Are we correct in saying or supposing that this world with all that we see in it (because perishable) is not real, and that the Invisible is the only Real? We are using the wrong word: all that we see here is real after its own manner: it is intentional, it is designed, it is magnificent, it is the evidence in fixed form of the Supreme Intelligence; how can we venture to call it unreal, nothing, negligible? It is a question not of Reality or Unreality, but of greater and of lesser Activity. In this world we see the Divine Energy slowed down to its least degree: we see it so much slowed down that the Divine Ideas can become crystallised into a form and for their decreed period remain fixed. It is exactly this which the soul requires in order to recover her lost bearings. She needs the Beautiful, the Good, and the Bad made sensible to her in _fixed objects,_ and Time in which to consider them and make her choice between them. When Spirit-living is experienced, we become aware that in spirit-life Activity is of such an order as to preclude the mode of it being in fixed forms and objects: so there is no fixed visible Beauty, no fixed visible Good or Bad, no fixed _results,_ and the soul "sees" and "knows" only _that which she herself is like to._ If she is bad, she cannot become better by the privilege of looking at that which is good. If she thinks or desires wrong, she remains wrong: she must think Right in order to produce or "know" Right. She loses God because she can no longer think godly, and nothing is fixed by which she can trace Him: it is like to like, and this instantaneously without pause (or time). Here in this world Like may behold its Opposite: Bad may behold Good and, because of being able to behold it, may go over and join its will to Good: it is able to do this, because the evidence of Good remains fixed whether the beholder or thinker is good or bad.
What is our quest in this world? It is to refind the lost knowledge of Celestial-living. Our Goal is God Himself. Our salvation does not depend upon our finding Celestial-living, but our finding this living depends upon whether we have found the way of Salvation. This Celestial-living is here, at our door, but we cannot retouch it without Act of God. What is essential to obtaining this Act of God? Is it necessary to belong to this or that Denomination, to perform this or that ceremony, to stand up, kneel down, or prostrate ourselves a hundred and one times, visit shrines, handle relics, endlessly repeat fixed words and sentences? No, these will not do it. Christianity _in its full meaning,_ a repentant and clean heart and mind--these will do it. It is a direct affair between the soul and God. It is Thee and me. This is immense condescension on the part of God. Love alone makes such a condescension possible.