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THE FINAL CANDOUR

"For nothing is hid, that shall not be made manifest; nor anything secret, that shall not be known and come to light." -ST. LUKE VIII: 17.

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HIS is our Lord's way of saying that we live

in a transparent universe. Apparently, just the opposite is true. So many curtains of enigma, rustlingly blown by the winds of mystery, tremble before our gaze, that we sometimes despair of discerning clarity, intention, purposefulness in the trend of things. The darkness seems deep and permanent while the light seems superficial and transient. The gloom is steadfast, the gleam is fitful; sin is glaringly triumphant, righteousness is modestly unassertive; distintegrating doubt is obstinate, constructive faith is difficult to practise. Is not this a familiar reading of the world? Unquestionably it is, and it is essentially untrue. For despite the apparent meaninglessnesses of life, there is a profound, universal, unceasingly active, shaping power that makes for order, for righteousness, for the realization of the one increasing purpose which runs from everlasting to everlasting. In a word, Christ says that the principle of self-revelation is

ingrained in the universe, in history, in things, in men. All are out on a campaign of ultimate, noonclear publicity. There is a final candour at the heart of things. The hidden evil and the hidden goodness are alike marching toward manifestation. There can be no permanent secrets in a scheme of things whose genius is detection and publication. "For nothing is hid," says the Master, "that shall not be made manifest; nor anything secret, that shall not be known and come to light." Thus the law of the final candour operates toward sin and holiness, falsehood and truth, hate and love every nook and cranny of being is searched out and published without sensation, but with solemn truth, to the whole round world.

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Let us begin with the candour of thought. What could be more hidden, less possible of manifestation, than thinking? Where does thought come from anyway? What is it? How did thought originate? We say, knowing little enough about such high things, that first of all there was a Thinker. But the Infinite Thinker does not conceal His thought. Given the Eternal Thinker, His thinking starts out at once upon the highways of manifestation. God thinks, and in due time there are multitudinous thinkings, which we thoughtlessly call things. The most wonderful feature of suns and planets is not their size, their distance, their inconceivable age.

The astonishing thing is that each is the expressed thought of God, that each is a thought of Deity burst into brilliant bloom. Worlds are first thought through, and then they begin to clothe themselves in matter. They cannot but manifest that which was originally hidden-the thought preceding their creation. Thus it is throughout the whole of things, from the minutest to the largest, from the greatest to the infinitesimal. Things are alive with life, and life is alive with thought, purpose, goal. The nerves of the universe are tingling to manifest their hidden thought-energies. Look up at night, and what do you see? Stars? Yes; but stars are only golden buds hanging upon the tree of thought. The roots of that tree are sunken deep in the mind of God. The divine thought thrilled up through those roots, pumping life into trunk and bough, and now, after a million celestial springs, these astral apples have reddened upon the unseen branches of the tree of thought. Or look down here at the ground. It is cold and bleak and bare. But go out in April, and the desolation floats a delicate flag of frail green. Now, if that tender grass-blade could talk—or rather, if you could hear, it does talk-would it not say: 'The fiery-hearted sun sweated in shaping me. Night unvested her mooned and starry bosom to suckle me. Heaven yearned toward me in weeping rain, and all her mothering pinions were stretched over my little cradle. She slaved for my welfare. Thunders and lightnings and winds and

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seas have toiled to feed me. The strength of Nature's pregnant thews have stooped to honour my frail majesty. Epitomized in me is the mystery of the solar system-God focussed to a point.' You see, God's thoughts burn through all the folds of expression, whether it is a Jupiter patrolling the confines of space or a grass-blade humming its vernal music at your feet. The divine thought cannot be hidden because its inmost genius is manifestation. Give God time, and the universe, which has been thought through, will manifest the perfection of the One Original Thinker. Give God time, and human redemption, which was kept secret from before times eternal, shall be fully known and come into that glorious light in Whom there is no darkness at all.

Now, because of this wide-ranging principle, consider the candour of thought in its human aspects. Here is a man who thinks black. His thoughts are soaked with darkness, dyed in thick, tangled glooms of inky night. Undoubtedly the mystery of iniquity is seen in such an example. But the iniquity is not all. Another mystery is this: The man foolishly imagines that his thoughts are hidden and secret, that they shall never be known and come to light. Such self-deception is a part of sin's awful tragedy. For if the man were keenly aware that his thoughts are wide open to inherent and universal scrutiny, that his dusky imaginings are flying toward the light,

perhaps he would not play out his stupid ostrich antics with such unblushing audacity. "The habits of the mind form the soul," said Balzac, " and the soul gives expression to the face." In other words, the face is the visible map of the invisible mind. Dark thoughts stain through the whitest features. How sad that we do not believe this! Disregarding it, men and women go on thinking untrue, unholy thoughts, imagining all the while that they are cloaked in densest concealment. They are, in reality, the pathetic victims of the law of the final candour.

Happily, there is a nobler side to all this. For man was never designed to think black, but white. Our thoughts are sheep and we are their shepherds. Armed with rod and staff, we must lead our mystic thought-flocks up into the green pastures of nourishing reality. Threading the higher ranges of being, we shall constantly hear the still waters of peace murmuring all around us. When some wolf of untruth, some roaring lion of impurity springs out of the hidden lair, He who shepherds our changes that Great Shepherd of the sheep-shall lend us strength to smite our enemy down, as we guard our white and precious fold from polluting taint. Where is there a lovelier, finer vision than that of the fair company of mental good shepherds, who have led their flocks of thoughts forth to graze upon the shining pasturelands of truth, and to feed upon the gleaming hilltops of the spiritual? Moses