In this sermon, the speaker discusses the concept of sense perception and how it relates to our spiritual journey. He explains that our five senses are like messengers that report back to us about our external experiences. These experiences are stored in our subconscious and can resurface at times. The speaker emphasizes the importance of being mindful of our thoughts and being careful with what we allow into our subconscious. He also references biblical examples, such as Moses and his sense of justice, to illustrate his points.

Thinking about anything that you want me to talk about tonight in connection with this morning's message? It's just a missionary touch. I'm a missionary way down underneath. And I love the work. I'd like to go back tomorrow. I would. I don't know, there's something about that material that... Oh, we have so much here. It's typical. Certainly. And they are so needy and appreciate, oh, just a little thing that you can give or do. They love it. Anything in this morning's lesson that we're working on that might help you? I never understood why, but in that anyway, I can understand. Well, he didn't want them to... The immortal spirit lives forever, but it has what we say a privilege of living in the realm of light or dark. And he didn't want them to live forever in this realm of darkness, and therefore he institutes right away an escape through the slain creature. He was introducing right away a remedy for them. But he had to do that after flesh had had its fling. Now, there is a principle again that we have to contend with and see it all the way through. Paul sums it up this way, in the realm of spirit, he says, listen, that is not born of the spirit first. That which is natural is first. Afterward, that of the spirit. In other words, God says, in this realm in which we live, we'll have to get used to it. He says, it's always the man, the human, the flesh, will take its initiative first in its rush. And so God allows them. And do you remember the escape that they made was to make a covering anyway. It says, when they partook of this forbidden fruit and they saw they were naked, that doesn't mean they looked at their bodies and didn't have any clothes on. He's not talking about that. They became conscious of a nakedness in a spiritual and moral sense. Do you get that? It is a spiritual and moral sense that they found they were naked because the covering which had made possible their access to God and their communion had been torn off of them through this disobedience. Well, they want to get back again to God. There is a desire. So what do they do? They say, we will make coverings to hide this moral and spiritual difficulty. But they go to a natural resource for it. And they take the leaves, you see, from the earth, which God curses. He curses the earth. The earth, cursed, cannot produce any kind of a material such as, as they call it in type, leaves for their covering. But God allows them to do this. He says, all right, now have your fling. Go ahead, have your fling. Your flesh will have to perform first. For that is not spiritual, which is first, but natural. Afterwards, that which is spiritual. Paul sums it up with that one little verse. It is a principle in this realm. So after they've had this and they find that they get nowhere, why, Jesus says, this is the covering you need, God says, and he slays an animal and covers them with its skin. Well, that is the Paschal Lamb again. It's the story of redemption in its first simple picture. The shedding of blood. And the little animal shed its blood and it took the covering of the animal. That's all our inheritance in Christ, you see. And he covers them with these skins. And what? He shows them a way back again to God through a law of sacrifice. Something is sacrificed to do this. So when you read in your Old Testament all these things, don't just be occupied with the material sense of it, because you'll lose a lot. Those are wonderful things. But they bear out a profound spiritual reality veiled with these actions and conduct. They get so literal with that garden and those skins and the Adam and all. I don't want to hurt them. Then I say, well, where did he get all the instruments to dress the garden? In Sears Roebuck or Montgomery and Ward? Well, now, these people who are so literal, I always want to say, well, you want to be a literalist. Well, then, if you are, where will you end? How many know you will end in some ridiculous thing? Because it isn't just the literal thing that he's talking about. There was an Adam. That's all right. We're not talking about that. We're talking about this idea of pushing the literal idea of the word of God into grotesque things when it is given to us to teach first of all a deep underlying spiritual philosophy of life. That's what it's teaching. And so when they were naked, that meant the first awakening of a consciousness of sin and failure. And they found themselves naked. Of course, before God, that whole thing that had known because of the glory and the light and the clothing which covered them, their acceptance was gone and they were unclothed. That is undone. Then God has to come. So he has to do that from the very beginning, from the Garden of Eden until this day, right today, and probably many in this room are going through it unknowing because it haunts all. Now, remember this if you don't get anything more. When God gives a word, a revelation to you or to me or speaks or intimates a promise to us, which we are to embrace, a promise of something which is not yet tangible, it's not seen, but we sense it in spirit, this is of God, this is what God wants or this is what God will do because he has intimated it. Now, don't always be too quick with your sense of time in those things. He may speak a word and we think, well, that means now or that will be in a year. No, he may speak things which finds its fruition years down your line that we take a long time, as I call it, cradle within the breast, within the heart, that word, that intimation, that's cradled in me. Now, I can't force it, I can't make an abortion, an artificial false birth. No, flesh wants to do that, they always do it, and he knows it. Paul found it too. He says, beware. That which is first is not spiritual. No, that's natural. But afterward, give it time. If you learn your lesson, the spiritual reality will come. Now, that's demonstrated all through the Old Testament. It's everywhere you turn. I think right with Abraham, remember? Paul remembered that wonderful promise that God gives to Abraham. He will give him a son who will be the heir, and through this son we're going to have great blessing. Now, that is a precious, wonderful covenant and promise to Abraham. Now, listen, that is God born. Any word, any promise, any indication which is spirit born has to be executed in the same method as that which