CONTENTS
Chapter I – NEW THOUGHT DEFINED
Chapter II – ORIGIN OF THE CREEDS
Chapter III – NEW THOUGHT AND THE CREEDS
Chapter IV – NEW THOUGHT AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
Chapter V – UNIVERSAL MIND IN MAN
Chapter VI – MAN ILLIMITABLE
Chapter VII – MAN UNFINISHED
CHAPTER VIII – AS A MAN THINKETH
Chapter IX – ETHICS OF THE CREEDS
Chapter X – ETHICS OF NEW THOUGHT
Chapter XI – VOICES OF NEW THOUGHT
Chapter XII – THE ART OF LIVING
Chapter I
NEW THOUGHT DEFINED
| “O we can wait no longer,
We too take ship, O soul; Joyous, we too launch out on trackless seas, Fearless, for unknown shores, on waves of ecstasy to sail, Amid the wafting winds, Chanting our chant of pleasant exploration. O my brave soul, O, farther, farther sail, O daring joy, but safe, are they not, all the seas of God? O, farther. farther sail.” WALT WHITMAN. |
NEW THOUGHT is not, as many believe, a name or expression employed to define any fixed system of thought, philosophy, or religion, but is a term used to convey the idea of growing or developing thought. In considering this subject, the word “New” should be duly and freely emphasized, because the expression “New Thought” relates only to what is new and progressive.
It would be a misuse of terms to apply the expression “New Thought” to a system of thought, because when thought is molded and formed into a system, it ceases to be new. When a system of thought has reached maturity and ceases to grow, expand, and develop, it can no longer be defined by the word “New.” It follows, therefore, as a necessary conclusion, that no system of new thought, or no system of thought defined by that expression, now exists or ever can exist. “New Thought” is the result or creation of perpetually advancing mind. The growing mind is not content with the past or its achievements. It is not satisfied with systems of philosophy or religion originating in other ages and handed down through succeeding generations. They do not satisfy the wants of the mind. Systems do not grow, mind develops. It wants something larger and better; it wants improvement, growth, and development. It is merely the logical and natural effort of the mind in its struggle for advancement; it is following its basic and inherent law.
As the growing mind applies thought to whatever enters into consciousness, it gains new and enlarged conceptions and, therefore, grows, and what it thinks is new. New Thought has been defined as the latest product of growing mind. A distinguished writer has characterized New Thought as an attitude of mind and not a cult. Those who grasp the true meaning and spirit of New Thought, or, as it is sometimes called, progressive or unfolding thought, do not conceive that a finished or completed system of thought, either philosophical or religious, is a possibility. All systems of thought change with the flight of time. Decay follows growth. The philosophies and religions of today differ from those of yesterday, and those of tomorrow will be unlike those of today. History alone demonstrates the truth of this statement. This conclusion is inevitable also from the very laws that govern man’s growth and existence.
Man’s body is not the only result of the processes of evolution, growth, and development, but his mind is likewise the product of the same great law. Man is an evolved and evolving being, physically, mentally, and spiritually. Change and growth are the silent mandates of divinity. The eternal current ever moves onward. We do not reckon with all of Nature’s forces. Back of all, unseen yet all powerful, is the one universal law or cosmic urge, forever pushing and projecting man forward into higher physical, mental, and spiritual development.
Through the principle of evolution, physical man was brought to his present state of development. By the same principle has he come to his present mental and spiritual condition. It is a principle operating throughout the universe. Evolution is a movement from the lower to the higher, from the simple to the complex, from the inferior to the superior. How can there be a fixed system of thought, a complete philosophy, a perfect theology, or a defined religion? For as man grows mentally and spiritually he moves away from such limitations. As his mental and spiritual visions expand, the very laws of his being lead him to higher and still higher conceptions of philosophical and religious truth. “Through spiritual evolution are we led to God.”
Every system of philosophy or religion is the result of an evolutionary process, the product of the human mind and understanding. When thought changes, when the mind develops, when the understanding is enlarged, philosophies and religions must likewise change. This is a self-evident truth. Were it otherwise, systems of thought, philosophies, and religions would be greater than the minds that created them and launched them upon the world — the things created would be greater than their creators. Were it not so, systems that have no inherent power of growth would become greater than man, whose very law is growth.
Moreover, fixed systems of thought, either philosophical or religious, are impossible, because they are not the same to any two persons but convey different meanings to each individual. No two persons think alike, or have the same conception or understanding of any important subject, least of all of a philosophical or religious subject. No two individuals are alike or think alike. Duplicates have never been discovered in all the broad domain of Nature. Scientists tell us that even the molecules of which our bodies are composed differ one from the other.
“No two men in creation think alike,
No two men in creation look alike, No two men in creation are alike,
No worlds or suns or heavens, but are distinct and wear a separate beauty.”
No individual can convey his thoughts, ideas, and impressions entire to another. Language, either written or spoken, is but a symbol, and at best an imperfect vehicle to convey thought. The meaning of truth is deflected in its transmission. “Thought is deeper than speech; feeling deeper than thought; souls to souls can never teach what to themselves is taught.” The mental and spiritual visions of man differ as the stars differ in magnitude. The same light does not shine with equal brilliancy on the pathway of each individual. What is light to one, may be a shadow to another.
Nor are our ideas changeless and fixed. Our thoughts, conceptions, and understandings change with the advancing years, as the soul receives new influx of light. As each morning bathes the earth in new light, so each returning day and every recurring season bring new meanings and understandings to the soul.
The greatest gift from God to man is a growing mind, one that expands from day to day as the light of truth breaks upon it. Were it otherwise, were our ideas fixed and changeless, life would be intolerable and existence a sterile waste. It is the new conception that thrills the soul and broadens the understanding, as the influx of new life brings physical health and growth.
In the search for truth each ultimate fact becomes a cause, a starting point for the discovery of more truth. Every attainment is the beginning of the next. “Every end is the beginning.” The discovery of a law of Nature is only the forerunner of a more universal law. Thus in the search for truth the endless tide of progression rolls on, forever conveying to man broader conceptions of truth and carrying him into a higher realization of his relationship with divinity.
As man renews his mind and reaches out for larger conceptions of truth, his understanding is enlarged, he gains new viewpoints, his expanded thought is translated and externalized into life, he grows, he advances, he comes into a closer union with God.
Thought is not final. What we last think may be our best thought, but it is not our ultimate though. It is only the fore-gleams of greater thought — we may not encompass the whole truth, but we can enlarge our conceptions of truth and thus bring ourselves nearer the reality. We all live, move and have our being in an atmosphere of truth; truth is only assimilated by the individual. It is not susceptible of monopoly or systematization. It is not encompassed by institutions, but its living spirit is present in every manifested form and object of Nature.
We hear much at times about systems, established religions, and settled creeds. Every institution insists on laying its foundation on a dogma. It has been well said that when a church is built over truth, truth flies out at the window. Every creed and every dogma offered to man undertake to show man’s true relationship to God. The major premise of every dogma rests upon an idea of God, and yet no two persons can be found with the same ideals and conceptions of God. Man’s idea of God is but an image of himself. The major premise of every creed is the conception some man had of God. To talk about settled creeds, the indisputable presumption must be indulged, that all other men have the same conception of God. To have a finished system of thought or a definite creed respecting man’s relations to God presupposes a perfect and complete knowledge and understanding of that relation, which is beyond man’s comprehension in his present state of development. When he has attained the mental and spiritual growth necessary to comprehend that relationship in its fullness and entirety, he will possess all knowledge and all wisdom, he will be omniscient.
It took the Christian Church until the fifth century to formulate its creeds, and yet for fourteen centuries it has been striving to settle them and mold them into an acceptable system. Has it accomplished it? Are its adherents any nearer an agreement? It is no nearer the coveted goal than it was fourteen hundred years ago. It is creed against creed, dogma against dogma, and their adherents still continue to look outward for truth.
Man has caught only a few rays from the great light of truth. Even the agencies of external Nature transcend and baffle our understanding. We use electricity, it is in our bodies, we see its manifestations, we harness it, we regulate it, but we know not what it is. How light reaches the earth is a puzzle to the understanding. Because we do not understand these familiar agencies, the meaning of Nature’s symbols, must we relinquish all efforts to discover their meaning and to find the laws that govern them? Must we desist in our search for truth?
Science is a search for the secrets of Nature. It is an attempt to find the laws governing the universe. The laws of the universe are the laws of God. Science, then, in its broadest aspect is a search for the knowledge of God. As man delves more deeply into the secrets of Nature, the mysteries of the universe, his spiritual visions will expand and he will have broader and more comprehensive conceptions of God. Yet we are told that religion must be let alone; that creeds and theologies must not be disturbed, that they are not the subject of inquiry. How futile the attempt to set bounds to the processes of thought; why should not man seek for a better religion as he struggles for better government? Thought was the first step toward civil liberty. Thought is the first step toward the soul’s liberty.
Truth is the understanding of the principles underlying the universe. Truth is as illimitable and boundless as the universe itself. Principles and laws are changeless, but our understanding of them changes as our minds gain new conceptions of truth and as they grow and develop. Only as the mind dwells on principles can it advance to a larger understanding of truth and higher conceptions of life. Principles are the landmarks to which all things are tied. When man departs from them he enters the jungle of uncertainty and confusion. To gain higher conceptions of the principles and laws underlying the universe is the real work of man. As he comes into an enlarged understanding of these principles, he directs the current of his life in accordance therewith. He grows into a closer harmony with Nature, and enters a richer and more satisfying field of experience.
A moral and religious life must be a growing life, an advancing life, a life positively and constantly constructive. Man is either progressing or receding; spiritually and mentally he cannot stand still. All Nature, with her actions and reactions, proclaims this great truth in every moment of life.
All useful discoveries in science have been the result of progressive and continued thought, thought applied to the discovery of the secrets of Nature. Each discovery has been a stepping-stone to the next. The discovery of each law became a light for the discovery of more laws. Each discovery in Nature is a benefit to the race, a step forward, and enlarges man’s understanding of God.
Man can grow into a knowledge of his relationship with God and reach out toward the divine goal, only as he renews his mind, only as he enlarges his conception of what is within his consciousness, only as he presses forward into a higher spiritual and mental development.
Why should not new conceptions be applied to religion as well as governments? Religion relates to man’s life and destiny: Government regulates man’s relation with his fellow-man. Governments have existed as long as religion. They both sprang into existence with the dawn of reason. They traveled side by side down the ages. They have changed as man has progressed in civilization.
We do not yet concede the existence of a perfect government. The model government is not yet in sight. The struggle to improve government goes on as relentlessly as ever before in history. The rights of man forever assert themselves. They have been improved and secured only as he created new ideals of government, only as he applied new thoughts and new conceptions to existing governments.
The creeds which attempt to set bounds to religious thought, which endeavor to define man’s conceptions of God, were given to the world when scientific thinking was unknown and by men whose conceptions of Nature were no better than idle superstitions. The formulators of the creeds, in their blind endeavor to set up a system founded on the oriental allegory of the Garden of Eden, apparently did not know that truth has no terminals and cannot be defined or circumscribed. If they had looked into the great laboratory of Nature and given thought and study to her processes, they might have there read that Nature tells no falsehoods and that her very law is growth, development, and eternal progress. They might hug the delusion that creeds are static, that they are fixed and final, bur they could find nothing in Nature remotely to hint at limitation or set bounds to her modifying processes. Change is written everywhere in her symbols. Her pulsations of life growth and decay, the morning and evening, the return of the seasons, all bespeak eternal change. There are no fixtures in all her domain. She has her seed-time and harvest, her summer and winter, her heat and cold. Her pendulum always swings.
Everything vibrates and oscillates through the broad stretches of infinity. Since motion produces change, everything in Nature is passing through perpetual change.
Let us apply the analogies of Nature to man, for is man not a part of Nature? The physical man is changing as the moments speed away. Scientists at one time said our bodies were entirely renewed once in seven years. Now they have reduced the time to twelve months or less. Man is constantly putting off the old and putting on the new, but Nature ever tends toward perfection. From the amoeba to man was a long and tedious struggle, but it marks the developing and perfecting laws of Nature. Her movements were ever from the lower to the higher, by the ceaseless and tireless processes of evolution, to the highly complex and individualized man, conscious of his own personality and existence.
We recognize man as a co-worker with Nature, and his right to assist her in her efforts toward perfection. He applies thought to her processes, and with her aid brings the flower, the fruit, the nut, and the animal to perfection. Is not Nature a part of God? Are not these symbols through which God finds expression and speaks to man? Why not Burbank religions, creeds, and theologies, as well as the fruits and products of the earth?
When man is a co-worker with Nature he is a co-worker with God; he applies thought to the processes and laws of Nature, and behold she smiles back with fatness and plenty. Then let us, with a sublime courage and kindly spirit, turn the God-given mind in each to higher ideas of God, and God will smile back with prophetic glimpses of the eternal peace and beauty of true religion.
All thought is new. What we know, what we understand, we do not think about. It is only the new that creates interest or enthusiasm. It alone awakens the mind and soul to activity and effort. The soul is always thrilled with the reception of new truth. Without enthusiasm nothing great was ever accomplished. It has ever been the propelling force of man in every important and momentous undertaking. We instinctively turn from the old to the new. It is the law of mind, it is Nature’s method, it is God’s plan of teaching man to grow.
Emerson said, “What is the ground of this uneasiness of ours, of this old discontent? What is this universal sense of want and ignorance, but the fine innuendo by which the great soul makes its enormous claim?” Progress is the law of the soul. Evermore the mind stretches forth toward the infinite, to grasp and reduce to understanding her mysteries, her wanders, and her secrets. To bind it to a fixed creed, a defined religion or system of thought, is as impossible as to pluck the Pleiades from the galaxy of the stars. The mind that can flash its thoughts across billions of miles from star to star in the hundredth part of a second, as the scientists tell us is possible, cannot be fettered by fixed creeds, dogmas, or systems, or bend to the authority or edict of an institution.
As we constantly advance to higher and more perfect ideals, we obtain clearer conceptions of the principles of truth, we expand and extend our spiritual horizon. We thus come to a better understanding of ourselves, our powers and forces, and the meaning of our existence.
Man grows only as he enlarges his thoughts. How can his thoughts be enlarged except as he takes on the new? By no other process can he enlarge his conceptions and understanding of life. As his ideals expand he comprehends more truth, he moves forward, he extends his visions, he grows, he sees beauty, harmony, and law in all created things.
Hence New Thought is a synonym for growth, for development, for perpetual and eternal progress. It recognizes the superior and excellent in man; it deals not with limitations; it sets no bounds to the soul’s progress, for it sees in each soul transcendental faculties as limitless as infinity itself.
But, someone asks, has New Thought nothing but uncertain and shifting conceptions regarding man’s relation to the universe? Is New Thought a mere tramp in the field of philosophical and religious thought? Is it anchored to nothing? These inquiries do not create surprise, since for centuries past men have been told that a belief in certain formulas war the first step in a religious life. They have become habituated to creeds, beliefs, and churches of authority and therefore deeply impressed with the thought that without them religion must decline and cease to have any vitality and strength. New Thought may be said to possess one fixed creed, that of an eternal search for truth. It is anchored to that one thought. It believes in truth, but it does not accept every conception of truth final. It realizes that attainment of truth is a process of evolution, growth, and development.
Man can acquire truth only as he is mentally and spiritually prepared to receive it. New Thought is anchored to the idea of finding the good and the beautiful in life, the development of latent possibilities in man, and that law reigns supreme in the universe. Anchored to these principles, New Thought moves forward in its quest for more truth, in its search for greater light that leads upward and onward toward a unity with God. It has not come to eradicate the old, except as the old fades away before the advancing light of the new. However, we have been told that it is dangerous to put new wine into old bottles lest the bottles may break. New Thought is constructive, not destructive. It is not here to tear down, but to build up. It employs addition, not subtraction. Its symbol is plus, not minus.
It recognizes that the universe is supported upon the enduring foundation of changeless principles and fixed laws, the result of an infinite and divine intelligence. It realizes also that man may grow into a knowledge and understanding of those principles and laws only as his conscious ideals grow from day to day.
Its goal is the understanding of life, of man, and a conscious unity of man with God. If its adherents differ, it is only in methods and not in the end sought. It does not enjoin methods. There are many avenues leading to truth. The arc-light sends out a myriad of rays, but they all lead to the one light.
The adherents of New Thought worship the omnipresent God, the indwelling God, in whom we live, move, and have our being. They do not conceive of God as distant or separated from man, but as a universal Spirit permeating all Nature, finding its highest expression in man.
No better conception of the God of New Thought can be expressed than was given by Pythagoras to the world six centuries before the Christian era. Listen to the great message:
“God is the Universal Spirit that diffuses itself over all Nature. All beings receive their life from Him. There is but one only God, who is not, as some are apt to imagine, seated above the world, beyond the orb of the universe; but being Himself all in all, He sees all the beings that fill His immensity, the only principle the light of heaven, the father of all. He produces everything. He orders and disposes of all things. He is the reason, the life and motion of all things.”
New Thought teaches that the revelation of God to man is a continuous process through Nature, through reason, the whispering of intuition through the events and experiences of life. The objects of Nature convey their message only as they awaken the divine impulse within, the desire to come into harmony with God.
Molding our lives more and more into the divine likeness is the essential thought in any worthy religion; as Plato taught, the highest aspiration of man is “the free imitation of God.”
To teach man to come into a conscious realization of the divinity within, and the unity of man and God, so that out of the sublimity of his soul he can say with the Gentle Master, “The Father and I are one,” is the supreme purpose and meaning of New Thought.
Chapter II
ORIGIN OF THE CREEDS
| “No! such a God my worship may not win, Who lets the world about his finger spin, A thing externe; my God must rule within, And whom I own for Father, God, Creator, Hold nature in Himself, Himself in nature; And in his kindly arms embraced, the whole, Doth live and move by his pervading soul.” GOETHE |
THAT there may be a better understanding and clearer comprehension of the fundamental
principles of New Thought, and wherein it differs from the recognized systems of orthodox theology, I shall undertake to institute a comparison between some of its teachings and the doctrines of orthodox religions. This plan of statement is adopted, because in no other manner can the distinctions and divergencies between the principles of New Thought and those of the recognized theologies be so accurately measured and determined.
At this time there seems to be an imperfect and mystified conception and understanding, in the minds of many persons, adherents both of New Thought and the orthodox religions, of the real message of New Thought and what it represents and teaches. This is not surprising since the Christian religion, although its followers claim for it a different origin, and to be founded on different ideas and conceptions, adopted in a more or less modified form many of the ceremonials and rituals and some of the teachings of the ancient pagan religions, and persistently adhere to them and treat them as essential, even to the present day. It is not, therefore, anomalous that there should be a tendency among the followers of both New Thought and the orthodox adherents to combine some of the philosophy of New Thought with the dogmas and creeds of the orthodox religions.
The plan of comparing the principles of the philosophy of New Thought with those of the orthodox religions is adopted not for a critical purpose, but with a view to finding the initial and important points of difference between the two and clearly differentiating them, so that they can be more readily and clearly comprehended.
Ecclesiastical authorities both in the past and present have not encouraged a critical or careful research and study of the foundations upon which theological structures are built. The theologian has been able to vault over great gaps in history with the nimbleness of an athlete, but the inquiring and careful layman might not be able to accomplish the same feat. In the Catholic Church the adherents have been told, in unmistakable language, that they must accept the dicta and authority of the Church as conclusive and final.
In the orthodox branches of the Protestant churches a critical review of the origin of the creeds is not encouraged, and particular beliefs and dogmas are enjoined as paramount and absolutely necessary to salvation, and that any doubts thereof would unmistakenly incur the Divine displeasure. With them the search for truth is of less importance than the acceptance of certain beliefs.
This may be called an incredulous age, but it is nevertheless a reasoning, thinking, and investigating age. Mind is at last becoming free. It is asserting itself as never before. It is refusing to be bound by the edicts and commands of authority, which we shall discover in a later page was invented for the sole purpose of silencing the reasoning and investigations of man.
In this twentieth century, too, men are asking why they must be bound by fixed beliefs, which the reason rejects, and why it is wrong to question them. Man finds himself endowed with reason and is conscious of his reasoning faculties, the one quality and divine gift that raises him above the animal, and asks why he may not exercise those powers in the investigation of religious questions as well as all others. Men are asking this question, why are the exponents of the creeds so persistent in enforcing their beliefs upon others? Why are they so uncharitable to those who differ, when the mind cannot accept their beliefs? Why the manifestation of so much displeasure at what are called unbelievers?
Many worthy persons are deeply grieved at what seems to be a growth of independent thought. They look upon modern progressive thought as an evidence of a decline in religion. They worship creeds in the name of religion. They reject truth in the name of creeds. They see in ceremonials and forms the highest expression of religion. They worship the old and distrust the new. They assume that a change of thought cannot be productive of any good, but must result in the subversion of all religious thought. They assume that it will lead man from all true considerations of a religious life.
All religion is based on man’s conception of God. Because my conception differs from yours, is it fair to quarrel with me because of that? That our views of an infinite God differ should cause no surprise. It does not follow, because men question existing beliefs, that they are not deeply religious themselves, that they are thinking at all about religion is evidence that they are in fact religious. That they are not satisfied with the old is evidence that they are trying to find a better and more satisfying religion. Man ought not to be blamed for seeking the religion that best satisfies the wants of his own soul. Carlyle said: “We will understand that destruction of old forms is not destruction of everlasting substances; that skepticism is not an end, but a beginning.”
It has been well said that man never really understands a truth until he has contended against it. In this age of intellectual and religious liberty we ought to be able to discuss in a dispassionate manner all subjects to which the mind is directed, whether religious or secular. In that spirit let us proceed to a study of New Thought and the orthodox religions and find the important lines of divergence: ” He who will not reason is a bigot, He who dares not reason is a stave. ”
The theology of all so-called orthodox churches, the Roman Catholic, the Greek Catholic, and the various branches of the Protestant Church, is fundamentally and in all essential points the same. Their basic principles are the same, and they draw their life and inspiration from the one identical source. The Reformation was not caused by any important differences between the fundamental creeds and doctrines of the Church. When Protestantism broke away from the Catholic Church, it was not because it disputed the underlying principles of the Church, but mainly and essentially because of certain abuses and practices it was claimed had grown up in the Catholic Church. The sale of indulgences and like practices contributed largely to the separation.
When Luther separated from the Catholic Church, he still clung to the theological ideas of the separation of God and man, original sin, the vicarious atonement, that none outside the Church could be saved, the doctrine of transubstantiation in reference to the sacraments, the denial of the freedom of the will, all of which, as we shall hereafter find, were first promulgated by the Church while under the dominion of the Latin bishops. He announced the doctrine of justification by faith and greatly magnified the functions and importance of Satan, so much so that we are told that he once hurled an inkstand at the phantom he called the devil.
John Calvin declared that God was outside the framework of the universe and denounced the idea of an immanent God. He adopted from the Catholic Church all the doctrines of a vicarious atonement, including that of election, which was first announced by Augustine in the fifth century A.D.
The creeds of both the older and newer churches after the Reformation continued substantially the same, and they remain the same today. The creeds of the Roman Catholic, the Greek Catholic, and the several branches of the Protestant Church are based on the following fundamental ideas and declarations: First, that man was estranged from God and became a fallen being by reason of Adam’s sin in partaking of the forbidden fruit, when the serpent said to Eve: “Your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil;” second, that by reason thereof man became by nature sinful and lost; third, that because of his lost condition, it became necessary to have a vicarious atonement to reconcile God to man; fourth, that God brought forth Jesus for that purpose; that Jesus was conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, and became the vicarious atonement for man’s redemption; fifth, that Jesus was crucified, was buried, and resurrected and ascended into Heaven, and there sits on the right hand of God, to judge the quick and the dead; sixth, that a belief in all this is necessary and essential for man’s salvation and a life of happiness in a future world; that if man will repent of his sins and believe this, his offenses will all be blotted out and he will be saved in heaven.
The three basic ideas are the fall of man, the vicarious atonement, and an absolute belief in these propositions. This statement might be enlarged and amplified, but in the end we should come back to the same propositions. This will no doubt be accepted by theologians as a fair and impartial statement of the underlying principles of the creeds of all the so-called Orthodox denominations. It is true the Catholic Church, in addition to the dogmas above expressed, still holds to the doctrines of the authority of the Church, Apostolic succession, priestly intervention, etc., which some of the Protestant churches have omitted from their creeds. But in substance the theologies of the Orthodox Protestant and Catholic churches are the same.
The adherents of New Thought cannot accept these views of orthodox theologians, for two reasons: First, because they do not rest upon any adequate or sufficient historical basis. Secondly, because these dogmas find their only support in the theory and supposition of the separation of God from man, which the advocates of New Thought cannot admit or concede. How many modern Christians know anything of the origin and history of the creeds and dogmas to which they yield implicit faith and obedience? They have been unqualifiedly accepted, without inquiry, doubt, or investigation. For fifteen centuries every doubt and inquiry about their origin, their reasonableness and truth have persistently been frowned upon by priest and theologian alike. They have held up doubt as a deadly offense and investigation as treason to the authority of the Church, that is, divine authority. They said, “Believe what we tell you or we will burn you as a heretic at the stake.” Such superstitions still grip the minds of millions who call themselves free.
Many illusions vanish when we take a survey of history and look into the origin of beliefs and the dogmas upon which they are based. We hear much even in the twentieth century about the early history of the Church, its beliefs, its doctrines, and revelations, with the plain inference, if not with the positive statements, that they were all given to the early Fathers of the Church by the Apostles themselves. To support that claim the theory of apostolic succession was invented as a valuable and necessary expedient.
As a starting-point in this inquiry it is well to remember that there is a vast hiatus in the early history of the Church, and no historical data of any value exist to bridge it over. Between the Apostles and the first of the so-called Fathers of the Church there is an interval upon which no historical light is shed. From the fall of Jerusalem, A.D. 70, to the middle of the second century, more than two generations lived and passed from the stage of existence, and yet that whole period furnishes no authentic history of the early Church. During that interval there is not a word of Church history that can be drawn from writers who have been designated as Apostolic Fathers. The first mention of the doctrine of apostolic succession was by Cyprian, about the middle of the third century.
It is proper to keep in mind that St. Augustine in the fifth century first formulated the modern doctrines of the Church, invented many of its creeds and dogmas, and adopted the Latin idea of establishing a church to govern and rule the world. From that date Roman theology governed the Church and gave to the West its creeds and dogmas.
Greek thought prevailed in the first centuries of the Church–Clement, Origen, and Athanasius being among its most able exponents. It was mainly their thought that shaped the theology of the early Church. They lived nearer the age of the Apostles than the Latin theologians, and it is a reasonable inference that if the creeds and dogmas later announced by the latter had had any existence in their day, they would have heard of them and given them to the world.
It is interesting to modern progressive thinkers, who teach the immanency of God, that God is a universal intelligence, expressing Himself in all nature, indwelling in man, that the early Fathers of the Church taught the same great truths. Like the Stoic philosophy which on the very eve of its decline produced such men as Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, they taught that God is indwelling in Nature, that the world was directed and controlled by an immanent life, of “whose beauty and glory outward Nature is the direct manifestation,” and that the spirit of man expressed the highest revelation of the actual presence of the divine. They said man was created in the spiritual image of God; that because he was made in the spiritual image of God, it is the law of his being that he may rise into the likeness of God and respond to the divine call; that the law of God is not found in external commandments, but is written in the consciousness of man himself. Nowhere did they teach the fall of man or that he was separated from God, or that God was displeased with his conduct. They saw in Jesus the normal man, the master idealist of the race, the exemplar set before man as a pattern toward whose perfection he should strive and aspire in the experience of life.
The theology of St. Augustine reversed all this and made Adam and not Jesus the normal man, and this is the view of the Orthodox theologies, even to this day, Protestant and Catholic alike.
The Greek Fathers also taught that the mission of Jesus was to reveal man to himself and illuminate his soul with a consciousness of man’s own divine nature. They did not speculate on the origin of evil and knew nothing of the doctrine of total depravity, of a vicarious atonement, endless punishment, infant damnation, election, Purgatory, and many other beliefs and dogmas that are still clung to by both Catholic and Protestant and regarded by them as essential to salvation. To them the resurrection was the immediate standing up again in the greater fullness of life,–a spiritual resurrection, not a resurrection of the body. They said the only revelation is within human consciousness, and not in anything external to man’s nature; that the kingdom of God, as Jesus taught, was within; that it is not through grace coming from without but by a
voluntary preparation of the soul in the discipline and education of life, that man comes into a harmonious and conscious relationship with God.
