7. Whitsuntide: A Whitsuntide Reflection

We can believe in the future of Christianity when we truly understand the significance of Whitsuntide. And then with a power that works as a force immanent in the soul, the stupendous scene comes before us; then we realise the future as the first apostles realised it, under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost; so that we long to bring to life in our own souls something that knows not the bounds set between the separate fragments of humanity; something that speaks a tongue understood by all the souls on the face of the Earth. We are sensible of the peace, the love and harmony contained in the thoughts of Whitsuntide, and we feel the vivifying power of those thoughts at our Whitsun Festival. We recognise in them a pledge of our hope of freedom and of eternity. As we feel in our souls the awakening of the individualised spirit, the most momentous attribute of spirit—the infinity of the spiritual—is aroused within us. By his participation in the spiritual, man may become aware of his immortality and eternity. In the thought of Whitsuntide we feel most deeply the power of those primeval words, which Initiate after Initiate has implanted in various languages, revealing to us the meaning of Wisdom and Eternity. We feel them as a Whitsuntide thought that has been transmitted from epoch to epoch, in words spoken to-day for the first time exoterically: