and a deific power, because it is a manifestation in us of the same intellect that creates and governs the world. According to Plato, our gnostic or knowing powers exist in three degrees. The lowest is mere animal instinct, and reason, and opinion, which may be true or false. The next higher degree is faith, which is far more than opinion and that degree of knowledge which is called science, which is a superficial perception of external facts. The highest of all is intuition, which is the divine light that illuminates the inmost or supreme man or mind. This is an intelligence invested with a large fraction of God's omnipotence.

It is also said by Plato in the "Timæus”—and it is a fundamental doctrine of the ancient Theosophy — that there are two classes of things of which our minds are cognizant ; first, things that exist in true being, or those that have a real existence, and are, as Kant would call them, "things in themselves." These are ideas. Secondly, there are things that are in a state of "becoming to be," but really are not. These include all our sense-perceptions and the objects of the so-called external world. They are not realities, but only their appearances or resemblances. These are recognized by opinion, which is only a little elevated above the animal life, conjoined with irrational sense. The other class of things, or those that have true being, are apprehended by pure intellect, which, as we have seen, is identical with the Kabalistic "justice" and Paul's righteousness of faith. The word so often used by Paul, Sıkıσúvη, and which is in our common version translated "justification," is the understanding of the just man, as Plato asserts, or the attainment of pure intelligence. Dr. Ackermann, in his "Christian Element in Plato,” says that the Platonic meaning of åpapría (hamartia), sin, is an error of the understanding, and we must suppose that Plato and even Paul understood Greek. By sin is meant the illusion and erroneous judgment of the senses, which is always the direct opposite

of the truth, or that clear intelligence which is called justice and faith. Paul says, "Let not sin reign in your mortal bodies," that is, let not these erroneous and illusory judgments of the mind on the plane of irrational sense control the corporeal condition. But let grace (or occult wisdom, as the word Kabalistically means) reign unto righteousness, through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Rom. v: 21.)

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In every case of disease it is incumbent on us to ask, whether it belongs to things that really are, or those which have an existence in our true being, or to the class of things which includes all our sense perceptions, that only appear to be, but really are not. It is our right to appeal the case from the court of irrational sense, with all its phantasms, to a higher intellectual tribunal, to the decision of the Platonic and Kabalistic justice, and Paul's "righteousness of faith," where the decision of the mind on the plane of sense will be reversed, and the disease will be classed among illusions, deceptive appearances, or sin which has no right to reign in our mortal body. This is only following the precept of Jesus, judge not according to appearance (sight, sense), but judge righteous judgment"; or, according to the true nature of things, which is always the direct opposite of the decision of the sensuous mind. Faith in the above sense, as the perception of truth which is above and beyond the grasp of the senses, would seem to be the divinely appointed remedy for the maladies of the soul, from which the diseases of the body arise, and of which they are the corporeal expression. In the "Timæus," Plato says, "that the disease of the soul is folly, or a privation of pure intellect. But there are two kinds of folly, the one madness, the other ignorance. Whatever influence therefore introduces either of these must be called disease." (Works of Plato, by Thomas Taylor, p. 544.) If this is true, it irresistibly follows that the most efficient remedy for the soul's ailments must be real truth, and the perception of truth that lies above and beyond the

plane of sense, and that puts our minds on the same exalted level with that divine intellect that creates and governs the world, is the Kabalistic justice, and Paul's righteousness of faith or rectitude of thought. This pure thought uninfluenced by sense, which separates the disease from our true being, and views our real self as exempt from all evil, is a silent but omnipotent energy that is the sovereign panacea for the maladies of the soul and its body. He who has the most of it comes nearest to the Christ, before whose name every knee bows, or owns allegiance.

