"GOD'S PURPOSE IN CREATING MAN"

"O Father of Infinite Love, we gather together once more in faith and ask Thee to give us the gift of understanding, still more the wonderful protection that is around all those who seek to cross those imaginary barriers between the earth and the realms above. Oh, grant that this realisation may so fasten itself on the minds of Thy little children that they may be certain that with Thee all is wonderfully well.

"Grant that we tonight, approaching holy ground with trust and with the wish to serve - grant that we may be allowed to enter into some of the brightness which Thou expressest to all who know Thee. Grant that each one may feel the Presence of God in very truth, and that this sense of contact may not bring fear or apprehension, but may despatch for ever that sense of separation which now and again comes to torture those who wish to climb.

"O Understanding Mind of Love, raise us above the world; lift us in thought, in aim and in purpose above all those ensnaring meshes of sadness, and grant that we - free and emancipated because we are Thy children - may go forward in joy, in that inward peace, and in the knowledge that we are answering to the Voice of Love which calls us on and on. Yet, ere we start to take, we seek to give of that little which is within our hearts.

"Christ, accept that which is Thine, and grant that day by day it may grow so that in time to come the gift of our love may indeed seem worthy in our own eyes. Such is Thy bountiful grace and understanding that we know that even at this stage Thou art content to stoop down and take from us with happiness that little which each has to offer. And for this and for all those mercies which Thy children as yet only sense, for all these we thank Thee with grateful hearts, and ask - asking always, as Thou hast directed - ask that out of Thy great generosity Thou wilt give unto us the power to rise, to be and to act - to Thy honour and glory... Amen...

"...My children, tonight I want you to regard silence, the silence of the Spirit, as especially necessary because we are getting on to holy ground. You have been told in many ways that on entering into the holy place of the Temple of God it was the custom to remove the shoes, so that not only was the worshipper free from the dust of the world but also he entered into the sanctuary of the Most High in quietness and in simplicity.

"Children, the time has gone when I could talk to you as the world speaks, when I could appeal to your mind through the imagination which belongs to the body and not to the soul; the time when I distracted you from your troubles as a Mother distracts her child - by seizing the first thing at hand and trying each one until the attraction was strong enough to turn tears into laughter...

"My children, those days are past, and I want you tonight and from henceforth to adjust yourselves to this new conception of approaching that which is Holy. I want you, as you were told by one who is nearer to the Spirit than he understands (Dr. Vanstone) - I want you to alter the measure of the Divinity within. And you cannot do that if your mind is distracted by this and by that.

"Only holiness can contact with holiness; and the things of the earth - harmless as many of them may be - do not ring true to the music of the spheres, and thus sadness creeps in and precious opportunity is wasted.

"There is around you the same cordon of Love but it varies in some particulars, and tonight, if you had eyes that could see, you would know that the Spirit of God was demonstrated in this room in a way that the closest student of the things of God would reject as absolutely impossible.

"But I speak of things not as imagined by the mind of man while still fettered in the physical body; I speak not even of that spiritual imagination which sometimes does get very close to that which is actual living truth - I speak tonight of conditions and of manifestations which are entirely of the realms above. And you, feeling yourselves in this circle of light and love and protection, can, I am sure, let everything else go and send out the real you into the silence - into the holiness of those inner, so-called secret places of the Most High.

"Tonight, my children, I lead you on from the thoughts which arose out of 'The Call to Youth' (19th Oct. 1924) - I lead you on from that and I ask you to bestow some consideration and prayer and thought on the great purpose which God had in mind in creating man to rise from small things into the power and purity which is of Himself.

"Time moves slowly to you - the years roll on and it seems to the physical mind that very little change occurs; that this nation rises, reaches its zenith and then sinks back again into an inconspicuous position. And the world accepts it as direct cause and effect - as something which, because it has happened in the past, will happen again and again, and so on into the interminable future.

"Of course, dear children, it is only natural that humanity as a whole is interested in these outward and visible signs of greatness or of failure. But I want you to get away from the physical aspect of things, and to ponder a little on the spiritual evolution of the individual soul.

"To the surface thinker it would seem that I am narrowing my borders by laying aside, for the moment, the big problem of the world; the problem that can never be answered by the greatest or the wisest on earth because they have not got the key to the riddle - or if they have found that key, have not sufficient courage to produce it. I say, to the surface thinker, it would appear that I leave the broad view and concentrate on the narrow, but you shall see that only by analysing and considering the construction which the individual is working upon - or neglecting, as the case may be - that only by applying the microscope of spiritual vision, can we understand what is animating the world at large.

