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Easter Day Teaching (1876)
CRUCIFIXION AND RESURRECTION SELF -SACRIFICE AND REGENERATION
An Easter Message, 1876
[I asked for further teaching on the subject of Death and Life, especially in the symbolic aspects in which
they present themselves in Spirit.
In the question put by me, I alluded to the spiritual symbolism between the Death and Resurrection, and
suggested that it typified death as the portal of life, and spiritual death as the road to spiritual
regeneration.]
Refer to what we wrote for you on the last Festival of Easter. The symbolism to which you allude was
then explained: viz. Resurrection from matter, not of matter. We explained the spiritual significance of
the various Festivals which the Christian Church has always kept. Refer.
[I referred to the message which immediately precedes this; in the course of which the Church Festivals
are symbolically explained: Christmas, self-denial; Epiphany, spiritual enlightenment; Lent, spiritual
conflict; Good Friday, triumphant love; Easter, the risen life; Whitsuntide, the outpoured spirit;
Ascension, the completed work.]
So it is. The whole course of the typical life of the Pattern Man is emblematic of the progressive
development of the life begun on earth, completed in heaven (so to use your terms), born of self-denial,
and culminating in spiritual ascension. In the Christ life, as in a story, man may read the tale of the
progress of spirit from incarnation to enfranchisement. Thirty years and more of angelic preparation fitted
the Christ for His mission: three short years sufficed to discharge so much of it as man could bear. So
man s spirit in its development progresses through the course covered by the Festivals of the Christian
Church, from the birth of self-denial to the festival of the completed life. Born in self-denial, progressing
through self-sacrifice, developed by perpetual struggles with the adversaries (the antagonistic principles
which must be conquered in daily life, in self, and in the foes), it dies at length to the external, and rises
on its Easter morn from the grave of matter, and lives henceforth, baptized by the outpoured spirit of
Pentecost, a new and risen life, till it ascends to the place prepared for it by the tendency of its earth life.
This is spirit s progress, and it may be said to be a process of regeneration, shortly typified by crucifixion
and resurrection. The old man dies, the new man rises from his grave. The old man, with his lusts, is
crucified; the new man is raised up to live a spiritual and holy life. It is regeneration of spirit that is the
culmination of bodily life, and the process is crucifixion of self, a daily death, as Paul was wont to say. In
the life of spiritual progress there should be no stagnation, no paralysis. It should be a growth and a daily
adaptation of knowledge; a mortification of the earthly and sensual, and a corresponding development of
the spiritual and heavenly. In other words, it is a growth in grace and in knowledge of the Christ; the
purest type of human life presented to your imitation. It is a clearing away of the material, and a
development of the spiritual a purging as by fire, the fire of a consuming zeal; of a lifelong struggle with
self, and all that self includes; of an ever-widening grasp of Divine truth.
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By no other means can spirit be purified. The furnace is one of self-sacrifice: the process the same for all.
Only in some souls, wherein the Divine flame burns more brightly, the process is rapid and concentrated;
while in duller natures the fires smoulder, and vast cycles of purgation are required. Blessed are they
who can crush out the earthly, and welcome the fiery trial which shall purge away the dross. To such,
progress is rapid and purification sure.
Yes; the struggle is severe, and one hardly knows what to fight against.
Begin within. The ancients were wise in their description of the enemies. A spirit has three foes itself;
the external world around it; and the spiritual foes that beset the upward path. These are described as
the World, the Flesh, and the Devil.
Begin with self the Flesh. Conquer it, so that you are no longer slave to appetite, to passion, to
ambition: so that self can be abnegated, and the spirit can come forth from its hermit-cell, and live and
breathe and act in the free scope of the universal brotherhood. This is the first step. Self must be
crucified, and from the grave where it lies buried will rise the enfranchised spirit untrammelled, free from
material clogs.
This done, the soul will have no difficulty in despising the things which are seen, and in aspiring to the
eternal verities. It will have learned that truth is to be found in them alone; and, seeing this, it will maintain
a deathless struggle with all external and material forms, as being only adumbrations of the true, too often
deceptive and unsatisfying. Matter will be regarded as the husk to be stripped off before the kernel of
truth can be got at. Matter will be the deceptive, fleeting phantasm behind which is veiled the truth on
which none but the purged eye may gaze. Such a soul, so taught, will not need to be told to avoid the
external in all things, and to penetrate through the husk to the truth that lies below. It will have learned
that the surface-meanings of things are for the babes in spiritual knowledge, and that beneath an obvious [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]