in this, that if the symbolism is in any degree
adequate it must, in some measure, represent the form of Truth, just as
the modelling of a drapery suggests the form of the figure beneath. They
have a certain consciousness that somehow they are in the presence of
Truth; and this leads people to resent any removal of those folds of
drapery which have hitherto conveyed this idea to their minds.

There is sufficient indication of the inner Truth in the outward form to
afford an excuse for the timorous, and those who have not sufficient
mental energy to think for themselves, to cry out that finality has
already been attained, and that any further search into the matter must
end in the destruction of Truth. But in raising such an outcry they
betray their ignorance of the very nature of Truth, which is that it can
never be destroyed: the very fact that Truth is Truth makes this
impossible. And again they exhibit their ignorance of the first
principle of Life--namely, the Law of Growth, which throughout the
universe perpetually pushes forward into more and more vivid forms of
expression, having expansion everywhere and finality nowhere.

Such ignorant objections need not, therefore, alarm us; and we should
endeavour to show those who make them that what they fear is the only
natural order of the Divine Life, which is "over all, and through all,
and in all." But we must do this gently, and not by forcibly thrusting
upon them the object of their terror, and so repelling them from all
study of the subject. We should endeavour gradually to lead them to see
that there is something interior to what they have hitherto held to be
ultimate Truth, and to realise that the sensation of emptiness and
dissatisfaction, which from time to time will persist in making itself
felt in their hearts, is nothing else than the pressing forward of the
spirit within to declare that inner side of things which alone can
satisfactorily account for what we observe on the exterior, and without
the knowledge of which we can never perceive the true nature of our
inheritance in the Universal Life which is the Life Everlasting.

II

What, then, is this central principle which is at the root of all
things? It is Life. But not life as we recognise it in particular forms
of manifestation; it is something more interior and concentrated than
that. It is that "unity of the spirit" which _is_ unity, simply because
it has not yet passed into diversity. Perhaps thi