Page:The Parable of Creation.djvu/64

60 symbolizes truth as bedewing, fertilizing and refreshing the mind. The waters under the firmament of heaven are truths concerning spiritual things as they are held by the natural mind, beneath the arena of spiritual comprehension, heard perhaps, remembered as forms of words or unheeded expressions, scripture sentences even, carefully stored away in the memory, but under, not elevated into the firmament or heaven of the mind's spiritual degree. The waters above the firmament are the same truths elevated into spiritual apprehension—lifted up into that region of the mind which discerns spiritual things. It is there that the distinction between what is natural and what is spiritual begins to be seen. It is there that the division of the waters takes place.

The first state of regeneration, therefore, as symbolized by the first day of creation, is light let in upon the mind as to the superiority of spiritual knowledge and life over natural; the second is the opening of the spiritual mind, or of the faculty which discerns things spiritually.

Clearly, so long as one refuses to recognize at all the beauty of spiritual knowledge or life, he cannot enter upon the regeneration. When he does this he can make no further progress until his power of understanding spiritual truth is developed. For then first he is able to see the distinction between