Page:The Parable of Creation.djvu/106

102 thought; but it has again to be re-born. This time the birth is into the realm of spiritual thought. These things are progressive. There can be no rational, thinking being until the physical body is formed. There can be no spiritually minded being until thought and reason as natural things are developed. The one, in each case, constitutes a foundation, as it were, on which the other may rest.

Spiritual thought and natural thought, spiritual aspiration and natural aspiration, a spiritual life and a natural life, belong to distinctly different faculties of mind. After the natural mind is born and formed, the spiritual mind must be born and formed. This is the rebirth the regeneration, of which our Lord spake, when He said "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." To see the kingdom of God is to see spiritual things. It is to understand them when presented to the mind. It is to be able to revolve them rationally in the thought, to grasp them, to enjoy them, so as finally to come, in matters of every day life, into their living spirit and purpose.

But the kingdom of God extends into the hereafter as well as has its beginnings here. Our ability to enter upon its joys in the world to come depends upon the harmony of our minds with its principles, purposes and uses. It is not so much a question, when we arrive there, as to how much punishment