Page:The Parable of Creation.djvu/56

52 natural mind and memory, and do as we will, or think with reference to them what we may, they cannot be wiped out. They are the waters under the firmament.

But when we come to perceive the difference between the spiritual and the natural; when we come to recognize our ability to view things spiritually and from a spiritual standpoint, then these truths, which before were matters of memory and not of life, names without understood qualities, sentences with no adhering meaning—then these truths become living, glowing verities to us.

The fog when it rests upon the earth has little effect upon the growth of its wheat fields and gardens, but let it rise into the canopy above, gather into cloud, and drop in the form of rain, and all earth springs at once into new beauty and bloom. So the Lord's truths when held in its embrace by the natural mind are mere words and forms of expression, from whence no spiritual growth proceeds. But let them be elevated into the spiritual mind, where they are spiritually received, understood and rejoiced in, and they give the eternal freshness of spring to life in all its varieties and degrees, from the spiritual above to the earthly below.

So when we can see the difference between religious truths as mere words and statements, and the same truths as a realized joy; between the truths