Contents
Foreword
Finding the Christ in Ourselves
Neither Do I Condemn Thee
In His Name
Loose Him and Let Him Go
All Sufficiency in All Things
God’s Hand
If Thou Knewest
Trusting and Resting
The Spoken Word
Unadulterated Truth
Oneness with God
FOREWORD
Responding to the oft-repeated requests of many friends who have been helped by reading the various booklets and magazine articles of the author, it has seemed best to publish them all under one cover as a more convenient way for readers to have the helps always at hand. The papers which make up this volume have been written from time to time as a result of practical daily experience. In none of them is there anything occult or mysterious; neither has there been any attempt at literature. Each number is so plain and simple that “a wayfarer though a fool need not err therein.”
In revising the articles herein contained there have been a few nonessential changes; yet the Principle and its application remain the same. Truth is that which is so, and it can never change. Every true statement here is as true and as workable today as it was when these papers were written. We ask no one to believe that which is here written simply because it is presented as Truth. “Prove all things” for yourself, for it is perfectly possible to prove every statement in this book. Every one has been proven before it was written. No book or author can solve another’s problem for him. Each must work out his own salvation. Here are some effectual rules, suggestions and helps thereto; but results to oneself all depend on how faithfully and persistently one uses the helps given.
Christ, the Anointed. So each one of us has two regions of being—one the fleshly, mortal part, which is always feeling its weakness and insufficiency in all things, always saying, “I can’t;” and then at the very center of our being there is a something which, in our highest moments, knows itself more than conqueror over all things; it always says, “I can, and I will.” It is the Christ-child, the Son of God, the Anointed in us. “Call no man your father on earth,” said Jesus, “for One is your Father which is in heaven.”
The author is grateful for the many words of appreciation which have come to her from time to time. These words are encouraging to one who is trying to solve her own life’s problems, as you are trying to solve yours, by the teachings of the Master.
“Lessons in Truth,” because of their effective helpfulness, have been sought for and published in five languages besides in embossed point for the blind. Let us hope that this book now sent forth with the same object of being a practical living help in daily life,
may meet the same fate. H. E. C.
January 1, 1916.
FINDING THE CHRIST IN OURSELVES
Throughout all His teachings, Jesus tried to show those who listened to Him, how He was related to the Father, and to teach them that they were related to the same Father in exactly the same way. Over and over again He tried in different ways to explain to them that God lived within them, that He was a “God of the living and not of the dead.” And never once did He assume to do anything as of Himself, always saying: “Of mine own self I can do nothing. The Father that dwelleth in me. He doeth the works.” But it was very hard then for people to understand, just as it is very hard for us to understand today, There were in the person of Jesus two distinct regions.
There was the fleshly, mortal part which was Jesus, the son of man; then there was the central, living, real part which was Spirit, the Son of God — that was the Christ, the Anointed. So each one of us has two regions of being — one the fleshly, mortal part, which is always feeling its weakness and insufficiency in all things, always saying, “I can’t;” and then at the very center of our being there is a something which, in our highest moments, knows itself more than conqueror over all things; it always says, “I can, and I will.” It is the Christ-child, the Son of God, the Anointed in us. “Call no man your father on earth,” said Jesus, “for One is your Father which is in heaven.”
He who created us did not make us and set us off apart from Himself, as a workman makes a table or a chair and puts it away as something completed and only to be returned to the maker when it needs repairing. Not at all. God not only created us in the beginning, but He is the very Fountain of Life ever abiding within us, from which Fountain constantly springs up new life to re-create these mortal bodies. He is the ever- abiding Intelligence which fills and renews our minds. His creatures would not exist a moment were He to be or could He be separated from them. “Ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them and walk in them.”
Let us suppose a beautiful fountain which is supplied from some hidden, but inexhaustible source. At its center it is full of strong, vigorous life bubbling up continually with great activity; while out around the circumference the water is so nearly motionless as to have become impure and covered with scum. This exactly represents man. He is composed of a substance infinitely more subtle, more real than water. “We are also His offspring.” Man is the offspring—or the springing forth into visibility—of God the Father. At the center he is pure Spirit, made in the image and likeness of the Father, substance of the Father, one with the Father, fed and renewed continually from the inexhaustible Good which is the Father. “In Him we live, move and have our being.” At the circumference, where stagnation has taken place (which is man’s body), there is not much that looks God-like in any way. We get our eyes fixed on the circumference, or external of our being. We lose consciousness of the indwelling, ever active, unchanging God at the center, and we see ourselves sick, weak and in every way miserable. It is not until we learn to live at the center, and to know that we have power to radiate from that center this unceasing, abundant life, that we are well and strong and powerful.
Jesus kept His eyes away from the external altogether, and kept His thoughts at the central part of His being, which was the Christ. “Judge not according to appearances,” He said, that is, according to the external, “but judge righteous judgment,” according to the real truth, or from the Spirit. In Jesus, the Christ, or the Central Spark which was God, the same as lives in each of us today, was drawn forth to show itself perfectly over and above the body, or fleshly man. He did all his mighty works not because He was given some greater or different power from that which God has given us—not because He was in some different way a Son of God and we only children of God—but just because this same Divine Spark which the Father has implanted in every child born, had been fanned into a bright flame by His prenatal influences, early surroundings, and by His own later efforts in holding Himself in constant conscious communion with the Father, the Source of all love, life and power.
To be tempted does not mean to have things come to you which, however much they may affect others, do not at all affect you because of some superiority in you to them. It means to really be tried, to suffer and to have to make effort to resist. Paul speaks of Jesus as “one tempted in all points like as we are.” And Jesus himself confessed to having been tempted when He said to His disciples, “Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations” (Luke 22:28). The humanity of the Nazarene “suffered being tempted,” or tried, just as much as you and I suffer today because of temptations and trials, and in exactly the same way.
We know that during His public ministry Jesus spent hours of every day alone with God; and none of us know what He went through in all the years of His early manhood—just as you and I are doing today—in overcoming the mortal, His fleshly desires, His doubts and fears, until He came into the perfect recognition of this indwelling Presence, this “Father in me,” to whom He ever ascribed the credit of all His wonderful works. He had to learn as we are having to learn; He had to hold fast as we are having today to hold fast; He had to try over and over again to overcome as we are doing, or else He was not “tempted in all points like as ye are.”
We must all recognize, I think, that it was the Christ within which made Jesus what He was; and our power now to help ourselves and to help others, lies in our getting to comprehend the truth, for it is a truth whether we realize it or not, that this same Christ lives within us as it lived in Jesus. It is the part of Himself which God has put within us, and which ever lives there with an inexpressible love and desire to spring to the circumference of our being, or to our consciousness, as our sufficiency in all things. “The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; He will save [or He wills to save]; He will rejoice over thee with joy; He will rest in His love; He will joy over thee with singing” (Zeph. 3:17). This Christ within us is the “well beloved Son” the same as it was in Jesus. It is the “I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect,” of which Jesus spoke.
In all this we would detract nothing from Jesus. He is still our Savior in that He went through suffering unutterable, through the perfect crucifixion of self, that He might lead us to God; that He might show us the way out of our sin, sickness and trouble; that He might manifest the Father to us, and teach us how this same Father loves us and lives in us. We love Jesus and must ever love Him with a love which is greater than all others, and to prove our love would follow His teachings and life closely. In no other way can we do this so perfectly as by trying to get at the real meaning of all that He said, and let the Father work through us as He did through Him, our perfect Elder Brother and Savior.
In speaking, Jesus sometimes spoke from the mortal part of Him, but he lived so almost wholly in the Christ part of Himself, so consciously in the center of His being, where the very essence of the Father was bubbling up in ceaseless activity, that He usually spoke from that part.
When He said, “Come unto Me, and I will give you rest,” He could not have meant come unto His personal, mortal self, for He knew of the millions of men and women who could never reach Him. He was then speaking from the Christ self of Him, meaning not “Come unto me, Jesus,” but “Come unto the Christ.” Nor did He mean, “Come unto the Christ living in me,” for comparatively few could ever do that. But He said, “The words I speak are not mine, but the Father’s in Me.” Then it was the Father saying not “Come unto Jesus,” but “Come unto Me;” that is, “Come up out of the mortal part of you where all is sickness and sorrow and trouble, into the Christ part where I dwell, and it will give you rest. Come up into the realization that you are One with the Father, that you are surrounded and filled with Divine Love, that there is nothing in the universe real but the good, and that all good is yours, and it will give you rest.”
“No man cometh unto the Father but by me,” means not that God is a stern Father whom we must coax and conciliate by coming to Him through Jesus, His kinder, more easily entreated Son. Did not Jesus say, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father”? or in other words, As I am in love and gentleness and accessibility, so is the Father. These words mean that no man can come to the Father except through the Christ part of himself. You cannot come around through some other person or by any outside way. Another may teach you how to come, and assure you of all that is yours if you do come, but you must retire within your own soul, find the Christ there and look to the Father through the Son for whatever you want.
Jesus was always trying to get the minds of the people away from His personality, and to fix them on the Father in Him as the source of all His power. And when toward the last they were clinging so to His mortal self, because their eyes had not yet been opened to understand about the Christ within their own souls, He said, “It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away the Comforter will not come;” that is, if He remained where they could keep looking to his personality all the time, they would never know that the same Spirit of Truth and Power lived within themselves.
There is a great difference between a Christian life and a Christ life. A Christian life is following the teachings of Jesus, with the idea of God and Christ being wholly outside of us, to be called upon but not always to answer. A Christ life is the same following of Jesus’ teachings with the knowledge of God’s indwelling presence, which is always Life,
Love and Power within us now ready and waiting to flow forth abundantly, aye, lavishly into our consciousness, and through us unto others the moment we open ourselves to it and trustfully expect it. One is a following after Christ, which is beautiful and good so far as it goes, but is always very imperfect; the other is letting Christ, the perfect Son of God, be manifested through us. One is expecting to be saved sometime from sin, sickness and trouble; the other is knowing we are in reality saved now from all these things through this indwelling Christ, and by faith we affirm it until the evidence is manifested in our bodies.
Simply believing that Jesus died on the cross to appease God’s wrath never did or can save anyone from present sin, sickness or want, and was not what Jesus taught. “The devils believe and tremble,” we are told, but they are not saved thereby. There must be something more than this—a living touch of some kind, a sort of intersphering of our own souls with the Divine Source of all good and giving. We are to have faith in the Christ, believe that the Christ lives in us, and is in us God’s Son; that this indwelling One has power to save and make us whole; aye, more, that He has made us whole already. For did not the Master say, “Whatsoever things ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye receive [present tense], and ye shall have them”?
If, then, you are manifesting sickness, you are to ignore the seeming—which is the external, or circumference of the pool where the water is stagnant and the scum has arisen—and speaking from the center of your being, say: “This body is the temple of the living God; the Lord is now in his holy temple; Christ in me is my life, Christ is my health, Christ is my strength, and Christ is perfect; therefore, I am now perfect because He dwelleth in me as perfect life, health, strength.” Say the words with all earnestness, trying to realize what you are saying, and almost immediately the perennial Fountain of Life at the center of your being will begin to bubble up and continue with rapidly increasing activity until new life will radiate through pain, sickness, sores, all diseases, to the surface, and your body will show forth the perfect life of Christ.
Suppose it is money you need. Take the thought, “Christ is my abundant supply (not supplier). He is here within me now, and greatly desires to manifest Himself as my supply. His desires are fulfilled now.” Do not let your thoughts run off into how He is going to do it, but just hold steadily to the thought of the supply here and now, taking your eyes off from every other source, and He will surely honor your faith by manifesting Himself as your supply a hundredfold more abundantly than you have asked or thought. So also with “whatsoever things ye desire.” But remember the earnest words of James, the apostle: “He that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.
