nd stages, is the
outgoing and unfolding of God, who in His Essence and Godhead is one,
indivisible and incomprehensible. But as He is essentially and
eternally Good, He _expresses_ Himself in revelation, and goes out of
Unity into differentiation and multiplicity; but the entire spiritual
movement of the universe is back again toward the fundamental Unity,
for Divine Unity is both the Alpha and the Omega of the {41} deeper
inner world. His main interest is, however, not philosophical and
speculative; his mind focuses always on the practical matters of a true
and saintly life. Like his teacher, Buenderlin, his whole view of life
and salvation is mystical; everything which concerns religion occurs in
the realm of the soul and is the outcome of direct relations between
the human spirit and the Divine Spirit. In every age, and in every
land, the inner Word of God, the Voice of the Spirit speaking within,
clarifying the mind and training the spiritual perceptions by a
progressive experience, has made for itself a chosen people and has
gathered out of the world a little inner circle of those who know the
Truth because it was formed within themselves. This "inner circle of
those who know" is the true Church: "The Church is a chosen, saved,
purified, sanctified group in whom God dwells, upon whom the Holy Ghost
was poured out His gifts and with whom Christ the Lord shares His
offices and His mission."[14]

There is however, through the ages a steady ripening of the Divine
Harvest, a gradual and progressive onward movement of the spiritual
process, ever within the lives of men: "Time brings roses. He who
thinks that he has all the fruit when strawberries are ripe forgets
that grapes are still to come. We should always be eagerly looking for
something better."[15] There are, he says, three well-marked stages of
revelation: (1) The stage of the law, when God, the Father, was making
Himself known through His external creation and by outward forms of
training and discipline; (2) the stage of self-revelation through the
Son, that men might see in Him and His personal activity the actual
character and heart of God; and (3) the stage of the Holy Spirit which
fills all deeps and heights, flows into all lives, and is the One God
revealed in His essential nature of active Goodness--Goodness at work
in the world. Externals of every type--law, ceremonies, rewards and
punishments, {42} historical happenings, written Scriptures, eve