The doctrine of the triune nature of man has always been the teaching of the spiritually minded of all ages and countries of the world. It is a doctrine of which we must never lose sight, and it must be to us something more than an opinion; it must become to us an intuitive perception, as it was to the mystics of the middle ages, -as Ruysbroek, Eckart, and Tauler. They looked upon human nature as tripartite, like the three stories of a house, or like the temple of Solomon, which is more a symbolic than a historic edifice. There is in man, first, the outer court of sense; next, the inner sanctuary of the intellectual soul; and lastly, in the East, the most holy place, the spirit, where, like the high priest, we may commune with God. This is the inmost region of our being, and our real self. It is included in the Christ, or the Universal Spirit. On this subject, Ruysbroek says, "I believe that the Son is the image of the Father, that in the Son have dwelt from all eternity, foreknown and contemplated by the Father, the prototypes (or ideas) of all mankind. We existed in the Son before we were born. He is the creative ground of all creatures, -the eternal cause and principle of their life. The highest essence of our being rests therefore in God, exists in his image in the Son." (Vaughn's Hours with the Mystics, Vol. I., p. 25.) This summit of our being, which is the real and divine man, is never contaminated by evil,

nor invaded by disease. The recognition of this truth, and the separation in thought of sin and disease from our inmost and only true self, is the Platonic (and also the Pauline) idea of redemption. Says Dr. Ackermann, "It is evident what Plato means by redemption, or how he conceives this event in the life of the soul. He thinks of it as a coming to one's self, an apprehending of one's self as (truly) existent, as a severing of the inmost being from the surrounding element, as a separation of one's self from the changing mass of the world and life, as a concretization of the original spiritual element in man to a divinely illuminated germ of light and life." (Christian Element in Plato, p. 247.) This coming to ourself, or the discovery of our true being, as in the case of the prodigal son, is the first step in our return to the Father, and the finding of this self not only in one's self, but also at the same time in another and higher being; that is, in God in Christ, is the Christian and Pauline idea of Salvation in the full sense of the word. We are expected and taught by the pulpit and the Church to find our real self, and to view it as polluted by sin, from the crown of the head to the soles of our feet. But this is the direct opposite of the truth. It was one of the doctrines of the Hermetic philosophers of all ages, among whom we unhesitatingly class Paul, that there centrally dwells in human nature the voice of the Divine Wisdom. This is the Genius Optimus, the Daimonion or divine guide of Sokrates, our inmost divine spirit and true self, the "Soul of the Soul," and the allseeing eye of the mind. It is that part or region of man that is incapable of contamination or damnation, and is never affected by evil and never lost, even in the greatest of sinners. This is even said to have been Cromwell's firm reliance and belief, and his last question to his attending chaplain bore reference to the assurance of it. In most men it is latent, and is as unknown to consciousness as the interior of the pyramid of Cheops, or the central world of the

universe. But it will sometime rise from its chrysalis enfoldments, and come into conscious life and activity. In this life of sense, we have taken our journey into a far country away from our Father's house or the realm of pure spirit. "Our (true) country," says Plotinus (that is, truly existing being), "is that from whence we came, and where our Father lives." Again, he says of this world of spirit, the kingdom of God in man, "Whoever is a spectator of this divine world becomes at one and the same time both the spectator and the spectacle, for our inmost self and immortal Ego is inseparable from it. He no longer beholds this intelligible world, or world of intelligence, externally, but he becomes the same with it." (Plotinus, Translated by Thomas Taylor, p. 100.) This is man as an image or idea of God, and not the vulgar and debased thing to which that divine name is usually given. And faith, when it rises above mere opinion, and becomes a clear intellectual perception of eternal truth, is the divinest power and highest saving and healing energy in the universe. "If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth." (Mark ix: 23.) 66 If ye had faith as a grain of mustard, ye might say to this sycamore tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea, and it would obey you." (Luke xvii : 6.) This is a sober truth, and not an Oriental exaggeration. The attainment of true faith is the recovery of the lost magic word. It is a perception of eternally existing realities, and is the Logos (or Word) in man. It is what Paul denominates, "the word of faith." Sin, in the Platonic sense of error, illusion, false opinion, is the opposite of faith, for "whatsoever is not of faith is sin." (Rom. xiv: 23.) But faith is not merely intellectual light; it is conjoined with love or feeling. Says Swedenborg, "All who are in the truths of faith from good are in power from the Lord, and this in the degree that they attribute all power to Him and none to themselves." (Arcana Celestia, 4932.) This is Paul's