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knowledge of the laws of God and are subject to those laws. We can imagine no more insane and fanatical idea than the one that has become so general in the churches, and which, as soon as the law of God is mentioned, finds expression in the declaration, "I am not under the law, but under grace;" in other words, I repudiate that which constitutes the kingdom of Heaven, and yet in some mysterious way I expect, after death, to be one of the inhabitants of that kingdom. Could you become a denizen of the United States, of Great Britain, or of any other country, without recognizing and being obedient to the laws of its government? and wherever you may live you are under the law-but not under the ban of the law unless you are a transgressor.

St. Paul's argument is that we are not under the law until we become disobedient to it; but it is clear that his reasoning is based on the fact that we are not under the ban of the law, neither does the law in any way affect us, as long as it is in our nature, and, consequently, our desire, to live without transgressing it.

There are many men and women throughout the United States who do not feel in any way bound by the laws of the country; they are free to do whatever they wish, because they do not desire to do anything contrary to the laws of the land. It may be said of them that they are not under the law, that is, under the ban of the law,-the law supports and protects them in carrying out their own desires and pleasures. These are the true subjects of the kingdom. There is another class whom the law holds in check, whose desire is to override and to violate the law in so far as they can do so without being punished thereby. These, too, are not under the law, but under grace, for they are favored and protected just as are others. Many such are called good citizens, but, in view of the law and its objects, they are traitors and hypocrites.

Now, there are two classes that sustain to the kingdom of God relations similar to those just described. There are those who have an innate love of righteousness,—right living,—who are in no way bound by the law, but, on the contrary, the law actually makes them free; that is, they are under its favor, be

ing protected and justified in the honest desires of their hearts, in the true and loyal service of their lives. But many others, through fear of hell-fire or of the disapproval of their neighbors, keep up an appearance of righteousness; these are the hypocrites who are subject to the law through fear. Whilst in many ways they are good subjects of the kingdom of God, yet, at the same time, they are unwilling subjects, and, as God's law is emphatic in its denunciation of hypocrisy and guile, they are in reality outlaws instead of subjects of the kingdom.

It has been well said that he who offends in one point of the law, is guilty of all; consequently, in order to be a true subject of the kingdom of God, one must be absolutely obedient to his law,—a perfect man or woman as judged by that law; and, as no one can be absolutely obedient to a law which he does not know, the requirement for citizenship in the kingdom of God is well expressed in the words, "In his law doth he meditate day and night." Ps. 1. 2.

The Covenant called the ten commands is the text of this law, and the whole Bible, the Old and the New Testaments, is a sermon preached from that text. Yet what the text contains has never yet been fully preached or understood. Therefore one who would be a candidate for entrance into the kingdom of God, or the one who would be a perfect man or woman, must meditate upon, study, his law day and night, until it form part and parcel of the real individual nature, for no one can be a loyal subject of any government unless he is an intelligent and willing subject.

When we pray, "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth," we are praying that men and women may be found whose lives comply in all particulars with God's law, his Covenant. It would be mockery for a subject of Germany to pray the President of the United States to let his rule extend over Germany, whilst he himself remained a subject of that kingdom, or perhaps held an official position under its government. So let us, individually, become subjects of the kingdom of God, and first let our prayers be that we may know his laws and live in harmony with them, after which we are ready to be workers in the kingdom of Heaven for the establishment of God's laws among men.

ASKING AND DEMANDING.

Asking and demanding seem to involve an antithesis; we ask for that we would have, but we demand our right.

The asking is the function of the attracting, aspiring, inspiring, feminine principle, which makes ready a dwelling place for God. Desire is altogether felt. It is the spirit of devotion that allows the divine fire of the soul to impregnate all parts of the body until it has reached the brain, and, as a result, we have the illuminated intelligence.

