Page:The Parable of Creation.djvu/74

70 higher things of the Lord and not to love them. Indeed all knowledge is worthless unless it is applied to use. But to know God and not to attempt to do his will, to know what the life of love is and to live in an utterly selfish manner, to understand the nature of heaven and to live by merely worldly rules is a miserable squandering of the gifts of God. Unless at least a genuine effort is made to bring that knowledge forth into every day life, the gaining of it will prove to be a matter of very little consequence. The faculty of knowledge has been conferred upon us in order that we may put to its highest use the knowledge that we gain. When, therefore, dawning light breaks in upon us as to the greater value of that which is spiritual, and the higher mind is so opened that we can make clear distinctions between what is spiritual and what is natural in knowledge, thought, love or life, then we are to live in the light we have gained. This beginning to live it is the third stage of regeneration.

At the outset our efforts will be feeble and their results small. They will be more like those first efforts of young eaglets to fly, which consist in trying their wings only to see what they can do, than like the flights of conscious strength they make when fearlessly soaring above the mountain tops.