gives its birth. If it is spoken in spirit, and it is of God spoken to you, you must wait. If it's a thousand years, you must wait until the Holy Spirit, which has breathed it, executes it and carries it out. But it's very hard to learn that, because good flesh is always assisting the Lord. It can't keep still. It cannot retire. So Abraham waits this reasonable time and says, well, God promised us this son. Well, he doesn't seem to be giving us any son. Where's the promise? God holds back. He says, go on, Abraham. Well, Abraham says, I know about getting children. Well, sure. And I see the impossibility in the natural here, and that's all we have to deal with. He said, so? Sarah? Sarah, she says she's agreed to this plot too. She says, well, we'll take this maid, my maid. You go in unto her and we'll get the son. How many can see flesh having its fling first? Do you get it right away or don't you get that? That's nothing but the natural, the flesh, the human is protruding. It's pushing its way in first. It cannot wait until this lovely promise can be executed in the Spirit, even by way of miracle. Now, if you do that, you will always get an Isaac on your hands. I mean an Ishmael, thank you. You're always getting Ishmael. You can't help it because that's where Ishmael comes. Now, you have produced your Ishmael. And when Ishmael gets crying around, tormenting everything, don't say, oh, Lord, Lord. He said, well, you got him. You got him. God's very merciful, of course. But don't say, oh, Lord, why, why? Well, he says, just look in your heart, dear. I don't like to look in the air. Hallelujah. Oh, why? You see, you've got your own Ishmael. Why? How did you do it? You took a promise, a word, which is Spirit-born. It is of God. It is genuine. It is really God. But you take it into your own clumsy, fumbling hands of the natural, a religious fashion, the religious natural, and you think that by this mechanism, you'll produce a lovely Isaac over here. You never can. Now, you're bucking up against another law, and I'm going to hammer it in. Jesus teaches it, too. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. He did not restrict that to personality. We always say the natural man, of course, is born of the flesh, but he must be born again to be spiritual. That's all true, but that's only one part of the question. He said, Whatsoever is born of flesh. Can you see this mechanism that Abraham produces? How many of you can see it's born of flesh? Well, of course, it's birthed in flesh. It can never produce anything spiritual. It has no power for it. It will always rest upon a flesh level and produce nothing but flesh, and sometimes those things are interesting and wonderful. It doesn't mean that they're all vulgar and bad. I hope that you think I'm too terrifying, but don't you know a lot of things that pass today as wonderful in God has a terrific lot of ishmael in it, or don't you? Don't you know that, or don't you? Oh, you say, God is God to everything that meows and scowls. Well, where are you living? I used to say to my students, for heaven's sake, ask the Lord for just a little discernment to tell something. I said, There are people, though, and he was telling the classroom, I said, If a crocodile came down this aisle just now saying, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, well, you'd say, Oh, it's a cherubim. They'd think a cherubim had arrived. Well, why? Well, I said, Hallelujah. Well, I said, There are a lot of crocodiles that can say Hallelujah, and they get wonderful results, but it doesn't make them a cherubim. It doesn't mean that ishmael was always a wicked, bad, terrifying thing. I suppose there were times when ishmael was quite welcome in the household. He was loved of his mother and all, but he was an ishmael. He was not an Isaac, but he came in under the promise of God, perverted. Do you get it or don't you? How many can see that? It's the promise of God that is perverted through flesh. What does it say he did? He did nothing but mock Isaac after he got there. And if you want to know the truth, if you've ever produced an ishmael, it'll torment you. It will torment the Isaac that God has for you. And you wait. Finally, God says, This is the way. In the proper season, you will conceive and bring forth. And here it is. And Sarah laughed, but she laughed twice, you know. She laughed once in scorn. Me having a baby. But afterwards, she laughed for joy. She always laughed twice, you know. That's good. Always get the, he laughs best who laughs last. And she laughed with the joy of the great deliverance. But you see, they were illustrating this principle that I'm telling you about. That is not spiritual, which is first, but natural. Afterward, that which is spiritual. But if you can't learn that because you see it demonstrated in life, and you have to learn it your way, well then, don't be amazed. Just say, Lord, I couldn't take it when I saw it in the Bible. I can't seem to take it when I see it demonstrated in life. It's all about me. I guess I'll have to have my own. So, if you're not careful, you'll get an ishmael on your hands. But ishmael is always tormenting the Isaac. I'll take another one. Let's look at Moses. You see, how many of you know the story of Moses? He is destined, he's a man of destiny. He has the call upon him that he's going to deliver these people. That's his vocation, that's his call. Now, he has his sense of what is right and what is just. But that doesn't excuse the matter. You hear people say, well, that ought to be so and so because that's right, or so and so. Now, listen, listen, listen. We're not here for justice or for things being done right for us. Not here. Not here, not as Christians. Accept the spoiling of your goods carefully. That takes grace of God to do that. Otherwise, you turn around and say, this is not fair. This is not just. Well, it isn't Saturday night. The bills haven't all come in. It's not closing hour. You're about in the middle of the week. You wait until Saturday night and the Lord will check up and you'll see where it comes out. But not now. Be quiet over that. How many of you have had to suffer injustice like that when you know as a Christian you've had enough? I have. I think I spoke of it in one of my tracts where what belonged to me, I refused to demand it. But two others caught in the same difficulty. They said, well, the law will do it. I said, well, then you can go. They said, I'm not going. I said, that's not scriptural. God will take care of it. Well, it wasn't pleasant to see $25,000 or $30,000 walk out of you and see the next one walking with it. You never say, Hallelujah! No, you don't. You just say, Lord, this is strange, isn't it? And that very person got a Packard car and rode around the street in front of me. I could have said, that isn't your car. But you see, he silenced me. Well, $30,000 