RELIGION THE KEYSTONE. 20
great lines that govern the movements, the action of all the faculties. By its very position, therefore, religion must be the harmonizing force for all the rest. And from this position we have a right to assert that religion includes all those general laws of responsive harmony which unite living, conscious beings with each other.
A UNIVERSAL RELIGION must express universal
truths. It must completely express as well as provide for the spiritual wants of man. By whatever name we may call our soul, or the spiritual. internal life, we must see that it is the formative and acting force within every organ, every part, every tissue of both brain and body. Hence our spiritual wants must pertain to every faculty and organ.
The forces of life act from within outward. In the living body " each outward shape has been accurately molded upon an interior shape which gives its life, its explanation; and this interior spirit must have a shape or forin in order to create form and sustain form." It cannot give what it does not possess.
If spirit has form, then it also has space, for we can
not conceive of form without space. For example, consider a very simple form, a triangle. It is bounded by the lines A, B, D. If we move the line B over to A so that there is no space between them, then the triangle, the shape, will itself disappear. Take another example in the circle. Suppose that there were no distance or space between the circumference, CIR, and
the center at D, or between the side at SI and that at Ot. What would become of the circle? It would not exist. While space and form are not the same thing, yet they must always co-exist; we cannot have one without the other. They efore, if the soul or spirit has a form, it also has space; or as the past philosophers would word it, "the soul occupies space. But these philosophers were so loose in their thinking that they imagined that the soul has no spacerelations at all.
These men believed that the soul can think and feel and exercise volition. Admitting this evident truth, let us consider a case. I think that the upper figure on page 183 is a triangle and that the lower one is a circle. The difference between the two is a difference of form. Now what is the difference in my thought of one and my thought of the other ? Do not the two thoughts differ in their shape, just as the figures themselves differ? If not, then in what way is my mind able to distinguish the difference between them ? Suppose that I think of two circles which are of the same size, hut one of them is red and the other is green. Now my thought of one must differ in color from my thought of the other. If in this case my thoughts have no color, then how can my mind know the difference between the two?
If we think at all we must see from these facts that our thoughts can have form and space and color. They are not intangible and shapeless nothings, as some people believe.
Through our physical senses we perceive a material world full of objects with varied properties. In like manner the spiritual senses of man have perceived a
