Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/257

 quently they derive life as not from the Lord, but from nature, of which they have no other idea than that it is something mechanical. While the fact is that all life is in interiors; and yet not in interiors nor in inmosts, but in the Lord Himself.

In a general view the Lord is the inmost and center, the spiritual creation is the intermediate, and the natural world is the outermost and circumference in which all prior things momentarily subsist in simultaneous order. In looking upon the arm of the workman as he labors, only a unit, the arm, is seen. But within the arm are numerous muscles, and back of these are myriads of nerves, fibers, and fibrillæ, and back of these are thoughts and affections with their countless forms; yet all these successively higher degrees act as one with every movement of the arm. Numerous as they are, superior as they are to the unit that the eye sees, they subsist simultaneously in it, and act as one by it. The arm can not move until the central point, the desire, acts. Nor can any power be manifested in nature that does not likewise come from its center, the Creator. Back of every force in nature, be it but the tiny capillary force, the forces of the planes higher than gross matter act; back of these the forces in all the degrees of the spiritual world are active, and back of these is