Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE REIGN OF PEACE. " Set thine house in order, for thou shalt die and not live."—2 Kings xx. THE origin of order, like that of every blessing and of every curse, of all life and of all action, is in the realm of spiritual experience. It may indeed be seriously questioned, as it certainly has been doubted by intelligent observers, whether there can be any actual consciousness in any other than spiritual beings; and without consciousness there can obviously be no such thing as experience. The freedom of heaven and the bondage of hell, sometimes incidentally confused, but always essentially distinct from each other, may be said to be the animating principles of human experience; and however they may be temporarily veiled from our apprehension by our necessary intercourse with the things of space and time, they will be finally revealed to us, either to our joy or to our sorrow, as the inward substance of the outward manifestations in which they are at once incorporated and obscured to our natural perceptions. Order, or simplicity in multiplicity, is the language of truth to the truly attentive ear. The very unity of the Deity, so far as it is capable of intellectual demonstration, is but the logical consequence of the universal simplicity of truth. Truth, by being essentially a simple thing, is a book ever open and legible to the true lovers of order; and hence, if we believe the power of light to be indeed superior to that of darkness, we must infer that order is the first law, not merely of the spiritual, but also of the natural, world. It is the principle through which the presence of the Almighty and All-gracious Creator is reveal- 4o THE REIGN OF PEACE. ed in his works to all who watch and strive against the entrance of confusion in those deep abodes of feeling whic...