Page:The Parable of Creation.djvu/44

40 which, as citizens of the kingdom of God, we must now acknowledge. There is the same distinction between the false and the true, the evil and the good, ignorance and knowledge, as there is between darkness and light, and the division between them becomes sharp and clear cut only so far as we perceive that distinction.

The first stage or state of regeneration, then, is described, in correspondences, by the incidents of the first day of creation. It consists in gaining this light, in seeing and acknowledging the superior character of that which is spiritual, in the belief that it is from God, and in the distinction, for the first time made within our minds, between the dark errors of the merely natural and worldly state, and the light of dawning truth which has thus flashed across the soul.

How long this will last, whether we rest in what we have gained, or push on for further spiritual advance, depends on ourselves. It must last for a while as a first state, because we cannot go from one stage of regeneration to another without due preparation.

Like the child at school who is promoted through earnest study from class to class, we go from light to light, from strength to strength, from one position in the kingdom of God to another; and yet in each stage of progress we rest for a while, studying