CONTENTS
1 – The Unknown God
2 – The Second Coming
3 – Working with the Law
4 – The Creative Power of the Ideal
5 – Self-Discovery Through Truth
6 – Walking by Faith
7 – Is Disease Real, or Apparent?
8 – Health, and How to Obtain It
9 – Spiritual Medicine
10 – Because of Your Unbelief
11 – The Will to Be Well
12 – Mind and Microbes
13 – A New Beginning
14 – Demonstrating Prosperity
15 – Inexhaustible Abundance
16 – The Law of Attraction
17 – The Law of Vibration
18 – Not According to Appearances
19 – Pictures and Personalities
20 – Discouragement
21 – Intuition
22 – The Nativity and Maturity of Jesus
23 – Lost in Transit
24 – The Hidden Mystery
O Son of Spirit, I have created thee rich. How
is it thou art poor? And made thee mighty. How
is it thou art weak? And from the very essence of
Love and Wisdom I have manifested thee. How
is it thou occupiest thyself with someone else?
Turn thy sight to thyself that thou mayest find
ME standing in thee, Mighty — Powerful — Supreme.
From the Hindu.
Chapter I THE UNKNOWN GOD
“Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you.” –Acts 17:23.
When a noted scientist spoke of God as “The Unknowable,” either he had never read, or he quite overlooked, the declaration of Jesus that a knowledge of God is an essential necessity. A perception of God is as imperative to the soul as is the knowledge of mathematics in the ordinary affairs of life; for what mathematics is to the regulation of system and order in the outer world, divine metaphysics is to the maintenance of peace and power in the mental realm.
When Job’s comforters asked of him, “Canst thou by searching find out God?” “Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perception?” he answered, “Surely, I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to reason with God.” A less courageous soul would have concluded that the ways of the Infinite are past finding out and, like the great majority, Job would have contented himself with the belief that “there is a God,” and let it go at that.
The most common attitude of mind is that which admits the reality of God, but which, at the same time, declares Him to be incomprehensible. If God is, God can be known. Only that is unknown and unknowable which does not exist; for it is alone the non-existent which cannot be known. All discovery and all invention are based upon the conviction that, “if a North Pole exists, it can be discovered,” or, “if a truth exists, it can be understood.”
It has been said that Nature has no secrets which the bold spirit may not learn. The trouble is not with Nature that she does not more readily impart her information; but it is with man that he does not more strenuously wrest it from her. The trouble is not with God, that He does not more frequently make himself known to the children of men; it is that they do not seek after Him with sufficient intensity.
How else does man find out anything except by searching? “He that seeketh, findeth,” whether it be in the kingdom of heaven, in the depths of the earth, or on the other side of the mighty ocean.
If men would seek after the Christ Truth as Columbus sought after this continent they would surely find It; for it is not that Truth is undiscoverable, but that they are not sufficiently intrepid and earnest in their search.
For one man who digs a well a million may drink of its waters, but “the water of Life,” which is the knowledge of God, is a something which no man can drink for us and quench our thirst. Another’s knowledge of mathematics avails me little; I must learn it for myself if I would be proficient. Another’s understanding of a foreign language helps me in so far as it enables me to acquire it also. In like manner it avails me nothing if saints and sages walk and talk with God if I am ignorant of His whereabouts, His character and His law. Something within tells me, as it told Job, that I must “converse with the Almighty.”
I am not satisfied to believe in the existence of God as I believe in the existence of Australia, or as a something afar off; neither am I content to believe that all I shall ever know of God is what I see of Him in nature. When the Bible tells me “Acquaint now thyself with God, and thereby be at peace,” I want to begin this acquaintance, if possible, for peace is the soul’s most sincere desire.
With all the gods that man has worshiped, and in which he has believed, there has always been reserved a place for that in which he believes, but which, so far, he has not discovered.
When Paul was led out to Mars Hill in order that the Greeks might hear something new, since it was their custom to give everything a hearing, even though they rejected it afterward, he was impressed by the great number of altars erected and dedicated to the many gods of Greece. Bacchus, Venus, Pan and many others were distinguished by the inscriptions upon them, and upon one was inscribed “To the Unknown God,” and it was this inscription which particularly attracted Paul’s attention.
With all that the Greeks knew about the gods there was still room in their philosophy for the acceptance of something which they did not know. The very act of dedicating an altar to the Unknown God was, in itself, evidence of the fact that they did not consider that they possessed all knowledge. They are an object lesson to us in modesty, a rebuke to bigotry, and a revelation of the necessity of having always a place in the mind for the reception of a new and higher idea. If Paul had carefully prepared an oration to deliver on the famous hill of Areopagus, he did not deliver it, for the reason that he received an inspiration for a new one, as a result of his observations along the way.
When all were assembled and attentive, Paul said: “Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by and beheld your devotions I found an altar with this inscription: ’To the Unknown God.’ Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you.” He then asserted God to be the One eternal Cause, as against the superstitious belief in many causes, represented by the many gods in the religious worship of the Greeks. He declared this Cause to be at work everywhere in the universe, by assuring his hearers that “In Him we live, and move and have our being.” He assured them of man’s relation to this Great First Cause by reminding them of certain statements made by their own poets, which said, “For we are also His offspring.” He admonished them to seek the Lord, if haply ye might feel after Him and find Him, though He be not far away from every one of us.”
The proximity of God was Paul’s great declaration. If men sought after God outside of their own spiritual natures they were like men looking for their own spectacles when all the time they had them on their faces. Were Paul here today he might tell us, who, as Christians, feel that we believe in the one true, living God, that we are altogether too superstitious. He might offend our religious sense of things by telling us that God is not what we think He is. He might even ridicule some of the altars which we have dedicated to Him as the “Great Unknowable,” “The Inscrutable,” “The Mysterious.” He might even tell us that the Greeks were more consistent than we, for while they erected an altar to “The Unknown God,” they never felt that He was ”Unknowable.”
He might take exception to our belief in God as an anthropomorphic personality, and he might also explode the theory of three persons in one person as a sufficient explanation of the Blessed Trinity. What a shock it would be to most of us to be told that we are altogether too superstitious, and then to have some of our most precious and time-worn theories about God and man, heaven and earth, exploded by the simple Truth about all of these.
It is said that when Paul concluded his oration on Mars Hill “some mocked, while others clave unto him.” Should it happen that some will mock our method of declaring God, others will accept what seems to them a rational definition of Deity. I know that certain theologians hold to the opinion that “A God defined is a God dethroned,” and that “Deity defies definition;” but when I have learned to my own satisfaction that theology is not the last word on sacred subjects I dare to differ with its dicta whenever these are not consistent with Truth.
If “To know God is Life eternal,” then there is no other way out of it than to know Him scientifically. Deity has been written and spoken of under many titles or synonyms. Prior to the time of Moses God was spoken of as Elohim; after that as Jehovah. To Plato God was known as Mind, or the home of Ideas; to Jesus as Spirit and Father, and to John as Love. From the pagan conception of many gods, these more or less after the likeness of men, and representative of different emotions, to the Jewish conception of one God comprising all these emotions, human thought gradually advanced to the conception of God as a loving Father, the Universal Spirit, and Omnipresent Love. But, like the waves of the sea, the waves of thought receded from the shores of science until superstition again clothed God with human form, endowed Him with human attributes, and banished Him from the earth to a heaven, the whereabouts of which not even theology can explain.
Today, in the stress and storm of things, as never before, men and women are asking if there is a God. To them it seems inconceivable that a good God, who is supposed to be omnipresent and omnipotent, should permit such atrocities as have lately taken place in the objective world. With a conception in the mind of a man-like God, ruling this planet from the center of all the planets, looking upon all this evil and suffering, and yet permitting it to continue when He might, in exercise of His omnipotence, put an instantaneous stop to it all, it is difficult to understand the so-called goodness of God. It is these inconsistencies which drive men either away from God or compel them to seek other interpretations of His nature and law than those which are commonly projected.
As the mind of man evolves in the direction of spiritual consciousness, Calvin’s conception of God, and others like it, become obsolete by reason of their brutality. Just as the damning of unbaptized infants and the consigning of such to eternal torment has become a doctrine too horrible for acceptance, so shall some of our pleasant theories in the light of advancing knowledge become too foolish for consideration.
The day will come when the unknown God, whom we ignorantly worship on the one hand, and fear on the other, shall be declared unto us. If today we worship God as a fickle personality observing all the unholy slaughter that has taken place in Europe, yet doing nothing to end it, the day will come when God shall be declared unto us as that immutable Principle of Being which beholds no evil and cannot look upon iniquity. (Hab.1:13.)
To the man who believes that God sees all the evil that is at present being enacted in this world, and permits it for some wise and inscrutable purpose of His own, it will come in the nature of a shock to have it declared unto him that God knows nothing at all about it. When He, Whom we have ignorantly worshiped as a person, in an anthropomorphic sense, is perceived as the ever changless Principle of all Reality, we shall see that it is no more possible for God to see the evil that so disturbs the world than it is for the principle of mathematics to see, and be moved by, the tears of children at school, or the throbbing brains of expert accountants.
If the word Principle, for Deity, seems cold and abstract, it is so only because we have not become familiar with it; yet, after we accustom ourselves to it we marvel that it has not been used before. We can understand how God can be everywhere in His entirety and omniscience and yet not know iniquity, when we think of the principle of mathematics being everywhere in its entirety–in the school room, counting room, at home, on trains, or on the streets–and yet not conscious of the struggles of the children of men to solve their mathematical difficulties.
If the principle of mathematics seems cold and heartless to those who are experiencing difficulties, the fault is not with the principle of mathematics. On the contrary it is most beneficent, for it places its whole, undivided and omnipresent self at the disposal of all who understand it and use it intelligently. The beauty and strength and usefulness of the principle of mathematics lie not in its knowledge of our mistakes, but in its support of our correct solutions. It neither chides nor rebukes us for our errors, and it is for this reason that we may turn to it again and again after each successive mistake, and find it tirelessly ready to answer every intelligent demand we may make upon it.
When the unknown God Whom we ignorantly worship, and Whom we dread to meet because we believe that He “remembereth our iniquities” and will condemn us for them, is understood as the Principle of eternal Love, we shall know that a sin forsaken is a sin forgiven. God can no more be angry than the principle of mathematics can be angry. When we stop making mathematical mistakes, we will find the principle of mathematics our most efficient helper; when we stop making moral mistakes, commonly called sins, we will find the Principle of Being not a bending reed, but a staff upon which to lean. Until we can view the unknown God from the standpoint of Principle, our forward movements are likely to be interfered with by the belief that God remembers our past.
The individual’s most anxious inquiry is: Can God forget the mistakes of the past? To such an one it must be comforting to know that the hitherto unknown God is the understandable Principle of Life which “forgiveth all our iniquities and healeth all our diseases,” when he applies this Principle and works in harmony with it. The principle of mathematics says to the man who has had no mathematical advantages, or has failed to make use of them, “Learn of me, and I will smooth out all your mathematical difficulties;” and in like manner the Principle of Being says, “Though thy sins be as scarlet, they shall be made whiter than snow.”
When we can understand that God is that omnipresent Principle of Life in which we live and move and have our being, we can, in the measure of our understanding, utilize this Principle, for there is a sense in which man utilizes God, even as God utilizes man. May it not be true that God never utilizes man except as man utilizes God? Every breath we draw, every movement we make, every good deed we perform is a conscious or unconscious using of Divine energy; and this being the case we shall one day use it more consciously, more constructively, more intelligently. Just as we apply the principle of mathematics to the solution of our mathematical problems, we shall apply the Principle of Truth to those moral and physical mistakes which we call sin and sickness. These shall be overcome, not so much by resisting evil as by knowing that God is all in all. By knowing that there is no error in the principle of mathematics, and by obeying its rules, the tendency to err is minimized and finally overcome; by knowing that in the Principle of Being there is neither sin nor sickness, and by applying the rules of right thinking to these mistakes, the tendency to indulge in the one and suffer from the other grows beautifully less.
As the unknown God is made known to us as the Principle of Being from which we sprang, and in which we exist, it becomes closer to us than our nearest friend. It is a covert from the storm, and an ever-present help in time of trouble. To be able to look away from our mistakes and to meditate for one brief moment on that omnipresent Principle in Which there are no mistakes, and to Whom mistakes are unknown, is for us to become refreshed and invigorated. It is to realize that the “tabernacle of God is with men, and that He dwells with them, and that they are His people, and that God Himself is with them, and is their God.” To know God as the Divine Principle of Love is to know that this Principle, when understood and applied, “shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away,” with our former misconceptions of God.
Chapter II THE SECOND COMING
“He came unto His own and His own received Him not.” –St.John 1:11
When Jesus said to his disciples: “It is expedient for you that I go away,” he set forth one of the soul’s greatest necessities. When he promised: “If I go away, I will come to you again,” he voiced that which has puzzled the human mind from that day to this. The second coming has been a hope, an expectation with many, a delusion to a great many more, and, to some, a foolish impossibility.
In 1849 Dr.Chalmers, one of the most noted divines of the Anglican Church, gave it as his opinion, based upon mathematical observation of spiritual truth in the Bible, that in the year 1865, or thereabouts, Jesus would again manifest himself to the earth in person. So careful had Dr.Chalmers been in spiritual investigations and observations, as well as mathematical calculations, that when Jesus did not appear in person in the year 1865, 1866 or 1867, he became discouraged and said on his deathbed that it was one of the greatest disappointments of his life, because everything in the Holy Scriptures pointed to the second advent at that time.
Others prophesied the same thing, and it is very remarkable that these prophecies were made concerning the years about the time that Dr.Chalmers predicted the second coming. The second appearance of Jesus of Nazareth did not materialize, so those who have devoutly hoped for it and fervently prayed for it, from time to time, have become discouraged until, today, the second coming is rather scoffed at by some. Strange to say, there are still others who believe profoundly in its possibility.
Is it not rather astonishing that two thousand years of Christianity, two thousand years of Christian living, have not served to disabuse the human mind of the possibility of the second advent of the Master? Is it not equally astonishing that four thousand years of Judaism have not yet eradicated from the Jewish mind the belief in the first coming of the Messiah? Does not the devout Jew look with just as confident expectation to the first advent of the Messiah as does the devout Christian of the old school to the second advent of Jesus?
What strange hope is this that all of the incrustations of centuries of materiality have not been able to crush successfully? What strange expectation is it, that four thousand years of Judaism and two thousand years of Christianity have not sufficed to kill in the human breast? Is it possible that we have not understood what Jesus meant when he said he would come again? Is it possible that our eyes are holden, that we cannot see? Someone has said that the expectation of a second appearing of Jesus is like looking out upon the horizon by means of a telescope for something which is as near to us as our hands and feet.
These are rather mystical utterances, to be sure, and it is only as we study them and dissect and analyze the words of Jesus himself concerning the second appearing that we begin to catch even a faint glimpse of what he meant. It was expedient for his immediate disciples that he go away, because if he had not gone away he could not have sent the Holy Comforter to them. Personality, ever true to self between human consciousness and its comprehension of Divine Principle, is that opaque bar which ever stands between the soul and its reception of the unadulterated, impersonal truth. It has always been expedient for all men, in all times and all places, that personality disappear in order that principle become the order of the day and the foundation of demonstrable sciences.
It would be deplorable if personality went away without leaving a fitting substitute for itself. It is a sad thing when a teacher leaves a school in which the pupils have loved her. It would be infinitely sadder if, during the time of her office, she had not done her duty. What is the duty, after all, of a personal teacher? Is it not to inculcate living, vitalizing principles? If a teacher is teaching children mathematics, what is she doing–solving their mathematical problems for them? Occasionally; but only by way of example. The time must come when each child must work out his own mathematical salvation, and hence she is a great teacher who impresses the living principles of mathematics upon the plastic mind, so that whether she goes or stays, it is able to work out its own salvation mathematically.
Is not the impressed principle of mathematics a very fair substitute for the personal teacher of mathematics? Is it not better and more efficacious in the economy of the child’s understanding than the personal teacher could ever be? Is it not expedient for them that she do go away occasionally from the classroom and leave them to their own work?
This is what the Great Teacher did, the Teacher of teachers, the greatest Teacher the world has ever seen. During his brief stay of three years, leading the disciples, he had been impressing upon their plastic spiritual mentalities the principle of being. He had been unfolding to them, with mathematical precision, the unity of God; the perfectness of man; and the day came when he saw that all he had ever unfolded to them was mere intellectual quotation. They had heard it with the ears; they had taken it in with the intelligence, and it had become a mental subject to them. But it was not a living, working principle. Just so long as he stayed, they went to him with all their difficult problems like children in a school-room.
“Why could not we cast him out?” “Because,” said Jesus in substance: “you are not applying the principle in your own lives. You feel a sense of great confidence that if you fail, I can succeed; and so you sit down comfortably and wait for the desired end. If that desired end be an application to me in the time of your distress, it is good for the patient, but not good for you; the patient is cured, but you are not using your power. So it is expedient that I go away, but I will come to you again.”
And when did he come to them again? After his ascension these disciples, who had had the glorious privilege of sitting at his feet, listening to his enunciation and elucidation of Divine Principle, revealed by their very loneliness, very depression and discouragement and very willingness to go back to their own vocations, that all he had ever told them had been little more than a mere intellectual acquirement. The very disappearance of Jesus filled them with discouragement. The strongest of them all, the most impulsive of them all, said he was going fishing. He was going back to his nets, concluding too hastily that the letter of Jesus’ teaching was, so far as he personally was concerned, undemonstrated.
But when once a man has put his hands upon the plough, even though he is not ploughing deep furrows and planting seeds of truth, he cannot go back comfortably. When once the human mind has become even partly convinced of the reality and genuineness and demonstrability of Divine Science, it would be impossible for that mind to go back, just as it is impossible for a child to forget its numeration tables when it has advanced in mathematical science.
So they, inclined between doubt and hope, fear and discouragement, marveled what was to become of them, finally coming back again to that which they believed intellectually to be the truth, and holding on to it with grim determination, even though they were not able spiritually to demonstrate it. Every human soul will come to that; it is the wilderness in a man’s life. It is the crystalization of development, when a man is neither a worm nor an angel. It is a necessary period of spiritual evolution, a trial of the soul, and when that has served its purpose, men are really ready for the great event, and this great event takes place usually on a pentecostal morning. They had overcome their doubts; they had overcome their fears; they had become re-integrated with a holy desire to be of service, to promulgate the doctrines of Jesus, to go out into the world and obey his commands, reform the sinner and heal the sick. They were all assembled together in one place and, significantly, they were all of one mind.
All Divine Scientists are sure that spirituality is the only Substance; that Good is the only law; that Love is the only force; and so, when they come together in one place, they are all of one mind on these essential, fundamental principles of Being.
On the pentecostal morning these first Divine Scientists were all in one place and of one mind, and, when men are all in one place and of one mind, something is sure to happen; and the thing which happened on the pentecostal morning was the Second Coming. It was not the reappearance of Jesus, as it had been in the upper chamber after his crucifixion. It was a revelation to their own inner souls of the realization, the genuineness, the demonstrability of the science that he had unfolded to them. It was an inner spiritual conviction infinitely more potent than any verbal utterance to which he had given voice. It was God’s way of talking to them in the language of ideas. No oral sound, no visible personality, but the communication of God Himself through the channels of spiritual receptivity.
The second coming has been experienced all through the centuries wherever minds and hearts and souls have been ready to receive it. It is not like a new comet–a something appearing suddenly so that millions and billions of people may see it. It can be perceived only by the awakened spiritual soul.
It is said in the Scriptures concerning the ascension of Jesus: “And a cloud received him out of their sight.” Our text is thus interpreted: “And when ye see these things”–such things as are now transpiring in Europe and America: famines, strikes, agitations, crimes and perplexities–“look up, and lift up your head; for your redemption draweth nigh,” and “the Son of man cometh in a cloud.”
These clouds are not black spots in the atmosphere; they are the various phases of mental opaqueness–spiritual density–not outside of us, but in us. It is a cloud in us which makes it difficult for us to perceive the presence of Christ, and so it is not without great and deep spiritual significance that “A cloud received him out of their sight” and “he cometh again in a cloud.” What does it mean? Christ has never been absent; it simply means that we have indeed been looking out upon the great and distant horizon with a telescope in order to locate and discover that which is within us. The greatest error of the human mind is a tendency to look out from itself for something that can be found only within itself.
“When shall the Kingdom of Heaven come?” asked the Pharisees. They were looking for a second coming, and Jesus said: “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you. You shall not say of it, Lo here or Lo there; it cometh not with observation.” It does not appear to the physical eye; it appears to the awakened spiritual senses of man.
What are the signs of the times? Were ever the prophetic utterances of Jesus more significant of any time than they are of the present day? Was ever the world at large in such a state of distress and agitation: nation against nation, brother against brother, father against child? One could easily become discouraged if one could not see the end thereof. One could easily feel that it is indeed the fulfilment of the prophesy, and the second coming of Christ is nothing more than this: the end of the world.
That is another thing which men have prophesied but which has not yet come to pass, because the prophecy has been so variously and almost universally misunderstood. The end of the world has appealed to us as the rolling-up as of a scroll of this physical earth and the disappearance thereof in a mist. I do not think that Jesus was speaking in this sense at all. If one looks up the word world in the Greek lexicons he finds that it means age. Jesus was not speaking of the world quite so much from a physical point of view as he was of the age of materiality–the age of sensuality. And when he was prophesying the end of this age through the second coming of Christ; through the revelation to human consciousness of the fact that Spirit is the only Substance and that matter is an ephemeral presentation–a phenomenal result of irregular and unscientific thinking–he was prophesying the disappearance of materiality–of human consciousness; not the rolling-up of the physical earth and the disappearance thereof, but the destruction in the human mind of everything that is unlike God and, through this destruction in the human mind, the revelation of the New Kingdom–the New Heaven and the New Earth. We have looked for the destruction of this; we have expected some great cataclysm of nature to wipe it out of existence and leave us like specks in a world of etheric space.
What hides the New Heaven and the New Earth from us today? The old idea of Heaven and the old idea of earth form the curtain which now hides from our spiritual vision the presence of the Kingdom of God and the presence of the earth of God’s creation, in which there is nothing poisonous, nor impure, nor imperfect.
The second coming of Christ is the spiritual means and methods by which this curtain of materiality is rolled up and discloses to our present view the Kingdom of God which has always existed and will ever continue; which exists now in all its beauty, harmony, continuity and power.
It is not coming to us from afar off. That is why Jesus said: “The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation.” You shall not see it like a floating speck in the atmosphere, coming from afar off. You shall see it when the curtain of materiality is rolled up in your soul; and there you will see, with illumined vision in the presence of God, the reality of Christ, the perfectness of man made in the image of God, and the spiritual universe that is unsusceptible to discord and decay.
Whatever is clouded is in us. The sooner we admit it, the sooner we realize where the cloud is, and the sooner we seek enlightenment in order that it may be dissipated, the better for us. The world has never been nearer to heaven than it is today; it is suffering its way into the Kingdom of God. It is not a difficult matter for a physician who detects the incipient phases of disease to prognosticate the situation and state of its development and to prophesy the hour of its crisis. He can tell you to watch the seventh, or twelfth, day, as the case may be. Once he determines the nature of the malady he can do that with all mathematical exactitude. He is prophesying a thing that has not come to pass, but it will come to pass, from his point of view. The patient’s case must reach a crisis.
If a physician can prognosticate or prophesy by means of his detection of incipient disease in human consciousness the hour or the day at which this disease must reach its crisis, is it not possible by just a little stretch of the imagination to conceive the possibility of Jesus–the Greatest Physician of all physicians–feeling the pulse and taking the temperature of the world’s body and prophesying with mathematical exactness the very things we have read in the text? It requires only a little more knowledge of spiritual anatomy. It requires only a little more understanding of the psychology of the human soul.
The Great Physician prophesied the very thing that is taking place today. The world faces its crisis. Its fever of sensuality and depravity has reached its height. Sometimes patients die when they arrive at this stage, but the Great Physician says: “No, the patient will not die. The world will live. It will live by the grace of God when the hour comes;” the very hour which is upon us. We can lift up our heads; the redemption of the world is nearer than we think, for the war drove men into the solitary seclusions of week-end retreats, forced to their knees women who have not prayed in years, and distilled in the hearts of children a new veneration for God.
It has not happened without purpose. Everywhere you find men turning, in most cases to their old religions, in many to the new. For what? Rest, peace and comfort. When a thing has grown so horrifying that it becomes nauseating and disgusting, men naturally turn from it, and to whom shall they turn? We have cried for centuries: “My Lord delayeth his coming.” A man whose vision is clear sees in the cloud the Son of man; sees already at the door, through the mist of all this carnality and depravity, the manifestation of the Holy Spirit; invisible to most, dimly visible to some, but clearly discernible to others.
“Behold, I stand at the door (of human consciousness) and knock.” Divine Science is clamoring for admission and receptive hearts are taking it in. It is true, as true as God is true.
And now let us come to the prophecy of 1865 and see if Dr.Chalmers was so grievously mistaken. I think the only mistake the dear man made was in believing that the second coming would be personal. In 1865 human thought had reached the place where it was ready for a new revelation of God, and whether it came through P.P.Quimby, or Mary Baker Eddy, or Warren F. Evans; or whether it was floated in on the waves of Emerson’s philosophy, it matters not. The thing arrived in 1865. That was the year in which this new thought of God and man and the universe was born.
Dr.Chalmers was incorrect only in one thing: not his mathematical calculations, not his spiritual observations and expectations, but his material expectation. He looked for spiritual truth to manifest itself in a material way, and it cannot do so. Jesus had done all that he could. He appealed to the sense of man–aroused men to the recognition of an indwelling power in themselves. He had accomplished his purpose.
The Physician had done his best, and now it remained for that which said: “I will come again.” It came again and has been coming again; it came again in our great country with a force that is overwhelming, and what did it meet? Opposition. Was it not scoffed at, ridiculed, sneered at, dragged through the courts? Has it not had to fight for its very breath, and yet has it not succeeded?
That which was born in the cradle in America has grown up and matured in England. The thing is born again and the forces of hell and earth can never stifle it. It is here to stay. It is the second coming; it is the revelation of God to human consciousness, the mathematical presentation of Truth. It is that by which the individual–when he understands it–may solve all the problems of his life.
I believe that prophecy can be so mathematically correct that you can determine the day and the hour of the crisis, just as a physician can foretell the crisis in a fever case. It is a hopeful thing. Let us not despair because of the terrible thing portending; let us rather repeat the encouraging words, the admonition of Jesus: “When these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads;–for your redemption draweth nigh”–your salvation is nearer than you think.
Already the fields are white for the harvest. You who are studying this new-old demonstrability of Truth, have in you that which is sacred, that which is sweet, that which is powerful. Hide it not under a bushel; use it not merely to personal purpose: the world has need of it. Circulate your literature, talk whenever you have an opportunity. Be not ashamed; there will come a pentecostal morning when you will tell the Truth to the world. Some may scoff and some may say that you are intoxicated; but if you are it is with the Spirit of God, inflamed with the Master’s compassion for a suffering world.
You mission is a marvelous one. The second coming is taking place every day you study, every day you search the Scriptures, every day you enter into the silence and realize your unity with God.
Chapter III WORKING WITH THE LAW
“My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” –John 5:17
It is a truth as ancient as the ancient days that, though we cannot contract the Infinite, we can expand our own conception of it in such a way as to make the Infinite serve us whenever we draw upon it intelligently. This is only another way of saying that the object of true prayer is not for the purpose of bringing about a change in God, quite so much as it is for the purpose of bringing about a change in men. In order for us to work intelligently with any law we must first understand that law, whether it be that of mechanics, mathematics or metaphysics. One cannot work contrary to any law and accomplish desirable results, and it is for this reason that an intelligent comprehension of law is as necessary in the religious realm as in any other.
When it is better understood that the Law of God, like that of nature, is fixed and permanent, unalterable and unyielding, men will cease to pray for petty benefactions and will seek rather to co-operate with Law, and thus bring into their lives greater blessings than they at present conceive. One cannot have read the Scriptures carefully without realizing how very important work is, for, in some places, it ranks higher than faith. James says, “Faith without works is dead.” Another says, “Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith alone.” Creative work is that which distinguishes the man from the animal, and, more than this, it is that which distinguishes a superior man from an inferior one.
We know how men differ in their attitude toward work when we observe how the majority dislike it, and how careless they are concerning it. For one Josiah Wedgewood, who permitted nothing to leave his pottery shop that was not absolutely perfect, you will find a million to whom perfection is an unnecessary detail, providing the market is supplied with imperfections at a good profit. For one Dante or Shakespeare whose every word must be such that no other could take its place and convey the exact meaning, we have thousands who, at so much per word, write stuff that is neither grammatical nor commendable. It is the paintings of the Michael Angelos and Raphaels which survive and increase in value, while millions of daubs are thrown into the discard. For a work to succeed, whether it be in art or literature, it must be as perfect as man can make it, and this can be accomplished only in the degree that men love their work, for it is the love of work which gives to any work its real value. Love of one’s work makes for perfection.
It is when we consider work in the light of these facts that we see why Paul ranks work so highly, for it is the visible complement of faith, without which faith would be a mere mental abstraction. Faith and works are like the two oars in a boat which must be used in perfect harmony if we are to cross the river of life successfully, for by using either one alone we merely cause the boat to go around in circles. “Working with the Law” is only another way of saying “Co-operating with God.” Men have accomplished marvelous things who did not realize they were co-operating with God; indeed their sense of God was very vague, and, in some instances, it almost amounted to unbelief, but in so far as they were working with the Law they were co-operating with God, whether they realized it or not.
The physical world as we see it today is a visible manifestation of man’s co-operation with God. If man had not co-operated with nature the race would still be trying to keep body and soul together on wild berries and the herbs of the field; but, on the grounds that “necessity is the mother of invention,” man was compelled to work with the Law to produce what nature unassisted would never supply. We know that man alone could never produce the appetizing and healthful fruits and vegetables which he now enjoys and prospers on, but we also know that nature alone, and without man’s co-operation, could not do it either. It is this working with the Law which has served to raise the race from the limited and the crude up to the unlimited and the beautiful.
The God in man, working with the God in nature, has brought into objective manifestation the invisible things which always exist in the archetypal world of Ideas. In a way that is only dimly perceived man is a co-worker with God, as is evidenced by the persistent improvement of the race. The best in man is always working in harmony with the Best in the universe, which is God, and this naturally leads to the “survival of the fittest” in the individual, as well as in the collective mass. When one looks at all the labor-saving devices in the world by which drudgery has been so greatly abolished, one sees that it has all been brought about by working with the Law. Humanity seems to be divided into three groups: those who, through ignorance, work against Creative Law and suffer untold miseries which might easily be avoided; those who, through laziness, refuse to co-operate with the Creative Law; and those who do co-operate with the Creative Law and increase and multiply in consequence.
The inventor is working with the Law whenever he produces anything of utility, whether he admits it or not, for it is always from something higher than himself that he receives his ideas and creative impulses. He is a channel through which Divine Intelligence communicates itself in terms of beneficial production. The Law of Creation, like that of electrical energy, is not a new law which man has evolved; it is as old as God, for it is God, and whenever men have worked with it results always have followed and always will. Every year at the Flower Show we see the results of this working with the law in the persistent improvements which are taking place in the floral kingdom; but these are only ocular evidences of the persistent improvement which is going on in the mind of the horticulturist, and without which the rose and the chrysanthemum would still be in their primitive imperfection of size and color. Nature alone never presented the race with such things of beauty in the floral kingdom and the architectural world as God and man working together have presented it. There are those who regard all the improvements in the worlds of man and of nature as things which occur according to “the natural course of events,” as if “the natural course of events” was something like the falls of Niagara, which could not be stayed, something which went on making changes in the world consciousness, independent of man’s thinking processes.
There are others who speak of things unusual as “occurrences which take place in God’s own good time,” as if they could not have taken place at any time and in any place, whenever God’s Creative Law was complied with. The reason why so many hopes have been deferred is not because Divine Mind was delaying the process, but because man was not availing himself of God’s Law and thus bringing into manifestation the things which God had “ordained for him before the foundation of the world.” If there is one thing more than another which needs to be understood it is the always-ready and never-failing responsiveness of Divine Mind to any intelligent demand that may be made upon it. God does not have to take our needs under consideration and think them over before granting them, as would a president or a king, for He is Infinite Wisdom and knows beforehand what things we need.
Neither is the answer to our prayers delayed because there is not enough in the Divine treasury to fulfill our request at the moment, as sometimes happens when appeals are made for funds to save human life in a nation whose treasury is empty. The electrician does not have to wait for electrical energy to make up its mind before he can begin to avail himself to it; all he has to do is to understand the law of conduction and transmission and the answer to his prayer is instantaneous the moment he establishes contact. The mathematician does not have to speculate as to the willingness of the mathematical principle to come to his rescue when he is in difficulty. He has learned from long experience that all that is required of him is that he work according to its rules and his answer is automatic. It is this working with the law in these domains which gets results, and this is none the less true in that mental domain where the working out of one’s own salvation is the paramount issue. In nature and in art, in mathematics and in music, we know that it is only as we work with the law that there is any real achievement, and now we are learning that our religious lives must be guided more by law than by emotion, if our religion is to be as workable and satisfactory as our mechanics.
At this point the question presents itself as to what is the Law, and what is the Law’s intention. There are those who tell us that the Law is Universal Mind and that Universal Mind has no intention “because it is impersonal.” But over against this we have those words of Jesus: “Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” And from this statement it would seem as if Divine Mind had intention, and that this intention is a good one.
It is not that Universal Mind has no intention, but that its intention is for Universal Good, and this is precisely what we must know so that our intention will take the same direction, knowing that whatever works for Universal Good will work at the same time for individual health and happiness, on the principle that that which blesses the whole will bless all its parts. Once let us accept the idea that Universal Mind has intention, and that this intention is always the same, and always beneficent, and then it is only a question of reconciling our intentions to the Universal Intention, and the Universal Good becomes a particular expression. This is what is meant by working with the Law, for when man’s intention is God’s intention, and not a mere personal caprice, a force is called into action which gives direction to the undirected Absolute. Working with the Law, when we understand it, will become as simple as touching a button and getting a flood of light.
In athletics and in war we recognize the necessity of team-work, and now we find it in the field of philanthropy, as well as in church and in commerce. When a man thinks he can work alone he has a fool for a partner, and hence the recognized need for co-operation. When the Allies worked together, and not separately, the war quickly ended. There can be no real success, financially or otherwise, until man makes God his ally.
We are told that “One with God is a majority.” This is understood when we see how unassailable a man’s position becomes when he is working with Law. The Law is always on our side when we are on the side of the Law, but let us go contrary to the Law and we at once invite disaster. “The fool hath said in his heart ‘there is no God,’” but that will not help him as long as there is Law to reckon with. Jesus said, “He that is not with me is against me.” This is not to be limited to a liking or a disliking of his personality, for what is really meant is that whosoever is working with the Law is working in harmony with God’s intention and all things conspire in his favor, as when a boy throws a stick into a stream all the force of the stream conspires to carry that stick in the direction in which it is flowing.
God’s intention is a stream of spiritual consciousness always flowing in the direction of man’s highest interests. Most men stand on the bank of the stream and idly watch it pass by. These are the men who are neither hot nor cold in matters that make for the general good. Others try to swim against it and are dashed upon the rocks of self-conceit and ultimate failure, while a comparatively few are throwing their sticks of thought into it and in this way uniting their purpose with the Divine purpose. Our object in working with the Law is not for the purpose of gaining ascendancy over other men, or of regulating the affairs of the outer world, but for the purpose of rising above our own limitations and exercising dominion over the world of diverse emotions within ourselves. By working with the Law we draw particular benefits to ourselves and others, for we become healthier, happier and holier, and these improved conditions reflect themselves on those with whom we come immediately in contact.
The Law will serve only in so far as we utilize it. Rivers will flow and oceans roll whether we use them or not, but if we are wise we will use them. Nature will continue from one century to another without our co-operation, but if we are wise we will co-operate and compel her to serve our highest purposes in increased production. Universal Mind will go on through all eternity whether we make it our ally or not, but if we have wisdom we will make it our ally. The tendency of the Universal Mind is to express itself in harmony, and when this becomes the tendency of the individual mind, it is as when two streams unite and mingle and then flow on harmonious to the same end.