Let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord.”
Nowhere in the New Testament is the idea conveyed that Jesus Christ came that there might be after death a remission of the penalty for sin. That idea is a pure fiction of man’s ignorant, carnal mind of later date. In many places in the biblical record reference is made to “remission of sins;” and Jesus himself, according to Luke’s record, said that “repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations.” “Sins,” in the original text, does not mean crime deserving punishment. It means any mistake or failure which brings suffering. Christ came that there might be remission or cessation of sins, of wrongs, of mistakes, which were inevitably followed by suffering. He came to bring “good tidings of great joy to all people.” Tidings of what? Tidings of salvation. When? Where? Not salvation from punishment after death, but salvation from the mistakes and failures here and now. He came to show us that God, our Creator and Father, longs with yearnings unutterable to be to us, through the Christ, the abundance of all things we need or desire. But our part is to choose to have Him, and after we have chosen to “hold fast till He comes.” Not till He comes after death, but just to hold steadily to our faith until He manifests Himself. For instance, in thus looking to Him for health, when by an act of your will you stop looking to any material source (and this is not always easy to do), and declare the Christ in you to be the only life of the body, and it always perfect life, it needs but that you hold steadfastly, without wavering, to the thought in order to become well.
And when once you have put any matter into the hands of this indwelling, ever-present Christ, in whom there is at all times an irrepressible desire to spring to our rescue and to do all things for us, to work out, do not dare to take it back into your mortal hands again to work out for yourself, for by so doing you simply put off the time of His bringing it to pass. All you have to do in the matter is to hold to the thought, “It is done. It is manifest now.” This Divine Presence is our sufficiency in all things, and will materialize itself as such in whatever we need or desire if we but trustfully expect it.
This matter of trusting the Christ within to do all things for us—realizing that we are one with Him and that unto Him is given all power —is not something which comes to any of us spontaneously. It comes by persistent effort on our part. We begin by determining we will trust Him as our present deliverance, as our health, our riches, our wisdom, our all, and we keep on by a labored effort until we form a kind of spiritual habit. No habit bursts fullgrown into our lives, but every one comes from a succession of little acts. Be sure when you see anyone working the works of Christ, healing the sick, loosing the bound, and so forth, by the word of Truth spoken in faith, that this faith did not jump unto them from some outside source all at once; but if we knew the facts, we should probably know of days and nights when with clenched fists and set teeth they have held fast to the Christ within, “trusting where they could not trace,” until they found themselves possessing the very “faith of the Son of God.”
If we want this Father within, which is the Christ, to manifest Himself as all things through us, we must learn to keep the mortal of us still —to still all its doubts and fears and false beliefs—and to hold rigidly to the “Christ only.” In His name we may speak the words of healing, of peace and deliverance to others, but as Jesus said of Himself, so we must also say of ourselves, “Of mine own self [that is, of the mortal], I can do nothing; the Father in me, he doeth the works.” He is the ever-present Power to overcome all things, be they sickness, weakness, ignorance or whatever. We claim this Power, or bring it into our consciousness where it is of practical use, by declaring over and over again that it is ours already. Saying, and trying to realize what we are saying, “Christ is my wisdom, hence I know truth,” will in a short time make us understand spiritual things better than months of study will do. Saying, “Christ is my strength, I cannot be weak or frail,” will make us strong enough for any emergency.
Remember, we do not begin by feeling these things at first, but by earnestly and faithfully saying them, and acting as though they were so—and this is the faith which brings the Power into manifestation.
The Christ lives in us always. God, the Creative Energy, sent His Son first, even before the body was formed, and He ever abides within, “the firstborn of every creature.” But it is with us as it was with the ship on the tempestuous sea after the storm arose. Jesus being in the vessel did not keep it from rocking or the angry waves from beating against it, for He was asleep. It was only after He was awakened and brought out to manifest His power that the sea became still and the danger was over.
The Christ in us has been there all the time, but we have not known it, and so our little ships have been tossed about by sickness and poverty and distrust until we have seemed almost lost. I, the true spiritual self of me, am one with this Christ. You, the true spiritual self of you, are one with this Christ. The true self of every person is the child of God, made in His image. “Beloved, now are we sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him.” Now, already, are we the sons, and when He shall appear, that is, not when sometime after the transition called death, He, some great, glorious Being, shall burst upon our view, but when we have learned to still the mortal of us and let the Father manifest Himself at our surface, through the indwelling Christ, then we shall be like Him, for He only will be visible through us.
“Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God.” We are not simply reflections or images of God, but expressions (from ex, out of, and premere, pressum, to press or force), hence a forcing out of God, the AllGood, the All-Perfect. We are projections of the Invisible Presence into visibility. God made man one with the Father, even as Jesus was; and just in proportion as we recognize this and claim our birthright, the Father in us will be manifested to the world.
Most of us have an innate shrinking from saying, “Thy will be done.” Because of false teaching and from associations we have believed that this prayer, if answered, would take away from us all that gives us joy or happiness. Surely nothing could be further from the truth. Oh, how we have tried to crowd the broad love of God into the narrow limits of man’s mind! The grandest, most generous, loving father that ever lived is but the least bit of God’s fatherhood manifested through the flesh. God’s will for us means more love, more purity, more power, more joy in our lives every day.
No study of spiritual things or material, no effort though it be superhuman on our part, could ever begin to make of us the grand, Godlike creatures, showing forth the same limitless soul which Jesus showed, as just praying continually the one prayer, “Thy will be done in me,” for the Father’s will is to manifest His perfect Being through us. “Among the creatures one is better than another, according as the Eternal Good manifesteth itself and worketh more in one than in another. Now that creature in which Eternal Good most manifesteth itself, shineth forth, worketh, is most known and loved, is the best; and that wherein the Eternal Good is least manifested, is least of all creatures” (Theologia Germanica). “It pleased the Father that in Christ should all fullness dwell”—fullness of love, fullness of life, fullness of joy, of power, of All Good. “And ye are complete in Him.” Christ in us, one with us, so we may boldly and with confidence say, “In Christ all things are mine.” Declaring it will make it manifest.
But above all things else learn to keep to the Christ within yourself, not that within somebody else. Let the Father manifest through you in his own way, though it differ from that of every other child of his. Heretofore even the most spiritually enlightened of us have been mere pygmies, because we have by the action of our conscious thought limited the Divine manifestation to make it conform to the manifestation through someone else. God will make of us spiritual giants if we will but take away all limits and give him an opportunity.
“Although it be good and profitable that we should learn and know what great and good men have wrought and suffered, and how God hath dealt with them, and wrought in them and through them, yet it were a thousand times better that we should in ourselves learn and perceive and understand who we are, how and what our own life is, what God is doing in us, and what he will have us do.” (Theologia Cermanica.)
All the blessings promised in the twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy are to those who “listen diligently to the voice of the Lord thy God,” those who seek the inner voice in their own souls, and learn to listen to and obey what it says to them individually, regardless of what it says to any other person, no matter how far he or she may be advanced in spiritual understanding. This voice will not lead you exactly as it leads any other in all the wide world; but in the infinite variety there will be perfect harmony, for there is but “one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.” Emerson says, “Every soul is not only the inlet, but may become the outlet of all there is in God.” We can only be this by keeping ourselves consciously in open communication with God without the intervention of any other soul between Him and us. “The anointing ye have received abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you.” “But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things.” “Howbeit, when He, the Spirit of truth is come, He will guide you into all truth; for He shall not speak of Himself; for whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak; and He will show you things to come.”
It needs but the one other little word, now, firmly and persistently held in the mind, to bring into manifestation through us the highest ideal we are capable of forming; aye, far higher, for does it not say, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts”? And this manifestation through us will be the fulfillment of God’s ideal instead of our limited, mortal ideal, when we learn to let the Spirit lead and to hold our conscious minds to the now. You want to manifest the perfect Christ. Affirm with all your heart, and soul, and strength that you do so manifest now; that you manifest health, and strength, and love, and truth, and power.
Let go the notion of being or doing anything in future. God knows no time but the Eternal Now. You can never know any other time, for there is no other. You cannot live an hour or ten minutes in the future. You cannot live it until you reach it, and then it becomes the Now. Saying or believing salvation and deliverance are to be, will forever and through all the eternal ages keep them, like a will-o’-the-wisp, just a little ahead of you, always to be reached but never quite realized.
“Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation,” said Jesus. He said nothing about our being saved from our distresses after death, but always taught a present salvation. God’s work is finished in us now. All the fullness abides in this indwelling Christ now. And whatever we persistently declare is done now, is manifested now, we will see fulfilled.
NEITHER DO I CONDEMN THEE
Hitherto few of us have had any idea of the destructive potency of condemnatory words or thoughts. Even among Truth students who know the power of every spoken word— and because they know it so much greater is that power—there is a widespread tendency to condemn the churches and all orthodox Christians, to criticize and speak disparagingly of students of different schools (as though there could be but one school of Christ), and even to discuss among themselves the failings of individuals who, in ways differing from their own, are earnestly seeking to find the Christ.
Let us stop and see what we are doing. Why should we condemn the churches? Did not Jesus “continue to teach in the synagogues”? He did not withdraw from the church and speak of it contemptuously. Nay, but remained in it, trying to show people wherein they were making mistakes, trying to lead them up to a higher view of God as their Father, and to stimulate them to more truly righteous lives. If He found hypocrisy in the churches, He did not content Himself with saying, “I am holier than thou,” but He remained with them and taught them a more excellent way, that the inside of the platter must be made clean.
Is the servant greater than his Lord? Shall not we, whom the Father has called into such marvelous light, rather help those sitting in darkness, even in the churches, than to utter one word of condemnation against them? A loyal son does not condemn his father and mother because in their day and generation, with their then limitations, they did not grow up to his present standard. We do not condemn the tallow candle or old stage coach because we have grown into a knowledge of electricity and steam power. We only see that out of the old grew the new, and that the old was necessary to the new.
God, in His eternal purposes, is carrying every living soul on toward a higher knowledge of the truth, a more perfect evolvement of himself through that soul. If some are being pushed on into the light of truth and consequent liberty more rapidly than others, shall they turn and rend those who are walking more slowly but just as surely on toward the perfect light? Nay, nay; but, praising God for the marvelous revelation of Himself within our own souls, let us lift up rather than condemn any who are struggling toward the light.
Let us become workers together with God, doers of the law, not judges.
Let no soul who has been born into a knowledge of God ever dare again to speak or even think disparagingly of or to any who seemingly are behind him in spiritual growth, lest by so doing he be found working against God, who is Infinite Wisdom as well as Love.
Jesus said to the disciples, after they had come into the consciousness of their oneness with the Father by “receiving the Holy Ghost,” “Whosesoever sins ye remit, they shall be remitted unto them, but whosesoever sins ye retain, they shall be retained.” O, with what mighty meaning these words are fraught in this new light which God has given us! See how our speaking, aye, our very thinking of the sins or mistakes of others fastens these mistakes upon them as a reality.
Strong, positive thoughts of condemnation sent to one by any person will strike that one with the physical sensation of having been hit in the pit of the stomach with a cobblestone. If he does not immediately rouse himself to throw it off—as he easily can by looking into his Father’s face and saying over and over until it becomes reality to himself, “Thou God approvest me”—it will destroy for the time being his consciousness of perfect life, and he will fall into a belief of weakness and utter discouragement quicker than from any other cause.
