Dictionary of all Scriptures & Myths

DISPENSATIONS; COVENANT OF LAW, AND COVENANT OF GRACE

Symbolic of stages and methods of the soul's evolution.

"Wherefore the law was our school-master to bring us unto Christ that we might be justified by faith." - GALATIANS iii. 24.

Wherefore the law of cause and effect, of reason and experience,—was as a teacher to lead us unto Wisdom and Love, that at length we should be perfected by intuition and perceive the Truth of things direct.

The first dispensation which is the moral law learned through experience and reason, and enforced by the conscience and the demands of social preservation and order, is supported and enhanced by the second dispensation which bestows the law of Love—a law free of coercion either from within or from without. It operates through attraction to all that is higher in the life of the soul.

“Unless the Church has more than a high morality to offer, it has ceased to be Christian. For as in Art, so in Christianity, its direct end is not to make men moral, but to awaken in them those deep emotions, and to present to them those high ideals, which, felt and followed after, will not only indirectly produce morality, but aspiration and effort to do far more than men are absolutely bound to do by the moral law." - STOPFORD A. BROOKE, Serm., Changed Aspect, etc.

"In the religious idea is the solution of the moral problem. This idea is none other than the idea of Perfection, which is in us at the bottom of our inner life, and realises itself—in idealizing itself in the notion of a God-loving synthesis of the real and the ideal Perfection exists. It is the summit of creative evolution. It surpasses reality (the actual) without separating itself from it. Religion is a reality which without ceasing to reason surpasses conform to the laws of the understanding. The worship of Perfection is the beginning of wisdom; it is also the end of knowledge, the highest development of the inner life in the communion of united and fraternal souls." - E. BOUTROUX, Sorbonne Lecture, 1913.

The soul takes satisfaction in progeny only because it finds in offspring visible image of everlasting possession. It rises steadily to ever higher types of progeny—lofty thoughts, poems, statutes, institutions, laws—the fair creations of the mind. But the highest stage of Love comes when the soul sees Beauty itself which is everlasting, not growing and decaying, not waxing and waning. 'He, who under the influence of Love rises to see that Beauty, is not far from the end. (PLATO, Symposium)." - R. M. JONES, Mystical Religion, p. 65.

See Also

BONDAGE
CHILD
CHILDREN OF JERUSALEM
CONSCIENCE
COVENANT
EXILE
GRACE
INTUITION
JUDAH
JUSTIFICATION
KARMA
LAW OF MOSES
LOVE
MOSAIC
TESTAMENT
WOMAN (adultery)