Page:The Parable of Creation.djvu/123

Rh very attempt to live what we know, makes the life more abounding in results of good, and this without limit and without stint.

But it is said, "Let the waters bring forth abundantly the creeping thing, the living soul." Yes; it is to the intent that we may become living souls that all this work goes on. Of what avail our knowledge, our activity, our energy, our enthusiasm, unless it goes forth at last into genuine spiritual life? Of what avail the possession of a soul unless that soul is made alive in the light of God? It is something to be born; but it is something more to be born again. It is something to have this body live, but it is infinitely more to have the soul alive. Life is God; and God is life. That life may be filtered through all the lower strata of thought and purpose, so that it partake of all the filthiness which inheres in stagnant things; or it may be obtained at the fountain head, pure as the spring from whence it flows, sparkling as the light that flashes from its spray. The nearer we get to the source, the purer the life. The purer the life we draw, the more eternally living the soul. When the waters of God within the man bring forth the living soul—the soul as a thing to all intents, in its Divine purity, alive—man then begins to be a man.

The living soul, however, is here called a creeping thing, because the man at this stage of