in Scripture that the angels who stand nearest
to God or highest in heaven are the cherubim--that is to say, they are
those who have attained a greater reciprocity than all other angels.
Now this Divine love is incomprehensible to us until we are initiated
into its mystery as a gift, and cannot be understood nor guessed at
by comparisons with any human loves however great, noble, or pure;
but this burning fiery essence of joy, this radiant glory of delight,
this holy and ineffable fulfilment of the uttermost needs, longings,
and requirements of the soul must be personally experienced by us
to be comprehended.

What madness in us is it that can count as an added cross or burden
any means by which we reach such perfection of bliss for ever? The
Cross is for us the misery of our own blinding sins and selfishnesses.
The burden is the weight of our own distance from God. "Take up
thy cross (which is our daily life of ignorance and sin), take up thy
cross, and follow Me," says the voice of the Saviour; and as we do it
and follow Him the distance between God and ourselves diminishes,
and finally the burden and the cross _disappear,_ and behold God!
awaiting us with His consolations.

It is the stopping half-way that causes would-be followers of Christ
such distress. It is necessary that we follow Him all the way and not
merely a part of it--that He may complete His process in us. When
we are living altogether in a creaturely, natural, or unregenerated
way, absorbed in the ambitions and interests of a worldly life, we
are perhaps content. When we live regenerated and in the spirit, we
are in great joy; but when we try to live between the two and would
serve God and worldly interests at the same time we are in gloomy
wretchedness, vacillation, depression.

The Master said, "The kingdom of heaven is within you," which
signified that within us was the potentiality to have entrance to, and
to know, the mystery of the Divine Secret, and to participate whilst
still living here, in the early degrees or manifestations of Divine
Love--that Power which glorifies the angels, and is Heaven.

_Of the three Stages of God-Consciousness_

_(Which more properly expressed is the gift of immediate access of
the soul of God)_

There are three principal stages on the way of progress--three
separate degrees of God-Consciousness. The first is the
Consciousness of the Presence of Jesus, the Perfect Man. We take
Him into the heart, accept and k