Whether we desire it or not, the Eternal Law of the Universe is change; an ever pressing forward; a slow climb toward higher and greater things; a reaching out toward the Ultimate. The Universe has passed through an approximate period of 50,000,000 years and, as a result of the constant urge of the unchanging, unvarying Law, there has been a steady advancement, admittedly slow, nevertheless, an orderly progression.

Man, despite the denial of the nihilist and atheist, is in the image of God, the Creator of all things; or, for that matter, if there is no God, then is prototypic of the Universe, and (is) given the same opportunity and privilege to grow, to advance, to press forward, and to ultimately reach the goal of his ordained - if obedient - existence.

This ultimate is a complete consciousness of an inner, spiritual self-being; an evolvement keeping pace with man's physical and mental development; a three-fold unfolding of his four-fold being.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on individual outlook, man was given free Will to himself decide what he will be, what he will do, and the manner of doing it. He, and he alone must decide whether he, like the Universe, will work in harmony with the Law, and like the Universe, advance; or take advantage of his freedom of thought, desire and action, and contrary to his own benefit and welfare, do all in his power to defy the operation of the Law, work in direct opposition to the Law, and contrary to his own benefit and welfare, do all in his power to defy the operation of the Law, work in direct opposition to the Law, become a creature in bondage to conditions and circumstances over which he will no longer have any control, until such time as he - as a result of experience and suffering, decides to retrieve, and begins to harmonize his thoughts, desires and actions with, instead of against, the Ever-Governing Law of gradual advancement.

The Universe, obeying the Law, is at peace. Its operation as in order as testified by the rising and setting of the sun. Year in and year out, throughout the centuries, spring follows winter; summer follows in the wake of spring; fall does not lag far behind summer and once again it is winter - the time when Nature rests - the cycle having been completed. This order is unvariable because the Law governs.

Man is born a hopeless being because he has not learned to chart his course or, having gained the knowledge, has failed to work in harmony with it. (1) Governed by a Law he always violated, he grows from infancy into childhood; childhood; childhood followed by youth; youth by manhood and the years of production, living all of his days in a haphazard manner, the plaything of fate, another name for disobedience. Though given free Will, he consciously or unconsciously sets his Will in defiance of the operation of the eternal Law and is quickly possessed by ill-ease; the inharmony which always follows disobedience or disorder; until finally, almost against his Will, he begins the search for something that will ease the inner turmoil.
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(1) This need not be so. Just as he who is about to take a long journey will, if wise, make careful preparations, arranging his affairs both for his trip and his return, so may man, if hi so desires, prepare during life, which is neither more nor less than a "journey" on earth, for his return and be directed by the Law which He himself has set into motion, then longer will he be the plaything of environments, conditions and circumstances. His return, or birth, will be arranged according to his desires during life.
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There is an aspect in relation to man which has no counterpart in the Universe. The Universe is wholly material, unfeeling and insensible. It is what might correctly be termed a "single organism." Man is complex. He is, as already stated, an exact prototype of the Universe, a material whole, but he is also a living entity in His own Universe. He possesses mind to think and decide; a spiritual self of which he is as yet unconscious. This Spiritual self is known as the Soul, and in addition, a feeling self, all readily recognizable, despite the almost universal tendency of the day to laugh at the idea that such a thing as a Soul exists.

There is also always present the mockery of those who disbelieve in God and man's Immortality. Yet they cannot satisfactorily explain the why of remorse for misdeeds; of Conscience accusing them so strongly as to deny peace to the guilty. Certainly this is not part of the material Universe, nor yet of the material, physical self of man, who would shut himself away from this interference.

Because of the sense of guilt for disobedience, the ill-ease that follows the accusation of a Conscience that will not be stilled, and the feeling which will allow no rest, man is assured of possessing something deeper and higher than that which is either part of the Universe or of his physical, material self -even though he at the same time denies the existence of that which he feels but does not understand.

And whether he will or not, (deny as he may in order to console himself in his guilt), profess disbelief in a God and /or the Divine Law, nevertheless, such a consciousness, (undefined, it is true), constantly "dogs" his steps and he has never been able to free himself of its presence - the Shadow or the weight of that which the more obedient to the Law have come to know as the Spirit of religious belief and faith, i.e., a Spiritual concept.

