Page:The Parable of Creation.djvu/163

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
The Sabbath of Rest.
159

horrent to the true manhood of man. And there is peace for the heart. There is no more enticement to sin. No doubts of right or wrong arise at any given point. The perfect way is as patent as the broad avenues, which none may mistake, to the natural feet of man. We have learned to know the Lord and to love Him, and the breath of his celestial presence permeates with the sphere of love all things of life. Nothing can disturb us; nothing molest. The magic wand of perfect trust in his overshadowing love in all life's comings and goings, brushes away the annoyances of life at every step and state.

This is the rest of God. Not only is it so in the sense of his resting from the work of overcoming opposition to his entrances in the spirit, but in that of his absolute repose on mind and heart, as gently as the sunbeams rest on the summer earth. This state is described by our Lord himself in his words to his disciples, "Abide in me and I in you; as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can ye except ye abide in me."

Swedenborg has called this state the celestial state as distinguished from the spiritual. We may be spiritual men, but we have always then a higher life to labor for. Indeed from the very day that the firmament is created within, that is, from the time when the firmament of spiritual thought and