We read that the eyes of our God are too pure to behold iniquity. An absolutely pure person sees not licentiousness in another. A wholly true person sees no falsity in another. Perfect love responds not to envy, fear or jealousy in another. It “thinketh no evil.” Jesus said, “The prince of this world cometh and findeth nothing in me”—that is, nothing to respond to anything in himself. So, unless there is something within us which responds to sin in others, we shall not see it in them. “By thy words thou art condemned, and by thy words thou art justified.” The moment we begin to criticize or condemn another we prove ourselves guilty of the same fault we are giving recognizance to.
All condemnation springs from looking at personality. Personality (Latin, persona, a mask) is the outward appearance, not the real self. That any of us utters a word of condemnation of another is the surest proof that we ourselves are yet living largely in the external of our being, the personality; that we have not yet risen at all beyond the plane of those to whom the pure Nazarene said, “Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone.” Just in proportion as we return unto God, as we withdraw from the external to the within of ourselves, keeping our thoughts centered on Him who is perfect, will we lose sight of personality, of divisions and differences, and become conscious of our oneness with each other and with God.
We are one always and forever, whether we realize it or not. Knowing this, do you not see a new meaning in the words, “Judge not, that ye be not judged; for with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged”?
“God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that through him the world might be saved.” And yet when Philip said to Jesus, “Show us the Father,” Jesus replied, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” Then, if God does not condemn, shall we, dare we, even in the smallest things? To each of us the Master says, “What is that to thee? Follow thou me.”
It is not while we are looking at the imperfect either in ourselves or our brother, but while we are “beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”
IN HIS NAME
Did it ever occur to you that you are almost daily taking God’s name in vain? Unless you are very watchful, very careful, you are doing so.
When God called Moses to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt, “Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name?
What shall I say unto them?
“And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you. . . .
“This is my name forever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.”
I AM, then, is God’s name. Every time you say / am sick, / am weak, / am discouraged, are you not speaking God’s name in vain, falsely?
I AM cannot be sick; I AM cannot be weary, or faint, or powerless; for I AM is All Life,
All-Power, All-Good.
“I Am,” spoken with a downward tendency, is always false, always “in vain.” The seventh commandment says, “Take not the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain.” And Jesus said, “By thy words thou shall be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.”
If you speak the “I Am” falsely, you will get the result of false speaking. If you say, “I am sick,” you will get sickness; “I am poor,” you will get poverty; for the law is, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” “I Am,” spoken upward, toward the good, the true, is sure to out picture in visible good, in success, in happiness.
Does all this sound foolish to you? Do you doubt that such power goes with the speaking of that name? If so, just go alone, close your eyes, and in the depth of your own soul say over and over the words, “I AM.” Soon you will find your whole being filled with a sense of power which you never had before—power to overcome, power to accomplish, power to do all things.
I am, because Thou art. I am what Thou art. I am one with Thee, O Thou Infinite I AM! I am good. I am holy. I am well. I am, because Thou art.
Says the Psalmist, “The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous runneth into it and are safe.” They who think rightly about the power of the I Am, spoken upward, just simply have to run into it, as into a strong tower or fortress, and they are safe.
Did you ever go into a meeting where the drift of all the “testimonies” given was the / Am spoken upward—”I am happy to be here,” “I am glad I am a Christian,” “I am hoping and trusting in God,” etc.? Attend such a gathering, and almost before you know it, you will find yourself lifted entirely above all your troubles and anxieties. You leave such a meeting with a feeling of joy and lightness, and a consciousness that you have the power to overcome all the home troubles and worries; and you go, singing and confident, toward the very fire which, an hour before, seemed about to consume you.
Dear friends, you who at times feel almost discouraged, you who are being continually “sand-papered” by the petty worries and anxieties of life, just try for one week always saying the I Am upward, toward the good, and see what the result will be. Instead of saying, “I am afraid it will rain,” say, “I hope it will not rain;” instead of “I am sorry,” say, “I would have been glad had it been so and so;” instead of saying, “I am weak and cannot accomplish,” say, “7 Am, because Thou art; I can accomplish, because / Am.”
You will be astonished at the result.
The Christ, speaking through Jesus, said to the Jews who were boasting of being descendants of Abraham: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am.” And Paul, writing to Timothy, said: “Let everyone who nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.” Let everyone who speaks the / Am keep it separated from iniquity, or from false speaking. Let it be spoken always upward, never downward.
Jesus also said, “Whatsoever ye ask in my name”—that is, in the name I Am—”He will give it you.” Whenever you desire—not supplicate, but desire, speaking the “I Am” upward—He will give what you ask. Every time you say, “I am happy,” you ask in His name for happiness. Every time you say, “I am unhappy,” you ask in His name for unhappiness. “Hitherto,” He said to the disciples, “ye have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.” Is not this just the trouble? Hitherto what have we been asking “in His name” ? Have we been asking for health or sickness, for happiness or unhappiness, for riches or poverty, by the manner of our speaking the I Am?
Have we spoken it upward, toward the good, or downward toward the not good? That which we have been receiving will tell the story. Jesus said if they asked rightly in His name, their “joy would be full.” Is your joy full? If not, then give heed to your asking.
The disciples healed “in the name of Jesus Christ.” In the name of Jesus Christ is in the name of the I Am.
Suppose a messenger is sent out from the executive mansion at Washington, to do certain things in the name of the President of the United States. These three little words, “In his name,” invest the messenger with the full power of the President, as far as the closing of that service is concerned.
“Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks unto God the Father,” said Paul, in writing to the Colossians. Whatever we do heartily and sincerely in the name of Christ or the I Am carries with it the power of the I Am to accomplish—a power from a higher source behind us, as the presidential messenger receives his power from a higher source. All power is given unto Christ. Doing all things “in His name” puts aside our mortal personality and lets the Christ do the work. When Moses, with a sense of his personal insufficiency for so great a work, shrank from it, saying, “O my Lord, I am not eloquent, but I am slow of speech and of a slow tongue, the Lord said unto him, Who hath made man’s mouth? Have not I, the Lord? Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shall say.”
In Edward Everett Male’s story, “In His Name,” a story of the Waldenses seven hundred years ago, it is no fairy tale that invests the words, “In His Name,” with such magic power. This little password carried all who went on errands of good safely through the most dangerous places. Locked doors were readily opened at the sound of the words. Soldier, sentry, officers of the guard, all gave way respectfully and instantly before it. Men were willing to leave their homes at a moment’s notice and plunge into the greatest hardships “for the love of Christ and in His name.”
Ministering today “in His name,” I say unto you, troubled one, anxious one, weary one, Be strong! Be of good courage! Be hopeful! The world—the mortal—is overcome already. The Christ, the I Am, speaking through Jesus, has spoken it, saying, “I have overcome the world.”
“To him that overcometh”—that is, to him who recognizes that already the world is overcome by the I Am, that there is nothing in all the universe but the / Am—”will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and on that stone a new name which no man knoweth, saving him who receives it.”
“Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out; and I”will write upon him the name of my God,” even the name I AM.
LOOSE HIM AND LET HIM GO
One of the natural tendencies of the mortal mind is toward proselyting.
The moment we believe something to be true we begin to try to convert others to our belief. In our eagerness we forget that truth is kaleidoscopic in its forms. We learn to say, with some degree of realization, “God worketh in me to will and to do of his good pleasure,” but we quite forget that the same God is working equally in our brother “to will and to do.”
Among the wise sayings of the ancient philosopher, Epictetus, we find something like this: “Doth a man bathe himself quickly? Then say not wrongly, but quickly. Doth he drink much wine? Then say not wrongly, but much. For whence do you know if it were ill done till you have understood his opinion of it? . . . Remember that he probably does it believing that it is right and meet for him to do so. It is not possible then that he can follow the thing that appears to you, but the thing that appears to him.”
Every living soul has an inherent right to freedom of choice, a right to live out his life in his own way. One of the surest signs that a person is no longer in bondage himself, is his willingness to give others their freedom, to allow others the privilege of seeking and finding God as they will.
Our great basic statement is, “All is Good, because All is God.” In other words, God is the only Intelligence, the only Life at the center of every form of existing life. We say that we believe the highest manifestation of God is in man; that God ever abides at the center of man, of all mankind, and is always in process of manifesting more and more of Himself, Pure Intelligence, Perfect Love, through man’s consciousness until man shall come to be consciously one with the Father in all things.
Do you really believe this fundamental statement? Then where is there any cause for the anxiety which you feel about those you love who are not, as you say, “in the Truth”?
If we truly believed that “All is Good” we would not be troubled ever about those who apparently are going all wrong. They may be going wrong according to our limited conception of right and wrong. But my brother, sister, you are not your brother’s keeper. He that will redeem, aye, he that hath already redeemed your brother, liveth within him. The Christ who ever lives at the center of every soul “neither slumbers nor sleeps.” God worketh, or as the original has it, “God is working effectually to perform” in your brother to bring him to Himself just as much as He is working in you and me. And we have absolutely nothing to fear about the eventual success of this Worker. He never fails.
You have perhaps come to the flowering or the fruiting season in your growth out of the darkness of sense belief into the light of spiritual understanding. It is blessed and beautiful to be where you are, and it is hard to human belief to see those you love just barely showing their heads above the earth of sin and mistake; or harder still to see them daily going down deeper into the earth of an animal life, farther away from your conception of the good than ever before.
But just here is the place for us to cling faithfully and trustingly to our basic statement. “We are saved by hope; but hope that is seen is not hope,” said Paul. Faith is not sight. Is our basic statement, “All is good,” founded on principle or on evidence of the senses? If on principle, then it is immutable, unchangeable. And God is just as surely abiding at the center of your loved husband or son, working in him, when he is drinking or going down as when he is coming up.
God is just as much the life of the seed when it is being planted in the dark earth where, to the human sense, it is dead and all is lost, as He is the life of the new leaf which a few days later bursts into sight. In fact it is because God is there at the center working in the stillness, unseen, and not at all because of the fussy, noisy outside work which you and I do, that the seed ever comes forth at all into newness of life.
“Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (John 12:24).
Thus it would seem that the dying, the failure, the going down of the old is a necessary step in all true salvation. Every soul must go down till he strikes his own level, his own self, before there can be any real growth. We may seem to hold another up for a while, but eventually he must walk alone. The time of his walking alone with his own indwelling Christ, his own true self, will depend largely upon our letting go of him. No one will seek anything higher than he is today until he feels the need of something higher. Your dear ones must have the liberty to live out their own lives, and you must let them, or else you are the one who puts off the day of their salvation.
“But,” says some heart that is aching over the error ways of a loved one, “would you not help anyone? Would you not run after them and urge them continually to turn into the right way?
Yes and no. I would gladly, joyfully help anyone when he wants help. But I could not urge anyone to leave his own light and walk by my light. Nor would I, like an over-fond mother, pick up another and try to carry him in my arms by continually “treating” him.
A mother may—and many do mentally and morally, if not physically—through her false conception of love, carry her child until he is twenty years old, lest he, not knowing how to walk, fall and bump his nose a few times. But if she does this until he is a grown man, what will he do? He will turn and rend her, because she has stolen from him his inherent right to become a strong, self-reliant man. She has interposed herself between him and the power within him which was waiting from his birth to be strength and sufficiency for him in all things. She should have placed him on his own feet, made him know that there was something in himself that could stand, encouraged and steadied him, and so helped him to be self-reliant and independent.
Hundreds of anxious fathers and mothers, sisters and wives say, “Ah! But I love this one so I cannot stand still and see him rushing on to an inevitable suffering.”
Yes, you love him. But I tell you it takes an infinitely greater, more God-like love to stand still and see your child burn his hand a little, that he may gain self-knowledge, than it does to be a bond-slave to him, ever on the alert to prevent the possibility of his learning through a little suffering. Are you equal to this larger love—to the love which does not hold itself on the qui vive to interpose its nagging bodily presence between the dear ones and their own indwelling Lord who is “with them always”? Having come yourself to a knowledge of the mighty truth that “God is all and in all,” have you the moral courage to “be still and know”? to take off all restrictions and rules from others, and let the God within them each one, grow them as He will; and, trusting Him to do it in the right way, keep yourself from all anxiety in the matter?
