65/115 SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS By FRANK H. SPRAGUE

In this simple act of renouncing personal self-interest for a more inclusive life lies the essence of growth and the key to the eternal life. The law of growth, then, is revealed in the tendency to open out, to expand, to abandon the old for the new, to cut loose from all that binds, restricts, hampers, contracts, enslaves, or limits, and to realize the free life of the Spirit.

“The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh, and whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit.”
“Consider the lilies, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; yet I say unto you, Even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”

The spiritually discerning man, the man who consciously allows his life to grow instead of striving to determine its course, indicates a tremendous advance in the scale of evolution. When one appreciates this factor, until recently so little recognized, the doctrine of evolution takes on a new significance.

This type of man marks the beginning of a radically different order of society, for he will no more fit into the present makeshift than would the Copernican world into a system of the Ptolemaic sort. The new wine “will burst the old wine-skins.”

Generally speaking, social bodies, like material ones, are of two descriptions as to their structure and method of formation. Material bodies of the one class, commonly termed “inanimate,” are held together by the power of cohesion.

Since they are mere aggregations of particles, they are incapable of spontaneous growth development from within; they can only be molded and shaped by external agencies, therefore they tend to disintegrate. But those of the other class are fashioned into individual forms, often marvelously exquisite and suggestive, by a vital energy.

In the one case, the particles obey an impulse of attraction, apparently of a purely dynamic character; each retains the position it is most naturally drawn to occupy in its unaided, individual capacity, without lending itself to any purely ideal end of a higher origin such as beauty or proportion.

In the other case, the particles are permeated and actuated from within, by a power that causes them to assume forms conceived by a higher Intelligence instead of ones of their own selection, as mere particles.

Snow crystals each a fairy world in itself, fantastically sculptured forests on the frosted window-pane, dainty mosses, graceful ferns, exquisite blossoms, stately trees, animal forms wonderfully adapted, not alone to the satisfaction of individual wants, but having reference to larger ends, these and myriad other creations that constitute the outer garment of the invisible world,

portray the irresistible yearning of a deep, hidden life to come forth into manifestation. Every creature builds ideally better than it knows. Even its short-sighted deviations from the pattern of the more comprehensive design, are eventually overruled and made to contribute to the perfection of the whole.