On the Migration of Abraham

“And the Lord said unto Abraham, Depart out of thy land, and out of thy kindred, and out of thy father’s house, into the land which I shall shew thee; and I will make thee a great nation and will bless thee and will make thy name great, and thou shalt be blessed. And I will bless them that bless thee, and them that curse thee I will curse, and in thee shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 12:1–3).

God begins the carrying out of His will to cleanse man’s soul by giving it a starting-point for full salvation in its removal out of three localities, namely, body, sense-perception, and speech. “Land” or “country” is a symbol of body, “kindred” of sense-perception, “father’s house” of speech. How so?

Because the body took its substance out of earth (or land) and is again resolved into earth. Moses is a witness to this, when he says, “Earth thou art and into earth shalt thou return” (Gen. 3:19); indeed he also says that the body was clay formed into human shape by God’s moulding hand, and what suffers solution must needs be resolved into the elements which were united to form it. Sense-perception, again, is of one kin and family with understanding, the irrational with the rational, for both these are parts of one soul. And speech is our “father’s house,” “father’s” because Mind is our father, sowing in each of the parts of the body the faculties that issue from itself, and assigning to them their workings, being in control and charge of them all; house—because mind has speech for its house or living-room, secluded from the rest of the homestead. It is Mind’s living-place, just as the hearthside is man’s.