When Jesus preached of a glorious freedom from suffering through a “kingdom within,” He often interspersed His preaching with the words, “Let him hear that hath ears to hear.” In other words, the gospel message of deliverance is for all who are ready for it. Let him who has come to where he wants it, take it.
No one has any right to coerce another to accept his ideal. Every person has a right to his own ideal until he desires to change it.
God is leading your friend by a way you do not and cannot know. It is a safe and sure way; it is the shortest and only way. It is the Christ way; the within way. “I am the door,” says the Christ within every man’s own soul. “If any man enter in by me,” that is, by way of the Christ in himself, “he shall be saved.”
Now you are trying to have your friend enter in through your door. He must enter in through his own Christ, his own desire, and you must let him alone to the workings of that indwelling One, if you want him to manifest Good.
“But,” you say, “is there nothing I can do when I see my husband, brother, friend, going down?”
Yes, there is something you can do, and a very effectual something, too.
“The sword of the Spirit is the Word.” You can, whenever you think of your friend, speak the word of freedom to him. You can alway and all ways “Loose him, and let him go;” not forgetting the letting him go is as important as the loosing him. You can tell him mentally that Christ lives within him, and makes him free, forever free; tell him that he manifests the Holy One wherever he goes and at all times, for there is nothing else to manifest. And then you see to it that you do not recognize any other manifestation than the Good in him.
It is written, “Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto him; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained.” Will you invariably speak the word of remission or loosing to your erring ones? Or will you bind them closer, tighter in the bondage which is breaking your own heart, by speaking the word of retention to them continually?
If you really want your friends to be free, there is but one way for you: “Loose them and let them go.” For it is the promise of the Father, through the Son, that “Whatsoever ye loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
ALL SUFFICIENCY IN ALL THINGS
There is that within every human being which is capable of being brought forth into the material everyday life of that person as the abundance of every good thing he may desire.
Here and there a soul who is consciously abiding in the secret place of the Most High, and being taught by the Spirit of Truth, dimly recognizes this and says, “The Holy Spirit abiding within us is able to do all things for us;” while occasionally a metaphysician, in whom the intuitional is largely developed, is beginning to apprehend it as a demonstrable truth, and, carefully avoiding all pious words, lest he be considered in the old rut of religious belief, he says, “The outer or visible man has no need which the inner or invisible man cannot supply.”
Let us not haggle over terms. There need be no schism. Each means the same thing. The only difference is in words. Each one is getting at the same truth in his own way, and eventually the two will clasp hands in unity, and see eye to eye.
This Spirit of the living God within us, fed ever from the All-Father fountain head, is not only the Giver of all good gifts, the Supplier of all supply, but it is the gift itself. We must come right up to this point. The Giver and the Gift are one.
God himself is the fulfillment—or the Substance which fills full—of every desire.
Truly our eyes have been holden until now in these later days we are coming to know of “God in His world;” of Him, the immanent creative Cause of all things, ever dwelling in man, ready and willing at any moment to recreate or renew our bodies and minds, or to manifest Himself through us as anything needed by us.
The certainty of this manifestation depends entirely upon our ability to recognize and accept this truth.
One recognizes God within as indwelling purity and holiness. To that one He is sanctification; and just in the proportion to the recognition and the trust with which this Divine Presence is regarded as immanent holiness does it spring forth into the outer everyday life of a man as holiness, so that even they who run may read a something more than human in him.
Another recognizes and accepts the God within himself as the life of his body; and instantly this Divine Life, always perfect, strong and vigorous, and always desiring with the mighty desire of Omnipotent Lave to manifest itself through somebody or something as perfection, begins to flow through his body from center to circumference until the entire body is charged with a fullness of life which is felt even by others who come in contact with him. This is Divine healing; and the time required for the process of complete healing depends, not upon any changeableness of God—for God knows no time but the eternal now—but entirely upon the ability of the person to recognize and trust the Power which works in him.
The one who recognizes the indwelling God as his holiness, but cannot mentally grasp any more truth, lives a holy, beautiful life, but perhaps lives it all through years of bodily disease and sickness. Another who recognizes the same immanent God as his health, and is made both holy and physically well by the recognition and acceptance, stops there, and wonders, when he is well and is living a life entirely unselfish and God-like, why he should always be poor, lacking even the bare necessities of life.
Oh, fools and slow of heart to believe! Can ye not see that this same indwelling God who is your holiness and your health is also your sustenance and support? Is He not our All Sufficiency in All Things? Is it not the natural impulse of the Divine Being to flow forth through us into all things, “whatsoever ye desire when ye pray”? Is there any limit except such as our poor human minds have set? Does He not say, “Every place that the sole of your foot shall rest upon, that have I given thee”? What does this mean? Is it not saying, “Whatsoever you dare to claim, that will I be to you”?
This Divine Energy is the substance (from sub—under, and stare—to stand), the real thing which stands under or within the visible or unreal of all things—food and clothing
as well as life and health.
How do we get holiness? Not by outside works of purifying ourselves, but by turning to the Holy Spirit within and letting it flow forth into our human nature until we become permeated with the Divine all through. How is perfect health through divine or spiritual healing obtained? Is it by looking to or trusting external efforts or appliances? Surely not; but rather by ceasing entirely from the without, and turning our thoughts and our faith to the Father in us.
How, then, are we to get our abundant supply—aye, even more than we can ask or think (for God gives not according to our need, but “according to His riches” we are told) ? “Acquaint now thyself with Him and be at peace; thereby shall good come unto thee,” saith our God. Cease to look to outside sources and turn within. “If thou return to the Almighty, thou shall be built up. Yea, the Almighty shall be thy defense, and thou shall have plenty of silver.” Be still and know that God —even the indwelling God, the Father in us— is our supply.
It is not enough to believe simply that God is our Supplier—the One who shall by His omnipotent power influence the mind of someone possessing an abundance to divide with us. This is limitation. God being our health means far more than God being our healer. God as our supply is infinitely more than God as our supplier.
When Elisha multiplied the widow’s oil, he did not, recognizing God simply as the Supplier, ask, and then for answer receive a few barrels of oil from some one over rich in that commodity and in whose heart the spirit of God was working. That would have been a good but a very limited way; for had the demand continued, in time not only the village but the whole country around would have been destitute of oil.
Elisha understood the Divine Law of working, and putting himself into harmony with it, God himself, the substance of all things, became manifest as the unlimited supply—a supply which could easily have flowed until this time had there been need and vessels enough.
Jesus’ increase of the loaves and fishes did not come up from the village in response to some silent word spoken by Him to a person having a quantity. He never recognized that He had any right to seek the over-possessions of another, even though He was going to use them to benefit others. In order to feed the multitude He did not reach out after that which belonged to any man, or even that which was already in manifestation. The extra supply was a new and increased manifestation of Divine Substance as bread and fish. So with the oil of Elisha, who was “a man with like passions as we.” In both these cases nothing came from without to them to supply the need, but the supply proceeded from “within outward.
This Divine Substance—call it God, Creative Energy, or whatever you will—is ever abiding within us, and stands ready today to manifest itself in whatever form you and I need or wish, just as it did in Elisha’s time. It is the same yesterday, today and forever. Our desire is the cup which shapes the form of its coming, and our trust—the highest form of faith—sets the time and degree.
Abundant supply by the manifestation of the Father in us, from within outward, is as much a legitimate outcome of the Christ life or spiritual understanding as is bodily healing.
The Word—or Spirit—is made flesh (or clothed with materiality) in both cases, and both are equally in God’s order. The law of “work-to-earn” is only a schoolmaster beating us with many stripes, breaking us into many pieces when we fall across it in our failures, just to bring us to Christ. “But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.” Then Christ—the Divine in us— becomes the fulfillment of the law.
“Labor not for the meat that perisheth,” said the Nazarene. Cease to work with the one object, viz., “for a living,” or for supply. Be forever free from the law of poverty and want, as you are from the law of sin and disease—through faith in Christ; that is, by taking this indwelling Christ, or Spirit, or Invisible Man as your abundant supply, and, looking to no other source, hold to it until it manifests itself as such. Recognize it. Reckon it. Be still and know it. Do not struggle and work and worry while you know it, but just be still. “Be still, and know that I am” what? Part of God? No. “Know that I am God”—all of God, Good, all of Good. I am Life. I am Health. I am Love. I am Supply. I am the Substance of all that human souls or bodies can need or want.
The law says, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.” The Gospel brings “glad tidings of great joy which shall be to all people.” The law says, Work out your salvation from sin, sickness and poverty. The Gospel says, Christ—the Father in you—is your salvation; have faith in Him. The law says, Work all you can and God will do the rest. The Gospel says, Free gift, not of works, lest any man should boast. The law is a way. Gospel, or Christ, the way, “Choose ye this day whom ye will serve.”
“But,” says someone, “will not such teaching—that our abundance is not at all dependent upon the labor of our hands or head— foster selfishness and indolence? Is it not a dangerous teaching to the masses?”
Jesus never thought the Gospel dangerous for the masses. It has not proven dangerous to teach that health is a free gift of God to His children—a gift which they need not labor for, but just recognize and accept.
Does anyone attempt to hide away from others, like a talent hidden deep in the earth, the new-born health which is God-manifest in response to recognition and faith? If he does, he soon finds that his health has disappeared; for selfishness and the consciousness of an indwelling God cannot both abide in the same heart.
Let not anyone for a moment suppose that he can use Gospel means for selfish ends. As well suppose he can go west by going east. A thousand times better that a millstone be hanged about his neck and he be drowned in the depths of the sea than to attempt to use God’s free gifts for selfish purposes. The divine abundance manifested through you is given you for ministry to others. You can neither receive it indolently nor retain it selfishly. If you attempt it, the flow of divine oil will be stayed.
In Christ, or in the consciousness of the indwelling Divine Spirit, we know that every man and woman is our father and mother, brother and sister; that nothing is our own, but all is God’s, because all is God.
And because we know this, we give—as we work—without thought or hope of return, because God flows through us to others. Our giving is our only safety-valve. Abundance is often a snare to those who know not God, the indwelling One, who is Love. But the abundance which is manifested from within outward is only the material clothing of perfect Love, and cannot ever bring selfishness. “The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and He addeth no sorrow with it.”
Will God, being manifest as our abundant supply, foster idleness? A thousand times, No! We will then more than ever be coworkers together with God. Wording but not laboring, working always for others. It is only labor when it is for self. Labor, not work, brings weariness, sorrow and sickness. Labor not for meat, that is, for any good to yourself. Working as God works does not weary, for then the current of unlimited Divine Life is always flowing through us anew to bless others.
“There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad,” but we must always keep the stream flowing from within—the source of its uprising—outward if it is to make glad.
When we work in harmony with Divine Law we have with us the whole force of the stream of living waters to carry us along.
Better than he knew spoke the poet when he said:
“Earth hath no sorrow Heaven cannot heal.”
Not the far-away heaven after death, when a whole lifetime has been spent in sorrow and trouble, but this “kingdom of heaven within you,” here, now, today. The mortal, human, earth part of you has no sorrow which cannot be healed, overcome, wiped out at once and forever by this ever indwelling Divine Spirit.
If any man would hasten the day of every man’s deliverance from all forms of human sorrow and want, let him at once begin to draw himself from outside sources and external warfare, and center his thoughts on Christ the Lord within himself.
“The Lord in the midst of thee is mighty.”
“Acquaint now thyself with Him and be at peace; thereby good shall come unto thee.”