These views were presented with substantial unanimity by Clement, Origen, and Athanasius, and reflected the prevailing theological sentiments from the latter part of the second century until the latter part of the fourth. Although Clement proclaimed the immanent and universal God indwelling in man, and knew nothing of the fall of man and a vicarious atonement, yet the Catholic Church saw fit to canonize him as a saint and revered him as such until the close of the fourteenth century, when his name was stricken from the calendar of saints under the pontificate of Clement VIII. It would be interesting to know in which instance the Catholic Church manifested its infallible wisdom, when it placed a halo around his name as a saint, or when it discovered his teachings were contrary to the doctrines of the Church and on that account struck his name from the calendar of saints.
Soon after the passing of the Greek theologians, the Church came under the influence of Latin theology. The Greek loved philosophy, the Roman loved power. The Greek revered truth and saw in the visible objects of Nature God’s symbols and gave their meaning to man. The Roman cared little for philosophy, but loved to exercise his genius for purposes of dominion, conquest, splendor, power, and obedience. It took as its proto-type the Roman government, whose genius was conquest, power, and slavery. Roman theology was formulated to that end.
It found its champion in Augustine, the so-called St. Augustine who flourished and wrote in the fifth century A.D. It is to him that both the modern Catholic and Protestant churches of the orthodox faith owe the origin, existence, and establishment of their present dogmas and creeds. He taught that man is wholly separated from God. He was the author of the doctrine of original sin and the total depravity of man, the only basis upon which a vicarious atonement could be sustained. He also invented the doctrine of predestination. His fertile mind also formulated the dogma of eternal punishment, as well as the idea of Purgatory after death. He promulgated the doctrine of apostolic succession, which was first invented, as we have seen, by Cyprian.
Tertullian, the Roman lawyer, who lived in the early part of the third century, in his “Prescription of Heresy” first proclaimed the idea of the absolute authority of the Church. The following language is ascribed to Tertullian at a later date: “It is a fundamental human right, a privilege of Nature, that every man should worship according to his own conviction. It is no part of religion to coerce religion. It should be embraced freely and not forced.” Nevertheless, his original argument was so valuable that the Church adopted it bodily and made use of it even down to the present.
Augustine found the idea of absolute authority convenient to silence questioners he could not satisfy and to dispose of inquiries he could not answer; hence he proclaimed the authority as supreme over the wills and consciences of men. With him, none outside the Church could be saved, and unbaptized infants and heathen were eternally lost. The necessity of baptism, sacraments, inspiration of the Bible, priestly mediation, and other dogmas originated with Augustine; in other words, they were invented by him as conveniences in making the Church a dominating power in the world.
It might be of interest to the orthodox Protestant to stop and contemplate the point that all the important tenets of his creeds had their origin with Augustine; that he also promulgated the doctrine of the authority of the Church, which subordinates the wills and consciences of men to its control, as well as priestly mediation and other cherished doctrines of the Catholic Church.
But, someone says, what authority have you for these bold assertions? What proof have you of these startling statements? In good faith it may be answered that all these statements are supported by historic data of the highest order. If our orthodox friends wish to read them in concrete form, they can find them in a volume written by a man orthodox in every respect, a professor in an orthodox theological institution. In a volume entitled “The Continuity of Christian Thought,” written by Alexander V. G. Allen, professor at the Episcopal Theological School of Cambridge, all the foregoing statements and many interesting facts relating to the early Church
may be found. Let us read from the volume some of the thoughts of Athanasius, who lived from 296 to 373 A.D.: “The revelation of God is written in the human consciousness; the ground of all certitude is within man, not in any authority external to his nature. In order to know the way that leads to God and to take it with certainty, we have no need of foreign aid, but of ourselves alone. As God is above all, the way which leads to him is neither distant nor outside of us, nor difficult to find. Since we have in us the kingdom of God, we are able easily to contemplate and conceive the King of the Universe, the salutary reason of the universal Father. If anyone asks of me what is the way, I answer that it is the soul of each and the intelligence which it encloses.” The sublimity of these thoughts cannot be harmonized with the dogmatic utterances of an Augustine. They leave no room for the dogma of the separation of God from man, a necessary premise for the hypothesis of a vicarious atonement. The teachings of Athanasius would find ready response with the most advanced of modern, progressive thinkers.
Let us quote further from the same volume: “None of the individual doctrines or tenets which have so long been the objects of dislike and an imadversion to the modern theological mind formed any constituent part of Greek theology. The tenets of original sin and total depravity, as expounded by Augustine and received by the Protestant churches from the Latin Church; the guilt of infants, the absolute necessity of baptism in order to salvation, the denial of the freedom of the will, the doctrine of election, the idea of a schism in the divine nature, which required a satisfaction to retributive justice before love could grant forgiveness, the atonement as a principle of equivalence by which the sufferings of Christ were weighed in a balance against the endless sufferings of the race, the notion that revelation is confined within the book, guaranteed by the inspiration of the letter or by a line of priestly curators, in apostolic descent, the necessity of miracles as the strongest evidence of the truth of a revealed religion, the doctrine of a sacramental grace and priestly mediation, the idea of a church as identical with some particular form of ecclesiastical organization, these and other tenets which have formed the gist of modern religious controversy find no place in the Greek theology and are irreconcilable with its spirit.”
Again, the same authority says: “Clement does not speculate on the nature or origin of evil. He knows nothing of the later dogma of the fall of man in Adam, nor of Adam as the federal representative of mankind.” The Same author further observes that the Rev. J. M, Neale, in the preface of his translation of the Eastern Liturgies, remarks that he finds no trace in them of the modern theory of the atonement as it has been held in Latin and Protestant churches, according to which the sufferings of Christ were an equivalent for human punishment.
To show that Grecian theological thought was predominant in the Christian Church until the Augustine era, it is interesting to note that St. Augustine himself once advocated the doctrine of the immanent, the omnipresent, universal God–ideas, directly at variance with those he afterward proclaimed when he conceived the idea of establishing an ecclesiastical hierarchy to rule the world.
At one time in his career, apparently without difficulty he wrote as follows: “For God is diffused through all things. He said Himself by the prophet, ‘I fill heaven and earth,’ and it is said unto Him in a certain psalm, ‘Whither shall I go from thy spirit or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there,’ because God is substantially diffused everywhere.” At a later date Augustine without difficulty could separate God from man and supply priestly intermediaries without number, as ecclesiastical middlemen between man and God.
In the same volume we read: “For a thousand years those who came after him [Augustine] did little more than reaffirm his teaching, and so deep is the hold which his long supremacy has left upon the Church, that his opinions have become identified with divine revelation and are all that the majority of the Christian world yet know of the religion of Christ.”
It is evident that these creeds and beliefs could not have been perpetuated through fifteen centuries save for that convenient dogma that the wills and consciences of men must be subordinated to ecclesiastical authority, and that other doctrine, observed and fostered by orthodox Protestantism, that a belief in certain formulas is necessary to salvation and that all reasoning and inquiry about their truth must be effectually and forever stilled.
A historical review of the creeds and a religion professedly based upon the teachings of the Gentle Master reveals many strange situations and anomalies. The creeds of the Christian Church originated among dissensions, and they have bred contentions, strifes and quarrels from their beginning to the present. We read in Galatians, that all was not peace and harmony between Paul and Peter. Their unseemly quarrel was presumably due to a profound jealousy on the part of Peter, over the fact that circumstances had not brought Paul into the company and society of Jesus during his sojourn in Palestine.
Perhaps one of the serious faults of humanity has been unduly to value and emphasize the lives and characters of those who lived in the distant past. We find Tertullian in the early part of the third century condemning heretics and asserting the authority of the Church. At the great council of the Church at Ephesus, A.D. 431, violent quarrels ensued over the question whether Christ had two natures or one, and similar questions. Let a modern historian tell the result: “A bishop was kicked to death by another bishop in the course of their arguments, and one hundred and thirty-seven corpses were left in a church, to attest the convincing reasons by which the most ruffianly side proved its orthodoxy. At the fifth general council, by a decree the Church expressed its gentleness as follows: “Whoever says that the torments of the demons and impious men will at length come to an end, let him be damned. Anathema to Origen, Adamantius, who taught these things.” Even the former head of the Church did not escape their fury.
The various creeds are as widely separated and no nearer a union than at any period since the first creed was promulgated. Their peace is outward only. Their love and respect for each other are no greater than when the Roundheads contended against the Cavaliers. My orthodox friend, is it a pleasant picture to contemplate? Are these contentions, strifes, and differences to continue forever? Why this tenacity over the shading of creeds and beliefs? Why this jealousy over speculative theories? The philosopher looking for a cause for every effect is prompted to make this inquiry: Does any part of the entire structure stand on a foundation of truth?
Chapter III
NEW THOUGHT AND THE CREEDS
| “As wider skies broke on his view, God greatened in his growing mind; Each year he dreamed his God anew, And left his older God behind. He saw the boundless scheme dilate In star and blossom, sky and clod; And as the universe grew great, He dreamed for it a Greater God.” |
THOSE who worship the immanent God, the indwelling God, cannot accept the theological opinions of the orthodox churches for the further reason that they are all based on the dogmas of the fall of man and his separation from God, and on miracles and other medieval conceptions. From a careful analysis of the propositions embraced in the orthodox theology, it follows as a necessary and logical conclusion that each one hinges upon the other and they must all stand or fall together.
If man never incurred the displeasure of God and never was estranged from Him, or, in other words, never fell, then it follows that there was no necessity, occasion, or reason for a vicarious atonement to establish his relationship with God. In other words, if man never was separated from God, no vicarious atonement was necessary to restore peace and harmony between him and God.
It is also apparent that if man was never in a lost or fallen state or condition, was never separated from God, the vicarious sacrifice of Jesus, the Gentle Seer of Galilee, was a useless and needless requirement,–nay, a cruel tragedy. It follows also that if man was never separated from God, the necessity for a belief in the vicarious atonement cannot possibly exist.
These conclusions seem to follow logically from a fair, candid, and careful consideration of the various propositions embraced in the orthodox scheme of man’s redemption. It will be observed that the whole orthodox plan is based on a dualistic conception of man’s relation with God; in other words, that God dwells apart from man, separated by a gulf, and that Jesus is the only intermediary to bridge that chasm.
The moral effect of the doctrine that man was estranged from God and is by nature weak and sinful, when viewed from the standpoint of modern psychology, as well as some of the tendencies that flow from the belief in a vicarious atonement, blotting out of man’s iniquities, and the unethical influences flowing from such teaching, will be considered in subsequent chapters.
Perhaps no other thought of God has produced so much discord in the human race as the dualistic conception of God and man–the dogma that separated man from God. The Church, instead of uniting men, has separated them. If its teachings are true, why is this so? Truth leads to harmony. Truth is harmony. Falsehood leads to strife. Falsehood is strife.
When man was told of his total depravity, God’s displeasure with him on account of the act of his first ancestor, and his entire separation from God, he instinctively looked for a mediator to plead with God for a restoration of that lost relationship. This gave rise to the idea of priestly mediation and furnished the priesthood an opportunity to inject and wedge itself in between man and God–interpret God’s will to man–and it has held that vantage point over man for fifteen centuries.
No great teacher ever separated God from man. Man was never separated from God except in consciousness,–only as he believed it. His theological teaching caused him to believe it. He felt his degrading position in the great scheme of Nature. When the idea of total depravity once took possession of his mind, he became the easy prey of those who desired to control him. Is it strange that man has at times been weak and vacillating, when his theology made him an outcast?
As Emerson wisely observes: “That which shows God within me fortifies me. That which shows him without me makes me a wart and a wen.” Never was a more ingenious idea invented for the control of man than his separation from God–that he had lost the divine image and was a spiritual mendicant, a wanderer over the face of the earth, without compass and without chart.
Out of the theological mists and miasma of the past has come duality. Under the glare of a spiritual sunlight will come unity–unity of life, unity of intelligence, unity of man and God. The adherents of New Thought entertain different ideas and conceptions of man’s relation to God. Their views are widely divergent from those of the orthodox theologian, and these differences are fundamental. By no process of reasoning or logic can they be made to harmonize or blend. They represent the extreme opposite poles of thought, the one holding to the dual conception of God and man, the other, the unity of God and man.
Those who accept progressive ideas, as taught by New Thought, accept evolution as Nature’s method of creation; that, so far as they can observe, the laws of evolution are operating throughout the universe, and that all animate life on this planet is under the dominion and control of these laws. Evolution may now be regarded as universally acknowledged among scientists, and by all educated men, in every part of the world. Evolution, like every new idea and discovery, was compelled to fight its way to recognition, because it was thought it would disturb the then existing idea of creation, as taught in Genesis. But a few years’ time has wrought a great change in thought, regarding the truth of evolution.
When the writer was a student at the Ohio Wealeyan University, evolution was universally frowned upon and stigmatized as an atheistic doctrine tending to undermine the foundation of the Christian religion. On one occasion a distinguished bishop was brought to the institution to preach a sermon to the students against it, who warned them not to be deceived by its false teachings. Darwin and Huxley were then regarded as the arch enemies of religion. But it is a happy circumstance that this is all changed, and that all thoughtful men now accept evolution as a recognized truth and Nature’s method of creation.
The adherents of New Thought conceive of man as the result and product of evolution: that he was evolved from the lowest form of animal life; that he is now the acme of all her operations, representing the highest and most perfect type of all intelligent and sentient beings. They conceive that in the long travail through the countless ages, from man’s beginning, there may have been periods when his progress was slow, when his advance was halted, even intervals when his steps were backward, but on the whole, and as one grand triumphal progression, man’s growth has been steadily, persistently, and eternally onward and upward, to his present mental and spiritual stature. Whittier said:
“Step by step since time began We see the steady gain of man. ”
They do not regard man as sinful or weak by nature, or that he was ever a fallen being, or that he was ever separated or estranged from God, or that he ever lost the divine ideal. They conceive of man as created, not in the physical image, but in the moral, intellectual, and spiritual image, of God.
They cannot agree with the orthodox conception that God ever demanded a vicarious atonement for the redemption of man, or that an infinitely tender and just God would exact such a requirement, much less of so pure and noble a soul as Jesus of Nazareth.
They cannot think that God condemned the entire race forever for one act of their common ancestor, when that one act was an effort to step forward and move upward in the evolution and progress of man, an effort to rise above the animal and become a man. Such a conception debases God and gives Him lower moral qualities than man.
They look upon the account of man’s disobedience and expulsion from the Garden of Eden, related in Genesis, as a bit of Oriental imagery–an allegory, the Oriental method of teaching,– designed to teach another lesson, rather than the forced interpretation given by the theologian. The Western theologian has employed Western ideas to interpret an Oriental document, hence he has not caught its meaning or truth. Alas, how much error and wrong have crept into the world to harass and bewilder man, from an interpretation of allegories as facts and offering them to the world as truths.
But someone asks if the advocates of New Thought believe in and accept the divinity of Jesus? Yes. They go even farther than their orthodox friends in accepting that divinity· They do not require the performance of miracles as a necessary step, to prove the divinity of that gentle soul. They see divinity in every act of his life. Whoever in the sincerity of his soul could utter the Sermon on the Mount requires no other proof of his divinity. They see divinity also in every man, –slumbering, perhaps, and only waiting to be called forth into development and expression.
With most of us the Christ within is asleep in the ship, and only as the winds and waves of life beat therein, threatening us with shipwreck and destruction, do we find courage to wake the Gentle Master to still the raging tempests. If the sole divinity of Jesus is denied, the divinity of all men is affirmed.
Jesus taught the unity of life, the unity of God and man. He understood the great secret of life and developed the divine principle in himself, so that in the consciousness of truth he could say, I and the Father are one. He is the one great masterful ideal, toward whose perfection man should continually and forever strive.
The advocates of New Thought conceive of the vicarious atonement as a plan which permits the individual to shift his responsibility to another, and therefore as an evasion of the law of cause and effect, that whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap. Let this thought sink deep into your soul.
Neither do they agree that a belief in a particular creed is a prerequisite to man’s eternal welfare. The thinking man cannot set aside the results of reason and the voice of intuition, to adopt a particular belief because he is so bidden, when the voice of his own soul conveys a different meaning. Jesus had little or nothing to say about belief, but he had much to say of life and methods of living.
They regard man as possessing the potential attributes of divinity within himself and that he is conscious of these divine qualities which make him man; that it is man’s privilege, duty, and function to develop those qualities, attributes, and possibilities, in the great school and discipline of life.
They concede that as God by His creative processes brought man to his conscious state, so it is man’s business and duty to perfect himself. This is the true meaning and purpose of life. Character is the true vision of the soul, the ideal set before man, the goal of all his endeavors. They do not recognize or accept miracles according to the orthodox conception and belief as possible in a universe governed, controlled, and operated under universal law. They look upon what many people regard as miracles, coming as special interpretations of God or otherwise than as the result of law, as having no existence, except as creations of the imagination of man.
They cannot conceive of any reason for bringing any person into the world by immaculate conception, but regard Nature’s method of producing man as entirely holy, for Nature herself is holy. They regard the accounts of the various immaculate conceptions of the several saviours of the world, recorded in history, as traditions and nothing more, probably having their origin in the ancient myth that the sun was born of the dawn, and the dawn was a virgin. It has been said that any distrust of the permanence of law would paralyze the faculties of man.
In one sense everything in Nature, from leaf to planet, is a miracle,–not in the sense that they are not controlled by universal law, but only in the sense that we do not understand them. Man himself is the standing miracle of creation. Walt Whitman said: “Seeing, hearing, feeling are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle; and a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.” Nevertheless, they are all under the control and operation of universal law.
It is a fundamental idea of New Thought that the universe in all its parts is governed by universal law; that from the smallest atom up through the infinite planetary systems law reigns supreme; that the law of compensation prevails and holds its sway over every thought and act of man; that whatsoever he sows, that shall he also reap. This law is written in luminous letters on the very dome of the universe. It stands before man’s face, so that none can escape it and none can deny it. This law is as inexorable in the mental, moral, and spiritual world as in the physical universe. Modern science, reaching out toward a solution of ultimate questions, is now pro- claiming the universal reign of law, the unity of all substance, and the existence of universal intelligence in Nature.
The adherents of New Thought conceive of a universal mind or divine intelligence pervading and permeating the universe, manifesting in all forms of creation; that there is also a unity of life and that each individual is a part of that intelligence and that universal life and spirit. The visible forms of nature are the expressions of that divine life and intelligence, and the same life and intelligence that seek expression in the bud, the grass blade, the flower, the bird and animal, are also seeking expression in man. This awakens in man a kinship with all created things. In man this life and intelligence find their highest manifestation and expression. He stands at the summit of all created beings, the most finished product in the great evolutionary struggle. A conscious being, aware of his own kinship with God, he walks the earth erect and can say, I am divine.
Some one has said, “God sleeps in the rock, smiles in the flower, and comes to consciousness in man.” This unity of life, this divine intelligence, pervading all nature and rising to its highest expression in man, is the basic fact in the philosophy of New Thought. The ultimate purpose of all true religious teaching is to produce a realizing sense of this consciousness in man. This consciousness enlarges the vision of man’s soul and awakens in him a knowledge and true estimate of the boundless possibilities within himself. Pope caught a vision of this great truth:
| “All are but parts of one stupendous whole Whose body Nature is, and God the soul; That changed through all, and yet in all the same, Great in the earth, as in the ethereal frame, Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees.” |
Someone says, all that has been said about New Thought is but a restatement of the old pantheistic philosophy. For the sake of argument, suppose we concede it. What then? If pantheism means that God is omnipresent in the universe, in nature, both spirit and substance, subject and object, being all in all, the visible and invisible, that the universe is a living whole, expressing itself in infinite variety, are you still opposed to pantheism?
When you see in Nature the manifestation of an intelligence, in every cell and bud the interplay of forces producing movement and repose, unity and variety, the recurring seasons, the planets obeying a hidden law, growth and decay, the conservation of energy, actions and reactions, all producing a perfect equilibrium, does it not suggest to you an infinite life, a supreme intelligence, and that all is God, and God is all?
Is not a spiritual pantheism more desirable than an absentee God–a God of finite proportions dwelling in some distant part of the universe? We must have one or the other. Which shall it be?
The highest conception of religion as taught by New Thought is to unfold and develop the soul into harmonious relations with divine intelligence, and thus come into spiritual unity with God. As the effect of the orthodox religions is to separate God from man, and New Thought conceives of God as within man, their ideals of prayer are not the same. The one prays to an absentee God, the other to the God within. True prayer is not debasing the soul in the presence of divinity. It is lifting the soul up. The divine intelligence is conscious of man’s innermost thoughts before they are uttered. Real prayer is not asking selfish favors. It is bringing the conscious mind into touch with the universal or divine mind. It is going into the closet and closing the door; that is, shutting out consciousness of external things, as Jesus taught, and there communing with infinite intelligence in secret.
I like the prayer of Socrates, “Give me inward beauty of soul, and let the inward and outward man be at one.”
Emerson says, “Prayer that craves a particular commodity, anything less than all good, is vicious.” “Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing His works good.”
“Be still and know that I am God” is the voice of the soul in the true attitude of prayer. Goethe speaks of prayer as God seeking for Himself and meeting Himself in man. Someone has defined prayer as the intercourse between oneself and our ideal companion.
Prayer is lifting up the soul to him who “has no eyes and yet He is looking at us; no ears and yet He hears us; no face and yet His smile greets us.” True prayer is lifting the soul into an atmosphere where one feels the glow, the beauty and harmony of the infinite presence and over his soul play vibrations from the source of eternal truth and love. God does not come at the sound of a bell or the blare of trumpets, but silently, as the dew is distilled upon the grass-blade bringing life, growth, and beauty to the plant, so unheard and unannounced God comes to refresh the soul with His unseen presence and power.
The votaries of New Thought do not depend upon one book or all books for their ideas, conceptions, and knowledge of God. To them that book only is inspired which inspires man and awakens in him higher purposes in life and a closer unity with God. The author of every book that speaks the truth was first inspired. If God at any age of the world inspired the author of a book, no reason can be conceived why he should not inspire others in every age, even this. Why should not God speak to Emerson as well as to Moses, or to Walt Whitman as well as to St. Paul?
To attribute the authorship of a book to God or to divine inspiration is not an act of wisdom, unless in every line and precept it breathes a pure morality and sets the highest ideals before man. The mistakes, low standards of morality, unethical teachings, and unworthy examples are thereby unduly emphasized. It is the consensus of opinion among profound thinkers that many things contained in the Bible might have been omitted with resulting profit to the race. It records that some of God’s chosen people, those held up to the world as the highest exponents of wisdom, freely indulged in the custom of taking many wives and concubines. In the same volume are accounts of trickery and deceptions in business matters, cruelties and conduct in wars, that would not be tolerated in this or any other civilized age, and the God of the Jews apparently gave it all his approving smile.
Every man pictures God according to the qualities of his own thought. If he is material and gross, he worships a gross God. If he is spiritual, he worships a spiritual God. Every man’s God is a reflex of himself. We read much in the Bible of an anthropomorphic God. Much there is written of an angry, revengeful, and jealous God. These are not commendable traits in man; how much less must they be in a God? Such examples set low ideals for man.
It has been said that he that knows but one Bible, knows none. There is perhaps much truth in the statement. The Vedas and Zend Avesta contain many truths later found in the Hebrew Bible. How many who accept the Bible literally and as the inspired word of God, ever read those ancient Bibles?
We can find much wisdom outside of written books. The book of Nature is always an open volume, and we may read God’s thoughts and secrets from its pages and thereby get wisdom and understanding. The rocks and trees and running brooks preach sermons more eloquently than the human voice and teach profounder lessons than were ever read in books or taught by man to man. In the book of Nature we catch glimpses of eternal beauty, of an ever-pervading harmony, of infinite power, of universal order, of an abiding and constant love. In that book man’s kinship with divinity is revealed.
| ”The music of his voice is heard, In every message of the bird; This carpet of the good green grass, Where softest feet of springtime pass, It is the cover of his book, Wherein we only need to look, To read how patient we should be, That have his gifts of grass and tree.” |
“The spiritual principle within men can know and interpret Nature, because the link that binds together all parts of Nature into one organic, correlated whole is itself a spiritual principle. My mind can understand Nature, because Nature herself is the revelation of mind, the manifestation of a principle, the expression of one root idea.”
To him whose soul is attuned to Nature’s laws, God appears in the starry vault of night, in the mellow glow of the sunset, in the flower by the wayside, in the music of the child’s voice, and in the majestic qualities of man. We do not all read these meanings and discover these beauties and harmonies in Nature’s symbols. Nature gives us back only what we lay at her feet. If we come to Nature with an unseeing eye, we see not; if we listen to her message with a dull ear, we hear not; if we call to her with listless purpose, she answers not.
| “Till one appears who hears, all nature silent is, Silent forever more, Breaking its waves of force, upon an unanswering shore, Till one appears who hears.” |
Nature is God’s true revelation. All supposed revelations given direct to man, translated into language and handed down through the centuries, convey at best only an imperfect and indistinct substitute for the original message. Language is imperfect. Thought is changed in its transmission. The message is not the same to the recipient as the giver, nor does it convey the same meaning to two individuals.
If we turn to the Hebrew Bible for a guide in our quest for an ideal of God, we find language rich in metaphor, expressing different conceptions of deity, reflecting the varied and diverse views of those who thus conveyed their thoughts to the world. We can read therein of an anthropo- morphic God, a God of revenge, a jealous God, a God who disliked a part of his children and made others his chosen people, a God of limited powers, an omnipotent God, a provincial God, a distant God, and an indwelling God. The ideals are but the expression of finite minds; the blind struggle of men attempting to write down and transmit to man their impressions and conceptions of an infinite God.
But Nature ever speaks with the same symbols. As often as we wander from the narrow path, under the spell of phantasms and illusions, so often does she recall us from our somnam- bulisms and bring us back to truth and reality. We do not plant in autumn, because Nature has taught us the winter is at hand; every recurring season and every phenomenon of Nature has its message of truth. Man caught his first ideas of law, of order, of beauty, of movement and repose from an observation of the symbols and operations of Nature.
Nature first furnished and displayed the symbols of geometry. Man first saw the squares, the right-angled and equilateral triangles in the starry heavens above. Nature is the fountain and prototype of all law. She furnished the law of cause and effect, the most valuable law ever vouchsafed to man. Nature has her own methods of imparting knowledge, and the nearer we follow them the more wisdom we display. She does not reveal all her meanings and mysteries. She conceals as well as reveals. She spreads her symbols before man, and leaves a work for him to perform. She supplies an innuendo, and bids him interpret and translate its meaning.
Nature is the manifestation of the divine, the expression of the infinite God. We may learn of nature, but we cannot master her meaning. Forever the infinite stretches away before us. Eternity alone will suffice to encompass and master her secrets.
Here man can observe the wisdom of divinity. Man is ever the learner, but never the master. If man were master of all Nature’s meanings, her mysteries and secrets, his ideals would be destroyed, his vision would be lost. If man understood God, and could fathom the mysteries of the universe, he would become tired of God and weary of the universe, he would weave his dreams about a greater and more mysterious God. He would reach out toward the infinite, for new mysteries, a new universe that he might learn their hidden secrets.
Stagnation is decay and death; advancement is life, is growth. There is no joy like that of eternal progression. It is the flowering pathway that stretches before man and lures him toward a haven of eternal peace. That alone satisfies the soul; it is the divine wanderlust of man.
The adherents of New Thought entertain not the least glimmer of doubt of the conscious identity of the soul after the change we call death. This conclusion does not rest on written revelation so much as on the inner revelation of man. It is written in man’s nature; the soul feels it and speaks its own divine message. The soul is divine, and that which is divine is eternal. This life is but a threshold of a larger and fuller life. This conclusion is borne out by many facts, experiences, reasons, and in the whisperings of intuition. Profound thinkers in these days agree on the unity of life; that we are part of the great life current of the universe, that the soul has divine attributes and is a part of the great divine soul.
These ideas found expression in many ancient religions and philosophies, and find a receptive chord in the human understanding. The kingdom of God is within you, so spoke the Gentle Seer of Galilee. Science is now voicing the same great truth. That which is divine cannot cease to live.
There are times when we feel a conscious harmony with God and Nature, and the soul’s vision brings us unmistakable glimpses and presages of a future life. It is the utterance of the divine to the divine in man.