would be nice. I can use it. But you see, you just learn to learn that this isn't the day when we get all of our justice. You have to learn that. So here is Moses. Now, he has a sense of justice, of what is right. And he goes out into the countryside there and he sees these Egyptians tormenting the poor Hebrews, making them work thus and so and all. It was all wrong. It was wrong. None of us can say that was right. It was wrong. But you see, he's not appointed as a judge to make a decision over it and tell them what to do. We aren't judges on that. We see it. But he can't hold still, you see. And so, that which is first is not spiritual, it's natural. So he makes a fling. What does he do? This is all wrong. These are God's people. These are my people. And he up and slays this Egyptian. Well, then when you get him slain, what are you going to do with him? Well, then you have to bury him. And it's always fortunate if there's enough sand to cover your dead man. Because by and by, it's very terrifying when he's not covered. And so he covers him in the sand. And God came down and said, Oh, what a noble thing. At last you see your calling. No, he didn't. He says, Come here, Moses. Come here, I'll talk to you. And poor Moses has to go on the backside of the desert for all those years for adjustment. Adjustment. Adjustment. Until the deliverance can come God's way. And not Moses' flesh. Moses' wisdom. Moses' idea of justice. God doesn't care two cents about that. He says, Come on. By and by, when God gets ready, the deliverance which he has spoken will move under the impact and power of the spirit of God who spoke it. Has to be. Now remember this in your philosophy. Remember this. If there is a vision which God has made clear to you of something to come, the means or the method by which that is attained or obtained, either one, the method by which it is, the method must partake of the same essence of the thing that you are dealing in. It has to. Now you take the essence of that down here and put it into its proper place and the thing moves. That is born of the spirit. This must be executed in the spirit and by the spirit. Otherwise it won't work. You'll get a temporary flair and quite a lot of excitement about the thing, but it isn't the reality. So Moses says, What is it? Well, God says, Come out this way and I'll show you. Do you remember what a magnificent display God gives of the power of God that Moses has used? And instead of having something to slay this Egyptian, he has a wand, a staff that's like a magic thing. It's the power of God. Now you go through your testament and you'll find that over and over, all the way through, all the time, because it's a fixed, established principle that works. And God says, These are for our admonition, to admonish us, so we won't fall into the same trap or be beguiled or deceived. But we'll say, No, I see how that goes. I can't do that. If that would be possible, it could be done, but I can't do that because I must wait until the same spirit that gave it birth will give it its power for its forthcoming. Oh, there's so many of those places in the Word. So many. And by and by we'll begin to see in the Word God teaching us how to live. As I said the other day, Jesus came to save us and to give us life. That's right. But his whole teaching is to teach us how to live. It's one thing to be born of the Spirit and filled with the Spirit, but it's quite another to be taught how to live, to adjust ourselves. And that's why we're here, and that's why the Spirit is given, and why the Word is there. It's the great book of instruction teaching us how. Sister Vera was asking, just at the class closing, it aroused a little thought in my mind. We were talking about this first Adam having intuitive gifts and powers, of course, which he had. Now, how do we know that? Because of the command which God gave him to have power over, to reign, to rule, and have power over. God couldn't say that to a man who didn't have the abilities with which to do it. You get that or don't you? Well, if he says, have dominion over the fishes, have dominion here, reign and rule, God couldn't say that to a nitwit. He has to say that to a man who has potential gifts and powers to do that, and that's what he did. Now, when sin and distress and trouble comes, all of that lovely thing is all broken to pieces. The death that is spoken strikes those threefold personalities, spirit, soul, body. Every department of the human is wrecked and ruined through the power of sin through its disobedience. Every department. That's why we feel first in the very highest level, the spirit, he said, that absolutely dies out. That's cancelled. So that man that's born today is always born subnormal. That's a dreadful thing to say to a person, isn't it, who has not been brought to God. They are subnormal. Why are they subnormal? They are under the normal pattern and plan, which was spiritual power and spiritual life and light in him, the natural, the psychic, and the intellectual, and all these gifts that are in this other realm, my soulish deposits, and then the physical. He is a trinity. Well, when sin strikes, it blots the spirit right out but leaves man subnormal. He is still conscious, and he has a body, but that's all broken. And the body, he says, is now not only broken, but it starts to die when you get born, and it's consummated finally in the act of death. He that is born, you have to die, in most of our translations. That's true. Well, now in that shattering, what Vera was saying, and I teach it too, there are shattered pieces of this deposit left in people's makeup. It's still left, those little deposits. Now, that's what we find in these people who are clairvoyant and all sorts of spiritual, psychic things in them. That is a shattered bit, a deposit left of the original wonderful thing that was in Adam. But you see, it's all broken to pieces, and we only get shattered bits of it shining here and there. Well, now, if a person is not careful, there are always two forces working. And if a person is not taught not to discern this, he is easily sidetracked by the power of the enemy who is already working with demons and just in that field exactly. And it's a very simple, easy thing for the demon to have access, and first thing you know, you have a fine medium. Some of them are tremendous. Well, people say, it's all hocus-pocus. It is not hocus-pocus. It is devilish, but it's real. Well, some of that is in there too. Some of that is in there too. But it's such a weird field that I always feel you'd have to be very much in God to touch very much of it. But it is a field, and they are real. They do real, absolutely real things. People say, oh, it's hocus-pocus. Well, of course, there's a lot of chicanery mixed up with it. These 10-cent mediums have a lot of that. But there are people who have