No other book, he says, but the Scriptures, teaches { 216} man "with assured knowledge of all the things which concern the soule, the eternal part of man," for other writers have written from the observation of their outward senses, but these writers had "inward senses--their eyes saw, their ears heard, their hands handled the Word of Life." And yet for those in these days who can "look through the vayle or shell within which the Eternal Spirit works its Wonders," the visible things of the world prove to be "a glasse wherein the similitude of spirituall things are represented" and "the Minde of man is a most clear and undeceiving glasse wherein we may perceive the motions and activities of that Work-Master, the Spirit who hath created everything in the world."[12] In the most satisfactory of all his Introductions, the one to the _Aurora_ in 1656, he undertakes to show that "the Light within" which has now arisen in England is not a substitute for the Christ of history. On the contrary, he insists that the Christ within and the Christ of history is one and the same Person who is not divided. He was once manifested in the likeness of sinful flesh, suffering, dying, rising, ascending in glory, and now, in an inward and spiritual manner, He is actually present within men so that they may become conformable in soul and spirit to Him and share in His life, sufferings, death, resurrection and glory, or they may, by their own choice, crucify Him afresh within themselves.[20] The Word of Life calls loudly within every man, urging the soul to forsake that which it perceives to be evil and to embrace that which it perceives to be good and holy and divine. This, he says, is the Eternal Gospel, and it brings to all men everywhere the good news that we live and move and have our being in God, and that the soul that gropes in sincerity after God will find Him, for He is very nigh, even in the heart of the seeker.[21] He deals in an interesting way with the important contemporary problem--raised by the prevalence of the emphasis on an inward Divine Presence--whether human Perfection is possible in this life. His { 217} conclusion is that the tendency to sin remains so long as "the mortal body" lasts. No person will ever reach a stage of earthly life in which the spur of the flesh is eradicated, and so no person can be infallibly certain that he is beyond sin, but when Christ is inwardly united to the soul and His Spirit dwells in us and reigns in us and we are risen in soul, spirit, and mind with Him, then we live no longer after the flesh, or according to its thrust and push, but share His life and partake of the conquering power of His Spirit; and thus, though "sown in imperfection we are raised in perfection."[22] The important matter, however, is not that one call himself a "Perfectist," but that he actually live "in this earthly pilgrimage and in this vale of sinfull flesh" in the power of Eternity and by the Light of Christ, whose fulness may be revealed in himself.[23]