Science teaches that nothing in the physical universe is lost. “Atoms are indestructible, force is indestructible, the soul is indestructible,” says Flammarion. Sir Oliver Lodge, in commenting on this ever-recurring question, observes that there is a unity running through the universe, and a kinship between the human and the divine. Here are some of his further conclusions:
“Meanwhile what has our experience been here? We have not been left solitary. Every newcomer to the planet, however helpless and strange he be, finds friends awaiting him, devoted and self-sacrificing friends eager to care for and protect his infancy and to train him in the ways of this curious world. It is typical of what goes on throughout conscious existence; the guidance, which we exert, and to which we are subject, now, is but a phase of something running through the universe. When the time comes for us to quit this sphere and enter some larger field of action, I doubt not that we shall find there also that kindness and help, and patience and love, without which no existence would be tolerable or even at some stages possible.”
Let us listen to Addison speak across the years: “Among other excellent arguments for the immortality of the soul, there is the one drawn from the perpetual progress of the soul to its perfection, without a possibility of ever arriving at it. How can it enter into the thoughts of man, that the soul which is capable of such immense perfection and of receiving new improvements to all eternity, shall fall away into nothing almost as soon as it is created?”
Carlyle says: “Pierce through the time element, glance into the eternal, believe what thou findest written in the sanctuaries of man’s soul, even as thinkers in all ages have devoutly read it there; that time and space are not God, but creatures of God, as it is a universal here, so it is an everlasting now. Know of a truth that only the time shadows have perished or are perishable; that the real being of whatever was and whatever is and whatever will be, is even now and forever.”
The soul is divine, the real in man. It is the revealer of its own truth, it speaks its own language, the fact of its own eternal existence. “It cannot wander from the present which is infinite to a future which is finite.”
A confident reliance on the soul’s continued existence is innate in man. It is a universal belief. It is not there to mock man in this universal hope. Nature is not so unjust or cruel. Our vision may not span the gulf that separates us from the unknown, but an unseen power brought us safely to the earth and an abiding trust tells us that it will safely bear us away and care for our every need. He who unerringly guides the bird along the pathless coasts and trackless wastes, “In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright.”
This faith was planted in man for a high moral purpose. It is necessary for man’s spiritual growth, for the development of character. It is the potent influence that makes man more than the animal, that leads him along the upward path to the highest moral and spiritual endeavor.
Let us listen to the message of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps: “Whatever this globe was put here for, it was not for failure. Whatever the unit was made for, the race was not made for hopelessness. However black the past, however blind the present, a bright future is a philosophical necessity. What has the king, the priest, or the prophet of your dreary creed to look to, compared with the promise open to the obscurest human soul, that knows itself a deathless thing?”
Let us turn to Addison once more: “If man considers his being as circumscribed by the uncertain term of a few years, his designs will be contracted into the same narrow span he imagines is to bound his existence. How can he exalt his thoughts to anything great and noble, who only believes that after a short term on the stage of this world he is to sink into oblivion and to lose his consciousness forever?”
The late Senator Ingalls, in pronouncing a eulogy on the memory of his departed friend, spoke these memorable words:
“If the existence of Burns was but a troubled dream, if his death oblivion, what avails it that the Senate should pause to recount his virtues? Neither veneration nor reverence are due the dead. They are but dust.
“No cenotaph should be reared to preserve for posterity the memory of their achievements. Those who come after them are only to be their successors in annihilation and extinction. If in this world we have only hope and consciousness, duty must be chimera. Our pleasures and passions should be the guides of conduct, and virtue is indeed a superstition if life ends at the grave.
“Such is the conclusion which the philosophy of negation must accept at last. Such is the felicity of those degrading precepts which make the epitaph the end. If the life of Burns is a taper that is burned out, then we treasure his memory and his example in vain, and the latest prayer of his departing spirit has no more sanctity to us who sooner or later must follow him, than the whisper of winds that stir the leaves of the protesting forest, or the murmur of waves that break upon the complaining shore.”
New Thought is in harmony with the latest utterances of science and philosophy, regarding the unity of life, that it pervades and animates all nature and all created beings. Only as we recognize this fact can we find a rational and substantial basis for the brotherhood of man.
To the extent that we realize and understand that the same life, the same divine current, that flows through our being is the life current in all men; that we have the same divine source and are governed by the same universal law, shall we be able to grasp the true meaning and significance of the brotherhood of man.
When we look beyond the outer form and see a divine soul in every man, and can say with Walt Whitman, “I shall meet the real landlord, and know that the great cosmic soul is in and over all, seeking expression,” can we truthfully and sincerely address our fellowman as Brother.
| “The heart in thee is the heart of all; Not a valve, not a wall, Not an intersection, is there anywhere in nature, But one blood rolls uninterruptedly, an endless Circulation, through all men, as the water of the Globe is all one sea, and truly seen its tide is one.” |
Chapter IV
NEW THOUGHT AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
| “Born from the darkest ages Of superstition is that ancient creed That matter is the enemy of good, Accursed and hateful, to the infinite; For every atom is a living thought, Dropped from the meditations of a God, Its every essence of immortal love, Of the incarnate Deity; and all The inmost pulses of material things Are mediums for the pulses of his will.” |
THE adherents of New Thought conceive of the visible universe with its infinite variety of forms and colors, its manifold substances and elements, as the expression of cosmic or universal mind; as the product of a divine intelligence. Their philosophy teaches that all created things, from atoms to circling planets, the myriad forms of life, the budding tree, the bursting flower, all animate life and man, with his infinite faculties, are the manifested results of divine ideals. In other words, their conception is that these created entities, which we observe as the external and visible works of Nature, are the projected images from a pre-existing Divine Mind.
Or we might state the proposition in different language: that God first created the ideals, or images of all existing objects, and these ideals were afterward externalized as created forms in the visible universe. Carlyle said everything in Nature is a symbol–man himself is a symbol, the symbol of God.
The contest has been long and discordant between the advocates of idealism on the one hand, and those of materialism on the other, as to the origin of creation, life, and intelligence. The great issue has been whether there is an infinite creative intelligence, back of all Nature, all existing entities, as their efficient cause and calling them into existence, or whether the physical universe, and all living things thereon, resulted from some other cause.
The beginning of this century finds the advocates of the materialistic conception, with their strange ideas of creation’s origin, in the minority, and that minority constantly diminishing in the light of scientific investigation. Few are the recognized scientists who still speak of creation as having any other origin than a pre-existing divine intelligence.
On the other hand, the majority of eminent scientists and thoughtful philosophers, men whose useful discoveries are attracting the attention of the world, are outspoken in their declarations that back of all nature and all its manifested forms is an unseen intelligence, the divine cause of all existing things.
Even Professor Haeckel, the past master of materialism, concedes that “the two fundamental forms of substance, ponderable matter and ether, are not dead, and only revealed by extrinsic force, but they are endowed with sensations and will.”
It is difficult to conceive of sensation and will as existing separate and apart from intelligence. Wherever there is life, there is intelligence. In the various forms of animal life, and also in plant and vegetable life, if we but look we can observe an intelligence meeting and overcoming the difficulties and obstacles of environment. The tree planted among rocks hunts out the crevices to send its roots down to soil and moisture.
As ether is supposed to fill all the vast expanses separating the most distant planets, we may adopt Haeckel’s premises and arrive at the unanswerable conclusion therefrom, that a universal intelligence pervades the entire universe. From his conceded premises we may therefore reach the reasonable deduction that a mental force exists everywhere, and therefore that it is the cause of all existing life upon the globe. We may therefore adopt as a working hypothesis the conclusion that the entire visible universe and all created objects are the result and product of a universal intelligence.
| ”Ruling the rain and sun, Giving the winds their laws, Back of each battle won, Back of each dream, each deed, Back of the flower, back of the seed, Stands the eternal cause.” |
The idealism referred to here differs widely from an extreme or absolute idealism proclaimed by many as the theory of creation and it is desirable clearly to differentiate the two. New Thought does not agree with the absolute idealist, that nothing exists in creation but the ideal, and that all external Nature is only an illusion of the senses. The conception is that an ideal or image was first created in the Divine Mind, and into that image as a mold the divine energy was centered, and as a result created forms appeared in the visible universe. In other words, there was first an ideal or picture in the Divine Mind, and the object was created according to that divine ideal or image.
The first Biblical account we have of an idealism we find in Genesis, in the great account of creation. The author proceeds as follows:
“These are the generations of the heavens and the earth, when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, and every plant of the field, before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew.”
Here is the declaration that every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew, had been created. If God created the plant before it was in the earth, and the herb before it grew, He must have created them as thought images or ideals in His own Divine Mind. They could not have been created elsewhere than in His own mind, if God was omnipresent and filled the universe with His presence.
This was God’s method of creation, first the ideal, then the ideal expressed as a visible form of creation. Thus in the first account of creation, found in the Hebrew Bible, we discover the declaration of an idealism. The idealism of the great Creator of the heavens and of the earth. Here is the first record that ideals or thought images preceded the external and visible forms of Nature. Every plant and every herb was first a thought, an ideal, and then became an entity in the visible works of God.
Later it was said: “The universe is the infinite utterance of an infinite number of thoughts from an infinite and thinking source.”
“There seems to be a necessity in spirit to manifest itself in material forms; and day and night, river and storm, beast and bird, acid and alkali, pre-exist in necessary ideas in the mind of God,” says Emerson.
It was said by Judge Troward: “If we realize that all visible things must have their origin in spirit, then the whole creation around us is the standing evidence that the starting-point of all things is in thought images or ideas, for no other action than the formation of such images can be conceived of spirit, prior to its manifestation in matter.”
Listen to Carlyle: “What is Nature? Why do I not name thee God? Art thou not the living garment of God?”
All that man has accomplished in his long history, from the stupendous monuments of architecture to systems of laws, governments, institutions, arts, and civilization itself, is the fruitage of thought, the result of ideals, which first found existence in mind only. All objective things first had a corresponding picture in mind and intelligence. The bridge first existed in the mind of the engineer, before it was objectivized in steel and iron. The sculptor saw the image of the perfect statue, before the marble was quarried from the hills. The locomotive was first a mental image, before it became a throbbing and panting expression of that ideal.
Men speak lightly of idealism, when everything in our lives and experiences is a standing evidence of its truth. We employ idealism, either consciously or unconsciously, in every act of life. Whenever we convert thoughts into deeds, ideas into action, carry plans into execution, or otherwise give expression to ideas, we proclaim the truth of idealism.
Thomas A. Edison says: “Science is mostly imagination. It is by conceiving what might be, before one has seen the way to realize it practically, that scientists have been buoyed during the period of experiment.”
Ideals are the molds for events, the fore-runners for all accomplishment, and the predecessors of all completed things. The truth of our ideals is the real truth of human life.
New Thought is an idealism, as are all esoteric philosophies and religions, all religions that do not separate man from God. It is also progressive, because it recognizes by its fundamental principles and teachings that all healthful and normal ideals must change, expand, and develop, as the individual gains more light and truth, as he expands and grows. “We must realize that life is a voyage and we are sailing under sealed orders. We open our orders every morning and this allows us to change our course as we get new light.”
Progressive minds cannot live on the past. The ideals of one generation do not fit the next. Men outgrow fixed ideas and so-called finished philosophies and systems of thought, as the bird flies from the nest never to return. It is the law of growth, it is a fundamental requirement of the human mind. This propulsion is innate in mind it is the way of the soul.
New Thought is progressive and knows that permanent and fixed ideals do not exist. It may, therefore, be defined as an advancing, progressive idealism. Christian Science differs fundamentally from New Thought. While Christian Science is an idealism, it differs from the idealism of New Thought. It may properly be defined as an extreme or absolute idealism. Its interpretation of the account of creation, as set forth in Genesis and heretofore quoted, differs widely from that of New Thought. The authorities of Christian Science say that the only creation of the plants and herbs of the field, according to the account of Genesis, was in the Divine Mind. They hold that the plants and herbs referred to had no existence in matter and were never anything but ideas. Of course this could be the only conclusion of a philosophy or cult that declares matter to be an “illusion of the human belief.”
“Science and Health” sets forth the above account of creation from Genesis, and then proceeds to an interpretation and construction of its language as follows: “Here is the emphatic declaration that God created all through mind, not through matter; that the plant grows, not because of seed or soil. but because growth is the eternal mandate of Mind.”
From “Science and Health” we also read as follows: “The only realities are the Divine Mind and ideal. Mind is all and matter is naught. Spirit and matter cannot coexist, or co-operate; and one can no more create the other than truth can create error, or vice versa.” “Matter and Mind are antagonistic, and both have not place or power.” “Matter and mortal body are all the illusions of the human belief. Our corporal senses lie and cheat. They are five personal falsities and their evidence is to be disregarded.”
Here we have the unqualified declaration that the only realities are the Divine Mind and idea, and that matter is a falsity and that our corporal senses lie and cheat. There cannot be two constructions to this language, its meaning is unmistakable.
Let us examine the language found in Genesis, which “Science and Health” quotes as the authoritative declaration of God’s plan of creation. Translated into modern thought, it says that God made the earth and the heavens, and every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew. This language assumes that the plant at some time was in the earth, and that the herb at some time grew. If the divine idea was the only creation and if the plants and herbs had no existence except as ideas in the Divine Mind, it would be a pertinent inquiry to make, why it was necessary that the plant should be in the earth at all or that the herb should ever grow. If the distinguished author of Genesis conceived of creation as an idea only, and not as a material or external reality, it is difficult to understand or assign any reason why he made any allusion to the earth at all, for the earth, then as now was either matter or an illusion of the senses.
Then the author of Genesis records that God made the earth and the heavens. Are we to understand that when God made the earth He was creating an illusion of the senses only? If the earth was an illusion of the senses only, why was it necessary to refer to it or mention it at all, in the great account of creation? If there was nothing bur a divine ideal, the great author might have been content to describe the ideal only, for that alone would be a correct and truthful account of creation.
Was so much of the descriptive account as refers to the earth the product of mortal mind and mortal thought? Was the author of the great event in error? These observations are not made with a view to exhibiting a critical attitude toward Christian Science, but to make plain its fundamental principles and clearly show the line of cleavage between it and New Thought.
If we give the usual and customary construction to the language employed in “Science and Health,” it conveys the unmistakable meaning that nothing exists in creation but ideas, and everything is mind. Christian Science may, therefore, be well defined as an extreme or absolute idealism.
We are told in the foregoing quotations from “Science and Health” that “Spirit and Matter cannot coexist or co-operate; and one can no more create the other than truth can create error, or vice versa.” The inquiring mind is inclined to ask why? Are there any premises to support the statement, or is it a mere dictum?
The author no doubt uses spirit in the sense of mind and as a synonym thereof, because she says mind is all. If we assume that matter has no existence and is only an illusion of the senses, then it follows as a logical conclusion that mind cannot coexist or co-operate with matter, because matter is nothing and hence that mind cannot coexist or co-operate with nothing.
But if we concede that matter is an existing reality, what then? Cannot mind coexist or co- operate with it? Is there not a coexistence and co-operation of mind and matter in all we see and observe in the universe? Is not every work of art the co-operation of mind and matter? What is the statue, or the canvas, but the result of mind co-operating with matter? Are they not executed ideals? What about our bodies? Did not mind build them? Are they not the result of the coexistence and co-operation of the two? Is not the body the temple of the spirit?
Sir Oliver Lodge observes that “Life is not energy, but it is the director of energy and matter. Mind determines, life directs–the material and energetic universe is dominated and controlled by these agencies.”
According to the statements of “Science and Health” and the recognized tenets of the philosophy of Christian Science, our five senses that administer to our daily wants and pleasures through life are not trustworthy or to be believed, but lie and cheat and delude us constantly. By the teachings of its philosophy our sense of taste, by which we find enjoyment of the delicious foods Nature has spread before us; our sense of smell, by which we catch the exquisite fragrance of the rose; that of touch, by which we feel the warm hand-clasp of a friend; our sense of hearing, by which the soul is lifted up to God through the immortal symphonies of the masters; and the eye, which reveals to us the unspeakable beauties of Nature, the marvelous works of creation, and betrays the innermost secrets of the soul, are five falsities and delusions.
New Thought cannot accept this philosophy. In man’s struggle through the evolutionary processes of creation, to his present physical and mental stature, it took millions of years to bring these five senses to their present degree of perfection, and they cannot be discredited by the bare declaration that they are false. Whoever makes the declaration that the senses are falsities and delusions, relies upon evidence which only the senses can furnish.
As we take a survey of Nature with its infinite variety of forms and beauty, we cannot conceive of these objective realities as nothing, or illusions. If we must discredit the eye, must we blot out of consciousness the magnificent panorama of Nature, the bright galaxy of the stars, the landscape with its in expressible beauty, the towering mountains and verdant valleys, the glories of the dawn, the mellow glow of sunsets, and man himself, as falsities and delusions, because the eye reveals them?
How are we longer to enjoy the wonders Nature has spread before us, when we are continually reminded that they do not exist, but are only falsities and illusions of the mind? Such a philosophy will blight the finer sensibilities and the imaginative faculties of man. It will retard and prevent the development of those qualities in man which embellish, ennoble, and enrich his life.
Nature is man’s great teacher. It sets God’s symbols constantly before his eyes. They are here to teach and instruct. When philosophy teaches that the senses which convey Nature’s
meanings to man are falsities, then Nature ceases to be man’s teacher and instructor.
The senses are the windows of the soul. Shall we close them, because they do not admit all the light, or shall we open them wider, that they may let in more light? We cannot improve the senses, with the adverse suggestion that they are delusions and falsities.
Instead of discrediting them, let us encourage, unfold, develop, and refine them, until man with his enlarged susceptibilities, shall see beauty where the vision is now clouded, and hear melodies and harmonies that now beat upon unresponsive ears.
| “The senses are the ministers of love, The senses are the oracles of truth, The senses the interpreters of law, The senses, the discoverers of fact: They hold their court in beauty and in joy On earth and in the spheres where angels dwell, And through the senses God reveals himself, And through the senses, earth is taught from heaven.” |
Carlyle says: “Rightly viewed, no meanest object is insignificant; all objects are as windows, through which the philosophic eye looks into infinitude itself.”
Christian Science occupies the position of the extreme or absolute idealist. Materialism represents the extreme opposite view. Their conceptions are, respectively, that of the abstract on the one hand and the concrete on the other, of the unconditioned and the conditioned, of the absolute and the relative. Judge Troward in speaking of the two conceptions says: “They are not opposed to each other, in the sense of incompatibility, but are each the complement of the other, and the only reality is in the combination of the two. The error of the extreme idealist is in endeavoring to realize the absolute without the relative. and the error of the extreme materialist is in endeavoring to realize the relative without the absolute.
“On the one side, the mistake is in trying to realize an inside without an outside; and on the other, in trying to realize an outside without an inside. Both are necessary to the formation of a substantial entity.”
Christian D. Larson has ably expressed his views on the denial of matter, as follows: “To deny matter, and mean it, is impossible. To deny the existence of matter, you must refuse to act as if it did exist; that is, you must not use matter in any shape or form, because to do so would be to contradict with your hands what you affirm with your mind.
“If matter actually was an illusion, you would simply be perpetuating that illusion if you accepted matter in any form whatever. Those who deny matter deny it only as a mental concept.They deny matter in the abstract, but accept it in the concrete–from greenbacks to roses.
“But matter exists only in the concrete, it does not exist in the abstract, therefore to deny it in the abstract and accept it in the concrete is to accept it where it does exist and deny it where it does not exist. Then wherein do we find the denial? It simply is not there and what appears to be such a denial is nothing but a useless process of thinking; a process that moves in a circle, which brings the mind back to matter whenever it claims to get away from matter.”
New Thought does not lay claim to more than a few rays from the great divine source of light, or that more than a fragment of truth has been discovered. It advocates, however, the infinite unfoldment and the possibilities of man, and that he will constantly reach and comprehend more truth and advance into a closer relationship with God. It sees truth everywhere, and knows that the avenues leading to its divine citadel are infinite in number.
Christian Science seems to have fallen into the error of its orthodox predecessors in believing that it has made discoveries heretofore unknown, and that it possesses knowledge exclusively conveyed by its teachings. It recognizes but one road leading to truth, and that the one pointed out and circumscribed by the rules of its organization.
Thus, in “Science and Health,” its author, after recounting the acts of divine revelation to her, says: “Christian Science is indivisible. There can therefore be but one method in its teaching. From the Infinite One, in Christian Science, cometh one principle and its ideas; and with this one principle come scriptural rules and their demonstration, which, like the Great Giver, are the same, yesterday, today, and forever.”
It is unfortunate that religious organizations have so often become imbued with the idea that God has smiled exclusively upon them and vouchsafed to them peculiar and particular revelation, not accorded the rest of mankind. Truth cannot be institutionalized, limited, or defined. Whenever an organization attempts to corral truth, it is plainly evident that it has discovered only a small portion of truth. Christian Science has not yet discovered that dogmas are not religion and creeds mean spiritual death.
Censorship is not in harmony with the spirit of the age, nor with the true idea of religious growth and development. The soul cannot be nourished on prepared and canned spiritual thought, nor a commercialized religion. The soul is limitless, and each demands its own spiritual food. Why this exclusiveness? Why set bounds to the universal demands of the soul? Why not encourage the soul to press on to greater truths?
Why limit worship to two books? Is not truth recorded elsewhere? Has an Emerson or a Whitman no message of light to the struggling soul?
No system can satisfy the soul. Its aspirations are as boundless as the universe itself. At last it must find its light from within.
With all that we hear about a universal religion and religious tolerance, the world still groans under a burden of sectarianism and exclusiveness. As long as organizations contend that their system is complete, that they have all the knowledge, that they have found the perfect way, so long will the world be dominated by creeds which separate man from man and which have been among the most fruitful sources of all his wrongs.
History should be scanned carefully, before laying claims to exclusive knowledge or to the sole discovery of truth. Did not Pythagoras say, twenty-five centuries ago, that God was all in all, as all great thinkers have ever done? Did not Bishop Berkeley and others teach the philosophy of absolute idealism? Have not mental and spiritual healing been practiced with more or less success, as far back as the records of man extend?
The advocates of New Thought do not attach much importance to special revelations to the particular few. It believes that God is revealing Himself to man at all times and has been so revealing Himself in all ages, and he whose mind is attuned to the harmonies of truth can hear and understand these revelations.
Walt Whitman Says: “I find letters from God dropped in the street–and every one is signed by God’s name, and I leave them where they are, for I know that whereso’er I go, others will punctually come, forever and ever.” New Thought believes with Walt Whitman, that man can forever find letters from God, and that others will punctually come, forever and ever. It accepts truth wherever it may find it. It looks upon completed systems, revealed theologies, and fixed cults, as already in senile decay.
Christian Science has performed a most valuable service to man; it has broken over creeds and dogmas which stood as barriers in the path of man’s progress. It has shown man a new way. Its danger lies in building around him a new barrier higher than the one he has surmounted.
The world is less ready now than ever before to concede a monopoly of divine wisdom to any philosophy, theology, institution, or cult. While institutions continue to discourage, restrict, and forbid the widest search for truth in every byway and avenue that open to the mind, so long will they retard its growth and hold the individual in bondage to their edicts. So long as they limit their adherents to the mental and spiritual food prepared and seasoned in their own theological kitchens and limit them to such interpretations as they place upon accepted writings, so long will they remain spiritually inert and stagnant. Instead of spiritual growth, development, and progress, there will be arrested growth, spiritual and moral decay.
Institutions that still continue to practice medieval methods are out of harmony with the progressivism of the twentieth century. They have not caught the spirit of truth or the temperament of the age. The Roman Catholic Church still sways its weapon of authority over the wills and consciences of man. Encyclicals are promulgated in Rome against what is called modernism. What is modernism but the God-given right of man to think but a free and unobstructed pathway over which the soul may travel? Think of six hundred priests at one time in one cathedral, holding up their hands and taking a solemn oath that they would not teach modernism! It means that they would not claim the right of man to think for himself; that they would not teach an immanent or indwelling God, but a distant God requiring priestly mediation between Him and man. It is a spectacle for thought and consideration. Why all this concern? Why place this ban on man’s thinking? Truth is its own defense. It is only error that is in danger. If an institution is built on the divine rock, how can modernism undermine the foundation or batter down her walls?
Men can grow only as they are mentally and spiritually free, only as they break away from the limitations that institutions attempt to set to their progress. What slavery is so debasing as spiritual servitude? Yet think of the millions who are under this bondage,–men who do not dare think except as they have been told, men who dare not read except what has been duly censored by those exercising spiritual authority.
Let us open the windows of the soul and let the light in, and then as the Gentle Master said, “The truth shall make you free.”
Chapter V
UNIVERSAL MIND IN MAN
“Thou Great Eternal Infinite; Thou Great Unbounded Whole;
Thy Body is the Universe, Thy Spirit is the Soul;
If Thou dost fill Immensity–If thou art All in All
Then I’m in Thee and Thou in me, or I’m not here at all.”
INTELLIGENCE is universal in Nature. This might seem to be a bold statement, were it not supported by observation, by reason, and by the authority of the leading scientists of the world. Every object in Nature has its counterpart in the unseen. External Nature is but the expression of the invisible. We wonder at the beauty and majesty of the visible and forget that back of it all is the unseen, far more beautiful and transcendent.
Universal intelligence finds expression in every object of Nature, reaching its highest manifestation in man. We live in an atmosphere of intelligence, unconscious of its presence; the material man knows only the material. The man of vision rejoices in the possession of the intangible; to him the invisible is the real and the permanent; the visible, the shadowy and the unreal, the one is the cause, the other the result; one is the ideal, the other the expression.
Every individual may find access to the universal intelligence, this infinite storehouse, and draw at will from its inexhaustible supply when he has come into the conscious relationship of his own soul with the divine soul. The universal mind speaks to the mind in touch with the universal. The trained soul hears and understands.
We sometimes speak of an omnipresent God, and yet pay homage and give reverence to a distant God, a non-resident God. If God is omnipresent, his spirit breathes in the clod, the leaf, the animal, and in man. If God is omnipresent, if God is intelligence, then intelligence is universal and accessible to man. We cannot well account for the existence of thought, its mysterious origin and power, unless it is a radiation from the universal mind that pervades all space and finds a dwelling place in man. The flow of thoughts and the existence of ideas, enveloped in obscurity and mystery, have ever been a constant source of speculation in man.
| “We do not make our thoughts, They grow in us Like grain in the wood; The growth is of the skies, which are of nature, And nature is of God. “ |
We cannot call thoughts the soul, but they are more properly the attributes of the soul. They cannot be analyzed, neither can they be measured, nor can their wondrous powers be calculated. They baffle the understanding, they transcend the wonders of the imagination.
“No scepter or throne, nor structure of ages, nor broad empire can compare with the wonders and grandeur of a single thought. That alone of all things that have been made comprehends the maker of all. That alone is the key which unlocks the treasure of the universe; the power that reigns over space, time, and eternity. That under God is the sovereign dispenser to man of all the blessings and glories that lie within the compass of possession or the reign of possibility.”
Men sometimes speak of brain as the origin and source of all thought. This is only another way of saying that matter produces mind; that molecular action is the cause of the mind and not mind the cause of molecular action. We might as well say that the dynamo is the origin of electricity. Electricity exists in Nature, the dynamo only concentrates and harnesses it for man’s uses and purposes. Thought may function through the brain, but brain is not its origin. A noted psychologist, speaking on this subject, remarked that “There is no human mind; the mind living in the brain is simply a minute fraction of mind universal.”
Where life exists, there intelligence also exists. Scientists tell us that life and intelligence
existed on the planet untold ages before the first brain appeared. Geologists speak of the Devonian age as the first in which a brain came into existence. Yet animal life had intelligence. Something told it to reach out for food, extract that which was nutritious, and reject that which was un-nutritious. It suited its life to its environment. It possessed the instinct or intelligence of self-preservation. It had no brain, and yet in all its movements it manifested intelligence. Against the overwhelming preponderance of evidence that a universal intelligence exists in all Nature, which science is giving to the world, the extreme materialist stands alone.
We live in an atmosphere of intelligence. We are unconscious recipients of its wealth and beauty. Genius has been described as nothing more than a divine plagiarism. As the inland bay opens out into the great ocean, so our minds have their outlets into the infinite ocean of intelligence and thought. Sometimes the inland bays of our minds are nearly closed by jutting headlands, yet through a narrow channel the great ocean at times sends its currents of wisdom and inspiration.
Thought has its origin, then, in the reservoir of infinite intelligence and flashes from thence to the mind of man. To give recognition to the existence of this infinite supply, this fathomless storehouse, and learn to draw from it at our will and pleasure, according to our wants and needs, is the most priceless secret in man’s life. The consciousness of this truth gives man the key to all accomplishment. It unlocks his latent powers and awakens his slumbering possibilities. It sets before him new ideals, creates within him the enthusiasm and confidence necessary for the accomplishment of all great results. It makes man spiritual, because he feels that he lives, moves, and has his being in a divine atmosphere.
