We seek the truth and reality of spirit and life, we who are seeking here. And in this search we find ourselves more and more at one with the Christian. The view that he and his fellows take of the Christian Church, that organization which is at least meant to foreshadow the kingdom Jesus preached, lies beyond the scope of this enquiry. All that needs to be said here is that we must not and do not foreclose an enquiry that shall include it. We stand now upon the very threshold of the kingdom; and, may be, we look with longing eyes.
There is nothing said of man throughout all scripture but what supposes him to stand, in nature, under a necessity of choosing something that is natural, either life or death, fire or water. _William Law._
So far-reaching a confession of the spiritual freedom and the spiritual dependence of man as is shown in the principles of Christian incarnation and atonement has never been popular. As they passed through the popular mind incarnation was often and widely made to seem a thunderclap from on high and atonement a transaction of the heavenly courts. All generations have clamoured for signs; and because none, such as they desired, has been given they have invented signs for themselves. The spiritual union of person with person in a coincidence of knowledge, will, aims, and mutual love, is at once too natural to be remarked in ordinary life and too remote from what is remarked to focus attention. It is much easier to think of a God disguised in manhood than of one who has taken manhood into himself and is 'made man' by a communication of himself to the man's own self. A king can masquerade as a beggar—that is a simple affair; but for the king to become a beggar and the beggar a king, the one remaining, nevertheless, beggar and the other king, is beyond belief by men whose belief is bounded by the behaviour of things that can be seen and handled, and by the logic of space. And it is much easier to think of salvation as bargained for, or bought, or handed over, than as attained only in the union of love and the co-operation of persons. In this corruption of religion human freedom has too often either been lost sight of or made a fixed character of man as man, a mark distinguishing him from other creatures and things. He is supposed to be free, but not to have the capacity to grow in freedom. 'Freedom of the will,' according to this, is like the right to a vote. It is a thing-character, ready-made, in a man, as the right to a vote is a thing-character assured to a man of a certain age and standing. A man does not advance towards spiritual freedom and grow in it; he has it as a diamond has a degree of hardness that enables it to cut glass. It is, in fact, a natural quality, not a growing achievement of growth that still goes on. Therefore it does not need to be fostered either by the man himself or by God. And it cannot be lost. So men too often have said.
