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the help of the Spirit in your affairs so long as you believe in securing your rights through such contentious channels. If you are sincere in your desire to be born into the Spirit, shun all the entanglements of the world's legal machinery. It is a snare and a delusion. Your triumphs through its methods will in the end turn to dust and ashes. "If any man sue thee at law and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also." Trust the defense of your rights to the law of Spirit and you shall be victor in every instance. You may appear to lose both your coat and your cloak, but don't worry. Your Judge is the Almighty Equilbrium of the Universe, and all men and all things are obedient to it in its "Day of Judgment."

Do you love your enemies? Do you bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you?

This is required of one who seeks the new birth. Are you laying up treasures for yourself upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal"?

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If so, remember the primal law of thought generation the gluing of the ego to those things which it consciously seeks, "for where you treasure is there will your heart be also." You can't float out into the ethereal substance of the Spirit with bags of gold in each hand.

Do you allow your mind to drift with the current criticism of the world, magnifying the error and minimizing the good?

This mental habit of the ignorant flesh is carnal judgment darkness and ignorance seeing itself reflected in all the universe. Beware of this subtle

adversary who goes forth ostensibly to reform the

world.

According to Rotherham, Jesus said to such: "Why, moreover, beholdest thou the mote that is in the eye of thy brother, while the beam in thine eye thou dost not consider? Or will thou say to thy brother, Allow I may cast out the mote in thine eye; and, behold! the beam is in thine eye? Hypocrite! Cast out first, out of thine eye, the beam; and then shalt thou clearly see to cast the mote out of the eye of thy brother."

O Son of God and Son of Man! Realize what and who you are. Know consciously what Jesus so succinctly stated: "No one has ascended into the heaven, save he who out of the heaven descended the Son of Man," the one having his being in heaven. Your being is in heaven -the spiritual consciousYou descended from that high estate, and you by right belong there now. You are there now if you will but realize it and comply with the laws of heaven. God is here, now in our midst. The saints are with us taking account of our every thought. The Father loves us with His Infinite Love. are His in Truth and must be His in fact.

ness.

We

Let us now and here consecrate ourselves anew

Let us agree
Let us write

There is no

to His Divine guidance and service. in thought and word to do His will. this covenant afresh upon our hearts. satisfaction short of the spiritual birth. home to the Father's house and abide in His love forever.

"Live by law, not like the fool,

But like the bard who freely sings

In strictest bonds of rhyme and reel

Let us go

And finds in them not bonds, but wings."

"Jesus gilded the tear-drop with his smile And made the desert garden bloom awhile."

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In Scripture symbology the feminine always represents subjective states of consciousness, whether in the higher or lower phase of manifestation.

In today's lesson the Greek woman stands for that state of mind apparently remote from the spiritual, yet seeking freedom from impure thought through spiritual means.

The I AM goes into the "borders of Tyre and Sidon," which means externality.

The I AM is that which says I; in other words, self-identity. When it dawns upon one that his I is not body, but free spirit, and can go from the within of consciousness to the without, it is then the "anointed of God," and is endowed with saving quality; it is then called "Jesus," which means Savior.

But the I is not all at once supernaturally wise. It must gradually become acquainted with its states of consciousness and its wonderful powers.

The history of Jesus in the four gospels fully sustains this truth. Jesus grew in stature and wisdom. He had to be told what to do sometimes by those having less power. At the marriage feast at Cana his mother called his attention to the lack of wine and intimated that he could supply it. He said, "What have I to do with thee, woman?" Yet he took the hint and turned the water into the best of wine.

In the lesson today, as in several other places in the Scripture, Jesus seemingly limits his mission to the Jewish people. This means that when the I in us finds that it is spiritual, its tendency is to function on the spiritual plane only. It has to be educated up to the point where it takes external conditions. in hand and rights them.

You may be trying to ignore or hide some lust or "impure spirit" of your fleshly consciousness. But like Jesus in Tyre, it cannot be done - you "cannot be hid" from your thoughts. Nor can you excuse yourself upon the plea that you must first deal with. the spiritual "Let the children first be filled." Your consciousness will cry out for relief from the "impure spirit" which has possessed her "little daughter" (thought).

She appeals for even the "crumbs" or little words and thoughts that seem too trivial to take into account. "A man shall be held accountable for his lightest word," said Jesus in another gospel. So these most outer states of consciousness may be purified by simple words of Truth.

"And he said unto her, For this saying (word), go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter."

Lesson 4. July 22.

Peter's Confession and Christ's Rebuke. Matt. 16:13-26.

GOLDEN TEXT-If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. Matt. 16:24.

"When Jesus came into the coasts of Cæsarea Philippi," means, when the I AM came into the realms of power.

Who is this Son of Man? is the question that presents itself when we come into consciousness of spiritual dominion and power, though it be of

even a temporal nature-indicated by the word. Cæsarea.

There are many and various answers if we listen to the opinions of men, or the voices of the temporal. We seem to be personalities wearing many masks, as "John the Baptist, Elijah, Jerimiah, or one of the prophets." Here is taught by inference that the personal perception of man results in what is termed reincarnation. But the true concept of this Son of Man does away with such limitations.

This higher concept is attained through recognition of and direct appeal to the very Substance of man's spiritual nature, which is Faith in God as Omnipresent Intelligence. It is through this Peter perception that man discerns his true character, which is "Christ, the Son of the living God."

Then when man has acknowledged his Christ he has a rock foundation upon which to build his character (church), and "gates of hades shall not prevail against it." Hades means the pit, the grave; that is, death.

This faith in one's spiritual nature carried to its ultimate will do away with death-its gate shall never open to receive the faithful disciples.

In the original Greek there is much metaphysical meaning hidden in the eighteenth verse. "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock," reads in the Greek "Thou art Petros and upon this petra." Petros is rock, masculine, and Petra is rock, feminine. The character of man must therefore be built up in the Christ way upon a substance which is both masculine and feminine in one. This Jesus of Nazareth. demonstrated in his spiritualized body.

The "keys" to this "kingdom of the heavens" is in binding" (affirmations) and (affirmations) and "loosing" (denials). The "earth" represents the fixed or concrete state of consciousness resting in this rock

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