had and know these experiences as reality. Now, that brought us to this question of sensing things. You know, I'm speaking of every once in a while, every one of us have had little touches. How many of you have had little touches at times as though there was something way past back there that you were connected with or knew something about, but you can't touch it? Just for the sake of knowledge, how many have had little touches of that? Come on, it's nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing to be ashamed of. Many have had that. It's just a flash, sort of a consciousness of something past, back here. It's not articulate, but you have a consciousness of a touch with it that is evasive, but very haunting, and yet you're conscious of this great expanse ahead. Now, you don't know anything about that either, but how many of you know, as we spoke of last night, the drawing power of the Holy Spirit into that realm, and yet you don't know anything about it? But you venture into it. You venture in, so do I. We venture in, fearless, because that is the realm. Now, I'm glad when I hear people give a little testimony about those things, because I know them. I know it's truth. You don't dare talk too much about it, because somebody wants to get blessed just about then, and then I always go home. I always say, everybody wants to get blessed. Now, come forward and get blessed good and plenty, then sit down. We'll talk. I always feel like doing that because they get diverted. No, there is that reality. It's in the Testament. It's present with us now, right now, and we become conscious of it. That fact, I'm glad to know because of this reason. Didn't I speak to you once before about this, the only great living psychiatrist that we have today is Dr. Jung. He's a Swiss psychiatrist. It's the only great living one we have. We had three of them. We had Freud, then we had Adler, and this last one is Jung. He's a Christian, which is quite unusual. He has in his theory a truth. I think I can show you just a chalk for a minute. We have this teaching, and of course we are all familiar with it, of this level of what we call our conscious mind. How many of you get this? This is our conscious mind. We are all conscious of this field. We wouldn't be here if we were not. We are also all conscious of a subconscious mind. You don't have to be a psychiatrist or a psychologist to know that. You can be a housewife and know that. A man plows corn. How many of you know we have a subconscious realm? All right. Now this is what we would call the subconscious level. This we only hold for the time being because it's quite impossible to hold at a conscious point all that we have. I'm not now conscious of the multiplication table, but I know I have it stored. So do you. We hold very little at what we call the present point of consciousness. You get me or don't you? I'm conscious now of this immediate right now. But I know about my home and all that past, but that's not in my conscious state. I have a conscious state that embraces this immediate. All right. Here we have all sorts of experiences, all kinds of experiences. We see it, we do. Now these experiences are all brought to us through our sense perceptions. God gave us five and there's a reason for it. Those are the five avenues, the only natural five avenues I have to reach out as messengers to touch my external things, the world. I touch it with my five messengers. Then they come back and report to me. I can't go down by the seashore, or lakeshore in a minute to detect what I discern there. I send my I messenger down and he goes down, he comes back, he says that's a boat. These are our messengers and they keep reporting to us. There are five and there's a reason why there are five and that's why in the word every little while we find five mentioned. Now those are my natural resources. They come and report. All of that touches me. Very little of it remains, but I'll tell you something. Much of that is deposited here, isn't it? We call it the subconscious deposit. It's deposited here. Then occasionally how many of you know how it will rise and come up to the surface again? But it's coming out of this subconscious department, my being. The Bible is full of this. I can show you some scriptures that are just like 1, 2, 3, 4 because it's in the word. Since that's true, this is a field that we have to be very careful of. Do you know why Paul tells us about thinking? How many of you ever noticed what he told us about thinking? Why? That's one of our means. He says think on these things. Why? Because it doesn't pay to think of everything and many things. Oh, people say, I can think. Please, no, you can't, my dear. No, you can't. Because all of that thought process is doing something here all the time. That's down on the ocean floor. Now, Jung is the only one who has this theory and I'm inclined to feel rather one with him in some other. I can't help it because I find it in the word. Now, under here, he says there is what he calls the social conscious realm in which the social conscious embraces many features which keep a deposit in the human race. Going over the... Collective consciousness. It's called collective, but he calls it a social one because it is not only a collection of this, but it is a consciousness of things that we find in different groups of people and races which have a unity in it. Now, for instance, we'll take... We were talking tonight about these heathen people. Why is it that so many, oh, many, many of them, these heathen people in their urge and desire for God and in their worship, it's common with them they always have a sense of a law of sacrifice in their approach. They have a sense of some kind of a sacrifice, a mediator, a medium, some kind of a thing which will join them to this. And I know there is a barrier, but they have to have that between. There has been discovered a tribe in Africa that in their ceremonies, they sacrifice a rooster and shed its blood. And the shedding of the blood of this rooster makes a kind of an atonement and a way back again to God. Now, how many of you see any significance of anything? I'll help you with that in a minute. Well, when I see all those little indications perking up, I say, I see something. Well, now, that's only just one little illustration because the people who have made a study religiously in this field have discovered it, that there are features here that pop up in a race here, a group of people there, somebody in America, someone over in India. They will have touches of exactly this thing. You go to people who have never heard of the Bible, don't know anything about it, and yet handed down by tradition in these tribes handed down, I don't know how many of them have the shadowed story of Noah's Ark. They certainly do. And they tell you the story of a great time when water was