All things work together for Good to them that love Good, because the Love of Good unites itself with the stream of Good, and not because Good steps out of its way to show its gratitude. All failure is due to taking sides with the finite that is within us. All success is due to taking sides with the Infinite that is within us. Working with the Law, we make God our Silent Partner. We become consciously identified with the Source of all Power and can affirm:
“All good gravitates in my direction, for I am One with God. I love It, I work with It, I attract It. It is now working through me to will and to do of Its own good pleasure; for this is its intention, and my intention is to bring all my thoughts into harmony with it, so that whatsoever I think or do shall be done to the glory of God, the all-Good.”
Chapter IV THE CREATIVE POWER OF THE IDEAL
“Be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God.” –Romans 12:2
I think it is Shakespeare who says, “It is the mind that makes the body rich,” and he might truly have added, “It is the mind that makes the body young.” We have known men and women who were positively old at fifty; that is, they were more decrepit in mind and body than many others whom we know who have reached their seventieth, and even their eightieth years. We used to think that this was due, largely, if not entirely, to physiological conditions; but in the light of the new psychology we are beginning to realize how very important a part the mental plays in the matter of premature old age, as in all other things. It seems too bad that just as a man has acquired enough wisdom to be of use to himself and others he should become suddenly smitten with a belief in old age, and thus nourish a thought that casts a cloud over his life. If there is one thing more than another which the new psychology is doing it is the revealing of this as neither necessary nor wise.
We are learning that we hasten the disintegrating processes of old age through auto-suggestion just as much as we hasten these processes by overwork and dissipation–if not more so. It is not enough when a man reaches what is called middle life that he slow up in his labors and discontinue his dissipations. He must cultivate youthful thoughts as surely as he must cultivate youthful companions. A man may spend fewer hours at his desk after his fiftieth year, but if he spends more hours at his club talking with old cronies and speculating as to the length of time he has remaining before decrepitude seizes upon him, he has not improved matters much.
This is now as much an established fact as that the ship-builder builds the ship or the house-builder builds the house. The ship-builder uses wood and steel, nuts and bolts, rivets and ropes, and in addition to these the house-builder requires bricks and mortar and other materials, but in the construction and carrying on of these enterprises of their physical bodies they each use the properties by which they are surrounded in the form of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and the like. That for a time this building and repairing work is carried on by subconscious processes is true, but this does not prevent these processes being greatly aided by conscious co-operation. This is the lesson that the New Spiritual Psychology has come to teach.
On the principle that while God supplies us with food He will not eat it for us, it is safe to assert that while God has equipped us with mental faculties He expects us to exercise these faculties for ourselves, in accordance with His law of Creative Intelligence. If the ship-builder and the house-builder should take the materials by which they are surrounded and scatter them here, there, and everywhere, we should have neither ships nor houses, but by the intelligent assembling of these component parts we have ships to sail in and houses in which to live.
Man, then, in the generation and regeneration of what is called his “earthly tabernacle,” or the instrument through which he functions on the objective plane, must act with the same degree of intelligence as do the builders of ships and of houses. These useful members of society cannot throw wood and steel, nuts and bolts, bricks and mortar together indiscriminately and construct ships and houses, no matter how well they are supplied with these essentials.
The same law which forbids the component parts of ships and houses and foods from being thrown together indiscriminately to result in good ships, houses, and physical constitutions, operates on the higher plane of the mental, for Law, to be Law, must be so in all phases. There is a law by which mind acts upon the body as certainly as an alkali acts upon an acid, and if this mental action is not operating constructively it is operating destructively; for mind action is as incessant as the flow of the waters of Niagara. When one thinks of the untold centuries of the ceaseless energy of Niagara going to waste, and of the comparatively few years in which it has been used to generate electric power, one is furnished with some idea of the tremendous Power of Mind and the comparatively little use we have made of it. It were nothing at all that an immense body of water poured itself over the Falls if no constructive direction were given to it. It would be marvelous to see, but of no practical benefit.
In every man there are undreamed of possibilities; but unless he realizes this he is much like a watch with all its mechanism in perfect order, but which does not record the time because it has been allowed to run down. Many a man considers himself “all run down,” when what he needs is to be wound up with the stem-winder of a New Idea. Perhaps nothing is so encouraging as the discovery that each man, like each watch, has a main-spring upon which all his movements depend, and this main-spring is the subconscious mind. The difference between the main-spring of a watch and the subconscious mind of a man is the difference between that which is subject to destruction and that which goes on forever. When Paul admonishes us to become transformed by the renewing of our mind, it is his way of telling us to charge the subconscious mind with such directions as we wish it to carry out in objective experience.
It is now the opinion of some of the most advanced thinkers that the subconscious mind is that which stands between the conscious and the superconscious, receiving its impressions now from one and again from the other. Its purpose is not to create but to obey, and so faithful is it in the performance of this duty that, like an office boy in the employ of a firm in which there are several members, it will carry out orders given to it by each member of the firm, even when these orders seem to be contradictory. It might seem from this illustration that the subconscious mind, like the office boy, is an automaton when it comes to obeying orders, and in one sense it is. When an employer said to an office boy who remarked that he thought a certain thing ought to be done in a certain way, “You are not paid to think, you are paid to do what you are told,” he had the attitude toward that boy which every individual ought to have toward the subconscious mind. It is not paid to think, it is paid to serve Thought, whether that Thought is prompted by suggestions from without, through the avenue of the senses, or from Within, through the channel of spiritual Perception.
The importance of this aspect of the subconscious mind cannot be too strongly emphasized, for it not only explains how we are constantly producing in our lives that which is undesirable, but it furnishes us with an idea of how we may bring into our lives that which is most disirable by simply reversing the machinery of the mind. If we are not perfectly satisfied with the conditions of our lives, and few persons are, we are confronted with the necessity of either becoming “reconciled to our fate,” as some believe we should, or becoming masters of our fate, as some believe we can.
Between the two extremes of being reconciled to one’s fate and being master of it there is a great gulf, but we are now learning that it is not an impossible gulf, like that which separated Dives from Lazaus, for if we cannot cross it on the surface, nor bridge it in the air, we can still use the subway of the subconscious, which is always the shortest line between the two points of the Relative and the Absolute. On the plane of the Relative all phenomena are more or less limited and imperfect, while on the plane of the Absolute all is unlimited and perfect. This is because the original Idea of a thing, like the original phraseology of a language, suffers from the attempt to translate it into visible manifestation. Those of us who are able to read the Greek poems only in their English translations are told that we have no conception of their beauty as it expresses itself to those who read them in the original.
One of the most difficult exercises at school is the re-translation of something back into its original language, and it is this exercise which suggests the method by which we are to return to our original perfectness as the conscious sons and daughters of God. When it becomes better known that the visible world, with all that it contains, including our own bodies, is a poor translation of that spiritual universe of God’s Ideas, we shall labor more diligently to re-translate ourselves into that Ideal State. If, on the plane of the relative, circumstances are not to our liking, and what we want to do is to change those circumstances to other and more desirable ones, we must do exactly what we do in simple arithmetic when we are uncertain about our calculations.
When things are not working out satisfactorily we do not go on writing figures in the hope that an accumulation of figures will solve the problem; rather do we, for the moment, look away from all figures to the principle and, working out from this, get our correct answer. In mathematics this method could be called working on the plane of the absolute, and it is in a similar way to this that all the problems of life must be solved. On the plane of the relative there are moral, mental, physical and financial problems to be solved, and to attempt to solve these by ordinary means is to be as unsuccessful in the future as we have been in the past. We can no more cure moral or physical diseases with just will-power, and without God-Power, than we can produce electric light without a dynamo; nor can we solve our financial problems by lying and dishonesty. “Except the Lord build the house they labor in vain that build it,” says the Scriptures. Except as any problem, mathematical or metaphyscial, is working out according to Principle, it is not solved at all.
The Creative Power of the Ideal depends then upon our conscious co-operation with the Absolute in Divine Science, which is God; and the easiest way to do this is to learn to think as God thinks; and as God never thinks in terms of the relative and the negative, but always in terms of the Absolute and the Positive, it is plain that the creative power of the Ideal through us rests with the kind of mental pictures we form. When I speak of the Ideal I do not mean that which exists only in imagination or fancy, and which we feel to be unattainable. I mean that which is back of all that we call real, and which is the very substance of the so-called real.
We speak of men as being men of high ideals or of low ideals, as the case may be, meaning by this that they are men of fine thoughts on the one hand or coarse thoughts on the other, and that their ideals exhibit themselves in their moral conduct, in their physical appearance, and in their very circumstances. Now, conduct, physical conditions, and financial circumstances can be created only by thinking, and hence the creative power of the ideal consists in equipping the original thought with sufficient strength to project itself into manifestation.
The physical sciences all assure us that the starting point of everything in the world is the invisible nucleus which gathers around it by the law of attraction whatever is necessary to its complete manifestation in form. If our thought nucleus is one of fear, it will at once attract unto itself the same quality of thought which is constantly emanating from other minds, for there is a mental contagion as there is a moral and a physical contagion. If our thought nucleus is one of sickness or poverty, it will coalesce with other thoughts of sickness and poverty until it registers in us as the finished product in bodily discomfort. This is on the principle that the smoke from one chimney may scarcely be noticed, but when it unites itself with the smoke from many chimneys it may almost conceal the sun.
But if the creative power of the Ideal operates in this manner on the plane of the negative, it will operate also on the plane of the positive. If our thought nucleus be one of health or happiness, purity or prosperity, then by the same law of attraction it will draw around itself thoughts of a similar character, until these register in our daily life in expressions after their kind. This is as much a law as that a magnet will attract a needle, and we must learn how to make intelligent use of it. If the subconscious mind is not “paid to think,” but to carry out orders, then we must see to it that we give only such orders to it as we wish it to execute.
And we must be so sure at the outset that we know what we want that we shall not be constantly countermanding our orders by persistently changing our minds. When we know what we want, we next need to know if this exists on the plane of the Absolute, for if it does not it can never manifest itself on the plane of the relative. All the things that are really worth having exist on the plane of the Absolute, for in God is Life, and Love, and Beauty and Supply. And the knowledge that these exist on the plane of the Absolute, from which they can never become separated, enables us to impress the Idea of these on the subconscious mind, and this in turn expresses these in us as the finished products of our mental picture.
The creative power of the Ideal, then, consists in suggesting to the subconscious mind whatever we desire and know to be in the Absolute Divine Mind awaiting our intelligent demand upon it. The suggestion of health or happiness, purity or prosperity is a seed which, if watered and nurtured by similar suggestions, will inevitably germinate into those things which rejoice the soul, strengthen the mind, heal the body and replenish the resources.
Chapter V SELF-DISCOVERY THROUGH TRUTH
“And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” –1 Thess. 5:23
If what is called the New Philosophy of Life has any purpose, it is, it seems to me, that of leading mankind out of the morass of its self-imposed limitation up to those heights of Self-knowledge whereon it is possible to see the object for which the all-creative Mind originated Man as Its highest Idea. Despite our most earnest endeavors to attain to those conditions which are ideal, so ideal as to be considered unattainable, we feel convinced that whether this goal is reached or not, there is something within that will not let us rest with our present status, and hence the urge to rise above circumstances with which we are not satisfied. With all our quests, and there are many, there is one which is most important, and which ought not to be placed second to anything, and this is the discovery of the self.
To that man who would be what he desires to be, it is a matter of great import that he should heed the advice of the Greek oracle whose precept was, “Know thyself.” With the ancients self-knowledge was based on the perception of the underlying Principle of Being, and not upon anatomy or physiology. It was not a question as to how much a man weighed in a physical sense, or as to how much he knew of physical laws; it was a matter of his consciousness of a self that is neither material nor mortal, and is superior to material and mortal conditions. It is of little real value to us to know how many bones we have in our bodies if we do not know how many faculties we have in our minds and how to use them. If a man had as many bones as a fish and only the intelligence of a fish, he might swim like a fish but he would not think like a man, and unless a man thinks like a man, he is not going to enter into the possession of a man’s blessings.
When a man realizes his true self it is like finding one’s direction by means of the compass. It is no longer a question of private opinion, but a discovery based upon science, so much that if the most profound scientist in the world told the simplest boatswain that he was sailing west when the compass indicated that he was going east, he would accept the verdict of the inanimate compass and reject the statement of the animate sage. This is a case of science against the scientist, or human opinion against Truth.
Just as there is a compass which serves to direct a mariner so that he may take advantage of all favorable conditions and avoid the unfavorable, so there is a compass which will so direct a man on the sea of existence that he may take advantage of every wind of God that blows, and avoid all those ugly currents of human and false opinion which are responsible for all the misery which afflicts mankind. This touchstone to which we allude is that which Paul designated as the “Christ in us, the hope of glory.” And lest we may make a mistake, which is so often made when Christ is spoken of as a person, we want to affirm that Christ, as we understand the word, is not so much a person as a Principle, which Principle, when understood and co-operated with, will lead us out of our difficulties as unerringly as the principle of mathematics leads us to the solution of our problems whenever we apply it and abide intelligently by its rules.
The door to all achievement will be opened to us when we find this key to every situation. The key is Truth, and the Truth is Christ, even as the Way and the Life is Christ. When we use these synonyms for Christ, such as the Way and the Life and the Door, we realize how impersonal the Christ is. It is the Way which leadeth to all Truth, and through Truth to that Life which is not physical but metaphysical, not mortal, but immortal.
There are three ways by which men discover themselves, but only one of them is fully satisfying. In our infancy we discover ourselves physically, as when a baby becomes aware of its toes and plays with them, or its thumb and at once begins to suck it. As it grows in consciousness it finds other members and other inclinations, but these are largely on the physical plane until it reaches the intellectual stage when it becomes congnizant of a new world, and a new self springs forth from the inside of the old self, which is now perceived to be not the real man or self, but the outer garment or shell. This fresh area which is opened up by the key of the intellect is often so marvelous as to cause us to feel that it is the last word in self-discovery. We discover through the intellect that man is not an animal merely, but a thinking being to whom the explorations of the physical world, and the investigations of the artistic, esthetic, and poetic realms become a fascination.
Under this spell the intellectualist makes the mistake of believing that the mind is everything and the Spirit nothing. It is as if the baby should conclude that its toes or its thumb were all and there were no hands or feet. When an intellectualist uses his intellect to prove, “There is no God,” he is in the same position as a baby would be if it were to attempt to prove it had neither hands nor feet simply because it is not yet conscious of these members, but only a portion of them. But the baby does not attempt any such thing, and it is fortunate that only a very few intellectuals seek to prove the non-existence of anything higher or other than mind.
Assuming, then, that we have found the intellectual self within the physical self, so to speak, shall we rest content with this sense of self and not seek deeper? A few may do this, but there comes a time when this view of the self becomes too limited and we cry, as did Job of old, “Oh that I knew where I might find Him! that I might come even to His seat!” There is a self-seeking that is not to be condemned but is an exercise of the soul to be applauded. It is the yearning of the best in us for the best in the universe, a thirsting of the soul after God which is likened by the Psalmist to the painting of a hart after the water brook. Mystics in all ages assure us that he who knows himself in the highest and most spiritual sense knows God, and that he who knows God as the result of this self-knowledge on a spiritual plane, knows all that is worth knowing.
It is for this reason that Solomon, the wise, says, “With all thy wisdom (intellectuality) get understanding,” which understanding is an inner conviction of the Truth that man is, like God, a trinity in unity. The Trinity in Unity of the Godhead is that trinity in one divine Intelligence of Life and Truth and Love, of which Man, in the highest sense, is the three-in-one expression of spirit, soul, and body which Paul the Apostle expressly prays may be “sanctified wholly.” Not only is the spirit of man, which is the highest degree of spiritualized consciousness, and the soul, which corresponds to mind’s capacity to appropriate Truth, to be preserved, but the body itself is to come under this preserving power of God, expressing itself through that transparency of Thought which comes as the result of knowing that, “There is nothing true but God.”
If we can accept the theory that the soul is the thinking faculty of the individual, we can also accept the theory that the spirit is this thinking faculty operating at its highest level, or at that point where it contacts with the Universal Spirit of all, or the Oversoul, as Emerson terms it. On the other hand, admitting that the soul is the thinking faculty, we can understand that the body is that thinking faculty operating at its lowest level. This, then, resolves the body into Thought, and because it is thought expressed in shape, we can assume that Thought may exercise dominion over its own formation, on the principle that that which creates, can recreate.
One ought not to find it very difficult to imagine oneself to be a trinity of spirit, soul and body if one will take the trouble to analyze one’s own emotions. Under the influence of an exalted emotion, from any cause whatsoever, it is possible for the soul, or mind, to become transported to such heights of consciousness as to be, for the time being at least, utterly oblivious of the body with all its so-called sensations. On the other hand, it is possible for the soul, or mind, to operate at such a low level that it is conscious of nothing but the body, with its so-called pleasures and pains. But such a state is spoken of by Paul as that of being “carnally minded,” the consequence of which is death. It must not be inferred that the body is a thing to be despised; it needs merely to be dominated and made to serve the highest impulses of the mind instead of the lowest.
Someone has likened the average man to a three-story house, the occupant of which lives for the most part in the basement, but there is no reason why he should continue to dwell in that region, neither should he be content always to dwell even on the parlor floor, for there are those up-stairs regions to which one, with just a little effort, may ascend and find rest and refreshment. It is in the upper stories of our being that we find that of us which surpasses all merely human conceptions of the self, for it is there, in that “dome of the temple of God in man,” that Thought rises like a sweet incense, or like smoke from the fire, to the most exalted perception of man’s unity with his Maker. It is on this high eminence of spiritualized vision that one sees how vast is the range of Pure Thought.
Like a sunbeam which may be extended indefinitely, but which cannot be separated from the sun which gives it birth, so Pure Thought extends itself to that celestial range where “Mind communes with mind,” where God speaks with every man as He spoke with Moses. And then down from this mount of revelation Pure Thought extends itself to those outermost bounds of human experience where sin and sorrow blind men to their true natures, to that real self “which knows no sin.” Living in the basement, or on a level with the body, we are like those fishes in the Mammoth Cave which have eyes but see not. But as we come out on to the roof garden of our mental homes where the view is unobstructed by the ceiling of separation, we are able to see “God as He is” and to perceive that “we are like Him.”
It is when the last shred of belief in separation from God is torn asunder that we “see as we are seen of Him That created us,” and it is at this point of our spiritual unfoldment that we can say with Jesus, “I and my Father are one.” This is the place in Thought where one cannot say where Divine Mind, or God, ends and Its idea, Man, begins. May it not be that there is no such line of demarcation, and that the Self which is God merges into the Self which is Man, as the dawn merges into daylight without any break whatsoever? At the point where the Christ is seen to be the only and real self of man, where Divine Mind and its Idea are as inseparable as warmth is inseparable from the fire which generates heat, there is perpetual tranquility. In this region of one’s being there is no disease and no discord, for it is that “kingdom of heaven” about which John was thinking when he said, “There is nothing in it that maketh or worketh a lie.”
It is a great step in the direction of a true mental or spiritual healing to discover that man, in his real nature, is now a spiritual being, and that all that is necessary is to become conscious of this Truth, for it is this Truth that frees us from all the evil consequences of believing ourselves to be something else. Once we establish the conviction in our own minds that we are the children of God, with all that is implied in this spiritual relationship, then we have a foundation to build upon which is the rock of Realization of eternal Principle, and not the sand of human speculation.
Like the prodigal in the parable of Jesus who “came to himself,” we must come to that Self of us, and the Self of all, which, like our Heavenly Father, is the same “yesterday, and today, and forever.” Through divine understanding we must form such a Holy Alliance with God that “No evil shall befall us, neither shall any plague come nigh our dwelling,” for is it not written that we “live and move and have our being” in Him in Whom no evil is? As a child in the womb of its mother is one with the mother, so man is one with God from Whom “nothing shall by any means separate” him.
Chapter VI WALKING BY FAITH
“The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” –1 Cor. 2:14
One cannot read the New Testament without realizing how large a part the element of faith played in the life and works of Jesus. To one who appealed to him for relief he replied, “Be it unto thee according to thy faith.” To another he said, “Thy faith hath saved thee.” While to the woman who said, “If I may but touch the hem of his garment I shall be made whole,” he answered: “Thy faith hath made thee whole.” In all of these expressions of the Master there is an evidence of that which we are coming to believe so strongly in these days of modern psychology concerning the supreme influence of thought upon the physical organism.
Through faith the mind rises above those morbid conditions which make for depression and consequent disease into that higher realm of thought and action where the impossible to sense becomes the possible to soul. Faith is that quality of mind which, instead of scattering our mental forces, concentrates hope and feeling, expectation and imagination, into a quartette of mental harmony which makes for that perfect song of praise which expresses itself in improved bodily condition. It would be strange indeed if this were not so, seeing that lack of faith makes for lack of initiative and arrested achievement. The innumerable instances of the cure of disease where the patient labored under the belief that some infallible remedy was being used, when the physician in attendance was merely administering some harmless concoction because he had reached the end of his resources, are all proofs of the remedial value of thought when lifted out of the slough of despondency into the more rarefied atmosphere of hope and expectation.
It seems almost superfluous in an intelligent age to emphasize the value and necessity of faith. One would think that the well-authenticated cases of faith’s workability all down through the ages would be sufficient to justify its scientific cultivation, but we have deluded ourselves into the belief that faith is like the color of our eyes; that is, we are born with it, and hence we have it naturally or we do not have it at all, and no amount of effort will confer it upon us. “I cannot force myself to believe; I wish I could, for then I might be happy. I envy those who have such sublime faith, but I must be shown,” says one who is trying, when all other means have failed to get comfort and healing by spiritual means. It might be well at the outset to state that Faith, which is the seed of the Spirit at work in the soil of the soul, is like any other seed in the sense that the less it is forced and the more it is cultivated the better, We are coming to realize that faith, which is so natural to us in childhood that we believe what is false as easily as we believe that which is true, must be elevated above the state of unquestioning acceptance to the plane of pure reason where it becomes that which is able to give a scientific explanation of itself.
The childlike faith of the woman who touched the hem of the Master’s garment enabled her to appropriate the blessing she sought, but it by no means enabled her to confer similar blessings on those who were in the same plight. There is the faith which appropriates, and the faith which demonstrates, and it ought not to be difficult for us to appreciate that the faith which demonstrates is greater than that which merely appropriates. One of the first acts of an appropriating faith is the willingness to be convinced, for where there is no willingness to be convinced there is no possibility of conviction, and where there is no conviction there is no construction. This applies to mechanics and metaphysics alike. If we cannot be convinced of a possibility in mechanics we take no interest, and where there is no interest there is no investment, either of time or money; and where there is no investment of these necessary factors there is no profit, all of which explains how large a part faith plays in what we call worldly success, which after all is nothing more nor less than faith rewarding itself.
Let us take two men with an equal amount of capital and with an equal desire to increase it. One is willing to be convinced of the value of a new discovery and listens with patience to a description of its merits, the other regards it all as a beautiful but impractical vision. One invests and makes a vision a possibility, the other withholds his interest and investment and remains at a financial standstill, if indeed he does not deteriorate financially. Jesus taught this in the parable of the talents, which ought to be taken to heart by every man who desires to increase in the wisdom of God and in the wealth of the world, for these are not incompatible as some would have us believe. When Solomon asked for wisdom and understanding he got riches in addition, for the one follows the other as the furrow follows the plough. It is where we ask for riches without wisdom or understanding that the Law fails to work, for we require wisdom and understanding to keep riches as well as to get and dispense them properly.
It is somewhat difficult to determine whether faith is emotional or intellectual until we arrive at the conclusion that it is a combination of these mental or spiritual qualities. The highest form of faith is that which exhibits itself in a blending of unquestioning trust in the Law and an intellectual perception of the Law’s availability. We have an exhibition of this combination of spiritual trust and intellectual perception in the science of aviation. All mechanical requirements having been complied with, the aviator then trusts himself of the supporting power of the air to hold him above the earth. In the physical world we see the steady increase of faith as it progresses from the grossly material up to the ethereal. There was a time when man dared not venture upon anything less solid than the earth. Water was his enemy, for the reasons that it afforded him no support for his feet, but when his faith conquered his fear water became one of his most obedient and profitable servants. That which yesterday threatened to swallow him today carries him to lands hitherto unknown and opens up prospects undreamed of. Water alone would drown him, but water plus faith increases his possibilities. Man through faith reconciled two of his former enemies, fire and water, and through their combined exertions he generated a new force which, in a limited sense, abolished time and space by enabling him in a few days to reach a destination which previously had required weeks or months.
By bringing water and fire into closer proximity steam came into use, so that water and fire were able to do infinitely more for humanity together than they could ever do alone. It was only a step from this to the discovery and use of electrical energy, by means of which the very air does not become dominated, as some aver, but utilized. These advances in the progress of man from fear to faith show that with each step there has been a steady ascent from the visible to the invisible. We see it in the faith of the primitive man who must needs overcome his fear of water before he can trust himself to remove his feet from terra firma. We find it again in the faith of the modern man who must conquer his fear of the apparently non-supporting air before he can trust himself to leave the ground. Just as we can subsist longer without solid food than we can without water, and longer without water than we can without air, so we can subsist longer without any or all of them than we can without the breath of Life which we did not create.
If all progress in the material world is the result of the use of those finer forces of nature, the further progress of the race must depend upon its knowledge and use of that greater force by means of which all these other forces are intelligently pressed into service. Without thought the forces of nature would be as inoperative to benefit mankind as water would be powerless to produce steam without fire. But thought that is merely mental motion, and not scientifically directed, is like steam blowing off through a safety valve. What is needed today is Thought operating in accordance with Principle, not principle as we commonly use this word, but Principle in the sense of Causation. If a sham medicine without any therapeutic value whatsoever can effect a cure where other medicines endorsed by the medical fraternity have failed, we want to know what the mental factor is which produces the desired result, and the only answer is that the disease is either a sham or the remedial agent is a mental quality, which we call faith.
That so-called incurable diseases are being cured by spiritual science cannot be denied; therefore it is important to understand whether it is the faith of the patient in spiritual science which produces the cure, or the understanding of the practitioner; or if it is not rather the union of these factors brought together in an intense focus. A patient comes to spiritual science, having exhausted the powers of his family physician, and also the skill of the specialists who have been called for consultation. It is not reasonable to suppose that such a patient has more faith in the spiritual scientist, whom perhaps he has never met before, than he has in his physician whom he knows and trusts, and yet it is not infrequent for such cases to be healed.
What is the explanation? Here we find a patient who either turns to spiritual science to please his family, or because he has reached the place where he is willing to try anything, no matter how seemingly absurd it appears. Beyond being willing to be treated or prayed for he knows nothing at all about the subject. One of the first requirements is a test of his faith, or rather a change in the direction of his faith. It is astonishing how difficult it is for us to give up material remedies, notwithstanding we have grown steadily worse under their administration, and it is for this reason that many physicians who have long abandoned their reliance upon them, either for themselves or their families, feel obliged to prescribe some harmless thing, which, while it has no remedial value, has no injurious effect. They assert that they do this because their patients would not feel that anything was being done for them if they were not “taking medicine.” And, to the great surprise of the physician, they often get well. In such cases it is their faith which makes them whole, and this ought not to be wondered at, since it is the natural consequence of the operation of mental law in the physical body.
Would it not be better, instead of resorting to such practices, to study this law of mental healing so that the physician on such occasions could instruct the patient in the use of his own spiritual faculties? Such physicians as are doing this are meeting with astonishing success. Not long ago I heard of a case of so-called incurable cancer healed by a surgeon here in New York who is a student of Divine Science. One of his patients who had suffered greatly was induced to have an X-ray examination, and the conditions were found to be such that an operation would only have occasioned needless suffering, inasmuch as everything seemed to be involved. Without telling his patient how very serious his case was, and realizing that nothing could be accomplished from a material point of view, he kept his patient’s confidence and began to treat or pray for him with the result that a later examination showed decided improvement.
One of the first requirements of Divine Science should be that the patient give up his material methods, at least while he is under treatment, so that when the cure is established he will know what brought it about, and thus be not only physically healed, but intellectually convinced that “God is an everpresent help in time of trouble.” Just as the primitive man had to leave the land before he could derive the real benefit from the water and test its power to support him, and just as the aviator must leave the ground before he can prove the sustaining power of the air, so the soul must rise above its dependence on matter before it can prove to the fullest extent the healing power of Divine Mind. Expecting benefits from Divine Mind while afraid to give up our drugs, we shall vacillate between one extreme and the other until we come to realize that the God Who created us can recreate us, and this without any material assistance whatever.
There is no satisfaction comparable to the feeling that “He Who forgiveth our iniquities healeth also our diseases.” To be healed of a bodily malady by the power of true prayer, and this without a single material remedy, is to see God in the healing of our flesh. It is to be grateful, not only for the fact that we are healed, but for the discovery that the Mind which brought us into being may be safely relied upon to correct our imperfections. There are those who, before they came to Divine Science, used material remedies almost daily for one reason or another, but who now and for years past have enjoyed better health than ever before, and this through a radical reliance on the God of all health. Is it not reasonable to suppose that the Mind which moves the planets can move the internal organs of man? Should it be thought a thing incredible that the Mind which formed man can transform him physically, as well as reform him morally? Can that Divine Law which makes for the circulation of pure air in its own universe not be depended upon to re-establish harmonious circulation in the human organism?
These are not impertinent questions, it seems to me. Shall He who created the eye not be able to repair it? Then why is it that spiritual healing should have had to apologize for itself for so long? Simply because the race had got out of the habit of depending upon it, and, like anything else that is not used, it was lost, for a time, only to be now re-established with accelerated force. Humanity is clamoring for it. The churches are trying to supply it, and it is only a question of time when the church which does not supply it will be asked the reason for its impotency.
The demand has gone forth and the supply is forthcoming. Faith is on the increase and the result of faith will be restoration of that primitive order which gave to Christianity its first great impulse. If “a genuine act of faith in God (as the Healer of our diseases) is a movement of the whole being towards Him, and brings the soul into vital contact and vivifying conjunction with the Central Life,” then it follows that the more faith we have in the unseen force of the Holy Spirit the better. If the mind of man is constantly creating a body for itself in its own image and likeness, that is, in harmony with its own nature, then we should see that our mental pictures are of the highest possible character. If the teaching of Jesus is true, that in the healing of our diseases it is done unto us, “according to our faith,” then he is the best physician who seeks to wean his patient from a too strong reliance on inert matter to Active Mind.
We walk by faith, but it is better to walk by faith in God than in man. The arm of the Lord is stronger than the arm of mortals, and therefore to be leaned upon with more assurance of unfailing support. If a sugar-coated bread-pill, or a rabbit’s foot, through faith in their potency, can cure an ill or ward one off, what should not an unquestioning faith in God accomplish? If to believe that we are sick is to make us so, then a change of belief to the conviction that we are well is to make this a reality to us, and this assurance becomes more real and lasting in the degree that health is understood as the normal, and therefore the real, state of mind and body. Let our declaration be at all times, then, “I am one with Him in Whom no sickness is.”
Chapter VII IS DISEASE REAL, OR APPARENT?
“It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing.” –John 6:63
In dealing with the reality or unreality of disease, the first thing to be established in the mind is the sense in which we are to use the word “reality.” It is destined in various ways, so that it is difficult to understand in what sense one is privileged to use it. One may speak of a mirage as a real illusion, for such it is, but the definition of the word “illusion” discloses the fact that it means that something which seems to be real is not real. Alluding to a real illusion is like speaking of a true lie, and yet the lie may be real as a lie, but when it is discovered to be a lie it is seen to have no truth in it; therefore the only reality about it is the suffering it has caused, and this would never have been if all concerned had known it as a lie. A lie would hurt no one if no one accepted it as truth. Even the liar would not tell his lie if he knew that no one would believe him, and so we see that it is not the lie which hurts, but the belief in it.
If we can accept the definition of the word “real” in its philosophic sense as that which is insusceptible of discord and decay, dissolution or disintegration, we will have a sense of reality which admits only that which is perfect and permanent. According to Plato’s idea, the real is the ideal, of which the materialist’s real is a more or less imperfect representation to the sense. The real, as we know it through the senses, is in a constant state of change, but, as science reveals it, it is “the same, yesterday, today, and forever.” To the senses the distant mirage is as real as the adjacent landscape, and far more attractive when one is thirsty and the adjacent landscape offers no promise of relief.
As the word “real” is susceptible of so many meanings, so is the word “apparent.” Seeking to establish the guilt of a man charged with a crime, a prosecuting attorney may say, “It is apparent from all the circumstances that the accused is guilty,” but the use of the word “apparent” in this connection may leave room for doubt in the mind of a juror who may want something more than the apparent upon which to convict the accused. Another sense in which the word is used shows that it is not synonymous with the real or actual as when one, speaking of the length or weight of an object about which he has only a general idea, says, “It is apparently about three feet long.”
Probably one of the simplest ways to define these words would be to say that the word “real” is “that which is,” while the word “apparent” is “that which appears to be.” It is in this way that the exact sciences use them. Therefore we are not taking liberties, as some might imagine, with the English language, when we use them in this sense in analyzing the subject of disease. To our senses disease is all too apparent and too disagreeable for us to say that it does not exist on the plane of the particular or objective. We say, with the most material man, that disease is one of the most apparent things in the world of sense, but we do not agree with the materialist that the world of sense is the only world, for we know what he does not know about the world of sense, we know that it is only apparent, while he believes it to be real.
If we accept the definition of the word “real” as that which is insusceptible of disintegration and dissolution, then it follows that the world of sense cannot be classified under this heading, for no matter how apparently beautiful it is, or how apparently permanent it is, it is evanescent and transitory. “The world passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.” The best that can be said of the apparent world is that it is an inverted image of the real world of ideas which John the Apostle saw with the eye of his mind when he said, “I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.” The first heaven and first earth is that which becomes apparent to our senses, the new heaven and the new earth is that which becomes real to our science, so that no matter how apparent imperfection is, we know that perfection reigns supreme.
When Jesus said, “Judge not according to appearances, but judge righteous judgment,” he was giving advice, which if it had been acted upon from that time to this would have averted all sin and disease in the individual and all war among nations. It was ever the design of the Master to elevate human consciousness above the plane of the senses to the perception of Truth. He well knew what so many of our foremost scientists are learning today concerning the unreliability of the senses. The science of optics reveals how unreliable is the sense of sight. For centuries it was believed that the sky which arches overhead was a solid body, and it remained for the science of optics to reveal that what appears to be a solid blue dome is nothing more nor less than the appearance that the atmosphere assumes when human vision has reached its limit. If it were possible for us to travel in the direction of what appears as the sky we should find it to be just as far away as ever, and if it were possible for us to travel to the uttermost boundary of space we should discover in practice what the science of optics has discovered in theory, namely, that there is no sky at all, as a thing in itself. A sky appears to be there, but what actually is there is boundless space.
The more a man studies, the more convinced he becomes that reason is more reliable than the senses, especially if reason works from the inside out, instead of from the outside in. The most necessary part of the individual is that to which none of his senses testifies, and yet nothing could convince him that he is devoid of it. Neither sight nor hearing, touch nor taste nor smell bears testimony to the existence of the mind of man, but despite this lack of sensible evidence man knows that he has a mind, for otherwise how could he think? Indeed how could he take issue against those very senses, when reason, a purely mental faculty, assures him that their report is not true?
Is it not an accepted truth that the most important things in the world are those to which the senses do not testify? How important is the atmosphere to the continuance of physical existence! We can live longer without food or water than without air, yet none of our senses testifies to its existence. We may say we feel it when it blows on our cheeks. What we actually feel is motion or vibration. Scientists tell us that we do not see color in a rose, for the simple reason that there is no color there. All color and all sound is the result of vibration. “The tympanum of the ear, with all the auditive apparatus, is as unknowing of the nature and cause of sound as the wall is in the case of the echo, and this is true of the rest of the organs of sense,” says a noted scientist.
Now, despite all the scientific proof of the unreliability of the senses, is it not strange that so many people will reject whatever is not supported by their false testimony? It is only fair to state, however, that there is a steady improvement going on, for there are more persons today who are ready to reject the testimony of their senses when these senses conflict with science than there were in the days of Copernicus and Galileo. Perhaps the most grievous charge we can lay at the door of the senses is the charge that they do not testify to the greatest Truth, but the senses never evidence Him. If we desire to know anything about God it is to reason we most appeal.