“Prove me now and see if I will not pour out a blessing upon you so great that there shall not be room to receive it.”
Let us prove him. “Commune with your own heart upon your bed and be still.” Be still and know. Be still and trust. Be still and expect.
“My soul, wait thou only upon God, for my expectation is from Him.”
GOD’S HAND
There is but one hand in the universe. It is God’s hand. Whenever you have felt that your hand was empty it has been because you have believed yourself something separate from God. Have you not felt at times great desire to give to others something they needed or wanted, and have not been able? Have you not said many times within yourself, “Oh, if I only had money, how I would relieve anxiety and distress! If it was only in my power, how quickly would I give to this one needing work a lucrative position; to that one wanting release from material bondage, freedom,” etc. Have you not often said, “If I could only afford it, I would so gladly give my time and service to others with no thought of return”?
From whence, suppose you, comes this desire to give? Is it from the mortal of you? Nay, nay, it is the voice of the Giver of all good gifts crying out through you. It is God’s desire to give through you. Cannot He afford to give whenever and wherever He will, and not be made poorer but richer thereby? Your hand is God’s hand. My hand is God’s hand. Our Father reaches out through these, His only hands, to give His gifts. We have nothing to do with the supply. Our part is to pass out freely, and without ceasing, the good gift. This we can do only by making a complete consecration (as far as our consciousness goes) of these hands, this entire being, to the service of God, the AllGood. When we have given anything to another we no longer recognize it as ours, but as theirs. So this conscious consecration of our hands to God helps us to recognize them as God’s hands in which is (no longer “shall be”) the fullness of all things.
When, a few weeks ago, the full recognition of there being but one hand was first given to a lady, it was so real that for hours whenever she looked at her right hand she seemed unable to close it, so running over full did it seem of all good things. She said to herself, “Then if this be true, I have in my hand health to give the sick, joy to give the mourning, freedom to give those in bondage, money to those needing it; it only needs that I keep the hand open for all good gifts to flow out.” To all who came to her that day in need of anything she said mentally, “Here is just what you desire; take it and rejoice.
All gifts are in my hand to give—it is God’s hand.”
And the result of that day’s work almost startled her, with such marvelous swiftness did the external manifestations of the heart’s desire come to everyone to whom she gave the word. One aged man, who for five years had been in external bondage and exile in a foreign land, held there by the machinations of another, and in which case no external law had been of avail to free, was set into perfect liberty, with the most complete vindication of character, and consequent public congratulations and rejoicings, by the word of liberty given him through that woman that day. Recognizing her hand as God’s hand, she only said, “Then in this hand are that man’s freedom papers,” and mentally extending to him her hand, she said, “Here is your freedom; it is God’s gift; wake up and take it; get up and go forth; you are free.” Then she committed the whole matter unto Him who invariably establishes the word spoken in faith, and He brought to pass the physical out-picturing of freedom.
“Thou openest thine hand and satisfies! the desire of every living creature.” Would you like to be able to do this? Then keep the hand open. Let no fear of poverty, fear of want, fear you will not be appreciated or justly dealt with, hinder you. Go right on giving aid to all who need anything. “Speak the word only” of giving. It is God’s word spoken through your lips, and has He not said, “My word shall not return unto me void, but shall accomplish that whereunto it is sent” ?
We cannot afford to withhold from giving our time, our intellect, our love, our money, to whomsoever need, for the law is that withholding makes poorer. “There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty,” said Solomon.
The supply is inexhaustible. Its outflow can only be limited by demand. Nothing can ever hinder the hand which is consciously recognized as God’s hand from being refilled, except, as was the case where the widow’s oil was multiplied through Elisha, “there is not a vessel more to receive it.” Let not the seeming emptiness of your hand at times stagger your faith for a moment. It is just as full when you do not see it as when you do. Keep right on recognizing it as God’s right hand in which are all good gifts now. And thus you will prove him who said, “Prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven and pour out to you a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”
God is surely calling us to “come up higher.” To all those who are earnestly seeking the truth for truth’s sake, and not for the loaves and fishes, neither that they may be able to “give a sign” to those seeking signs, He is saying loudly, “Take no thought what ye shall eat, what ye shall drink, or wherewithal ye shall be clothed. Your Father knoweth ye have need of these things. Seek ye first the kingdom of God, these other things shall be added. Freely ye have received, freely give. Do good and lend, hoping for nothing again, and thereby ye shall be the children of the highest.” God is forever giving, giving, giving, with no thought of return. Love always thinks of giving, never of receiving. God’s giving is the spontaneous outflow of perfect love. The higher we rise in recognition and consequent manifestation of the Divine, the more surely we think always of the giving, not of what we shall receive.
We know now that money, houses, lands, and all material things can be made to come to us by holding them in our thoughts as ours; but that is not the highest God has in store for us. “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive of the things He hath prepared for them that love”— what? Self? No, but “that love Him”—that love Good more than self. Jesus said, “They that have forsaken house, lands, etc., for my name’s sake shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, of houses, lands,” etc. They that have forsaken, they that have forsaken self, they that dare let their hand be forever open to their brother, “doing good and lending, hoping for nothing again,” to them is the promise of an hundredfold even in this life.
God has called us to be stewards of His. He has chosen us as vessels to carry good to others, and it is only while carrying to others that we ourselves can be filled. The law is,
“Give, and it shall be given to you, good measure, pressed down and running over.”
Give without thought of return.
“But,” says one, “am I to give my time, my money, my best thoughts, to others, and not require of them something in return? It is not just.” Give as God gives. He knows no mine and thine. He says, “All I have is thine.”
Look only to God for supply. If anything is returned to you through the one to whom you give, render thanks for it. If nothing visible is returned, give thanks just the same, knowing that no man can stand between you and the inexhaustible supply; and that it is he that withholds who is impoverished thereby, not he from whom anything is withheld.
“Acquaint thyself with God and be at peace: thereby good shall come unto thee. If thou return to the Almighty, thou shall be built up; thou shall put away iniquity far from thy tabernacles. Then shall thou lay up gold as dust, and the gold of Ophir as the stones of the brooks. Yea, the Almighty shall be thy defense, and thou shall have plenty of silver.”
When we have learned that God is our supply, and that He it is from whence cometh all our help, we will no longer care whether “pay” is rendered for our services or not. We will simply know that all things are ours now, and out of the fullness of love we will give freely. God’s hand is sure. Your hand is God’s hand now—today. It is full now. Give out of it mentally to all who call upon you, whatever they need. “Trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass.”
IF THOU KNEWEST
It would seem almost childish and puerile, almost an insult to the intelligence of one’s readers, to assert that the sunlight coming into a darkened room will annihilate that darkness. The merest child knows this, even if he does not understand the modus operand! of such fact. The sunlight does not have to make an effort to do this; it does not have to combat the darkness or wrestle or strain to overcome it; in fact, it does not change its course or its natural action in the least. It just goes on calmly radiating itself as usual. And yet the darkness is annihilated the instant it is touched by the light. Why?
Because the darkness is not an entity having a reality of its own. It is no thing. It is simply the absence of a positive real something. And when there is made a way for the something to rush in and fill to fullness the empty space, the no thing then is the nothing, the darkness annihilated, destroyed, healed; and all there is left is the something, the light.
Where did the darkness go? It did not go anywhere because it was not; it did not exist. It was simply the lack of something, and when the lack was filled there was no longer any lack. So with all negations, with all that is not good, not light, not love, not health, not wholeness. They are each and every one the absence of the Real, and they are all annihilated or healed by letting in a Something, a real Substance which fills full the vacuum.
Remembering that the things which are seen are the temporal, the unreal which pass away, while the things which are not seen are the eternal, the real, let us carry this thought of the no thing a little further. Unhappiness is not a reality because it is not eternal; it belongs in the category of things which pass away. Envy, selfishness, jealousy, fear, and so forth are not real entities in our lives. Each is a lack of love, their positive opposite. Lack of temporal goods, lack of health, lack of wisdom, none of these things belong to the kingdom of the real because they are all temporal things which will, as the philosopher Epictetus said, “pass away.” Nothing is real except the eternal, that which is based on the real Substance, God, that which can never be changed or made less by any external circumstances whatever.
Does this not make a little clearer and more acceptable, a little less antagonistic to the mind of man the oft-repeated statements, “There is no evil, sickness is not real, sin is not real,” and so forth? I repeat, nothing is real which is not eternal; and all conditions of apparent evil, of sickness, poverty, fear, etc., are not things, not entities in themselves, but they are simply an absence of the opposite Good, just as darkness is the absence of light. In the deepest reality there is never an absence of the Good anywhere, for that would mean an absence of God there. God as Life, Wisdom, Love, Substance fills every place and space of the universe, or else He is not omnipresent. Who shall dare say He is not? Eventually our best healing of wrong conditions and human suffering is done when we recognize and affirm this great whole of Truth, the Omnipresence of God, refusing absolutely to recognize anything else. The only “absence” which exists is in man’s consciousness or lower senses. But in order to bring this matter to the human understanding by piecemeal, to break the bread so that each shall have the portion which he is able with his present growth to take, let us take up a little detail.
Your friend is to all appearance very ill. God is Life—all the Life there is in the universe. Is your friend’s illness an entity, a “real” thing (that is, an eternal thing) ? No, it is rather like the darkened room, needing only the light to heal, an absence of Perfect Life in the body. Would not the incoming of newness of life—this Perfect Life—to all the diseased atoms heal and renew and make alive? Of course. Well, how are we to let in this fullness of Life? We will see later.
Take another example, for bodily illness is one of the least of the woes of blinded humanity with which we have to deal. A mother’s precious son is going all wrong. He drinks, steals; he breaks his mother’s heart with his unkindness and his dissipation. She weeps, rebukes, entreats, lectures, finally nags. What is all this that is killing the mother? It is no thing, nothing at all. It is not real because it is not eternal. It is the absence of Love, that is all. A perfect flood of Love permeating and saturating that boy’s being would heal all of his diseases, both moral and physical, because he is simply manifesting a great selfishness which is absence of Love—the darkened room again. How are we to get the remedy, fullness of Love, let in and thus applied to the root of the disease? We shall see.
Poverty belongs among the no things, the nothings. It is not real, for only the eternal things are real, and poverty is temporal. It is an absence of substance, and it is only permanently healed by an inflow of Substance to fill the empty space. Sin is not real, for it is not eternal. It is a failure to reach the mark. It is a blind, ignorant outreaching of the human for something not possessed, the sinner desiring and hoping thereby to gain happiness. This empty void, this awful outreaching which resulted in failure is only satisfied and healed by the incoming of a flood of Good which fills full the lack as the sunlight fills the darkness.
In overcoming undesirable conditions in our lives there are two definite ways of arriving in our consciousness at the realization of the Omnipresence of God—the great comprehensive Truth which heals all manner of diseases and which makes free, viz.: 1 st, we persistently deny the reality of the seeming evil; 2d, we let in the Substance of all good.
Everything undesirable passes away if we refuse absolutely to give it recognition by word, deed or thought as a reality. This we can the easier do when we remember that nothing is real except the eternal. A wiser One than we, said, “Give no place to the devil [evil].” It is not. It really has no existence whatever any more than has the darkness which often causes us, children that we are, perfect spasms of fear and suffering. It has no more reality (remembering what is real) than the fiction of dreams. When one awakens from a particularly unpleasant dream, some moments of definite assertion to one’s self that it was only a dream, not real, are required before the heart’s normal action returns and the natural breathing is restored. Even with one’s eyes wide open the dream seems strangely real, but we all know that it was entirely a delusion of the senses, nothing else; no substance, no reality. So the physical and material troubles are not real and will disappear if we refuse absolutely to give them any life or reality by our word or thought. Let us rejoice in words of thanksgiving that this is one of God’s ways, simply that evils are not. This is our first step.