over the world, and they've never heard of the Bible. You see what I'm getting at? There are deposits, deposits of things which have happened in the social order generations back, pushing themselves up. Some of them have come in a very strange way, and we have records of it, by dreams. And sometimes a person who doesn't know anything about that will, in his dream, tell the dream, and it will be a repetition of a thing that's happened way back in the social plan, but it has found its way back again now into this individual, and his dream will be it. We have some illustrations of it. They're most amazing. This is the thing that I like about it. Do you know what it is? When I find all this heterogeneous mass having a collective, a general conception, repeated and repeated and repeated, it goes back to the fact of what? A one origin. There's been a one origin. There has been... Do you get it or don't you? There has been a one origin. And some now, some of our leading anthropologists have come to face it. I live next to Dr. Link, who is a professor in the Teachers College at home, and when he goes on a trip, he had to go to India for a year. He's just gone this last week, and his wife and I have only missed him dreadfully because they're such good people to be with. And when he went away, his house was taken over by Dr. Ruth Underhill. And you probably have seen her books. She's one of America's finest anthropologists. And while she was there, she was writing another book. And, oh, did we ever have some good talks. Oh, my. And talk about she was an intelligent woman and wanted no spiritual things. And she was drawing at me because she sensed that I had something about her. And she would ask, and I remember one evening, I live alone, and I do my own housework, keeping and all, and I said, well, Dr., we call her Dr., she's Dr. Ruth Underhill, and I said, I'm getting the supper on, and if you wanted, would you like, oh, sure, I'd just love to stay. I'll stay for supper with you. I said, well, come ahead. And we're having so-and-so, and I remember we had sliced peaches. That was one thing that she liked. I made a lovely little supper at the table, and we ate together, but we were doing a lot of talking beside, and I was pushing out all the spiritual things that I possibly could for her grasping. Do you get me? And it was time to close our meal and get up, and she says, oh, no, not yet. And I can remember her, yes, she put her hand over like that on mine. She says, I wish you would talk more. This is doing something for me that I want. And she took my hand like that. Of course, she's much older than I am, so it was very safe. But I thought it was very sweet and very simple and very human of that culture-educated woman to do that. She put her hand over, put it down on mine, and she said, don't, don't, don't do it. Let's not do that. She said, talk to me. Talk more. She says, I need just this. You talk. Well, we didn't talk about anthropology, dear. We talked about something else. But I couldn't help but think, now, she is one, there are several who have come to this conclusion. They say, this tells us something. It isn't evolution. We don't come from a bunch of monkeys. They're discarding it. And they say, there has to be a unity here and a beginning. And the shattered bits of that early beginning is now being repeated and repeated and repeated all the way down, broken. But it points back to a central one. How many of you see that? Or don't you get that? And that is very indicative of it. I didn't mean to talk about that, but you'll take it, won't you? I'm still Pentecostal. Some people can't take this because they think, my, no, this is just common, isn't it? This is not intricate. It's just the way things are. Some thought. Yes. Is tradition, which is passed orally from primitive tribes, from an original source, how much is this what they call a collective memory? Well, it is a racial memory, but it had to have a beginning, and all of this points toward a oneness in it. Yes, I understand, but I mean, how much of this substrata of knowledge? Well, some of it is handed down by a tradition. Others of it is things that they have never heard of before which come to them, as I said, through those dream things. Oh, then it's a subcollective memory. Subcollective, absolutely. And it's pushed down into these graces. The dreams, some of them are, it is wonderful. A person who has never heard, never known of the thing at all, this will come up. It just like comes up to its surface, comes up on here. Now, this is good for us to remember because all the time we are building this. That's, therefore, people can't say, well, I can do as I please. I can think as I please. No, you can't. I can read this or I can look at that. No, you can't. Everything we read, everything we look at, everything that strikes us is registered. It is. It's registered whether we like it or not. And it has its effect in this region. We don't delve too much here but I'm glad to know because I can see it. I can see that it goes back to an origin which is simple and has a oneness in it. Now, we're going to go now. It's almost ten but I want to read you something. It borders a little on this idea of your past. I mean, something that is haunting, that is past. I don't know. That's the way it is with me and I don't expect everybody to be like I am. Heavens, I hope not. Lorne's got enough to do it. I don't want too many of them running around. We've got a job on hand. I don't want that but I have these things. I was born with them. They're a part of my makeup. God knew that. For instance, my reactions or my feeling to sound and color and smell, my senses, they report things to me at times and stir me very deeply because they don't seem to be on the surface of my being. Now, for instance, I've told you some other ones. I can remember as a child and I was perhaps three. My earliest memories are two and a half. I remember things when I was two and a half but I was perhaps three, maybe a little over and I knew where we lived. Well, now, I don't know about melancholy. A little child doesn't know all this business. He's just responsive to things and I remember the glen that was down below our place and in the evening the whippoorwill used to come and twirl himself on that rock. You know, they twirl when they whippoorwill and they have a little whistle and then they'll twirl around like that, whippoorwill, whippoorwill, whippoorwill and then they'll twirl, whippoorwill. I don't know where they are. I've never heard one in California or other countries but we have them in the east and they move up the Hudson and never more than 12 or 15 miles back from that river in the country, never more than that. They keep and that, oh, that's only three and a half and four and he would come and go, whippoorwill, whippoorwill and I couldn't take it. I