perfect as far as lie can go, but not perfect finally because he has not traversed the whole of the way. In building a temple you may have only the foundation laid, and that may be perfect, but it is not a perfect temple; only when the temple is completed can the architect say, “There is a perfect expression of perfect thought.”

 

            Here is the true idea of perfect life. In soul we generate perfect thought, a perfect ideal; then we have to work it out, laying stone upon stone, until that perfect thought is externalized in the perfect temple of our manifested being.

 

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            And when you feel, “I have committed a sin; I am so sorry; I thought I acted for the best, but I find I made a mistake; I did wrong; I have hurt some one to whom I would have given the sweetest consolation;” we tell you, you did right, relatively, because you did the best you could; it would be unreasonable on the part of God, and, therefore, impossible for him to be angry with you. If you did not feel that your acts were imperfect, you would settle down in contentment and never rise higher. No act is properly imperfect when it is the best you can perform, under the circumstances.

 

            Let us reverence our ideal of perfection and rest assured that the way to perfection is ever to act in harmony with the best that we know, so that we may ever do better and better and better, until the comparative changes to the superlative, and Ave are perfect in the purity of our every thought and perfect also in the wisdom that enables us to carry our perfect thought into perfect effect, which will ever be displayed in a symmetrical mind expressed through the instrument of a sound and healthy body. Perfect physical health is the ultimate or final consequence on earth of perfect thought in spirit, compatible with present attainments.