Helen Keller, despite her great handicap, knew that God is. When she was able to understand her friend and teacher, who developed a system of communication independent of the senses, she was told about God, and the girl, who could neither see, hear, nor speak, made it plain to her friend that she knew all about Him, but not by the name which the teacher used. Intuition, that inner sight, which is not dependent on the optic nerve for its existence or continuance, had assured her of the reality of that to which the most perfect senses in the world would never testify.
He only is a philosopher who knows that the visible world with all that it includes is a mental picture. The world exists for us as the representation of our own states and stages of consciousness. Rob us of consciousness, and our world disappears. Rob all men of consciousness, and the world, as we view it, would collapse, for where there is no mind to perceive a world there is no world to be perceived. Swedenborg declared that God creates the visible world through man, according to pre-existent patterns. Plato seems to have taught that the visible world is a more or less poor reproduction of the archetypal universe of Ideas, which Ideas antedate the so-called material world and will survive its discontinuance. In Plato’s philosophy, moral or spiritual beauty is the only real beauty, of which all physical beauty is so much copy or imitation.
We have some idea of Plato’s conception of Reality when we look at a work of art. We stand enraptured before a landscape or a portrait. They seem so true to life that we feel the spirit behind and in them. It is in some such way that the spiritual philosopher regards the material world. He does not sneer at it, any more than we disregard a work of art simply because it is not the real thing. The spiritual philosopher is able to appreciate all the beauties of the external world because to him they suggest those rarer and more eternal beauties of the spiritual universe; therefore he, in a sense, is able to live in two worlds at the same time. It is as if a man stood upon the soft turf of a beautiful meadow, surrounded by the most gorgeous scenery, while an artist was putting the finishing touches on a canvas depicting the scene. The man might look from the beauty of the natural scenery to the beauty of the painting on the canvas, that is, from the real to the imitation, without losing for a moment his ability to distinguish the one from the other.
Now, just as the picture on the canvas is a poor representation to the senses of the natural landscape, so the natural landscape is a poor reflection on a higher plane of that “better country” of the mind whose “maker and builder is God.” And lest we delude ourselves into thinking that this better country is something we can see only after we die, it might be well to state that it is that Realm of Reality, or Kingdom of Heaven within, of which Jesus spoke, and to which we have only to open the inner eye of the understanding in order to perceive. If any ordinary person can appreciate the painting of a landscape while realizing that it is not the real landscape, that same person, with just a little more enlightenment, might easily appreciate that what he calls the real landscape is just a good picture to his mind of that more lasting beauty of the spiritual universe. We know that the painter’s canvas will not last forever, and, in like manner, we are persuaded that the material world, which Schopenhauer called a “disordered dream of humanity,” will one day be lifted, as is a curtain at a theater, so that we may see what is back and behind all that is so apparent and, to the spiritually ignorant, so deceptive.
The end of the world, which has been predicted so often, may not come to pass as many have prophesied, all of a sudden and in bulk, but gradually and a little at a time. The end of the world is now being interpreted as that gradual decrease of materiality which is to so thin the veils from before the faces of mankind that what cannot be seen, while those veils of materiality obscure the view, may be plainly discernible. The new heaven and the new earth are not going to be created, for that was done in the Beginning; they are going to be revealed, much as anything else will be revealed when the thing which conceals it is removed. That which obscures the Real is the apparent. The apparent or material world and the knowledge of this is the first step in the direction of that Dominion which God has promised to them that love Him.
Somewhere I have read that Herbert Spencer once said that, “What is real is permanent, what is not real is not permanent;” but this is only an echo of what Paul said nearly two thousand years ago when he declared, “The things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” If we can accept Spencer’s declaration that what is real is permanent it will help us to take a new view of disease that will be of great service. If disease is real, then it is permanent; but we know that in most cases it is not permanent, for it comes and goes, while God goes on forever. The fact that disease is not permanent proves that it is only apparent, and the knowledge that it is only apparent, and therefore unreal, in the truest sense of this word, confers upon the knower the power to overcome it.
One great truth about Reality is its persistency. This is why God and the things of God will stand forever, while the things that are not of God will disappear when man knows they are not of God and says to them what Jesus said, “Get thee hence.” The knowledge that disease is only apparent and not real has a practical side. For Jesus to know the truth concerning this important point was for him to apply this Truth in the healing of the sick. Our consideration of the question, “Is disease real or apparent?” should not be in the form of an idle and useless speculation; rather should it be for the purpose of becoming acquainted with such facts as will stand us in good stead in the moment of trial and tribulation.
Humanity is divided in thought on this point. Today the majority believe in the reality of disease, just as in Galileo’s day the majority believed the earth was flat; but belief does not make real a thing which cannot be real, no matter how apparent it is. Take two children, one of whom believes in the reality of a ghost, and the other who believes in nothing of the kind; which of those children will be most free from fear and consequent misery? Consider two men, one who believes in the reality of disease, and the other who knows that it is only an appearance due to some wrong mental attitude, and which of these men is the more likely to recover from it?
We may easily know whether disease is real or apparent by asking a very simple question of our own sanity. Is God the author of it? If God is the author of it, it is real, and therefore incurable; if God is not the author of it, then it is only apparent and therefore curable, and the more quickly this fact is accepted and emphasized. It will help us to demonstrate this truth if we remember that just as a photograph is not the flesh and blood man, so the flesh and blood man is only a representation to the senses of that real man or spiritual entity which lives, and moves, and has his being in God where he is exempt from disease.
When this truth about man is more generally known we shall no longer judge after appearances. We shall see ourselves as the perfect expressions of Him in Whom is no disease, and to Whom disease is unknown. We shall treat disease as the wise man treats any other illusion, and it will flee from us. We shall regard it as a mirage of the carnal mind, an appearance without actuality. The apparent will vanish and the real will take its place, just as apparent darkness takes its leave at the approach of light.
Chapter VIII HEALTH, AND HOW TO OBTAIN IT
“The eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing.” –Isaiah 35:5-6
In all the world, there is no one thing so earnestly sought after as health. It is that without which there can be no real success in any reach of life. It is a universal necessity, for, without it, neither prince nor peasant can be happy. When the body is racked with disease, the sinner cannot sin so much, nor can the saint soar to such heavenly heights. Without health, he who would tread the path to fame in literature, art, music, invention or industry, faces an almost insurmountable barrier.
That some of us, through our so-called diseases, have been compelled to turn to God in our extremity is true; but the blessing is not that we have been sick unto death, but that we have turned to God; and this we might have done without being coerced. It is a sad commentary on the wisdom of the average man that he has been compelled by illness to do that which he should have done naturally and without effort.
It was the custom among the early Israelites to turn to God at the first suggestion of disease, and, if history tells us correctly, they had none of the diseases which the Egyptians had, whose remedy was not Deity, but drugs. It is recorded that King Asa, when disease came upon him, turned not to the Lord, but to the physicians, and as a consequence, “he slept with his fathers.”
We make that first which ought to be made last, and that last which should be first. So that to-day, when we are told that the sick can be cured by a system which is wholly drugless, we are filled with doubt concerning it. We arrest chiropractors, osteopaths and others whose patients sometimes pass away without noxious drugs, while another school may sign a death certificate and avoid persecution and prosecution in cases where their patients have passed away with enough drugs in their systems to represent a pharmacy! In the same paper which contains a glaring account of a man who passed away without medical assistance, you will find in the obituary column a doleful array of those who have passed into the beyond with medical attention. These are facts which ought not to be overlooked in a matter so important as our physical well-being. Divine Scientists make no objection to the rest of the world filling itself up with poisons, but they merely ask the privilege of calling in the Great Physician in the hour of temptation.
It is not that Divine Scientists are in open rebellion to the existing systems of therapeutics; it is that they have tried these systems until disappointment has driven them to God as the last and only refuge. They are not engaged in warfare with materia medica, neither are they proselyting in the churches; but when men become discouraged with attempts through materia medica to heal their bodies, and with theology’s efforts to answer the questions of their own souls, Divine Scientists are not to be blamed if they recommend the throne of God as the court of highest appeal.
We are coming as never before to realize that sickness is not a divine institution, but that it is due to some form of mental wretchedness–concealed, perhaps, from friends, but nevertheless there. The ordinary man seeks after health much as the extraordinary man seeks for heaven; and strangely enough there comes a time when both find what they are looking for in the same place, and in the last place they look for it.
The sick man travels to renowned corners of the earth–from Battle Creek to Carlsbad and on again–seeking for that health which is more desirable than fine gold or precious stones. The saintly man seeks for a heaven which he never expects to find until after he has been gathered to the bosom of his fathers. An awakened conscience, with an acute sense of right and wrong, makes it impossible for him to be really happy in what he calls a world of sin, and so he sighs for that other world where pain and sorrow are unknown.
By a strange tendency of thought, we look for that outside of ourselves which can be found only within. The sick man seeks health in divers places, and the saint seeks heaven afar off, when all the time each is carrying about with him the thing he desires, if he only knew it.
Happiness and health are not blessings which may be imported from a foreign land. They cannot be imparted from without; but, if they are to blossom externally, their seeds must be implanted in the deepest recesses of the human soul.
To the man who asked Jesus when the kingdom of God should come, He said, “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation. Ye shall not say, Lo here, and Lo there, for the kingdom of God is within you.” If we accept this, we shall be compelled to narrow our search to a small area. Instead of scattering our energies and wasting the little strength we are conscious of in trying to find more, we shall go quietly into the Silence and affirm, “The strength of God is my strength, omnipresent and eternal.” In the depths of our own being shall we find that which we have so fruitlessly sought elsewhere.
If happiness, health and heaven are not in us as mental states, they are nowhere. It is said that in the New Jerusalem there is neither sorrow nor crying, for “the former things have passed away.” The New Jerusalem which cometh down from God out of heaven is not an ancient, but a rejuvenated city. It is that state of man’s soul which may be called the kingdom of Good, or God, in man while on earth, here and now. It is the state of mind wherein the individual perceives that the things that are seen are carnal and temporal, while the things that are not seen are spiritual and eternal.
When a man realizes that external conditions are not superior to internal convictions, he has emerged from the plane of limited capacities to the realm of unlimited possibilities. Instead of being the slave of external conditions, he becomes their master, for he has risen from the life of sense to the Life of Spirit, wherein is the only Reality.
Throughout the ages the efforts of all the great teachers have been to free men’s minds from the belief that matter is superior to mind, and thus to enable man to rise from the dust and begin to realize on earth his God-given powers. That body governs mind is inconceivable, but how to instruct mind to govern body and make happiness and health grow where discontent and disease previously flourished is very essential.
The important thing which man can learn today is wherein lies the source of his power; and when he discovers that it is centered in himself, it is only a question of time until he will direct it to constructive ends. We are hypnotized by our surface experiences because we are as yet unconscious of our latent capacities.
As the race sat for centuries in comparative darkness, ignorant of the fact that it lived and moved and breathed in an ocean of unmanifested light, which today we call electricity, so the average individual accepts conditions that are almost unbearable because he does not realize that there is a limitless capacity for expansion within his own being.
As the aviator soars to ethereal heights and the earth vanishes beneath him, so is it possible for us to rise above our discords, discouragements and diseases by elevating the mind above morbid thinking. When a submarine commander wishes to escape the shots of a cruiser, he submerges; or, when a storm rages, he dives to a depth of the ocean where there is perpetual calm. These acts should illustrate the wisdom, in the hour of seeming danger, of submerging the Self in fathomless depths of the Love of God.
If, on the surface of our lives, there are storms and conflicts, there is depth of our being where poise and power persistently abide. To find this depth and rest there, is to gather strength, not only to bear the so-called ills of the flesh with fortitude, but to overcome them. To rebel against disease while believing it to be incurable is suicidal, for it adds discouragement to discomfort.
In sickness we should be hopeful and expect recovery; but the consciousnes of the Abiding Presence to whom sickness is unknown is an infallible panacea. In the hour of disease it is as possible for us to turn inward to that Eternal Center where only health abounds as it is for a man to seek shelter and protection from bombs by going down into an underground railway.
Things that make us unhappy, and ill in consequence, are neither as real nor as powerful as they seem to be. In our ignorance of God’s omnipresence we magnify our ghosts of fancy until they assume alarming proportions, and when we would escape them they follow us like our shadows–for this is just what our ghosts of fancy are, the shadows cast by our own spiritual density.
In the Science of Creation set forth by Plato and others, God, or the Immutable Good, is the one source from which all real things proceed. Since effect must be ever like its Cause, we are forced to the conclusion that all that God creates is good, for it must be like the Cause which produces it. Good is positive and real; evil, being the opposite of Good, is negative, and consequently unreal, and to understand it as such is to gain control over it. If disease is evil, and most of us admit that it is, then it, also, is unreal. It is an appearance without actuality, like darkness, which is merely the absence of light.
To the great majority of persons nothing seems more real than disease, but when it becomes known that only that is real which proceeds from God disease loses its terror for us, and through Truth we gain the ascendancy over it. The conviction that “Nothing is true but God” is the rock upon which to stand, against which the winds and waves of human ignorance may expend their fury, but against which they cannot prevail.
To be able to realize that disease is not God-created, and to know that there is no other creator, is to be “endued with power from on High,” for it enables us to form a correct idea of ourselves as we are in Divine Mind. This is the beginning of our cure. So long as man’s conception of himself is that of a frail mortal, subject to sin on the one hand and to disease on the other, all the tendencies of his thought will work in the direction of causing this conception to be made manifest, for that which a man believes himself to be that will he surely become.
From this we see the importance of forming a true conception of the real Self, for when this true conception of the Self is formed it will go through all the orderly processes of unfoldment until it externalizes itself in happiness and in health. The true conception of the Self is that which is based, not upon human parentage and physical surroundings, but upon the Truth that we are the effects of the Great and only Cause. In other words, we must learn, with Jesus, not to think of ourselves as the sons of men with inherited evil propensities, but as the Sons of God and joint heirs with Christ to the kingdom of God in which there is no sin, sickness, disease nor death.
To find health and enjoy it as a permanent possession, we must look for it where it is. Looking to drugs and change of climate will never bring us perfect health; and disappointment will be our doom. God is the eternal health of man, and it is only as we find our health in God that we shall find it at all.
Since Life, Health and Blessedness are from God, we should look to God for them and not to man. External methods are temporary, but the internal conviction of one’s connection with the Source is lasting and permanent. Our health cometh from the Lord who made heaven and earth, for if it does not come from Him it is non-existent. When vain searchings in other directions have driven us to despair we may, like the mariner, who, in a storm, steers for a friendly port, turn the prow of our minds in the direction of that Indwelling Presence which is Health itself. Looking away from terrifying appearances to that Divine Reality in which we live and move and breathe, we may say with confidence:
“In Thee I have no pain, no sorrow, No anxious thought, no load of care; Thou art the same today, tomorrow; Thy Love and Truth art everywhere.”
Chapter IX SPIRITUAL MEDICINE
“I will restore health unto thee, I will heal thee of thy wounds.” –Jer. 30:17
These words of Jeremiah embody one of the sweetest promises ever made to the race, and yet it is one all too frequently unfulfilled. Is it because God has forgotten His promise, or because we have lost the art of relying on this promise that it has come to read as if it were written for a special people, or a limited period? If history tells us truly, there was a time when men as naturally turned to God for the healing of their infirmities as they now turn to material remedies. In the ancient Jewish religious consciousness, the idea that health, as well as life, was from God, seems to have been firmly rooted. Hence it was that they sought unto the Lord in their disease, and never thought of applying elsewhere until the Egyptian sorcerers and medicine men corrupted their thought and weaned them from their reliance on That Only Which can be relied upon.
“In that age of simple child-like faith in God,” says one, “men knew no better than to apply to Him directly for the cure of their diseases.” It would seem from this as if the old saying were true that “where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.” If men had remained in this blissful and healthful ignorance, the traffic in drugs would be much less, but the general health of the world would be vastly better, as is so clearly set forth by Dr. Mason Good, who asserts: “If all the drugs in the pharmacopeia of Materia Medica were thrown into the sea, it would be much better for mankind but worse for the fishes.”
Professor Bowen says: “After poisoning their patients with drugs through many centuries the doctors have at last come to know their business better, and now stand aside, so as to leave free course to the curative agencies of the unconscious, which alone can restore the patient to perfect health.” If a spiritual healer had said this he would be accused of belittling the “learned profession,” but even the spiritual healer may be pardoned if he agrees with Dr. Good, the physician, and Professor Bowen, the philosopher.
Our object is not to ridicule the practice of medicine in its material aspects, but to ask if there is not, when this practice has been tried and found wanting, a court of final appeal to which the invalid may take his case with some hope of a cure? If physics cannot minister to a mind diseased, then it were well, as Shakespeare says, to “throw physic to the dogs.” When material remedies are found inadequate, as they often are, it is well to go back to those old practitioners of the early centuries who are quoted in ancient works on medicine, and see how greatly they emphasized the value of the mental. Says one: “To give joy to the sick is natural healing; for once make your patient cheerful, his cure is accomplished.” The wise man asserts in his Book of Proverbs, “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine,” and another has said it doeth more good than a medicine, for it leaves no bad after-results.
These are all ways of stating that there is therapeutical value in the mental attitude of the physician. A noted doctor has said that “sympathy is a powerful drug in the hands of a skillful administrator.” And this brings us to the consideration of Spiritual Medicine as a something which one may carry about with him far more conveniently than he can carry the most daintily bottled homeopathic pellets. If a smile is worth $5,000 a year to a physician, as Oliver Wendell Holmes once declared, then it behooves us to cultivate such qualities of soul as will help and not injure humanity. A woman once told me that one who is very near and dear to her said to her as she groaned with pain, “For goodness’ sake don’t groan so; it makes me nervous,” and this to a woman who was seemingly in the valley of the shadow.
It is at such times as these that a patient needs love more than lotions, and if we cannot give love and exhibit unlimited patience, it were better for the patient that we stay out of the sick chamber, for we are more of a menace to health than a means to its recovery. We injure those whom we would benefit, and later suffer the gnawing pangs of remorse when we remember our past impatience, as we are bound to do sooner or later. An irritable nurse, no matter how much she thinks she conceals her irritability behind a forced smile, is more harmful than she realizes, and if she cannot overcome her irritability the only honorable course left open to her is to seek some other profession in which irritability is not so injurious to others, though it will always be so to herself.
An ill-natured physician can do more in a minute to depress the spirits of his patient than all the drugs in his little black bag can overcome in years. Physicians have told me, and I have observed it in my own practice, that when certain persons visit their patients they recognize it at once by the quickened pulse and heightened temperature of the patient. From this it would seem that it were a matter for serious consideration concerning our state of mind when we visit our ailing friends. We should be very careful not to discuss sickly subjects or symptoms of disease, knowing, as we should, that ailing people are very sensitive and find it difficult to throw off negative suggestions with the same ease that they would if they were well. An inconsiderate person will never become a successful dispenser of Spiritual Medicine, for the reason that he lacks that without which there can be no healing accomplished.
If we would heal as Jesus healed, we must cultivate that mental attitude which differentiated him from all other men. If Jesus had one thing more than another it was compassion, without which the letter of the Law is but “sounding brass and tinkling cymbal.” Compassion is something more real and vital than mere sympathy, as is evidenced by the fact that sympathy can often be more injurious than helpful. Sympathy has been defined as, “that which takes on the condition of that sympathized with,” as when we are told that one limb is gouty through sympathy with the other, or that an eye has become inflamed through sympathy with the other eye. Compassion may be defined as that attitude of the awakened soul which recognizes the sufferings of others and hastens to relieve them. It is for this reason that the word compassion is always used in the New Testament in reference to the attitude of Jesus toward suffering humanity, and never the word sympathy.
This does not mean that Jesus was unfeeling; it simply denotes that while he recognized his own power to dissipate those sorrows; and when one does this he becomes an infinitely more helpful servant to humanity than if he merely wept with those who weep, without in any wise assisting in removing the cause of their griefs. He had a medicine to give that they knew not of, and it was a specific for every ill that is known to the flesh. In the first place he had cast out from his own consciousness everything that was unlike God, for it is only as we do this that we can cast out other evils from the minds and bodies of other men. We cannot give what we have not got; therefore if we have no spirituality of our own we cannot impart it to others. Loving words without a love nature back of them are as powerless to heal the sick as moonshine is ineffectual to melt ice. The hard Puritan who has no forgiveness in his heart for the weaknesses of other men will never heal the sick, no matter how pious or devout he may be, for he lacks that fire of Divine Love which alone can consume with “fervant heat” the sins and sickness of the erring children of men.
Spiritual Medicine can never be administered by one who is terrified in the presence of disease, for terror closes the tube through which Love and Truth are poured into human consciousness; neither can it be successfully administered by one who is so good in his own estimation that he is appalled by the sins which are the causes of other men’s sufferings. A true divine compassion is neither terrified in the presence of sickness nor disgusted in the presence of sin, for it knows that both are only apparent, because only God is Real. When a man knows that that only is real of which God is the Author, he becomes inspired with confidence in his ability to rise above his own sicknesses and sins, and this at once acts as a stimulant in the direction of urging him to assist others to rise above theirs.
The Spiritual Medicine which is always acceptable and never distasteful to any invalid is the blessed assurance that the love of God is greater than all his fears and false beliefs, and that this Love of God will heal him if he will only trust It. One thing must be clear to us, and that is if God is the Author of disease there is no remedy for it, and any attempt to cure it with or without drugs is as foolish as the attempt to empty the ocean with a teaspoon. The fact that disease can be cured by any system, human or divine, proves that it is not of God, for whatsoever is of God shall endure to eternity.
When the Psalmist sang, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; who crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercies, who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s,” he expressed in poetic language the idea that all healing that is permanent must come from the same source from which all Health comes. So fully convinced was David that God is the “strength of our life” that he believed he could save us from the so-called most fatal conditions. In his wonderful 91st Psalm he expresses this profound conviction when he says that God will deliver him “from the pestilence that walketh in darkness, and from the destruction that wasteth at noonday.”
When Jesus healed the sick he did so by bringing them into conscious contact with the One and Only life, and this then flowed through them as water will flow through a pipe when one turns on the tap. In proportion as we look away from material appearances to spiritual Realities, we shall center into that Dominion originally bestowed upon man by his heavenly Father. Fear of disease is the most prolific cause of disease, and the only medicine that will destroy fear is faith in God, for faith is a spiritual medicine for which there is no substitute in the drug store. Someone has said that “Fear is faith in the wrong thing.” If we had no faith in disease we should never fear it, and if we never feared it we would never have it; therefore, it is easy to understand that fear is faith in the wrong thing.
The best Spiritual Medicine that can be given to the sick and suffering is the assurance of their exemption as the children of God from everything that is unlike God. It is astonishing what changes can be brought about when a man becomes convinced that his diseases are not divine visitations. At once they lose their terror for him, and as consciousness expands in the direction of this Truth, disease disappears. It is literally starved to death, for the only food disease has to feed upon is fear and false belief; cast these out by the purifying medicine of Love and Truth and the patient is made “every whit whole.” When a man says to himself, “I am sick,” it is as if he were taking a slow poison; when he says, “I am well,” it is as if he were taking a sure and certain antidote.
When the Prophet Joel declared, “Let the weak say I am strong,” he was prescribing a remedy more infallible in its efficacy than anything in the material world. If weakness were real in the sense that we have defined Reality it would be folly for the weak to say, “I am strong,” but if it is only apparent, and it is only apparent if God is not the creator of it, then the sooner he learns to say, “I am strong,” the better, for by his words he will be justified, even as by his words he has been self-condemned.
In the system of Jesus, the body of man was healed by the restoration of the mind to its normal functions. Jesus, so far as we are able to discover, never examined his patients to ascertain the condition of temperature, pulse and blood pressure, for he knew these were mere effects of which some morbid idea or spiritual ignorance was the predisposing cause. Jesus, two thousand years ago, knew what Sir George Paget discovered only recently when he said, “In many cases I have reason for believing that cancer had its origin in prolonged anxiety.”
The results of modern medical research are, day by day, proving that not only was Jesus the Great Physician, but that Spiritual Medicine is the only safe and reliable medicine in the universe. When we say that the method of Jesus in the healing of the body by spiritual means was the restoration of the mind to its normal state, after which the body had to get well, on the principle that an effect must disappear on the disappearance of its cause, we say what may be demonstrated by any person who will set aside his prejudices long enough to give this method a fair trial. If long continued grief can produce a malignant disease, and it can, and the love of God operating through the mind of Jesus can dissipate, first the grief and then the physical manifestation of it, is not this a brief in favor of Spiritual Medicine, and a hint to the wise for a more general use of it? If fear is such a disease producer as we now have reason to believe it is, and if, “Perfect Love casteth out fear,” as John the Apostle declares it does, then it seems that the more we take of this spiritual medicine the better.
Hate and anger create poisons of their own, as Professor Gates’ experiments show, for he assures us that “Enough (poison) would be eliminated in one hour of intense hate, by a man of average strength, to cause the death of perhaps four score persons, as these ptomaines are the deadliest poisons known to modern science.” Then how careful we should be to avoid these emotions, if for no nobler reason than sheer self-protection. From all that we have said and quoted it would seem as if the need for spiritual medicine were great indeed, so much so that every physician should also be a preacher of the Gospel. When he heals a case which he knows is the result of wrong thinking he should say what Jesus said to his patients, “Go, and sin no more.” To do otherwise is like saving or rescuing a drowning man’s hat, while allowing the man himself to sink.
To center our attention on the body while leaving the soul untouched is nothing short of quackery, no matter how “regular” the doctor may be. It is like breaking off the points of a troublesome tooth while leaving the root and the exposed nerve to give greater trouble and suffering later. The aim of all true healing should be to pour Truth and Love to the waiting minds of men, allowing these to do their own work of purification.
Chapter X BECAUSE OF YOUR UNBELIEF
“He that believeth in me, the works that I do shall he do also.” –John 14:12
In view of the fact that we have arrived at the conviction that the “gift of healing” by no means indicates that God is a respecter of persons, bestowing upon the favored few what so many are pining for, it is well to inquire what are the requirements if one would be a healer of his fellowmen. In a world that is filled with sin, sorrow and sickness he is a strange person who has not, at some time, sighed for the power, not only to reform the sinner, but to heal the sick.
The drunkard would, if he could, prevent other men from becoming as weak, unhappy and miserable as himself, and any man who has ever suffered great mental unrest or physical pain will tell you that he would give a great deal to be able to cure another in a similar state. How often we hear a man say, “I would not wish to see my worst enemy suffer what I have suffered,” and yet when he sees his best friend in similar suffering he finds himself utterly unable to be of the slightest assistance in actually casting out the demons of sin and disease by the Word of God.
The desire at the heart of every man to lessen sorrow and increase joy in the world is God-implanted, and is the foundation of all healing. Sometimes this impulse does not extend itself beyond one’s immediate family, in which case it is selfish. Again, it reaches out among friends so that a man will leave his comfortable fireside to spend time with one who is benefited by his visit. Then, again, there are those whose desire to be of service is not limited to relatives and friends, but who, like Father Damien, go to Molakai, or, like Dr. Grenfell, to Labrador.
Back of all this we see that the so-called gift of healing is based on unselfish love. It is as impossible to heal by merely using the words, or the name of Jesus, without living the life of Jesus, as it would be for the moon to melt the frozen crest of Mont Blanc. The reason why spiritual healing is not often as instantaneous in result as it was in the early days of Christianity, is not because the law of healing has become suspended, but because we do not “live the life.” The sooner we recognize and correct this, the better it will be for the world and for ourselves also.
The obligations of the healer are not confined to studying the latest works on abstruse metaphysics, or in being able to write intelligently on these subjects, for one might easily do all of this and still lack the love and the personal purity necessary to make his treatments effective. It is becoming more generally recognized than it has been in the past that he or she who would become a healer of men must keep himself unspotted by the world. It is at this point that we are told that healing is a “special” gift, for the reason that only a few can live such a detached life as it requires. On this presumption we might argue that only the few can enter into eternal life because only the few can live so as to be worthy of it. God demands perfection, and nothing short of it will satisfy, for God will accept nothing as being His own “Image and Likeness” which does not bear that resemblance.
If the obligations resting upon the healer seem to be of an uncompromising character, let us realize that the healing art of Christianity is purchased at a price of much self-surrender, but that which we are called upon to relinquish is as nothing compared to that which we receive in return. It is like throwing a sprat to catch a whale. To give up the false pleasures of the worldly life and find in their place the joys of heaven is no great loss, but any attempt to gain the one without giving up the other is as foolish as the attempt of a child to seize a new plaything when the hands are already full of other objects.
The man who would be successful in healing by spiritual means must be one of high moral character, actuated more by the love of man than by the love of money, for it is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of one professing spiritual healing who is not living, to the best of his ability, the Christ-life. The emanations which go out from one who heals by mental or spiritual power will partake of the quality of his predominating mental states, and if these are not of the highest and most unselfish character, his patient will feel these mental states, rather than any influence which his mere words or personality might exert. Patients under spiritual treatment are infected by the healer’s spirituality, or lack of it, so that the responsibility of one who would heal as Jesus healed is very serious. It is evident from this that the nearer one lives in accordance with the teachings and practices of the Master, the more apt one will be to do the works of the Master.
A fact that must never be overlooked is that the spiritual healer’s state of soul is of far more importance than the so-called strength of his will, or even the condition of his physical health. Healing, as Jesus taught it, is effected by spiritual force and not by mere will power or physical strength, therefore it is more essential that the practitioner be a man of sterling spirituality than one of magnetic personality or dominating will-power. It is not necessary, as some imagine, that one should be acquainted with physiology and anatomy in order to heal by the power of prayer, for then all of Jesus’ disciples must needs be graduates of medical colleges. In fact, it is sometimes a hindrance to the success of one in spiritual healing to know so much of these sciences, for the reason that one is more apt to be influenced by symptoms than by Spirit. It has been proven again and again that the less one knows of material laws, so-called, and the more one knows about spiritual law, the better.
It is not so much a knowledge of man’s body that is of importance in the healing of the sick, by any system, as it is a knowledge of the secret intents of the heart, the concealed emotions of grief and fear, lust and selfishness, which are, all too frequently, the provoking causes of what men call physical maladies. It were folly to prescribe coal tar preparations for insomnia when the thing that is preventing sleep is anxiety on the one hand, or a guilty conscience on the other. In the one case it is better to destroy fear with love, and in the other to correct a guilty conscience by revealing the impossibility of cure so long as sin is unrepented. Spiritual Science finds the cause of all disease in sin and ignorance, and it sees no cure save that which is effected by spiritual enlightenment through which sin and ignorance are overcome.
One of the great obligations resting upon him who would heal as Jesus healed is that he should be able to detect the sin or sorrow, as the case may be, which is back of a patient’s physical or nervous malady, for in this way his helpfulness to humanity will be greatly augmented. Jesus dissected souls not bodies, and hence his success where others failed. When the woman at the well of Samaria tried to lie to him he read her mind and told her “all that ever she did.” As one grows in Spiritual Science one is better able to penetrate beneath the surface and see the mental causes which are producing physical effects.
We must not forget that in addition to all other things one must have great faith in God, for without faith nothing can be accomplished. When Jesus was asked by his disciples, on an occasion when they had tried to heal a case and could not, “Why could not we cast him out?” he answered, “Because of your unbelief.” Herein lies the secret of all the failures in the world. Through unbelief we create our own impotence, when through belief or faith we might generate an unlimited power for good. An intelligent faith in the power of good over all apparent evil puts the mind of man in working harmony with omnipotence Itself, where all things become possible. It fortifies the mind as nothing in the world can do, and, by so doing, furnishes one with a sure weapon of attack as well as defence. With every other mental capacity and no faith one is like a well-equipped engine without steam.
A profound belief in God as the only power in the universe endows the soul with a consciousness of superiority which nothing else can confer. Some day we shall realize the value of faith, and when we do we shall see what Jesus meant when He said, “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.” Before the aeroplane and submarine ever materialized someone had to believe in their possibilities, for without such belief no attempt would have been made to construct them.
Not only must the practitioner in Spiritual Science believe in God, but he must also believe in himself as the messenger of God, and it is at this point that most of us fail. It is an easy matter for us to believe that God can heal the sick if He so desires, but that man, when working in accordance with God’s plan, can also heal the sick is not so easy of acceptance. And yet when we take a closer view of the matter we see that man’s part in the healing art of Christianity is an indispensible part, for “God never does for man what He can only do through him.” The belief in one’s self as a channel through which the purifying love of God flows, as the water from a reservoir passes through the unobstructed pipes to the homes for which it is intended, is a necessary part of the healer’s equipment.
This confidence in one’s self ought not to be in the nature of personal vanity, but a grateful acknowledgment of the truth that it is the Father in us that “doeth the works.” We, of ourselves, can do nothing, and we are only too conscious of the fact, but living and working in harmony with Love’s law of perfection along all lines, we can do much. No man, however, can really believe in himself the way Jesus recommends except he has true self-respect, and no man can respect himself unless he is doing all in his power to live as he knows he should live. Others who know him only as they see him on the surface may respect him, but seeing himself from the inside, he alone knows whether to believe in himself or not. A sinful man may prescribe medicines, but a practitioner who is not consistently striving to rise above his sins can never heal the sick in the way of God’s appointing.
When called upon to deal with almost insurmountable difficulties, we require something more than the mere letter of Divine Science, for this without the spirit is dead, and the Spirit is personal purity. He only can heal the sick who can conquer his own evil inclinations. In order to be endued with power from on high we must elevate thought above the body with all its so-called pleasures and pains, for if we have not proved our authority over our own moral weaknesses, it is hardly to be expected that we can cast out the belief in physical weaknesses from the minds of others. If we would impart physical purity to another we must first have moral purity in ourselves; otherwise we shall be as the blind leading the blind.
All this does not imply that we should wait until we ourselves are without “spot or blemish” morally, before we begin to try to help others. We should, in addition to adding to our intellectual knowledge of truth, be constantly guarding against everything that is sinful in our own natures. When Paul, at the conclusion of some of his best healing work, was about to be made the object of the worship of the people, he cried, “Sirs, why do ye these things? We are men of like passions with you, and preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God.”
While still suffering from “a thorn in the flesh,” whether this were a moral weakness or a physical disability, Paul nevertheless, like his Master, “went about doing good.” Paul knew that he was not healing the sick with his body, but with a mind that was so filled with the allness and goodness of God that there was no room in it for evil or error of any name or nature. Moreover, the same truth which he spoke for others finally made him free from his own infirmity, for it is a law that the truth you speak for another reacts on you as certainly as the boomerang returns to the hand of the thrower.
This setting forth of the obligation resting on the practitioner of Spiritual Science is merely for the purpose of bringing about a better form of healing than at present prevails, for one cannot read the New Testament with its accounts of spiritual healing and not feel that the best results of mental or spiritual healing today are puerile by comparison with those of Jesus and his immediate disciples. What is needed nowadays, above all other things, is not so much the remembrance of the Jesus of two thousand years ago, as is the consciousness of the everpresent Christ.
We must know that the Christ is that Truth which assures us that only that which is created by God is real; and since sin, sickness and disease are not real, man, through the knowledge of this Truth, has dominion over them. To know the Truth as Jesus taught it, is to know that “every plant that my heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up.” The plants of sin, sorrow, and sickness were not planted by our heavenly Father, and for this reason they shall be rooted up by any man who knows this Truth and lives it. On the principle that we affect and infect others with our thoughts, it ought to be easy for us to accept the possibility of communicating sanative ideas, for this is precisely what takes place in all spiritual healing.
For Jesus to communicate an idea of health was for his patient to take up that idea in the subconscious mind and work it out in a bodily state. It is in some such way that all spiritual healing takes place today. When one is baptized of the Spirit; that is, when one is sure that sickness is no part of God’s creation, all the powers of his spiritual nature become quickened. Dormant faculties are stimulated into healthy activity, during which man becomes an instrument in the hands of God for the lifting up of them that are bowed down. A little success in spiritual healing has the tendency, wherever men are honest, to increase concentration and consecration.