would, I can remember now to this day as a little child like that it hurt me so in here in my inner spirit. It hurt me so. It wasn't fear. Somebody said, well, you're afraid of it. Oh, I said, no, no, no, no. I know fear. I was not fearful but it struck something in me like a haunting thing and I would crawl under my mother's bed upstairs and go up in there and the rest of them down there when they missed me, where is Johnny? Well, he's heard that whippoorwill and mother would go up and take me by my feet and pull me out from under the bed and set me up, you know, and talk and she said, now this is a good bird and so on, tried to make it right but I can't hear a whippoorwill today without it. There are certain sounds like that that do things. Well, now I have that very much so with a wood thrush. There's something in the liquid, they break, you know, it's a liquid thing, it isn't, it isn't that. It has a twirl in it. It's a funny, so sweet, a beautiful liquid. I can't hear that either. I have this strange experience. It's just, I can't help it. That came to me when I was 10, 11 years old. We used to go to the woods to gather winter grains. Mother would say we could go to the woods if Ebby went along, that's the big sister to look after us, four of us. And we could go, well we would go and be picking winter grains and up in this tree, and you know the trees, how they, what a sound you can get when the bird is in the woods. How many of you know the difference, singing in the open, singing in the woods? You get the things away, absolutely so. And all of a sudden here would come this wood thrush and he's old, that was just too much. That was just too much. I'm conscious of this. I don't know how to do it. I could do it in abstract painting, I think, because it's an abstract thing and I know the colors I could use to do it. It would be a very strange abstract thing, but I could do that because it has a color and it has sound and movement. And it sounds like this to me. Say here I am on this level. If I catch that, that wood thrush, for the instant I'm transported and I hear something way back. I don't know how far back it is and it comes haunting like that. Well, it's silly, but it moves me to tears at times. I can't take it. It's just a terrifying something. It haunts me, just like a haunting thing. And if I really give way to it, I don't tell people, nobody's around, mind my business, I talk to the trees and cry when I want to. It's nobody's business. It breaks me. That past, I don't know how far I go. It doesn't become articulate, but it's past, way back in years. But it's so haunting. How many of you have ever had something that hurt you and yet you delighted in it? Have you? Have you? Well, that's true. It's haunted and yet it's most thrilling because it gives a sense of things that nothing else will do. So, as I get that way back here, instantly, the thing over here becomes a challenge like that. I don't have to remain in this. It haunts me. No, no, no. And that challenge before me is, come, just like that. And that wood thrush does it. And just as soon as that wood thrush begins that thing, I'm back in that old place, psychically, I suppose. And that past haunting and something, it's like a challenge to come. And I just feel like, oh, I want to go with it. I want to go. I want to go. It's calling. I'll go. It calls. It calls out of this thing, but it's calling me there. Now, that'll be just a little background. Now, may I read it to you? Well, now, this is what I got just in March, when I'd heard this lovely wood thrush. Yes, if you want, it doesn't matter. I think the Lord is with me in this thing because it's a field where he visits me. It's a field where he comes to deal with me. Sometimes I feel it's a real habitat. It's a spiritual place where I can move. And so when this comes, this past, this haunting thing, then the challenge of no. Oh, everything misses, yes. And I want to go right out into it. Into it. That's the challenge feeling. There's no remaining. I must go. So I wrote this. I dedicated it to a wood thrush. Want to catch it? I heard a wood thrush call one time. It was a close of day. The sun had set and shadows soft along the woodland lay. It's an eventide episode. The liquid note so sweet, so clear. Within my heart awoke a strange and haunting echo faint. No human voice there spoke. Where is the past from whence it came? Why could it thrill me so? Oh, lovely note. I hear you call from out the long ago. Why do you haunt my hungry heart? Strangely stir me so. Through all my life whenever you call I leap and want to go. My son. This is my son. My son has passed its zenith hour. Evening air is calm. Long shadows rest behind my back. An evening song. I wonder when I have to go if I might once more hear a wood thrush call from out the woods in notes so sweet and clear. Of one thing I am very sure. Its echo I will hear deep down within my waiting heart and I shall know no fear. Do you like that? How many of you like that? Do you like that? Well, now, that's real. That's like that is only I captured it and put it in verse form. And that zenith hour, I want to help you with that. You see the sunrise. If we move with God, we are always facing the light, the morning light. We face it. But you see, the sun comes up in the east, we say. That's our early experience in God. It reaches the zenith in the middle of the light. However long you live, you have a zenith hour. That is the middle hour of your life. That's the zenith of your sun. Now it sets, but you are still staring in the east. You have followed that lovely sun right around. And you see, when you face it in the west, when the shadows soft along the wood not lay, where are your shadows? Your shadow is behind you. Where was it in the beginning? It is behind you. It always should be. If your shadow is confusing you here, you are not looking the right way. No, you are not. No, you are not. Because when you face the light, your shadow will always be here. Be back. And so, here is the light. Here is the sun. I face it here. I walk in this light, but here is my zenith hour. Now my sun goes into a declension. But as I face it, the light casts my shadow behind me. You get it or don't you? Your shadows should be behind you, dear. They are behind you. There is no shadow for your immediate movement. My shadows are there. So that is why I said that. I read that again so that you will catch it. You see, I am 75 years old, and I will be 76 in a little while, and I can't stay here more than 100 more years. So my zenith hour, you see, is that. I have had that. And my zenith hour is past. I am facing my west now. I am facing my west. But where are my shadows? If I face that sun yet, my shadows will be behind me. That is why I said in this verse, it is rather a personal thing, my sun has passed its zenith hour. The evening air