kingdom of heaven.

When a free and independent

soul like Jesus comes forth with his proclamation of the indwelling God they cry, "Away with him! Crucify him!"'

ble to us all. Although the personality of Jesus was erased for our benefit, we have a like road to travel in overcoming evil tendencies. Before his demonstration it was impossible for anyone to get out of the hypnotic personality of the race thought and realize in its purity the Divine Mind. The door is now open through Jesus Christ and through no other, because no other mentality has dissolved the self and become one with the Universal.

The idea that man can and ought to overcome death is now taking a firm hold on the minds of advanced metaphysicians, and many are striving to make the demonstration. But all who do not take advantage of the methods of Jesus in handling erroneous states of consciousness will be disappointed.

The New Testament is a veiled text-book for the initiate seeking degrees in the inner life. Rules are given for working out every mental state that may be found in the mind. It is like a text-book on mathematics, with all the rules for working every problem that may come up in human life. Instead of reciting the relation of figures, it recites the relation of ideas. It is quite complex because it masses the action of ideas on three planes of consciousness - the spiritual, the mental and the physical. To the ordinary physiologist it has no message, because it represents the body as an aggregation of ideas. The eye, for instance, is the result of a desire to see, and is formed and sustained by that desire in the mind. Then to understand the eye, and perfect it as an instrument of sight, the oculist must study all the ideas that enter into its formation. It thus disappears as a mere material organ. So with every organ of the body, they must be resolved into their original ideas before they can be understood, regenerated and spiritualized in the Jesus Christ way.

Jesus worked out step by step in his three years' ministry all the sins, shortcomings and limitations that enter into the mind and body of man, and the New Testament is the record of that work. After

leansing the body temple in detail there remained still an idea of body separate and apart from other bodies and also from the One Substance. This final surrender is typified in the giving up of the ghost on the cross.

We should remember that in this process there is not what we ordinarily call death, because Jesus did not give up entire possession of the body; if he had he could not have resurrected it. What he gave up was the idea that it was his personal property, separate and distinct from other bodies. We will all eventually come to that place in understanding where we will see that there is but one subtance universal and that our bodies are actually interchangeable; that the very cells are in a state of flux and mix with the cells of other people's bodies. Then will come this final letting go of the mind of a personal body. This is high demonstration and must be preceded by thorough mental purification. The mind must be cleansed of separateness from even those who have reviled and crucified us. "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."

Lesson 13. March 31.

Review.

GOLDEN TEXT-He is despised and rejected of men. Isa. 53:3.

The last week of Jesus' work in the body was crowded full of stirring events. The importance of this brief period is shown by the fact that twentyfive of the eighty-nine chapters of the gospels are occupied with the events of this one week. It is the experience of metaphysicians that there are times of mental harvest when all the thoughts and words that have been held and spoken come all at once to fruition. Jesus said, "The word is the seed," and a truer statement was never made. A thought planted in mind germinates and comes to harvest in manner so like a seed that the simile is almost perfect.

Jesus gave several illustrations of the kind of ground these seed thoughts are planted in and the conditions they are liable to meet. The crop is dependent upon this sowing. Good, careful sowing in rich ground will always bring a bounteous harvest. Jesus was doubtless sowing seed all during his thirty years' obscurity. He cultivated that seed in his three years' ministry, and harvested it in one week.

Regarded from the temporal standpoint his harvest seemed agony, crucifixion, death. But when the spiritual understanding is opened these are changed to giving up mortality, crossing out bodily sensation, and coming into a consciousness of indwelling life.

So those who have sown the good seed seem to have at certain times harvests in which the body goes through what the sense man calls agonies. However the sower will tell you that there is not that sense of suffering which seems, and which was experienced under the old belief in physical reality. To the one spiritually quickened these crucifixions. are part of a phenomena which seem removed in a measure from the control of self, and there is no real suffering such as was experienced under the mortal law. Again and again those who have seemed in bondage to some bodily discord have said, "This is not at all real to me. I know that my body is in bondage, and when I think of it as reality I suffer, but when I affirm my spiritual supremacy it withdraws and I am serene."

Jesus was undoubtedly in this inner consciousness and did not suffer as pictured in the agony descriptions of those who see the sense side only. A commentator says it was a kindly custom of the Jewish ladies to give to those who were being crucified a stupefying draught of wine mingled with a powerful narcotic drug, bitter, but offered as an anæsthetic to stupefy and dull the sense of pain. Jesus tasted it, recognized that it contained the drug, and resolutely