When it is understood that purity is the foundation of power, then men will seek purity for power’s sake, and, finding it, they will understand what Jesus meant when he said, “All power is given unto me, in heaven and upon earth.” The conditions for healing are the same now as they have always been. Just as susceptible of fulfilment now as it ever was is the promise that, “The works I do ye shall do, and greater works than these shall ye do, if ye believe on me” (and live as he lived).
Chapter XI THE WILL TO BE WELL
“There is nothing good or evil save in the will.” –Epictetus
“The star of the conquered will, He rises in my breast, Serene, and resolute, and still, And calm and self-possessed.” –Longfellow
Dealing with the will to be well, I am not unmindful of the fact that there are, in the metaphysical world today, many depreciating the use of the will. It is spoken of by some as that which is blind, stubborn and headlong. This is probably because we are apt to look upon only one side of the picture. We are prone to see only the negative aspects of the human will, or perhaps those positive aspects of it which are blind, stubborn and headlong.
But simply because the human will exhibits these peculiarities from time to time, there is no reason for deprecating or abrogating or repudiating it altogether. The human will plays a most important part in the whole scheme of progressive evolution. Indeed, without it there would be no progressive evolution at all. Modern psychology tells us that man ascends through three progressive stages of mental development: the first being that of knowing; the second, feeling; and the third, willing. Man is differentiated from the animals principally, if not entirely, by willing. That is, he is the only animal,–if we are pleased so to term him,–who exercises this divine function in mundane affairs.
The biologist, who observes life on its lowest plane of visible manifestation, credits this life with knowledge, i.e., he says we assume that the protoplasm in the initial cell knows just enough to divide itself, and just enough to increase itself by and through self-division. We also assume that it feels, because there is every evidence of this state of consciousness, in that it feels cold and heat. It responds to one and dies in the presence of the other. The very lowest forms of what we are pleased to call physical life are thus credited with knowing and feeling, but never with willing. Will, as you know, is the exercise of the function of volition, and it is because of this that the will is something that must be exercised, if we would be well.
There is no realm in which the exercise of will is so clearly demonstrated as in art. How oft we read the criticism of a man who knows music technically, but who has no feeling. He is engaged by a daily paper or magazine. His one and only function in life seems to be that of critic. We read his criticisms but they leave us cold and unsympathetic and unresponsive. He knows all the tricks of technique in music, but he has no personal inner feeling. Another person has that inner musical feeling, but lacks technique. Everything he hears in the world of music or sees in the world of art inspires him. The futurist intoxicates him, and he tells of this revolution of art, this new manifestation of music and when we do not enthuse he is astonished. He has feeling but no knowledge, and so he, too, notwithstanding the fact that he is very musical in soul, should not be considered to have the final word. But when the knowing of the critic unites with feeling in the critic, we have a teacher who elevates us.
It is, then, this knowing and feeling in art which gives will to the artist. It is out from this will that there is production and reproduction, because it is worthy of note that the critic is rarely ever a creator. He is, for the most part, when devoid of feeling, a destroyer of hopes and ambitions; he sits in judgment on young artists, often blasts their hopes and ruins their prospects, and all because he knows music, but does not feel it. So it is in the scientific phases of the world. Knowing and feeling must be united with will, else the man who conceives a patent will carry it with him to the grave. He may know a great deal about mechanics and feel the great urge borne in upon him by a hungry world waiting for improvements, but if there be no will, his idea of that opportunity of meeting human need and requirements will be like a stillborn infant, assuming a certain growth, but never breathing itself into visible manifestation.
So it seems that the will is a very, very necessary factor. The trouble with the will does not lie in the will itself. Trouble arises only when the human will would be something of itself and independent of the universal divine will. That is the only mistake the human will ever makes. It is like the human intellect. Both essay to be something of themselves, independent of the great Source of all Intelligence and Wisdom and Love. It is when the will seeks to operate divorced from the Divine Will, which is God, that it becomes arrogant, offensive, brutal and despotic.
I find no one in the metaphysical world, ancient or modern, who lays such tremendous stress on the will as does Jesus of Nazareth, and surely we students of Divine Science can take him at his word. See how he stresses the use of the will. While reading the fifth chapter of John we feel Jesus standing by the pool of Bethesda, the ancient Lourdes, the healing waters, and we find one brought there. Year after year he had been taken there and borne away again with no visible sign of improvement, and his only explanation for it was that when the angel came to trouble the water, there was no one to put him into the pool. And Jesus said, after listening to this, “Wilt thou be made whole?” The man’s view of healing was very circumscribed, as is ours today. We limit it to some particular thing; if not a pool of healing water, it is a glass of hot water in the morning. If it is not one thing, it is another, and always external or mechanical. There he was, waiting for the troubling of the water when, all the while, the great healing, cleansing, purifying, energizing water of life was ready to flow through every artery of his being, to cleanse and purify and invigorate him.
And so Jesus sought to instill into this man’s mind a great truth. But first he must get the man’s consent, or co-operation, for the only way the individual can co-operate with the universe is through the will, and Jesus knew this. “Wilt thou be made whole?” Having once secured the invalid’s will and his co-operation, however unintelligent it was, all that remained for Jesus to do was to say: “Take up thy bed and go thy way.” And the man took up his bed. He was rebuked for carrying it, because the day happened to be Sunday. We are very conventional today, so that we have no criticism to offer of the Jew of yesterday. The point I wish to make is that there is a necessity for the will to be active before the man can be well.
I remember as a young student of Divine Science being called to see what was a very critical, so-called incurable case. All the schools of materia medica had been tried to no avail. Scientists after our own faith had been tried, with no result, save to bring a certain sense of mental comfort and fortitude. This man had fortitude, the kind which says “what can’t be cured must be endured,” but there is nothing that cannot be cured by Christ. This man had reached that place where, after trying all the systems, new, medieval, or ancient, he was bending his head to what he believed to be the inevitable. I was too young in this science to feel that I could do what my predecessors and older confreres had failed to do. Moreover, I was too humble concerning my own knowledge of Divine Science to feel for a single moment that I could succeed where the best practitioners in the field had failed, and there I sat in all humility and in all my self-confessed ignorance of Divine Principle. For a moment I was helpless in the presence of this error. Then it dawned upon me that, since the condition under treatment was an error, and not at all the production of God, that very man in the room with me could, if he wished, exercise dominion over this belief. This idea grew during treatment and for several days, but there was no visible change at all.
He always sat with his face to the window looking out into the street. The door opened from the back into a little hall, so that when I was ushered into his room, it was always to face his back and meet with the words, “Good morning,” but never a move. He was like an ossified thing, which he believed himself to be. I do not know whether it was impatience in me and a certain irritability born of failure up to that point, but I exclaimed to him on the fifth or sixth morning: “Now my dear fellow, it is useless for me to talk to you about Divine Science. You know as much about the letter of it as I do, and we are not making any headway. I am going to treat you this morning and we will spend our time realizing that God is the source of movement. We are going to realize this in our silence, and we will do nothing else, and if we do not do it, it will be useless for me to come tomorrow.”
I was the last hope he had in the world, and perhaps he thought I was arrogating to myself too much personal importance. When our silence was over, we declared: “God is the source of all movement. There is no inaction.” It seems to me that what we affirm in the silence we ought to be able to declare audibly, and in no uncertain tone, so I said: “There is a clock on the mantel-piece to the left and unless you turn to it this morning, I am not coming tomorrow.” As well as he could look out of the corner of his eye, he did so. “I really mean it,” I added; “if God is the source of all movement, there is no time better than the present to put this to a test.” That involved will. Prior to this, the man had known what was right, but was quite unwilling to do anything.
I shall never forget his effort to see that clock. It was like a huge cathedral door that has not been opened in years being swung upon its rusty hinges by the force of great mechanical strength. His neck creaked, just the fraction of an inch at each move. I do not remember how long it took, but he saw the clock and also the door leading into the bathroom on the right. Would all the knowing and feeling in the world have done for that man what knowing and feeling united to will accomplished?
Christ was saying: “Wilt thou be made whole?” He was not saying: “Do you know the truth and feel the force of the truth?” That was taken for granted. The man had been under treatment for years, but he did not will to do anything on his own account, but waited for the practitioner to make his neck swing around comfortably. If the man at the pool of Bethesda had waited to take up his bed and walk, he would be waiting there still, if human life could last so long. The question Christ is asking of you and me today is: “Wilt thou be made whole?” Thousands are asking to be made whole, but are not willing to do anything toward its accomplishment.
I recall a case of so-called genuine locomotor ataxia, which I had quite failed to do anything with, and on which others also had failed. It was the case of a woman who, for eight years, had been confined to her bed. I was called away from that city to a distant town and I turned my practice over to another, including this case, one of the most serious I ever had. And when that other took hold of the case with all of her resoluteness, she decided that knowing and feeling were not quite enough. This sufferer read her Bible, and “Science and Health”, and studied faithfully, but she never moved. The practitioner said to her: “Now, my dear woman, we are going to try different methods, you and I, and we will make the best of the time given to us during Mr. Murray’s absence.”
If I seem to be personal, I am not intentionally so, but I want you to understand how the will to be well must be exercised. She said to the patient: “I am going to treat you this morning with all the understanding that I possess, and ask you to unite with me in prayer to the end that movement, being a spiritual, divine force, manifests itself in every bone, in every muscle, in every nerve and every sinew of your body.” So they prayed and the healer announced: “I am coming to see you tomorrow at 10 o’clock, and I hope you will be sitting in your chair.” She looked up in pitying alarm. It was absurd; she had been years in this condition and was growing worse, instead of better. At 10 o’clock the following morning, the woman was still in bed. “Oh, you are still in bed,” was the healer’s greeting. And the patient looked at her as much as to say: “Where did you think I should be?” “I expected you would be up this morning. I am going to pray for you, and at the close of this treatment I want you to get up.” Fifteen minutes later the practitioner turned to her and said: “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk,” and she looked at her. The woman knew and felt, but she would not will.
Summoning the great burly nurse, the healer said: “Will you see to it that this patient gets up at once?” The nurse walked over from her corner of the room, and as it looked as if she were going to seize the patient violently, the woman indignantly sprang out from the other side of the bed.
You have only to read Dr. A.T. Schofield’s work to see cases illustrative of it operating in the material, physical and medical worlds. Under stress of strong emotion paralytics have jumped from their beds; sufferers from rheumatism have run out from burning buildings and never suffered again from paralysis or rheumatism. What does it prove? Simply that the will, under stress of strong impulse, is almighty. It is a derivative spiritual quality from that universal divine will, which men call God, operating in the human organism, and making for real action where there seems to be inaction, and movement where there seems to be a cessation of movement. All power comes from identifying ourselves with the origin of movement, because will is the cause of all action. You exercise will in order to leave your homes. You exercise it to sit on a chair. Will is the motive power and it is only despicable and imperfect when it thinks it is of itself something. It is grand and glorious when it knows that it is identified with the great operating will of infinite intelligence. It is then the will, co-operating with the divine will, becomes a power of right to liberate men. “Wilt thou be made whole?” said Jesus to the man. “I will.” “Be thou clean.” There was the will of the man to be healed, and the will of the one who could heal to heal, and those two wills, conjoined and brought into immediate spiritual contact with the will of the universe, precipitated what men have since called a miracle.
But there are no miracles. It is not a miracle when you will to touch a button on the wall to bring a light. But suppose you sat in darkness until the end of the year, with all the buttons in the room touchable and you did not will to leave your seat to press one, would you have light? Why should we belittle will, simply because will is occasionally blind and stubborn and headlong? The child has will, but he uses it destructively, is stubborn and self-conceited, and so he can accomplish nothing, because his own will, independent of divine will, leads to self-conceit and personal egotism. But is that any reason why we should set it aside altogether?
Shall we repudiate the energy of electricity simply because tomorrow morning a man may be electrocuted at Sing Sing? Shall we repudiate all electrical energy because one scorches her cambric handkerchief while ironing it? Shall you repudiate the whole thing because of the few erroneous uses of it to which you put it in your ignorance? The Divine Will can never work for us save as we work with ourselves through the exercise of our will in the direction of the Divine Will’s method. God will never do for us, as Judge Troward says, what He can only do through us.
The Universal can do through the individual only through the individual’s willing co-operation. We must will to be well. A man who knew nothing about Divine Science lay in Bellevue Hospital next to a man weighing 200 pounds. He weighed only 135 pounds and the doctor shook his head and said: “My dear fellow, if you are a Protestant, you would better send for your minister, or a Catholic,–for your priest.” The little man realized what the doctor meant and this was his reply: “Doctor, don’t fool yourself. I am not going to die. I have a wife and three children dependent upon me, and my insurance is so small, they could not live a month. Kindly excuse me,–I am going to get well.” He was having the same specific remedies, so-called, that the man in the next cot had been having, but, with all his manifest bulk, the man in the next cot passed away.
What is the average man’s mental picture when he says in sorrow, distress and poverty and pain and unhappiness: “Thy will be done”? It is the picture of one who thinks that God has just “given it to him good,” and he is trying to cultivate as much fortitude as he can. Every day I am brought into contact with so-called incurable diseases in men and women who have been saying all the days of their so-called incurable malady, “Thy will be done,” but all the time they have been thinking it is the will of God that they should be thus afflicted.
What is the will of God? Interpret it as Jesus did. Listen to his marvelous words. Prior to his time there existed the same idea concerning the will of God which exists today. Was a man afflicted? It was the will of God. Did a child die and leave a sorrowing, heart-broken mother? It was the will of God. Did a woman die and leave a man with children that he could not raise morally? It was the will of God. But there came this great and wonderful Teacher, this marvelous Seer of Divine Truth, this man who knew that God alone is. By the exercise of a divinely anointed will to heal humanity, he gathered a little group about him and said in substance: “If a child ask his father for bread, will the father give him a stone? Or if he ask for a fish, will the father give him a serpent, which may look like an eel, for instance? Or for an egg, will the father give him a scorpion, which is formed very much like some eggs? Will the father, when the child asks for some particular benefaction, withhold that, provided it is consistent with his physical, mental and moral requirements?”
And he also said: “If ye, being evil (in the sense that you do not know the eternal law of God), know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give to them that ask Him?” And then he added: “It is not the will of my Father that one of these little ones should perish,” that the child should die; but rather that he should live. And then, speaking of a sinful man, against whom everybody believed that God had a grudge and was awaiting only a favorable opportunity to put out of existence,–Jesus said: “It is not the will of my Father which is in heaven, that the sinner should die, but rather that he should be converted and live.”
What an interpretation to place upon the will of God! And how shall we avail ourselves of it today? By willing to be like Him. First, says modern psychology, comes knowing, then feeling and then volition, or will. We accept these statements that the first activity of the mind is expressed in knowing,–that the child knows by what it is surrounded and then feels an interest and constructs things. And then it begins to will, to construct more things and to use more intelligently such materials as it is surrounded by. In Divine Science, the first thing that we know intellectually is that we are the children of the Lord, that God is the Author of our being and, therefore, our being is spiritual, because God is Spirit. And then, if we grow, we begin to sense this, as the musician feels music, as the artist feels art, in addition to all the things they know about music and art. It becomes an unquestioned idea firmly fixed in our very soul. We know it to be a truth. Shall it rest there? Is there no volition? The will to be well? The will to be pure? We know we are the children of God, and the will comes in to prove it.
To repudiate the little degraded will, because occasionally it is blind and stubborn and ignorant and headlong, is absolutely foolish. “All morality,” said Seneca, “rests upon the exercise of the will.” Where there is no exercise of will, there is no morality. Where there is no exercise of will, there is no health. Where there is no exercise of will, there is no wisdom. Human will is the means by which man turns on the tap which contacts him with the universal will, which is ever seeking to express itself through him, and through his will in terms of life and joy and health and strength.
Oh, let us pray to identify our wills with the great Will of God and say: “Thy Will be done.” But let us know what the Will of God is. Let us think of the interpretation of Jesus. He negates the old idea of the will of God and says it is not the will of God that one of these little ones should perish, but that all should have everlasting life; it is not the will of God that the sinner should die, but become converted and live. It is not the will of God that the sick man should continue to sicken and die. It is the Will of God that all men should be well, but they must will to be well. So let us know that the Divine Will is working in us to will and to do of its good pleasure, and it is the Will of God’s good pleasure to externalize itself in health, strength, joy, gladness, peace, power, plenty and prosperity.
Be still, and know that the Will of God is operating in you, as the blood is flowing through your veins without any personal effort on your part. The blood surges through your arteries and veins, but you must will to move, otherwise you will sit, like the Hindoos, until you atrophy.
Take up your bed and walk. Those of you who are afraid to do something lest it hurt you, do it. That which you fear to do, do. Therein lies demonstration. Do, providing it is right. Did Jesus abrogate will? He said: “My will is to do the will of Him that sent me.” That is precisely what you are to do today and every day.
Chapter XII MIND AND MICROBES
“The Lord shall preserve thy going and thy coming in, from this time forth, and even for evermore.” –Psalm 121:8
Some months ago there came to my hand a paper which will show that my views are not altogether personal, or antagonistic to a theory that has become such a bugaboo to many that everywhere and in everything they see lurking death. There are some physicians who seem to be obsessed with it, so much so that if we would escape danger we must perforce absent ourselves from the objective world; that is, we must actually die in order to escape death itself, since everything, from the dust on the window curtain to the smell of the sweet mown hay, is a menace to health.
The Standard Allopathic Journal of Canada says:
The reasons for questioning the germ theory are mainly three, viz: 1st. The divergent views of bacteriologists as to which germ caused the disease.
2nd. The stronger claim of the biochemic theory.
3rd. The absense of germs at the onset of the disease, as the following sample cases show:
(a) A man crossing a river broke through the ice, was rescued, later became ill, and the doctor, fearing pneumonia, tested for pneumo-cocci. There were none present; when pneumonia developed they appeared. (b) After an oyster supper some men had cramps–no Eberth bacilli were present but were present later. (c) Hurrying, a girl arrived at her shop, sweating; as the shop was cold, she became chilly; next day complained of sore throat, but no Klebs-Loffler bacilli were found. Later, when a diphtheria patch appeared, the bacilli were present.
Here, in each case, the bacilli followed the onset of the disease.
Believing that the above germs were the result and not the cause of the disease, tests on the germs of diphtheria, typhoid and pneumonia were made. The first test was whether the Klebs-Loffler bacilli would cause diphtheria and about 5,000 were swallowed without any result; later, 100,000, 500,000 and a million more were swallowed, and in no case did they cause any ill-effect.
The second series of tests was to decide whether the Eberth bacillus would cause typhoid, but each test was negative, even when millions were swallowed.
The third series of tests showed that one could swallow a million (and over) pneumo-cocci without causing pneumonia or any disturbance.
The investigations covered about two years, and forty-five different tests were made, giving an average of fifteen tests each. Each germ culture was tested and six persons (three male and three female) knowingly took part in these tests, and in no case did any symptoms of the disease follow. The germs were swallowed in each case, and were given in milk, water, bread, cheese, meat, head-cheese, fish and apples–also tested on the tongue.
In the face of these tests, when the medical profession is in a quandary, it is only natural that the ordinary layman should wonder what it is all about. We have much experimentation and some cures, but whether these cures are due to the serums so extensively advertised, or to the faith in them, remains to be seen. It is a well known fact that, “As long as a medicine is powerful in psychic (mental) qualities it cures readily; when it falls into disrepute or out of fashion, and the halo goes, it loses much of its value.” As far back as 1771 Unzer remarked: “The expectation of the action of a remedy often causes us to experience its operation beforehand.” This is why “New remedies have thus a greater effect when first introduced than afterwards.”
The history of medicine furnishes us with some remarkable proofs of the uncertainty of its practices. It is said that in the ancient practice of medicine everything under the sun was utilized as a remedy for disease. “The more out of the way and the less suitable for a remedy a substance seemed to be, the more likely it was to be chosen by the old practitioner in the healing art. Thus they made use of gold, silver, precious stones and pearls. But the most loathsome substances were quite as readily employed. Excretions from living and dead bodies and powders of human bones were made lavish use of.” These facts are all narrated in order to show what great strides medicine has made in the last fifteen hundred years.
But what shall we say of the various vaccines employed by the modern medico who laughs at these ancient practices? Vaccination is the science (?) by which a mild form of a disease is produced in a perfectly healthy person to prevent a worse form from developing. A healthy animal is inoculated in order to make it unhealthy, and, when it is so diseased that a foul virus has been developed in its system, this is extracted and then injected into the system of a pure-blooded child, on the presumption that this child may one day have smallpox, if he does not first take cowpox. It would never do to inject into the system of a healthy child some healthy substance, for then, says the vaccinationist, “It would not take.” It would never do to let the poor cow become half sick; the more diseased she becomes the better for the child.
We have vaccines for everything. Drugs have gone out of fashion, thanks to the New Thought of things, and so we must have substitutes. The other day I heard of blackleg vaccine. Blackleg is an infectious disease, and the supposed cure for it in man is a powder prepared from the diseased muscles of animals that have died of blackleg. If the ancient schools of medicine could beat this for filthy ingenuity they must have been either a very clever or a very rascally lot. It might astonish some fastidious persons who are addicted to medicine to learn just what they are taking. If the medical profession cannot compel us to eat germs, as in the case of the Canadians cited, it will get them into us hypodermically or otherwise.
Already a reaction has set in against compulsory vaccination, so that one day a physician may arise who will write against the superstitions of the medicine of today, as there are those who are exposing the superstitions of the medicine of yesterday. Not long since, in the Oranges, some parents won a victory over the local Board of Health. They had held an indignation meeting against compulsory vaccination, and the Board of Health declared that their children should not go to school until this vaccination requirement was complied with, and since non-attendance of children at school is punishable by fine or imprisonment, the parents faced a serious situation, but they did so unflinchingly. There were so many of those benighted fathers and mothers who could not see that the injection of a filthy virus was essential to their children’s happiness, that their very numbers prevailed over the more enlightened Health Board. The race has made many changes in the manner of treating itself against disease, and it may be that vaccination will one day be as obsolete as the practise of removing the eye from a live crab–it must be a live crab–and then using it as a cure for photophobia. If we could wake up, as did Rip Van Winkle, after a twenty years’ sleep, we might discover that all our textbooks on Materia Medica were out of date and that our germ theories of today were a form of bacteriological insanity.
In the days when physicians prescribed powders made from the entrails of frogs (extracted while the frogs were still alive) there were some ignorant persons who refused to take such prescriptions after they discovered their ingredients, and by degrees frogs’ entrails became unpopular and now almost any frog may keep his entrails without any fear of being mutilated in the name of science. I am wondering if the popularity of the germ will presently wane through the fearlessness of those of us who scorn it. If it does, of course we shall have to devise some other means of terrorizing humanity; meanwhile the germ must be worked for all it is worth.
In March 1920, The Journal of the National Dental Association of Chicago had a leading editorial entitled, “The Slaughter of the Teeth.” Dr. O.M. King says in part:”Slaughter implies ruthlessness, unnecessary destruction,” and apparently the term is correctly descriptive of what has happened. Voices are being raised against the procedure. The fault-finding voice is from the medical profession:
“Teeth out, no results.” No count has been made of the number of times teeth have been removed with the best of motives and, following quite far-reaching promises in some instances, with no results at all. Quick to accept the findings of the leaders in bacteriological and pathological research, the great parent profession was as quick to put the findings to effect, with the result that daily patients were sent to the radiographer, and thence to the dentist, with orders for extraction. It was a good beginning; the beginning was made where it was the easiest and the patient was most duly impressed with the up-to-date intelligence of the physician. There was no palliative consideration for the teeth, for what is a mere tooth? And the dentist, desiring to be no whit behind the physician, extracted. In this combination the dentist was to blame. The dentist is supposed to know something about teeth, while the average physician knows nothing about them. What the schools give medical students about dental tissues and diseases is a travesty. Dentists must realize that no substitute they can make, can take the place of the teeth they extract. They must learn that the patient sent by the physician for extractions has other possible sources of infection besides the mouth, and that sanitation might be attempted, to show whether the mouth is the contributing cause or whether there is some other. The dentist who extracts without giving the case the most complete examination before extracting, commits a crime.
About a year ago there were appearing in the medical journals, and also in some of the daily papers, very well written articles setting forth the theory that many of the worst ills known to man were directly attributable to diseased teeth, and this in cases where the teeth showed no sign of disease. X-rays were ordered by physicians who believed this theory, with the result that in some cases pus formations were found at the roots of teeth, and this, in the estimation of the physician who believed so strongly in this theory, was sufficient to account for the symptoms which they declared would never yield so long as this condition of the teeth prevailed. Teeth were ordered extracted, and they were extracted with what one doctor called “ruthless abandon and a forcepts.” I know one lady who had five apparently good teeth extracted because the specialist persuaded her that they were the cause of a spinal disease which had defied the best medical skill she could find, here or elsewhere. That she was not relieved by this painful operation, and that she did not get better, does not prove the teeth faddists to be all wrong; it simply proves that human judgment is supposed to be based on scientific observation.
These experiments interested me greatly for I did not wish to treat against insanity, if the real malady were bad teeth, and the insanity, or rheumatism, or what not, was only a symptom. As much as any man in the world, I am convinced that it is much quicker and much more effective to strike at cause than at effects. That I employ one method, and the physician another, does not change the fact that I must employ this method intelligently. I made many inquiries both among physicians and patients with the result that I found the opinion to be that the cure was worse than the disease, in most cases.
It was while I was asking these questions that I spoke to a surgeon-dentist who is considered most successful. As soon as I asked him the question which has set the dental world thinking, as well as that part of the metaphysical world with which I am identified, he just laughed. I soon discovered it was not my question at which he was laughing but at an incident of which he was reminded. A dear old lady client, whom he had not seen in years, had been in his office a few days before, in great distress. She had been ailing all winter and her physicians, and good ones they were, had not been able to relieve her at all; indeed she had steadily grown worse. Finally her latest physician, quite in despair, suggested that she call upon her dentist, as he felt that the whole trouble must lie there, since he had handled the case from every other standpoint without success. My good friend, the surgeon-dentist, listened to her story of great suffering and then asked her to take a seat in the dental chair. He wanted to see if there was any infection in the mouth which might justify her physicians surmises, but all he found was a full set of upper and lower teeth which he himself had made for her years previously! He did not ridicule the idea advanced by the teeth faddists, but he did say that he considered it so negligible that it was hardly worth being taken seriously.
It is a very grave question in the minds of some of the most intelligent medical men if the real danger lies as much in microbes as it does in mind. When General Grant died, his death was given great publicity, but the worst feature of these accounts was the minute description of the malady which had hastened his end. It was smoker’s cancer, and for weeks the doctors were besieged by patients who were certain they had the same disease. Some time ago a man was dying from hydrophobia in Brooklyn, and each day there was published an account of his condition as each phase presented itself. So impressive was all this that the Pasteur Institute had a stream of people calling there every day to be inoculated against hydrophobia–some had been bitten years before by perfectly harmless little dogs, while others had never been bitten at all.
Now, it must be inferred from what we say and from what we quote that we are trying to explode the whole germ theory. We believe in germs, but we also believe there are benign ones, and we believe they are greatly in the majority, and we believe these are infinitely more potent to build up than the others are to tear down, and we are also convinced that this very belief is itself a safeguard against the fears which come from the opposite belief. It is possible to make friends of the germs, even helpful allies, instead of enemies. As we see it, it is a mooted question, even with bacteriologists, whether germs create disease or whether disease creates germs. There are those who believe that certain emotions, such as fear and anger, create germs peculiar to themselves which they call fear germs and anger germs. Others affirm that these emotions do not actually create germs, but that they liberate them from those obscure corners in the system where they always are and where they would do no particular harm. Now, whichever of these opinions is correct, it would seem the better part of wisdom is to avoid such emotions as are described, for if they create germs it were folly to go into the creating business for such small profit; while if they merely liberate them, it were still the better part of wisdom to let sleeping germs lie.
Professor Elmer Gates, of the Laboratory of Psychurgy at Washington, has proved, by the chemistry of a drop of perspiration, the state of a man at the time when that drop of perspiration was taken. Sometimes it was the sweat of anger, again the sweat of fear, but always it contained its own peculiar poison. Now, if that can produce ptomaines, and ptomaines can produce bacteria, and bacteria can produce disease and death, it were well for us to consider the prevention of all this, for prevention is better than cure as much in metaphysics as in physics. When a reputable physician states that all the germs in the world cannot injure us if our vitality is high, he furnishes us with two important points to consider. The first is that germs are not such terrible things as some would have us believe, and the second is that we should aim to keep our vitality so high that none of these things (germs) shall hurt us.
Let us then consider some of the causes which tend to lower the vitality and see if we cannot find a remedy for them. Work does not tend to lower our vitality–if we are in love with our work–whether that work is mental or physical, but worry does. A man may work never so hard without losing his vitality if he does not worry; but let a man worry and he will lose appetite, sleep and ambition, although he never works an hour. There is an antidote for worry, but it is not to be found in the drug store. It is trust, trust in the living God, such trust as does not neutralize itself by allowing doubt to enter if things do not come about as speedily as we desire them.
There is another condition to which we are all more or less subject to which makes for lowered vitality, and this is anger, which runs all the way from suppressed impatience to downright uncontrolled passion. There is an antidote for this, but it is not to be taken out of the bottle. Love is the antidote for anger in all its phases.
In the heart of every man there are the germs of Trust and Love which need only to be cultivated in order to grow in number and in power so that they will first hold all other germs in their place and then destroy them. Then there is that something higher from which Trust and Love take their rise, that Something which is more protective than anything else in the world. It is Understanding, and by Understanding I mean that sublime conviction that, despite all germs, there is God; and when it becomes a question of which is stronger, God or germs, we ought not to have any difficulty in deciding.
In those tests in Canada where a million germs were swallowed without any ill-effect, there was a literal fulfilment of those words of Jesus, “Ye shall drink any deadly thing, and it shall not hurt you.” We have said that worry and anger lower the vitality, but fear is perhaps one of the most deadly germs in the world, and just as diphtheria, typhoid and pneumonia germs could not fasten themselves upon those healthy constitutions of the Canadian experimenters, so the germs of fear, worry and anger cannot imbed themselves in the mental or physical constitution of that man who understands that in a universe that is filled with the presence of God there is nothing to fear. Such a man will go forth in the consciousness that the Lord shall preserve his going out and his coming in forevermore.
He will maintain a sound constitution first by maintaining his trust in God, and then by temperance in eating. He will bathe and exercise because he likes to do these things, but he will not feel that these are all that is necessary, for they are but the external correspondences of that mental bath, by means of which he shall cleanse his thought from all fear, worry and anger. In addition to his physical exercises he will exercise his mind in the direction of developing a fuller reliance on the Spirit, so that no matter what epidemic arises he will be able to say within himself, “In this will I be confident,” for “God has given his angels charge concerning me.” “He is a shelter for me and a place of refuge.” “No evil shall befall me, neither shall any plague come nigh my dwelling,” “for I dwell in Him in Whom is no imperfection and no impurity. Divine Mind rules supreme in Its own universe and I shall not be afraid, for where it is a question of Mind or microbes, my faith is in Mind.”
Chapter XIII A NEW BEGINNING
“I will pull down my barns, and build greater.” –Luke 12:18
The idea which Jesus had in mind when he used this parable was that of illustrating the folly of adding riches to riches for the mere sake of having riches, without any consideration of their ethical value. Jesus knew that the pursuit of wealth for its own sake, without any regard for what it will enable its possessor to do to ameliorate human suffering, could end only in that form of idolatry which we term as mere “money worship.”
Every day some man somewhere is thinking about retiring from business, but the great majority of these are dissuaded either by their friends or by their own counter impulses. A man starts out to acquire a certain amount which he is sure will be enough to enable him to do all he has set his heart on doing, but when he arrives at that amount there is a conflict in his soul, providing he remembers his good resolution of years ago, which many so easily forget.
He finds himself arguing with himself, and it is as if one self said to the other, “It is ridiculous for you to think of retiring now. You have only just got your stride; from now on it will be all easy money.” And he listens as he should, and it is all easy money, for wealth is like a snowball, which seems to increase of its own momentum. It exceeds his fondest expectations, but he neither retires nor uses even the interest on his investments, so great is it. You ask him what he is doing with it all, and he tells you he is putting it back into his business. When you inquire why, he looks at you as if you were foolish to ask such a question. He is wondering if it is possible that you do not realize that putting money back into the business is the surest way to make money work for you while you rest.
Then, if you are as courageous as you are inquisitive, you ask him if he is doing anything to make it easier for the hospitals which depend on charity to give good service to those who are unfortunate enough to have to become inmates. He is quite likely to tell you that he has serious intentions of building a hospital that will be more to his liking than those to which he now refuses his support. If he does not do it before he dies, he will surely do it after he dies, but, as Henry Ward Beecher once said of such a person, “He is dead already.”
The man in the parable found himself, as so many men are finding themselves today, with more wealth than he could use. Such a man paid $85,000 for a fur coat for his wife a few years ago. I hope it will keep her warm, but it will not if she remembers that over in Europe the mothers of new-born babies only last year had to wrap those babies in paper, because they had neither cotton, wool, silk, nor linen for the purpose. I suppose if those mothers should complain, some little preacher for the foolish rich–for there are rich who are not foolish–might call to their attention the fact that Jesus was born in a stable, and I have no doubt some would derive comfort from the reflection. But just the same it would still be hard on the European baby.
We may argue that the person who pays such a vast amount of money for a fur coat is putting the money into circulation; but on this principle one might contend that a man who lives extravagantly and riotously is putting his money into circulation. Of course it is all a question of relativity, but there is one comparison that such a person could make in a very practical way which would show that between some things there is no similarity. For instance there is no comparison between the state of mind induced by the comfort from wearing an $85,000 sable coat, and that induced as a result of going without it and wearing something cheaper while 80,000 children are being fed for three days.
It is all a state of consciousness, but there are some people who could sleep better if they knew that they had just provided 40,000 blankets at $2.00 a pair for baby cribs. It is this dissatisfaction with good coats of a reasonable price, in order to put on others of a price that, from any point of view save that of vulgar display is out of all reasonable requirement, that makes the parable of Jesus so applicable today. There is no harm in keeping money in circulation, and indeed that is what it is for, but no one but a fool will contend that any woman with a grain of commonsense will not get more happiness out of keeping 40,000 babies warm than she will get out of being herself overdressed.
When the man in a parable had concluded to “eat, drink, and be merry,” he was called a fool and told that that night his soul would be required of him. How short-lived are the joys we refuse to share with others! Now, just as every cloud has its silver lining, so every parable has a positive as well as a negative side. There is a sense in which a man may say, “I will pull down my barns, and build greater,” and still be in harmony with the Law, for there are barns, and barns.
Here is a man whose barn is a job by which he is held captive, so that he can neither improve himself where he is, nor spare the time to look for something better. Growing demands press upon his slender resources until he either shrivels up in his barn or he says within his soul, “I will pull down my barn, and build a greater one.” If a man’s barn is a job in a place where there is no possibility for further expansion and improvement, he may stay with it until old age makes him even less serviceable; or he may make a resolution on the New Year’s Day of his ambition to pull down his barn by refusing to believe that it is the only job to be had. This does not necessarily mean that he shall throw out the dirty water before he gets the clean, but it does mean that he shall not hypnotize himself into the belief that it is this job, or none.
A man may be in one barn, or job, physically while he is in another mentally, and, while he is so, he is mentally tearing one barn down while he is building another in prospect, so that he will step from one into the other without disturbing anyone. When this is not possible it is better to quit and take one’s chances than to have the walls of the barn close in on one to a point of suffocation.
On the first day of the first month it was a custom of the Jews to celebrate the setting up of the tabernacle. This was to call to their remembrance the day when their forefathers quit their jobs under Pharaoh and started out for the new country of larger promises. Under the guidance of Moses they had pulled down their old barns long before they had built new ones, on the principle that if they did not immediately get new ones they would at least never go back to positions outgrown. It was a case of burning their bridges behind them.
In the “days of ‘49” men gave up good positions to go out to California, not altogether in a spirit of adventure, but because the walls of their respective barns were restricting their movements. They had nothing in sight but a prospect; but a prospect without a job is sometimes preferable to a job without a prospect. Today there are greater barns in California than were ever dreamed of in Maine or New Hampshire. But this could not have been so if pioneering New Englanders had not been willing to pull down their barns, or, to use their own expression, “pull up stakes.”
A man’s barn may not be a job which he is afraid to give up; it may be a building of limitations which he has erected for himself by persistent negative thinking. There is a story told of an Italian nobleman who, in order to punish a woman who had been unfaithful to him, caused her to be placed in a little niche just large enough for her to stand in. Then he ordered masons to lay a row of bricks around her until one row rose on top of another. By degrees a wall rose until she was left standing in her living tomb. It is a horrible story, but it serves to illustrate how men build their own barns around themselves by accepting limitations as if they were imposed upon them by God, and therefore incurable.
It does not matter that the walls of one man’s barn are built of gold bricks, or accumulated riches, or whether another man’s are built of the mud of accumulated fears, each must decide to do what the man in the parable resolved to do. He must say to his soul, with all the strength of his character, “I will pull down my barn, and build greater.” Here is one whose barn is neither a job which he is afraid to lose, nor one whose walls he has built by his own accumulated fears. This person’s walls have been built by others, but he accepts them as the boundaries of his own restricted opportunities. This barn is what to others might seem a luxurious home. There is no lack of anything, save the right to expand. A young man or a young woman, more frequently a young woman, is made to feel that if he or she leaves the parental roof for the establishment of a new home it will hasten the end of a mother who is considering her own happiness more than that of her grown child, though she would never admit it even to herself. The mother is all too frequently of hardy stock, so that such sons and daughters live in these particular barns until they are not fit to live in any other.
There is a certain kind of love which builds the walls of this particular barn, but it is a barn nevertheless, and all too frequently a cage in which some dear soul is imprisoned by its unwilling consent, if there is such a state of mind. Have we not seen men and women who have spent the best part of their lives in a barn which they have called home when all that was fine in them cried for a home of their own, in which they could be their real selves? This accounts for the willingness of young people to leave luxurious homes for much less pretentious ones. When a young woman marries and leaves a beautiful home to go into a small apartment with the man of her choice she is pulling down her barn in order to build a greater, for she is about to develop into something bigger than she could ever become in what she calls her [parents] home. In a material way she is giving up something better than she is getting, but in a spiritual way she is getting something bigger than she is giving up. It does not mean that she is to despise the home of her parents simply because she is now the mistress of a home of her own. She merely pulls one down, in which she is more or less of a dependent, in order to build another up in which she shall be the ruling spirit.
It is in some such way as this that the man who has built around himself a wall of wealth must learn to tear it down, not in order to throw this wealth away but in order to do more good with it. It is well that he built the old barn, but now he needs more room. A man has not expanded to his fullest capacity when he has become merely fabulously rich. This is only the beginning of his normal development for, with all his acquisitiveness, he requires those riches of the intellect by means of which to appreciate art, music and literature. And in addition to these he acquires those riches of soul by means of which to appreciate the needs of suffering humanity.
When the rich man senses those personal needs he resolves to become of service. Theodore Roosevelt might have been content with his particular barn of social and financial security, but he saw the need of men in his station of life taking an active interest in politics. Hitherto politics was largely the profitable pursuit of the unclean, but when Mr. Roosevelt saw that this was leading to national immorality he said, if not in word, in deed, “I will pull down my barns (or respectable seclusion) and build greater.” He might have continued to live in his barn of personal comfort and been content to cast his vote like every other citizen, but that was not his way. He pulled down the barn of his private life and became a public character such as has not been seen in many a day.
Consider the case of young Father Damien of Belgium whose life might have been spent in the quiet of a monastery, but he early recognized that this would have been merely an easy method of saving his own soul. He had read of those eastern lepers who were taken to the Island of Molokai from their homes as soon as the dread disease manifested itself. On that island they were left with no one to care for them but lepers like themselves, since no one dared to run the risk of contracting the horrible malady. When Father Damien volunteered to go to Molokai he was informed that it would be the place of his burial, since no one was ever permitted to leave after once setting foot on its soil. It was indeed the place of his burial for, after many years spent in ministering to the physical as well as the spiritual welfare he finally died of the disease, which he contracted through such ministry. It was his way of tearing down his barn and building a greater one.
History teems with glorious deeds of similar character but time is not long enough for us to recount even a tithe of them. It is enough for us to know that there is a positive side to his parable of the Master. At the close of this year and the opening of another year it may be that we have discovered that our particular barn is not large enough, and as the New Year approaches we may be making those inner resolutions which are the necessary forerunners of better things to follow. It may be that some of us are not so dissatisfied with our barns as are others, for not all men are victims of discontent. There are those who feel that they are doing the best they can with the means at hand. But are they?
A man’s barn is never big enough until there is not room enough for another good act. When a man’s barn is big enough to satisfy him he has stopped growing. There is always room for expansion. In one sense it is scientific not to admit our limitations; in another it is wise to recognize that our possibilities are much greater than our performances. When a man realizes that his mental barn is cluttered with a lot of junk in the form of negative and unproductive thoughts he ought to clean it up. If on the other hand it is full of a sound philosophy which he is making very little use of, then he needs to pull it down and build a greater one where there will be room for the application of all he knows.
Sometimes a man’s barn is a habit which he has built around himself, and which stands in the way of his progress. When this is the case he must not conclude that his habit is too strong ever to be broken. Let him fall back upon the sustaining Infinite in his own soul, and say to himself, “I will pull down this barn, this debilitating habit, and build a greater habit, a habit of temperance and sobriety. I will use all my mental energy in the direction of proving my God-given superiority over everything that robs me of self-respect. I will build a barn, a habit of thought, that will stand against every wind of temptation, that will be a place into which I can retreat when the storm of passion threatens to overwhelm me. It will be a temple of pure thoughts at the very center of my thinking being, erected thought by thought, and day by day; the walls will be like the walls of a fortress, impervious to any assault that may be made upon them. The barn that I shall build, in place of the one that I shall pull down, will be the habitual dependence upon Spirit instead of matter, for through Spirit and my reliance upon it, I shall be more than conqueror.”
If the barn that we have builded is the habit of regarding ourselves as invalids and therefore unable to do the one thing our hearts desire to do, in this also must we be resolute. If we have built for ourselves a barn, the walls of which are fear and doubt, depression and discouragement, we must again say within our souls, “I will pull down my barn and build a greater. I will build those ‘more stately mansions’ of the soul, out of that Rock that is higher than I, that spiritual Truth which quiets the mind and heals the body at the same time.
“With the passing of the old year there will be a passing also of all my old false beliefs, for the New Year of spiritual awakening has brought with it the revelation of Christ in me, the perfect expression of a perfect God. I shall not look back and darken a beautiful present by regrets for what might seem to be an aimless past. I shall regard it as a traveler on an ocean liner regards the refuse which is thrown overboard–I shall say to my soul ‘You have seen the last of the old barn, for the new barn, the New Year with all its glorious possibilities, is to be constructed.’
“I shall press forward to the completion of that spiritual building in consciousness, that building ‘not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,’ that structure in which is nothing ‘that maketh or worketh a lie,’ that Creation of Pure Thought, wherein is no sin and sickness, no pain and no poverty, that building which is not less real, because it is not of matter, but of Mind. Having pulled down the barn of my old misconceptions, I shall build a greater structure on that solid foundation of my understood relation to that Eternality which, to know aright, is Life Eternal.”
Chapter XIV DEMONSTRATING PROSPERITY
“I lead in the way of righteousness, in the midst of the paths of judgment: That I may cause those that love me to inherit substance; and I will fill their treasures.” –Proverbs 8:20, 21
A noted Hindoo teacher, visiting this country, once said that if he announced a lecture on “How to Get Rich,” the hall would be packed, but if he advertised one on “Self-Surrender,” he would not attract a baker’s dozen. He felt that the paramount object of the West, particularly of the United States, was to accumulate this world’s goods, irrespective of methods employed, or the uses to which these were to be put.
The belief has become almost universal, and while there may be some truth in it, there is another side which critics ought to consider in order that their criticism be just, even if it is not generous. When it is understood that this country is peopled largely with those who come here in order to escape from the limiting and crippling influence of poverty in all its phases, for it is verydoubtful if anyone ever came here save to improve his condition, it will be seen that what seems to be feverish haste to amass wealth is nothing more or less than urgency to escape the bondage of lack and limitation. That some do not know what to do with their riches after they acquire them does not change the fact that prosperity is a universal necessity, as much as is health. That some men do not take care of their health does not change the fact that health is good, or the fact that the more we have of it the better.
If what the Master says is true, with regard to a tree being known by its fruit, it might be well for us to consider the kind of fruit which grows on the tree of poverty, for we may, by so doing, get some idea of the peculiar methods by which some persons try to get away from it. Like the deadly upas tree of Java, over which the birds will not fly because of the virulent poison which it casts off, so the tree of poverty is one which all men instinctively shun. And since this fact is so universal, there must be a reason for it.
Some time ago an old policeman, a sergeant in one of New York’s most poverty stricken localities, was asked why it was that there was so much crime in his precinct, which was one noted, not only for its adult criminals, but for its unusual amount of juvenile delinquency. Being neither a psychologist nor a social settlement worker, his answer was not the studies reply of one schooled in these speculations, but that of one who had studied conditions at first hand during a period of twenty-five years on the force. He explained that he had noticed that the children in his precinct began at a very early age to indulge in comparisons between themselves and other children who were more fortunate. At first this attitude manifested in envy, which presently grew into covetousness, so that the little fingers began to follow the eye in the direction of an object which was very desirable, but financially unattainable. Frequently these thefts were accomplished without detection, but sometimes they were frustrated, and the method of dealing with them was not always one which ended the desire to possess things, but rather one which threw the juvenile offenders into companionship with older persons who were also seeking to escape from their common enemy, poverty.
He said, further, that poverty compelled these children to live and sleep and eat under such conditions as made home the last place they wished to go, or remain in, and so they were on the streets long after they should have been in their beds. This led to other temptations, such as stealing to go to the movies. He enumerated a list of crimes which he believed were all the outcome of poverty, and which one would never hear of in less congested and cleaner precincts. When asked if he thought the children in his territory were naturally worse than others, he replied that all children were naturally good–they needed only a chance.
One may, or may not, agree with this philosopher of the streets, but I have never met a man who would voluntarily choose the tree of poverty under which to recline, especially if he had a family. That some monks take the “vow of poverty” is a fact; but that is not poverty which ties a man up to a “Providing Order,” which relieves the individual of all anxious concern for the future. That the monk’s life is reduced to one of austere simplicity may be true, but he is not always wondering where his next meal is coming from, nor is he lying awake nights thinking how he is going to meet the rent man who has threatened to dispossess him. The monk’s existence, to a man freighted with responsibilities, which he wants to meet, but which he finds himself unable to do, is not an altogether unenviable one. The average man does not wish to become a monk and avoid responsibility; he simply desires to be a man and meet his responsibilities in a manly way. This is as true in the sergeant’s precinct as it is in those other localities where ‘shabby gentility’ weeps in private and smiles in public. Poverty is like a precious stone in one respect, for it has many aspects, but unlike the precious stone, none of its aspects is beautiful.
The so-called man of means is not always shielded from the stings and jibes of lack, but often tosses on his bed when notes are due or overdue, and nothing but the sacrifice of one thing will enable him to keep another thing which must be kept, if all is not to go from bad to worse. In addition to poverty being an actual condition, it is also a state of consciousness, in which one may have much and delude himself into thinking he has little. The case of the wealthy woman who passed away in New York some time ago, and concerning whose will there was so much contention, is a case in point. She was wealthy, even as we today consider wealth, and yet she lived as only a miser would live, through a persistent fear that she would end her days in the poor-house. When we think of a woman worth millions, eating at inexpensive restaurants and smuggling food into her hotel from cheap lunch counters in order to avoid ordering from the hotel menu and tipping the waiters in addition, we are not surprised that her daughter used these facts to prove that her mother was of unsound mind when she made her will. However, it is only an exaggerated instance of an almost universal insanity.
When one considers the prodigality of nature, it is a mild form of mental derangement to suppose that there can be a lack in the universe that is filled with unlimited abundance. To be sure there is inequality of distribution, but this is due to “man’s inhumanity to man,” rather than to God’s “immutable plan.” We have various recipes for the conquest of poverty. The poor are recommended to be more industrious and less extravagant, which is not bad advice to give to any class.
But there are times when the most industrious and least extravagant find themselves in what are called straitened circumstances. War, trade fluctuations and sickness are conditions over which the most industrious and the least extravagant cannot always exercise control. It is not always because men have spent their money in riotous living that they find themselves, when their little savings are all gone, unable to purchase the remedy and food which the doctor prescribes for a sick wife or child. That poverty is due to drink and gambling in many instances is true, but frequently men and women drink and gamble as the children in the old sergeant’s precinct steal bananas or apples. They want something which instinct tells them they ought to have and, not knowing the right way to procure it, they yield to the temptation which ignorance calls the easiest way, but which subsequently proves to be the hardest way.
If a man on a small income tries to increase that income by gambling in stocks or betting on horse-races, and become more impoverished in consequence, there is little pity for him. If, on the other hand, a man resists the temptation to gamble under such circumstances, but “drinks to forget,” we have very little pity for him either, especially if the pangs of poverty have not made themselves felt in our personal experience.
One cannot pick up a high-class magazine today without seeing anywhere from one to a dozen well advertised methods by which the conquest of poverty is to be brought about. Poverty is the Hun of the economic world, and all the forces of progression are the Allies which first defend themselves against it and then defeat it, if they can. Among such advertisements are those which recommend home-study of law, medicine, chiropractics, engineering in all its branches, and those various trainings for which correspondence schools are noted. From all of this very excellent advice, it is obvious that the conquest of poverty is to be brought about, not by muscular, but by mental energy; for all these systems rest upon the improvement of the mind along lines already in operation, or the direction of the forces in ways other than those which the aspirant to prosperity has been taking.
It is almost generally conceded that the path from poverty to power is that of mental culture, but this opinion is receiving many rather hard jolts these days if one reads some of the articles concerning doctors, ministers and college professors which are appearing in the papers. One says that the man who minds the train gets a much larger salary than the man who trains the mind; the brakeman on a freight train gets more than a teacher in a high school, while the brakeman on a passenger train gets more than an ordinary professor in a college. The conductor receives more than a college president, and the engineer’s wage, if given to the professor of chemistry or botany in most colleges, might have a tendency to turn his head. Professors and ministers of the gospel have gone into the automobile and other businesses, for the simple reason that, with the current high cost of living, their miserable stipends were insufficient to buy shoes for their children. It would seem that when one class prospers another class suffers. War has a strange way of making the rich poor and the poor rich. It not only affects individuals, but nations, so that we are led to inquire if there is not back of it all a law which is ever working to equalize matters.
It is all so bewildering that we conclude that life on this planet is largely a game of chance, and therefore we must try to be good sports and pray for better luck on the next planet. On the principle that “God helps those who help themselves,” we have done the best we could, only to find ourselves in sore straits after all, so that the most natural question has been, “What’s the use?” Poverty is like one of those puzzle games which are invented from time to time, which we try by every means in our power to solve, only to find ourselves baffled, for we have not discovered the little trick connected with it.
In the matter of solving the problem of poverty, we have learned that a healthy body and a well-trained mind are most valuable assets, but when these fail to keep the enemy from the door, as they frequently do, then even these soon show the effect of the unequal struggle. Poverty is a wrestler which has thrown many a strong man, until he learned the hold which not even poverty can break. In struggling with limitation, the unbreakable hold is the soul’s reliance on the eternal promises. When we have tried all the regulation tricks and our shoulders are being borne to the mat, so that the situation seems hopeless, if we can hold on to the promise that, “The Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones; and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not,” we shall wriggle out from under poverty’s grasp; we shall break away from the bondage of fear and stand upright on our feet.
Every wrestler will tell you that when he has overcome fear, the struggle becomes easier and the victory surer. We enter the arena with this old antagonist of the race in a state of mental uncertainty; its reputation terrifies us; it has thrown so many bigger and stronger men than we, and we have witnessed those unequal contents. We are really whipped before we commence, just as young boxers are defeated by the reputation of older ones. It is an astonishing thing what a reputation will do, if one is afraid of it. It is a trick among boxers to play upon the fears of youngsters who are ambitious to win. They have skill and they have strength, but there is too often a hole in their mental armor. I remember one of those unusual young men, who, when he was told of the enormous size of his opponent, in addition to his terrifying reputation, replied, “The bigger they are, the harder they fall; and when they fall their reputation goes down with them.”
One does not look for sound philosophy from a prize-fighter, but when one finds it, one ought to apply it to those contests in human life, which, while they may be more dignified, are just as undesirable. If we could look at our approaching troubles, especially our financial ones, when they loom large on the mental horizon, and say, “the bigger they are, the harder they fall,” there would be fewer failures, and old and formidable poverty would presently lose its reputation. Other men have beaten it, and so can we, if we “put on the whole armour of God.” When a man is afraid, there is a crack in his shield, and it is through this opening that the universal enemy shoots its poisonous dart. At the close of the Civil War men who had never known the touch of want suddenly found themselves penniless. Some allowed their shoulders to be pinned to the mat and they never rose again, while others wriggled out from under and became richer than ever, not only in cash, but in character.
Poverty is a ghost which terrifies us so long as we are children in spirit, but when we are grown in Christ, we see it for the sham it is and cast it off. When all our other holds have failed, let us try this new hold; let us hold on to the promise of God, which reads, “They that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing.” We must learn to say with the Psalmist, “All my springs are in Thee, nothing can by any means overthrow me or dismay me.” When we are not sufficient of ourselves, it is well to remember that our sufficiency is of Him in Whom is no lack. We look for abundance with our eyes closed to its Omnipresence, but when God opens our eyes, as He opened the eyes of Hagar in the wilderness, we see what has always been here, but which we could not see before, because fear had blinded us. “The Lord shall open unto thee His good treasure” when thou openest thine eyes to see that without Him thou canst do nothing, but with Him thou canst do all things.
Chapter XV INEXHAUSTIBLE ABUNDANCE
“The Lord shall open unto thee His good treasure, the heaven to give the rain unto thy land in His season, and to bless all the work of thine hand, and thou shalt lend unto many nations and thou shalt not borrow.” –Deut. 28:12
In these days of metaphysical investigation, it is not surprising that thought is turning in the direction of a more general application of spiritual psychology. Time was when men felt that the employment of spiritual means for what they called, in their ignorance, material purposes was ignoble and sacrilegious. Even today we seem to feel that we may call upon the Infinite for anything and everything, save money, and yet when we examine the thought carefully we see that it is based upon the belief in opposites. We hesitate to implore Spirit to act for us on what we call the plane of the material, and by so doing we defraud ourselves of those visible blessings, the which, if we do not possess, leave us little time or thought for the contemplation of the Real. Life that is not visible in energy and animation is not expressed, and unexpressed Life is not appreciable either to God or man.
Health and strength which are not made visible in clearness of eye, elasticity of step, and in what men call physical endurance, may as well be, and remain in kingdom come, so far as the individual is concerned. In like manner then, abundance or prosperity, unless expressed, is a hollow mockery to the man besieged by creditors and haunted by the needs of his family.
When all earthly means have been exhausted, is the individual to conclude that there is no help for him in the Lord, since it is an error to apply Spiritual Science on the plane of the material? Who or what is it that suggests a material plane? In the Science of Spirit is there such a plane as the plane of the material? And if so, on what basis is it established?
If there is a material plane, then there must be a material foundation for it, and if there is a material foundation, then God, or Spirit, is not the Only Founder and Foundation. “Other foundation shall no man lay than that which is laid.” To believe in another foundation than that which is the only Foundation, namely, Pure Spirit, is to be a house divided against oneself.
When we learn that there are not two planes–the spiritual and the material–we shall not try to “materialize spirits” nor “spiritualize matter,” for we shall have learned that a thing can never be transformed into its opposite. Money is not, as some suppose, the materialization of spiritual substance; rather is it the visible expression of Invisible Abundance.
It is we who materialize money when we use it for sinful purposes, just as we carnalize the affections when we reduce them to self-gratification. Materialization is not the conversion of one substance into its opposite, quite so much as it is our mistaken or malicious use of that which is in itself a particular expression of the universal Reality. We have condemned the flesh and thought we were following the example of Jesus, who “came not to condemn the flesh, but the sins which are done in the flesh.” We have despised wealth because of the false and ignoble uses to which it has been put, when we should have worked to acquire it for the purpose of putting it to grand and noble uses.
We have been taught, by a fat and prosperous clergy, to regard poverty as a virtue, but they have not been nearly so eager to cultivate this particular virtue as they have been to make others comfortable in a most uncomfortable position. Poverty is no more a power to be submitted to than is pain or profligacy, for it is all too often the mother of both, and through these it is the grandmother of an innumerable progeny.
The best that can be said in favor of poverty is that it occasionally causes men to seek divine guidance by which to escape from it. On this principle we may declare that pain is a positive good, since it causes men to seek a remedy for it; but these declarations are based on a one-sided view of things.
For centuries we have faintly believed in the therapeutic value of prayer. That we can, through prayer, be liberated from or sustained through painful experiences, all true believers in God will readily concede, but the Science of Christ reveals to the receptive soul the prophylactic value of prayer. Prevention is better than cure, and the prevention of poverty is a subject that is frequently under discussion these days.
To instruct humanity in the Law of unlimited Abundance is to enable them to turn to the Inexhaustible Source, which is God, and this is the work of the true educator and emancipator. To teach humanity, individually and collectively, that God is the source of supply, and that “There is no lack in Him in Whom all fullness lies,” is the function of the real philanthropist.
Man, knowing his relation to the universe, is an inlet to the Over-Soul. Becoming a channel in himself, through spiritual understanding, he depends less and less on other channels, and more and more on the Source of these. Having freely received through other channels from the One and Only Source, we must freely give, continuously, however, pointing the gaze upward so that others, too, will presently tap the Reservoir directly, instead of indirectly.
We must learn sometime, somewhere, somehow, that dependence on anything short of the Dependable is a looking to the creature instead of the Creator, and that such dependence is false and must eventuate in disappointment. “Put not your trust in princes,” said the Psalmist–not that the princes are unreliable always, but because they, too, are tributary to the King. We must learn that we also are princes, children of the King, and that in the court of Spirit there are no favorites.
Man, in his ignorance, would separate man from man and all men from God; but God in His infinite wisdom ever unifies and knits all together in bonds of love. He causeth prosperity, like the rain, to fall upon the just and the unjust alike, and this because His love is impartial and universal.
When we see an unjust rich man we are prone to declare that evil succeeds where goodness fails, and then we question the justice of God, forgetful of the fact that there is a psychological and scientific reason for this apparent injustice and favoritism.
Not knowing that man is the Expression of God in all that God is, we seem to feel that each individual can express the Universal only in some one particular direction. On this false assumption we declare that the literateur and the artist must of necessity be impecunious. Art and true literature may have nothing to do with a sinful commercialism, but if the artist and literateur leave out from their calculations the commercial value of their productions, they are apt to starve in a garret, or subsist on the crumbs which fall from other men’s tables. On the other hand, we often hear it said that men of wealth cannot, by reason of their wealth and attendant responsibilities, be spiritually minded, and in support of this we have the story of the camel and the eye of the needle repeated to us. If man expresses Deity in Prosperity, a limited understanding of Man’s possibilities as the reflection of the Infinite asserts that he cannot express Deity in Purity. If man is pure he cannot be prosperous, says finite belief, and thus we argue for limitation and finiteness. When the individual learns that he is the complete reflection of the universal, he will know that that is not a perfect “image and likeness” which reflects only in part. “A righteous man thinketh that which is righteous,” and whilst he does so and walketh uprightly, he shall have the Lord favorable unto him in all his enterprises.
If the Bible promises healing and health as the result of righteousness, or right thinking, it also promises immunity from poverty. The foolish belief that poverty is a virtue should not close our eyes to the sacred assurances of Holy Writ. If an unjust man be a rich man it is only an evidence of the fact that he has concentrated on riches to the exclusion of righteousness, but this is no proof against the fact that he might have had both riches and righteousness had he been so minded. If a pure man be poor it is no evidence that poverty is the natural accompaniment of purity; it is only an indication of the common error in believing that no one man can reflect God in all His attributes. The tiniest dew-drop or the tiniest blade of grass, as well as the limpid surface of the largest lake, reflects the sun, not in part but in its entirety. Man, as the manifestation of the Invisible Whole, cannot be the slave of limitation except by his own ignorance or weakness of consent, and it is just these errors that Truth comes to destroy.
As ignorance makes for slavery, so enlightenment makes for emancipation, and here, again, we are to rise superior to the belief in limitation. Emancipation from one task-master, while remaining in bondage to others, is not absolute freedom, and nothing short of absolute freedom can be likened to “the glorious liberty of the children of God.” “By humility and the love of the Lord are riches and honor, and life,” says the wise man, and we should lay as much emphasis on the one as the other. The only danger comes from emphasizing one more than the other. One boasts that honor is preferable to riches. Another thinks he must sacrifice honor to acquire riches, while still another is so fearful of bodily injury that he will sacrifice honor and riches to save his skin.
From whence cometh this distorted view of things, if it is not from the belief that man can never be the unlimited Expression of Un-Limited Mind? That the individual may manifest one or more of the attributes of the universal is almost generally conceded, but that the Individual may manifest all the Deific characteristics is a Truth which comparatively few can appreciate, and hence it is that while we strive to be satisfied with health minus wealth, and wealth minus health, we instinctively reach out for both, and this because it is according to the Law of Complete Abundance that we should have both.
“There is a spirit in man,” says Job, and it is this very spirit which some speak of as the Divine urge which ever protests against anything short of Perfection. The nearer the spirit (thought) in man approaches the spirit (thought) of God, the more it appreciates its likeness to this spirit of the Real, and the more apparent does it become that poverty, like pain, is a flaw in an otherwise perfect gem. The most perfect gem is a righteous mind, but that is not a flawless mind in which the slightest cloud of fear or doubt appears, and the fear of poverty obscures the sun of joy and gladness in many a heart. To what, then, shall we turn in our dilemma if it is not to the Divine Lapidary? Like traders in precious stones, we may be satisfied that our particular gem of character cannot be improved upon.
We have not regarded poverty as a mental flaw quite so much as we have considered it an unavoidable circumstance–therefore, we present our mental gem to the scrutiny of the Divine Lapidary in the belief that it is a facsimile of His own, and lo! it is returned to us for correction. The human mind in its spiritual state is an exact reproduction of Divine Mind, the very “image and likeness of God,” and for this reason the Divine Lapidary points out the flaw. Having failed to observe it, or having observed it, to excuse it as an evidence of virtuousness we present it, and not until its imperfection, as a true copy, is made clear to us do we awake from our delusion. The eye of the expert sees what we have not seen.
Looking into the soul of man, it detects what cannot be found in God, namely, a belief in insufficiency. Now, in the Mind which is God, there is no such belief, and no ground for it, since “there is no lack in Him in Whom all fullness lies,” and the recognition of this fact, coupled with the understanding that Man is the manifestation of the Unmanifested, will dissipate the delusion. “Yea, the Almighty shall be thy defence, and thou shalt have plenty of silver.” In relying upon these promises of the ever-beneficent Lord of Hosts, we cultivate the habit of serene trust. A serene trust is something entirely different from a blind hope, and its difference lies in this, that it is based on the conviction that “God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” Not a few, not a great number, but all your needs are to be supplied through a knowledge of Truth. “And the Lord (Truth) shall guide thee continuously and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones; and thou shalt be like a watered garden and like a spring of water whose waters fail not.”
There are two statements, often used, sometimes accepted, but as often rejected. “Be good, and you will be happy,” is a true declaration, but there are many good people who are not happy, and there is a saying which has grown out of this one, and it is, “Be good, and you will be lonesome.” It does not seem to follow that because man is good he will be happy. Some of the best men we know are not happy, but this is not because they are good, but because with all their goodness they are, all too frequently, sorry for themselves. They know they are good, and they cannot understand why everybody else does not know it, and praise them for it. Goodness is its own recompense, and one should be happy because he is good, if for no other reason. The consciousness that one is doing the best he can under all circumstances is a certain remedy for unhappiness. A man may not directly create the most harmonious conditions for himself, but he can so order his thought that these indirectly will eventuate in producing such conditions as are most desirable.
Another statement which is often used is, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you,” and while this also is true, have we not seen those who have most diligently endeavored to live the spiritual life confronted with the most distressing poverty? What is the answer? Surely it is not because a man seeks the kingdom of God that he is poor. May it not be that, with all his seeking, there is a lurking fear of lack? And may not this obsession be the sediment in the channel which prevents the free flow of the Substance which, when expressed on the objective plane, we call money? To trust God with one-half of our minds and to fear poverty with the other half is to be “a house divided against itself,” and hence the failure to demonstrate.
If we are mindful that the Source of all wealth is omnipresent and inexhaustible, and also remember that this Source is saying in its still small voice, “Behold, all that I have is thine,” we shall get ready to accept that which God has so richly provided, as did the widow when the prophet told her to “Go, borrow thee vessels, abroad of all thy neighbors, even empty vessels, borrow not a few.” This illustrates the need of preparation as well as prayer. To pray for oil, but to get no vessels to put it in, is to defeat the purpose for which we pray. To pray for prosperity and to doubt its appearance in our lives because we cannot see at the moment how, or through what particular channel, it is going to come to us, is to make it impossible for it to manifest through us at all.
It is not necessary for us to think in terms of specific sums as when one “visualizes” a particular amount, for this is to limit the Illimitable, on the principle that “One cannot get a three-inch stream through a one-inch pipe.” Our thought must not be of some special manifestation of wealth, but of Wealth itself, which as we think Wealth will tend to flow into us through innumerable channels, even as water tends to flow from a higher to a lower level into such receptacles as man or nature has provided for it. And just as water which flows into any vessel tends to assume the form of that vessel, and of no other, so unlimited Substance, or Opulence, will assume the shape of that which is most needed at the moment.
There is one point that must not be forgotten in this matter of seeking first the Source and having all things added, and this is that the channel must be as wide on the dispensing as it is on the receiving end; otherwise harmonious circulation will be interfered with. Man is not a funnel with the big end held in the direction of the Source of Supply, and the little end in the direction of other men. To expect abundance from God, and at the same time to be afraid to spend for that which is really necessary, is like squeezing a hose-pipe so that what might be a good sized flow of opulence becomes a mere trickling stream which hardly suffices to meet Caesar’s demands from day to day. It is not that God’s supply is limited, nor is it always that our demand is too small, all too frequently it is because our distribution is niggardly and mean.
To affirm Opulence in order to get it, and then to plead poverty in order to excuse ourselves from giving to worthy charities and holy causes, is like screwing a metal cap on a fire hydrant. There is plenty of water in the reservoir, but none for the fire; and hence, through the fire of indignation at so-called “Christian conduct,” is destroyed the faith of many which might have been preserved if the cap of parsimoniousness had been removed.
Whatever the phase of poverty may be–spiritual, intellectual, or financial–we may have recourse to the Inexhaustible Font, for “God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things may abound in every good work.” Claiming abundance for the purpose of dispensing it, we become free and open channels. Circulation and not stagnation is the law, and this order will become more general as men cease from their fears of “future poverty,” which is as much the haunting specter of the rich as of the poor. Let us know, then, once and for all, “As He is so are we in this world.” As He is Life, Truth and Love, so is He Substance, and for this reason our Substance is imperishable as our Life is indestructible. “I cause those that love Me to inherit Substance, and I will fill their treasuries.” Accepting Substance as literally as we accept Life and Health, we shall enter into our inheritance. Poverty, like pain, shall flee away and Universal Prosperity shall be the natural consequence of spiritual enlightenment.
Chapter XVI THE LAW OF ATTRACTION
“For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son.” –Romans 8:29
Two of the cardinal points in Calvin’s doctrine of predestination are, first, that “God elects individuals to be saved”; second, that “He designs complete redemption for these elect only.” The Koran teaches that “Every event is predestined from eternity and cannot possibly be avoided.” From these teachings there has grown a form of fatalism which declares that “if a man is born to be hanged he will never be drowned.” The old idea of predestination was most discouraging, since no man knew whether he was elected of God to be saved or not, so that regardless of his efforts to live the Christian life, he was always more or less uncertain about the post mortem consequences. Happily this is changing, even in the churches which recognize Calvin as their earthly founder. It is difficult to reconcile the predestination of one man to eternal bliss and another to endless torment with the justice of that God Whom we now know to be impartial and universal Love.
If God is no respecter of persons, as the Scriptures declare, then it is impossible to understand how the fate of a man can be decreed before he is born, so that in spite of his most earnest endeavors he must perforce go the way of the flesh when all that is within him prefers to follow the spirit. Theologians have tried to prove, with very indifferent results, that predestination, as Calvin taught it and as the Koran teaches it, does not necessarily interfere with the exercise of free will. The moment you inject into the strange theological situation the element of free will, or free moral agency, you have something which, if pushed to the extreme of its possibility, at once interferes with the preconceived plan of the Predestinator. Free moral agency or free will supposes the power of the individual to save or lose himself, make or break himself, in the degree that he follows the law of Righteousness, or fails to follow it. It is hard, therefore, to reconcile the doctrine of predestination with that of free moral agency, since one has a tendency to offset the other, and thus balk the purpose of Him Who knows no defeat.
Free moral agency is the God-bestowed power by which man must eventually work out his own salvation. It is the sublime power of Thought by which a man may think himself into negative misfortune or positive prosperity.
Predestination is a truth, but not as it is taught, nor as it is commonly understood. “There is,” as Shakespeare says, “a divinity which shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will.” But it is inconceivable that a God Who could plan an orderly universe and create man in His own image and likeness could not at the same time see the end from the beginning.
For Infinite Wisdom to know anything, is for It to foreknow all things, therefore, in Divine Science we accept predestination as the plan of Divine Mind to attract all things to Itself, and conform all things to Itself. Not the election of a few to be saved, but the selection of all, as the beneficiaries of His love, is the method of God’s goodness. The most hardened sinner will one day see the error of his way and turn unto God, for it is in accordance with his spiritual destiny to do so, since it is written “Through the greatness of Thy power shall Thine enemies submit themselves unto Thee.”
The Australian aborigine hurls his boomerang so that it will return with unerring accuracy to the hand which throws it. This is one form of predestination. Man, in the process of his spiritual unfoldment, makes the circuit of human experiences only to discover that the place from which he started is the place in which he must end. Like the Australian’s boomerang he must, through science or suffering, return to the Father’s hand. The length of time spent in returning to primitive perfectness depends largely on the manner in which we use those two most precious things of time and thought. The intelligent use of time and thought depends entirely on what we know of Truth, since it is Truth which is the determining factor in all cases. To spend time and thought in error is merely to add disappointment to disappointment. So long as the race spent its energies under the delusion that the earth was flat, one continent was ignorant of the existence of any other continent but itself; but when the Truth became apparent and men began to use time and thought in the pursuit of more Truth, continent was added to continent. The limited and bounded gave place to the unlimited and unbounded, and the explorer still sails and endures hardships because he knows that all has not yet been discovered.
Laboring under the delusion that predestination is a chart of life which the individual must follow, and that the events of life, good, bad, or indifferent, have been carefully planned by God before one’s birth, one is apt to become a fatalist of a foolish sort, arguing that it matters not at all how one thinks or acts, since the end will be just the same after all. On the principle that “what is to be, will be,” men have become stoically indifferent when they might have become pre-eminently constructive.
Thinking of the doctrine of predestination on its negative side only, men have concluded that the least that could be expected of them was to be as moral as possible and leave other matters to a law which they were not supposed to understand. But predestination has its positive side, and it is this side which we in Divine Science are striving to understand, and with which we are seeking to co-operate.
The positive side of predestination is embodied in the words of our text: “For Whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His son.” The definition of the word conform is “to make like in form, to bring into harmony, or correspondence with a model or example,” and if we accept this definition we see at once Paul’s grand conception of the scheme of universal salvation. If the word predestination means “foreordained,” and conform means to “make like” in every particular, then we see that the plan of Divine Wisdom is that all men sometime, somehow, somewhere, must become like Jesus in Character and in Power.
It is as if God put man into this great workshop to work at the problem of life and develop character in the process. It is as if one were put into a studio with all the necessary elements for creating a work of art, and with the most perfect model as a pattern from which to work. And then it is as if Divine Wisdom had said, “It is only a question of time when all men shall prove their God-likeness.” May not this account for what we call the great patience of God? When a teacher knows that it is only a question of time when all his boys shall solve all their problems is he not likely to be patient and gentle? And is not his mental attitude going to be a wonderful example to the boys? His faith in them and his conviction in their ultimate dominion communicates itself, as the boys develop in such an atmosphere as they can in no other. If a schoolmaster should predestinate or foreordain each boy in his school to become proficient in his conformity to all the arts and sciences, no matter what that boy’s personal experiences might be in arriving at this desirable state, and if in addition to this preconceived plan he had the power to put it into perfect execution, what a wonderful schoolmaster he would be! May it not be that this is just the kind of schoolmaster God is?
If we can regard this earth experience as a schoolroom in which we are to learn the most important lessons of life, and if we can realize that we are foreordained or predestined to become conformed to the image of the Perfect Man which is the Christ in us, what a glorious incentive it will be! To realize that it is only a question of time when we must become conformed to the pure, the perfect and the powerful, and that procrastination on our part is the only thing which is delaying the glad day, is to be seized with the holy desire to enter into heaven here and now. What an inspiration should be the consciousness that in all God’s plan there is nothing that can be lost, and that the worst, the very worst, that can happen to even the most hardened sinner is a more or less painful postponement of the things we are entitled to when we earn them!
This helps us to think of predestination as Paul puts it. It does two wonderful things for me. It reveals the eternal Love of God on the one hand, and the ultimate perfectness and happiness of man on the other. It hurts me to think of predestination as Calvin expressed it, and as the Koran states it. When I try to think that only the elect can be saved, and when I see so few who are elect, notwithstanding the desires of so many to be so, it is depressing. I tell this to a man who believes in “infant damnation” and he says, “Yes, it is depressing, but it is nevertheless true,” and then I turn to Jesus and he answers the question of my soul by saying: “It is not the will of my Father which is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish, but that all should have everlasting life.”
What a comforting Jesus: and what a different idea he had of predestination from that of some modern followers! “It is my Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom,” said He, and one can almost hear him add, “and why do ye so long refuse to partake of it? Since it is foreordained that ye must become like Him, why do ye linger and wait?”
Why do you accept this erroneous conception of predestination, which would hypnotize you into the belief that at the moment of your birth God placed an invisible tag about your neck signifying the painful manner of your life and death and also your future hopelessness? You believe in destiny and a cruel fate, but this is because you see only half the picture. You see the boomerang leaving the hand of the thrower and you ask where it is going. You do not see its return and you conclude it will be lost. You see yourselves out here in space, and you wonder why you are here and what is going to become of you. You do not see yourselves slowly but surely returning to the Father’s house and you become afraid.
Life is a great mystery until one understands its purpose, but so is the schoolroom to the boy. When one understands, however, what it is all about, it takes on a new and a more hopeful significance. When one realizes that the painful experiences of this earth journey are not predestined and unavoidable calamities quite so much as they are the sharp reminders of a spiritual ignorance, which may be rectified through spiritual science, one takes hope, and “hope maketh not ashamed.”
For this cause came we into the world, namely: to prove our Divinity, and how can this be done unless it be in the studio of the mind? With a picture of oneself destined to fail, despite efforts to the contrary, what will the consequence be? Can figs grow on thistles? Can the fruit of success and prosperity grow on a tree, the seed of which is a belief in predestined poverty? Can a man prove his divinity so long as he believes that he is predestined to fill a drunkard’s grave, no matter how heroically he struggles against the tendency?
What is the remedy for all these pain-producing mistakes? Does it not lie in a right idea of this much misunderstood Law of God? Does it not rest upon a spiritual interpretation of what predestination really is? When a man understands that he is predestined, foreordained to become conformed to the very image of God, to manifest God in terms of Life, and Health, and Happiness, and that here or elsewhere he must eventually measure up to his foreordained Perception, he is likely to conclude it might as well be here as elsewhere.
Since the end of man, according to Divine Plan, is to become like God, the individual who perceives this Truth puts on the garment of righteousness and the breastplate of Truth and goes forth to fulfill his allotted destiny. Knowing that predestination means that nothing which God has created can be lost or come to naught, he regards himself and every other man in the world as a candidate for the kingdom of heaven upon earth. Man cannot utterly destroy himself, even if he tries, for this would interfere with predestination; the worst he can do by such an attempt is to make a temporary fool of himself.
When man, the boomerang, has spent his force in the outward journey, he returns almost involuntarily, and this is in accordance with a Destiny which shapes his ends. He returns from Whence he came. The ends must unite in Spirit, and they are so welded together by the fervent heat of God’s Love that mortal eye cannot discern the point of union. This, then, is Predestination: that we shall be conformed to the Image of Him Who created us. “The work to be performed is ours, the strength is all His own.”
Chapter XVII THE LAW OF VIBRATION
“Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled, came Jesus and stood in the midst and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.” –John 20:19
It is said that wherever any of God is, there all of God must be in His or Its entirety, totality, completeness. Some explanation of this statement of science, philosophy and true religion may be in order at the start. This agrees perfectly with the theological idea of the indivisibility of God. We cannot conceive of God being broken up into fragments, so that a little is in one place, and a little in another place. Wherever any of God is, there all of God must be, on the principle of mathematics that wherever mathematics is, there all of that principle must be in its entirety, totality and completeness.
This will appeal to the rational minds of all. Wherever any of God is, there all of God must be, and because of this, wherever any of God’s reflection is, there all of God’s reflection must be in its entirety, totality and completeness. And for Jesus to realize this was for Jesus to know that wherever any of him was, spiritually, or mentally, there all of him was physically, so-called, because there could be no divisibility between mind and mind’s manifestation.
It is for this reason, then, that Jesus, completely understanding that wherever any of God is, all of God must be, could be physically wherever he was mentally or spiritually. This is not an incommunicable secret, nor an impossible phenomenon. It is merely impossible to us, by reason of the fact that we have not yet reached the point where we can demonstrate what we can intellectually perceive.
There could not be demonstration before there was perception, not even with Jesus. For Jesus to perceive that wherever any of mind was, all of mind, in its totality and completeness, must be, was for him to set about beginning to demonstrate it in the degree he realized it, until the day came when he could demonstrate it in its fullness. And so we find him appearing to the disciples on the way to Emmaus, abolishing time and space and communicating with them, not telepathically and from afar off, but from close proximity.
We are dealing with the appearance of Jesus on the evening of that eventful day in the room with his disciples when the doors were closed, “for fear of the Jews,” it is written. This attitude was based upon the belief that their philosophy was not understood and, since the chief leader of the cult of that day had been safely put away, it was an easy matter to deal with the disciples of this rapidly growing, but, nevertheless, insane group.
That was the New Thought of that day, and so they locked themselves in, and Jesus appeared in the midst of them. We have placed this in the catagory of miraculous, not to speak of spectacular, performances. We have declared it was done once, but could never be repeated. But is it not a profound belief, with the most scientific mentalities, that whatever has been performed, at any time in the world’s history, may be again performed, under similar conditions and according to the same identical law, if law is back of it?
What is the law, then, back of this phenomenon? Modern science is revealing many strange truths, based upon past investigation and discovery. There is none being revealed to the inquisitive minds of our day that is more susceptible of demonstration, more entrancing in its investigation, than is the law of vibration.
This is a twentieth century of discovery of a law that is as ancient as the universe. We have seen it at work again and again, but never thought to inquire into it. We have watched its strange manifestations with pleasure, but we never sought until very recently to inquire into the predisposing cause. For instance, never until the last forty or fifty years did we have such an instrument as the ideophone. This was quite unknown to the ancients, notwithstanding the law of vibration was as much in operation in their time as it is in ours.
The ideophone is a delicately constructed sound instrument which records with mathematical precision every vibration of sound. Stretched over a thin parchment in this marvelous machine, there is a receiving paste and, when sounds are made into it, on this sensitive paste are traced the most wonderful manifestations of the glories of the earth–trees, flowers, ferns all begin to manifest according to certain chords, according to certain musical tones. Let there be a discordant tone, and immediately this paste begins to ruffle up and crumble and present the most disorganized mass of peculiar marks. But, it is said, if instead of using paste, sand is placed therein and the same sounds sung, the sand will assume entirely different shapes; instead of conforming to natural objects, such as trees and birds and flowers and ferns, there will be geometrical figures. If, however, a discordant note should be sung into the mouth, the sand will run around, like some fidgety little people, breaking up the formations.
In this way we are beginning to see, by mechanical means, how the law of vibration works. There is that other manifestation of this same law which you have seen every time that you have breathed on a window pane on an early winter morning. When your cloud of breath upon the pane freezes to ice crystals, have you not noticed all the delicate markings of ferns, and trees and other forms of nature?
The inference drawn from this, by the most profound students of vibratory law, is to prove that all visible manifestations, our own bodies included, are nothing more or less than the clouds that are sent off from the invisible values of the universe and, through processes of condensation, become trees, birds, plants, human bodies and bodies of other objects, assuming shape in a cold world, so to speak. This contention at first sounds rather fantastic, but it is not. On the instrument they record scientific methods of procedure, and so it is we are going to attempt in our way to use this law of vibration to explain the method by which our Saviour appeared in the room with his disciples, when the windows were barred and the doors were locked.
I remember being told something relative to this many years ago by a lecturer who had become interested in this philosophy and wished to reveal the supremacy of mind in the material world. He had set aside in his own home a room, to which he frequently invited a well-known, though not professional, spiritualistic medium, a dear old lady in regular standing in the church, who, nevertheless, believed in spiritistic commmunications. There was nothing in the room to indicate any possibility of concealment. It was rectangular and there was no furniture save a center table and two chairs, and no lights. During one of these evenings, my friend informed me, he found moist things falling over his head, dropping softly and gently; and when the doors were opened afterwards and the lights shone in from the hall, he found the room strewn with sweet pea blossoms. The medium told him that these flowers had come from his own garden. He went out and found that the flowers had been gently plucked from their stems.
I brought my knowledge of the law of vibration to my aid, because I could not explain it on any other theory. Whatever it was, whether it was a discarnate spirit, the spirits of just men made perfect, or so-called mortal mind, operating on the plane of the invisible, I do not know, but the method I think I can explain. Whatever force it was which resolved the sweet peas into their original constituent elements of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, etc., was able, in that form, to bring them into the room and resolve them back by the same law of vibration into flowers.
Perhaps it is the same thing that is back of this peculiar phenomenon in our Saviour’s experience. How else shall we explain the appearance of a human body, which he takes pains to show is a human body? When they say, “It is a spirit,” he says: “A spirit has not flesh and bones as I have. Look at my hands and feet and side (which he showed Thomas later). Behold it is I, I myself.” Naturally the question would arise: “Whence came thou and how crept thou in hither?” There he was. There was no means, physically speaking, by which he could stand before them without having come through a window or door. But he could be there on the principle that wherever any of mind is, there all of mind must be. And, since the body is mind made manifest, then the mind made manifest in Jesus’ body could be there, in all its perfectness, totality and completeness, on the principle that whatever God is, man may be, when working in co-operation with God’s eternal law.
We find these strange things taking place at this time and, for this reason, call your attention to the text, because, it seems to me, if we examine it closely, it explains the phenomenon. “He that ascended, what is it but that he first descended?” We are not trying to account for the ascension of our Saviour; we are trying to find if there is law back of it, and what it is, if we may become intelligently acquainted with this law, and thus ourselves ascend first of all above our sins and sickness and sorrows, and then above all matter, through mental dominion.
“He that ascended, what is it but that he first descended?” You have the secret. Here you have the explanation of this peculiar statement made by Dr. Humshacker, the noted German scientist, “It is said that as the clouds of one’s breath condense on a pane of glass into flower shapes, so, after a like manner, the whole flora and fauna of the globe come from the nebula cloud.” This is not Divine Science at all. It is a statement by a student of unusual phenomenon. There is that nebula cloud, which corresponds to the clouds of your breath on a winter morning, that universal breath that goes out from the great center of the universe and gradually condenses as it approaches the planets and, in its process of condensation, takes the form and shape of ferns, birds, flowers, or what not.
Now we have this scientific explanation of the strange phenomenon attributed to our Saviour, and this we believe. “He that ascended, what is it but that he first descended?” on the principle that that which goes down comes up, as, for instance, the moisture which comes from invisible vapor becomes visible vapor, then moisture, then rain, or snow or ice, and then falls as dew in the early morning.
Jesus came down, we believe, by personal consent. The reincarnationists tell us that he consented, for the sake of humanity, to incarnate himself in the flesh, but what was the process of the reincarnation? It was that of mind’s descent into material conditions, through which there came this condensation of the nebula cloud, or the breath of God becoming condensed, as it descended into the region of the cold, unreceptive world, as a physical body, which became manifest to us as Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Mary. It vibrated on such a plane as to enable you and me and the wise men to see this condensed spiritual vapor of Christ, manifesting itself in the physical Jesus.
We are told that he came down to redeem a sin-sick, sorrowing world, but he had to come down through processes of condensation. Thought had to descend into material conditions before it could assume material shape and, when this material shape had served its purpose, Jesus, gradually realizing mind’s supremacy over matter, just as he had power to come down, had power to go up. Hence his words when he said, “I have power to lay down my life and to take it up again.” “I have power so to reinvigorate the constituent elements of my being, operating at such rates of vibration that I shall be apparently a physical person, but I have power also to heighten or increase my vibrations as to make my body, which is dense and opaque, translucent and transparent.”
It was all a question of vibration, which, in its final analysis, is not a physical thing at all. What the scientists are thinking of, perhaps, in the construction of their instrument, is physical, but that does not change the fact that it is not a physical thing, and the German scientist has arrived at the conclusion that the thing proceeds not from anything that is physical, but from something back of that. It is the breath of the Almighty, reduced by processes of condensation into the visible manifestation, especially in the person of Jesus of Nazareth; then, through the development and evolution of his own soul, comes the gradual ascension above matter. So, first of all, he takes possession of the so-called material body–not a material body, but a mental one–and, by heightening the vibrations, causes the body to assume lightness which is not customary, but is according to law.
Does this contain any lesson for you or for me, or shall we be forever just emphasizing the strange, miraculous appearance of Jesus of Nazareth in the closed room with his disciples? Did he do it merely for spectacular purposes and to prove to the doubting Thomas that he was real?
Shall we regard all of these manifestations of the law of vibration as things of no spiritual significance for us? To do so would be stupidity. We live in a veritable universe of miracles. The appearance of ice crystals is as much a miracle as the appearance of Jesus in the room with his disciples. It is just as much a miracle and is governed by the same law. What does it mean, then, to you and me? Have you ever seen it work in the physical body? I have seen it, time and time again. How often a man comes to Divine Science, desparate almost to a point of suicide, the victim of a habit he cannot control–a self-confessed drunkard, bloated, bleary, sluggish. He has tried the rest cure and the gold cure, swearing off and taking the pledge, all to no avail.
And then he turns, as do most of us, to that last resort, God–to Christian Science, Divine Science, or any other phase of the new philosophy. He is given something to read. He is encouraged in the belief that he can overcome this habit through mind’s supremacy over the law of propensities. This is not a question of taking something, but of realizing that he can actually think himself out of his malady. He reads and studies. He takes treatment; he prays, he affirms his exemption from everything that is unlike God. Yesterday he considered himself a beastly sot. Today he believes he is, despite all appearances, the son of God.
Does the change take place immediately? Sometimes the mental change does. Do the bloat and the purple and the blear and the sluggishness of movement disappear instantly? I have never seen it, but I have seen, as that soul has come into a fuller conviction of the unity of God, the gradual disappearance of all these physical manifestations or correspondences of his mental state.
The spiritual explanation of it is that he has become transformed by the renewing of his mind. But what of the physical change? Vibration. When a man sins, and when the brain becomes cloudy with the vapor of intoxicants, the body expresses correspondence. The vibrations become lower and lower. When a man comes into a fuller realization of what he is, he rises above all this, not through will power, nor gold cure, nor signing the pledge, but through the inner realization that the son of God is not a drunkard. When he gains this conviction, he returns to his Christian athletic perfectness; fat gives place to muscle, inflammation yields place to clarity, and sluggishness disappears.
Whenever the mind is sinful or sorrowful or sordid or selfish, the bodily atoms are operating at such a rate of vibration as to make for density or stupidity, or sluggishness; and the ideophone merely illustrates what actually takes place every day in the physical organism. It all depends on the kind of song you sing into the ideophone of the mind as to what kind of vibrations will take place on the delicate manifestation of the mind that you call the body. If you sing harmonious tunes of your unity with God in the ideophone of the mind, there will be only beautiful manifestations symbolized by ferns and flowers and trees. Again, if you make other sounds and use sand for the purpose, you will find those beautiful geometrical figures of bodily symmetry, as a result of mental exactness. All of these correspondences take place in the very body, because it is to the mind what this sensitive paste is to the song that is sung into the ideophone.
So vibration, while not a physical law, is a spiritual manifestation of a physical law. That accounts for the whole visible, physical world. It is comfort to have a scientist, who does not profess to be a Divine Scientist, assure us of the fact that the whole visible, physical world is nothing more or less than the condensed nebula-breath of the universe and that, if that could change, the whole physical world would disappear. This is corroborating the statement of Peter that in his day the world could be rolled up like a scroll and disappear like a cloud, because the physical world is nothing more or less than the condensation of nebula clouds. But we take it to be the whole thing; but once let him change his course and the vibrations, going up and up, produce physical correspondences almost immediately. In the degree the drunkard grasps it, to that extent will the understanding be translated in his body. It is for him to grow more and more and more in the Christ consciousness; so the clarity of his eye will proclaim the health of the mind. Shall we say the law has fulfilled its purpose, because it has brought the drunkard from two hundred and fifty pounds to a trim figure? Is there not a point to which it may still go? It was just at that point that Jesus began, where most people leave off. This same man may still go on spiritualizing his consciousness, until his body becomes lighter, more tenuous, less dense, and less opaque, for it is not enough for today to destroy the disease which manifests itself in the body, nor enough to destroy brutality and carnality. We shall not stop there.
There is no division in man any more than in God. It is we who divide. We say, “With my mind I can be in the room, but not with the body.” Jesus said, “With my mind I can be in the room with my disciples, complete.” It all depends on who places the limitations. God never imposed them. Wherever any of you is, there all of you must be; and when you grasp the significance you will understand the miracle.
The thing that is true of Jesus is true of you. When you ascend it will be merely because you have descended first. When you rise it will be merely because you fell in the first place and, when you attain to this spiritual perfection of the person of God, you will not be anything that you haven’t been, but only what you have always been, but have forgotten for a time to be.
Thought has descended into the material, and ascension is nothing more or less than the elevation of the mind above materiality. This is your ascension, even as it was the ascension of our Saviour. When this takes place, you will see that the body is merely condensation of thought, operating on a low plane of vibration, and you will see it dissolve and disappear. You will realize that you are a breath of the Almighty, gone out from the great warm mouth of God, having become congealed and condensed through material thinking, forming beautiful pictures of yourself, and sometimes ugly ones. You will understand that you are precisely the result, on the physical plane, of the law of vibration, according to certain spiritual states of consciousness.
Theology has not sought to explain the ascension of Jesus. All it ever thought to do was to say that he has ascended, “I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church,” and so on, but it was belief without knowing. That, of course, is good. It is better to believe without knowing than not to believe at all, but what was it concerning him that ascended, but that he also descended? What was it when he appeared in the midst of his disciples in a room, but that he had so heightened the vibrations of his body, through spiritual thinking, that he would appear and then, lowering his vibrations, could stand before his disciples with the same identical body? The same, because that body represents his states of consciousness at certain periods of evolution. If he had come without scarred hands, Thomas would have said, “That is not my Lord and Master at all. Here is some trick.”
Spirit is not matter; but thought descending becomes materialized, and ascending becomes spiritualized. There is no matter. All is mind; all is thought,–so that Huxley, the physical scientist, when he says: “What is the material thing called matter but thought that we have poorly constructed for ourselves?” is verifying every statement of our Saviour.
Perhaps it is enough for us to use this law of vibration in a physical way, by so heightening and elevating thought, so lifting it into a spiritual world, governed by spiritual law, that all carnality, bestiality and all grossness will gradually subside, in the degree that the mind is elevated above material things, until the very figure itself by the renewing of the mind will become tranformed into estheticism, charm, beauty and purity. Thus, gradually, we shall ascend above the material into the esthetic world and then, by a steady process of evolution, gradually ascend and sit with Him in the enjoyment of that nature which has never become touched or tainted or corrupted by material conditions, until we shall get back of all that tends to condense itself in the slightest degree, into the great heart of the infinite, to live as that imperishable and eternal form of God, which Man is.
The ascension of Jesus is wonderful, especially when one considers it from a standpoint of vibration. Who shall say that Jesus is not here? Many declare he is not. But again the law of vibration helps us tremendously, for it tells us that there are things operating at such a high rate of vibration that the most powerful microscope cannot detect them. Have you ever taken a board on the end of a string, as a youngster, and twirled and twirled it, until it gained such speed that you could see nothing but the string going through the air? Have you ever watched the huge spokes of a ship’s wheel in the engine room, moving with such rapidity that gradually, as the speed increased, they disappeared?
You have noticed the blades of an electric fan disappear, of course. What accounts for it? Vibration. There are multitudinous bodies in the world today that are operating at such a high rate of vibration that science cannot detect them. So it is, possibly, with the rarefied, spiritualized form of Jesus, operating at such a high rate of vibration. There are moments when the soul can see, just before it passes into the great beyond. May it not be that there are other moments when it becomes so refined that it can perceive, because there is less materiality? Times we can catch a vision of that which we cannot see at any other time? Do you not recall that the youthful Stephen, when they stoned him to death, looked up and said, “I see Jesus seated on the right hand of God”?
How do we account for these ecstatic moments just before one falls asleep in that which we call death? Shall we wave them aside and say it is delirium? Oh, no. The ordinary, material world is delirium and, when we catch a vision of the Christ, we call it delirium; in reality we are insane all the rest of our lives.
How shall you explain the phenomenon of the transfiguration, when Moses and Elijah appeared talking to Jesus? You say it is just hallucination in the minds of Peter and James and John. May it not be that this thing worked in two ways? I am merely asking questions because I am very curious. I do not merely accept transfiguration. I am like Paul–I want to know how and why; and if a church cannot tell me, I want some good book to tell me, and, if a book cannot, I want the spirit of a just man departed to tell me. I want to know if the experience on the Mount of Transfiguration is something that we are just going to accept and let it go at that, or if we cannot, then to have an explanation.
The law of vibration works two ways, by descension and ascension. Was it not possible on that morning for Moses and Elijah so to reduce their vibrations as to allow them to appear to Jesus? Is it not possible that the minds of Peter and James and John became so elevated, and their vibrations so high, that they could see that which came down?
Chapter XVIII NOT ACCORDING TO APPEARANCES
“Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.” –John 7:24
It has been asserted that the end and aim of all religions is so to elevate the mind above the plane of the senses that the truly religious man will be able to walk more intelligently by faith than the material man walks by sight. When Jesus said that we were to judge not according to appearances he was speaking from the standpoint of scientific wisdom as well as from that of spiritual necessity.
Today, after all the centuries of scientific investigation, the most thoughtful men of the race know what a foolish thing it is to base one’s assertions on observed phenomena.
Looking at that which is now termed “the envelope of the globe,” or what most people call the sky, one would imagine that he saw a beautiful, blue canopy, or covering, over the earth. At one time, we are told, this sky was considered solid. But today every school child knows that what appears to be a solid substance, in which the stars are stuck like so many diamond pins in a blue cushion, is nothing more or less than an appearance which the atmosphere assumes at a certain distance from the earth.
The child may think that a rainbow is a solid arch of rich colors, but the tutored adult knows that it is an optical illusion resulting from atmospheric changes. There are times when the clouds move between us and the moon, so that we could swear that the moon is moving if we did not know better. Judging after appearances men have assumed that when the sun rose in the morning, the moon and the stars went off to do service on some other planet; whereas now we know that they are merely eclipsed by the stronger light of the sun. It is as when the candle, which has given light during the night, is scarcely observed when the shutters are thrown open and the light of day streams into the room. The greater obscures the lesser, but does not destroy it.
As Science advances it learns to discredit the senses because of their proven unreliability. That which we call the sky may still appear as solid as ever, but we know there is no such entity, and we are neither disturbed nor deceived by it. The earth upon which we are walking and sleeping is whirling through endless space with inconceivable speed, yet we would never know it from anything that our senses tell us. It seems to be immovable, but we know that it is traveling at greater speed than the fastest express train. We know this, however, not because of sense observation, but because of scientific investigation. It is because of all this that Jesus cautioned humanity not to judge after appearances, and to some extent we have heeded the admonition.
We are now perfectly willing to admit that our senses are unreliable witnesses. They may tell us that there is a moon, but they cannot tell us the distance of that moon from our earth, neither can they tell us its size. If we wish to know these facts, it is to mathematics and astronomy we must turn for information, and hence it is that we have come to distrust our senses. Our eyes deceive us, and no matter how old we grow in years, if we do not unfold in wisdom, they will continue to deceive us. If I sit in a train with a little child waiting for that train to start, and a train pulls in on the next track, it is as difficult for me as it is for the child to tell whether it is that train or the one upon which we are sitting that is moving. We seem never to outgrow these illusions; we merely learn that they are illusions and refuse to be disconcerted by them.
This attitude of mind should serve as a useful hint in the more vital things of life. It is very important for us to know what is, and what is not, real, in order that we spend as little time as possible bothering about non-essentials. It might help us then at this point to know how the real is defined by our best lexicons, lest we be accused of placing a fantastic interpretation upon the word to suit our own philosophical purposes. The word “real” is defined in the Standard Dictionary as “The existent as opposed to the non-existent; being something as opposed to nothing; that which is permanent, unconditioned, unrelated, absolute; hence, opposed to phenomenal; having attributes apart from appearances to which they give rise.” According to this definition it would seem as if that only is real which is eternal and invisible to our senses, and this fits in exactly with the declaration of Paul the Apostle: “The things which are seen (observed with senses) are carnal and temporal, the things which are not seen are spiritual and eternal.”
Does this mean that we shall despise the things that are seen, simply because they are carnal and temporal? Or does it mean that we shall see them in their true light and treat them accordingly? It is a rapidly growing conviction with many very sane people that the whole visible world is a sort of moving picture show, a representation to our senses of something that is “real” and permanent back of it all, and that it is this reality and permanence that is most worthy of our consideration. The materialist who sees the visible world as a system of realities has what he calls real pleasure; but he also has what he calls real pains. He lives in a world which is a strange admixture of beauty and deformity, success and failure, and living in such a world he swings like a pendulum between these extremes. Like the man in the Scriptures, he feels, even when he does not say, “In the midst of life, we are in death.” In the full possession of the greatest blessings, he secretly fears that he may one day lose them all. Not understanding what are the true riches, he dreads the loss of his spurious ones, whereas if he understood what are the “gifts of God,” he might keep both.
When we say that the real world is the world of Ideas, it does not signify that we lose our appreciation of those symbols of beauty which we see in what men call visible nature. The rose does not become less beautiful to us because we perceive it to be, not the real rose, but a good counterfeit. A good reproduction in the world of art may not be as valuable or as acceptable as the original, but it ought not, for this reason, to be despised or destroyed; all we need to know about it is that it is not the original. It then takes on a new significance for us, for while it does not deceive us, it nevertheless charms us with its excellent resemblance to the real work of art.
The connoisseur is not, unless he is very affected, distressed by the fact that he has to live in a world made up so largely of imitations. If he has a little common sense in addition to his capacity to detect the real from the imitation, he is grateful that there are so many excellent imitations for us common people to enjoy. It should not distress us when we are told that the visible world, with all its joys and sorrows, is only a poor representation to our senses of that invisible world of the Spirit which is ever striving to manifest itself through us, but which can do so only as we roll up the shades before the windows of our souls.
When God said, “Let there be light,” it was not that light had not yet come into being, but that the window-shades of ignorance were causing the race to sit in “great darkness,” and this same command is issuing today from that Supreme Intelligence which beholds nothing but the beauty of Its own creations. If the light that is in us is darkness, how great is that darkness! If all we know of creation is that which we see of it on the plane of the senses, then we are mistaking the apparent for the real, and disappointment will be our experience.
Man, on the plane of the intellectual, derives his information from two sources, the interior and the exterior. The exterior suggests the finite and the perishable, the interior the infinite and the imperishable, and he is wise who draws more upon the interior than upon the exterior, for such a man, like Jesus, may live in two worlds at once. When the soul opens itself to the light of Truth, it enters a world in which there is neither “sorrow nor sighing,” disease nor dying, but wherein are joy and gladness, for the former things have passed away in the light of Love’s eternal radiance. It is when the intellect begins to materialize everything, and to regard the material world as real as the spiritual universe, that trouble begins. Any attempt to interpret Life from a physical standpoint, instead of from a spiritual one, is bound to produce confusion.
Inspecting reality from the standpoint of the senses, all things become inverted, as when one looks through a photographic camera and sees everything before it upside down, and the right side on the left. God, seen through the camera of the so-called human mind, appears to be a personality afar off, instread of an everpresent and immanent Life Principle working in and through Its all-harmonious system of ideas. Through this same camera, man appears to be the ever-erring son of Adam, instead of the never-erring Son of God, and the universe of God’s creating appears as a world of trouble and tumult, instead of an orderly cosmos, wherein all things co-operate and nothing collides.
As human thought turns from the contemplation of creation as its Creator sees it, the element of confusion enters in; complexity takes the place of simplicity, and bewilderment destroys that certainty which alone can make for rest of soul and health of body. Once accept the definition of “real” as “that which is permanent, unconditioned, unrelated, and absolute,” and you see at once that it refers only to God, and the things of God, and this brings us to the point of what is referred to by Jesus as “righteous judgment.”
In order to pass judgment upon anything, we must be conversant with all the facts concerning that thing, otherwise it is “snap judgment” and as such it is worthless. The case before the Court of Spiritual Inquiry is the case of evil’s supposed right to dominate the individual. It is asserted that evil is as real as Good, and if we judge according to appearances it would seem as if it were more so. Judging appearances, we say, with Paul, “When I would do good I find evil present within me,” but taking a more rational and idealistic view we say, with him, when he was in a more exalted state, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”
It is through idealism, then, that we are to distinguish between the Real and the apparent; therefore, the senses can afford us no aid, and hence it were folly to look to them for guidance. Idealism is not a word which implies a star-gazing attitude of mind, wholly impractical, and sometimes foolish, for idealism is back of all that is creative and inventive, even on the physical plane. Bronson Alcott says: “The idealist is the true realist, grasping the substance and not its shadow. The man of sense is the visionary or illusionist, fancying things as permanencies, and thoughts as fleeting phantoms.” It was the idealism of Jesus which made of him the Redeemer of men and the Healer of their diseases. If Jesus had judged after appearances, he would have cast the first stone at the adulterous woman; but he judged righteous judgment and said to her, when her accusers, whom he had shamed, had slunk away: “Go thy way, I will not condemn thee.” If Jesus had judged after appearances in the cases of the palsied and the leprous, he would have admonished them to make the best of a bad and a so-called incurable situation, but instead he said, “Arise,” to the one, and to the other, “Be thou clean.”
Judging righteous judgment, Jesus could not be tempted into believing that the apparent was the Real, and so he said to the apparent, “Get thee hence, satan.” There are, however, degrees of the apparent; that is, some phases of it are more acceptable than others; but this is on the principle that some counterfeit works of art are better than others, and not because the best counterfeit in the world can ever become the real thing. If I should tell you that the best physical health in the world, which is based more upon what men call a sound constitution than upon a sound comprehension of God as Health, is only an imitation of the real thing, it might surprise you. But when you see for yourself what a trifle it takes to convert a sturdy athlete into a confirmed invalid you are aware how carnal and temporal mere physical health is.
Only that health is enduring which is the consequence of communing often with the Source of health. Health which is merely the result of a sound constitution is apt to be abused. It is like inherited money, which is easily squandered. We all know how transient a thing apparent prosperity is, and yet if we are told it is not Real we smile indulgently and declare we would like to take our chances on more of the same kind of counterfeit. But with all the money in the world, and no sense of what constitutes enduring Substance, we should only be holding a shadow that might escape us at any moment, as shadows have a habit of doing. It is as true today as it ever was that if a man fain the whole world and lose his own soul (sense of what constitutes Reality) he profiteth nothing. The most priceless possession in the world is that of spiritual understanding, for included in this is everything else that is worthwhile. It is through spiritual understanding that we are able to separate the wheat from the tares, and to discriminate between that which is and that which is not.
Unwilling to admit that the apparent is only the apparent and not the Real, some declare that what we call evil is only more or less Good in the making, and in this way they can still cling to the statement that “All is Good; there is no evil.” There is more sophistry than Science in this statement, it seems to me. Would it not be more in line with Truth to say that what we call Good in this world of appearances is only more or less bad? Good, or God, alone is Absolute or Real; evil is the relative and the unreal, and it is because it is relative and unreal that man has dominion over it, when he knows that it is relative and unreal. All that is not of the Father is of the world, and “the world passeth away,” for the simple reason that it is merely what Schopenhauer said of it when he wrote: “The world is my presentation or mental picture–it is what I represent it to be; it agrees with my thoughts; it is my thought.”
To reduce this abstract philosophy to practical purposes, for it is of little real value unless it is so treated, we must, when confronted with conditions that are not calculated to increase our mental, moral, physical, and financial efficiency, ask ourselves in the silence of our closets of prayer if these conditions are Real or apparent, that is, if they are of God, they are Real and there is no remedy for them, since that which God creates must stand forever. But if they are not of God, and certainly no evil is of God, then they are only apparent, and man, knowing this, at once becomes superior to them. So long as we view our difficulties and diseases as real, we shall never overcome them, for the Real is the Absolute, Unconditioned, and Indestructible.
It is for us then to decide, in view of all that has been said, what we shall accept as the Real and eternal, and, abiding by our decision, enter into the enjoyment of those Realities which God hath prepared for us from before the foundation of the world of sense, with all its manifold delusions. If it is true that man’s real being is spiritual, then it is by virtue of its spirituality divine and immortal, and as such it is exempt from disease. When this is understood disease becomes to the spiritually awakened man a false seeming, a dream from which he has awakened, an illusion which has lost its power to terrify. Once this is accepted, we become loosed from our infirmities.
Remember, then, that the only Realities are those which God has created, and these are acceptable because they are good; all else is apparent and therefore unreal, no matter how real it seems to be. Just as you know there is no sky, but only the upper regions of the atmosphere which take on the appearance of a solid body, so you must know there is no disease, but only the appearance of a disturbed mental state registering on the body. Correct this mental state by knowing that you are the child of God, from Whom no evil and no error proceeds, and when this is done, the offending cause of disease will be destroyed, and the bodily manifestation will disappear as certainly as the reflection of anything in a mirror will vanish when that object is removed from the range of vision.
Chapter XIX PICTURES AND PERSONALITIES
“O Lord, Thou art our Father; we are the clay, and thou our potter, and we all are the work of Thy hand.” –Isaiah 64:8
The poem from which I wish to draw the lesson which is to follow is that of Browning entitled, “Old Pictures in Florence.” In the first place Browning emphasizes the statement made by Jesus that, “A prophet is not without honor save in his own country, and among his own people.” He does so by pointing out the neglect and misunderstanding of those great painters of Italy by the Italians themselves, who were so close to the great masters that they could not perceive their greatness. He seems to feel that the artists themselves have, in many cases, painted as Jesus spoke, in parables, without leaving any key to the parables in art by which men who came after them might penetrate the divine mystery.
As so many have done since his time, Browning haunted the old churches of Florence where he loved to gaze on the works of his beloved Giotto and others, and it grieved him to see tourists give but a passing glance to the old masters’ works and regard them as so much peeling paint on wrinkling canvas. He fancied he could see the ghosts of the old masters watching in agony the stupid eyes of those who came, merely to say they had been to see, and he likens their state of soul to a great thing wronged by a small one, “A lion who dies of an ass’s kick.” The souls of the dead artists seem to call upon him to defend them from the praise of the witless ones who “hum and buzz” today, but who, if they had lived in the masters’ times, would have passed them by with never a word of praise or encouragement.