is calm. That is good, isn't it? Some of you are still in your storms, which are normal. That is natural. I have patience with it. But I can't imagine that forever. There should be a calmness in the spirit. Because we have learned something of adjustment, acceptance. Don't quarrel with life. Accept it. What will you do with it? Offer it back to God. And say, Lord, teach me how to adjust myself to this. The sun has passed its zenith hour. The evening air is calm. I thank God for the calmness that I didn't have. But I am so glad it is calm. I am so glad. I have gone through some heavy things. That is not public. Long shadows rest behind my back. I chant an evening song. Isn't it nice to go singing? I didn't always go singing, because I was too full of questions. But he wouldn't answer them. Some of them he hasn't answered yet, but I am calm about that. He will talk to me sometime. If not now, he will later. If not now, well, later. So when you speak of having these senses of things gone, I think it is a very realistic thing. You don't make it up. And I don't think it is the devil tormenting me. I just feel it is something that I move into. And I have a spirit and a makeup that responds to it. Now, that is like our reactions to these things. They are transporting. How many of you know what it is for the time being to be transported through a sound or a voice or a color or a sense? If I am out in the country and I smell a wood fire burning somewhere, well, I am transported in an instant. In an instant. I don't have to tell the people I am riding in the car with. I am saying, isn't the tree beautiful? Merry Christmas. All that, but I am not in that mood. Well, you become more or less transported through the stimuli. Well, now, here is one I want to read. It is ten o'clock, but I will read you this one while we are in the mood, because we can't recapture this mood we are in right now, tomorrow. How many of you know we never can recapture it? It is a mood which the Lord has made for this evening. How many of you have felt God moving around here tonight? Well, of course, He is present. And we can't recapture that, you know, and say now we will start off where we were. While we are in this mood, I want to read one more. And I become an instrument that it plays on, like that. And then I can capture it. Because sometimes, Paul says so. He says, All creation groaneth and traveleth together in pain, waiting its redemption. Well, I don't think anyone has moved very far in God unless you have had a touch of that. Haven't any of you ever felt that terrible cry of all creation going up? And it gets into your spirit and you cry with it? Well, certainly. We should. It is that haunting, crying thing that is a universal thing. And though we are simple, we can partake of some of the most magnificent and universal things. We can partake of it. Now, talk about being transported by a sound. I'll read you this one. You can go home if you want to, but you've got to stay a minute. Just a minute. I don't want to read you this. Because it illustrates the thing that I'm trying to get at. It's in here. Where are my eyes? And I wrote this one down. I captured it. Yes, and this is one that's in it. And I want to read it. So wherever you go home, dear, and read it, you will get the setting of this thing and know why. Now, this is due to a bird call, which I heard in spirit rather than in the flesh. It was at Christmas, and Mother and I were keeping home together. And I always have had the habit at Christmastide of going to the forest or the woods and getting my arms full of lovely greens, and bringing them and placing them over my mantel. I have a mantel. My mantel is eight feet long of my firewood. And I used to bag them up back as a background and put brass candlesticks and candles in it, interspersed. It makes a very effective thing. And so I always do that. And my old cop in the center, great-grandfather, he ticks and he rings his shell. So I had gone to the woods to get my greens. And I love to trance through the snow. It's, oh, it's thrilling. And I had my boots up and my pants tied here. And away I went across this field, down over the brook and up over the hill, up to the woods. And here were these lovely green trees and things. And a stone wall. I'm just in the sense of heaven if I can see an old stone wall that's been laid by somebody at least a hundred years ago. And we had them in the east. New England's full of them. Great old stuff, all covered with that gray green that no one could take and nobody could do it. Only age can do it. And climb over this wall, go in and clip off my branches, my boughs, you see. And I had my arm full like this. And I was tramping my feet up like this, down through the snow bank, and then through that one. Oh, the snow was like that. And I came to a bramble patch. Now, farmers in the east would know what a bramble patch is. There are berry, we call them canes, berry canes, that is, bushes of blackberries, you know. And they grow in a patch because no one cultivates them. And so their little shoots come up around them. And by and by, each shoot having, you'll have a patch. Oh, as large as this circle. They're brambles. Now, get it. They are brambles. Very discouraging. They're full of stickers. More discouraging. And so in this bramble patch, here was one lovely spray that had swung out this way, just as graceful as a foot. And right up near the edge of it was a little tiny nest, a walrus nest, only about as big around as that. Empty, of course, but this is December. And when I came to it, you know, I just stood in sort of an adoration. I looked at it, and I was just transported. I thought, oh, isn't this magnificent. Here's this little nest tucked away on a bramble bush. I listened. You know what I heard? I heard a spring bird sing. A spring bird. Right in the middle of winter. Right in the middle of the winter. Snow up to my knees. But this little nest. I heard this spring bird sing. I didn't say anything to anyone about it. You don't always tell all these things. I'm telling it to you. But if you ever tell them, don't tell them. There was some silly thing. It isn't silly to me. It's very real. It's very real. So I stood for a moment, and I looked at it. Here was this little nest hanging on this bramble spray. I thought, oh, I can't let you go. You'll have to go home with me. And so I put my hand down in the snow, quite deep, where I could break it off. And I brought it home. Oh, it was at least that long, graceful, with a little tendril sticking out, and this little nest balancing in it. So I laid down my brief. And I went home and came in the kitchen door, and Mother said, well, dear, did you get the greens? I said, oh, I got good ones this year. So she came out to see them, and of course on the top of it lay this thing. She said, well, my dear, what's that? Without thinking at all. Oh, I said, Mother, that's a poem that has never been sung. Well, how do you know that was right? I said, oh, I didn't think about it. It came out. I said, oh, my, that's a poem that hasn't been sung. And I took it in, and I put it over a picture, which I had done with the pastel, and I put it over there, of course, just so in keeping with it. I didn't think anything about that. It was artistic and pretty, and I enjoyed it. And I like to look at an empty nest like that. Why shouldn't I? It thrilled me. The ministry thrilled me. Did something for me. And not too long after that, the professor of the English department of the college came down to call, and they had asked me to come up to visit one of their classes in English to read for them and to give them a talk. And I had consented. I'd given different remarks. They said, what is that, Paulette? Is that a bird's nest? No, I said, I'll tell you what I told my mother it is. It's a poem that hasn't been sung. Well, then why don't you sing it? Well, I hadn't thought of that. Why don't you sing it? Sing the poem. It was just something that was cheering me and doing something in my own heart. So I just dismissed the thought. Well, then a few days later, I thought, well, sure, why not sing that? Well, here are two things I'm incorporating in this poem. It's rather veiled, but it's true, scientifically true. In the birds, in ornithology, you take any studies on these birds, the nest that a bird builds, say a robin, his first nest is just as perfect as the last nest he will ever make. He is not taught how to make one plumply and then make a little better one and the next time you'll have a good one. No, that's not the instinct of the bird. He lives under an entirely different fashion from man. He is moved by instinct and the laws of nature. And that bird, I've watched the robins, and I've seen them come with a mouth, there's a little bill I've hit with a hunk of mud, you wonder how they can ever carry it. And put it in with that little grassy base that it has, and how many of you know how they shape it? By puffing their breasts. They'll get in and puff, puff, puff, puff, puff, puff, puff, puff, puff, puff, puff, puff, all around, you know, with their little breasts. Shaping it. Oh, it's wonderful to watch them. I've seen them. Well, now listen. A bird's neck is a strange thing that's carried for thousands of years. That arm. Now, the next thing is its song. No bird changes its song every once in a while because this is an old tune, it's out of fashion. No, he just calls it. My robins, I have a lot of birds at home, back in these woodlands. And I often think, well, if my great-grandmother should rise up, if my great-great-great-grandmother should rise up and hear that woodlock, or could hear a robin, and I say, Granny, what is that? Well, what would she say? She would give it its name because it sang exactly that way for her a hundred or two hundred years ago. The bird that was there was doing the same thing. Well, that I thought was, that's an amazing thing, that this bird should build a nest so marvelously, under its law, and then repeat its song, though it perishes, it's passed on to its little child, through an egg. That's right. It's carried through an egg. That little bird has all of its potential in the way of him. And this is his old mother, she lays another egg, and it's carried out through ages. Well, then this thought was running through my mind at the same time. The sound of the spring bird will echo in your heart in spite of your snowdrift. You know that? The snow can drift, but if you ever capture it, now I mean by that not merely a bird, but I mean a high point in your experience. That's the same thing. How many of you know what I mean by a high point in your experience? Some special high point in your life, in your experience. And it has thrilled you, it has blessed you. You've walked under the inspiration of it. Then it fades. But how many know what it is to recapture it again, and move on under a recaptured emotion of your high point? How many get that? Come on, those who are not asleep, excuse me. Well, now that's in here, that in spite of the snow which may drift, if I've heard my spring bird sing, that is, if I've had my high point in God's name, I recapture it by a suggestion, though my knees are in the snow of difficulty and coldness and terror. So that was the background for this. I think you'll get it. A poem that I cannot write, a frail, exquisite thing. I found one day in snow-blown fields and heard a spring bird sing. It was a simple little nest upon a bramble spray, a home some happy bird had built in joyous sunny May. Who taught him how to build his nest? Who gave to him his song? Who kept these hours preserved for us the many ages long? This was his home. Here sat his mate. The nest was blessed with young, the bramble was a holy place, and love the song he sung. Oh, could I tell in simple words what mysteries you wake that flood my heart with ecstasy and leave a strange dull ache. Upon the wall of memory I hung the bramble spray with nest of subtle artistry, a gem I prize today. Oh, could I make my life a gem upon a bramble spray that I might leave to sing for me when I have gone away. Do you like that? How many of you know what your bramble spray is? Well, can you make a habit of that? That's very powerful. Oh, could I make my life a gem upon a bramble spray, the most impossible thing, the thorny, disagreeable, ugly thing that we find this to be. How could it ever hold a gem? The winter snow has drifted deep. My heart, where is the spring? I see a nest and hear a spring bird sing. How many of you get it? Do you like that? Well, now that's real, isn't it? How many can sense there is spiritual reality in it? Absolutely. Real spiritual reality. How would you get it out of a bird's nest? Well, what scripture verse did you have? Oh, let's not get back. Our loving Lord, we want to thank you again tonight for your presence today. You've been with us all day. You come here, you carry here, and you've fed and ministered to every one of us, each one in turn according to his need and according to his capacity to receive. And where we have been able to receive, you have been so glad to minister to us. Therefore, we close the day in thy presence with our thanksgiving and offering afresh again of all that we have to be poured out at thy feet. Our love, our adoration, all that we have, we want to pour it out. We're not thinking of working, Lord. We're just thinking of pouring out everything before you. So take us to our places of rest in the quietness and the loveliness of thy spirit and bless to our good all the things that you give us for Jesus' sake. Amen. And God bless you. You've been so patient. When's breakfast, dear? 8.15. 8.15. Well, we've got quite a while to sleep. It's only 10.15.