IV - Conclusion

I concluded my last chapter with the momentous question, What happens if we go counter to the generic law of Spirit? What happens if we go counter to any natural law? Obviously, the law goes counter to us. We can use the laws of Nature, but we cannot alter them. By opposing any natural law we place ourselves in an inverted position with regard to it, and therefore, viewed from this false standpoint, it appears as though the law itself were working against us with definite purpose. But the inversion proceeds entirely from ourselves, and not from any change in the action of the law. The law of Spirit, like all other natural laws, is in itself impersonal; but we carry into it, so to speak, the reflection of our own personality, though we cannot alter its generic character; and therefore, if we oppose its generic tendency towards the universal good, we shall find in it the reflection of our own opposition and waywardness.

The law of Spirit proceeds unalterably on its course, and what is spoken of in popular phraseology as the Divine wrath is nothing else than the reflex action which naturally follows when we put ourselves in opposition to this law. The evil that results is not a personal intervention of the Universal Spirit, which would imply its entering into specific manifestation,