"In the lives of the vast majority - indeed I could almost say in the lives of all - you will get worked out what the history of the nations shows you in bold detail. You will find at one time powers seemed high, that they attracted to themselves some of the gifts of the world, and that they enjoyed a moderate form of success in the particular positions in which they were placed.

"And, then, apparently for no reason at all, the full tide started a slow retreat, and, to their amazement and affrighted vision, presently the bare shore was revealed and the waters of happiness seemed to have receded out of sight.

"At those times, dear children, whatever is in the individual comes out, and, more than that, it is laid out for others to see. Just as the stones on the shore or the shelving sides are hidden by the beauty of the swift moving waves above them - so in their days of prosperity the real self was hidden from those who thought they knew them best. But with the barren shore, subterfuge is useless; they are face to face with themselves, and unless there is some hold on God, pitiable indeed is their lot...

"Yet as the years pass on, slowly the waters of happiness come creeping back; but whether they are of beauty and of power depends entirely on the work which has been done on the naked shore. Fence it how you may, the test comes then. Only those who, in searching out their latent resources have found something to cling to, can hold happiness - the happiness that will last.

"Children, sometimes it seems to you that there are those who have not had the ebb and flow; but when they come here and see things as they are, they would be the first to tell you that the ebb and flow - or the flow and ebb, as the case may be - had occurred, but they were unready for it, and so sadness took the place of gladness. And they see that had they found within themselves the strength to hold on to God, the ebb would not have had that permanent aspect, as it appeared to you...

"I think you can guess why I speak of this tonight. You must recollect all of you that, from the world's point of view, your shore has been exposed for a very long time - and so it has. It was necessary that the uneven places should be filled in, that the stones should be so arranged that they neither proved a menace to you or to others, that much work had to be done to make the shore as beautiful without the sea as when the sea rolls in.

"That is the purpose behind all that happens on the sorrow-side of life; and you will agree that when this care and over-seeing is omitted, it is a terrible waste of opportunity and, more than that, it is by reason of those omissions that happiness retreats once more.

"In the life of the individual there is reflected the fate of the nations; and how often is it, dear children, that by suffering, a nation finds its firm foundation at last. Oh, there are many enemies, of course - they are the testing ropes which pull in all directions to see if the fabric is sufficiently firmly established to resist and to hold fast. You cannot be certain of your foundation until the test has been met and faced.

"And I want you all to so widen your borders of thought that, in thinking of the individual, you can apply it to yourselves; then to again widen the radius of your thought to include your neighbour, and once more to stretch those boundaries and to take in humanity as a whole.

"It would seem to you, however, when you get on to such a broad basis of thinking, that the necessary preparation has not been done in order that happiness should come and should stay. Yet, dear children, in the individual life again you get your answer. God, of necessity, has to use the individual in the shaping and the working out of His plans, and so you will see from this the importance attached to the individual rather than to mankind as a whole.

"Once more it is by considering the little things, the single atom of the great conglomeration of the world, as it were; it is by giving your attention to the individual that you can cause, in time - in common with all those who are working for God - a revision in the thought of the great collection of human life.

"It has been said, and rightly so, that you want to get down to essentials in order to raise the people. It is no use speaking of treasure in bulk, when this one and that goes hungry for the sake of bread. You have got to get down to the individual point of view. And what is it that the average one seeks? Another who can see their view - who understands the human longings and needs of the apparently forsaken.

"It is not easy to express in finite terms that which is infinite, but I must leave some inkling in your minds tonight of God's purpose in regard to the children He loves so well.

"I want you in everything to get back to the one thing which pervades - which overwhelms everything else - and that is that: God, in allowing man to start off on the journey of the Spirit, has always the End in view; and it was Love and Love alone that allowed the individual to set out and try and find himself; and in thus finding himself to be linked - in a way hitherto impossible - with God and all He represents.

"Follow the road of life how you will - and I know, looking at things from the physical aspect, it must seem that it is a road beset by pitfalls and traps - but only by the experience so bought can the material be submerged by the spiritual, and only by taking the rough hillside can that spirituality, emancipated and free, triumph over all.

