es the
rule, and sets the standard of what each one may become as he attains to
the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.

Let us, therefore, by striking out this interpolation, restore the
Master's words as they stand in the original: "Except ye believe that I
am, ye shall die in your sins." This is an epitome of his teaching.

"The last enemy that shall be overcome is death," and the "sting," or
fatal power, of death is "sin." Remove that, and death has no longer any
dominion over us; its power is at an end. And "the strength of sin is
the Law": sin is every contradiction of the law of Being; and the law of
Being is infinitude; for Being is Life, and Life in its innermost
essence is the limitless I am. Dying in our sins is thus not a
punishment for doubting a particular theological dogma, but it is the
unavoidable natural consequence of not realising, not believing in, the
I am. So long as we fail to realise its full infinitude in ourselves, we
cut ourselves off from our conscious unity with the Infinite Life-Spirit
which permeates all things. Without this principle we have no
alternative but to die--and this because of our sin, that is, because of
our failure to conform to the true Law of our Being, which is Life, and
not Death. We affirm Death and Negation concerning ourselves, and
therefore Death and Negation are externalised, and thus we pay the
penalty of not believing in the central Law of our own Life, which is
the Law of all Life. The Bible is the Book of Principles, and therefore
by "dying" is meant the acceptance of the principle of the Negative
which culminates in Death as the sum-total of all limitations, and which
introduces at every step those restrictions which are of the nature of
Death, because their tendency is to curtail the outflowing fulness of
Life.

This, then, is the very essence of the teaching of Jesus, that unbelief
in the limitless power of Life-in-ourselves--in each of us--is the one
cause of Death and of all those evils which, in greater or lesser
measure, reproduce the restrictive influences which deprive Life of its
fulness and joy. If we would escape Death and enter into Life, we must
each believe in the I am in ourselves. And the ground for this belief?
Simply that nothing else is conceivable. If our life is not a portion of
the life of Universal Spirit, whence comes it? We are because that is.
No other explanation is possible. The unqualified affirmation of our own
livi