CHAPTER XII

PAUL

"Let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing" (Phil. 3:16).

SAUL of Tarsus, surnamed Paul, was a Grecian Jew. He was a descendant of the tribe of Benjamin; he was a Pharisee. "I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee: of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question" (Acts 23:6). He belonged to that class of Jews who taught that man is resurrected out of a state of carnality and death into a state of life and spirituality. "My manner of life from my youth, which was first among mine own nation at Jerusalem, know all the Jews; which knew from the beginning, if they would testify, that after the strictest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee And now I stand and am judged for the hope of the promise made of God unto our fathers: . . . Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead"? (Acts 26:4-8). The dead here spoken of are they who are dead in sin and carnality; they who are dead to the spiritual state of consciousness. Life and death are states of the soul, and not of the body. They who have no knowledge of spiritual things are said to be dead and in their graves. "When I have opened your

graves, O My people, and brought you up out of your graves: . . . then shall ye know that I the Lord have spoken it" (Ezek. 37:12, 13; John 5:28; 1 John 5: 16, 17; Ps. 31: 17; Hosea 13:14; Dan. 12:2). He who lives in obedience to the desires of the flesh is dead to the spiritual state. "If ye live after the flesh ye shall die."

The foolish, the conceited, the sensual, the animalized are always attempting to account for the works of nature, and for life and mentality in some way other than that pointed out by religion. But it can be said with perfect truthfulness that many of the profoundest physical scientists have unqualifiedly confirmed the Scriptural doctrine, to wit: that all things proceed from One Eternal Source. Herbert Spencer, when criticizing the Positivists, the French School of Secularists who contended that "veneration and gratitude" are not due to God, but to the Great Being Humanity, said: "If veneration and gratitude are due at all, they are due to that ultimate cause from which humanity as a whole, in common with all other things, has proceeded. If we take the highest product of evolution, civilized human society, and ask to what agency all its marvels must be credited, the inevitable answer is, To that unknown cause of which the cosmos is a manifestation."

"All things proceed from One Universal Energy," said Herbert Spencer. "I can see nothing at last in success or failure," said Emerson, "than more or less of vital force supplied by the Eternal." Alfred Russel Wallace, the principal coadjutor of the late Charles Darwin, said:

We find that the Darwinian theory, even when carried out to its extreme logical conclusion, not only does not oppose, but lends a decided support to, a belief in the

Spiritual nature of man. It shows us how man's body may have been developed from that of the lower animals under the Law of natural selection; but it also teaches us that we possess intellectual and moral faculties which could not have been so developed, but must have another origin, and for this origin we can find an adequate cause only in the unseen universe of Spirit.

All truth is One; Science is the ally of religion; the day is near when Psychology, the science of the human soul, will be called the first science. Religion will be taught as a science from the standpoint of Psychology; and Psychology will take precedence of all other science because of its immediate and direct relation to religion itself. When all the great colleges and institutions of learning in the world teach the truth concerning human nature, then "everyone having knowledge and having understanding" (Neh. 10:28) will know that the religion of the Jews is true and eternal; and that it is founded upon the nature of the soul itself. Men will then know that there is a Law of Human Life. "One Law shall be to him that is homeborn, and to the stranger" (Ex. 12:49). There is One Law alike applicable to the Jew, and the Gentile. When science becomes the faithful handmaid of religion, then will the teachings of Moses, and of Elias, and of Jesus be heralded as the truth the world over, then will men seek to relate their lives to the primal and adequate cause of all, "the unseen universe of Spirit," then will men realize the profound significance of Jesus' words: "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God."

Spencer has told us that "all things proceed from One Universal Energy," and Wallace has said that the intellectual and moral nature of man is not an evolution

of his animal body, but that this high and godlike nature "finds an adequate cause only in the unseen universe of Spirit." Things outward, things carnal that we see in the world are representative of the animal kingdom. Malice, hate, envy, revenge, lust, hypocrisy, greed, cruelty, and murder are animal traits; these traits still adhere in the souls of unregenerate men. "My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight" (John 18:36). That there is a kingdom transcending the animal kingdom is not a matter of speculation; all the virtuous and just have testified that there is such a kingdom; and with them it is not a matter of conjecture, but of knowledge.

The Scriptures teach that the mind of man, the son of man, must be lifted up as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, if man would escape the obsessions of animalism, and would be related to the kingdom of life and peace. "To be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." This lifting of man out of a state of carnality, out of a state of animalism, into a spiritual state of consciousness is the resurrection spoken of by Paul. "Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?" (Acts 26:8). "When I have opened your graves, O My people . . . then then ye shall know that I the Lord have spoken it, and performed it" (Ezek. 37:13, 14). All honor and glory to God for it is His Spirit and Power that giveth the resurrection and the life; it is the Lord God Jehovah that leadeth man out of Egypt. "I made you go up out of Egypt" (Judges 2:1). This is the reason that the resurrected, the elect of God, in all ages have raised their voices in prayer, in "veneration and gratitude" to the One

Almighty God; for they recognize that it is the "Lord that hath spoken it, and performed it." "All things proceed from One Eternal Energy."

"My kingdom is not of this world, if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight." The Scriptures teach that in passing from the plane of the animal sensuous world to the Mental, or Moral plane of consciousness, we pass at once from the phenomenal to the Real; from the successive to the Continuous; from the many to the One; from an endless chain of mutual dependence to an Organizing, Controlling, and Self-Determining Source of Power and Wisdom. The cultivation of virtue, the prayers of men, in a word, all the works of religion are intended to bring man into a conscious relation to the Mental, or Moral plane of consciousness, called in the New Testament Scriptures the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven.

In the twenty-seventh chapter of Acts is the story of the shipwreck of Paul and others. The writer of this story tells how they were overtaken by a windstorm coming from the east, called Euroclydon. It is evidently true that Paul was taken from Cæsarea in Palestine to the City of Rome as is here described; and it is equally true, without reference to who wrote the book entitled "The Acts of the Apostles," that Paul was entirely familiar with the ancient story of the human soul, and the mode and manner of its evolution. Paul's eventful journey to Rome was used to the end that this story might be preserved in the book of the "Acts of the Apostles." There is reason to believe that Paul wrote this chapter, for his admitted writings and the experience of his life are in entire harmony with it. In this chapter is a veiled description of the tempest, the Euroclydon, that every human soul in the process of its