to all our commercial as well as our social relationships.
We have not been more successful in making this doctrine of Jesus a practical standard for everyday guidance because we have not understood the law on which it is based. Jesus would not have put forth a doctrine that was not true and not based on unchanging law, and we can be sure that this doctrine of giving and receiving is powerful enough to support all the affairs of civilization. We have not gone deeply enough into the teaching but have thought we understood it from a mere surface study. "Ye look at the things that are before your face," says Paul, and Jesus also warned us to "judge not according to appearance." We should form no conclusions until we have gone thoroughly into the causes and the underlying laws. The things we see outwardly are the effects that have arisen from causes that are invisible to us. There is an inner and an outer to everything: both the mental and the material conditions pervade the universe. Man slides at will up and down the whole gamut of cause and effect. The whole race slides into an effect almost unconsciously and so identifies the senses with the effect that the causes are lost sight of for thousands of years.
An awakening comes in time and the cause side of existence is again brought to the attention of men, as set forth, for example, in the doctrine of Jesus Christ. But men cannot grasp the great truth in a moment and cling to what is plainly visible to them, the effect side. The truth that things have a spiritual |