Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 3.pdf/277

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his final regeneration has commenced with a loathing of his gross sensual proprium; man turns with a yearning thought to the purity and innocence of his infantile state. Here is the opening of the ascending gyre of his inner being, and now there will be "an enlarging and a winding about still upward to the side chambers; for the winding about of the house went still upward, and so increased from the lowest chamber to the highest by the midst." As man descends, and all the beauty and glory of the inner life opens to his delighted senses, how calm and beautiful will the outward life become; all animosity and contention will cease; the selfish proprium will be dead, for the windings being upward and inward, those that were downward and outward will be closed; and man in his renewed and regenerated state will realize heaven upon earth; "the kingdom of God" that is within him, which "cometh not with observation," not with external manifestations, will be revealed to him, and the face of man will be turned to the Lord, as unvaryingly as every particle in the body, which is receptive of spirit and life, is turned to the soul as its centre.

At present there is a mighty influx of spiritual manifestations, which mark the opening of the spiritual degree in man. When the Lord descended upon the earth, there was a little marked influx. But if the early Christians had rejected all the visitations of angels because false and evil spirits also manifested themselves, then in vain would the stone have been rolled from the door of the sepulchre, and the dark wall of separation between the spiritual and the natural world opened: for none would have looked in and