Introduction

THIS little work attempts to deal only with inner religion. In the Spirit we can all become one, although on the surface we may not be able to agree at all. The Kingdom of the Spirit is eternal and unchanging. Theology and doctrine change from age to age, but the inner Spiritual Reality is the same always. Now, as in olden time, we can make contact with this inner world or Kingdom and find God, and in Him be satisfied. Scientific discoveries threaten to overwhelm Christianity from time to time, but they make no difference to the Inner Kingdom. When Science or the Higher Criticism has demolished everything, apparently, the mystic still contemplates the Supreme, and walks with his Lord. Nothing is changed really. Everything essential is just the same. It is only the non-essentials that have been shuffled about somewhat.

Quite recently there has been a great controversy about Darwinianism. A school teacher in America was arraigned because he taught Evolution. Most educated people in this country accept evolution as a matter of course, just as they accept the law of gravitation. Because of this some think that Christianity is exploded. But nothing is altered in reality. It does not matter, even if it is the fashion to believe in evolution, for we can retire into the Secret Place of the Most High just the same.

The earth is still the same, now that people believe it to be a globe, as it was when people thought the world was flat. The earth is not altered—it is only beliefs that change.

The exterior part of a religion does not matter much—although it is about this that people quarrel so bitterly—it is its inner meaning and experiences that are of importance. The end and object of religion is Divine Union, and if another soul attains to this blissful state by a different road from that which is the only one that can be used by us, let us be glad and praise God, instead of wasting our time explaining to him that he is wrong and our way the only one. Let us all be broad-minded. Our Lord said, when speaking from the super-conscious, wherein He realized that He was consciously indwelling the advanced souls in every nation and religion: “Other sheep I have which are not of this fold.’’ Let us be glad that this is so, and rejoice in that the Truth can be found in so many different ways.

Strange though it may seem to many, some people are afraid of what is going to become of them when Divine Union takes place. They are afraid that they will lose their personality or individuality. They argue that if they get back to the Father like a drop of water returning to the Ocean, they will be swallowed up and lose consciousness, so to speak. Nothing of the sort happens, of course, the consciousness is not lost — it expands. But this is a great mystery and little can be said about it, but the following, taken from the writings of Dr. Rufus Jones, may prove helpful to some:

‘’There need be involved no loss of personality, no abandonment of selfhood. The self is not merged into a nameless absolute. Personality remains, but it is now a Personality conscious of its divine environment, conscious that its life is God’s Life—a Personality that chooses to will the divine Will and that is conscious of its two sides or surfaces of expression. It all feels, then, as if there is around one a Conscious Ocean, an Ocean of Consciousness with conscious inlets opening out of it—one of which inlets constitutes yourself. The inlet on its shore side may have it, defined shape and margin, but on its seaward side it may open to the ocean and feel the influx of its tides and currents. The tides of that measureless expanse may sweep in to stir the shallows of the inlet. The inlet is in the ocean and the ocean is in the inlet.”

May this little book help many pilgrims who are “in the Way” to a deeper realization of God’s presence and a more intimate fellowship with their Lord.

H. T. H.