Now for the second step. Had man any true conception of the gift of God to him, nothing in the created world would be able to withstand his power. We speak of a man’s “gift” without realizing how truly we are speaking. We say he is gifted in this direction or that as though he were in possession by nature of some remarkable ability inherited from parents or created by peculiar environment. While many of us are ready to acknowledge in a general way that “every good and perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights,” even we are not at all prepared for the reception of the marvelous truth of man’s full endowment from this Source. When a glimpse of it comes it makes one almost breathless with wonder and astonishment.
“If thou knewest the gift of God to thee.” What is this inestimable gift? What, indeed, but that He hath given the veritable Son of God to be forever within us. This is the marvelous way of creation and also of redemption from all human lack and suffering, Christ-in-you. “It hath pleased the Father that in Him [in this Christ, this Son of God] should dwell all the fullness of the Godhead”—fullness of Life, Love, Wisdom, Substance, yes, of the very substance of everything this human man can need or desire. “Christ in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,” “of his fullness have all we received.”
To have created man thus has seemed wise to Infinite Wisdom, and the one object in this life should be with us as it must be in the mind of God to make manifest this Son of God. “Unto every one of us is given grace [power, love, life, wisdom, substance], according to the measure of the gift of Christ.” Not that God’s giving is with partiality. Make no mistake here. The Creator of the Universe is no respecter of persons. There are no favorites in His creation. All the fullness of the Godhead is embodied in His Son, this indwelling Christ. But this power, life, wisdom, this “all” that makes up the “fullness of God,” is manifested only in proportion as we recognize this Christ as the Source of the good we desire, look to Him for it, acknowledge Him as All, and affirm persistently in the face of all opposition that the Son of God is now made visible through us.
We are each of us small or great, gifted or otherwise, “according to the measure of the gift of Christ we have received” consciously. There must be an incoming of this Divine Son of God to our conscious minds. This incoming will depend upon our faithfulness in acknowledging the Source and affirming its manifestation. We cannot idly drift into it. We must speak the words of Truth before Truth will become manifest. Paul said, “The Son of God was manifested to destroy the works of the devil [evil].” Precisely so, just as the light is manifested to destroy the darkness by filling it full. Let us take and definitely use day after day this statement of Truth: “The Son of God in me is now manifested, made visible in my body and all my affairs. He comes not to destroy, but to fill full.”
TRUSTING AND RESTING
There is a perfect passivity which is not indolence. It is a living stillness born of trust.
Quiet tension is not trust. It is simply compressed anxiety.
Who is there among those that have learned the law of Good and have tried to bring it into manifestation, that has not at times felt his physical being almost ready to snap asunder with the intensity of his “holding to the Truth”? You believe in Omnipresent Life. You attempt to realize it for others. An obstinate case comes to you for help—a case in which the patient is always in a hurry for results, always wanting to know how much more time will be required, and so forth. Her impatience and unbelief, together with your great desire to prove the law to her, stimulate you after a few treatments, to greater efforts; and almost immediately you find yourself thinking frequently of her when not treating, and trying to throw more force into the treatment when she is present. Then after giving a treatment you find a sense of fullness in your head, which is very uncomfortable; and very soon, what at first was a delight to you becomes a burden, and you almost wish the patient would go to someone else. You cannot help wondering why she improved so perceptibly with the first few treatments, and afterwards, even with your increased zeal, seemed to stand still or get worse. Let me tell you why. It is because when you first began to treat, you, so sure of the abundance of Divine Life, calmly and trustingly spoke the truth to your patient. When she got in a hurry, you, beginning to take on responsibility which was God’s, not yours, grew anxious and began to cast upon her your compressed anxiety. You were no longer a channel for Divine Life, sweet, peaceful, harmonious, to flow through, but by your intensity and hurry you completely shut off the divine influx, and were able only to force upon her, out of your anxious mortal mind, a few strained, compulsory thoughts which held her as in a vise, and exhausted you.
Some healing and other demonstrations of power are brought to pass in this way, but it is always the stronger mortal thought controlling the weaker, and is always wearing to the one thus working. This plane is entirely one of mental suggestion, a mild form of hypnotism.
In the matter of God as our supply, or any other side of the divine law which we from time to time attempt to bring into manifestation, the moment we begin to be anxious, then our quiet becomes simply the air-tight valve of tension or suppressed anxiety, which shuts out the very thing we are trying to bring about, and so prevents its manifestation.
This way of holding with intensity to a thought, be it mental argument for healing or looking to God for material supply, recognizing that we ourselves have power by such firmness of thought to bring what we want into manifestation, is one way of obtaining results, but it is a hard way. We do thus give out what is within us, and it is helpful so far as it goes; but by some mental law this intensity of thought seems to cut off our consciousness from the Fountainhead, thus preventing inflow and renewal therefrom.
Hence, the quick exhaustion and burdened feeling.
We need to rise above this state of tension, to one of living trust. There is such a thing as an indolent shifting of our responsibility upon an outside God, which means laziness, and which never brings anything into manifestation. But there is also a state of trustful passivity, which we must enter into to do the highest work.
There are some things which we are to do ourselves, but there are others which God does not expect us to do. When I speak of ourselves as something apart from God, I simply mean our conscious selves. We are always one with God, but we do not always realize it consciously. I speak of ourselves as the conscious part of us.) They are His part, and our greatest trouble lies in our trying to do God’s part, just because we have not learned how to trust Him to do it. We are, with our conscious thought, to speak the words of life, of truth, of abundant supply, and we are to act as though the words were true; but the “bringing it to pass” is the work of a Power that is higher than we; a Presence which we do not see with these mortal eyes, but which is Omnipotent, and which will always rush to our rescue when we trust it.
From the smallest thing of our everyday life to the rolling away of the largest stone of difficulty from our path, this Presence will come in to deliver us. But its working depends upon our trusting; and trusting means getting still inside.
In this effort of ours to bring into manifestation the good which we know belongs to every child of God, it is when we get beyond the point where we try to do it all ourselves, and let God do His part, that we get the desires of our heart.
After we have done our part faithfully, earnestly, we are told to “stand still, and see the salvation of God which He will work for you.” “The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.” See the conditions here imposed. This invisible Presence will remove the big difficulties, which look to your mortal vision almost insurmountable, from your path, only on condition that you stand still.
The Lord shall fight for you if ye hold your peace. But there is nowhere any such promise of deliverance for you while you preserve a state of flutter within. Either one— this state of internal unrest, or a forced external quiet, which simply means compressed anxiety—completely prevents this invisible Omnipotent Force from doing one thing for your deliverance. It must be peace, peace; possess your soul in peace, and let God work.
Marvelous have been the manifestations of this Power in the writer’s life when the “bringing to pass” has been left entirely to it. Ask not, then, when or how or why. That implies doubt. Only “rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him.”
When, in the reign of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, the Ammonites, Moabites and others, a great multitude, came against the king in battle, he in great fear called the people together, and they sought counsel of the Lord what to do, saying: “We have no might against this great multitude that cometh against us; neither know we what to do; but our eyes are upon Thee.” Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jahaziel, and he said: “Hearken ye, all Judah, Thus saith the Lord unto you: Be not afraid nor dismayed by reason of this great multitude; for the battle is not yours, but God’s. O Judah, fear not; but tomorrow go out against them, for the Lord will be with you. Ye shall not need to fight this battle; set yourselves, stand ye still, and see the salvation of the Lord with you.”
My friend, this battle you are trying to fight is not yours, but God’s. You are trying to heal; you are trying to make God manifest as your supply; you are trying to hold vigorously to the law of good in that very trouble at home which the world knows not of, but which at times nearly overwhelms you. Be still. Let go. The battle is God’s, not yours; and because it is God’s battle through you, God desiring to manifest through you, victory was on your side before ever the battle began (in your consciousness, for that is the only place there is any battle). Can you not calmly—aye, even with rejoicing—claim the victory right now because it is God’s battle? “Ye need no longer fight this battle,” but “stand ye still,” right where you are today, in the struggle to overcome material things, and “see the salvation of the Lord with you.”
Does some doubting Thomas say, “Yes, but I must have money today,” or, “I must have relief at once or this salvation will come too late to be of use; and besides I do not see how—” ? Stop right there, dear friend. You do not have to see how. That is not your business. Your business is to “stand still” and proclaim, “It is done.”
God said to Jehoshaphat, “Go out tomorrow against them;” that is, they were to do calmly, and in order, the external things which were in the present moment to do, but at the same time were to stand still, or be in a state, mentally, of trustful passivity, and see God’s saving power. Jehoshaphat did not say, “But, Lord, I do not see how;” or, “Lord, I must have help right away or it will be too late, for already the enemy is on the road.” We read, “They rose early in the morning, and went out; and Jehoshaphat stood, and said, Hear me, O Judah. Believe in the Lord your God; so shall ye be established.” And then he appointed singers, who should go forth before the army, singing, “Praise the
Lord; for His mercy endureth forever.”
All this, and not yet any visible sign of the promised salvation of the Lord! Right into the very face of battle, against an army mighty in number, singing, “Praise the Lord!”
Are you any nearer than this to the verge of the precipice, in this material condition you are trying to overcome? What did Jehoshaphat do? Did he begin to think or pray hard and forcibly? Did he begin to send strong thoughts of defeat to the opposing army, and exhaust himself with his efforts to hold on to the thought until he should be delivered? Did he begin to doubt in his heart? Not at all. He simply remembered that the battle was God’s and he had not anything to do with the fighting, but everything to do with the trusting. Further on we read:
“And when they began to sing and to praise, the Lord set ambushments against the children of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir, which had come against Judah; and they were smitten.”
It was only after they began to sing and to praise, that the Lord made the first visible move toward the manifestation of His promised salvation. It may be so with you. You may be at the very verge of apparent failure and the overthrow of your cherished principle. Your friends (?) are already beginning to speak disparagingly to you of your foolish trust (the things of God are always foolishness with men), saying, “You must do something in this matter.” Fear not. Just try to realize that the battle is God’s, through you; that because it is His battle, it has been victory from the start, and can never be anything else. Begin to sing, and praise Him for His deliverance; and as surely as you do this, giving no thought to the when or the how, the salvation of the Lord will be made visible, and the deliverance as real as it was in Jehoshaphat’s case, even to the gathering of unexpected “spoils” following. For this narrative of Judah’s king further says:
“And when Judah came toward the watchtower in the wilderness, they looked unto the multitude, and behold, they were dead bodies, fallen to the earth; and none escaped. And when Jehoshaphat and his people came to take away the spoils, they found among them in abundance both riches and precious jewels, more than they could carry; and they were three days gathering the spoil, it was so much.”
So God delivers when fully trusted—perfectly, fully, even beyond anything we have asked or thought; adding good which we have never dreamed of, as though to give double assurance of His favor and love to any who will trust Him. This is the “salvation of the Lord” when we “stand still.”
We must learn that the time of help coming to us is not our part, but God’s. We do know that in all the accounts in Scripture of those who realized God’s special deliverance from their troubles—from Abraham going forth to sacrifice his son, down to when Jesus put out His hand to save the sinking and faithless Peter, and even after this in the experience of the Apostles—this invisible Power came to hand just at the right time always—never a moment too late.
The promise is, “The Lord shall help her, and that right early;” or as the Hebrew reads, “at the turning of the morning,” which means just the darkest moment before dawn. So if, in whatever matter you are trying to exercise trust in your Father, the way keeps growing darker and darker, and apparently the help goes further and further away instead of coming into sight, you just grow more peaceful and still than ever, and you may know that the moment of deliverance is growing nearer for you with every breath.