The intelligence, on the other hand, belongs to the masculine side of man's nature. Divinely illuminated it will demand its own, for it is the God within that speaks, and no longer the weak man. He knows now what to ask for, but he no longer asks-he demands; he perceives that what he desires is in truth a part of his own life, which has hitherto been latent within him because he has not recognized that which belongs to him. The intelligence, unillumined, has surrounded him with much foreign matter which cannot satisfy; for it does not belong to his divine origin, his heart never craved it—he only thought so. Consequently, the state of asking, or devotion, must precede that of demanding, or knowing, as the mother precedes the son, and prepares the way. Either state is incomplete without the other; the two form the duality we see manifested in all nature; and where there is an harmonious blending of these two conditions we find the whole, or complete man. The world today is still asking; it is not yet ready to demand its own, for it does not know what its own is. We need not despair, however, it is not dying, but, surely and steadily, it is growing. Its desires are becoming more urgent, and are reaching out more and more with every year; and it is learning to spurn the paltry morsels with which the intellect has endeavored to feed it. Hence this unrest, discontent, dissatisfaction, which we now find among the masses. It is a wild, flickering fire that burns in the hearts of the people; it is arrested by opiates, but again it breaks forth, still unappeased.

What is the remedy? Go into your own room and close the door: be alone with yourself, and dismiss all other thoughts

Concentrate upon that Continue in this concen

but that of the fire burning within. which is known as the solar plexus. tration, and try not to stifle the fire within, but let this desire, or fire, freely consume you as it will, until it has revealed to you what you are to demand.

The transition from the state of desire to that of command is not a perceptible one; like the positive and negative poles of a magnet, we cannot draw the line where the one ends and the other begins. It is the harmonious blending of the masculine and feminine principles, and there is no line of demarcation. You will be like one passing through a stage of fermentation, when gradually you will be immersed in a state of deep rest and peace a momentary calm before the awakening. Then noiselessly steals upon you a feeble demand, louder and stronger it comes, until you are fully conscious that you are no longer in the negative state of asking, but are positively demanding.

The Bible, although limited to a single volume, probably pictures every phase of human experience, and the thought of asking and demanding it formulates in these words of Christ to his disciples: "Henceforth I call you not servants, but I have called you friends." The people without the small circle who followed Jesus had not yet found their God who always demands his own; they had not become at one with him, and were, therefore, still in the state of bondage, although within them the divine fire was busily working to give them the truth that was to make them free. Within them ignorance was at war with the new light that would penetrate, which caused fermentation, a state of unrest and dissatisfaction. But the disciples had passed this phase of growth, and were now in a condition to receive whatever they asked. With them it was the positive asking that feared no refusal: being at one with God, it was no longer they who spoke, but the God within demanding his own. Jesus had said "The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these doeth the Son likewise" (St. John v. 19).

The one who has not passed through at least the first of these

two stages of experience, who is satisfied with himself and with the world as it is, is in almost a hopeless state as far as any present development is concerned, for he is really in a condition of death; his satisfaction is not that of the real man, but is only the stupor of a sleeping soul, of one buried under the lifeless-that is unconscious-heap of materiality. He has not, as it were, been born, has not gone through the stages of travail and overcoming.

in man.

I have endeavored to picture in words-which are always inadequate the advancing phases of desire, and its fulfillment But desire, which in man finds highest expression on earth, keeps on increasing; it is ever reaching toward more exalted attainment, and at each step it must go through the same process of first asking and then demanding fulfillment. Nothing can hinder or delay desire except not hearkening to it, not waiting upon, or seeking to understand its voice.

In the whirl of the world, eagerly grasping one distraction after another, seeking to compromise with the soul by giving it the next best thing, or stifling its pain by reasoning it out of its real need, one may silence the voice of desire, the great factor in racial development.

The plant's desire is to pierce the soil and to reach the sunlight, but observation and experiment teach us that it is only actuated by unconscious desire. Man, on the contrary, has the power to become conscious of desire, this inner means of growth. He may cooperate with the laws of desire, or being, and by becoming one with it he reaches the at-one-ment with his God, or his highest conception of being. There can be no denial when god, growth, life, asks, for it comprises all, and the asking becomes demanding. We read that Jesus commanded the wind to cease; he did not ask it to do so; no doubt disturbed the fulfillment of his demand -a wise man does not "command" unless he is sure of obtaining obedience.

When there is no longer strife, division, or failure of comprehension, between that part of the ego whose function is desire, and the external man, then the asking is the demanding, and the millennium has dawned.

E. O. LEWIS.

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