71/115 SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS By FRANK H. SPRAGUE
Jesus did not promulgate a creed, establish an organization, or institute a specific reform; yet within a comparatively brief period, the expansive quality of the type of life which he manifested in a supreme degree, yielded the fruits of reform in more abundant measure than any specific reform which has ever been inaugurated. His life contained the potency, not only of social reform, but of far more than that of a complete metamorphosis of humanity.
Fixed forms of every description impede, even where they do not absolutely prohibit free growth. Truth suggested by symbols, or illustrated in parables, is unfettered; but when the intellect seeks to dominate the spiritual realm, the law of growth is interfered with, and spontaneity ceases.
Creeds, rules, and by-laws restrictions imposed by the intellect operate as fetters to any movement which has for its object the advancement of spiritual ends. Water cannot rise above its level; neither can the Spirit manifest itself beyond the limits of fixed forms that men devise in their attempts to confine it.
Jesus spoke with absolute authority, for he acknowledged allegiance to no tradition, dogma, sect, institution, organization, or sphere of existence. His words were the unrestrained voice of the Spirit, whose authority is supreme. His consciousness so far transcended the human plane that he became “one with the Father.”
He was therefore the Logos, or “Word made flesh.” In him, for the first time, the chasm between the finite and the Infinite was spanned, so that the divine ideal of humanity could grow into manifestation with absolute spontaneity. He broke through the insulating medium, the material consciousness, and allowed the Spirit to flow freely into human channels.
No satisfactory compromise can be effected between the old and the new standards of life. We must choose unreservedly either the one or the other. All such words as “policy,” “expediency” and “diplomacy” should be eliminated from our vocabulary. It is not strange that men have sought to explain away or evade the central point in the teaching of Jesus.
It was the boldest, most radical step in human progress; so radical, in fact, that even now the world does not comprehend its full purport. The supposition that he intended to establish, as a general standard for humanity, a type of life so thoroughly subversive of all previous theories and practices, seems utterly absurd to most persons. They think of his life as a solitary instance, an abstract ideal, not as a concrete example of the normal human life.