Men have grievously erred in their belief that the life of man is approximately three score and ten; divided into the stages of childhood, youth, manhood and a decline. The age of man is concurrent with that of a cycle a dispensation. This is true even of his physical self even though he, in one incarnation, lives but seventy years, In his Spiritual self, consciously, he is of the years of a Dispensation. This is gauged by the beginning of a specific religious concept, not that of one man, but of many.

Such a specific concept has its birth in conjunction with the beginning of an age or cycle; it develops as gradually as does composite conglomerate man. It reaches its zenith, just as does man en masse, and then man enters into a state of decadence because of the diseases of mind, his body and his Spiritual self, manifested as dishonor, im-or-un-morality, Degeneration, ( a mental disintegration indicated by treason to his fellow and his country), until the end of the age or cycle is reached, when both man in toto, and his religion - his Spiritual concepts - remain, as it were, in status quo for a period.

Then there arises a new sun on the horizon, by the birth of one who, perhaps secretly and silently, and unknown except to the few, gives voice to a new concept, a more vital application of the Divine Law as it applies to man. Then it is said a new religion is born, when in fact it is no more than a new interpretation of the one-ever-existing Law.

As this new interpretation gains strength, the old concept passes away and those of the old age who lived, thought and acted in accord with the dying concepts, or perhaps in defiance of such Laws as they did understand, are forced by the operation of the Law itself to give way to the vigor of the new cycle, the New Order of the Age, and the Spiritually imbued inculcations for their guidance. A New Age together with a New Interpretation - not a new religion - has been born, and the old, men and forms, must give way to the new.

Unfortunately, during the period of the dying of the old age and its formerly accepted religious concepts, all too often based on form and not on truth, and the birth of the new age and its enlightened inculcations, there is a considerable period during which almost all restraint is cast aside. Dishonor is rampant; degeneracy general; treason commands high prices; morality is all but unknown, an Spiritual concepts are forgotten except by the few.

During all past ages, during all changes, there lived those who were fully conscious of the dying of the old, as well as of the birth of the new. Such a one was A. Reville, one of the great writers and visionaries of France, who in summing up the religious pulse of his day, pointed out what was beginning to take form.

"Always in all human societies, at a certain period of their existence, a time comes when their religion begins to diverge from its fundamental meaning, then diverges more and more; loses this fundamental meaning and finally crystallizes into permanently established forms. When it does so, its influence upon the life of men grows weaker and weaker as it becomes more of a form from which the life [the spirit] has departed..

"At such periods, the educated minority [The intellectuals, the Spiritually dormant'], though no longer believing in the existing teachings, still pretend to believe, finding this religious form necessary for holding the masses in the established order of life; whilst these masses, although adhering by force of their inertia to established religious form, no longer are guided in their lives by religious demands but only by popular customs, laws [and fears].

"So it has been many times in human existence throughout the ages. However, what is now taking place in our Christian society never has occurred before. The ruling and more educated minority, which has the chief influence on the masses, not only themselves disbelieve in the existing religion, but are certain that religion [especially the Christic concepts] is no longer necessary. It teaches those who doubt the truth of the accepted faith, not some other more rational and comprehensive religion that existing, but persuades them [by precept and practice] that religion in general has outlived its time and has become not only a useless, but even harmful organ of social life.

"Religion is studied by this class of men not as something which can be known only through inner experience [experience of feeling and awakened sensing], but as a mere external phenomenon; a ritual of mere fancy words; a disease, a weakness, as it were an ideology, to which some people are subject and which can be understood only in its external symptoms. It is because of religion, as here considered, that so very many have lost all faith in religion.

"Religion remains despite the intellectuals,' the atheist and the morally-Spiritually dead, as it always was, the chief motive power, the heart of the life of the truly human creature. Without it, as without a heart [the feeling that is the heart], there can be no rational life. There have been and there are, many different religions because the expression of the relation of man to the Infinite, to
god, or the gods, is different at different periods , according to the different degrees of the development of the people. Of different nations {decadent or advancing}; but no society of men, since men have become rational beings, ever could live and therefore never did live [as true human beings] without religion.

"It is admittedly true that there have been and still occur, periods in the life of nations when the existing religion was so distorted and so far behind life that it no longer guided man, and such a period is the immediate present one. Any such period of destructive, debasing influence is only a temporary one. Religion, like everything that is vital and eternal, has the capacity of being reborn, developing, growing and dying, [by misinterpretation and misdirection], and of reviving again and again, always in a more perfect form than it ever was before.