He compares the artist with the laborer whose sleep is sweet and who is not troubled as to whether or not posterity will appreciate his efforts, even if his contemporaries do not, and he shows how the artist suffers, as Jesus suffered, when he cried out as he looked back over Jerusalem, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how oft would I have gathered thee together as a hen doth her chickens, but ye would not.” Artists die in despair over the inability of the rest of us to perceive what they are trying to tell us of the things which can never be understood save by symbols, but Art lives on, as Browning proves, when he traces art from the statues of the Greeks to the paintings of the Italians and then shows how the Italians improved on their own masters.
All of this points, it seems to me, to the idea in Browning’s mind which is back of all art, as we know it, to that which we are just beginning to understand, which is the fine art of creating for ourselves, out of that plastic substance called Thought, the things we desire. When art has served it purpose it has revealed to man his own potentialities; and it has not served its purpose until it has done this, for art is not the mere creation of something in stone or on canvas for the purpose of attracting the eye and delighting the esthetic sense. The religion of art, for there is a religion of art, as there is one of the soul, is to portray man’s perfectness and to suggest the possibility of attaining that perfection, and through this suggestion to stimulate endeavor.
Browning sees in Greek statuary a suggestion of the human form as it ought to be, and as it was originally. He shows by comparison how far short we fall of physcial perfection, not to speak of spiritual development. We would be more kingly than our fellows, yet we cannot sit with the same dignity as did Theseus. We would be a model for an artist, but we lack the use of arms and knees as The Son of Priam used them. We cannot show our emotions of indignation at social injustices, nor our superiority in hours of danger as Apollo did, nor can we express our grief as did Niobe over the loss of her children. The office of art is not to carve in marble nor paint on canvas the impossible in human experience, but so to elevate the souls of men that what is portrayed may be performed.
It is for this reason, when we have viewed all there is in the world of art, that we are to look within and ask if in ourselves there is not something waiting for expression. Comparing statues in stone with latent capacities in soul, and looking from one to the other as from suggestion to demonstration, Browning says:
Growth came when, looking your last on them all, You turned your eyes inwardly one fine day And cried with a start–What if we so small Be greater and grander the while than they?
Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature? In both, of such types are we Precisely because of our wider nature; For time, theirs–ours, for eternity.
Today’s brief passion limits their range; It seethes with the morrow for us and more. They are perfect–how else? they shall never change: We are faulty–why not? we have time in store.
The Artificer’s hand is not arrested With us; we are rough-hewn, no wise polished. They stand for our copy, and, once invested With all they can teach, we shall see them abolished.
The human artist has done all that he can for his statue when, out of shapeless marble, he fashions the form which entrances, but which cannot speak. Anatomically perfect, but mentally deficient, finished in construction but lacking in consciousness, it is a mute revelation of what man might be as a talking animal if only he knew how to fashion himself in healthy tissue by the renewal of his mind. When statues and paintings have done all they can for us in revealing perfectness of form, they have lifted thought up to the contemplation of something better and more enduring than deformity and decrepitude; for they have introduced us to the Ideal.
But a mere introduction to the Ideal, while it is gratifying to the senses, is not sufficient. It is not enough that we appreciate art if we remain forever on the plane of the esthetic, for the esthetic is itself nothing more than a beautiful symbol of the spiritual, without which spiritual, the esthetic is a shadow without substance. It is for this reason that the artistic temperament, or the esthetic nature devoid of divine understanding, is so frequently at the mercy of its emotions. Having no scientific, spiritually scientific, background, the artist is a sensitive plant which blooms in the sunshine of success and fades in the gloom which misunderstanding casts about those who see beauty without perceiving Truth.
The artist of the future will be he who sees the Ideal in Spirit and externalizes his vision in the flesh. Art, like the religious sentiment in the human soul, is ever in a state of ascending development. From the first crude attempts on the part of man to fashion things out of wood and stone, to the exquisite statuary of the Greeks, countless ages passed. It was not because human skill was constantly improving, so that hands which before were clumsy now became dexterous, but because man’s perception of the Perfect unfolded as man advanced in spiritual consciousness and, because of this, art could not remain in the wood and stone age of expression.
Beautiful as statuary is, it nevertheless lacks that warmth which color lends, and so an advance is made from cold stone to warm paint. If, at first, beautiful eyes stared out from their stony sockets, now art decrees that they shall speak to us in tones of brown or blue, gray or hazel. If, before, lips were hard and cold, now art affirms they must be red and potent, inviting the kisses of children. The hair must not forever continue to maintain a perpetual stoniness, but it must now bespeak the hue of the model in all the requisite delicacy of wave and beauty. Art in paint has not come to destroy art in stone; rather has it come to fulfill promises to the race that the best of today shall be included in the best of tomorrow, which will be better, because man is ever improving.
It is because of the steady ascent of art from the crude to the refined that we can, in fancy at least, see the approach of that new conception which will not remain content to make inanimate matter look more life-like, but which will work in the very flesh itself, so that the body will become transformed according to a law as fixed as the law back of science by which a block of marble becomes a Venus or an Apollo. We can easily accept the truth embodied in the scriptures which says that we are the clay in the hand of the Potter, and that God can make of us whatsoever He wills; but it is a New Thought which assures us that by the exercise of our reflected Creative Intelligence we can make of ourselves the thing we desire to be. This idea must have been in the mind of Browning when he asked:
Shall Man, such step within his endeavor, Man’s face, have no more play and action Than joy which is crystallized forever, Or grief, and eternal petrifaction?
On which I conclude, that the early painters, To cries of “Greek Art and what more wish you?”– Replied, “To become now self-acquainters, And paint man, man, whatever the issue! Make new hopes shine thro’ the flesh they fray, New fears aggrandize the rags and tatters: To bring the invisible full into play! Let the visible go to the dogs–what matters?
Always non-progressiveness says to progressiveness, “Greek Art, and what more wish you?” But this question is asked in different words with each succeeding generation. The non-progressive mentality does not believe it can improve on existing conditions, and so it falls from mediocrity to inferiority and finally goes out “unwept, unhonored and unsung.” Not realizing the power of spiritualized Thought to carve a glorious present out of an ugly past or a happy future out of a disturbing present, the average man allows thought to circle about himself and his troubles much as a foolish cow walks around and around the stake to which she is tethered, until the rope becomes so short and unstretching that she has nothing to nibble but dust. By the proper use of Thought, man becomes an artist with the “pattern showed to him on the Mount” for his model.
I am reminded of a story which a well-known evangelist told me in company with some friends who had been gathered together at the house of an associate to entertain him. In a large city in the middle west, where he was engaged at his work of leading souls to the better life, he was the guest of a few public spirited men who regarded his work as most important, and who felt that it would be a good idea to show him the city’s best sights at such times as he was not engaged in preaching. One of these was a pottery shop where some of the most artistic pottery in America was made. After seeing all the simpler forms of constructed pottery with all that preceded these in the clay mixtures and adapting machinery, he was taken into the shop where the finest products of the potter’s art were produced.
The potter in charge was asked to make a Corinthian vase. He began by taking from the vat a lump of clay which he at once commenced to model according to a pattern which stood before him. In a very little while the vase was complete and was placed on a board next to the workman’s table. But presently the workman seized it and, as he did so, the bystanders observed that it was failing in its narrow part. The shank was not strong enough to support the upper portion, and hence the bending which the workman was quick to observe. It would never do to allow it to harden in that position and so he began at once to manipulate it into another form, and presently the bystanders beheld in the transformed clay a shapely cuspidor, but a cuspidor, nevertheless.
If we accept Thought as the substance, or clay, out of which we are to construct our Corinthian vases, let us so use it that our product will stand upright and beautiful, fit to receive the Water of Life. It is Thought by which man falls or rises, fails or succeeds.
The dominating factor of the coming ages is the art of dwelling upon the Divine–that of depicting man as man, and not as a weak, finite, feeble creature of the earth, the art of seeing the great idea which is in the mind of God. This is greater than all other art and is that to which all art from its dawn to the present moment has been progressing. It has been gradually, but truly pressing and rising to the point where today we stand, carving our lives in Thought, bringing perfection out of imperfection, for the great Art is the Art of Right Thinking.
Chapter XX DISCOURAGEMENT
“Why art thou cast down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted in me? Hope thou in God; for I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance.” –Psalm 42:5
Have you ever asked yourself this question of the Psalmist, when there seemed to be no justifiable reason for your discouragement? Have you ever had moments of unshakable depression when it seemed as if life were not worth living, and yet, when you stopped to consider your affairs, you could see that others were much worse off than yourself and were not making nearly so much fuss about it? No doubt everyone has had the blues, sometimes because of conditions which have thrust themselves suddenly into his experience, and then, again, for no apparent reason. Discouragement is a disease which is no respecter of persons, and for which no antidote has been discovered in the world of medicine. It is a ruthless blight which destroys the flower of hope and the fruit of one’s labors, and leaves nothing behind but a road for itself to travel over again.
Because discouragement is so general we have come to regard it as inevitable and something to be expected, as is an occasional cloudy day. But we know that discouragement is neither necessary nor profitable. We can see no good thing in it, and yet we do not see how it can be avoided. At times we feel that we have very good reason for feeling discouraged. The odds are all against us and everything to which we put our hands crumbles like a tinseled toy. Yesterday our prospects were encouraging, today they are shattered. A telegram, a letter, a telephone call pricks the pretty bubble of our hopes and it vanishes into nothingness before our very eyes. Some men are born pessimists, others become so through experience. In the hour of despair men become blind. In the fog of self-pity they cannot appreciate their blessings.
On the morning after the great Chicago fire a man and a woman sat by the dying embers of their once beautiful home. The woman was the man’s wife and she was preparing some coffee by means of a fire fed by fragments of wood from a home in which they had lived and in which they had hoped to die. In a night their dream had been shattered, and as she cooked he cried. He was inconsolable, and so she cooked and kept quiet. He repeated again and again, “Everything is gone,” and presently she touched his arm and she said, “John, you still have me.” He looked at her through his tears and said, “Yes, thank God, I still have you. I had forgotten that.”
The warmth of an almost forgotten love dried his tears and he joined her in drinking the coffee. What a wonderful thing a good woman is! We have no idea how many of them cook while men lament. In the midst of this man’s calamity he had been reminded of something so important that one marvels how a man could forget it. Peering into the future with its dismal prospects, he quite forgot the love and constancy of his wife who knelt by his side. Like so many of us, he could weep over the morrow’s obligations while utterly losing sight of today’s blessings.
The recognition of his one remaining blessing brought with it a new resolution. He finished his coffee, kissed his wife goodbye and started for the center of the city where a few days before had stood his warehouse. He was aimlessly walking in the direction of his place of business when he met the president of the bank with which he had always done business. They talked as they walked, and when they parted the banker assured him that just as soon as certain loans which he expected from the East came in, he would advance him sufficient to resume his business again. Gloom gave place to a new hope, and as the years went by this hope was realized in a bigger business than he had ever had before.
The effect of discouragement is not limited to man’s mental processes, for it not only makes a man unhappy, but it makes him unhealthy, and in addition to this it renders him unproductive. A discouraged man is a debilitated man, and it is only a question of time when mind, body, and business must show the effects of the poison of discouragement. When a man dies from an affection of the heart, or brain, or from a chronic intestinal difficulty, superinduced by persistent discouragement, we say he died a natural death, but according to some wise men there is but one natural death, and that is falling asleep at the end of a life well spent at a ripe old age. There are those who tell us that discouragement is a sin, for the reason that it implies lack of trust in God.
Discouragement comes from the false belief in a power opposed to God. It is the natural consequence of spiritual ignorance. When a man becomes spiritually enlightened he becomes convinced of the allness of God, and when a man becomes convinced of the allness of God, he loses his belief in the reality and power of evil, and when he loses his belief in the reality and power of evil, discouragement becomes a thing of the past. If, then, we can so trace the cause of discouragement, it ought not to be difficult for us to find a cure for it. In our moments of discouragement and despair we should sit down quietly and ask our souls what David asked of his. We should talk to ourselves in the quiet of our rooms as if we were talking to another whose difficulties we were endeavoring to dissipate. We should question our inner selves, our subconscious mentalities, as did the Psalmist, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted in me?” What is the reason for all this anxiety and nameless dread? Is it that temporary trials and external conditions are too much for thee? Why art thou cast down, O my soul? Hast thou come face to face with apparently insurmountable obstacles and discovered the apparent smallness of thyself? Does it seem to thee that evil is more real and more powerful than God, and that there is no refuge save in self-destruction? Then, O my soul, do what the stalwart David did: “Hope thou in God.”
Hope is the medicine, a cheap and universal, infallible cure for discouragement. When dark thought gropes around the soul, if we but whisper this magic word to it, there will be instant response. Have we struggled with disease and reached the point where the doctors declare our malady is incurable? Has black despair seized upon the heart so that our friends seem to us like Job’s comforters, and all their words but empty platitudes? This is the time to ask of the soul, “Why art thou cast down? Is it because thou hast lost thy faith in Him to Whom nothing is incurable? Is it because the best efforts of man have been found unavailing that thou art so disconsolate? Then hope thou in God. Look away from the finite to the Infinite, and the Lord of Glory shall come in and thy sickness shall be healed.”
Is the case of discouragement due to the fact that we have labored for success and found failure? Are demands being made upon us that are just, but with which we cannot comply because of financial lack? Have we exhausted every resource and reached the conclusion that we shall presently be dispossessed, and because of this is the soul disquieted so that the head is dizzy and the heart faint? The sovereign panacea for all discouragement is Hope. Not an aimless hope which has no definite direction nor fixed center in which to place itself, but hope in God Who is able to do for us more than we can ask or even dare to expect.
It may be that our discouragement is not due to any specific anxiety, and that if we were asked the reason for it we could say only, “I do not know; I just woke up this morning feeling as if the whole world were about to collapse.” This form of discouragement is not at all uncommon. It ought not to be difficult to explain this seemingly unnecessary condition if we only realized the operations of the subconscious mind and its sensitiveness to suggestions. Men feel that they are subject only to those influences which reach them through the avenues of the senses. They can understand how they can be affected by things they see, hear, and touch, but it is difficult for them to understand the effect of invisible forces in producing certain emotive conditions. We can understand the possibility of detecting a perfume in the atmosphere, even when we do not know where it comes from, but it is difficult for us to believe that we can be affected by the thoughts of others who are no nearer to us perhaps than suffering Europe. This will become acceptable to us, however, when we realize that, just as odors pleasant and unpleasant become a part of the world’s physical atmosphere, so thoughts goods, bad and indifferent, escaping from the minds of men, tend to become a part of the world’s mental atmosphere.
It is this world’s mental atmosphere or race belief by which we are affected when we are discouraged for no particular personal reason. We are all more or less barometrical so that we feel and register the mental temperatures of the world, without knowing the law back of it all. Our mentality is the barometer which indicates the atmospheric pressure of the world’s emotions. Ignorant of the force of mind, we are like thermometers which can only register the temperature, but cannot change it. This is why so many of us are at the mercy of every mental wind that blows. The difference between a man and a thermometer is the difference between an intelligent personality and an unintelligent piece of mechanism.
Another important point that must not be overlooked is the fact that the thermometer in no wise contributes to the atmospheric condition of the world, while man does. The thermometer generates neither heat nor cold; it simply indicates them, but man is constantly contributing to the mental atmosphere of the world. Every thought he thinks is taken up on the etheric waves of subconscious mental activity and unites itself, as by chemical affinity, with every other thought of a similar character.
For this reason, then, we must be ever on our guard lest we contribute to the ocean of thought which we do not wish to return to us after many days. Our every thought is a casting of bread upon the waters, and it is for us to decide whether it shall be food for future success or future failure.
Chapter XXI INTUITION
“By thy great wisdom and by thy traffic hast thou increased thy riches.” –Ezekiel 28:5
Glorious indeed is the world of God around us, but more glorious is the world of God within us. “There lies the land of song; there lies the poet’s native land.” These are the words of Longfellow to whom intuition meant the perception of Truth without aid of conscious reasoning, but a perception, nevertheless, which conscious reasoning must eventually support. “If only I could have known what was going to happen, so much might have been avoided which now must be endured,” says the man who has made a mistake in business, and the woman who has made a mistake in love.
The popular notion that women are more intuitional than men might be seriously questioned if their matrimonial and sentimental ventures were used as tests. If the faculty of intuition has a special field in which to exercise itself, it would seem to be in affairs of the heart, but the number of mistakes made by women in such affairs is as great as are those of men, or more so, if one may judge by the divorce findings. It is too late after the bad move is made and the results are beginning to appear, to remember that we had a “hunch” that things were not going to turn out well, for it is this intuition which comes from something higher than the intellect which ought to be considered, and not so frequently brushed aside.
Much of Russell Sage’s monetary success, it is said, was due to his wife’s intuitions, upon which he learned to rely rather than upon his own method of reasoning. The trouble with most men in business is not that they are lacking in intuition, but that they allow intellect to reason them away from their intellectual perceptions. The trouble with most women in love is not that the faculty of intuition stops functioning, but that other considerations silence its “still, small voice,” and it is only when trouble comes that both men and women remember the “hunch” in the case. “If I had only stopped to think,” we say; but the trouble is that we did stop to think and, going contrary to our warning, we invited what we did not want.
There is a prevalent notion that intuition is a gift, and while it is true that some are born with greater capacities along this line, just as some are born with sounder constitutions, it is nevertheless true that intuition, like physical strength, may be acquired. It is a question of exercise in both cases. If “God enters by a private door into every individual,” we should see to it that the latch-string is always on the outside. It is not belittling to intellect to say that intuition is superior to it, and that it is that upon which it must ultimately depend for its clearest explanations of Truth. Intuition is that which furnishes intellect with its working ideas. When it is said that “All science is based on the assumption of causation,” it simply means that the intellect would have nothing to work upon were it not for the intuitive perception, or assumption, that effect presupposes cause. As it is the office of intellect to reason from ascertained facts, it is the function of intuition to grasp Truth at first hand, and then to bring all the powers of reason to bear on the translation of Truth into concrete usefulness.
Intuition is not that in man which corresponds to instinct in the animal. We cannot compare it with the mental quality which causes the bee to construct its cell, the beaver its dam, or the bird its nest; for while these indicate the certainty of unusual mental operations, they do not necessarily lead to divine communings. Instinct in the animal enables it to co-operate with nature, while intuition in man enables him to co-operate with nature’s God. The one enables the animal to use nature’s forces for constructive purposes, the other enables man to utilize Divine Energy in a way that makes for health, wealth, and wisdom. It is from intuition, and not from intellect, or instinct, that man rises to the highest exhibitions of artistic genius in music, poetry, painting, architecture and invention. If one reads carefully the visions of Joseph and of Daniel one will see how large a part intuition played in their interpretations. There are more ways than one of acquiring knowledge, and learned men are discovering that inspiration is as necessary as education, if men would not forever memorize and repeat what other men have memorized and repeated before them.
Swedenborg says that nothing ever happens in heaven. What is meant by this is that nothing ever takes place on the plane of the objective that has not already taken place on the plane of the subjective, so that all prophecy is based upon seeing in the subjective world the mental picture of that which will ultimate itself in the physical world, unless something is done to produce a short circuit. Our intuitions may prophesy good or ill because they are based upon the inner perception of thoughts in the subconscious mind of the race, and since this is so they are invaluable in developing the good mental pictures on one hand, and destroying the bad mental pictures on the other. The more intuitive we become, the more we shall invite success, and the quicker we shall forestall failure, for intuition is a two-edged sword which cuts both ways. It is through intuition that we perceive opportunities and seize them, unless we permit intellect to reason us away from them.
On the other hand, it is through intuition that we sense danger, even when all seems most auspicious on the surface. Intuition appraises us of forthcoming good and warns us against approaching calamity. It is that in man which is spoken of as his “guardian angel.” It causes a man to change his mind and take the elevated [trolley] when, as a general rule, he almost automatically travels by subway. There is no apparent reason for departing from his usual custom, and he feels almost foolish for following what seems to be an unreasonable impulse, but he learns, on arriving at his office, that there has been an acident in the subway which would have delayed him, even if he had not been injured by it.
Recently a young woman told me that she had started out for a long horseback ride when she suddenly felt that something dreadful was transpiring at home. She tried to laugh herself out of it, but the feeling persisted with such force that she turned her horse around and galloped home as fast as possible, where she found her father dying in his chair, where she had left him a few moments before, apparently well. Such things have happened so often that we no longer question them. We admit the phenomena, and we become almost fatalists in our admission. If good is on the way, according to our intuitive perceptions, we are glad of it, but if calamity is impending we are apt to say, “If it is to be, it will be, and that’s all there is to it.”
It is right here that we are to make intelligent use of this God-given faculty in order to hasten the good and neutralize the evil. It is now an accepted fact among psychologists, spiritual and academic, that the subconscious mind is amenable to suggestion by the conscious mind, and that according to the law of action and reaction, the conscious mind is reacted upon by the subconscious, so that the subconscious, which stands between the individual and the Universe, may keep the individual informed of things transpiring on the subjective plane. But this reaction of the subconscious upon the conscious ought to be more intelligently persistent and not so unintelligently spasmodic, and it will become so when we learn to pay attention to it, as Joseph and Daniel heeded it.
When it is once understood that the conscious mind reacts to promptings from the subconscious, we shall see that our highest impulses come more from intuition than from intellect. In learning to place more reliance on this Inner Guide, we may occasionally follow a blind lead, but we shall less frequently reason ourselves out of good prospects by refusing to heed our infallible mentor. There are those who tell us that our first impressions are good detectives, inasmuch as they reflect what is actually taking place in another’s mentality, so that what he is, and not what he appears to be, impresses us. There are those who scorn to be influenced by “first impressions” lest they misjudge their new acquaintances, but the frequency with which they are brought back to first impressions through grievous disappointments speaks volumes for the value of intuition.
The Scotch speak of intuition as “second sight” when, as a matter of fact, it is first sight, or the ability to see mind in action before it comes into manifestation. It differs from clairvoyance in that it is not confined to reading the individual mind, but feels rather than sees, what is taking place in the subconscious mind of the race. That which intuition enabled Joseph to do in the matter of foreseeing the seven years famine and to protect Egypt against its ravages, will enable any man to do in the ordinary affairs of the business world. Even the little they have of it as a natural gift, without any cultivation whatever, would, if listened to, prevent many a catastrophe and seize many an opportunity.
But the bias of our education has been all in favor of “weighing the matter” from the standpoint of reason, so that we have reasoned ourselves away from what would have protected us in one instance, or profited us in the other. All men have intuition but few men cultivate it, so that when we find one who does, we find a success. It is the explanation of all real achievement, and it reveals the law by which one man outdistances another. Speaking of the phenomenal success of a mutual friend, one man said to another, “How did he do it?” and the other replied, “He saw it first.” But it would have been of little value for him to see it first if he did not act upon it directly. We must learn to trust our intuitions more. All inspiration is due to the normal action of the Universal Mind on the individual, whenever the individual is listening inwardly.
The only reason why we do not get inspirational guidance more frequently is because we permit ourselves to become distracted by the things of sense and the outer world. Like the natural talent for music and art, we must cultivate this precious gift and it will recompense us a thousand-fold. Through self-discipline and earnest longing the mental vision of the individual becomes clear, so that the power of immediate insight, which is man’s highest attainment, supersedes the laborious operations of the intellect.
The truths and glories of the spiritual world are intuitionally discerned, whereas the intellect, if it glimpses them at all, does so as through a glass, darkly. Apart from the value of cultivated intuition as an asset in business and a protection against danger, its greatest benefit to human kind lies in its power to lead us out of the bewilderment of sense to serenity of soul. When we have the faith and courage to trust it our spiritual vision will become clear and the Hidden Way out of the maze of disease and trouble will be revealed.
Intuition leads to a conviction of the Omnipresence of God, in spite of all appearances. It is the compass which always points to the peace we seek. The cultivation of intuition, like the cultivation of a seed, begins in the silence. The busy man and the busy woman will be most greatly aided out of their perplexities, not by “taking thought,” but by taking time to relax. If we would be in good receiving condition we must become as passive as the flower which turns to the sun, so that the voice of God coming through the channel of intuition may not be confused by the blurring protestations of mere reason. When we have shut ourselves off from outer things and have become still, and know that the “I AM” is God, we should say silently:
Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, a light unto my path. There is that in me which hears Thy Word and, hearing It obeys It. Through my God-created intuition I have ears which hear and eyes which see the things which make for progress, spiritual and material. I perceive Thy Way and, walking in it, I keep company with the spirits of just men made perfect.
My spiritual intuitions are not idle fancies which lead only to disappointment, but they are direct impartations from Divine Mind to my receptive soul by which I am able to distinguish between that which is true and that which is false. Intuitively I perceive that God, and not mere intellect, is my unerring Wisdom, and this perception leads me to seek guidance from the Inner and not from the outer. I cannot be deceived into doing that which I ought not to do, nor prevented from doing immediately that which I ought to do, for my Guardian Angel (Intuition) guards me against the one and encourages me in the other. Following that which God has given to me as my Inner Guide, I shall go on from Glory to Glory, until it leads me at last to that Infinite Wisdom which knows no error and makes no mistakes.
Chapter XXII THE NATIVITY AND MATURITY OF JESUS
“And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.” –Luke 21:28
The central figure around which most serious thought revolves is undoubtedly the most unique person of all history, Jesus of Nazareth. From every Christian rostrum and from many Jewish pulpits the name of Jesus is sounded forth as the one who has left the greatest impression upon human consciousness.
The songs sung, and the sermons preached, at Christmas services often deal with the birth of Jesus in a stable in Bethlehem. Many references are made to prophecy, particularly to that of Isaiah, who, seven hundred years before the coming of Jesus, foretold it, and related just what would happen to him, just what he would do and what he would accomplish for the race. Those who are skeptical might take the prophecy of Isaiah and the advent of Jesus of Nazareth and bring them together in parallel columns and see if one does not exactly fit the other, if one does not seem to produce the other. One strange fact about prophecy is this: that when it finds acceptance by a single human mind there is another mentality added to the mentality of the prophet, and when this belief is communicated to other minds, there are a number thinking along the same line, confidently expecting the same thing; and when this goes on increasing with geometrical ratio that which starts in the mind of a single prophet presently becomes a nation’s hope. And so it is perfectly natural, knowing what we know of the power of thought, that Jesus should come in response to prophesy.
He came because of a great demand of the human heart. The children of Israel had longed for an emancipator, a deliverer and a savior, and their hope gave rise to the prophetic utterances and soul desire that this should come to pass, and it came to pass in due order and in due time. Hence we have the peculiar and the supernatural aspect apparently surrounding the birth of him who was prophesied long before by Isaiah.
I am not so much concerned with the nativity of Jesus, though it is tremendously interesting, as I am with the maturity of Jesus. His nativity and early life have been taught in Sunday Schools all over the world. The lives and characters of children have been molded according to this marvelous history of the child Jesus. The young of either sex who desire to be in the world, and yet not of it, find in the youthful Nazarene a flesh and blood testimony to the power of God to keep one from yielding to temptation.
We see in the young Jesus the triumphant personality, one who was tempted in all things, even as we are, and yet, without succumbing to sin, calling upon his internal and integral and inherent Divinity which sustained him in the hour of trial and tribulation and, moreover, temptation, because many a man can stand in the hour of trial and tribulation who finds himself utterly weak in the presence of temptation. To be tried from without is one thing; to be tempted from within is another. And so we find in this youthful Jesus an example of the power of a young man to rise superior to his appetites and passions–because he had them. Otherwise it would not be stated in the Bible that he was tempted in all things, even as we are, yet without succumbing. Herein is not only a model for childhood, not only a something upon which you may build juvenile character, but a something upon which you may base the virility of early manhood.
But such another composite character the world has never known. Such another rare instance of spiritual superiority over material tendencies history cannot furnish. I want to deal especially with his maturity, with his full-fledged manhood. It is nothing to us where he was or what he was doing between his twelfth and thirtieth years, though speculation has abounded over this particular period in the life of the Master. Hindus tell us he was in India. Persians assert that he was in Persia. Assyrians tell us he was in Assyria. The Esdras of Judea claim he was in their monastery. It does not make any difference where he was. The question is, what was he doing? I believe he was studying the science of life, Divine Science. I believe he was becoming more and more intelligently conscious of his unity with God, so that when he appeared in his thirtieth year in the first days of his ministry he came forth with an internal conviction of his co-partnership with the Infinite.
We do not find anywhere in the history of the Nazarene any attempt to set up a new organization, a new cult, a new church. On the contrary, everything bears witness to the fact that he sought to use intelligently and wisely the existing institutions of his day. He was not to be the founder of a new church. He came to give life to the old one. He came to ask of the old church what it was doing as the pastor, what it was doing as the shepherd of the flock. He came to remind the old church of his day that it was not measuring up to the Divine requirements. And so we find him going from city to city, and village to village, and preaching in their synagogues about the Kingdom of God, the gospel of righteousness.
He had traveled over many cities in Judea, and one day he came to his own little home town, Nazareth, and, as the custom was in that day (and one which might prevail today with a great deal more benefit to the world than the customs which do prevail), he was handed by the presiding rabbi of the synagogue the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. And he read from the Prophet Isaiah a reference to himself and to his own mission–“I am come to bind up the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, to open the eyes of the blind and to preach the Gospel to the poor.” And, closing the book, he handed it to the rabbi and he said: “This day, this very day, this scripture is fulfilled in your ears.”
That prophecy had stood on the pages of the Book of Isaiah for seven hundred years, and no man up to that time had dared to attribute it to himself. No man up to that hour had felt that it had any reference whatsoever to himself. But this man, who had arrived at his maturity, not only his maturity in years, but his maturity of spiritual understanding, took it to himself. “It has reference to me, and I tell you, of a verity, on this day this scripture shall be fulfilled in your ears. I shall preach the Gospel to the poor. I shall heal the sick. I shall preach deliverance to the captives. I shall open the eyes of them that are blind. I shall bring to them a new thought concerning themselves and concerning God and concerning their fellow-men.” And they marveled. They marveled because they knew that he was not schooled in the Sanhedrin. He was not a college graduate. He was not a theological seminarian. He was not ordained by the existing ecclesiastical institutions. He was the son of a carpenter from a remote village. He had not even had the benefit of associating with the bright lights of Jerusalem.
“Now, how knoweth this man letters, seeing that he hath never learned?” They propounded questions, and the answers staggered them. He had been closer to the great heart of things than they; he had not developed the intellect at the expense of spiritual intuition. Rather, he paid more attention to the inner thoughts of God. He confounded the wise, made the scholastic look foolish, asked questions to which there was no answer, from their point of view, and then, as it is said, he came unto his own and his own received him not.
There is a tremendous significance in this statement. One of the most natural things in the world, when a man finds a good thing, whether it is a valuable gold mine, a great political idea, or a tremendous spiritual truth, is to communicate it to others. There is that inherent unselfishness in the great majority of men which, when they discover anything that is really worthwhile, prompts them, impels them to share it with others. And so, the most natural thing in the world for Jesus of Nazareth to do was to communicate this great spiritual truth of his to his own people. He came to Nazareth, where he was brought up, where he was well-known, and there he proclaimed for the first time the mission that he was about to accomplish.
Presently a murmur arose in the synagogue. His statement was a rebuke to them. If he were going to do it, why had not the Church of Israel done it long before? If he were going to initiate this new order of things and fulfill this prophecy in his own person, why had not someone like Malachi or Joel done it? Why had not the great prophet in the wilderness, John the Baptist, done it? Why should he attribute this prophecy to himself and make himself co-equal with God? Presently we find them leading him out of the church to the brow of a hill, from thence, says the Scriptures, to cast him off, to murder him.
He had blasphemed. He had taken unto himself a prophecy that could have no application to an ordinary carpenter’s son. If any were going to fulfill this prophecy, it must be one of them. It would naturally be a man high in the church, one noted for sanctity and piety. But the strange thing is that history does not record that any great truth, that any startling spiritual truth has ever come through a man standing high in the church. * St. Francis of Assisi did not stand high in the church; neither did St. Francis de Sales. Peter was a fisherman. Truth seems always to have reserved herself for some simple, meek and great soul of humility. You cannot pour the wine of spiritual inspiration into a vessel that is already full, but only into an empty vessel. And Jesus was such, an empty vessel crying night and day for wisdom and love and righteousness and truth. Like David, his forbear, he moistened his couch with his tears. He wept on the Mount of Olives as well as in the Garden of Gethsemane. His great soul poured forth its supplication for more truth wherewith to feed humanity. And he came unto his own and his own received him not. Such is the history of every great thinker.
Homer sang through many cities in which he could get no bread, and in which hundreds of years afterwards he was honored. So, Jesus of Nazareth was rejected in his own community when he came there with a message. He came to a people, the children of Israel, the members of the ancient Church of Judah, with the fulfillment of the very thing that they believed in, wanted, desired, or thought they did. He came to tell them that Isaiah had spoken the truth, and that it was within the power of God to heal the sick, to comfort the sorrowing, to set the captives free and to raise the dead. It was the message of life and love to a dying and sickly race–and it was too good to be true. Could it be that God was going to minister to them through a solitary personality who was not equipped as they thought he should be? Was this lonely man, unknown in the world of letters, to be the channel through which these great blessings should come to the race? This was too much to expect, and so at once he was misunderstood.
The Greeks understood him better. The despised Samaritans understood him better. The common people heard him gladly. The scholars scoffed. And today, two thousand years later, we find the scholars still scoffing. Christians, who call themselves by his sacred name, ridicule the possibility of a continuation of his healing ministry. He comes unto his own and his own receive him not. The Christ truth knocks at the door of the synagogues of today, and I mean by the synagogues, the Christian churches as well. There was no intention on the part of those to whom the second appearing came to start up new institutions, new organizations.
Ask yourselves, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Catholics and Jews, when this thought of the indwelling Christ first came to you, if it was not the desire of your heart and the ambition of your soul to take it to your people–the Jew to the Jew, the Presbyterian to the Presbyterian, the Catholic to the Catholic? When this light of a new truth dawned upon your consciousness, was it not the first great impulse of your heart to communicate it to your own? What is more natural? Appreciating all the good of your respective churches, recognizing all the sanctity of your respective clergy, realizing all the peace and contentment that had come to you in your churches through your respective sacraments, or without them, the first great impulse of your generous hearts, when you discovered this, was to take it to your people.
The Presbyterian had no desire to convert the Roman Catholic, and vice versa; the Catholic had no desire to go to the Presbyterian with his message of love and life and truth or New Thought. To the Presbyterian it is the fulfillment of prophecy, it is the realization of hope, and likewise to the Catholic and the Jew. And then what? What else would we do, if we should not go into our respective synagogues or churches and say to our respective ministers or rabbis: “What do you think of this? This has given to me more comfort than my old church has ever given to me. I wish you would look into it and incorporate it. I wish you would take it into the church and preach it from your pulpit. Will you not recommend it to your people? It is so real, so vital, so loving, so healing. Please do not keep it out of the church.” And the wise man has all too frequently shaken his head and looked at us with a sort of pitying contempt: “What is this strange thing? What is this new doctrine, this declaration of Spirit is greater than matter, the affirmation that God can overcome evil; this statement that prayer can conquer human ills, as well as moral infirmities? What do you mean?”
Exactly the same questions are being asked today as were asked by the people of our Saviour’s time. It was the doctrine of man’s emancipation to the right exercise of his own mentality, of salvation to the power of the spirit over the flesh. It was merely a re-emphasis of an ancient truth. The same thing is true today; it comes to its own and its own receive it not.
It is such a startling truth that a Christian, calling himself such, believing himself such, will say: “Well, I believe in prayer, but when I am ill I want a doctor. I believe in prayer, but when I am ill I want some physical help.” He cannot understand the man who believes in prayer and is willing to trust to it absolutely with the same thought that Job expressed when he said: “Yea, though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” And when a man arrives at that conclusion, he knows that God does not slay anything. Truth comes unto its own and its own repudiates it. It comes in the sacred name of Christ, and Christians resent it, because, they say, if this thing were designed to come to us in the natural and prophetic order of things it would have reached us through our respective churches.
Well, again we repeat, nothing that is really worthwhile has ever come to us through our respective churches. Churches, like individuals, have to be aroused. They are hypnotised by ecclesiastical formulas. Great bodies move slowly. It is always some lonely, solitary individual who, alone with God or some great idea, perceives a hidden truth and then communicates it to another. Great bodies have never given us anything. For all they have ever done we thank them, but we do not applaud them very much. All that any great body has ever done has been to perpetuate an idea which an individual communicated in the first place. And then, when it has grown up into a great, big, tremendous organization, it resents a new idea. It says: “We have always believed this. This is the faith of our fathers. Ye shall not bring to us any new thought. The religion of our fathers is good enough for us. We are perfectly satisfied.” But the new idea keeps knocking at the door; very frequently from within the church, more frequently from without, and the church maintains its stolid indifference.
I want to give to the churches all the credit that belongs to them, but every great ecclesiastical and political institution, and every institution which has banded together under its banners large numbers of men, moves slowly, whether it is medical, or political, or religious. You remember how long it took the medical institutions to accept Sir Humphrey Davy’s idea. You remember how slow the medical schools have been to accept new ideas born in the minds of individual physicians; how they have been opposed and persecuted and misunderstood and rejected and finally accepted, and then the sweet, wise men of the profession have said: “Why, of course; we always believed it.” They forget the days when they persecuted the man who formulated the idea.
Agassiz says that every great truth goes through three stages of evolution–first it is rejected, then it is considered, then it is accepted; and when it is accepted men delude themselves into thinking they always admitted it. Divine Science, not as a religion, not as a denomination, not as a sectarian philosophy, came unto its own and its own received it not. It has knocked at the door of every church of the City of New York through someone who has been healed and helped by it. It has knocked at the door of every rector’s private study through someone who has been affected by it, or through some book which has been sent to him anonymously. It has sought admittance into the souls of the most progressive clergymen of this and other countries, and only in rare instances do we find men big enough and meek enough and humble enough to kneel at the feet of Christ and take it as a truth. One of such was Archdeacon Wilberforce, the noted prelate of England. Dr. Andrew Raymond is another. There are very few men in the city of New York like Rev. Herman J. Randall, a Baptist clergyman, who has been willing to sit down thoughtfully, quietly and prayerfully, and examine this thing to see if it had a message for him. And, if so, if it had a message for others through him, he thanked God that he had found it. But he is only one in perhaps twenty thousand.
The Jews accept it more readily than most of our Christian people, and yet these same Christians say: “We are open, we are alive to new things.” They say: “We want to know more about God.” Do they? I am speaking on the maturity of Jesus. He went to his own people, as was most natural for him to do, and they received him not. History ever repeats itself. He comes today, in the maturity of two thousand years of Christianity–a great maturity that is, you know–and knocks at the door of the human mind and the doors of the synagogues and churches and asks if there is any room for him within. And again, as of old, there is no room.
The ass hears the message of good will and peace upon earth more quickly than most of our scholastics. It is the donkey in the stable that breathes upon it and keeps it warm, and most of us are considered donkeys by the general public. But, thank God, we are breathing upon a newly revived philosophy, keeping it warm until the men and women, and children of tomorrow will take it up and see in it a communicable light. It is the stranger, sometimes, whose heart has been longing for something better, whose thoughts have been aspiring to something higher and nobler, and in all his simplicity and contriteness of soul, and all the great repentance of a mind that is conscious of the fact that it does not know everything, who sits down at the feet of a simple disciple of truth and listens in wonderment, enthusiastic over the new revelation, and sets about to learn more of it. Such a person may not be in the church and may not want to have anything to do with the church; because he has sought in the church previously and found Him not there.
It is all very well for us to go out into public squares and talk about the nativity of Jesus and how he was born, but what about his maturity? What about his Gospel? To sing the praises of the infant Jesus we tend to forget the manly Jesus; that is hardly the full text of Christianity.
It has come again, and the same question is being asked today that was asked in that day–can any good thing come out of Nazareth? That was the question the clergymen asked concerning P.P.Quimby, of Portland, Maine, who was Mrs. Eddy’s [founder of Christian Science] first healer and teacher–“Can any good thing come out of an ordinary clock-maker?” We ask exactly the same question, with two thousand years of Christian philosophy at our backs–can any good thing come out of Portland? Can an ordinary clock-maker communicate any new truth to us? But he did; a truth that has rung around the world, so that there is not a Christian city, village or hamlet on the planet today that does not know something of the philosophy of the Newer Thought of God. There is not a place in the world today that is worthy of the name of place where this thought has not been heard, felt and demonstrated.
Over in Germany and England, when this re-statement of the truth was taken over to them, they said: “This is another American fantasy; can any good, profound, religious thing come out of America, a land of commercialists?” When a friend of mine took it to Berlin they wanted to know what this strange thing was. And, when it began to make inroads in the court, it was summarily suppressed. It made no further progress except secretly, just as the early Christians progressed secretly in the catacombs of Rome. When it was seen by the powers-that-be that it was making headway among the thoughtful people of Germany, then the iron hand was put down upon it, but it went on growing nevertheless. It makes no difference how heavy the rock is, the worm under the soil performs its functions and wriggles its way upward and through. It makes no difference what may be the weight of the soil, the thirsty root of the tree will find water. And it makes no difference how many weights are placed upon this larger thought of God, this Twentieth Century communication of Christ to humanity will find its way into the hearts of men, and no ecclesiastical dynasty, no government authority, can prevent it. Just as early Christianity flourished in spite of persecution, so Twentieth Century Christianity will do likewise.
It has come unto its own, and if its own have not received it, if the smugly complacent and self-satisfied ecclesiastics have not taken it as a body, what of it? You can’t expect them to do so. The sick have taken it, and the common people have heard it gladly, and the poor have accepted it, and the oppressed and the down-trodden and the miserable. The Gospel of New Thought or Divine Science appeals to the very same class of people as those to whom the Gospel of Jesus appealed. The common people always hear a prophecy of better things gladly, and this is no Utopian dream. This is not something to make men feel better for a while, and to delude them into the hope that they are going to get better things, and have them feel that they must put up with conditions as they are today, because the future will bring forth a new order. Not at all! This is not only the prophecy of better things to come next year, but it is the fulfillment of the thing today; so that men and women can rise up and call it blessed, and know that the healing of their bodies is being accomplished through the quieting of their minds, through the uplifting of their souls, and that something greater has come into their lives than ever was there before.
It has come unto its own, but only those receive it who really yearn after it. Only those who are worthy receive it, because this is not thrust upon anybody. There must be a heart-longing and a soul-yearning for it. We must desire this truth of God as much as the drowning man desires air, or the sunflower desires the sun. We must yearn after it with all our hearts and souls and minds and bodies. And then it shall come unto us and sup with us. We shall invite it and it will bring with it its own rich blessings. Our health shall spring forth speedily, regardless of the laughter of so-called Christians, regardless of the ridicule of existing institutions.
There are those individuals who have felt the touch of this healing agency in their own bodies, who know something of the uplifting of the mind through spiritual influences, who know something of the change of heart, or what we call the transformation of the soul, through it. This something can never be taken away from us. There is no amount of legislation that can take it away from us, no amount of persecution that can belittle it in our estimation. We believe that we are standing for the same Divine principles for which the early Christians stood, the right to pray in time of trouble, and the right to trust God absolutely and implicitly and not to lean upon an arm of flesh. Woe unto them that go down into Egypt for help! Woe unto that man who seeks any lesser aid or assistance than that which comes from God, because sometime, somehow, somewhere, he will be rudely awakened from his delusion.
Divine Science has come to teach us and to emphasize the great fact that the only reliable thing in the universe is God Almighty, and that a man that putteth his trust in Him confidently, absolutely, implicitly and without division will bring whatsoever he will to pass. There is no danger in trusting God. The great danger is in not trusting God. We cannot trust God too implicitly. “Do not rely,” says a very good Christian, “too much on prayer.” How remarkable–do not rely too much on prayer? Did Jesus rely too much upon prayer? Did the early apostles rely too much upon prayer? Has any man ever lived who relied too much upon prayer? The great trouble is we have not relied enough upon it. “When I am ill,” says a caustic individual, “I pray, but I also take drugs.” Well, in Divine Science, we do not say that. When we are ill, we pray the fervent, effectual prayers of righteous men and of righteous women, and the prayer of faith saves the sick without drugs.
There is one thing from which Divine Science has saved us, thank God, and that is the drug habit. There are thousands and hundreds of thousands in this great country who can testify to the fact that they have been saved by Christ from the drug habit. What do you suppose the Churches of Christ, Scientist, have been builded with in this country or in any other? Let me tell you–drug money. With what do you suppose this church is carried on? Drug money, for the most part, if not altogether. If our people would compute the cost to themselves, before they came into Divine Science, of just drugs for their so-called maladies and diseases, and would put that money into the treasury, they would do marvelous things.
If Divine Science has done nothing more than to break the drug habit for most of us, it is a benefactor, a veritable Messiah. Submit it to yourselves–those of you who know anything about Divine Science, those to whom it is a religion, those to whom it is a philosophy–have you saved anything, or have you been saved from anything as the result of your interest in it? Do you take more, or less, drugs? Do you feel better, or worse? These are simple questions, purely mathematical in their character. If you want to find out whether you have been benefited or blessed by your study, take your little day book and study the debit and credit side. Most of you have lost an ugly and costly habit, and you have gained a better understanding of God.
And this thing comes to its own today in this enlightened Twentieth Century, and we are still egotistical enough to say that “the religion of my fathers is good enough for me.” Abraham might have said that and remained a pagan. Moses might have been so minded and remained in Egypt. Jesus might have said that and have gone to the synagogue with his mother from then until now, if he had stayed with us. The religion of our forefathers is not good enough for us, not if we are progressive. The lives of our forefathers and the characters of our forefathers may be, but their religious ideas and views, not at all. Why? Because God is forever imparting himself to human souls. God, in his infinite wisdom, is ever unfolding to humanity nobler, higher, better, more beautiful truths, and for a man to say that “the religion of my forefathers is good enough for me” is to limit the power of the Holy One of Israel. It is to stand still.
We might as well say that the politics of two thousand years ago are good enough for us, that the sanitary conditions of our forefathers are good enough for us, and therefore we will make no improvement. How ridiculous, how absurd, how un-Christian! As if God had reached a limit of his impartations to the human soul! As if the final word of truth had been spoken and God would never again utter himself! And, when a simple man comes to us, apparently from nowhere, with a message, we say: “Can any good thing come out of this simple, unschooled man? Can he know anything of truth? Is it possible that this man knows more than Bishop So-and-So?” Bless you, perhaps the bishop knows more about good eating than he knows about Christianity. We are awakening to the great fact that scholastic education means nothing by comparison with Divine intuition, and whether a man comes out of Nazareth as a simple carpenter’s son with a message of truth, or from a remote village in some foreign country and brings to us a more glorious tiding of great joy, we in all humility should listen to his message. How do we know but that it is one that is coming to its own and not being received?
Therefore, I recommend to you that you listen more intelligently to this new message, that you get such literature as is now at your disposal, that you study it earnestly and thoughtfully, that you make comparisons between the new thought and the old thought, and then abide by your convictions. If you do, there is a blessing in store for you that is as far superior to anything that you can think of as prosperity is superior to poverty. Search the Scriptures, for in them ye have eternal life.
It is the maturity of this man, Jesus, this God-man and man-God, that I wish to emphasize. The beautiful infant is pictured in art, literature, music and oratory. A holy child is one thing; a sublime man is another. It is the sublime man that I want to call to your attention, the developed Christ, the matured soul, the courageous, fearless proclaimer of truth, the man who could say, with all the conviction of an awakened consciousness: “I have come that ye might have life and that ye might have it more abundantly. This day this Scripture will be fulfilled in your ears.” And he said it without any thought or suspicion in his mind that it would not come to pass; he said it though he knew that his very declaration would draw down upon him the bitterness, the hate, the animosity, the devilishness of the existing institutions, that that very minute they would seek to pull him out of the synagogue and cast him from the hills. Failing in that they would cry, as any angry fool mob will cry: “Crucify him! Crucify him!” And yet, he had the hardihood to say it.
It is the mature man that stands before me and not the infant Jesus. I love the infant Jesus. It is a wonderful example to youth that one could stand there, with all the appetites and passions and angers and hates of the human soul, and still could triumph over them by the power of an intense spirituality. But it is quite another thing when a man comes before us, at thirty years of age, matured and developed, and opposes the institutions which would slay him, which would crucify him, and which did so. It is not the birth of Jesus but the life of Jesus that stands out, the life of a glorious man, the life of a personified God who feared nothing and nobody, who spoke the truth as he felt it, gave utterance to it as he knew it and defied the Devil and all his minions.
In our parks we set up wonderful Christmas trees–to what? For the most part to the infant Jesus. What do we know about the mature man? Very little, and that little would be taken away from us if that could be done. But we are learning every day and every hour the principle for which he stood.
Up to date I have found nothing better than a divinely scientific interpretation of his mission. I do not know what new revelation is in store for me next year. But this one thing I know, that when it comes I shall pray God for humility and meekness and strength enough to accept it; no matter through whom it comes, or from where. Tomorrow, if any of you has a better interpretation of the law of God, bring it to me: I want it. I have never stood as one who knows more of the Lord than you. I am a fellow-disciple with you, a co-worker in the Kingdom of God with you, a reacher-out with you, after the great things of God. It is only as we come with this empty vessel, it is only as we come with this open soul, to the great heart of things that there can be poured into it the water of life and the wine of inspiration. It is only as we become conscious of the fact that, by comparison with all there is to know, we know very, very little, that we will be kept meek and humble and contrite.
He came unto his own and his own received him not. That text haunts me. The natural expectation of the human heart is that when it goes to its own it will be received. Have you tried to communicate this thought to a mother, or has a mother tried to take it to a child, or a sister to a brother? Has it always been accepted joyfully and gladly? Then you know something of the attitude of mind that Jesus must have suffered when he brought this great, glad message of God to his own people and they received it not. If you have tried to take this New Thought to one whom you believe needs it more than he needs anything else in the world, and he has looked at you with astonishment and almost ordered you out of his house, then you know something of the experience of the Master. He came unto his own and his own received him not. There is nothing more pathetic than this in the whole New Testament.
There is nothing more pathetic on the pages of human history than this great, tremendous fact, that when you discover a new truth, whether it is political or religious or otherwise, and you strive to communicate it to others, they do not receive it. That is where the poignancy of it all comes in, and the pain of it all, but it is good for you. It is tremendously good for you, because then you know what it means when he says: “Two women shall be working in a field; one shall be taken and one shall be left. Two men shall be sleeping in a bed; one shall be taken and the other shall be left.” And the one that is taken with your idea may not be related to you, while the other, the one sleeping beside him, may be your own brother or your own father. Whatever objection men may have to it, whatever refusal they may make of it, do not be discouraged. You are no better than Jesus, not as good; and remember that your faith is only his faith written in small letters. No matter what you have to go through, he felt it before. He trod the wine-press absolutely alone, and not even the guards at Gethsemane, Peter nor John nor James could stay awake with him.
His own received him not and comforted him not. It is well for us, because the only comfort that we can get is the comfort of turning the heart unreservedly to God, and when that comes you will not seek consolation, but you will give it. That is the mark of an emancipated soul. The only thing it seeks consolation from is the Most High God, and, seeking it there, it will get it in abundance, and, getting it in abundance, it can minister lavishly.
The Christian life is wonderful. It is not what we have thought it to be at all. It is a life of perpetual prayer. And what is prayer? I quote Emerson on this, because I think he was more of a Christian than those who condemned him. “Prayer,” says Emerson, “is the contemplation of the highest facts of being from the sublimest point of view.” In other words, prayer is contemplation; it is meditation upon God. It is the absorption of the soul in the Deity. It is the conscious unity of the individual with the universal, the contemplation of the facts of being from the highest point of view. How many who pray with the lips contemplate the facts of being from the highest point of view? How many know anything about the facts of being? A woefully small number. Let it not be said of us that he came unto his own and his own received him not. Let us cultivate the expectant heart, the awakened mind, the open soul, because these lead to joy, gladness, peace, power and prosperity.
Chapter XXIII LOST IN TRANSIT
“Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.” –Eccles. 9:10
I have been thinking of the many things that are lost in transit, and wondering if, in the mental world, there is not some correspondence for it all. Of recent years there has been a great deal of mail and expressage failing to reach its destination. It was not difficult for us to understand this during the Great War, when we considered the heavy inroads made in the mail and express service by the drafts of men for military service; nor were we surprised when we learned that whole shiploads of grain and other supplies intended for the Allies failed to reach those to whom they were dispatched.
These illustrations give us an idea of what is taking place with most of the people in the world. There are a thousand good starters for one good finisher, and perhaps this accounts for the fact that there is just about one success for every thousand failures. We have so many irons in the fire that we become confused. “Jacks-of-all-trades,” we are really master of none. The evidence of all this was shown by the great uncertainty which was abroad in the land concerning what we should do personally to be of real assistance at the time of the world’s great need. So many branches of service were open to us, and there were so many worthy causes to which to contribute, that we were bewildered.
The relief society with a high-sounding title all too frequently exists for the purpose of enriching a few at the expense of the many. Much money is sent in , but only a small percentage reaches those whose distress is so eloquently pictured on the society’s stationery. The donor is out of pocket, and the supposed beneficiary continues to suffer. The love offering has been lost in transit. Such facts should point to a lesson in concentration, and teach us the wisdom of selecting one worthy cause and giving to it our time and money in such ways as to make that cause a most efficient means to an end.
Have you ever thought of all the time and thought, as well as energy and money, that is lost in transit by those who start things and never see them through? A man quits a good position in order to go into business for himself. His hopes are high and he can imagine how fine it is to be one’s own employer. He starts beautifully and the feeling of proprietorship is exhilarating, but there comes a day when business slows down and expenses speed up. He can then realize what caused his former employer to be irritable at times, but the recognition of this is no balm for his own distressed mentality. As he lies awake at night, he indulges in comparisons. A position with a good salary and no personal financial responsibility is a much more comfortable berth than to own one’s own store, and yet know not whence the rent is coming. Fear and self-pity seize him, and as these are not good aids to success, it is only a question of time until he closes shop and looks for another position.
This is another instance of where time and money are lost in transit. Such a man is a good starter but a poor finisher. He prefers to let his employer worry while he draws his salary. Mediocrity is his doom, and this by his own consent and cowardice. Jesus said, “No man, having put his hand to the plough and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”
Every day, in connection with various shirt-waist factories, you will see an advertisement in the papers for “Good Finishers.” Is it treading the verge of modern slang too closely to say that this is what God is advertising for? That which is true of a foot-race, or a boat race, is equally true of the contest of life.
Hast thou attempted greatness?
Then go on; Back-turning slackens resolution.
Without resolution there is no achievement. We must, like Mr. Britling, “see it through,” whether it is war, in business or in religion. To make good resolutions, as we do at New Year, only to yield to discouragement at the very first temptation, is a sign of weakness, and weakness is not the magnet by which we attract success. Every man realizes that his condition or station in life might be improved upon and, accordingly, most men have an idea of what would bring about this improvement. A new spirit in an old business has often revived it and converted approaching failure into success. Sometimes this fresh impulse has to come from the outside in the form of what is called a new management. The old management has conceived many plans, but has lacked the initiative and the courage to put these into execution. They have had visions, but their visions have been lost in transit. They have had hopes, but their hopes have been frittered away through fear. What we need most is not to go outside to get other men to infuse a vigorous activity into our enterprises, but to cultivate this new spirit in ourselves. Once resolve to do this, and the next step will be to clear away from our thinking processes everything which prevents this attitude from expressing itself in results.
If we would not have our ambitions lost in transit, we must learn to concentrate; or perhaps it would be better to say, we must learn to eliminate. Whenever a thing or a thought is lost in transit it is due to an interference somewhere along the line of travel. To discover these interferences and remove them, is to insure safe passage and satisfying consequences. Just as a submarine might have interfered with mail and food in transit to the Allies, or just as inefficiency or insufficiency might have prevented their speedy delivery had they escaped the submarines, so outside pressure may interfere with the safe arrival of our ambitions at their intended destination of achievement.
A young widow came to New York from a western city with a few hundred dollars left from her husband’s insurance. She brought with her an only child. Her hope was to get something to do that would make her economically independent. She had friends in New York to whom she applied for advice, but the consensus of opinion seemed to be that she should go back to the small town from which she came, and where she was best known, and do the best she could there, instead of struggling against insurmountable obstacles in New York. She took the advice of her friends, but it resulted in a small position at small wages and with small opportunities.
Another woman came to New York with two young children after the death of her husband in Europe. She had less than a hundred dollars, and spoke little if any English. To go back was impossible, and so, despite all the terrifying aspects of the situation, she placed her children in a nursery and took a menial position by the day. At present she is the proprietor of a prosperous business. This has nothing to do with small towns or large cities, but with small and large personal expectations. To him that hath a large vision and a strong determination shall be given; to him that hath small vision and small expectation shall be taken away even that which he hath.
There are few men who, at some time or other, have not had moments of great enthusiasm, when the future was as plain before them as the sun at noonday. They could see the glorious end from the small beginning, and at once they set out on the path to power. Seeing the end from the beginning, they had not counted on the things between, and when these began to present themselves, courage commenced to wane, and that fine enthusiasm with which they had started out was lost in transit.
Do you suppose it is all because man himself seems to have become lost in transit? Launched forth into a world of experiences and opportunities, only to return when he came, richly laden with the fruits of spiritual conquest, may it not be that he has become, for a time, lost in a fog of materialism, that he is wandering around in a maze of uncertainty? If the journey of the soul is from God back to God again, then man’s difficulties and discouragements would indicate that he has become side-tracked in some mysterious manner.
Just as the Post Office authorities send out tracers after letters and packages which have been lost in transit, so does that loving Intelligence which rules the universe send out tracers in the form of prophets and apostles, and, greatest of all, in the form of Jesus, to find that which is lost in transit and restore it to its rightful owner, God. How else shall we account for the Way-showers of the centuries? In every human soul there is the God-implanted impulse to attain the Perfect. Like the prodigal son, we have to attain away from the Father’s house, which symbolizes Peace, and Health and Happiness, and since life is unbearable without these, we strive in every way to achieve them.
When the way seems long and painful we yield to discouragement, and often consult with those whom we consider capable of advising, only to be told that we must not be surprised at our illnesses and poverties, since these are the conditions peculiar to the world. Such conditions as we are seeking do not obtain on this planet, we are informed; therefore, we must not seek as present possessions what can be only post-mortem experiences. The attempt to realize heavenly conditions on earth has always seemed impossible, and yet we go on trying. This is because we are meant to enjoy the goodness of God in the land of the living; therefore, nothing can destroy the instinct, notwithstanding our efforts and ambitions may become lost in transit.
Of all the things which make for side-tracked resolutions, I know of nothing equal to self-depreciation. We cannot understand how other men can succeed because we convince ourselves that they are not handicapped as we are. They were born under a lucky star, while we were ushered into the world under most unfavorable conditions. They have had friends and influence, while we have had to face life’s battle without either. It is asking too much, that we, alone and unaided, should achieve the success we desire. We forget that the works of a watch are inside. When a man hopes to be moved in the direction of success by outside pull and other people, he is expecting the impossible. The vast majority of failures in the world are due to the fact that the average man works with everything but the right thing. We lay more stress on human pull than on Divine Principle, and when this fails, as it always does, we become disconsolate. Unless the average man has influence, he feels impotent.
When a man attaches too much importance to what other people can do, for or against him, he is like a watch without works,–he won’t go far. The strength of man is like one of those army “tanks” which forces its way through brick walls, across trenches, tears up trees and scatters death and destruction. The tanks needs no outside pull or push. Its stored-up energy is within itself. Sniper’s bullets make little impression upon it. Solomon says to the lazy man, “Go to the ant, thou sluggard.” I say to the fearful man, “Go to the tank.” See in it an object lesson. Drawing upon its own stored-up energy, it pursues its mission, heedless of the sharp stings of scattered shrapnel. Its energy is not lost in transit, for it almost invariably reaches its objective.
When a man’s mental dynamo is working in harmony with God’s law, he is drawing upon an inexhaustible store of strength. Working from within as a co-partner with the Infinite, no obstacle is insurmountable, no task too difficult. Nothing can offer successful resistance to him who knows that he can do all things through Christ which strengthens him. He does not lose in transit either his peace or his power, because of the sniper’s bullets of envy, prejudice, or misrepresentation. He does not give up a good work because others ascribe ulterior motives to him. If man would do the work that God intends him to do, and for the accomplishment of which he has supplied all the necessary machinery, he must become a spiritual tank. He must move forward by the spiritual energy stored up in his own soul, and he must maintain the attitude toward criticism and condemnation which Paul maintained when he said, “None of these things move me.”
Many a noble purpose and many a good deed have been lost in transit because of fear of what other people might say or do. A man in conquered, not so much by what other people say about him, as by the power of his own fears and sensitiveness. When he learns that he is environed by himself, and that this Self is Divine, he will not quake and tremble. A man may not fear imprisonment or execution for his peculiar views, but if he fears public opinion, what is the difference? A healthy mind is related to all the laws which make for power, just as a feeble mind is related to all the forces that make for weakness. A spent bullet is not the consequence of a too great distance, but the result of a lack of power in the projector. A spent thought, which does not reach its destination, is not lost in transit because the thing desired is unattainable, but because the thinker is using only half his energy.
When a man tells me that I cannot help myself, he plunges me into despair, if I believe him; but if I do not believe him, he prods me to productiveness. Believe no man when he tells you that the thing that ought to be done cannot be done. Let not your lofty desires be lost in transit because of the wear of fools, for then you will be the prince of fools. God has endowed you with power to transcend all your difficulties; therefore, let nothing affright you. Use your difficulties as you use the apparatus in a gymnasium,–to give you strength. It is your duty to obey your divine impulses. The call of the spirit is the call of the soul for a fuller expression of joy and gladness, health and wholeness. Do not allow yourself to be hypnotized into the belief that you cannot enter into the enjoyment of the things which God has prepared for you.
If you are sick, do not delude yourself into the belief that you are ill beyond recovery. If you are poor, do not conclude that you will always remain so. Is it not written that “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him”? These things, which have been lost in transit, are here now awaiting your claim. When the temptation comes and you think your situation is hopeless, just remember that your strength, which is God, is equal to every demand which you may make upon it. “To them that believe, all things are possible.” Believe, then, that you shall have your heart’s desire. God is no respecter of persons, giving health and wealth to some, and withholding them from others. Say, then, in your moments of temptation, “No good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly.” Say often, “MY strength cometh from the Lord which made heaven and earth.” “I shall not be afraid, and so come short of the things I want. I will rise to the power and dignity of my Sonship with God. Health is my birthright. I claim it in the name of Him who created me. I have it now.”
Chapter XXIV THE HIDDEN MYSTERY
“The image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature.” –Col. 1:15
Nothing is so fascinating as the mysterious, and for this reason the mind of man is ever striving to get away from the commonplace. All progress is the result of reading out beyond the known to the unknown, for we instinctively feel that the known is only a small fraction of the unknown presented to our senses. When Newton observed an apple fall to the ground, the mystery of gravitation was on the eve of being solved. He might have treated the incident as had countless millions of the earth’s inhabitants before his birth, but he did not, and hence we not only know that apples fall, but we know why they fall.
The appearance and disappearance of the stars was a mystery, so long as men believed they were stuck like pins in a pin-cushion in a solid body of blue sky, but the mystery vanished when it was learned that the stars were like our earth, revolving in space, and supported as is our planet, not upon pillars like the floor of a building, but upon the ample breast of ether on which all natural things rest in motion. The stars do not go away in the morning to some remote corner of the universe and come back in the evening, as children suppose. The mystery then is, why do we not see them? And the answer is, we do not see them in the daytime because of the stronger light of the sun.
The world is full of mysteries, but God has furnished man with a certain sense of divine curiosity which will not let him rest under the delusion that the mysterious must ever remain so. There are those who declare it presumptuous to attempt to solve the mysteries of the spiritual world, and yet Jesus says, “Ask and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you.” It is certain that we shall never know anything concerning the kingdom of God unless we inquire, and if we can believe the statistics of Bible Societies and the statements of those who sell books which serve as keys to the inspired writings, the number of inquiries is steadily on the increase. From reliable sources we gather the information that never before was there a time when so much spiritual literature was in healthy circulation.
There is a hunger and a thirst after spiritual knowledge which indicate the unsatisfied longings of the soul of the world. Realms of mind are being more generally explored than ever before in the endeavor to solve the mystery of the Christ, and in some measure we feel that this mystery is being opened in a way which is leading to a new and firmer grasp on the things which count. Paul declares that he reckoned all things of trifling importance by comparison with a knowledge of Christ, but by Christ Paul meant not one special man, but the Life-Principle which governs all men. The word Christ is loosely used, so much so that it suggests almost universally the idea of a particular personage in human history. We think it is the name for the particular man Jesus when, as a matter of fact, it is the title for what has been called “The divine Collective man.” It is significant when an ecclesiastic signs himself, “Yours in Christ” and not “Yours in Jesus,” for it signifies a unity in the spirit, rather than a oneness in the flesh.
The hidden mystery of the Christ is not an incommunicable secret, nor an incomprehensible question, nor an unascertainable Truth. It is simply a condition which is not generally understood, but wherever it is understood, it is the power which makes for right thinking and healthy living. If the mystery of Christ in man was not revealed until Jesus came, it was not because it could not have been revealed, but because of a crafty priesthood which refrained from communicating it. Then, as now, there were those who believed that the most precious Truths of God were for what were called the “elect.” They were like those secrets of secret societies which are made known only to those who have reached certain degrees of initiation, and who are bound under pain of oath not to divulge them.
The mystery of the Christ in the individual was, to the ancients, like the discovery of a rich mine from which only a few were to derive benefits, and not like the revelation of a great Truth to which all men are entitled and through which all men have a right to expect emancipation. The mystery of the Christ in the individual was, to the initiates of old, like some secret formula in chemistry, kept hidden in order to enrich the few at the expense of the many. The plea that there are some truths which, like some combustibles, are not safe in the hands of the ignorant, sounds very plausible until you realize that it is only as Truth is explained to the ignorant that they rise above their thralldom.
There is a considerable difference between dynamite and divinity. In the case of the one there may be a possibility of injury, but in the case of the explained divinity of the individual there can be no greater commotion than a moral uprising and a bodily rejuvenation. If there is any danger connected with the explanation of the hidden mystery of every man’s place in the divine order, it is the danger of making the universal which a few men would like to consider private property. It is an almost common temptation for us to derive some comfort and take some pride in the thought that we possess some information which is not generally known. If we speak of it it is [in hushed tones, and with the admonition to those to whom we confide not to divulge it.
Whether it is a choice bit of gossip about our neighbors, or a New Thought about God, we communicate it as a confidence which we “do not wish to go any farther.” It has been said that the real offense of Jesus, and the one for which he suffered most, was the act of taking what was supposed to be known only to the priests and making it the common property of all mankind. We may doubt that there are minds base enough to keep secret that which would lessen human suffering and increase human joy, but the history of some of the most helpful discoveries in the medical world is that they were used first to enrich their discoverer, after which they were handed down to the discoverer’s family. To the credit of the medical profession it is only fair to state that this practice is contrary to its highest ethics, and we refer to it only to show that, even in the most dignified professions, the tendency to preserve the mystery of things is not rare.
It is astonishing that as soon as a mystery is explained we wonder why it had to be explained, why we should not have known it for ourselves.
The mystery of the Christ is solved when we take a more impersonal view of things. The highest thought of today is that God is not a distant ruler, but an Omnipresent Intelligence, and that just as the world is ruled by Mind, and not by matter, so this Omnipresent Intelligence is perpetually expressing Itself in endless variety. If we can think of the Great First Cause as the universal Divine Mind from which all creation springs, as light emanates from the sun or perfume emanates from flowers, it will help us to understand the place of the Christ in the scheme of orderly unfoldment. When we speak of the Christ as the first emanation of Divine Mind, we mean that It is the first exhibition of the Divine Will to project itself into manifestation, and not a mechanical efflux with no intelligent direction back of it.
It is when we think of our own minds and the way they express themselves that we have the best illustration of the Christ in us, for just as Thought is the first activity of our individual minds, so Idea is the first activity of the Universal Mind, and this Idea is the Christ. A simple explanation of The Blessed Trinity which does not involve us in the acceptance of three Persons in One Person is to explain the Trinity as, first, Creative Intelligence, or God; second, Creative Intelligence in action, or Christ; and third, Creative Intelligence in manifestation, or Jesus.
Through all the centuries of Christianity in its various forms the doctrine of the Trinity has given more or less trouble to the thoughtful mind because of the difficulty of accepting the idea of three persons in one. Those who do not wish to be bothered by thinking accept it as one of the mysteries of the Church and let it go at that; but when the Trinity is explained as Mind, Idea and Manifestation, the mystery disappears and the Trinity becomes a law of necessity which is transpiring under our very eyes. Speaking of the Christ as the universal Idea of God, and not as a particular person, Paul says it is “The image (Idea) of the invisible God (Mind), the first born of every creature, for in Him (Mind) were all things created (in Idea), in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and invisible (as ideas and then manifestations), whether thrones, or dominions, or principalities or powers, all things have been created by Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and by Him all things consist.”
In this text we have presented the orderly method of creation, for just as Thought is the firstborn of every material thing, so the firstborn of every man that cometh into the world is “the image of the invisible God,” or the Idea in Divine Mind, without which he could not come into being or partake of immortality. Christ is the soul of man without which the body could not be. Christ is that Divinity in man which preceded his birth and will survive his death. Christ is that eternal reality of man which is never separated from the Father. It is that in man which never sins and never suffers. The mission of Jesus was to reveal this Christ in all men, even as he had discovered it in himself. He prayed, “That they all may be one; as Thou Father art in me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us.”
The discovery of one’s self in Christ is the greatest discovery of the ages. It is when we feel that we are not in the Christ, and the Christ is not in us, that we are sinful, sick, and unhappy; but when, through understanding, we connect ourselves with the firstborn of ourselves we become a new creature. When it is understood that Christ is not a person, but the living Idea back of every person, we shall understand what it means to be resurrected with Christ. When we learn that the Christ is the eternal son of God in every son of man, we shall judge man, not by the sight of our eyes, but according to Truth.
When Simon saw in Jesus the Divinity which animated and actuated him he said of that Divinity, “Thou are the Christ, the son of the Living God,” and when Jesus saw in Simon the Divinity which perceived Itself mirrored in himself he said, “Henceforth thy name shall be called Peter.” It was the mutual recognition of the “firstborn” in each. If we will but remember that Universal Mind is the Father, we shall have no difficulty in accepting the Christ as the Idea of Universal sonship, of which we are individual expressions. Like drops of the ocean, which possess all the qualities and properties of the ocean, each individual is a distinct manifestation of the Christ-Idea. The Christ-Idea may be likened to the hub of a mighty wheel through which runs the supporting axle, and out from which extend numberless spokes.
If we can think of the Universal Divine Mind, or God, as the supporting axle which underlies and carries all creation forward and the hub, or Christ, as that without which neither axle nor spokes could properly function, we shall be able to understand our own place in the creative plan. From the least unto the greatest, each of us is a spoke in the wheel of eternal progress, but until we realize this we are thinking of ourselves as that part of the spoke which is nearest the tire. At this outer extremity we feel the painful pressure of a too close contact with the earth. One day at this end of the spoke of ourselves we are looking up into the heavens and hoping for better things, the next we are ground in the dust again. It is a series of ups and downs with us always until we learn to think of ourselves as the end of the spoke which is firmly fixed in the hub.
This may be a poor analogy, but it conveys the idea that man’s refuge from the discords and diseases on the circumference of life is in learning to find his Center in Christ, the hub of the universe, and resting in Christ as Christ rests on God, the supporting Axle of all creation. When we can do this we shall know what it means to be One with the Father. We shall no longer believe in two lives, a physical one which ends at death, and a spiritual one which can never end, for we shall know that, like the spoke in the hub, and the hub on the axle, our “life is hid with Christ in God,” secure from all harm and unconquerable by death.
The End