Prentice Mulford, one of the pioneer writers of New Thought, says: “A supreme power and wisdom govern the universe. The supreme mind is measureless and pervades endless space. The supreme wisdom, power, and intelligence are in everything that exists, from the atom to the planet. As we grow more to recognize the sublime and exhaustless wisdom, we shall learn more and more to demand of wisdom, draw it to ourselves, make it a part of ourselves, and thereby be ever making ourselves newer and newer. This means ever perfecting help, greater and greater power to enjoy all that exists, gradual transition into a higher estate of being, and the development of powers which we do not now realize as belonging to us. We are the limited yet ever growing parts and expression of the supreme, never ending Whole.”
Thomas A. Edison says: “All scientists, in getting nearer and nearer the first great cause, feel that about and through everything there is the play of an eternal mind.”
It was said by the late Lord Kelvin, that “biologists are absolutely forced by science to believe with absolute confidence in a directive power.”
Emerson, in the opening paragraph of his essay on history, most clearly elucidates and emphasizes this sublime truth. He there says: “There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason, is made a free man of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel. What has befallen any man at any time, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind, is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent.” Again we read in his studies of Nature: “We lie in the lap of universal intelligence, which makes us organs of its activity and receivers of its truth. Who can set bounds to the possibilities of man? Once inhale the upper air, being admitted to behold the absolute natures of justice and truth, we learn that man has access to the entire mind of the Creator, is himself the creator in the finite.”
It is of the utmost importance that we let the full significance and spirit of these truths sink deep into our understanding. it is equally important that we follow them to their logical conclusion and consider their effects upon the life and welfare of man. They reveal to man new sources of power, They set a new light on his pathway of progress. They bring man and God together. They open the door of the infinite storehouse of divine wis dom. They invite man to drink at the divine fountain, and the water he shall there drink shall be in him, as the Master said, “A well of water springing up into everlasting life.”
What thought is equal to this, that there is a universal mind, common to all men, and every man is an inlet to the same and that “man has access to the entire mind of the Creator, is himself a creator in the finite”? In these brief statements, we find the fundamental principles and basic ideas of New Thought. These are the foundation stones on which the structure is built. It is founded on the rock of truth, and the winds and storms cannot prevail against it.
The theological mists and vapors of sixteen centuries dissolve in the presence of these sublime thoughts. Ecclesiastical subtleties, the dogmatic paradoxes, fade from the mind, when man learns he has access to the mind of the Creator. This simple truth undermines all the cunningly contrived structures that separate man from God.
What are all the bulls, excommunications, and encyclicals of Rome, of all the potentates and prelates of earth, to the one who has come into the consciousness of this sublime truth? What power have they with their man-made theologies to separate you from this divine source or break your relationship with God? How vain are ecclesiastical anathemas to him who feels, knows, and realizes the all-enveloping presence! Who stands between man and God, when the Divine Mind spans the imaginary gulf created by the ingenuity of the theologian?
It is not surprising that those who claim to stand between God and man should be concerned about the growth and development of those ideas and should from time to time warn their followers of what they term their sinister and pernicious effects. They plainly foresee that their growth means the enfranchisement of man, and that as he comes into a consciousness of this truth the vocation of the ecclesiastical middleman will pass away forever. They see under it a new order of things and the constant and eternal advancement of man.
Man is no longer a mental and spiritual serf, but is coming into the estate God intended he should occupy and enjoy. What Plato thought, he may think; what man has wrought, he may accomplish; what a saint has felt, he may experience, when he comes to a conscious realization of his oneness with God. When man can feel the rhythm and pulsations of this divine intelligence surging in upon his being, and realize that infinite source of power, he will find himself emancipated from fetters and limitations; he will enter a new world of limitless mental and spiritual development.
Not since the sublime declaration of Jesus that “I and the Father are one”; that is, the I AM, the soul which was in Jesus and is in all men and the Father, the universal soul, the divine intelligence, are one, has a greater or more universal truth been spoken to man. It was the impassioned utterance of the divine relationship, the oneness of God and man. This is the essence and meaning of the Emersonian philosophy, the great message of the gentle seer of Concord. His one theme was the greatness of man, the illimitable development of his soul, the oneness of man and God.
Among all the treasures of literature, what message to man is more priceless than this? What utterance has awakened in man a greater realization of the true worth of his own nature, of the infinite depths and riches of his own soul, and the boundless possibilities that stretch before him? The masters of thought, the illumined of all the ages, have spoken the same great truth. They saw the divine in man, and ever strove to lead him to the consciousness of that truth.
More than twenty-five centuries ago Pythagoras spoke the great truth that “Man is a microcosm of God.” In other words, man is an epitome of the universe, a God in embryo. Before Abraham led his flocks and herds into the land of Canaan, the masters of thought of Egypt expressed the same great truth, when they said, “He is I and I am He.” This is the utterance of the illumined in all the past.
No great teacher ever belittled man, or emphasized his weakness or defects. The wise never spoke of man as weak, helpless, or depraved. The greatness of man was the supreme thought and theme of Jesus. Emerson said of him: “Alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to what is in me and you. He saw that God incarnates Himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of the world.”
When we consider the limited place in Nature accorded to man by theology, it is not surprising that man should have gathered imperfect ideas of Jesus’s conception of man. They have been impressed with the thought that Jesus looked upon man as weak and dependent, rather than a being of strength and power. Jesus was supreme master of himself, his own forces and powers, and thereby was enabled to see and understand the latent and slumbering greatness in all men. After performing works which the world pronounced miracles, did he not say to his Disciples, “Greater things than these shall ye do”?
In view of our enlarged conceptions of man, and the latent powers within him, how impressively significant was the sublime utterance of Jesus, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all things shall be added unto you!” Even those who heard these words fall from his lips had vague ideas of the kingdom about which he spoke. Some of his followers sought places of honor in the new kingdom. They thought it was to be a temporal kingdom, with a material domain, with a distinct location, with a court surrounded with pomp and circumstance. Many ideas expressed in later ages regarding Jesus’s meaning about the kingdom of God have not shown marked advance over those first entertained by his immediate followers. Men are still propounding the question, Where is the kingdom of God? Jesus left no room for doubt. He did not fail to express his meaning. He left no reason for posterity to quibble over the great message, “The kingdom of God is within you.” He spoke for all time and to all men. His words were not meant for his Disciples alone, but for you and for me and for the millions yet unborn, the kingdom of God is within us.
The most of us failed to hear these words echoed from the pulpits in the past. We heard more about original sin, predestination, the necessity of baptism, total depravity, and other dogmas equally destructive to the soul’s progress. Theology did not have much to say about this sublime utterance of the Gentle Master. Perhaps it saw the logical sequence of emphasizing this truth. If the kingdom of God was within man, where was the ground for the declaration that man was wholly depraved? If this were true, how was it that some men were born for eternal damnation? If the kingdom of God is in man, where is the foundation for the separation of God and man, the major premise of all the orthodox theologies ever invented?
How little has been extracted from the great, priceless message of Jesus, in nineteen hundred years. For about sixteen centuries man’s defects and weaknesses have been exploited and emphasized, when he was told by Jesus he had the kingdom of God within him. If man was so inherently bad as depicted, how did the kingdom of God find a dwelling-place within him?
The question is often asked, what is the kingdom of God, so often spoken of by the Gentle Master? What are we to understand by the terminology of Jesus? A kingdom suggests someone having the qualities and attributes of a king or a ruler. If we were to speak of the kingdom of Great Britain, our meaning would be clearly comprehended. The listener would know we spoke of Great Britain as an entirety; its broad expanse of territory; its organized government; its Parliament; its laws; its strength; its force; its silent, unseen power; its character and influence; in short, we should be understood as including under the phrase the kingdom of Great Britain everything sheltered and protected beneath the folds of her flag.
What, then, is the meaning of all this wonderful message to man–the kingdom of God is within you? What did Jesus mean? He laid marked emphasis on his statement, and tried to impress his hearers with its importance. He did not use his language in a narrow and restricted sense. He meant that the same order, the same laws, the same intelligence, the same justice, the same powers, the same attributes, and the same infinite and eternal soul that exist in God and pervade the universe also exist in man.
He did not mean to be understood that all these attributes and qualities in man had reached a perfected state, but they were there, either as developed or incipient powers, and their unfoldment and development depend upon man himself. Differ they may, but only in degree and not in kind. For every power and attribute in God, there is a corresponding power and attribute in man. Were it otherwise, were man deprived of divine attributes and qualities, how could he conceive of God or comprehend the principles and qualities of the Divine Mind? Unless the seed of divinity is there, how could man grow into the likeness of God? How could he come into harmony and communion with God, if by nature he is sinful and depraved?
Jesus would not have appealed to the divine in man if the divine had not been already there. Otherwise his precepts and messages would have been meaningless and vain, for only the divine can respond to the divine. That man can rise above self and forgive his enemies, is a declaration of his divine nature. Jesus, above all teachers, revealed to man the majesty of his own soul. The most valuable thought in all time is that man possesses these divine character- istics and has the power to unfold them in the great school and discipline of life, and thus bring himself into peace and harmony with Divine Mind. We are told that when we seek the kingdom of God all things shall be added unto us. By his incomparable parables, Jesus illustrates the growth and development of the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven. He spoke of it as the leaven and as the grain of mustard seed, which was the smallest of all seeds, but when it grew was the greatest among the herbs and became a tree, so that the birds of the air came and lodged in its branches. By these parables he showed that the kingdom of God not only grows and expands, but to him who seeks it, to him who has found and recognized its power, all things shall be added.
What, then, are the things to be added? Are they something to be enjoyed in another state of existence, or something to be enjoyed in this life also?
Jesus instructed men how to live in this life, not in the next. He taught a religion of life, a religion of joy, a religion of industry, a religion of peace. When he said all things should be added, he meant here and now; he meant peace, power, tranquillity, plenty, and the mastery of the individual over circumstances and environments.
Jesus laid down one rule by which man might find the coveted treasure, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” He meant that man should turn about and externalize his changed thought into a worthy and upright life. If he had been leading an unclean and degrading life, he should reverse it and live a clean and upright life. The rule was simple, that the spirit should dominate the material in his life and that he should get away from limitations, recognize the divinity within himself, and transmute that divinity into a constructive and useful life.
The first step to this attainment is for man to come into a consciousness of his own divine nature and let the Divine Mind find expression in the thoughts and acts of his daily life. When he recognizes these qualities within himself, and turns toward the new goal, then like the seed of mustard the kingdom within will grow, expand, and develop and he shall come into a life of accomplishment and abiding reality.
What is the great subconscious mind in man discovered through the agencies of modern psychology, but the kingdom of God, as declared by the Gentle Master? The discovery of modern psychology has thrown new light on the mysteries of mind and brought to light the laws by which it is governed. in a degree it has revealed man to himself. It has analyzed and mentally dissected the mind, and discovered qualities, powers, and attributes in man, of which he was previously ignorant. It has overturned many pre-existing theories and opinions long cherished, supposed to be permanently entrenched and established. By it man is discovering the forces and powers of the great soul within; better than all, it has found the law by which man can unfold, develop, and control these forces and make them obedient agencies of his will.
Man is realizing that the great subconscious mind is an infinite storehouse of intelligence and power, and that when he has learned the laws by which it is reached, impressed, and controlled, he may draw from its inexhaustible depths at will to supply his needs and wants. He is coming into the consciousness that the great subconscious, “the Great Within,” his own masterful soul, is the link that unites him with the Great Divine Soul. He is learning that the subconscious controls the functions of the body, its life, its growth, and the entire physical organism, and that every thought of the objective mind is a power that will affect the subconscious and the entire personality of man.
Psychology reveals that the laws of mind and thought are absolute and changeless, that the subconscious will respond to whatever thought is impressed upon it. When man has come into a realization of this truth. and learned to control his thoughts and impress the subconscious only with constructive, healthful, and worthy thoughts, he has learned the secret of transmuting thought into power, life, and health, and thus revolutionizing his entire life and being. When he has reached that understanding and has come into possession of that secret, he has found the kingdom of God within, which is the kingdom of mind.
When the kingdom of mind rules man’s life, he has found his own center, he has acquired power and poise, he is no longer swayed and buffeted by the caprices and whims that ever disturb the thoughtless; he lives his own life as nature designed it, the storms of discontent and anxiety are stilled within, he expresses in his life the beauty, the harmony, and power of the kingdom of God within.
Chapter VI
MAN ILLIMITABLE
| “Only the genuine men of science, we say, can truly know how utterly beyond, not only human knowledge, but human conception, is the universal power of which nature and life and thought are manifestations.”–HERBERT SPENCER. |
THERE never was any conflict between true religion and real science. Truth was the real goal of each. The only conflict has been between those defending creeds on the one hand, and the narrow and intolerant scientist on the other. Too often the real business of each, the rational pursuit of truth, was forgotten in their zeal to defend a cause.
Many persons seem to think that God endowed man with reason and then inflicted upon him a religion, so that there would be an eternal conflict in his soul. Men have been told that reason and revelation are contradictory and that man can only become religious when he denies intelligence, ceases to think, and surrenders himself wholly to a belief. The logical sequence of their reasoning is this: man has been given a mind and clothed with the power of abstract reasoning, but his eternal welfare depends upon his ignoring the reasoning of his mind.
Some writer has said: “Every branch of science has, with the clergy, gone through three stages: First they say it is absurd; second, it is against the Bible; third, we always knew it was so.”
We have heard vastly more about disturbing faith than about seeking truth. A hunger for truth is the first step toward real religion. There never was any conflict between truth and truth, but the only conflict was between truth and error. Carlyle said, “Wise man was he, who counseled that speculation should have free course, and look fearlessly toward all the thirty-two points of the compass, whithersoever and howsoever it listed.”
But, someone says, scientific investigation disturbs faith. What of it? The disturbance of faith or, more properly speaking, beliefs, is the first movement toward real progress. What if it brings a revision of all creeds and traditions? Is that to be weighed against the discovery of truth?
When we follow the light we have and from that try to discover more and clearer light, we are on the road to true religion, to progress and development. We must give science credit in the main for an honest effort to discover truth. It has ever moved forward and upward with an open and inquiring mind. Science has advanced and become more tolerant; so have many religious thinkers. The scientist of today finds himself in harmony with advanced and intelligent religious thought. Science now recognizes the existence of an intelligence pervading the entire universe and all forms and creative things that exist within it.
The scientist once said that molecular action was the cause of life. Now he reverses his former position and says life is the cause of molecular action. It is true the scientist does not recognize the existence of an absentee God, one external to ourselves, an anthropomorphic God, clothed with the attributes of hatred and revenge, as deity has been pictured to man, but he conceives of God as an unseen presence, filling the universe, penetrating every atom and molecule, manifesting in all objective Nature, which gives life to all created beings, in whom we live, move, and have our being.
As Emerson says, “The true idea of omnipresence is that God reappears in all his parts in every moss and cobweb.” This is the God of science, the only omnipresent God. When science finds the way to lead man into a recognition and union with that divine intelligence, what will science be but the highest form of religion? Is it unthinkable that in due time science may supplant theology and become the only living church?
But someone says this is an extravagant and unfounded assumption. Is it? More men rely on the voice of science today than ever before. It has the respect and confidence of the intelligent world. They turn to the scientist for evidence of the continued, conscious identity of the soul after death, and they are not turned away empty-handed. Science proclaims the unity of all substance, the reign of universal law, and the existence of an omnipresent divine intelligence. When men rise to that degree of development and enlightenment that their one quest is truth, they will be found enrolled in the ranks of scientists and listen to what they say.
Alfred Russel Wallace, the contemporary of Darwin, whose contributions to science and to our knowledge of evolution is gratefully acknowledged by the whole scientific world, in his work entitled “The World of Life,” in speaking of organized life says: “What we absolutely require and must postulate is a mind far higher, greater, and more powerful than any of the fragmentary minds we see around us; a mind not only adequate to direct and regulate all the forces at work in living organism, but which is itself the source of all those forces and energies, as well as the more fundamental portions, of the whole material universe.” He continues: “If, as John Hunter, T. H. Huxley, and other eminent thinkers have disclosed, life is the cause, not the consequence, of organization, so we may believe that mind is the cause and not the consequence of brain development.
“The first implies there is a cause of life, independent of the organism through which it is manifested, and this cause must be persistent, eternal life, any other supposition being essentially unthinkable. And if we posit eternal life as the cause of life, we must equally posit one eternal mind as the cause of mind.
“And now that we are led to believe that the atom itself is highly complex, that it is a system of revolving electrons or corpuscles, held together by tremendous forces, the mystery becomes deeper still and we find it quite hopeless to realize what is the nature of the controlling power and mind, which out of such unimaginable entities has built up the vast material universe of suns and systems of which our earth forms a fractional part, together with that even more complex world of life of which we are ourselves the outcome.”
Even the chemists are beginning to see directive forces back of all Nature. Professor H. E. Armstrong, the learned chemist, says, “The general impression produced by known facts is that directive influences are the permanent influences at work building living tissues.”
Professor Larkin, the astronomer, in writing on this subject, remarked that “For a year past no book, pamphlet, or letter had been received at the observatory containing arguments against the scientific necessity for the existence of a creator to account for the universe.” He continues: “Science now demands a conscious power within protoplasm–the only living substance; and science knows that the power is mental, that mind now manifesting in man is identical in its nature, in every attribute, property, and phase, with primordial mind.
“The human mind is illimitable. Majestic as is the universe, it is destined to be still more magnificent. So is man. How shall eternal progress obtain, if all things are perfect now?
“To try to think of the existing possibilities of the coming grandeur is overwhelming. It doth not appear to what immortal heights man will ascend, for the mind of man is a portion of the infinite mind within.
“The expression that mind is now demanded behind protoplasm is obsolete. Mind within is the truth. This is immanency. No clew to its nature has been detected. To say that it is chemical activity obscures the problem. Waste no time at present to find what life is, but find what it is able to do.
“I state that mind is the base of Nature and that the seat of the mind is in the primordial electrons; and I reassert here and now that they know what to do to build all existing objects.”
These are the voices of science, speaking to an intellectual and listening world. They are the utterances of men learned in their professions, studious of Nature, of long and patient experience in the study and investigation of physical phenomena, and who have delved deep into the wonders and mysteries of life. These are the mature observations and conclusions of unbiased and thoughtful minds. They are flashes of light from an unexpected source, whose beneficent rays bring joy and gladness to the soul of man. They enlarge man’s understanding of himself, they give him a more complete conception of his place in the universe and the possibilities that await the future man. They are worthy of our deepest thought and contempla- tion.
When did theology give to man a message half so precious as this? In what theological book did you read of the greatness of the coming man? Theology said man was finished. What a conception in view of man’s arrested development. Man’s weaknesses and imperfections have always been emphasized and enlarged. It remained for science and philosophy to accentuate his greatness and possibilities.
Much criticism has been heaped upon science and philosophy in times past. They have been charged with removing the prop from man’s faith and belief, but they are awakening in him a greater faith and a stronger belief. They are revealing to him a knowledge of his own inherent worth and greatness.
“The human mind is illimitable.” What a message to man! The very thought vitalizes and quickens every energy of man’s being and arouses the sublimest emotions of the soul. If man is still a slave to the thought that he is weak, inherently bad, and insignificant, what message is of such transcendent value to him as that mind now manifesting in him is identical in every quality and attribute with Divine Mind?
If there is in man a spark of slumbering manhood, will not this arouse it to the highest activity? What will kindle the smothered fires of the soul so much as this thought? If man has not discovered the hidden forces and powers of his own soul, what tidings can give him such inspiration or lead him to that discovery, as the latest utterances of science and philosophy ?
“What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty!” Truly did the great Master of thought have a keen insight into the greatness of man.
Whatever man has accomplished in his upward progress since he was declared inherently bad, has been in the face of adverse suggestions and retarding influences. Limitations were always set before his face. Discouragement marked every step of his long and rugged pathway. That he has so far surmounted all obstacles and that he has made so much intellectual and moral advancement is the standing and indubitable proof of his own divine qualities.
To sum up the results at the present time, we find the most noteworthy of modern philosophers, scientists, and psychologists in agreement upon the fundamental questions respecting life and intelligence in Nature and that they are the basis of the physical universe. They are in unison on the point that life and intelligence are manifest in all created forms, from electrons, atoms, molecules, up through the infinitude of Nature to her highest organized existences. It is also said that the electrons are endowed with intelligence and understand what to do, to build all objective forms found in Nature.
Such being the conclusion of modern science and philosophy, Nature inspires us with a new interest and takes on a grander aspect. It can be seen at a glance that man’s mind will dilate with this thought that he is enveloped in an atmosphere of intelligence which pervades and carries life to every creative object. The flower will reveal new beauty, the tree more grace and symmetry, the mountain and valley more majesty and grandeur.
How similar are the voices that speak to us from different epochs of time when we open our minds to catch their meaning! The declaration of Jesus that the kingdom of God is within you; that of Emerson, that man has access to the entire mind of the Creator, is himself the creator in the finite; and that of modern science, that a universal intelligence pervades all nature and that the mind of man is illimitable, are equivalent, are one and the same. In different dialects and varying expressions they spoke the same great, universal truth. They saw the divine in man, they recognized his transcendent qualities, and each expressed the thought in his own way. They looked into the future, they saw man as he shall be, when he shall stand forth in the full stature of his mental and spiritual manhood, a free man, divested of all thought of limitation, conscious of his own true worth and greatness.
With these thoughts sinking deep down into his subconsciousness, man gains a new view and estimate of life and feels a deeper reverence, not only for the divine Creator of all things, but also a sublime reverence for the majesty of his own soul. He obtains a new faith in his own forces and worth, the first true step to all progress and advancement. He sees his kinship with the divine and the possibilities and duties that flow from that relationship. The consciousness of the divine in man creates worth without vanity; strength, poise, and serenity without egotism. Vanity and egotism are not qualities that flow from the consciousness of man’s divine kinship. They belong to undeveloped minds, those that have not touched the universal.
If life and intelligence exist throughout Nature and are present in all its manifested forms, then it follows, as a logical conclusion, that life and intelligence are in every electron, atom, molecule, tissue, nerve, muscle, and bone of the human body, a fact heretofore ignored or at least not expressed by medical science.
If this conclusion is correct, it suggests far-reaching consequences and possibilities in man’s development. The medical profession has spoke much and kindly about Nature and its marvelous powers of healing, and they have said that medical science can act only as an aid and assistant to Nature in the cure of disease. When pressed for the meaning it attaches to Nature and what it understands by the term, it has never been able to illuminate the questioner with an intelligent answer. It speaks of chemical activity and chemical action as the cause of physical change, when, as Professor Larkin says, the term chemical activity only obscures the problem.
The physiologist, in seeking an understanding of the human body, the mysteries of its life currents, the building and tearing-down processes, has failed to discover that an intelligence pervades and guides the operations of Nature, including everything in the physical organism of man. If he has discovered it, he has not made his discovery known to the world.
Alfred Russel Wallace continues: “Now in none of the volumes of the physiology of animals, that I have consulted, can I find any attempt whatever to grapple with the fundamental question of the directive power, that in every case first secretes, or as it were creates, out of the protoplasm of the blood, special molecules adapted for the production of each material bone, muscle, nerve, skin, hair, feather, etc., carries these molecules to the exact part of the body where and when they are required, and brings into play the complex force that alone can build up with great rapidity so strangely complex a structure as a feather adapted for flight.
“Of course the difficulties of conceiving how this had been done and is being done, before our eyes, is nearly as great in the case of any other specialized part of the animal body; but the case of the feather of the bird is unique in many ways, and had the advantage of being wholly external and being familiar to everyone.
“It is also easily accessible for examination either in the living bird or detached feather, which latter material offers wonderful material for microscopic examination and study.
“To myself not all that has been written about the properties of protoplasm or the innate forces of the cell, neither the physiological unities of Herbert Spencer, the pangenesis hypothesis of Darwin, nor the continuity of the germ plasm of Weismann, throw the least glimmer of light on this great problem.”
We must therefore conclude that some directive force is at work in the physical organism and with ceaseless activity selects molecules from the protoplasm of the blood to build up the manifold tissues and other parts of the human body. Whatever that influence is, it manifests intelligent action of a high order. It cannot therefore be other than intelligent. That same intelligence is sending the blood through the arteries and veins, carrying building molecules to the various parts of the body and at the same time bearing away the decomposed particles when their work is done. Thus that intelligence is ceaselessly and noiselessly performing its tasks, forever renewing the physical organism and keeping it new.
As evolution reveals that its processes ever tend toward development and growth, and that all life and intelligence are striving to manifest in more perfect forms, so we may well conclude that the forces, life, and intelligence within us are working to build healthful, normal, and perfect bodies.
What a startling fact for contemplation, that an intelligence pervades every atom and molecule of our physical organism and controls all its functions and activities. We pause and reflect on its far-reaching consequences, when we consider it from the standpoint of the psychologist. If intelligence holds dominion over the physical universe, it includes the physical organism of man and that intelligence is subjective. It can be impressed with ideas of health, power, ability, and other desirable qualities, with the certainty and consciousness that results will be measured by the thoughts conveyed to it and the manner in which they are impressed upon it.
In other words, the subjective intelligence will respond to the suggestion it receives from the conscious mind. This one thought unlocks the door to the mastership of man over the forces and powers within him. That he can guide and control that intelligence within, to build, renew, and accomplish according as he wills and suggests, is a fact of the utmost importance to man.
As we look forth into Nature and study its processes, we find it is difficult, if not impossible, to conceive of it and the hidden forces trying to find expression in manifold forms as other than intelligent. What is it that gives the flower a grace and beauty that no artist can match, but an intelligence endowed with a sense of beauty? What is it that builds the tree with such graceful symmetry and proportion, but an intelligent agency possessed of artistic qualities? What constructed the physical organism but an intelligent architect having a perfect understanding of the marvelous mechanism necessary to perform its proper functions?
The wonder is that we ever looked for other than an intelligent cause for all we see in Nature. On every hand we see beauty, proportion, order, grandeur, and harmony, the attributes and symbols of mind. When we stand, we are not conscious of holding ourselves erect, but there is an unrecognized power which sustains us in an erect position. When life is extinct and the intelligent forces cease to act, when the prop of intelligence is gone, the body falls.
We marvel at the developments of physical science and pay our grateful acknowledgment for its noteworthy benefits to man in his long and tedious struggle toward enlightenment. But it has not accomplished all or supplied all man’s wants.
Modern psychology has also done its work. What discovery in twenty centuries compares with this, that man has learned to tap the Universal Mind, the infinite reservoirs of his own soul, and thereby create health, ability, character, or any other quality he may desire? Man is at last discovering himself.
“Science started with the stars and ended with the soul.” We are following an illumined pathway that leads to a knowledge of the soul.
Chapter VII
MAN UNFINISHED
| “All parts away for the progress of souls, All religion, all solid things, arts, governments, All that was or is apparent upon the Globe Or any globe, falls into niches and corners Before the procession of souls along the Grand Roads of the Universe.” WALT WHITMAN. |
MAN has ever stalked over the world like an idle somnambulist, in a dream of bewilderment, unconscious of the boundless resources of his own nature and the illimitable heights that the fully developed man may reach. Limitation always clouded his vision. Of the limitless reservoirs of mental life within himself, he was totally oblivious. He has been a stranger to himself, an unguided wanderer, ignorant of his own greatness and possibilities.
Man supposed he was made in an instant, the result of a fiat, and that his limitations were set by the divine decree that brought him into existence. He was never told that he was not finished or of the slumbering possibilities within himself. But he is awakening from his long dream, to the realization that “The full measure of a man has never been taken” and that the infinite path of progress stretches away before him.
Elmer Gates, who has given the profoundest thought to the human mind and has analyzed it as carefully as any modern psychologist, says: “That through consciousness we put ourselves en rapport with cosmic mind. Subconsciousness is the great ocean of mental life; our conscious states are merely the ripples that strike on the shore.”
I quote the following extract from the lectures on mental science delivered in Edinburgh by Judge Troward:
“We have experimental proof of the existence in ourselves of transcendental faculties, the full development of which would place us in a perfectly new sphere of life. . . .
“Universal intelligence subsists throughout Nature, inherent in every one of its manifestations. For the present, it will be sufficient to realize that the subjective mind in ourselves is the same subjective mind which is at work throughout the universe, giving rise to the infinitude of natural forms with which we are surrounded and in like manner giving : rise to ourselves.
“We never get beyond the law of cause and effect We externalize in our outward circumstances precisely our ideas of the universal mind.
“Man has depths which reach beyond all our philosophical soundings, with lights that no seer has ever revealed to us, with reachings of his being only divinely felt in his own soul and never revealed to others.