"Such periods of development, decline, and regeneration have occurred in all religions throughout the ages and such a period [of at once decline and rebirth] is happening now. Religion, in fact, is the definition of man's life by the connection of the human with the Divine; the power of which, over the universe and himself, man recognizes, and with which he feels that he must unite himself and come into conscious relationship, [if he would live and not die."

No other author of his time of since, so thoroughly analyzed and succinctly stated the religious and non-religious feelings of man as Reville. None so fully sensed that religion is not a dogma or even a faith alone, but a sensing and feeling of being. Lacking this feeling, the creature is not wholly a man, but a thinking, though uncertain, inharmonious, unhappy, ill-at-ease being that in order to find a degree of satisfaction and ease, is led into all the errors of life - into every dissipation, every degrading act, every degenerating habit, even to the senseless and useless destruction of his own fellow man, and this final act without apparent consciousness of guilt is the proof of the death of his Soul.

Toward the end of the past century, it became apparent to all thinkers with even a slight Spiritual insight, and to those, who possessed a feeling for the welfare of man generally, that religion as it was being interpreted had lost its power to guide men in the right direction and that , having degenerated into a mere dogma without Spiritual vitality, was doomed. If faith in God was to continue to live in the hearts of men and be an incentive and directive to a higher, more exalted, nobler life, an entirely new religious sentiment based on human needs, justice and well-being, was a immediate need. From whence was this to come?

Throughout the death struggle of the old age or dispensation, during the past seventy-five years, the one ray of hope and light of those who had not lost faith in the Divine Law, was firmly based in the promise given ages ago. As an age died, together with its material concepts, a new Age and a new Messenger would always appear, one capable of giving to men a new, vital, Spiritualized concept; a new Interpretation of the Divine Law applicable to the New Age and New Order to be born would be ready; an application of the Divine Law which would enable men, who so desired, to free themselves of the many weaknesses and evils of the past age and dispensation and draw nearer to God, away from the evils so rampant toward the end of the old age, and in the beginning of the New.

This New Age, this New Dispensation, this Prophesied New Order, in the new world then not yet discovered, was prophesied ages ago by one who was given vision because he obeyed God's Divine Law. This New Age we entered into some seventy years ago. The new concepts and Spiritually conceived interpretation are being given to the people as rapidly as they will accept and can assimilate them.

The manifold evils, many of them comparable to the last days of Nineveh, Babylon, Sodom and Gomorrah, and Greece with her Sappho, the wickedness, degeneracy, treason, even lack of honor in minors, the immorality and irresponsibility of those in high places broadcast daily - all these are the witness of the "last days" and of the "passing out," the death struggle of the old.

These evils, so general not only in the decadent nations, but also in the new worlds and the most advanced people; the viciousness and human butchery we have witnessed during the past forty years, all bespeak of an ever increasing soulless people, all the signs of the harvest by the Biblical Red Horseman; all indicate the tearing down of the old to make place for the new.

Each Age demands a distinctive interpretation of the Laws of the Ages, of the new and enlightened application of the Divine Law for the government of those who are willing to be obedient to the Law that they may reap the blessings of the Law. Such interpretations must of necessity be adaptable to the immediate needs of the period.

These interpreters erroneously known as Lawgivers, with the exception of Moses, were the Rulers (gods), Messengers, Avatars of New Ages or dispensations. Among them, after Egypt, was the Nazarene, the Gnostic Fathers (Knowers) because Spiritually Conscious, and lastly, still unknown except to a very few, Manisis) God's Messenger of the New Age or New Order of the Ages.
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(2) Contrary to popular conception, Manisis is not to be worshiped as the formal church taught regarding Christ, nor is he to be prayed to as an intercessor with God. He is here as God's messenger to interpret the Divine Law for those willing to apply it and themselves become God Conscious.
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Truth, like the Divine Law, is forever the same. The Law has not changed since the beginning of time, not has its application by men who seek to live as men should to receive the benefit of the Law's Reaction. The world of thought and ideas advances, and, with each advance or step forward, new actions may become necessary. This requires new concepts of the Law's application. Each outgoing cycle demands the laying aside (the dead burying their dead), of its cloak, much as the snake sheds its skins of yesteryear, that the incoming cycle may be "Clothed upon" with the new garment better suited to its immediate needs.

The texture, designs and colorings of the "cloak" of thought, desire, and action, must be determined by the particular emphasis that the age requires for the fulfillment of its designs. The human race, including all who will accept and harmonize themselves with the design, may be enriched by the varied aspects that the Law offers.
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