In St. Mark’s account of that early morning visit of the women to the tomb of Jesus, when, bent on an errand of loving service, they forgot entirely the immense stone weighing several tons lying across their path, until they were almost at their journey’s end, and then one exclaimed in momentary dismay, “Who shall roll away for us this stone?” he says: “When they looked, the stone was rolled away; for it was very great.” Isn’t that “for” full of meaning to us? The very greatness of the difficulty which made it impossible for human hand to remove it, was the more reason why it was done by this invisible Power.
“Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity.” The more we are cut off from human help the greater claim we can make on Divine help. The more impossible a thing is to human or mortal power, the more at peace can we be when we look to Him for deliverance; for he has said, “My strength is made perfect in thy weakness.” And St. Paul, realizing that when he placed less confidence in the mortal he had more help from the Divine, said: “When I [the mortal] am weak, then am I strong.”
Trusting means resting confidently. We are to rest confidently, saying, “God is my strength, God is my power, God is my assured victory. I will trust in Him, and He will bring it to pass.”
“They that trust in the Lord shall not be confounded. Blessed is he whose trust is in the
God of Jacob.”
“It is better to trust in the Lord [in this invisible Presence] than to put confidence in princes.”
“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee.”
THE SPOKEN WORD
“Without the Word was not anything made that was made.”
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
How?
Listen: “The earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
“And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.
“And God said, Let there be a firmament . . . and it was so.
“And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear; and it was so.
“And God said. Let the earth bring forth grass, . . . and it was so.
“And God said. Let us make man in our image and after our likeness, . . . and it was so.
(Genesis I.)
God, Infinite Power, might have thought about all these things till doomsday. He might have wished during an indefinite time that they were formed and made visible. Nothing would ever have been created in visible form had there not been the Spoken Word put forth into this formless ether. It took the definite, positive “Let there be” to bring forth order out of chaos, and to establish in visible results the thoughts and desires of even an Infinite, Omnipotent Creator.
To create is to bring into visibility; to form something where before there was nothing; to cause to exist or to take form that which before was without form and void. To exist (from ex, out from, and sistare, to stand) is to stand out. Being always is; existence (Latin, exist are, to stand forth, emerge, appear) is that which stands forth as a visible entity.
God creates. Because man was created or brought into the visible universe in the image and likeness of God, he, spiritually, has like powers with God: he has this power of creating, of bringing into visible form that which before did not exist. As God created by the Spoken Word, “without which was nothing made that was made,” so man can create by his Spoken Word. In fact, there is no other way under heaven to bring into existence the visible conditions and the things which we each want.
Today it is agreed by all scientists—material as well as spiritual—that there is but one, universal Substance out of which all things are made. That Substance is Divine Stuff which, though invisible and intangible, is lying all about us as is the atmosphere we breathe. This Divine Substance is without form and void as is also this same physical atmosphere. It is waiting, forever waiting, for man to form it as he wills, by his Spoken Word.
What is Liquid Air? It is compressed invisibility, is it not? It is invisible, formless substance pressed into form by a definite and continued process until it becomes visible and tangible. This God Stuff, Divine Substance, is likewise subject to the pressure of man’s thought and word.
There are three realms in the universe: the spiritual, the mental, or psychic, and the physical, or material. These three, while in a way distinct, are so blended into one that it is difficult to know where one ends and the other begins. All created things have Spirit, soul and body. All things which we desire, already are now in being in the spiritual or invisible. But, as someone has said, “Thought and the Spoken Word stand between the Invisible and visible. By the action of these two —thought and the Spoken Word—is the Invisible made visible.
When we desire anything—I use this word “anything” advisedly, for did not the Master in divine things say, “Whatsoever ye desire,” “If ye ask anything,” etc.?—we must take our thought entirely off from the visible world and center it upon God. We begin, as God began in creation, by speaking out into this formless Substance all about us with faith and power, “Let there be so and so” (whatsoever we want). “Let it come forth into manifestation here and now. It does come forth by the power of my word. It is done: it is manifest,” etc. We continue this with vehemence a few moments, and then let go of it. This should be repeated with firmness and regularity, and with definite persistence at least morning and evening. Continue it, perfectly regardless of any evidence or want of evidence. Faith takes hold of the Substance of the things hoped for, and brings into evidence the things not seen.
The moment one takes cognizance of circumstances that moment he lets go of Faith.
Our spoken word first hammers the thing desired into shape. Our continued spoken word brings this shaped substance forth and clothes it with a visible body. The first action brings that which is desired forth from the formless toward the external as far as the psychic; the continued action brings it forth still further and clothes it with visible form or material body.
This was forcibly illustrated to the writer a few years ago. A lady, Miss C., had been for days vigorously “speaking the word” out into the great universe of Substance, of something she much desired. She had no confidante and recognized no human help.
One day she wrote an ordinary business letter to a friend in the country. This friend, on receipt of the letter, immediately replied, saying: “What is this strange thing about this letter of yours? When I took it from the post office it had the appearance to me of being covered with so and so” (the very thing which the writer had been shaping in the Invisible by her spoken word). “I opened the letter,” she continued, “and for some minutes the opened letter took the form, to my sight, of a ‘horn of plenty,’ pouring out in unlimited quantity this same thing. Have I gone crazy, or what does it mean?”
Do you not see? The Word spoken alone in the silence of her own room by Miss C. had shaped and brought forth toward the external as far as the psychic realm the thing desired. The vibrations of her thought had permeated, all unconsciously to herself, everything that she had touched. The friend, having some psychic power developed, saw plainly surrounding this letter the shape Miss C. had created, though it was yet quite invisible to the natural eye. It is needless to say that the continued Word very soon brought this shape forth another step into the visible world as a solid manifestation of exactly what Miss C. desired.
In this process, however, there are two conditions which must be carefully observed. One is, do not talk with anyone about what you are doing. Talk scatters and wastes all this precious Divine Substance; and what we want to do is to focus it. Much needless talk diffuses and wastes all of one’s power. One might as well pierce full of holes the boiler of a steam engine, letting the steam ooze at dozens of pores, and then expect any power in the engine to draw the train. It is impossible to both diffuse and focus at the same time.
The other important condition to observe is to continue the Spoken Word. “Be not weary in well doing, for in due time ye shall reap, if ye faint not.”
UNADULTERATED TRUTH
There is a straight white line of Absolute Truth upon which each one must walk if he would have demonstration. The slightest swerving in either direction from this line results in nondemonstration, no matter how earnest or intense one may be.
The line is this: There is only God; all seeming else is a lie.
Whosoever is suffering today from sickness, poverty, failure—any kind of trouble—is believing the lie.
We talk largely about the Truth, and quote with ease and alacrity the words of the Master, “The Truth shall make you free.” Free from what? Free from sickness, sorrow, weakness, fear, poverty. We claim to know the Truth; but the question to be driven right home is, are we free from these undesirable things? And if not, why not?
Let us get right down to a good, hard-pan, practical basis about this matter.
We talk much about the Omnipresence of God. In fact, this is one of the basic statements upon which rests the so-called New Thought. “God is omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient.” When I was a child in spiritual things, I thought as a child and understood as a child. I believed that God was here, there and everywhere, within hailing distance of every human being, no matter whether under the sea or on the mountain top, in prison or outside, in the sick chamber or at the wedding feast. In any and all places He was so near that in an instant He could be summoned to help. To me this was God’s omnipresence. Then His omnipotence meant to me that while sickness and poverty, sorrow, the evil tongue of jealousy or slander, etc., had great power to make one suffer, God had greater power. I believed that if He were called upon to help us He surely would do it, but it would be after a fierce and prolonged combat between the two powers of good and evil, or of God and trouble.
I wonder if there are not others today whose real, innermost thoughts of God’s Omnipresence and Omnipotence are much like this. Are you one of those who believe in God and —? God and—sickness? God and poverty? God and something unpleasant in your life which you are daily trying to down by applying a sort of plaster of formal statements of truth right over the sore place of your trouble, while at the same time you are giving in your own mind (if not also in your conversation) about equal power to the remedy and the disease? If you are in this category let me tell you, you will never escape from your bondage, whatever it may be.
Try for a moment to think what really is meant by Omnipresent Spirit, remembering at the same time that what applies to our bodies applies equally to every other form of human affairs or conditions.
Each little atom of one’s physical body, taken separately, is completely filled, permeated by Spirit, Substance, Life. This must be true because there could be no external form to the atom without first the sub—stans, that which stands under, or as the basis of all material things. The Spirit permeating each atom is now, always has been and always will be absolutely perfect because it is God, the only Life in the universe. These atoms are held together each moment by the same Spirit. They work together in perfect harmony because the Spirit pervading them is one Spirit and not several spirits. Not one of these atoms can change into a diseased or imperfect atom, even for a moment; because if it did that would be one place where, for a time, there is lack of God, Perfect Life. And one place for one instant where there is lack of God breaks up the entire law of the Omnipresence of God, which cannot be.
Jesus said, “The Truth shall make you free,” but he prefaced this statement by the word, “Ye shall know the Truth.” It is then knowledge of the truth which sets free. The truth is, we are free now, but we do not know it. You may be the child of a king; but if you do not know it you may live in poverty and squalor all your life. We are all, today, this very hour, free from all sickness, because God, who is Perfect Life, unchangeable and indestructible, abides within and fills completely full every atom of these bodies. If God, Divine Substance, fills every part, every place and space as the atmosphere fills the room, there is certainly no lack of life in any part. Then if today we are manifesting sickness, it is because we have believed the lie about ourselves, and have gotten the results of the lie, that is, apparent lack of health, in our consciousness.
All that is, is good, but lack of God in any part is not, that is, does not exist. Such a thing is a moral impossibility.
Many earnest people are greatly puzzled right here. They are told that “there is no evil; all is good because all is God,” etc. When they find themselves or others suffering apparent pain, sickness, lack of money, etc., they are staggered in faith, and begin to say, “Surely this is not good; lack of health is not good, sin is not good, poverty is not good. What is this?” For an answer they are often told, “Oh, yes, this is good, for there is nothing but good (God) in the Universe. This is unripe good, like the green apple.”
Now the truth is that all which is not good (God) is no thing. It simply is not. It is the lie, and has only to be definitely characterized as such in order to disappear. What is the wild beast that sits on your chest with such overwhelming weight when you have nightmare? Is it “unripe good”? Is it something that after a few days or weeks of right thoughts you can manipulate into good? Not at all. From beginning to end it is nothing, no thing— but a vagary, a deception of the mortal brain and senses. Had it at any time any sort of reality whatever? Surely not. It is all a lie, which at the time seems so real that it requires almost superhuman efforts to throw it off, even after you realize that it is only a nightmare.
“There is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things,” said Paul (I Cor. 8:6). And again, “For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things” (Rom. 11:36).
If God, then, is the Substance of all things visible and invisible, and is omnipresent, there is no such a thing as lack of God or lack of Substance in any place or space in this universe. Sickness would be lack of Life in some part of the body. Impossible. Poverty would be lack of Substance in the circumstances. Impossible. Foolishness, ignorance, insanity, would be lack of God, Divine Mind, Omniscience in man. Impossible.
Do you not see, then, how all these negatives are utter nothingness, not true, the lie?
And how, instead of recognizing them as something to be overcome, we should put them at once and at all times into their real place of nothingness?