“Man is a religious being, not conscious of his greatness and infinite possibilities. To him all life is the reaching out for these possibilities. The search for the larger life is the endeavor to find himself.
“Whatever gives us larger being to life, whatever brings us to the goal, whatever solves our problems, breaks the clouds before our eyes, helps us to look up, teaches us to step forward, is a religious service.”
We feel the breath of inspiration at the realization that the subconscious mind within is one and the same as the Universal Mind that produces all things in Nature with which we are surrounded, and which produces also ourselves. Why should not man be a religious being, when a thought of such moment enters into his consciousness? It enables him to see a new meaning, nay, a kinship, in every object of Nature, from the grass-blade beneath his feet to the planets circling through endless space.
When this truth dawns on man’s reason and consciousness, he sees a religious meaning in all beauty, in all order, in all harmony, in all that opens the mind to truth, in every new revelation of Nature. It all enriches life and leads man upward and helps him in his struggle to see and know God.
“Why has the heart restless yearnings
For heights and steeps untrod?
Some call it the voice of longing,
And others the Voice of God.”
Victor Hugo remarks that “The religious fact is not the Church; it is the opening of the rose, it is the breaking of the dawn, it is the nesting of the bird. The religious fact is Nature, holy and eternal.”
Man has not yet conceived of his own greatness and possibilities. The evolutionary processes of Nature have culminated in the production of a being who walks the earth in an erect position, his brain at the summit, who is capable of thought, of emotion, and of abstract reasoning. He is the highest type that has yet appeared upon the earth. He is also a religious being, conscious of his own individuality, his own soul, and a mysterious longing for something, divinely felt, faintly dreamed of, but nor yet realized.
From the great soul within, man sometimes feels the surging of an inexpressible power, a restless feeling, welling up within him, seeking recognition and expression. We are all conscious at times of this divine unrest, a striving force within, a cosmic urge prompting us to effort, pushing us onward and upward to something greater. It is the great soul within seeking to find its true expression. It is the divine calling to the divine in man.
Carlyle says: “Man’s unhappiness as I construe it comes of his greatness; it is because there is an infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the finite.”
Emerson declares that “A Man is the facade of a temple, wherein all wisdom and all good abide.”
With all his powers, with a reason divine, an imagination bridging the infinite, man is not yet a perfect being. He is only in the process of creation, he is unfinished. He is undergoing an evolutionary development, he is still far from the goal at which in due time he will arrive.
As we take a survey of the world and the various types of plant and animal life, their change and development, as we study the rock and the mineral, and observe the workings of Nature, we discover that creation is yet unfinished. The master hand is still at work: Creation is now as rapid as in the six days mentioned in Genesis. Her processes never rest. The rocks are still building, glacial action still goes on, the rivers continue to carry silt to the seas. Nature’s laboratory was never more active, since the earth first swung into its orbit.
The theologian has always considered and spoken of creation as finished. Until science and reason demonstrated its impossibility, he contended that the world and all created things that dwell thereon, including man, were created in six days of twenty-four hours each. He also said God was satisfied with His work and rested on the seventh day. This was his conclusion because, he said, he had read it in a book. Man read a different account in the open book of Nature, in the rocks, the rivers, the lakes, and the eternal hills.
The same unseen forces that are building the rock and manifesting in new created forms, is also at work in man, developing new power, strengthening existing faculties, and pushing man onward toward a more complete and perfect state. Man has not been symmetrically developed. His advisers limited their efforts to the cultivation of his spiritual side, and that mainly through the influence of the emotions. Fear was the incentive held before his mind. The preparation was not so much for this, as for a future life. His slumbering possibilities were not known. If he was to be great or strong, it would be in another state of existence.
Man is a triune being, and to make him a perfect man requires a three-fold development. That development only is normal and symmetrical that endeavors to perfect him physically, mentally, and spiritually. The development of one phase of his being and not the others is abnormal. The theologian was never able properly to instruct man, because he never understood man. What did he know of the subconscious mind in man? What understanding had he of the hidden forces and powers in man? It was the blind leading the blind.
Modern psychology has enabled man to discover himself. Through it he is gaining faint glimpses of the powers of the great soul within, of that reservoir of intelligence and wisdom to which he may find access when he has learned the way. He is learning the potency of thought: that thought is his empire, that thought is the avenue to the infinite treasures of the subconscious mind, and that thought can control his entire personality.
Man is only at the threshold of real greatness and real power, only with feeble taps is he knocking at the door of the great within. When he has awakened to the consciousness of the forces within himself, to build a perfect body, to develop higher mental and spiritual powers, he will look upon man as he is today as a pygmy and a dwarf. Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the imagination of man to conceive of the glories that await the coming man.
Henry Harrison Brown, writing on creative thought, says: “Man as thinker shapes the universal energy into forms of use and beauty, through his thought in mechanics and art. The absolute creates within itself by bodying itself forth in a universe cognizant to the senses of man, first as cosmic energy, then as matter. Man is thus the absolute, becoming cognizant of itself. Man is God thinking; elsewhere all creation is God working.
“Wind and wave are manifestations of the working of the absolute; the unconditioned and unindividualized. Here it manifests in lower octaves; in the rose and bird it has gained in pitch, still higher its rise in human thought. Thought is a form and a most potent form of universal energy. Man is God individualized. The kingdom of God is within you. Kingdom: power, thought is this kingdom.
“Man is the only individuality among all the manifestations of God that can think, can say ‘I am.’
“My power as an individual begins and ends with my power to create thought forms. These forms life takes as molds into which to flow and shape itself.
“This is the one and only great fact in human experience, the one fact which when understood will redeem the race from all slavery to matter and will give man control of his destiny. The great fact is by thought power to build ideals; man controls that subconscious divinity which he is. The conscious man controls the God in man.”
These are great words coming from a noteworthy modern thinker. They strike the keynote of modern psychology. They point man to the pathway of power and accomplishment. They show him how to reach the great subconscious, the source of all power. Like all great teaching his message is simple, concise, and easily comprehended. How unlike the impenetrable mazes theology has always set before man. Thought is the force that opens the door to the store- house of wisdom and power. By thought power to build ideals, man becomes a builder, a creator; he controls the subconscious divinity which he is. Long ago modern psychology demonstrated that the subconscious obeys the mandates of thought, is amenable to the power of suggestion. Here the same truth is stated in another way. The discovery of the law of suggestion marks the birth of modern psychology, and modern psychology is the great revelation to man of his own masterful powers.
We can all follow the simple rules laid down for our guidance. We can create ideals if we desire. We can develop ideals of health, of mental superiority, of high moral standards, of power and success. When we have learned to form and hold these ideals, with confidence in results, we have opened the door to the great within.
Christian D. Larson, who has written so understandingly of man’s hidden forces, says: “The destiny of every individual is hourly being created by himself, and that something that determines what he is, to create at any particular time, is nothing more or less than his ideals.”
The real secret of man’s power, then, is to create proper ideals or thought forms, and thus control the subconscious divinity within him. As thought controls the subconscious, the great reservoir of intelligent forces, so man directs his own welfare and destiny. The key, then, to man’s power is to think constructively, think positively, create ideals of health, of cheerfulness, of happiness, and of accomplishment. When he has learned this secret, he has become master over things and circumstances. At last we come back to the great truth, as a man thinketh in his heart so is he.
Science is finding evidence corroborative of what the philosopher has thought, of what the idealists have always laid claim to, that thought controls matter, that mental images are molds into which cosmic life and energy flow; that matter is thus shaped into forms, corresponding with the ideals first created. Results have been published of an experiment by means of the infallible test of the camera, that would seem to bear out the claim that thoughts may be embodied in mental forms or images and that atoms and molecules of matter will shape themselves into forms corresponding to those images.
The materialistic scientist may view this statement with utter incredulity, but it is no more unthinkable or improbable than that thought and even the human voice may be carried over long distances by means of no other conductor than either that fills all space. It is not as mysterious as life or growth, which we know exist but do not understand and a thousand phenomena which baffle all understanding.
Professor Larkin recently said: “You can separate heat from light and use each separately, and do many wonderful things with both these totally unknown forces, in a suitable laboratory. ‘Unknown’ is used here purposely, for nothing is now known as to what anything really is.”
The experiments referred to, by which thoughts were transformed into visible forms, were conducted by Dr. Charles W. Littlefield. He asserts that he created mental images in solutions of inorganic compounds placed upon photographic slides, and the forms thereby created were successfully photographed and the photographs exhibited for inspection. Dr. Littlefield, in giving the results of his experimentation, says: “In the chemical analysis of all living things we find two classes of compounds, the organic and the inorganic. The former class is represented by albumen, sugar, starch, and oil, while the latter is represented by the compounds of soda, lime, magnesia, iron, potash, and silicon, as made up by the union of these with sulphur, phosphorus, chryoline, fluorine, and oxygen, making twelve mineral compounds, commonly known as tissue salts.
“These thought images were held in the mind while the attention was fixed upon a drop of the solution of one of the mineral salts of organic life upon a microscopic slide and afterward photographed.
“In other words, these are thoughts photographed through matter. Since these thought forms are fixed in the same kind of mineral compounds which are now known to be not only the builders of the human organism, but also the material medium of all its functions, both physical and psychical, they furnish us some very interesting and reliable data upon which to construct a rational system of psychophysics, not only embracing an explanation of every known form of mental manifestation through matter, but also suggesting possibilities in psychology almost beyond belief.”
These experiments would seem to bear out the conclusion that mind, external to matter, can control matter. If this is an established fact, its importance can scarcely be overestimated.
Someone asks how this can be done. What is the explanation of mind shaping matter, when matter is separated by distance from the person sending forth the thought? An impossibility, you say.
In answer to the expressed doubt, it might well be said this is the result of investigation, of experiment. Its cause is in the field of science and it is the business of the scientist to find it and offer it to the world. This suggestion, however, may be offered, not as a conclusion, but only as a hypothesis from which to reason.
Scientists tell us there are no solids in Nature. What seem to us the hardest and densest substances are not solids, but the electrons and corpuscles forming the same are separated and do not touch, but revolve around each other with certain great and specific velocities. All Nature is in motion, all is vibratory.
It has been well said that thoughts are forces. If they are forces, it follows that they can create vibrations and also that they can travel through space. If thoughts send vibrations through space, is it not possible for them to affect the atoms and molecules of which matter is composed, which scientists tell us are in constant and rapid motion?
The wireless instrument creates vibrations that travel through ether, penetrating and passing through what we call solid substances, to be again taken up by a like instrument and
translated into language. Scientists sum up the recent results of wireless telegraphy as follows: “Boats have been steered to right or left, stopped, started, reversed, accelerated, retarded, and controlled in every way by an operation in a wireless plant on the shore. No wire from man to boat–waves of electric force only.”
Mental telepathy seems to be an established fact, which is nothing less than sending thoughts through space, which are received, understood, and translated by other minds. If thoughts were not forces, how could this be? If they did not create vibrations, it would seem difficult to understand how they could travel through space.
Professor Larkin, in an article on the power of thought, said: “it is natural for us to think that no object can be formed without a previously formed thought pattern. This would be as impossible as for an iron casting without a mold and a mold without a pattern.
“The word ‘matter’ as used in chemistry and physics cannot be applied to matter, cannot exist until electrons revolve around each other at definitive and fixed high specific speeds, specific velocities being a fundamental fact in Nature.” He then related that another photographic test had been made of thought images, revealing similar results to those above related.
That there is something in the life force which controls matter, uses it, and shapes it, is the latest utterance of philosophy.
Henri Bergson, professor of philosophy in the College de France, Paris, now attracting the attention of the philosophers of the world, is among the recent champions of these ideals. As he views it, the world and man are only in the process of creation; man is becoming and passing through an evolutionary process, a process of growth and development. He teaches that there is a super-materialistic or psychic element in life, as the vital force, which molds matter to its own use. He holds that wherever there is life, creation is still going on, and that creation is ever bringing something new into existence.
His philosophy will set new ideals before man and lead him to greater things, a life of reality, growth, and development. When man becomes conscious of the creative and ever-renewing forces within himself, he will find the renewing hand of Nature, which is ever leading him toward the new and perfect.
The fact that scholars and students from every part of the world are listening to Bergson’s utterances proves that his philosophy has struck a responsive chord which is to have a marked effect in molding modern thought. It all leads to one central thought, that man is becoming conscious of the greatness of his own being and the illimitable powers of his own mind and soul; that he is constantly and forever evolving, passing through the processes of creation and growth, gradually reaching higher and higher levels, moving onward and upward toward the perfect man that he is yet to be. When the consciousness of this truth takes possession of his entire being and personality, he will make mental and moral strides such as man has not yet experienced in reaching out toward, the ultimate goal.
CHAPTER VIII
AS A MAN THINKETH
| “Mind is the master-power that molds and makes, And man is mind, and ever more he takes The tool of thought, and shaping what he wills, Brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills:– He thinks in secret, and it comes to pass: Environment is but his looking-glass.” JAMES ALLEN |
NATURE does not thrust powers and accomplishments upon us. In her infinite wisdom she left us a work to perform. Endowed by Nature with incipient powers, it was left to man to develop them or not, as he should determine.
Wisely was it ordained when man was created that he should eat his bread by the sweat of his brow. Labor has been the propelling force in man’s progress and advancement in civilization. Without it he would have placed no value on that which satisfies his wants and ministers to his comforts. We value that most which we accomplish by our own efforts, either physical or mental. “Diamonds are found only in the dark places of the earth; truths are found only in the depths of thought,” says Victor Hugo.
That we may have a due appreciation of the forces and powers within us, we must learn to unfold and develop them for ourselves. This we can do only by the exercise of our own thought and will power. If we wish mental power, we can have it only as we exercise the faculties of the mind and thus develop and educate them for the work that devolves upon us. If we wish character, thought is the key to its development. If we desire accomplishment along any chosen line, we must put forth the thought and effort necessary to produce the sought-for results. If we wish to utilize the subjective forces within, only as we properly train the objective mind to play upon them and impress its thought upon them can we expect valuable or important effects.
Cause and effect are written everywhere in the universe. The law of compensation is ever before our eyes. If we would evade it, it steps in our pathway to block our progress. We must ever pay the price. Wherever there is an effect, there was first a cause.
Everything in the universe that we observe, all the varied and marvelous manifestations in Nature, all that takes place in men’s lives, proclaim the truth and universality of this law. From elections to worlds keeping their orbits through infinite space, all things animate and inanimate must obey the positive mandates of this law. This law is as inexorable, unerring, and constant in the mental and spiritual planes as in the physical universe. It is never suspended, never varies; it is fixed and eternal. The same law that the planets obey, that causes the seed to germinate and grow, that brings the recurring seasons with equal precision regulates and controls every thought sent forth from the human mind. Let us consider well what thoughts we entertain, and how we shall send them forth, for they are causes and will in good time come into expression in our own lives. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. This wondrous truth is old, and it is new. Its application is new to us every moment of our lives. Its real significance and true meaning were never known until the discovery of modern psychology.
Until we have learned something of the nature of subconscious mind, we can have but a faint understanding of the import of this golden proverb. We must first realize that the subconscious mind has control of the functions and forces of the body; that it is the great mental and spiritual storehouse of man; that it is amenable to every suggestion of the objective or conscious mind; “that the conscious mind acts, the subconscious reacts; the conscious mind produces the impression, the subconscious produces the expression; the conscious mind determines what is to be done, the subconscious supplies the mental material and necessary power,” before we can understand its full meaning and significance.
Translated into modern language, we would say that as a man thinks deeply and reaches down into the subconscious mind and impresses it with his thought the subconscious mind will respond according to the nature of the thought and impression.
Plato said: “Thinking is the talking of the soul with itself.” Thought is dynamic. Thoughts are not things, but the forces back of things; the creators of things. Thought is power, thought is force, thought is cause.
“Our todays are the result of our past thinking, our tomorrows the result of our present thinking. We have been our own mental parents, and we shall be our own mental children. All that a man does and brings to pass is the vesture of thought.”
There is a correspondence between thought and deeds, thoughts and circumstances. Thoughts produce conditions in our physical bodies, in our lives and circumstances, according to the character of those we harbor. Emerson says: “The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own,”
Every thought accompanied with deep feeling, or impressed upon the subconscious mind, produces chemical changes and effects upon the body. Thoughts of fear and anxiety disturb the functions of the body and bring weakness and disease. Pleasant, agreeable, and joyful thoughts bring health, strength, and poise.
“The pleasantest things in the world are pleasant thoughts, and the greatest art in life is to have as many of them as possible.”
The laws of mind are fixed, absolute, and eternal. We are the results of the sum total of our thinking. Thoughts are revealed in our faces and manifested in our lives. As we glance in the mirror, we see the reflection of our thoughts. Men foolishly believe their thoughts are their own, and that they may entertain them in secret and keep them to themselves. Thoughts are not secrets; they are not their own. Every thought is registered in the archives of the soul. Thought pencils the lines in the brow. Thought plows furrows in the cheek. Thoughts reveal their character in the expression of the eye. The face is the mirror, reflecting the mind and thought of its possessor.
Walt Whitman says:
| “Sauntering the pavement or riding the country road, lo! such faces. Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality! The spiritual prescient face–the always welcome common benevolent face. The sacred faces of infants, the illuminated face of the mother of many children. The face of an amour, the face of veneration. The face withdrawn of its good and bad, the castrated face; This now is too lamentable a face for man; Some abject louse, asking leave to be cringing for it. This face is a haze more chill than the Arctic sea; Its sleepy and wobbling icebergs crunch as they go. The melodious character of the earth, The finish beyond which philosophy cannot go, and does not wish to go, The justified mother of men.” |
If we but observe, we too can see the faces Whitman saw, as we saunter through the highways and byways of life. Similar faces appear in every street and thoroughfare. Whitman looked through the eyes of the seer, he saw beyond the faces, he recognized the silent causes there registered, he understood. We, too, can look beyond the expression to the cause and understand they were all wrought in the forge of thought. We can almost feel the calculating thought of the man with a face “A haze more chill than the Arctic Sea.” We can see a life of unselfish love back of the face of “The justified mother of men.”
The character of thought betrays itself, not only in the faces of men, but in their lives and characters as well. Thought determines character. Thought is character. James Allen has well said: “Think good thoughts and they will quickly become actualized in your outward life, in the form of good conditions. Control your soul forces, and you will be able to shape your outward life as you will. The difference between a saviour and a sinner is this, that the one has a perfect control of all the forces within him; the other is dominated and controlled by them.
“Dwell in thought upon the grandest,
And the grandest you shall see;
Fix your mind upon the highest,
And the highest you shall be.”
What we sow, that shall we also reap. Some men seem to think this law applies only to outward acts and relates only to the sowing in a physical world. But the same law governs mind and thought.
Thoughts of revenge, hatred, jealousy, envy, and lust affect and mold the character and lives of those who harbor them as certainly as effect follows cause. Sooner or later they will be externalized and manifested in every outward circumstance and condition of life.
Thoughts generate health or toxins in the system according to the kind of thought entertained. Thoughts of malice, fear, hatred, and envy interfere with the normal functions of the body, affect its secretions, generate poisons, resulting in disease. Thoughts of health, thoughts of joy, thoughts of kindness, bring joy and health to him who entertains them and sends them forth.
If we think ourselves inherently bad, we shall reap the fruits of that thought. If we conceive of ourselves as weak and unworthy, as Whitman said, “Asking leave to be,” we shall develop those qualities and actualize them in our daily lives. If we recognize divine attributes as our inheritance, we shall grow into the likeness of those attributes. Whitman said: “I believe in you, my soul–the other I am must not abase itself to you. To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow.”
It is the man of conscious power within that wins in life’s contest. He is great, because his thought was first great. The man who is conscious of the potentialities of his own nature and couples energy with that thought, is master of circumstances. He is the magnet that attracts power, attracts success; he is success. A man may have a lofty opinion of himself but as long as he thinks small thoughts he will be small. Man can only become great as he thinks great thoughts, and to think great thoughts he must seek to gain a larger consciousness of real worth and superiority.
Greatness is strength, without egotism. It is power, with a desire that others shall not recognize that power. Jesus said, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” He did not employ the term “meekness” as the synonym of “weakness.” His thought was that man should be great without parading it, without ostentation: strong without letting it be known. This is the essence of all greatness.
By the law of suggestion the subconscious mind is amenable to the thoughts and impressions it receives from the conscious or objective mind. The subconscious registers the impression which is again given expression in the life and character of the individual. The subconscious faithfully reproduces every mental idea or state contained in the impression. The law is as unerring as the law of gravitation. As is the suggestion, so is the result.
The subconscious is a rich soil, and the seed thought planted therein by the conscious mind will produce according to its kind. If we plant flowers, we shall pluck flowers. If we sow tares, the crop will be tares. The subconscious is an obedient servant. It obeys the thoughts of the conscious mind. What it receives, it reproduces, and its effect is manifested in the personality of the individual. If we sow ideas of diseases, we shall reap a harvest of disease. Thoughts of health will be re-expressed in healthful conditions. If we sow ideas of poverty, that will be our portion. If we sow thoughts of inferiority, weakness, and fear, we shall build a personality devoid of character and strength. Ideals of abundance will produce abundance, if we plus them with intelligence and energy.
In that valuable little volume “The Great Within,” Mr. Christian D. Larson has stated the law well and correctly. “The subconscious mind is a rich mental field: every conscious impression is a seed sown in the field, and will bear fruit after its kind, be the seed good, bad, or otherwise. All thoughts of conviction and deeply felt desires will impress themselves upon the subconscious and will produce their kind, to be later expressed in the personal being of man.”
Since the subconscious is impressed with every earnest and deeply felt thought, it is easy to understand how beliefs stamped upon youthful minds are perpetuated in adult age, whether they are true or false. The subjective mind receives them in an impressionable age, and there they remain and grow throughout the years of life. Certain institutions understand the psychological law perfectly and therefore insist on what they call religious instruction in early life, before they encounter any opposition from auto-suggestion or independent thought. The religious instruction usually consists of teaching certain creeds and dogmas, and in most instances playing upon the emotions to cause their teachings to be impressed upon the subconscious. Fear has been the favorite influence to cause these impressions to become permanent in the subconscious.
These impressions, being ground into the subjective mind, remain to bring forth fruit after their kind in the succeeding years. It is no evidence of their truth that they remain as fixed belief in mature age. Men believe what was impressed on the subconscious mind in early life, because that belief has become so firmly planted therein that it becomes a habit. Habits thus formed in childhood prevent the mind from accepting any line of thought that does not accord with those habits or beliefs. They are accepted as fundamentals, and logic and reason are powerless to overcome them. Yet these habits and beliefs, however firm or fixed they may become, may or may not be true. That they are thus believed in mature life, by men of the highest intellectuality, is no evidence of their truth.
Men of greatest mental attainments differ as widely in their religious beliefs as the opposite poles of the universe. They cannot all be true. The question is asked, Why do intelligent men differ so radically? The explanation lies in a study of psychological law, that the subconscious mind is so thoroughly impressed in childhood that the impression is never eradicated, but remains a fixed and permanent habit and belief through life. Men are compelled to believe as they do by reason of the deep impression on the subconscious mind. These impressions are so strong that they color and warp everything that enters into the mind thereafter, even education itself. Thus education and training become merely servants of our earlier beliefs.
Then, too, ecclesiastical authorities and ecclesiastical reverence are important factors in silencing youthful minds from questioning what they are told. They are taught that they must accept the instruction given, as the final commands of authority, and to make further inquiries would tempt the divine patience. These become deep and lasting impressions on the subconscious mind, the tendencies of which are to preclude further inquiries in later years.
As long as the world continues to cling to the idea that some men are clothed with exclusive authority to teach truth, or that their authority cannot be questioned, so long will they be able to fasten beliefs upon the human mind that reason and judgment cannot dislodge or eradicate.
So long as the child is taught that it is dangerous to think except as his spiritual advisers tell him and that he must accept their interpretation of what has been written, so long will he refuse to see or accept truth or enlarge his conceptions of truth. Whatever his intellectual attainments may be, he is likely to remain a spiritual slave. Mr. Larson has well said, “When you accept anything as final, you bring your mind to a standstill in that sphere of action; and the fact that nearly the whole world has accepted certain spiritual ideas as final is the reason why spirituality –real, living spirituality—is almost unknown today.”
The conscious mind supplies the ideals for the subconscious mind to work to and bring forth into expression. This is a subject for the deepest thought and consideration, and is the key to all true mental training. As is the ideal, so will be the expression. It is of the utmost importance that proper and truthful ideals be always held before the subconscious, for whatever they are they will find expression in the life, character, and personality of the individual.
Chapter IX
ETHICS OF THE CREEDS
| “Belief in limitations is the one, the only thing, that causes limitation, because we thus
impress limitation upon the creative principle; and in proportion as we lay that belief aside, our boundaries will expand, increasing life and more abundant blessing will be ours.” |
IN view of our knowledge of the law of mind, the power of thought, and the undeviating law of suggestion, as revealed by a study of modern psychology, and the influence of thought as affecting character and personality, the subject of what should be taught to growing minds becomes a topic of universal interest. More especially do these questions rise to a profound degree of importance when they are considered and analyzed in reference to religious thought and training.
The consideration of this line of thought suggests an inquiry of the deepest concern. Has the religious instruction of the past been of that healthful and constructive kind that leads to the highest moral and spiritual development? Has it been creative in its tendencies and effectual in developing the highest personality in man? Has it been at all times ethical and conducive to a strong and robust morality? What effect have these teachings had on the development of character? We should be able to approach the study of these questions with open and impartial minds, and bring to the discussion the spirit of fairness which the consideration of such questions requires for an intelligent solution.
There can be no reason why these questions should not be treated with the same unbiased judgment that we bring to bear on the solution of all secular questions.
No institution is so venerable, or clothed about with such authority, that it should not be willing to invite an examination of its underlying principles and a study of its methods. No institution, whether encompassed by traditions or not, should be immune from a fair investigation or a just and intelligent criticism by thoughtful men in every age. Time is the great leveler, and ultimately men place a just estimate upon all institutions.
It has been truthfully said: “Humanity has never really had but one religion and one worship. This universal light has had its uncertain mirages, its deceitful deflections, and its shadows; but always after the nights of error we see it reappear, one and pure like the sun.” It is not necessary to confine our investigations to the religious teachings of the past. We may with equal propriety direct our inquiries to a consideration of the religious instruction still administered to the young and to ceremonials and rituals constantly observed and practiced. They offer an interesting field for psychological study and metaphysical investigation. Those who assume the right and authority to administer religious instruction seem either to have never given study and thought to the great lessons of modern psychology, or wholly to ignore the effect of its teaching. They seem to dwell in the past, ignoring the truths that modern psychology brings to men, a revelation and knowledge of his own mind and soul that ought to be heeded by all who assume the responsibility of presenting religious thought.
The neophyte is taught that a clean, moral, upright life, with the strict observance of the Golden Rule, alone will not answer his needs; that a religion of works is not sufficient for his soul’s salvation. Although he may have “visited the fatherless and widows in their affliction and kept himself unspotted from the world,” he must do something more. He must look outward and elsewhere for help and must exercise a belief in a certain dogma before he can hope for eternal rest and happiness. He is told that a life of works will not weigh, in the divine scales, against a fixed and necessary belief.
The student of religion marvels at the theory that the qualities that endear man to man and man to society do not endear him also to God. He does not understand why character, the best asset in life, is not also the best eternal asset. He does not see why an unselfish life of duty should not be of more value, both here and hereafter, than a particular belief.
The exaltation of faith, or rather belief, over character cannot lead to the best moral and spiritual results. The attempt to make character secondary and subordinate to faith or belief removes from man the highest ideal that has yet been set before him. Faith or belief does not depend on character. Men seemingly devoid of character may nevertheless have a supreme faith in creeds and dogmas. It has been said, whether truthfully or not is not vouched for, that with one exception every murderer ever executed in the city of Chicago had a supreme faith and belief in the whole doctrine of the atonement.
Since faith or belief is not necessarily linked with character, but may be exercised by men who are strangers thereto, it is dangerous teaching to make faith the supreme fact of man’s existence. Relief is a slender prop, unless reared on the enduring foundations of morality, character, and manhood.
The truths of psychology are slow in making their way against established religious customs. We observe that public oral confessions of wickedness, depravity, and weakness are constantly made by religious worshipers as a part of the recognized and established public worship. They publicly confess their manifold sins, accompanied with the declaration that they are without health or strength. The idea seems to prevail that the worshiper can only approach God, and that God will only listen, when the worshiper comes in the attitude of a spiritual mendicant. These ceremonials and rituals, adopted hundreds of years ago, when psychology was unknown and when metaphysics was a jargon, are still revered and preserved on account of their antiquity and because they were adopted by the authority of an institution. What is an institution but “the lengthened shadow of one man?”
