Page:Sermons on the Lord's Prayer.djvu/65

 present sins and sufferings, troubles and disorders, public and private; and that the earth may again become what it was in the beginning, and what it was by its good Creator intended to be,—a lower heaven: that just as in an individual man, while regenerating, the earthly or natural mind becomes purified from evils and falses, and thus the good descending from the heavenly or spiritual mind enters into and occupies it, and forms it into a likeness of itself, and thus in him earth becomes an image of heaven,—so, in general, and with mankind at large, we are to pray that evil and its attendant falsity may be put away, and that then love and truth descending from heaven may take their place,—and so the lower world may become a likeness of the upper,—the earth, an image of heaven.

But how is this to be accomplished? It is to be accomplished with the world in general, precisely in the same way that it is accomplished in the little world of an individual mind: indeed, the work will be effected with mankind at large, only in proportion as it is effected with the individuals of whom mankind is composed. To regenerate the world, you must regenerate the individuals that constitute the world: goodness and truth will increase and be established in the world at large, only in the degree that they are established in the minds of individual men. There is no such thing as regenerating the world in general, and yet leaving the individuals in their natural unregenerate state. Yet it seems to be a kind of feeling or fancy with some, that such a thing can be done. Or,