Let us go back to our straight, white line of Absolute Truth. There is only God. All that is not God is no thing, that is, has no existence—is simply the nightmare. If we walk on this white line where we refuse to see or acknowledge anything but God, then all else disappears. In dealing with the everyday problems of life we will succeed in becoming free just in proportion as we cease absolutely to parley with apparent evils as though they were entities. We cannot afford to spend a moment’s time agreeing with their claim, for if we do, we ourselves will be the overcome instead of the overcomers. We must rise to the highest, most sweeping statements of Truth that we know. Our great statement must be, “There is only God. Whatever is not God (good) is a lie.” And this lie must be instantly and constantly crushed on the head as a viper the moment it appears in our mentality. Hit the hydra-headed monster (the lie) instantly it appears, with the positive statement, “You are a lie. Get to where you belong. There is no truth in you. There is only God, and God is fullness of good, life, joy, peace, now and forever.”
The Absolute Truth is there is no lack anywhere, but an overflowing abundance of every kind of good which man can possibly desire or conceive of. Stop believing the lie. Stop speaking it. Speak the Truth. It is the spoken Truth that makes manifest.
In the domain of Spirit there is neither time nor space. What is to be already is and must be spoken into visibility. Practice thinking and realizing Omnipresence, that is, practice realizing that all good that you desire is here now—all present—it is not apart from you and requiring time to bring it to you. There is no time or space.
There is not God and—a body.
There is not God and—circumstance.
There is not God and—any sort of trouble.
There is only God, through and through and through all things, in our bodies, in our seemingly empty purses, in all our circumstances, just waiting as Invisible Substance for us to recognize and acknowledge him, and him only, in order to become visible. All else is a lie.
God is.
God is all.
God is manifest, because there is nothing else to manifest.
ONENESS WITH GOD
“Prayer that craves a particular commodity—anything less than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the Spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private end is theft and meanness. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as man is [consciously] at one with God he will not beg.”—Emerson.
True prayer, then, is just a continual recognition and thanksgiving that All is good, and All-Good is ours now as much as it ever can be. Oh, when will our faith become strong and steadfast enough to take possession of our inheritance here? The Israelites entered not into the promised land because of their unbelief. Their inheritance was real and was awaiting them then and there; but it could not do them any good nor give any enjoyment until they first took hold of it by faith, after which, and as a result of which, would have come the reality. It is this taking by faith first that brings anything into actuality or visibility.
Why will these mortal minds of ours forever postpone the acceptance of All-Good as our rightful inheritance for this life? The heir of material wealth must claim his inheritance before he can possibly come into its possession or use. So long as he rejects it, he is as poor as though nothing had been provided for him. All things are ours now—fullness of love, of life, of wisdom, of power—aye, more than these, fullness of All-Good, which means abundance of all things material as well as spiritual. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”
Thank God, some of his children are ceasing to look at the things of God from the objective standpoint, and are learning to contemplate the facts of life from the subjective, or higher side —even pronouncing all things good, as God does, until everything else but the thought of good drops out of mind, and only the good is manifest.
Oh, how marvelous are these little glimpses we are from time to time obtaining of things as God sees them! To what high points of privilege are we, his children, being lifted in these latter days, that it is possible for us to see things from the standpoint of Pure Intelligence, Perfect Wisdom? “Verily, I say unto you, that many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them.”
One instant’s view of the facts of life from the subjective, or God’s side, makes all our carnal aspirations and struggles, all our ambitions, all our boasted wisdom and pride sink into utter nothingness; and we see instead, “the wisdom of men but foolishness with God.” All other objects in life fade into insignificance beside the one of getting more and more into conscious oneness with the Father, where, at all times, we shall pray the true prayer of rejoicing and thanksgiving that All-Good is the only real thing in the universe. When we come into perfect recognition of unity instead of duality, then indeed shall we know prayer to be but the “soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul,” and we shall cease forever to pray “the prayer as a means to effect a private end, which is theft and meanness.”
The nearer, I say, we approach to God, and the more we grow into the realization of our true relationship to Him, our Father, the surer are all personalities, all divisions to be lost sight of, and our oneness with all men and women becomes so vivid and real to us that a prayer for “private ends” becomes impossible to us. All desires of the little self are merged in the desire for universal good, because we recognize but one in the universe and we a part of that one.
Now comes the question, How can we quickest and surest attain this conscious oneness with the Father, which shall enable us to see things as He sees them—all good?
And instantly flashes over the wires of Intuition, out from the stillness of the Invisible, a voice saying, “O return ye unto God.” Return, turn back away from the mortal, away from people, from human ways; turn “within and look unto me, ye people, saith the Lord your God.”
Seek the light from the interior, not from external sources. Why always seek to interpose human help between our soul and God? Emerson again says: “The relations of the soul to the Divine Spirit are so pure that it is profane to interpose helps. . . . Whenever a mind is simple and receives Divine Wisdom, then old things pass away—means, teachers, texts, temples, fall.”
“Let us not roam, let us stay at home with the Cause.”
Constant reading, discussions, interchange of opinions are all external ways of reaching the truth from the intellectual side. These are a way, but “/ am the way, the truth and the life,” spake the voice of the Father through the Nazarene. “The anointing ye have received abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you.” “The Spirit of truth which dwelleth in you shall lead you into all truth, and shall show you things to come.”
Oh, when will we cease this running to and fro, seeking truth, and learn to “be still, and know that I am God”?
In order that we may hear this inner Voice and may receive this highest form of teaching, which alone can open the eyes of our spiritual understanding, this mortal self must cease its clamoring even for truth; this human intellect must become absolutely still, forgetting to argue or discuss. The Father can only lead into All Truth when we listen to hear what He, will say—not to what others will say. We must learn to listen— not anxiously and with strained ears, but expectantly, patiently, trustingly. We must learn how to wait upon God, in the attitude of “Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth,” if we would know truth.
Jesus said, “Except ye become as little children,” that is, teachable and trusting—”ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven,” or the kingdom of understanding of truth. And again he said, “Father, I thank thee that thou hast hidden these things from the wise [or intellectual], and revealed them unto babes.”
We must put aside all preconceived opinions of the truth, either our own or any other person’s, and with receptive souls opened toward the source of all light, say continually, “Lord, teach me.” We must become as babes in human wisdom before we can enter into the deep things of God.
But believe me, the revelations which the Spirit of Truth will make to you when you have withdrawn from all outside sources and learned to listen to the voice in your own soul, will be such as to make you fanon?—no longer believe—your oneness with the Father and with all His children. They will be such as to fill you with great joy. “These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.”
The great Soul of the Universe has chosen you and me through whom to manifest itself.
“Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.” Shall we forever limit this manifestation by making ourselves into a little narrow mould of personality which shall shape and size the Divine, or, worse still, shall we run here and there to borrow some measure our neighbor has made of himself and hold it as our measure under the great rushing waters of Infinite Wisdom and Love, thereby saying: “This full is all I want; it is all there is to be had, all that thou art”?
Away forever with such limitations, ye seekers of truth.
“We make His love too narrow With false limits of our own;
And we magnify His strictness With a zeal He will not own.
For the love of God is broader Than the measures of man’s mind;
And the heart of the Eternal Is most wonderfully kind.”
Would you then know God, “whom to know aright is life eternal”? Go not abroad looking for the Divine. “Stay at home within thine own soul.” Seek there earnestly, calmly, trustfully, the Source of All Good. Know at once and forever that only therein will you find truth, and only thereby will you grow to be what you desire—self-centered, selfpoised. Let go your little narrow thoughts of the Divine, cease to desire anything less than the fulfillment of God’s will in you. His thoughts are higher than ours as the heavens are higher than the earth. Let nothing short of the perfect fulfillment of His thought in and through you satisfy you.
Do you comprehend this in its fullness—the desire of Infinite Love and Pure Intelligence being fulfilled (or filled full) in you and me?
Oh, how quickly and far recede the cankering cares of life, the frets and fumes, the misunderstandings and the being misunderstood! How sure we are when we have consciously— and by effort if need be—swept away all limitations of personal desire and are saying, “Here am I, Infinite Father, thou great Fountainhead of All-Good. I have no desire. Thou art fulfilling thy highest thoughts in me unhindered by my consciousness; thou art now pouring thyself through this organism into visibility; thou art thinking thy thoughts through this intellect; thou art loving through this heart with thine own great tender Father-Mother love, which thinketh no evil, endureth all things, beareth all things, seeketh not her own; thou art manifesting thyself in thine own way through this organism unto the visible world.” I say when we thus burst the bounds of personal desire and rise to a willingness that the Father’s will be done through us every moment, how sure we are of the fatherly care which shall clothe us with the beauty of the lilies and feed us as the birds of the air. Aye, with even a more lavish abundance of all good things than He gives to either of these, for “are ye not of more value than many sparrows?”
Do you fear to break loose from teachers, from human helps? Fear not. Trust to the great and mighty Soul which is in you and is limitless behind you to manifest himself as truth to you and through you. There will be no failure, no mistake. Spend some hours daily alone with the Creator of the universe. In no other way will you ever come into the realization you desire. Learn to sever yourself from those around you. Practice this, and soon you can be as much alone with God in the street or in a crowded room as you could in the wilds of a desert. A little book called, “The Practice of the Presence of God,” by Bro. Lawrence, tells how he, for years, kept himself consciously in the very glory of Divine Presence, even while at the most humble daily tasks, by always keeping the thought, “I am in his Presence.” All other things which were not divine in the man died out and dropped away, not because he fought them or resisted the uprising of the natural man, but because he persistently practiced the Presence (or thought of the Presence) of God, and in that Presence all other things melted away like snow before a spring sun.
This is the only way of growth, of overcoming. It is letting “the same mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” We do not have, by some supreme effort, to draw this mind into us, but simply to let it. Our part is to take the attitude consciously of receiving, remembering first to “enter the closet” of our own soul and “shut the door” on all thoughts but that of Divine Presence.
Each individual soul has its own salvation to work out—that is, its own self to bring into visibility. This is not to be done by some intense superhuman effort, but by each one dealing directly with the Father.
Just as long as anyone clings to the skirts of another, so long will the manifestation of the real Self—God—remain weak and limited. Wait only upon God for the light you desire. He will tell you how to act, what to do. Trust your own inspiration; act upon it though all the world sit in judgment upon it, for when any soul puts aside selfish aims, and desires only to manifest the Highest, his life then becomes the Perfect One manifesting through him.
When you learn to let God manifest Himself through you in His own way, it will not be like the manifestation through anyone else. You will think and speak and do without previous thought or plan. You will be as new and surprising to yourself as to anyone else. “For it is not you that speaketh, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.”
Oh, what supreme tranquility we have when we are conscious that our thought is God’s thought through us; our act, our word, God’s act and word through us! We never stop to think of results; that is His care. We are quietly indifferent to criticism of lesser minds (mortal thought), for we know whom we have believed. We know that what we speak and do is right though all the world be made wrong thereby. “What I must do is all that concerns me—not what people think,” says Emerson. Then God in you becomes a law unto you and you have no longer need of external laws. God becomes wisdom unto you, ever revealing to your waiting soul more and more of Himself, giving you new and clear visions of truth, and indeed, “ye need not that any man teach you.” You have no longer use for external forms, which are but the limitations of truth and not truth itself.
Then God—the Infallible—shall be unto you and through you unto others, not only wisdom and understanding, but Love and Life and the abundance of all things needful.
Then shall you have at all times something new to give to others instead of looking to them to receive; for you will stand in the very storehouse of All-Good with the Master of the house, that through you He may pass out freely the bread and water of Life to those who are still holding up their empty cups to some human hand to be filled—’not yet having learned to enter into all the fullness of Good for themselves.
O believe me, ye who seek Truth, who seek life and health and satisfaction, it is nowhere to be found until you seek it directly from the Fountainhead who “giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not.”
Begin at once to put aside all things and people which you have hitherto interposed between your own soul and the Great Cause of all things.
Cease now and forever to lean on anything less than the Eternal. Nothing less can ever give you peace.
THE END