Page:The Parable of Creation.djvu/109

Rh controlling elements of the regenerating individual's life.

The regeneration of the human mind is, therefore, progressive. It proceeds, as Creation proceeded, by distinct steps. The four days of Creation symbolize four successive stages of regenerative advance. First, some higher spiritual light was thrown upon the mind; second, the spiritual mind, or the faculty for the perception of spiritual things, was developed; third, good actions and a better life resulted; fourth, love, faith and knowledge, like great lights and stars of brilliant shining, lit up the life with their beautiful radiance. All this has been fully illustrated and explained in previous lectures. We now come to the fifth state of regeneration represented by the fifth day of Creation. In this state the man's spiritual condition begins, at last, to exhibit signs of genuine life.

But was not the individual really alive before? Naturally speaking, yes; spiritually speaking, no. In all the business, work, pleasures, ambitions and aspirations of the world, yes; in the higher and more inward ends, desires and motives of life, no.

And what is it to be alive? We ask this question, of course, in a sense above that which attaches to the idea of merely physical life. There is a phrase much affected of late years which illustrates the point. We hear of live political parties—these are