70/115 SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS By FRANK H. SPRAGUE

A worldly-wise materialism makes strenuous exertions to administer formal justice to a few legally-constituted criminals, while at the same time almost utterly ignoring the subtle forces that are at work, on every hand, sowing seeds of crime, disease and misery in thousands of minds. While men are at work repairing one leak in the outer shell of society,

the whole structure is being undermined by insidious forces, which are scarcely recognized by the busy throng who live in externalities in the semblance of things. Attempting to check the ravages of vice and crime by legal enactment or forcible intervention is like trying to “sweep back the ocean with a broom.” Evil is hydra-headed; it can only be exterminated by striking at its heart—materialism.

If we keep our faces turned steadfastly toward the light, and follow its guidance, we shall be relieved of all responsibility as to results. It is not for us to query what the issue of our work shall be. We need only follow the leading of the superior Intelligence which thinks, speaks, and acts through us.

The finite in man is only the agency through which the Infinite manifests Itself. This does not imply that the individual is to lapse into a state of apathy; but, rather, that he is to awaken to a state of increased activity and efficiency, since the wasteful, destructive factor of friction is in a great measure eliminated from his life.

With consciousness of power comes the temptation to use it for selfish ends a course which must seriously interfere with the expression of the divine ideal. When the organizing impulse is diverted into personal channels, and made to subserve individual interests, it produces forms that represent the ideal in a distorted manner.

The ideal form, as well as the impulse through which it finds expression, must come forth into manifestation from within. Man-made organizations are not instrumentalities through which the free Spirit can act unreservedly. When men learn to trust the management of the world of human affairs to a Higher Power,

without feeling constrained to interpose their own personally conceived efforts to avert impending disaster, when they are satisfied to co-operate with the Universal Will, instead of struggling to neutralize and frustrate the higher end of existence by their ill-directed finite aims then the growth of the divine type of society will be amazingly rapid, and irresistible as the ocean tide.