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consists in symbols

      is to find the answer to the old, old question, What is Truth? and in

      the degree in which we begin to recognise this we begin to approach

      Truth. The realisation of Truth consists in the ability to translate

      symbols, whether natural or conventional, into their equivalents; and

      the root of all the errors of mankind consists in the inability to do

      this, and in maintaining that the symbol has nothing behind it. The

      great duty incumbent on all who have attained to this knowledge is to

      impress upon their fellow men that there is an _inner side_ to things,

      and that until this _inner_ side is known, the things themselves are not

      known.

      There is an inner and an outer side to everything; and the quality of

      the superficial mind which causes it to fail in the attainment of Truth

      is its willingness to rest content with the outside only. So long as

      this is the case it is impossible for a man to grasp the import of his

      own relation to the universal, and it is this relation which constitutes

      all that is signified by the word "Truth." So long as a man fixes his

      attention only on the superficial it is impossible for him to make any

      progress in knowledge. He is denying that principle of "Growth" which is

      the root of all life, whether spiritual intellectual, or material, for

      he does not stop to reflect that all which he sees as the outer side of

      things can result only from some germinal principle hidden deep in the

      centre of their being.

      Expansion from the centre by growth according to a necessary order of

      sequence, this is the Law of Life of which the whole universe is the

      outcome, alike in the one great solidarity of cosmic being, as in the

      separate individualities of its minutest organisms. This great principle

      is the key to the whole riddle of Life, upon whatever plane we

      contemplate it; and without this key the door from the outer to the

      inner side of things can never be opened. It is therefore the duty of

      all to whom this door has, at least in some measure, been opened, to

      endeavour to acquaint others with the fact that there is an inner side

      to things, and that life becomes truer and fuller in proportion as we

      penetrate to it and make our estimates of all things according to what

      becomes visible from this interior point of view.

      In the widest sense everything is a symbol of that which constitutes its

      inner being, and all Nature is a gallery of arcana revealing great

      truths to those who can decipher them. But there is a more precise

      sense in which our current life is based upon symbols in regard to the

      most important subjects that can occupy our thoughts: the symbols by

      which we strive to represent the nature and being of God, and the manner

      in which the life of man is related to the Divine life. The whole

      character of a man's life results from what he really believes on this

      subject: not his formal statement of belief in a particular creed, but

      what he realises as the stage which his mind has actually attained in

      regard to it.

      Has a man's mind only reached the point at which he thinks it is

      impossible to know anything about God, or to make any use of the

      knowledge if he had it? Then his whole interior world is in the

      condition of confusion, which must necessarily exist where no spirit of

      order has yet begun to move upon the chaos in which are, indeed, the

      elements of being, but all disordered and neutralising one another. Has

      he advanced a step further, and realised that there is a ruling and an

      ordering power, but beyond this is ignorant of its nature? Then the

      unknown stands to him for the terrific, and, amid a tumult of fears and

      distresses that deprive him of all strength to advance, he spends his

      life in the endeavour to propitiate this power as something naturally

      adverse to him, instead of knowing that it is the very centre of his own

      life and being.

      And so on through every degree, from the lowest depths of ignorance to

      the greatest heights of intelligence, a man's life must always be the

      exact reflection of that particular stage which he has reached in the

      perception of the divine nature and of his own relation to it; and as we

      approach the full perception of Truth, so the life-principle within us

      expands, the old bonds and limitations which had no existence in reality

      fall off from us, and we enter into regions of light, liberty, and

      power, of which we had previously no conception. It is impossible,

      therefore, to overestimate the importance of being able to realise the

      symbol _for_ a symbol, and being able to penetrate to the inner

      substance which it represents. Life itself is to be realised only by the

      conscious experience of its livingness in ourselves, and it is the

      endeavour to translate these experiences into terms which shall suggest

      a corresponding idea to others that gives rise to all symbolism.

      The nearer those we address have approached to the actual experience,

      the more transparent the symbol becomes; and the further they are from

      such experience the thicker is the veil; and our whole progress consists

      in the fuller and fuller translation of the symbols into clearer and

      clearer statements of that for which they stand. But the first step,

      without which all succeeding ones must remain impossible, is to convince

      people that symbols _are_ symbols, and not the very Truth itself. And

      the difficulty consists in this, that if the symbolism is in any degree

      adequate it must, in some measure, represent the form of Truth, just as

      the modelling of a drapery suggests the form of the figure beneath. They

      have a certain consciousness that somehow they are in the presence of

      Truth; and this leads people to resent any removal of those folds of

      drapery which have hitherto conveyed this idea to their minds.

      There is sufficient indication of the inner Truth in the outward form to

      afford an excuse for the timorous, and those who have not sufficient

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