"Once before, dear children, you were told, as perhaps you will remember, that the chief preparation goes on underneath - in the inner recesses of the soul. And I want you tonight, in regarding the individual - and especially those who are reluctant to forsake the things of the world - I want you to remember that God very often works on that which is covered up.

"And so it is that when the test comes you hear again and again: 'They took it better than was expected'... Unconsciously the shore has been prepared, and when the tide of happiness goes rolling out it does not reveal that which makes you shrink but only that which can be filled in by effort and work and prayer.

"In regard to your work amongst the individual, don't underestimate its importance. It seems to you that there are some who could speak to an audience already half prepared, and you sigh at the precious opportunity which is slipping by. I understand all this and more; and will you try and believe me when I say that in God's sight the gathering of one lonely soul into the brightness of His Love counts, with Him, the same as if you could send your message far and wide?

"I do not want you to belittle the work that you do. I want you to realise that it is part of the plan, the position in which you find yourselves - and if it had been God's will, He could easily have surrounded you with all that good material which you so long to have the opportunity of working upon. Far more than you can guess the preparation is going on underneath; and by a word here and there to the individual, you are providing that which is necessary.

"After all, what is it that tells in life? The quiet conviction and faith of the individual - because in coming in contact with others, far more than they know, they leave an impression of that same faith on the mind of the other.

"Oh, do not be disappointed; do not deplore the fact that you cannot broadcast the message of Hope, for you shall find that by pegging away at the individual, so - in God's good time - shall the influence spread and spread until at last the soil is suitable and the seed can be sown freely in all directions.

"The work goes on apace in many ways which are hidden from you, but the work goes on apace; and that which was done in diffidence and with misgiving shall produce not only the desire for better things in the heart of another, but the courage to set out and seek until they find...

"So the good work goes on, and out of the tiny seed of endeavour grows that great tree of achievement which, in the by-and-by, shall be very pleasant to look upon.

"And now, my children, I will leave you. Perhaps you think it wiser for me to stay, but there is work that has to be got in tonight, and in following out that which has been laid down to be accomplished, we shall gain our happiness in the end..."

"...Now, my children, I am not going to keep you longer tonight. We have fought the good fight and we have won through; and I want you to know that if it had not been for those few words of preparation in the beginning, tonight would have been marked off as the first failure we have had.

"I urge you to remember this always: To be still more rigid over the preparation, the sanctification of yourselves unto this great work, which even now is assuming proportions of which you little dream.

"There is rest for the weary, peace for the soul in doing that which God has appointed; and you shall all find, with so much relief and so much joy, that the struggles were not failures but firm successes, and that only by conquering and re-conquering the opposing forces, were you able to go on into that security where evil cannot approach.

"I told you tonight, dear children, of the cordon of Love which was around you. It has remained intact, and even when the interruption came it was powerless to touch that, and so I could give my child instructions to do that which was needful. Again and again the power was cut into in a way you cannot grasp, but again and again was it replenished - and we have finished stronger than we began.

"Oh, take from this the comfort I long to give - that in spite of struggle, of sorrow, and of many enemies - you shall finish stronger than when you began. It is of the morrow I speak when sadness shall be no more, when effort will be crowned by result, when weariness will have changed into that restfulness - which only the fight well fought can bring. Resting in the strength which is of God we shall gain the highest peaks with no loss of courage, but with that greater courage which is born out of the very fears it overcame...

"So, in God's good time, we shall find ourselves up there and able to send back strength which, over and over again, shall be used to help the weaker ones to climb.

"There is one for whom I would say a word, and that is our friend who was in your thoughts last night. He does not speak this evening because there are some things which cannot be talked about; but I had to put it into words because he suffered too - he suffered too.

"And now for the blessing: Tonight it is not only of peace but it is of a gladness surpassing anything that has come your way before - the gladness of having kept true to Christ... In His Name I bless you and in His care I leave you, knowing that each evening of this sweet communion draws closer the ties, not only between us, but those precious ties between you and the Great Spirit, which shall never break and shall never give...

"The blessing of the Great Spirit of Love and Light and Understanding rest upon you for ever and for ever; and this is a promise and not a request - a promise which I pass on - that between the Great Spirit and His children nothing can come because of all the past has held, for which we thank God - we thank God for all the past has held.

"My children, echo it too because you have builded better than you know, and the vision of the Spirit shall be yours...Goodnight, my little ones."

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Download 9 chronologically-ordered digital books of earlier Zodiac Circle sittings (1923-1928)