Chapter 1
The Book of the Law
II Chron. 34:8-33
In the thirty-fourth chapter of II Chronicles it is written that Josiah, king of the Jews, restored the worship in the temple after it had been neglected for about seventy years. The Jews had followed after the religions of the heathen nations about them, and were worshiping idols and practicing sorcery. Josiah commenced his reign when he was eight years old, and the record is that “while he was yet young, he began to seek after the God of David his father.” He destroyed all the idols, broke down all the altars of Baalim, and repaired the temple at Jerusalem. Money had been collected to pay for the repairs, and when this money was brought out, Hilkiah the priest found “a book of the law of the Lord.” About eight hundred years before this time Moses had given the Law, but there were not many copies of it. In this day, when millions of copies of the Scriptures are in circulation, we can hardly realize the dearth of Bibles in ancient times. Every manuscript had to be copied by hand. This lack of Scriptures in the hands of the people continued up to the time of the Reformation. Luther never saw a Bible until he was twenty years old. The Scriptures were found only in monasteries, written on parchment, and they were read at religious exercises by the priests.
All this history is suggestive; but it makes little difference to us what the old Jews had or what they did. There is small profit in reading history unless one gets the lesson taught in the recital. This history is symbolical, and a study of the inner meaning of the names of these persons who discovered the Book of the Law, Hilkiah the high priest, Josiah the king, and Shaphan the scribe, reveals that they are used to represent states of mind in man. Every character in this recital is a symbolical representative of some phase of mind in human consciousness.
Man has numerous egos. The ego that attains control in the outer consciousness is king; but in the subjective consciousness there are many other egos striving to get the rule. The Scripture is true in its parables, and the dominating ego is always represented as the king. In this lesson Josiah is king and all the others are subjective. Recent experiments in psychology report the case of a young lady who had manifested three distinct egos. A hypnotist who experimented with the case, put to sleep the dominating ego. Then one of the subjective egos came forth and took possession of her brain. One of these egos was a very good girl and one was very bad; but all were characteristic of the young lady in her every-day life. All claimed to be the one real individual. Search within yourself and you find your dominating ego, and many subjective desires. or egos, trying to work themselves to the surface.
Man is like a temple filled with people. Every cell is an identity. We could not have life without identity. All our thoughts are producing egos, forming states of consciousness. Every experience we have is packed away in the subconscious. Our religious experiences make a religious ego, referred to as the high priest. He discerns the Book of the Law and hands it to Shaphan the scribe. The scribe is memory, who reads to the king out of the subjective Law.
As the Scriptures are unraveled and applied to the individual we come more and more into the consciousness of the great kingdom of Mind and its many palaces. The great Law of Being is written deep down in the essence of all things. We should not pray to an outside God for the fulfillment of our desires, but we should search within and find the law by which they can surely be brought to pass. But suppose that for seventy years, or less time, we have neglected the law, so that it has been more and more submerged and forgotten in the subconsciousness; what is the result? The temple begins to fall into ruins. Then the high priest, the subjective spiritual ego, calls our attention to the Law Supreme, written in the inward parts. The king, the ruling ego, is repentant, and is forgiven his shortcomings.
The idea of Perfect Man, known mystically as the Christ, is the Book of the Law. We change from the mortal states of consciousness to the spiritual by understanding, thinking and speaking the Truth. By this process we become an entirely new man—no longer the man of small affairs, striving for personal aims, but the man universal, who lives in a great world, seeing the Larger Self not only in himself, but in all. The memories of the little self, that fill the subconscious and hide the Book of the Law, are cleared away; we turn within, repair the temple, and begin to establish the true worship of God.
The record is that the book of the law was found “when they brought out the money that was brought into the house of the Lord.” Money represents reserve force. Every one of us has a great reserve force, a subjective energy which is well symbolized by money. When it is brought forth through recognition and mental concentration on ideas of energy and power, every faculty is quickened. Sight, hearing, memory—in fact, all the powers of body and mind—are resurrected. Thus the Book of the Law is uncovered and man remembers the law of his own being.
Physical scientists are just recently telling us that they can see, with a certain electrical apparatus, an envelope of light surrounding people. This light has long been known to Hindoo mystics as the “astral light.” It is the sensitive plate of the mind. Upon it every thought is written by the scribe, and the record falls back and becomes part of the subconscious memory. In the beginning the Supreme Mind wrote within us the Supreme Law; and when we seek we shall find and come into the full stature of the perfect man in Christ Jesus, through thinking the thoughts of the One Mind and building a new state of consciousness according to the Law. Every one must go within and find the Book of the Law for himself, and not depend upon any man or any book for his guide.
In the One great Mind every one has a definite place. If, as Jesus Christ said, “the very hairs of your head are numbered,” it must be that God intended us to do a specific work. The trouble with many people is, they are trying to do a work that does not belong to them. The only way to find your work is to know the Law. It is not a matter of guesswork when you get your direction from the Spirit within you. Man has the power to realize all his ideals. It is merely a question of recognition and use.
