The Dore Lectures on Mental Sciencel. Thomas Troward

thought for the morrow"--and note that

      the correct translation is "Take no anxious thought"-- are the

      practical application of the soundest philosophy. This does not,

      of course, mean that we are not to exert ourselves. We must do

      our share in the work, and not expect God to do FOR us what He

      can only do THROUGH us. We are to use our common sense and

      natural faculties in working upon the conditions now present. We

      must make use of them, AS FAR AS THEY GO, but we must not try and

      go further than the present things require; we must not try to

      force things, but allow them to grow naturally, knowing that they

      are doing so under the guidance of the All-Creating Wisdom.

      Following this method we shall grow more and more into the habit

      of looking to mental attitude as the Key to our progress in Life,

      knowing that everything else must come out of that; and we shall

      further discover that our mental attitude is eventually

      determined by the way in which we regard the Divine Mind. Then

      the final result will be that we shall see the Divine Mind to be

      nothing else than Life, Love and Beauty--Beauty being identical

      with Wisdom or the perfect adjustment of parts to whole--and we

      shall see ourselves to be distributing centres of these primary

      energies and so in our turn subordinate centres of creative

      power. And as we advance in this knowledge we shall find that we

      transcend one law of limitation after another by finding the

      higher law, of which the lower is but a partial expression, until

      we shall see clearly before us, as our ultimate goal, nothing

      less than the Perfect Law of Liberty--not liberty without Law

      which is anarchy, but Liberty according to Law. In this way we

      shall find that the Apostle spoke the literal truth, when he

      said, that we shall become like Him when we see Him AS HE IS,

      because the whole process by which our individuality is produced

      is one of reflection of the image existing in the Divine Mind.

      When we thus learn the Law of our own being we shall be able to

      specialize it in ways of which we have hitherto but little

      conception, but as in the case of all natural laws the

      specialization cannot take place until the fundamental principle

      of the generic law has been fully realized. For these reasons the

      student should endeavour to realize more and more perfectly, both

      in theory and practice, the law of the relation between the

      Universal and the Individual Minds. It is that of RECIPROCAL

      action. If this fact of reciprocity is grasped, it will be found

      to explain both why the individual falls short of expressing the

      fulness of Life, which the Spirit is, and why he can attain to

      the fulness of that expression; just as the same law explains why

      iron sinks in water, and how it can be made to float. It is the

      individualizing of the Universal Spirit, by recognizing its

      reciprocity to ourselves, that is the secret of the perpetuation

      and growth of our own individuality.