These ceremonies called worship are affirmations and suggestions, made by the conscious to the subconscious mind. The laws of psychology reveal their effect upon the subconscious mind. They are seeds sown in the subconscious, and will bring forth fruit in abundance after their own kind. If they are not spoken with tender feeling and from the innermost depths of the soul, they are idle and useless exercises and become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. If they are not poured forth from the fountains of a sincere heart, however sonorous their utterance, they must fail to reach the divine ear. If they spring from the innermost depths of feeling, with the spirit of true devotion, they become seeds of weakness, depravity, and disease, planted in the subconscious, which by an unerring metaphysical law will germinate, grow, and produce a harvest like unto the seed sown.
These conceptions of worship originated from thinking of God as a monarch seated on a distant throne, separated from man by a gulf, and man approaching the throne in a servile and dependent attitude. Although Jesus came teaching a religion of democracy, the brotherhood of man, and the Kingdom of God within, yet the church has continued to cling to and conduct its worship on the monarchical plan and idea.
True worship is not a confession of weakness and depravity. God does not want man, created in His own image, to worship Him in fear or in the attitude of a culprit. Jesus instructed his followers, when they prayed, to go into the silence and shut the door, but did not tell them to debase themselves in God’s presence.
It is a strange conception also to think of pleasing God by a stately worship of pomp and circumstance. The great soul, feeling the throbbing pulse of the divine within, walks and talks with God. It realizes God as an enveloping presence, sweet as the breath of eternal spring, bringing ineffable joy and peace to the soul. Divine itself, the soul cannot come into harmony or unity with God by belittling itself or proclaiming its own depravity. The true worshiper listens to the whispering accents of the great soul within, and obeys the still small voice that ever comes to him whose soul is attuned to catch the divine harmony that forever breaks thereon.
Jesus said, the Kingdom of God cometh not by observation, which being rendered into modern phraseology means that we cannot come into a realization of oneness with God, or hear the whisperings of the divine spirit, by the observance of ceremonials, costly robes, rituals, saints’ days, pomp, and stately worship. Confessions of sin are acknowledgments of weakness. Such affirmations send negative and disturbing thoughts and impressions into the subconscious mind, there to germinate, grow, and bring forth more negative and disturbing thoughts.
What we think, by an inexorable mental law we become. The soul does not purify itself or rise to spiritual heights by thinking of evil, but by thinking of the good, the true, and the beautiful. The growing soul seeks light, health, and strength. It looks within, it comes into touch with the universal soul, it finds joy and serenity and that peace that surpasseth the understanding. Health is not brought to the body by thinking or talking of disease; neither is peace brought to the soul by thinking or talking of sin.
These perverted ideas of worship grow out of the erroneous idea that God and man are separated by a gulf. The theologians said man was weak, indigent, and sinful, and that he must look outward and elsewhere for light, health, and strength, rather than into the depths of his own infinite soul. They clothed God with vanities, like a temporal despot, jealous of His subjects, His own children, and that He will not bestow His benefits until man has pleased Him, either by a worship of craven humility or by that of pomp and splendor. These are the fruits of the theolog- ical conception of man’s fall, original sin, and his separation from God.
In the beginning of the twentieth century, as we look forth into the world and there observe the constant increase of crime and insanity, the depravity, poverty, disease, and wretchedness everywhere apparent, did you ever pause and ask for the cause of these conditions? Why is not man a more nearly perfect being? What accounts for this increase of crime and insanity, now established by statistical and indisputable proofs? The question recurs again and again, in this age of general education and enlightenment. Why is this so?
There must be a cause for these effects. The theologian would say the devil is getting the upper hand of God; that man has ceased to be religious and neglects the religious sanctuary. He would attribute present conditions to the evil that Adam brought into the world, now manifesting itself in men’s lives.
These explanations, or any other we might receive from the theologian, might have sufficed in medieval times, or in an age of theology, when man farmed out his thinking to the spiritual advisers and accepted the commands of ecclesiastical authority, but they will not answer the requirements of an age of thought and reason. The reasoning faculties of man require a more rational solution. The thinking man looks for a deeper cause and cannot bend his mind to such
sophistical explanations. His reason, his experience, and the intuitions of his own soul reveal to him another cause. This is a social problem, engaging the attention of the world and reforms will be of small avail until the true cause is found.
Psychology, science, and enlightenment are fast exposing this, as many other fallacies of the past, supposed to be conclusively established. Nothing is final or conclusive but truth, a fact which some religious institutions seem never to have grasped, or at least never acknowledged. The key to a man’s life is his thought. Thought makes character. Thought develops the soul. Thought makes the man. Thought is expressed in the personality. Thought, either good or bad, is manifested in all men’s lives.
Never did Emerson speak more wisely than when he said: “He who knows that power is in the soul, that he is weak only because he has looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly on his own thought, instantly rights himself, stands in the erect position, works miracles.” Men have looked outward and elsewhere and have depended on the will and direction of others so long for guidance and power, that they have ceased to realize that the seat of power and wisdom is within their own souls. They have not learned that as they throw themselves unhesitatingly on their own thought, on their own infinite resources, they can instantly right themselves and produce corresponding results in their lives. They have forgotten that the Kingdom of God is within themselves.
The character of a man’s thought determines his moral worth. Suggestion is the power that molds thought. Everything in life is a suggestion. Man receives suggestions from environment, from his associates, but most of all from what he has been taught. The quality of his thought is determined by the quality of his teaching. It depends on the mental and spiritual food upon which his mind and soul are nourished.
The modern thinker, not appalled by tradition, is making bold to ask, Has the mental and spiritual food for centuries administered to man been of the right or proper quality? Has it furnished proper nutriment for mind and soul? Has it built character? Has it given man strength to contend with and master the forces with which he is surrounded?
The church has always claimed the prerogative of providing the spiritual education of man. It always begins with the plastic mind of childhood. It has told the child, and continues to tell man in mature life, that he is inherently bad, weak, and a worm in the dust; that sin is his natural state, that he is a fallen being, and has no power within himself, but must look outward and to another for all his help and strength. He has been taught that only as he believes in a vicarious atonement can he hope to escape the consequences of his own sinful nature and tendencies and be reconciled to and find harmony with God; that to find a secure place in a future world is the supreme purpose and aim in life.
The great theme of theology has been, what can man do to be saved, instead of what can he do to make life beautiful, true, and good–a life worthwhile. These theological ideas have been set forth in catechisms prepared for the young, in order that in early life, before reasoning was mature, they might become fixed, settled, and established. That these theological tenets might sink deep into youthful minds, it was made compulsory that they be thoroughly committed to memory. They were also taught that if they believed and repented of their sins and wrong- doings, whatever they might be, they would all be blotted out and remembered against them no more. They were told that they were weak and indigent and that there was only one power to rescue them from their lost condition, and that was in repentance and a belief in the vicarious atonement.
What should be expected of the boy or girl starting out in life burdened with such thoughts and ideas? They are suggestions of weakness and depravity, impressed upon receptive minds, sinking deep into the subconscious, there to germinate, grow, and work throughout the years of their lives. Burdened with such teaching, would you expect the boy or girl to develop character, to be brave, and to be strong to meet the contending forces of life?
At this point we must not lose sight of the great truth that there is an unerring metaphysical law that regulates the force and effect of each thought impressed upon the subconscious mind; that whatever is sown will grow; that each thought and impression is a seed that will bring forth fruit after its kind and will find expression in the life and personality of the individual.
Taught moral weakness, would you look for moral strength? Taught that they were sinful by nature, have you a right to expect goodness? Taught fear, how could they be brave? Taught dependence, should you look for independence, character, and virtue? Instructed that a belief and confession–a certain mental conclusion–would relieve them of the consequences of a misspent life, would set aside the laws of cause and effect, the incentive to an ideal life is removed. The proverb says, Call one a thief and he will steal.
Christian D. Larson says: “The knowledge that counts is not the knowledge of evil, nor facts about the missteps of man, but that knowledge that informs us how man may bring forth the greatness and the beauty that are latent within. The knowledge that counts is not the knowledge that tells us how to avoid the wrong, but how to increase the power of the good.”
Personal irresponsibility cannot produce spiritual and moral character. It does not fit men for the conflicts and storms of life. Only as responsibility rests upon a man, can he build on a foundation of strength and worth. Man is ever a builder, but only as he trusts his own inherent forces–the unbounded resources of his own soul–will he build a spiritual temple that can withstand the winds and storms of life.
There exist in man two opposite forces or principles, as in all the manifested works of Nature. The one has positive, constructive, and upbuilding tendencies; the other negative, destructive, and tearing-down tendencies. The one constructs and builds, and is the basis of all life and growth; the other dissolves, disintegrates, and tears down, and is the cause of all weakness, dissolution, and decay. The one is active and directs the life-forces to build; the other is inactive and negatives the same forces. The one produces unfoldment, development, and growth; the other, arrested strength, stagnation, and decay.
We see the workings of these forces and principles throughout all the operations and processes of Nature. She has her actions and reactions, she has her springtime and summer of life and growth, and her autumn and winter of death and decay. She has her season for the bursting bud, also for the falling leaf. Nature symbolizes these two principles in colors. Green symbolizes life and growth, the yellow betokens death and decay.
Nature has endowed man with a will that must determine by which of these contending principles he will be controlled, whether the positive and the building or the negative and the unbuilding. Whatever strengthens the will is constructive, whatever weakens it is destructive. Whatever prompts man to step forward and upward is constructive; whatever induces him to step backward is destructive. Whatever points man toward self-mastery is constructive; whatever tempts him to submit to his baser nature is destructive. Whatever increases self-reliance and confidence in his own powers is constructive, whatever takes away self-reliance and causes man to rely on others is destructive. Whatever produces in man the consciousness of the indomitable forces of his own soul is constructive; whatever inspires man with a sense of weakness and inferiority is negative and destructive. Whatever establishes a spiritual paternalism over man’s soul to be exercised by others weakens his moral fiber and makes him a slave of external forces.
The instruction given to man, whether religious or secular, is valuable or otherwise according as it strengthens the one or the other of these contending principles. Education that augments the power of the will is constructive; that which weakens it is destructive. Applying this test, it is plainly apparent that the greater part of man’s religious instruction has had the direct tendency and effect of weakening and destroying his power of will. His will-power being weakened, he has become defenseless and dependent upon external influences, the victim of superstition and the slave of fear. Practically the entire scope of man’s religious teaching has been negative in character. Fear, weakness, and moral depravity have been the ideals set before man. Even the Ten Commandments are mostly negative and place before man’s mind the evils they would have him refrain from.
The more thoughtful of the orthodox clergy are now outspoken in their declarations that we cannot make men good and strong, that character cannot be developed, by repeating to them the negative commandments. The lawgiver from whom Moses borrowed the Ten Command- ments might have told man to be honest, instead of not to steal. When a man is honest, he does not want to steal. When kindness is in a man’s heart, he does not want to murder. What the world needs is more positive teaching and less negative. Men and children alike are not made good and strong by don’ts. Negative rules of conduct do not build character, do not develop manhood and womanhood. These qualities are built up only as the latent divinity and forces
within are called forth into expression and activity.
But, someone says, your characterization of the quality of theological instruction is not borne out by observable and recognized results. Look at the vast array of noble men and women living model religious lives, revealing the sublimest examples of manhood and womanhood, who have received the religious instruction you now criticise. Their lives are a standing protest against what you say.
True; every religion is productive of men and women of the highest religious types. They sometimes rise above their theological training; they listen to and obey the intuitions of their own souls. The highest spiritual development is expressed in their lives, in spite of their theological teaching and not because of it. Then, too, the majority of men and women grow away from the fetters and creeds and limited theological conceptions, into higher and more rational planes of spiritual thought. They rise above the narrower confines of thought, into more exalted fields of spiritual endeavor.
But the real question is, what is the tendency of a system of teaching that impresses on man’s mind a sense of weakness, inferiority, and a debased and wicked nature? Theology claims much credit for what has been done in the world since the advent of the Christian era, to which it is not entitled. There is no desire to minimize in the least the great work that has been done for man under the banners of the Christian church. It is true Christian nations have set the highest ideals before the world; we must not forget also that they have at times set the lowest. If man has established a fair standard of civilization, we must not forget also the relentless religious wars fought in the name of the Prince of Peace.
Civilization was not even a name when religious institutions controlled the lives and welfare of men. Whenever these institutions were supreme in power, they were ever the faithful allies of tyrannies and despotism. They remain so today in certain countries of the world. Man has made social and civil advancement only as he broke away from the restraining influences of these institutions, only as he exercised independent thought and action, only as he felt the spirit of democracy.
The Christian nations have had the highest ideals before them by which to direct their work. When divested of every vestige of theology, the life and simple utterances of Jesus have been the great example before the eyes of man. With a perfect understanding of the laws of life, he presented the completest ideal and type of manhood the world has yet observed. For nearly two thousand years that ideal has stood before man as the most potent influence in molding his life, in spite of the hindrances and obstructions thrown around it by the ingenious subtleties of the theologians. They have obscured the ideal by theological perplexities and limitations. They raised him to a pinnacle to which man could not hope to aspire. They separated him from man by a gulf so wide that man could never hope to bridge it.
Notwithstanding all this, man has been led by that great ideal into a truer realization of the brotherhood of man and to a higher and better conception of life and his relation to God. Theologians told man to worship Jesus, rather than to follow his footsteps. Jesus directed man what to do; they told him what to believe.
The purpose of theology was to make man religious by fear. It labeled him with the mark of an outcast. It held before him the threat of eternal punishment, as the motive for a religious life. It prescribed a belief and repentance as the antidote for what they termed man’s lost condition. Fear never developed virtue or established moral character. Fear has ever been the fruitful mother of man’s woes and misfortunes. Fear retards all growth, whether physical, mental, or spiritual. Science and experiment reveal it as a source of physical weakness and as the prolific mother of disease. It destroys the power of will; it is the enemy of progress. It chills every worthy and benevolent impulse in man.
Someone asks, Do you believe in the atonement? Not in a vicarious atonement. I would feel myself debased to cast my sins and offenses on that Gentle Soul who never had a thought but love and kindness for man. If I believed in the vicarious atonement, I would have to believe in the separation of God and man, which everyone who has caught the inner vision knows is only a fable, and a superstition. God is universal, God is omnipresent, God dwells in man, God was never separated from man except in belief–except as he follows the false light set up by an Augustine, to make a vicarious atonement possible.
Do I believe in an atonement? Yes, in a real atonement; each soul has its own atonement. It must be purged of the dross and superfluities of life, before it can become pure. The atonement is finished when the soul has come into harmony and unity with God. Each soul must purify itself. The law of the soul recognizes no proxies.
Every individual must obey the eternal mandates of his own being, the voice of his own masterful soul, that ever speaks to him who listens. Man must walk by that light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world, the light of his own soul. It leads man by a divine path, and at each step the light grows clearer until in the fullness of time he shall stand forth in the radiant splendor of eternal truth.
Chapter X
ETHICS OF NEW THOUGHT
| “Truth is the one reality in the universe, the Inward Harmony, the Perfect Justice, the eternal Love. Nothing can be added to it, nor taken from it. It does not depend upon any man, but all men depend upon it.”– SWAMI VIVEKENANDA |
THE supreme purpose of religion is to teach man to live a normal life. Ethics and religion cannot be divorced; they go hand in hand, they supplement each other.
The best religion teaches the purest ethics. Only from true religion can pure ethics flow. The religion that is not ethical, that does not teach the highest morality, is not true. When we discover a religion of absolute truth, we shall possess a code of perfect ethics.
Truth is constructive; error is destructive. Truth alone is ethical; error is unethical. Truth expands the mind; error contracts it. Truth alone prepares the mind for the reception of more truth; error, however innocently espoused, unfits it for the reception of truth. Error repels truth; it invites more error. Truth broadens the mind, error confuses and weakens it. Truth builds moral character; error tears it down. Truth emancipates man; error enslaves him.
Frank Crane observes that “There is only one thing in the universe of men and near
men that is always good, full of health, soundness, and peace, whose apples are of the substance of the soul and whose leaves are for the healing of the nations, and that thing is truth.” Theosophy has well said there is no religion higher than truth. Another has said, “Truth is the property of God; the pursuit of truth is what belongs to man.” Goethe wrote: “It is not necessary that the truth be made clear; it is enough if it hovers about us like a spirit and produces harmony; if it vibrates through the air, gravely and kindly, like the sound of a bell.”
If the one great fact could be impressed upon men, that they can only come into harmony with God as they approach truth, and the nearer they get to truth the closer they come to God, it would be of more value than all the theological dogmas spoken since time began. This one fact would liberate the human mind and send it on its joyous discovery for the greatest of all treasures man can possess, truth. It would emancipate man from fixed and narrow beliefs, which are the real hindrances to the discovery of more truth. It would prepare his mind for the reception and assimilation of larger ideas and a broader understanding, the first steps toward true progress and real life.
When the theological mists and fogs which for so many centuries have hung like a pall over the race are dissolved and brushed aside, we find that real religion is the living a life. Religion that is kept for speculation and theorizing and not for use is not religion. Religion is for use alone, and no man has any that he does not use. That religion is best that fashions men’s lives by the highest ideals of truth, justice, and morality–that inspires the mind to reach out for still higher conceptions of truth.
To lead man into an honest, industrious, moral, and unselfish life, to bring him into harmony with the laws of Nature, to build character, to develop his spiritual nature, is the supreme end of all philosophies and all religions. Nature and truth are the basis of man”s life, and on them man and all his interests, relations, and concerns come to rest as certainly as the dawn follows the night.
It is his function and office properly to interpret the symbols of Nature and open and prepare the mind for the reception and assimilation of truth.
Whatever leads man away from selfish thoughts, whatever elevates his mental and spiritual understanding, whatever builds character, mental and moral, whatever inspires the desire for knowledge, a longing for truth is in the truest sense religious and in the highest degree ethical. The mind recoils from the thought that a creed or a dogma that professes to relieve the individual from personal responsibility can have any ethical or moral value. Nature wisely placed us under responsibility; whatever, therefore, seeks to evade its just consequences is immoral.
Likewise the mind shrinks from the idea that a particular belief will determine man’s future welfare and eternal destiny. Beliefs are important only as they have constructive tendencies, only as they mold character, only as they fit men to grapple the real things of life and lead them to higher ideals and more exalted ethical standards. It is true that positive beliefs, or more properly faith, are essential to all growth and development. The belief in one’s self, in our own illimitable possibilities and the universal law of cause and effect, the justice of the universe, the good in other men, are essential to all true progress and the symmetrical development of man. “The fearful unbelief is the unbelief in myself,” says Carlyle.
For fifteen hundred years or more theology has dealt in negative beliefs, the belief in man’s insignificance, his weakness, and inability to build his own character and now as the light of reason reveals man to himself and the potentialities of his own soul, they lament the decay and loss of those beliefs. Their contracted vision sees only darkness in the spiritual sky. Men of thought see growth and development, as such beliefs fade and disappear.
The masters of thought in all ages taught man how to live, how to act, not what to believe. They were content to give man rules for living, not formulas for believing. The Gentle Seer of Galilee laid down few rules for man’s guidance, but they all related to conduct. The essence of his teaching was realization, not belief. His directions were so simple, so few that men have over- looked them or said they were impracticable in a practical age. His whole life and career was one grand protest against formulas and rules. He was the greatest heretic of his age. Were he to return to earth again, the present church would so brand him. The essence of all his teaching is embraced in the one incomparable statement, Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them. How simple, how fair, how equitable, how explicit and easily understood. There was never a truer expression or completer definition of the term justice.
Did you ever stop to think what cruelty, wrongs, and bloodshed would have been spared the race if this simple rule had been observed, even by those who pretended to be the followers of him who gave it to the world? In modern times we call this rule the square deal. A gleam of its wisdom, utility, and justice is beginning to penetrate men’s minds. It is not only influencing the minds of individuals, but also governments, states, and political institutions. It is the basis of all movements to abolish war and bring about international peace. It is the foundation of all true diplomacy. Nations, as individuals, see that it does not pay to violate this rule of justice. “The dice of God are loaded.”
Selfishness is the fruitful cause of all vicious and culpable conduct. Jesus undertook to tell man how to eradicate selfishness and remove it from his life. His antidote was expressed in one word, Love. Love your enemies, return good for evil, was the acme of his thought. “Self is the only prison that can ever bind the soul; Truth is the only angel that can bid the gates unroll. ”
Never was a completer code of ethics given to man than in the Sermon on the Mount. Its principles are true to the laws of Nature. Their bare statement is a demonstration of their truth, to him who thinks and reasons. Their truth and wisdom intuitively flash upon the soul. They embody the wisest rules possible, for the solution of all life’s problems. They give man the key to a life of honest purpose, a life of success, and a life of power.
The Golden Rule is the best business maxim the world has yet observed. It had been declared for ages before and spoken in many languages and dialects, but Jesus impressed it anew upon the world. Underneath all the simple rules and as a basis upon which they all rest, is the universal law of cause and effect; as is the cause, so is the result. If we rob another, we rob ourselves; we rob ourselves of our own character and we have nothing left. “Every wrong is redressed in silence and certainty.” When men follow these precepts, they find peace, plenty, and power. When they violate them, they experience the opposite results. When they practice honesty to their fellow-man and are true to themselves, they have reached the highest ethical standards.
When Jesus said: “Ye have heard that it hath been said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, but I say unto you, resist not evil,” he uttered a solemn protest against the law of retaliation, although it had been taught by no less a personage than Moses whom the world calls the great Law Giver. Understanding the nature of man, Jesus saw that such a law was not founded on the principles of morality and could not lead to the betterment of man. The Sermon on the Mount is a standing protest against much of the code of Moses. Man is not made better by the practice of cruelty or the exhibition of revenge. Morality is not thrust into the soul on the point of a sword. Man can only be made moral as he changes his thought. Until his thoughts are moral, his life cannot be moral.
Yet the world did not believe Jesus, nor do his professed followers believe him even to this day. Our Christian civilizations still follow the law of Moses and reject the teachings of Jesus. Society still persists in murdering men, because they murdered other men. We still practice the law of retaliation, the lex talionis, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
When did the orthodox churches whether Greek Catholic, Roman Catholic, or Protestant, ever enter a protest against the horrible spectacle of capital punishment? We assume the right of taking human life, which God only can give. Society, in sending the homicide to the gallows or the electric chair, effectually declares him unfit to live in their commonwealth, although deprived of citizenship and confined behind bars at hard labor for the remainder of his life; yet it always implores God to accept him in heaven, restored to his liberty and citizenship, that he may there become a resident and permanent inhabitant. Society says he is not good enough for us, but recommends him as worthy of a place in heaven.
What would Jesus say to the proposition of hanging or electrocuting men, who said to the woman, “Go, sin no more?” Could you conceive of him installing an electric chair, or adjusting the hangman’s noose? You say this is blasphemy. Is it? Jesus never shrank from the perform- ance of a duty. He would not enact a law that he was not willing to execute.
Has any religious convention or conference or synod or any of their branches ever raised a voice against capital punishment? The horrible tragedies are still enacted, except where certain American States, realizing the folly and atrocity of the system, have abolished it by legislative enactment. At any time during the last thousand years the Church could have caused its abolishment, had it so desired, but the Church loved Moses more than Jesus. We read of six thousand executions in one nation during one administration, although the Church and State are united. It is only as men have broken away from Church domination and become independent, that they have become charitable enough to abolish the death penalty even for larceny.
Our whole system of criminal law is based on the law of Moses. We follow Moses instead of Jesus. Their utterances cannot both be true. If the law of retaliation is right, because Moses said so, why not follow all his laws? Why not sacrifice with burnt offerings? For did not Moses so direct? When our forefathers killed witches, they had the sanction of Moses and no doubt depended upon him for authority. It has been said that we are governed by the dead. We are not only governed by the dead, but by those who have been dead four thousand years.
As long as law sanctions a system of retaliation, cruelty, and hate, and practices methods of getting even, what kind of ideals is it setting before the individual? Must the individual rise above the standards and practices set by government? There cannot be two standards of right, one for society or the State and one for the individual. The law should set an ideal of righteousness for the individual to work to, not one that would drag him down to lower levels.
Jesus taught the supreme law of kindness. He looked into the depths of man’s soul and
understood every law of his nature. The wisdom of his rules can be demonstrated constantly in man’s everyday experience. Kindness is the only solvent for hatred; in all Nature like attracts like. Men’s attitude to us will be what our attitude is to them. If we send out kind thoughts, we attract kind thoughts; if we send out malicious thoughts, they return to us as malicious thoughts. Honest men attract honest men, and suspicious and dishonest men attract their own kind.
What we sow, that we reap. We are governed by laws fixed and eternal. We are never better than our thoughts nor grow beyond our ideals. Our conditions are measured by our mental and spiritual images. We get what belongs to us. We attract that upon which our thoughts dwell. If we commit crime, it is because we first admitted criminal thoughts into our minds. The only reform is to reform the mind.
Some one asks, How can I love my enemy? The answer is simple enough, the accomplishment is easy. If you banish hatred and malice from your mind, if you treat other men as you want them to treat you, you will have no enemies. If you have enemies, blame yourself, you made them.
The great lesson for man’s consideration is that we are under the control of a simple yet inexorable law. We get what we send. We govern not only the thoughts we send forth, but those that return to us as well. Our argosies come homeward bound, laden with the same kind of merchandise as on their outward voyage. John Burroughs sang, “My own shall come to me.” Henry Victor Morgan has beautifully and truthfully written:
| “There comes to my heart more and more This infinite spirit of trust, That in spite of all earth-seeming wrongs, The universe ever is just. “No matter how heavy the load, nor how bitter |
We attract the people who are attracting us. If we are worthy, we count the worthy as our friends. There is also a law of repulsion. We repel what we are not. The honest man does not attract the criminal, nor vice versa. Men foolishly think that the law of giving as taught by Jesus related only to money or tangible property. As usual they misunderstood his meaning. The law as stated by him embraces everything man has to give, whether money, tangible property, kindness, sympathy, or charity. It likewise includes the opposite, hatred, malice, envy, and every evil thought the mind sends forth.
Give and ye shall receive. How simple the statement, yet how profound the law! How lightly has the world valued this great utterance. Nature is evenly balanced. We cannot disturb her equilibrium, but we can fail to find our own. If men value us, it is because they see value in us. We weigh ourselves; we judge our own qualities and defects; we record the verdict, other men read it.
The ethical lesson of greatest value is this, that man is under the dominion of law, that he cannot escape the consequences of his own thoughts and acts. Every unworthy deed brings its own punishment, and likewise every worthy act has its own reward. Someone has wisely said, we are punished not for our sins, but by our sins. Pindar sang: “The Gods themselves cannot annihilate the action that is done.” Most creeds have mistakenly taught man that he is punished by some being outside himself, sometimes a capricious and changeable being. They have devised ingenious methods by which they thought he might escape the consequences of his own acts. Such teaching is unethical and cannot produce high moral results.
Man is both the actor and the judge. He must judge himself. He cannot escape responsibility. Responsibility is the foundation of all moral teaching. Without it man cannot develop character, and without character there cannot be any high order of morality. These are self-evident truths. This is the only creed worthwhile. It gives strength for worthy living; it impels us to a realization of our best and leads to honest thinking, honest deeds and honest lives.
Since we can never get beyond the law of cause and effect, and because absolute truth is the highest ethical standard, New Thought has one supreme test for all teaching. It asks one question, Is it true? It applies the pragmatic test to all creeds, dogmas, religions, philosophies, cults, and systems of thought. Pragmatic philosophy does not accept creeds, dogmas, religions, or theories because they are old and claim the sanction of authority, nor does it reject them because they are new. Indeed, it is difficult to find religious or philosophic thought that is new. Much of modern thought is older than the creeds and is supported by authority equally as authentic.
Pragmatism is free from all bias and all prejudice. It weighs all claims in equally balanced scales; it hears all the evidence, it listens to all arguments; it is moved neither by fear, nor flattery, and then renders a just and true verdict. It is an impartial arbiter. It accepts all creeds, dogmas, and philosophies on their merits, at their intrinsic worth.
To all institutions and their creeds and philosophies pragmatism says, the burden of proof is upon you. You cannot rely on authority, tradition, age or precedents, but you must make good. Are you able to show that you make better men and women? Do you give men something worthy and uplifting to carry into their daily tasks? Do you work well in everyday affairs? Do you help men to solve properly and wisely their life problems? Do you set before them the highest motive for honest, upright, and moral living? Do you place before men the highest ethical standards? Do you reveal to man the limitless powers within himself? Do you make plain that he must reap what he has sown, and must accept the consequences of his own thoughts and deeds?
If your religion, your philosophy, creeds or dogmas unequivocally comply with these tests, pragmatism will accept them as true. If they do not, it will reject them as untrue; if your theories are not true, they are not ethical. If they do not come up to the standard of truth, you have no right to impose them upon man. Make good or quit talking. No religion should be encouraged which does not make man strong, that does not constructively develop his best qualities and point him unerringly to the highest standards.
Pragmatic philosophy demands of all religions three qualities–truth, utility, and morality. New Thought invites these tests to all its teachings, to which all philosophies, religions, dogmas, and creeds must ultimately submit their claims. What is true of men is also true of religions, philos- ophies, and creeds, they must be known by their fruits, by their effects upon the lives and characters of men.
The final test of a creed is not whether it has remained unchanged for hundreds of years, but whether it is giving men and women strength to resist the temptations of life and build unassail- able moral characters. This is a utilitarian age in more senses than one. The religions of today must bow to this requirement. Whatever is unethical, whatever tends to weaken the moral fiber of man, whatever would relieve the individual of responsibility, whatever belittles man, whatever seeks to sap the foundation of the law of cause and effect, finds no place in the code and philosophy of New Thought.
New Thought proclaims a religion for today, a religion of life, a constructive religion, a religion founded on the highest principles of morality, a religion that brings man into harmony with Nature and God.
Man cannot be brought to practice virtue, or a moral life, either by fear or cruelty, but only as his thought comes into harmony with that kind of a life, only as his desires prompt him so to live it. Whatever awakens in him the consciousness of his own divinity, and the possibilities of greater and better things, whatever leads him on the upward path, is a long step toward a normal moral and religious life. When that consciousness takes hold of man, he becomes moral and religious by choice, he lives that kind of a life because it is attractive, because it leads him to better things, because it brings him peace and plenty and into harmony with God.
Chapter XI
VOICES OF NEW THOUGHT
| “All Nature is but art, unknown to thee; All chance. direction, which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony, not understood, All partial evil, universal good.” |
FOR centuries men have contended and argued about evil and its influence on the lives of men. They have spent their energies and thought in speculating on the nature of evil and trying to discover its origin. They have characterized it as a separate and independent force, insidiously operating on men’s lives and leading them on a downward path. They have permitted their imagination to clothe Satan with human and personal characteristics, and have accorded him a position of active force and power in the moral government of the world. They have painted him as an active agent, possessing fiendish instincts actively employed for man’s destruction, gloating over the victims he leads away to their eternal downfall. In their unrestrained imagin- ation, fanned by the fires of ignorance and superstition, they have given him powers second only to those of God. The history of the Christian Church has been the history of Satan. Borrowing the idea of evil from ancient pagan superstitions, they have cultivated and fostered it, magnified and strengthened it, until in the delirium of their superstition they represented it as incarnated in a being active, powerful, and possessing all the destructive instincts of a demon.
While they thus exalted Satan to this high station, they at the same time told man he was weak, unworthy, sinful by nature, and unable to cope with Satan or resist his temptations. Theology somehow never brought peace and good cheer to the heart of man. It has hung like a somber pall over his life and destiny. It has shut out the sunshine of joy, beauty, and gladness. Man has tolerated it through fear alone, not because he loved or respected it. It has always wandered through the valley of the shadow of death, rather than over the hills of light and beauty. it has cast its darkened shadow over life’s pathway, rather than to illumine it with the rays of joy and hope.
Theologians thought of evil, talked of evil, and meditated upon evil, until it had a fixed abode in the human imagination. They dwelt upon evil more than upon the good. They were not aware that they were giving strength to the supposed enemy against which they inveighed and contended, The slogan has ever been how to fight the devil, how to overcome evil. They said good could only prevail when Satan had been dethroned and evil had been put underfoot and demolished.
The theologian always approached the problem from the wrong angle. He preferred to be a destroyer rather than a builder, and as a consequence he not only did not destroy evil, but he gave it added force and power by magnifying its importance and exalting its standard. He gave his thought to evil till it became a habit. He unconsciously grew into the likeness of the so-called monster he sought to destroy. Even Martin Luther could follow this phantom, until in his frenzy he could hurl an inkstand at an imaginary fiend. He surpassed even the imagination of the Catholic Church in clothing Satan with importance.
The conceptions of New Thought, regarding evil and its influence on men’s lives, are widely at variance with these theological views. Its estimate of evil is less exalted than that accorded to it by theology. It recognizes evil only as the absence of good and as possessing only negative qualities, functions, and powers. It does not regard evil as a positive force or entity, but, more properly speaking, a misdirected energy, force, or power, good of itself. It may be said to be an improper use of a power that is in itself good. In fact all forces, powers, and energies in the universe are created for good purposes and are good in themselves. It is only as they are improperly applied and misdirected that they become evil or other than good. “Evil is merely privative, not absolute; it is like cold, which is the absence of heat.”
The principle may be illustrated as follows: The purpose of each of two individuals is ultimate happiness. One seeks it by energy, honest effort, and self-denial, resulting in a prosperous, contented, and peaceful life. The other has a different plan in life. He seeks the same end, but by the employment of his wits, tricks, self-indulgence, and intemperance, ending in misery, want, and crime. The same energy was employed in both instances. One was directed wisely and
accomplished certain positive results; the other was directed unwisely, with different conseq- uences. The wrong was not in the energy, but in the manner in which it was employed.
The best method of fighting evil is to do good. The great problem is how to direct wisely the energies and forces of the world, not how to fight the negative we call evil. When we can displace negative by constructive thoughts, evil by good thoughts, to that extent can we eliminate evil. By indirection only can we overcome evil.
When Jesus said, Resist not evil, he gave scientific advice, he spoke a universal truth, he expressed the wisdom of the ages. He also laid down another law of equal importance, the law of agreement; agree with thine adversary quickly, a law based on the same underlying principle. He understood the laws of life, the laws of mind, that man can accomplish nothing by fighting negatives and shadows, but can produce results only as he constructs and builds and thereby displaces negatives and shadows.
Man has been taught to think of a devil and fear a devil, until he has a fixed place in his imagination, The theological teaching has always impressed the subconscious mind with the imaginative force and power of evil. The theologian, ignorant of the principles of psychology and the laws of mind, has impressed these negative thoughts upon the subconscious mind until the thought of evil, its force and power, has become the settled habit of man.
The mind gives life to conditions to which consciousness is directed. If we sow negative thoughts in the subconscious, we shall reap negative results. When we consciously dwell upon the subject of evil, we give more life and power to evil. We grow into the likeness of that we think of most. We are shaped in the molds of our own thought. We take on the character of that which most engages our attention. This is a scientific fact, a basic law, a vital truth in the study of these problems. It is therefore evident that any system of thought or training that gives the least attention possible to evil and as much attention as possible to good, will directly lessen every form of evil and increase every form of good.
The best way to overcome the devil is to ignore him and do good; he will then become good himself. We cannot expel darkness from a room by fighting it, but only by letting in more light. Light is the only solvent for darkness; good is the only solvent for evil.
Emerson says: “Nerve us with incessant affirmations. Don’t bark against the bad, but chant the beauties of the good.”
Except as the individual, either actively or passively, invites and entertains them, evil thoughts, so-called malicious animal magnetism, and similar imaginary powers and influences find no place or recognition in the code of New Thought. To the man or woman of character, of positive and normal thoughts, they are as harmless as the rustling of leaves on another continent. It is only the man of flabby mind, with negative and passive characteristics and qualities, that can be affected thereby. The world does not show marked advancement in thought by changing the name of devil to malicious animal magnetism. Whether we continue to impress the subconscious with the existence of a force or entity called the devil or malicious animal magnetism can make little difference; the weakening effects are the same.
When man has learned that he has the power within himself successfully to resist all external influences, all imaginary and evil forces, he will become a free man and cease to be a slave to all such visionary forces. Man can only be free as he eliminates and banishes the last vestige of fear from his mind. Then only will his soul expand, then only will he grow and develop into the stature of true manhood.
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OPTIMISM
New Thought teaches a sane and healthy optimism. Optimism produces positive effects on character and a larger outlook on life. Pessimism dwarfs the soul and unfits a man for the larger vision necessary for a successful and useful life.
As we take a practical survey of life and men in their various walks, we observe as a rule that optimistic and cheerful men succeed, and by the same token gloomy and pessimistic men end in failure. The optimist brings good cheer, joy, and happiness to others; the pessimist carries gloom and sadness wherever he goes. The one breathes joy and health from the atmosphere and sees harmony and peace in all created things. Like a spendthrift he tosses that joy to others on his way through life. To the other, Nature is a blank, he breathes discontent, even the sky is filled with somber clouds. He hears no music, he carries no message of cheer or comfort to his fellow-man. The one attracts, the other repels.
One universal law holds good. He that looks for joy and gladness will find it. He develops those qualities in his own soul thereby attracting those of a kindred nature. The pessimist obeys the same law; his soul invites only its own kind.
True optimism is not generally understood. The true optimist is not one who sees only the sunshine at every step in life. He is not one who refuses to see that all things are not good, and hopes for the best under all-circumstances. But the true optimist is one who sees the situation from all practical standpoints. He sees imperfect conditions when they exist, but recognizes that inexhaustible power within himself properly to direct the seeming wrong and bring success out of apparent failure. He lives in mental sunshine because he has learned how to make things right. He has faith in his own inherent forces to accomplish desired results. He does not say all is good, when it is not good. He says, if things are not right, I will make them so. He does not deceive himself. The true optimist has a supreme faith coupled with untiring energy. He does his best, and dwells in the happy consciousness that his own will come to him.
The optimist looks for the divinity in man, the beauty in life, and worships the omnipresent, indwelling God. Every man has divine qualities, and he who seeks them will be rewarded. The qualities in every man attract like qualities in other men. If they are good, they attract the good. If bad, they attract the bad. Man silently radiates the good to his fellow-man. As man speaks to men through the soul, he awakens the same qualities and instincts in their souls. The divine responds to the divine.
The conscious influence of man is small; the unconscious power, the inner light, that silently radiates to other men, is the real influence in life. Men receive what they give. If they give value, value is recognized and given in return. It is the law of giving. Men find their true place by what they express in their own lives, by the qualities they carry to their daily tasks.
Our attitude toward life determines what we get out of it. The world catches our smile and in return smiles back. If we carry frowns to the world, we are compensated with frowns. The optimist fills life with mental sunshine, he illumines the world with gladness and joy. He carries good cheer to the lives of his fellows, he radiates hope and peace from his life and personality. His presence stills the passions of men. He turns the discords of life into music. He unconsci- ously catches the rhythm of the universe, he moves with its eternal currents, he keeps step with the vibrations of Nature, he breathes hope, he finds the peace and harmonies of life. When he passes over the great divide, he leaves the world a little better and life a little sweeter.
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DEVELOPMENT OF MAN
The chief function of New Thought is to show the way for the symmetrical development of man. The riddle of the universe would be of no value, except as we apply the knowledge thereby gained in the further development of ourselves. Knowledge is but the plaything of man, until it is utilized for his advancement. It gives value only as it is used.
The results of science are beneficial only as they help man in his upward struggle. What is philosophy until it is distilled into wisdom and used to lead out and develop the higher and better qualities of man? Religion is not normal, that does not confer upon man a normal and symmetrical development. A religion that stops with a creed does not meet the important and essential wants of man. Man is a triune being and requires a three-fold development–physical, mental, and spiritual. Until he is so developed, he is abnormal. Until he is developed physically, mentally, and spiritually, he lacks some of the essential qualities of a well-rounded man.
For some reason the Christian Church, at least after it was Latinized under the Roman hierarchy in the fifth century, never practiced the art of healing. It claimed apostolic succession; that is, that it divinely inherited the power possessed by the Apostles, which was handed over to them by Jesus. Yet it never gave to the world an exhibition of its ability to heal, a gift freely exercised by Jesus and the Apostles, according to the recorded accounts in the gospels.
There may have been a controlling reason for this entire lack of effort in manifesting any efficiency in the art of healing. Making claim to powers of healing was a different proposition from the other prerogatives asserted by the Church. It was dangerous to assert its power to heal unless it had the ability to make good. The claim, if fraudulent, could be easily detected. Men might measure results from observation.
It was easy enough to assert the right of Apostolic succession, the separation of God and man, authority of Church, priestly mediation, election, and a host of other dogmas, for the truth of such declarations could not be weighed or measured by tangible evidence. No risk, therefore, was incurred in laying claim to their truth. They could be established as doctrines of the Church by an appeal to ignorance and superstition, under the mighty weapon of ecclesiastical authority. But it was a dangerous assumption of power to assert the ability to heal, because unless it was made good and demonstrated, the false claim would be exploded. Assertion without fulfillment would bring derision and ridicule. Because the Church had departed from the teachings of Jesus and had become a commercialized institution, it had lost the power to heal and dared not make such a claim to the world. The Church confined its efforts to a blind struggle for spiritual development alone. Apparently it did not see the necessity for a symmetrical development, to round out and build the perfect man.
Man requires a perfect body as a suitable temple for the mind and a fit tabernacle for the soul. Intellect, soul, and body are mutually dependent. Healthful thoughts produce healthful impressions on the subconscious, which in turn give expression in healthful bodies. The conscious mind impresses health, the subconscious expresses it. Mind and soul cannot properly express themselves in an imperfect body. The physical man, the intellectual man, the spiritual man, constitute the normally developed man. He alone is the perfect instrument of expression.
Intellect is imperfect until it finds its expression in feeling, which the soul only can supply. Mind does not reach its zenith until it has touched the universal, until the conscious mind has come into touch with the subconscious. The soul only can give life and permanency to the utterances of mind. What the soul speaks, lives. What the intellect expresses, untouched by the soul, is only for a day. The one supplements the other. Thought is without power until it is touched by an emotion. Emotion vitalizes thought, it gives it form, power, beauty, and expression. The message touched by the soul can be read and reread, and always new beauties and new meanings are revealed. The man that speaks from his soul is heard. The man that writes from his soul is read. These are the immortals in the world of thought. These are the masters whose thoughts survive the ages.
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A RELIGION FOR TODAY
New Thought is not a religion of yesterday, or a philosophy for tomorrow but for today. It is a religion of life and for man’s use. Its purpose is to teach man how to live now, and to find the highest and best in life. Our yesterdays are gone, our today is here. “Yesterday is only a dream, tomorrow is only a vision.” We cannot control the past, but we can perform the duties of today. Today will be the past tomorrow, we can only make it glorious by acting well today.
| “Away with the flimsy idea, that life with a past is attended, There’s Now–only Now, and no Past–there’s never a past, it has ended. Away with its obsolete story and all of its yesterday’s sorrow; There’s only today, almost gone, and in front of today stands tomorrow.” EUGENE F. WARE. |
One trouble with the world is that we have been living under religions of bygone ages, instead of religions for today. Each generation will practice a religion suited to the spirit of its own age. The narrow and intolerant religions of the past could not flourish today.
Say what you will, there are more charity, kindness, and love in the world today than in any age that produced any of the religions of the past. This change has been effected, not so much from religious teaching, but as the result of the spirit of democracy and enlightenment. All the religions of the past partook of the age that produced them. The God men worshiped was a reflection of themselves. Hence the God men worship today is unlike the God of the old theologians. The present day religious teachers make the mistake of trying to make modern thought fit their religions, instead of making their religion fit modern thought.
Men will not worship a cruel God, when the world is ruled by the spirit of peace. When men conceive of the universe as under the rule and dominion of universal and permanent laws, they cannot give reverence to a jealous and capricious God. Whoever feels the divine, like an enveloping presence, cannot adore an absentee God.
We read many learned discourses about the decline of church attendance and the reasons therefor, but has the true reason ever been stated? When the Church utters thoughts suited to this age, its sanctuaries will be crowded. Men are as hungry today for spiritual food as ever in the past. They object to the quality that is set before them.
We hear much about standing by the religion of our fathers, and books have been written on that subject. It is said if their religion was good enough for them, it is good enough for us. That argument is based on sentiment alone. If we had always observed that principle, we should still be living in the stone age and worshiping stone idols. We honor our fathers for the virtues they developed under their religions. They walked by the best light they had. Must we walk by the same light, when we have found a better? Who knows but they would be traveling by the new light, were they here? Jesus broke away from the God of his fathers. as every great and illumined soul has done.
We have heard nothing but the history of revelation to other men and those only who lived in the dim ages of the past. We want a revelation of God to us, instead of the history of a revelation to others. Why should not God reveal Himself today as much as in any age of the past? Has the gulf widened between man and God, so that God refuses longer to reveal Himself? Are there none worthy to receive the divine message?
Men still need light. Why should God cease to bestow it? God reveals Himself to man the same as in the ages past. He speaks through the same symbols as He ever did. If we read them aright, we must see and know God. If we listen, we can hear the still small voice.
The outer forms of creation reveal the inward and spiritual. Emerson, as he cast his eyes over the landscape bathed in the mellow rays of the setting sun, was heard to say, “God, all is God.” Life was meant to be and can be made a beautiful and grand reality. To those who have caught the inner visions of the soul, Nature forever yields a message of light, a panorama of joy and gladness. Listen to the evidence of Helen Keller, who sees only with the inner vision: “The splendor of the sunset my friends gaze at across the purpling hills is wonderful, but the sunset of my inner vision brings purer delight, because it is the worshipful blending of all the beauty that we have known or desired.”
To him who sees, the stars of heaven are envoys of beauty, the landscape is a picture no artist can paint. The spheres circling in their orbits and the return of the seasons bespeak divine order and wisdom. There is ever a music of Nature to the listening ear. When man’s inner and outward senses are harmonized, he sees sublimity in all Nature, he hears the voice of God, “The foot turns up no barren clod, But hath upon it written God.”
The great secret of life is to learn to live in harmony with Nature’s laws. The laws of Nature are the laws of God, and are for man’s guidance and direction; for is not man a part of Nature? These laws have their punishments and rewards, as unfailing as the tides of the sea. The man who disobeys them finds existence a disappointment and life a failure. The man who obeys them finds life a satisfying reality, a life worthwhile. His world is filled with harmony and satisfaction. When a man has become conscious of this truth, and learns to look to the light, the intuitions of his own soul, for truth and guidance, he has found the secret path that leads to reality, to harmony and things worthwhile. He has acquired the control of things and and circumstances; they yield themselves in the presence of his personality; they obey his will, he is master.
When the divine words were spoken to man, over the wide, weltering chaos at primeval creation, “Let there be light,” he was given dominion over all the things of the earth. If he has lost that dominion, it is because through the long centuries there has been no design on the spiritual trestle board, resulting in utter confusion, from which man has become unconscious of his divine immanency and has thus misconceived and misunderstood his own powers. More properly, we may say the designs have been false, separating man from God and leading him away from the consciousness of his own powers and divine inheritance.
If there is a lost word, it is the loss of the consciousness and knowledge of the divine in man, that potentially man possesses forces which when called forth will make him master of self, of circumstances and environment, and bring him into harmony and unity with God. High ideals, faith in the grandeur and majesty of your own soul of man’s oneness with the divine, are necessary and initial steps to this mastery.
Emerson saw the importance of this consciousness in man and thus expressed himself: “It is easy to see that a great self-reliance, a new respect for the divinity in man, must work a revelation in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their associations; in their property; in their speculative views.”
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NEW THOUGHT AND PROSPERITY
Poverty is not essential or perhaps not conducive to the highest order of spiritual development. Prosperity should be every man’s portion and is necessary to a useful and well-rounded life. It enables man to find time for study and contemplation. It permits him to stretch forth a helping hand to assist his needy brother.
The first step to a life of financial prosperity is the recognition of one’s own worth, the limitless possibilities and powers within himself. Financial acquisition is not always synonymous with a successful life. Too often money becomes master over the man.
A successful life is more. No life is successful that does not result in the mastership of the individual over things. No slavery is more pernicious than financial slavery. Success has been defined as “The attainment and preservation of a practical and legitimate ideal.” The useful life, the constructive life, the life that lights the pathways of others to higher ideals, and awakens their consciousness to the divine powers within themselves and brings peace and contentment to him who lives it, is the successful life.
Money, wealth, and position do not always bring happiness. Money is sometimes the fruitful cause of unhappiness. Externals, however pleasing, however rich and varied they may be, are not a sure sign of happiness. The soul grows weary of externals, they are cast aside and new externals are necessary to take their place. Gold is good or bad according as we master it or let it master us.
| “Meed of the toiler, flame of the sea– Such were the names of your poets for me. Metal of Mammon, curse of the world, Dug from the mountain-side, washed in the glen, Servant am I or the master of men. Steal me, I curse you; earn me, I bless you; Grasp me and hoard me, a fiend shall possess you; Lie for me, die for me, covet me, take me– Angel or devil, I am what you make me.” |
There is only one source of true and enduring happiness, and that is from within. It comes only when a man is at peace with his own soul. Complete happiness is ours only as we give happiness to others. If there is one discouraging feature observable in the present outlook, it is that too many men and women are imbued with the idea that they must be constantly enter- tained, that happiness comes from externals alone.
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CONSTRUCTIVE THOUGHT
Constructive thoughts are the only thoughts worth while. They alone build; negative thoughts bring confusion and destruction. One of the useful lessons for man is so far to master himself that he can rise above such negative thoughts as fear, malice, hatred, envy, revenge, and thoughts of similar character. Such thoughts react on the individual sending them forth and unfit him for the useful and constructive work of life. They destroy health, they waste force, they remove energy, and disqualify man for the accomplishment of real and valuable results. They impress the subconscious with their disturbing effects, to be again reproduced and their bitter fruits garnered by the individual.
The great lesson for man to learn is that such negative thoughts as malice, envy, and hatred do not injure or affect the person against whom they are sent, so much as the one who gives them wings and sends them forth. Giving and receiving is the work of life. What we give, that we receive. This law holds good in all we give; whether we send forth thoughts to another or to our own subjective minds, they come back, either as benedictions or otherwise, according to the character of the thoughts sent forth.
Too long has the world been taught that poverty was the mark of virtue and moral worth. The Church has failed to create ideals of better things and to awaken that true consciousness in men, of their own powers, to lead them to a life of prosperity. They have been told that the poor we should always have with us. The charity extended has only been for immediate relief. They have not inspired the desire and determination for better things, in those to whom they have extended charity. True charity is to cause the individual to find himself, that he may supply his own wants and rise to thrift and prosperity.
It has been a favorite theme of the theologians, to dwell on the poverty of Jesus. Every circumstance and event in his life have been emphasized to show that Jesus was poor and had not where to lay his head. They said Jesus was the friend of the poor, because he was himself poor. It is true that he was the friend of the poor; he healed them and ministered to their wants without price. But he was the friend of more than the poor, he was the friend of all men and saw in every man a brother.
How little they reckon of the wealth and resources of Jesus, whom they called poor! He was not poor. Nature’s storehouse stood open before him. He whom the winds and waves obeyed, he who fed the multitudes with a few leaves and fishes, he who brought cheer and gladness to the wedding-feast, “When the conscious water looked up on her Lord and blushed,” was not poor. Plenty and abundance were his without the asking. Precious ointments anointed his body, costly robes adorned his person. The wealth of the universe was his to use. His outstretched hand was always filled. He used what he needed, he had no use for more.
He did not discourage human labor and effort, but encouraged industry in all his
teachings. By his incomparable parables he praised and commended the industrious and thrifty servants and condemned the slothful. He looked upon work as the normal business and function of man. He read aright the analogies of Nature, that all is work. “The Father works and I work”; Nature works and man works. He taught man to work and also to have faith and confidence in results, that he would garner where he had sown.
When Jesus told his listeners to take no thought of the morrow, he did not intimate that they should neglect the duties and work of today. His message was not to cease from work, but to forget anxiety. The sparrows work unceasingly, and so should man. But why worry about the rewards and the future? His message to man was to work with a purpose and trust to the Infinite Giver of all for the just rewards and fruits of his toil.
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THE LAST CHANCE
New Thought presents a religion of life, and that the best preparation for the continued existence of the soul, after the last great change, is a life worthwhile here. This has been the message of the masters of thought in all ages.
Nothing in man’s life is higher than duty; nothing is more ennobling than service; nothing diviner than an unselfish life. The consciousness of such a life is the best asset to carry over the last Great Divide. The discipline thereby experienced will best fit the soul for the enjoyment of greater and better things. A religion of works brings peace to the soul, which it will have and enjoy “When the last day is ended and the worlds lie dead.”
St. James believed in a religion of works. With him “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” New Thought believes that the practice of such a religion is the best preparation for the soul’s eternal enjoyment. The theologian has said that a particular belief is necessary for man’s future happiness and of more importance than an upright and worthy life. At times we have been told that the omission of certain ordinances, such as that of baptism and ceremonials, or the failure to hold a registered membership in certain institutions, were fatal to man’s eternal happiness. But since men in modern times claim the right of exercising reason regarding religious and ultimate questions, these medieval opinions no longer disturb their peace of mind. Thoughtful men no longer conceive of God as other than just. They cannot understand that God would punish a being, created in His own image, for the failure to exercise a particular mental conclusion. They do not believe that God is less just than man.
Jesus said: “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father, which is in Heaven.” It will be observed that the word “doeth” is the key to his thought. In all history, no great teacher laid more emphasis on duty and conduct than the Man of Galilee. None have been heard who spoke less of belief.
What makes character? Is it a particular belief? It is living a life–a life useful, constructive, and unselfish. Character is not quickly formed, but it will determine our future status and welfare. We are living in eternity now. We are making life a hell or a heaven as we live it here. Have we any reason to believe it will be otherwise in another state of existence?
Man is an evolving being, growing, striving, and moving onward toward the perfect man. But it is unthinkable that he should become perfect in an instant, or otherwise than by the slow processes of growth and evolution. We shall enter the portals of our next state of existence no better or worse than we live here. If we have not built character here, we shall not have it there. If we have not lived in harmony with God here, we shall not be in harmony with him there. Unless our souls are fitted for enjoyment here, they will find none elsewhere.
FEAR
Fear has no abiding place in the philosophy of New Thought. New Thought would eliminate it from man’s mind, and thus make him free. While fear controls, man cannot be free.
Religious institutions, through fifteen centuries or more, have ruled their followers mainly through the influence of fear, and are still wielding that mighty and potent weapon. Fear has been the enemy of man in all ages. Fear has enslaved the individual to institutions. The soul withers and pines before its blighting influence.
Fear has displaced man’s will and made him obedient to the wills of others. It has made man a spiritual peon, dependent on others for light and guidance. It has drawn the curtain of ignorance and superstition between man and God. What has man to fear, but himself? As man is what he thinks, he has nothing to fear but his thoughts. If man has done wrong, it is because his thought was first wrong.
You have been told to implore God for the forgiveness of your sins and that they should all be blotted out. What about yourself? Suppose God should forget and wipe away your iniquities, does that help you to forgive yourself? Think back over the years of your life and see if you cannot find some spoken word or neglected kindness to those who have gone to their long rest, that you would give your wealth to blot from memory.
As Victor Hugo said: “One can no more prevent the mind from returning to an idea, than the sea from returning to the shore. In the case of the sailor it is called the tide; in the case of the guilty it is called remorse; God upheaves the soul as well as the ocean.”
If we violate no laws we pay no penalties; if we break them, we suffer the just consequences of our acts. What a travesty on religion, that man can be made to believe that someone stands between him and God. If we are punished, we punish ourselves; if we are rewarded, we reward ourselves. “I am the Captain of my Soul.”
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HAPPINESS
New Thought is the philosophy of joy and happiness. Happiness is indispensable to a life of the highest accomplishments and to the normal and symmetrical development of man. Much of the theology of the world has been too somber to admit of much happiness in man’s life. It has not looked upon happiness as conducive to spiritual and religious growth. Man was regarded as
weak, and unable of himself to create a happy or joyful mental state or condition. To the theologian happiness was not a necessity or an indispensable condition in man’s life. He knew nothing of the effect of happiness on health and physical development. Happiness was looked upon rather as the offspring and effect of evil and sinister forces. The religious face revealed sadness, rather than joy. Even the religious garb disclosed a sad tone to man’s life and personality.
Modern psychology has given happiness a new place in man’s life. The effect of a happy mental state on health is now so well understood that its discussion is unnecessary. The poisonous toxins produced by fear, anger, and similar conditions of mind are likewise well understood.
Modern psychology has revealed the fact that happiness is a quality susceptible of growth and can become a habit by each individual creating cheerful states of mind. It can be cultivated as any other art or accomplishment. Its growth depends on the individual and the power of his will. A strong will can produce cheerful states of mind, just as a weak will can be productive of morose mental states. Cheerful attitudes of mind are constructive, the opposites are destructive.
Cheerful mental states do not depend upon external circumstances. Happiness, as before stated, comes from within. As cheerful mental attitudes produce health, they increase the power of every function and every talent in man. They illumine the mind, they enlarge the understand- ing, they widen the soul’s vision. They send a current of life and health through the body; they bring joy, strength, and character to the individual. Walt Whitman found good fortune in himself:
| “Afoot and light-hearted I take the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me, The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose. Henceforth I ask not good fortune–l myself am good fortune.” |
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NEW THOUGHT AND MODERN PROBLEMS
The principles enunciated in New Thought have never been tried in the solution of the social and economic problems that constantly confront society. After all the centuries of theological teaching, the world is still divided by contentions and disagreements. Men are still separated by antagonisms and dissensions, each individual and class seeking to take advantage of the other. Selfishness still dominates man. Man’s hand is still raised against his fellow-man. If it is not individual against individual, it is organization against organization, class against class. Labor is arrayed in fierce warfare against capital, and capital against labor. Labor is in antagonism also with itself. Public servants are still dishonest. The briber still plies his trade. The grafter is abroad in the land.
It is lamentable that these conditions should exist in this twentieth century. There must be a cause. There is a cause for every effect. Conditions can only be changed as the cause is changed. True reform is centered at the cause.
The old teaching has not brought the golden era so long desired. Men will do right when they understand that no other course will pay. They will cease to do wrong when they know that every wrong they perpetrate will recoil on their own heads. In other words, when the law of cause and effect, that whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap, is understood and so thoroughly impressed upon men’s minds that they dare not ignore it, we may confidently look for the dawn of a new and greater era. When men fully appreciate that for every wrong they commit they punish themselves, that for every unworthy act there is a swift and relentless punishment, the restraining influence of this teaching must have a beneficial and permanent influence on their lives and characters.
But, someone says, is not this maxim old, that whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap, and has it not always been taught? Yes, in a way, but at the same time and with far more emphasis the theological doctrine has been impressed on man’s mind that he may escape this law and all its effects and consequences if he will but entertain a certain belief and conform to certain rules. The whole theological doctrine is subversive of this law, and present-day society is reaping the results.
When the laborer learns that every time he cheats in his work, he is cheating himself; that every time he robs his employer, he is robbing himself; that every act of cruelty he inflicts upon his fellow-man, he inflicts upon himself and all other men; that every malicious thought he sends forth will return to torment himself, he will get rid of the distrust and hatred that now control his life. He will then entertain a different attitude toward his fellow-man.
When the employer learns this lesson and understands its full import, he will profit in like manner. When he fully realizes that whenever he oppresses and enslaves the employee, he oppresses and enslaves himself–that he is under the dominion of the same in exorable law–he will deal fairly, justly, and kindly with him.
Following the trend of past teaching, we have been looking for the bad in men so long that we have forgotten to seek the good. We operate upon the principle of mistrust, rather than trust. We reap what is due, a harvest of contentions and strife.
Emerson says: “But because of the dual constitution of all things, in labor as in life, there can be no cheating. The thief steals from himself. The swindler swindles himself. . . . Human labor through all its forms, from sharpening of the stake, to the constitution of a city or an epic, is one immense illustration of the perfect compensation of the universe, Everywhere and always this law is sublime.”
“I say,” says Carlyle, “there is not a red Indian hunting by Lake Winnipic can quarrel with his squaw, but the whole world must smart for it. Will not the price of beaver rise? It is a mathemat- ical fact that the casting of this pebble from my hand alters the center of gravity of the universe.”
We might beg to suggest that even religious organizations might well profit by the observance of these principles. Even the followers of the Prince of Peace are not at peace. It is creed against creed, dogma against dogma, and doctrine against doctrine. Instead of a display of love, it is an exhibition of contempt and hatred. They find fault with the followers of one religion, because of an act said to have been committed nineteen hundred years ago, which nevertheless theologians said was preordained of God from the beginning of the world. Yet they still hate the Jews. They filled the Jews’ head with the egotistical thought that the Jews were God’s chosen people. They so declared because they had read it in a book written by the Jews about themselves. Think of the proposition, that God would pick out a little handful of people and heap His favors on them and ignore the other races of the world. Greece, with her heroes, her scholars, her artists, her love of beauty, her greatness, could not be considered with the chosen race. Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and others were not among the elect. The Jew alone was God’s favorite.
Then, because they also read that a small mob of Jews crucified Jesus on a charge of heresy, for fifteen centuries they have kicked and cuffed the Jew over Christendom, have driven him out of Christian countries, confiscated his property, penned him up in ghettos, deprived him of civil or religious rights, murdered him, all under the banner of the cross; and still they dislike the Jew. If the Jew has any disagreeable qualities, who made them, the Jew or the Christian? The Jew is what the Christian has made him. They still condemn the Jew for the one act of the mob. Why, if Jesus had not been crucified, there would never have been a Christian religion. Is it not time the Christian world should take off its hat and apologize to the Jew?
One claims to be the church of authority, the others deny it. Each one is sure it is right, and the others are all wrong. Worshiping the same being, they refuse to worship together. They tolerate each other outwardly, only because the law compels it. Where the law does not compel it, we see one Christian nation, with Church and State united, driving out and murdering the descend- ants of the nation which gave them their sacred book.
The want of harmony and these uncharitable opinions must continue to exist so long as men conceive of God as separated from man and dwelling in some distant part of the universe. As long as men entertain such ideas of God, they will differ and quarrel as to who are His chosen vice-regents and am bassadors to carry out His plans and transmit His orders and desires to men. These institutions seem never to have grasped the great truth that the same hatred, ill-will, and malice they send forth will return to themselves with undiminished force; that if they sow hatred, they will reap hatred. Thus the yawning gulf of hatred and exclusiveness is never closed. The law of Jesus is forgotten, the law of hatred supplants it.
”Alas, how much of life is lost,
How much is black and bitter with the frost
That might be sweet with the sweet sun,
If men could only know that they are one.”
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NEW THOUGHT AND INDIVIDUALISM
New Thought speaks to man as an individual, and always proclaims an intense and robust individualism. Men can be normally and fully developed only as individuals, and not as a class or members of an institution. The individual is the unit from which all greatness springs.
New Thought ranks the individual above institutions, as all masters of thought have done. Institutions are made by human units and are the product of individual thought. They are no greater than their creators. Jesus spoke to individuals, and not to churches or institutions.
The advocates of this teaching recognize no spiritual authority save the voice of the soul, speaking to each individual. Each soul can interpret aright the oracles of truth. They speak by intuition to each soul. No other can convey that meaning to us. He that has found the light within and has felt the promptings of his own soul asks no authority how he shall worship God. His knees bend only at the command of his own manly soul, “The reliance on authority means the decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul.” The soul is no follower. It knows its own way, as the bird knows its course. It follows its own light. Unerringly it reaches up toward the divine.
NOW
New Thought is a philosophy of the living, a religion for today. It does not dwell in the past. It leaves its yesterdays behind as it advances to its work of today. The present is the time of opportunity, of action; the past holds memories and reflections only. The past was not perfect, the Golden Age is yet to be. The world is steadily converging toward that one divine event. Every constructive life brings it nearer.
Life is not enriched and nourished by regrets and lamentations over the lapses and faults of life. There is nothing constructive or upbuilding in such thoughts. They sap the energies of the mind and unfit man for the highest duty and expression for today. If we indulge the memory, let it rest only on the beautiful and cheerful spots of the past.
Life is a series of experiences. We must look upon each as necessary to bring us to our present state of development. If any had been lacking, we should probably have been different now. Each experience teaches a lesson; each speaks words of wisdom and truth to him who listens. They build up or tear down character, according as we read the lessons they impart. If we interpret them aright, they bring understanding and strength.
It brings neither peace nor strength to brood and worry over the mistakes we have made. We cannot recall them. They belong to the past, we to the present. Let us accept their lessons, forget them if we can, and turn our faces toward the rising sun. Each morning is the beginning of a new life, the exhilaration of hope newly born. Each evening bespeaks the dawn of a new day. Sparingly, at least, let us exercise charity toward ourselves. At times, if we can, let us blot out some of our iniquities and remember them no more. Let us remember the past only to profit by its experiences in the work of today.
New Thought believes in a sound and glorified body as the only fit habitation for the indwelling soul. it teaches that health is man’s normal condition and that he is equipped for the real work of life only as he possesses a healthy body; that all disease and sickness are the results of consciously or unconsciously violated law. Herbert Spencer said that the time would come when it would be as disgraceful to be found sick as to be found drunk. Nature is constructive, Nature is harmony. The soul cannot properly manifest itself or find harmonious expression except in a healthy body.
“I have said, the soul is not more than the body, and I have said the body is not more than the soul,” says Walt Whitman. Carlyle says, “There is but one temple in the universe, and that is the body of man. Nothing is holier than that high form. We are the miracle of miracles, the great indescribable mystery of God.” We are each the center of our universe, from which we look forth to study and contemplate the indescribable works of God. We are equally as mysterious and as little understood as the universe itself, with its systems of worlds and planets circling through the stretches of infinity.
“Ever the soul reaches out and asks for freedom. It looks forth from the narrow and grated windows of sense, upon the wide, immeasurable creation; it knows that around it and beyond it lie outstretched the infinite and everlasting paths.”
Victor Hugo says: “There is one spectacle grander than the sea; that is the sky. There is one spectacle grander than the sky; that is the interior of the soul.”
Each of us is a symbol of God, an epitome of the universe. As the old knight said, “Let the universe be to thee no more than the reflection of thine own heroic soul.”
Chapter XII
THE ART OF LIVING
| “Our lives are songs; God writes the words. And we set them to music at leisure; And the song is sad, or the song is glad As we choose to fashion the measure.” “We must write the song, |
THE philosophy of New Thought offers a key to the essential life–the life worthwhile. New Thought is a philosophy of life. It leads man out of the labyrinths of weakness, doubt, and darkness into the sunlight of hope, strength, and courage.
The art of living is the art of thinking, for life has no values except as thought molds them– except as thought creates ideals for the individual to shape and pattern his life after. How we shall live is the most momentous question for man’s thought and consideration. It is paramount because during its existence we mold character, either good or bad, which is the only asset we carry away at its close.
Life is not built to any fixed plan. One ideal will not suffice for all lives. Individuals cannot follow the same guide, because all persons differ and the orbits of their respective lives cannot be the same. Each person is endowed with some distinct and superior quality. The real purpose of his life should be to develop that gift and bring it into activity and expression.
We must, therefore, begin with the proposition that life is an individual function, a problem for each person to work out in the manner best suited to his own individuality. Each must be shaped by his own ideal. Each must follow his own line of cleavage.
The inquiry is often made, What is the ultimate purpose in life? Of course, millions would say that the real object in life is to observe certain formulas and requirements that will secure one a safe place in the next world when death ensues. But this does not answer the question or satisfy the inquiring mind.
Every man has one supreme ideal. Every man is turning his thought toward the future, with the hope of reaching one great result. What is this inward longing, what is all this striving, the labors of life, what is the goal of all man’s efforts, but happiness? Ultimate happiness is the motive power of life. The search for happiness, however, should be distinguished from the search for pleasure.
No two persons will agree on what constitutes ultimate happiness. Therefore no common ideal can be set up and established, by which to reach that desired state. One may think wealth to be the direct means of producing happiness, another travel. another work, another duty and service. We all map out and travel different roads to arrive at the one desired result. The essential fact is not what we may think will be productive of happiness, for the greater part of our thinking along these lines is defective and illusory; but the important thought for consideration is what, in fact, will lead us to the coveted goal.
Our lives and energies are largely wasted in an endeavor to follow our ideals of happiness. We spend the larger portion of life in discovering and laying aside out cherished illusions and discarded ideals. Our greatest illusions, the ones that most monopolize our thought and energies, are those we treasure of happiness. They fade away and vanish as we travel along the highways of life. After all, we gain much wisdom from Nature. If we have eyes to see, or ears to hear she will furnish guides that will pilot us safely toward the essential life, which in its last analysis and ultimate meaning is a life of happiness.
Happiness has been defined as the warm glow of a heart at peace with itself. How to find happiness as here defined, how to possess it, how to make it our own, is one of the great arts and secrets of life. To study the art of living, we should begin with certain fundamental truths which form the basis of all constructive thought about life. Without these fundamentals we can only travel the rugged and difficult path of experience. We should know something of the laws that enter into life, that shape and give it destiny, before we can bring intelligence and understanding to a discussion of the art of living.
Without a study of the nature of man, the mysterious power of the mind which controls him, something of our relationship with Nature and the universe, the law or causation, the greatness of man, our approach to a knowledge of the essential life will be slow and tedious. We might as well try to sail the trackless seas without compass and without chart, as to sail life’s seas without these pilots.
We should begin with the law of causation, the law of cause and effect, written everywhere in Nature. This law enters into life in every moment of time. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. This law is as absolute in the regulation of mind and thought as in directing the orderly movements of the physical universe. Man is under the dominion of law, and every thought is manifested in outward life.
Life is ruled by a spiritual helmsman.Truth exacts constructive thinking. Thought is the great factor in life. Right thought means right living. Constructive thought means constructive life. Negative thought means an empty and negative life.
The kind and quality of thought determines the kind and quality of life. Thought is expressed in the personality and molds the outward circumstances of life. It is manifested in life’s results. We receive that which is our due; nothing more, nothing less. We pay the price; we do not get something for nothing. We take out of life only what we put in. Only as we take to life a full soul, do we live a full life. If we carry into life an empty soul, our reward is a desolate and barren life. Life yields only what it receives. These truths should sink deep into the understanding as they light the pathway that leads to the art of living.
It follows as a natural sequence that the violation of these laws brings its own swift and relentless punishment. If we break them, Nature sets up her impediments, we are frustrated in our efforts, we fail to reach the real in life. The converse is also true. If we keep them, Nature smiles her approval and we reach out toward the constructive and essential in life.
Then, everywhere we are reminded of the unity of life, that universal life and intelligence that pervade the universe, manifesting and expressing itself in all objective Nature–the grass blade, the flower, the bird, and in man–reaching its highest manifestation in human life.
When we come into the realization of this fact and feel the growing import of its truth, Nature seems a little kinder, the flower has a new meaning, man appears greater, our fellow-man a little nearer, and Nature puts on a more human aspect. We can feel harmonious vibrations everywhere, and see revelations of splendor, beauty, and meaning in every bud and leaf. It enlarges our conceptions of life to find ourselves linked to the Great Oversoul that is forever seeking unfoldment and expression in our lives. This thought is creative. It awakens within us an inspiration for development and achievement. It places before us an ideal, to lead us along the upper pathway of life. The consciousness of this truth enlarges man’s spiritual and mental vision. It is a starting-point on the journey toward the real achievements of life. It gives one courage to grapple with the larger problems of life and efficiency to solve them wisely.
Then, too, life is individual and each person must follow his own path. Be yourself, live your own life, is the message of the great in every age. Man makes himself miserable by attempting to follow the blazed trail of others. Man can only work to one pattern, and that one is his own. Be yourself. Remember that you are an infinite soul and that no human standard will serve you as an ideal. Think your own thoughts, even though they jostle the intrenched thoughts of the ages.
The essential life is not found by traveling the path of conventionalities. It is only discovered as one revolves around his own axis. The conventional life is only a seeming life, a counterfeit, and never a true life. Following the ideal of another accounts largely for the misfits in life, the human derelicts that infest the world. As man is self-reliant, he is strong; as he is dependent, he is weak.
We forget to look within for the true source of all wisdom, for “the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” “It is only as a man puts off from himself all external support, and stands alone, that I see him to be strong and to prevail.” From the divinity within we gain the philosophic instinct correctly to appraise life’s values. We are all subject to illusions. Day and night they dog our footsteps. They are ever with us. The mirages of life lure us on and on, over many a dreary league.
We cherish the illusion that the never-resting impulse, or divine urge within, can be stilled and satisfied. Tenaciously we cling to this alluring sophism. The divine unrest is a part of ourselves and cannot be satisfied. It is the divine seeking the divine; it is the infinite within trying to find expression, which the finite cannot satisfy. In vain we search the world for something to satisfy
this eternal longing. We foolishly believe that wealth, travel, society, excitement, intellectual attainments, will still this tumult of the soul. We forget that we are playing the temporary and finite against the eternal and infinite. We offer to the soul the toys and playthings of time, the trifling expedients of the hour. Their effect is momentary only, they vanish before the soul’s returning tides. We cannot still that infinite and surging force, the soul’s wanderlust, that forever pushes and impels us onward to new experiences, into new currents, but we can modify, mold, and refine it until it will lead us along the ascending scale of life. We may direct the soul’s urge from the prose of life into the realms of poetry and beauty. We may change the desire for the tangible into a hunger for the possession of the intangible, but the great soul within forever speaks. When the divine throbs cease and the soul’s tumult is stilled, man will be in peace and harmony with God.
Knowing these truths, understanding these fundamentals, we are better fitted to enter upon the active experiences of life. The lawyer must be skilled in the fundamentals of the law before he can intelligently enter upon the practice of his profession. So man should have knowledge of the underlying principles of life before he can safely enter into its activities or find its satisfying realities. Only then is he able to turn away from the illusions and phantoms that crowd his path.
Discrimination is a large part of the work of life–weighing, judging, and appraising its eventual- ities. Discrimination is judging, elimination is acting; they are the judicial and executive functions of man. Our years are spent in discarding the unessentials for the essential, the unreal for the real, the false for the true, the shadow for the substance. How much of life we waste in clinging to negatives! How little we use in reaching out toward the positives!
Life is the little time allotted wherein we may learn how to live. The most of us have learned little when we are well past life’s meridian. We struggle without purpose or plan. We falter and stumble on the way. The selfish man learns nothing of the art of living, because he is a stranger to the finer things of life. Only the unselfish know these–they do good for the love of doing, they make the world bright with their very presence.
Man is slow to learn that peace and satisfaction come only from constructive work. His place in Nature is that of a builder. Until he builds he feels not the joy of living, the delights of accomp- lishment. He that causes two grass blades to grow where only one grew before, has added something to the world. He is a co-partner with Nature, he feels satisfaction. Every constructive act brings its own reward; every non-constructive, its own disappointment. What salary would tempt you to sit at a desk in idleness for a year? Nature is constructive and progressive–her processes ever tend toward growth and perfection. Something in us responds to the constructive and building forces in Nature. Our only real satisfaction is in accomplishment.
Wealth has no rewards to compete with the joy of giving expression to the inner visions of the soul. The poet, the artist, the thinker, find their joy in creating, in giving expression to their ideals. The creator of ideals alone is immortal. When all else passes away, his creations alone survive. His work may not bring gold, but it brings something far more precious, because he has given expression to the promptings of a soul. Ideas alone are deathless.
The work of life that creates, that gives expression, that adds substance, that pushes the world a little farther along, that makes it a little better, that inspires in someone a new hope, that lights up some darkened pathway, is the life worthwhile–the life that brings peace and satisfaction to the soul.
To know the art of living we must know much of Nature. Until we catch its deeper meanings, until it kindles in us a sense of beauty, of order, of proportion and sublimity, the valuable ideals of life have evaded us. When we can recognize an intelligence back of the rose, possessing a spirit of sense and beauty; when we can discern the symmetry and proportion of the tree, the grandeur of the landscape, the splendor of the sunset, as the expression and handiwork of a divine intelligence, we recognize a kinship with the grass blade and flower and feel the touch of the universal soul.
A kinder impulse stirs our nature, the grosser things of life fade away, the finer instincts rule and govern our lives. Without these conceptions, how commonplace is life, how little Nature yields! We live in the midst of beauty and see it not; we are encompassed by music and hear it not. Life’s melodies are wasted on the unheeding soul. “See deep enough,” says Carlyle, “and you see musically; the heart of Nature being everywhere music.” We miss the value of Nature’s ideals, we reject her best gifts to man, we spurn her richest bounties, we enjoy only the common things of life.
Of all servitudes known to man, the most debasing is that of spiritual servitude, the slavery to dogmas, creeds, and institutions. After that, the most oppressive servitude is the tyranny of things, and the great majority of mankind voluntarily bend their necks to its galling yoke. Things are masters of men; things, not mind, not soul, are the controlling factors in life. The love of things overshadows the love of humanity. We carry our gifts to the shrine of things. We bestow our care, our patience and industry on things. Things monopolize thought, they dominate life. Things have their value and their limitations. Their use and value must not be unduly minimized, neither must they be overvalued. Things are obedient servants, but harsh task-masters. They are good or bad according as they serve or as they master. Beautiful things awaken beauty in the soul when it is attuned to beauty. When not so attuned, they awaken rather the feelings of vanity and display.
What we call civilized man is in part a barbarian; he has not conquered the love of display, the wild barbaric strain in his own nature. We instinctively crave display; we assume the superior attitude; we love to dazzle with gaudy splendor. For want of riches within, we worship riches without. Lacking charms of soul, we love to charm with external splendor. We imitate royalty, that employs pomp and circumstance to dazzle the multitude. We parade apparel and jewels for the same vulgar effect.
Men have not learned that externals cannot bring permanent satisfaction and content, that they are only for an hour and then pass away before the higher demands of the soul. When they have found the peace and serenity that come from within, that externals cannot give, they have caught a glimpse of the art of living. When man has learned to be alone, but not lonely, isolated but not alone, to be content without luxury, tranquil in adversity, hopeful in defeat, he has become master over things and knows something of the art of living.
Many make possessions the chief purpose in life and mistakenly believe that these furnish the real basis of living. It is true wealth gives opportunities, but how often does it blight the finer instincts and impulses of the soul. Gold sometimes develops a metallic quality in the soul, which rings only with the cold, unfeeling sound of the metal. Some men use the dollar as the yardstick to measure life’s values. They do not discover the finer sensibilities or the real friendships of life. The dollar friendship vibrates only to the selfish touch. What do the worshipers of Midas know of the finer impulses of the soul, of the comradeship and riches of culture, of the joy of giving, of the peace of the tranquil soul? The soul is bankrupt in the presence of riches. The glitter of conventionality is as cold as the Arctic stream. Money alone does not pay returns on life. The real dividends on life are love, service, friendship, the good, the true, the beautiful. These bring that inner peace to the soul, that surpasseth understanding and expression.
Before we discover the true art of living or the secret of the essential life, we must learn to exercise a fine judgment and tolerance in adjusting and tranquilizing the contingencies of life. Until we are able to judge others with the same consideration and judicial fairness that we employ in judging ourselves, we lack the essential qualities of a well-developed life. Until then we have not learned the secret of avoiding the conflicts and antagonisms of life. We must be able to view life’s facts from another’s standpoint. We must judge him and ourselves by the same rules and standards. This is not an easy task. It requires a fine judicial temperament to submerge self to the point where the scales of justice will evenly balance between ourselves and another. It requires a fine discipline to develop these qualities to that state of perfection. With most of us self outweighs all other considerations in pronouncing the judgments of life. But in the last analysis the standard of even justice is the only rule to employ in dealing with our fellow-man. Unless we adopt it, we shall in time disown our own judgments.
You say it is impossible to overcome the lingering relic of selfishness in us, so that we can deal as justly with our fellow as ourselves. Why should it be? The difficulty lies in our inability to view situations from the same angle as our fellow-man. We criticise others for not observing the square deal. Yet most of us merit the same censure. It is the little fellow in life who can see only his own rights. It is only the big man who can say, I am wrong.
The difficulties of life arise largely out of trifles. The little rift widens into a gulf that might have been bridged over with a word or a smile. The sad tragedies of domestic life usually begin with the trivial. We are too proud to retreat–too stubborn to yield –and so the breaches of life widen. A little word of kindness, a little look of love, might have healed them all. How useless and uncalled for are the usual tragedies of life!
One of life’s most valuable secrets is to avoid conflicts and contentions. Prevention, in troubles as in disease, is always the best remedy. Prevention is more effective and acts more speedily than cures. Too often we condemn without knowing the facts. We view situations from one angle only. Our judgments are based on imperfect knowledge. How little we know of the circumstances and environments that influence men’s acts. We cannot always see or understand the silent forces that shape situations and events. Yet we are always quick to judge. How much better to exercise a little charity, a little patience, and a little consideration, in our travels along the paths of life. A little tolerance would soothe and tranquilize the passions of men, the streams of life would run a little more smoothly and the world would move a little farther toward the goal of peace.
Again and again after all our wanderings through the fields of philosophy we come back to the wonderful bit of wisdom, spoken nineteen centuries ago, “Judge not that ye be not judged.” How little do we reckon with this great truth in the strifes and tragedies of life. In these few words the Gentle Master spoke a universal truth. We forget that if we judge, we shall be judged. If we send out judgments, we invite judgments. If we judge harshly, we are judged harshly; we solicit what we send. This law is but an exemplification of the law of giving. We receive what we give, nothing more. It is the law of attraction. We attract that which we send; like attracts like. Until we employ this philosophy in meeting the situations in life, in adjusting its relations, we are still strangers to the art of living and cannot feel the joys and delights of the life essential.
A good memory is essential to a well-rounded life. Without it we cannot cultivate and practice that fine sense of gratitude that good breeding and true culture require. Memory should retain impressions of the pleasant, worthy, and agreeable events of life. It should also be trained to forget those things that bring with them a train of sad and disagreeable reminiscences. Some things in life are too sacred to forget–the memories of childhood, of family, of friends, the
kindnesses and pleasantries of life. Such memories are constructive and keep alive the finer instincts of the soul. Likewise the memories of the disagreeable experiences of life are destructive and disturb the peace and serenity of the soul.
We should cultivate the art of forgetting, as well as the art of remembering. Discrimination is necessary in training the forces and powers of memory. Forgetting the unpleasant and disagreeable incidents of life, the memories of wrongs and injuries, and retaining in their place only the agreeable and pleasant, is one of the valuable arts of life.
Forgetting and remembering–the one is as fine an art as the other. A good memory is a fine forgetting. It is the ability to leave off the useless for the useful, the sad for the pleasant, hatred for love, the deformed for the beautiful. It is planting in the subconscious a rose instead of a thistle, a seed of kindness instead of hatred, which in due time will blossom forth in the full radiance of their beauty, in the personality, life, and character of the individual.
We cannot live a well-rounded life until we are able to eliminate and banish fears, anxieties, worries, and frettings from our minds. These negatives do not add any strength or value to life, but on the contrary undermine and sap the energies and potencies of mind. They impair the judgment and unfit it for its highest duties and functions. They introduce confusion and disturbances into the mind, when calmness and strength are the primal qualities necessary for the solution of our problems. When we live in an atmosphere of serenity and calmness, we gain poise and confidence to carry with us into our daily tasks; we give our faculties opportunity to act and bring to the solution of life’s problems the highest degree of efficiency.
We live in the great present, the eternal now, the grandest epoch in all the ages. Our ideals must be great, to harmonize with the ; great present. We cannot live the full life by taking our standards from the past. We must feel the thrill of the present, to develop the best within us.
As this is the age of progress, an age of development, our lives must be kindled by the same spirit, to meet life’s demands and requirements. The age gives much and requires much. It imposes a great responsibility on every actor in life’s drama. If we act well our part, we must accept the responsibilities imposed, in whatever walk of life. They give man strength, courage, and wisdom properly to solve life’s problems.
Let us pick up these threads of philosophy and weave them into the web and woof of the fabric of life. Let us realize that the constructive is the only life; that to create is a joy; that to build is life’s purpose and man’s function.
Let us each remember that the latent possibilities of a divine soul are inherent within us, slumbering perhaps, but only waiting to be called into development and expression.
Let us remember that we may create, that we may build, that we may be a positive force in the world, that we may lift the burden from some struggling life, that we may radiate joy and kindness, gratitude and love from our lives, that we may leave the world a little brighter and mankind a little better than we found them.
Let us not forget that a man hears the sweet symphonies of life only as he listens to the voice of his own soul; that he walks in the paths of peace only as they are illumined by the light within; that he sees the facts of life aright only as he trusts his own inner vision; that these are the true pilots to guide us safely over the fretted seas of life.
Let us build to these ideals and the world will move forward, some life will be made a little happier, some pathway will be strewn with roses, and we shall feel the glow of a heart at peace with itself.
Finally, face the end with equanimity and unfaltering step, and as you gaze across the borderland to the infinite paths that stretch away before you, inviting you to higher achievement, to greater accomplishment, may you feel the conscious joy of a life well spent and that you have mastered the art of living.
THE END